Choosing to Free Yourself

选择解放自己

The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.

最难的不是做你想做的事，而是知道你想要什么。

Be aware there are no “adults.” Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it. [71]

要知道这里没有“成年人”。每个人都是边走边编的。你必须找到你自己的道路，选择、选择和抛弃你认为合适的道路。你自己想清楚，然后去做。

How have your values changed?

你的价值观有何改变？

When I was younger, I really, really valued freedom. Freedom was one of my core values. Ironically, it still is. It’s probably one of my top three values, but it’s now a different definition of freedom.

当我年轻的时候，我真的，真的很珍视自由。自由是我的核心价值观之一。具有讽刺意味的是，它现在仍然是。这可能是我的三大价值观之一，但现在它对自由的定义不同了。

My old definition was “freedom to.” Freedom to do anything I want. Freedom to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s “freedom from.” Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. I’m looking for “freedom from,” internally and externally, whereas before I was looking for “freedom to.” [4]

我以前的定义是“自由去做。”做任何我想做的事的自由。想做什么就做什么，任何时候我想做什么都可以。现在，我在寻找的自由是内心的自由。这就是“不受束缚的自由”免于反应的自由。从愤怒中解脱出来。从悲伤中解脱出来。免于被迫做事的自由。我在寻找内部和外部的“自由”，而之前我在寻找的是“自由到”。

Advice to my younger self: “Be exactly who you are.”

给我年轻时的自己的建议：“做你自己。”

Holding back means staying in bad relationships and bad jobs for years instead of minutes.

犹豫不决意味着在糟糕的关系和糟糕的工作中呆上几年而不是几分钟。

Freedom from Expectations 从期望中解脱出来 I don’t measure my effectiveness at all. I don’t believe in self -measurement . I feel like this is a form of self -discipline , self -punishment , and self -conflict . [1]

我根本不衡量我的效率。我不相信自我衡量。我觉得这是一种自律、自我惩罚、自我冲突的形式。

If you hurt other people because they have expectations of you, that’s their problem. If they have an agreement with you, it’s your problem. But, if they have an expectation of you, that’s completely their problem. It has nothing to do with you. They’re going to have lots of expectations out of life. The sooner you can dash their expectations, the better. [1]

如果你伤害别人是因为他们对你有期望，那是他们的问题。如果他们和你有协议，那是你的问题。但是，如果他们对你有期望，那完全是他们的问题。这与你无关。他们会对生活有很多期待。你越早能粉碎他们的期望就越好。

Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what other people think.

勇气不是冲进机关枪的巢穴。勇气就是不在乎别人怎么想。

Anyone who has known me for a long time knows my defining characteristic is a combination of being very impatient and willful. I don’t like to wait. I hate wasting time. I’m very famous for being rude at parties, events, dinners, where the moment I figure out it’s a waste of my time, I leave immediately.

任何认识我很久的人都知道，我的典型特征是非常急躁和任性。我不喜欢等。我讨厌浪费时间。我在聚会、活动、晚宴上以粗鲁著称，当我发现这是在浪费时间时，我会立即离开。

Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.

珍惜你的时间。这是你的全部家当。这比你的钱更重要。这比你的朋友更重要。这比什么都重要。你的时间就是你的全部。不要浪费你的时间。

This doesn’t mean you can’t relax. As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing? 这并不意味着你不能放松。只要你在做你想做的事，就不会浪费你的时间。但是，如果你没有把时间花在做你想做的事情上，你没有赚到钱，你没有学到东西—你到底在做什么？ Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you’re happy, other people will ask you how you became happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy. [10]

不要把你的时间花在让别人开心上。其他人快乐是他们的问题。这不是你的问题。如果你开心，别人也会开心。如果你快乐，别人会问你是怎么变得快乐的，他们可能会从中学到东西，但你没有责任让别人快乐。

Freedom from Anger 从愤怒中解脱出来 What is anger? Anger is a way to signal as strongly as you can to the other party you’re capable of violence. Anger is a precursor to violence.

什么是愤怒？愤怒是一种尽可能强烈地向对方发出你有能力使用暴力的信号。愤怒是暴力的前兆。

Observe when you’re angry—anger is a loss of control over the situation. Anger is a contract you make with yourself to be in physical and mental and emotional turmoil until reality changes. [1]

观察你生气的时候—愤怒是对情况的失控。愤怒是你与自己签订的一份合同，在现实发生变化之前，你会处于身心和情绪的动荡之中。

Anger is its own punishment. An angry person trying to push your head below water is drowning at the same time.

愤怒本身就是惩罚。一个愤怒的人试图把你的头推到水下，同时也溺水身亡。

Freedom from Employment 免于就业的自由 People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom. [11]

那些入不敷出的人享受着人们忙于升级他们的生活方式所无法理解的自由。

Once you’ve truly controlled your own fate, for better or for worse, you’ll never let anyone else tell you what to do. [11]

一旦你真正掌握了自己的命运，不管是好是坏，你永远不会让别人告诉你该怎么做。

A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

尝到自由的滋味会让你失业。

Freedom from Uncontrolled Thinking 从不受控制的思想中解放出来 A big habit I’m working on is trying to turn off my “monkey mind.” When we’re children, we’re pretty blank slates. We live very much in the moment. We essentially just react to our environment through our instincts. We live in what I would call the “real world.” Puberty is the onset of desire—the first time you really, really want something and you start long -range planning. You start thinking a lot, building an identity and an ego to get what you want.

我正在养成的一个大习惯是试图关闭我的“猴心”。当我们还是孩子的时候，我们完全是一张白纸。我们活在当下。从本质上说，我们只是通过本能对环境做出反应。我们生活在我称之为“真实世界”的地方。青春期是欲望的开始—当你第一次真的，真的想要什么东西，然后你开始了长期的计划。你开始思考很多，建立一种认同感和自尊心来得到你想要的东西。

If you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point. They’re constantly judging everything they see. They’re playing back movies of things that happened to them yesterday. They’re living in fantasy worlds of what’s going to happen tomorrow. They’re just pulled out of base reality. That can be good when you do long -range planning. It can be good when you solve problems. It’s good for us as survival -and -replication machines.

如果你走在街上，街上有一千个人，所有的一千个人在任何时候都在自言自语。他们不断地评判他们所看到的一切。他们正在回放昨天发生在他们身上的电影。他们生活在关于明天会发生什么的幻想世界里。他们只是脱离了基本现实。当你做长期计划时，这是很好的。当你解决问题的时候，它会很好。作为生存和复制机器，这对我们有好处。

I think it’s actually very bad for your happiness. To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master. My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7.

我认为这实际上对你的幸福非常不利。对我来说，思想应该是仆人和工具，而不是主人。我的猴心不应该全天候控制和驱使我。

I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard. [4]

我想打破思维不受控制的习惯，这很难。

A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time.

忙碌的头脑加速了主观时间的流逝。

There is no endpoint to self -awareness and self -discovery . It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at. There is no one meaningful answer, and no one is going to fully solve it unless you’re one of these enlightened characters. Maybe some of us will get there, but I’m not likely to, given how involved I am in the rat race. The best case is I’m a rat who might be able to look up at the clouds once in a while.

自我意识和自我发现没有终点。这是一个终生的过程，希望你能在这方面越做越好。没有一个有意义的答案，除非你是这些开明人物中的一员，否则没有人会完全解决这个问题。也许我们中的一些人会到达那里，但我不太可能做到，因为我参与了这场激烈的竞争。最好的情况是，我是一只老鼠，也许能偶尔抬头看看云。

I think just being aware you’re a rat in a race is about as far as most of us are going to get. [8]

我认为，仅仅是意识到你在比赛中是一只老鼠，这就是我们大多数人所能达到的最大限度。

The modern struggle:

现代斗争：

Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising… 孤独的个体召唤非人的意志力，禁食，冥想和锻炼…

Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.

对抗大量的科学家和统计学家将大量的食物、屏幕和药品武器化成垃圾食品、点击诱饵新闻、无休止的色情、没完没了的游戏和上瘾的毒品。