Posts Tagged ‘life’

There’s #Value in Going Through the Motions

Posted: January 12, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
Tags: , , , , ,
0

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
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

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
Tags: , , , , ,
0

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.

There’s Value in Just Getting Through

Posted: January 2, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
Tags: , , , , ,
0

You have to survive in order to thrive.

Crawl, walk, run.

You can’t pour from an empty cup.

We all want to be better people. We all want to do better.

But sometimes, some days, we just need to survive.

External factors show up.

Internal factors bubble up.

There is no instruction manual.

There is no such thing as normal.

As long as you’re not negatively effecting other people, it’s okay to just do what you have to do to make it through to the next day, the next hour, the next minute, the next choice, the next breath.

Radical Acceptance of #HumanNature

Posted: January 1, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Judging seems to be a default setting in humans.

It’s not just easy, it’s as natural and normal as breathing.

I know I have been guilty of judging others negatively, but what I was actually doing was projecting negative thoughts about my own flaws onto them. And I’m not accessing my long term memory when I think of examples of this.

I’m not sure if becoming more accepting of human nature comes with age or with experience. I just know that as I’ve gotten older, and had more experience interacting with more and more people, I am (slowly) becoming more accepting of the fact that to be human is to be irrational.

I think that if we all take a minute to look back on some of our decisions in just our recent past, we’ll find the actions of an irrational person.

Studying philosophy has helped me with this. Reading books by Robert Greene has specifically helped me with this a lot in recent years.

To accept our human nature, is to be forgiving, to have empathy.

We need more of a lot of things in this world, but empathy, that is something that a majority of us can agree upon. Something free, simple, within all of our ability to control and influence.

Having more compassion for myself and empathy for others is an evergreen new years resolution for me. Being more aware and accepting of the irrationality of human nature has helped provide fuel for my ability to empathize to grow.

Older Entries
Newer Entries