F**k It Therapy Page 4

  This is a peculiar thought – and if it’s very unfamiliar it might not even have a chance to register! It means we only recognize what we already know. To help explain this phenomenon, the example of the indigenous people, who hadn’t seen ships before the first explorers arrived, is often used. It was reported (by Captain Cook, Magellan et al) that while the locals greeted the small landing boats, they couldn’t see the ships moored offshore – even though they were looking out to sea. Ridiculous? Don’t blame me. I didn’t invent that example. I didn’t do the research into the brain.

  It is very natural to fix our models, firm up our network of neural pathways, create our habits, and let them become our prisons. And part of the F**k It Therapy process includes a conscious effort to break those habits. It’s possible to rewire some of the brain’s networks. It’s also possible to rewire them with a more open response to stimuli by developing and practicing new habits of perception.

  In fact, in the ‘F**k It State,’ as we call it, you’re naturally more open to stimuli. And that’s the trick – to use F**k It Therapy to help you into a naturally more open state because it helps you out of your naturally more limited state.

  A PRISON HAS RULES AND REGULATIONS

  In music and movies we glorify the rule breakers, the rebels, and the pioneers. Freedom is our fantasy: we break out of whatever chains bind us and head out for the open road. There are those, of course, who have never had this fantasy, who are happy to live the 9–5 working life with 2.2 kids in a neat suburban home with a standard family car, weekend trips, staycations, the saving for retirement, the lawn bowls, the retirement home, the mid-priced coffin. I repeat: they are happy to live that life. So leave them alone. Don’t knock them.

  But most of us have a fantasy about freedom. And that’s why those movies and music work on us, but not because we’re free and on the open road of life. Do you think the true rebels and pioneers are watching Thelma and Louise and listening to The Clash? No, they work on us because we’re still in our chains. Do you know how many white-collar workers there are out there with big motorbikes? Do you know how many Audi drivers listen to Eminem? How many grandfathers are listening to punk? How many media people say ‘cool’? How many of the dudes at school became financial advisers? Don’t knock them. It’s probably me. It’s probably you. Wait until your kids are in their teens, then you’ll get the list.

  Why – with such a common, strong, fantasy – are we all still in chains? Because we like it at some level, of course. We like the rules and regulations of regular life. They make us feel safe. No matter how much we dream about breaking the rules, we secretly fear what life would be like without them. People talk about soldiers or prisoners who become ‘institutionalized,’ reliant on order and routine. It’s easy to look at someone who exits the military or prison after a long time and see why it’s difficult, and say ‘ah, yes, they’ve become institutionalized.’ Well, you don’t think you have? You don’t think you’re as reliant on your institutions as they were on theirs? You believe that you’re not reliant on your work status, your routine, your family, the support of your friends, the economic web that feeds you, entertains you, the infrastructures that sell to you, ferry you around, comfort you, and heal you when you’re sick?

  Just try taking out some of the elements of the rules and regulations that you work within occasionally. If you work in an office and dream of being your own boss, of having the freedom of working from home, then try it for a couple of weeks if you can. And get your wake-up call – meet the truth you unconsciously suspected all along – that it’s not so easy. Not that finding a way to give up the nine–to–five and striking out on your own with a business you can run from the beach isn’t a brilliant idea – we’ll give you some tips later to do just that. But it’s a peculiar fact, that the more you idealize your fantasy alternative life, the further away it is from you.

  You stay in prison because you’re secretly afraid of what it’s like without those rules and regulations. We’ll learn how to say F**k It to unobtainable fantasies, and how to work out what you want to do, and how you can go about doing it.

  A PRISON CAN BE VERY COMFORTABLE

  Imagine those Mafia bosses with their luxury cells, running their empires on smartphones from gold-rimmed toilet seats. Now drop that image. It’s not realistic, and it contributes little to this next point.

  The prison you make for yourself can be comfortable. Not just because it feels safe and it’s a natural way to live, or because of all the rules and regulations of the particular institution you’ve chosen, but because there are huge resources invested in making it comfortable for you. Much of our society is set up to support the individual and the collective prisons of its population.

  Take your work life, for example. Although I am writing this book in the middle of a recession, in the age of austerity, most people have become steadily wealthier over the past decades. We really have never had it so good. Yet most people still continue to work 40-plus hours every week, even though a fantasy for many people is to work fewer hours, get more leisure time, or retire early. Meanwhile, we’ve all been living moments away from an easy-to-fulfill fantasy. All we have to say is ‘I don’t need all this stuff, I don’t need a bigger house, I’ll forego the new car, and work less. I’ll trade in my stuff for time.’ Unlike, say, 50 years ago, it’s been possible to buy leisure time (you see, that’s what you’re effectively doing, when you work less, earn less, and enjoy more leisure time). The increasing gap between what is required to live a comfortable life and what we all have means there has been an easy opportunity to downsize and enjoy more time. But how many people have actually done it? Relatively tiny numbers, if you assess how many could have done it. Fifteen years ago I was the first man in our forward-thinking advertising agency to go part-time. I used the time I bought each week to write. I was amazed by how many people would say, ‘John, my you’re lucky, how did you pull that off?’

  ‘I asked,’ I replied.

  They’d look at me as if they understood what I was saying: that they too, could ask. But that they wouldn’t, would they? There was always a pause, then: ‘Ah, no, but I couldn’t, could I, because…’ And the same old list was reeled off. But they were affluent people. They were also entrepreneurial, imaginative, self-confident people. Yet, they were happier to rest in the assumption that they couldn’t do it because they hadn’t been given the opportunity, rather than the truth that they wouldn’t ever do it because they’d made their decision to enjoy the trappings of work success over the freedom they professed to desire.

  Why have so few of us taken up the possibility of downsizing and enjoying life more? Because we’ve become accustomed to a higher standard of living. But it’s more than that. It hasn’t been in anyone’s interest to encourage you to downsize, work less, and sit around more. Just imagine the effect on the economy. The more we work, the higher the country’s GDP, the more money is generated for the company, which buys services from other companies and pays us more money, which we spend on more things produced by other companies, who are buying goods and services from still other companies and paying their employees more money, etc., etc. The problem here is – if your population actually wants to be free and they’ve already got more than they need – how the heck do you get them always to want more? You have to tell them, somehow, the following things:

  ‘You won’t be happy until you have this (a better car) or this (the latest iThing) or have been to this (expensive) place.’

  ‘You can’t really be happy until you’ve fulfilled your potential (done better in your career, got to the top, etc.), got smarter (by reading more, self-educating, etc.), look your best (bought the diets, joined the health clubs, used the hair products, undergone surgery, had your teeth cosmetically enhanced, etc.).’

  And don’t just blame the advertisers. Sure, they pump ‘must-have’ steroids into the market, making you feel inadequate and desperate without the purchase, but they’re just the middleman betw
een the company and you. You want it. They provide it. We’re to blame. The media is to blame. It’s a sick, incestuous mess. Fame and wealth are now the strongest currencies in our culture. When I was a kid, we all dreamed about doing something amazing (I wanted to be a footballer1, then a rock star, and later a writer). I wanted to do those amazing things because I loved playing football, playing guitar, and later, writing. I didn’t dream of the money I’d make or the fame I’d enjoy. Though it was, of course, assumed you’d be both rich and famous. But it wasn’t the aim. Oliver James, in his book Affluenza, cites the study where children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up: most said famous. The follow-up question asked: ‘What do you want to be famous for?’ Most kids didn’t know, because simply being famous was their aim, not the thing that would make them famous.

  We live in the Big-Brother age, when people become famous for a moment, not for doing anything amazing, but for sitting around in a house being watched by everyone else.

  Everything is set up around us to convince us that living in the prisons we’ve created for ourselves is the only way to live. We’re comfortable because, yes, it can be a materially comfortable life, but also because everybody is in the same boat. Or prison. Prison-boat. That’s what we’re in – a huge prison ship with fur-lined cells, gold-rimmed toilet seats, and corporate lackeys of any gender, age, and persuasion paid to give you blowjobs whenever you want, as long as you KEEP BUYING and never, ever, think of trying to jump ship.

  F**k It, get your bathers on.

  1 Or soccer player, if you live in the USA. One thing most Italians and British men (and many women, too) have in common is their passion for the ‘beautiful game,’ by which I mean English football (affectionately known as ‘footie’ in the UK or soccer in the USA) and not to be confused, now or at any point in the book when I mention it (which I do sometimes) with American football.

  WHEN ARE WE IN PRISON?

  SEEING THROUGH THE WALLS

  So you might say that you’re not in prison, and you’ve never been in prison. Someone who knows you might disagree, and pinpoint the exact reason you’ve always been in prison, and maybe always will be. It’s clearly not as easy to define as a bricks-and-mortar prison. But it also means that, once seen, the metaphorical prison is easier to escape than the real one. In fact, sometimes, simply seeing it is enough for the metaphorical walls to dissolve.

  But, if a degree of consciousness is assumed, then we’re probably in the land of definition disagreement. Or at least, you’re happy with the apparent ‘limits’ that exist in your life. You may be conscious that your dialectic materialism has had its philosophical day, that it probably limits you, but you’re happy with your life within those confines, so that’s that.

  Others see their confines and want out. Still others don’t even know they’re ‘in.’

  AFTER A WHILE, PRISONERS FORGET THEY’RE IN PRISON

  Though you might think that walls and bars are daily reminders of being ‘inside,’ they become invisible after a while. Other prisoners surround a prisoner… not the free. Prison life, after a while, feels normal. So other issues replace the issue of ‘I’m in prison and I’d like to get out.’ If you live in Nondescript-and-a-Bit-Ugly town – every country has one or several, so you know where I’m talking about wherever you are (in the UK it’s probably Dartford) – then you’re surrounded every day by other people who live there, too. There are very few outsiders to tell you how awful the place is, or how lovely, say, another town is (in the UK that’s probably Canterbury – a not-too-distant but more pleasant place). And even those who do visit, a) get out quickly and b) wouldn’t tell you how awful it is because (particularly if they’re British) they’re too polite. After a while of living there, surrounded by other people who live there, you effectively forget you’re in hell.

  This is a good enough reason to travel far and regularly: to cleanse yourself of the hypnotic and deadening effect of the wrong kind of acceptance.

  So for the prisoners who forget they’re in prison (or for the citizen of Dartford who never travels), he or she’s likely to remain in prison for a good/bad long time.

  Why does it matter if they’ve forgotten? (You’ll find out soon in Why Would We Want to Get Out of Prison?)

  AFTER A WHILE, THE OUTSIDE BECOMES A FRIGHTENING PLACE

  There’s the scene in The Shawshank Redemption (see Appendix II: Our Top Five Prison Movies) when the old guy who’s been in prison forever is finally released. In the 40-odd years he’s been behind bars, the outside world has changed unrecognizably. He’s shocked by every aspect of an alien modern world – from the honking cars to the harsh working world. Within days, he’s hanged himself. (Sorry to give that away if you haven’t already seen it, though it’s not the actual ending. If you can’t be bothered to watch the movie and want to know the ending, and you’d like to ruin it for friends and family who also haven’t seen it but can be bothered to watch it, turn to Appendix IV aptly titled The Ending of The Shawshank Redemption.)

  We are probably most free as children. Being free comes naturally. We don’t have to make any effort to be free. We don’t have to steel ourselves, or face our fears, in order to do something. We just do it. But as we grow up and build the walls around ourselves, and become accustomed to being in our prisons, and surround ourselves with other prisoners, the very idea of being ‘outside’ can scare us. It’s such a long time since we experienced true freedom that we don’t know whether we could cope with it. It means that, even though we might occasionally venture out of our prisons (e.g., when we’re visiting another country or place, or have a few glasses of wine), we very soon return to the safety of the high walls around us.

  REPEAT OFFENDERS

  This lack of familiarity with the outside, this underlying fear of the freedom we experienced perpetually when we were younger, means that – even for those of us who crave freedom and consciously try to break down the various walls of our prisons – we end up back in the safety of prison.

  We’re repeat offenders. And some people live their lives like this. They live through times when they’re trapped, and feel trapped, but don’t seem to be able to find a way out or a way through. Then they manage to escape and enjoy freedom, make huge changes in their lives, but then slowly slip back into patterns, relationships, jobs, or places that trap them again.

  LIFE SENTENCE

  Some people would argue that we’re all lifers: that very few people have the good fortune in their lifetimes to experience true freedom, which is usually defined as an experience of ‘enlightenment,’ and usually signifies a recognition of reality as a kind of imprisoning dream. True reality (i.e., outside the prison) is another ‘enlightened’ form of consciousness.

  We could argue (and will do so toward the end of this book) that the opposite is true: we’re all free; it’s just that we can’t see it. Instead, we see we’re ‘trapped’ and crave ‘freedom.’ In fact, the natural process seems to be something like this:

  We start free, as children, but without realizing it, because we know nothing else.

  We grow up and lose our freedom, without realizing it.

  We’re in prison, but don’t realize it (and might not realize it for the whole of our lives, in which case we are unconscious lifers).

  We realize we are in prison, and strive to break down the walls and, usually, with the help of some good F**k It Therapy, we succeed.

  We experience freedom, then occasionally slip back into prison, but with consciousness and a good bit of F**k It, we’re able to get out again.

  We finally see that all states are fine, that being in prison is the same as being outside prison when we live in full consciousness.

  But I’ve just told you the ending. The thing is, unlike the ending of The Shawshank Redemption, no matter how many times you read about it, you don’t usually understand it until you’ve gone through all the above steps: so it’s like me telling you the ending of The Shawshank Redemption (again, see Appendix
IV), but you not being able to understand a word of it until you’ve watched the whole movie.

  So, what’s the point of mentioning it? F**k It, why not?

  WHY WOULD WE WANT TO GET OUT OF PRISON?

  A PRISON CAN BE DANGEROUS

  Just as in real prisons, your metaphorical prisons can be dangerous places. If you left your dreams behind long ago and settled for (whatever the reason) a job you never wanted, a partner who was never your ideal, routines you would never have imagined… if you feel like you’re living someone else’s life, then it rots you. It’s a dangerous place to be. You never feel completely yourself or at ease.

  When we get stuck and imprisoned in a situation, a way of living, a thought process, or a religion that closes off part of us, then it can eventually make us ill. We’ll learn later about how energy works, in life and the body. When we suppress part of ourselves, when we shut off a strong desire, when we consciously ignore a strong voice within ourselves, then we’re effectively blocking our energy. And it’s the blocking of energy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that leads to illness. That’s why, in the sessions we run on F**k It Retreats, when people finally really let go, release their frustrations and move their bodies freely, amazing healing happens. And not just physical healing: deep emotional healing, too.

  Even though most of the people around you are in prison, even though every message in society is inviting you to remain in prison, don’t be tempted to remain stuck, no matter how apparently safe it feels. If we suppress our strongest desires or ignore our deepest pain, these strong forces have a way of forcing their way out anyway. It’s best to get out of that prison first and allow those forces to flow, before they force ‘flow’ on you.