Month: January 2017

I often wonder what would happen if I suddenly realised exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life but the thing I realised I wanted to do was something like become a magician or a ventriloquist. Would I or anybody I know accept this, and could I actually make the change, or would I ultimately forgo the life I’d finally realised I wanted?
When I say I often wonder this, I don’t mean it’s particularly all consuming. I just wonder about it because I think it’s interesting for a number of reasons:

a. It hasn’t happened – though it must have a non-zero probability, right?

b. In the specific examples I’m used above – magician or ventriloquist – I actually don’t think I would disrupt my whole life to be one of those and I don’t think people around me would “understand” if I did.  

c. Given a. and b. I wonder if this is ever likely to happen

It’s c. that’s really interesting to me. The idea that there is some hidden purpose to your life that you must discover has been discussed all over the place as both a truth and as a fallacy. I personally believe more in the idea of “making yourself” rather than “finding yourself”. I also suspect that “making yourself” has gone from being the edgy contrarian opinion to being the dominate popular believe, even as it continues to be presented as the contrarian view.

So I don’t believe your special purpose is completely isolated from the situation you are currently in now. Nor do I think your special purpose is at odds with the values you currently have now at this moment. Again, this is because I believe you “make yourself” rather than “find yourself” and therefore your special purpose doesn’t even exist until you make it.

However, there’s a contradiction here. If your special purpose doesn’t exist until you make it, and yet it’s not at odds with your currently situation and the values you have right now, then it cannot fully “not exist” right at this moment.

The situation you are currently in, and the values you currently hold, should already be the seed of what you eventually make. In many ways there is nothing new or revolutionary about stating this. In fact, those who knew me in my 20s would probably recognise this sort of articulation of beliefs. Furthermore, those who knew philosophy when it was in its 20s could probably provide a more nuanced and incomprehensible rendering. However, I personally haven’t really thought like this for a long time.  

I didn’t need to think through these sort of things over the last few years because I’ve felt that I was fully formed. But I’ve been questioning that recently. I’ve never been one to resist change, and I consider myself as much of a “lifetime learner” as anybody else. But I’m also doing what many people do at my age (and perhaps at this time of year) – I’m consciously transitioning to whatever’s next.

And I’m determined to enjoy the process.

I used to get angry and frustrated at work. This was objectively because work is actually pretty frustrating and many things that happen at work are a legitimate cause to get angry. But I stopped getting angry and frustrated anyway.  
I had to make up a reason to stop because without a good reason it was easy and natural to fall back into the old habit. The reason I came up with was simply that being angry and frustrated at people either hurts them or helps them – depending on whether they have power over you.

If you are angry and frustrated at somebody who has power over you, or wants power over you, then you are giving them a lever with which to manipulate you and your fortunes. If you are angry and frustrated at somebody who you have power over, or somebody who believes you have power over them, you frighten them or at least make them feel uncomfortable.  

So your anger and frustration ultimately helps people who might want to hurt you, and hurts people who might be willing to help you. This is my reason I made up for no longer getting angry or frustrated. It’s useful and may well also be true.

It’s important to realise though that forcing yourself to stop being angry and frustrated isn’t a magical cure to all things work related. I used to also get angry and frustrated because I’m ambitious (in my own way) and determined to make a positive impact on the world.  

I was rarely angry or frustrated at a particular person or any aspect of their personality. Instead, I was typically angry and frustrated at how a person’s actions, behaviours, inaction, or perhaps just poor communication interfered with my plans or the progress I thought I had made.  

So there still exists this distinction between being angry and frustrated for legitimate and even noble reasons, and the act of being angry or frustrated at or towards particular people. This step of taking your anger and frustration and aiming it towards somebody – even yourself – must be seriously considered and most often avoided.  

The trap we sometimes fall into is that we want to hold onto that anger and frustration because we know it’s part of our passion. We want to hold onto it because we know it’s righteous when it comes from good intentions and noble causes. But we get stuck in this transition between not getting angry and frustrated at people, versus not getting angry and frustrated at all.  

During this transition we tend to get frustrated at ourselves. If we don’t shift through this phase with the right changes in mindset we’ll move away from our passions and towards regret and self-loathing, rather than away from the frustration and anger we were feeling.

We need another name for the noble frustration and anger that we don’t want to let go of. Although it feels the same we need to consciously make a distinction between worthless frustration and anger and noble frustration and anger, just like we need to make a distinction between being frustrated and angry versus getting frustrated and angry at a particular person.  

Our goal is to move away from frustration and anger while moving towards our passion and goals, rather than losing both at the same time or reverting back to being frustrated and angry at others. 

Let’s call the righteous frustration and anger “fight”. This brings to mind a passionate defence – a defence of what you believe is right. But it also brings to mind the idea of the “fight or flight” response typically associated with stressful situations.  

It is righteous and noble to “fight” for what you believe so that particular sort of anger and frustration now has a name with less negative connotations. By feeling and labelling the feeling as “fight” you are at least acknowledge that your gut is telling you in this instance you want to stand your ground. You haven’t chosen “flight” you’ve chosen “fight”. You want to fight for what you believe in, you think this is important, and you think things could be better in this moment.  

But in that moment you have to ask yourself two questions. Firstly, do I really want to “fight” or is it just this situation in this moment that makes it feel important to my overall goals and values? Secondly, do I honestly think I’ll help my own cause the most through an emotional response right at this moment?  

These questions force as to decide, either now or by giving ourselves time to decide later, if this is important and if we truely believe what we are going to do will help. Often taking action feels better in the moment – but by forcing ourselves to remember the decision we make we can look back on it and judge if we made a good decision.  

When we act purely to make ourselves feel better in the moment we are not really “fighting” for our cause – we are getting a quick fix, usually at the expense of our own objectives. In fact, acting against our own objectives is really a “flight” response as we run from the actions (or inactions) that will help us.  

We can’t always stop ourselves doing this. But we can take the moment we decide clearly so that when we reflect back on that moment we have no excuse but to see it as a decision we made rather than something we were forced to do based on the situation.  

So, if you are angry and frustrated it’s either justified or it’s not. If it’s justified what you are really feeling is disappointment and you are having a “fight” response as a way of staying on your course. But if you try to push that anger and frustration to somebody else it’s either going to make them think you are disappointed in them, or it’s going to make them disappointed at you. This is rarely what you want to achieve and will rarely help you make the changes in yourself and the world that will reduce your disappointment in the future.