Breakthrough: Indifference
Discovering the truth of the world's indifference
Not allowing the opinions of others to destroy your morale is the first great milestone in escaping the pit of low status scarcity. In order to be capable of seeing all of opportunities life is giving you, you must first be able to bear the discomfort of showing up to the game.
A great source of discomfort for me is the opinions of other people. Their opinions do not even have to be stated or thought, I simply imagine what they are thinking and hold my sense of worth and status hostage on their behalf. Simply looking at me in the wrong context, especially in public, is enough to trigger this self destructive process. It makes showing up to life extremely painful
One day, this pattern occurred again. An older couple was walking down a path in my direction. The pattern occurred again. I imagined that they must think me strange or unappealing and would soon move further to the other side of the path in avoidance. Nothing happened. We all kept walking to our respective destinations. I had been down that path many, many times, without incident too. Subtly, the realization that this anxiety was not only unwarranted, but completely self-induced had now fully impressed itself on me.
The truth is: people very seldom care. This realization, while completely true, was not yet digestable to my emotional self. Ascending to the fact that the fear was irrational was easy, but that alone was not convincing enough to force a true change in my emotional responses. In fact, the inability of people’s emotional faculties to fully integrate these kinds of truths is easily the biggest problem in self-development. It is not enough to recognize the truth, it must be felt. Data and deduction is proof to the mind but imagery and sensation is proof to the heart and gut.
Here is a solution. It is an exercise that helped me further realize this truth on an emotional level:
Imagine how many people you have met over the course of your life. Imagine how long it has been since you have seen some of those people. Try to recall how many relationships you have actually maintained versus how many have faded away. Now imagine the future and all of the people you might meet. How many of them will actually care specifically about you? How many of them will care enough that it will tangibly affect your life? And finally, how many of your relationships would matter in one, ten, fifty, or one hundred years? Imagine all of that time passing.
Putting things into perspective helped me greatly. Suddenly the opinions of others really do feel like they will melt away.
This exercise will be useful in reducing anxiety for most people, though there are some cases where the answers to these questions will be: quite a lot of people care. This is true in the case of many celebrities. This exercise will help us return to a baseline level of reality, but I want to be prepared for even the extremes. To feel secure even in the event of mass popularity, peer pressure, and public notoriety. That is the way of the high status man,
The next few ΩMEGA Journey posts will be about how it may be possible to permanently secure one’s status by deciding to play a different game.
Depends on where you live, and this is definitely more difficult in urban settings, but try greeting people who you pass. Just a "Good Morning", "Good Afternoon", or "Hi". Do this for couples or small groups of people.
Make eye contact with the male of the group for a second as you are about to pass, then say "hi" or "'Morning", and keep walking.
If they say nothing, that is fine. You are not lessened by it; you offered a common human courtesy, and they were either surprised or even slightly taken aback.
If they return the greeting, even better. You control the situation in offering the greeting, and in case they greet you first, you are prepared to return a greeting to them.
You might find this heartening for your day. You establish control of a small interaction that will likely be neutral or even slightly positive (getting a greeting in return) for both parties.
As you said, you may never meet these people again. That short greeting could be the only interaction you will have with them, so you lose nothing in most situations by saying 'hello' and walking on your way.
You’re honest, observant, and self-aware. The three essentials for this kind of journey.