Lessons from Quarter Century of Life: Part III

The sunk cost fallacy is a phenomenon where people refuse to abandon a strategy or a course of action because they had already invested in it, even though it would be more beneficial to let go. While the phenomenon is often used to guide business decisions, being mindful of it in everyday life could enhance our overall well-being. Hate the book you are reading? You don’t have to finish it. Don’t like the food you are eating? Your body’s not a bin; throw it out. Your friend changed, and the distance between the two of you only seems to be growing? Let them go; not everything is meant to last forever.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that humans are inherently good and pure. Thomas Hobbes disagreed and thought that the natural state of humankind is of war and conflict. Adam Smith was the only one who came close to the truth and stated that people are self-interested beings concerned with the public’s opinion of themselves and the intentions of others. The latter bit, although often forgotten, is quite important because it adds subtle complexity – humans are motivated by self-interest, but not blindly. In other words, if I won the lottery and offered you money, you would accept my offer. However, if I stole money and offered you a chunk, you would, according to Smith, possibly reject my offer depending on your assessment of my intentions and how acceptance of the stolen money might influence the public’s opinion of you as a person.

But why is this relevant to us? It is relevant because societal pressures are not always morally correct, nor are they always present in our lives, and some people outright reject these pressures – killing is okay if your country is at war, cheating might be okay if you never get caught, and theft is alright as long as you are stealing from the rich. Self-interest, however, is a constant – if necessary we will kill, cheat, and steal for our own sake. Some might object and present examples of conscientious objectors, law-abiding citizens, and even “selfless” individuals who give up their own lives to save others to demonstrate the seemingly unselfish nature of humankind. This is a false premise, and we should not be fooled by it – no act is truly selfless because to act, we need to be motivated, and all our motivations evolve from the self. Internalizing this notion will set us free because it will allow us to achieve higher-order thinking and move beyond the limited conceptual framework of good vs. evil.

Often, we pass on valuable life experiences because of negative assumptions – I am not smart enough to apply to X, not good-looking enough to be desired, not experienced enough to try. We disqualify ourselves before we even attempt to succeed, taking on the role of a harsh critic that suffocates our confidence and internal drive. Our tendency to assume, and often assume the worst, creates a negative feedback loop that traps us further in a helpless state. The more we allow our assumptions to control our lives, the more we lose our internal locus of power. In the aggregate, we stop feeling responsible for our lives and become victims of fate. We need to stop assuming and start tackling life head-on to build up our confidence in our abilities.

This is an idea that I expanded on in my first article and is a lesson that I learned the hard way. I was 20 years old when my first relationship ended, and although I wasn’t terribly heartbroken, it still left an impression and impacted my approach to relationships. I became just a tiny bit cynical and found faults in every person who liked me to justify a solitary lifestyle. Of course, being an incurable romantic (courtesy of my divorced parents) and a perfectionist, my cautiousness was rather extreme – I wanted my next relationship to be with “the one,” and I refused to settle for anyone else. In essence, I was keeping my heart safe – I felt that relationships were not worth my while unless I met “the one” and chose to avoid them altogether. I realized with time, however, that I was also avoiding the experiences that make life worth living – keeping my heart locked in a fortress meant that I had to forgo meaningful relationships. I finally understood that a closed heart will only shield me from the heartbreak of a relationship, but it won’t shield me from the heartbreak of a life not lived.

Nine people out of ten will only listen to speak. Where did I get that statistic? My own experience, but this is not important. The key takeaway is that people don’t actively listen – not to people, not to their bodies, not to the universe – and this is the cause of all our problems. This isn’t our fault – after all, most of us are born with the ability to hear, but speech is something we develop, resulting in speech fixation. We also start valuing speech more because it is vital to our survival during infancy, while the ability to hear is largely useless until we develop motor skills to react to the sounds that we hear. However, we need to understand the importance of listening – to our conversation partners, to the way our bodies feels, to nature – because it will allow us to be present in the now. We don’t listen because we are anticipating the next moment – our response to the conversation, what is next on our agenda. If we want to be engaged in reality though, in the now, we need to listen. As Epictetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

The worst has already happened – we were brought to this world to die. We live our lives in fear, and while some of our fears are perfectly rational – not standing too close to the edge or not walking alone at night – most of our fears are irrational, stemming from our illusions of grandeur. It is of course good to think that we are important and that we matter, but it is also worth remembering that we, humans, are minuscule creatures in the vast black void we call universe. We approach life timidly, scared to embarrass ourselves as though there is someone keeping an accurate score of our blunders. In reality, everyone around you is so self-obsessed and tangled in their own illusions of grandeur that no one actually thinks or remembers that one time you did that one stupid thing. So, be brave and actually live life, don’t just exist.

This is a very simple idea and yet, it seems like we can’t arrive at it ourselves without the guidance of self-help books. The problem isn’t exactly us – it’s the way we grow up. We get used to being told what to do, what to want, and when to want it that by the time we are allowed to make important decisions for ourselves, the habit of outsourcing the responsibility of choice becomes too compelling to give up. We become adults who are confined in the same structures we keep in existence. To regain control of our lives, we first need to decide what we desire and then work backward. If we think carefully, we will notice that the version of us that is fulfilled is a completely different person. The only reason why the desires exist in the first place is because we have a mental image of ourselves that currently does not correspond to reality. To merge reality with our desires, we need to understand who we need to be to have what we want to have. If we want to have a fit physique, we need to be active and eat clean. If we want to have a successful business, we need to be entrepreneurs. If we want to have healthy relationships, we need to become romantics. Once we figure out the “who?” we need to think of the “how?” How do we become active people? By getting memberships at our local gyms. How do we become entrepreneurs? By starting businesses and cultivating a business mindset. How do we become romantics? By opening our hearts. Remember that the schema is painfully simple, we just need to act.

The beauty of the human psyche is its flexibility – we can find happiness in virtually all situations. In practical terms, this means that if happiness is a destination, there are many roads that lead to it. In other words, it is possible to live a happy life even if we don’t follow our passion or calling and just stick to ordinary jobs doing ordinary things in ordinary towns. The main difference is how quickly we will arrive at our destination. Our hearts knows the shortest path to happiness, and following our passions is bound to bring us happiness, or rather us to happiness, much quicker than if we dedicate our lives to other less attractive pursuits. Of course, the shortest path is not necessarily the easiest, but the universe has an interesting way of rewarding courage.

Some cultures have a saying – the crying baby gets the milk. I want you to keep this idiom in mind because of its simplicity. It is important to vocalize our needs and desires because, at the very least, the act of saying them out loud allows us to refine them. Vocalizing the desire helps us get clarity; it helps us see whether our desire is aligned with our higher self and purpose. Spiritually, asking sends out our intention into the hands of the higher power, and in practical terms, asking for what we think we deserve lets other people see it too. Put differently, we might not receive that awaited raise or promotion unless we ask, because our bosses are too busy thinking about their own promotions. We need to be comfortable being our own advocates.