Archive for the ‘Stimulus Space Response’ Category

There’s #Value in Going Through the Motions

Posted: January 12, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Habits are not dependent on enthusiasm.

Forming and cementing habits is about repetition.

Just do it, over and over and over and over and over again.

Does it have to be great every time? NO

Does it have to be good every time? no

Do you still need to do it even when you don’t want to? Yes

That is where the mental disconnect is for myself and the majority of people when it comes to establishing and sticking to new habits. When starting something new, it’s rarely if ever going to be good at first.

The not wanting to do something different is baked into the human condition. If starting and sticking to new, hard things was easy we would be living in a utopia.

What I have found in my experience is the lack of motivation gets its fuel from the thought of not wanting to be bad, look bad, come across as bad, etc.

Bad meaning inferior, mediocre, amateur, inadequate.

People don’t like looking foolish. That’s human nature. One can notice this in the ratio of creators to critics.

One of the things that has helped me is taking enthusiasm and expectation of quality out of the equation. I have so many journal entries that have the line “I’m just going through the motions” written, then list what I did that day, what I ate that day, my current mood, etc. With the end goal being habitual daily journal writing.

Not quality journal writing. Habitual journal writing.

Not quality published essays/articles/blogs (at first). Habitually published essays/articles/blogs.

It’s so natural and so common and so normal to resist doing something because we’ll be bad at it at first. I stopped playing video games because my friends all got way better than me and I didn’t want to keep losing to them and didn’t want to invest the time into getting better.

On the other end of the importance spectrum; after finally following my life’s dream of becoming a professional wrestler, I resisted practicing and taking low level indy bookings because I didn’t want to look foolish or embarrass myself.

Every bar and nightclub in the history of the world has been filled with men and women who don’t talk to each other because they’re scared of sounding foolish on approach and/or looking foolish if rejected.

So consider taking positive expectations, excitement, and enthusiasm out of the equation and just go through the motions. Literally saying to yourself internally or out load that’s what you’re doing in the process. Or writing it down. Or texting it to yourself. As long as the thing you want to do gets done, today.

Then the next day. Then the next day. Then next week. Then the week after that. Then next month. Then the month after that. Until it’s just something you do. Until the thing you want to do is something that you start to do on autopilot. Until you know you are going to do it that day as your default setting when you wake up (and have your morning coffee).

It’s when we reach the point of doing it by default, that we can shift our focus to proficiency, quality, excellence, and hopefully one day…mastery.

There’s value in just going through the motions.

#Create One Thing at a Time

Posted: January 10, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Many of my journal entries over the past year or two have ended with me writing the words; one thing at a time.

Getting started can be so, so hard. The internal resistance to putting forth external effort and action if measurable, would go off the charts and break the instruments.

When one is able to at least temporarily squeeze through or push past perfectionism and create something, regardless of quality, the inner pressure release and sense of relief would be the equivalent of sky diving, while holding and anvil.

One thing at a time

One action at a time

One choice at a time

What is quality? What is good and bad? The gatekeepers have been out to lunch for decades at this point. Just do it.

Spotlight effect often holds people back. I know it held me back. With a little (or a lot) of Imposter Syndrome mixed in.

One thing I realized, after a very, very long time of thinking about it, journaling about it, meditating about it, drinking about it…was that if I really did think what I wanted to create was so bad then I wouldn’t be negatively judging other’s so frequently and/or so harshly.

But that’s not what we’re doing when we’re negatively judging other acts of creation. We’re projecting self hatred. I know I was. It got to the point where I was getting into verbal conflicts with people I hardly knew at bars over…nothing. I think back to what started those verbal tiffs and after I cringe, I slap myself in the forehead and stay there because they never actually said or did anything. I was just projecting my self hatred onto others because I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do which was creating.

A creator that doesn’t create, otherwise known as a writer or artist sans the word professional prefixed.

Just publishing blogs, articles, essays, and thoughts has changed my mental and emotional state immeasurably. Is my content good? Is it important? Is it impactful? Well all metrics of external success would say no, then to pat me on my head and say at least you tried.

But it’s good for me. It’s working for me. It’s helping me. And you can’t help others unless you help yourself first. You can’t feed others from an empty bowl. You can’t put on someone else’s oxygen mask if you are suffocating to death yourself.

One thing at a time

One action at a time

One choice at a time

People Get These #Ideas In Their Heads

Posted: January 9, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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People get these ideas in their heads.

People meaning me, meaning us, meaning everyone, ever.

We get these ideas in our head that we need or should or could or will.

Good ideas, bad ideas, neutral ideas, beneficial ideas, detrimental ideas.

We know we can be our own worst enemy. Yet it’s solemnly publicly acknowledged outside of college philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology classes.

Self sabotage. I don’t have to explain what that is. We all know it through repeated experience. Both in important and irrelevant things that we’ve done to ourselves over the course of our lives regardless of age.

I could ask an 18 year old and an 80 year old to tell me a about a time they self sabotaged something that could have been a really good thing in their life, and they’re likely to reply; “you just want one example?”

People get these ideas in their heads.

Out of nowhere. Like a meteor. It strikes and buries itself in the land.

Accepted as fact that it’s always been there.

That’s just the way it is, they’ll say. They being the voice in our head.

Has it always been this way? Have I always lived this way? Is this helping or hurting me? Well it’s how I’m living. It’s how I’m thinking. It’s how I’m perceiving. It’s how I’m feeling. It’s how I’m acting.

I wouldn’t think, perceive, feel, and act in ways detrimental to my own existence, surviving, or thriving would I?

People get these ideas in their heads.

#Habit Building is About New Not Old

Posted: January 9, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It feels like I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to improve my habits.

At least the periods of time I care to remember. Which are the periods of time in which I cared to care and tried to try. I also remember many instances of the internal resistance to trying to build new habits being so strong, it felt like a literal force from within my body pushing me the opposite direction.

In 2023 I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I strongly recommend it for a host of reasons. While reading the book and after reading the book, one of the concepts that stuck and that I noticed when consuming other material related to habit formation, is the necessity of focusing on and doing the new thing rather than focusing on not doing the old thing.

That was a light bulb moment for me. Reading about that in the book, I knew both in my heart and in my head that I had spent the majority of time when trying to form new habits on what I didn’t want to do versus the new action I wanted to cement.

This concept legitimately helped me and is actively helping me now. You reading this blog is a product of me focusing on writing and publishing my work, rather than focusing on the time spent not writing and fixating on the details of what I want to write through the paradigm of perfectionism.

I like writing. I like blogging. I wanted to write again. I wanted to blog again. I posted an article that I liked one day last year. I just wrote it, revised it, and posted it. Then when I sat down to do the next one, the old habits of focusing on the topic, the title, the body, a catchy opener, and a well wrapped up closing line all creeped into my mind and put a writer’s block in front of the habit of blogging.

A couple of months later I read Atomic Habits. After finishing the book I read various articles and watched various YouTube videos on habits. The concept I found myself implementing the most in my day to day life was thinking about the new action, rather than thinking about past actions, past mistakes, past failures, etc.

The value of this concept is directly proportional to the action taken. It’s real value that can be measured externally, based on the real action one takes. I’m very grateful to have this paradigm taking hold in me. I hope it can do the same for whoever reads my words.

Quiet & Disidentify From Noise

Posted: January 6, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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For me, it’s mental noise I need to quiet. For others, they need to stop talking.

Ram Dass (quoted in the graphic above) was a spiritual teacher, who, I haven’t studied a lot of, but whenever I’ve listened to his talks or seen of videos of him speaking, would almost always give me goosebumps at some point. In a positive way of course. His cup runneth over with love and compassion.

Contrast that with the spiritual teacher I have studied the most, Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart rarely gives me goosebumps, but who communicates in a way that connects with me deeply, on whatever subject or subtopic he speaks about. I try to watch one of his videos on YouTube every other day.

I’ve also read both The Power of Now and A New Earth which I whole heartedly recommend. They’re very long and dense, so going with the audiobook version is probably the most pragmatic way to go. I’ve done a read through and a listen through of each.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more quiet. I’m sure I talked more and was louder and more obnoxious in the my past than my ego and memory will allow me to believe. But I am now, and for a decent number of years have been a more quiet than talkative person. I recommend it. A great quote that I find evergreen and true is; “the loudest one in the room, is the weakest one in the room”.

At times I’m too quiet for my own good. But I find that to be a better way than the alternative. Especially in a culture where more and more people not only think what they have to say is valuable, but worthy of immediate and constant broadcast.

As I’ve gotten older, my mind has not followed my mouth in becoming more quiet. I’ve been meditating for around fifteen years now. On and off. The relative consistency to habitual consistency kicked in ten years ago. Meditation is one of the only things I recommend to all human beings without exception.

The practice of meditation has quieted my mind more than it was before I started the practice. Like anything else it is not a one time, cure-all, magic bullet. Hence why it is called a meditation practice. But it does help me. There’s more and more science showing how it tangibly helps people.

The greatest gift meditation has given me up to his point, is to help me quiet my mind and to disidentify from my thoughts. Individual thoughts, thought streams, mental movies, the voice in the head. Meditation has helped me to reduce their influence, their frequency, and to stop confusing those things with who I am.

So there is less mental noise. So I can hear more. So I can learn more. So I can do more. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot to learn and a lot to do that will help me live my life the way I know I want to. So every little bit helps.

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