Sometimes in life, it is important to make suboptimal decisions because that is when you learn the most. If you only ever make perfect choices, with perfect calculations, you don’t learn the right tools for real life.
For example, if you sometimes force yourself to spend too much money, it forces you to learn how to live more frugally. For me, this is the only way that works. Otherwise, I don’t learn it. The same goes for exercise: I work out every day until I can’t go any further. That’s how I learn the consequences of what I do. There have to be real stakes; something real has to be on the line. I need to be able to risk my health—everything.
Or: I try to worry for 10 hours straight to see what effect it has. Now you can see the relationship between what you do, how you look at something, and how it affects you. I don’t think worrying itself affects you that much, but how you look at things has consequences for what you do and how you move. You can become paralyzed at home, and that is actually unhealthy.
Or: instead of focusing, I deliberately try not to focus for a whole day to see how it affects my work. What happens if I try to be distracted?
These thoughts are happening inside you right now. Isn’t that a miracle in itself?
Suffering doesn't come from attachment.
If you lit me on fire, I'm suffering because you lit me on fire.
Before you go full Buddha, I think a lot of people don't know how to operate a body on a very fundamental level.
Fundamental level means: you are your whole body at once, and you feel pain at the spot in your body where the pain is. So, if I have pain in my back, I feel it with my back.
The most problematic thing about Buddhism is the unhealthy relationship it sets up with thinking. Thinking is meant to be very hard for the first 30–40 years of your life. It doesn't mean that when you grow up, you have found "enlightenment." You went through the basic levels of thinking. That's what happened.
You went through the OCD, anxiety, depression, and overthinking levels. It's normal to go through those to become better at life, to learn, and to see where you are stuck.
Besides the terrible teaching, what Buddha did was very smart: going through a lot in life, living multiple lives, and then reflecting on those experiences and taking the lessons with you.
Trust me, you don’t really know how consciousness works.
Consciousness is the sickest of the sickest of the sickest thing you have ever experienced. If it isn’t like that, you have misplayed your cards. It’s that easy.
A very typical mistake is Buddhism, which is a very safe method when you are scared of your own thoughts.
If I look at somebody like Buddha, I'm like, "Meh, I'm better at this and that." That's not ego; that's a normal attitude to have. Stop putting people on a pedestal.