Posts Tagged ‘personal development’

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Posted: December 28, 2023 in Stimulus Space Response
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One of the first audio books I ever rented from my local library was Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. I had a bad habit of turning molehills into mountains. Of turning little things into big things. Of taking serious, things which were meant to be taken lightly.

Through nature or nurture, I inherited this habit from my parents. Both of them, up until they both passed away; dramatized insignificant day to day happenings in their personal lives and the events of the world around them. So frequently and with such fervor, that it short circuited my internal ability to distinguish between the important and the irrelevant while judging each in a negatively passive aggressive manner.

I was in my twenties when I had a roommate who told me that my priorities and way of seeing the world were totally out of whack. That I focused my time and attention on things that I had no control over and/or had nothing to do with me.

Around that same time is when I got more serious about a regular-daily meditation practice. That was likely a new years resolution around that time when I first downloaded the Calm app.

When this prompt popped up on one of my recent Daily Calm meditations, it brought back a flood of memory pieces from the times spent listening to that audiobook during my commutes in and around Chicago. The concept of don’t sweat the small stuff is modern wrapping paper placed on the gift of traditional philosophy.

I wasn’t ready to implement and habitualize the concept back then. Because it was just touching on the edges of philosophies like stoicism and taoism. I didn’t need to dip my toes in philosophy and spirituality, I needed to dive head first into the deep end. Because my head was already drowning in constant thoughts and negative emotions.

Flushing the negative judgements of myself and others with the pressure washer of philosophy and the cleansing waters of a spirituality practice were what I needed then, and what is helping me so much, now.

But some people need to just dip there toes in. Change is hard. Paradigms die hard. Perception shifts are slow. The modern personal development/self help genre is built on the foundation philosophy.

So do check out some non fiction self help books, audio books, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc if you need help. Modern people, language, examples and stories will be a necessary ingredient for many people. Since ageism applies to concepts as well as people in the world we live in.

Whatever works, whatever helps.

#Mental Space to Choose

Posted: December 26, 2023 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Stimulus Space Response
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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It would be nice to say that I had an awakening or an epiphany that changed the way I lived forever all at once.

The older I get, the more I feel like that isn’t how change works.

I’ve had, what I thought were life changing epiphanies, repeatedly. Life changing visions, repeatedly. Life changing moments, repeatedly. I thought after X or Y happened to me that I would live differently from that point onward.

Habits always win out however. Choices, actions done repeatedly make our lives.

The concept of Stimulus-Space-Response was a concept I first learned from a rented audio book by Stephen Covey. He was telling the story of Holocaust survivor Dr. Victor Frankl.

Learning about that concept I can still remember thinking, in the library I was listening to the audiobook in; that this was going to change my life from that point on.

I thought my depression, laziness, anxieties would all be instantly and forever changed now that I knew that there was a space between stimulus and response.

I get to choose how I respond?! I can cultivate and grow that space?!! Surely this will change my life immediately. I will only make good choices now. I will only do right actions.

The older I get, the more I feel like that isn’t how change works.

But learning about Stimulus-Space-Response is one of the closest things I’ve ever experienced to an epiphany that stuck. I suppose a more apt metaphor would be that of a seed being planted. A seed of lasting change was planted that day.

Stephen Covey also used farming as an analogy for change and for life. I may have planted the seed(s) for growth, but I failed to tend to the soil properly with patience and persistence. Then the harvest was nothing.

It is a great concept that more people should know about. The knowledge that we can choose what happens to us no matter what happens. Because we have the ability to think, perceive, and assign meaning in our brain. Unlike most animals.

I think most people are unaware of this. I know I was. I think most people think that to live, is to live reactively. Just reacting to whatever happens to us and around us whether good, bad, or indifferent.

But we can choose to stop, breath, think, and choose.

It’s no magic pill, no such thing of course. But it can help. It helps me.

#Stoicism for Breakfast

Posted: December 24, 2023 in Stimulus Space Response
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Studying philosophy, specifically Stoicism has been a life saver for me.

I have found stoicism and a meditation practice go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Which is appropriate, since the most famous work of the most famous stoic in the history of the world is called “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius.

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday has been one of the best things I’ve ever incorporated into my life. The book, the podcast, and the YouTube videos. I strongly recommend any and all to any person who reads my words.

Listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast first thing in the morning was a staple of my routine for years when it was just a couple of minutes long. In recent years, especially the last two, watching a Daily Stoic video on YouTube with my morning coffee has been how I start my days.

It puts my head in the right place…along with the coffee of course.

The concept of we don’t control what happens to us, we control how we respond has been not just a game changer, but a life saver. That concept completely changed my paradigm of my life at a time when my life desperately needed that change.

Stoicism is no magic pill of course. No such thing exists.

Philosophy has been a tremendous aide. A wonderful tool in the tool belt of helping myself and developing as a person. A way to help keep my ego in check.

First world, capitalist controlled, consumer countries all have out of control, exploited egos by cultural design. We suffer for it because we can never have enough externally. Stoicism teaches that we already have enough, internally.

Ready to Do

Posted: December 21, 2023 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Stimulus Space Response
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You have the want to change.

You have to want help.

You have to decide your’e ready.

You in this case, means me, means us.

I like the spirituality concept that we are all one, or come from one energy source.

Energy, atoms, etc.

Ten years of work to become an over night sensation.

There is a lot of internal work to do before I was ready for external.

So much baggage to let go of. So much to strip away.

Expectation, validation, opinion, anxiety, depression, laziness.

There is a lot of internal work to do.

Philosophy, mediation, exercise, journaling, yoga, psychology, communication…

Then I’m walking from one room to the next and I want to do the thing.

No thought, no worry, no excuse, no waiting, I just wanted to do the thing.

Then I did it and wanted to do it again the next day and the next day.

Years and years of nothing, no thing. No action. No doing.

There was a lot of internal work that was done.

There is a lot of internal work to do.

But I am grateful for the process.

I am grateful for the journey.

Some say that’s what life is…

First Drafts, Second Steps

Posted: December 20, 2023 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Stimulus Space Response
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Seeing this image helped something click in my brain.

Call it writer’s block, perfectionism, procrastination, or just being human.

I didn’t want to write, or do much that required effort. Why?

Well what if I fail. What if I don’t get anything out of it.

External. Ego.

The work is the win. It’s about doing what I love doing. Time well spent.

Who cares if it isn’t perfect, great, good?

It’s time well spent, because I like doing it. It’s part of the process.

Everything starts out bad. Every person who was great started out bad.

No exceptions, ever.

We all have to learn.

We have to learn how to live and survive, let alone thrive or specialize.

So it’ll be bad at first and down the road, if I stick with it, hopefully it will be better.

It still might only be me who ever reads these. But that’s fine too.

There’s genuine value in going through the motions.

The value is building beneficial habits.

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