Year: 2025

new post test

My stepfather, Chet Fox, has a brilliant view of embracing failure as a natural byproduct of effort: “to get into the baseball hall of fame you need a batting average of .300. That means they had to fail 70% of the time and failing 70% of the time is good enough to get you in the hall of fame!” 

Trying and failing are the ingredients of success, the steps to victory, the path to winning. Don’t fear effort and failure, SEEK IT. It means you are on the path to victory!

Connor & Gemma: This is what I studied in my over a year long PTSD meltdown. Happiness and the study of it. In line with the hedonic treadmill, we think buying a Lamborghini will make us happy. So either we get a Lamborghini or we can never be happy? That cant be right. But let’s say it was true and we did. How many days in a row could we buy a brand new Lamborghini before it turned into a chore we complained about having to do? 3? 7? 17? Idk but guaranteed there is a number and it’s not a big one.

One of the ways getting what we want isn’t how to achieve happiness. It’s not hiding being a bigger paycheck, a promotion, or anything else. No matter what we want, whether we get it or not, it will just be something else. That’s the treadmill.

This is why “if x THEN I’ll be happy” is wrong. there is no X. If we get x, we aren’t satisfied for long, there is just another x, THEN I’ll be happy. Which is why one of my favorite quotes is “your conditions for happiness are the chains of your suffering.” We are slaves to thinking getting what we want will make us happy when getting what we want will be forever and will constantly be changing whether we get it or not.

So, if getting something isn’t what makes us happy, what’s the answer? How do you stay from that regret of the past and the fear of the future?

Right in line with the power of now – gratitude. Conscious appreciation. In order to become happy, be happy. Be happy by gratitude.

In line with this, The stoics say don’t hope for anything to be a certain way, ever. We will be wrong or just want something else. We are to hope things will be exactly as they will, exactly as they are supposed to then there is no disappointment. Acceptance. This is also “letting go” ending the resistance to what is. Ending the animal thrashing in a cage for what we want which we just proved won’t ever make us happy.

A remix of an old saying I made is this – a man went to the Buddha and said “I want to be happy.” The Buddha said “do not add, take away. take away the I, that’s the ego, remove the ego. Now remove the “want.” Want is craving , it is the body, it is what we think we desire which will always change, remove the want. Remove “to be” to be is the future. Remove the fear of the future and the pain and regret of the past, be in the now. What are we left with? Happy. So be happy. To be happy, remove everything stopping it and be happy. To find happiness, be it, not later, now.”

Be happy. Now, not later. How? Gratefulness and appreciation. If you can’t be happy now, what makes you think you will be able to be happy later? With more stuff you will get bored of?

Smile my children, laugh. Both, always. Smile most when you most don’t want to, smiling is a high jack to gratefulness. It can ALWAYS be worse – that’s how you can be grateful in any moment.

I saw this on the internet and it’s a visual of one of my favorite quotes: “Be kind to everyone, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”