Don’t fucking panic, Bob. Keep your shit together. – One Battle After Another
I’ve always been fearful about my job.
I remember my first internship, where I was terrified of getting exposed as an imposter. I’d listen to the Terminator Theme to stay motivated as I cycled home in the dark. I’d survived another day.
When I moved to America, my fears shifted to worries about getting fired and then losing my visa which was tied to my job. Every vague invite from my boss was a potential dismissal. I thought I’d be fired if I asked for too many days vacation.
Between jobs, interviewing was always this chilling task where I was seemingly never prepared enough.
Mostly, my fears of failing, losing my job and ending up homeless never came true. And over time I gained confidence and started to feel less fear.
Less fear. In a way, that’s been a big goal. Feel less fear. Fight fear. Remove fear. I pictured a successful career as never feeling fear again.
When you are identified and engulfed by fear, it’s horrible. It feels like you’re in a building with fire in it. Getting burnt alive is something you imagine and that also feels like it could really happen. Anxiety adds the alarm bells. So it makes sense that you want it to go away. I think that’s our habitual response to fear.
Fighting fear works… until it doesn’t. I don’t think fear can ever really go away. Even if fear did go away, I don’t think you’d want it to.
I don’t think fear ever stops feeling like fear either, that’s just what it is. But if we look at fear as information, rather than something to remove, it can work for us rather than against us.
What do athletes do but create difficulties for themselves so that they can grow through overcoming them? – Viktor E. Frankl
It’s easy to find yourself under pressure in a game of tennis.
In singles, you’re alone, with no teammates to rely on. You alternate serves, with each service game presenting a chance to be broken. Within each game, pressure can build quickly from long rallies, often decided by a line ball or a mistake (unforced error) rather than a winner. A few of those at the wrong moment and the match is lost.
Since most points end on errors, the general strategy is to play one shot longer than the other person. Get a high percentage of your first serves in. Don’t miss returns. By playing good enough, you send pressure back over the net.
It also helps to be talented. Nadal is an example of a player who applied pressure by having seemingly no weakness to exploit. On clay he would whip every shot into something that felt like a “bowling ball” on your racket. Players like him, Andy Roddick says, leave you no choice but to “pick your poison” and hope you get lucky.
Even if you’re one of the greats, pressure is still a factor. They might not admit it, but we can see it expressed in smashed rackets, weird shot selections or slumped shoulders. So if you can be great at hitting the ball, while thriving under pressure, even better.
Djokovic, who famously “takes your legs, then takes your soul”, typifies this sort of player who is strong both mentally and physically. Not only does he win a lot, but he seems more likely to win when he’s a set down. Maybe it’s only against big waves: 5th set tiebreaks, stadiums filled with booing crowds, that he can reach “the true limits of his capacities.”1
This ability to withstand and do well under pressure provides a huge advantage. Imagine two equally strong players duking it out for a championship. The pressure steadily increases over the course of the match because neither of them is making mistakes. No one can break serve. Every point starts to matter more than the last. The gravity in the stadium is increasing. When you’re flooded or taken over by pressure, you think you need to be perfect, when good enough is fine. You believe the momentum you had a few moments before is lost forever. Game over.
But the player who can see through pressure notices most of this. They’re able to recognise that the suffocating air in the stadium is quite breathable. The gravity no longer affects them in quite the same way. They’re still missing their first serves, exhausted and drenched in sweat but they’re not blinded by pressure in the same way. Their perception is less distorted.
And because they can see a bit more clearly, they might catch a glimpse, a small recognition that their opponent is suffering in just the same way.
Human creativity is responsible for many of our greatest works of art. Michelangelo’s David. Anything by David Lynch or David Byrne. Music, paintings, sculpture, film. These things can connect with us in different ways at different times in our lives. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a creative person, you’re likely someone who at least appreciates the creations of other people. That’s why it can feel wrong that a machine could be capable of the same creativity we have.
But what exactly is so special about human creativity?
Losing it
Animals and children make creativity look easy. Children are “independent arbiters of significance”.1Theyinvent stories, poems and riddles without trying. Animals are less clever but can be spontaneously creative too, inventing new games, dances and songs. We could call this natural creativity.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to last. It’s more likely we are surprised by creativity when it decides to tap us on the shoulder. One morning, in that drowsy, hypnagogic state, I briefly saw a poem about wasps. The words weren’t mine, or anything I had read before. Still half-conscious, I attempted to edit and add to the poem. But with every effort I made to improve it, the poem got worse. This is normal creativity. Judgement, over-thinking and all the other delights of the left-hemisphere leave us feeling dissatisfied with our creations.
The Source
That wasp poem was weird, and I have no idea where it came from. Creativity is mysterious like that. Even Mozart admitted that he had “nothing to do with”2 his best ideas.
“Thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish…Those which please me, I keep in my head and hum them… Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself to the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each instrument, and all these melodic fragments at last produce the entire work.”
Mozart and other masters are examples of the heights of human creativity. We could call this abnormal creativity. It can almost feel alien to us mere mortals. If we’re sipping inspiration through a straw, people like Carl Jung or Walt Disney are wading around in a lake of it. But even if they might have more of it, it’s the same stuff. Nothing special.
Most of us aren’t Mozart. And most of us have lost our natural creativity. So it’s no wonder we are irritated to hear about a machine winning art competitions. We shouldn’t be. Creativity might be a mysterious thing, but it’s always in us. And it’s not special, it’s natural. Children and animals are constantly pointing out how simple and easy and joyful it can be to create. We really can’t help but be creative. We just need to stop getting in our own way.
So let’s stop making creativity special, and start making things again.
December 26, 2024 @ 3:09pm – Mt. Martha, Australia
I bet they’d love your sparkling personality – Carol Sturka, Pluribus
The easiest way to piss someone off is to poke fun at something they take personally. Their haircut. A pair of brand new sneakers. Don’t do this. They will get annoyed. Because when something is personal, it hurts.
The personality is a project that we’ve all poured a lot of time and resources into. It’s what we show off in our elevator speech or on a first date. It’s our personal trivia, odd quirks and what we’ve tried to desperately iron out and improve with therapy, self-help books and travels abroad.
Take me for example. I’ve always liked to ride bikes. I might even say that I’m a cyclist. But if someone thought that I was riding 50km/h in a bunch of fitness freaks every morning at 4am I would get a little upset. That’s not me, I’d think. I’m not that kind of cyclist. Even if it’s close to the truth, I’d feel a bit annoyed and misunderstood.
I also have this blog called Buddha Bike. You should read it! But I’m not a Buddhist. I don’t know any prayers or have a favorite sutta. I don’t wear robes (unless my dressing gown counts). I would get upset if I was introduced as Buddhist. That’s not me! At least, that’s not how I think of myself. Writing this blog is tied up with my personality, so I’d take those comments personally.
It hurts when we take things personally, but it also hurts more when we take things too seriously. When I’ve written (here and here) about taking things seriously, I meant it in a much more positive way. Like “singing like your life depended on it”. That’s what a concentration camp survivor told David Lee Roth, who then followed that advice for his whole career. Or it’s like when we participate in a race and we don’t care about the result, we just try and do our best (even if our best might fluctuate wildly). This is what we should encourage kids to do. This is what growth mindset is. It’s wholehearted. Maybe we could call this healthy seriousness.
In comparison, unhealthy seriousness is cringing, defensive, overly sensitive, fearful, neurotic, self-conscious and self-absorbed. Sounds like fun, right? It’s a fragile attitude and position to take on life. Like a tiny quivering half-blind Chihuahua, it’s got no choice but to end up scared and barking at a streetlamp. For example, if one takes their appearance very seriously, they’re suffering every time the wind ruffles past their hair. If you take the formatting of your word documents really seriously, you’re suffering when someone comes in and changes the font size. You were too serious. You clutched onto it too tightly, and now your hands are bleeding.
To escape this pain, people have found all these different ways of taking themselves less seriously. There’s the extroverts who seek out the attention, turning their faults into fame and enjoying a heavy reality distortion field. But they can also be dangerously unhinged and narcissistic. There’s the monks who have switched off their personalities but live alone in a cave and are scared to turn the lights on. There’s preppers who don’t trust or need to rely on anyone, but end up paranoid and alone. And there’s the few who have been able to unplug themselves from society’s rules but end up disconnected from themselves and others, making normal relationships and jobs impossible
Although I can admire these types from a distance, purely for their ability to shed self-consciousness and sensitivity, many of these ways of living don’t seem that healthy or appealing.
Instead, we could be finding ways to relax this seriousness, like author Robert Moss writes to “look at your issues and life choices … without judgment and always (I trust) with a sense of humor.”
One way to do that is finding ways to laugh at yourself. Can you laugh at how you are rewriting that post on social media? Can you laugh at yourself picking out the right shirt to wear? Can you admit that you’re being a little bit too serious about it? Some of us have turned something like a profile picture into a matter of life or death.
But unlike seriousness, humor always feels like relief. Laughing deflates. Releases pressure and tension. Unclenches. You’re basically laughing at the world not ending. Annoying stuff still happens. Disappointing stuff still happens. But we don’t need to take it seriously1.
Remember which seriously I’m talking about here. Not this one. ↩︎
January 11, 2025 @ 11:08am – Bolinda, Macedon, Australia
It’s a shame we take our thoughts so seriously.
They distract and pull us away from what’s actually going on. They sneakily absorb our attention without us noticing. Spiritual teacher Osho goes further, calling them “parasites”.
If we could just take a step back and find a little distance, our thoughts might have less influence over us. We might be able to live without instantly reacting or getting caught up in their stories.
This is possible with a little mindfulness, and shows us there’s nothing there to worry about.
With “humility and the patience”, Richard Rohr says, “you will say 98% of your thought patterns are repetitive and useless.”
So what do we do with them?
Even if they are mostly negative or trivial, it’s not possible to stop the tap of thoughts. Instead, the usual advice is that we should treat them kindly.
It’s good advice. Letting your thoughts float by without clutching onto them or harsh judgement helps to de-potentiate their energy and prevents one from acting them out. Altering your nervous system with a long walk or a cold plunge can also help.
But it’s not easy to be kind and understanding, especially when we are dealing with persistent, ‘sticky’ or uncomfortable thoughts.
So here’s another approach.
Your thoughts are racing, they’re really distracting you, and pretty soon you’ll be completely carried off by them. When that happens, try saying this:
“Yes? What else.”
Let’s say you’re upset about the dinner you’ve cooked for yourself. Thoughts might show up like:
“I should have planned this better.”
“I should have eaten that yesterday, now it’s going to go bad.”
“I wish this looked more appetising.”
Step 1: Say “Yes?”
Firstly, affirm the thought by saying, internally or out loud, “Yes?”
When you say this, try to take on the attitude of someone who is patient, a little bemused, and on the verge of exasperation, like someone dealing with a person who doesn’t quite know what they’re doing.
“Yes?” is a statement of recognition. You’ve grabbed hold of something that usually lives in the dark and you’ve brought it out into the light. And you want to do so without being judgmental. We’re not wishing it away or demanding it be different.
The thought may not feel very nice to touch. The thought might have a feeling tone of desperation, or sadness or some other emotion. If it’s something annoying, problematic or scary, you’ll probably want to drop it and do something else. Eat some food, watch YouTube, whatever. Or you might fall back into the old pattern and get carried away thinking about it.
Step 2: Say “What else?”
If you can stomach one thought without distraction, see if you can handle a second.
After you say “Yes?” then say, “What else?”
Another thought might arrive.
The attitude should be the same. Slightly impatient, but non-judgmental.
When you do this, you’ve made the choice to grab some more stuff from down in the drain.
We keep that attitude going. We’re rolling our eyes at ourselves. We’re nodding. It’s not scary. It’s maybe even a bit boring. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just more thoughts.
When big, heavy thoughts appear
Sometimes really “big” thoughts will come up.
“I’m never going to be able to cook something nice.”
“I’m a loser.”
“It’s never going to change.”
“I’m going to be broke forever.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
They might feel scarily true, like facts rather than opinions. We might call these beliefs. A belief quietly trains you to expect certain things from life. Like a child might expect to see Santa on the roof on Christmas Eve. But they’re just thoughts too, just ones you’ve probably thought a lot of times in your life.
And what do we say to beliefs? Same as we do to any other thought.
Yes? What else.
When we say “What else?” we don’t treat one thought as more special than another. And why should we? I didn’t choose any of the thoughts that arrived in my head, so why should I honour some over others?
By doing this over and over, we’re teaching ourselves that we can handle any thought.
Tips and caveats
This is a slow process, and we shouldn’t need to rush into it.
Start small It will feel stupid at first. You are talking to yourself. Start with small, everyday thoughts, before trying this with bigger beliefs. Practice while washing up.
Don’t go deep There’s no need to spend any time trying to understand or intellectualise the thoughts. This isn’t depth-psychology. All I’m suggesting is three words, plus a basic, non-judgmental attitude.
Watch out for moods If you’re in a really good mood, you probably won’t want to do this at all. If you’re in a really bad mood or feeling very reactive, I wouldn’t recommend it either. We’re adding attention to our thoughts, which might fuel some flames unnecessarily.
Why this works
One big reason this sort of practice is helpful is because it’s the exact opposite of what we usually do. Most of the time we do one of the following with our thoughts:
Buy it totally and get completely identified with it
Resist and rage against it
Run from it, numbing out with food, tv or other distractions.
But to simply look at a thought, raise our eyebrows, keep looking, and calmly ask for more, is a complete 180. And we could all do more 180s.
Buddha Bike 