Testing Myself

Posted on February 26, 2020 by admin

I try to put a great deal of thought and consideration into my views. It’s easy for to make snap decisions and cling to them for emotional purposes but I try to avoid that as much as possible. To see how I’m doing with this, I have a little test that I use on myself every so often. It goes a little something like this.

In addition to asking myself why I think the way I do, I also ask myself “What do I mean by that?” whenever I feel strongly about something. I make myself define my terms, explain things in more than just a few simple words or catchy slogans, and try to figure out why I think the way I do. I keep doing that as I go deeper and deeper into my thought processes to see if I have any inconsistencies or thoughts that I haven’t taken to their full conclusions. Taking ideas as far as they can go is crucial for seeing if they are worth keeping, changing, or abandoning. When I want to get even more out of this practice, I have someone I trust test me. Because they’re not in my head and therefore don’t automatically know what I think, I have to be much more thoughtful and thorough in my explanations. Additionally, they can think of better objections to my ideas than I can and often end up making me rethink some of my views.

Whether I do this by myself or with someone else, it helps me see what I actually think and why I think that way, which allows me to change something in my thought processes if I so desire. Since I’ve been doing this for a good while now, my positions have become more nuanced and less ideological. I can also see ideological tendencies more clearly in myself as well as in others. All of this makes it easier for me to empathize with people, understand different points of view, and communicate effectively on a wide range of subjects. Sometimes I go overboard with testing myself but mostly I save it for occasions in which I’m feeling up to the process as it can be difficult and draining at times. Testing myself has benefited me a lot in a variety of ways and, if you’re not already doing it, I highly recommend giving it a try and seeing what it can do for you.

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4 Ways I Take Extreme Ownership of My Life

Posted on February 19, 2020 by admin

One of the most influential books I read last year was Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. It’s inspired me to take more responsibility for my decisions instead of blaming other people or events for things that I dislike. In the spirit of Extreme Ownership, here are some ways that I’ve taken greater ownership of my life over the past few years.

  1. Going to bed earlier. Of all the things on this list, this is the one I struggle with the most. I find it difficult to put away my electronics and go to bed at night. I’m also used to staying up late and sleeping in the next day, which can make me miserable when I have to get up early. I’ve gotten better lately about going to bed at a decent time and getting enough (or close to enough) sleep even when I have an early day at work. As much as I hate waking up early, I’d rather develop the discipline to go to bed early enough to get sufficient sleep than feel like a zombie the next day or put the blame on my work schedule.
  2. Giving myself more time to commute. I’ve pretty much mastered this, at least for my regular activities outside the house. This is a good skill to have since I drive almost every day and have fairly lengthy commutes. Regardless of where I’m going and what time of day it is, I can get ready and leave early enough to get to almost any function in my normal routine well before I have to be there. Sometimes I’ll take a book with me in case I end up having some time to spare and want something to do besides stare at my phone until I go in. Getting there early gives me more peace of mind and prevents me from being late due to heavy traffic or other potential slowdowns.
  3. Using my time wisely. Good time management is easiest for me when I have a day off or a closing shift at work and hardest when I have an opening shift. When I open, I feel like I end up spending the rest of my post-work day trying to catch up on everything I didn’t get to do before I left the house. In contrast, when I close or have the day off, I have plenty of time to get everything done at a fairly leisurely pace. Either way, I always have at least a few hours of free time even on my busiest days that I can spend as I like and I feel best when I put that time toward things I find meaningful.
  4. Being careful with my money. I’ve had some recent car trouble that cost me a pretty penny. Although I did complain a bit about that at the time, I moved on from it fairly quickly once everything was back to normal. The way I see it, I can either blame unexpected expenses for my financial troubles or I can avoid excessive miscellaneous spending so that I’m better prepared for those rainy days and have more money to spend on things that are important to me. And when something urgent like car trouble does appear, I can get it taken care of right away so that it doesn’t become an even bigger and more expensive problem due to neglect.
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A Powerful Empathy Exercise

Posted on February 12, 2020 by admin

You understand your reasons behind many of the things you do, including the outcomes that you hope will unfold. However, you don’t always know or understand those things in someone else, so it can be easy to assume the worst about them, especially if they do something that turns out badly. If you can’t ask them about how they think, then you can try putting yourself in their position. Think about what you might have been hoping to accomplish if you had done those same things. Even if things didn’t turn out as you’d hoped they would, your intentions were still good and you weren’t trying to hurt anyone or cause trouble; chances are that the same is true for them.

To make this easier, you can do something that you find relaxing until you feel some separation between yourself and your views so that you don’t feel as strongly attached to them as you otherwise might. This, in addition to thinking of someone else’s views as if they were your own, will help you put yourself in their shoes and understand why they think the way they do. You’ll then have completed a powerful exercise in empathy and you’ll have a much better understanding of those around you.

Through trying to understand the other person’s perspective, you’ll likely find it much harder to get angry at them for doing something that turned out badly. Instead, you’ll probably find it much easier to think well of them and recognize that they wanted something good to happen even if that’s not the way it worked out. In addition to helping you focus on solving the problem at hand, this will also give you much more mental peace and allow you to save your energy for more important matters later on. I’ve found great success with this when I’ve managed to do it and I hope it serves you as well as it’s served me.

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3 Great Life Hacks for Stressful Situations

Posted on February 5, 2020 by admin

This year has been wonderful to me overall, with lots of pleasant days and hardly any unpleasant ones. When I have had rough days or even just stressful moments during otherwise good days, I’ve used a few solid life hacks to get through them. The following are things I’ve learned from Stoic philosophy and Eastern philosophy. They’ve helped me a lot and I hope they also help you when you need them.

  1. Doing what I can and focusing on one particular task at a time (even if it’s a small task) before moving on to the next one. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I try to calm myself enough to find something to do that will lighten my burden and put me into a better situation. That also helps me avoid becoming paralyzed by stress and unable to do anything. Similarly, focusing on one task at a time and finishing it before moving on to the next one is much less stressful than thinking about everything I have to do at one time. I don’t have to do everything in one fell swoop and reminding myself to keep things simple, do what I can, and work on one thing at a time helps me stay sane even on the busiest days.
  2. Focusing on what I can control instead of what I can’t. I may not be able to control what happens at my job, on the road, or in many other situations in my life, but I can control how I prepare for them and I how I respond to them. I’ve found that coming up with plans to handle busy and potentially stressful times reduces my stress and helps me better handle whatever situation I’m in. I also try to remind myself that I am perfectly capable of coming up with solutions to whatever problems I’m facing once I settle down enough to think clearly, so a difficult moment doesn’t have to bring down my whole day. Having a plan and looking for solutions works out much better than trying to figure out everything as I go and acting as if there’s no way to turn a bad situation into a good one.
  3. Giving myself some challenges to overcome on easy days and allowing myself to rest on rough days. Life isn’t one-note, which is a relief because it would be incredibly boring and predictable if that were the case. That uncertainty can make things tricky but I’ve found a great way to adjust to it. If my day looks to be pretty easy, then I can challenge myself by doing a hard workout at the gym, spending more time practicing with my unicycle, or taking a cold shower. Those physical challenges provide some nice contrast to the easiness and allow me to better handle the hard times, feel accomplished on simple days, and prevent my life from becoming a big marshmallow. On days that appear to be really busy or stressful, I give myself more downtime for rest and leisure. I often lay down when I get home from a long day and sometimes I even end up taking a nap if I’m tired enough. Knowing when to push myself and when to take a break keeps my days from being agonizingly boring or overwhelmingly stressful.
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Changing My Stance on Self-Improvement

Posted on January 29, 2020 by admin

My stance on self-improvement has changed as I’ve gone further in this journey. I still love self-improvement and consider myself to be on a self-improvement journey, but I don’t see it the same way as I used to. I used to see self-improvement as a way to become a different and better person because I didn’t like myself enough and was focusing on learning as much as possible about doing things differently and being better. But as I’ve gone on and learned more, I now see self-improvement as accepting and loving myself as I am and seeing how I can best maximize the qualities I have without trying to change myself to become who somebody else wants me to be.

I see it like an artist who wants to make a sculpture out of a big block of marble. He picks up the hammer and the chisel and chips away everything he doesn’t want until all that’s left is the sculpture. Everything that is gone was never part of the sculpture in the first place; that was just the stuff that the artist had to get through to get to the sculpture within. That’s what I’m doing with self-improvement: I’m chipping away everything that’s not me and is concealing the real me until all that’s left is who I am. This plays into why I really hate when other people are trying to control me, make me do things differently, or be someone other than who I am. When they do that, it feels like they’re trying to take the hammer and the chisel away from me and chip away parts of me that they don’t like and carve me into a sculpture of their own choosing. I want to be my own artist and create my own sculpture. Everyone else can get rid of parts of themselves they don’t like if they want but they can’t do that with me.

Now I do know some people who love me as I am and simply want me to have more self-love, self-acceptance, and peace within myself. That’s perfectly fine with me since they’re not fundamentally trying to change me and it fits in with self-improvement as I see it. They’re just encouraging me to be more myself and love myself as I am. That’s quite different than the people who try to take the hammer and the chisel away from me and carve me into who they think I should be. My close friends have done a lot to fuel my self-love and self-acceptance and I’m grateful to have them in my life.

The sculpture I end up making may be weird and different than the sculptures of those around me and that’s ok. I’ve gotten more comfortable with being awkward and weird, not always knowing what to say, and feeling like I don’t have to say something if I have nothing to say. Overall, I’ve gotten much more comfortable just being myself and observing how people respond. Those who don’t like me? Ok, I don’t need them. I’d much rather be around people who look at the sculpture of my life, see it for all it’s worth, accept all the flaws and the weirdness and the beauty, and say “I like you; let’s be friends.” I’d take those people any day over the people who look at me and say “No, thanks.” The best way to find the people who accept me as I am is to just be myself, see how others respond, and gravitate toward the ones with whom I feel a meaningful connection. That has done so much to improve my life and I’m excited to see what it does for me as I continue to get better at it.

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The Daily Stoic: “Reignite Your Thoughts”

Posted on January 22, 2020 by admin

I think about this every so often. There are long stretches during which I stick closely to my principles and other times that I couldn’t be further from them. Sooner or later, no matter how far I’ve drifted from the things that I value, I always manage to find my way back to them. As I’ve progressed in my self-improvement journey, the times that I’ve veered away from my principles have decreased dramatically and it’s gotten much easier to act according to what I find meaningful. That’s why this entry from The Daily Stoic resonates more strongly with me than most of the other entries from that book, and I’m glad I get to share it with you.

“Your principles can’t be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it’s continually in your power to reignite new ones…. It’s possible to start living again! See things anew as you once did – that is how to restart life!”

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.2

Have you had a bad couple of weeks? Have you been drifting away from the principles and beliefs that you hold dear? It’s perfectly fine. It happens to all of us.

In fact, it probably happened to Marcus – that may be why he scribbled this note to himself. Perhaps he’d been dealing with difficult senators or having difficulties with his troubled son. Perhaps in these scenarios he’d lost his temper, became depressed, or stopped checking in with himself. Who wouldn’t?

But the reminder here is that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointing our behavior has been in the past, the principles themselves remain unchanged. We can return and embrace them at any moment. What happened yesterday – what happened five minutes ago – is the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like.

Why not do it right now?

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Getting What I Need Instead of What I Want: An Ice Cream Anecdote

Posted on January 15, 2020 by admin

Sometime last week, I got some lunch and then went for ice cream before going to work. The person at the ice cream shop messed up my order and I only fully realized it once I got to my car. I ate a few bites, didn’t like it enough to keep eating it, and decided to just throw it away rather than making a fuss or trying to eat the rest of it. That turned out to be a great decision as I had eaten enough lunch to feel slightly uncomfortable at work. I’m sure I would have felt horrible if I had eaten all of my ice cream, so I’m glad that I got the wrong order and ditched it.

I didn’t throw it out right away as I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t what I ordered and also see how it tasted. When I decided I didn’t like it, I thought of sunk costs right before I threw it away. Sunk costs is an economic concept that involves costs that cannot be recovered and thus should not be taken into account when making future decisions. The money I spent on that ice cream was gone and I wouldn’t have gotten any of it back or been in a better financial position by eating something that I wasn’t enjoying. If it made me uncomfortable or sick, I’d have been in an even worse position, so there was no point in trying to force myself to eat it in order to avoid feeling like I’d wasted money. Knowing this made it easy for me to get rid of it and move on.

This is a good example of life giving me what I needed instead of what I wanted. If I had gotten what I wanted, I probably would have eaten most or all of it and felt miserable at work. Because I didn’t like what I got and ditched it, I avoided bringing that misery onto myself. It’s often difficult for me to be satisfied when what I get isn’t what I want but occasionally I’m clearheaded enough to recognize that it’s sometimes better to get what I need even if it isn’t what I want at the time. I was able to recognize this at work that day and I hope this little anecdote helps me remember that lesson when I come across it elsewhere in life.

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Resistance and Calming the Mind

Posted on January 8, 2020 by admin

The more I learn, the more I realize how much resistance works against me. Putting up a strong wall of resistance in a difficult situation only makes it harder to communicate with whoever else is involved and prolongs the tension. Even with myself, resistance causes a lot of problems. For example, trying to drive out unwanted thoughts only strengthens them. How, then, can you settle your thoughts?

The answer requires taking the opposite approach: focus on your thoughts and be very aware of what’s going on in your head. Try challenging yourself to think harder and then watch as that brings you a great deal of mental peace and stillness. I’ve heard this from Alan Watts and Eckhart Tolle and was recently reminded of it when I listened to this TED Talk from Brad Blanton. They all talk about how the mind does the opposite of what you try to get it to do, so trying to forcibly quiet your mind only makes it more active and trying to energize it instead calms it.

I think the best thing to strive for is to have no resistance whatsoever, but hardly anybody seems to actually live that way. Short of that, using life hacks like this that make resistance work for you rather than against you is a great alternative option. I’ve used this life hack a lot lately to quiet my own mind and be at peace in the present moment. It works wonderfully every time I use it and I highly recommend you give it a try the next time you’re overthinking or feeling stressed.

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Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020

Posted on January 1, 2020 by admin

(Real quick: this will be my last daily blog post. I’ll still be posting once a week, though, so I’m not going anywhere. Thanks for accompanying me on this journey thus far. I hope you stick around to see where this year takes me. Without further ado, on to the post!)

For me, 2019 ended on a very nice note. I had several events and parties that I could have attended but I chose instead to have a quiet day mostly to myself. Since I had the day off from work, I slept in and kept a nice leisurely pace throughout the day. After breakfast, I played my Star Wars game for a while and then went out for a late lunch/early dinner (sweet tea, french fries, and the best steak I’ve ever eaten). I was pretty full at that point, so I went home to rest up for a bit before heading back out.

I then went to a park close to my house and spent some time throwing around a stone and some weights with a friend. Even though I had never tried that stuff before, I stayed patient, listened to his advice, and adjusted my technique until I started getting a feel for the movements. We finished up, walked a few blocks for some food, and hung out for a while longer before parting ways. I headed home to juggle, write a blog post, and rest a bit. I had debated whether to go out or stay home and I decided to go out to ring in the new year, so I stopped by a local nightclub to visit with another friend for a little while. I stuck around for a bit after midnight and then went back home to read and head to bed.

This was the quietest New Year’s celebration I’ve had since 2016 and I loved it. I had plenty of time by myself to pursue my interests and recharge while still getting a decent amount of meaningful socializing. I also didn’t have any solid plans yesterday and just did things as I went, which was a nice change of pace. Some people like to go big when they celebrate but I’m finding more and more that I generally like to keep things simple. This was a great way to say goodbye to 2019 and welcome in 2020, and I hope the rest of this year continues along similar lines.

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Ringing in the New Year

Posted on December 31, 2019 by admin

Amidst the fanfare of New Year’s celebrations, I can easily forget that things are going to continue as they are once the festivities are over. Just because the calendar changes doesn’t mean that anything else will change. My present habits, routines, and systems are going to keep going unless I intentionally change them. That’s both a blessing and a curse. I like that my progress won’t vanish when the clock strikes midnight but it would be nice if the difficult stuff went away at the end of the year.

Since New Year’s isn’t an automatic hard reset, I get to decide how I want to start off the new year. The last few years have all ended very differently for me. Although 2017 was overall a very difficult year, it ended on an incredibly high note and gave me a great start to 2018. In contrast, 2018 was one of the best years of my life but I was in a difficult place emotionally by the time it left. This year has been a mixed bag but I’m feeling good about both the present and the future at this point. So to make 2020 a good year, all I have to do is keep my positive momentum from this year going and continue to work on myself.

It’s helped that I’ve kept my New Year’s celebrations small and quiet. Until 2017, I had never even gone out; I had just stayed home and relaxed until midnight, at which point I’d go to bed. I’ve hung out with a few friends the past two years and I’m thinking of going out again tonight, although I haven’t decided for sure yet. If I do go out, it will be for another simple celebration to say farewell to the old year, ring in the new year, and then get some sleep. I don’t have any wild or crazy New Year’s stories and that’s how I like it.

That’s my take on New Year’s. While many people see it as out with the old and in with the new, I see it as out with the unwanted and in with the wanted. Like carving a sculpture out of marble, it’s a matter of deciding what to eliminate and what to enhance. I’ve gotten pretty good at that and it’s put me in an overall great life situation. While I have plans for next year and an idea of how things will go, I’ll no doubt be surprised many times along the way and will probably end up getting what I need even if it’s not what I wanted. That all being said, I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s celebration that gets 2020 started off on the right foot and takes you one step closer to your best life.

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