The other day, my brother send me
this article which you can read it in full -
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/
It is something I found myself
reading several times and trying to apply it to myself. I will definitely re-visit this article several times and for sure end of 2014.
It is one brilliant article – harsh and
brutal honestly about life in general.
Here is the general synopsis;
#6. The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You
If you want to know why society
seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is
full of people who need things.
Either you will go about the task
of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world
will reject you, no matter how kind, giving, and polite you are. You will be
poor, you will be alone, you will be left out in the cold.
Does that seem mean, or crass, or
materialistic? What about love and kindness -- don't those things matter? Of
course. As long as they result in you doing things for people that they can't
get elsewhere. For you see ...
#5. The Hippies Were Wrong
It's brutal, rude, and borderline
sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the
world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world,
people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's
better to simply let you keep failing.
You don't have to like it. I
don't like it when it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway. Clouds form and
precipitation happens. People have needs and thus assign value to the people
who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe and they do not
respond to our wishes.
#4. What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to
Benefit People
"What, so you're saying that
I can't get girls like that unless I have a nice job and make lots of
money?"
No, your brain jumps to that
conclusion so you have an excuse to write off everyone who rejects you by
thinking that they're just being shallow and selfish. I'm asking what do
you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative?
OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world?
Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have
guys being nice to them 36 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do
you know how to operate or not?
Does that break your heart? OK, so now what? Are you going to mope about it, or are you going to learn how to do surgery? It's up to you, but don't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer. "But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well guess what, there's another guy in her life who also knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar. Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The actors are clearly visible."
I think this is why you can be a
"nice guy" and still feel terrible about yourself. Specifically ...
#3. You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything
It's always "How can I get a
job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers
want?" It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of
"How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?"
"But why can't I find someone who just likes me for me?" you ask. The answer is because humans need things. The victim is bleeding, and all you can do is look down and complain that there aren't more gunshot wounds that just fix themselves?
#2. What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do
There's a common defense to
everything I've said so far, and to every critical voice in your life. It's the
thing your ego is saying to you in order to prevent you from having to do the
hard work of improving: "I know I'm a good person on the inside." It
may also be phrased as "I know who I am" or "I just have to be
me."
Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because fuck you if so -- find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people watched that Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor African children "in their thoughts." What did the collective power of those good thoughts provide? Jack fucking shit. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work.
#1. Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement
The human mind is a miracle, and
you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is
fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with
layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that
might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict.
So even now, some of you reading
this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it.
From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of ...
*Intentionally Interpreting Any
Criticism as an Insult
*Focusing on the Messenger to
Avoid Hearing the Message
*Focusing on the Tone to Avoid
Hearing the Content
*Revising Your Own History
*Pretending That Any
Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self
And so on. Remember, misery is
comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort. Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to
know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody
can attack the thing you created. It's
so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations.
Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, their work will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.
Don't be that person. If you are
that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate
you. This is what's making you hate yourself.
So how about this: One Year. The end of 2014, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose
I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make
you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.
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