Black-out curtains for the bedroom
Healthy diet
Frequent walks outdoors
Scheduled alone time
Change of scenery
Building a talent stack
The last item on the list requires explanation. You already know that assembling a set of skills makes you highly employable. At a young age, I also realized it’s a great source of comfort. The more skills with commercial value I assembled, the less I worried about my future. I knew I’d be fine no matter where I ended up.
Survivor’s Guilt
Let’s say you are the only survivor of some sort of disaster. If that happened to me, I would interpret it as luck on my part and nothing more. But many people would reflexively seek meaning for the event and wonder, “Why them, not me?” That’s called Survivor’s Guilt.
Mechanical World
The best way to reframe survivor’s guilt depends on your philosophical view of reality. If you believe we are a mechanical world unfolding according to the exact laws of physics, use this reframe.
Usual Frame: Why did I survive when others did not?
Reframe: It’s no different from a clock reading 2:00 PM exactly once a day. It is just cause and effect. It has no meaning.
In most disasters, there are survivors. They can’t all have meaning. But it’s a safe bet that some of the survivors will search for that meaning. Likely, no meaning is there to be found. Sometimes people just survive tragedies. Maybe this time it was you. That’s the end of the story.
If you have a statistical view of the world, this reframe might work best for you.
Usual Frame: Why did I survive when others did not?
Reframe: Every specific thing that has happened to me since birth is extraordinarily unlikely. This is more of that.
Have you ever had bad luck that was super-unlucky? I’m talking about coincidences that are mind-blowing. Sure, you have. We all have. That’s because luck follows a natural distribution. Most situations involve average amounts of luck, while the two extremes of super-bad-luck and super-good-luck do happen, but not often.
Purpose
Your existence on this planet is extraordinarily unlikely. It took over 13 billion years of evolution to bring you to this exact place and time. On top of that, you are the product of a winning sperm and a willing egg. All the competing sperm that day failed. Your sperm-daddy was the only one who closed the deal. From that moment on, your life has been an unending sea of near-misses and near-hits. If you survived an accident that took everyone else’s life, that coincidence is no more remarkable than everything that led up to that moment. We live in a sea of coincidence.
If you are a believer (in God), I have the strongest reframe for this situation.
Usual Frame: Why me?
Reframe: God needs you here for something important.
Is that true? I don’t know. But it’s comforting for believers. I’ve seen people make good use of that reframe. I can’t speak from personal experience on this one as I am not a believer. But I find value in imagining I have some sort of purpose, God-given or otherwise.
Permission
This is a weird one. Sometimes we just need “permission” to release guilt. I’m here to give it to you. In my capacity as author of this book—which you have enjoyed enough to read this far—I give you permission to release your survivor’s guilt. What happened to you was bad luck, or maybe God’s will, but it was not about you.
Guilt of any kind is a social phenomenon, and by that, I mean you couldn’t be guilty unless other people existed. Guilt is how you see yourself through the eyes of others. If no other existed, you would have no one to feel guilty about and no eyes to see yourself through.
The function of guilt is to reduce the chances of you making an unwise decision in the future. But if the tragedy dogging you is unlikely to happen again, your guilt serves no biological or social function. You need not be warned against making the same mistake because the situation will never come up again. Respect your guilt for the useful function it serves, but let it go when it has served its purpose.
Usual Frame: I feel a responsibility to hold this guilt.
Reframe: You have my permission to release your guilt.
Sometimes all you need is an independent nudge to let it go. Let me be your nudge.
Think of the Dead
Do you think the people who did not survive want you to suffer? They do not. Your respect for the dead is holding you captive. The dead are flexible. They will not complain. They would want you to be happy, not guilty. Let the dead have their way. It’s the least you can do for them and the best way to respect them.
Usual Frame: I feel bad that I was the lone survivor.
Reframe: What would the dead want you to do—suffer or be happy?
The Past Is Imaginary
I’ve already talked about the past being imaginary, so I will skip the details here. The quick explanation is that you can decide you popped into existence today and need to navigate a life you just took over. This reframe helps me let go of the past. I think it can work for you, too.
Take a breath and look around the room. Imagine you just popped into existence as if in a video game, and the game just started. All prior games have been deleted.
Go.
Could Have Done More
Often, we feel we “could have done more” to help someone avoid tragedy. And it might be true largely because it is always true. Saying you could have done more—about anything—is so true it is meaningless. Of course, you could have done more. But since it would always be true you could have done more, no matter what, it has no meaning. Let it go.
Usual Frame: You could have done more.
Reframe: Everyone can do more. It is a meaningless concept.
Addiction
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philosopher Naval Ravikant says the greatest personal challenge in modern times involves avoiding (or managing) addiction. If you don’t have an addiction problem, you probably think this reframe doesn’t apply. But I guarantee you are addicted to something, which might include social media, daily exercise, gambling, sex, or anything else. In my experience, everyone is addicted to something. But not everyone is addicted to something harmful, which leads me to this reframe.
Usual Frame: Avoid addiction.
Reframe: Choose your addictions wisely.
This reframe acknowledges the reality that humans are by nature easily addicted, but we are not addicted to the same things in the same ways.
For ethical reasons, I can’t recommend you pursue any specific lesser addictions to replace your more dangerous addictions, but I do recommend you think in those terms. Look for ways to consciously add positive addictions to your life to crowd out your less-helpful impulses. I recently added learning to play drums to my addiction stack, and I love it. I’m also addicted to waking up early, posting, and exercising regularly. The worst one on my list is X, but I tell myself that’s part of my job. I have other addictions as well, but none of them involve opioid addiction or unlawful conduct. I fill my schedule with positive addictions to leave less room for the toxic type.
I sometimes call this reframe the Pleasure Unit Theory. The idea is that humans need a minimum daily amount of pleasure or else life will not be worth living. This explains why people do dangerous illegal drugs—they don’t feel they have other options for sufficient pleasure. This suggests an indirect way to treat addiction: Introduce lots of pleasure substitutes. Ideally, you also want some meaning-of-life activities in your schedule, too, such as being useful to others. Pleasure alone won’t keep you in a good place.
I have too much experience with addicts to tell you they can be cured by taking up some substitute hobbies. I’m suggesting that whatever method you use to treat an addiction will be easier if your alternatives offer lots of pleasure. This is what it looks like as a reframe.