ETHICAL MEDDLING

volume 1: why are you stuck

This is the first volume in a new series of publications I’m working on called Ethical Meddling. It’s where I meddle needlessly in the lives and minds of my subs. My inspiration? I do this constantly to my friends and has been beneficial for them.

TLDR: This is how I show care, and I care quite a lot about each and every one of my subs.

If this piece moves you, as I hope it will, please share it with someone. Most of us are all so alone in our pain and so afraid of the humiliation of asking for help. We deserve the tools to help ourselves and each other. Give that gift to someone as a thank you to the universe for the algorithm giving it to you.

Thank you, and happy reading!

Why are you stuck?

Being stuck requires a certain level of comfort, weakness, fear, shame, guilt. Usually, it's a combination lock of some of all of these that keeps you in a cage of your own mind. I am going to work you through the code to break it. It’s not going to be entirely fun or nice or easy, but if you want a better life, I really need you work through this with me.

I'll recommend you go read my first piece on HOW TO GET UNSTUCK.

This piece here is the active workbook portion of this puzzle. Because, in my experience, the only effective way to learn a lesson is to get put your hands on it.

Let's begin.

WHAT WAS THE REASON? (There may be many)

1. how did you get here and why can't you get out?

Usually, this question will lead you to a litany of beliefs hiding under "logical" answers. You can't move because you don't have enough money. Of course, you poor thing. Should you be babied now? Should you be pitied? Maybe.

Unfortunately, I am not the one to do it. I will not pity others. I will only rage against their chains. So let's step beyond the comfort zone of whatever thought-terminating cliché you've swaddled yourself in to make an unexamined life “livable.”

2. (Example follow up question that you can adjust as needed to whatever your response was) Why don't you have enough money?

The economy is bad? Your job market sucks? Not good enough, you need to be as specific as possible. You don't have enough because your job sucks or because your employer is greedy. Fine, why don't you get another job?

Perhaps it's not possible because you don't have enough education. You don't have enough education because you didn't go to a good enough school. You didn't go to a good enough school because—oh, and there it is.

Finally, you'll reach all the way down and find a scapegoat.

Was it your parents? Was it your significant other? Was it your friends? Who is it that you put the blame on?

AUTHENTIC LOVE RENDERS OTHERS BLAMELESS FOR YOUR OWN UNHAPPINESS. SORRY.

You cannot resent people who you love wholly. You cannot use them as an excuse for your unhappiness. It is a betrayal of the very biology that allows us to experience love to do so. Begin unlearning this cope immediately or suffer endlessly in a pit of your own creation.

Harsh? Listen to me, I am a professional emotional martyr and I have harmed far too many people, including myself, to allow others to unwittingly recreate my crimes.

Oftentimes, it is done with the best intentions and noblest morals. Loyalty, for example, is good and admirable, yes? Only if it is devoted to good and admirable people, things, or causes.

3. Are you stuck because of loyalties to other people or your own insufficiencies/insecurities?

If you answer the former, you must re-examine the relationships and ideas you are loyal to.

4. If they are so important to you, why are these relationships or ideas unchangeable?

An inflexible worldview is a brittle one. A relationship that leaves no room for growth is a prison. Do not lose yourself in an illusion of control.

5. Are you attached to supporting other people because they need you or because being a martyr gives you a sense of duty and purpose that you've never found in work?

Read Bullshit Jobs for more on this ego death.

6. Are the people you sacrifice your agency for truly better off with this version of you, or would they be better off watching you be aligned with your soul's desire?

If you maintain relationships out of a sense of duty rather than in the interest of your own well-being, you must answer these questions. Fully and honestly.

If you maintain relationships for any reason other than unconditional love and a reciprocity of mutual respect, further learning and deep, irreplaceable companionship, it may be wise to consider lessening your loyalty. Loosening ties, perhaps.

WHAT IF IT’S YOU?

If your answer to question 3 is the latter, we have a new set of questions to answer:

7. Why aren't you good enough to do or have what you've always wanted to do?

8. Are these insufficiencies/insecurities rooted in actual physical or mental limitations, or a fear of your potential?

9. Assuming all things are possible, and that you are the only thing preventing yourself from the cataclysmic change necessary to unstick yourself, what would be the first step toward freedom and change?

Because:

NOTHING WILL STOP CHANGE. NOT EVEN PLAYING DEAD.

Many of us stand knee-deep in mud instead of learning to swim for fear of drowning. It will not save you from getting wet. We obsessively, frantically avoid humiliation for fear of shame. It will not save you from looking stupid. We avoid growth for fear of change. It will not stop the growth, it will only disfigure it.

Resisting change will only make this one precious life of yours, and the world that contains it less pleasant.

If it smells like festering, if it stinks of stagnation, if it glues your feet to the floor, if it makes you feel as though your hands are stuck in slowly-drying concrete, it may be time to plant something new in the rotten whatever that lives in your head. It’s time to ask:

10. would you rather preserve this rotting or use it as fertilizer to grow something new?

Just because something no longer works for you does not mean it is a waste unless you refuse to change or learn from it.

Everything in nature dies. Even rocks become sand that becomes soil that feeds something else once it's no longer what it was. Flowers rot and feed mushrooms, which feed deer, which feed humans, which feed soil, which feeds everything. It is a beautiful cycle that we should never escape from.

So why insist on keeping things as they are? Trying to preserve anything, whether it be a relationship or or a job or a future is a denial of nature. And nature will not be thwarted without a fight.

I believe in the efficacy of both tough love and baby steps

Let’s take a break from tough love and step into the baby steps.

11. what are you hoarding?

Ask yourself, what takes up the most mental and physical space in your life?

The universal laws of death, rebirth, change, and growth do not approve of things being hoarded and jealously guarded. If you only keep things because you are afraid of other people having them, you do not have good reasons. The universe will never favor you for your greed.

I understand that this is not applicable to everyone. Sentimentality is not an illness. However, again, possessions are not protection from change or death. Obsessions will not miraculously give you control over an ungovernable universe. However making choices will. And you do have choices. You always have choices.

12. what can you get rid of?

The burden of our possessions is quite as spiritual as is physical. The psychology of clearing out your space has been shown in innumerable studies (here’s one from UCLA) to positively impact our mental maps and our psychological wellbeing.

If you can't bring yourself to get rid of mental blocks, start with possessions; clothes, rugs, tables you don't use anymore, books you haven't read in years, Tupperwares that never leave the cabinet.

Baby steps: Get rid of a pair of shoes if you can't quit your job. Stop speaking to a toxic coworker if you can't break up with your boyfriend. Delete some pictures off your phone if you can't confront your mother. Buy a more reliable car if you can't bring yourself to move cities.

And once you free up some space in your physical world, your mental world clears a space in sympathy.

Detachment is a difficult thing. It is a practice and discipline. It is an active exercise that you must do reps in to gain mastery of. A muscle you must grow intentionally. Apathy is a weak imitation of detachment and it will never give you the same result. In fact, it will rob your life of meaning while conditioning you to believe that you do not have the power to change anything.

That leads us to lucky number:

13. are you holding on to comfort or are you afraid of pain?

If you are able to identify that your life is stagnant, you probably are not comfortable. If you know your life needs to change, but there’s too much good to justify disrupting everything, you may be holding on to comfort. The question really is if you could be excited, vital, and happy rather than just comfortable. It’s the difference between succeeding and settling.

If you are not comfortable, the logical conclusion is that you are more afraid of comfortable than you are of being in pain.

This is very common for people who grew up in pain, in traumatic households, in volatile relationships with parents family and friends.

Many of us hold a great deal of shame at the very idea that life doesn't have to be so hard and that we don't have to suffer and that money doesn't have to be hard to make and that working a job doesn't have to be miserable.

But these are philosophies that we decide are true. They are not universal truths, nor are they universal realities. For fear of victim blaming, it must be acknowledged that no two people are dealt the same hand of cards. Not even identical twins. However, take it from someone who should've been a statistic for teenage drug overdose, we have vastly more responsibility for how our lives turn out than we are told.

You must understand that stuckness comes from a place of fear or complacency.

The next step is to ask this final essential question:

TACKLING THE UNTHINKABLE BY… THINKING…

14. what would your life look like if you didn't have to be miserable?

Unthinkable, I know, but the answers might surprise you. In all of this orb-pondering, remember;

IF YOU CAN’T UNLOCK A DOOR, OPEN A WINDOW

Allow some newness into your life and realize that as newness expands, old and stagnant aspects of yourself and your life will simply flake off like old tree bark and you will grow and you will bloom and you will be unstuck.

And before you talk yourself off the ledge of change, I want to ask you one final question:

15. what if you do deserve it?

Because I think you do. I think I do. I think your existence on this planet is proof that you were chosen for more than inanimate misery and immobility. Your joy is a song I wish to hear. Your freedom is a trail I want to run. Your emotion is an ocean I long to see raging from the cliffs. Your humanity is a tribe I need to share with you.

Do not reduce yourself to being a sacrificial lamb. Or worse, a machine.

Yours far too sincerely,

Sky