Current Events > Life gets better when you stop giving a shit about stuff you can't control

(+) Yeah! (+)

And do your best to fix stuff in your control

Nihilism is pretty cool

Live. Laugh. Love.

Laugh and grow fat.

I had an Uber driver (an older man) who started talking to me about this.

it's called stoicism.

That gets easier to say the less things are out of your control.

Just dont focus on things you cant control is dumb in a general sense because plenty of things feel like both.

Youre poor and can barely pay bills? Well, technically thats in your control. But in a lot of cases, it either requires time or has a lot of unforeseeable obstacles.

I generally dislike blanket advice for this reason.

No thanks. I'll just get strong enough to control more things

It's good advice, but you need to be accurate with what is and isn't within your control. If you're poor and struggling to pay your bills, no amount of worrying is going to change your immediate situation. You need to be calm and work out exactly how far you can get things to go. However, that doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and never strive to improve your situation.

That's a bit difficult when "stuff you can't control" includes things like half of the country you live in being at least tolerant of the notion that it should be legal for anyone to execute you on sight.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

That gets easier to say the less things are out of your control.

Just dont focus on things you cant control is dumb in a general sense because plenty of things feel like both.

Youre poor and can barely pay bills? Well, technically thats in your control. But in a lot of cases, it either requires time or has a lot of unforeseeable obstacles.

I generally dislike blanket advice for this reason.

You're thinking about it too hard, it's not that complicated.

Friends,

it even goes beyond this.

The more stuff you own, the MORE your OWNED.

I have been trying to clean the house. if I have not
touched in it a year, it goes.

I even threw out pictures of my parents, they are
both dead, and I only had two... GONE.

The house is still full of 10 million things, not
sure how that happened.

Good luck.

BloodMoon7 posted...

You're thinking about it too hard, it's not that complicated.

It is that complicated for people with a lot of problems out of their control or very little things in their control.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

It is that complicated for people with a lot of problems out of their control or very little things in their control.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. That's most people. Many of them with worse problems than you. Yet the number of people who overthink things and make the problems feel worse for them than is necessary isn't that high, comparably. The point was never to just give up or to simply accept everything, the point of this message is that stressing yourself out is only doing more damage to you. If life itself is already fucking you over, shouldn't you cut yourself a break? You're the one person who fully understands your own pain after all. The average person had many problems that will be difficult or impossible for them to solve. And even if you are successful, one day you will die and it will all be meaningless to you. So why worry over everything? Even if it isn't much, why not focus on things that you can do and that you enjoy? A small improvement over time does add up. If you are still alive, you can still do something.

Or you know, give in to despair like me and see how well that goes for you. I'll tell you right now, when they say stress kills, they aren't fucking around buddy.

Pretty useless advise. Your just saying "stop worrying!" Oh okay i didn't realise i could just choose that.

havean776 posted...

Pretty useless advise. Your just saying "stop worrying!" Oh okay i didn't realise i could just choose that.

No one is saying to stop worrying. But if you're gonna worry about literally everything that's also a bit extreme.

It doesn't really if you're in a marginalized group

That advice is good as long as your life or livilhood isn't at risk.

Will_VIIII posted...

It doesn't really if you're in a marginalized group

I am a black man. If I got upset everything I got disrespected, or faced prejudice life would be a miserable.

drclaeys posted...

I even threw out pictures of my parents, they are
both dead, and I only had two... GONE.

uhhh

divot1338 posted...

uhhh

You can safely ignore all their posts lol

Yeah basically. CE needs to learn that

reincarnator07 posted...

It's good advice, but you need to be accurate with what is and isn't within your control. If you're poor and struggling to pay your bills, no amount of worrying is going to change your immediate situation. You need to be calm and work out exactly how far you can get things to go. However, that doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and never strive to improve your situation.

Going by the way this topic is going a lot of people missed the point already and are still dwelling on things they can't control.

BloodMoon7 posted...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. That's most people. Many of them with worse problems than you. Yet the number of people who overthink things and make the problems feel worse for them than is necessary isn't that high, comparably. The point was never to just give up or to simply accept everything, the point of this message is that stressing yourself out is only doing more damage to you. If life itself is already fucking you over, shouldn't you cut yourself a break? You're the one person who fully understands your own pain after all. The average person had many problems that will be difficult or impossible for them to solve. And even if you are successful, one day you will die and it will all be meaningless to you. So why worry over everything? Even if it isn't much, why not focus on things that you can do and that you enjoy? A small improvement over time does add up. If you are still alive, you can still do something.

Or you know, give in to despair like me and see how well that goes for you. I'll tell you right now, when they say stress kills, they aren't fucking around buddy.

This may blow your mind.

But worrying too much is sometimes, ironically, the thing people cant control.

Its good advice for controlling your emotions.

havean776 posted...

Pretty useless advise. Your just saying "stop worrying!" Oh okay i didn't realise i could just choose that.

You can. Not gonna say it's easy though.

I had a boss who would ride my ass relentlessly. And it pissed me off cause she didnr do it to most other people. She said she knew I was good and expected better out of me than them. I stayed stressed and it was really starting to have an affect on me.

One day I thought to myself we are so short staffed they can't afford to fire me. Especially since I'm apparently one of the better workers. I quite worrying about it. I'd take my ass chewing say ok then go right back to it. God did that seem to piss her off. She tried to write me up once but her boss more or less threw it out.

Edit: this was out of my control btw. Cause she was the type who would tell you to do things this way today them chew you out 2 weeks later for doing it that way. You never fucking knew what she expected out of you.

drclaeys posted...

Friends,

it even goes beyond this.

The more stuff you own, the MORE your OWNED.

I have been trying to clean the house. if I have not
touched in it a year, it goes.

I even threw out pictures of my parents, they are
both dead, and I only had two... GONE.

The house is still full of 10 million things, not
sure how that happened.

Good luck.

We should probably do it more often, but every 4 years or so my wife and I take a weekend and go through the entire house and have a "If we were to move, would this come with us?" top to bottom cleaning of our house.

Whatever we say "it wouldn't come with us" to either gets donated or thrown out.

BloodMoon7 posted...

No one is saying to stop worrying. But if you're gonna worry about literally everything that's also a bit extreme.

Exactly.

Like, if you have a 4 year old, and you're stressing about if they're going to get good enough grades to get into a good college, you may want to punt those stresses 10 years down the road.

Irony posted...

Nihilism is pretty cool

I don't think TC is necessarily advocating for that though

ai123 posted...

Live. Laugh. Love.

My mom has this sign in her kitchen and it hurts me a bit every time I visit.

I'm actually working really hard on this, but it's really hard to do with my recent dating experiences. Featured a lot of highly memorable and hurtful moments. Like I find it so difficult to keep bouncing back, and I don't want to give up so I'll continue to keep swiping and meeting strangers and risking confusion, heartache, mental instability

Guide posted...

My mom has this sign in her kitchen and it hurts me a bit every time I visit.

My mom had one that said Backdoor friends are best hanging by the back door in the kitchen. They moved out of that house but the sign made me laugh every fucking day.

haloiscoolisbak posted...

I don't think TC is necessarily advocating for that though

They are making a common chud nihilistic comment, so it's not unreasonable to think that they are going that route when paired with their AMP.

This board wouldn't have any posts if people followed this advice

divot1338 posted...

My mom had one that said Backdoor friends are best hanging by the back door in the kitchen. They moved out of that house but the sign made me laugh every fucking day.

fucking lmao

This is one of those things you have the be in the right place at the right time to accept and implement in your daily life but there are tons of factors that keep that from happening.

I've personally found it to be true and would honestly be dead by now if I hadn't been able to reach this point.

I've been trying to think more positively but it only takes like 1 instance of seeing specific things online or on TV to ruin my day. At least sleeping seems to reset my thought process but only if I get over 7 hours of it.

It gets better when you stop taking it so seriously

life gets better when you take calculated leaps of faith to control stuff that meaningfully affects you

--Zero- posted...

Its good advice for controlling your emotions.

This. Things beyond your control are hard to just not worry about. When I was about to go before a judge and possibly face prison? Beyond my control, yes, something I could just stop worrying about l, hell no.

But its useful advice for people with anger and impulse issues like me. Something stupid happens? First instinct is to fly off the handle. This advice is about taking a deep breath and not letting that happen, because letting it happen is unhealthy at best, and can potentially get me into trouble at worst.

Its about not sweating the small stuff really. No ones saying ah, dont worry if your country is on the verge of making your existence a crime, you think too much.

Dark_Arbron posted...

This. Things beyond your control are hard to just not worry about. When I was about to go before a judge and possibly face prison? Beyond my control, yes, something I could just stop worrying about l, hell no.

But its useful advice for people with anger and impulse issues like me. Something stupid happens? First instinct is to fly off the handle. This advice is about taking a deep breath and not letting that happen, because letting it happen is unhealthy at best, and can potentially get me into trouble at worst.

Its about not sweating the small stuff really. No ones saying ah, dont worry if your country is on the verge of making your existence a crime, you think too much.

Well put.

KanWan posted...

Things shouldnt be in your control anyways

they should always be keeping you on your feet

Sounds like a game of Russian roulette.