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Snap Out of It, Part 1
THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY YOUR LIFE SUCKS
For the Younger Ones: Millennials, Gen X, Y, Z, etc.
“The truth is something that burns –
it burns off deadwood, and people don’t like having
their deadwood burnt off often, because they’re 95% deadwood.”
Jordan Peterson, on The Joe Rogan Experience #958
You want the Truth?
Your imagination has been filled with ugly nonsense by people who want to co-opt your imagination for their own purposes, rather than letting you create your own life.
Harsh, but true.
The bad news is, you’ve been suckered. The real bad news is, you’ve been suckered by people with good and bad intentions.
How many of these things can you honestly say apply to you?
— The world has been screwed up by old people.
— I feel depressed most of the time. (Not a clinical or suicidal depressed. If one of these applies to you, my posts may not help. Or maybe they can. Only you can decide. I’m a good coach, but a lousy therapist.)
— I have massive student loans or credit card debt.
— I don’t have a good job (or any job at all).
— I hang out with angry, depressed, and cynical people.
— I smoke pot or use illegal drugs at least once per week.
— I’m addicted to social media.
— I often feel like a victim.
— I have no control over my life.
— I don’t know how to be happy.
If 3 or less of these are true, you’re only mildly sick. If 4 to 7 of these are true, you are sick. If you feel that 8 or more are true, you may want professional help. But along the way, you might find something in these posts that can help. (Use the Tag “Snap Out of It.”)
The fact is, you don’t have to be upset with the world. You don’t have to change the world. You just have to find a new way to change you. And I’m simply saying you may have been suckered out of believing that you can change yourself in fundamental and dramatic ways.
You’ve been suckered by teachers, by social media, by the news, by your “friends.” You’ve been conned by politicians, banks, and advertising. They make you think that:
— you have no control over your life
— other people owe you something
— other people have made you miserable
— you should believe what they say, and not question why
— that society is somehow responsible for everything, and all you need to do is change society to be happy (never mind that nobody can agree on what society is).
There is a reason why a committee can’t play a violin.
They want you to believe life is luck, not something that you can create for yourself.
They want your creative imagination to buy into their group vision, not for you to use your creative imagination to create your individual life.
They want you to believe that you are helpless without the group, without your peers, without “the committee” for this or that. They want you to be the host for their vampire needs.
And that’s the nub of it. The unvarnished truth.
It doesn’t matter what happens to you.
What matters is how you respond.
That’s right. Contrary to popular belief, you are 100% responsible for all you think, feel, and do.
Not anyone else. You. Unfortunately, few people embrace this fully.
Okay, I’m speaking too broadly here. Not all Millennials or Gen Zers lead a sucky life. Many can think as individuals and are good creators of their life. Hell, the words “Millennial” and “Generation Z” are media-made words just like “Baby Boomers.” You can’t box people in like that. And of course, all those groups can be suckered. Millennials aren’t experiencing anything new. Not really.
The point is, I’m a dubious authority. If you believe anything I say without having experienced it, then you could be getting unintentionally suckered by me as much as the people I claim have suckered you. But if you hang in there, I promise you’ll discover things new to you. Things no one, not your parents or teachers, have brought to your attention.
But let’s assume I may have something worth saying, that it’s time for you to burn off the gunk. To incinerate a bunch of crap that you believe to be true but isn’t. Stuff that’s been implanted in you. Harsh medicine for your sickness.
The good news? You can get better, day by day, by changing your thinking.
What do I mean by “changing your thinking”? Getting control over your feelings. Stop repeating what doesn’t work. Using your imagination in ways not thought of. Learning to recognize con artists in your life. Building resilience to change in ways that may upset people you know. And never, ever, pointing your finger, blaming others for what you are experiencing.
But who am I to say? Hell, you already have doubts about me. And you should. Yeah, I’m an old fart, a crank, a curmudgeon. You think I’m talking down to you. (Am I? Could there be something else going on here?) And I’ve lived many more years than you. So what? How can I possibly know:
— What you’re going through, and what you’re feeling?
— What it’s like in this unjust world that has been screwed up by old people like me?
— What it’s like to be a minority, discriminated against, marginalized, oppressed, etc.?
I grew up with a father and a mother. But my father didn’t want a family, so it’s no wonder he was unhappy, spending all his time watching television. In middle school, we had an electrical blackout, and all my father could say is, “It’s hell around here without a television.”
Yeah, it should be no surprise that my parents divorced by the time I was eighteen.
We moved around. A lot. It seemed we could never stay in the same rented house for more than a year. My parents never owned a home. Never had enough money. Sometimes we lived on welfare; living off other taxpayers. Sometimes not. My parents could never get a break.
We lived in four different cities in Nebraska, two different cities in Kansas, and six different cities in California. All before I was seventeen years old. I went to four different sixth-grade schools. I went to three different high schools. Imagine all the fun it was having to make new friends in a new city every year or two.
My parents never went to college. I grew up without a clue about college. Of course, they never saved for my college education. How could they? They barely had enough money to feed me and my brother. (The last time I saw him, I was holding him down for the cops to take away after beating his girlfriend, and, perhaps, my mom. She would never admit it.)
As a teen, I flipped burgers at McDonald’s for $1.65 an hour, just to have my own spending money for clothes and books and records. I later got fired as a manager making $2.20 an hour.
I got caught using drugs. A couple years later, I spent a few weeks in the county jail, including my 21st birthday.
Yep. My life sucked.
In jail, I looked at how my life was before that point.
It sucked.
I looked at where I was then, with other misdemeanor jailbirds.
It sucked.
I looked at my future.
I decided that my future wouldn’t suck!
And I knew nobody could make that happen but me. I had to think and act in new ways. Yes, we all suffer into the truth. Especially the truth about ourselves. That’s life.
My mom and new stepfather handed me a great benefit when I was finally released from jail and got a job at a 7-Eleven store. They kicked me out to live on my own and pay my own bills.
I worked 50 hours a week at that 7-Eleven, putting myself through a junior college (15 units) trying to learn something, anything, to get free of that 7-Eleven. It took eight years, three of those at a proper four-year university.
My top pay at 7-Eleven while living on my own? $6.00 an hour.
My life still sucked for years. But I was building skills.
I learned a little about computer programming. I learned how to write. Even got published in magazines. I learned history from someone who didn’t try to tell me how to “interpret” it. I learned how to expand my language skills and read Plato, Shakespeare, Booker T. Washington, and Virginia Woolf on my own.
Then after years of sucky, hard work, I got better work. Then even better work. I taught Business English, Business Math, and Legal Writing for paralegals at a business college. I reviewed research papers by cops for the California Commission on Police Officers Standards and Training. I trained workers at Intel on problem solving.
After more years of thinking differently, and taking the risk to try new things, I achieved a six-figure salary in Silicon Valley helping engineering managers from around the world learn how to set stretch goals and develop high performance thinking and innovation skills. My company sent me all around Asia and Europe.
By the time I was in my late thirties, I’d given up looking for a real relationship. Nothing had lasted even two years.
My relationships sucked.
Now, I have a wife of almost 25 years who actually likes me and laughs at my jokes. I even have a home without a mortgage. We never fight. How did I do it?
It wasn’t privilege. It wasn’t the government. It wasn’t because I expected someone else to give me something I hadn’t earned.
So, how did I do it? Yep, you’re not going to like the answer.
By taking full responsibility for my sucky life!
But before going further, how about a little humor? You need some right now, don’t you?
A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain and is named Juan. Years later; Juan sends a picture of himself to his mom. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wished she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responds, “But they’re twins. If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.”
Okay, puns are a cheap laugh. Shakespearean, but cheap. How about this?
A dyslexic man walks into a bra…
There. Did you laugh? Even at one of them, a little?
If not, you may need to act and think in new ways. When humor dies, when everyone is walking on eggshells afraid to offend someone, everything valuable dies. The more you let go of that sucky inner gunk, the more you get your sense of humor back.
And that is the best measure of diminishing sickness.
Laughing more and more every day.
Alcoholics Anonymous and other rehab groups use a 12-step program to help addicts manage their addictions.
My wife believes in a 2-step program: 1) Get over it, 2) Stay over it.
Me? I support the 1-step program, the one you’re starting right now:
SNAP OUT OF IT!
Coming soon: Snap Out of It, Part 2.
Published in Education
Absolutely superb post.
And a remarkable story! Dang impressive, sir.
Excellent article! Redemption is possible if you don’t wait for others to do it for you, and you have patience. I think the current generation has for too long lived on instant gratification and entitlement that it has neither the patience nor example to model.
If there is one way that we failed the next generation it is that we did not teach them this lesson. It is the only way to get through life as has been known for thousands of years.
It was an easier lesson to teach in the past. Life was hard for them so they had examples of people climbing above it, people who hadn’t grown soft in prosperous times.
True, but there should be plenty of examples now. And more coming everyday.
Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are two great examples, shunned because they don’t fit the narrative preferred by those who want to blame others for their own shortcomings and thus want success handed to them because they are entitled.
Well done. Great post.
-from The Nanny
Made me think of this.
There is a corollary… people who are able to climb the ladder of success but walk away for a higher calling… raising their children. Their endeavor would be spoiled by constantly wondering what could have been. Their success is measured differently.
Awesome! May I repost on RushBabe49.com?
Absolutely! You have carte blanche with all I write here.
LOL
It seems ‘SNAP OUT OF IT’, must be a looooong step if it takes two parts to get through it ;-)
I’m beginning to see why the pampered snowflakes on today’s college campuses don’t want to hear Jordan Peterson.
Posted now, over at RushBabe49.com. I did not use your full name. I did change the title a bit.
https://rushbabe49.com/2021/03/12/guest-blogger-stern-advice-for-young-people-by-mark-a/
Oh, My G-d! No!
Please, No exclamation marks either-
Sorry…
That. Is. Not. Funny.
AAAARRGGHHHH????
…………………
No need to grumble.
Love your jokes, Mr. Alexander.
Here’s a question for you. What was it that pushed you forward? The challenge of material success? A higher calling of some sort? Not to end up like your father?
Also, I have long been under the impression that those who inhabit Silicon Valley are generally devoid of character and lack a moral compass. Did you find this to be true?
As you know, Jordan Petersen has a religious side to him and uses the Bible as source material. Does this resonate with you?
With all good wishes,
JF
Higher spiritual calling. Had direct spiritual experiences surrounding my arrest, conviction, and incarceration. But that’s a story for another day.
The Silicon Valley company I worked for had a clearly articulated set of Core Values that were actually practiced by the senior execs and cascaded. They had the best people.
And JP is da bomb.
I wonder if the lack of spiritual calling is one reason these secular young people are such whiners.
Great post. One quibble on Gen X, though – a big chunk of that group is old, already, and don’t fall anywhere into the broader critiques of some of the more recent generations. In fact many Gen Xers would be parents of Gen Y/Z or Millennials, however they are variously described.
All of your points above still hold regardless of age, though. Victimhood in one form of another seems to have no limits on its capacity to infect thinking across all of society. The only times things really change for individuals is when they do for themselves, and stop expecting others to fix their problems or challenges for them, including the gov’t.
My son-in-law is a scientist at a nuclear weapons research lab. Although he’s a lefty (seems to be default for people who work for government-funded entities), he’s one of the oldest Millennials, and his rants against the younger Millennials and the following age bracket are fun to hear. His father died when my son-in-law was in high school, and so he had to navigate a lot of college and jobs on his own. Particularly fun is when he goes off on the lazy protesters that show up at the gates of the lab, but can’t seem to keep up their protest for more than a few hours. His typical comment is along the lines of, “If you were really serious about your opposition to my work, you’d protest at least as long as the 8 – 10 hours I am at work, and not quit before I’ve even had lunch.” He will also launch into a rant about the bums seeking donations outside a store that has “help wanted” signs in the window. And he’s not all that impressed with many of his younger co-workers, complaining that they don’t seem to want to work very much for their six figure annual salaries.