Infinity Stones and Life Hacks

Posted on May 31, 2019 by admin

Many of the recent Marvel movies feature Infinity Stones, which are six cosmic objects that each control a certain aspect of the universe (space, time, souls, minds, power, and reality). Each individual Stone is already incredibly powerful on its own and becomes even more powerful when it’s combined with one or more of the other Stones. Characters who possess multiple Infinity Stones can do things that nobody else can, including warping reality on a universal scale if they get all six Stones. I love the concept of the Infinity Stones and, sometime after I saw Avengers: Endgame, I started thinking about the similarities between the Stones and life hacks.

Like the Infinity Stones, life hacks allow me to control a lot of things in my life, including (but not limited to) my thoughts, my responses, and my time. Whenever I use life hacks, I have much greater control over my life than I don’t use them or choose something that doesn’t provide my desired outcome. Additionally, like the Stones, life hacks become more powerful when I use two or more of them together. For example, How to Win Friends and Influence People has a lot of good stuff about interacting with other people, but reading it by itself might make some people pushovers. I think it did that to me and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what stuff in there is worth practicing and what I can ignore. When I read Boundaries earlier this year, it helped me find my voice and stick up for myself, so reading both books gave me better results than reading just one. Other books that work well in combination are The Power of Now and The Four Agreements; being present and at peace mentally makes it easier for me to remember and live by the agreements. Whether I combine several life hacks to compensate for a weakness in one (or both in some cases) or to make their effects stronger, I find many of them work better together than they do separately.

I enjoy comparing life hacks to the Infinity Stones. Since I’m a big fan of the Marvel movies, it helps me remember to use life hacks and it makes them feel like superpowers to me. It also makes them more fun to use. Although, unlike the Infinity Stones, I have way more than six life hacks, I find new ones all the time, and I don’t need a big gauntlet to use any of them. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and found it useful and I will see you in the next one.

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The Path of Least Resistance

Posted on May 30, 2019 by admin

There’s a concept I first heard about in high school called “the path of least resistance”. From what I’ve gathered, it’s a way to avoid rocking the boat or upsetting anyone, so it’s an appealing option for some people. I’ve certainly chosen it plenty of times, although I’ve often regretted it afterward. That’s because, in my opinion, while it’s always an available option, the path of least resistance is not always the best way to go.

The path of least resistance appears to be a tool for minimizing resistance between two or more people in a given interaction. If one person wants to do a particular thing and you want to do something else, the path of least resistance would involve one of you giving up your plans and going along with what the other person wants. This assumes, of course, that neither of you are seeking win/win solutions and that one of you is expected to “lose” in this interaction. However, while this creates minimal resistance between the two of you, it has the potential to create a lot of resistance within yourself. By giving up your plans to please someone else, you may feel a great deal of negativity toward yourself; if you are in the habit of regularly deferring to others, you may very well start to resent yourself as well as the other people with whom you interact.

There are times when deferring to someone else may be the best course of action. As long as that is an occasional exception rather than the general rule, I think that would minimize the chances of resistance, frustration, or any other negativity appearing in those situations. However, if constant deference becomes the norm, then I think that’s a huge problem, especially if one person is always deferring to another. In that case, the one caught up in people pleasing will suffer from a low sense of self-worth and an inability to say no. The one who always gets what they want will acquire a sense of entitlement and a reduced ability to accept when things don’t go their way. If you get fed up with constantly deferring to the other, you may eventually put you foot down and assert your boundaries. The other person will likely resist and then accuse you of being selfish. This tactic is intended to make you back down and give them what they want, because who wants to be seen as selfish? However, if this happens to you, take some time to look at how things have been going and ask yourself if you want them to continue happening this way. Also, isn’t it selfish of them to always expect you to defer to them when they’re never willing to defer to you or find a path that lets you both get what you want? Who’s truly being selfish in this situation?

The way I see it, the true path of least resistance is the one that minimizes all the possible resistance in a given situation. This includes both the resistance between, say, yourself and the person with whom you’re interacting as well as the internal resistance you both feel toward yourselves. I don’t think it’s worth letting other people walk all over you and always saying no to yourself just so you can maintain an appearance of peace that doesn’t actually exist. If you start asserting your boundaries, you will probably be met with a great deal of resistance. After that’s been going on for a while, some people might get upset that they can’t push you around anymore and then leave to find their next victim. This is why setting appropriate boundaries and having resistance where needed is so important: it reveals the toxic people around you and removes them from your life. So keep this in mind in your interactions, especially if you tend to defer to others more often than you should. You can save yourself a lot of grief and improve your relationships by making a few simple changes and making sure to look out for yourself.

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Handling Fear

Posted on May 29, 2019 by admin

Fear has been in my life for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it’s appeared as a small amount of anxiety and other times it’s made me freeze in my tracks, preventing me from doing anything. The most effective thing I’ve found with regards to handling fear is to prevent it from rising in the first place. When I’m focused, I can do this through meditation, floating, watching my thoughts, and controlling my breathing. It’s easiest to maneuver in life when I’m not afraid, but it’s still incredibly difficult for me to prevent fear from appearing and I often fail at it. If I can’t prevent fear, then the next best thing is to manage it.

I have a fairly good track record of staying the course and accomplishing my goals despite being afraid at times, so it’s gradually gotten easier to face my fears. As I move increasingly further out of my comfort zone and experience more of life, I feel much more comfortable in new situations than ever before. Additionally, after I’ve stayed in a new position for a while (usually long enough to have a good idea of what to expect), I then feel the urge to move beyond it and into yet another new comfort zone that’s even more challenging than the previous one. This can be difficult, but each level prepares me for the next one, so it usually feels more like a big step rather than a huge leap. Although I may stumble a bit and take a while to find my balance, I always manage to stabilize after I’ve taken that next step.

More often than not, the bad things that I’m afraid will happen never end up manifesting; it’s always a relief whenever this happens, as is feeling the fear dissolve until it’s gone. Even though I regularly make preparations to increase the chances of things going smoothly, I still sometimes get nervous that something might end badly. In those cases, I say to myself, “I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.” That simple phrase does two things. First, it helps me relax and avoid stressing over the outcome. And second, it reminds me that there are ways to handle whatever problems might arise and that I won’t be stuck in a bad position as long as I look for solutions. Having a solutions-based mindset helps me avoid a fear-based mindset and allows me to act more effectively when things do start going downhill.

I think that that is the answer to fear: preventing it whenever I can, managing if it appears, doing good things even if I’m afraid, and focusing on solutions. I’ve already done this in several areas, so now I just have to keep it in mind as I move toward some things that I’ve been avoiding out of fear. It may be tough, but having a plan that’s proven itself elsewhere in my life will make it easier and less stressful. I hope these realizations help you as much as they’ve helped me.

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When Everything Starts to Make Sense

Posted on May 28, 2019 by admin

There comes a time when your perspective shifts, everything starts to make sense, and you begin to understand why things happened the way they did. You look back at painful moments and see the lessons you learned from them. You now know why some people stuck around while others left. And you realize that things that once appeared random and meaningless were actually carefully orchestrated for a definite purpose. That purpose was to get you to this point and to give you the tools you’d need to fulfill your life mission.

This makes it easier to accept the things you’ve experienced. Even if it still hurts to think about some of the things in your past, you now know why they had to happen. You wouldn’t be who you are if those things hadn’t shaped and inspired you the way they did. Sometimes they added something good to you and other times they removed something bad from you; either way, you’re now grateful for them and see them as beneficial. You might even find it hard to imagine where you’d be or who you’d be if you hadn’t had those experiences.

As you look back at your past self, you can’t help but have mountains of compassion and wish you could go back and show yourself even a small glimpse of things to come. That would make it easier to weather the storms and know that it’ll all be worth it. Even if you can’t do that, you can still keep this in mind as you face new sets of challenges that will take you to increasingly better places in life. Learning from your experiences is what got you this far, and who knows how far it’ll take you in the years to come? Only one way to find out. Are you ready?

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My Week of Floating

Posted on May 27, 2019 by admin

At the time of this writing, I’ve floated for eight days straight. I had originally planned to float for just two days in a row, but then I decided to see what it would be like to float every day for a week (or just over a week in this case). I’m so glad I did and I’ll share my experiences in the remainder of this post.

Normally, I float with lights and music on at the beginning and end; the middle portion (about fifty minutes) is dark and quiet, which I enjoy since nothing else in my life is like that and it’s a great way to escape from everything. This week, though, I played around with the lights and sounds, and, in one case, the length of the float (I tried floating for thirty minutes instead of my usual hour). I enjoyed floating with different settings and seeing how I reacted to them. I liked most of the options I chose, including having sound on the whole time with the lights off and lights on the whole time with no sound. The only combination I didn’t like was both lights and sound on the whole time. I think I disliked that one because the lights and sound usually come on toward the end of my floats, so having them both on constantly made me feel like the float was about to end and prevented me from relaxing as much as I usually do. Overall, though, the experimentation got me out of my usual routine and enhanced my floating experience. I went in to most of my floats without knowing what to expect, which I think made them more enjoyable and restorative. Plus I now know what other settings I like in case I decide to mix things up once in a while.

As usual, each float messed with my perception of time; even my thirty minute float felt much longer than it actually was. I think this happens because the pods are free of external distractions, so I’m better able to stay in the present moment and less likely to get lost in my thoughts. Either way, it felt like I had a lot more time each day, so this past week has felt more like several weeks to me. And, since things have gone so smoothly for me lately, I’ve appreciated the extra time.

For most of the past week, I’ve felt more relaxed than I have in a long time. I can’t remember when I last experienced such a deep sense of peace that’s stayed with me for so long. I was feeling pretty good almost all the time after the first few days and hardly anything has been able to bother me this week. Every time I started getting upset about something, I would remember to stay in the present moment, focus on my breath, watch my thoughts, and avoid stressing about the future. These reminders came automatically, as if I had nonstop access to my higher self. As you can imagine, this made it much easier to handle each day, get along with the people around me, and enjoy each day to the fullest. I hope that this will become my normal state if I continue to remember and make use of calming life hacks. I don’t know what it’ll be like to resume my normal routine of one or two floats a week, but I think I’ll still be feeling pretty good for quite a while from the eight consecutive floats. This experiment has been the best thing I’ve done for myself in recent memory and I’d like to do it again sometime, or maybe try going even longer. If you enjoy floating and have an opportunity to try something like this, I highly recommend it. And if you do, I’d love to hear what you thought about it.

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An Amazing Saturday

Posted on May 26, 2019 by admin

I’ve had a lot of wonderful days as of late and yesterday was no exception. It was easily the best Saturday I’ve had in a while; almost everything went smoothly and the day was full of cool things from beginning to end. Here are the highlights from this amazing Saturday.

I started by floating shortly after I woke up. This was the second time I’ve floated early in the morning and it’s become my new favorite way to start the day. Once I finished floating, I worked a relatively short shift and then went to the beach for a friend’s belated birthday celebration. We played Frisbee, ate a bit, and talked about our recent activities while enjoying each other’s company. Then a few of us walked over to a local brewery for some drinks (I had a glass of their finest agua), ping pong, and Jenga. This was a nice way to get out of the sun and have fun in a different setting before heading home. On the way back, I listened to some nice music and stopped for a late lunch. Relaxing, moving at my own pace, and recharging by withdrawing from other people at home was the perfect way to end the day.

Since yesterday morning’s float was my seventh float that week (more on that in my next post), I felt much calmer than usual. That float put me in a great mood that stuck with me and positively influenced all my interactions that day. Things that normally would have upset me had little to no impact on my attitude, I had a great deal of patience for every delay that came up, and it was easy to relax into the good times and enjoy everything that happened in them. It’s been a long time since I had such a deep sense of peace and I’m glad to have it back. I’m hoping that it’ll become my normal state if I continue to float regularly, focus on my breath, and avoid getting lost in my thoughts. Being so at ease with everything made it easy to have such a wonderful time yesterday and I’m looking forward to many more wonderful days in the weeks, months, and years to come.

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Patience and Understanding

Posted on May 25, 2019 by admin

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I would say that a little knowledge combined with an unwillingness to consider different viewpoints is even more dangerous. I think of this whenever I see someone jump to conclusions about another person’s views, intentions, or thought processes. Invariably, this exacerbates the communication problems that are already present in the world and leads to nothing but trouble.

A potential solution to this issue is learning more about the world. Learning about different perspectives, philosophies, and cultures makes it much harder to cling to limited worldviews and narrow-minded thinking. The ability to consider many different points of view without feeling the need to automatically agree with them or instantly discount them creates many wonderful possibilities, the greatest of which is patience. Getting to such a point in the first place requires a great deal of patience, and afterward it becomes much easier to be patient when talking with other people about their ideas. This, in turn, creates more opportunities for learning, which increases patience, and so on.

The more pieces of the bigger picture I find, the more nuanced my views become. Doing this also helps me understand different perspectives and think well of people with whom I disagree. I’ve changed my mind on a lot of subjects in my life and remembering just a few of those perspective shifts helps me avoid assuming the worst about others. When I engage someone in a conversation about their views, more often than not, I find that they have good intentions for the world and support the ideas that they think will bring about positive outcomes. These kinds of conversations have been very freeing since they show me that people who think differently than I do often have good intentions behind their thought processes; we usually want the same positive outcomes even if we disagree on the best way to get to them. A little patience and understanding can be wonderful things, and I hope to see more of them both as the world keeps turning.

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Consequences

Posted on May 24, 2019 by admin

In Boundaries, Henry Cloud and John Townsend talk a lot about consequences as a way to learn. Much of what they explore in the book has to do with the negative effects that arise when people don’t experience the consequences of their actions, usually because someone else steps in and prevents that from happening. This has been in the back of my head ever since I read the book and it’s caused me to rethink a lot of things in my life.

When it comes to helping people, I’ve long supported the idea of showing kindness by doing for them what I’d want them to do for me if our roles were reversed. I’ve appreciated the people in my life who have done that for me and I like to pay it forward. However, my ultimate goal is to get as many people as possible to the point that they can support themselves so they don’t have to rely on anyone else, and that requires a great deal of personal responsibility. If someone never has to focus on making good decisions because someone else is always going around behind them and cleaning up their messes, then that sense of responsibility is lost. If they continually make bad choices and don’t experience the consequences, what will motivate them to make good choices? Sometimes the best thing to do for someone’s personal growth is to let them reap what they’ve sown so that they’ll learn to make better decisions in the future.

This has been a difficult concept for me to accept. I have a strong desire to help people succeed and I find it hard to step back and let them do things on their own. Something that’s helped me be able to step back is thinking about the things I’ve accomplished because other people gave me enough space to do them on my own. This includes learning how to avoid trouble and pursue beneficial things instead by experiencing the consequences of my actions, both good and bad. Learning something on my own feels different than having someone teach it to me. I’ve benefited a lot by learning from other people, but I feel a sense of personal accomplishment after I’ve figured something out for myself; that sense of accomplishment is much weaker when I’ve learned from someone else. That’s why, when I’m teaching someone, I try to give them just enough of a foundation that they can figure out the rest of it for themselves. I love seeing the look in their eyes when they get a feel for it and know that they accomplished something cool through their own efforts.

I plan to continue refining this balance between helping people and letting them experience the consequences of their actions. As with many other things, I had to go through this myself before I could even begin to understand it. My experience has done a lot to make me more comfortable with this and it’ll only get easier over time as I acquire more experience with it and figure out what works best for myself as well as other people in any given situation.

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A Strategy Based on Stephen Covey’s Ideas

Posted on May 23, 2019 by admin

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People contains so much wisdom and so many life hacks that I regularly refer back to it. Whenever I do, I always find something good that I had forgotten or never noticed before. I’ve been thinking lately of how to incorporate every habit into a strategy that will help you in any given pursuit. The exact steps you take will vary depending on your goals, but I think the approach I’ve laid out below based on Stephen Covey’s habits will maximize your effectiveness and give you the best chance of succeeding. Without further ado, here are his habits and my take on applying them to a practical plan.

  1. Be Proactive: Take action whenever you feel strongly about something. You don’t need anyone to agree with you or help you in order to get started; there’s always something you can do by yourself to make a positive difference. You’ll feel better afterward and, while you’re working, you won’t have time to care about what other people think of you.
  2. Begin with the End in Mind: Know where you want to go and work backwards to figure out a plan to get there. You may end up changing the plan several times along the way, and that’s fine. But if you don’t have a destination in mind, then you won’t get anywhere.
  3. Put First Things First: Get your priorities together. Figure out the order in which you have to do things to accomplish your goals and then use effective time management to put together a schedule. Try to be efficient with your time whenever possible so that your productivity while working on your goals is maximized.
  4. Think Win/Win: When working with other people, figure out ways that you can both get what you want. Focus more on your common ground than on your disagreements. You’ll both benefit much more from working together toward shared goals than you will by arguing over your differences.
  5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Do your best to understand someone else’s perspective. Don’t make assumptions about what they think or why they think that way. If in doubt, ask for clarification. Once you can repeat their perspective back to them in your own words to their satisfaction, you’ll know exactly where they stand and how much you have in common with them, and they will be much more open to hearing your perspective.
  6. Synergize: Put your heads together and find Win/Win solutions. Take enough time to think outside the box and come up with potential plans that satisfy everyone involved. If you find several of them, pick the one that appears best suited for your goals, resources, and personalities.
  7. Sharpen the Saw: Take care of yourself in every area of your life (physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional). This includes taking regular breaks to rest and recover before you get burnt out; when you resume your work, you’ll be more effective and you’ll enjoy it more. Try also doing relaxing things with people who see things differently than you. The more you can humanize them in your own eyes, the better your interactions will be and the further your combined efforts will go.
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Win/Win

Posted on May 22, 2019 by admin

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey advocates pursuing Win/Win solutions. These are solutions in which everyone involved “seeks mutual benefit” and everyone walks away feeling satisfied at the outcome. Covey values Win/Win solutions above solutions in which one or more people leave feeling worse off; these alternatives include Win/Lose, Lose/Win, and Lose/Lose.

One reason I think that arguing is largely a waste of time is because most arguments I’ve seen and participated in focus on Win/Lose or Lose/Win rather than Win/Win. When I used to argue, I focused on trying to “win” by doing my best to make someone else see things my way, which required them to “lose”. The more they resisted, the harder I pushed until one of us gave up and moved on. Looking back on those arguments, it appears that everyone involved lost because nobody learned anything, tried to see things from another person’s perspective, or walked away feeling better at the end than they felt at the beginning. We also ignored any common ground we had and focused solely on our disagreements.

In contrast, I’ve found conversations to be incredibly valuable in many ways. Some of my best conversations have been with people with whom I largely disagreed. A few close friends of mine, for as long as I’ve known them, have been great at listening to other perspectives with an open mind and then having civil discussions about a wide range of subjects. We often try to make sure our positions are logically coherent and sensible by asking for feedback, looking for weak points, asking a lot of questions, etc. Sometimes we even try to find solutions that would let us both get what we want; such solutions often require creative thinking and a willingness to consider a lot of different possibilities. At the very least, we don’t let our different perspectives foster any hostility between ourselves.

I think pursuing Win/Win solutions could make a world of difference in discussions. I think that would do a great deal to turn hostile exchanges into civil conversations and bring about positive change in the world. Although I used to spend a lot of time trying to win arguments, I’d much focus on solving problems at this point. That’s a much better use of my time and it makes me feel a lot better about myself and other people. I’m glad I started thinking in terms of Win/Win and I hope more people do the same.

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