Sorting Yourself Out: 5 Reasons People Stay Lost
Written by Richard
Hey Tribe,
Welcome back!
Issues such as depression, anxiety and addiction are common today and we hear more and more about them in the mainstream media, yet we hear much less about why these issues are so common today.
While I’m sure there are a few extreme cases where these issues just can’t be helped, there are millions of instances where they can.
However, one thing you see a lot of today – and I used to do relentlessly – is people using the aforementioned issues as an excuse for failure and suffering.
This was the case with me for two reasons, firstly I didn’t think change was possible, and secondly, I was addicted to my victim story (more on that later).
I couldn’t actively change until a variety of people and experiences actually showed me how to sort yourself out after a very dark and existential rock bottom.
This was followed by an inner transformation that aligned me with a disciplined structured path that taught me actively how to live life in an effective way.
This piece focuses on five key reasons people get trapped in a vortex of depression, anxiety and addictions and points to a strategy on how to sort yourself out.
1: You Have No Conscious Goals
The key word here is conscious, because whether you know it or not, you have goals, it’s just if you’ve never sat down and really organized what your goals are and made them conscious.
Henceforth, you’re following subconscious goals.
Subconscious goals are especially dangerous because they stem from all manner of forces outside of you intent on manipulating you to their end.
They can be conditioned by your culture, by your family or your friends, or worse still by advertising, subtly making you think what you should aim for in life rather than what you actually want to achieve yourself.
When we’re lost in subconscious goals we’re also prey to internal passions and craving, meaning hedonism can be placed above things we genuinely value
This situation has become endemic among modern men, especially as we have so few elder wise guides to show us an earthier form of masculinity.
Goals iron out the whole of your structure of existence and give you meaning and the key coordinates within your day to aim for and achieve – they are the basis of how to sort yourself out.
2: Having Goals But Little-to-No Discipline
Given the state of play in our contemporary culture – the instant gratification society – we have seen a growth of interest in people such as Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink, who heavily focus on discipline and how to sort yourself out.
In fact, Jocko Willink has become famous for the phrase ‘Discipline Equals Freedom’, and although this seems like a paradox on first inspection, when you actually enact it in your life you can start to see what he means.
The basic axiom is that the more discipline you have as a human the more freedom you’re going to have.
Now we don’t always act in perfect discipline, this is part of being human, but it is about getting shit done to the maximum degree possible.
If we can overcome resistance and just get on with it, you’ll be surprised how much progress you can make.
3. You’re Too Hard on Yourself When You Fail
Being too hard on yourself when you fail is very common and a very, very difficult one to deal with because it presents itself as self-esteem, but is actually the ego coming in disguise.
That critical voice jabbering on about how you fucked up seems so legit, it seems to be the voice telling you how to sort yourself out, yet in reality, it’s the ‘poor me’ voice masquerading.
This voice tells us that we have fallen short on a soul level, as a winner, as a man, but that is complete bollocks.
It may be a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true – winners fail their way to success.
I know it’s difficult, as when you’re in those moments you get a strong sense of guilt, yet this where we have the opportunity to dust ourselves down, get thicker skin and start rolling with the punches in life.
THIS is what builds character.
We must see that despite being flawed and despite having inner contradictions, the aim is to have an ideal vision and to keep striving for it progressively, despite the knocks and self-sabotage.
In essence, it’s not about winning battles but about coming out on top at the conclusion of the war.
4. You Eat Junk Food and Don’t Workout
Now this one might seem like I’m stating the damn obvious but it goes back to the point I made right at the beginning – that living a lifestyle based on pleasure-seeking without conscious goals will lead someone else to pick your goals for you.
These ‘people’ will be marketers and advertisers.
Two of the most common things that are aimed at men and are even seen as ‘male’ staples are junk food and booze, the latter of which has become a sort of existential balm in our present-day in helping us hide from the realities of life.
This is also why, after my own transformational experience from drugs and drink to healthy living, I woke up to the realization that I’d been sold this idea that drinking was rebellious, social and cool.
In actuality, being healthy is much more countercultural as it allows us to take control of ourselves as consuming political beings.
Further still, being healthy and clear-minded is one way that you can actually see life for what it is, you can actually experience your body for how it’s supposed to feel when it’s in a state of homeostasis and harmony instead of a state of constant repair and constant detoxification.
Now I now that advertising can be just as rampant and egregious regarding health products, yet with a clear mind and as you build up your own knowledge of your body and the surrounding world, you will begin to easily navigate between the fact and the fiction.
5. You’re Self-Centred & Over-Analyse
We’re convinced in our day and age that psychology is the answer to pretty much any mental issue.
However, this isn’t the whole truth.
It is true that therapy has value in some instances, especially if you’ve been heavily traumatized, but the general idea that constantly thinking about your problems is going to solve them is an errant and dangerous one.
In reality, sometimes just leaving your problems way alone and not obsessing over every last little thing in your life can be immensely freeing.
This was certainly the case for me after years of therapy.
I was convinced that no one had a life as complex as mine, that no one had suffered the beatings I’ve had, or taken the drugs I did when I was young, or suffered the injustices and betrayals in relationships, the panic attacks, the pain, their brother committing suicide.
On and on the list went, and I was always armed and ready to throw it at anyone who challenged me to change.
Yet while I clung to all these issues, it became clear in time that I was clinging to them as an excuse as to why I couldn’t get on in life.
While I may even have been right about that, the victim story I was telling myself, even if correct, was suffocating and immobilising me.
This is why it’s so important to try and have a perspective that transcends your independent self.
Letting go of constant self-analysis and of constant self-interpretation allows us to actually take part in life, it allows us not to take our individual selves quite so seriously, and it lets us see that we’re part of something much bigger than what the limited mind can understand.
However, if you want to stay depressed, stay listening to that voice in your head – it will keep you alone, it will keep you stressed, and it will keep you depressed for your life.
It will hold you from learning how to sort yourself out and banish you to a life of decay, pain and fear.