What’s the Single Worst Thing You Can Do In Life?
Take a second and think on this question — because in reality there is no “right” answer. I suggest one below, but there are a parade of maladies that people can, and often do, invite into their lives. Why would an alcoholic, knowing that drinking the next day would keep them in the spiral of lost job, friends, spouse and children yet continue to do so? Perhaps becoming an addict came to your mind. Why would anyone choose a job that offers no meaning and purpose and stick with it for their entirety lives, only to die telling others on their death bed their litany of regrets. And then why do those people go on to do the exact same thing — live on a treadmill simply putting one foot in front of the other for the eternity of their existence having to get up the next day to do it yet again, never thinking at any point they can simply step off that treadmill and do what they actually want? Living a life of regrets would be a horrible existence. Here’s one I’ve worked on deeply because it was a problem for me: Why would you go through life not telling people how you feel about them? What could possible be the downside? This life is a the blink of an eye and when you tell someone something amazing about them, it doesn’t just brighten their day, it does yours too. But for much of my life I was incapable of doing this. Another that someone messaged to me online: What are the benefits to not actively living your life? Why let others dictate what YOU want to do? Why would you talk about what you are going to get out and do without ever actually actively doing so. We are always our actions and never our words or thoughts.
But I want to posit something else. Because I have seen it more and more the older I get, I’ve recently seen it from someone trying to do it to me in my personal life, which is only ultimately going to make only their life more difficult.
The single worst thing you can do as an adult is to invite chaos and drama into your life. Yet we do this in many small ways every single day
“Life is difficult,” began the very first sentence of M. Scott Peck’s best-selling ‘The Road Less Traveled’ from which he went on to conclude “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.” Which, undeniably so, it is. Not only does life become more difficult as you get older — giving way to physical ailments and mounting stresses due to responsibilities that take precedence over things that you would actively want to do. Things that would make your life more fulfilling and easier. But society is at its all-time crux of psychological suffering. We are no longer, as humans, spending 18 hours a day simply surviving. We have more time, therefore, to be in our heads. And for every one of us, our heads can be a bit messy. We also have a super-sized sense of negativity-bias for evolutionary reasons, meaning that we struggle with seeing the objective truth about our future, but we often go straight to the absolute worst-case scenario. Great for human survival — hear a rustling in the bushes and assume it’s the wind, plow through and it’s a lion, whoops you no longer exist to pass on your genes. Those with the most negative future looking thoughts were the people that lived on to pass on their genes. But today — we don’t need them in almost any psychological situation. Yet research shows when we do actually do this (and we all do) and have these thoughts, we activate the same stress “fight or flight” hormones as if we were being chased by that lion and had to survive. Have a bad boss? Your cortisol might be spiked all day long — which would be great for a 5 minute spike where you need to run fast away from the aforementioned lion. But it is a horrible way to live your entire day. And finally, and I believe most insidiously, from the moment we can now look over our parents shoulders we can compare our insides versus the best days of other people’s outsides. Thank you social media for this one. Life is difficult enough on it’s own — we now live in a world where when we feel on worst days the pain our heads, we have to see the false images of very polished best side if everyone else. The consequence of which is we feel like failures.
The above we can not control. We can work on them, of course, with self-growth and tools for finding unconditional self-love. But we’re still, inevitably, going to have some very bad days completely outside of our control. Which brings be to the punch line and I’ll make it as strong as I can:
You should never invite chaos or drama intentionally into your life. It will only make your life more difficult and you always have this choice
Yet, sadly, I see this every morning I wake up. This morning it was the second I turned on my phone. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is about to have to give away his entire business and net worth. His life. Why? Because he made up a bunch of lies for money and then welcomed into his very being the anger that went with it. Picture him or google him. Red-faced. Mad. On the attack over a lie he knew deep down wasn’t true. That’s the definition of conjuring up drama and chaos. And his life is rightfully ruined.
You do this too and so do I. Every day, albeit on a much lesser level. Maybe you make a fake online account and attack someone for very little reason. They said something you disagree with and you want to “punch back” so you say something hidden behind the curtains to hurt them. Think how many thousands of people, have been outted doing just this; losing jobs, partners, college admissions and the list goes on. Their lives become irrevocably full of pain and drama because they welcomed it in. I see it every day. We pick arguments with our significant others only to see if we can prove we are right, we snap at someone on the street for cutting us off not once thinking about the day they might be having. Listen to this speech by David Foster Wallace, if you have 10 minutes, it will change your life. Why would you ever cause drama onto others which ultimately is just going to boomerang it right back to you — we are all in this together suffering in ways no one could ever know.
‘Impulse regulation control’ is simply the term for something we are almost all equipped to develop as we pass through our childhood and teens such that we can pause, consider consequences, and make intentional choices rather than act impulsively. Which is what this all boils down to. There are so many things out of our control. Some will be great and some are going to hit you like a sledgehammer. A medical condition. The loss of a loved one. Can you imagine, on one of those days, someone you started a war with for absolutely no reason showing back up to publicly document what you did to them? You made up a story about them or perhaps you sued them because you made up a story in your head, and the very day you are diagnosed with a horrific illness you now have to deal with a lawsuit against you for malicious prosecution. What I just write isn’t a hypothetical — it is real, something I am seeing it unfold in front of me as I write this. Someone invited chaos into their life, and it will simply make their life incredibly worse off at the end of the day. Yet they continue to do so. And again, to some extent we all do this. We make our lives more difficult for no reason by picking unnecessary battles, big and small.
As I end every blog that I write: You are our own griefs. You are our own happinesses. You are our own remedies. You have absolute control over which battles you choose to pick. Go gently and soft through each day. Don’t dwell on drama and please don’t welcome it. Life is difficult enough.There is no reward in fabricated chaos you bring onto yourself. It is, sadly, so prevalent and the worst thing you can do in this life, because you can choose not to do so.
I wish you more than luck.
Mike Spivey