Count your Failure!

I reached the realization that failure is the natural state of the world. Whenever you are learning something you always start with failure, why do we expect to perform that task perfectly when that is basically a miracle.

It is part of the confusion that goes with your abuse, whenever you punish someone for the normal or good situations you create confusion in that persons mind. So now we resist the normal outcome of our actions, which in becomes an emotional blockage that slows you down or disables you.

If honesty is the way you start your mental recovery process, being necessary for the end of your denial as well as getting you more accurate feedback on what skills you need to put your time and energy in. The way you end your recovery process is through normalizing failure. Because your emotional pain is caused by loss the way you are going to stop the loss is through acquiring new skills and the process of skills acquisition requires failure.

If in the past when you worked at acquiring a skill you were focused on success, this made the work that you needed to put in to that skill hard and viciously painful. By putting your attention on how many times do you have to fail before you reached success not only is going to remove all your emotional blockages, but is also going to make you happy because you realize that you haven't deviated from the course, you are actually right on track.

My definition of success is:

Success is the distillation of reality through failure.          

 Think about it, if in order to be successful you have to know what works, because when you truly know something is almost impossible to don't practice it. And the way you really determine what reality is you have to test multiple ideas out of which most of them are just wrong. So then the more ideas you test out the more chances you have to figure out what is real.

Set Appropriate Goals

So how should your goals look like when you embrace failure as normal part of the process. It is important to put the focus on how many time you will have to repeat a certain task rather on how quick you will accomplish something.

Let's say you are learning to ride a bike instead of setting a goal that sound like:"i should be a able to ride pretty well by noon today". You first have to get specific over what are you going to practice. Let's say you are going to practice balance, as a normal consequences of learning balance on a bike for the first time you will of course fail today so the second variable to set about your goal is how many time are you dispose to fail at balancing on a bike today.    

The formula is:

Specific goal + Technique + no. of failed repetitions = reality/success

Like this you remove the emotional blockage that you might have, that will make the process longer or stop it entirely. Also because you are not confuse about the fact that you are somehow deviated from the track of accomplishing your goal, you will be generally happy working towards making yourself better. 

The World is Made Out of Crushed Souls!

The natural state of the world is one of failure, disappointment and eventually death. It was always like this, and i have no reason that it will change any sooner.

So if the statement form above is true how can you ever have any chance of living a happy life?

My definition of happiness is that: happiness is the emotional reward for the effort in the pursuit of pleasure. The big mistake that a lot of people make is that they believe that they will be happy when they become successful, in reality success offers only temporary satisfaction. This is the mechanic that feeds the addictive behaviors. Is an attempt to compensate for the lack of happiness in someone life with pleasure. Pleasure is different and has other purpose, it is the reward received at the end for successfully accomplishing a task like for example eating, or receiving your salary.    

Happiness is the emotional reward you get from the attempt of accomplishing this end goals, because it requires hard work and a semnificant energy expansion, in order to keep you motivated in doing the work your body rewards you for the actually work. While simultaneously still gives you feedback for your progress in the moment, it is like a game of hot and cold with emotions when you are getting closer to your goal you get to feel god before you accomplish your goal, when you start to get farther away from your goal you experience negative emotions like anger, frustration, depression, disappointment etc.  

This making happiness a variable emotion that fluctuates from minute to minute from day to day. What brings a lot of unhappiness in people life is the confusion left over from the abuse they suffered in the past. This was inflicted through the process of punishment and reward like this you received a negative reinforcement for a normal or positive action. Like for example when you was in school and received bad grades whenever you failed a test. Because it is normal to fail i could argue that this is how human being learn, but the feedback you received from the outside was negative making you believe that you deviated from the course when in fact you are right on track.


One of the biggest tragedy that ever happened in the history of the humanity was the implementation and use of external punishment and rewards, it is what the education system is based on in most countries, and is literally destroying people capacity to be resilient. After all externally controlling someone is a the definition of abuse.

What makes happiness really last is realizing that failure is a normal part of life and is unavoidable, Like  this whenever you fail and receive some negative feedback from your body you realize that this is normal part of life and you are still on course and after your negative emotion and bodily sensation past you can restore to a state of being generally happy.

Self-Preservation

If you suffered from chronic abuse chances are that you are really bad at self-preservation. Because the purpose of abuse is to create a win-lose dynamic, this being done to you repeatedly creates a lot of bad habits that will keep someone self-sabotaging even after the abuse is over.

 So what is self preservation? In a nutshell self-preservation is ones capacity to take care of himself.

It is not selfishness is simply the recognition of the responsibility you have for your body and happiness. In order to consider self-preservation selfish is when is done at the expense of other people happiness. Self-preservation at any cost is the definition of evil. Just because you are taking care of yourself doesn't mean that you have to hurt other

There are two aspects of self-preservation: 

1. The first aspect is the way you interact with yourself, like for example if you have any vices or virtues.

If you have had a vice for a long period of time this generally happens true the suppression of the truth. Which maintains your confusion about your felling not associating the action you take with the bad emotions. And the way to restore your capacity to self-preserve is true a commitment to be honest with yourself and the people around you.

Like most of the ancient classic philosophers argued to do is to know. When you really know something is it hard to really don`t act upon it because your emotions change.

2. The second aspect of self-preservation is how you interact with other people.

Likely the solution is pretty much the same as in the first case, only that here you have to be honest with others. The magic word for the most part is NO, which is starting to become a lost art in to our culture.Turning down people when you consider the trade unfair is key, this can be simply done true being honest with them.

The antidote to manipulation is honesty. If someone is making you do something that is unfair most likely than not you will get an appropriate emotion from your body. Rather than making excuses or lying to them i found out that is the best to just tell them how you fell. My mantra when i am in a similar situation like this, to say something between the line: "i don't feel comfortable doing that".

Self preservation is the attempt of Making happy the people that make you happy, while self sabotage is make happy the people that make you unhappy. You have no obligation to do anything for anybody at the end of the day.

Failure Makes you Happy!

When we first come in too the world we don`t have any skills. One of the first skills we have to learn is language and motor function. And we do this through the simple process of trial and error. There is no class or manual for babies that teaches walking or talking.

The way we learn this things naturally is through observing them at the people that already mastered this skills and imitate them at our best. In the book "Mastery" written by Robert Green the process of mastery is divided in three parts observation, imitation and innovation.

The first attempts a baby makes at learning how to talk are nothing like what is being observed this generally consist in simple repetition of syllables as an attempt to pronounce entire words. And slowly through repetition the child develops the skills to properly use language and communicate. The mistakes that the child's make are considered to be normal and nobody aspects that a baby should be able to speak fluently.

When we grow up and we end up in institution like public schools for example, in this institutions they use something called punishment and rewards to "motivate" people to learn. And now when you are learning the more advanced skills like writing what happens is when you are trying to write your first letter you are going to of course make mistakes, but now instead of letting the natural process of repetition to take place and allow you to assimilate the skills you are going to get a small grate or some sort of punishment. In other words you are receiving negative feedback for normal consequences of life.

This in the long term is going to create confusion, because the people around you disapprove of you now you're perception changes and you are going to see normal reality as being wrong. This leads to neuroticism, ad an attempt to replace reality with fiction and resist things that are impossible to change. I still struggle with this whenever i start a learning something new my first tendency is to be surprise that i am not as good as i imagine in my mind. It generally requires me to pause and remember that what i was expecting initially was a miracle. And from that realization a sense of inner calm and happiness returns to me.

Because happiness is the emotional reward for the path that leads to pleasure, when you realize that your practice and the failure that will naturally occur during your practice is normal part of the process, it doesn't mean that you deviated from the course. So you are going to experience short lasting negative emotions like frustration for example but this will eventually pass and you will return to a general state of being happy.

Unfortunately because of this dynamic you were thought early on in life, end up being nothing more then intellectual and professional now you have some reverse engineering to do. This is no different then any other vice you first have to acknowledge that it is hurting you and when you will feel bad enough for hurting yourself you will stop doing it. 

Force vs. Violence

The difference between violence and force in a nut shell is that violence implies violating someones wrights.

The root of evil is self preservation at any cost no matter how many people you hurt. The illusion in modern society is that force is violence so you can`t use any force, I remember when i was a kid i wasn't allowed to express anger or frustration every-time i would express this emotions someone would disapprove of me. So the way i adapted to that situation was to suppress my anger which eventually made me depressed and self loathing.

Whenever you give someone wrong feedback on good or normal actions creates confusion in that persons mind. This of course is an element of abuse if you confuse people you can make them self-sabotage for your inters.

So what is force? Force is the expressed energy with the intent to change something. If you want to change your life you need force contrary to the popular belief from eastern philosophy or new age principles that you should not resist anything. There is some wisdom in the fact that you shouldn't resist the things that you can`t change like the past.

This is what Freudian psychology would call neurosis, a rejection of reality in an attempt to replace it with fiction. On the other hand if you have any deficiencies in your life that are lowering the quality of your life. This can only be overcome with force by resisting your emotions and behaviors in the present. If i have a car that needs to be repaired according to the new age principle of not resisting anything i would just let it sit there and things are going to repair by themselves. That car is not going to repair itself without force either force that you need to express or higher someone qualify to fix it.

Not only is not going to repair itself or the universe is going to sent a mechanic without me doing anything. But the longer i wait, that car is going to get in a worse state and decay.

How to tell the difference between Force and Violence   

If violence is self preservation at any cost then, this means that you are hurting other peoples for your own benefit. Violence implies violating someones wrights, while force is self preservation without violating anyone's wrights. So if you can figure out wright from wrong it is easy to understand if you are using violence or force. There is an older word that has some degree of stigma associated to it: morality. All what moral and immoral means is right and wrong.

Doing something right means doing something without hurting anyone. This is not necessarily the best in your own inters. For example if someone decides to hit his head on a concrete wall over and over again, is not necessarily a good hobby but is not wrong. You are still going to fell emotional pain because you sabotage yourself you are still losing something. And losing is the only thing that triggers emotional pain. Your body is going to give you feedback that you need to change something.

Most of self-sabotage occurs as an effect of being a victim of violence. Because the purpose of abusing someone is to make it self-sabotage for your own inters.  

How Abuse Creates Mental Illness!

So what is abuse? I like to think of it as abnormally using someone, we are social animals of course we need each others in order to meet our needs. The problem appears when you have an uneven exchange like a win-lose dynamic.

The purpose of abuse is to get something from someone or make someone do something for you without giving anything back or giving a lot less than it would be considered fair. If you are being hold at gun point in a dark alley it is because that person wants to make you do something you won`t do either-ways like give him all your money without getting anything back. 

Whenever you are trapped in a situations in which you are being abuse frequently this will lead you to develop bad self sabotaging habits.

The only instance in which human beings fell emotional pain is when they lose something, like when someone close to you dies, you end a relationship, or you lose a sum of money. Because you experience abuse frequent enough you are constantly self sabotaging yourself and the body responds automatically to the loss with chronic pain. And the chronic emotional pain becomes mental illness over time like addiction, OCD, anxiety, depression etc. With the exception of the genetic ones of course.  

Below there is a flow chart with the mechanism of abuse as well the consequences that being abuse on a chronic basis creates:

The 3 Steps of Abuse

There are three main steps of abusing someone:

1. External control

This generally happens through violence either more direct forms like physical violence or passive aggressive violence. The scope of it being to control someones emotions and behaviors. Any form of external punishment and reward is an attempt to replace someones personal agenda with your own agenda.

2. Confusion

There are more obvious form of abuse like the previous example i gave in the introduction of this blog post where is kind of obvious that you are getting abuse, however most abuse is a lot more subtle than you would think and equally toxic and painful for the victim. In punishing good or normal behavior or emotions the victims gets confused and accepts the abuse and often this allows the abuse to happen multiple times until things become clear.

A simple definition of confusion is perceiving wrong things as being wright and wright things as wrong.

3. Self sabotage

The purpose of all this is to make the victim to self sabotage and create a win lose dynamic. This causing the victim emotional pain and if is allowed to happen for a long time this will lead to mental illnes and other complications.