Help me understand this…

I don’t think i’d take it as far as “NO expectations…” but certainly try to have realistic and appropriate expectations.

Why would you bother to get out of bed? Well, because if you don’t, you can’t earn income to afford your own life, which means homeless and starving. Homeless and starving is not what you want.

Align your expectations with reality, and know yourself well enough to know what you can do, and what you should be doing, and where to put your efforts, so that they may produce the best gains.

And of course having zero expectation is “more hopeless than disappointment.” Disappointment is all about having too much inappropriate hope and elevated expectations. So, obviously, lacking any expectations would necessarily be “more hopeless.” The point is: stop hoping for things that aren’t going to happen, and then being upset when they don’t.

I doubt it’s possible for any rational, functional mind, to literally eliminate ALL expectation. You’re always going to expect something, no matter how small or insignificant… because cause and effect. When you observe the cause, you can “expect” that it will have the effect it will produce. If it doesn’t do what you expected, then your assessment must have been wrong, which means you didn’t understand the relationship between that cause and the effect it would produce.

I’m trying to imagine what it would be like, to literally have zero expectation… and it seems like the equivalent of mindless drifting. People get institutionalized for that kind of thing. Plus, it’s not like you can rationally put your hand in fire and not expect to burn, or take a shower not expecting to get wet.

“if you want to change something, you must first accept it…” (paraphrased) -C.G. Jung

Honestly, i learned accidentally, due to my mom encouraging me to play the “what if?” game, as a child. I attribute much of my thought processes and “insight,” to things i don’t think she realized she was teaching me to do… probably because she had no way of knowing how my mind would make use of such strategies. I have an unbelievable amount of practice and experience, trying to predict what will happen, based on any set of circumstances, according to all observable information, but with the variables of knowing that i usually can’t know all of the relevant factors. Sometimes you just know: you’ve seen enough of the relevant factors to make an accurate prediction about what the result of the conditional set will be.

So idk how to tell someone else how to do it, except to observe, assess, analyze, and strive for a fluid understanding of the world.

Then again, maybe i should never tell anyone to think or act based on my methods, since i have not found what most people would call “success in life.” Or maybe my methods would have been highly productive, with a compatible set of circumstances.

Try not to waste time and energy on pursuits that you can determine will not produce the results that motivate your pursuit. Don’t waste yourself on something you can’t do… but don’t just go ruling everything out, without really digging into it, enough to make an “appropriate” determination.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket… unless it’s a damn good basket.

Look before you leap. Think before you speak. Don’t do stuff to others that you wouldn’t want done to you.

Take care of yourself. Don’t overextend. Don’t promise what you can’t, or don’t fully intend, to deliver. Be honest with yourself… but practice selective disclosure with others; keep your personal shares to a minimum, unless you’ve tested someone for trustworthiness enough to reasonably expect that they are worthy of trust.

Honestly, if i could refine everything i would impart upon others, into a condensed, potent morsel of information, i would. But then i’d have to also produce an elaborate explanation and impenetrable arguments to back up each point, and i just don’t think i can do all that. The physical and time requirements are just too high. My body is not enough for my mind.

You don’t necessarily have to stop analyzing, just pick your spots. Sometimes it’s entertaining to dissect what is self-evident… but a lot of times, it’s just not necessary… and there are usually more pressing issues requiring in-depth analysis before they can be appropriately or effectively resolved.

Your house analogy is interesting, because while i understand that process, you don’t necessarily need to repair the entire house. A house not in need of extensive repairs, is usually a new house… and new houses cost a lot of money… and so instead of worrying about repairing an old house, worry about making enough money to build a new one. Meanwhile, the current house probably isn’t going to fall apart or collapse… it’s just a bit run down. Things wear out. Just try not to put too much pressure on fragile things… be careful and mindful in your actions, and try not to break it any further, while focusing on bypassing the need for repairs, by seeking a more holistic solution, through building a new house.

And if you have to make some patch jobs or rig something to work, don’t worry about it. As long as it does what it needs to do, it’s not a priority.

If you prioritize the building of a new house, you can construct it so that things are right and sturdy from the start, and then the only requirement is to avoid damaging it, which is usually much easier than making repairs.

And i meant exactly what it says: my body is not enough for my mind. My problems require me to create solutions that don’t already exist, but i haven’t been able to keep my body in good enough condition to be able to actually implement the theories into practice. It’s a “vicious cycle,” sort of like a reverse paradox, combined with a regular paradox. It’s like being both locked in, and locked out, simultaneously, and the longer i’m stuck, the harder (more implausible, ultimately impossible) it becomes, to correct the ever increasing effects of the errors.

There’s no use putting fresh panels on a wall with rotten studs. There’s no use building a new room onto a house with a cracked and sinking foundation. There’s no use building a new foundation on unstable land, in an environment that isn’t where you want to be, full of people you’d rather avoid.

It’s infuriating how important financial security is, but how impossible it is for most people to attain… meanwhile, the value of our currency continues to plummet by design, which causes everything to cost more, while most people can’t even afford to survive and remain healthy. And “survival” just isn’t enough. I require more than mere survival, in order to produce sufficient motivation… and without that motivation, i cannot even merely survive. And while i tend to go on and on about how “i don’t want to live like this,” i actually CAN’T live like this. So either way, death is on the horizon, whether i choose my own conditions, or get flushed away homeless and starving. And the only options i see that are even capable of producing enough wealth for me to recover and have any semblance of “a life,” involve exploiting consumers and endorsing consumerism, thereby exacerbating the problems caused by the source that it would take almost all of us working against in unison, to correct.

What went wrong?

What Didn’t go wrong? lol. It feels like pretty much everything went wrong, except for the stuff i managed to avoid, by following my own methods and principles. Most of the time, factors beyond my control, limited the available choices, from which i was allowed to select… and so all i could ever really do, was try to avoid the worst thing, while never really having any opportunity to advance. The world is fucked up, and all you can really do is try to navigate it in a way that either avoids or mitigates as much of the potential damage as possible. A huge part of that is accepting reality as it is, and learning to be more efficient and discerning with what you allow yourself to spend your time and energy on, which includes what or whether you choose to analyze any particular thing.