Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Life-Advice

Don’t Adopt Every Stray—What Things You Adopt Have A Way Of Becoming Your Life

Photo by Alvan Nee on Unsplash

# 84 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You are not meant to adopt every stray (thought, belief, person, animal, opportunity) that shows up in your life. Choose well.

The wind blows things into and out of our lives. These things take the form of thoughts, beliefs, people, even animals, and sometimes opportunities. Just because something shows up doesn’t mean it should be picked up. Some things are better left alone to blow right on by. Don’t adopt every stray. You aren’t meant to.

The Inbox of Life

I like simple analogies. Viewing the detritus that life blows in is like viewing the daily contents of my email Inbox. Stuff blows in. I scan for relevance, responsibility, or refusal. Some of the items I must have asked to show up there. This is apparently the case. I recognize that the me that asked to receive information about every cheap Caribbean travel opportunity is a different me than the one opening my email this morning.

This revelation creates its own opportunity. I can unsubscribe and save myself the little mental distraction that accompanies every email subject line. (You know that many of these emails have highly trained professional writers whose sole aim is to create irresistible subject lines to trigger you to open the email, don’t you?)

But I’ve digressed. Although this digression was intentional. I digressed about email believing it to be a metaphorical application to which most can relate. The existence of an email address virtually guarantees spam in the same way that staying alive guarantees stray stuff showing up in your Life’s Inbox. Some of that stuff you invited, some you did not. You need not open it all. You need to archive and save even less. Some of it is as dangerous to your life as a virus-laden, malware-infected, trojan horse of embedded code hidden in an email about ED could be to your computer. Best to leave it lie.

Where do thoughts come from?

The element of my advice I find most universally applicable is in the handling of stray thoughts and beliefs. No one being honest can tell you where all your thoughts come from. Are they self-generated? Are they completely random? Did they come from the far side of the Universe? From God? From the devil? No one is sure.

Meditation is a great practice for so many reasons, not the least of which is that is can convince you how involuntary most of your thinking is. Try it for five minutes and see how like a wave machine with no off switch your mind is. Thoughts just show up, because…

But like the neighbor’s cat, or the stray that habitually shows up on your doorstep, you don’t have to buy a little cat bed at the PetSmart and put out a saucer of milk for the stray. Unless you’re my son, then you do. You have to buy one of those. But you can be much less accommodating with 95% of your stray thoughts. Learn to unapologetically shoo them away. Kick if you must.

You may become what you adopt

Don’t adopt every stray. Every thing you invite in to your life has the potential to, like a virus or piece of malware, spread and take over your life. Some things you’ve taken in as a past self have become your present self. Think of that. Choose wisely, friends.

July 14, 2021
Expectations Are Resentments Waiting To Happen—More Like Minefields

Photo by Chris Mai on Unsplash

# 83 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Expectations are resentments waiting to happen. Under promise and over deliver. Rinse and repeat.

I did not coin this phrase. I have, however, borrowed copiously from its minted vaults.

Never was a truer truism uttered. “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” The oft-used quote is from author, Anne Lamott.

You can create expectations in others, or harbor them yourself

This is a sword that cuts in both directions. You may either harbor or create expectations.

The directive in my advice is to the creator of expectations. If you create expectations that you lack either the willingness or ability to fulfill, you will be resented. End of story.

Expectations are a test drive of hopes you convince yourself are already real

On the other hand, if you harbor expectations that are unrealistic, wishful, or fantastical, not being based in a semblance of reality that can reliably produce them, you are resentment walking. It is important to think of expectations as hopes—only hopes. Unfounded expectations blow up, go up in smoke, cause disappointment, or fail to materialize in all sorts of ways. But they act on our emotions like a trial run at actualization. Because of this, if an expected outcome doesn’t turn out the way you imagine, it will blindside you emotionally. They are imagined entitlements we treat as if already real. So, of course, they make us act entitled, spoiled, and finally angry, as if we’ve had something that was ours stolen out of our very hands, if, in the end, they don’t happen as imagined.

Either way, whether by creating them, or by harboring them expectations in life determine so much of our experience of it. I’ve written before on the little equation, also not mine (forgive me, I’m a borrower as I already confessed above): Happiness=Reality-Expectations.

I try not to own things in my mind not already present in my hand. I usually expect the worst, even plan for it. It is quite a pleasant surprise, whenever the outcome exceeds my expectations. I prefer the delight of surprise to depression. I like to feel shocked by unexpected good fortune.

And if I set correct expectation levels for my kids, friends, girlfriend, customers, readers, and meet them, no one is the worse for wear. If I exceed them, I’m an instant hero. All good.

Whenever you face uncertainty about a person, an event, an outcome, set a very low expectation threshold.

The takeaway

When you face demands upon you; whether of your time, your skills, your expertise, or your level of involvement and engagement in some endeavor or other, be honest with yourself and the ones creating expectations of you in their minds. Don’t promise more than you can deliver. Under promise and over deliver.

If asked to do something and you sincerely doubt your ability to deliver and meet expectations, employ one of the most valuable words in our language, the pound for pound champion in terms of it’s positive impact on your life in proportion to the number of its letters. It is the word—NO.

July 13, 2021
Never Ignore Your Conscience—Even If Tempted By Camisoles, Honeysuckle, and Dreams

Photo by Jan Segatto on Unsplash

# 82 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Never ignore your conscience. It is the only internal compass you have to accuse or excuse your behavior. Ignore it at your peril.

Your conscience is to your future moral life as the ability to feel heat from a burner is to your future sense of touch. Ignore it at your peril. You should never ignore your conscience. It’s a pre-loaded tool that either excuses or accuses your thoughts and behaviors. A moral compass if you will.

A clear conscience, free from internal, self-directed accusations and recriminations, is essential to peace of mind. And peace of mind, one of the highest of all ends to be sought for its own sake, is essential to a good life. Therefore, if you hope to have the peace of mind that enables a good life, don’t ignore your conscience.

Alternately, you can lie to yourself, cover up your faults, sins, and poor treatment of others telling yourself you’re not as bad as Osama Bin Laden or Hitler, so you’re probably still not on God’s naughty list, since you aren’t as bad as you could be.

But face it, a good life is really a life in which you’re as good as you can be in every area of which you exercise any degree of agency and control. No one would define the good life as the one in which you fail to be as bad as you could have been.

Fear and Longing in a Camisole

I remember my initial wrestlings with my conscience and the FEAR OF GOD!

Boy, do I! It involved some strange things happening in my dreams because of a raven-haired “sitter” who read me sections of the Hobbit in a too-sheer camisole . (She was my grandfather’s second wife’s 19-year-old daughter.) I remember the feel of her silken smooth arm against my pre-teen shoulder, propped up on pillows, listening to Gollom’s riddles. I remember how she smelled of honeysuckle. And I remember the unbidden and uncontrollable, and horrible longings all that innocent sensuality provoked.

Soon, the honeysuckle-scented camisole’d sitter was in my dreams too! How did she get there? And, well… let’s just say my conscience worked just fine.

It was my first encounter with the lifelong truth so ably depicted in the Grateful Dead’s Dupree’s Diamond Blues:

“That jellyroll will drive you so mad!”

Look, there are things you can control and things you can’t. Don’t fool yourself. And don’t attempt to fool God either, remember:

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
~ Galatians 6:7, NKJV

The Takeaway

Look, after all that 19-year old in a camisole, and honeysuckle, and dreams, you’re not stupid. You get the takeaway. I’m trying to keep a clear conscience here.

July 12, 2021
A Life Worth Living Is The Point Of Making A Living—Even If You Row… Go For It!

Photo by SOULSANA on Unsplash

# 81 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Focus your attention and energy on making a life worth living, more than on making a living and hoping one day to match it to a worthwhile life. That day may never come.

Making a living isn’t that exciting if it just means you’re keeping yourself alive and afloat to—make a living. Instead, focus attention on making a life. One worth living. Making a life worth living is the point of making a living. Right?

How do you know if you have?

Ask

Ask yourself, is this the life I want to be living?

Answer honestly.

Hopefully, there are elements in your life that you enjoy, that you want to be there, and that you would miss if they were gone. Cherish, protect, and be grateful for those.

Other elements need to go. Period. You know it. You’ve known it for a while.

You know them when you lie down at night and scan the inventory of your life and wonder how you got here, what you’re doing in this job, or with that person, or with these persistent, chronic issues arising from so-called friends, or family members that are family in name only.

And these certainly aren’t the only things that may need to go for you to have the life you actually want.

One thing is certain, you’ll never arrive there—if you don’t leave here.

You cannot know for certain that you’ll arrive at your desired, imagined, dream life. You can’t be certain of the destination.

But you can be certain of the launching pad. You can know where you’re leaving from.

Row if you must, but go for it

Lyrics from 2 songs by the only band that matters, the Grateful Dead, apply here.

The first is from Row Jimmy:

“And I say row, Jimmy row
Gonna get there?
I don’t know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
Row, row”

The second, from Saint of Circumstance, is like it:

“Well, I sure don’t know
What I’m goin’ for
But I’m gonna go for it,
That’s for sure. “

You have one shot at this life, folks. One shot. And God, it’s a blink. A vapor that passes.

I especially like pacing suggested by the chorus from Row Jimmy. It’s not Speedboat Jimmy. Nor is it Rocketship Jimmy. It’s Row Jimmy. Sometimes making a change can take time. It takes effort. The pace can feel slow, like a rowboat.

The second song verse from Saint of Circumstance suggests that the decision to commit to a change can be instant and persistent. You may not know where you’re gonna go. You may have to row to get there. So it may take some time, but making a life worth living is what you’re gonna go for.

There and back again

At 19, I traveled all the way across country and back having left home with a $20 bill. I didn’t know how hard it would be to make that trip again, or how long it would take me to do it. I didn’t know the full value of what I was seeing. The places I went were amazing, but I wasn’t as mindful as I’d be now. I was grateful, but not as appreciative as I’ll be the next time. I hope like hell to go across country by car again, but that day may never come.

There will never be a good time to do it. Other considerations, other obligations, other clamoring, clutching things will seem to matter and weave an illusory web of importance to keep me stuck if I let them.

There will never be a good time. If I do it again, there will only be departure time.

Lastly

You will face your own sticky web that is keeping you stuck in a life that is not the one you ever envisioned. Free yourself to live your best life.

I’m not advocating being irresponsible. I’m advocating taking responsibility for your own misery as the only path towards taking responsibility for your own happiness—and go for it. For sure.

July 11, 2021
The Wise Use The Best Means—Even If It’s A Long, Strange Trip Getting There

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

Picking right up where we left off in the preceding companion piece in which you drank coffee and chose the ultimate end for your life, we proceed to the second of wisdom’s applications. Wisdom chooses the best end, then uses the best means to achieve it. So, the wise use the best means.

I didn’t learn about the application of means and ends to my life until after I’d already confused them royally. At 17, I entered college as a freshman. I chose the college I attended because I loved the basketball team. Seriously. What was not to love? Michael Jordan had just helped the team win a national championship. Is there any better criterion for choosing a university?

So, at 17 I arrived on campus with a cooler, a stereo with huge speakers, a bong, and some albums. My pre-med roommate said he’d never seen a freshman so outfitted. I probably took his meaning the wrong way… it made me proud.

I had not just arrived on campus, by God, I had arrived in LIFE! And I was at the summit! King of my Universe! And let me tell you, as king, I had a helluva lot of fun. All my gear was put to incessant use.

2 Years Later

It took two years to realize I had selected the wrong end.

As much as I loved cheering MJ’s exploits as a man among boys at Carmichael Auditorium (this was pre-Dean E. Smith Center, mind you), the lifestyle was unsustainable. The classes were dull. My other roommate spent two hours a night on a single accounting problem. I knew that wasn’t for me. I had no conception of why I was there once basketball season ended. The football team was mediocre even then.

The wise use the best means, and I was as far from wise as I was from equalling Jordan’s skills as a basketball player. I didn’t know what means even were.

A Long, Strange Trip

So I left college with questions about life college couldn’t answer. I went on the road to follow around the Grateful Dead instead. Hey now, don’t laugh! There are worse means to use exploring the meaning of life and consciousness than Dead shows.

Anyway, after a long, strange trip, I now know what ends and means are all about. I know that college is a means to an end, not the end. And I know a job is a means to an end, not the end. Likewise, money, most learning, etc.

Once you’ve chosen wisely and selected your life mission, your ultimate end, you’ll need to determine what it will take to achieve it. What path will bring you there? What metaphorical mode of transportation?

Remember, it is not enough to casually try out the best means. You must use them diligently. Along with diligence is patience, teachability, and flexibility. The best ends take time. It takes a lot of time to figure out what value is. Then more time to know what is valuable enough to make it your life’s pursuit. Still more to adopt the best means and stick with the program.

But if it is truly valuable enough, a wise choice, and therefore worthy of the effort, don’t make the effort by all means—make it by the best means. That’s what the wise do.

July 9, 2021
Wisdom Is The Choice of The Best End and The Best Means for Achieving It…to be continued

Antigua, Mamora Bay Sunset (Photo by Author)

# 78 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Wisdom is also the application of the best means for the most valuable ends. See # 77 above for initial thoughts regarding wisdom.

In keeping with the string of tips and stories about intelligence, truth, and wisdom, this is the reader’s digest summation. Wisdom chooses the best end, then achieves it by the best methods.

Easier said than done.

Getting lost in the weeds of esoteric ideas is no benefit if you want to be wise (and who doesn’t want to be?). Simple answers and concepts are the most helpful to get you and keep you on track.

The Best End

You may wish to grab a Venti-sized latté while you ponder what this means to you. It will take a while.

What is the mainspring of your life? What is your ultimate reason, purpose, goal? Why do you do what you do? What is it you’re hoping for?

The ultimate end of a person’s life dictates their life, morality, their praiseworthiness or guilt. It is the motive behind every decision. It is the mission statement, even if unspoken, deeply buried in the unconscious.

Wisdom is the choice of the best (most valuable) end.

Which is what exactly? What is the correct answer?

America’s founding documents declare it to be, “the pursuit of happiness”—but is the pursuit, or the happiness—the end?

If happiness; is that the most valuable end? Is your happiness more valuable than mine? It may be to you, but when weighed on a universal scale? Are they not equal?

And if that has you scratching your head, assuming a belief in God, is your happiness more valuable than God’s? And are you more deserving of happiness than God is?

That will keep the mental wheels spinning a while.

Lest we digress too much, a repetition is in order. Wisdom is the choice of the best end.

Oh, that’s easy, you say. Lots of money is the best, most valuable end. But is it? Is money more valuable than time? What is an extra hour at the end of your life going for on the open market nowadays? A day? A year? Pretty pricey if you can find a vendor.

Well, ok then, time is more valuable, you agree. But is time more valuable than health, or peace of mind? Would any reader wish to live for eternity with a tormented mind? Or with a debilitating illness?

No? Didn’t think so.

This explains why philosopher types are so vilified. So damn many questions!

Still, you must choose a worthy end of your own if you hope to be wise. Your choice of end shows your wisdom—or lack thereof. A hint: You’ve already chosen an end regardless of whether you know what it is. We all have. But you can move off the default choice, which is to live entirely with regard for your own momentary pleasures as fully as possible, to some more valuable and well-considered purpose.

The Best Way To Get There

This is going to have to wait for another treatment of its own. You’ve got plenty to work on.

July 9, 2021
3 “A’s” and The Essence of Wisdom; or, The Truth About Chairs

Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

# 77 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: When you discover Truth, accept it, adopt it, and act on it. This is the essence of wisdom.

In a previous story, I’ve written about using your intelligence to pursue truth.

But what will you do if you catch it?

Will you be like the chihuahua who chases the bus down the street?

I mean, what would it do if it ever caught the bus?

But you’re no chihuahua, when you discover truth, you will:

Accept

Truth is floating all around you right now. It is everywhere. It permeates creation and saturates reality. The existence of lies has no more impact on the existence of truth than darkness does on light.

But truth will not dispel darkness unless you accept it as truth.

Remarkably, the mind is so made up that acceptance of truth as true flips a switch that settles the question. It will remain so until it discovers fresh evidence, more true.

Acceptance of what is true also implies acceptance of what is false. Sometimes, this is difficult. Pet beliefs may fall by the wayside. Dogmas may crumble. Sparkling fantastical claims lose their luster, dull, and drop away.

Admittedly, this can be painful. All learning changes you. The old dies a little death. A new, truer self steps to the fore. This is nothing to be afraid of, but one must remain vigilantly prepared, because this happens when you discover new truth and accept it.

Adopt

The next step is adoption. Truth accepted is not enough to elicit the full benefit. Make the truth your own. Make it your truth. Do so knowing that you are malleable and open to the possibility that new, more full, more complete truth may appear.

But for the time being, think of the difference between acceptance and adoption as that between one who acknowledges the existence of a child and one who assumes responsibility for the child to raise as their own.

Act

In my wanderings I may see a chair. My senses encourage me to accept that it is indeed a chair, and in fact, a very good one. Pleased with my discovery, I take it home, adopting it as mine.

The proof of whether my acceptance and adoption of the chair has any depth is whether I sit on it. Do I use it for the end to which it was designed and for which I accepted it, adopted it and carted it home?

Regarding practical value, truth unenacted is no better than a lie. Just as an unused chair may become merely an object upon which to bang one’s toe in the night.

The Takeaway… There is no 4th “A”

A person is wise in proportion to the truth accepted, adopted, and acted upon in their life. Notice there is no 4th “A” for accumulation. Truths catalogued and shelved, but not accepted, adopted, nor acted upon do not make one wise; They make one guilty.

July 8, 2021
How To Use Intelligence, How Not To Use It—And A Warning To The Wise

Photo by Ryan Jacobson on Unsplash

# 76 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Use your intelligence to pursue Truth. Do not use your intelligence to produce misinformation.

Simple. The warning is a little further below.

Intelligence is both a gift, a tool, and a potential curse. Use your intelligence to pursue Truth. (Yes capital T, because all truth issues from The Truth, just as all lies issue from the father of lies).

Too often, intelligence is used to corrupt, camouflage, or constrain truth. This is a shameful abuse of the gift, a shameful misuse of the tool, and ends up being a curse both to the intelligent misuser, and to those harmed by the misuse.

Intelligence is a tool for finding truth, because it is the only tool we have to recognize it once found. To use it for another purpose is to damage the tool.

We live in an age of misinformation affecting everything we hear from politics to healthcare to religion. We are shamelessly lied to by the powerful who control the machinery. And some, parroting the powerful, use social media to scatter the lies like one pushing a broadcast spreader of grass seed infested with weeds.

What are the intelligent to do? In the land of lies, truth seekers are enemy combatants. The intelligent are labeled “elitists”, as if it is elite to believe in mathematics, scientific data, and live video (regarding vote counting, or virus spread rates, or a violent insurrection, respectively).

Call me elite.

Grow your intelligence bar and power up

I sometimes wish we lived in a world that rewarded or penalized us the way characters in video games are.

Use your intelligence correctly and cause your intelligence bar to fill and glow. Fill it to maximum and level up, enabling discovery of even more truth. You progress and advance, careful to increase, not decrease, your intelligence meter.

Use it incorrectly, either by believing, or spreading a lie, and the bar level drops. Believe or spread lies often enough and the intelligence bar drops to zero, disabling even the simplest actions.

Of course if that was happening in RL, there would be millions who could no longer dress themselves. Kitchens would be on fire in every neighborhood. And drooling, blubbering, naked and shoeless fools would be strewn everywhere, having abused the gift of intelligence they had started with to their own detriment. If only…

But that is not our reality. There is no immediately discernible, internally affective penalty. So liars prepare and feast on deceptive nonsense with impunity.

Truth starts with me and you

But what if we didn’t tolerate that anymore? What if we demanded truth of ourselves, those with whom we remain in contact, and from those to whom we turn for information? Truth starts with me… and with you. It starts with policing ourselves, refusing the commission or admission of lies.

The degree to which we live and act in harmony with truth is the degree to which our intelligence displays its existence and vigor. Conformity to truth determines the degree to which we can hear, recognize, and embrace new truths as we discover them.

Just as a conscience is be-numbed each time its own warnings are ignored, until ultimately it becomes cauterized and useless, so intelligence is defiled with every lie believed and uttered, until it too is useless — twisted by its own misuse into self-deception. Every lie believed or uttered contributes to deceiving oneself, extracting a toll on the ability to recognize truth at all.

Here’s a perilously frightening warning to those I’ve described, who do not love, seek, and cling to truth, confirming the deterioration and ultimate disaster coming their way. Notice the susceptibility to further delusion once love of truth is abandoned.

“… and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
~ 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12, NKJV

I strongly suspect that verse is not magnet’d to the refrigerator of many of the self-righteous perpetrators of the numerous lies polluting the national dialogue.

They probably think they can pick-and-choose which truths to love… not so!

So, the takeaway, I repeat, is to use your intelligence to pursue truth. Cause if not…

Self-deception and delusion is its own condemnation.

July 8, 2021