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To paraphrase Nietzsche, sometimes being superficial—taking things only at first glance—is the most profound approach.
Objectivity means removing “you”—the subjective part—from the equation.
Just think, what happens when we give others advice? Their problems are crystal clear to us, the solutions obvious.
We take the situation at face value and immediately set about helping our friend to solve it.
Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn’t matter.
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
when you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.
The Greeks understood that we often choose the ominous explanation over the simple one, to our detriment. That we are scared of obstacles because our perspective is wrong—that a simple shift in perspective can change our reaction entirely.
How we approach, view, and contextualize an obstacle, and what we tell ourselves it means, determines how daunting and trying it will be to overcome.
It’s your choice whether you want to put I in front of something (I hate public speaking. I screwed up. I am harmed by this). These add an extra element: you in relation to that obstacle, rather than just the obstacle itself.
Stop pretending that what you’re going through is somehow special or unfair. Whatever trouble you’re having—no matter how difficult—is not some unique misfortune picked out especially for you. It just is what it is. This kind of myopia is what convinces us, to our own detriment, that we’re the center of the universe. When really, there is a world beyond our own personal experience filled with people who have dealt with worse. We’re not special or unique simply by virtue of being. We’re all, at varying points in our lives, the subject of random and often incomprehensible events.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
