Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back

by Gary John Bishop

Whatever truth you own doesn’t own you.

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect.” —Arthur Schopenhauer

It takes as much effort to live a crappy life as it does a great one. And you’re the only one who can choose which you want to live.

That’s what true acceptance is for a human being. When you can let something be itself without any charge or reaction around that thing.

Remember, if certainty is key for a human being, then providing evidence for what you have already concluded is critical to that certainty. Your conclusions are your rock, the “truth” from where you can make sense of this world.

“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.” —Jonathan Swift

FINDING YOURSELF ON THE MAP You can picture this point of experience as your own little marker on Google Maps. Every morning you wake up into a world. As soon as your eyes open you are in a familiar location, and no, I don’t mean in your bed. It’s actually more like in your head! This isn’t the world that greets you every morning but rather your unique world.

Whatever new life you want for yourself requires you to be different. You can’t be the same you you’ve always been,

To authentically change your life requires you to authentically change yourself.

We try to placate our conclusions with our accomplishments. We try to get away from them with our progress. But that gives you momentary relief, at best. The conclusions are still there. You’re still stuck at that same point of experience. So, what can we do to get unstuck? Stop the striving and struggling, for starters, and just accept where you are. Be “here” for the moment. This moment. Attempting to overcome your point of experience is futile. You’re trying to outrun a treadmill. You can’t escape your conclusions by running. You can’t out-think, out-hustle, or out-meditate this shit.

Right now, think of something in your life that you barely, if ever, give thought to, something so mundane and benign it just fades into the background of your thoughts. It could be anything—the color of your car, your middle name, the light bulb above your head, the size of your feet. Any item that, when you give it some thought, has no impact on you one way or the other. You experience neither joy nor frustration nor sadness nor passion nor any emotional state connected to it. You literally experience nothing with regard to that item. Do you know why that item has zero impact on you? Because you genuinely accept that item the way it is. You have no urge for it to be better or different or for it to change in any way. You’re not “past it” or “getting over it,” and you have no need to cut it from your life or barely even think, let alone talk, about it. And so, it sits there. Accepted. Undisturbed. It has no bearing on you because you accept it for what it is. That item is itself, and while it’s part of your life, it has no influence on you. There is no emotional tug at you. That’s what true acceptance is for a human being. When you can let something be itself without any charge or reaction around that thing. When it has no influence, and I mean NONE, good or bad. Nothing either way. You can’t ignore the darker parts of your unconscious. You can’t repress them. Because they don’t go anywhere. And oftentimes they just keep getting worse and emboldened by your attempts at ha...