Posts Tagged ‘life’

Changes Are Horizons

Posted: April 6, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Does any concept lend itself better to metaphor than change?

Perhaps only life and death.

Change is hard. You know this. I know this. Podcasters and self help gurus who try to convince us otherwise know this.

You know how we know change is hard? Because if it was easy, then we would all change for the better, for individual then mutual benefit, and we would be living in a literal utopia.

Change is hard, that is why it lends itself so well to metaphor.

Change involves metaphor as much as the literal.

We have to change in immaterial ways before we can change in material ways. We have to change our minds before we can change anything. Is changing our mind a literal thing or a metaphorical thing?

What is our mind? Where do our thoughts come from and where do they go?

Changing our mind means expanding our horizon(s). To push up against the limit of our perception and to then go far enough to reach the unknown and to become familiar with it.

When we reach the new horizon, what next? Whatā€™s left? What to do?

If change were easy we would know what to do, how to do it, how to habitualize it, and take inspired action by default. But change is not easy. Change may not be complex, but simple and easy are not same just as there is difference between what is difficult and what is complicated.

Does one have to go all in on change? Is incremental change a thing? Do we dip our toes in the water first or do we cannonball in and submerge ourselves in the cold plunge of the new and unknown?

Habits of thought, perception, emotion, and action would indicate that we have to change incrementally. In the never ending story of trying to replace detrimental habits with beneficial ones, we can reach a point of whatever it takes and whatever works.

Change is hard. Knowing what to do and doing it. Being socially conditioned into thinking that doing something once equates to permanent success and happiness certainly doesnā€™t help for those of us raised by movies and television.

Is taking a break the same as giving up? Are rest days necessary or are they for the weak? What does alpha even mean anyway?

I remember when finding information required effort. Then the information was easily accessible. Now itā€™s hard to find again because we have to sift through the misinformation, native ads, digital clutter, and distractions. Thatā€™s if we decide to try and change and seek out knowledge to help us.

Meditation and philosophy help me declutter my mind and emotions. They help me to focus my actions in at least a generally beneficial direction. They provide a spring board and rest stop for me when I decide to try.

Aging has taught me that time keeps going and the world keeps moving. That combination has given me some awareness and equanimity, two concepts that at least create a solid foundation for change.

Circles and Cycles are #Life

Posted: March 27, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Iā€™ve never dreaded getting older. Iā€™m yet to mind the trade offs that come with aging. Hopefully I have a long way to go still, but tomorrow isnā€™t promised for any of us.

I still remember coming up in my teens and twenties and every time I was at a party or a bar or a club I would hear someone, both men and women equally, complain about getting older. Lamenting the loss of their youth even though none of these incidents involved someone moaning about being above the age of twenty six.

So that gave me a positively warped view of aging. I never bought it. Every time I ever heard it, whether sober or three sheets to the wind, I always thought the person soundedā€¦uhā€¦less than optimally intelligent.

I donā€™t pretend that I feel as spry and vibrant as I did ten years ago, or fifteen years ago. But Iā€™ve never felt upset about it, or robbed of something, or like something was missing. Not yet anyway. If Iā€™m lucky enough to live another ten or twenty years maybe that will change.

One of my favorite things about getting older are seeing life cycles. How itā€™s all the same, only the names will change. The seasons of nature are great metaphors for pretty much every aspect of life. The more time I spend in nature, the more I see and feel this to be true.

I see it in myself, my friends, my family, in pop culture, in society, etc. Cycles. Not lines. Not going from A to B and everything or anything being done. Nothing going up to the top of the metaphorical mountain and stays there. What goes up, must come down, and being again.

I see cycles, circles, patterns, repetition in my own life. I look back and I see myself struggling and succeeding in many of the same areas over and over again, spread out over extended periods of time.

I see more similarities than differences in the different, ā€œerasā€ of my life, to use modern terminology.

I donā€™t get angry or disappointed or frustrated at this. Nor do I get filled with pride or superiority. Itā€™s just what is. Itā€™s just what happened. Itā€™s just whatā€™s happening. Itā€™s just what will happen.

I will try. I will plan. I will execute. I will learn. I will apply. I will think. I will review. I will take action. I will let go. What will happen will happen.

I know before meditation, philosophy, and spirituality practices came into my life I never could have been so calm or coherent about my trials and tribulations, my successes and my failure, my drama and my karma, my life situation. After all this is my lifeā€¦MY LIFEā€¦

I likely would have only been able to see the cycles of life in the cyclical nature of fashion and applied some kind of ego based judgement on people who think theyā€™re ā€œcoolā€ for wearing a style of clothing that was fashionable twenty or more years ago, was deemed uncool for so long that people stopped wearing and forgot about the clothing style, only for it to be brought back again in the name of status, clout, attention, and superficial uniqueness.

But now I love seeing the style of my dress of my youth being brought back into vogue and being enjoyed by a whole new generation of people. I talk to the people wearing throwback fashions, and the majority of people I have talked to love the style, they like how they look in them, they like the aesthetic, many of them have been wearing that style for years and years and it is just now that mainstream culture has caught up to them. How wonderful. The classics never go out of style.

Seeing the cyclical nature of life takes some of the pressure off of myself to be some kind of perfect being. Perfectly unique. Perfectly productive. Perfectly efficient. None of that exists in reality. Only in the areas of our imagination under control of our ego.

Progress, not perfection.

Thereā€™s no escaping the yin yang. Ups and downs, peaks and valleys, noise and silence, dark and light, good and bad. Circles, cycles, not lines.

We are all flawed. We are all imperfect. We all repeated the same mistakes and the same successes. We are cyclical, not linear.

Being Aware of Being Swept Away

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It is not just easy, but normal and natural to get caught up in our thoughts and emotions. We donā€™t even notice that weā€™re swept up in them until time has passed and weā€™re in the same physical position for x amount of time.

I think this is why doom scrolling became engrained in the culture and human nature so fast. Scrolling through social media is the external manifestation of our internal scrolling through thoughts, emotions, memories, and projections.

Awareness kicks in eventually for most people. Often times after an amount of time passes that weā€™re ashamed to admit to ourselves or to anyone else.

ā€œI was spacing out for how long?!ā€ ā€œI was scrolling through Instagram for how long?!ā€ Two sides of the same coin.

Awareness is the way out. But like everything else, it must be cultivated. Cultivated through repetition. Practice makes progress. There is no progress without repeated action consistently, persistently. Easier said than done, just like everything else in life.

Meditation has helped me to cultivate my self awareness. Journaling has also helped me to cultivate awareness, as long as I occasionally review past journal entries so I may become aware of potential patterns of detrimental thought, emotion, and/or action.

Any journaling is better than no journaling. We have too many thoughts in our head to not take some time, some of the time, to just vomit them onto paper with a pen or pencil.

Any meditation practice is better than no meditation practice. We are too scattered brained to not take some time, some of the time to find stillness, focus on our breath, and attempt to bring inner state into alignment with the present moment.

Both journaling and meditation are put to better use for us when they are done purposefully. Mindless writing with no review can be called journaling. Sitting with our eyes closed, with new age music playing in the background, while we think aimlessly could be called meditation.

To cultivate our awareness, so we can break the cycles of getting swept away by detrimental thoughts and emotions; journaling with review of past journal entries, like extended breath focused meditation sessions with a mantra; are more useful tools to bring about the results we are looking for when engaging in self improvement practices.

Neither of which are one and done magic pills. No such thing. I still find myself getting swept up in thoughts and social media scrolling. Just five minutes before I started writing this essay I found myself standing next to my workstation, scrolling on my phone, unable to remember why I even picked my device up.

I do know I caught myself quicker than I used to. I know I get sucked into salacious social media content less often.

I know I still space out and get caught in streams of past memories and future projections. I also know I do so less often and for smaller periods of time than I used to. Even compared to this time last year or this time last month.

Little by little. One day at a time. One step at a time. One choice at a time. One action at a time.

Awareness is the way out.

Practice Makes Progress.

More Literal & Metaphorical #WeightTraining Please

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I love weight training. It is one of three things I recommend to every human being. It is one of the things I love that is actually good for me.

Weight training has positively impacted my life as much or more than any other external concept Iā€™ve encountered while Iā€™ve been alive. Iā€™ve been regularly weight training for two thirds of my life now.

I donā€™t plan on stopping. All physical exercise is a marathon, not a sprint. Weight training is not something one does for a season, it is something one does for life.

Every year that goes by more and more scientific studies come out showing greater and greater benefits of weight training. Broader benefits and deeper benefits. Physical benefits, mental benefits and social/emotional benefits. Benefits for children and benefits for the elderly. Benefits for living longer and benefits for living a higher quality of life.

There has been and will continue to be resistance to weight training because of it being intertwined with bodybuilding. Male bodybuilders are to weight training as female instagram influencers are to yoga pants. They go hand in hand but only represent the egomaniacal extremes of the user base.

Most people want to exercise and benefit from weight training for practical health benefits. Not because they are seeking external validation from strangers via their smartphone to compensate for an internal lack.

For every fitness influencer covered in athleisure shape ware from head to toe while they photoshop their selfies, there are 10,000 people who would benefit from going to their local gym, a few times per week, to see and feel tangible physical benefits of exercise, surprisingly quickly.

Warm up, lift some weights that challenge their effort and comfort level, do some cardio, stretch, cool down, go home, shower, and eat. Anything beyond that moves into intermediate and beyond which one can find infinite information on in the growing podcast and youtube fitness video sphere.

Weight training helped me in the deepest, darkest times in my life. From depression, to burn out, to grieving the deaths of both of my parents. It helped me to feel good, feel challenged, feel accomplished, feel pride, feel growth. I wish that for every person I meet which is why I recommend it to everyone regardless of demographic or type.

Weight training also makes for great analogies and metaphors. Meditation, another thing I universally recommend, has been called doing bicep curls for the brain. Seeking general challenges and discomfort has been called weight training for life.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Notice how I am yet to bring up aesthetics. Except to poke at the social media narcissists who use perceived visual fitness achievement as a fix for their addiction to attention. Aesthetics is a by product of weight training and exercise in general.

Exercising for aesthetics can be a path the dark side of the fitness world. See fit fluencers and steroid abusers. People who are chemically and surgically enhanced, making a living, by living and lie. Lying to anyone and everyone, including themselves, that their aesthetics can be achieved with discipline, consistency, and whatever products they are selling.

Iā€™ve had multiple IFBB pros tell me when it comes to who is on gear/has had cosmetic surgery vs naturals; muscle mass volume to body fat percentage never lies, ever.

So use common sense, although Iā€™m not so sure how common that is anymore.

But common sense would dictate all humans engage in some form of physical exercise unless they spend their days engaging in physical labor for the job/career.

Use it or lose it. That applies to your body and your mind. Physical and mental ailments and deterioration are often brought about by physical and mental inactivity. The happiest and most spry elderly are the most active. The saddest and slowest youths are the most sedentary. Use it or lost it.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Acceptance & Love of What Happens

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Amor Fati is one of, if not the, most challenging concept Iā€™ve ever learned.

To love what happens, regardless of what happens, is not natural. If we all loved what happened to us, regardless of whether we perceive what happens as positive or negative, we would be living in an unrecognizable world.

I am very grateful to have learned about this concept, through stoicism. Although the term Amor Fati is not of stoic origin. It is a term that comes from Frederich Nietzsche. This is a philosophical concept that is like jelly to the peanut butter of meditation.

Plugging the concept Amor Fati, into the awareness that is cultivated by a habitual meditation practice, has beenā€¦well, Iā€™d like to say game changing, but in actuality it has been very challenging to apply and execute.

It is certainly a concept that goes against the grain. Modern culture and mass media certainly donā€™t put out the vibe of accepting and loving what happens to us. In fact, a solid majority of pop culture in America is about not liking what happens to us.

Amor Fati being the norm would mean the end of gossip, office politics, relationship drama, family feuds, rumors and innuendos. Imagining modern life without any one of those things requires strong, concentrated imagination. To imagine modern life without all of those concepts would be the beginning of a science fiction novel.

So it is natural to struggle with getting a grasp on Amor Fati because it is so unnatural and unnurtured in modern life.

Life doesnā€™t happen in a vacuum. Life doesnā€™t occur in a rehab facility. Life can be loud, messy, challenging, harsh, cold, unfair, stressful, and unnerving. Weā€™re all zen until someone cuts us off in traffic or we stain our favorite shirt.

Life is challenging. Life is challenges. That is why I feel like philosophy and meditation go together like peanut butter and jelly. To think about philosophical concepts during meditation sessions has been a genuine help for me, when Iā€™m able to disidentify from my thoughts and emotions.

Meditation can create space for deep thought. Meditation can create focused pondering of; the big things, the scary things, the confusing things, the unnatural things. Amor Fati is all of those things. It is a big, scary, confusing, unnatural concept to love everything that happens to us.

Amor Fati isnā€™t a philosophical concept that is meant to be all sunshine and rainbows. This isnā€™t a toxic positivity, self help guru, social media influencer like statement. This isnā€™t saying turn your frown upside down.

Amor Fati is as challenging as it gets, because we have been conditioned to think, perceive, feel and act in the opposite direction. If I didnā€™t have a meditation practice to plug Amor Fati into, I would have likely dismissed it instantly, like I imagine a great many people have throughout history since Nietzsche first wrote the words.

It is because Amor Fati is so different, that I believe itā€™s time has come to be mainstream. We need different in the culture right now. We need different in the zeitgeist right now. Amor Fait is what we need to break up the status quo claptrap that monopolizes the perceptions of the masses.

We need a different paradigm. We need to change our perceptions. Amor Fati is the type of concept that cuts across class, race, gender, and generation to challenge us at our cores equally.

It is a concept that I very much need to apply in my life. More and more as the days go by.

Amor Fati, to me, also sounds like something, that we all, desperately need at this point in history.

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