Linus Rylander

writer, entrepreneur, maverick

author, copywriter, lifestyle strategist
linusrylander

Ebb & Flow

  • linusrylander
  • 9 years ago
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  • 4 likes
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Over the past week or so, I have been in a state most people would characterize as “depressed.”

What? Aren’t you the guy who literally wrote the book on how to live a kick ass life?

Yeah. I said most people.

Most people have a horrible lack of insight in the natural patterns in their own lives.

They notice they don’t feel so good, thinking maybe they’re depressed or worse. Maybe you need some pills for that. There are pills for everything these days.

The difference in the state I was in was that I was detached from it. I immediately recognized it as the natural ebb and flow of how things work. It is all cyclical. Everything expands and contracts all the time, whether you want it to or not.

When you stay in “expansion” mode for too long, and you force yourself to keep moving, then the body will not tolerate that. It will forcibly shut you down, and then you say you are burnt out. Or in my case, I caught a nasty flu-like thing. Fever, murderous headaches, constant dizziness, etc. Yeah, that was fun. But I recognized it for what it was. Then I am now gradually easing out of it. I’m no longer physically ill, but I’m still slowly working my way out of “contraction” and into “expansion” mode.

The lesson is that, a lot of the time when you think something is going terribly wrong, it isn’t. It is just moving through the natural cyclical pattern of how everything works. There’s a natural pacing to everything.

The more you pay attention to the world around you in general, and to yourself in particular, the more you will start to see this for yourself... and more importantly, you can start to act in accordance with it. That’s life in the flow.

###

Blogging challenge: I will be posting 5-6 days a week for the next 30 days. I still have a couple dozen unpublished post that will never see the light of day. I’ve been writing daily posts for a while now, and only publishing my favorites once a week. But now, I need to generate some momentum after not writing much at all for ~2 weeks. So I’ll be publishing everything just to keep myself accountable.

Blog platform: As you may notice, this ain’t wordpress. Tynan has spent the past couple of years developing a new, kick-ass blog platform called SETT. It isn’t ideal for everything, but for what I want for this blog, it beats the pants off of wordpress.

Today’s writing music: The Party & The After Party - The Weeknd

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Professional deep end jumper. Check out my SETT blog at http://misol.com
Misol.com
  • Misol.com
  • 9 years ago
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This one hit home. Just crashed and burned a few weeks ago. It's amazing how my mood affected my decision making. 

However, I took it easy, slept a lot, moved back home and everything is better. I guess the key is stay healthy, take it easy and don't make any hasty decisions.

Depression may be a sign you need to sit back and rest.

author, copywriter, lifestyle strategist
linusrylander
  • linusrylander
  • 9 years ago
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Cool. Yeah definitely agree -- I think depression is largely a mythical beast. People don't understand it, but not because it's not there to be understood. I think it's more about self-awareness than it is anything else.

Thanks for the note :)

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Al McBride
  • Al McBride
  • 9 years ago
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Yes, pills are generally not a good idea for 'depression', or for many people 'I'm feeling a little down'. As Jung mentioned, narcissism is so often mistaken for genuine suffering. That's not to say there isn't genuine suffering, but many are grossly self-indulgent. For many it's a point of fashion now, to be bi-polar. 

As you wisely said, a natural ebb and flow, life in cycles makes perfect sense. It prevents burn out whether you want it to or not, so you might as well roll with it. You don't have a choice when you've a high fever and your head is spinning around just walking to to sink for a glass of water. Your body is urging you for some quiet, relax and reflection time. That and watching marathons of movies. 

It sounds like this different state was of value to you, the contraction rather than the expansion. If so, how so? Were your thoughts just calmer? Or were they coming to you in a feverish wave, so all the more novel for that? Or were you using different language to yourself, or did you find new perspectives? 

I always appreciated your quality over quantity approach Linus. Your work is generally up in the heady heights of 'bad-ass'. It will be intriguing to see your array of daily posts. Can too much Linus be a bad thing? We will see...

AL

author, copywriter, lifestyle strategist
linusrylander
  • linusrylander
  • 9 years ago
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Amen re: movie marathons. In my case, I watched a couple of seasons of Castle...

But yes, it was definitely of value to me much in the same way all things are valuable to me. It is when you perceive everything that happens as part of the story. Wrote chapters on this in the book previously mentioned (Principle #7: take everything personally, take nothing seriously.)

Another reason it was valuable is because it gave me an excuse to just disconnect and vegg out for a while -- my body wouldn't tolerate anything else. A forced contraction state. My fault for being too much all over the place, moving too fast and not respecting the natural pacing of things. I could have slowed down by my own accord, taken a look at where I was, and started moving again in accordance with "flow" so to speak. When I didn't, my body did it for me. Or, that's how I interpret these things, anyway.

Great comment, thanks for asking a good question.

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Al McBride
  • Al McBride
  • 9 years ago
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Contraction yes, but it's not really depression at all. It's your body and mind needing down time, a reboot. LIke an elastic band, only so much expansion before it goes 'boing' and violently contracts. I presume along with symptoms of physical illness, you were very unmotivated and focused, other than to watch tv?

Usually when you're down or more severely depressed you can't see the wood from the trees, totally self-absorbed. It's really the slightly indulgent part, you don't have to be concerned about anything outside of yourself. But you on the other hand manage to see perspective of how the life contraction works, the cycle that you will sooner or later return to expansion. Most depressives feel literally future-less, which can be quite terrifying. But that feeling of being within a story offers that wider perspective.

I like the idea of seeing everything as a part of a narrative. You can choose to see things how you wish, all the better you see them in a helpful way. I wonder, do you feel like you're the director and the lead, or sometimes just the lead and something or someone else is in the director's chair?

My cousin is a clinical psychologist and was telling me recently one of the methods he uses involves changing people's narratives. It can be quite an effective tool in helping people see themselves in a different context. 

I fear many people might only feel like bit-part players in their own life if they tried to adopt it as a philosophy. It's harder than you think to play the lead, after all, you're in every scene, and you've to carry the film. Or do you see your narrative more in the style of a book? Is it Linus Rylander the biography vol 25, or Linus Rylander the box set, seasons 28 coming soon?

author, copywriter, lifestyle strategist
linusrylander
  • linusrylander
  • 9 years ago
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Haha, yes. I guess your first sentence was the whole point of this post: when something happens that you perceive is "bad," whatever that means, it usually isn't. Everything is part of a larger whole, and just because you can't see the full picture doesn't mean that it isn't there to be seen.

Anyway, in terms of how I see myself as part of the narrative, I guess I would be the lead actor more than anything else. In some situations maybe the screenwriter, but never the director. Lead actor because he would follow the directive of the director. The director would be the universe, I guess, or whatever you want to call those larger patterns I've been talking about. Just the natural flow of things. That's what tells me what I should be doing. Sometimes I might think that it is my decision to make, but that is an illusion. As they say in the army, everybody has a plan until someone gets punched in the face. 

Plans never go according to plan, and I believe there is a far more superior intelligence at work which is way smarter than me about these things. So in a sense I just do what I'm told. This is all a very roundabout way of saying to simply re-align yourself with the natural flow of how things work... like setting your sails to move with the wind and with the ocean, rather than slaving away trying to fight it with a couple of silly little oars. You don't stand a chance.

 (reluctant to refer to anything as "God" here because of all the weird religious bullshit connotations etc... I think of it as something very simple and natural but hundreds of years of religious dogmatism and general weirdness has made this simple, beautiful thing into something ignorant and bizarre...) 

I mentioned that in some cases I might consider myself the screenwriter, and that is because I will set my intent on something I want to do or have. Write it into the manuscript, so to speak. But it's the job of the director to decide exactly how that will take place.

Master of Killing Time and Slaying SERPs
Umeboshi
  • Umeboshi
  • 9 years ago
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Glad your feeling better.  It has been a while since I've read any of your posts. As always well written, your command of the written word is unparalleled.  Always a joy to read.. I will have to grab a copy of your book on azon.  SETT looks pretty cool too

author, copywriter, lifestyle strategist
linusrylander
  • linusrylander
  • 9 years ago
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Not sure about "unparalleled" but I am flattered! Thanks for your comment :)

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