“it do be like that sometimes” is starting to lose it’s magic a little
I don’t have one, but these replies remind me of some lines from Inglourious Basterds:
“You’ll be hanged for this!”
“No, I’ll get chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before.”
Seems a little weird to make your life mantra a meme phrase anyways.
Mine is the motto from my high school lacrosse team, of all things. I was 15, an angsty teenager, the team sucked and lost most our games. But our coach was relentlessly positive. The motto was a Latin phrase that roughly translates to “if you’re going to do something, commit to it”. Basically, no half ass efforts. That stuck with me all the way through until 11 years later when I had it incorporated into a tattoo design.
Whatever intrinsic motivation you pick, it’s gotta have a little more meaning to you than being the flavor of the month on the internet, or it will always lose its magic.
“You’ll feel better in the morning.”
I get a lot of intrusive, negative, catastrophising thoughts late at night. Worrying about things I would never worry about during daylight.
I always try to tell myself: don’t think about this stuff right now, it’s not helpful. Put it aside and if it still feels important in the morning then you can do something about it. Fixating on it right now serves no useful purpose.
“One day at a time. One hour at a time. Let’s just get through this one little task.”
In the future this will be a period of time I’ll remember clearly, which makes it valuable. Easy times lead to no substantial memories which is effectively the loss of that time.
This is how I interact with my dad’s dog.
Dad’s out of town so I’m staying at his house taking care of his dog. I love this dog. But also take this dog for granted a lot, especially when I’ve just come home from work and I’m irritable and overwhelmed.
I pretend that, instead of this being me here and now, it’s a future version of me, from maybe thirty years in the future, when this dog has been long dead. Then I imagine that this moment is some kind of miracle wormhole through time where the me from the time this dog is an ancient memory has been given a few minutes to be with the dog.
Like, I would happily trade my finger and all the money I have for a minute with my mother, who died fifteen years ago. But I can’t.
What I can do is treat the people around me as I would treat my mother in that one minute, if it were somehow granted to me.
Almost like opening myself up to visitation from my future self. And in doing so, I experience more richly and it will actually work. When the dog is long gone, in the ground for decades, I will be able to visit him because I opened myself, which led to deep memory inscription.
Brilliant post, and I try to do the same thing, if I’m somewhere beautiful or profound and I have a few minutes to myself I like to make a “memory bubble” to me it’s like a little snapshot of experience that I work really hard to recall every minute detail ( including my emotional state and sounds and smells, etc…) and then I can revisit them in the future.
I like this because it makes you appreciate where you are at the time more, and gives you good memories to lean on in the future.
Incidentally, I think this phenomenon of appreciating the present by looking through the lens of a future where it’s lost, is the basis of the band name The Grateful Dead.
Easy times lead to no substantial memories
This seems wrong
I’m open to discussion, but now that I’ve existed for a substantial period of time, I’ve found that my most prevailing memories are the ones hard won (e.g. when I almost had to sleep on the streets or ran out of money in a foreign country or got evicted from my flat). Whereas days sat on my couch watching telly, or in the pub having fun with friends, or another routine day in the gym are all blurred memories with no definition and no real sense of elapsed time.
One I like from Malazan Book of the Fallen: “I am not yet done.” The mantra of a man who’s duty it was to bear the souls of the fallen for his faith as it crushed him.
be far-sighted
I say “fuck this” or “fuck that” or “fuck it all” or “fuck everything” pretty often. I guess that?
“it’s not supposed to be easy all the time”
It could be though, if you were rich
As much as I hate the rich, I don’t think they don’t have problems or stress, it’s just a different selection of problems and stress.
They can still have relationship issues, family members die, diarrhea.
We have those problems too. We have to worry about money at the same time.
If you were rich:
Relationship issues> the best counseling, less time working, more holidays, de-stress any number of other ways to make solving those issues easier.
Family member dies> stop working for a period of time (if you even choose to work) spend time with family, pay for funeral for a nice send off, pay to have cleaners and meals cooked for the house of the deceased to ease their burden. Pay for people to fly or take time off work so they can spend time with family.
Diarrhea> fancy toilet and bidet.
The idea life is not easier with money is a lie. We know this because everyone who has it will do everything they can to keep it and get more. The difference is the more money you have, the more problems your brain has to manufacture. Not knowing which Bentley to buy or feeling like your too busy while you have the power at any moment to pay to have other people do a lot of those things aren’t real problems because you have the resource to solve them. When you’re poor your problems are more real. Not having enough food or worrying about rent or paying to medical costs are real problems.
Also like, we’re the proof of that.
People from 1,000 years ago would not believe we could be suffering at all, given our level of wealth.
That’s not true
Well not all the time, but a lot more of the time. Here’s a philosophical question. Do you think being on a holiday is easier than having to go to work? Why would not being on a permanent holiday be easier? Do extremely rich retired people look like they’re having a hard time aside from physical decline?
“It’s only a gameshow”. Big Brother contestants sang it to themselves on one of the seasons back in the 00s. My colleagues and I did the same during a rough patch at a former company I worked for.
I like it because it’s a reminder that things can seem immovably important until you remove yourself from the context of that situation and assess it from the outside.
“Slow down for a moment, tackle one thing at a time” helps a lot when I’m anxious and overwhelmed.
This is really close to what I do as well. If I’m overwhelmed, I think to myself, “Just start with one small thing. Then do another small thing. Eventually, lots of small things add up to a large thing. Won’t get anywhere doing nothing and worrying about how much I have to do.”
Yup. One thing at a time is a powerful thing.
When I was in college I had a therapist. I was telling him how I wasn’t sure if I was being perfectly efficient about how I was going about things, that I was wasting time and energy in my approach.
His advice was just to focus on doing something rather than nothing, without trying to optimize it.
It really helped.
“one mile at a time, just one mile at a time…”
Or the Maha Mantra
“Every task before you is a challenge to succeed.” It’s from “Moment to Moment” by a band called Children 18:3. Great song.
Also from them “All my balloons are popping!”
Shit piss cunt cocksucker shits fart dirty twat
“I’m working on it.” when I feel like things are where I want them to be, but they’re gradually getting there, it makes it seem okay, since I’m actively working towards a goal. This could be my weightloss, managing my depression, cleaning the house, or going through endless emails. It helps to know that it’s fine that it’s not perfect or great yet, but I’m working on it.
