6 rules I live by

I have created a list of 6 rules that somewhat serves as the foundation of my beliefs and morals that I started to apply to my life and practise everyday after becoming a more intentional person, and I have been trying to expose myself to more growth and self-improvement type of movies, documentaries and books and I have been collecting some really great lessons that I have taken from them and decided to apply to my everyday life and make them my own source of guide.

Hopefully there will be a thing or two that you can take from and decide to implement to your life especially when you’re feeling excessive stress or feel lost on life.

1-Altruism for ultimate happiness

(selfless concern for the well-being of others)

What this means is, you do something for the sake of somebody else to be happy.

"A society becomes better when and old man plant trees shade of which he knows he will never sit on." // from Afterlife

When you engage in a selfless behaviour, so when you hold the door for someone, compliment somebody’s outfit, carry an old person’s heavy bags, the chances are, you will feel a little happier as well. There is a great 2 minute long animation called Mr. Indifferent (here) that I will put here, so you can just stop, watch, and be right back.

So altruism is not entirely selfless, you may start for the wrong reasons, but it sure does help everyone out at the end. “When you’re feeling helpless, the secret is to help someone else.” I noticed that when I get out of my head and decide to do one little thing for somebody else and it’s animals for me, always, I end up feeling a little better. There is in fact a study made on this, so it’s actually scientifically proven that I will link below if you want to read, it basically says that the amount of satisfaction we get from random acts of kindness is in fact more than when we do something for ourselves (which is a great way to boost your mood)

And you know what, it is contagious. “A true act of kindness always sparks another.” So for that, you may not be interested in animations but everyone I suggested absolutely loved it, it was also nominated for the academy, so you can go ahead and watch “Klaus” on Netflix. When I started practising more altruism, I realized there is an innate desire for me to help people and animals and I think everyone is pretty much the same.

2-We are the waves of the same sea.

All feelings we have, we think belong to us, but are ubiquitous. What this means is, anger, sadness, joy, happiness, embarrassment, they can be found everywhere. Since the beginning of time, we have been divided, to groups, to races, to genders, to groups that support Manchester vs Liverpool, conservatives vs democrats this vs that we have been fighting against each other for SO LONG.

There is a part in the show The Good Place that really explains it for me. “As humans evolved, the first big problem we had to overcome was ‘me vs us.’ Learning to sacrifice little individual freedom for the benefit of a group. The next problem to overcome was us vs them. Trying to see other groups different from ours as equals. That’s why we have racism and nationalism and things like that.”

Side not:Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite people

As Celeste Headlee says, today, we are more divided than we ever have been in the history. But if there is anything we can take from today, covid 19 does not only affect a certain group. So we all suffer the same way. So what I understand is, the absolute desire to fit ourselves into a group and feel belonging is an act of ignorance. When I look at the bigger picture I see that a lot of people do this and it does no good to them.

3-Worry about your character, not your reputation, as John Wooden says.

Focus on how you see yourself, not how others think of you. There is a saying that goes “I am not what I think I am, I am not what you think I am, I am what I think you think I am.” We live inside our brains and assume what people think of us, see us and create this persona based on that. We care a lot about others’ thoughts. For all I know, in order to get fame and reputation we can do a bunch of weird stuff, but what does that really say about you as a person? When you stop people pleasing and your need for validation, then you can live a more free life.

4-Beauty is way too overrated.

If you look at yourself and not see someone worthy of love or respect because of the shape of your body or nose lips or nose, to like yourself more, you don’t need plastic surgery, you need therapy.

A lot of companies made us this way so that they could feed off of our insecurities and inner critic constantly telling us we are ugly. As John Mayer said “congratulations on your face” so what’s next? Maybe cause I myself am not standart pretty that’s why I had time to think about these things and I am not justifying unhealthy eating choices and lifestyles and aside from that, you do you. At the end of the day you need to be happy in your own body. And the best way to understand this is, unless you’re a complete psycho, you don’t look at a baby and go “that kid is an uggo, absolutely disgusting.” So what happens within 15-20 years that we end up feeling not worthy, not lovable? And if you jugde someone based on the shape of their eyes or nose or hips, you need to work out a few things in life. As Taryn Brummfit said in her ted talk, we ruminate over our so called imperfections, pretend it’s the biggest tragedy, but it’s not. The real tragedy is poverty, racism, cruelty, lack of education. So I think we need to shift the amount of time we spend on ourselves and more time on how we can become better versions of ourselves, character-wise. And it’s never too late for that. Never.

5-Psychology and philosophy help us make sense of the owrld.

When we read about these 2 subjects, we see the patterns in human lives, our actions and what they’re based on, and don’t feel so caught up on our own personal dramas. For examples when you or somebody gets angry, realize that they’re just hurting and probably in pain, feeling sad. Sadness makes you feel weak so you don’t want that and project it into anger. Or that when we fall in love and suffer from it, it’s probably because of the idea of romanticism that was implemented on our brains from all the novels and movies and how we all need to be with someone, and also because we lack self-love and compassion, thing like that, you know. I still have a lot more to read.

/that's why everybody hates moral philosophers!/

And last, but definitely not least is;

6-Embarrassment is useless.

I want you to remember something embarrassing someone did now. The thing is, most of you probably can’t, because we don’t remember others’ lives. So this is my take, when you feel scared or embarrassed, just remember that no one is going to remember your embarrassing moments, cause everyone is occupied with themselves. So remember, no matter how scared you get, don't let fear get in your way.

(I took this advice from Charisma on Command on YouTube)