Month: March 2021

Valuing Time

Valuing time is the most important concept that anyone can learn. Valuing your own time and the time of others allows people to work together in society. Time is one of the few things that everyone on earth has in common. Everyone has to confront the finality of life. Valuing time means making the most of your limited time. When you deny reality, you are not valuing time. The goal of valuing time is being happy and healthy for the greatest percentage of your life.

You will neglect most aspects of your life if you only focus on a few. Spending more time on one aspect of your life will leave less time for the rest of it. If you value your time, you will try to distribute your time evenly and efficiently. Any aspect of your life that is neglected can bring down the value of your life. Valuing time is valuing all of your life and not letting one aspect devalue the rest. Singularly focusing on one aspect of your life will lead to an unfulfilled life. Widen your focus in life and you will better discern what values your time most.
Being bored can devalue your time. If you are forced to sit and do nothing, you can still value your time. Spending time alone is valuable for yourself and those around you. Having your own thoughts and opinions is important to valuing yourself as a person. If all of your thoughts and opinions come from others, you are merely acting as a mouthpiece for them. Valuing yourself as an individual is just as important as valuing the time you spend with others. Being bored is a symptom of being a boring person. One regret people have when looking back on their lives is not living true to themselves. Be the person who brings value to others and yourself.
Planning how you spend your life is critical to valuing time. If you do not plan for the future, your time will become less and less valuable. Planning allows you to optimize your time. When planning for the future, keep in mind why you are planning. If you are planning to spend more time at work because you want more money, ask yourself if you consider that time as valuable at the end of your life. Did that time at work make you happier or would more time with your family and friends have valued your time more? Valuing time requires you to balance planning for the future, living in the present, and learning from the past.
Arbitrary time restraints can limit your ability to value time. Most arbitrary time restraints are self imposed. If you say you do not have time to do things that value your time, that is an arbitrary time restraint. Part of valuing your time is arranging your time so you prioritize your hours in a day to allow yourself to do what you most value. Instead of saying what you “must” do, make conscious choices to do things that most value your time and the time of those around you.
The top goal of valuing time is happiness. Valuing the time of others builds the happiness of others. The more happy people are, the less they will deny reality. Happiness has more to do with the choices you make than the reality you can not change. Knowing what makes you happy is not always clear to all people. If you do not know what makes you happy, you will not be happy. Always keep in mind that happiness is not the same thing as pleasure. Pleasure is short term, but happiness can last your whole life. Planning to be happy is just as important as any other planning you will do. Valuing your time will increase your happiness.
An additional benefit of valuing time is better health. Balancing your time between exercise and good nutrition is just as important as valuing your happiness. Happiness will lead to better health and good health will lead to greater happiness. Making time to eat right and exercise is a matter of starting slowly and building. If you exercise too much when you start, you risk injuring yourself or stopping exercise all together because you are in pain. Nutrition can also take time to work into your routine. The end goal of developing healthy habits slowly is to make the habits part of your daily routine. When you are tempted by unhealthy practices, you will be less tempted over time because you will crave being healthy over the unhealthy feelings brought on by the unhealthy practices. Valuing your health values your time.
Valuing time encompasses every activity in your life. At any point in your day, you can ask yourself, “Am I valuing my time right now?” Valuing your own time includes valuing the time of others. A person who is isolated from others is not valuing his or her time. Valuing time is not about making the most of every moment, it is about valuing a high percentage of your lifetime. You will have negative moments in your life, but how much those moments maintain or decrease your happiness is up to you. If you lose valuable people in your life, you can value those people in your memories. Focusing only on the loss is not valuing those people or your time. The only person who can say if you are valuing your time is you. You must accept the reality that time is finite. Valuing time is important in accepting that reality.

Craving Simplicity

Most people dislike things that are complex. We crave simple things like sugar, salt, pleasure, and winning. Reality is nothing but complex systems interacting with other complex systems. Nothing in reality is simple if you examine it closely enough. When people simplify reality, they are only simplifying their view of reality. When something becomes too complex, it gets ignored or denied. Complex realities become unaccepted while they accept simple beliefs that do not exist. Their craving for simplicity overshadows their view of reality.

Reality that is complex does not make it unknowable. The only reality that people need to understand is the reality with which they interact. The average person need not know the reality of space or infinity. Understanding the reality that affects your health, relationships with others, and dealing with everyday problems only requires a basic grasp of reality. Depending upon the amount of reality acceptance in the society in which you live, understanding reality at a basic level is possible. Although reality is complex, individuals need not understand every aspect. Facts do not matter as much as understanding general concepts. Individual facts, names, and numbers are useful when talking to someone else about specific details of a subject, but they are unnecessary for a basic level of understanding.

Simple solutions only work on simple problems. The more factors involved in a problem, the more complex the solution must be. When people propose simple solutions for complex problems, they will ignore many factors. The simple solution may work for a short time or with a limited amount of people, but we must implement a solution that considers all factors if we will solve the problem for the most people. We must make compromises in dealing with complex problems. We cannot completely solve some problems. The goal in solving a complex problem is solving as high a percentage of the problem as possible. Complex solutions are not as satisfying as simple solutions, but they are necessary for handling complex problems.

Simpleminded strategies will work less well as sensible and well thought out strategies. If you quickly create a strategy, it will be a simple strategy. A well thought out plan will always consider more factors than a simple one. You may not always have the luxury of time for a well thought out plan. Emergency situations require quick and simple solutions. A simple strategy should be general enough to work in most situations. Most situations are not emergencies. Time restraints are usually self-imposed. Being late to work is not an emergency. If you are speeding in and out of traffic, you have chosen a simple strategy that will force you to make quick and simple decisions. If you get into an accident, it will be an emergency that was unnecessary and highly preventable. Taking the time for a well thought out strategy will help you make better decisions.

Craving simplicity is not a problem as long as you accept the complexity of the world. Understanding the complexity or offering solutions is unnecessary as long as you accept the entire reality of a situation. Complex problems involve many factors. Many of these factors will include other people. Each person must consider multiple factors to finding a solution that will satisfy the most people. As it involves more people, the more complex the solution will need to be. We can base even quick decisions on experience and a general knowledge of reality. Having knowledge of a complex reality is not as useful as understanding the general realities of the world. Simple solutions can not solve complex problems any more than complex solutions are necessary for simple problems. Accepting a general reality will help you much more than accepting simple solutions that do not address all the factors involved in complex problems.

The History of Reality Denial

Reality denial exists all over the world. We deny realities long proven true with evidence from multiple sources. Our beliefs shield us from realities we find unpleasant or confusing. We deny global warming despite an overwhelming amount of evidence from around the world. The more time marches on, the more absurd our denial becomes. We could excuse people thousands of years ago for denying realities most people did not understand, but we are being openly ignorant if we still deny these basic realities today.

Believing in something does not make it real. Our beliefs are temporary assumptions about the world. We base them on our experiences with the world and other people. No baby has ever been born believing anything about the world. They are a blank slate. Luckily, we have other people looking after us. They keep us alive until we become conscious of the world. We gather beliefs from our parents, mentors, and teachers. Accepting reality is impossible if we only learn about other people’s beliefs and not reality.

You do not have to believe in your need for food. Your stomach feels hunger and you know to eat. Your beliefs guide you toward what you eat. If we allow our children to choose what they eat, they will probably only choose things that taste good to them. Most of these foods will be high in sugar, calories, and salt because our palates are not sophisticated when we are young. We believe what we eat only needs to taste good. When we are older, we learn about nutrition, but still eat mainly good tasting non-nutritious food. Our beliefs allow us to ignore the damage we are doing to our bodies. We believe we no longer can control what we eat.

The history of reality denial has many origins. The earliest and most influential beliefs most people had were their religious beliefs. Of all religions, Christianity in all its forms tops the list of most influential around the world. As science emerged, scientists exposed religions as denying many fundamental realities. Many religions, especially Christianity, fought to hold on to their beliefs (and their followers) using racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. All these forms of discrimination existing today can trace their roots to the religious discriminatory practices of the past.

The reality denial of the past led to many negative concepts people believed were real. The concept of good and evil led to concepts of winning and losing, simplistic this or that thinking, heroes and villains, moral and immoral behavior, us versus them thinking, and other reality denying concepts. These concepts led to most forms of discrimination we see today. We label things such as racism as the problem. The problem is our beliefs that began these racist behaviors. Race is a non-scientific concept born from racist beliefs. Eugenics was one of the worst forms of discrimination stemming from these beliefs.

The only way we can get away from these negative beliefs is to value our knowledge over our beliefs. We base all our beliefs on ignorance because, once you learn the reality of what you believe, they are no longer beliefs. They are knowledge. Most societies around the world continue to base many of their laws on beliefs rather than reality. Basing our laws on reality means we only create laws that solve actual problems for all of a society. We need to stop valuing people’s beliefs about reality. Until we do this, reality denial will continue.

Reality Acceptance Categories Explained

The first part of accepting reality is accepting the reality of your Health. Ill health will hamper your perception of reality. As your health improves, you will be happier and your view of life will improve. Most people would benefit by examining their health more closely. You can only work on health problems you accept as real. You can start with your physical body. Are you dramatically over or under weight? Do you have frequent illnesses or health problems? Do you eat nutritious food and exercise? The answers to these questions will tell you the state of your physical health. Next, start thinking about your mental health. Are you a content person? Do you have anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, or other issues preventing you from being happy? The answers to these questions will tell you the state of your mental health. The reality of your health depends on your physical and mental health working together to improve your overall health.

Knowledge can help you improve your physical and mental health as long as you accept the reality science can teach. Science examines reality without bias, opinions, or inconsistencies. Science allows everyone to gain knowledge about the world without having to conduct experiments themselves. Examining established science will allow you to understand reality. All scientific information gets updated, re-examined, and questioned by other scientists. Science is constantly developing and growing. Our understanding of reality grows with it. Science examines what we cannot perceive with our senses alone. The knowledge learned from science can help you understand and accept reality.

Your Thinking about the world will improve your perception and knowledge of reality. Knowing why you think as you do is much more important than expressing simple but clear thoughts about what you believe. Filling your head with the thoughts of others will only result in thinking like they do. If they think negatively, you will have negative thoughts. Reality is neither positive nor negative, it is a mix of both. Focusing on the positive aspects of life will give you a positive outlook on life. As your thinking becomes more positive, it will cause your behavior to improve. This will improve your relationships with other people and the world.

When you accept other people in your life, your Behavior toward them will affect them as much as it does you. Your positive interactions with other people will improve until you and the other people are happier and healthier. You will notice others who are not happy or healthy because they are not accepting the reality of their life. If you know them, you can try slowly to get them to accept more realities to improve their lives. Some will resist or deny reality, but others will accept the realities in their lives. Through your journey of Reality Acceptance, you will have learned the skills of living a happy and healthy life so you can spread reality acceptance to others.

Reality Acceptance Introduction

Reality Acceptance Introduction

Accept reality for what it is, not what you want it to be. People and groups who deny reality do so because reality is against them in their minds. Reality is not their friend. If you dislike how the world is, deny it is that way. If you do not agree with someone else, deny anything they say has validity. We all perceive reality differently and interpret what we perceive differently. To accept reality, you must become a reality detective. We do not perceive reality in simple to understand presentations. Our experiences, senses, and beliefs mask reality. We can only understand reality by gathering the perceptions of others and matching them with our own. Life will present you with many problems to solve in your life. Accepting reality will lead to better outcomes for these problems.

I have broken Reality Acceptance into four different categories. I explain these categories here.


Examining reality is difficult. Most of us have spent a life with beliefs, biases, and a singular point of view about the world. Widening your focus to see the reality of any situation requires accepting a diverse group of perceptions. Reality Acceptance is a skill you must develop. I will help you accept reality, but I will not explain reality. If I claimed to explain reality, you would know I was lying. I will give you the skills to discern reality even when your senses, experiences, and beliefs tell you something different.

Accepting reality is about accepting limitations. If you do not see the limits of something, you are only missing the limits. Everything has limits. You must work with the limits to accomplish what you want in life. People see limits as barriers they must avoid, but they are just the parameters of reality. The possibilities between the limits are much more abundant than people believe. Accomplishing goals within these limits is possible as long as they are realistic. Working with limitations builds your creativity and problem-solving skills.
An important part of accepting reality is a concept I call Other People Exist. You cannot accept reality without acknowledging the perceptions and experiences of other people. Our personal experiences only allow us a limited view of reality. Even the other people you see regularly only widen your view slightly. If you separate yourself from other people, you are separating yourself from reality. Understanding reality is gathering a diverse number of experiences directly or through other people. Connecting to other people helps us understand them and ourselves better.
I accept the reality of the world and am a happier person because of it. I see other people whose beliefs, experiences, and biases lead to a miserable life. Nothing about reality is miserable, but their perception only allows them to see negativity in the world. The more you examine reality, the more you will see how few things are inherently negative. Your misery is completely in your head and has nothing to do with reality. Happiness is a choice we must learn to accept. If no one taught you to accept reality or happiness, you never will.
Scroll to Top