regret

Feb 5 2012

Do I want choice? Or do I want what’s right?

Have you ever had a moment where you wanted to do something that you knew was wrong? Then you said to yourself, “I’m gonna do it anyway because it’s my life and I can do things how I like”. Ah… the perfect recipe for regret…

We’ve been blinded by democracy. That ability to make our own choices and influence how our lives become. It had a noble purpose, once.

When the ages were dark and others chose how you led your life, people were miserable under kings who told them what to do without caring how it affected them. When others ruled your life and made choices, those choices were designed to be good for the chooser and left us, the common people, out of the equation.

We retaliated. We wanted freedom! Freedom to make good choices rather than be trapped in the bad ones of our kings and queens and dictators and freedom to live a happy life. But somewhere along the way, we forgot that we wanted to make GOOD choices and started to think that we just wanted choices. Now… now we want freedom for freedom’s sake.

Some would argue with me. They’d say that freedom isn’t just about making the best choice, it’s about making your own choice. And that includes making a choice that’s bad as well as a choice that’s good.

This line sums it up well:

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

– Mahatma Gandhi

I agree. Kinda.

But you see, we’ve gone over the deep end. We want to reassure ourselves over and over again that we have this freedom and therefore we continually and purposely make mistakes. Worst of all is that we seem to think that this is somehow noble, to fight for freedom and freedom alone.

I say that the whole point of gaining freedom is so that you can choose what is RIGHT. Because sometimes those who have power over you will choose only what is good for themselves, which usually means something that is bad for everyone else. So the original purpose of gaining freedom isn’t just to make ANY choice, it’s to make the best choice. It’s to make the right choice.

I mean, have you ever thought to yourself that you want to ruin your own life? Never. It’s always been about making your life better, or making the life of your loved ones better.

I’ve spoken before about how I sometimes support making mistakes on purpose, but it’s clear that I mean mistakes that come as a result of learning a new skill, not mistakes that can ruin your life.

So I think that we all need a wake up call, to remind us that freedom isn’t there so that we can all strive to make mistakes, whether as a society or as an individual. It’s there so that we can do good, even when people don’t agree with us sometimes.

But wait, what’s the meaning of “good”? What’s the meaning of “right”?

Good is subjective

The evangelists (super strong supporters) of freedom, they call out loudly and say that good is subjective. That we have to preserve freedom in general because what I feel is wrong might be right for someone else.

Not true. I think that for the most important things in life, there’s always a “right” way. Yes, you can have different favourite colours, or different jobs and hobbies, but there should only be one correct way to treat your parents (with respect), and only one right way to do your job (ethically and responsibly). For me it’s quite simple. The “right” way is what resonates with my core values. The “right” way is what fits my religion.

After all, I think that as humanity in general we can readily agree on most things. Murder and stealing are wrong. Education and children are sacred. Life is something that we shouldn’t just throw away. Don’t cheat. Be respectful. Be trustworthy. It isn’t so hard to find common ground on what is “right”.

Oddly enough, I think we spend a lot of our freedom trying things out so that we can find the “right” way of living our life. And sometimes, we spend a lot of our freedom trying everything wrong, with the excuse that we want to “experience life”.

Make no mistake, I’m not against having freedom. I am against misusing it and abusing it.

When given freedom and given the opportunity to make your life better, it saddens me that there are many people who misuse that freedom to do every mistake possible, just because they can. Just to prove that they can. You know what I mean. Even while knowing that cigarettes and drugs are bad for us, so many people still want to rebel and take it up, not because they’re trying it to find if it’s “right” for them. They know it’s wrong.

But they’ll do it anyway because they want to rebel, to reassure themselves that they are still in control of their lives, where they’ve lost control of everything else. When they’ve screwed up the rest of their lives, they feel that the ultimate form of proving that they have freedom is to make a mistake.

As you can guess, I don’t support this. I support making the right choices. But I also don’t support having other people controlling your lives and controlling what you choose.

Hmmm…. what now?

The middle ground

Surprisingly there’s a middle ground. It’s called guidance.

You can have freedom, but you can also be guided. You can ask. You can accept advice and you can hear people out when they tell you what to do. You can talk to family and friends. (Not friends and family. Notice which comes first. Family should always be first in that line-up)

Through all of that, whether people tell you the right thing to do or the wrong, whether people suggest things or aggressively force it on to you, remember that it’s all just suggestions. In the end you choose what you want to do. So don’t worry too much if they’re TELLING you what to do. If you don’t want to do it, don’t. If you think it’s good advice, then do it anyway in spite of them being so aggressive when giving the advice. Use that good advice even if it comes from someone you hate.

The idea here is that no matter what people say, you are the one making the choice in the end. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t get guidance and input from others.

There’s a small story that led to this post. Every once in a while, my mom or dad would suggest something to me. It used to be that my first reaction was to rebel in my mind. “They don’t own me! They can’t tell me what to do with my life!”

But it’s a stupid reaction. So I suppressed it. Instead, I thought about the content of the advice. It turns out that they were usually right and that their advice was pretty darn good.

So I think that we all need to be able to do that. To listen to people’s advice and hear their message for what it really is. Afterwards, you can do whatever you want and ruin your own life (just don’t ruin mine). But don’t go out and do something while ignoring everyone’s advice then act all surprised and sad when everything goes bad later.

Yes, you have freedom. No, you shouldn’t use it to do whatever you like.

So when your choices are suddenly limited and filtered out (whether by the situation or by other people), don’t suddenly get angry and complain that your “freedom is being taken away!”. Ask yourself if the good choices were the ones that disappeared. If the only things that disappeared were the bad choices, then perhaps it’s just a teeeeeeny bit useless to get angry about it.

I don’t really want all choices to be open to me. I just want the choices that are right for me to be open to me.

The paradox of choice

After all, it’s actually bad for us when we have too much choice. The paradox of choice states that when there are too many options available to us, we get paralyzed. After all, we want the best choice, right? That also means that we have to research EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. And that simply overwhelms us and paralyzes us.

So I’m actually fine with having my choices limited. As long as the choices that are limited are the ones that were bad for me anyway. So please please start limiting your own choices. The people who feel like they can do anything are the same people who are the dictators and evil governments of the world.

It’s my hope and prayer that when a bad choice comes along, my family and friends would be there to support me. But I don’t want them to support me in whatever choice I make. NO. I want them to support me in choosing what is right. And telling me what is wrong.

And hey, it turns out that I have an awesome family and awesome friends. It seems that it might just work out…

Conclusion: Summing it up, I know that there’s a gray area in making choices where no one is really sure whether it’s right or wrong. That’s NOT what this post is about. This post is about the choices that you know and that everyone knows is wrong, but we somehow want to defend anyway. I don’t think we should.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Making Plans • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Jan 8 2012

When fear stops you from living

You decide based on your emotions. Why? Because emotions tell you what’s important to you.

You only feel strong emotions for something that you care about (whether good or bad).

However, it’s not always good to follow your emotions. You can’t always trust them. Sometimes, you have feelings that you misunderstand. And you start thinking that you love skydiving when, in truth, you actually love the rush it gives you. We’re pretty bad at understanding why we feel something.

Emotions can lead the way and point you toward things that make you feel alive. But then, it’s your job to use logic to figure out which part of that activity actually makes you feel that passion.

The opposite is also true. Sometimes your emotions and desires tell you that you don’t want to do something. But why don’t you want to do it?

Do you NOT want to do something because it hurts you? Or because you’re scared of it? It’s hard to figure out sometimes because our mind’s defences often just want to block out that we are weak. It’s called denial.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I didn’t really want it that much anyway“, when actually you were tearing up inside? Rather than confess that we’re weak/scared of something, we’d rather just say that we didn’t like it anyway.

There’s the problem though. Our mind has already associated fear with weakness. When you’re afraid, or scared of something, it means you’re weak, right? Wrong. When you’re afraid and give in to that fear, that is the problem; but only fears that stop you from living your life and achieving your dreams.

Don’t face your fears

People always say:

You should face your fears

However, I say that you should only face your fears when they stop you from living your dreams. That’s because some fears are fine. Some people are scared of cockroaches, or snakes or spiders. That’s fine; it’s not really a big deal.

For these people, I’d say that having fears is normal. Normal and even healthy. If you aren’t afraid of guns then there’s something wrong with you.

But sometimes… sometimes you’re scared of speaking in public when you really really want to be a good manager. Or you’re scared of publishing your writing even though you really want to share your ideas and make the world a better place. Or you’re scared of opening your own business even though you have a great service that you think will really help people.

THIS is when your fears stop you from living your life and achieving your dreams. And this is when you’ll feel internal conflict. ALL THE TIME. “Torn between two lovers” and all that. And the reason is because you yourself want to do something, and you yourself don’t want to do it.

In that case, the only solution is to change yourself to be yourself.

So what do you do when your fears and dreams conflict?

Priorities: Fears and Dreams

A lot of people have empty dreams. There’s a big discussion that’s going on about the difference between dreams, goals, resolutions, plans, etc. I was sucked into the debate for a time, but now I’ve realized I don’t really care about the definition of the words themselves. I care that people understand that when you want to achieve a goal (plan, dream, whatever), you have to have an extra step, which is to set out the way you’re going to achieve it.

But even before that, you have to know what you’re getting into, if not you’ll never have the motivation to even start. And if you push yourself to start anyway, you’ll lose that motivation before long. Haven’t you noticed how many people make New year’s resolutions and never follow through with them?

To know what you’re getting into, one of the ways is to look at your fears and dreams together, and see whether you’re willing to still chase that dream if you have to face your fears.

Take an afternoon to yourself. Sit somewhere that’s nice and lonely like your bedroom or a grassy field. Don’t do anything but let your mind wander and imagine. Imagine chasing your dream. Imagine what you would be doing on a typical day of you chasing your dream. Then imagine yourself facing your fears as you chase that dream. How would it look like?

Is it worth it? Would you be willing to go ahead with it?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. And neither do you. At least not until you sit yourself down and imagine for yourself whether you’re willing to go through 2 hours of training every day for the next year so that you can get better at basketball. Or whether you can spend 30 minutes a day, 4 times a week, to learn a new language. Or whether you can summon the courage to stand up in front of a small crowd to practice your public speaking skills.

You won’t know until you figure out how important that dream is compared to your fears. Once you figure it out and have your priorities straight, you’ll then have a good idea of which one wins. If your fears scare you more, don’t bother facing them. The dream wasn’t really that important to you anyway (or maybe that fear is just too deep). Or maybe… maybe you just have other more important things in life bigger than that dream. I can definitely respect that.

HOWEVER!, (and this is a big however), if that dream is worth it to you, it’s time to think about ways to face your fear, because that fear is what is keeping you from being a man who feels complete.

It’s not an issue of whether you achieve your dream, or even whether you’re good at it in the first place. You can chase a dream even if you know that you have a high chance of failure.  The issue is about you chasing your dream. When you don’t; when you shy away from that thing in life that calls you like a beacon; you stop believing in yourself. You stop trusting yourself.

And that is something that breaks my heart every time I see it.

Let me put it another way.

How can you be a trustworthy man if you don’t stick to your principles?

Because that is what your dream is; it’s a way to realize your principles (what you truly believe in) and make sure that they happen in the real world.

If you don’t, all you’ll do is regret your life the whole way through and you’ll be one of those people who always talk about “one day” living your dream. Don’t be one of those people. I’m in the journey of moving away from this myself.

Conclusion

So to recap, it’s fine to be afraid of something, when it has nothing to do with your dreams. Because then, it doesn’t really bother your life or affect it in any way. But when fear stops you from living your dream, it’s time for you to work it out.

You don’t owe it to me or anyone else. You owe it to YOURSELF so that you can start living life and stop regretting it.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Setting Goals • 4 • Tags: , , , , ,

Dec 20 2011

The mistake you can learn from… and the mistake you can’t

We are so afraid of making mistakes!

Let me first tell you about my experience in teaching classes, then explore how not making mistakes affects us even after school is over.

Whenever I teach a class or teach a student one-on-one, my biggest obstacle is always to get them to start answering questions. And I know why. Normal school has taught us that if we can’t answer a question correctly, we shouldn’t answer at all!

Every once in a while, I’ll even have a student who has it so bad that I’m forced to reveal to them an amazing truth (it’s actually not that amazing):

You’re coming to this class because you don’t know the answer

It’s fairly obvious but it seems to have been forgotten by the students (and teachers alike). We come to the class and for some reason expect the students to give the correct answer straight away. Ridiculous. They should be expected to get it wrong at first.

However, it’s not entirely the teacher’s fault. If you’re a teacher, you’ll start off loving the job. It’s rewarding, it gives you freedom to choose the way you teach, you get feedback almost instantly… basically it has almost all the characteristics of an excellent job (except for the pay). What’s not to love?

Then after a year of having students who never put in any effort to study, you start to lose interest in trying to teach people who don’t want to learn. After 2 years, you start getting frustrated. As the years go on, you lose patience with those students who keep on giving wrong answers. That’s when you just start lumping them all together with the students who never want to study.

But there’s a fundamental truth about school. School is where you go to learn. Which, by definition, means that you don’t know yet. You can’t be angry at someone for answering a question wrong about something he’s not supposed to know yet.

Obviously, I’m talking about classes here, and not exams. Be as wrong as you like in class, and quizzes, and homework. At that point, the more important fact should be that you’re putting in the effort and learning to do things. You should be angry at someone for not putting in effort, not for getting an answer wrong.

But over the past few years, I’ve heard more and more people saying:

Make as many mistakes as you can so you can learn from them

That’s all fine and well, but it starts giving people an excuse to make mistakes and screw up their life. Hey there! Wait a second… am I supporting mistakes or saying that they can screw up your life?

It turns out that there are 3 different kinds of mistakes that we can do (oh, did the title imply only 2? Oops). We should only really be allowing ourselves to make mistakes in 2. The last mistake is the one that leads us to regret.

The honest mistake

This mistake is the most basic. It’s the kind of mistake you do for trivial things, often because you simply forgot.

Mistakes like forgetting to buy the milk, or being late for an appointment because you got stuck in traffic.

These mistakes aren’t a big deal. They should be worked on though. Notice these mistakes and keep track of them. If you start noticing that you’re doing some of these mistakes over and over again, you’ll have to find a workaround that will fix it.

If you’re always forgetting appointments, get a calendar. If you’re always forgetting where you put your keys, have a designated place to put them and never put them anywhere else. If you’re always 15 minutes late to appointments, go out 15 minutes early.

But the honest mistake is the least of your worries. These mistakes aren’t usually the reason that you start to sit around with your friends wondering what you’re doing with your life.

The mistake that you can learn from

One mistake is the variety of a mistake that happens because you don’t have the skills, or you haven’t learned enough yet. These are fine and this is what is meant when they say,

Make as many mistakes as you can so you can learn from them

OR my favourite way of saying it:

Fail fast and fail often

Failing in this way is an important part of learning. You don’t learn anything from the field until you get into the field. To put it another way, you don’t know what’s important to your project until you actually start the project. If  you do know, it’s because you’ve done it before (and failed and learned from your mistakes before) or you’re smart enough to learn from someone else, whether it be a person or books.

It’s linked very strongly with perfectionist paralysis and making a fast decision. Whenever I notice myself researching too long before making a decision, I know that part of it is the fear of making a mistake. The fear of failure.

To avoid making a mistake, we spend waaayyyy too much time researching and gathering enough information rather than acting and gaining feedback about the choice on the way. Whenever I do this, it’s because I want to do the thing right. And for some reason, that means to me that if I can’t do it right, I shouldn’t do it at all.

And so I go on this endless search for more and more information. Does this sound familiar to you?

But this search can only really be satisfied once I’ve found someone who’s gone through the exact same experience that I can learn from. So what’s actually happening here is that i’m learning from their feedback from the project. Sometimes this is feasible.

At other times, the project is just too new or there’s no one that I know who’s gone through the same thing. What do you do then?

This is when you start the project anyway and learn about the project as it’s going on. Because the truth is that the only way you’ll learn about what is important in a project and what’s needed to make it successful is to go through it, whether through someone else’s experience or your own.

This is when you should make mistakes. And this is when you should learn from them.

The mistake you should never do

So what is this other mistake that you can’t learn from? This other mistake that you should never do?

The mistake that I mean here is the mistake that you make with your life choices. I lied a little. You might actually learn from a mistake made with your life choices, but more often than not, it results in regret that eats away at the soul.

In the skills mistake, no matter how many times you fail, you won’t regret it because it’s all effort being put in the right direction. You’re trying to learn a new skill and failing while learning that is fine, because the goal you have is worth it. Failing in the right direction is a good thing.

But this mistake, this mistake about your life choices, it makes you look back on it, trying to see if you could have done something about it, blaming yourself that your current life is like this due to that ONE mistake.

Here’s the thing, it’s not actually true. People like imagining that if only they were rich, or thinner, or had a job, their life would be perfect just like those people they admire (and envy and hate) because their life is oh-so-perfect. It’s not actually true since having just that one thing probably WON’T solve all their problems. But our human minds will still obsess over that one thing, that one mistake, again and again and again.

So what kind of mistake do I mean when I say mistakes about life choices?

It’s the mistakes you make when you forget your principles and go against them.

It’s the mistakes you make when you go against your core values. If you felt strongly about the environment, how would you feel if you threw trash by the side of the road because you couldn’t find a trash can nearby? I know I know, you wouldn’t. But if you did, you would remember it, the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Or if you thought you were a gentleman, but you made a girl cry. That would pretty much haunt you forever. What if you wanted to be a great parent, but you missed your daughter’s school show?

These are the kinds of mistakes that can go against your core values, whatever they are, and cause regret for a long long time to come.

But the truth is that this 3rd mistake is easy to avoid. You can either set a goal and know what you want or set your parameters and know how to guide your life. Have core values. Avoid regret.

Knowing what you regret BEFORE you regret it

At this point, my words might not seem feasible. To not have regret, you have to avoid the things that would make you regret. To do that, you would first have to make a “mistake” and experience it first. That’s the only way to know what you would regret. Right?

If you’re guessing that I said wrong, then congratulations. You’re starting to figure me out.

You can figure out what you’ll regret in the same way that you can figure out what will make you passionate. Notice what you feel strongly about. When you do something, or when you hear about somebody else doing something, notice what you feel strongly about.

For example, if you feel strongly about children, then it might be best to stay away from abortions. And if you feel strongly about your religion, perhaps it’s best to stay away from the sins your religion has. Do you feel strongly about honesty? Don’t lie to friends and family (lying on surveys is usually considered ok. I’ll forgive you for that).

Here are some ways to figure out what you feel strongly about:

  1. Go out and experience life. Notice how you feel about things.
  2. Talk to friends. Hear their stories. Notice what you feel as you hear them.
  3. When meeting people, ask them their stories. People love to tell you their stories. Most of the time they’re quite interesting.  Ask why they did what they did. Ask them if they ever regretted doing [fill in the blanks here]. Again, notice if you felt strongly about any part of their stories.
  4. Read books.

I’ve honestly learnt the most about myself from listening to stories of others. It doesn’t hurt that I love stories and that I love learning about people. Especially when a senior speaks, they have so much to tell from their lives that it’s always a joy to sit and listen to what they have to say. You can’t just let them talk though.

I’ve learnt to ask the questions I want so that they tell me about what their life was like, and why they chose what they chose. I don’t know why friends of my age (25-ish) are bored listening to their elders. I love it.

By listening to them tell their tales, I can then notice the times when I have the urge to stop them and say,“No! You should have done this instead.” But you see, that was their life. That was how they wanted to live it. And now I know that if the same situation ever happened to me, I’d know which choice would feel right to me. Which choice would fit in with my core values.

Over time the picture of your core values, of your principles, becomes clearer and clearer.

Once you figure it out, making a choice becomes much easier. If a decision ever goes against any of your core values, reject that decision immediately. It’s that simple. No more thought required. The moment you go against your core values is the moment you start to regret your choices.

And when you regret that choice, you’ll learn a little something about yourself, but it’ll just be too little too late.

Don’t screw up your life. Don’t make mistakes that you’ll have no time to learn from (and even if you did, would be useless because it’s too late). Learn what would make you regret.

Then…

…DON’T make that mistake.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Reflections • 3 • Tags: , , , , , ,

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