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Safety Meetings
Feb 4, 2008

My Instagram is blowin' up 24/7.
This is my draft, it probably needs some editing and may contain grammatical or spelling errors, so my apologies in advance.



Everybody is hosed up. Thats a good thing. This is the one thing I learned from a brief period in my life where I lived with a drug dealer. You’d think that his clients are all gonna be skids, losers, burnouts. But they aren’t. A lot of them are professionals. Respectable people. Nobody goes to their accountant and thinks “this guys gonna go home after filing my corporate tax return and snort 4 grams of coke while loving the poo poo out of a prostitute” But it happens. a lot. Drugs make you feel good, and my opinion has always been that people who seek out and abuse drugs are doing so in order to compensate for some kind of unhappiness in their lives. It’s so easy to see people who have things you want; a nice car, a hot girlfriend, a stacked bank account. And you wonder. “how come don’t I have these things? what do I have to do to be in this persons position? Am I just making the wrong choices, or is there something fundamentally wrong with me that I simply don’t deserve to live that kind of life?” But it is not easy to see that many people who have the things you want are not as happy as you think you would be if you were in their position. In many circumstances, it’s easy to look at things that people take for granted and say “if I had that, i’d truly be happy. I’d appreciate it and care for it." And for whatever reason, you think that until you have this in your life, you are somehow incomplete; something is missing.

For example, If you’re a male, i’d be willing to bet that you have had a lady friend was is just that. a friend. But you wanted more, and for whatever reason it doesn’t work. Maybe she has a boyfriend, or maybe she just isn’t into you that way. And if you are truly her friend, you’ll respect that. And although this may leave you feeling morally satisfied, on a personal level you still haven’t got what you wanted. This is one of my favourite examples because nothing motivates a man more than hormones and adrenaline. When I was younger, I was really bad at solving this problem. My solution was to try and shove my way into her life. If she opened up to me about issues with her man, or things that SHE wanted but didn’t have, i’d try to provide these things for her and do my best to compensate for for the shortfall of her lover. My thought process was that, in time, she’d eventually realize that what she REALLY wanted in life was right in front of her all along. But this is just the plot for a bad movie, and never works out in real life. Although I thought I was being a nice guy, this is actually the complete opposite. This is selfish and manipulative. It’s only nice if you do something for the sole purpose of improving the life of another person. If you have any kind of expectation out of your actions, you’re not being nice. You’re just trying to buy a person, and that never works.

Despite all of the effort you put in, you’re wasting it. If you like somebody and they don’t like you back, it’s easy feel like you are somehow “not good enough”. And if you think you aren’t good enough, how is trying desperately to fill the holes in somebody else's life going to make you feel better about yourself? In this situation, you need to look at exactly WHY you don’t feel good enough. And then you go out and you solve the poo poo out of that problem. Not attractive enough? Eat a fuckin vegetable. Go for a run. Socially awkward? go talk to people. Join a club. Take a loving class. No matter WHAT your problem is, there are other people in the world with the exact same issue. Find those people and go practice whatever it is you want to do. Then you go back and get the girl. Or you don’t, it doesn’t fuckin matter. The simple fact is that you got yourself into a position where you did not have the resources to fulfil your desires, and you turned this into a situation where you became a better person. If you’ve gone out and made a change in your life, big or small, and become more of the person you want to be and this chick STILL doesn’t want to be with you. Then guess what, the bitch doesn’t deserve you. Go find another person, and if you’re lucky you won’t be good enough for them either. And thats not a failure, that’s an opportunity for you to identify another thing that you aren’t happy with and once again become a better person. When you get into this kind of cycle, rejection is great. Because you know that no matter how many times you get shot down or lose, every single one of these interactions is going to cause you to take actions that bring you one step closer to to being the kick-rear end motherfucker that you want to be.

And that is as hard as it gets! Everything else you could want in life is way easier. There is no book saying that in order to have some specific girl, you need to meet specific qualifications. Those situation are subjective. But if you want something else like a car or a job, people will tell you exactly what they need from you in order to realize those dreams. Maybe your dream job needs a degree or some kind of experience. It’s all laid out for you, there is no thinking involved. Go do that thing. And if you think that meeting the requirements are not worth the effort, then there is a pretty good chance that whatever it is you want wouldn’t make you as happy as you think it would. Everything good in life is worth fighting for, and the amount of pain you are willing to go through in order to get something is an excellent gauge for how much pleasure you will get out of fulfilling that desire.

You might read this and think that this process sounds miserable. How is getting rejected and failing repeatedly a good thing? How is spending an indefinite amount of time trying to change yourself supposed to be fun? At what point am I supposed to be satisfied with what I have? And the answer is quite simple. it’s not fun, and you are never satisfied. Thats the reality for an effective, confident person. I used to think that being confident was a matter of knowing that you could accomplish whatever you set your mind too. Knowing that everything was going to work out in the end, no matter how things looked in the moment. Knowing that everything happens for a reason. But things do NOT happen for a reason. It is your job to FIND reasons why things happened, and if you aren’t satisfied with the outcome you change the circumstances that lead to that situation. I knew this girl who got dumped by her finance. And she was ruined over it. Lost her job, spent months crying in her room feeling like she couldn’t live her live without this dude next to her. But time passed and and she got a new job in a new city and eventually she met her current husband. And later on she told me that, in the end, all of her suffering was worth it because she met a man she loved and she found a career that fulfilled her way more than her old one. And she told me that it was worth it specifically because “everything happens for a reason”. And I thought this was total bullshit. She’s there taking personal responsibility for all of her misery, but then when good things happen she spouts off some bullshit as if the universe had rewarded her suffering. She gave no credit to all of the actions she had personally taken to improve her life. Despite what she thinks, the universe did not hand her the job and this dude to her on a silver platter, she went out and loving earned it. While this may not make much difference in the present, what happens the next time she gets dealt a lovely hand? If you can take responsibility for your successes in life, it’s much easier to handle your failures. You can look back and think “gently caress it, i’ve gotten through worse poo poo, surely I can get through this"

I used to think that confidence was knowing that no matter what happens, eventually I will succeed. Even when things seem nearly impossible, I will somehow pull it together and get what I want. This way I could walk into any situation fearlessly: knowing that I already had the ability to achieve my goals. I was wrong. Confidence is knowing that you WILL gently caress up and you WILL fail and you WILL fall short. But everything will be ok. You will be alive. Sure, you might be miserable or disappointed or sad, but thats life. Sadness and pain are necessary. This is your brain accepting that there is something you need to change. It’s easy to find solutions to problems, but being able to identify exactly the thing that makes you unhappy is the first (and the hardest) step. And when you feel sad and hopeless and broken, this is actually a beautiful moment in your life. Because this is the only time that you can know, with 100% certainty, that things will be better tomorrow.

So how exactly does this relate to drugs, and where is the part where I explain how to be truly happy in life? Well, I can’t tell you that. I do not have the answer. But i did meet one person that, unexpectedly, was one of the happiest guys I have ever met. he was an addict, he shot heroin and smoked crack. When I first met him I figured he was the biggest skid on the planet. His house was a complete loving mess, he had no furniture or food in the fridge. Only a mattress on the floor. But this guy knew exactly what he needed to experience true bliss, and that was his fix. When I first saw his life I couldn’t imagine how anybody could live without things I took for granted. A job, a family, a "loving big television” as they say in trainspotting. But this guy had everything he wanted. He could experience the lowest of lows, and he’d be ok with that because $10 later he’d be able to experience one of the greatest pleasures known to man. His life would never change, and he’d never amount to anything more than what he already was. And he was ok with that. This is what happens when you are completely satisfied with what you have. You become stagnant. I don’t care if you sleep behind a dumpster or if you live in a mansion, for me the greatest pleasure in life is being able to look back on your experiences and feel pride knowing that you were able to take your worst moments and turn then into something positive. Life is about progress. No matter what you have, eventually you will want something more. And the process of improving yourself is painful. Being confident is not about being untouchable, it’s about knowing that every time you look in the mirror and and feel like you are hosed up and sub-par, you’ve already completed the hardest step of becoming the person you want to be.

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supermikhail
Nov 17, 2012


"It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

quote:

For example, if you’re a male, I’d be willing to bet that you have had a lady friend was is (I'd go with "who was") just that[comma... or maybe a dash?] a friend.
Yes, capitalization and punctuation. And some shify tense-shifting.

I am really glad that you learned all that, but I wouldn't call the piece especially motivational. I personally felt a lot of negativity while reading it. Although, books are sold with similar content and tone, so :shrug: I still think what's expressed here is rather banal opinions, and banal opinions don't need lots of anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and imperatives. And expletives, if those are used for added emphasis.*

Unless you yourself are going through some event, in which case, yeah! Do what you said! Seriously, great advice. Also, http://youtu.be/WlBiLNN1NhQ



*However, it's perfectly acceptable to incorporate all those into a great piece of fiction that with some effort can be boiled down to banal opinions.

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