Closing Out the Year Right

Yesterday, as I was scrolling through Facebook, I came across this article a friend of mine shared: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. Always loving a good dose of self-help, I immediately clicked on the link, and was so glad I did. It was one of the best, no-nonsense-cut-the-crap-and-look-at-your-own-bullshit articles I’d read in years, and it came at the perfect time; that time of the year where many of us reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go.

Last night, I shared this article with as many people as I could and today, I wanted to share it on this platform as well. Of course, as I like to do, I offer you the cliff notes version below, but I urge all of you to read the whole thing and really think about the kind of fruit that is growing from your tree.

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person:

#6 The world only cares about what it can get from you. 

…society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships… the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people’s needs.

Either you will go about the task of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world will reject you, no matter how kind, giving and polite you are. You will be poor, you will be alone, you will be left out in the cold.

#5 The hippies were wrong. 

…the difference in those two attitudes — bitter vs. motivated — largely determines whether or not you’ll succeed in the world.

…you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills. Your “job” — the useful thing you do for other people — is all you are.

People have needs and thus assign value to the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe… You don’t have to like it.

#4 What you produce does not have to make you money, but it does have to benefit people. 

I’m asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world?

#3 You hate yourself because you don’t do anything. 

…you don’t hate yourself because you have low self-esteem, or because other people were mean to you. You hate yourself because you don’t do anything. Not even you can just “love you for you”.

…the secret to winning at human life: Doing … whatever you call it … is better than not doing.

#2 What you are on the inside only matters because of what it makes you do. 

…”who you are inside” is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit grows.

But here’s what everyone needs to know, and what many of you can’t accept: “You” are nothing but the fruit.

Nobody cares about your dirt. “Who you are inside” is meaningless aside from what it produces for other people.

#1 Everything inside you will fight improvement. 

The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are — ask any addict.

Remember, misery is comfortable. It’s why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.

-David Wong, cracked.com

Happy holidays everybody! Let’s close some shit in 2013.