Or have you been programmed to work against your own best interest?
Do you want what you want? Do you really? Or are you pursuing what others told you to desire? The things society has programmed you to desire? Things that may be counterproductive to what will create a meaningful and satisfying life for yourself?
Look at what you are working hard to acquire, be they money, stuff, a degree, a promotion, or likes on social media. Did you decide that these are the thing you wanted out of life? Most likely, no. These are desires society placed within you.
You Have Been Programmed
Think back to when you were a small child. As long as your basic needs for food, rest, and love were met, you were happy. You did not need a reason to be joyful; you just were.
Then you started school, and authority figures told you that you needed to be different than you were. Your teacher expected you to act a certain way. You dressed in the clothes approved of by your peers. The lesson was that you could not trust yourself to know what you wanted. Instead, you needed to look to teachers, peers, parents, religious leaders, and others to tell you what you should want and who you should be.
Society tells you that you want some form of the big three; power, wealth, and fame. You come to believe that you will be happy if you have high status, lots of money, and likes on social media. But are those things making you happy? Or is the pursuit of them making you miserable?
What You Want
What you really want out of life is not stuff. What you want is an experience of being alive. And that experience comes from being free and feeling love and joy.
What keeps you from getting it.
The desire for what society tells you to want blocks you from the experience that creates a satisfying life. The mad dash to get rich quickly so you can be happy later keeps you from being happy now or ever. The belief that you need to be popular robs you of freedom as you give up control of your experience to the whims of others. Your expectations of who others should be and how they should act keep you from seeing who they truly are and blocks you from having an authentic loving experience.
What you really want out of life is not more stuff. You can’t measure what makes your life worth living in dollars, followers, or likes. So why are you working so hard to acquire those things?
The reason is that society trained you to lust for those things. Parents, teachers, religious leaders, bosses, and political figures have given you a set of rules to follow. Those rules tell you what you should want and how to go about getting it. If you work hard to get ahead by society’s rules, then you are a good worker. If not, they label you a slacker, loser, lazy bum, or drag on society.
You have been trained to follow the rules.
When you follow the rules, you get rewarded. But the reward isn’t real happiness. Instead, you live in fear of not measuring up. You are anxious you will fail. So when you succeed, what you feel is not happiness but temporary relief from fear and anxiety.
You come to mistake this relief from negative feelings for happiness. But the absence of a negative is not the same as the presence of a positive. Taking away pain is not the same as being comfortable.
Over time you become frustrated that all you are working for does not make you happy. But by now, you have so deeply internalized the rules that you do not question them. The rules are sacred and involatile. So if something is not working, it cannot be the rules to blame; it must be you.
The Rules are Stacked Against You
Your life has become a game stacked against you. You can’t achieve everything society tells you that you need to be happy, and you can’t blame society and its rules. So you end up blaming yourself. Blaming yourself leads to feelings of guilt and shame. Rather than experiencing freedom, joy, and love, you feel anxiety, fear, anguish, and exhaustion. You feel hopeless and helpless to fix the “flaw” within you that blocks you from being happy.
The big lesson.
Here is the big lesson; there is nothing wrong with you. Let me say that again; there is nothing wrong with you, nothing that needs fixing. You are not flawed; the rules society handed you are.
Here is the big lesson; there is nothing wrong with you. Let me say that again; there is nothing wrong with you, nothing that needs fixing. You are not flawed; the rules society handed you are.
If you gamble at the casino long enough, you will eventually lose. The casino’s rules stack the odds against you. If you try to live your life by the expectations of others, you will also fail. Again the odds are stacked against you. And if you can’t win, the only smart move is not to play.
Drop the rules.
Rather than make yourself miserable playing by society’s rules, drop those rules. Drop your expectations of what life should be and accept the reality around you. Give up the dream others told you to pursue and find one that calls to you. Recognize that you can be happy now. You already have everything you need; you only need to see it without the filter of society’s expectations and rules.
The way to the experience of living that you want is to deprogram yourself. Divorce yourself from all the rules, expectations, and limitations society placed on you. See yourself and the world as they are, not as you think they should be.
There is nothing wrong with you.
Stop trying to change yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Give up all the tips, tricks, and life-hacks that you hope will finally bring you the things society tells you to desire. Instead, accept yourself as you are. Accept your life as good enough just the way it is. Then eliminate the thought that things should be different than they are. Lift the veil from your eyes recognize the good that already surrounds you.
You don’t need more advice.
No quick and easy life hack will make this happen. By now, you should be getting the idea that you don’t need more rules, tips, tricks, and hacks. Instead, what you need is understanding. You need to understand how the rules have held you back from the experience you want. You need to understand how you respond to those rules and how they make you feel. You need to stop trying to improve yourself and start understanding yourself.
You need understanding.
Understanding is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of awareness, and that is in short supply in our hyper-distracting world. But you need that awareness to recognize when you are living by the rules and question if those rules are serving you or not.
It will be uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, flouting the rules will make you uncomfortable. Disregarding society’s expectations will produce anxiety. When you feel anxious, your natural reaction is to turn away — to seek comfort. But to understand, you need to embrace those moments of discomfort and fear. Those feelings are your signal that you are in the place where the rules are butting up against the life experience you deserve.
When you find yourself in that uncomfortable place, embrace the feeling and learn what it is there to teach you. Because when you embrace the anxiety, you can understand where it comes from. And when you know where your discomfort comes from, you will be able to change in a meaningful way.
Understanding does not equal blaming.
Understanding is not about blaming. Understanding means accepting things as they are, whether you like them or not. Only once you understand can you change. But once you understand, change can be easier and more productive than the latest life-hack on the internet.
People Will Object
Some people will object to the idea of abandoning most of society’s rules. They will say that if everyone gives up on the accepted formula for success to chase their dreams, humanity will cease to function. But a culture that makes its members fearful, anxious, and guilt-ridden is a weak society. Strong communities build on the strengths of their members. Those unique, individual strengths can’t come out if everyone tries to conform to the same static image.
Society does not know what it wants from you. That is because society does not perceive what you can do. Only you can uncover what you are capable of becoming. You won’t discover that by blindly following the rules. So you have a moral obligation to question those rules, understand yourself, and become the best you can be. Because what society needs are individuals who have come alive to their potential.
Conclusion
Society has programmed you to be what society thinks it wants. But society does not know what it wants from you because society doesn’t see what you have to offer. So question the rules and expectations placed upon you. Come to understand yourself. Give up your illusions about how things are and your expectations of how things ought to be. You will find there is nothing wrong with you — no reason to feel guilt and nothing to fix. When you do that, you will open yourself to sharing the best within you with all of us. And society may not know it, but it desperately needs you to come alive and make your unique contribution.
