everybodyhasabrain:

My priorities always seem to change based on what I don’t have at any given point in my life. When I had no income, no savings and massive student loan debt, I just wanted to have a little disposable income. When I got a bit of income, I wanted better living conditions. When I got an actual income, I got the better living conditions, but….

Now I want to see the world. Now I want nice things to put in my nice space. I want toys, I want the finer things in life, I want to skip past being poor and in debt and get to being rich… and probably still in debt.

What I’m finding is that whatever my income level is at, I never truly feel like I’m using it in the way I want. It seems to get tied up in rent, debt repayments, day-to-day expenses, the usual suspects.

But it’s curious; I seem to over-value certain things when I don’t have them (like a nice place), but once I have them for some time, the value I get from it diminishes significantly. Do I really need all the space? The high ceilings? The idyllic location? Or do I really just need a desk, a kitchen, a couch, a bed and a bathroom?

I find that I simply do not know the value of objects, but while an object can lose personal value to me, I tend to cherish memories more as time goes on. So what I would like to focus on now is using my income to create memories and have experiences, rather than accumulating comforts. Comfort is good, but only up to a point.

Travel seems to be the perfect way to satisfy that urge. But how do you travel without any disposable income? When is it okay to prioritize travel over swifter debt repayments? Striking this balance is very difficult for me, and it causes me no end of grief.

This is my constant struggle with money. I just can’t justify spending it on myself. 

-avr

everybodyhasabrain:

There’s this cool study done at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, which essentially concludes that autism and psychosis represent two poles of the social mental health spectrum. Check it out here.

Now, I had a not-very-scientific realization when I read this article, but it changed my thinking about human interactions quite profoundly. Autistic people have difficulty with empathy, social interactions, verbal and non-verbal communication. Psychotic people over-think things, often attributing validity to false beliefs, particularly fear and suspicion.

What I realized is how closely this correlates to society’s notions of typical Alpha and Beta personality types. Inasmuch as Alphas tend to assert themselves, focusing less on the mental states of others than on their own, Betas tend to over-think about how other’s perceive them, then over-emphasize how important those passing thoughts may be.

Alpha -> autism -> internal focus. Beta -> psychosis -> external focus. In a given context or situation, everyone’s mental state is somewhere on the scale between these two poles.

Okay, so this is over-simplifies things a bit, but it puts my own thoughts in perspective. I’m a Beta, through and through. I spend far too much time worrying about what other people think about me. It’s not productive, and what’s more, it’s often delusional. Often times I can’t even articulate what I’m afraid is going to happen, but my gut tells me ‘it’s gonna be bad.’

But the lesson here is that everyone is too busy either worrying about whether they are happy, or worrying about whether everyone around them is happy to really take the time to care about the minute thing you’re obsessing over.

So this is my new mantra: It’s okay. Nobody cares. And what other people think about you is none of your business anyway.

-avr

everybodyhasabrain:

In the past, I listened to my brain all of the time. If my brain came up with a reason why I shouldn’t do work right now, I would listen to it, and not do work. And then later when it came up with a reason why I was a failure because I hadn’t done any work, I’d listen to my brain and react to it, to try to be certain I wasn’t a failure. I was always reacting to the intrusive thoughts in my brain. That took me further and further from being who I knew I was. I believed I had to react to the anxious thoughts in my brain. 

That caused an enormous amount of stress and anxiety related to how I was spending my time. Reacting to the thoughts that I was wasting my time, and trying to make up for that, has the same result than any attempt to control anxiety has: more anxiety and more uncertainty and an even greater sense of failure and laziness. 

Getting over that has been all about ignoring my brain. I fired it. It was a terrible employee. I wasn’t lazy. My brain was lazy. When I act according to my values instead of reacting to my brain, I’m so much happier with what I do and I can get astronomically more work done. 

Brains are selfish. They literally do not have your best interests in mind. Articulate your values and let them guide your actions.

- Mark

orientaltiger:

Melting Disco Balls by Rotganzen

(via loveyourchaos)

(via loveyourchaos)

the-iridescence:

califonia nebula (by hhobbang1)

(via loveyourchaos)

everybodyhasabrain:

During most or all of the day, I find it really hard to fully relax. I always feel like there needs to be something done, or completed, or figured out that I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s true that there’s a bunch of things I could be doing at any given moment. So I try really hard not to get overloaded with all the things in my head, by breaking things down as small as possible. 

For some reason, when I think about something I have or want to do, it comes about through big ideas that usually involve a great deal of time and planning. It’s great that I have such big ideas, but they’re not really useful unless I start making them happen somehow. This is probably the most challenging part, but starting can really be the simplest of things - like writing it down, or talking about it with a friend for feedback. And I find one of the most important things with tackling big ideas, is to not be afraid of failure. When I’m thinking of doing something new, I do think about the risks, but I try to stay away from the “oh…this might not work” mentality. I try to instead take an approach of thinking “no idea is a bad idea.” That way, I don’t feel so restricted to the things I can do. Things are waiting to be done or developed everywhere around you - so if this one idea doesn’t work so well, chances are you’ll find or think of something else. 

- Matt

whatshouldwecallme:

whatshouldwecallme:

whatshouldwecallme: