Belly Button Lint

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Tag: fear

  • Theme:

    Dropping ambition to return to reality

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    1–2 minutes

    The drive to find purpose, to fulfill ambition, is a misdirection forcing you to disconnect from reality.

    Sam Harris says ambition and purpose are imaginary friends; there is no reason that reality is insufficient.

    This is true, but also privileged nonsense. Having the ambition to achieve lands you in a place soft enough to consider purpose, where before it was clear: survival. Many people are hip-deep in reality (aka survival), from which our ambition can drag us free.

    The irony Harris brings to light is that achieving the comfort that allows us to consider "purpose" is to overcome survival, that is, to escape the nagging confrontations of reality. Once free (free of reality, free to consider purpose), we should turn off our ambition to return to reality.

    Yet overcoming requires such persistent effort that humans are conditioned and are dreadfully afraid to return to the state of survival. It is not that Harris is wrong -we should reconnect with reality and drop illusions- but it requires a mad overcoming or padded life before such returns to reality are wise.

  • Theme:

    conflict avoidance is conflict amplification

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    1–2 minutes

    The more you avoid conflict, the more you repress your feelings. You present a false you, while the real you grows resentful and angry; you are secretly hurting.

    Eventually, you will create the argument you need to voice your pain, but it will be a huge mess you will end up apologizing for. Your avoidance somehow became amplification.

    The explosion confirms (to you) that you are the kind of person that messes everything up, so you’ll keep on avoiding conflict, until you explode again.

    Instead, try to verbalize your feelings as they arise, not laying blame on the other person. Over time you will find it’s easier for you to stand your ground without a fight, without drama.

  • Theme:

    Love is a beautiful moment

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    1–2 minutes

    Take time to simply enjoy the moment. It won’t last.

    Instead of becoming pessimistic, anxious, or unequal to a theoretical future please attempt to forgive yourself.

    If you can defer and relax at this moment, you may enjoy it fully. You do not need to deconstruct it or make sense out of it, it will make sense out of itself.

    It will become love by you being in it.

  • Theme:

    Patience derives from power

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    1–2 minutes

    Patience is only a virtue if you have power.


    When you are powerless and told to be patient, you must wait on the “powerful” to fulfill your request. Patience is a control mechanism: we will grant you rights and privileges if you behave.

    Being impatient and impulsive threatens the stability of the carefully constructed lives of those with something to lose. The impetuous act is offensive because it is uncontrollable, unmanageable, and undeferential.

  • Theme:

    anxious action

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    1–2 minutes

    When you are anxious you aren’t profound. You feel the need to act: to speak, to do.

    This acidic aggravation generates a compulsive need for action, for exhaustion. It is a bodily response springing from a psychological state.

    Our goal is to soothe the mind to soothe the soul, trusting the body will follow.

  • Theme:

    Aggravation prompts action.

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    1–2 minutes

    When you are anxious, or under anxiety, you don’t feel profound. You just feel like you need to be speaking or doing something.

    Aggravation generates action. This is a bodily response springing from a psychological state.

    Soothe the mind to soothe the soul, and the body will follow.

    The first step, of course, is recognition, and then allow yourself to map out the stress into what you can solve and what you can’t.

  • Theme:

    transparency allows depth

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    1–2 minutes

    The worst part of people opening up is not that we become closer, but we clearly reveal our uncompromising nature that is afraid and seeking stability.
    Our transparency, vocally stated, is one-directional: it is the depths of self-revealed, resplendent in need, fear, and longing.

    Clouding the waters with murk obscures you and can protect you, but it also keeps people on the banks, only tiptoeing into your shallows. To expose your depths is to invite deep relationships.

    As well, your openness models openness: reciprocity of genuine comradery.

  • Theme:

    Optimization from fear

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    1–2 minutes

    What portion of our pursuits are motivated by anxiety and fear?
    Is our level of optimization equal to our stress?

    If this number is high we are operating from a place of fear rather than a) the curiosity of our potential or b) the drive toward thick and beneficial desires.

  • Theme:

    Owning your assery

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    1–2 minutes

    You can be an ass. You can realize you’re silly and emotional and ignorant and confused. But this does not mean you are not a good person who is trying.

    Recognizing your flaws, owning them, and still attempting to be better is all we can ask of anyone.

    The person to fear is the one takes pleasure in their assery or the one who hides it.

  • Theme:

    normalized anxiety

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    1–2 minutes

    The unknown and risk offer excitement and anxiety: the urge to rid ourselves of these extremes drives us forward. This drive is a biological attempt to find peace.

    Yet, we are conditioned to no longer find comfort in rest: we can only find familiarity in anxiety.