Effortless chain of events that magically leads to paradise

I did this very often, and I need to focus intensely every day to not fall into this trap. But here's the truth: There is no shortcut. There isn't this one video that you watch which then somehow causes a chain of events that effortlessly makes you build an amazing life. There’s also not "one thing" that you need to do which then somehow magically solves all other problems as a consequence. This is wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking is laziness in emotion and thought. You seek an easy-to-implement solution to all of your problems. Well, let me tell you something you already know: THIS THING DOESN'T EXIST!

Believing that it does exist is the root cause of hedonism and nihilism. If you think that there are easy-to-implement things that solve your problems and give you meaning, you will use whatever is available to satisfy your needs, instead of implementing those action items that actually solve your problems and give you meaning.

Every problem in your life needs to be approached individually, and you must sacrifice (experience pain) at every stage of making something happen.

Of course, some problems, if solved, also solve other problems in the same process, but that isn't generally true. Life is way too complex for that.

Going to the gym, for example, might eliminate stress to some extent, but believing that it eliminates stress entirely is naive since stress is caused by something other than, not going to the gym.

You need to accept pain. You need to approach each life problem individually, and most importantly; you need to respect cause & effect.

Cause & Effect

You know what cause and effect is. Every event in the universe is simultaneously a cause for a different event and an effect of a different event. This means that you won't be able to hit your goals or live life in the most positive way possible if you don't cause it. Your chances are very low if you leave it to random events that you don't personally cause.

Therefore, if you want to hit your goals, and have an amazing life, you need to do stuff that causes the desired effect.

Effect

The first step is therefore to identify which effect it is that you want to cause and get specific about it. In other words: you need a goal.

To craft a goal you care about and stick to; a meaningful, exciting, and maximally positive goal, you need to first ask yourself what is most important to you.

If you can manage to answer the question: "What is the most important thing?" honestly, you will figure out what is most meaningful to you. You will find the purpose or mission of your life (at least for the current person that you are).

But that purpose or mission is most likely not a specific effect or goal. It’s rather something that you do. It’s an action. So in the next step, you need to craft a very specific, and achievable goal from your ultimate mission or purpose, and decide to work on that goal, to build it.

Just ask yourself which goal would make you pursue your mission the most. It makes a lot of sense to have a specific, and achievable goal because it gives you something tangible that you can work towards. It aligns you with your mission.

Cause

You might have guessed it, but after you have identified a specific effect, you need to simply cause it. It’s obvious that there isn't one thing that you do once which then leads to the effect immediately, or "in an effortless chain of events". That’s just you lying to yourself.

The more intelligent thing to do after you identified which effect you want to cause, is to identify the proper causes for that effect, and you do that by honest thinking and education.

Listen to the advice of people who have been able to cause your desired effect, read books that might give insight into how to cause that effect, and simply use the blessing that is your mind to figure out which actions would increase the likelihood that the effect is caused.

Also, since your mission is more of an action—something that you do, it should also clearly show you which causes are appropriate because your mission is the ultimate cause for the hypothetically most positive effect possible. The only purpose of getting extremely specific about the effect by forming an achievable goal is to start taking action and to have something tangible to work on. This aligns your biology with causing the most positive state possible, via the dopamine system that motivates you when making progress towards a goal.

Mental obstacle

The only thing that prevents you from causing your desired effect, or from identifying your desired effect in the first place, is your mind. You are standing in your own way. And no, fixing your mind isn't "the one thing" that causes an effortless chain of events to the most positive state of life possible for all people across all times. Fixing your mind–making it take action–is obviously a very huge part of producing the right causes for the desired effect, but it’s not the only thing. There are indefinite amounts of actions and decisions that you need to make on the path to–paradise essentially.

What this letter hopefully did for you was to shift your belief so that you stop looking for the one solution for everything, and start taking action on solving all the small problems which constitute the one main problem, which is suffering as such.

There is, again, no shortcut. There is only action or no action. The more you dwell in action the more you cause paradise, if your goal is derived from what you deem most important. If you have a goal that was assigned to you by someone else, or that you crafted to be liked by society, you will not cause paradise (the most positive effect possible). You will also not go all in on life. You won't experience true meaning. Your life will stay shallow.

If you take anything from this letter, let it be this: Craft your own goal.

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