Hi, I’m Milo. Here are tips that help me make peace with myself. I learned those living my life as an autistic, bipolar trans person.
Tips are selected to yield you net positive. There are no tough-but-true accusatory things here, only practical and uplifting ones. Everything you read here has a solid chance of making your life better.
Losing an argument says nothing about me. Being rejected says nothing about me. Being ghosted says nothing about me. Obeying someone says nothing about me.
If I’m nice to you, it doesn’t mean I’m weak. I can turn my “yes” into “no” suddenly and confidently.
At all times, I am an unbiased observer reading a history book. Past is facts. Feeling bad or guilty about it won’t change anything.
Once I memorize my book word by word, only then can I be free of trauma. I’m not the main character — I’m the camera.
There are multiple parts of me inside my head. They share something, yet they’re different.
I can resolve any inner conflict by letting every part spill it out. It’s not the conflict itself that makes me uncomfortable, it’s my seemingly unified “me” that shouldn’t contradict itself but does. The most logical solution is to admit that there indeed are many me living inside one head, interacting with each other. It is okay for emotional and rational parts to disagree.
For all of them to move somewhere together, they need a captain. I declare the part that talks the captain. What she says is law. Any part that contradicts the captain should be told “no”.
Willpower is being able to do what you want. It does exist, and it does change lives. When I need to go for a run but can’t, I stop for a second, and then start moving muscles one by one to stand up, get my running clothes on, tie my shoelaces, leave my home. It feels like steering a huge ocean liner. It for sure sounds weird, but it’s literally my captain taking over and fighting her actively hostile crew.
If this approach to willpower suddenly stops working, I seek medical treatment — I might have another depressive episode.
They say “think outside the box”. When I’m depressed, my box is made of concrete. The more depressed I am, the smaller the box is.
Just because you skipped one morning run doesn’t mean you should now go stuff your body with junk food while feeling guilty. You have the willpower to overcome it. If you don’t, seek medical attention — you won’t believe how easy it is to solve depression with a good doctor by your side.
When life gets complicated, I should start by fixing sleep. Only then mindset adjustments, self-analysis and medication become effective.
I define anxiety as counterproductive stress. Some stresses motivate, some paralyze. The latter ones are not welcome in my life.
I eliminate everything that has the slightest bit of anxiety to it. Living with bad mental hygiene while encountering a major destabilizing event may turn into a death by a thousand cuts.
Complex anxieties become trivial when put into words. The surefire tactic of a bona fide abuser is isolating their victim. While being abused by your anxiety, never stay alone. Talk to someone.
More often than not, charmed by your sincerity, they’ll want to listen.
Beneath thousands of layers every trauma has, lies not the event of the past, but the fear that is relevant in the present. When the fear is addressed, trauma ceases to exist immediately, turning into just another memory.
Profound, life-changing answers come to me out of the blue. Obvious in hindsight, they’re in fact a product of a months-long background thought process.
Answers will come. Sooner or later, it will all make sense. I didn’t “thought of it earlier” because I was thinking about it all this time.
I do my best not to miss the forest for the trees. There are exceptions to every rule, but being constantly mindful of them comes with a steep performance penalty. Ignoring outliers is a safe bet that is good enough for me.
The interim meaning of life is to exist for long enough as a species to discover the true one. I suspect that the theory of everything and figuring out our brain might improve our chances of finding it.
Until then, actively spread peace.
It’s not about reproduction: it’s possible to die of overpopulation before the meaning is found. It’s not about pacifism either: I’m okay with eliminating an occasional peace destroyer.
One small act of kindness may turn into someone not yelling at their colleague, which turns into their colleague being a better parent that day, which turns into their child being more confident and productive, which turns into another genius joining our ranks.
My main peace-spreading technique is “What do you want me to do?” More often than not, it immediately disarms the argument.
Remember: it’s not you vs. me, it’s you + me vs. the bad thing.
Doubt is freedom. When doubt becomes luxurious or punishable, it means someone is trying to take my freedom away. Once I cease to doubt, I cease to be free.
When convincing someone to achieve a mutual goal, start with asking whether they can be reconvinced in the first place. If they tell you nothing can convince them, what’s the point in arguing at all?
To be dying knowing I lived someone else’s life and not my own while realizing that it’s too late now is the scariest thing that can happen to me. To make living worthwhile, I should always be preparing for dying.
By saying “what for?”, outer goals connect to each other, forming meaningless chains.
You need to close this popup to copy the mechanic’s number. You need the number to call them. You need to call them to negotiate the cost of your oil change. You need an oil change, so your car won’t break when you least expect it. You need a car to go to work. You need to work to earn money.
You need money to… And here, the chain terminates with an inner goal. This goal doesn’t entertain what-fors. It is important as-is, and it gives meaning to the whole chain. Knowing my inner goals makes my life so much easier.
Laid out meticulously in all its glory, the personality of the most boring person is magnificent. Those we call creative geniuses are in fact successful at connecting what they have inside with the outside world, translating what they feel to the language others can understand.
Becoming a creative genius is an exercise in building bridges. It’s an acquired skill.
You can go either mask on or mask off.
When fashioning a mask, you adapt based on the info you gather, which is limited. Thus, the mask will never be as nuanced as your true personality.
I think people don’t like shallow. Authentic me can say controversial things but be forgiven and appreciated because of her sincerity.
If you feel uncomfortable, say “I feel uncomfortable”. If you have nothing to say, but you feel like you should, say “I feel awkward right now because I understand that I should say something, yet I can’t find words”. If you want to comfort somebody but don’t know how, say “I really want to comfort you, but I don’t know how”.
If you feel weird while saying this, say “I feel weird saying this, but at least I’m not a liar”.
The point of every healthy discussion is mutual benefit. Discussions that aren’t about mutual benefit are most likely harmful and should be avoided.
It is mutually beneficial to make the discussion as friendly as possible. Every human being under the sun can make you feel good talking to them. If they don’t, it’s a choice, and it says a lot.
Walking on eggshells while talking to someone as you’re trying your best not to offend them is worse for both of you than talking freely but ready to apologize for offending unintentionally. “Are we okay?” is a bad life motto.
Don’t listen to their words with your ears — listen to their intent with your gut. Being able to read intents makes you more resilient against manipulation.
No one is invulnerable one hundred percent of the time. Peer pressure can make me feel genuinely convinced of anything at all. Natural languages have imperfections that can be exploited.
Giving enough time, a skilled manipulator can completely rewire my brain. Talking is touching: when I hear words, I change. In social interactions, I always trust my gut feelings more than the part of me that can talk.
Reptile intuition honed by millions of years of detecting threats around corners will never fail you. Language will.
What they’re going to do with your data matters more than why they collect it in the first place. They use my data to slightly nudge me here and there, to a great effect, as they know my mental state at all times.
Feeds are their jaws. When I stay away from all kinds of personalized experiences, I become untouchable. Knowing how to manipulate me doesn’t matter if you can’t reach me anyway.
My life is not a problem to be solved. I should stop treating it as such.
Choosing the right solution at every step of the way does not necessarily lead to the right place. An hour spent on a quick win today is an hour not spent on a long-term project that might fruit tenfold.
There are no adults. Nobody has their life figured out. Everybody you meet are freestyling as they go. Everybody fights some kind of battle. The majority doesn’t know what they want to do with their lives.
Outliers do exist, but I ignore outliers.
I don’t argue online. Every time I want to, I play the game of what-if. What’s the best case scenario? It’s probably them saying “You are completely right. I was wrong on so many levels. Starting today, I will reshape my life to be like you in every way”. A bit weird, for sure, and it’s probably going to make my day, but in the grand scheme of things, it won’t matter to me.
If even the best scenario is not enough, why settle for less? Why argue online at all?
To preserve my identity and keep it from being influenced by guilt and shame, I only edit this website in the evening, when a pre-derealization hits. This is the only way I can keep it true without fear of being misunderstood and judged by vague authority figures.
Every time I do it, I overcome the fear of appearing unhirable, inappropriate and cringeworthy. Yet, this website is an accurate representation of my true self. I try to keep it this way. I don’t want advertisers and cancel culture to rule my life.