Living a life true to yourself (important article)

(27-minute read)

This article will be a wake-up call for you in many ways. I would say especially if you think you already have your shit together, this piece definitely applies to you, so keep reading…

By the way, the “Fuck count” for this article is 41, so if you’re too conservative, rigid, or old to read this piece, I’m giving you a heads-up now.

I’m going to talk about independence in the form of caring less about what other people think, and I’ll discuss my own life experience as far as once having cared too much about what others thought, and how I transitioned out of it.

Now that I’m able to finally think for myself, I can objectively reflect a bit better, not just with respect to my own life, but also in regard to others in general.

Independence has many pillars (i.e., finances, preferences, your living situation, general life decisions, etc.).

These develop as we gradually break the bonds of dependence from our parents while growing up. It would be great to think that all of our pillars are completely squared away and standing high as we become adults. In reality, these things take years to mature, and for some people, they never do.

I would actually contend that making truly independent decisions, where we really don’t give a fuck about what other people think, is in fact the least prevalent form of independence across the population, not just in Western countries, but in the world.

I’m serious when I say that most people don’t even begin to consider that they live out their lives making their biggest decisions tethered to the impressions or judgments of one or two people (usually a parent).

When we’re young, we tend to care about what everyone thinks. Then as we get older, even after we think we’ve moved past all of that, maybe we’re still unwittingly held back by one of our parents or siblings.

For instance, in my case, it took me reaching the age of 28, as well as a year and a half of seeing a psychologist, to realize that my decisions regarding career were almost exclusively linked to seeking my father’s approval.

Despite being incredibly independent in the sense that I had moved all the way to Australia by myself and had been accepted into med school before telling anyone I had even applied, I was nevertheless engaged in an incipient life path caring heavily about the judgments and views of one person. My pillars of independence bore strong asymmetry.

How many fucking people do you know who are so “passionate” about going into some prestigious career path (e.g., medicine, law), when in reality, they have no fucking clue about life to even arrive at the basis for that decision in the first place. You don’t see many people ardent about going into nursing or paralegal. Why? Because most people are fucking hypocrites who chase the cash and prestige.

(If you’re a nurse or paralegal, I’m defending, not insulting, you here. I’m saying you’re not a fucking hypocrite chasing extrinsic validators.)

And by the way, I don’t mean to come off as a cynical and defensive asshole criticizing people as though they have intrinsic weakness. I’m not intending to make blanket statements that all doctors and lawyers must be hypocritical or superficial in some way. But there is veracity surrounding society’s general pursuit of prestige and money. When people don’t know what they want in life, their default setting naturally falls under the envelope of comfort and what’s socially approbatory.

I went through all of it myself. Trust me. So if anything, I still carry some residual frustration knowing that I lived so many years of my life making my decisions for the wrong reasons.

So many people in this world are held back by others’ judgments, and they really shouldn’t be. It’s only when they get to 70 or 80 that they finally say, “Fuck, why didn’t I just live a life true to myself.” (And how cliché does that sound by the way. Well clichés exist for a fucking reason.)

My advice is to not wait until you’re an elderly schmuck to finally start doing what you want to do with your life. What are you waiting for. Stop fucking caring about what people in your life supposedly think and just DO/GO.

You’d be amazed that the vast majority of the world, including those who are supposedly “close” to you, don’t actually give a fuck about you or your life. Now I know that might sound sad and depressing, but it’s simultaneously a refreshing and awesome thing.

Decisions and life events in your bubble that are such a big deal to you mean close to nothing to basically everyone else.

When you tripped coming down the stairs at the cafe last week and were all embarrassed about it, and now you don’t want to go back to that cafe; chances are, people didn’t even remember it moments later anyway.

When I moved to Australia at the age of 22, during my first one or two years there, practically no one back home in America actually asked me about how I was doing. This included several “friends” from college who never reached out at all. My thought would sometimes be: how could they not care?

For me, moving all the way across the fucking world and starting med school was a huge, huge deal. To everyone else? They were too busy with their own shit to think twice about it. Maybe I was a bit delayed, but it was probably some time during this stage that I realized the world really didn’t revolve around me.

In other words, you can make your decisions knowing that no one’s judging you. And of those people “close” to you who seem offended or critical of the things you do, it’s only because they’re worried about how what you do might inadvertently affect them, or their emotional state. It’s not even about you.

If people in your life are upset with you for changing gears, that’s their fucking issue. If one of your siblings suddenly came out as LGBT, you wouldn’t disown him or her, rather you’d embrace instead. Well if you decide one day that you want to give up your lucrative, boring-as-fuck job in order to move to Iceland to climb volcanoes, and mom and dad (or wifey) think you’ve lost your head and are bipolar type-II, they’ll handle it.

If people don’t accept you for what you’re doing with your life, or if they are antagonistic toward you for your decisions, that’s an immaturity they themselves have to grapple with. Not your fucking issue.

The problem is it often requires getting significantly into adulthood before you realize that everyone else is fucked up in his or her own way, and no one’s opinion or view in life matters but yours. And by then, you’re already entrenched in many of your habits, or have already established various enclaves of stability, and the notion that you could just give up whatever you’ve invested your energies into in order to start something new can be very challenging to consider. 

Your biggest obstacle preventing you from doing what you want in life is actually you, and your own thoughts, not anything or anyone else.

If other people give you shit, or if you’re afraid that they might, you really have to keep a cool head and face antagonism calmly by making statements such as, “Well people naturally have different perspectives and views on life, and ultimately it would be nice to see you accept my decisions.”

And if people seem to not be able to accept your decisions, you tell them they don’t really have a choice. You have to be firm and hold your ground. It’s your life. And if that still doesn’t work, just let those people go. If those people are your parents or siblings, just let them go temporarily. They’ll eventually get over their own apprehension surrounding your choices.

You never need to convince anyone of your course in life. Your life is not a debate. It’s not a democracy. It’s not ruled by anyone but you. So there’s no explaining you need to do. Understand that it is NORMAL for people to not agree with or understand your life decisions.

If people don’t see eye-to-eye with you when it comes to what you want out of life, always keep your cool. Allow them to go their separate way if they can’t handle it. Don’t try to convince them of anything.

Especially when it comes to “friends,” you’ll make and filter for like-minded ones depending on what you choose to do. “Friends” come and go. But true friends will stand by you no matter what, so don’t worry about anyone who seems conditional or flaky.

When it comes to family, the relationships you have are almost always unconditional. So if there appears to be a circumstance or boundary that tests that unconditionality (e.g., mom’s going to disown you because you want to leave the family business in order to move to Berlin, fuck around, and go to all-night electronic dance clubs), it’s often transient anyway.

Meaning: accept negative fluctuation as inherent to the unconditional relationships in your life. This may entail temporarily distancing yourself from certain people if they are antagonistic toward or upset with you. Tell them that whilst you’re open to hearing their, at times, critical perspectives, they MUST accept your decisions.

The last thing you should ever do is justify your life to anyone.

Never feel the need to defend your choices. Make your decisions for you. And if people aren’t happy/are discontent, they can go fuck themselves.

In order to truly not give a fuck about the views and judgments of others in your life, you have to simultaneously hold the courage to walk away from them if they’re unaccepting.

Mom and dad aren’t happy?

I’m serious.

For instance, when I started this blog, the bulk of my articles were about dating and picking up women, which hit my family like an ICBM out of North Korea, considering I haven’t lived in the US in over eight years and they didn’t know about my heavily promiscuous lifestyle during my 20s.

As far as they were concerned, I was some timid conformist embarking on a respectable career as a hospital doctor.

So the choice they were presented with was: accept me for what I wanted to write about, despite not liking it, or I’d just let them go. And for the time being, I’ve just allowed them to go. My mentality is: give people time to adjust; they’ll come around.

When my uncle came out as gay probably 35 years ago, my grandfather threatened to kick his ass and didn’t talk to him for two years. But now he and my grandfather have a great relationship. So yeah, people will come around to my blog. They don’t have to like it, but they’ll come around.

Likewise, when I graduated medical school and decided to give up hospital medicine altogether in order to move to Japan, bum around, and become fluent in Japanese, people in my life didn’t remotely understand. They all thought I was “burned out” from medicine, or experiencing some sort of post-traumatic stress. What was really annoying actually was the general presumption that something in my life must have been wrong or adverse. They figured I was in a negative mental state of some kind.

That’s because most people can’t imagine drastic life change for themselves as a function of their own initiative. They imagine that the only way to make big change in life is to experience an external, adverse stimulus of some kind. Yeah, adverse stimuli are often the driving force for life change, and I’ve experienced my fair share, but they’re not a mandatory, fundamental requirement. 

If you’re waiting for some kind of external stimulus in order to start your life, you’re essentially saying your decisions must be the passive result of factors out of your control.

I’ll be straight with you. I think it’s largely my history of approaching lots of women that has given me the confidence to be bold, not just in that realm, but with my actual life. People can’t relate to my forwardness with women the same way they can’t relate to my forwardness in life. When I said, “Nope, not interested in hospital medicine. I’m moving to Japan to bum around.” No one understood.

The same way I’m not afraid to approach an attractive woman when there’s a surrounding audience, I don’t hesitate to just live my fucking life.

The audacity (or fear) you carry with respect to the decisions you make in one area of your life has a tendency to positively (or negatively) reinforce other areas of your life.

In other words, you’ll find that not giving a fuck doesn’t just apply to one alleyway or channel in your life; it’s a mindset that opens you up to liberation and mobility in all other areas.

If you’re afraid to approach and talk to someone you’re interested in (which is probably the hardest thing to do for most people anyway), you’re probably afraid to make bold moves in other areas of your life, and vice-versa.

You have to remember that your decisions are in your own control.

You don’t believe me? I’ll book the flight and hostel for you. Tell your boss you’re sick. He or she will handle it. 

If the idea of the above scenario seems incomprehensible and juvenile to you because you feel bogged down by responsibility, my advice especially applies to you:

Stop fucking worrying about everything in your life and just fucking live. I’m serious. Stop fucking worrying.

The extent to which people understand your route in life is irrelevant. You’ve got to just make decisions for you. I’ll reiterate once more that you should never have to convince anyone of your decisions in life.

Your choices are yours. They’re not open for discussion.

When we consider that the vast majority of people live out their lives looking for social validation and parental approval, there’s no singular person or persons who is/are to blame. It’s a chain-effect, where an individual simply imparts the same (or similar) blueprint to his or her kids that he or she was the recipient of. Parents often set their kids up to be weak decision-makers imploring for approval, likely because they themselves didn’t receive good guidance from their own parents.

I grew up in middle-upper-class Jewish suburbia in New York. Not just I, but a large handful of people I know from Hebrew school, or from the Jewish community at large, went to med school. There’d be someone I hadn’t spoken to for years, whom I’d ask about through the grapevine, and I’d hear, “Oh yeah, she went to med school.”

My thinking would be, “Yeah, no fucking shit she went to med school. Here we have yet another person who’s a victim of needing parental approval.”

It’s important to take full responsibility for everything in our lives, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that vertical causation actually exists. Ignoring it doesn’t make us more mature; it makes us more ignorant. It’s okay to acknowledge that the way we think, both in positive and negative ways, is significantly impacted by our parents. Get over it. 

I advocate that once you identify why you’re supposedly fucked up in some way (and we’re all fucked up), you take full responsibility and move forward with your life. You can’t dwell and play the victim forever, especially if you’ve hit 30.

I’m not saying blame your parents. I am saying, however, that it is healthy to draw links to why your thought processes and behaviors are a certain way, even if that means pointing the finger at mom or dad. It’s only after we identify causation that we can actually move on and be our own people.

Don’t blame your parents for shit. But if drawing a causative link to why your adult character is a certain way means pointing the finger at a person or two, that’s OK. Once again, this isn’t blame. Identifying the sources of your own behavior is the first step in enacting change. 

You need to find the most upstream source, or most significant underlying reason for, your thought processes and behaviors.

If that sounds a bit nebulous, take this point for instance:

If you had a first-grade teacher who slapped you across the face with a ruler and dumped your desk once a week, that would probably change your adult personality in some way. Then, when you’re 28 and finally realize Mrs. Jackson is the reason you’re scared to speak up in front of people, that’s not blaming her – it’s not saying, “She’s the reason I have problems in life and I’m a victim” – it’s merely identifying a causative link, and that’s healthy. Drawing links isn’t always convenient when we’re trying to take full responsibility for who we are, but it’s necessary if we want to resolve any psychological issues we have.

Once I identified my behavior as the result of constantly seeking my father’s approval, I was able to gradually take responsibility and move past it. I saw that the reason I was seeking approval from him was because I had never received any praise from him growing up, so my actions were always structured to chase his affirmation.

I was able to realize this was the causation because any time I encountered a life situation that entailed, or could have entailed, a possible achievement for me, the first thought that would come into my mind was always, “How would my dad view this?” Or, “What would my dad think about this?” Or, “How would my dad be seeing this situation through his eyes?”

The way I moved past this phase of my life was by explicitly communicating with him my issues and what my thoughts were.

I didn’t hide my thoughts. That would have only built resentment. We spoke via email alone for probably four or five months because any phone conversation would quickly spiral out of control for both of us.

I realized that it’s only after you communicate your issues that they become external and are no longer as big of a deal. Because not just this issue, but others I had, when I started talking to different people about them, I coincidentally noticed they were no longer in my “issues” category anymore. They were just normal, albeit personal, talking points.

The degree to which any self-perceived issues are kept strictly internal is directly proportional to how big of a deal you consider them to be. 

If you have certain issues that you never talk to anyone about, even with the closest people in your life, because they still feel too personal, try first talking to a psychologist about them.

And yes, I know as soon as people here the word “psychologist,” they say, “Fuck that.” But hear me out:

A good psychologist will say one or two words, or maybe a single, short sentence every so often so that you can continue along your thought stream.

It’s your spontaneous continuation along your thought stream that leads you to eventually drawing causation. It’s the closed and confidential environment of being one-on-one with someone prodding/redirecting you deeper into your thought stream that is conducive to unraveling your issues.

Self-reflection is great, but it’s easy to get distracted. And you can have these conversations with people in real life – people who listen well – but I’m saying a psychologist can play an effective role when the stuff you want to talk about feels too personal to discuss, even with a person close to you.

In other words, in my opinion, a good psychologist doesn’t say jack shit and stays consistently in a state of shutting the fuck up. That allows you to continue deeper into drawing causation.

Once I started talking with someone about issues I supposedly had, they slowly became less of a big deal. That gave me the courage to talk to people here and there who were not my psychologist. Then, before I knew it, I was able to talk to people in every day life about things that before I couldn’t get off my chest at all.

When I gained clarity on why I was so career driven, it occurred to me that most people go into socially acceptable career paths because they’re seeking approval. Plain and simple. I began to see it everywhere. And I wasn’t just biased because of the nascence of my own realization. I could see plain as day that many med students and doctors around me were in the career for the wrong reasons. You’ll get a lot of rationalizing, but it’s the truth.

What you really need is for mom and dad to raise their kids saying:

“You pursue whatever the fuck you want in life. And don’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks. Don’t give a fuck about what I think. And especially don’t give a fuck about what your ‘friends’ think. Live your life as you want, for the aspirations you spawn autonomously, and if people have a problem with that, they can go fuck themselves. If I ever come off antagonistic toward how you want to live your life, you can tell me that I should go fuck myself.”

If a child of mine ever told me to go fuck myself because I was genuinely and truly antagonistic toward his or her pursuits/interests in some way, I’d probably turn around a few hours later and say, “Yeah, this kid is a straight-shooter.” 

People generally follow a cookie-cutter template in life: go to school, get married, have a family, and find a career that they’re “passionate” about for 30-40 years, before retiring to a beach or golf course somewhere.

I slowly realized I didn’t really care about career so much, even in general. In other words:

What need did I have to pursue career so ambitiously?

I began to formulate my viewpoint on career as a blind attempt by most people to assign arbitrary value or legacy to their lives, when in reality, no matter what you do in life that’s so “incredible,” in 50 years nobody will care who you are or what you did anyway, so you’re just wasting your time.

Really? You actually give a fuck about pharmacy? No you don’t. That’s how you want to spend the rest of your life? How do you know? Why fucking pharmacy.

Chances are, you have no fucking idea what you want to do with your time, and the only reason you went into pharmacy in the first place was because it seemed socially acceptable and lucrative enough.

I’m an incredible skeptic of people who are heavily career driven because I was there myself and know it’s bullshit. I was hardcore about medicine, trust me, and nobody could have convinced me otherwise. When I finally freed myself from realizing wealth, legacy and approval don’t actually matter, my behavior was liberated.

It was the state of no longer chasing anyone’s approval that led me to ask the unprecedented question: “what do I really want to do in life?”

For the first time, I started thinking about what I actually wanted to do for me, not anyone else.

I decided that, rather than career, I was interested in investing a lot more into real life experiences.

I started traveling a lot more – I went to Fiji, the Maldives, New Caledonia, Tazmania, etc. – the list goes on.

I came to a huge revelation that you don’t need a lot of money to have the life experiences you’re supposedly looking for.

Although, yes, money can help buy certain experiences, people often forgo the vast majority of them anyway because they spend 40+ hours a week working.

For instance, I could make 20K a year living a minimalistic lifestyle bumming around in East Asia, and acquire a breadth of life experience and language acquisition that somebody making 400K in the US couldn’t conceive of. If anything, the guy making 400K probably strives for that income in order to get his week off in winter and summer………so that he can travel to East Asia and bum around a little.

Sure, money might get you a house and car. But why do you need those things? If you don’t need them, suddenly you don’t need to work so hard to maintain them either. For me personally, I would actually be more stressed out needing to deal with maintaining them. I’d be like, “How do I get rid of these things as quickly as possible?”

When you realize that you don’t need a lot of money to acquire amazing life experiences, that frees up your decisions to do things that really matter to you. You’re no longer in the default setting of needing to have a “high” income as a prerequisite for everything else.

You have way more fucking flexibility to do the things you want in life than you realize. Stop saying no as your default setting; start saying YES. And if that sounds cheesy to you, handle it, because it’s fucking true.

When you ask people what they’d do with money if they had a lot of it, they’ll almost always start out by saying some material things (i.e., nice house, car, etc.). But what does everyone’s list always eventually lead to? And I’m serious. Always:

Travel. Learning. And new experiences

I talked to a friend of mine who’s just begun a lucrative medical career. He and I were actually classmates in medical school. I asked him what he would do if he had 75 million dollars and never had to worry about money ever again.

His answer was: travel and live in Thailand for 3-4 months, get a small fishing hut on a beach somewhere and spend 3-4 weeks there just thinking. Then after that, travel some more, pick up different languages, etc. He said medicine would take a back seat. Maintaining the knowledge fractionally was a positive consideration, but the priority suddenly went from 97% to maybe 5%.

Yet here he was just having purchased a house and car and was spending 70+ hours a week on medicine.

When he asked what I would do if I had 75 million dollars, my answer was:

Exactly what I’m doing now.

I’d be a bum in Japan meeting new people, eating and drinking random things, picking up the language, etc. Then after, perhaps I’d move to another country, like South Korea. Who knows.

And what will I do later in life?

Whatever I feel like at that point.

Not everything you do in life has to have a long-term goal attached to it. If everything you do must be goal-oriented in some way, you’ll never branch out in life. You can go to Anchorage just because you want to look at some trees and say, “Yeah, those are Alaskan trees. Cool.” It doesn’t have to be a situation where you’re like, “Yes, I’m going to Alaska in order to enroll in university for x, y, and z reasons. Then after that, I’m going to do a, b, and c.” You need to not think so much and just do.

As I said, not everything you do in life has to have some fucking goal attached to it. Just do it.

And, once again, don’t worry about the money so much.

When you finally realize that a lot of money isn’t required for amazing life experiences, you’ll begin to view it as less important, and your behavior will follow. Suddenly you’ll feel okay giving away a lot of it because you realize you don’t need as much for yourself anymore.

How many people do you know with nice houses and good incomes who never donate?

It’s not because they’re bad people; it’s because they think money is too important to give away.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m some perfect person, but I’ve comfortably donated >20% of my savings to different causes (i.e., various cancer foundations/research [e.g., breast, pancreatic], the Obama foundation, the Center for Human Genetics in Boston, my sister’s ex-husband’s band, etc.).

Interesting how not giving a fuck about what other people think factored into me caring less about money and career, and in turn that actually made me a more generous person.

In closure:

My advice is to not give a fuck about what others think, live a minimalistic lifestyle, and just travel. If you’re married and have kids, make it a journey for all of you. Change the kids’ schools if you need to. If your wife isn’t keen, find a new wife. If you’re concerned about your job, take an abeyance and trek around in Asia or South America for a bit. Teach English to support yourself if you have to. After all, you don’t even like pharmacy anyway, so it’s a win-win.

Meet people who give you new perspectives on life. Acquire diverse knowledge. Acquire experiences. Abdicate an assiduous focus on career and income. Don’t focus on legacy. Any legacy you leave will be secondary and an incidental outcome of pursuing things that are important to you.

I’m passionate about conveying my message here because I want to see people live a life for themselves and not for anyone else. I believe that a focus on life experiences over material possession will unlock tremendous happiness for you. There’s really nothing holding you back as much as you think. If you want to go to Anchorage tomorrow, or even today, you could just go.

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