Tyler durden@RSD samlade artiklar.

[TobiasK]

BY Tyler | November 8th, 2010 at 8:48 PM
Tyler's New Written Article: Getting Aligned On A Deep Level To Succeed In Modern Life. Do YOU Have What It Takes??
(Boston Free Tour & Hot Seat this Thursday and Saturday. My first time in BOSTON -- if you live in anywhere nearby come hit up Jeffy and I at these mind-blowing events!! http://www.rsdfreetour.com / http://www.rsdhotseat.com. San Diego & San Francisco are on deck!!)

Arrrrghhhhh, fuuuuuu, DAMMIT!

Been scrambling since last Wednesday to cook up the new Free Tour 2 page, lock down the dates, build the new site, and cut together the new bonuses. It was down to the wire and ultimate victory was at hand -- but woke up this morning with the 2 hour bonus video having failed to upload the way we wanted it to.

(All this should have been nailed but Askmen requested a new video on yet another "stay up all night" deadline. My team and I attempted to squeeze in the additional 20 hours to produce it along with the time we needed to prepare the new Free Tour 2, but we didn't leave room for any mistakes.)

Anyway to keep you amused in the meantime I threw together a new article for you.

It's a little rough around the edges -- sort of spit it out "off the dome". Thought it would be fun however, because there were responses in the last article that encouraged me to do some writing like back in the day.

(And btw -- be sure to check back THIS WEDNESDAY for the mega launch of the new Free Tour 2. This is literally the most extensive series of events I've ever done in RSD, and you will be titillated and intrigued by what is revealed. Wednesday IS *YOUR* DAY!!)

ARTICLE STARTS...............NOW.

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Hey good morning!! I thought I’d talk a little bit about the struggle to get done what you want to get done, because people often ask me about it.

In modern life I think we have a bit of a conundrum, because our emotions and instincts that have evolved over millions of years to help us are oftentimes giving us IMPULSES to act in ways that screw us over.

For example I always figure that as a caveman if you had shelter, a big stash of food, and a comfy bed, your instincts would probably have told you “Now it’s time to rest…” You wouldn’t have had much reason to get up and do anything other than play with your kids or joke around with your buddies, because there weren’t really any ways of “getting ahead”.

Nowadays it’s different because it’s the man who can ignore instant gratification (ie: your emotional impulses) and FOCUS ON THE BIGGER PICTURE who is able to get ahead.

And DAMMIT can a guy who has this ability ever create a fun life in this day and age. I mean it’s absolutely insane what an awesome existence you can achieve for yourself if you can simply master the art of “delayed gratification” and working towards a larger goal.

(Personally I think it kinda sucks it works this way, because so many good people can't handle it, but it is what it is!!)

That being the case, the way I see it is that the art of modern life is re-aligning your emotions and instincts to “get on your team” and help you to accomplish your greater purposes in life. This is important because it means that you can experience the happiness of the caveman, while enjoying the benefits of modern day living.

To do this is really a struggle through your twenties and early thirties. And it really is VERY tough for a lot of people, definitely me in particular, as I’ve really struggled with it.

In my case I’ve had A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder) as well as being a night owl. That means that back in the caveman days I probably would’ve been the crazy caveman who “thinks outside the box” to find food and shelter, and then was insane enough to run down a Woolley Mammoth and kill the damned thing. Then at night time I would’ve been the weirdo who stays awake at night time and warns the group about a leopard about to eat one of our little babies.

Sounds cool right??

Well in modern society, it just means that I was the kid who had a hard time concentrating on math and science for hours at a time in a stuffy classroom, and who was half-dazed through the first half of the day because school started at 8AM and it was running against my sleep pattern.

For guys like me, having a job or business that accounts for this isn’t an option, it’s mandatory. In the typical work world I’m just a delinquent who has a hard time following the rules and not questioning authority I don’t agree with by my own judgment. But in the right environment I’m the guy who finds solutions for problems that other people can’t solve, the guy whose willing to take risks, etc etc.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it, because it means that we have so many people in this world who could contribute so much value, and yet because they haven’t “found their niche” they walk around believing they’re lazy or stupid. They wind up being failures or even stuck on welfare, basically just draining the system, as everyone thinks “Oh well, some people just suck, that’s just how it is…”

Even crazier is that most of these people are honestly deeply depressed by their inability to get their act together. You see this on RSD Nation forums at least once a week, where somebody will post up “I just don’t care enough to go out and learn this stuff. I don’t know why, I just don’t see the point.”

The fact that they’re taking the time to post about it means there’s part of them that is deeply saddened that they can’t marshal the motivation to go out and improve, and yet another part of them that really doesn’t care. They’re in conflict with themselves, and the part of them that DOES care is going to be super disappointed that it didn’t “happen for them” over the next few years.

Many people wind up having to “rationalize” their lack of results, either blaming the system or other people or even people who want to help them like RSD (“It’s all about looks! Pickup can’t work!” etc.) What’s really bad about this is that the more they have to rationalize, the more disconnected they get from reality, and that’s why so many people in their thirties and forties in our society are just unhappy and overall burnt out.

They live in some weird pseudo-world of rationalizations for why their lives don’t look the way that they envision is possible for themselves, then become bitter or haters or grumblers or whatever. What’s bad is that this type of mindset makes it basically IMPOSSIBLE for them to pull themselves out of it, because to move forward they’d first need to unwire a tangled web of bizarre beliefs up in their heads.

In my own case the way I’ve dealt with this is NOT being afraid to confront negative-emotions. When I feel a negative emotion I try to look at it as a SIGNAL that my unconscious mind is “recognizing a pattern” that something isn’t correct. It’s trying to get me to focus on something I did wrong, and implant an emotional anchor to ensure that I don’t do it again.

To my way of seeing it, your twenties and thirties is basically a time to go through that process. My goal has been to try my very best to get things done, and then when I screw up to ALLOW those negative emotions to sink in and correct my behavior.

My view is that the difference between “healthy negative emotions” and “unhealthy negative emotions” is this…:

Healthy negative emotions:

-Directs your focus to patterns in your behavior that are allowing problems to occur, which otherwise you wouldn’t want to look at.

-Makes you feel bad UNTIL you make the proper adjustments so that the problems don’t keep happening. Once it’s fixed the negative emotions immediately GO AWAY.

-Etches the lessons you got from the problem deeply into your brain, so that you learn from the experience and benefit from it (the pattern that allows problems to happen becomes emotionally relevant to you, and you gain instincts not to let it happen again, like not putting your hand on the hot stove).

Unhealthy negative emotions…:

-Are unfocused and generalized, not really at anything in particular. You then have to rationalize why something is “making” you feel then way when in fact you’re probably just addicted to being in this state of mind.

-Usually blames other people and isn’t focused on your own role in the problems.

-Builds up stress chemicals (like cortisol) in your system, and rather than helping you to recognize patterns that are causing problems, actually mess up your memory and emotional balance.

Anyway my general view is that to be successful, you have to have a very strong “internal locust of control” (as they say in psychology). That means that you view yourself at the CAUSE of everything in your life, never at the EFFECT.

That doesn’t mean to brow-beat yourself if something happens that’s beyond your control, but it means that you’re very good at quickly “getting over” what you can’t control and focusing on what you CAN.

(So in a way there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance. If someone asks you “Are you fully in control of your own destiny?” the answer is always “YES”. But if some meteor lands and someone said “Well could you control THAT Mr. Smart Guy?” you’d probably answer “Yeah whatever, what I CAN control is the following…” and then you’d immediately be focused on what’s in your ability to improve.)

From this basic foundation, the setbacks, impediments, and screw-ups in your life then become a set of learning lessons. Through your twenties and thirties you basically just take on various goals and missions that you want to achieve, continually challenge yourself and “lean into your edge” (as David Deida would put it) and then as the bullshit continually mounts up, you basically just learn, learn, learn, and learn.

This is a lot like a little baby learning to walk, or a five year old learning to read, or a teenager trying to get good at a sport. It’s basically just the “continued development” that you are SUPPOSED to experience in your twenties and thirties, which allows you to keep maturing and evolving as a human being.

In my opinion one of the downsides of modern society is that comfortable and predictable jobs really wind up robbing people of this experience, and yet there’s really no solution to it because the average person isn’t going to CHOOSE to have to go through all this, despite that it would be in their long term advantage and make them happier overall.

So in a lot of ways our society winds up being this amazing growth environment for the people who choose to continue growing as human beings, or oftentimes who are inadvertently forced into it by their life circumstances (they feel like they’re unlucky at the time, and then later say “I wouldn’t change any of it because it made me who I am…”. But for people who either lack this awareness or aren’t forced into learning it, modern society winds up being this insanely effective STAGNATION environment, where people are more capable of stagnating and sinking into lameness than ever before.

(It’s just too difficult for many people to overcome their caveman instincts that tell them “Fridge is full, got a comfy bed, time to chill out…” Then as they fail and fail they become depressed, the pattern gets so deeply engrained that it’s easier to indulge in diversions to take their minds off it, like television or video games or internet or gossiping/hating or getting drunk/taking drugs, etc.)

This is why to become the person you’re capable of becoming you need to take on some purpose or other. The reason you have the purpose is (by a way of looking at it) to TRIGGER problems to happen, which then forces you to adapt and grow. You think you’ve taken on the purpose to reach a certain goal that would make you happier, but in reality it’s through the journey that you grow and evolve. Obviously you want to avoid problems as much as possible, but that’s only because so many of them will happen regardless.

Of course all this probably doesn't sound very appealing. Like "Really that's what you'd call GOOD??"

But the more profound amusement that comes from this is BECOMING AWESOME -- just being able to lay back and be like “Dammit I’m fucken awesome. OH YES.” From this paradigm you don’t have the same need for diversions (not that you can’t enjoy them once in a while) because just being WHO YOU ARE is THE ULTIMATE SHIT.

In the long term there’s also a very powerful spiritual component, where this gives you a richer inner world, because it forces you to become more “non-resistant” and realize that there’s ultimately no purpose to ANYTHING.

At first as you’re on some mission or other you gain success, and then you think you’re a big shot and identify with it. But most people who experience this will also experience the LOSS of this success, and then regain it, and lose it again. And through this process you come to realize that “who I am” is ultimately beyond success or failure, and that the journey only exists for the journey’s sake.

(This is difficult for people who are just starting out to realize or find motivating, and in fact they often find it DE-motivating, because they haven’t evolved to that paradigm yet. They’re like “Well if there’s no point to doing any of this, then forget it! I’m just going to suck! YEAH!” But for people who are in this paradigm, it is VERY motivating and powerful as an incentive to go further and further.)

Anyway all this is a continual process of alignment and re-alignment. Moving forward, hitting walls, and realizing that you can’t solve the problem you’ve reached with the paradigm or level you’re at, so being forced to CHANGE in order to keep moving.

At the end of the day you just have to PICK something that’s of interest to you, and go at it. There’s nothing that’s going to magically summon you to it, you have to GIVE the passion to this thing. The passion comes from YOU.

It’s not an issue of being “stimulated” and “tickled” by this thing. It’s the decision to find something that on a level you’re obviously very into, and then bring the juice and life to it YOURSELF. Then as you move forward with it, you realize the benefits of the continued growth that it’s bringing into your life, and the passion for it amplifies, deepens, and improves.

People walk through life waiting to be stimulated, waiting to be called into something that wakes them up out of their slumber. When it doesn’t happen for them they rationalize it and blame anyone except themselves.

But at the end of the day your life is very short and will pass you by if you aren’t attentive to it. You obviously KNOW that there’s a right choice and a wrong choice to make in life, so you just have to do the best you can to make the right one as often as possible.

Willpower isn’t something you cultivate overnight, and we’re usually only really “awake” and able to make conscious decisions a small percentage of the time. With personal effort and growth that small percentage grows like a seed into a big giant tree, willpower becomes easier to summon, and conscious decisions become easier to make.

It’s a lifelong process, and it’s a journey to be walked, not talked about, rationalized, or excused. Make the choice to live it and you’ll pay a price, but you’ll also be rewarded with a rich, interesting, and profound existence. As ever short as it may be.

Have fun!!

Tyler