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There is no room in there for narcissism, this is merely a toilet, where you really see yourself for what you are and get a whiff of reality. On the toilet no one is a star. Remember that and you will go far in life.
These days ‘motivational speakers’ are also considered big shots. We confuse bravery with bravura. I’ve seen motivational speakers who are brought in to companies to tell you about rowing across the Atlantic with one arm. How is this helping the company? That person isn’t brave, he’s nuts.
It all went wrong when some deluded optimist wrote the words, ‘All men are created equal’. This is clearly not the case; some people are losers.
Millions of years of natural selection, and this is what we’ve come to. We want to be the most famous, the richest, the thinnest and the busiest. Darwin would shit himself in the pants.
So many people want to label you as funny or aggressive or a mess. We are condemned by other people to stagnate in the image they have of us; held ransom by their expectations like a butterfly pinned on cardboard.
Our brain can trick us into thinking life stands still. In the end this causes the human race the most heartache.
It’s amazing how we will suffer pain and abuse to keep our lives predictable. We’ll let our inner voices brutalize us, rather than live with the possibility that we might be wrong about how we see things.
Many people want to change the world; they don’t want to change themselves.
We spend a whole lifetime hunting for some wisdom. In childhood, it’s ‘happy days’, our biggest challenge is hitting the potty, after that the shit hits the fan. By the time you hit your 20s you’re fuelled with the stress that you have to end up as someone special. Clearly some give up and just take root on their sofas but most young folks feel they have to turn on the turbo and go for the gold. In your 30s you’re fighting to keep what you’ve got and by your 50s you know it’s going to get taken away. And this is where the road divides and you either turn into wine or into vinegar.
When Hamlet says, ‘O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!’ That’s got to be one of the most accurate descriptions of depression. (If a shrink heard you say that he’d have you on meds in seconds.)
There are clues that something is wrong because I can only sleep two hours at a time and when I wake there is dread; heavy like a weight on my chest. My movement is limited and trips to the shower are like getting ready for a decathlon.
Another mental torture arises from the fact that I’m being haunted continuously by the thought of how old I am and how many years I have left. I have been doing this periodically since I was 40; now I do it all the time. Each day I look for signs of my decay and, in finding them, feel my own imminent death.
The feeling is that of being a corpse, no sense of skin or other extremities, like fingers or legs.
It’s as if your old personality has been sucked out so slowly that you didn’t notice its departure. Very slowly it’s been stolen away and each day you remember less and less of who you are and what you feel.
They’d say, ‘Come on, people are dying of cancer. They wouldn’t know a cushion if it came up and spoke to them.’ I want to tell them that the voice telling me to get the cushion is the illness. People don’t commit suicide because they can’t find a cushion but the feeling of helplessness, the sense that your brain does not belong to you anymore with its insane commands, could drive you over a cliff just to get some quiet.
we won’t have to hunker down in isolation any more, quivering in case someone we know finds out, or worse someone at work finds out and we’re either dismissed (the company probably will say for other reasons) or treated like a person with Ebola.
The brain detects negative information faster than it does positive. We are drawn to bad news. When something is flagged as a negative experience, the hippocampus (responsible for consolidating memory) makes sure it’s stored in an easy–to-reach place for future reference. If you whistled a happy tune and just thought lovely thoughts you’d probably be hit by a truck pretty quickly, and find yourself as road kill. This negative bias primes you for avoidance and fear but when you direct it at yourself, it can bring you to your knees with depression.
Psychological stress is a fairly new concept. People might say, ‘Oh, come on you lightweight, we can deal with stress, bring it on.’ It isn’t the stress that makes you sick or even your risk of being sick. Stress increases your risk of getting diseases that make you sick, or if you’re already sick and you add stress, you can kiss farewell to your natural defences. The fact we can’t switch off our alarm is what makes us vulnerable. So here’s my point: stress-related diseases are disorders of excessive stress responses. (Take it or leave it).
Testosterone Those who habitually fill up with testosterone literally have no brain. It’s a no-brainer; a lot of sex but no brain.
If she expresses depression or shows an expressionless face, the baby, not being able to think something is wrong with the mother, believes he is the cause and so has a greater chance of having depression or some other mental dysfunction himself, while keeping an idealized image of his caretaker; his survival depends on her.
The big idea is: THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR MASTER, THEY ARE YOUR SERVANT.
Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple and a meditator said, ‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – all these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.’
