Fuck This, Find Your Breath (eBook)

Why Fuck This?

For a book on meditation, self-awareness, and living in the moment, Fuck This might seem aggressive. And it is. It’s powerful.

We hear people say “fuck this” all the time, whether it’s

• “Fuck this job”
• “Fuck this pen”
• “Fuck this relationship”
• “Fuck this car”
• “Fuck this book”

No matter the significance (or lack thereof) of the issue, you can say “fuck this.” And each time you say those magic words, what you’re doing is making a choice. A conscious decision, if you will.

Choices, choices

Conscious decisions are the result of thousands of subconscious thoughts—thoughts you’re not aware of. It’s believed that the human brain has over 6,000 conscious thoughts per day.1 Let’s break that down—because that’s a lot of thinking.

For those of you who didn’t pull out the calculator, there are 86,400 seconds in a day. Of those 86,400 seconds, we’re generally awake for 57,600. If we were to have a new thought every 6.5 seconds (a plausible number), we’d have 8,861+ trains of thought per day. By “train of thought,” I’m referring to the general idea of the subject being thought of, not each individual component.

Here’s an example.

When I go to the store, I need to remember to get more coffee.

Maybe I’ll try a different kind of coffee.

Oooh, maybe I’ll get a flavored coffee this time.

I wonder if there’s a flavor like the one I had at that café?

What friend did I meet at that café again?

A train of thought like this happens within six and a half seconds. This is how easily thoughts can run away. And this goes on all day, every day in your brain. In fact, research psychologists believe this happens from the moment the brain is developed in the womb (according to a healthline.com article) until the moment you die.2 For me, unfortunately, it happens until the moment I try to talk to women. Then my thoughts become static and amplifier feedback.

My lack of social skills aside, all that noise up there in your noggin—racing thoughts, random memories, imagining what might happen in the future, ruminating on what happened in the past—it’s going to impact how you feel at any given moment.

So what does brain noise have to do with meditation? Well, only everything! Meditation gives us a fighting chance to quiet the noise and make a change in ourselves—to become self-aware. Self-awareness isn’t just about knowing “who you are.” It’s about recognizing when your thoughts shift, and why.

Your level of self-awareness directly affects how you choose to respond to certain situations.

Self-awareness allows you to choose how you respond, rather than have a flinch reaction.

Here’s a simple example using the physical body. When a doctor knocks below your knee with that little hammer, your leg moves. It’s a reflex, meaning the conscious mind isn’t involved in the movement. Conversely, if the doctor asked you to stretch out your leg, you’d consciously choose to do so. It is a response to the doctor’s request.

Here’s the cool part. While we can’t change how our body reacts to certain stimuli, we can change our mental responses to situations. We can ask ourselves why we’re feeling a specific emotion.

Why did you get pissed off when you were cut off in traffic? Maybe you were remembering that time your date left during a movie and didn’t come back. Why didn’t she come back? I thought things were going well. Good thing I don’t have to see her again. Who would do that? Then you’re cut off, and so is your train of thought. Already ramped up as a result of that twenty-five-year-old memory, you have a temper tantrum in the car.

This is where I’d generally find myself throughout the day—constantly lost in memories that pissed me off and then taking out my emotions on the people around me.

When we’re able to catch our mind’s knee-jerk reaction, we can choose how best to respond. Maybe instead of choosing to respond to being cut off by yelling, you have a moment of gratitude because nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged.

The more you practice being aware of your reactions, the easier it becomes to reach a quieter state of being. Meditation can give us the mental space to break up that inner chatter, even for just a moment.

It’s through quieting the mind that we get to truly discover ourselves—without judgment.

So really. Why Fuck This?

Because I was tired. I was tired of being angry all the time. I was tired of being irritable all the time. After the accident, I looked at my life and thought about how much of it I’d spent being upset about dumb shit that didn’t matter. I wanted to live my life, not spend it being pissed off.

And so I said “fuck this” to not having control of my mind.

I was finished sleeping with the TV on to drown out the “voices in my head,” aka my runaway thoughts. I was finished with not being able to manage these thoughts. I was finished with not being able to sit quietly with myself. The final straw involved my mom and my dog, Spoons.

I was dropping off Spoons at a vet appointment, and my mom came along for the ride. While waiting in the car for our vet tech to come out and get Spoons (it was COVID-19 times), I watched other patients being attended to—patients who’d arrived after we had. Finally, while watching a chatty client occupy one of the techs, I lost my cool.

“You can wait here!” I screamed at my mom. “I’ll walk home!” We were well over a mile from the house, and at this point, I’d barely walked one hundred yards in one go since the accident. I’d lost all perspective.

I apologized to my mom for days afterward, even after she told me to stop and that she forgave me. While meditating the same day as my mom’s forgiveness I decided, barring horrific circumstances I would never have an outburst like that again. Not to my family, not to friends or co-workers, not to strangers, and not to myself. I had to get my irritability, frustration, and temper under control. I had to calm down my thoughts. Just as my extreme tantrum in the car was childish, off-putting, and all-around unacceptable, so were the small outbursts I was having consistently throughout the day, every day.

How about you?

Think about the last time you lost your cool. Maybe it was when neither end of a USB would connect? When you get disconnected from a call after waiting on hold for forty-five minutes? When some schmuck didn’t hit the gas pedal immediately after the light turned green? “It’s a green light, asshole! LET’S GO!”

When was that for you? Was it a year ago? A few months? A week? Was it ten minutes ago? In my case, everything pissed me off all the time.

You might say, “Yeah, but I am the way I am.” If you think you simply have “no control” over your reactions or yourself, then I say unto you, my friend,

You are full of shit.

And I know this because I, too, was full of steaming shit. I was an angry, tantrum-throwing, door-slamming, steering-wheel-punching asshole.

“I am what I am.”

Yeah? Well, I have some unfortunate news. Nobody likes adult babies. The people around you don’t like your tantrums. Coworkers walk on eggshells around you because nobody wants to deal with your outbursts. Contrary to your beliefs, you don’t look like a badass, you look like an asshole. Just like I did. But I have good news as well! You can live a life where you go into a frustrating situation and come out the other side not pissed off.

It all comes down to being in the moment.

Being in the moment is what allows you to see the world from a different perspective. To see that you have far more control than you realize. For me, it all boiled down to a simple sentence that I’ll share with you later in the book.

First, I need to paint a picture—a landscape of how developing my self-awareness made a difference in my life.