Self-Mastery. Nº17
Self-Mastery. Nº17
To find peace, give up the idea of problems.
Welcome to Self-Mastery — a timeless signal to become the architect of your mind and create yourself, starting from the inside.
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
— Chinese Proverb
Read
There’s a lot to say about the idea of problems, happiness and peace. I’ll keep it simple for the purpose of brevity.
Problems don’t exist on the outside of our mind.
It's a bold statement, but a true one. Think about it: nature doesn’t create problems. Whatever happens in nature just is. It’s neither good nor bad. We experience things; then we label them as “problems”. They don’t begin as problems.
It’s solely our perception making that decision.
Today, the way we think you find peace is by resolving your external problems. That’s not possible if there are unlimited external problems, and there are.
We find “problems” in all stages of life. We find them in all stages of wealth. We find it in all stages of relationships—that cute or funny behavioural trait you once loved to see, now it bugs you. It even sparks arguments from time to time.
When we accept that things begin and end as things, we can find peace.
The best definition of peace is one I saw recently—a few days ago. Peace is happiness at rest. Happiness is peace in motion. If you’re peaceful, anything you do will be a happy activity. You’ll enjoy housecleaning. You’ll enjoy admin work. You’ll enjoy that once in a while conversation with that family member you don’t usually like to speak with.
But there won’t be any problems, because when you’re peaceful, nothing disrupts your inner calm. Nothing controls how you feel in the present. Nothing can make you think twice, or overthink. Only you can. If you wish.
Society wants you playing status games. Multiplayer games. But in its essence, you’re only ever playing a single-player game. And you’re only competing against yourself.
Create happiness through internal training. You won’t find it anywhere else. It doesn’t come from external validation. It can’t. You can’t be happy trying to be like somebody else. You can by creating your happiness, creating yourself on the inside; building the right mindset, and being yourself better than yesterday.
So work on that, every day. Intensively. Passionately.
“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.”
— Naval
What’s on My Mind
I’ve noticed two things about myself recently.
The first thing is that I’ve spent this year, without much thought, learning to be comfortable with speaking into a void. It sounds odd, but I’ll explain.
The hardest part about building a business, or a personal brand, is the beginning. Because you spend so long with little to no validation. You don’t know whether you’re going in the right direction. You spend most of the early stages speaking to yourself, or to a very small group of people. And you don’t see success for a very long time.
Of course, you have supporters: your family, friends, the tiny slice of the internet who follow you. But you don’t truly know if what you’re doing is right for months, years even. That’s what makes it hard. It’s even harder watching people with a bigger platform and audience than you. They could write anything, “Just woke up”, and have tens, hundreds, thousands of people engaging with it. I write the same thing. Crickets.
But that’s the beauty of respecting the work of others—without envy. And creating something of your own. Building equity. Ownership. Having dedicated fans who you serve. Seeing them join your path, one by one. It’s quite special.
The second thing is that I’m creating a habit based on making a conscious effort to react to less. It sounds strange. But you’d be surprised how hard it is, and how very few people achieve it.
I’d recommend you try the same; spend less time reacting, more time initiating, and realise that there’s often no need to think twice about most things.
Having an opinion on everything is what society wants us to do, so we become more outraged and distracted. But the less you can do that, the more you can focus on creating things of your own, such as better health, a positive mindset, and profound philosophy.
Trust me.
Explore
I’ve recently been reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It’s a great book that simplifies two quite popular topics: wealth and happiness. It has some of, if not the most valuable truths about happiness and truly creating wealth. I love it just for the fact it’s so simple. When I read it, it makes me feel calm. I don’t know how. That’s the beauty of writing. You can download it for free here.
Today’s edition is based on this book. I hope you have a great week.
Jelani.
Are any of your friends interested in thinking, moving and living better?
If so, please invite them to read or subscribe.