Tag / reality

by Nathan Coumbe

Create a reality from which you don’t want to escape

I can’t remember where I first heard something similar to that headline (it may have been Seth Godin…)

But the idea occurred to me that so much of what we do is an attempt to get away from our daily lives…

People do drugs or drink to numbness to escape reality…

They take vacations to get away from work or family or just about anything else…

And those moments just become these little blips of happiness on the radar. Not even happiness, really, but bursts of pleasure… 

But contrary to popular belief, pleasure and happiness aren’t the same thing.

I think the key to good living is this:

Create a reality from which you don’t want to escape. 

Easier said than done, I know. And plenty of people have real horrors they need to escape from (I know from way too much personal experience). 

But few of us rarely sit down for a few quiet minutes and take the time to think about what that reality would be. 

I’d encourage you to take a few minutes now— with pen in hand and a few pieces of paper—and write out any- and everything that comes to mind about the lifestyle from which you wouldn’t want to escape. 

Then ask yourself what the first step would be on the way to making that reality real.

Because no one else is going to make that reality for you. You’ve got to do the work yourself.

And it’s sad, but true, that you might be at a severe disadvantage compared to others due to things that are completely out of your control—or shouldn’t even matter. 

But that doesn’t change what YOU have to do to get what you want.

by Nathan Coumbe

School can ruin a passion

It amazes me how much I used to enjoy certain things until I went to college. School ruined a lot of it for me.

Let me explain:

I have always had a passion for music and history. I loved them both so much I couldn’t decide between the two when I went to college, so I double-majored. I did all of my research on different historical periods and figures in music.

Interestingly enough I hated every second of it.

When I graduated, I quit researching history, and I quit researching music. I think in the back of my mind, the thought was if that’s what I was gonna have to do for a living, I wanted nothing to do with it.

I graduated five years ago and have been struggling to find my fit in a career ever since. I have had a lot of time to think, and I believe I’ve figured out the problem.

I didn’t hate the work: I hated having my hands tied.

College assignments are unrealistic

“You can’t write about or research anything you want – you are required to tie it back to this particular point and make an argument about how it conforms to this idea.”

“It doesn’t matter that your subject has very little source material – you have to make it 30 pages (rather than making it as long as it needs to be and no longer).”

How many of you went into college to study something you had a deep passion for, only to come out the other end hating what you once loved?

I don’t think you suddenly realized you hated the subject: I think you hated being boxed into unrealistic parameters and expectations.

Nowadays, if you want to do research on a topic outside of school, you can, and you can make it as long or as short as it needs to be. Also, it can be about whatever you want it to be.

Do you want to turn it into a podcast instead of writing? GO FOR IT! Do you want to interview people and draw conclusions from their ideas? Do that.

As long as you aren’t making stuff up and deliberately lying to the rest of the world, you can do whatever it is you want to do in whatever subject you choose.

You don’t hate learning – you hate school

You will never have your hands tied, parameters set, or asinine expectations to meet like you had in school. You don’t hate your subject, and you don’t hate the work you thought you wanted to do. You hated being boxed in, required to do things that bored you to death or robbed you of the joy of what you once loved.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there was something you used to love doing, something about which you were insanely curious, I encourage you to pick it up again.

I don’t think you lost your love for it – I think you just got the wrong idea of what you were expected to do in the real world in your field of study.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Accepting things as they are doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about them

The latest newsletter by Ryan Holiday on Stoicism (feel free to read it here) got me thinking about the difference between stoically, proactively accepting something as it is versus doing so in a passive, resigned way.

Holiday points out that Stoics were once criticized as being “too resigned…[accepting] the status quo.” That particular phrase got me thinking about accepting reality and taking action.

There are plenty of folks in the world who accept things passively, resignedly, like a sad sack – “there’s nothing I can do about it.” However, that isn’t what Stoics, or indeed, any religious or philosophical teaching truly preached.

Jesus told us turn the other cheek.

Epictetus told us to accept the things we can’t control as they are.

However, none of this means we simply roll over and die, accepting our fate. Quite the opposite, in fact. What these teachings tell us to do is face reality, then take action.

Circle of influence

Stephen Covey talks about the “Circle of Concern” and “Circle of Influence” in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; these two circles are precisely the ideas about which Jesus, Epictetus, and other Stoic philosophers were trying to teach us.

There are things that we simply cannot change or do anything about. You can’t control whether someone slaps you in the face. You can’t control the economy, the weather, what the politicians in Washington do, or what your boss is like. You have to accept these as reality, or you will waste time and energy banging your head against the wall.

You can control how you respond to the guy who slaps you in the face, how you handle your money in times of crises, or how you dress and prepare when the weather turns nasty.

You can control how you treat other people, whether or not you vote, whether you actively contribute to your community, or whether you make positive deposits into your most important relationships.

You can control what skills you learn, how diligent you are in your job search, whether you give more than you are asked and build more trust with your boss as a result, and how you react when the boss doesn’t change his behavior.

Complaining, comparing, attempting to change things involving other people’s behavior, or changing the way the world works, for the most part, is ridiculously ineffective. You must instead focus your attention on things over which you have actual influence and control; most of the time those are things involve you: your behaviors, your actions, and your views of the world.

Accepting things as they are is the most important first step in changing how things are.

Until you accept reality as it is, there is nothing you can do to make a difference.

That’s my rant for today. Thanks for reading.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Should be vs. what is

You cannot move forward until you accept the reality of your current situation.

Things absolutely should be a certain way. Some people should still be alive.

But they aren’t.

Your current reality dictates what is possible in your future. But that realization equips you with a great power: the power to turn what you think should be into your future reality (to a certain extent. I’m in no way insinuating that you can bring back the dead).

Accept what is, then act accordingly.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Your lens determines your reality

Imagine you are looking through a telescope. Is what you are seeing actually how the world looks?

What if the lens had a crack in it? The image is now distorted, but is reality actually cracked? Of course not.

Imagine a friend is looking through another telescope, and you are are both looking at the same thing. What if her lens had a higher zoom or some filter on it which changed the color? Or perhaps your friend has a degenerative eye disorder which makes it difficult to see. 

Would the two of you disagree on what you were seeing? 

Yet we do it every single day.

Each of us walks around using different lenses to see the world. Two perfectly rational people can look at the same issue and have completely different opinions about the “reality” of the issue. Stephen Covey would call these lenses paradigms — different ways of seeing the world. 

Why does this matter?

We can only become truly effective when we realize that our ideas and opinions are not the only ways, the correct ways, to see the world. Seth Godin talks about each person having her own unique noise in her head. What she wants is different from what you want, at least in some minuscule way. Sometimes that way is vastly different from yours. 

If, for example, you wanted to sell something to someone – an idea, a widget, or a plan – you would need to talk about it from the other person’s point of view. That person doesn’t care how you feel about it; they only want to know what it will do for them. We are selfish that way.

Be proactive when speaking with someone: consciously try to see the world through her lens.

Imagine a world where each person sought to understand the other person before arguing.