Handling Change

Posted on April 18, 2019 by admin

I’ve mentioned a few times now that I’m going through some major life changes. These have been the first big changes for me in a long time and I’m being reminded that I don’t handle major, sudden change well. Some people can completely change their life overnight without a problem, but not me. I prefer to make small, gradual adjustments that steadily move me toward something different without feeling like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me. When I get thrown a lot of new things all at once, I feel very confused, lost, don’t know which way is up, and have no idea what to do or how to do it. I’ve never enjoyed those kinds of sink-or-swim situations and I prefer to avoid them whenever there’s another way.

However, every time I can recall being in one such situation, I’ve figured out how to swim when sinking or climbing onto a boat weren’t options. Somehow I’ve always been able to hold on long enough to figure things out and rise above the situation. This has gotten a bit easier since I’ve done so much personal work, especially with regards to managing my emotions, so I’m sure I’ll be able to successfully navigate these major changes I’m currently experiencing. It’s simply a matter of keeping my head on straight and avoiding getting overwhelmed.

One thing that’s helping me right now is the fact that I’ve recently gotten involved in something that is extremely refreshing, fulfilling, and enjoyable. Having this positive thing motivates me to keep going through the current obstacles and gives me what I need to handle them. Another helpful thing is slowing down and living in the present moment. Rather than spending all my time reminiscing over the way things once were or dreaming about the way they will be, I remind myself to breathe, settle my thoughts, and focus on one step at a time. The more I live in the present, the more peaceful I feel and the better I’m able to get through the challenging times. This works for me when I remember to do it, and that’s my plan to get through this and any other life situation I get into.

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Feeling Off

Posted on April 17, 2019 by admin

I don’t know why, but I’ve felt off as of late. I’ve gotten frustrated more easily than usual, felt distant from people with whom I’m normally close, and ended up spending more time by myself (which I’ve enjoyed, so I don’t think I’m craving interaction or missing it when it doesn’t happen). When I’ve spent a good amount of time around others, I notice myself acting in ways that make me wonder if I’m headed in a good direction. I suppose the fact that I’ve noticed this and thought about it is a sign that I’m doing ok, or at least better than I was a few years ago; if I didn’t have any doubts about what I’ve been doing, that would probably be an indicator of trouble.

Maybe this is a phase I’m going through as I move away from compulsive people pleasing and I haven’t found the golden mean between sticking up for myself and being a pushover. There may be a lot of disingenuous people around me and I’m just not playing along anymore. I could be stressed from some of the big changes I’m experiencing right now and unintentionally taking it out on others. As I’m trying to be myself all the time, maybe I’m finding out how much time I spent trying to be who others expected me to be and it’s taking me a while to get comfortable not doing that. Or maybe I’ve been neglecting to practice what I preach and should return to doing so. It’s probably a combination of one or more of those things. I’ll find out as I continue observing myself and seeing what behavioral changes I need to make.

This is the first time in a while that I’ve felt uncertain about whether or not I’m on the right track. Once I figure out what’s going on, I’m sure I’ll be able to get back to a good place with all of this. If anything, this shows that knowing may be half the battle, but acting on that knowledge is crucial. I haven’t really talked about this with anyone, so I don’t know if anyone has noticed a change in my behavior or if they’ve also felt off lately. How about you? Have you noticed yourself feeling or acting differently within the past month or two? I’m interested to know if this is something that’s affected a lot of people, so please let me know if you’ve noticed this in yourself or someone you know. If so, I hope whatever’s going on ends soon so we can all go back to normal.

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Review of Outliers

Posted on April 16, 2019 by admin

Outliers is a fantastic book by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book, Gladwell looks at those who have risen to a place of prominence and offers an explanation for how they did it. He covers a number of people from different time periods, cultures, and classes, doing his best to show the common traits between highly successful people.

One of Gladwell’s most frequently mentioned points has to do with the sheer amount of work required to master something, which he says is around 10,000 hours. Those 10,000 hours have to contain a great deal of hard, consistent, and dedicated practice for someone to become a true outlier. Even people who are exceptionally gifted, such as Mozart, still have to put in the hours in order to reach their full potential. Sheer genius and ability aren’t enough without putting in the time.

Of course, it’s much easier to get in all those hours of practice and fly as high as you can if you’re in a good position in life. Having a particular advantage over others (such as how Bill Gates was able to work regularly with computers when they were still scarce and expensive) leads to more opportunities. Those opportunities then open up chances for you to accumulate even more advantages, and so on. This may sound concerning, but Gladwell gives a few examples of how even people who appeared to be in a bad position ended up being in the right place at the right time to get ahead after logging their 10,000 hours. He also shows that nobody becomes an outlier without a lot of help from others who steer them in the right direction and give them the tools they need to succeed.

Gladwell also talks about how some cultural norms can either offer enormous advantages or create major disasters. For the former, Gladwell uses the example of how it’s extremely common in China for people to have a solid work ethic. This allows Chinese people to excel at nearly anything they do, whether it’s creating and sustaining rice paddies (an incredibly involved, difficult, and time-consuming way of life) or being among the best in the world at mathematics. Their work ethic is such that they’re more likely to stick with something until they get it than people from cultures without a similar work ethic. When it comes to disasters, Gladwell looks at how Korean Air went from having an incredibly high number of plane crashes to becoming a remarkably safe airline. He talks in this section about how the level of deference to those in “authority” varies between cultures. In the case of Korean Air, the flight crew came from a country with a great deal of deference to their superiors, meaning that the first officer and navigator wouldn’t give orders to the captain or the people in the tower even if they thought there was a problem. This, combined with terrible weather, long working hours, malfunctioning instruments, and a few other factors lead to one crash after another until those issues were sorted out once and for all.

I particularly liked how Outliers shows the complexity of life and that one simple explanation is often insubstantial for accurately describing anything of significance. There are a lot of things going on at any given point in history and looking at just one or two of them while ignoring the rest leaves out a lot of important information; the more ways you can look at any given situation, the better your chances of finding out what’s actually happening, and the truth is often quite different than it initially appears to be. I learned a lot more from this book than I thought I would and I feel like it gave me a better understanding of the way the world works (and it’s written in plain English, which made it a fairly easy read). If any of this sounds interesting to you, then I recommend checking out the book and seeing how it affects your perspective of the world.

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Floor Divided 2019

Posted on April 15, 2019 by admin

Last night, I got back from Floor Divided 2019 in Tallahassee, Florida. This was a weekend swing dance workshop with a camp theme: there were 4 teams (red, yellow, blue, and green), a lot of games, and plain goofy fun. We had all of this in addition to the usual dances and lessons, making for an incredibly fun and memorable weekend. Here is my take on this event.

I got to the main dance on Friday shortly before it started and chose to join the green team, as did most of the others from Jacksonville. We all danced and had fun for a good while before the camp activities started. Each team gathered together and came up with a cheer before the Mockingbird competition, which was a ton of fun to watch and involved competitors dancing in sync to a video they had found. After that, the green team got up and did the Cupid Shuffle; I still don’t know exactly why, but I enjoyed doing it. Later, we found out the winners of the Mockingbird and continued dancing until the time came for the late night dance.

When I got to late night, I hung out with some other folks and had a snack while talking about dance and watching a few videos as the organizers finished setting up. In addition to dancing once late night began, we played a fun camp game called Ships and Sailors. It was basically Simon Says but with a few very specific actions we had to do when called out. Ships and Sailors and the Mockingbird were my favorite activities of the day and showed me just how fun and goofy Floor Divided can be. After Ships and Sailors, I watched a bit of solo dancing until late night ended around 2:30 in the morning. This was the first late night dance I “survived” until the end, so I was quite pleased with myself. Then I headed to the house I was staying in for the weekend, got ready for bed while talking with some of my other housemates, and turned in for the night.

I woke up around 9 after getting very little sleep due to being really wired just like I was at Lollies and Lemonade. Still, I managed to take a shower, get ready to go, grab some food, and still make it to class on time. In the first class of the day, we stretched, covered a lot of the history of dance, did the first half of the Big Apple, and had opportunities to earn points for our teams. During the lunch break, we had a lot of time to rest, visit with each other, and have a quick game of Frisbee before the afternoon class. Instructor Dee Daniels Lock took us through a warmup to some hip hop music, encouraging us to not be afraid to move our bodies differently than we might normally and telling us that overcoming that fear and trying out different dances will make us better dancers. We then worked on a lot of partner dancing stuff, including some points about swingouts. After the class ended, I left to do a few other things and get ready for the main dance that night.

The band started playing around 8:15 or so, which is about when I started dancing. When the time came, everyone who made it into the Trail Mix couple’s competition got up and danced as best as they could to modern pop songs rather than traditional swing dance music, again fitting in with the goofy camp theme. In addition to finding out the winners of the competition, we did a few jam circles, including one for those with April birthdays and another one for the folks who organized Floor Divided. After that, we headed out to the hallway for some pictures of each team and dance scene. When the dance ended, I went with a few others to Whataburger before heading over to the late night dance. I brought in my juggling equipment and juggled some glow balls with a few other dancers in one of the rooms. Then we passed clubs in the front room and showed the other dancers how they can walk through the pattern without getting hit, in addition to showing off a bit with some other tricks. After we finished with that, I watched a bit of the silly solo competition before heading home. Then, just as last night, we got ready for bed and passed out.

I think I slept easier that night since I was already exhausted and deprived from the previous night. Either way, I got ready and went to the morning class. Dee reviewed the first half of the Big Apple and showed us a few variations to several of the moves before working with us on the latter portion of the dance. I had a lot of fun going through it again since, by that time, I was familiar with many of the moves and felt more comfortable with them than I had the first time around. Following the lunch break, we had a class that primarily focused on swingouts and swingout variations, mostly things related to changing the timing but also some points about our form. I had fun with this one, though my legs were super sore and tired before it ended. Once we returned from a short break, we spent the remainder of our time together covering some moves that aren’t done as much as they used to be, including the reverse swingout and the frog jump. I had never tried either and was pleasantly surprised to find them easier and more fun than I had anticipated. Dee finished up by answering some questions and then we thanked her before resetting the room, finding out that the yellow team won again this year (the green team came in second by just 2 points!), and heading out. The farewell dance was cancelled due to bad weather, so some folks went out for ice cream and games instead. I, being quite sore and having a long drive ahead of me, decided to head home after saying goodbye and grabbing the last of my stuff from the house. A few hours later, I had made it back to Jacksonville, gotten some food, and started relaxing at home while typing this blog post.

At this point, I’ve been to 4 weekend dance workshops, and each one holds a special place in my heart for different reasons. Floor Divided came at just the right time for me as I’m going through some major life changes and needed a nice weekend to just relax, dance, and have fun with cool people. Unlike a lot of other people my age, I’ve never been to camp, so I enjoyed the team spirit and friendly rivalries at this event. Lastly, the goofiness of the camp theme, incredibly good (and fun) lessons, and general reminders I got from a variety of places to do my best in everything I do left me with a great feeling that I’m sure will remain with me for a long time to come. I loved Floor Divided 2019 and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next one has in store.

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The Daily Private Victory

Posted on April 14, 2019 by admin

One of the most helpful things Stephen Covey talks about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the Daily Private Victory. This involves spending time each day sharpening the saw in the physical, spiritual, and mental areas of one’s life. By getting each of those areas in order while in isolation, it becomes possible to then win Daily Public Victories through improved communication and seeing people for who they could potentially be rather than merely who they currently are.

While Covey recommends taking an hour to do this, I usually only spend 15-20 minutes at most, which is generally sufficient to get me on the right track. However, I’ve found that the more time I dedicate to this practice, the better I’m able to navigate the day and be a positive influence to myself and those around me. I think of this as time spent wrestling with my dark side and getting control over it so that it doesn’t control me as I go about my life. By winning that battle early on, I’m in a much better position to live by my values and I can much more effectively resist the temptation to act defensively or aggressively around other people.

Since I’ve been doing this for about a year now, I don’t even remember how I made it through the day before I started this practice. I do know that I was a lot more anxious, aggressive, and frustrated, and I don’t miss that one bit. Even if nobody with whom I regularly interact practices the Daily Private Victory, it still puts me in such a good mindset that I can rise above whatever situation I’m in (if I’m focused on maintaining that state, that is). This is one of the best life hacks I use and I’m glad I started doing it, and I hope you’re encouraged to try it if you haven’t already.

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Negotiation

Posted on April 13, 2019 by admin

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how kids who are taught how to negotiate and gently push back against those around them tend to be more successful than kids who are taught to follow orders and submit to those in positions of “authority”. This is a critical skill as so much in life requires being able to negotiate rather than always accept the first offer one is given. Consequently, the people who grew up learning how to do this are in a much better position than the people who didn’t.

Knowing how to negotiate requires a number of related skills and concepts that serve one well in all areas of life. These include but are not limited to critical thinking, realizing that nobody is always right, understanding that nobody has all the answers, and that there are often better ways to do things than how they’re most commonly done. Even when they’re alone, these skills and concepts allow whoever possesses them to live more effectively and efficiently than those without them. Knowing all of this from a young age affords a lot of time to practice and master them before going out into the world.

It’s possible to learn how to negotiate and everything that goes into it later in life, but that’s hardly an easy feat. I was not raised to negotiate, so I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to develop these skills. Overcoming the tendencies I adopted growing up to appease others (particularly those older than me) and satisfy them at my own expense has been a slow, difficult journey. Gradually, however, I’ve gotten better at speaking my mind, sticking up for myself, realizing that someone else’s emotions are their business and not mine, and looking beyond the simple choices with which I’m presented to find other options. I’ve benefited a lot from from reading books about these subjects, but I’ve found that practicing negotiating in everyday life has been crucial to my success. Rather than fretting over the time I didn’t spend working on this stuff, I’m making the best use of the time I have now to practice and improve at it. I’ve improved a lot at all of this in a relatively short time and I’m excited to see how much better I get as I keep working on it.

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Stephen Covey on Principles and Change

Posted on April 12, 2019 by admin

This is an excerpt from one of Stephen Covey’s final interviews as recorded in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I love that he talks about the importance of sticking to principles in the midst of massive changes that have occurred and continue to occur. I thought that way long before I ever considered reading the book, which is why it’s one of my personal favorites. Without further ado, here is his answer to a question about things that have changed since the book was first published:

Change itself has changed. It’s accelerated beyond anything any of us ever imagined. Technological revolutions seem to occur hourly. We grapple with economic uncertainty. global power relations shift dramatically and over night. And much of the world is terror-stricken, both psychologically and literally.

Our personal lives have radically changed too. The pace of life is now light speed. We are connected to work 24/7. We used to try to do more with less; now many of us are trying on our own to do everything at once.

But one thing hasn’t changed and never will change – the only thing you can rely on – the fact that there are timeless and universal principles. They never change. They apply everywhere in the world at all times. Principles like fairness, honesty, respect, vision, accountability, and imitative govern our lives in the same way that natural laws like gravity dictate the consequences of falling off a building. If you go over the edge, you fall. It’s a natural principle.

And that’s why I am fundamentally optimistic. I am an optimist because I believe in changeless principles. I know that if we live by them, they will work for us.

Unlike a rock that falls if dropped from a building, we are capable of choosing whether to jump or not. We are not unconscious beings to be merely pulled or pushed around by impersonal forces. As humans, we are endowed with the gifts of conscience, imagination, self-awareness, and independent will. These are amazing gifts that animals do not possess. We can sense right from wrong. We can stand apart from ourselves and evaluate our own behavior. We can live our of our imagination, the future we wish to create, instead of being held hostage by the memory of our past. And the more we exercise these endowments the greater becomes our freedom to choose. We can choose to make principles work for us or against us. I revel in that ability to choose.

To live with such change, we need principles that don’t change.

But there’s a problem. Too many of us – more than ever, I’m afraid – are trying to take a shortcut around the principles of life. We want love but not commitment. We want success without paying the price. We want thin bodies and our cake too. In other words, we want something we can never have – the rewards of good character without good character.

That’s why I wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I believe that our culture is drifting from its anchor in those principles, and I want to point to the consequences – that neglecting principles can only result in the shipwreck of our lives. In like manner, I promise you that in the long run, if you will live in alignment with principles you will prosper, personally and professionally.

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The Hard Side of Self-Improvement

Posted on April 11, 2019 by admin

In this NSFW clip, David Goggins talks about how tripling down on your weaknesses is more important than tripling down on your strengths. It’s easy to improve at things you’re already good at, but it’s much harder to get good at difficult things. In my own experience, I’ve found that overcoming my weak points has been far more rewarding than improving my strong points. The greatest joys I’ve felt have come from getting good at things at which I struggled, and even small improvements in these areas have been exciting.

Whenever I can, I try to make small improvements and focus on easy steps to get where I want to be. Sometimes, however, I have to take bigger steps or even huge leaps. If I’m trying to jump across a sizable gap, I can’t tiptoe across it or walk slowly up to it before making my attempt. I have to run at a fast enough pace to give myself enough momentum to clear the gap by the time I jump. I can start off walking if I have enough distance between myself and the edge, but at some point I have to start taking bigger, faster steps to have any chance of making it. Self-improvement is the same; small steps were ok initially, but eventually I realized I had to work on directly tackling my major problem areas. Otherwise I’d be forever working on polishing things that were already shining brightly while neglecting the things that were falling apart.

This is the hard side of self-improvement, the side that gets ugly and messy and is often left out of conversations on this subject, and for good reason: if it were included, most people would never undertake it. The people who have spent decades working on themselves make it look easy whenever they respond with kindness to a hostile person or accomplish more in a morning than most people do in a day. We can see them do those things but what we’re not seeing is their early years where they struggled and had no idea what they were doing; when they spent years working on things that may occupy a chapter or two of their book. They may talk about where they came from and how hard it was for them to get where they are now, but seeing their struggle is a whole different ballgame than reading about it or hearing them discuss it. You may know someone who you’ve seen rise from the lowest of lows into a fantastic place in life. If so, how powerful was it to watch them on their journey and see the progress, slow at first and then much faster as they went on their way?

Everyone who’s worked extensively on personal development has a story that is far too complex and detailed for any book, video, or speech to fully capture. However, if they don’t include a synopsis of their journey and the difficulties they encountered (and probably still face to this day), they’re giving others a false impression of what the process is like and are setting them up for failure by making it look far easier than it really is. There are parts of self-improvement that are easy, or at least easier than other parts. If you’re committed to it, though, eventually you’ll get to the difficult, painful parts. It’s here where the real magic happens if you stick with it and heal these big issues instead of just healing the small ones (although healing a lot of small issues will help you prepare for the big issues).

There have been many seasons on my journey in which I’ve felt enraged, cried at the drop of a hat, wanted to distance myself from everyone around me, and felt all my hard work was for naught. Nothing I’ve heard, watched, or read fully prepared me for these times. Whenever I’ve made through one of those seasons, I’ve always felt better and stronger, especially if I had incorporated a lesson into my life that I needed to learn. I can’t see myself going back to how I was before and I can’t imagine how my life would look right now if I hadn’t undertaken this journey. Keep all this in mind if you decide to start or have already started a self-improvement journey. It’s often difficult and painful and it’s always worth it. Godspeed.

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Letting Go

Posted on April 10, 2019 by admin

Something that’s been a struggle of mine for most of my life is letting go. For whatever reason, I’ve long had this underlying feeling that I have to say yes to just about anything someone asks me to do and stick with them indefinitely, and that I’d be in the wrong if I said no. Except for a few occasions that came during major life changes, I’ve always had a hard time leaving people and situations behind. That has changed within the past year, however.

I’ve gradually gotten better at saying no, distancing myself from harmful people and places, and working to change negative mindsets and destructive habits. It’s taken a lot to get here and I still have a lot of room for improvement, but I’ve improved a lot over time. Practicing setting limits, meditating, floating, and reading a ton of useful books has worked wonders for me. The reason I’ve been successful with all of this is that I decided to start loving myself enough to pursue these positive things. There’s only so much room in my life, and filling it with things that are wrong for me prevents me from filling it with things that are right for me. Saying goodbye to things that drag me down allows me to say yes to things that lift me up.

While I’ve definitely focused on taking care of myself and loving myself to a much greater extent than I ever have before, this hasn’t made me stop caring about other people. Rather, it has allowed me to be a better person to those around me. It’s much easier to help someone when I’m in a good place in life than when I’m in a bad place, and having a positive attitude does much more to lift everyone’s spirits than a negative attitude. Slowly replacing the bad with the good has made all the difference for me, and I expect my progress to come even faster now that I’ve got a lot of positive momentum carrying me in the right direction. Letting go is still a struggle for me but the little bit that I’ve done thus far has been well worth it and I’m excited to see where it takes me as I continue improving at it.

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What I’ve Learned from Floating

Posted on April 9, 2019 by admin

As of this writing, I’ve floated in a sensory deprivation tank on six different occasions. Each float was different in some way and gave me exactly what I needed even if I didn’t know it at the time. Here are some things I’ve learned from my experiences thus far.

My most recent realization has to do with working through difficult and painful things in life. There is nearly half a ton of salt mixed with the water in a sensory deprivation tank, meaning that you float effortlessly on the surface. I can hold my arms or legs on the bottom briefly but once I relax, they float right to the top. In the same way, I’ve found floating clears my mind of distractions and allows the things I need to work on to float to the surface of my mind. Sometimes I’ve thought about those things while I’m floating, and other times they’ve not come to mind until I’ve gotten out and resumed my regular life. Either way, floating makes room for me to focus on those important things.

On the subject of working on problem areas, I’ve also realized that I can’t depend on floating alone to improve my life. Floating is simply a tool (and a very useful one at that) that helps me recognize where I can do better and puts me in the right state of mind to follow through. But following through is a must. If I act without regard to my values in my regular life and then expect floating to do the heavy lifting for me, I’m going about it the wrong way. I have to practice what I preach, and floating has always clearly shown me when I’m not doing that.

Something I got from my most recent float was a reminder about letting go. I kept that in mind the very next day at work when it was crazy busy, hot, and had the potential to be super stressful. Whenever I felt the stress coming on, I reminded myself to breathe, let go of resistance to the situation, and just take one step at a time until I was finished. That’s exactly what I did and it worked like a charm. I needed this reminder to work on controlling my perception of any given situation instead of letting the situation control me.

These, in addition to being reminded of the importance of relaxation, have been the biggest revelations I’ve gotten while floating. I’ve enjoyed the experience of floating as well as the insights it’s given me about my life. It’s been interesting to see some messages appear repeatedly (which I take to mean that I need to work more on those things) and others that have only shown up once or twice (probably areas where I’m doing fine). I’m excited to see what else I learn about myself through floating and how I can use it to improve my life and the lives of those around me.

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