While You're Right, Entirely Right, The Thing Is It Shouldn't Even Be A 'i Have To Do X' In The First

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.

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?

Remember to smile!

You are only as happy as you think you are!

Smile often, it makes you happier.

That is all.

On temptation

Temptation is a word that is loved to death by christians, but is actually used to describe any old impulse the body or mind may have. Temptation is wanting to eat all the time. Temptation is the desire to lay in bed on a monday morning. Temptation, temptation, temptation. The thing is, though, that temptation also has a different meaning, which is the 'actual' definition of it: Being tempted (be it by yourself or others) to do some thing. Horrible explanation, so let me use an example: If you want to stop cracking your knuckles, a christian would say that cracking your knuckles is a form of temptation. But I would say (not from stoicism in particular) that temptation was the feeling you get when you don't crack your knuckles and you then start wanting to. That's temptation. This kind of temptation is directly linked to dicipline, and it can be used to train your dicipline.

Instead of avoiding temptation, you have to expose yourself to it in a controlled amount. If you just supress your desires (which come from a natural place way most of time), you will not achieve anything and it will bounce back some way or another. But if you instead tempt yourself on purpose, imagining and telling yourself how easy it would be, you will build up your own dicipline, especially if/when your brain takes it up as a habit in itself. Train it up, see what happens!

3 am motivation

Guys, do NOT get motivated at 3 am!!! (gone wrong)

Yeah so basically, it's a little tragic to think about. Why do we get it? I can't say I know with certainty, but it's either that we run out of distractions and our brain thinks it's finally time to be productive (which is sad in the way watching a puppy try to play with a cat that's not having it, is sad). The other reason is that our brain doesn't want to send the motivation until it feels confident enough that you won't actually do it, so it does it late at night when you want to sleep. In this case, that's just a serious lack of self-dicipline where it feels uncomfortable to do something productive due the Feeling of Resistance.

I do think it's the first one, which sadly is the less straightforward one of the two to solve. I don't know exactly how to overcome it, but I do know that I have overcome it myself, so it is possible. Make your own conclusions on this one, I'll just explain how productive work usually goes for me (when it goes right)

I get something assigned. I mentally make a note of it, when it's due, and how long it will take.

Later on, I decide when to do it. This may be immedeately after the first step but not always.

5-15 minutes before it's time to do the task, I pull it up and ready myself for it. This basically just means reading up on it, remembering what it's about, and letting my subconsious work a little.

Here's where I usually get that motivation. While I technically don't have to get started yet, I will often pick up on a good way to start, and decide to go immedeately. The entire feeling of resistance is eliminated and the work ends up not being that difficult.

When the time for the task has come, I clear my mind and start working. If I don't know how to get started (meaning that no sudden burst of flow and motivation hit me), I write something terrible until it gets me on a road of productivity, and then I fix the start later.

For the record: This does not always work. At all. Litterally today, as I was writing this, I should have been getting started on an assignment.

So yeah probably don't believe anything you hear me say, the hell do I know.

Love, as always, from Anthony

14 Million (according to the national government of health) saved. 6 dead. I repeat. FOURTEEN MILLION PEOPLE have been estimated to have kept their lives because of the vaccine. "World renowned immunologist" Ais also a Britsh politician, who are notorious for being morally bankrupt, and he himself was part of a far-right populist party, he also opposes efforts made to oppose and slow down climate change. But here's the best part. This guy, scummy as he may be, works IN CREATING VACCINES. He helped FOUND a CANCER VACCINE institute. Anti Vaxxers are genuinely so dumb they can't even do basic research and have to do cherry picking to this degree.

What the meaning of life isn't.

Nobody knows what the meaning of life is, this is pretty commonly known. However, people are surprisingly good at knowing what the meaning of life isn't! For example:

If I asked you: "is the meaning of our time here on earth to drive cars?" You'll probably answer no, because intuitively, cars isn't... the meaning, yk? Obviously you can argue why with examples and reasoning, but you don't need those to know that driving cars isn't the meaning of life.

Is the meaning of life eating food, surviving and then having offspring? Some people will say yes, and it's a fair answer. Biologically, it is why we are here, after all. But most people don't find this a satisfactory answer, which is where the question takes a more spiritual turn. It's less "what is my purpose" and more "how do I feel accomplished in life". Accomplishment is a hard feeling to keep. You may have it, periodically, but it quickly slips away. This is the same with happiness.

Humans have (due to advertisements and ESPECIALLY social media) gotten used to the idea that being happy means actively experiencing happiness all the time. It doesn't. Being happy is more of a skill, something you steer towards when given the chance but otherwise don't stare longingly at when you don't have it.

Remembering that time the Soviets pulled a 1:1 recreation of a B-29 (pictured) out of their asses, slapped a red star on it and called it the TU-4.

As far as I understand, they seemingly did this by attempting to make it a 1:1 replica, even when they had specific technologies or building techniques that were superior.

The Soviet Union also had to reverse engineer it from near scratch, as even the thickness of the Hull had to be figured out (America used imperial whereas everyone else used metric), and the very best thing about it is that their main motivation to do all this was to show the Americans that they had the ability to drop a nuke (which, mind you, they had just barely invented), with the whole 'we engineered your $60 billion dollar plane in two years" aspect merely being a bonus.

They made the plane as close as possible to prove to the US that they had a bomber that could attack the mainland, because that was easier than making a new design and proving what they wanted to prove.

Taxes?