Unlearning 2020: Part 5 – Welcome to the Grand Gaslight

(Continued from Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.  Read those first.)

Welcome to The Grand Gaslight.

This is the part where I reveal just how badly “they” messed up our minds in 2020.

First …

OK, let’s assume you have secured your free copy of The Little Calendar That Brainwashes You and it’s on the way.

Trust me.  You’ll need it for the rest of this.  Once you get it you’ll want to start doing the little 30 second exercise it teaches you every day.

That’s the easy part …

Now we’re going to separate the tough from the tourists.

Pop Quiz:  Which of These Do You Secretly Crave?

• certainty
• comfort
• ease
• short cuts

Really pause here for a moment and think about this.

In your private moments, what do you look forward to?

When you are frustrated, what do you fantasize about?

Probably all four of these things.

Be honest now.

“Wait, what’s wrong with craving comfort and ease?”

Well, if you think about it, all of them look like “great goods” on the surface.  But they are actually all Trojan Horses.

Yet, we’ve been conditioned to crave them.

It’s in almost all of our pop culture … almost all of our advertising … almost all of our social conventions …

It’s everywhere.  And it’s gotten even worse in 2020.

Let’s take a quick look at each and swallow some hard truths … Truths that are being deliberately hidden from us.

Certainty

As we learned over the last few posts, justifiable certainty about anything may very well be impossible.

You should be craving uncertainty.

Huh?  More about this in the next – final – post, actually … but for now, hold that thought.  (There are exception, too … More later.)

Comfort

Comfort makes you weak.

The weaker you become, the less comfortable you will be.

It’s a trap.

What you should be seeking is challenge.  You need to train yourself to be “comfortable being uncomfortable.”

There is no bubble in which we can insulate ourselves to get around this fact.

The paradoxical beauty is that the more you seek out discomfort and challenge, the easier life becomes.

Ease

See above.

The more you seek out ease, the more difficult life becomes.

Short Cuts

Same deal.

There’s a saying amongst US Navy fighter pilots.  “Live by the gouge, die by the gouge.”

“Gouge” is inside information designed to give you an edge.  It’s the “life hack” we’re all looking for to avoid having to do real work.  (That is:  what almost everyone on the planet is selling you.)

The reason this is so dangerous is that it, too, makes your mind weak.  If you’ve been relying on shortcuts, when things get tough, and there is no shortcut handy, you won’t have the mental toughness required to deal with the situation.

……………………..

My apologies if this sounds grim.

Most of us aren’t ready to hear this.

Some of us are ready to hear it, but aren’t ready to actually do anything about it.

The next, and final, post is written solely for those ready to do something about it.

Is that you?

If it is, you’ve already got one ally in the fight.

And you’ll soon have others, as you soon shall see.