There was a time if I was in an argument, it was not over until one of us admitted defeat. The argument would go on until there was a clear winner. It would even go on longer if it was a heated debate. After all what was the fun of stopping at just winning if I could really rub the other persons nose in their defeat?
It sure felt good when on the winning end to really punish the other person. Taking it one step further. Adding a few extra hurtful comments because I knew I could was extra frosting on the cake.
Over time, I learned, or maybe unlearned, that I was not doing myself any good going above and beyond when I won an argument. It made me feel good for a few minutes of course. Or maybe I should say it made my ego feel good.
What I found was the price I extracted in collecting my proverbial pound of flesh from the other person would eventually turn out to be very expensive for me. I found out my behavior I was really hurting myself in the long run.
Over time, I find it better not to let arguments become that heated if at all possible. The more battles I took on, even more battles would make their presence known. In the end there are only a few battles worth fighting.
What I learned to do was stop arguing when I won. When losing, I found it is less painful to concede immediately. Stopping at the first opportunity is something practiced in martial arts where the idea is to stop the violence as quickly as possible with the least amount of harm to the opponent.
Fighting battles can be fun. Winning them is fun. Punishing the loser is even more fun. It is a blast in fact, until I needed something that only the person I hurt could do for me. Then suddenly it became obvious that the price they paid was much smaller than the price I would end up paying.
At first it was hard to stop. Hard to make myself stop when I had a lifetime of taking arguments too far, too often. With practice it became easier, and when done long enough, stopping before an argument became heated and something painful was said, became second nature.
So what is the benefit in not taking an argument too far? The most obvious is the other person does not feel like they have an enemy. They know what they were saying was actually heard and understood. In the future they may be may be more likely to help you, or at least not do anything to hamper you because they are not your enemy.
Being perceived as more mature comes in third for me. Not letting a disagreement become personal, and therefore heated, allows me to stay focused on keeping the disagreement respectful.
I find I have more energy. I have more energy because I am not wasting energy and effort on something that is not that important.
Life becomes easier and simpler. Not wasting time and energy on something that when compared to the bigger things in life are not really that important, allows more time and effort for what really matters. Not spending my energy trying to win an argument at any cost, gives me more time to notice those little things that make a big difference in the quality of my life.
When enough time is put into not arguing for the sake of arguing, I now understand other peoples arguments may be valid when they disagree with me.
Because I learned other people are not always wrong, I started seeing the person. When I start seeing the person, I know they are trying to enjoy their life just like I am. They may be going about it differently, but they are not wrong.
Reaching this point, a happier more filling life starts to happen, and life becomes happier and more enjoyable because almost everyone is moving in the same direction I am.
We should not define ourselves through the approval or disapproval of others, but rather by accepting ourselves and appreciating who we are. When we are young children, maybe even babies we do things that elicit a reaction. If moving the muscles in our face receives a response, we try it again. If it works a second time it becomes a part of who we are.
Being accepted and approved of by those around us is very important to our well being. It is what makes society function from a tribal setting to a country of billions. If we are not accepted by those around us for who we are, it is hard to be happy.
Often we take the need to be accepted farther than we should. We do certain things or perform certain acts, not because we want to, but because it is something we think we need to do to receive acceptance from those around us.
Often those rituals we are performing are restrictions we place upon ourselves. Dressing a certain way is a good example. When we are children it never enters our minds how we are dressed. It is only when others in our social circle start to notice what we are wearing that our clothing becomes important to us.
This forming and changing to conform rules our life throughout our high school and early adult years. We conform and change so often we are not even aware we are doing it, and have been doing it. As we change, we change our speech, our taste in television, books, and other entertainment, and opinions of people and the world.
We wake each day and put a happy face on for the world to see, showing everyone we come into contact with how much like them we are. We observe certain few people who seem to be naturals in our chosen circle and emulate them. We also start feeling less than because we are not that talented and natural at being who we want the world to see we are the same as that person or persons.
What would happen if instead of trying to be like everyone else with a few minor differences, we worked on becoming ourselves? Really being who we are, and not settling for being a little bit of who we really are?
Each day we wake, each of us makes almost invisible changes from who everyone thinks we are to who we really are. Most of the time we are not even aware of the process. It may be something as odd as waking up, and wondering why we said what we said to someone the day before. Or maybe why we watched a different television program the night before instead of the program we always watch.
Our inner self knows who and what we really are, and manipulates subtle changes in our lives to help us become us, and not a poor clone of who we think we want to be. Women are the most obvious and successful example during middle age. We men go through a major process too, but we are not as successful as women are in identifying and becoming the real us.
Those people we tried to emulate all those years, were themselves, and they were comfortable with who they were. The real us is perfect too once we remove all the additions and subtractions we made to ourself to fit in. The real us is the person who has stripped away all expectations belonging to others about us, and they become the person they were born to be.
Once we are us, and not an act, we start to have a clear understanding of why we are in this world, and what our true purpose is. At this point we enter in a race against time to accomplish whatever it is we were meant to do.
How much healthier it would be if we did not wait until some future time to become us, stripped away the facade starting right now, and became the real us. How much more we could accomplish as we perfect ourselves along the way instead of going through separate processes. Who am I, and what is my purpose would not be as painful of a process. We need you, start now on the path to finding you.
I was playing Holdem last week and played two non standard hands that both won the pot. In Holdem terminology, I played two pieces of trash and made the nut on the river with each one. In this particular instance in poker terminology it could be said, again in that I was tilting. Nothing new there, we tilt all the time, most of the time without even realizing it.
Tilt applies equally well to everyday life. Driving fast in the morning to make it to work on time, studying for a test late the night before, these are cases of tilt in action. Perhaps you lost your patience with someone for no obvious reason, or the sight of someone you dislike makes you suddenly angry. These are all instances of every day tilt in action away from the poker table.
One of the most interesting things about tilt is it sneaks up on us, and unless we are really aware of how we are behaving and why, we tend to go on and off tilt almost every day. Think about today, and try to remember if there was any time period when you found yourself having feelings or doing something before you realized it? Maybe something as simple as making a biting ‘deserved’ comment before you realized it ‘slipped’ out of your mouth?
These are some simple examples of how we tilt everyday. Tilt for poker players is deadly to their money, and something all good poker players try to avoid. Here is an example of why a poker player going on tilt is so serious. Pretend for example you are a just starting out professional poker player. You payed attention to all the advice and you saved up six months living expenses and enough money for your poker playing bankroll to ensure you will not go broke. You have now left your job behind and you are starting on your new lifestyle.
You wake up in the morning and feel a little tired, perhaps you had a drink to many last night celebrating, and had a little less sleep than you should have to be completely rested. You get ready to eat, but there is nothing in the fridge so you go to a coffee shop for breakfast. Your eggs are not cooked the way you like them to. You send them back and they are closer, but not right, but you eat them anyway. The coffee tastes a little bitter too.
A few more little annoyances happen in your morning and it is off to the poker room. The person who puts your name on the board for a table seat leaves for break, and as some time goes by you realize that people who have arrived after you are being sent to a tables with open seats. The poker room manager apologizes for the error and finally you get to sit down and start playing.
There are a couple of really poor players who are really getting lucky in spite of themselves. They have ran you down (beaten) a couple very good hands you have held. You start to take it personally, and decide you are going to show them who is the best player. Suddenly you realize that the chips you traded your hard earned money for to play in this game today are almost gone! How did that happen you wonder? As you start to think about it dawns on you that you are not in a very good spot. You are tired, angry, and not making good decisions. In poker language, you are on tilt, and just now realized it.
Remember those trash hands I spoke of? I played those on purpose to tilt some players at the table. One player, a pro left the table and took a long break when my second hand tilted him. A second less experience player, became angry and decided to punish me by aggressively playing against me. He lost a lot of money before he went home broke. We all tilt every day. Watch yourself for signs of tilt, so you do not end your day wishing you could do a few things over.
I doubt everyone has done some soul searching over this, but I know I did. I had to decide for myself what was the right thing for myself and my family. People who study our behaviors have come to a few interesting conclusions. Only two have any relevance to this post. The first is that most of us spend too much time dwelling on our faults and not enough time celebrating our successes. The second behavior we share as humans is we are great at blocking out negative factors in our lives we choose not to think about. For us, it seems if we do not think about them, they do not exist.
The reality is they do not exist until they come to pass, then if we are still around to reflect, we chastise ourselves for not seeing this extreme risk, and taking steps to prevent it. A great example is smoking. Growing up in my generation more adults were smoking than not, or so it seemed. There was a major not smoking campaign throughout my school years, and of course like well brainwashed children I was convinced about the evils of smoking and would harangue my parents about their smoking.
After I was out of school a few years, I found myself buying cigarettes for my own pleasure. Over those few years from leaving school to that point, I managed to dull down the dangers of smoking, and turn it into something real men did, so I should be smoking too. There is nothing like a group of men all standing around smoking and joking to make a young man think about how fun it would be tpart of that small social club.
After some years passed, and I went to some funerals of friends and family members who all seemed to have died too early, smoking started to lose its appeal. The biggest factor in changing my mind about smoking was my children. I did not want them being exposed to smoking so they would be less likely to become smokers themselves. It didn’t happen overnight, but one night I smoked my (almost) last cigarette and started down a new life path.
Time marches on I arrived at forty, and a new set of challenges were waiting for me. Mostly about what and how I ate. All men see and hear of other men who were fine one second and dead the next. Men that fell over from massive heart attacks. At first it just seemed like it was the destiny of men to fall over dead form heart attacks. After all heart attacks caused the demise of several male members of my family. That’s just the way life was. Of course other men came out of the woodwork, and we now know that is not the way life is at all.
We have access to more and better information regarding our health and welfare than we ever had before. In just a few hours of serious net searching, we can become familiar with just about any health subject. One area we still lack in is denial though. There is no medical breakthrough to stop us from living in a state of denial. If there was, I doubt as free adults we would subject ourselves to that particular cure either.
The biggest health concern I see for us is the foods we choose to eat. We are surviving on some really poor food choices. Most of us pretend poor food choices are okay. If eating fast or fried food had the ’side effects’ of smoking, many people would not be eating those foods. Because the major health problems poor food choices have on our bodies are not visible we go on pretending that eating how most of eat is okay. It is okay, until you find yourself falling over from your heart having exploded in your chest, then it is too late. Company advertising is not going to tell how deadly these foods are either….
I am urging everyone who finds that a major part of their diet is fast food, or fried food to really think about how good that food is, both in health and in taste. Are those food choices really so good that they are worth the risk hidden in those foods? If anyone has children, is eating fast food and feeding it to your children worth dying for and leaving your children to grow up without you around, and facing the same health problems? We can ignore a lot of bad things in our lives and usually it is okay, but poor eating choices have no warning signs until it is too late. Make aware food choices, and be there for your kids. Don’t allow them to grow up eating the poor food choices you are making.
I like the idea of managing my day to day risk. It is sort of like the insurance company does when they are deciding what my cost will be for my car insurance. It is also doing a little thinking about day to day life, and balancing those activities with more risk over a longer period of time. There is a large happy medium in our lives if we choose it. Sort of like Buddha and taking the middle road, it is not really that difficult and the returns are great.
I like driving as a good risk example because I live in a city, and driving is a part of my everyday life. I take two roads to work that are main trunk roads. They each have some serious accidents on them everyday. Because the traffic is moving rapidly, and there is a lot of it, I have to come to terms with possibilities that an accident I am involved in will probably be very serious.
At the rush hour times of day are the greatest risks of an accident. Early in the morning, there is always a possibility of a late night drunk heading home. During non rush hour periods are women and children in the car, or not, hurrying to get their shopping done before they have to meet their children and start their evening.
At night are usually the young drivers speeding around with their newfound power in their foot. This group of driver’s can rightly claim to have the fastest reflexes of any group out on the road, but they are also the least experienced, and most easily distracted group on the road. Of course their accident record and insurance rates reflect it. It appears by casual observation that they lead all age groups in rear end accidents, if you can call such accidents, accidents. Normally, they appear to be collisions caused by lack of attention.
When I venture out on these busy roads I have to be aware of the hazards of that time of day. The most serious accidents are at rush hour, the rest of the day except for about seven to ten at night is about the same risk, with that isolated period where I am most likely to have a collision with a teen age driver. So the wise thing to do would be off these roads during rush hour and middle evenings. To do otherwise is to increase my personal risk of being in an accident.
This same thought process applies to everything around me. Certain foods are better choices, some neighborhoods are safer, the amount of sleep I get makes a difference. In a high level view of our lives, we control very little of what happens around us. How we think about what we do, we can make a big difference in keeping ourselves safe.
Thinking about 9/11 is another good risk thinking exercise. You can name a number of large cities where you might live where 9/11 could have happened. You can also make a list of buildings most likely to be effected in each of these cities. Once you have that list, you can better manage your risk of being hurt even if you live in a large city with many possible targets. Better yet is not living in a large city, and choosing small town life instead. The problem with a small town is it has risks of its own, unless you know you would enjoy small town life.
It is good to make a little list of activities once in a while, broken out by time and risk. Too many risky activities means we are going to get hurt sooner instead of later, but too little risk does not always mean safety either, as accidents happen everywhere. Taking a known risk you can afford on every level may be a good risk. Speeding down the street and running a red light at rush hour, is a foolish risk. Knowing the difference keeps life exciting. Knowing the risks you take in general, and knowing whether or not you will survive if you lose, both physically and emotionally, makes life a lot more enjoyable.
It is something the way some people approach their belief system. Some people go to such extremes after changing, and nothing changes in their life. It does not seem to matter to them though. They think if they wait a little longer, they will be rewarded.
What I see they end up having is a blame system. They decide what their life should be like. They make an attempt at being the new them. When it does not work out they try it all over again. After a number of tries they start accusing, and blaming, because they are not rewarded as they feel they should be. It is a new version of the, “Emperor’s New Clothes”, only in this story the Emperor does not walk around naked. The Emperor in this version of the story had his clothes washed, and given back to him.
Unfortunately, the new laundry service that washed the Emperor’s clothes made a mistake, and the clothes no longer look to be the same clothes the Emperor sent off to be cleaned. The laundry used some new cleaning product, and a new sequence of cleaning the clothes. What happened is the clothes are not the same texture, and colors not what they were before they were washed.
The clothes feel different to the Emperor because they have new texture, and colors, so the Emperor assumes they are new clothes. What the Emperor misses in this thinking is about the clothes themselves. If they were indeed different clothes than the Emperor sent to the laundry, that would mean someone else received the Emperor’s clothes, and the Emperor received their clothes. Because the Emperor thinks these clothes are better than the old clothes, there is no need to change anything – as the laundry made the mistake. The mistake seems to be in the Emperor’s favor, so of course the Emperor is quiet about the switch.
The laundry does not have the dilemma they thought they would, because so far everyone thinks the clothes they wear now are better than the clothes they sent in for cleaning! So the laundry, other than have some anxiety over who may complain about their clothes, has no real problem at the moment.
Now the Emperor has been wearing his new clothes for a while. While the Emperor likes the new color and texture of the clothes, it seems something is not quite right with the clothes. The Emperor was sure that these new clothes were special, and as soon as they were put on, everything would start changing in the Emperor’s life.
Sadly, for the Emperor, there has been very little change except for the few days of vibrant enthusiasm of wearing new clothes and feeling pretty good about it. The Emperor notices little by little the major life change he is expecting is not happening! The Emperor can not understand what is wrong, and starts to get a little disgruntled.
The Emperor talks to some of his new friends who think they have also received the new clothes. They all seem happy, upbeat, and on a new path in life. Maybe their life has changed, and maybe it has not changed all they pretend it has, but it makes the Emperor angry thinking he is missing out.
There is no belief system I know of that is built around the idea of an all powerful being who waves a magic wand over new converts, and changes their world because they changed their clothes. If there were any instant payoff belief system, you can believe the whole world would be there already. But there is not one anywhere here…changing your clothes does not change your life.
If you wait for some all powerful being to come and make your life better, because you decided to think differently, I hope you have a comfortable spot to sit and wait, because it won’t be happening in this lifetime, in this reality. That is the stuff fairy tales are made of, and the best we can do is read about them.
I have learned in my life – if I want positive life changes: I have to be active in the process; today is a good day to start; blaming my belief system does not change anything.
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