I Doubt He Cares But The Sentiment Is Correct. You Are Bolstering And Enforcing Real Sickness From People

Remember to smile!

You are only as happy as you think you are!

Smile often, it makes you happier.

That is all.

Why I think self-pity is the bane of our joy

Stoicism is an old philosophy which is only now starting to have a modern rennecaince with new ideas and concepts. This is great, because it allows us to develop brand new doctrine to fit the world around us, and terrible, because it means we don't have the answer for everything. However, one of the things that are being explored the most as of now is self-pity. This is a very prevalent state of mind in the western world, where it has become so common to complain about the small things that it can seem almost competitive.

Our ability to complain has combined with our ever-rising standard of living to create cartoonish complaints that we are gasping to share with the world around us, who are trying to voice their complaints. As Vers writes: "Alle kalder ud, men ingen gider at svare" (Everybody needs to be heard, but nobody is willing to listen). This has lead Neils Overgaard, a man I deeply respect and look up to, to create what he calls the "immigrant test": Basically, you take whatever thing is bothering you in the moment, and you imagine that you have to tell it to a mother of 5 children who has left Sudan, crossed the Sahara, been illegally exported across the Mediterranean, and finally landed in Greece, ready to live out the rest of her life at the lowest bottom of our society. Your task is now to look her in the eyes, and tell her about the problem that is letting you down, and if you think you can do that, THEN it is worth thinking about.

Self-pity is not the same as complaining, though. I would argue that self-pity is what happens when you systematically feel rightious to complain and the world around you validates this feeling. And what you're doing on a psychological level is train your mind to focus on the negatives and hold on to them, so that you can pass them on to others. Surely, my friends, a brain that only notices and focuses on the bad things is not a happy one, right?

So how do YOU avoid self-pity and the need to complain in general? Well, you're not out of options (though it may be tempting to say that you are). In this post, my advice will be to FORTIFY. Back in the day, people used to say "man up", but that's kinda turned into a toxic thing that means "push it down", and it's also only for men. So now we have the new word "fortify", which is much better. How do you fortify? That's up to you, but it should ultimately make you a more emotionally resilient person. Focusing on the next step can be a great way of fortifying, for example:

Your car breaks down on your way to work. You are going to be late. Do you: A. Have your mood be ruined over the situation, complain to your boss when they ask you why you are late, and get pissy when you get the repair bill? B. Accept that the situation is out of your hands, focus on getting your car towed and finding another way to get to work, and calmly explain to your boss that your car broke down and you still showed up ready to work?

It's entirely up to you, but option B is not only a calmer, more pleasant way to handle the situation, but it also makes you a more resilient being in the future, because your brain will recognise your handling of the situation and be calmer the next time something unpredictable comes up, thus marking the start of a good spiral.

There will be more in the next post, to make it easier to digest.

Love you all! - Anthony

Their power grows

Self-Pity pt. 2

Fortifying not only makes you a happier person all around, but is also what permanently relieved me of my lack of confidence (and, to a lesser degree, my self esteem issues). Like many others, I felt like I was a barely functional product that was just barely able to make it through life. But truth is, as I kept proving the more I reviewed myself in different situations, that I was incredibly capable of dealing with actual problems. And so are you. You just have to look out for ACTUAL problems, which are easy to ignore, and stop looking at the imaginary problems that we love to give attention to.

Actual problem: My bike trie fell off and I didn't have my phone with me. (Solution, which I did not recognise myself doing until much later): Drive the remaining length to my destination, ask for someone's phone and call someone who could help pick me and the bike up later.)

Imaginary problem that same day: My voice is shaky, isn't it annoying for other people to listen to? ("Solution": Akwardly stop talking with this person who is interested in hearing what you have to say. Imagine if they started disliking you.)

So fortify yourself if you are worried, and focus on the small solutions you come up with everyday. You are the god of problem-solving, and this next trick to avoiding self-pity is all about that:

Understand who you are. That may seem like a tall order, but it's easier than you think. You are a human. You may think humans come from all sorts of weird places, but if you can't accept evolution, I mean, I don't know how you found yourself in my blog in the first place, cuz I don't dumb these things down for my readers. So we are fancy monkeys, less hair, more stamina, bigger brain, the works. What about it? Well, what are we meant to do? That's right! It's time to answer the meaning of life (kinda). I will argue that, by looking at our bodies, we can to a degree figure out what we are meant to do. Let's take a look at a cheetah. Cheetahs go fast. like 100kmph or 60mph fast. That's impressive, and you would have to assume that, on some level, the Cheeta is 'meant' to go fast. Let us now look at the humble dog. The dog is a wolf, but for humans! They are rounder, slower (both physically and mentally), cuter and much less scary. The dog is meant to be our pets! And it wants to be, too! Now for the human.

The human is.... uhh... well.. For starters, we have a straight back. Why? Because we have 2 legs. Why? Because we have 2 of our limbs as arms. These can move far more freely than our legs. Why? So that our hands can reach things in all sorts of ways. Why do they need to do that? Because humans are dynamic. We constantly try to one up ourselves and each other, and we don't just have one unique mechanic for one purpose. Right now, you are deriving meaning (hopefully) from looking at pixels on a screen that display the right photons in the right patterns to make this "g", and your brain is not only proccessing those symbols, getting meaning from them, but you may also write something yourself, where your brain both thinks what it wants to convey, turns it into a sentence, THEN makes your fingers press on buttons on a plastic board until your idea exists somewhere other than your mind. What?? That's an insane concept to think about! Armed with this knowledge, I challange you to ask yourself the next time you find yourself in a scary or unpredictable situation: "How am I gonna get out of this one??", because that's litterally what your mind is meant to do. That's right! The meaning of life is to solve problems?? Eh, maybe not, but it's probably a small part of the puzzle, so don't throw the idea out, okay?

With that, you should be well on your way to complain less, both to yourself and others. Remember to fortify and celebrate the small victories that you give yourself.

Love, Anthony.

Learn to get up again.

You will most likely face challenges in life. If not, touché, but for most of us, there will be feats we attempt to undertake, and fail at. Or things that happen which we really didn't want to happen. Or things that don't happen when you really want them to. It is reasonable to assume this is an inevitable fact for all humans.

Because of this, one of the best skills to learn in life is getting back up when life kicks you down.

And it doesn't have to be a major thing. It can be, but major events have the aspect of "wow, this was a major thing, I really need to make a dedicated attempt at moving on" which smaller, more common misfortunes sneakily sidestep. But no matter if a loved one died, or your partner dumped you, or you relapsed, or if you didn't get into your dream academy, you must get back up sooner and later. And most of the time, you will, but training your mind to have a structured framework for getting back up is an incredibly liberating exercise once you get it down.

All of the examples I just mentioned have happened, one way or another, to me throughout my youth, and back then I was not nearly as well-adjusted or happy as I am now. This is not because I grew out of the phase where bad things happened - there's no such thing - but because I learnt to deal with loss, grief and how to get back up after I relapsed. Instead of channeling my emotions into selfhatred, shame, scratches and drunken weekends, I eventually trained myself to get back to where I was after reality kicked me out of flow. (I'll get to the exception in a moment).

I remember the first time it properly happened. I had my first high school exam, and I had done a masterful amount of prepwork... at least by my standards. Seriously, though, I was feeling great about it and actually looking forward to presenting and- I got the lowest passing grade. Now, to put this in context, my whole life I had gotten mid to high grades without putting in any effort, and always been told that if I just put in effort I could make it so much further. I was not even sad when I recieved my grade - not cuz of stoicism, but because I was so genuinely flabberghasted I did not know how to react.

As I went home, my mood gradually decreased, especially as everyone around me kept asking "what went wrong", and I continually had to supress the urge to tell them "Oh I actually put in effort this time, like you said!". But that evening, I had finally gotten to a point where I was mentally capable of comprehending the grade and the entire experience. So I ran it through again, and this time, I asked myself "What went wrong" like everyone around me had done before. And truth is? I don't know what went wrong. Even now, I don't get it. But back then it seemed pretty clear what was gonna happen now. A lifetime spent without effort was rewarded, the first time I really tried I was punished. And yet, the conclusion I came to that evening was "Eh, it was probably a one-time thing", which was an out of character level of maturity for a 15 year old boy with virtually no work discipline to present. And no, to this day I have no idea how or why I came to that conclusion back then, either.

Now, back to the whole "getting back up" thing, you may find after particularly important and/or traumatic events in life that you can't just return to everyday life. Maybe there is a new feeling in your mind that you know you can never get rid of, or maybe a part of "normal" dissapeared completely from your life. In these cases it is more important that ever to have a structure in your mind, so that when one aspect of life comes crashing down, the rest remains intact. You have to be emotionally prepared to adapt, because life doesn't wait for good times to kick you in the nads.

And this, near the end of a very long rant, is probably going to be the only time you will ever see me encourage religious-esque activity. Cuz asking yourself "what does the universe/God/Joe Roagan want me to learn from this" is plain and simply more effective than asking yourself "what can I learn from this" when you're facing something that sucks.

Humans are social creatures. Imagining the personifcation of your inner voice as a friend that wants you to be happy is a tool that shouldn't, but does, work for me. Maybe it will for you, too?

Biblically accurate cat

Why do the tumblr gods punish me with such awful posts

The amount of ED bullshit I'm being recommended is insane. I've spent between 20 and 40 minutes trying to block the posts and DNI the tags. HOW MANY do you assholes have? Seriously, these people are the scum of the earth, trying to drag as many people down with them as they destroy their body for their own immedeate pleasure. It's disgusting, not to mention tragic. All those young girls and boys who will never grow up right, who will silently be avoided by those who are well adjousted and only end up with other victims or abusers who see their vulnerabilities. I see people trying to help in the comments, but they get called slurs and threatened. So deep goes the echo chamber, that, according to social theory, it classifies as a cult.

Please, alorithm, give me ANYTHING but this shit. Give me Beatles fanart, stuck up philosophical quotes, people complaining about their lives, just not this radicalisation of young teens which I am powerless to stop.

And, god forbid, should you have Anorexia or any other ED's and be reading this... Please stop. Your body doesn't hate you, it's litterally doing everything in it's power to keep you alive, and while it's good to take control over your life, this isn't the way to go. If you are struggling, talk to someone you trust, or a stranger, but don't believe those who shame/encourage your fasting. They don't care about you or your life. They just need you to be doing worse than them so that they can push themselves onwards and tell themselves they are getting sloppy.

That is all.

In Denmark, we have a popular song which has the line "Man siger efter stormens pisken kommer solen frem, men den hjælper sjældent dem der er blevet våde", which basically means "After the storm the sun comes out, but it rarely helps those who became soaking wet".

When your life stabilises it doesn't mean you should suddenly feel alright. It means you can now BEGIN to heal and dry off.

You don't have to force yourself to bounce back so quickly. I read something recently that said "when you come in from a rainstorm, you don't expect yourself to be dry and warm right away", and it really resonated with me. It's okay to take time to dry off and warm up. Take the time you need to process what happened to you.

When you get lost and you end up in the enemys spawn

right wing trolls acting up on tumblr always fascinate me like what are you doing making a fuss about pronouns on the pronouns in bio website you’re in enemy territory like are you lost or something

What you just described is like.. a critical chunk of the Human Condition.

The feeling of not being capable of the thing you're "meant" to do is such a human struggle, and it's something that everyone feels. It fundementally stems from the fact that our instincts are unaligned with our way of life, and when those instincts aren't met, we become miserable.

So we feel abandoned even if we are surrounded by friends and family, because we have abandoned ourselves by abandoning our instincts. We get punished, and try to compensate. By creating. We want to put our mark upon the world, to let others know we existed. That's why we built pyramids, and later wrote graffiti on said pyramids, and later yet made Tumblr posts about Greek graffiti on the pyramids.

And the thing is, creating doesn't fix the Human Condition, the same way acceptance of the loss of a loved one doesn't conclude your period of grief. But it ensures we can at least die knowing we achieved things. A small consolation, but nevertheless, we chase it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The thing with humans is we create. We create such advanced things that draw deep parallels into our own selves. Not only that, we draw those parallels. We compare everything, we build those thoughts and put ourselves into the shoes of others.

And this is a silly thing to be upset about. I absolutely do know that. I watched the Steven Universe movie. Great movie, amazing music, adorable stuff. Mature as well of course, since the show itself has a lot of deep and important topics that are enjoyed by young and old.

I'm sure someone already said something about it before. But Spinel. She was sweet. Designed for fun. Designed for Pink. To avoid boredom, to keep her happy. And seeing yourself so plainly in another character and the parallels of trauma can be heart shattering.

To be created for someone's joy. And then they grow bored, annoyed. Bothered by your existence. They become too mature for your antics. They anticipate the trouble you can bring. Neglect, abandonment. To be left alone so long when all you wanted was to bring joy and pride. To know they dropped you off for others they did find joy in. To be forgotten.

Not only that. Knowing that you have trauma and don't really want to cause trouble in the end once you're awake to your actions, yet can't stop yourself. The pain runs under the skin. You lash out, and you can't take it back after. You can't begin again. Moving on is hard. You can't go back to your Pink, you can't fix those old friendships either. Or worse, Pink is your family. And now, you can't even go back to them either. The shock and darkness that would follow. It's just a lot to consider.