this is why i find the conversation around people pleasers supposedly being manipulative & spineless to be flat, reductive, harmful, & ultimately unhelpful. displeasing people can & DOES lead to consequences that disproportionately affects neurodivergent people.
I don't know how to explain this, but reading and writing becomes a lot more fun once you stop romanticising it. There is no need to create a mood, build a ritual, or make it seem unnecessarily aesthetic. You just do it and get on with your day, like you do everything else.
I meditated a lot in my mid 20s to reduce tanha/dukhha, but now I'm really into them. I like grasping & craving, taking things personally, waking up tortured with what I want to do and probably can't pull off, and thinking it'll just feel so great if I get one more thing
if you do not see god/universe as a friend that always has your back no matter what, you will never be able to experience a version of them that acts that way. and that is a kind of misforture in itself.
Around age 17 I realized that “driving around on a sunny afternoon playing 2010s edm and singing along with someone in the passenger seat” was very high up there on the list of good experiences you can have, but I did not appreciate how much better it would get with age
One of my absolute favourite types of humans is the person who is aggressively passionate about the most specific, obscure things in the unlikeliest of places—the accidental archivist.
The guy who has logged every single lightning strike in his town since 1984. The niche historian who dedicated 20 years to archiving the history of the modern pencil. That person who has been tracking global banana sticker designs for 40 years. Or the micro-historian obsessed with 18th-century tavern menus.
Pure, unadulterated hyper-fixation.
People doing deep, intense research in the unlikeliest corners of the world. They aren't looking for fame. They have a quiet, unstoppable urge to understand, preserve, and know one specific slice of existence. It’s the highest form of curiosity.
The unsung hero of documentation, creativity, & science.
You can literally hypnotize yourself into success
Start by sitting or lying somewhere quiet, close your eyes, and take three slow breaths, exhaling longer than you inhale. Relax your body from feet to head, tensing each part for about 5 seconds then letting go.
Count down from 10 to 1, going deeper with each number. Then deepen it further, picture yourself going down, a staircase, a lift, sinking into water, one step deeper on each exhale. When you feel heavy, you're in.
Now the visualization, this is the main event. Pick one specific scene of the success already real, and step into it through your own eyes, not watching yourself.
You're closing the deal and shaking the hand. You're checking your account and seeing the number. You're walking into the room and everyone takes you seriously. Build it with detail, what you see, what you hear, what's around you.
Then load the feeling. Feel what you'd actually feel if it were real right now, the pride, the gratitude, the confidence. The scene plants the picture, the feeling is what makes your brain file it as real. A scene with no emotion does almost nothing.
Sit in that feeling as long as it stays strong, and while you're deep in it, press two fingers together. Every session. Soon those fingers alone bring the state back, before a meeting, a call, a decision.
Count up from 1 to 5, and with each number tell yourself you're coming up more awake and energized, on 5 open your eyes feeling sharp and refreshed.
Do it twice a day, right when you wake up and right before you fall asleep. In those minutes your brain slows into theta waves, that sleepy in-between state where the part of your mind that argues back and doubts is switched off, so whatever you tell yourself goes in deeper. Stick with the same scene for two to three weeks before judging it. Some people feel it right away, others need more time.
@hellspatisserie ppl really should stop equating victimhood with a moral cleanliness because those really are not connected no matter how much everyone wants them to be
I would warn people against the belief that any individual or group has been so specifically, thoroughly, and uniquely victimized that it is categorically impossible that they themselves are capable of any form of violence. It is dangerous and it should not be dignified.
addicted to posting bullshit on my ig close friends story. it’s like my version of slam poetry or something. instead of finger snapping i have loyal story likers
@xsphi I think that, not only is flirting not always plausibly deniable, flirting should *never* be plausibly deniable. The other person should understand “they are attracted to me.” Flirting = disclosing this information in a playful, low-stakes way
I just reread Scott Alexander's Samsara and realized oh my god I am the meme irl
"Master, until now I have lived an unexamined life. Going to temple every day, meditating, taking the drugs, doing the dances. But I longed for something more. In an old library, I found a book which claimed the ancients knew of a state known as samsara, and of a mystery called the Self. That those who master these mysteries gain strange powers. Using the technique of Greed, they can attain such perfect willpower that they can work eighty hour weeks for abusive bosses without quitting. Using the technique of Lust, they can reach such perfect focus that all their thoughts for months revolve around the same person."
A really good practice for noticing more beauty in our lives is keeping what I call a Beauty Journal.
In a Beauty Journal, instead of just writing arbitrarily about your day, you write about:
- all the things that happened that day that you found beautiful
- everything that springs to mind about what is beautiful in your life in general
- everything about another person in your life that you find beautiful (you can pick a different person each day)
Be as poetic, mythic and expressive as possible.
Cast your life in the most epic terms within the boundaries of what feels authentic to you (making sure to stretch those boundaries to an uncomfortable limit)
What this does is build a habit of noticing beauty in your life, which forms a virtuous circle where it becomes easier and easier to notice more of it.
It helps make you an artist of your own life.
It also helps you stay in touch with a fascination for existence and an openness to possibility, which naturally leads you to ever more beautiful experiences.
Here’s the thing with obedience-centered parenting: it totally kneecaps your ability to be an adult. Totally. Adulthood requires a willingness to act upon and change states of affairs that the logic of obedience is totally opposed to