Lessons of life from Fight Club. Walk the walk. Do the work but prepare to throw everything away. Stop caring and you’ll make opportunities. Stop caring so much and you’ll gain freedom from your thoughts, from the expectations of others.
Lessons from Fight Club: Stop being perfect. Stop caring.
How many countless hours have I spent trying to be perfect: getting up at 7 am, having cold showers, eating healthily, being frugal and spending little, working hard, reading lots. Getting rejected from interviews, placements, year abroad applications. Having trouble at home. Having trouble with my degree.
What do I need?
To get up.
Dust off.
Reload.
Recalibrate
Re-engage.
To go out on the offensive.
I need to stop caring so much.
It’s the I don’t care mentality.
It’s Bruce Lee’s prepare fully but throw everything away when the time comes.
It’s the screw it, let’s do this attitude.
It’s nonchalance.
It’s the knowledge that we can’t control everything but let’s give it the best we’ve got.
People who walk the walk rather than talking the talk, epitomised by the likes of Bruce Lee, James Bond, and Tyler Durden. They shut up and get on with it. They say less than necessary. They listen and observe and whilst others reveal valuable information or gossip. There’s a sense of mystery about them. Most importantly: they get things done.
Their work speaks for them, not their words. After all, what you do in the dark puts you in the light. So instead of brushing up my C.V, editing my LinkedIn profile, i.e, trying to appear useful, I should try and actually be useful by learning or developing my current skills.
Let your silence ignite their whispers
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities — Bruce Lee
Stop caring
When I wanted something so bad, when I had a lot of anxiety about getting it, it would mess up the routine, the process. When you still care but let go of the result, things become easier, more liquid. I’m not saying put no work in and hope that opportunities will naturally come to you but rather work and prepare fully but never attach yourself to the result.
I was about a foot shorter than my twin brother for about 4 years, during secondary school. I hated that everyone thought he was my older brother. “Why can’t I be 6ft 7” damnit?”, I asked myself. Then came the anxiety of spots and acne. Thereafter was the worry of styling my hair. This time, however, I realised there will always be another ‘thing’ to worry about, another ‘thing’ that, in the grand scheme of things, really is not that important. Realising this gave me some relief. I still cared about my skin, my hair, my height but I stopped obsessing over it. I stopped giving it so much of my time and what do you know, I gained confidence and the ability to do something actually useful, or perhaps less useless. In accepting the facts: okay, I look pretty terrible today and that’s that, I moved on.
I’m not as special as I thought I was as a kid. There was always the inherent assumption that I would achieve great things. “You have time”, everyone would tell me. Fantastic, I would think to myself, I will be great. I will change the world, yet go back to playing Black Ops or messing around with my friends.
After being rejected after interviews for a placement, I asked myself “why would they want to hire me over them?” I could find no answers, no good reason. As Ryan Holiday explained in Ego is the Enemy, if your belief is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on? Probably nothing. Probably your ego. Ego is wishful thinking, delusion. I was deluded and thinking that my inherent nature was sufficient for the job. The truth was that a gap needed to be filled and they needed someone who could best fill that gap. So I scaled back my goals and rather than being at war with the world and proclaiming its unfairness, I asked myself what I can do to improve, to be a better candidate.
This idea has shown up in so many areas of my life
- Girls — every time I liked a girl too much, overthought every single message or how I could walk ‘like a man’, that would desperateness would naturally come across and she wouldn’t reciprocate.
- Jobs — If I wanted a job too badly and could only think about what the interviews wanted rather than how I could best perform the job, that desperation naturally came across. It’s when you rock up fully prepared but fully adaptable to the situation, not forcing anything, not trying to repeat the company’s mission statement at least 6 times, that you demonstrate yourself as a good candidate.
- Religion — It does not matter if you are religious or not but this notion of being complete, of already having one’s true self is powerful. In Christianity, you already have your true self. You don’t need to impress, work, try so hard — you are already complete. That is not to say that you should not work or try so hard. Of course not. It just means you don’t need to. Instead, having this knowledge as the foundation allows you to realise that everything else is extra. See below.
- Premortem — The mental exercise: what can go wrong? If you were to die today, would you still do the things that you’re doing? Thinking that every new day is extra allows you to cherish the moment. Damn, this day has been given to me and I’m grateful for that.
Realise that we are not as special as we thought. Our ego tells us that we shouldn’t do the grunt work, that we are better than this. It says that we should only take the best positions. You’ve got to prove yourself first, work your way up, take on the status of the grunt until your work proves otherwise. To never think of yourself as better than someone else. You have the opportunity to learn from everyone you meet. They always know something you do not.
Conclusion
There is a certain flair in someone who acts, makes effort but also and funnily enough, doesn’t care. There is an air of nonchalance epitomized by James Bond, a man who is extraordinarily skilled, confident in his own ability, and fully prepared, but cares little. I want to improve my writing, get my experiences and messages across better but also not care about views and claps when I click publish. It’s good to care about results but not to the demise of one’s own work.
Of course, let passion run its course. Let it move you into action. But do not let yourself be stalled by such feelings, put into positions of paralysis. In caring less we can focus more on the moment. We can be like water my friend, as Bruce Lee says. In caring less about our own achievements and goals, we can focus more on being in the present, on the freedom that comes from releasing yourself from obligations of the mind and getting through the work of the here and now. Have goals in mind, of course, that is necessary, but focus on the process and not the outcome and you will achieve a sense of nonchalance and confidence in your ability. Now get out there stop trying to be perfect.
Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdTMDpizis8
