Now that we know the thing we all have in common, how 0’s can turn into 1’s, and what to believe in, it’s time to figure out how to put that knowledge in practice by learning how to distinguish 1's from 0’s.
At first, this might seem pretty straightforward. A couple of examples may come to mind: Missing an important event is a 0. Not getting the job we wanted is a 0. Winning the lottery is a 1. These however, are examples of how reality can be misleading.
To better see how reality works, we need to let go of the belief that the things that happen in our life are either a 1 or a 0 and understand that it is not the event itself that is a 1 or a 0, but how we experience it. As such, missing an important event might be a 1 or a 0, not getting the job we wanted might be a 1 or a 0 and winning the lottery might be a 1 or a 0.
You probably have heard the sayings: “A glass can be either half-empty or half-full.”, “There is always good in bad.” or “Look on the bright side…”. You might not even believe in them, but these expressions exist for a reason: they were born when others before us faced their greatest sorrows, and turned them into their greatest joy. How did they do that? It’s simple: by believing.
To succeed is to win: a common mistake
There are times in life where things just keep going wrong. No matter how hard we try, it feels like we are caught in a tide of misfortune from which there is no escape. The reason why it feels that way, is that we actually are. For some reason, we end up doing the same thing over and over, every time expecting a better outcome. It can become so disheartening, that we just want to give up, and yet, at the same time, we can’t stop until we succeed.
Why is it so hard to give up?
To understand the answer, we have to understand the ups and downs of reality. In binary terms, when we are flowing through a stable stream of 1’s, one of the next possible outcomes is a 0. When that happens, we expect that the next outcome will be a 1. So when we are struck by another 0, we are irresistibly compelled to try again, because we know for certain that a 1 will come again. When that 1 finally comes, balance is restored and we move on with our lives. That is, until the next 0 comes and the cycle repeats.
Life: a flip of the coin
There is a simple thought experiment that may clarify this cycle: a coin toss.
Imagine you hold a coin in your hand. You flip it and try to guess heads or tails. When the coin lands, you look at it and see which side is facing upwards.
Statistics say, that if you throw the coin enough times, your guesses will have approximately 50% chance of success, regardless of what you guessed.
Curiously enough, as we flip the coin over and over, our brain tends to see a pattern in the results, which makes us believe more and more that the next coin toss will be what we predict. If you toss the coin three times and in all three its heads, your brain will tell you that the next coin toss will be tails, even though the chance is still 50%. There is even a term for this phenomenon: the gambler’s fallacy, which is the mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future.
If we compare this experiment to the events that happen in life, we realize that we do this almost every day. When we are late for work, all the trafic lights are red. When we want to go out to have fun, all the bars are full. When we fall in love, it’s always with the wrong person. Culturally, this tendency to predict events is called expectations, and sadly enough, its is the reason why we suffer so much.
We expect to find the love of our life when we go out, we expect to land that awesome job that we have worked so hard for. We expect that next time we play, we will win the lottery.
So as the coin of life flips, we take a guess without accepting that every single time, we have 50% chance of success.
Now you may think it is a good time to assure yourself. “50% is not that bad. It means I will guess right half of the time.”.
If you thought like this, you are not seeing reality in binary terms. In binary, there is no 50% chance of success. Every single event in life is the same: it either happened, or it didn’t. 1 or 0.
So what happens when you abandon expectations? What happens when you stop trying to guess right and simply live?
To win: accept any outcome
Consider the same coin toss experiment. Close your eyes, flip a coin but do not guess the outcome.
Now open your eyes and see the outcome. Obviously enough, the chance that you are seeing heads or tails is 100%. Do this experiment enough times, until you are absolutely certain that every time the outcome is either heads or tails. When you stop, think about how you feel.
If you feel happy, then your chance to have won was 100% in retrospect and you can carry on happily with your life.
If you are unhappy or indifferent, then it means that you expected to win or to the very least to accomplish something, which compels you to try again and again until you stop to think “why am I even flipping a coin?” and let go entirely.
This might make no sense to you. After all: “Why would we flip a coin a thousand times without expecting to guess it right?”. The reason we expect to guess it right, is because we believe we can. For some reason, we seem to be innately programmed to think that we are capable of predicting the outcome of a random event. We even invented a word for it: luck!
So if we are lucky enough to have all the green lights when we are late to work, we are going to have a good day. When we fall in love with someone under the right conditions, then it has to be the love of our life. It’s like we have special abilities which “magically” allow us to predict the future. We are sucessfull, we win at everything, our life is great!
And for the unlucky ones? Well, too bad. It’s not our fault that life is against us!, “It’s God’s fault!”, or worse, a curse that someone has cast upon us.
After all, we did not choose to be “unlucky”. Did we?
Why would we choose that?
Why would we indeed…
Consider this: when you believe that you don’t have a choice, when you believe that the world, or luck, or any other thing it is choosing for you, it is when reality indeed chooses for you.
Catharsis: choose the outcome.
Beautiful things happen every second of our incredibly unlikely life, but we only realize they happened in retrospective. It is only when we stop taking our life for granted and look back at our greatest moments, that we see that they are not the outcome of guessing, but the product of our choices. And when we realize that it was not luck but our own decisions that got us this far, we feel proud of ourselves, because we believe that no matter what happens, if we choose with our heart, the outcome will always be positive. We always win.
This phenomenon has been explained by many spiritualists. It is called gratitude.
Some flow through life and look back and are grateful for every moment that has passed. Others live trapped in the endless loop of successes and disappointments, always expecting more and more.
So if you want to experience life without fear or failure, you have to let go of what you expect the future to be. You cannot guess it, but you can choose how to feel about it. That is the only possible way of experiencing a steady flow of 1’s, because no matter what happens, you are prepared for anything.
Ultimately, it is our choice to create a reality that is best version that it can be.
