Why Seeing Life As a Contract Will Keep You Motivated.
“When people experience their power to change their lives, they either get scared of it or they relax and fall right back into their old habits”
Reading through Nick’s article, I could feel the self-condemnation rolling in. He had me pegged. He wasn’t referring to me, but his lines were so apt I could have changed the title to “A message to Ayooluwa in light of his recent attitude”. The actual title though, was “This is the process you go through when you try to change yourself”.
The people closest to me can attest to the fact that I’m a self-help nut, I’m always “attempting” to change without actually ever changing, some really sad sturvs. But recently, things had been different, I’d stuck to some new changes and their effects were beginning to show. I was even getting comments from the people around me, so it wasn’t just in my head. The positive feedback from my effort felt so good, that I make the brilliant decision to award myself a “well-deserved break” from my efforts.
We all know how the story goes from here, a break turns into weeks of no writing, no digital illustrations and random meditation sessions, all typical self-sabotage 101 moves. I wonder how I’ve made any progress in my life with behaviors like this.
Anyways, that’s the backstory, back to the present story. I sat at the dining table, mentally kicking myself as I read Nick’s experience packed account of personal change. I think it all came to a climax when I read the line “When people experience their power to change their lives, they either get scared of it or they relax and fall right back into their old habits” ….
Shitttt!!!!! That was me right there bruh! That is the fucking story I just told and it could have as well been the story of my entire life. How many times had I made good progress in an endeavor only to raze it to the ground with “breaks”? Travie was right, this right here’s some savagery.
“This right here’s some savagery” — Jacques Webster aka Travi$ Scott.
As I pondered the truth of Nick’s article and my life in general, I began to recall an anime series I watched about a month ago. It’s called “Darker than Black” and in its universe the characters with superpowers are called contractors.
These contractors could bend reality in their own individual ways, but their abilities came with a catch. Every time they used these abilities they had to offer a remuneration i.e. payment, in the form of a ritual. The rituals could be anything, and I mean ANYTHING. Some were trivial like drinking a can of beer, others like eating cigarettes, were just downright weird, but basically, payment had to be made or the result was death. This remuneration was the reason they were called contractors, because their powers were like contracts they had to pay for.
You’re probably wondering what this series has to do with anything. Well, it bears a close semblance to our own reality. We’re all contractors in our own way, we make deals with life through our choices and our actions, whether consciously or unconsciously, but then there’s a special twist to this whole arrangement; we get to choose what contracts we want to pay for and ignore the ones that are irrelevant to us, if and only if we’re conscious enough to see it.
In my case, I made a contract with life when I decided I wanted to live as a creative, and that meant making remunerations like practicing my craft regularly, getting used to the insecurity that comes with going down an unconventional path, integrating values like creativity, self-mastery, autonomy and so on into my lifestyle through discipline, focus and a lot of other stuff I can’t mention due to a lack of space and time. But I haven’t been practicing lately and as such I’ve regressed which is in a way dying.
As a society, we’re so driven by outcomes and benefits that we rarely take the time to consider the prices we pay for these rewards. A lot of us strive for material comfort as the ultimate reward and in turn give up freedom, autonomy & creativity, ending up as a dull, lifeless addicts who are too scared to give up a tree for the experience of the forest.
This isn’t to rail against comfort, after all a level of material comfort is needed to live a fulfilling life. What this is about is seeing life as a contract to build the person YOU want to be, over the the person people say you should be, and a willingness to do the work this contract requires. It’s about giving up superficiality and outcomes for substance and technique. It’s about giving up our chains for wings. It’s about being generous with ourselves and letting go of our long dead loves, for new life.
As you adopt this kind of thinking, you’ll find that you’re more honest with yourself about who you want to be and what you want to do and that you can make much firmer decisions, because as Nick said, when you experience your power, it’ll blow your mind sky high and you’ll realize that who you are isn’t an object waiting to be grabbed but the most exciting and intense personal project you could ever carry out.
The universe must be desperately trying to reach me, because I’ve been coming across kick ass content that have left me with new mantras to act on. I hope this article does the same for you as well, and if you feel you need some more juice, check this out, it’s the inspiration for this article. Peace.
