This Is Why You Are Suffering
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 8th, 2023
Today, I’ve got some deep thoughts swirling around in my mind, and I can’t wait to share them with you.
These ideas, when you put them together, have the power to truly change your life and help you see things from a new perspective and bring more gratitude, purpose, and fulfillment into your world.
A wise philosopher, Seneca, said something that really struck a chord with me: “We often suffer more in our imagination than in reality.”
We create these expectations and ideals in our heads, and when reality doesn’t align with them, we suffer.
But here’s the kicker…the suffering we experience is based on our own interpretations and expectations. It’s all subjective.
That brings me to the second thought.
This one’s important: any belief held strongly enough will eventually become your reality.
So it’s crucial to be mindful of what you choose to believe.
Those deeply rooted beliefs can become the lens through which you see and experience everything.
Whether it’s about work, relationships, or even the mundane aspects of life…your beliefs have a powerful impact on your reality.
That’s why it’s essential to question and challenge them. Gain self-awareness and examine the narratives you’ve created for yourself.
By examining our beliefs and perceptions, we gain control over our experiences and find a path to personal growth and happiness.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Self-awareness is what leads to a life worth living.'”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up all you beautiful people? I am feeling philosophical today. I have 2 thoughts that I’ve been kind of meditating on throughout the day and I want to bring them to you because I think these 2 thoughts when taken in conjunction with each other can really transform your life. At least the perspective that you go through your life with, which in turn affects your results. Because I do believe, I do believe that what I’m going to talk to you guys about here today is, it’s the unlock. It’s the cheat code to living a life that fills you with gratitude, that you’re filled with purpose and fulfillment. And so here are the 2 thoughts that I wanna share with you. The first is from, I believe it’s Seneca. I think Seneca first said this.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:45]:
He said, we often suffer more in our imagination than in reality. Okay. So let me repeat that. We often suffer more in our imagination than in reality. And I think there’s a lot of truth in this. I think if you really thought about your situation where you are in your life right now, both physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, monetarily, and all those ways, a lot of the struggle, the suffering that you are, you’re incurring is due to the expectations that you have around that thing and less about the actual reality of that thing. For instance, you suffer in your mind because you think you should be healthy and fit and strong and that you should feel a certain way when the reality of the situation is no, like nature does not owe you that. That is not actually what you deserve given the decisions or the path or the actions that you’ve taken throughout your life, right? If you’re, I mean, saying that if you’re not where you want to be, let’s say.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:49]:
Now, if you were to flip that, there are plenty of people who have your similar physical characteristics. They maybe are overweight or they’re fit. Maybe you have some kind of handicap that’s making it difficult for you to navigate life as a, as a fully, what would they say? Fully functioning body. Or maybe you’re just getting a little bit older and you’re starting to get into chronic pains and aches and all the joints and all these things, right? Well, There’s probably somebody out there with a similar situation or worse who does not suffer in the same way that you do. I’m not saying you. I’m using you as the royal you, not like singling anybody out. I’m saying there are people out there. There are people out there who have a little bit of tennis elbow and they think their whole world is ending.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:34]:
Whereas there are people who have no elbow, they have no arm, and they’re like, you know what, it’s okay, life is great. I have the rest of my faculties, I’m still in the game, I’m still playing, this is awesome, I’m making do, not making do, but I’m making the most of what I have in this body of mine. And so the suffering that we incur is due to the expectation of what we think the reality should be. Like, oh, I should have my fully functioning arm. I should have these relationships. So if you just strip that down, you get down to the raw, the raw goodness of it. You realize that there is nothing in life that is good or bad. There’s merely your perception, your interpretation of that event, right? Objectively.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:14]:
And I’m not, Maybe you have like some spiritual or religious beliefs that say, you know, this is objectively good. This is objectively bad. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I’m saying for me, that’s not my belief system. I believe that we are just the product of an objective, unfeeling, cold universe And that there is no such thing, there is no grand scheme, no grand plan to everything. And there is no objective truth, there is no objective good, no objective bad. There’s merely our interpretations. And I think you don’t really have to look any further than to realize that pretty much anything that you could come up with that says like, this is objectively bad, you can look back in history at a time, in a period where there is a group of people who believe the contrary, that that thing is actually in fact a good thing.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:00]:
For instance, you would say baby murder. Not a good thing. Okay. Well, let’s go back to the Bible. Again, it’s funny I’m saying I don’t necessarily believe in religion or spirituality, but like I do believe these stories are timeless and that there are some interesting nuggets to be taken from them. So we look at what is Isaac and Abraham. God says to Abraham, go sacrifice your, your firstborn son to me. And Abraham goes to do it.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:25]:
It says, okay, God, that’s what you want. And of course God stops him. But the point being, you would say, hey, that’s objectively horrible. That’s a bad thing. Baby murder, not cool with that. Well, if it’s to prove your faith to God, in that instance to Abraham, he says that is a good thing. Okay, so we could take this event with 2 different interpretations and we’d ask ourselves, okay, well, is it good or is it bad? And the answer is it’s neither. It just is.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:49]:
It’s just maybe a murder, whatever. Okay, this is a weird tangent. Anyway, and I do believe this is true that when we overlay our interpretation on top of events, thinking this is good, this is bad, getting cut off in traffic is bad. Well, in reality, that might be the thing that made you a little bit late for work, which is a good thing because maybe if you had walked into work at that exact moment, something was going to fall from the sky and land on your head, right? You don’t know. You can’t see the infinite number of variables in life and so the only answer that we can realistically say is it is just it is just what it is. Okay? So that’s the first concept that I’ve been thinking about is that we often suffer more in imagination than in reality. And so if we can change our perspective, our imagination, and how we perceive these things, then conceivably we would suffer less. Now the second thing that I’ve been thinking about, and these things again, they go hand in hand, is that Any belief held tightly enough will inevitably be made true.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:51]:
So let me repeat that. Any belief held tightly enough or strongly enough will inevitably become true. So you need to be very careful about what you choose to believe because in a very real way it will become your reality. Okay, so when we take these 2 concepts and we smush them together, we realize, okay, if I believe very, very strongly, baby murder, bad, then that will become my reality. That will become the lens through which I see the world, through which I move. And I’m not saying again, baby murder is good or bad. I’m just using this as like an extreme example, but there are plenty of other examples that much more mundane that we could apply this to, you know, like. If you were to say, um, working past 5 PM is bad or waking up early is good.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:35]:
Like you set up these narratives that will inevitably become your reality. And I find that to be a very helpful perspective that those beliefs that we have that we don’t even question anymore, they play this very large role in our life that we don’t even begin to question them anymore because they’re so deeply enrooted. And those beliefs that we don’t even think to question them because they are tainting our perspective, our imagination, they have more of an effect on our reality than the objective reality does in itself. And so we need to be really, really careful about reviewing, okay, what do I believe about the world? What are the, the, The labels, the descriptions, the categorizations of good or bad that I’m making that maybe don’t actually have a basis in reality only in my historical narrative. That’s the only basis that it has is that at some point in my life I started to, I chose to believe this thing and it’s in questioning those narratives. I think that we can learn, we can grow, we gain more self-awareness, which I’ve talked about countless times, is 1 of the greatest superpowers that any of us – forget being an entrepreneur or an investor, just any human can have is like self-awareness. Because I think it was Aristotle said, and this could be completely wrong about who said it, but the idea is, is, is solid. It’s the unexamined life is not worth living.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:01]:
And to examine the life means to examine the self because that is the lens that is the life that is where you are living through is yourself. And so self-awareness is what leads to a life worth living. So those are 2 concepts that I’ve been thinking about heavily today. I hope this brought you a little bit of value. Maybe it’s just kind of a weird episode and if that’s the case, please forgive me. I’ll try again to do better tomorrow. But again, there are no labels. So, you know, just is what it is.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:25]:
Wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It just is what it is. Now, if you got some value out of this, it would mean the world to me. If you just quickly drop a review or a rating on Spotify or iTunes, just give it a little shout out, give it a little bit of love, because that really truly does help the algorithms spread the podcast wider, spread the message, so that maybe there’s somebody else out there who’s going through the tough times right now, and this might land on their radar and help transform their perspective into something that can actually move them forward productively in life. And so instead of just suffering needlessly in their imagination more than reality, they realize, oh, I actually have control. The locus of control is within me and they can go on to do something incredibly great with their lives. So that’s what leaving a review.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:08]:
That’s what leaving a rating can do. Truly it can change lives. So you have the ability right now to transform the universe with just the flick of a thumb. So if you could just take a second to go do that, would truly mean the world to me guys. But if you don’t, I’ll still love you. And I will see you back here bright and early tomorrow. But until then, stay hyperfocused, my friend.
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