The Four Agreements

Just read The Four Agreements.

The book The Dynasty reveals that Brady highly approves of the philosophy espoused in The Four Agreements. TB is relatively successful - if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

Truthfully, it has been on my radar for years but I hesitated to buy it because most of the self-help stuff I read in the past turned out to be trash. It didn't help me to help myself at all. Although I gotta accept some of the blame. You can't read these books like a Stephen King book - you gotta get brilliantly inspired, then jump out of your chair and commence to self-improving.

I never did that, even with the books that made sense to me. Numbness is a great way to survive but not so helpful when it comes to making change.

I like Eckhart Tolle, I've read some of his stuff, weird looking little man that he is, although his brain obviously functions at a higher level than mine does. I liked Matthew McConaughey's book, except for the jacking-off dreams thing. Point is, I liked these books but kept on whining and regressing anyway.

Anyway, I'm feeling desperate lately. My approach to saving my life right now is like a guy who falls out of his rubber raft and realizes he's drifting towards a massive waterfall. He's paddling frantically trying to get to shore, but it's fifty fifty whether he makes it or goes over the edge. So I said "What the fuck" and bought the book.

Glad I did. My impression on the first run-through (it's a small book) is that I connected with all the negative things Ruiz points out that people do to themselves, essentially because of what they believe. Self-sabotage. That is definitely me.

I also like the fact that he says everything we were taught growing up - by parents, in schools, in churches - is all a lie. Because the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself and what works for you.

You have to fucking know who you are to be happy.

In other words, we are all just by-products of how and what we are taught because when we are taught these things we are impressionable. But they become hard and fast rules in our minds, rules that perfectly disrupt our ability to just be ourselves and be happy. And we are taught these things by people who are fucked up in their own heads because of what they were taught and who they turned out to be.

Fighting back, clawing your way back to who you really are, is hard work because you don't realize how fucked up you are - you think you are naturally being you - but you're not.

Here's what's wrong with us:

We do not speak with integrity, and do not say what we really mean. We take everything personally, instead of taking nothing personally. We make assumptions instead of dealing with facts. We do not always do our best.

I can relate to all that.

The core of fighting back against all this, at least as far as what I got from the first read, is to get to a place where you love and trust yourself - then it does not matter what anyone else thinks of you, or says to you. You know who you are, and if someone goes negative on your ass it is a reflection of their own misconceptions, fears and weaknesses, and has nothing to do with you.

But to get there, you have to untangle all of these fucked-up thoughts in your head that are handcuffing you from living and enjoying your life.

I get that. I know my diseased brain is my worst enemy - if I can get it under control and change my perspective, I can be a whole different me.

I have been paying attention to negative thoughts today. I've been up for 7 hours and have had 250,000 negative thoughts. Almost every thought in my skull is negative.

There's urgent work to be done. Because I hear a deep, loud, and ominous rumble ahead of me.

Shit, man - that waterfall's gotta be half a mile high. 

Sounds like fucking Krakatoa exploding.