Category: Josh Feingold Blog

I’m not sure where I heard this one, but it’s so true.

Practice has never made me perfect, just make me quit.

When we set the expectation for kids (or ourselves) that by practicing we can be perfect, then what do you think happens when we platueu or just aren’t progressing very quickly?  We give up.

However, when we instead set more realistic expectations of practice makes better, we can all appreciate that we are getting better as we practice, so are LESS inclines to quit in our down times.

As long as we are on the topic of expectations, let’s remember not to set our expectation bar too high.  How many people do we know that never really got married until they were willing to realize that the “perfect package” was only found in fairy tales (and there was a reason that they called them fairy tales!).

Or for that matter, how many people still haven’t come to terms in their marriage with the realistic expectation that they won’t get everything that they want?  You know he isn’t going to change the light bulb, so just stop asking, and stop getting frustrated about it.  Is it really worth the strife?  You know what I’m saying, right?

Expectations are one of those things that just don’t really serve us very well.  In fact, when was the last time that an expectation did you any good?

Wow, wait a second.  Time for a tangent.  I actually didn’t realize that until just now.   Perhaps, I should just stop setting expectations entirely.  Think how much less frustrating life would be if we never set any expectations of ourselves or other people.   If we just assumed that people would constantly let us down and not do what they said they would do.

First of all, we would certainly appreciate the people that do things for us much more.  I guess if people didn’t do what they said they would do, we would just stop hanging around them.  Wouldn’t that be better than the negative energy from the passive agressiveness or anger that we do when we are disappointed in someone?

Well, this one needs some thought.  Maybe, I’ll just start small, and not make as many expectations on people as I did before.  After all, practice makes better.

 

A friend of mine reminded me today that time takes time.

How simple, yet profound.

Yes, time propels us forward in life against our will, as children slowly, and as we age much faster than we want to go.

The only way for us to slow down time as we have discussed in other posts is to start paying attention to our surroundings and the minute details of our environment which forces our brains to stop and focus.

However, sometimes, life forces us to to examine our life more than we might want to, such as when we are in pain, and in those times life slows down – but we don’t want it to.  In those times, we want life to go back to normal speed, so we can move on from the pain that stares us squarely in the face.

Unfortunately though, things slow down for a reason, so we can examine our situation clearly and grab the amazing OPPORTUNITY to fix things.  If life kept speeding by, we wouldn’t have a chance at seeing the issues we faced, and find a solution.  It would be like watching a movie and trying to pull out a frame as the film passes by.  Impossible.

So instead our brain slows things down as a gift for us.  Many of us ignore the opportunity and just push past things, but for those of us who appreciate the gift we have been given, we can turn inwards, and find gold while the window of opportunity is open.  Of course it is hard, and in those times when all we want is the pain to recede, it can help us to remember that the hard times are a gift and that, in fact, time takes time.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of my core beliefs had always been that life had to been meaningful to be happy, and I had built a whole city of beliefs and values upon that belief, that I later overturned.

Which brings me to my next topic.  Do you know what your core beliefs are?  I didn’t.  And even after sitting and thinking for a few hours, I only came up with a few of them.  I’ll share the process with you since I thought it was interesting.

At first, they were pretty basic:

• Be good.
• Be responsible.
• Treat people like I want to be treated.

Then I realized that these beliefs were all about other people, where was I in there?  So I added the me beliefs:

• I control my own destiny and happiness in life.
• I choose how and to spend my limited time on earth.
• I have equal rights to everyone else on earth – no more and no less.

From there, I realized that there were beliefs that I had about the world, life, friends, and so I started putting them down.  Honestly, I’m still working on the list.  However, here is what was interesting about the exercise.

I turned to the girl to my right and asked her, “what is a core belief of yours that I might not have on my list?”  To which she answered, “That there are things worth dying for and killing for, like democracy.”  Then later that day, I was in line, and asked the same question to a father of grown children and he told me, “Having honor of self (which he defined as acting good and being truthful) permeates everything I do to myself and to others and what I expect from other people.”

So my list keeps growing.   Point is, we are motivated by beliefs that underlie everything we do, and we can’t even articulate what they are.  Scary, isn’t it!

I struggled with the meaning of life for a long time and never really got really far.

Religion offers meaning, but you had to buy the premise upon which whatever religion you considered offered, which I found difficult.

I saw books on the meaning of life, and never really understood them, since they were just arbitrary infusions of meaning that people put into their life, not absolute values.

However, as I got to understand life a little better, I came to also understand that from the perspective of the individual, life has no intrinsic meaning.  It is one of the great choices left to us as humans to chose a meaning, that we find meaningful.

Like twinkies?  Become a twinkie crusader.  (Hey, if it works for you…)

An even bigger realization that I came to is that I could also choose to say that life HAS NO MEANING, and be perfectly comfortable with that too.

Of course, we all like to think that life has meaning, so it is an uncomfortable statement to make, but as an individual it is certainly my right – and honestly – it’s kind of hard to argue against someone who says that all meaning is arbitrary if you really think about it.

It’s actually interesting how far we go to infuse our life with meaning.

* We define ourselves through other people, instead of recognizing our intrinsic worth.

* We define ourselves through what we do, instead of recognizing our intrinsic value.

* We create belief systems that allow ourselves to be bigger than life (or really to escape death).

But the net result of meaning is that we actually tend to devalue ourselves in the process of finding our own value.  Not only that, but I bet for many of you, this entire post makes you uncomfortable, and you are thinking, how sad, life without meaning would be.  But really, life without meaning, doesn’t have to be sad, unless you define it that way.  Who told you life without meaning is sad?  Probably people who wanted to define your meaning!

So what is my model of life without meaning, you ask?  Honestly, I think as humans, we have a need to find meaning.  Either because, as religion would tell you, it is God given, or due to the fact that evolution wants man to connect and not live alone in caves.  So there is an innate need for meaning in our lives, but I do think it is important to realize that meaning is a choice (since probably no one has ever told you that before) and that it is arbitrary (which you might have intuitively thought of already).

Now that it is arbitrary, you can accept religion, relationships, helping the poor, collecting things, or even twinkies as your meaning and live a perfectly meaningful life.   At least to you.