It’s important to me to respond to everyone who shared their stories and feedback on this blog so far. First of all, thank you! Your time and effort are greatly appreciated. For those that wrote about their triumphs through their dark times; I commend you! You will be so much stronger for having gone through those difficult times if you stick to it. I love you. The graciousness of those that wrote me about fessing up for lying, even after these many years, is emotional for me. Again, thank you for your patience and love, and I will not let you down again.

When I wrote my Accountability/Transparency blog post, I asked for feedback. Some believable people did get back to me, so I adjusted my beliefs and updated them. Below, I started writing responses and intend to open the discussion to everyone. There were only a few, and I’d be honored to hear your theories and beliefs on these ideas too. Also, if you head to that post you can see how I made adjustments to the importance of it all, determined to be less needy, better described my win, and more clearly defined my beliefs on why/how to meet my mission.

“Did something recently happen?”

-Something always happens. All we can control is how we react to those somethings, and I am always trying to optimize my reactions to meet my beliefs. I still suck at them sometimes, but I want to better. Writing down what I believe in was a proactive move to be better reactively.

“Where does this leave you to just ‘be’?

-This is similar to the last part of a comment below. My ‘being’ is what I’ve laid out. No, these beliefs don’t make me a robot. Staying disciplined with them opens freedoms in other areas and at later times. Relaxing? Of course, I exercise some freedom to relax and let-loose sometimes. Being in the moment, all the time is how I try to live. But living in the moment all time, while staying true to my beliefs, is the ultimate path for me. More on this later.

“I think your vision for your future is unrealistic and self-centered. Your future wife seems to be a projection of who you want to be. And maybe I don’t understand the exercise or I am being too critical. I think it is really incredible how much work you put into yourself and it is very admirable. On the other hand, it seems like you struggle with some kind of self-identity and fill your life with extreme structure because otherwise, it would be too overwhelming. You already possess the values and principles laid out. But your chart does not give you any room to be human at all.”

-I can see where you are coming from; the exercise was to go through your personal win by writing a journal entry, so yes it was self-centered. Unfortunately, I did not originally describe what a lot of the causes behind my actions throughout the described day were for. Based on my mission (tethered to my values and principles) of relaying joy, love, and enrichment, my actions are to be based on promoting goodness. I believe the projection of my future wife may be true of who I am today, and of course, I want to be aligned with someone who shares a lot of the same values; principles and tactics would, and should, likely be different. Thank you, but I don’t handle praise well, as I’ll be describing in a future post. Putting my beliefs to paper, releasing my long-held lie, and doing a lot of exploring since my suicide helped me confirm who I really am. I am you, and everyone else, living a different life. I’m an amalgamation of my thoughts, actions, and experiences – and so are you. Do you know why? Do you know what they are? I know mine now. I own them. And I learn from them to keep trying to be better. Employing discipline (and the other principles and tactics) helps me be efficient at being effective for my mission. Productive. Of course, I stumble and fail sometimes, but the journey of life is exciting that way. Being ‘human’, ‘to just be’, – here is some science on presence: personal power, also known as “presence”, ‘true self’, or “in the moment”, is a physiological condition of the body where high testosterone and low cortisol exist. In other words ‘our true selves as being present and transparent’. I try to maximize my time, effort, and concentration to productively meet my goals which lend to my mission. So yes, there is a lot of those resources being spent on me to maximize high T and low C and presence, but in an effort to achieve the greater good.

“If you had to give one piece of advice what would it be? I like that you put time and effort into going through this journey to have your beliefs in front of you; most people don’t know what they believe, and their beliefs change all the time. The worst piece of advice I’ve gotten from all the people I’ve asked this question, and it comes up a lot, is “stand up for what you believe in”. If you think about it, Hitler stood up for what he believed in. So, not only did you lay all this out, you step back and think about whether it was worth it or not.”

-Again, thank you for the kind words, but the rest of the conversation is where we can get a bit of meat. I originally answered this question with “do and be good”. The person responded with (paraphrasing), “I hate when people respond with ‘stand up for what you believe in…’ “. I figured the answer I gave seemed like it was similar to the answers he hated and then said, “write down your values, principles, and mission”. We then talked about why I had gone through the exercise of writing down my beliefs and that after completing it, I was wondering about the effectiveness of my effort (was it worth it, in such a short life, to have done so?). After thinking about this for a bit I brought up to the person that asking the question ‘one piece of advice’, and getting a response, is the exact action that he hated – by answering the question, one is standing up for what they believe in. It is a circular path that leads back to the origin. It’s ok for people to change their mind. If new logical information comes, is from a believable source, and is true (reality), then it would be unfortunate not to change one’s mind/belief, so I agree that I don’t like that response (and the question :). But I’m willing to keep an open mind for changing my belief on this.

Do you have thoughts on these words? Please reach out.