The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Understand: The story of Anton Chekhov is really a paradigm for
what we all face in life. We carry with us traumas and hurts from early
childhood. In our social life, as we get older, we accumulate
disappointments and slights. We too are often haunted by a sense of
worthlessness, of not really deserving the good things in life. We all
have moments of great doubt about ourselves. These emotions can lead
to obsessive thoughts that dominate our minds. They make us curtail
what we experience as a way to manage our anxiety and
disappointments. They make us turn to alcohol or any kind of habit to
numb the pain. Without realizing it, we assume a negative and fearful
attitude toward life. This becomes our self-imposed prison. But this is
not how it has to be. The freedom that Chekhov experienced came
from a choice, a different way of looking at the world, a change in
attitude. We can all follow such a path.

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This freedom essentially comes from adopting a generous spirit—
toward others and toward ourselves. By accepting people, by
understanding and if possible even loving them for their human
nature, we can liberate our minds from obsessive and petty emotions.
We can stop reacting to everything people do and say. We can have
some distance and stop ourselves from taking everything personally.
Mental space is freed up for higher pursuits. When we feel generous
toward others, they feel drawn to us and want to match our spirit.
When we feel generous toward ourselves, we no longer feel the need to
bow and scrape and play the game of false humility while secretly
resenting our lack of success. Through our work and through getting
what we need on our own, without depending on others, we can stand
tall and realize our potential as humans. We can stop reproducing the
negative emotions around us. Once we feel the exhilarating power
from this new attitude, we will want to take it as far as possible.
Years later, in a letter to a friend, Chekhov tried to summarize his
experience in Taganrog, referring to himself in the third person: “Write
about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by
drop and how one fine morning he awakes to find that the blood
coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave but that of a
real human being.”
The greatest discovery of my generation is the fact that human beings can
alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
—William James