Zoom Out

Posted on December 30, 2018 by admin

Sometimes my thoughts are overwhelming, especially when they’re negative. The unceasing torrent of thought can surround me and make me feel like I’m drowning. This doesn’t happen all the time or even as much as it used to, but it still happens every so often. In situations of overwhelming thought, it’s easy for me to get stuck on a particular thought or a particular kind of thought. Maybe I’ll keep replaying a painful moment or a series of painful moments. The negativity builds upon itself and causes increasingly greater suffering in the process. When this happens, I find it helpful to zoom out.

Instead of remaining fixated on one moment, I’ll take a look at the bigger picture: what I’m doing with the rest of my week, something that’s going on in another part of the world, my life plans, etc. That reminds me that this moment is only one of many in my life and that it, like all the others, will pass; instead of remaining my sole focus, it becomes just one of a number of things that I can think about if I want to. I can then look at whatever is causing me grief and see it with a greater sense of perspective. Even just a bit of distance can take me from feeling overwhelmed to feeling at ease.

I find it helpful to remind myself that I’ve made it through every stressful moment of my life and then use life hacks to make the present moment less stressful. This could involve, among a number of things, remembering a joyful occasion, thinking of something that makes me laugh, using loving-kindness to wish happiness on someone else, controlling my breathing, relaxing my body, or doing a physical activity that I enjoy. Giving myself some distance from my stressful thoughts allows me to go back to them and work through them more effectively than trying to stop them outright. I’ve found that gives me a much better chance of actually being able to quiet my mind and achieve inner peace instead of just temporarily burying the stress by distracting myself with other thoughts. I hope this gives you a useful tool for when you feel overwhelmed by your thoughts. Please let me know if it helps you and, as always, I’ll keep sharing stuff that helps me as I come across it.

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Communication Rhythms

Posted on December 29, 2018 by admin

There are different rhythms within communication. Some people tend toward rhythms involving big groups where everyone jumps in and out of quick, energetic conversations; others prefer slower, more relaxed exchanges with fewer people. There are some people who can easily move between the two, but most that I’ve seen lean toward one or the other. If someone strongly prefers one type of environment but ends up in the other, they will probably feel uncomfortable and out of place until they leave. For example, a reserved person in a highly active setting will likely feel overwhelmed and retreat inward. They may like the people they’re around and have interest in the subjects being brought up, but the sheer number people around them, uncertainty about when to jump in, and fear of looking bad if what they say gets a poor reaction (or, worse, no reaction) prevents them from relaxing and joining in the fun. They’d have a much better time discussing the same subjects in a much smaller group, especially if that group consists of other people who are also reserved.

This holds for everyone, regardless of their preferences for group interactions. Their preferences align with their own rhythms of how they think and communicate, and they tend to seek out others with similar rhythms. As a result, they grow closer to those people and can quickly become friends with them. They can still enjoy the company of people who have different rhythms and even be friends with them, but they will usually prefer being around those who share their rhythms.

As you may have guessed, I am generally more reserved around other people. I can be quite outgoing in certain situations: at my job, when I’m performing, and when I’m with people I know very well and around whom I’m comfortable. But overall, I’m usually on the quieter side and tend to do more listening than talking. When I do say something, whether it’s a joke or something serious, I try to make my words count instead of just speaking for the sake of speaking. Those are the reasons that I prefer small groups over big groups and why I tend to avoid situations that have big groups consisting mostly or entirely of people I don’t know. Now that I’ve talked about my communication rhythms, I’m interested to hear about yours. Do you prefer small groups or big groups, or can you be content in either one? Thanks for reading and commenting and I’ll see you in the next post.

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My Nighttime Routine

Posted on December 28, 2018 by admin

Something I’ve done this year that I think has made a big positive difference for me is develop a good nighttime routine. Like a lot of other things I’ve done, I’ve assembled this routine gradually and without much initial conscious effort, so it’s taken me some time to notice it and deconstruct it. Now that I have, I thought I’d share it with you and see if you find value in it. Without further ado, here’s my nighttime routine.

I avoid eating a lot of sugar or caffeine or drink much of any liquid a few hours before bed, and I typically have my last meal well before I call it a night. When I’m ready to start winding down, I sit in my zero gravity chair, lean back, and read a chapter or two of a book. That helps relax me and put me in the mindset to go to sleep. Then I might stretch my legs for a few minutes before I finish up my pre-bed routine of taking out my contacts (or taking off my glasses, depending on the night), brushing my teeth, and using the bathroom one last time. After that, I’ll lay in bed with my lights off and fan on as I spend a bit of time on my Kindle; I turn on the blue shade setting, which prevents blue electronic light from getting into my face and helps me sleep better. I try to avoid things that make me angry or sad and instead focus on things I like, especially things that I find funny, uplifting, or relaxing.

Once I start feeling sufficiently tired, I put my Kindle away and sit on the edge of my bed as I breathe deeply and slowly for thirty seconds or so. I’ll use this time to expel any negative energy I notice so that I’m not dwelling on it as I try to sleep. Because I do a lot during the day to expel or work through negativity, I usually don’t have much to deal with at bedtime. Then I lie down and begin relaxing my body, starting from my toes and working up to my head, making sure to release any tension I feel as I go. Before I know it, I find myself in a dream or waking up hours later. Even though I often wake up briefly a few times during the night, more often than not, I still feel good in the morning.

Since I developed this routine, I’ve found it consistently helps me fall asleep easily and relatively quickly and wake up feeling refreshed in the morning (as long as I get seven or more hours of sleep, that is). This is a wonderful change of pace from before, when I didn’t know if I’d go to sleep easily or spend upwards of an hour wide awake. I’ve also noticed that my mind is much quieter at night now than it was before I developed this routine. This makes it easier to go to sleep since I’m not thinking about everything under the sun and gives me more pleasant, peaceful dreams. I’m fortunate to not have insomnia, sleep apnea, or any other issues that can make it almost impossible to get a good night’s sleep, so I don’t know how effective this routine would be for someone with those issues. But it works well for me, a guy with a highly active mind, energetic body, and near-constant desire to be doing something. I hope something in this routine can help you too. Sweet dreams, friends.

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Fun with Anti-Logic

Posted on December 27, 2018 by admin

Most of the people I see on a regular basis are either nice or at the very least pleasant/unassuming. It’s pretty rare in my work, my dancing, or anywhere else in my usual routines that I run across an ornery person. When I do meet someone like that, I’m unprepared for what they say and do, which makes it easy for them to walk all over me.

I started thinking about this stuff after a recent encounter with a customer at my job. He stopped me to talk about picking up an appliance he’d just bought, I asked a clarifying question, and that’s when everything went off the rails. He became very aggressive, wouldn’t let me finish a sentence, and didn’t listen to my attempts to explain what I meant. Once I realized that it would be a waste of time to continue trying to reason with him, I told him he could take it out himself if he wanted (which is what he asked to do initially) and then went back to the customer I was helping before he stopped me. The customer I was initially helping spoke up on my behalf during that ordeal, which I greatly appreciated; another customer who also witnessed it offered me some supportive words later on. Their efforts helped me get through that onslaught of negativity.

Of all the customers I’ve been around at each of my jobs, this guy was by far the rudest and least reasonable. I didn’t see this coming at all and I had no plan in mind for dealing with someone like him. My normal strategy of remaining calm and explaining myself in the hopes that doing so would defuse the situation failed, and for a long time after, I blamed myself for what happened. It took a lot of life hacks focused around breathing, relaxing, and reframing myself, as well as a good amount of time after the situation, to get me into a state of mind to think about this more clearly. When I got to that state of mind, I realized that he probably would have acted aggressively regardless of what I said, and that I gave him no cause to get upset; for whatever reason, he chose to react that way. That made it easier to avoid taking his reaction personally and helped me move onto formulating a plan in case something like this happens again.

Since I’m so used to being around nice people who share several of my interests, I’ve forgotten that we humans are irrational and respond poorly to reason and logic. This explains why my efforts to employ those in that situation failed. That lead me to this thought: if logic doesn’t work, why not try anti-logic? By that, I don’t mean reverse psychology wherein I ask someone to do the opposite of what I want them to do in the hopes that that will nudge them in my desired direction. I mean throw logic completely out the window and just be weird. This should be easy for me as a weird guy who grew up watching a lot of classic Looney Tunes shorts and who draws a lot of comedic inspiration from Bugs Bunny, the Marx Brothers, and Buster Keaton. Employing this strategy against an angry person trying to argue with me would probably throw them off and leave them unsure of what to do next. Instead of explaining myself or trying to reason with them, which they’ll probably be expecting, I’ll try changing the subject to something bizarre, making animal noises, singing a song, speaking in another language, lying down on the floor, etc. I won’t touch or do anything to scare or intimidate the other person, just give them a fun little show and see if that does the trick.

I got this idea from listening to Derren Brown tell Joe Rogan about his experience with this earlier in his life. Instead of trying to reason with or fight a drunk guy who got in his face, he changed the subject and started talking about the height of the wall around his house. This confused the guy sufficiently to drain away his aggressive energy and stop him from being a threat. This is also similar to the way Tony Robbins uses state breaks as explained in this video from Charisma on Command. Although I had heard of both of those ideas before the incident at my job, I hadn’t yet worked out a plan to use them. Now that I’ve worked through my feelings from that situation and thought a lot about what to do if it happens again, I feel much more confident that I’ll be able to reduce tensions and defuse an aggressive situation if necessary. If you’ve tried this sort of strategy in a tense situation, please let me know what you did and how it went. I’d love to hear about it. For now, though, That’s All, Folks!

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A Wonderful Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2018 by admin

Another Christmas has come and gone. Like most others, I greatly enjoyed this one and did a lot of things that I do every year. I also did some new, special things, which is what I think will make this Christmas stand out in years to come. I’ll tell you a bit about it in this post.

Although I’ve woken up early in previous years, this year I slept in until shortly before 9:30 am. I then scrolled through my Kindle a bit before doing my morning routine and joining everyone else to open presents. We took our time giving each other the gifts and gradually making our way through them until there were none left to open. I then spent much of the afternoon trying out some of the things I got.

The things that I had the most fun trying were my hammock straps, my unicycle, and my headphones. I got a hammock for Christmas last year and, although the rope that it came with worked well enough, I’d heard that hammock straps are easier to use and better for use with trees, so I’d been wanting some for a while. After we finished with presents, I went to the backyard to test them. The straps were much longer than I had thought and it took a while for me to find some trees that were far enough apart to work. Once I found some good trees and set the straps properly, though, I found that they worked like a charm. I spent a good while relaxing in my hammock, enjoying the cool air, shade, and peace. It was nice to pause the day for a bit and just marinate in the moment out there.

Next, I grabbed my unicycle and went to the driveway. My dad had helped me put it together earlier and all it needed was some air in the tire. At the time of this riding, I’ve never successfully ridden a unicycle for more than a few seconds, and, before yesterday, it had been years since I even touched one. However, I’ve always wanted to learn to ride one, and I’ve learned and gotten good at enough things through consistent practice to know that I’ll eventually master the unicycle if I stick with it. So I spent a bit of time getting on and riding for a second or two before losing control. Unlike a bicycle, which will often bring you to the ground when you’re learning to ride it, a unicycle can fall out from underneath you and leave you standing. The bigger issue with learning to ride a unicycle is protecting your shins; it only took one good blow to my shin from a pedal to remind me to put on my shin guards. This made the remainder of my practice time much more enjoyable and free of pain. I had to stop and get ready to leave not long after I started, so I put it aside and came back to it after I got back home. In both practice sessions, I had a few moments where I managed a short, controlled ride of a second or two. Those moments felt great and gave me the motivation to continue. Now all I have to do is make it part of my routine to practice a bit each day and I should be able to ride it in a relatively short amount of time.

My headphones were the most unexpected delight of any of my presents. I’ve had several pairs of headphones and always manage to damage or destroy them, usually by messing up the cord. These headphones, however, are cordless and work through Bluetooth. I charged them for a while and tried them out when I got back home. The directions were easy to follow and soon I had them paired with both my Kindle and my phone. I experimented a bit with them to see how they worked and then used them for most of that evening to watch videos or listen to relaxing things on YouTube. There is a cord that I can use if I want, but I think I’ll avoid it. I like the Bluetooth feature and the freedom of movement it gives me. Plus I think going cordless decreases my chances of damaging or destroying these, and I want to keep them as long as possible since they’re the nicest, most comfortable headphones I’ve had.

In the mid-afternoon, I went to visit with my older sister and her family. Between the food, more presents, A Christmas Story in the background, and a few more things, it was a nice visit to close out the afternoon and make for a good little trip. That’s a theme that ran through this day: finding joy in small things. Sure, the presents were nice, but what I really enjoyed was the opportunities they gave me to relax, have fun, and learn something new. My day was full of nice little moments like that, so it felt like several days in one, especially since I was off work. This stuff makes for a wonderful Christmas, but it works with any day in the year. My plan is to do my best to make every day feel like Christmas and be grateful for the opportunities to do so. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and enjoy what remains of the winter holidays this year.

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Distractions and Working Through Feelings

Posted on December 25, 2018 by admin
Image result for sit in a quiet room alone

Have you ever had a negative experience during the day and mostly pushed it to the side but then couldn’t stop thinking about it while you tried to fall asleep that night? I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve done that. I have an idea as to why this occurs and some things in mind that may help manage it.

Most people have tons of distractions around them during the day: electronic devices, books, other people, animals, and so on. It’s easy to get lost in one or more of these and be able to temporarily block out negative thoughts. As night approaches, however, things begin to settle down and the distractions start to recede. It becomes harder to find something to keep those negative thoughts at bay and they seem to slowly become more powerful. When it’s time for bed and there are no more external distractions (the lights are off, electronic devices are put away, everyone else is gone, etc), thoughts that were merely background noise earlier can become overwhelming. At that point, it’s much more difficult to simply shrug them off and focus on something else.

I think another part of this involves the failure to work through negative thoughts. This is understandable as working through negativity requires facing painful memories and that’s never a fun or enjoyable process. However, the alternative, which is pushing them to the side or burying them deep down, causes a lot of trouble over time. Emotions that are not transmuted or even fully acknowledged will reappear at some point. Maybe they’ll come back in the form of a nightmare, a sharp remark directed at a loved one, or a general feeling of unease. Someone who snaps at you may be using you as a target for frustrations that they encountered long before your paths ever crossed; because they didn’t work through their pain, they eventually took it out on you, punishing you for their own shortcomings.

This is why I think it’s important to spend some time in solitude and with as few distractions as possible. Getting away from the noise of modern life prevents you from seeking refuge from your mind in things outside yourself and forces you to confront whatever’s bothering you. After you’ve let your thoughts run for a bit (even if they’re thoughts you’d rather not have but feel like you have to acknowledge or express properly), you can focus on slowing your breathing and gradually entering a state of presence. Then you can work on healing that past pain and transmuting it through reframing yourself, giving yourself a state break, remind yourself that you aren’t responsible for someone else mistreating you, etc; this way, you can truly move past the pain without it sticking around to cause problems later on.

Although I’ve been doing most of the above for a good while now, I only just recently started feeling through whatever emotions arise, even ones I’d rather avoid. I think I was suppressing negative emotions for a long time while thinking that they weren’t getting to me. Since I started working through them more and feeling them fully, I’ve felt a lot better. I think being honest with myself about my situation also helps; I think I was simply mistaken about how I felt rather than intentionally deceiving myself, but either way something was getting lost in translation. I still find distractions (especially taking cold showers and doing other challenging activities that increase my mental toughness by getting my focus out of my head and into my body) to be temporarily useful by keeping the negativity at bay until I have time to work through it, but I’m trying not to use them excessively anymore so that the negativity doesn’t come back during quiet moments. This video from Charlie at Charisma on Command does a great job breaking down and explaining these concepts. I had written most of this post before I watched the video, so I was pleasantly surprised to find another great moment of serendipity and see how much it overlaps with my thoughts on this subject. Charlie’s videos have helped me out a lot and I hope they, as well as my post, can help you too, especially with incredibly important yet seldom-discussed subjects such as working through negativity.

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And Action!

Posted on December 24, 2018 by admin

I’ve had a lot of personal growth this year, probably more than any other year of my life. This isn’t the first year that I wanted to make progress or tried to do it, but it has been by far the most successful year in that regard. I think I’ve had so much success this year because, in addition to the fact that I’ve read so much more about self-improvement this year than ever before, I’ve been putting the stuff I’ve learned into practice.

When it comes to practical life skills, knowledge without action is useless. Someone who knows little but practices it regularly is better off than someone who knows a lot and never uses it. I benefited a lot from my initial reading of How to Win Friends and Influence People and subsequent implementation of its recommendations. This was last year, well before I had read any of the other self-improvement books on my shelf, so even that little bit of wisdom made my life noticeably better. And when I stopped practicing what I had learned by reading that book, I began to run into the same problems I faced before I read it; revisiting the book and putting its lesson into practice once again made those problems disappear just as before.

The Bible talks about the importance of works in two different chapters in the Book of James. I remembered those passages when I started thinking about what to write in this post and they gave me some direction. I’ve done enough research and picked up enough life hacks to get me through many situations. Fortunately, I’ve also put those things to work so I’m able to navigate those situations better than I could in previous years. I’m a work in progress but, as long as I keep working, there will always be progress.

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A Nice Christmas Visit

Posted on December 23, 2018 by admin

Yesterday, I went to a visit with some family members for our annual Christmas gathering. Because several of us live fairly far apart, this provides us with one of only a handful of opportunities during the year to all visit together. This one, like the other ones we’ve had, was one for the memory books. Here’s a brief overview of how it went.

It took just under two hours to drive from Jacksonville to our meeting place. Once most of us had arrived, we spent a bit catching up before diving right into the food; we continued catching up while we ate. After that, I spent the remainder of the visit floating between groups, singing a few Christmas songs around the piano, and taking a bit of time by myself to recharge. My self-improvement work has helped me be more conversational and relaxed at these kinds of visits, which makes me appreciate them more and look forward to them. While I initially felt some anxiety over this visit, I did some deep breathing and relaxation exercises both on the way there and at various times at the gathering. These helped me settle down and have a smooth, pleasant visit. Around four in the afternoon, we packed up, said goodbye, and hit the road for home.

I always enjoy these kinds of visits and I’m glad that we got together just before Christmas, especially since we couldn’t have our normal Thanksgiving visit. I’ve gradually been moving away from the materialist mindset that I’ve had for most of my life and started placing much more value on experiences. These visits are the holiday memories that I’ll fondly revisit years from now and treasure more than any material gift I’ve ever received.

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A Few of My Favorite Movies

Posted on December 22, 2018 by admin

I’ve seen a lot of movies in my life. I’ve enjoyed most of them, but an exceptional handful have stuck with me where most others have fallen away. I’ve already talked about several in previous posts, so now I’ll talk about some that I haven’t mentioned yet. Here are a few more of my favorite movies and a bit about why I love them

  1. The Dark Knight. I was blown away by this movie. The acting, writing, effects, music, and everything else work together perfectly to make an incredible experience. I’ve seen a lot of superhero movies and this is one of my favorites. There’s so much great stuff that shows just how awesome and effective Batman can be.
  2. Chinatown. This is a neo-noir film from the 1970’s. Jack Nicholson plays a detective investigating a murder and strange events surrounding the Los Angeles water supply. Even though he makes a lot of progress, he is ultimately unsuccessful at saving the day and getting the typical Hollywood happy ending. This film, which is amazing from beginning to end, gives a powerful and painful life reminder that sometimes the bad guys win.
  3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Very similar to Chinatown in many ways, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the best example of human actors mixed with animated characters that I’ve ever seen. Animated characters from Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, and other studios appear in this movie about a detective trying to clear a cartoon star named Roger Rabbit of a murder he says he didn’t commit. The technical innovations that made this movie possible are amazing. Everyone involved did such a great job making the cartoon characters appear to be interacting with the real world, which, along with the story, makes this a fun movie to watch again and again.
  4. Toy Story 2. In my opinion, this is the best of the Toy Story movies. The same characters we got to know and love in the first movie are back with a new story that gives them new challenges as they try to maintain their friendships in the face of increasing life changes. There are lots of great jokes, action scenes, quotable lines, and memorable moments with wonderful characters. Released in 1999, this is the only movie I remember seeing in theatres in the 90’s as I was 6 when it premiered. I still have a quality VHS copy and watched it sometime in the past few years. There is a lot of pleasant nostalgia for me around this movie, which may be a bit part of why I like it so much.
  5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The first movie starring Captain America that I saw in theatres and the one that made me such a big fan of his. Cap has gotten used to life in the 21st century when he discovers a sinister plot involving world domination and mass murder. Choosing to stand up for what’s right, he has only a handful of people on his side as he takes on the bad guys and has to make some difficult decisions. This showed the integrity, strength, and goodness of Captain America like never before on the big screen. He’s at his best here and sets an incredible example of doing the right thing even when it’s painful.
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Becoming Free, One Book at a Time

Posted on December 21, 2018 by admin

I’ve read a lot this year. As I write this, I’ve read twenty six books (twenty seven if you count my annual reread of How to Win Friends and Influence People) and, by the time the year ends, I’ll have read two more if all goes according to plan. Keep in mind that with one or two exceptions, I haven’t sped through these books; I’ve simply managed to read two or three books a month by dedicating some time each night (as well as during the day in some cases) to read a chapter or two at a time. My thirst for knowledge and decently-sized personal library are what have allowed me to read at such a quick, steady pace.

I acquired many of the books on my shelf earlier this year because they were written by people I find fascinating, recommended by friends, or simply looked interesting to me. What I didn’t realize until I had read them is that they contained similar ideas about the way our brains work and why we behave in the ways we do. The psychological lessons I learned from these books fascinated me and gave me a completely different view of the world than I had ever seriously considered. Inspired, I began intentionally collecting more books on psychology so I could learn more about this subject. As I kept reading and learning new things, I found out more and more about how interconnected everything is. The more pieces of the puzzle I found, the easier it became to tell whether or not a new piece of information fits into that puzzle (though sometimes it might not appear to fit because it belongs to a different portion that I haven’t gotten to yet). This has given me a much better understanding of the world and the people in it as well as helped me navigate it more successfully. 

Because I read the works of many different authors, I get exposed to a lot of different ideas. I always do my best to understand what an author means and where they’re coming from even if I disagree strongly with them on one or more points. There are many ways to view just about any situation, and since I now have a variety of perspectives from so many different authors, I can take a more nuanced look at many situations than I could in the past. This also helps with my self-improvement work: if I start getting upset over one possible interpretation of a situation, I try to remind myself that there are other ways to look at it, which usually helps me feel better.

Another reason for my renewed interest in reading comes from my desire to avoid blindly following people, a mistake I made over the past few years. Whenever I found someone particularly compelling, I’d read or watch as much of their work as I could find. While this usually did me no harm, I’d occasionally get drawn into someone who later turned out to be a fraud, manipulator, deceiver, etc. Because I was so enamored with them early on, I couldn’t see their inconsistencies, bad ideas, and other things that should have been major red flags. Eventually I saw these people for how they really were and stopped following them. Once the feelings of hurt and betrayal subsided, I could think more clearly about the lessons I learned from this experience.

Above everything else, I never want to let other people do my thinking for me again. I still listen to and learn from other people, but I now understand that I have the ability to make up my own mind in any situation. I also try to keep in mind that some people are deceitful and anyone can be wrong. Whether or not someone intends to cause trouble, they may be saying something that turns out to be false or harmful. Just as nobody is always wrong, nobody is always right, either. So now, instead of listening to a lot of what one or two people have to say about a fairly narrow range of subjects, I’m listening to what a lot of people have to say on wide range of subjects. Some of these people are experts in a certain subject and others are just average people trying to make sense of the world; sometimes what one person says overlaps with what someone else says and other times it couldn’t be further apart. In any event, I try to take what I learn with a grain of salt and see how it compares with the things I already know rather than automatically taking someone’s word for it just because they say some stuff I like.

Overall, I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned about blindly trusting people. I wish there weren’t dishonest people or people who talk as if they knew what they were saying when they really don’t, but as long as there are people like that in the world, it helps to be prepared for them and to know how to avoid falling for their tricks. Reading just about everything I can get my hands on and learning how to say no and protect myself against manipulation have helped me a lot in this regard. Instead of getting upset at myself for the mistakes I’ve made, I’m going to celebrate that I’m determined to avoid making them again and that I have some life hacks to help me do so.

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