Recently, I have talked about the concept I named a pendulum life. It is a framework to understand our mental system and set appropriate goals for people with unique individualities.
Today, I will talk about why it makes our lives easier as a wrapping up of this topic.
How to make our lives easier
Sometimes, we want to make our lives easier. There might be many things we have to do against our will, such as disgusting jobs, caring for others’ emotions, obeying the orders of parents or superiors, or situations we cannot do freely.
Confusion of priorities often burdens us with a lot of unnecessary work. If we don’t know what is important, we will feel everything is necessary. This makes us spend time on things that don’t improve our future.
That is why we want to set priorities in life.
However, we sometimes don’t know what is essential for our lives, especially if we have unique individuality. What makes us happy is often entirely different from what makes others happy.
Today, I will explain why the concept of a pendulum life helps us. It reduces our confusion and allows us to identify our life priorities even partially. This concept might make our lives easier.
What is the essence of happiness for people with individuality?
We want happiness. Happiness would be an ideal situation for our lives. Our happiness includes making others happy, fulfilling ourselves, and contributing to society or the human species.
Knowing what we truly want is essential for happiness. Being aware of it frees us from useless work for our happiness, as I mentioned above.
Of course, we don’t know what makes us happy from the beginning. We have to keep trying, learning, and getting feedback to identify it.
I call it a feedback loop of happiness. As long as we are in this state, we have hope and feel the progress of life. Even if we fail, we can learn from it. It is fun to feel our growth.
However, we sometimes get out of the feedback loop. Stagnation is a typical example. There is almost no hope, and we cannot improve our lives, no matter how hard we work.
In this state, we have confusion. Failure causes us pain. There is neither fun in growing up ourselves nor feeling our growth. In addition, we cannot try another way easily. We cannot get any feedback. We want to believe we are right, but things don’t work. Although we know it indicates we are wrong, we cannot accept it. We are confused.
The concept of a pendulum life
The concept of a pendulum life could solve the confusion even partially for people with unique individuality.
In this concept, we assume we have at least two contradictory wants. We sometimes want to be active but sometimes want to rest. We sometimes desire to change the outside world but sometimes modify our inner world. We sometimes want to please others even with sacrifices but sometimes want to fill ourselves without caring for others. Although we cannot do both sides simultaneously, we need to fill both.
It is like a pendulum. We live swaying between conflicting desires. Our inner pendulum indicates what we want now.
Following the movement of the pendulum
In this concept, we set our goals to live with our pendulum. This allows us to be in a feedback loop of happiness. On the other hand, if we go against it, we often feel pain and get out of the feedback loop.
This is because suffering comes from social stress, especially for people with unique individualities. Society often forces us to follow social values that are against our will. It means going against the movement of our pendulums causes mental suffering.
In other words, the wants that our pendulums indicate are also parts of us. We can neither ignore them nor suppress them.
If we try to reduce social stress like that, we will naturally head toward independence. Independence is the natural way to live well for us.
This life direction frees us from unnecessary work to be happy. The goal is a life with less interference from other people in the movement of the pendulum. The other ways are means, such as becoming a millionaire, being famous, selling our products, or acquiring skills.
That is why this concept can make our lives easier. We can identify the priority in our lives.
Suffering by misunderstanding ourselves
If we misunderstand this, we often confuse means and ends. For example, we could set our goals to be millionaires. However, we cannot always make it happen. We can neither become millionaires nor rest. All we can do is endure. This causes stagnation with mental suffering, which makes us get out of the feedback loop of happiness.
We sometimes could believe social values are true and judge everything based on them. We call it an inferiority complex.
In this state, we ignore one side of inner aspects that contradict social values and lie to ourselves that we have only one side that suits society. This makes us only aim to accomplish one side. We decline other wants, although it is also parts of ourselves.
In this state, some might feel as if there is someone else inside us. It has entirely the opposite values to us. Some call it the inner child. It is selfish and prevents the ‘right way of our living.’ To make the inner child obey us, they use many methods, such as positive thinking or training of patience.
The concept of a pendulum life tells us that we don’t have to be more positive or patient. We also don’t have to make the inner child obey us. We have two contradictory aspects. It is natural.
This awareness allows us to get into the feedback loop of happiness.
Conclusion
That is why the concept of a pendulum life reduces our confusion and allows us to identify our life priorities.
The goal could be a life with less interference from other people in the movement of the pendulum. The other ways might be means.
This concept might make our lives easier, especially for people with unique individuality.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
