Essential Oils, Wellness, and Mindfulness

A male billionaire stock broker and a female energy healer are waiting in line at McDonalds. She is dressed in flowy, colorful clothes and wooden beads, and he is dressed in a colorless suit. She recently lost her children because she was not able to provide for them financially, and she is in danger of becoming homeless. The two strike up a conversation and each asks what the other one does.

A disagreement soon breaks out. She says to the man in the suit: “You should loosen up. I can tell you’re not happy. You need to focus in your inner world and ignore everything else, because feeling happy is all you really need in life.” The stock broker says: “I may not be happy, but I make a billion dollars every year, I own 10 houses, and I can travel anywhere I want to. My wife and children are provided for, and that’s what life is all about.”

Which of these two attitudes is the right one to have?

This is a problem I find in men as well, so it’s definitely not gender-specific. But many of my sexual partners have had an outlook on life that’s tremendously different from my own.

One woman seemed to have no awareness of external facts of the outside world, and instead chose to focus on her inner emotional world. She didn’t even know how much money she was making, unless she was completely broke and couldn’t pay the rent. She didn’t budget or compare her income to her expenses, and didn’t really see any connection between her actions and her consequences. For instance, she complained to me about her finances being tight but then she bought an expensive new leather couch (I convinced her to return it).

This same woman considered herself very spiritual, and loved books and knowledge and everything related to spirituality. She seemed to view life as a string of moments, hopping from one emotional experience to the other, without any concern for external results such as achieving something or making an impact in this world. She lived in a small apartment, was often in financial trouble, was unemployed, and could not provide for college for her teenage children. But it seemed none of that mattered to her, as long as she felt good, emotionally.

An attitude common in men is exactly the opposite: we ignore our feelings for the sake of cold, hard results. In fact, a man who isn’t achieving his (often numeric and quantifiable) goals will be pretty unhappy. He will allow himself to feel good once he has achieved something significant and measurable in the external world. He does not measure progress by personal growth, but by how much good he can do in the world.

I don’t think the first attitude is right: you can’t just go around doing whatever feels right in the moment (“follow your heart,” they say) and expect to wind up with a livable life. There will always be things you need to do that you don’t want to do, that will create they type of life you want to live in. I don’t think the second attitude is right either, a cold hard focus on results will leave one feeling empty inside when the achievements don’t provide the expected emotional payout.

I think the best balance lies between: live in the real world, and don’t think that your feelings are an infallible guide to truth. Feelings should come as a result of doing something productive that you love, but should not be an end in themselves. Set some specific, measurable goals and do some things you don’t feel like doing in order to reach them, but also take care of yourself along the way and enjoy the journey. You can never become successful just by being happy, but you can never become happy just by being successful either.

As a side note: don’t buy or use products that claim to do something unless those claims have been evaluated by the FDA. If you try alternative medicine, ask your doctor what he thinks about it and for god’s sake listen to him. He went to school for 10 years to learn what the brightest minds in the world have discovered about the human body over the past 5 centuries, so do not think that you know better because you read a blog or did a google search.

Facts over feelings.