“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.” - Will Rogers
People often say, “I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing.” Well, if I could do it all again, and change things, I would. In a heartbeat!
Look, I’m not big on the “I’m a Victim!” excuse – however, I can honestly say I was always trying to do the right thing. I was incredibly tuned in to the news, education, pop culture – I was on top of everything! I was on (what I believed to be) a constant path of improvement.I read whatever self-help book was popular: Wayne Dyer! Deepak Chopra! The Four Agreements! What The Bleep Do We Know. THE SECRET (oh, I loved the Secret!).
I loved going to the bookstore and bouncing from the self help section to the cooking section and of course, magazines, (I was equally obsessed with Psychology Today and US Magazine).
When the news and government warned us that butter was bad – eat margarine! I did. When they said, don’t eat fats – eat low fat food – I did. Take a “daily vitamin!” – I did.
Then they said Wait! Margarine is actually bad – it contains chemicals, eat butter!
They said Wait! Don’t eat low fat foods, they contain too many carbs and that is reason Americans are obese! Those daily vitamins you’ve been taking? They’ve been doing NOTHING – tests have shown that the vitamins are never fully metabolized!
Vaccinate your kids!
OMG – DO NOT VACCINATE YOUR KIDS – vaccines cause autism!
WAIT- we were wrong – vaccinate your kids!
I could probably write a whole book on all the false fears that turned out not only to be untrue, but actually caused harm. And all of these “warnings” had one thing in common; they were based on scientific studies.
Now, this book is not bashing science. Nor religion. It will, however, show us how even the smartest of us are easily duped, and that science is not perfect, religion is not perfect, and self-help books are not perfect.
No matter how many books I read, or episodes of Oprah I watched, for all the reading and advice I was following, I was constantly finding I would get just so far…on the cusp of success and then BOOM – I’d melt like a stick of butter in a hot skillet.
In the Spring of 2014 – I faced a health crisis. I was sure I was not going to live to see the year 2015 – and as I struggled to figure out what was wrong, I started to understand why my life had been so full of failures despite my enthusiasm, despite my continual searching to improve my life and be the “best” me: it’s because I believed I was truly open minded, and very individual, only to discover that I had confused the word significant with superiority. I was only getting “so far” because I was receiving conflicting messages everywhere I turned and because I thought I was being “educated” but in reality, I was being entertained by illusions of a better, easier, faster, sexier, safer, life. And when I say I was being entertained, I really mean I was being sold – because 99.9 percent of the people selling advice aren’t actually living their advice – they are simply selling a product, an idea, easy salvation.
My health crisis was solved when I had surgery, but it took quite a-while to get to that surgery because I saw 8 different doctors. My test results were always consistent – but every doctor had a different explanation and different solution.
I wish I could point to that one AHA moment, because who doesn’t love a great “AHA!” moment – but I have had quite a few a-ha moments over the past year as I slowly stopped listening to what all the popular “experts” were saying, dug into history, started really questioning myself, my actions, and facing some uncomfortable truths about myself.
The answers were there all along for me, and they probably are for you, but we have been conditioned to believe we do not hold the solutions to our problems; that someone else has superior knowledge. We are always seeking “better” – more sophisticated, smarter.
It should be simple to figure out, indeed, it is, but our culture has been flooded with complicated answers, contradictions and inconsistency.
I have been studying and questioning human nature all my life. I’m innately curious, curiously creative, and my life has led me down totally different paths. My lifelong curiosity and study on behavior, advertising, and psychology combined with my experience as a paramedic helped lead me to the gradual understanding of where true happiness lies.
