purpose

The Veiled Veil: How to Escape the Matrix

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Escape the Matrix

One of the most important things that you can embrace about life if you value your freedom is the idea that:

“THE WORLD IS NOT REALITY” (quoting my own books, Personal Revolutions and Shadow Life).

If you don’t step back to acknowledge this then two things can happen, both of which hold you back and limit your capacity for FREEDOM and its expression:

  1. You start to limit yourself INTERNALLY because you take a sense of identity on board that is given to you as a conceptual set of ideas from ‘The World’ (which isn’t real).
  2. You start to limit yourself EXTERNALLY because you start to see external barriers to your own growth and progress towards your goals (that also aren’t real because they’re rooted in your perceptions of ‘The World’).

This isn’t to say that ‘The World’ isn’t a thing that doesn’t exist (in the sense of at least being ‘there’) but it’s something that only really exists as a consequence of human ideas about life and what it ‘should’ be.

It’s a kind of MATRIX that exists as the sum total of all our collective doubts and fears about life that we project over whatever is really ‘out there’ in reality.

Nothing ‘wrong’ with that and it’s just something that human beings do in order to ‘survive’ whatever they’ve already been through (just like we do at an individual level by creating an ego for ourselves in order to keep surviving life based on what we’ve already seen of it).

The problem, however, is that a lot of the IDEAS we come up with about life and what it is are actually limited and unreal because the thinking that caused them in the first place is actually DISTORTED and untrue because of the natural limitations of being a human being.

That might sound a bit much but all it means is that the DEFAULT way of thinking and being in the world for a human being is often more about SURVIVING LIFE rather than THRIVING in life (something that you’ve probably heard before).

This being the case, we create a collective MATRIX for ourselves to live in that allows us to go through the motions of living but never to actually live in the REALEST possible way.

Perhaps that’s fine because not everybody is ready to pay the cost of living a real life and many people are ‘happy’ to just go through the motions and to take things at face value.

If you’re one of the Real Ones that feels like there might be more to life than just ‘the Matrix’ of the World, then keep reading because this article is going to simplify your relationship to it and give you a few simple techniques and strategies to start breaking out and finding freedom again.

You only get one life so there’s no point holding yourself back and being INDIMIDATED by a world that doesn’t even exist and living a life that never truly makes you feel alive.

Here we go:

Human beings need to be WHOLE if they want to be real but – unfortunately – we’re ‘made’ of FRAGMENTS.

Before we get into this, you need to understand an important difference between WHOLENESS and FRAGMENTATION.  If you’ve read some of my ‘stuff’ before then you’ll know what this means but if you haven’t here’s a super quick overview:

Essentially, human life becomes more ‘complicated’ than we often want it to be because we are torn (as a result of our bodies and our social programming) between two states of being.

The first state, is what I would call a REAL state which is a state where we’re constantly moving towards WHOLENESS in ourselves by connecting to our true values and intentions, uncovering and ACCEPTING hidden ‘parts’ of ourselves that may have been disowned in childhood (like certain emotions etc.), and generally putting ourselves on a path to be more authentic.

This real state will also see us moving towards more WHOLENESS in relation to the world around us: for example, by having less barriers erected between ourselves and others so we can have more authentic relationships, finding people that share our values, and understanding the similarities between ourselves and every other human being on the planet rather than just being obsessed with and motivated by the differences.

Finally, the real state will allow us to keep going into a deeper relationship with REALITY. All this really means in simple terms is that we embrace our inherent CONNECTION to life as a whole and to the systems within systems (ad infinitum) of the universe as a whole.  This doesn’t necessarily need to mean anything ‘mystical’ – it just means that we all play a role in the universal unfolding of the universe as ONE relationship.

When we are able to live in this REAL STATE then we’re able to keep flowing and growing with life and to generally avoid a great deal of friction, frustration, and  misery in our lives. This is because we’re not holding ourselves back with illusory mental blocks or ideas that cause us to act as something that we’re not.

This is where FRAGMENTATION comes in – fragmentation is just anything that causes us to think, feel, and act like we’re DISCONNECTED from ourselves, the world, and reality.  This is almost always because we have PERCEIVED these things incorrectly and because we have INTERPRETED these perceptions incorrectly on top of that (this is the VEILED VEIL which we’ll discuss in more detail in a second).

If you tend to CHOOSE fragmentation over wholeness then you will end up removing yourself from reality (because reality is ultimately about working with what’s WHOLE) and you will end up causing yourself to live in a state of FRICTION that will eventually turn to frustration and misery.

The most common form of fragmentation that the majority of us have to contend with is our own SELF-IMAGE (aka ‘Ego’ in the language I use) and the way that we separate and DISCONNECT ourselves from the whole of ourselves, the world, and reality in order to protect it (because we think protecting it will help us – which it might in the short-term but only causes more problems in the long-term).

For example:

At the level of ourselves, being ATTACHED to a certain fragmented image of ourselves cause us to DISCONNECT from all of the emotional ‘stuff’, values, or intentions that are real about us but which go against that self-image (usually because we want to hide from those things for whatever reason – usually social conditioning and self-hypnosis).

At the level of the world, being attached to this fragmented self-image (that we’re separate and not the ‘same’ as others) causes us to create unreal NARRATIVES about our place in the world and to start playing ROLES that are disconnected from reality (usually either acting as ‘more than’ or ‘less than’ human and playing either a ‘hero’ or a ‘victim’, respectively).

At the level of reality, being attached to this image causes EGO RESISTANCE that causes us to resist things about reality that cause us to grow more WHOLE – for example, we may resist change, we may resist facing our weaknesses, we may resist the fact that time is precious because we’re going to be dead one day.

These are all examples but the basic principle we all need to follow is that – to be a ‘happy’ human being – then we need to consciously make a CHOICE to move towards wholeness and connection despite there being a natural drive towards FRAGMENTATION inside all of us.

When the will to fragmentation starts to win, we just end up being ENSLAVED to the Matrix of the world because we believe that the world is reality and the identity we’ve created to survive in it is the truth about us.

‘Escaping’ and living our REAL lives means that we understand the unreality of fragmentation and make a shift into a REAL STATE that allows the world to slip away from our experience of our fragmented ideas about ourselves so that we can move towards wholeness (without expecting to be fully whole, just embracing wholeness as a direction to keep MOVING in).

This means battling our own biological and cultural limitations and making sure we step into what’s whole rather than just acting according to the fragments of ourselves that we picked up from our fragmented perception and interpretation of ‘The World’.

The Veiled Veil: Limited Perception and Interpretation

This is where we come to an inescapable problem of FRAGMENTATION that every human being on the planet has to contend with: the VEILED VEIL.

The Veiled Veil is what emerges when you’re in a fragmented body on a fragmented planet and when you have a machine in your head that uses fragmented concepts to try and make sense of everything it perceives (that ‘machine’ is your brain, btw).

Even though the ‘truth’ about reality is that everything is WHOLE and just one system relating to itself in different ways, human beings have TWO different levels of fragmentation that can block them from experiencing this wholeness to the greatest extent possible.

  1. Limited perception.
  2. Limited interpretation.

When these two things come together you have what this article is referring to as the Veiled Veil.

It’s called a ‘veil’ because it places a layer of fragmentation between ourselves and our experience of life as a whole. It’s called a ‘veiled’ veil because it doesn’t just do this once but two times.

At the first level of PERCEPTION, we experience the wholeness of life as being divided and fragmented because of our BODIES.

The fact that we’re in bodies in the first place means that our perception is limited.

My body is positioned in a different place in time and space to yours and so will have a slightly different perception of the WHOLE to you. Furthermore, all bodies are incapable of perceiving everything around them – for example, unless you have eyes in the back of your head you can’t see what’s behind you as you read this.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, it’s just the way it is but what it means in terms of wholeness versus fragmentation is that the primary information you bring in through your senses is completely FRAGMENTED from the very outset. To think that you’re perceiving the truth is a mistake…you’re just perceiving (like the rest of us).

The second level of fragmentation of the Veiled Veil is our INTERPRETATIONS of what we perceive. Because what we perceive is already fragmented, we’re already disconnected from the reality of the whole – but we complicate and fragment things even more by also being BIASED (consciously and unconsciously) in the way that we interpret things we’ve perceived.

This usually comes back to our own relationship to ourselves and our own emotional ‘stuff’ – for example, if we had a ‘bad’ relationship with somebody in the past then we’ll be more likely to interpret what they’re doing in the present as being ‘bad’ too. Another example might be that we CHOOSE to believe something about somebody because it fits in with the way that we want to see ourselves (the ‘ego’ stuff mentioned above).

Either way, what this all boils down to is that the NATURE OF REALITY is wholeness but the way that we perceive and interpret life as a default – from behind the Veiled Veil – is FRAGMENTED.

‘The Matrix’ is just what happens when we choose to continue believing in fragments in our own lives and when we choose to believe that the collective fragmentation of ‘The World’ is real also.

To free yourself, you need to condition yourself to step back from the influence of the Veiled Veil as much as possible.

Survival Value and the MATRIX

Just to be clear, we need the Veiled Veil so that we can survive life on earth but it isn’t the TRUTH about life – it’s the MATRIX that keeps us plugged into an unreal world that holds us back from REAL LIFE.

If you want to start freeing yourself then you need to improve your relationship at the two levels that the Veiled Veil causes you to buy into unnecessary fragmentation: the level of perception and the level of interpretation.

What we can do: Limited Perception

You  need to find  the EDGE and taste WHOLENESS

It’s probably impossible for a human being to live in a complete state of wholeness for their whole lives – this is because we’re in fragmented bodies in a fragmented world and because we will always have emotional ‘stuff’ to work through that distorts our perceptions and interpretations from time-to-time.

Even so, it’s more than possible to have a TASTE of wholeness that will permeate into the rest of your life and give you a direction to move in and return to if the ‘matrix’ starts to suck you back into ‘the world’ (and the unreal version of yourself that ‘lives’ there to keep the illusion going).

This is something I’ve talked about a ton in my books and in the 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose but the short-version is that you need to put yourself in situations that get you out of your head and allow you to feel completely CONNECTED to your surroundings.

Some examples:

-Riding a motorbike fast.

-Making love to somebody.

-Climbing a mountain.

-Getting in a flow state with a creative project.

-Etc. (the list is endless).

In these kind of cases, you will experience being completely whole and as one with life itself.  This means that you managed to find your EDGE and to get out of your ideas of yourself – in other words, there is no separation between you and life. It’s just life experiencing itself.

The more of these kind of experiences you have (Abraham Maslow called them Peak Experiences) the more you will understand your REAL IDENTITY beyond the Veiled Veil.

You need to think in terms of systems

Thinking in terms of systems can also help you to perceive things in a way that is more ‘reality-aligned’ and not limited quite as much by the Veiled Veil.

A ‘system’ in this context is just a series of interrelated parts sharing a connection.

Seeing things in this way, allows you to make a shift towards wholeness instead of just being caught up in the ‘default’ way of the body to limit everything to separate parts.

As a simple example – right now, as you’re reading this, we are not just too ‘separate’ entities but have created a new system that exists between writer and reader. That means that in this moment, we are ‘One’ and the exchange between us is a system. From that system, something ‘real’ might emerge.

That might sound simple but seeing things in this way – and making a conscious choice to remind ourselves to do so – allows us to see things in a way that’s more aligned with the natural WHOLENESS of reality.

Other examples:

-If you’re in a group of people, then you’re not just all separate individuals; you’re all ‘part’ of the ‘group’ system. Seeing it as ‘one’ thing allows things to flow better between the ‘parts’ (people involved) and to allow something bigger to emerge.

-If you’re walking through a forest (or whatever), then you’re part of that system whilst you’re in it (and even when you’re not, tbh). This helps you to see how connected you are to it – even if you’re only playing a small part, you’re still ONE with the system (and it’s only your perception that makes you disconnected if you get caught up in the default way of being).

-If you have a pet, then you and the pet form a new system and this connects you to each other on a deep REAL level. You might not see this if you’re in the ‘default’ way of perceiving but seeing it as a mutually beneficial system allows you to go deeper into it.

These are simple examples and it might seem almost trivial to make this shift but seeing things as systems allows you to step out of the fragmented view of life and to start moving more towards WHOLENESS (which is always more real and allows you to feel more ALIVE).

Train yourself to look for WHOLENESS instead of FRAGMENTATION and to act on what’s whole.

In short, you need to train yourself to overcome the limited perception of your body (which of course you can’t do completely because you’re in your body) and to start looking for the real connections between things.

How far you choose to take this is of course up to you but it might just be about asking yourself from time to time:

“Am I CHOOSING wholeness or fragmentation right now?”

You don’t have to be perfectionistic about it but it will usually be clear which direction you’re moving in.

Act in a way that moves you towards wholeness and your life will usually reflect what you want to a deeper degree.

Learn to BREATHE

Focusing on your breath from time-to-time is another great way to bring yourself back to wholeness.

Again, this doesn’t have to be anything complicated and you don’t need to meditate for hours at a time (unless you want to). Your breath is a great metaphor for some of the things we’re talking about here, though, because it’s connected to the WHOLE.

Your breath is connected to the whole of your body as it carries oxygen throughout the whole SYSTEM. More than that, the breath also connects the inner and outer world and so can show you that you’re not just an independent entity but interdependent with reality as a whole (the breath you breathe is shared with all the other living things around you, etc.).

There’s loads of good stuff out there about breathing but a simple technique is just to do 7-11 breathing when you want to remind yourself to get out of your head: you breathe in for 7 seconds and out for 11.

What we can do:  Limited Interpretation

You need to stop treating opinions as facts.

At the Veiled Veil level of interpretations one of the easiest things you can do is to learn to tell the difference between opinions and facts.

A lot of the time, we interpret things as meaning whatever we want them to mean because a general rule of life is that MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE (see below).

This could be about anything but the short-version is that whatever is going on with their relationships with themselves and their emotional ‘stuff’ causes people to act irrationally and to believe whatever will support their egos, justify their fears, give them hope, etc. etc.

When people slip into this unreal way of being they come up with all kinds of skewed distortions about life in the form of narratives and conceptual ideas that they treat as FACTS.

This gives them short-term comfort but in the long-term it just causes them to become more FRAGMENTED and to live lives that they don’t really want to be living.

If you have the emotional resilience, then a way to get around this is to be HONEST with yourself about whether or not what you think is just an OPINION or if it’s an actual fact (true for all about REALITY).

If it’s just an opinion then all you have on your hands is an INTERPRETATION of reality. That’s fine just as long as you are open to changing this interpretation if need be as you keep moving forward and growing more REAL.

You need to realise that MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE (and try to kill this tendency in yourself).

Most people don’t believe in the TRUTH, they believe in what they want to believe in order to feel good about themselves and life.  If you’re not careful then you might also fall into this trap (as the old saying goes “ignorance is bliss” but if you want to live a REAL life then you need to be truth-facing, not truth-avoiding).

People believe what they want to believe because it’s easier than facing difficult truths about life and the people that share it with us. It also gives us a kind of false ‘hope’ that we’ll get whatever it is that we want and need in the way that we want.

Here are some examples:

-Somebody might believe that they can grow their business by simply ‘manifesting’ clients or by finding a quick fix (like posting on social media once a week and watching the clients come crawling). Both of those go against reality but people WANT to believe it works like that because they WANT to believe they can do it without doing any WORK (people hate that).

-A guy might go to a coffee shop every day and he develops a crush on the girl that works there. He WANTS to believe that she feels the same way so he starts to tell himself a story in his head that she’s madly in love with him and he starts looking for evidence that this is the case (when really she’s just being nice because she wants the tips).

-Somebody wants to believe that she can lose weight fast in only 5 minutes a day by buying some MAGIC BULLET from the shopping channel on TV (do people still use those?). Of course, in reality there is no magic bullet but people WANT to believe in them because they don’t wanna do the WORK.

-Somebody is in a relationship with an irrational emotional retard but wants to believe “they’ll change” because they don’t want to do the difficult emotional work of breaking up, finding a new partner, accepting that the love wasn’t as deep as they thought, etc. etc.

-Etc.

These are just examples but the POINT is that people interpret life to fit into what they WANT from life. That’s fine if you wanna live in Cloud-cuckoo Land but if you wanna get actual RESULTS then you need to understand that this is just a case of you skewing things from behind the VEILED VEIL in order to justify your own BS.

You need to give up CONTROL FREAKERY

Another thing you can do to manage your life in a more real way at the level of interpretation is to stop trying to CONTROL everything.

If you lapse into CONTROL FREAKERY it’s always because you need life to be a certain way to justify your own interpretations of life. That would be fine if interpretations were the truth but because they’re not, it just causes all kinds of tension in your life, ruins your relationships, and stops you growing.

In the very best case, control freakery will just lead to you managing to create a bubble for yourself to live in but this bubble will always burst when reality creeps back in.

Instead of trying to control everything – which is always EGO – you need to switch to an approach where you can handle UNCERTAINTY and keep growing with it.

The TRUTH about life is that “the only certainty is uncertainty” but this means having to also face uncertainty in yourself (which control freaks hate which is why they’re control freaks in the first place).

When people have a lot of shame, guilt, or trauma that they don’t want to face, they create INTERPRETATIONS of life and try to hide from it behind a false certainty. If you’re a control freak, you need to accept that facing this stuff is just the way back to WHOLENESS and will give you the real experience of life you want.

You need to ensure you have an attitude that keeps you LEARNING

In short, your way out of the Matrix (which is really your relationship with yourself) is to stop acting like you know everything and to put yourself on a path of LEARNING.

Acting like you know everything is the same as acting like your perceptions and interpretations are completely true. Because reality constantly changes and evolves around us this is an UNREAL STATE to be in that just causes problems (including anxiety and depression in many cases).

The REAL approach is to accept and even VALUE uncertainty without letting it affect our own levels of self-acceptance so we can keep growing real and become more WHOLE.

Learning to learn means we can let go of our attachment to interpretations and:

-Not have to worry about being seen as ‘right’ all the time (a form of Control Freakery)

-Not needing to be perfect

-Not being afraid to change our minds

-Etc.

In other words, we won’t have to live our lives defending the fragmentation that makes us miserable in the first place!

You need to stop getting involved in unnecessary conflict.

Finally, developing a REAL relationship with your own interpretations of yourself, the world, and reality allows you to step back from engaging in unnecessary conflict (aka DRAMA & BS).

When you know that the TRUTH is whole and that people can only argue about their INTERPRETATIONS of it, then you don’t need to argue about your own opinions and you don’t need to be bothered about other people’s (whether they’re positive or negative).

Somebody calls you an asshole? Just their interpretation (which might be accurate).

Somebody doesn’t like your political opinions? Cool, they’re just your opinions and they’re entitled to theirs.

Somebody thinks their method of doing [whatever] is better even though it gets the same results? No problem, carry on.

All that really matters is what’s either gonna move you to more wholeness or bring more fragmentation into your life.

If somebody shares something – positive or negative –that helps you on that journey then take it on board. Otherwise, just smile, nod, and move on because the TRUTH can handle itself.

Bring it all together by growing real

The long and short of all this is that you can keep pushing through and EXPERIENCE life deeply by growing REAL:

Choose a purpose that keeps you moving towards wholeness and shattering your interpretations of yourself, the world, and reality (so you can remove layers of fragmentation and become more REAL) on the way there.

As you become more real, you become more whole, and the rest will fall into place. Get in touch if you need some help figuring out how to do it.

Conclusion

You can either live life in an unreal state and be miserable or you can get REAL by pushing through your limits and shattering the VEILED VEIL and leaving the Matrix.

 

The Black Rose: “Gimme Something Real or GTFO”

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Intro

The easiest way to build a real life for yourself is to learn to spot the difference between real and unreal in ourselves and others (so we can change, ignore or walk away from the unreal stuff).

In this context, ‘real’ means that you’re moving towards WHOLENESS via your true potential, you’re not blocking yourself with negative or irrational thoughts that distort your view of yourself, the world, and reality, and you’re not engaging in DRAMA or unhealthy ego dances with people that don’t support you and your growth (and who you don’t support in return).

Ultimately, this boils down to two incredibly important things:

  1. Having the best possible relationship with yourself.
  2. Having the best possible relationship with others

Really, these two things feed off each other because if you don’t work to ACCEPT yourself then you’ll never be able to provide the most amount of value you can to the world and have the best possible relationships with the people in it.

Because relationships are so important to living a ‘good’ (REAL) life, we need to be able to understand which relationships are worth keeping, which are worth ditching, and which are worth healing if need be.

This article gives you a simple but effective metaphor for just that.

Here we go:

Tending To Your Garden

In the metaphor that we’re going to run with, your life is a garden; you are the gardener and your job is to ensure that you take responsibility for making sure that your ‘garden’ is more populated with flowers (roses in this example, but you can use whatever you want) more than weeds.

This means that you need to realise that you have POWER over the garden and that if you take RESPONSIBILITY and make REAL CHOICES then this garden will be one that you actually want to spend time in.

If you don’t acknowledge your POWER, refuse to take RESPONSIBILITY and become passive and just let things happen or let nature take its course, then your garden will become overrun with WEEDS and it won’t be the kind of place you actually enjoy being in.

Roses or Weeds? That’s the basic choice for all of us but we have to step up and actually MAKE THE CHOICE otherwise we just end up living a life surrounded by unreal relationships and all of the DRAMA and BS that comes with them as everybody tries to uphold their own ego ‘stuff’ and act like an emotional retard (that’s what ‘weeds’ do).

In short then, the quality of your life will be affected by the quality of the relationships you CHOOSE to cultivate and nurture – first, the relationship with YOURSELF and then:

ROSES – the REAL relationships that add mutual VALUE to the lives of the parties involved.

WEEDS – the UNREAL relationships that don’t add mutual value and bring drama and unnecessary conflict.

Gimme Something Real or GTFO

Sometimes, we don’t realise how much power we have over our own ‘gardens’ and our ability to change the scenery.

All this means in practical terms is that it’s up to us who we ALLOW into our lives or not and that we’re more than capable of setting boundaries by saying “NO” to the unreal relationships and people that hold us back.

This might sounds strange if you’re emotionally attached to certain unhealthy ‘weeds’ that aren’t serving you but – actually, as an ADULT human being – you can kick absolutely anybody out of your life for whatever reason you want (that isn’t a recommendation that you should but just a reminder that it’s your CHOICE and you can do what you want without having to JUSTIFY yourself).

Here’s a list of ‘weeds’ that you can start to remove from your garden anytime you like:

-Fake friends that only seem to take from you and never give anything in return.

-People who don’t share your values or moral code and act in shady ways that go against your integrity.

-Family members that keep trying to fit you in a box or cause drama because of their own ego ‘stuff’.

-People you’ve outgrown for whatever reason and that are holding you back.

-Irrational people or emotional retards that are constantly causing trouble or problems for you.

-People that have stabbed you in the back too many times.

-Basically: anybody that you feel doesn’t BELONG in your garden (based on your true values, intentions, and moral code).

Get the trimmers out and say goodbye to those weeds.*

*This is an amazing thing and very empowering but it also means that if you act like a Weed people can trim YOU from their garden.

This doesn’t mean that you should get rid of anybody or everybody that annoys you – if you do that then it’s probably just your ego driving you and you’ll end up LONELY.

In the cases where people are clearly a drain on your time, energy, and attention, though – i.e. acting like bonafide WEEDS – then don’t be shy to step up and set a VALUE on your life that it actually deserves.

*Snip*.

A simple – and very effective – rule of thumb to keep in mind here is as follows:

“GIMME SOMETHING REAL OR GTFO”

Make this one of your official standards for living your life and ensuring that the people you CHOOSE to keep around are bringing the REAL stuff (in exchange for you giving them the real stuff too).

How To Spot A Rose:

If you spot a Rose in your garden then you need to do the work of nurturing the relationship and keeping it there.

This means giving something real in return (quality time, energy, and attention), appreciating its value, and ensuring that you keep it away from weeds that might be trying to KILL the relationship.

Here’s how you can spot a ‘Rose’:

They bring joy to your life

A rose will bring a sense of joy to your life by allowing you to see life CLEARY and to be your REAL SELF.

Energy

This joy will bring energy to your life and make you feel more alive on account of the relationship being LIFE-ENHANCING.

Laughter

Laughter often comes from a sense of shared TRUTH and that’s exactly what the REAL relationships are built on.

They support your goals and your purpose

The roses in your ‘garden’ actually want you to reach your goals and to move towards your life purpose because they have an ABUNDANCE mind set and your success is their success.

They help you learn and grow

The roses also realise that you won’t stay the same forever and that as life moves and those reality waves sweep over you then you’ll learn and grow into the next evolution of your realness (i.e. you’ll go more deeply into WHOLENESS – connection to yourself, the world, and reality).

In contrast, life is a little different when you let the weeds take over:

How To Spot A Weed:

They constantly make you miserable

There’s hardly and joy in your life when the weeds are involved because they’re unreal. This unreality brings FRICTION in the form of drama, frustration, and eventual MISERY.

They DRAIN your energy

The unreal nature of this misery-inducing activity will eventually drain you of energy and you’ll constantly feel depleted and lethargic around them (that’s what happens when you ALLOW the weeds to wrap themselves around you and to restrict your breathing).

There’s hardly ever any laughter

All this misery and untruth is hardly then environment for laughter (but there’ll be plenty of arguments and dramatic moments).

They belittle your goals and try to derail your purpose

The weeds want you to feel bad about yourself because they feel bad about themselves too. “Misery loves company”, after all, and so the weeds don’t want you to take action that might fill your life with more roses.

They don’t want you to learn or grow (usually so they can CONTROL you in some way and keep you the same).

Furthermore, a weed will constantly try and convince you not to grow or to do new things. This is because they don’t want you to OUTGROW them because if you do they might not have a hold on you anymore – it’s about CONTROL (so they’ll often use SHAME to try and stop you growing and GUILT to stop you doing things that are real to you as a way to convince you to stay the ‘same’).

Perhaps by reading that you’ll have already been able to see that some of the people in your life are ‘Roses’ and others are ‘Weeds’.

What you do with that information is up to you, of course, but in general you need to nurture the relationships with the roses and use them so that everybody can grow more real and you need to get rid of the weeds in whatever way works for you.

There is an exception to the rule, though:

Enter the BLACK ROSE

Sometimes, you’ll meet people in your  ‘garden’ that are hard to categorise as either a Weed or a Rose. Sometimes, they appear to be a friend; sometimes, they appear to be a foe. In this case, what you have is a Black Rose.

The Black Rose appears when you’ve taken a passive approach to letting people in your life but don’t get close enough to figure out if they have the potential to be a Rose that can add value to your life or if they’re just a Weed in disguise waiting to complicate things.

In this case, things could go either way – it’s up to you to take an active role towards making the relationship work for you (or stepping back if there are clear signs that the Black Rose will reveal it’s true nature as a Weed).

There are three main ways to handle a Black Rose appearing in your garden:

How to handle the Black Rose:

Figure out if their  ‘good’ side is real or not.

Sometimes, the Black Rose will look like a nice addition to your garden but the closer you look the more you realise that appearances can be deceptive.

Maybe, for example, they will constantly let you down by saying one thing but doing another. This mismatch between words and actions is suggestive that they are being untrue in some way.

Another sign might be that they constantly gossip or say negative things about the other Roses in your garden. This is a sign that they’re just a WEED in disguise trying to destroy things from the inside out.

Obviously, you should probably try and give people the benefit of the doubt but if the Black Rose gives too many signs that the ‘good’ is just a mask for weed-like behaviour then you should be wary (and be prepared to get the pruners out when things get more intense).

Figure out if their ‘bad’ side is real or not.

Sometimes, the Black Rose might just look ‘bad’ on the surface of things because they’re moody or have a strange sense of humour or whatever. It’s possible that this is just because they’re going through some ‘stuff’ and so you might be able to tend to it and turn it into a real relationship.

This depends on how much energy you’re willing to invest overall but it’s a good way to add more roses to your garden if you give the right people the benefit of the doubt.

Figure out if they’re ‘neutral’ or not.

Sometimes, a Black Rose is actually just ‘neutral’ and the best thing to do with it – if they’re not bothering you – is to just leave them in a corner of the garden where they’re just getting on with their own thing.

This applies to people that are ambivalent towards you and that you’re ambivalent towards (basically acquaintances on the periphery of your social network) – if you see them, you can say “hello” or whatever but you don’t have a particularly meaningful relationship with them and neither or you are really interested in one (for no particular reason – just how life is sometimes).

Conclusion

Your life is in your hands but you need to know that you have a responsibility to nurture the ‘garden’ and see things clearly.

You can do this by remembering “Gimme something real or GTFO” and making sure that you’re doing the best you can to cultivate the real relationships and let the unreal ones fall by the wayside.

 


If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with other! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

How to Stop NEEDING to Be Liked by Others (Walking Away from Life’s Great Popularity Contest)

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Life doesn’t need to be a ‘popularity’ contest

This article will help you to deal with one of the most common but harmful problems in the world: needing to be ‘liked’.

The key word here is “NEED”.

Obviously, it’s better to be ‘likeable’ than not – there’s no need to purposely be unlikeable in life.

At the same time, we can make ourselves completely MISERABLE and take our lives of track by making being ‘liked’ our main motivation.

If we only focus on getting approval from other people then it just leads to us not spending time focusing on the REAL things we could be doing with ourselves and our lives, growing into a continuously more authentic version of ourselves, and finding a ‘tribe’ or community of people that actually like – or even LOVE – us for who we actually are (not some FAKE version of ourselves that we created because we crave validation).

If you have this problem (of needing to be liked) then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about and you’ll probably suffer from some – or all – of the following symptoms:

  • You’re often anxious, frustrated, or even depressed (even if you don’t show it).
  • You know that you’re being ‘fake’ or selling yourself out in order to make people ‘like’ you but the thought of being disliked is too unbearable or too much hassle – because it would mean rearranging parts of your life – to start being real.
  • When you’re in a group of people you constantly find yourself comparing yourself to others and trying to figure out where you stand in the social hierarchy. This just stops you from relaxing and having a good time.
  • It’s almost like you don’t really even know who you are anymore –you’re main motivation for doing things is to ‘fit in’ and be approved of by the herd.
  • You’re constantly trying to make it look like you think/feel/do what everybody else does. You just want to come across as being ‘normal’ but now you’re paying the price because you feel detached from yourself.
  • When you’re out-and-about in public or hanging out with people, everybody thinks you’re a cheerful person who’s got it all together. You know that’s just a MASK, though, because in private you struggle with emotional emptiness and question everything you’re doing with your life.
  • You often find yourself having problems with boundaries because you want to be liked by absolutely everybody and so you say “Yes” to their needs and “No” to your own (when a REAL approach is to say “Yes” to your own when you’re not hurting anybody and “Yes” to others when it suits you).
  • You’re obsessed with your own self-image and constantly need other people to help you reinforce it for you (because it’s on unstable foundations because it’s not REAL).
  • (if you can think of any other obvious symptoms then please leave a comment).

To make matters worse, having this unreal attitude towards ourselves and our lives can be made worse by drama and BS in your life.

This is because you’re probably not the only person in your life or social circle that has this problem; others in the world around you also have a tendency to crave being liked by everybody else (even people they don’t ‘like’ because of their own ego stuff) and this just leads to life turning into one big Popularity Contest.

This being the case, just leads to all kinds of unnecessarily stressful situations where everybody is in competition with each other for something they don’t need in reality in the first place: the approval and ‘liking’ of other people.

Depending on how much they secretly hate themselves and have a void to fill within themselves (because of unresolved shame, usually), people will put all of their efforts into trying to build themselves up (to mask how small they feel) and to put others down.

This Popularity Contest is completely unnecessary because it’s totally unreal in its primary reason for existence: helping people to convince themselves that things that aren’t important about them or anybody else are important.

The only winning strategy in this particular ‘contest’ is not to play.

This article will help you figure out how you can check out and be in competition with the only person that matters: YOURSELF.

The Irrationality of Needing to Be Liked

Just to be clear, this article isn’t about making yourself unlikeable but about making sure that you live in such a way that you’re not bothered if people don’t like you.

That’s a subtle distinction but it’s about embracing the reality of life which – in this case – means accepting two basic premises and learning to work with them:

  1. You can’t control what other people think about you and whether they ‘like’ you or not.
  2. What they think about you doesn’t need to affect the way that you think about yourself.

In the first case, it’s quite simple:

You can’t control what other people think about you and whether they ‘like’ you or not.

You could be the nicest, most wonderful human being on the planet and – still – somebody out there would find a reason to dislike you (no matter how hard you might try).

Maybe they’re just having a ‘bad’ day; maybe you remind them of somebody that once called them an offensive name; maybe they just don’t like the way you talk or something about the way you dress.

The point is, that people are just weird – they have likes and dislikes without even knowing their reasons behind these feelings and – because people are varied and opinions are many – there will always be somebody out there that simply doesn’t like YOU.

This kind of ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ has nothing to do with rational reasons or logic and so it doesn’t even really reflect on ‘You’ as a person – it’s more just a ‘feeling’ that certain people have when they see you because of their own emotional ‘stuff’.

If you think about it, there are probably people that you dislike and can’t even really give a good reason as to why – there’s just something about them that speaks to your unconscious mind and makes it say “No, thanks.”

Because it’s an emotional thing and beyond any logical reasons or argument then you can’t bargain or reason with these people to make them ‘like’ you (and if you respect yourself you shouldn’t waste time doing that anyway): you just have to accept it and move on. It’s literally all you can do.

Maybe they’ll change their minds one day; maybe they won’t. It doesn’t matter. You can’t control it and so – like anything else in life that can’t be controlled – you just need to ACCEPT it.

Trying to make everybody like you is just as irrational as trying to convince yourself that the sky is usually green. It’s just the way it is and so you either accept it or make yourself miserable by going up against reality.

Trying to make everybody like you is just as irrational as trying to convince yourself that the blue sky is usually green; it’s just the way it is and so you either accept it or make yourself miserable by going up against reality.

What they think about you doesn’t need to affect the way that you think about yourself.

The second point to be made is that not only is what people think about you outside of your control (so you don’t need to worry) but, also, just because somebody thinks something about you doesn’t mean you need to believe it or change the way YOU think about yourself.

Let’s say that again for the people at the back:

What people think about you is just their OPINION; you don’t have to take it on board as a FACT about you.

In other words, what you’re dealing with is an INTERPRETATION, not REALITY.

Obviously, this isn’t always as easy to live as it is for me to write down in words – if somebody says something ‘negative’ about you then your initial instinct might be to feel a pang of shame or doubt or some other unhelpful emotion.

When this happens, you can get carried away to wherever that emotion wants to lead you, distort your own view of reality,  and get sucked into the ILLUSION that another person’s words or opinion somehow have power over you.

This isn’t a sign that their opinion is valid (though of course it could be but that’s up to you to decide – it’s not true just because they said it); it’s a sign that you have some unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ that’s making you BELIEVE that what they said could be true.

This is a key point:

If you are fully aware of your own realness and are able to ACCEPT YOURSELF UNCONDITIONALLY then you will have a good opinion of yourself and the opinions of others won’t change this.

This is ultimately about a concept I’ve talked about before on this site and in my book Shadow Life: being Outcome-Independent.

What this basically means is that your sense of self-worth and levels of self-acceptance are not dependent on external outcomes – like how people might think or feel about you, for example.

The main thing that stops you from being outcome-independent and instead being dependent on outcomes (or external validation, ‘likes’, etc.) is that you have an unhealthy relationship with your own emotions, especially in the form of SHAME.

When you feel shame at some level of your ‘being’, then you’re more likely to do two things:

  1. Create a false image of yourself that you hide behind to try and hide your shame from yourself and the world.
  2. Try and get other people to help you keep this false image or mask in place by trying to control your relationships with them (in terms of what can be said/done/felt, for example).

Unfortunately, because this false image is completely untenable – because it’s not REAL – you can easily start to doubt yourself when people ‘dislike’ you in some way.

This is because, actually, they’re not doubting the real ‘You’ – which can’t be doubted because it’s real ; they’re doubting the false image which you also doubt because you KNOW it’s not true.  Naturally, this triggers an internal conflict within you (and your normal coping mechanism for this conflict is to just try and be ‘liked’ so it goes away).

Quite simply, the reason that you doubt yourself is because you’re not being yourself – you have lost touch with what’s real about you and so you have started to yourself if the negative things they’re saying about you are true.

If you were being REAL then you would, of course, realise that these things are not true because you would be standing on a more solid foundation.

What is that foundation? The knowledge that when you’re being real you can’t be JUDGED in either ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ terms – you’re beyond either.

The problem, then, isn’t that you’re scared of being disliked but that you don’t know the truth about yourself and so seek it in other people (who probably don’t know themselves either).

The solution is to stop looking for answers about who you are in the OPINIONS and interpretations of other people and to instead ACCEPT who you are, CHOOSE who you want to become, and to DO the real work of becoming that person.

You can’t control what other people think about you and whatever that happens to be doesn’t need to affect your relationship with yourself anyway (unless you CHOOSE to let it).  That being the case, you might as well figure out what you like about yourself and then keep doing it instead.

The Psychology of Needing to be Liked All the Time

So if needing to be liked all the time is irrational because you can’t control other people’s opinions and those opinions don’t matter anyway then why do some of you need to be liked?

The short answer is that there are two main reasons:

  1. Reasons of the Self
  2. Reasons of the World

Reasons of the Self

The reasons of the Self are just any of the reasons related to your own psychological relationships with yourself that make you DOUBT who you are and have to create a fake version to deal with this doubt.

Normally, this comes down to  three emotions (or a cocktail of the three): shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

Shame: Makes you feel that there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with who you are and so you try to make people like you to compensate.

There are millions of different ways to compensate here and if you look at the world around you (especially on social media, etc.) you’ll see shame-driven people everywhere.

Guilt: Makes you feel that there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with the things you do, want to do, or have done. Whereas shame is always perpetuated internally, guilt always comes from some external source (that’s usually trying to control you).

When you have less shame and can see reality clearly then guilt is less likely to affect you – when it does affect you, it makes you dance around through hoops trying to be ‘liked’ again (by whoever is trying to make you feel guilty in the first place).

Trauma: Trauma is the most severe thing that can happen to a human being – it essentially means that something happens to you that makes us doubt – and even fear – your own power.

When that happens, it’s much more difficult to trust and believe in yourself and so you end up trying to outsource that trust and belief to others (which always fails because you can’t control what people will think about you and their opinions don’t really matter anyway).

Reasons of the World

When it comes to the psychological ‘Reasons of the World’ (aka SOCIAL reasons) for why you have a NEED to be liked, the short-version is that being ‘liked’ offers survival value.

Quite frankly, if nobody likes you then you’ll find it harder to have success in your career (because all business is ultimately about relationships), you’ll have no friends watching your back if things go sour somewhere, and people won’t really care what happens to you (in the most extreme cases) and so will leave you to die in the gutter (only a slight exaggeration).

If nobody likes you then that just means that – in the eyes of society – you’re lacking in status and that you’re not offering any value to the world (I know that’s harsh but it’s how it is).

We could probably say loads here about how this goes back to our “evolutionary past” and how human beings needed to hunt and live in tribes but all you need to know now is that being liked by the right people is a ‘good’ thing – living to make the wrong people try and like you to keep masking your own shame isn’t.

In terms of your own psychology, then, there are two things going on with a need to be liked:

The first is that you have unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ that’s preventing you from walking away from unhealthy relationships or causing you to outsource your ‘good’ feelings about yourself to others (which – as we saw above – is irrational because you can’t control what they think and their opinions about you are redundant anyway). Also, these ‘good’ feelings are really just a short-term high that comes from the release of tension of thinking you might not be ‘liked’.

The second is that you have all kinds of social instincts that are part of your biological makeup that make you feel like you have to be one of the herd/tribe/pack or you’re going to be cast aside to die in the (proverbial) gutter.

To give up the need to be liked you need to work on your relationship with yourself and listen to your own opinion more than others (and, for the record, if you have a ‘bad’ opinion of yourself then that means you’re being unreal and have picked up external standards or conditioning that you’re judging yourself in accordance with).

You also need to realise that your instincts to follow the herd and blend in are not reality – they’re just impulses that can help you survive but that you need to be selective with.

If you just follow any old crowd, then you’re going to end up being miserable because you will lose yourself in the crowd and no longer know who you are.

 

How needing to be liked all the time can hold you back

Just to drill the point home, here is a list of the symptoms you’ll face when you have the fundamental problem of NEEDING to be liked because of your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’.

I’ll also give you some quick tips so that you can actually start DOING something about this issue and moving towards a life that’s more REAL.

You’re never present because you’re always following an unreal agenda.

Problem: The first problem that arises from needing to be ‘liked’ all the time is that nobody really knows you because you’re always acting to come across in a certain light (that’s actually shadows), rather than being the REAL you.

As an example, maybe you need to be seen as being ‘nice’ (because your toxic shame can’t stand the idea of you being a ‘bad’ person or whatever) and so you have to constantly turn the volume up on how polite you are, hold back what you really think, never express your true feelings, etc.

This may help you to get what you want in the short-term, but in the long-term all you’re really doing is distancing yourself from other people and never truly being ‘seen’ (which is all any of us really want, at the end of the day).

Solution: The solution here? Start letting the REAL you out. You don’t have to go overboard especially if you’ve built a lot of the relationships in your life on an unreal foundation.

Stop being so AGREEABLE and start saying “No” – that’s always the first step to setting healthier boundaries and that’s what you’ve ultimately given yourself: a BOUNDARY PROBLEM.

Next time you catch yourself doing something purely because it will make you look ‘Nice’ (or whatever) then allow yourself to say “No” and be REAL instead. Overtime, this will definitely make you feel better about life in general.

You’re constantly comparing yourself to others

Problem: Another problem you’ll face if you need to be liked is that you’re going to constantly find yourself comparing yourself to others. This will be for two main reasons:

  • You want to compare to see how you’re ‘ranking’ in terms of whatever quality your ego has convinced you you’ll be liked for (being ‘nice’, ‘intelligent’, ‘alpha’, ‘beautiful’ whatever).
  • Your underlying SHAME (which is the main driver of needing to be liked) will want to make sure that nobody is ‘better’ than you because that will just make you catastrophise and act like there’s something WRONG with you (which is irrational but we’ll save that for another post).

In both of these cases, your need to be liked has caused you to create an ILLUSORY/BS standard to compare yourself and others to which is causing you to waste time in negative thinking and comparison.

This just stops you appreciating yourself and having REAL relationships with others (because you’re too busy comparing yourself to them to see them clearly).

Solution: First and foremost, you need to be AWARE of the fact and then ACCEPT the truth that human beings are incomparable – there will always be somebody that’s ‘better’ that you at some things but you’ll also always be better at some things than them.

Secondly, you need to try and develop an ABUNDANCE mindset – this just means realising that there’s enough goodwill in the world for everybody to be ‘liked’. Just because somebody else is likeable doesn’t mean you can’t also be likeable.

Thirdly, you need to stop worrying about other people and creating illusory competitions in your head by choosing a PURPOSE for yourself and your own life and focusing on that. When you’re busy GROWING REAL, you won’t have time to compare yourself to others: you’ll just be DOING YOU and getting things DONE.

You’re always criticising yourself

Problem: All this needing to be liked and comparison just sets you up for FAILURE. It sets you up for failure because you’re trying to do the impossible which is to change REALITY.

If you don’t realise that this is what you’re doing then you just end up living according to a bunch of EXPECTATIONS about yourself, the world, and reality that can never be met and you end up constantly criticising yourself.

This is because you keep telling yourself you ‘SHOULD’ get certain results but you never do (because you nobody can). In this particular case, the ‘SHOULDS’ in question are to be liked by everybody, to always be the best, to be perfect, etc. etc.

When you keep failing then your inner monologue (as an extension of your EGO) will keep chastising you and beating you up (or tell you you’re not good enough in the case of Imposter Syndrome).

Solution: You need to do the work to align your expectations with reality and to ACCEPT  the realities of life that we’ve talked about here today in this article.

You never focus on your own goals because you’re wasting time on trying to impress people etc.

Problem: When you CHOOSE to live as though you’re only purpose here on earth is to be ‘liked’ then you make choices that reflect that – because most of these choices are UNREAL and our lives are just a consequence of the choices we’ve made then… it leads to your life being UNREAL too.

This is because in life the most important things we have – because we’re gonna be dead one day – are our time, energy, and attention.

Every time you CHOOSE to hide yourself behind some fake image of yourself, you’re wasting your LIFE.

Every time, you CHOOSE to not do that thing you really want to do because of shame or guilt, you’re wasting your POTENTIAL.

Every time, you CHOOSE to try and impress people or beg them to like you with desperate actions, you’re wasting the opportunity to be really KNOWN.

If the CHOICES you make are motivated by unreal, shame-driven, egotistical reasons then you’re not living YOUR life.

Solution: You need to start asking yourself what you really WANT from life, create a vision for it, and COMMIT to taking the actions that will help you realise it.

When you have a real vision then it makes it a lot easier to make CHOICES that are a reflection of you who really are, who you really want to become, and what you’re committed to do to get there.

Not being  REAL to yourself or others.

Problem: In short, when you act like you need everybody to like you before you can like yourself then you stop being real.

This is a one-way ticket to misery because being unreal always leads to eventual frustration (see the symptoms we talked about above) and frustration always turns to misery if you don’t do something about it.

If you can’t be real with yourself (or others by extension) then you’ll never truly feel ALIVE – this means that one of the best and most urgent ways for you to improve your life is to start working on this stuff and actually moving towards self-acceptance and a life of ‘liking’ yourself first and foremost.

Solution: You CAN solve this problem but it will take a little patience with yourself and some time for you  to readjust and reconfigure the shape of your life based on the CHOICES you’ve already made.

You do this by putting some thought into what you truly VALUE and INTEND to do with your life and then start dedicating yourself to that instead of the FALSE MISSION you’ve created for yourself (the mission that you think is to be LIKED more than anything REAL).

The Final Word

This has been a long article but I hope it’s helped you to see (if you had the problem we’ve been talking about) that focusing on being ‘liked’ only causes more problems in your life.

Not only does it distance you from yourself but it distances you from other people and wastes the precious time that you have here on planet earth.

If you want to start making changes in this area then you need to spend a little time becoming AWARE of who you really are and how this ‘likability’ problem is holding you back.

After you’ve gained this AWARENESS you need to ACCEPT the truth about yourself and the ways that you can express this truth in a real way through ACTION.

By dedicating yourself to that ACTION you’ll know what you want to say “YES” to (real life), that will make it easier to start saying “NO” to the unreal things we’ve been talking about, and you’ll increase your odds of meeting REAL people that actually like the REAL you for real reasons.

Don’t be liked; be real. The rest will fall into place.

 


If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

How to be real no matter what.

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“Real always works” – that’s what I’m always telling my clients and how I live my own life (really, “Real always works” is just a shortcut to circumventing all of the mind chatter that stops us taking action).

There’s only one problem: even though we may intend to be real, we’ve found ourselves in an unreal world where there’s more disinformation, BS, and confusion than probably any other time in history (really, not hyperbole or exaggeration: thanks to Internet algorithms and social media echo bubbles there’s more misinformation than ever before – we can all live in our own alternate (un)reality if we CHOOSE).

Here are ten things to keep in mind that can help us avoid the vortex of an unreal world and keep moving towards real life so we can be real no matter what.

1. Remember the times when you’ve felt most real.

I’m always reminding my clients (or readers of my books) to remember the times when they felt most real in the past. Almost always,  these will be times when they have stepped outside of themselves (or more accurately, their IDEAS about themselves) and they are fully present and spontaneous in the moment.

In my own life, the examples I always tend to give are:

  • Bounding down Mt Fuji one morning with the clouds beneath me.
  • Making love with somebody I truly care about.
  • Riding a motorbike.
  • Being outside in storms.
  • Really good yoga sessions.
  • Etc.

All of these experiences were times were my mind-body connection was heightened, I felt ‘one’ with my surroundings because I wasn’t only perceiving or interpreting everything conceptually, and where I got into a flow state of some kind and moved towards WHOLENESS instead of just mere fragments of living.

The lesson here is that you can’t always feel like this because these moments need you to take yourself out of the day-to-day world and to put yourself in the realest place possible.

Once you’ve tasted these moments, however, they do show you what real life is and show you the direction you need to start aiming back towards once the world begins to creep in again (really this is just the process of returning from the fragmentation of the world to the wholeness of reality: see Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness if you want to build on these ideas).

2. Always keep the real vision in mind.

If your life feels unreal then there’s a good chance that it’s because you don’t have a vision for where you’re going or – if you do have one – it’s not compelling enough.

In my experience of coaching people, a ‘compelling’ vision just means that we choose something REAL to run towards instead of only trying to hide from the unreal stuff (for example, running towards something that is an expression of our true values – creativity, freedom, whatever – instead of trying to hide from our shame or guilt, etc.).

A lot of people set goals for themselves that are actually unreal and become outcome-dependent because they think they can fill the void inside themselves with external validation or other things that can never really save us.  My view of why this happens is because they set goals from a foundation of not knowing themselves (because they haven’t gone through the process of raising Awareness and Accepting themselves before taking Action).

Chasing an unreal vision will only serve to make your life increasingly more unreal as you push yourself further away from yourself; chasing a real vision will eventually bring real results that compound on themselves and make life more real overall.

You can remember it by remembering this simple formula (from the Personality Transplant):

Unreal in, unreal out; Real in, real out.

Make sure you’re aiming for something real before you get there.

3. Set goals and habits that structure your day.

You don’t need so much structure that your life becomes a prison but – once you have that real vision – you need enough structure to support its forward momentum and to carry you where you need to be.

For most of us, this just involves breaking the vision down into goals and also dedicating ourselves to the (almost) daily habits that will take us there.

The reason that this works is because real life is about working with time and that the only way to get RESULTS is to use cause and effect to manipulate time.

For example, if you have a vision of being a creative consultant of some kind then a goal you might have to support that might be to write a book. The habit that will support that is writing every day.

You need to break down your vision into the necessary goals and then be disciplined, consistent, and focused with your actions as you get there.

If you don’t have this basic structure then you will likely just fall into the trap of being distracted with activities, relationships, and thoughts that just make your life more unreal.

4. Value the truth more than anything else.

I’ve said it loads of times before but – in order to live a real life- you only really need to commit to doing two things:

  1.  Uncovering the truth (cultivating Awareness and Acceptance)
  2. Living the truth (Acting on it).

The only caveat here is that we often think we have the truth but all we really have is an interpretation of it. This is why you need to work on being constantly curious, constantly learning, and shifting yourself into having a growth mindset.

Sometimes, we think we’re doing this but actually we’re just tricking ourselves because of our EGO RESISTANCE and a desire to remain the same because of our unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ like shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

The ultimate barometer is how much FRICTION we feel in our lives – if we’re constantly coming up against obstacles or have problems that we just can’t find solutions to then these obstacles and problems are usually only lingering because we’re trying to hide  the truth from ourselves at some level.

The cure is to look inside yourself and see what you’re not yet willing to accept – only if you uncover that can you find a solid foundation to build on and move forward. Without valuing the TRUTH above all else, though, you’ll never be able to do that work as you’ll always be judging what you find.

5. Remember that your time, energy, and attention are the most important things you have.

You’re going to be dead one day. That’s a real FACT that we can all agree upon.

This being the case, it means that the most precious and valuable things you have are your time, energy, and attention.

A lot of us end up being unreal because we forget this and we give our time, energy, and attention to distractions and BS that don’t deserve it (the short version of what these distractions and BS are is that it’s anything that causes us to deviate from that real vision and growing into who we need to be (with our goals and habits) to make the vision a reality).

To stay real, you need to condition yourself to keep checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re CHOOSING to give your life to the things that are real to you and will allow you to be more real.

All being real means, ultimately, is that you know WHY you’re doing what you do (because you have a real vision), you know HOW you’ll do it, and you choose to do WHAT you need to do to get there (the ‘What’ may sometimes be to do nothing so you don’t burn out).

6. Remember that the world isn’t real, it’s just other people and their ideas.

One of the biggest causes of unreality is that we IDENTIFY with the world and think it’s real – in other words, we allow ourselves to be conditioned from the outside-in thanks to the media, our parents, other people, the system, etc. etc. etc.

Really, the world is not real at all – it’s just a bunch of conceptual ideas and the end-result of our collective thoughts and interpretations about life and reality based on our collective emotional ‘stuff’ and how much light we’ll let it.

As we said above: unreal in, unreal out – if most people in the world are distanced from themselves then the world we build will be an unreal extension of that.

If you’re not aware of this,  then you might try and FORCE yourself to fit into the world, but all you’ll be doing in that case is trying to deny all the real parts of yourself that can make the biggest difference to your life.

Flip the script and start with reality before the world.

7. Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go to plan – that’s just how life goes.

Even with the greatest vision and all of the consistency, discipline, and focus in the universe, you’re still just a human being in an imperfect reality and things can and will go wrong.

Being real just means that you don’t let this turn you off – you know that the map is not the territory and so you will have to adjust and adapt to get where you need to me.

The more unreal you are, the harder this will be because being unreal means that you try to control everything in an attempt to hide from your own unresolved emotional ‘stuff’.

If you find yourself lapsing into control freakery and being emotionally wounded every time you fail or get rejected or whatever then you need to work on accepting yourself and reality so you can see things clearly.

Being real means if you fall down 7 times, then you get back up 8.

8. Learn to listen to yourself and to act accordingly.

Your body and your mind will give you clear signals if you’re being unreal – learn to listen to yourself and to make changes as necessary.

When it comes to your body, it’s kinda obvious: if you feel burned out, depleted, or in pain then you need to rest.

If you feel lethargic, then you may need to exercise more as the more energy you use, the more energy you get (only you will know what you need to do but you need to DO something).

Anxiety and depression are often also signs that you need to listen to yourself:

In the case of anxiety, it often means that you’re living according to a FAKE/unreal version of yourself and so you’re constantly getting feedback from reality in the form of friction. This constant friction would make anybody anxious and will turn to frustration and misery if you don’t listen to yourself and make changes.

In the case of depression, it often means that you’ve developed a passive mindset and have lost touch with your purpose. When this happens you stop moving, have no vision for the future, and become miserable.

In all these cases – and others like them – listening to yourself at a real level and acting on it is the solution.

9. Make sure you’re living your real life and not somebody else’s unreal one.

A lot of the time, you might think your living ‘your’ life but if you feel restless or even miserable then there’s a 99% chance that you’re actually living somebody else’s life in the form of goals that aren’t yours.

Only you will know whose goals they really are? Maybe it’s your parents? Maybe it’s some Hollywood movie? Maybe it’s just ‘society’ as a whole?

If you want to be real, you need to learn to decondition yourself and make sure that what you invest your time, energy, and attention on actually comes from deep within yourself.

10. Embrace your weirdness.

When we’re being real, we might be judged by the world for being unconventional or deviating from standard paths and ways of doing things.

If you resist embracing this weirdness at some level, then it means that you’re still JUDGING yourself. All judgement is unreal because it brings in value judgements of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (whereas what is real is beyond duality).

If there’s something weird about you and you’re not hurting anybody then don’t hide from it, embrace it.

Your weirdness is one of your greatest gifts to the world as it allows you to express the truth and the truth allows others to learn and embrace themselves too.

Don’t give into the pressure to hide from yourself because of your unreal ideas about the world. Life is for the living and real life is always a bit weird.

 


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Your World Today is a Reflection of How the ‘Old’ You Used to Think.

//

What you put into your life is what you get out of it.

You put something REAL in, guess what comes out?

Yeah, something real.

You put something UNREAL in?

You can probably figure it out.

The ‘problem’ (though it’s really more just a ‘reality’) is that the universe operates according to a law of CAUSE and EFFECT and it takes TIME for these effects to accumulate and give you the results that you want.

What this means is that you could spend your whole life being UNREAL and then decide to WAKE UP one day but it wouldn’t change anything unless you were real CONSISTENTLY over time.

Everything in your life is the accumulation of some PROCESS.

If the process you were involved in for the DESIGN of your life came from a place where you were being unreal with yourself (not your ‘fault’ – probably because of your conditioning and/or unresolved shame/guilt/trauma) then the world you live in today will be UNREAL too.

This is because – due to everything being a PROCESS – there’s actually a LAG.

What this means in practical terms is that your life and WORLD today is just the accumulation of all the choices that the ‘Old’ version of you made yesterday or a few months ago or even years back.

I see this all the time with my coaching clients:

For whatever reason, they were conditioned NOT to be real with themselves (i.e. live according to their REAL values and intentions) and so today the world they’re living in doesn’t ‘fit’ who they truly are deep down.

The solution in this case is to start UPDATING THE SOFTWARE.

Instead of having an unreal personality that was built as an unreal response to something unreal, I have to help people UNLEARN all of that ‘stuff’ and start acting and making CHOICES in a way that is more AUTHENTIC.

Often, this means letting go of the BELIEFS and IDEAS that make them feel like they’re ‘unworthy’ or whatever else they have going on.

When you DIG DEEPER and remove those kinds of beliefs you can start the PROCESS of upgrading the software so that there’s less CONFLICT.

When you do that, things start MOVING again almost immediately, momentum is built, blocks are removed and you just know that TOMORROW is gonna be even better.

 


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Take the ‘Whatever’ Pill: Trust and Believe You Can Handle Whatever Comes Next.

/

There’s the blue pill, the red pill, and then the big boy: the WHATEVER pill.

You take the blue pill and you stay in your little day dream… The MATRIX of your ego and a sense of disconnection and restlessness as you hide your SHADOW ‘stuff’ from yourself and ‘live’ in your own comfort zone.

You take the red pill and you wake up… You get AWARENESS of the truth about life and how things work – you can see through the VEILED VEIL (of your limited perception and interpretation).

AWARENESS will only take you so far though… Yeah, you can see and UNCOVER the truth but unless you actually work to ACCEPT the truth and then ACT on it then you’re cutting yourself of from your potential and the excitement of living and being connected to the REAL WORLD.

There are two things you need to do to live a REAL life:

1. Uncover the truth
2. Live the truth

To do this you have to walk the road from AWARENESS to ACCEPTANCE to ACTION (and then keep walking it going deeper into the truth each time).

It works EVERY time but it won’t work if you only become ‘aware’.

The final pill is the WHATEVER PILL and you can only take it if you’ve gained enough awarness and acceptance to TRUST and BELIEVE in yourself NO MATTER WHAT (because you’ve become unshakeable – see my post on abundance mindset).

When you truly trust and believe you’re ready for anything that comes next because you know you can HANDLE it in the sense of not being shaken from yourself and true SELF-ACCEPTANCE.

When people don’t take the WHATEVER pill then they become too SCARED of RISK to do what they really want to do with their lives.

They become scared to go out there and take ACTION because they fear the CONSEQUENCES of self-perceived failure or having people say things about them or whatever else their ego and its fears can convince them of and project forward int an UNKNOWN future.

When you project these hypothetical ‘what ifs’ forward without taking the WHATEVER PILL then you forget that you’ll still be capable of TRUSTING AND BELIEVING no matter what so no consequences really matter.

You can handle it.

Take the WHATEVER PILL and it gives you the superpower of knowing that you can handle WHATEVER is next.

 

 


 

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Real Men and Women are Rare.

/

If you find a REAL one, you better keep it in your life.

In a world where everybody is confused by consumption and where the boundaries between people have become enmeshed, it’s rare to meet somebody who can embody their NATURAL energy and the power that comes with it.

Everybody is obsessed with SEX but few are capable of understanding their own sexuality or the SENSUAL nature of how it expresses itself.

Everybody is obsessed with the POWER that the world has over them and how they might best bow down to it or find new labels to hide behind (as an expression of their POWERLESSNESS) but few are ready to express the power that already flows through them.

Real MEN and WOMEN are a rarity in an unreal world because the world is built to curtail the spirit of real human beings.

We have been CONDITIONED to be scared of anything that’s DIFFERENT
– despite endless talk about diversity, etc- and to become the same kind of SAME OLD:

-Endless consumers that live from the outside-in.

-Playing it safe and not wanting to offend anybody (which you don’t have to purposely do but can’t avoid if you’re growing real in an unreal world).

-Being passive instead of active because of learned helplessness or a failure to realise that responsibility is the key to personal and collective freedom.

In a world that’s asked us all to be the ‘same’ instead of truly EQUAL – in terms of the opportunities that are available to us and the respect we bestow upon each other, the world just becomes insipid and BLAND and people become disconnected from their true purpose.

A REAL WOMAN is not to be fucked with – she has the power to show you what the EARTH is all about and who you really are in the face of her grasp of life.

A REAL MAN can stand his ground in the face of this unleashing of life and to shape the world around the human values that support this life in a sustainable way.

When these two forces come together new worlds – and the humans that populate them – are literally built and anything unreal has to collapse in the furnace of the truth they share.

To tap into your NATURE and harness the power it brings is the rarest thing in an unnatural, unreal world.

 


 

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Everything is the Best Thing that Ever Happened to You.

/

This is a bitter pill to swallow but life is absolutely amazing.

Somehow – against all the odds – you managed to win the cosmic battle and to end up in a MEAT SUIT (but don’t worry, your body is nothing without you) on a habitable planet 93,000,000 million miles away from a ball of fire, spinning around at 1000mph, and getting to be AWARE of the whole experience.

Yeah, you’re gonna die one day but actually that’s just frickin’ amazing too because it means that EVERY single moment of your life is just a thread in the tapestry of consciousness and that – as you get closer to the end – each moment becomes even more PRECIOUS in its rarity.

The odds of you being here breathing and flowing and growing with life are literally ASTRONOMICAL – you’re connected to everything and everything’s connected with yout and then….poof: you become one with it.

We can easily forget all the things that we’re BLESSED with because we get DRAGGED into the clown world day-after-day:

-Sleepwalking politicians that lie and dodder in their old age as ASLEEP as they’ve always been.

-Drama and BS from economic GRUNTS that believe all the BS that created them (media, education system, ‘society’, movies and TV, etc).

-The ‘System’ that some how convinced you you’re here to work 9-5 until you’re 70 and then enjoy a few years of retirement.

None of that stuff is ‘REAL’.

Your REAL LIFE is who you are when you look at that sunset.

It’s who you are when you MAKE LOVE to somebody you care it about.

It’s the version of you that’s laughing your ass off so much your belly hurts and you have tears streaming down your face.

It’s you when you’re on FIRE and your soul is ABLAZE because you’re in the zone and your identity has been cast aside with all fear and you flow like a goddam force of NATURE.

The thing is – despite the cage of the CLOWN WORLD and all its BS – EVERYTHING that ever happens in your life is the best thing that happened to you.

Everything that happens – heartbreak, BS, loss, WHATEVER – is a lesson in ACCEPTANCE and the only thing you can ever accept is that you’re HERE, you’re NOW, and that you’re ALIVE.

Stop resisting and start ACCEPTING – because life is AWESOME.

 


 

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The Universe is Neutral; Thought is Empty; Life is Full.

In the human form we’ve found ourselves we’re just…human.

Some people spend their lives trying to convince themselves that they’re ‘LESS THAN’ human and so they role over and give up – forgetting that they have a human SPIRIT and can stand up to fight again.

Others act like they’re ‘MORE THAN’ human, thinking that they’re really above and beyond all of the amazing things that make human being such a rewarding experience – they don’t have time to feel ‘bad’ sometimes or to grow through weakness. They’re heroes who are immune to life (and so they wonder why they never really TASTE it).

When these ‘more’ or ‘less’ than humans have moments of being shaken or feeling like they’re not where they want to be, they often BEG the UNIVERSE for guidance.

The problem with this is that the ‘universe’ doesn’t really give a crap about you – it CAN’T because it’s totally NEUTRAL. It doesn’t think or feel or even really do anything – it just IS and you either work with its flow or you don’t.

That doesn’t mean the universe can’t be MOULDED into something ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ with the CHOICES that we make but it does mean that when you beg it for help you’re begging nothing for nothing and just wasting your own time.

Would you ask that random rock in the hills to guide your life? Would you ask that tree in the park to solve you sciatica? Would you ask the empty space you walk through to help you pay your electric bill?

Of course not. But that’s all the ‘universe’ is: neutral objects and empty spaces.

Both the ‘More’ and ‘Less’ than humans have been TRICKED by the same empty thing: thought.

Their thoughts have tricked them into believing that they’re something other than what they ARE and all of the amazing things that come with it: a human being.

When you stop your thoughts getting in the way and blocking your view you allow yourself to be FILLED with LIFE.

When this happens, you’re no longer disconnected from everything that surrounds you and you are able to find power within yourself to stop your universe being neutral because you do two things:

1. Uncover the TRUTH

2. Put it into ACTION

You can’t do that if you treat the neutral as meaningful or the empty as FULL.

 


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If You Haven’t Been ‘Happy’ Since the Womb then You’ll Try and Turn the World into One

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Sometimes, our lives are a mess because we’re bitter that we had to leave the womb.

I know that might sound a bit much but hear me out:

For the average human being, life goes something along the lines of this:

1. We’re conceived and find ourselves in the womb where all of our needs are met IMMEDIATELY and we don’t have to do anything to have it happen (because we’re connected to the WHOLE).

2. Nine months later we’re DRAGGED kicking and screaming into a state of DISCONNECTION and are introduced to the world.

3. Our needs are met when we CRY (if we’re lucky and have a good mother) so we feel a bit more CONNECTED again.

4. Eventually, we are sent into the world to fend for ourselves as a singular, FRAGMENTED creature that may have moments of WHOLENESS but – ultimately – it’s just us and a few moments of connection until we DIE.

Jeezus, that sounds bleak but it’s not all doom and gloom:

If you can WAKE YOURSELF UP and learn to be REAL then you can find a sense of purpose for yourself that allows you to flow with reality and GROW more whole again.

The way that we can do this is by finding some sort of ‘spiritual’ path to walk on that makes sense in the context of our lives and leads us back to ourselves.

The problem – for many people – is that they confuse spirituality (or whatever you wanna call it) with that LOST FEELING they miss from back in the womb.

This unconscious drive to return to the womb state DISTORTS their view of reality and causes them to try and turn their WORLD into a womb as a substitute.

Such a world is supposed to have the following features:

-Needs are met IMMEDIATELY without any effort.

-Cause and effect have no authority here because everything is connected to the NEEDS of the person at the centre of it.

-All you have to do is ‘think’ it and it will happen.

-There is no friction or tension to grow through because everything is perfect all the time.

-Passivity is rewarded more than ACTIVITY.

-If you CRY, you shall receive.

-Etc.

People with unconscious ‘Womb Nostalgia’ shape their world around the needs of their EGO.

All they end up doing is creating a bubble that will BURST at which time they’ll GIVE BIRTH TO THEMSELVES.

 


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