On lying, lack of integrity and incongruence

My boy, when you lie. When you steal. When you do things that go against the person you want to be and know you can be, the real victim is you. When you eat candy, yet claim to be healthy. When you call yourself a Christian yet you don't read the Bible. When you claim to be a good friend yet you backbite and gossip about your friend. You hurt yourself and your own self-esteem more than anyone else.

You can't run away from the contradictions, cognitive dissonance and brain fog that living hypocritically will bring you. You may be hurting everyone else. But you're really only hurting yourself the most. Because you're telling yourself that you can't be trusted. Stop lying, stop pretending and stop giving up because someone is mad or talked shit on you. They don't matter as much as you do. 

You can't deceive a person that is with you 24/7.

Forgetting The Difference Between Action and Motion

Nike was spot on with their slogan.

I read Atomic Habits. And throughout the two months since I've finished that book and moved on to different things, I've forgotten the biggest and most important lesson from the book. Action ain't the same thing as motion. 

Obsessive planning is just advanced procrastination. Fuck the plan, get out there and do it, get some feedback and then make a plan.

I've messed this up with many, many different areas in my life. I've read a book on dating and have watched tons of videos on that shit but how many dates has sitting around strategizing and reading gotten me?

0. 

How many dates did flying by the seat of my pants and talking to random people get me?

Like three or four.

My point is made. Strategy isn't useless, but it's important to remember that it's nothing without actually practicing. And the only way to do that shit is to do it.

Not to wite about doing it. Not to talk about doing it. Not to plan to do it.

But just to fucking do it.

On Resenting Others and Criticism

You must understand that the things you resent in others are the traits you most dislike about yourself. And the things you admire about others represent the traits you most admire in yourself. For example, I stutter from time to time. And whenever I notice someone else stammering I become involuntarily filled with resentment for that person. Conversely, I admire those who are well-spoken because that's where I wish to see myself. 

So in order to bring out your favorite traits, surround yourself with those who have them in abundance. And if you want to be rid of your demons, stay away from people who possess the same ones.

You can also apply this knowledge to dealing with others. When you realize that people resent their own negative traits when they see them in others, it makes it easier to understand any criticism they direct at you. 

Imagine you have a friend at work who berates you for not keeping the office organized to his standards. Yet one day you ride in his car and see the floor is covered in trash and food wrappers! What happened to the organization he obsesses over? It seems hypocritical. But it isn't, once you realize he struggles with organization. He berates you because he wants to help you to be organized to! 

Remember the words of Yogi Bhajan - Look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value, then you will over time cease to react at all.

How It Feels to Break Your No-Fap Streak: A Daily Collection of Pictures and Videos

Good morning and welcome to the first (formal) post on this blog!

I'm going to start this post by shouting out the communities over at No-Fap.com, and r/No-Fap on Reddit. Without those communities I wouldn't be posting about this beautiful challenge!

So. Today, it's going to be about jacking off.

Well, it's going to be about not jacking off to be exact. You see, I'm a No-Fap enthusiast. For those of you who don't know what  No-Fap is, it's a self-improvement challenge where the participant refrains from pornography, masturbation and orgasm (PMO) for an extended period of time.

You may be wondering, why the hell would I want to refrain from touching myself? Is this a religious thing? No, it's not religious. But if you want to involve Jesus in this, you can.

I personally think your Lord and Savior might want to be left out of these kinds of affairs, but that's your call.

© T.S.A.M. Inc.

We all know that guilty feeling we get after we're done with Rosie Palms and we wonder ,"Why did I do this?" You know when you're just getting finished and you feel like Anakin Skywalker after he killed Samuel L. Jackson.

This is usually me on repeat.

© Lucasfilm

The idea of No-Fap is that longer you abstain from PMO, the less you associate those things with happiness and the less likely you are to want to do them. And as a result you start chasing things that actually make you happy. Things that don't have you writhing on the floor feeling like you just shoved someone's grandma.

 And therefore the longer you abstain the more productive a person you become.

The longest I've gone without pulling the proverbial pollo was 118 days.. Before that my longest streak was 50 days. I've made some attempts to start a streak again. To no avail. You see temptation is a fucking beast. And I am a knight with a broken sword. What else does a knight with a broken sword do but go find somewhere secluded and play with his own - you get the idea.

Some Deep Shit I Thought About While Meditating

This is a post from my other blog that went up on the second of January. It would only be right to share it here, too.

Sitting on my front porch meditating this morning I've come across something I've never really thought about before.

You see as I sat and stared at the cars, and the clouds and the streetlights and the sky I tried to get my thoughts to shut the fuck up. And unfortunately, they just got louder and louder. And my heart started pounding harder and harder. And I was getting madder and madder. And I just kept wondering why the fuck isn't this shit working? 

And suddenly what I can only describe as an amalgamation of all the voices of the gurus and prophets I've listened to spoke to me inaudibly. The voice asked "Do you try to make this white car red? Would you get angry because you can't do it? Do you obsess over that to the point where your heart races?"

And I looked up at our fence. And the voice asked "Do you get angry because that grey fence isn't pink? Do you get mad and try to change that?"

And the voice went all out and asked, "Are you angry that the sky isn't yellow?" And finally, I had to admit that being angry over all of these things would be stupid. Because I can't control what color the sky is. I can't control all of these inane things. 

And the voice of reason said, "You also cannot control your thoughts. You can't make them go away or silence them. You can only listen to them. You can only make peace with them. You can only accept them." And as soon as I nodded and accepted that fact everything went quiet.

Only when we learn to accept and make peace with that which we cannot control can we make a compromise and change things.

On Negative Thoughts and Worry...

The difference in a negative and positive man is simply how they view things. A positive man falls out of a tree and he says, "I'll be more careful in this tree." and goes back up. A negative man falls out of the same tree and says, "This tree is not for climbing." and walks away. The same thing happened but the interpretation is what made everything. 

It is much easier to be negative and pessimistic in this world we live in. But I wager you this. There is no such thing as negativity. The first man will not fall out of the tree again. (Or if he does he will not fall in the same place.) The second man will not fall out of that tree again either. Both men simply changed their actions to prevent making the same mistake again. Both men simply reacted to preserve themselves. There is no negativity in that.

Look at your thoughts this way. The thoughts that say you'll fail. The thoughts that claim you're a loser. Are they really negative? Or are they just trying to prevent you from making some kind of mistake? Are they saying something in a way that you don't understand? 

Ask the voice that calls you a loser why it says what it says. You'll often find it has a reason for doing so. It just found the worst way possible to express it to you. You have to dig deeper into your mind to find out why you've created these thoughts. And the most effective way to do that is by following "negative" patterns of thoughts and questioning them.

You'll often find that like a child your brain had good intentions behind the bad outcome it created.. And do we scold a child for not knowing how to express itself? Or do we teach them until they gradually get better?

As hard as it may be to accept this, there is no such thing as a "negative" thought. 

The only "negative" that exists is the natural force that repels positivity. So why create negativity in our heads by becoming hostile towards our own thoughts?

So just for today, let us not repel the positive by labeling our thoughts as negative. And instead let's address them and ask why they are and how they came to be.

Shalom.

What Is This Place?

I reckon that since you've stumbled upon this blog and have been hopefully moved (or angered) by something here, you're probably wondering "Who is this guy?"  and "What is the meaning of all this?" So I thought that I'd write this as an answer to those questions and an introduction to this blog in general.



I'm Joe, a college student majoring in cyber-security and minoring in creative writing. I write poetry and what I'd call poor man's philosophy.

I'm not a part of any religion, yet I have no problem with them so long as they treat their members and others fairly. However, I am at least a little bit spiritual. I pray over my food and meditate daily. I do believe that there are things out there that we cannot grasp, but I do not deny established science unless given a good reason to.

And when it comes to others, I don’t care what you believe as long as it doesn't hurt you or anyone else.

I record two podcasts (that are alive but not necessarily well) and run another blog which I update daily. My other blog is a personal journal with pop culture references and jokes sprinkled in for variety. But it's read by at least nine people daily. I figured if I could share something more substantial with just half that amount of people at the same rate, I'd be making a positive change in the world.

That said, the reason I started this blog is simple. I want to share my opinions and findings on the world, and the human condition with the intention of positively affecting others.

Even if I only reach one person a week, I'll still be making a change in the world.

An indeed minute, but positive change.

And that's what I'm here for...