Don’t Live Your Life in a Straitjacket of Your Own Making

Have you ever heard of Sadhguru? He’s a brilliant guy who kind of reminds me of an Indian version of Jordan Peterson. If you listen to him, he’ll be kind of meandering along and you’ll be thinking, “Where is he going with this?” Then, next thing you know, he’ll come up with some profound point out of left field.

As a Westerner, I find Sadhguru to be particularly intriguing not just because he is a very smart guy, but because as an Indian who grew up immersed in that culture, he has a very different way of looking at the world than most Americans. That means he tends to touch on topics you just don’t hear about very often in the West.

For example, in his book, Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, there’s a concept he goes back to a number of times that I’ve tied together here in three quotes from him:

Depending on the type of physical, mental, and energetic actions you perform, you write your software. Once that software is written, your whole system functions accordingly. Based on the information from the past, certain memory patterns keep recurring. Now your life turns habitual, repetitive, and cyclical. Over time, you become ensnared by your patterns. Like so many people, you probably don’t know why certain situations keep recurring in your inner and outer life. This is because these patterns are unconscious. As time goes on, you turn into a puppet of your accumulated past

...It is important to see that whatever seems determined in your life has been determined by you unconsciously. You have written your own software. Depending on the way you have written your software, that is the way you think, that is the way you feel, that is the way you act, and that is what you invite into your life. Depending on the kind of “fragrance” you emit, you attract life situations. Some people seem to constantly attract pleasant situations; others seem to constantly attract unpleasant ones. Or perhaps you see this in different phases in your life. In some phases, wonderful things seem to keep happening; in others, adverse circumstances keep recurring. Now, this simply depends on what you have in your karmic reservoir. Today you have rotten fish, so you attract some terrible situations; tomorrow you have flowers, so you attract better situations. One thing that we are trying to change through yoga (and hopefully, this book) is the kind of fragrance you throw out into the world

...When you were eighteen, it looked like you could grow in so many different ways. But as you grew older, it slowly seemed like choices were shrinking. It felt like there was only one way for you to be. As the karmic substance increases in volume, the discerning mind becomes almost useless, because you now work largely by habits, patterns, and cycles.

Put another way, what he’s saying here is that when you’re young, you feel like there are so many possibilities in your mind. For example, when I was young, after I asked a classmate what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said he was torn between being an astronaut and a truck driver. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a lawyer, a psychologist, a stand-up comedian, or a writer. This is pretty typical. Even most people just starting college don’t really know what they want to do in college or who they want to be. Family man? Playboy? Surf bum? Fitness junky? Entrepreneur? Go work on a farm? Pursue those big city lights? Fall in love and have some kids? Spend a decade dating around?

Over time, we willingly make choices, or we just sort of seem to fall into them. We build habits, both good and bad. We get older. We build an identity. We get used to how things are. Next thing you know, our options shrink, our decisions catch up to us and our world gets smaller and smaller. We do the same things. We go to the same places. We hang out with the same people. We think the exact same things. We don’t grow. We don’t learn. We get comfortable and our world shrinks more and more each year. Then, we wonder why we feel that sense of discontent, why we feel bored, why things feel stale.

A lot of people chalk that up to getting older and there’s at least something to that, but in most cases, it’s truer to say that people stop trying, stop growing, and stop wanting things fervently and that makes them grow old. Don’t believe me? Well, tell me you don’t see people who are forty, but dress like they’re sixty, shuffle along like they’re 70, and look like they’re sleepwalking through life.

Of course, it’s easier for us to see this in older people, but it also happens TO TEENAGERS all the time. They create an attitude, a set of beliefs and a way of being that are extremely limiting for them. In the most extreme cases, you get trans kids, school shooters, and kids that kill themselves, but even many the less extreme cases can spend their whole lives trapped in the same patterns that limited their lives as high schoolers.

How do people get in that position? They put themselves in boxes, straitjackets, and in prison with their choices, their beliefs, and their way of looking at life that they picked up from their parents, their friends, or developed on their own. They tell themselves things like:

* “People my age don’t do that.”

* “Nobody would want someone like me.”

* “I have to respond to that by getting angry and lashing out!”

* “I don’t deserve happiness.”

* “People like me can’t do that.”

* “It would be easier to just stay home.”

* “I don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

* “I can’t try that. I would be terrible at it.”

* “Old dogs can’t learn new tricks.”

* “I’ve never tried that, but I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

This is a kind of death. You can start to become like an animal with a leg stuck in a trap. You can get so desperate to get free that you’re almost ready to chew your own leg off, but you don’t know how to get loose because you keep doing, believing, and thinking about all the same things that trapped you in the first place:

If this is you or, even if you don’t want this to become you, you have to start taking leaps of faith. Read a new book. Watch a movie you wouldn’t normally watch. Expose yourself to different ideas. Go eat at a restaurant you wouldn’t normally try. Meet some new people. Go to a new church. When you have an impulse, pursue it. Become the sort of person who feels compelled to do things they fear.

Question your limiting beliefs. Try responding in different ways to frustrating situations. Try a different type of exercise. Travel to a new place. Do something you’ve always wanted to do that you never have. Design your day in a different way. Say “yes” to something you normally say “no” to just to get a different experience.

Some people get scared of this type of behavior and they automatically jump to a worst-case scenario. “Try something different? So, I should try heroin? Maybe I should cheat on my wife by having sex with a prostitute without a condom. Is that what you’re saying?”

No, of course, it’s not, but if you’re thinking that, it’s a strong sign that you’re one of the people who need this the most because you’re desperately looking for excuses to stay in the same old rut.

We all only get one crack at life and if you’ve been living it in a straitjacket, you’re going to be a lot happier if you take it off.

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