We humans adapt quickly to new circumstances. Take the lottery for example- do you think you would become permanently happier if you won it today? Studies have found that recent lottery winners are in fact temporarily happier, but soon after, they adjust and are no happier than others. If we are constantly adapting to positive change in our lives, then how can we sustain an increased level of happiness over the long-term? To answer this question, we must first understand what determines our happiness.
There are three major determinants of happiness
1) Your genetic baseline / range of potential happiness
2) Your current circumstances (e.g. health, income, region where you live)
3) Your current intentional activities (e.g. exercising regularly, writing a book, attending college)
Pessimists might read this list and argue that you can never raise your genetic baseline level of happiness. They might say that even with circumstance or activity changes, you will always revert to a genetically-determined level of happiness. This is a fair argument, especially considering the lottery example, but one study completed by Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky has come to very a different conclusion.
You can sustain happiness above your genetic baseline level
According to the study, activity changes lead to sustainable increased levels of happiness, above your genetic baseline level. Circumstantial changes, by contrast, do not lead to sustainable increased levels of happiness. What does this mean? Winning the lottery or securing a raise (circumstantial changes) will increase your happiness temporarily. Starting to exercise or initiating a new goal (activity changes), will increase your happiness permanently.
This means that as long as you continue introducing intentional positive activity changes into your life, you can sustain higher levels of happiness. To use this knowledge effectively, you must be aware that activity-based changes are those that involve continual effort and engagement in some intentional process. Circumstance-based changes are one-time changes that tend to occur independently of effort and engagement.
Three habits you can start today to become happier and sustain it
1) Stop falsely believing that changes in your current circumstances will lead to sustained increased happiness
2) Start introducing positive activity changes into your life
3) Practice virtues of gratitude, thankfulness, and thoughtful self-reflection
The song played that is easiest to remember will be a hit. The politician that promises the most gets elected. The Youtube video which creates the strongest reaction in the least amount of time will become popular. What am I talking about? Memes.
Meme: Any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances.
Memes spread through human culture similar to a contagious virus. As the meme is repeated and re-encoded in the minds of other individuals, it evolves. Memes that do the job with the least amount of energy will survive.
Meme evolution is not necessarily to our benefit
Memes have a life of their own, and the means by which they evolve is not necessarily in our best interest- the successful meme is copied and spread whether or not it’s in the interest of the meme creator. A good example of a successful meme is the evolution of projectile weapons, which started with arrows, then bolts, catapulted stones, cannonballs, explosive bombs, and nuclear bombs. The amount of destructive power has increased exponentially over time, but there is no evidence that a new weapon actually enhances the survival of the people who created it.
Memes can **** you up and infect your mind if you let them
Technology is helping memes evolve and spread at a more rapid pace than ever before. Successful memes are more easily copied, while unsuccessful memes are not copied. Due to technology, the modern day man is more vulnerable to being infected by memes. Here are 3 ways this happens:
1) Internet Memes
Dancing baby. The hamster dance. LOLcat. These are all examples of Internet memes. Are they a fun part of Internet culture, or a parasitical waste of your time? To answer this question, you must first ask yourself how much you value your time.
As your time is limited, it is important that you are using it to get what you want out of life, versus letting memes use your time to propagate themselves. If you could look back at your life, how memorable would your time spent on Youtube, Wikipedia, Twitter, or this blog post be? When you follow Internet memes for hours, how much of that time is contributing to your well-being, versus parasitically draining your energy?
Musician and Internet sensation Tay Zonday (creator of Internet meme Chocolate Rain) sings about the time we spend on the Internet:
So every day I swear
I’m gonna go to bed at like eleven.
And all of a sudden its 4AM . . .
And I was just watching Youtube and
reading Wikipedia for five hours.
It’s like MAN . . . you ask me the
next day. I can’t even remember
what I was doin. Crazy.
-Tay Zonday
2) Television Memes
Sensationalism. Sitcoms. Soap operas. With television, memes can be transmitted almost instantaneously to people throughout the world. Generally, television makes viewers feel very relaxed, but also significantly less active, alert, mentally focused, satisfied, or creative compared with other ways of spending time.
Like a drug, television initially provides a positive experience, but research suggests that the longer one watches it in one setting, the worse one’s mood progressively gets. 90′s hip-hop group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy sing about this in “Television the Drug of the Nation”:
How do you feel after watching television? Was your time spent doing something rewarding, or wasted? Do you use television to get what you want out of it, or do television memes use you to propagate themselves?
3) Materialism Memes
Houses. Cars. Clothes. As man looks on his material possessions, he becomes deluded into thinking he’s a big deal- the objects become symbols for expansion of the self. It is easy for man to spend his whole life accumulating property without end just to feed his ego.
Each of us has needs for shelter, food, and clothing. But this doesn’t explain the houses of today, which represent more of the evolution of memes than to our personal well-being. Similarly, expensive clothing and restaurants are used to make an impression on the minds of other people, versus the simple needs of keeping us warm and replenishing our energy.
A powerful example of a materialism meme is the automobile. After first buying a car, you have positive feelings, such as freedom, power, and pride of ownership. The car becomes a symbol for the expansion of the self. Then the car ownership begins to drain your energy- you worry about payments, upkeep, insurance, accidents, and so on. But still, the meme continues to evolve and replicate, with new car models coming out each year for future owners.
A scene from the movie Fight Club discussing how “the things you own end up owning you”:
Do you use memes to get what you want, or do memes infect your mind and replicate themselves?
Do you use memes to get what you want and meet your personal goals? Or do you become a meme replicator, with hours of your time being wasted as the outcome? Internet, television, and materialism memes are really just the tip of the iceberg- memes can drain our energy in all areas of life. After capturing our attention, memes will continue reproducing themselves whether it is good for us or not. If we are to take control of our lives, we must get out of autopilot mode and use memes for our own ends, versus letting them parasitically drain our energy.
João Gilberto simply is music. He plays. He sings. Without stopping. Day and night. He is very, very strange. But he is the most fascinating being, the most fascinating person, that I have encountered on the surface of the earth. João, he is mystery. He hypnotises.
-Maria Bethânia
João Gilberto has been called many things throughout his ongoing career- a genius, a reclusive eccentric, the father of bossa nova, and the most enigmatic Brazilian alive. But one thing is certain- in 1958, this man changed Brazilian music forever. During this year, João invented bossa nova- a style of Brazilian music which evolved from samba, but is more complex harmonically and less percussive.
João’s signature piece, Chega de Saudade, is universally acknowledged as the song that launched his career and the bossa nova movement:
Here are 5 lessons for following your passion from the creative musical genius João Gilberto:
1) Stay focused
From an early age, João was interested in only one thing- music. He was given a guitar at the age of fourteen, which soon became an extension of his body. João played day and night, often the same chord repeated innumerable ways. Even when João’s family thought that he was mentally disturbed, and sent him to a psychiatric sanatorium, he kept up his musical experiments.
2) Never give up
For seven years, João’s career seemed at a standstill- he rarely had work, was dependent on his friends for a place to live, and was chronically depressed. João did not give up, and eventually, he was helped by friend Luiz Telles, who took him to southern Brazil, where he blossomed.
3) Work on your own schedule
Early in his career, living with his friends in Rio de Janeiro, João was a Night Owl, and would sleep during the day and play at night. Even though his hosts had day jobs, when returning from work, they would keep him company until early in the morning, listening to him play. When João moved to Porto Alegre, he single-handedly altered the city’s nightlife. People who normally went to sleep early stayed up late, adapting themselves to João’s sleep schedule, to hear him play.
4) Refuse a “normal” job
Although João’s family wished that he would consider a “normal”, non-musical job, he refused. Even when João had no money and work, João would not take jobs which he considered demeaning, such as singing in clubs where people talked during the performance, or recording commercial jingles.
5) Isolate yourself to develop your own style
João spent eight months with his sister, where he secluded himself from others, playing guitar day and night, developing a personal style for voice and guitar that would later be called bossa nova.
Are you following your passion, on the verge of creating a “bossa nova” in your field?
João is an inspiration for all of us. Imagine if he had taken a non-musical job, instead of focusing on his passion- would João have invented bossa nova, and been as successful as he is today? What if João had listened to his father, who disliked his songs, thinking João was mentally disturbed? The same songs that João’s father disliked were later considered by music critics to be zen-like, and works of pure perfection.
The most important lesson we can learn from João’s career is to pursue our passion relentlessly, whether or not our family or friends support us. Like João, each of us must focus on what we are most passionate about. We must focus on what makes us come alive:
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.
-Howard Thurman
Life is like a river. It’s moving, and you can be at the mercy of the river if you don’t take deliberate, conscious action to steer yourself in a direction you have pre-determined.
-Anthony Robbins
Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits recently wrote a very honest post about The Dirty Little Secrets of Productivity Bloggers, and I’ll be sharing one of my own with you in this post. To give you some background, over this last month, I have been on two extremes, and am now back to normalcy. For the first two weeks, I was on vacation. I had lots of free time, and I managed my own schedule and did what I wanted to do. I lived on my own sleep schedule (I’m a late riser). I meditated and exercised every day. I did a lot of reading, writing, and relaxing.
When I came back to work, I was immediately placed on an intense project, which involved long hours and weekend work for 2 weeks. I went from 100% free time to 100% structured time. Was I able to maintain my positive habits when my routine changed so significantly? Nope. And this explains my dirty little secret- I wasn’t able to follow my own advice.
I ended up building sleep debt due to long work hours. I was unable to maintain my exercise routine due to getting home so late from work, I ate unhealthy food (catered into our conference room at work), and I stopped meditating.
Why couldn’t I maintain my daily positive habits when my routine changed?
I love being challenged and pushed to extremes- this is a way to personal growth for me. I dedicated myself to the success of the project at work, and gained a lot of experience from it, but in doing so, I also adopted the norms (eating and sleeping habits) of the team, and temporarily lost my positive habits along the way.
I wasn’t able to follow the advice of my blog post about living like a sprinter (having a healthy balance between stress and recovery), versus living like a long distance runner (no balance/time for recovery, leading to burnout). During these past two weeks, I have been confronted with how difficult living like a sprinter can be. How do you maintain positive habits when routine changes, and the nature of your work can be so chaotic?
Your routine will change, that’s a given- plan for it
I’m learning that routine changes will happen to you and I many times in our lives, but the important thing we need to have in place is a a backup plan. A back up plan is your pre-determined way of handling drastic routine change and maintaining positive habits. Why come up with a backup plan early on? If you have to come up with the backup plan while you are in crisis mode, it’s already too late:
Changes to routine have a smaller impact on your positive habits when you use a backup plan
Here are several examples of creating a backup plan:
Routine Change: Working long hours, unable to work out at gym
Backup Plan Options: If long work hours are going to be a long-term occurrence, you will want to find an alternate work-out time, such as early in the morning or over lunch break. If it is only short-term, you can simply cut back on your daily caloric intake, and plan to get back into your workout routine as soon as your work hours go back to normal.
Routine Change: Unable to leave work for lunch break due to deadlines, unhealthy snack options in the office
Backup Plan Options: Bring a bag of trail mix or nuts with you to work, use this as a meal replacement when you are unable to eat a normal lunch. Otherwise, you may end up eating unhealthy office snacks, or even worse, you will be starving by dinner time, and overeat to make up for the missed lunch.
Routine Change: Unable to get enough sleep during the week
Backup Plan Options: Take a mid-day 20 minute nap at work. If you have you own office, this will be easier to do. If not, you will have to be more creative with napping at work.
It’s Your Turn to Share
It’s much easier to maintain positive habits when your external environment and routine stay the same. But when the situation suddenly changes, are you able to adjust? Do you maintain your positive habits, or do you revert back to the way you were before you acquired the positive habits?
I’m still working on my backup plan, and experimenting with the best ways to maintain positive habits when my routine changes. I’d love to hear your experience with maintaining positive habits through routine changes- please leave a comment!
You must daily have the courage to risk making mistakes, risk failure, risk being humiliated. A step in the wrong direction is better than staying “on the spot” all your life.
-Maxwell Maltz
There are some activities and jobs in which people must fail every day in order to succeed. Think of the insurance salesman who is turned down 9 times in a row, just to have one success. Or the skateboarder who must fail at performing a new trick many times before he is able to perform it successfully one time. We can learn a lot from these extreme failing individuals- they seem to view failure as a temporary setback, or a learning experience.
Learning from Extreme Failing: Skateboarders
As a high school student, I loved skateboarding. The nature of skateboarding involves a lot of failing- my skater friends allowed themselves to fail much more often than I did, and in doing so, they became great. I’ve pulled together some footage from my high school skateboarding days to give you a visual of extreme failing:
What if a skateboarder fell one too many times, and thought of his failure as a defeat, wallowing in its permanence and pervasiveness? What if he decided he wouldn’t try the same trick again, for months? I can tell you that he wouldn’t get very far in skateboarding with that mindset. To be successful at skateboarding, you must pick yourself up after a failure and immediately start trying again. You must look at a failure as a challenge, or a temporary setback to achieving your goal.
The Extreme Failing Mindset Can be Applied to Any Type of Setback
The extreme failing mindset isn’t just for insurance salesmen and skateboarders- it can help anyone overcome a setback in their life. One example would be if you recently broke up with someone- If you tell yourself “This is only temporary, I will find someone else”, you will be on your way to a fast recovery. But if tell yourself “This person meant everything to me, I’ll never find someone else like them”, you are setting yourself up for depression and pain.
Similarly, if you recently lost your job, and explain it to yourself as “I lost my job because I am lazy and incompetent- no other employer will want to hire me”, you most likely won’t recover and get a new job for a while- the negative mindset will be self-fulfilling. By contrast, if you tell yourself “The economy is not doing well right now so my employer had to make some cutbacks- I tried my best, and now I will find a new job even better than the last”, you will be on your way to finding a great new job.
Three Dimensions of Explaining Setbacks to Yourself
Based on years of research from psychologist Martin Seligman (explained in his book Learned Optimism), there are three dimensions of explaining setbacks to yourself: Permanence, Pervasiveness, and Personalization. On each dimension, you can explain a setback with either the extreme failing (optimist) mindset, or the pessimist mindset:
Permanence: Do you believe the cause of the bad event is permanent or temporary? Extreme failing individuals believe the bad event is temporary.
Breaking up example: Tell yourself “I will find someone else”
Pervasiveness: Do you believe the cause of the bad event is universal, or specific? Extreme failing individuals believe the cause of a bad event is specific.
Breaking up example: Tell yourself “My relationship was only one part of my life”
Personalization: Do you believe the cause of the bad event is your fault (internalize), or other people’s fault (externalized)? Extreme failing individuals believe the bad event is external to themselves.
Breaking up example: Tell yourself “My ex was not the right person for me”
Do You Have the Extreme Failing Mindset? Take the Test
How do you perceive failures in your own life? Take the test to find out how well you handle setbacks, and how much of an extreme failing individual (optimist) you are.
Taking Responsibility
A comment was recently posted by Brandon (see below), with concerns over how the Martin Seligman’s optimism test, and the Personalization dimension of explanatory style. The test seems to encourage us to not take responsibility, and instead blame external events/people. Here is a quote from Dr. Seligman’s book to help answer Brandon’s concern:
I am unwilling to advocate any strategy that further erodes responsibility. I don’t believe people should change their beliefs from internal to external wholesale. Nevertheless, there is one condition under which this usually should be done: depression . . . We want people to change, and we know they will not change if they do not assume responsibility. If we want people to change, internality is not as crucial as the permanence dimension is. If you believe the cause of your mess is permanent, you will not act to change it. If, however, you believe the cause is temporary, you can act to change it. If we want people to be responsible for what they do, then yes, we want them to have an internal style. More important, people must have a temporary style for bad events- they must believe that whatever the cause of the bad event, it can be changed.
According to Seligman, we should use the external explanation only in situations where we are at risk for depression. Additionally, the Permanence dimension (temporary/permanent) is the key to change, not Personalization (internal/external).
What does it benefit to man if he gains the entire world, but loses himself?
-Jesus Christ
Social programming is the set of instructions each of us learned to fit in with society. Our family members, school teachers, and peer groups were all part of the socialization process. The long-term affect of this socialization is that we seek external approval and external goals in our lives. If we are to take control of our consciousness and pursue our own goals, we must learn to break free from social programming:
Caught in a treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that always dissolves in his hands. In a complex society, many powerful groups are involved in socializing, sometimes to seemingly contradictory goals . . . Schools, churches, and banks try to turn us into responsible citizens willing to work hard and save . . . merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to spend our earnings on products that will produce the most profits for them . . . gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers . . . promise rewards for easy dissipation- provided we pay. The messages are very different, but their outcome is essentially the same: they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes.
Society tries bribing us at every opportunity. People who submit completely to social programming, and mistakenly believe that their happiness is obtained only by achieving external goals, are “rat racers” who never enjoy the present moments of life.
Do you constantly delay gratification to the future? Are you always looking to others for approval, and setting external goals? If so, your social programming is being used against you:
Ways Your Social Programming Can Be Used Against You
Falsely believing that “once I obtain status, people will like and respect me”
Trying to “keep up with the Joneses”
Becoming popular with lots of people, but not building close relationships with individuals
Approval- “I want to be liked”
Working at a job you hate to pay for your family’s high consumption
Pursuing a career path that Mom or Dad told you to go after
Not speaking up at work when you have a good idea, for fear of getting shot down
Power- “I want to dominate”
Using others only as a means to achieve your goals
Trying to one-up others, dominate conversations
Pinpoint other people’s weaknesses and failures
How to Break Free from Social Programming
The key to breaking free from social programming is not to eliminate all external goals. Instead, it is to create goals that are meaningful to you personally, and then enjoy the day to day process of realizing those goals. Here are some tips for breaking free-
1) Choose your own values, principles, and goals
To assume responsibility for choosing our values, principles, and goals, relying solely upon our own reason and understanding- to honor our internal signals to that extent- is to practice the ultimate form of intellectual independence, the one most difficult for the overwhelming majority of human beings and for which their upbringing has least prepared them.
It’s easy to adopt external goals that society gives you- after all, those are the goals you were programmed to adopt. It’s more difficult to create your own set of values- this requires intellectual independence and aloneness from society.
2) Follow your own vision
You follow your own vision by moving forward with your own personally selected goals, and not letting any external circumstances circumvent who you are. Following your own vision can leave you feeling alone in the world, and requires courage. But the more you are able to become independent and think for yourself, the higher your own self-esteem will be.
3) Accept your aloneness
You must accept your aloneness in order to truly be free of social programming:
We can learn from one another, but we cannot share the act of being conscious or of thinking. We can share the results- namely, our thoughts and perceptions- but consciousness, awareness, thinking, reasoning is, ultimately, an individual, solitary process, not a social one. And many people dread independent thought and judgment precisely because of this factor of inescapable aloneness; it makes them aware of their own separateness as living entities; it makes them aware of the responsibility they must bear for their own existence.
Here is a poem which emphasizes being honest with yourself:
The Guy in the Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.
-Dale Wimbrow
Note: The word pelf in the first line means “wealth.”
Breaking Free is a Life-Long Process
Your genes instruct you on what feels good and bad, and society bribes you on how to expend your energy. To take control of your consciousness, you must be fully aware of social and genetic programming, and make yourself independent of it as much as possible. By taking control of your consciousness, and following your own vision, you will become better at thinking for yourself and more independent of others.
Breaking free is a life-long process, not a one-time effort. But I promise you, based on my own personal experience- the quality of your own life will improve drastically when you begin the process of breaking free.
Genetic programming is the set of instructions each of us was born with. It gives us instinctual drives such as fight-or-flight that are meant to motivate us toward activities which ensure our survival. In modern day society, if we are to take control of our consciousness and pursue our own goals, we must learn to break free from genetic programming:
Submission to genetic programming can become quite disastrous, because it leaves us helpless. A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable. Instead of deciding how to act in terms of personal goals, he has to surrender to the things that his body has been programmed (or misprogrammed) to do. One must particularly achieve control over instinctual drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.
People who submit completely to their genetic programming, and mistakenly believe that anything which feels good equates to happiness, live by the maxim “seek pleasure and avoid pain.” They are constantly trying to fill their genetic drives in the present, while ignoring the long-term consequences. They are also easier targets for societal organizations that take advantage of an individual’s instinctual drives.
Do you respond predictably to what instinctually makes you feels good and bad? Are you constantly seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? If so, your genetic programming is being used against you:
Ways Your Genetic Programming Can Be Used Against You
Fight-or-Flight- “React to perceived threats”
Getting stuck in “survival mode” due to excessive stress at work
Having an argument with your spouse, resulting in stress
Food- “It tastes good”
Overeating
Using food as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life
Sex- “It feels good”
Constantly being preoccupied with sex, distracting you from your personal goals
Using pornography, strip clubs, or prostitution as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life
Drugs and Alcohol- “It feels good”
Needing alcohol to let loose and have fun at social events
Using drugs as a form of self-medication due to being unhappy with your life
Getting your fix by frequenting bars, liquor stores, or drug dealers
How to Break Free from Genetic Programming
If you cannot resist what feels good, tastes good, or control the way you react to perceived threats, you are not free to direct your consciousness towards the path you choose. You are living your life without taking conscious control of it. But there are some easy habits you can adopt to change the way you respond to genetic programming-
1) Use mental rehearsal to practice taking control of your consciousness
Spend 20-30 minutes a day mentally rehearsing situations in which instinctual drive is taking control- this is when you are reacting to things that taste good, feel good, or responding to perceived threats. In your mind’s eye, take conscious control of the situation, and respond in a positive manner.
For example, if you tend to overeat during meals, mentally rehearse yourself at a restaurant, eating a reasonable portion of food, and leaving the rest, or getting a to-go box. But don’t stop there- mentally rehearse every possible situation in which you need to take control. Visualize yourself responding positively to all sorts of possible scenarios, such as friends bringing snacks to work, or going to a buffet restaurant. You are practicing your self control, the same way a sports player would practice before a game.
You may start to think your time is being wasted, but give this a try for at least a week and you will be surprised. This is because you are tricking your mind- you will begin to notice that it will be easier for you to take control of yourself when the actual situation occurs. Your brain cannot actually tell the difference between mental rehearsal and reality. Keep this up for 21 days and you’ll find yourself much closer towards having complete control of your genetic programming.
2) Create a mantra to use whenever you lose control
Repeat a phrase to yourself every time your genetic programming would typically take control. For example, if you normally get stressed out when you have a lot on your plate at work, you can use the mantra “I’ll handle it.” Then, whenever you feel your muscles get tense and feel yourself slipping into survival mode, repeat the mantra to yourself “I’ll handle it.” Like mental rehearsal, this is a way of tricking your mind. On a subconscious level, your mind will believe your mantra, and you will distract yourself from the typical stress response.
3) Stay in control by staying accountable to yourself and close friends/family members
Find a way to track your progress, such as a daily log showing how many times you took conscious control over your genetic programming. After a month of progress, reward yourself in some way. For example, if you made progress by no longer using alcohol to self-medicate for a month, reward yourself with a nice dinner (note: if you are an alcoholic, I recommend you begin attending AA meetings as a support group).
Tell close friends and family members about your goal of taking control. Make sure you only tell those friends and family members which have been supportive of your personal growth in the past. Otherwise, instead of keeping you accountable, they may hold you back. After you’ve told your supportive friends/family members, ask for their help in keeping you accountable.
Breaking Free is a Life-Long Process
Your genes instruct you on what feels good and bad, and society bribes you on how to expend your energy. To take control of your consciousness, you must be fully aware of social and genetic programming, and make yourself independent of it as much as possible. By taking control of your consciousness, and resisting instinctual drives, you will be free to direct your energy towards the path you choose.
Breaking free is a life-long process, not a one-time effort. But I promise you, based on my own personal experience- the quality of your own life will improve drastically when you begin the process of breaking free.
photo credit: LarryLowrey
