All things are one thing (two concepts that changed my life)

What I learned while rotting on the couch.

This week’s letter is different.

I’ve been working on a letter about Strategic Obsession for this week but it’s not ready.

I want it to be as valuable as possible for you and if I rush it it won’t hit the mark.

It deserves another few days of work.

Instead I wanted to talk about a couple concepts that changed my life.

Things that fundamentally shifted my understanding of reality and my ability to get what I want and live a fulfilling life.

1. All things are one thing

A couple years ago I was dealing with severe burnout, health issues, and a list of personal problems like deaths in my family, and close friends cutting me off for situations I wasn’t a part of.

I left my day job due to these issues coming to a breaking point.

I spent every day on the couch watching Netflix and rotting away.

After a lot of suffering and some reflection I realized I had to make a change.

That lead me to a few books.

Rick Rubin’s ‘The Creative Act’ was the first.

If you haven’t read it it’s a book about how there’s an underlying creative force in the universe and when you create something you are tapping into that infinite source of creativity.

This lead me to more spiritual books like ‘I: Reality and Subjectivity’ by David R. Hawkins.

These books brought my awareness to the underlying patterns of reality.

When you pay close attention you will recognize that all things are individual expressions of one thing.

The coffee mug on your desk and the YouTuber in the video you just watched are actually the same thing pretending to be different things.

There are theories in quantum physics that support this idea but my goal in this letter isn’t to convince you of anything.

It’s to open your mind to concepts that will change your life.

You have to do the rest.

There are things that you can only confirm through experience and this idea is one of them.

But if you consider this long enough you’ll see the interconnected nature of all things.

You’ll realize you have the power to affect the entire universe with your actions because you’re not separate from anything else, it’s impossible to be separate.

Everything you do affects the whole.

2. Language literally creates your reality

We experience life through defining things.

I am this and you are that.
A chair is a chair so it’s not a table.

If we couldn’t define things we would have no way of separating between good and bad, useful and useless.

Language is a container for definition.

The word chair has nothing to do with the actual object.
It’s just a sound we chose to define the object.

So instead of saying “let me sit on this four legged wooden construction.”

We say “let me sit on this chair.”

Here’s where things get interesting.

The chair wasn’t a chair until you called it one.

Before that it was just an object.

A collection of atoms floating in space.

If you had no understanding of what a chair was, say you’re an alien who has no legs and lays on the ground like a snake.
A chair would just be a thing with no clear meaning.
It could be anything to you.
But once you call it a chair you experience it as a chair.

Now it’s for sitting.

This is how your whole life works.

The way you define money determines how you experience money.
The way you define love determines how you experience love.

You can change your experience of life by changing how you choose to define or interpret it.

This isn’t magic.

It’s not like you can say this chair is now an elephant and make that true.

Your brain still knows it’s a chair.

But you can start to realize that most of what you experience isn’t based in what actually happens.

It’s based in how you define it and interpret those definitions.

Over time, your definitions become less rigid.

You start experiencing reality as it is, not as you’ve labeled it.

The Takeaway

These two concepts changed my whole life.

They are foundational to your experience.

If you think about these long enough they can create meaningful transformation.

If you want more letters like this—deep, conceptual, existential—let me know.

DM me.

Let’s talk.

Strategic Obsession next week.

‘Til then.

Don’t betray yourself.

All things are one thing.

— Edamame Dufflebag