*Typing*

It's better to like yourself than to be liked by others.

No. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. However, the need to be liked by others can often lead to us making short-term decisions that are rarely in our long-term best interest. We might say things we don't mean. We might bite our tongues when we'd normally speak up. We might behave in ways that don't align with who we are. We might compromise in areas we normally wouldn't compromise in.

With time, these short-term decisions may lead to others liking who we are. But, rarely do they leave us liking who we are. External validation is a form of immediate gratification, which is to say it is a form of pleasure. Pleasure, unchecked, compounds into self-loathing. The reckless pursuit of pleasure is a trait that makes for bad partners and weak leaders.

If you want to like yourself, you must resist the pleasure of being liked by others.

When opportunities feel scarce, we place an unhealthy expectation on each one that comes our way. This not only takes us out of the present moment. It actually pushes the opportunities away. The Buddhists call this grasping or clinging. They believe it's the root of all suffering. I prefer to call it white knuckling. Think of it like attempting to catch a butterfly. If you chase a butterfly, you will not catch it. You will frighten it away. However, if you sit still and be patient, the butterfly might just land on you. It's easy to be patient in a butterfly garden where there are dozens and dozens fluttering around you. It's harder when you look around and see just one. When there is just one, behave as if there are many. You can't white knuckle a butterfly.

No matter how unique your taste is, you're not alone. Your taste might be eccentric, sure, but it's not exclusive. There are communities who like stapling bread to trees, writing horror renditions of Garfield comic strips and carrying around sand in their pockets. Shared taste should be hugely liberating to a creative individual. Knowing others will like the things you like gives your the freedom to create the things you like. Your work might not garner an audience of millions. But, your work will find enough people to support its creation. So, instead of creating for the masses, focus your attention on creating for yourself.

Great martial artists achieve what is called 'munen muso'. It's the ability to act without thinking. Professional athletes might call it the 'zone'. Big wave surfers might call it 'flow'. Businessmen might call it 'momentum'. It's not so much the name that matters but the feeling. It's a state of mind where thinking is replaced with knowing; and deciding, doing. To achieve 'munen muso', we must meticulously master our craft until it is knitted into the fabrics of our beings. Our crafts must become as much a part of us as our hearts and souls.

Refuse intense ideology. Avoid black and white thinking. Believing blindly in any one extreme is not faith but ignorance. It muddies up the waters of your thinking. Instead, you should constantly challenge your own beliefs. You should treat your beliefs as questions rather than answers. You should be wary of your natural tendency to drift too far in any one direction for with extremism comes a sense of certainty. It is not certain to live without answers. And so extremism is choosing to live with a false sense of certainty. Furthermore, you should be wary of extremists as the mouse is wary of the grinning fox, for extremists are quite persuasive.