In the end, we are human beings with human minds having human experiences. No different from each other or those who came long before us. The scenery might differ, but the basics stay the same. A truth you learn or a process you use can apply to anyone. That’s the beauty of life. The answers are always available.
At the monastery, I set out to write how to be better on the outside. But as is the nature of creation, what resulted was far different. Habits and goals and success are just details. The tip of a deep iceberg. What matters is the foundation, the stillness below the surface. The truth inside. Living it, the rest is a natural byproduct.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest swordsman in Japanese history.
Throughout the book, at the end of each section, he repeats only one phrase: You should investigate this thoroughly. If you could boil his teachings down to one thing, that would be it. And I understand. Knowledge is never enough. Even action, if it’s just following a prescribed way, will never fully express your potential. But to dive in, test each theory out, kick the tires, keep what works, discard the rest, add your own — that’s where magic happens.
One thing I’ve learned: we don’t stumble accidentally into an amazing life. It takes decision, a commitment to consistently work on ourselves. The best ones I know, like the two above, they do it daily. A focused practice. They fail, but they pick themselves up, continue forward. If there is any secret, that is it. And over time, the days blend into a life that amazes the world.
If there’s a definition of freedom, I think it’s this: living life on your terms.
The truth: I live my days as if I will live forever. Putting off so much, expecting there to be more time, another chance. If I accepted my mortality to my core, never knowing when the chain snaps, then how would I live?
More on my terms. A free man. I’d write more, I’d love more, I’d laugh more.
Even if we may feel like it sometimes, we are never alone. I write this, expecting that you will read these words. I write them with the hope that they will improve your life. I am giving you my all. My truth. That you will read it is a gift to me. I may never meet you, but that’s ok. I smile, knowing that we are links in a beautiful chain connected in ways deeper than we can imagine.
Whatever you experience in your life, choose for it to make you grow in amazing and unbelievable ways. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to those who came before you. You owe it to those connected to you who you’ll never meet. You owe it to those who have yet to come into your life.
Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it. Whether through a book, raising a child, building a company, creating art, or a conversation. Whatever human endeavor we choose, as long as we live our truth, it is success.
“Life is emotion,” he said, “life is feeling. If you’re not feeling, you’re dead.” He paused. “Suffering is in the resistance. When we resist the moment.”
Suffering is when we resist the moment.
Holy cow, truth.
All suffering is when we say “no,” when we say, “I want it another way,” when there is no surrender to the present.
“Freedom,” he said, leaning back and widening his chest on purpose, “is when we fully open ourselves. To the moment. Experience the moment and let it pass.”
I wanted to hug the guy. My mind had been in resistance mode all week, beating myself up for feeling like I should know better. I found myself relaxing, remembering my practice. “It’s ok,” I said to the worry, to the pain, “it’s ok.” Accepting it, as I would a child scared by far away thunder. And immediately, I felt myself lighten.
He sensed it too. “See?” he said. “That’s all it is. Let it move through you.”
We are far far stronger than our pain. It can come in waves, move through us, spice up our life, but suffering, that happens when we fight it, shut the doors and hold off, shouting, “No. You should not be here.”
There is no should. There only is. And when you accept that, letting the emotion rise, the feeling crest and crash, say to it, “it’s ok. I accept you.” Even say to it, “I love you.” There is power there. There is freedom.
I once asked one of the best entrepreneurs in the Valley how he did it. He’s created game-changing companies multiple times. He sort of laughed, then said, “if I only stuck with what I was qualified for, I’d be pushing a broom somewhere.”
That sentiment is not uncommon. The best people, they’re afraid, they question themselves. Many, if you corner them, will admit that they wonder if they’re good enough. But what separates them from the rest is that they jump off the cliff anyway. Sprout wings on the way down.
It’s the knowledge — or confidence or hope or sheer stupidity; the word doesn’t matter — that they will figure it out. That’s it. The only qualification you need to create anything.
I had to fall to realize an important lesson, one that I will carry with me in whatever I do: I am not the outcome. No one is. I am my effort, what I put on the table. That’s it.
Here’s something I’ve learned about truth. When you first discover and live it, it transforms your life. In no uncertain ways. But it doesn’t end there. You cannot stay at the same level as when you first practiced your truth, life won’t let you.
Life is entropy. A beautiful chaos. But with rhythm, underpinnings of clockwork. Almost as if designed to push you to the next stage of your growth.
Magic happens, expect it. But challenges come. And when that happens, it’s not that your truth failed you or you it. Far from it. This is part of your personal evolution — you need to commit more, you need to go deeper.
Whatever ego you’ve developed, look hard at it. You will find aspects that no longer serve you. Strip away the layers. Be vulnerable. Be open.
Is this hard? Depends. If you fight it, yes. If you see it for what it is and use it consciously for your growth, you will end up in places that will astound you.
I once heard that we all want good judgment, and good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is the result of bad judgment.
Whatever area you want to increase confidence in your life, cross the threshold. Do it again and again until it is your norm.
A simple realization freed me, mostly. Caused the rocks to loosen, start rolling down. This: my father was human. Fallible, full of mistakes, trying to make his way through the world like the rest of us, afraid. Human.
Forgiveness, the key to freedom, followed naturally. I could no longer judge him. He did what he could and he was gone.
Another realization followed. This one, making the rocks disappear. It didn’t just free me, it made the concept of freedom unnecessary.
This…
I am human.
Here I am, fallible, judging another fallible being through the lenses of the past, through fear. I thought I had to forgive my father to be free. Turns out, I had to forgive myself. If you come to it that way, forgiveness for others is not just easy, it’s a way of being.
I think often we try to save the world, to love others, to forgive them. We think it’s others that we need to do something to, something for. The irony is, it’s all a path that ultimately brings us to the one who needs it the most — ourselves.
My hope is that with this knowledge, I start with myself first. Always myself. Then, the virtue flows naturally from the inside out.
As I grow older, a simple truth dawns upon me. The things I carry, the things that weigh me down, they are not clothes or furniture or the latest iPhone. Throw any of us on a deserted island, no possessions, we would still be ourselves.
The things I carry are my thoughts. That’s it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened. Regardless of whether the world is exploding or celebrating, my inside determines the quality of what I experience outside.
I think that is why many traditions emphasize present moment awareness. Because that takes us away from the maze our brains seem to constantly run around in, slows us down, makes us breathe, and just be. Even for brief moments, just be.
If there is one thing worth working on, it’s the inner self. Regardless of the way that works for you, it is the true path. It is where freedom lies.
The truth in life is, we are born, we exist, then we are gone. That’s it. What happens before or after is your personal belief, and if you have one, you should live it fully.
But this part — birth, life, death — doesn’t matter if you’re in a canoe in the Amazon and I’m in a cafe in California, odds are that we’ll both agree on it.
Being born and gone, we have no control over. Eventually happens to the best of us. But knowing that one day we will cease, and not knowing whether that is today or a distant tomorrow, that realization is a key to living a fulfilling life.
It comes when you find the gift. From the experience, from the pain. There is always a gift. When you discover it, that is when the shift happens, when you taste freedom.
I don’t think you can force this. Just be open, let whatever you feel move through you, live your truth, be your truth, and the light flows in. That’s really all it is.
A woman comes to Gandhi with her son and says to him, “my son eats sugar all day, it’s so bad for his health. He respects you. Can you tell him to stop eating sugar? I know he’ll listen to you.”
Gandhi looks at her for a moment, thinks.
“Come back with your son in two weeks,” he says. “I will tell him then.”
The woman is disappointed, but leaves. Two weeks later, she returns, son in tow. Gandhi looks at the boy and says, “stop eating sugar.”
“What the…?” The woman’s response. “Why did you not tell him two weeks ago?”
“Because before I could tell him to stop eating sugar,” Gandhi says to her, “I myself had to stop eating sugar.”
And through it, just like George Carlin taught Louis CK, I shall dive deeper, learn new aspects of my truth. And live them.
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