Topics: Sharing Yourself Fully
Live Free or Kill Myself: One Man’s Quest to Face His Fears or Die a Coward
May 24th, 2010 by Josh BillingsWhen you can’t give yourself permission to do what you really want to do, change the circumstances so that you all-of-a-sudden have permission.
This is an experiment in giving myself total permission to live by making the only other alternative death. It’s an act of giving myself permission to be who I came here to be. It’s an act of either sharing myself completely with the world, or taking the physical world completely away from me.
This is not a cry for help, this is a commitment to change.
There are two main things holding me back right now.
- Fear of being rejected.
- Fear of looking badly.
I’m either going to learn to release these fears through continued exposure, or try my hand at life after death.
The Rules:
- If I don’t risk both rejection and looking bad once a day, every day, for 30 days, I will kill myself.
- I must write a blog post every day about this project. Limit one hour. I may not edit to look better or avoid rejection. I may correct typos and spelling errors.
- I must Tweet any scary thought I have.
- I must take responsibility for all my decisions (i.e. no making decisions via coin flip or other arbitrary sources of authority).
- The project starts 5/25/10 and ends 6/23/10 or when I kill myself, whichever comes first.
- I will have to tell all the people on my list about this project by 2am on 5/25/10.
Why now?
Because there’s no better time than the present.
Why are you suicidal?
I’m not really suicidal so much as I’m open-minded. I view suicide as a legitimate means for finding relief if I ever were to find myself in unbearable circumstances; however, I’m currently in a very good place mentally and emotionally. The reason I chose suicide as the consequence was because suicide was the only option I could exercise that would take the option of suicide away. I consider a wide array of options when brainstorming the best course of action, and in this particular case, I think the threat of suicide is the only thing irrevocable enough to entice me to embrace the benefits of what I want to do rather than finding a way to live with the consequences of not doing the things I’d love to allow myself to do. I have a real all-or-nothing personality and this is as all-or-nothing as it gets.
So you’re not unhappy?
By all accounts I’m happier now than perhaps I’ve ever been, so happy that I’m finding it less and less tolerable to live below my potential. This is an effort to change that.
Is this just some crazy hoax to attract blog traffic?
My goal here is to stop hiding, and more importantly, to be seen. This isn’t a hoax, my plan is to simply follow through with the rules of the project. If I fail to follow through, it probably means I’ll have stressed myself beyond my limits and hopefully be able to view suicide as a viable means out. If I fail to follow through out of pure laziness then I probably won’t have the motivation to kill myself either, so I’ll just end up looking like a total douchebag (which will at least accomplish item #2 on my “what’s holding me back list pretty thoroughly”. But I don’t really fear death or the consequences of suicide the way other people do. My guess is that if I fail to follow through on this I’d be in a place where successfully committing suicide would look better than failing to do either, so hopefully I’ll choose that option.
UPDATE: The experiment has been completed. Check out the May-June 2010 Archives to read the daily updates. To see how it all ended up, click here: Live Free or Kill Myself: Day 30
12 Comments | Posted on May 24th, 2010
Similar Posts:
First time comments will be held for moderation. No need to repost.
12 Comments
Leave a Reply
RSS feed for comments on this post
First time comments will be held for moderation. No need to repost.
Josh,
I follow your writings and blogs from time to time and I generally find them contentious, but they always have me seeking inside for what resonates and what I might learn about myself.
This posting doesn’t do this, it just leaves me feeling disturbed for two reasons. This is not a healthy thought process, no matter what your beliefs are after passing from this existence.
The other reason is the venue. The Internet is a vast open forum, with people who many different thought processes. Some are rational, others not, and often some people are simply impressionable. My friends 14 year old daughter was one of these people and decided that choosing life was not what she wanted. My friends will now continue there journey through life without there child and hardly a day will pass without them reflecting on this.
I would ask you to give serious thought about continuing with the “Live Free or Kill Yourself: One Man’s Quest to Face His Fears or Die a Coward” posting.
Paul
All I can say is that this has been an amazing experience for me so far. I’ve never felt better or more free. So if this isn’t a healthy thought process, then I don’t want to be healthy.
I think I did a much better job of explaining myself in the day 1 post. Specifically the “powerful intro” and “Isn’t This Irresponsible of You?” sections. They’re a total of six paragraphs, so if you’re interested in better understanding where I’m coming from (and why it’s not as unhealthy as it looks), that’s a real quick way of explaining it. I posted links to the two sections below.
http://www.joshuabillings.com/live-free-or-kill-yourself-day-1/#intro
http://www.joshuabillings.com/live-free-or-kill-yourself-day-1/#irresponsible
PS: (and this part may sound a little contentious, but…) I’m not going to hide myself or worry about what other people think. I don’t care who chooses to be offended or disturbed by what I share; I will not take responsibility for their choices on how they perceive what I’m writing.
What I’m sharing feels right to me and I know sharing it with others is doing so much more good that it could do harm. I think after the 30 days are over, everyone will have a much different perspective.
I don’t get it Josh- you can risk the fear of rejection and looking badly just walking out the door everyday. In fact, all of us do. So what’s the big difference for you?
Todd (your comment got caught in my spam queue so I didn’t see it till just now):
As I wrote in my post on Total Freedom:
“Rejection and Looking Badly are not my goals, they are the things holding me back.
“The idea isn’t to face the ultimate form of rejection, the idea is to do the things that my fear of rejection are holding me back from.
“The idea isn’t to look as bad as possible, the idea is to do the things that I’m afraid to do because it might make me look bad.”
While the risk of looking badly or being rejected is nearly omnipresent, willing myself to go to the grocery doesn’t do anything to connect me with my unmet desires. However, giving myself the space (and permission) to risk rejection and looking badly has proven itself tremendously helpful.
So the big difference for me is that one form of possible rejection and looking badly (the forms that I’m already comfortable with) keep me where I am, while the others (the ones that force me to rethink my view on reality before I’m able to act on them without fear) move me in the direction of my dreams.
Hi Josh,
Don’t know what to say, except I find it challenging, if you do really mean it in the positive way coz that’s how I am thinking about your objective. Well i am really in a state depression and all the time there is this constant thought in me that says ‘I need to do something about myself’ and the only thing that’s held me back is myself.
Lemme try and hope to challenge myself, though not as radical as you are… Do live happily, cause its always better to burn and die rather than fade and dies.
Hey Benoy,
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
I definitely had a tremendously positive experience with this 30 day challenge. You can see the results here: http://www.joshuabillings.com/live-free-or-kill-myself-day-30/
If you want to feel less depressed, give yourself permission to be angry. Anger will remind you of how powerful you are and from there you can use that newly reclaimed power to feel better and better about yourself and your life.
Anger gets a bad rap because depressed people are easier to deal with than angry people, but anger is healthiest way to reclaim your power and start climbing the emotional ladder back to being your naturally happy self.
I wish you the best! And if you have questions or want to reach out to somebody, feel free to reach out to me.
-Joshua
I am quite astonished to come across this blog, simply because I have not yet come across someone who apparently shares an idea which I hold deeply close to my heart.
I have always felt that I need to live my life on my own terms, and when that is no longer viable, I would take my life into my own hands. This thought is in my mind everyday, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes just a backdrop to my consciousness; but it guides me and gives me both a sense of urgency to live my life the best I can and a sense of relief that I would always have suicide as an exit if I find myself having to live in a way that compromises my beliefs.
I do not consider myself insane at all, though many others find my orientation absurd or even alarming. I am just a person with strong convictions and long to lives her life – each and every moment – with passion, and with a deep appreciation of beauty, love and truth.
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.
Miso Puppet
I havent read much of anything on this site, just happened to come across it by chance. my only question is this; have you considered what circumstances you might face after committing suicide? There is a possibility that you would end up with worse circumstances than your facing, or ever would face in this life. Its not like your going to be able to kill yourself in the afterlife to get back here.
[...] [...]
[...] The area of my life that’s going best right now is my relationship with my girlfriend. Something I’d wanted for even longer than my desire to become a freelancer and have a business of my own, but that I’d failed to achieve through the first 26 years of my life. And the events that finally resulted in the changes that led to me having this awesome relationship started in a very strange way: with admitting to myself that I was being a coward. [...]
[...] at my worst nightmares, I’ve put my livelihood on the line in the name of freedom, and later my life. I remember searching for something that was worth starving to death just to hunger for. All in the [...]
[...] [...]