The Power of the Shower

Posted on October 17, 2018 by admin

I routinely experience writer’s block and have trouble completing blog posts. Trying to force the ideas to flow only makes them harder to obtain. I find that my best ideas tend to come when I’m relaxed and not thinking much; being in that state makes me more creative and lets the ideas flow. A lot of good ideas have come to me when I’m in the shower, which is one of the best places for getting into that state.

Showering is a time of great vulnerability as the ability to fight back or flee from a threat is almost nonexistent. However, in enclosed areas without threats, showers can feel comforting and protective. There’s something about the warm water, the distance from everything and everyone else, and the acoustics that make it easy to relax. There’s also a certain timelessness to being in the shower. Everything else seems to fade away, minutes can feel like hours (or sometimes seconds), and it becomes much easier to focus. Maybe that’s it: maybe being in a safe, calming place puts the mind at ease since it doesn’t have to worry about survival, which then allows the creative juices to flow. This could also be why so many thoughts and ideas often arrive in bed before falling asleep. 

On rare occasions, I can think or talk out an idea fully before writing it down instead of working it out as I go. When I get fully-formed ideas, it’s almost always when I’m in the shower. Sometimes I’ll find the inspiration I need for a blog post, an activity, or other decision with which I’ve been struggling while I’m in there, usually without even putting in much effort. Other people have had similar experiences, which suggests to me that there’s some validity to this phenomenon. Either way, whenever I feel stuck with an idea or decision, I know where to go for a creative boost. 

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My Writing Process

Posted on October 16, 2018 by admin

I’ve written before about my love of writing and I thought I’d share my writing process in this blog post. While I said “writing process“, I suppose it would be more accurate to say “processes” as I have a few different methods for writing out my ideas. I use both of these processes for the writing I publish as well as the writing I keep to myself.

Sometimes I manage to write out all my ideas in one shot. When this happens, normally it’s because I’ve thought out (and usually talked out) my ideas quite thoroughly before I start writing. It feels like someone has placed the finished work in my head and all I have to do is copy it into the computer. This is a rare occurrence but it always feels good when it happens and it lets me get a lot of writing done in a short amount of time while making minimal changes once I’m finished.

Most of the time, I end up writing a bit at a time as the ideas come to me. Some of the things I do include writing the conclusion before anything else, writing down a couple of words and adding to them later, working a bit on each paragraph before finishing any of them, starting a post one day and finishing it the next (often not long before it goes live), and editing it as I go rather than waiting until the end and doing all of it at once. This is the process I’ve used in writing most of my blog posts, including this one.

Once I have all my ideas together, I make my final edits, check to see if everything flows smoothly from beginning to end, and save it if I can’t think of anything else to add or improve. If I’m writing a blog post, I’ll add the tags, categories, and title at whichever point in the process I feel inspired to do so. Then I figure out the date I want it to be published, check over it one last time, and hit the “schedule” button. I try to have my posts scheduled the day before I publish them, though, as indicated in the previous paragraph, that doesn’t always happen.

I’ve found both of these processes to be useful for motivating me to write even when the ideas seem sparse and helping me keep my thoughts organized. I hope this has been interesting and even helpful for those who enjoy writing but feel stuck. There are times in which I struggle to come up with ideas or the right words to express them, but I always manage to come up with something. Sometimes I achieve inspiration through writing down the few ideas I have and other times I need to take a break and clear my head for the ideas to arrive. So if you have writer’s block, please go easy on yourself, relax, and know that this is just a temporary phase before the inspiration returns.

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What Do You Do?

Posted on October 15, 2018 by admin

What do you do when you feel bad? Do you swallow your pride and ask for help, or do you tell yourself it’s not a big deal and keep it to yourself? Do you put on a happy face and try to “be yourself” around your friends? Is it worth it to let your guard down and show them that you’re hurting?

What are the rules for acting vulnerable around other people, and how did they become the rules in the first place? Are we truly ourselves in public or do we just act like “ourselves”? Do we cultivate an image, a persona of how we want others to see us and wear that persona like a costume whenever we go out? To put ourselves out there, to wear our true face, is to risk being rejected. If someone rejects the persona, at least they’re not rejecting us.

If we’re comfortable enough to be ourselves when nobody else is around, then however we are when we’re alone must be how we truly are. If there’s a difference between how we are when we’re alone than when we’re around others, then there is some degree of “acting” going on in the latter scenario: acting like we’re ok, acting like we want to be there, acting like a fun person, acting like nothing is wrong, etc. Why is this so common? Why does anyone care what strangers think about them? And if someone is around friends, why is it still often difficult to open up to them and be vulnerable? Surely one’s friends are going to be accepting and loving even when things are going badly, right? Right? 

There is power in the spoken word. Whatever is said can be forgiven if the receiver is willing but nothing that is said can be taken back. Perhaps there is the concern that speaking about negative feelings will make them stronger or make them obvious to others when they were previously invisible. Perhaps there is the thought that it’s better to suffer in silence than to drag others down that path. If so, how did it get to this? How did it get to a point that we have to hide ourselves and our feelings from even the people closest to us? How did it become acceptable to have a veil of mystery and dishonesty covering nearly every interaction? How did it become commonplace to talk more about the weather than about our hopes, dreams, desires, concerns, doubts, and fears? And, more importantly, how do we change it?

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Learning Through the Internet

Posted on October 14, 2018 by admin

I’ve learned a lot over the past several years. I can spend the rest of my life learning several new things every day and still not be anywhere near close to knowing everything. Fortunately I’ve been able to greatly increase the amount of things I can learn through the internet. 

The internet offers an incredible amount of information on a wide range of subjects. I can listen to online lectures (YouTube is great for this as I can increase the speed and listen to more videos in the same span of time), read one article after another without issue, access databases full of information, and quickly find all of these and other resources for little to no money. There are plenty of online resources and tutorials available that cover just about anything I want to learn; when I want to learn more about something, the internet is one of the first places I go, and most of the time it gives me what I’m looking for. If I want to dive deeper into a subject than the internet allows me to do, I can still use it to find relevant resources. I learned about many of the beneficial books I’ve read through the internet; sometimes a friend pointed me toward them, other times I found them myself, and still others were recommended by people I found interesting. I’ve bought most of my books in physical stores but I’ve also ordered several from different websites.

One of the features I most appreciate about the internet is how it allows for a wide range of input and perspectives. Instead of being limited to a few sides of a subject, it offers the ability to examine every side of just about any position. Even pages dedicated to one particular perspective often contain opposing perspectives in the comments. This gives everyone on the internet the chance to learn as much as they can about a given subject and decide for themselves what to think about it instead of being forced to accept one of the few allowed opinions. It’s possible for someone on the internet to focus only on the things with which they already agree and so get into an “echo chamber”, but that can also happen elsewhere in life. If someone is stuck in an echo chamber at their school, workplace, or other place they frequent, they can use the internet to seek out other perspectives and benefit from hearing things there that they won’t hear from the people around them.

I’ve gotten pretty good at learning things through the internet. Some of the things it’s helped me learn or get better at include coding, juggling, interacting with other people, self-improvement, fixing things, playing sports, and writing. I still find it helpful to have someone in person guiding me through something I want to learn (especially when it comes to physical skills) but I can learn a lot just by doing some simple searches and reading the articles or watching the videos that appear. Without internet access, it would have taken me a lot longer to track down the resources that have taught me all the skills, concepts, and facts that I’ve learned in a relatively short period of time. I’m grateful to live in the internet age and have most of humanity’s knowledge available at my fingertips almost all the time. I don’t know where I’d be right now without it but I think it’s safe to say that I’m in a much better place in life because of it. 

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Giving Others the Benefit of the Doubt

Posted on October 13, 2018 by admin

I try to keep my actions consistent with my words, but I’ve struggled with that for most of my life. Too often, I’ve talked about the importance of kindness and then done something that’s incredibly mean or otherwise unkind. Something that’s helped me avoid doing this is putting myself in someone else’s shoes and giving them the benefit of the doubt. 

For example, I’ve gotten a lot more patient over time when I drive. I used to honk at other drivers just about every time I drove; at this point, I rarely do so unless I feel endangered by someone else’s actions. A trick I use when I’m on the road is to remind myself that I don’t know what’s going on with anyone out there but myself. Maybe someone is driving slowly or being slow to start moving because they’re a new driver and haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. Maybe the person who signaled for a turn and slowed down only to speed up again and turn at the next street instead did so because their GPS is malfunctioning. Maybe the driver trying to merge at the last moment never drove on this particular road before and didn’t realize they’re in a turn-only lane. 

I’ve been in each of those situations and my intention in all of them was to get where I was going safely, not to inconvenience anyone else. Sometimes other drivers honked at me or drove so close behind me that (insert phrase here), but other times they’d be patient with me and give me time to get my bearings straight. I always appreciated the latter drivers and I try to keep this in mind when I drive. I don’t know what is going on with any driver except for myself. Even if I do, I can’t control what they do on the road; I can only control what I do and how I react to them. Rather than getting upset over things I can’t control, I try to relax, breathe through it, and focus instead on what I can control, whether I’m driving or in any other situation in life that involves interacting with others. 

Giving others the benefit of the doubt and refraining from making assumptions about them has been incredibly freeing. It’s helped me relax, prevented me from bringing negativity into a situation, and improved my interactions with others. Don’t Make Assumptions is one of the agreements in The Four Agreements, which is one of my favorite books and one of the most helpful that I’ve read. I think about it whenever I start feeling stressed and there’s always something in it that helps me feel better no matter what situation I’m in. I’m grateful for great books like this and the life hacks they contain; they’ve made a huge positive difference in my life and I hope they can do the same for you. 

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Save Some Time for Yourself

Posted on October 12, 2018 by admin

Before this past Wednesday, it had been a long time since I took a whole day to rest and do a few things for myself. For over a month, I went out somewhere and did something with other people. I love doing fun things with friends, but eventually it became too much for me. I found myself getting anxious, frustrated, and tired much more easily than usual. Plus I felt distanced from my friends and started making assumptions and reading into things, which only made me feel worse. Normally I go swing dancing on Wednesday nights but this week I decided to stay at home and relax; the place I go was closed that night, so I didn’t even end up missing anything. Since I didn’t have to go into work that day, I spent my time relaxing and doing things that I enjoy, which is one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.

One of the first things I did on Wednesday after my usual morning routine was tend to my back. I had been dealing with pain around my shoulder blade since Monday and I finally decided to do something about it. My store manager said it was probably a muscle thing (she’s been dealing with that as well), so I reread this article from The Art of Manliness and went to work. I grabbed a racquetball, found a good wall to use, and rolled the ball against the areas of my back that hurt the most. After doing that several times in short bursts, the majority of my pain was gone and I could stand up straight and breathe much more easily.

After I had given my back some relief, I relaxed on the couch with my dog and watched “Groundhog Day”, which is one of my favorite movies. As I normally do when watching a movie, I put my phone on the table behind me and forgot about it until the movie ended. Unplugging from the internet and social media for almost two hours while enjoying a great movie was one of the most enjoyable things I did that day. Also, the movie inspired me to write a blog post about it, which I worked on here and there until I was satisfied with it. For the remainder of that day, I organized part of my room, talked with a friend on the phone, juggled a bit, and played a fun computer game. 

It was wonderful to have a day to myself and be able to take it easy from beginning to end. I still got some productive things done, but I was able to avoid rushing and do them on my own time based on what I felt like doing. By the time I went to bed, I felt like I had had three days off instead of one since I used several tricks to slow down time; I hadn’t done that in a while and it was nice to get back to it. Wednesday was a much-needed break from always being on the go and never having much time to truly rest. As I write this, I feel at peace, refreshed, my back feels much better, my anxiety is gone, and I’m looking forward to interacting with others instead of dreading it. If you’re feeling stressed, anxious, frustrated, or otherwise burnt out, I highly recommend taking a day to rest and take care of yourself. It’s amazing how refreshing that can be and you don’t want to miss it.

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Review of Groundhog Day

Posted on October 11, 2018 by admin

Groundhog Day is a classic comedy movie, but it also works on a deeper level. Bill Murray plays a weatherman named Phil Connors who travels to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities. Connors is an arrogant, conceited man who wants nothing more than to get out of town and back home as soon as possible. Stuck in Punxsutawney due to a blizzard he predicted would pass over them, he finds himself stuck in a time loop, repeating Groundhog Day indefinitely without rhyme or reason. The movie follows his journey and the changes he goes through along the way.

When he first realizes he is reliving the previous day, Connors is confused. As the day progresses, he finds it hard to accept but eventually does so after spending a night out with a few locals. He then decides to live it up and do whatever he wants: driving through a mailbox, running from the police, driving on the railroad tracks, stealing money, manipulating the townsfolk for his own purposes, etc. Nobody else is aware of the time loop, which allows Connors to get away with all of these antics. He gets the big thrills out of his system before turning his attention to his producer, Rita. Gradually, he learns about her and her interests and tries to create the perfect day so as to seduce her. However, he constantly fails and causes her to storm off in a rage, leaving him alone every night. This drives him to sadness and anger shortly thereafter. As the time loop continues, he finds his situation increasingly intolerable and tries to end it by repeatedly taking his own life in various ways, only to find himself waking up every day as if nothing happened.

Connors is unable to make any true progress until he accepts his situation, surrenders to it, and begins to turn his focus away from himself and toward those around him. He starts by giving the poor, elderly man he passed by every day a large sum of money and getting some snacks for his coworkers. Late one night, he goes back to the elderly man and takes him to the hospital. While there, he is shocked and saddened to learn that the man has died. The next day, he buys him a hearty meal at a restaurant and fails despite trying desperately to revive him outside. Aside from his inability to save the elderly man, Connors is quite successful at his other positive ventures: he saves a boy from falling out of a tree, replaces a flat tire for three women, performs the Heimlich maneuver on the guy in charge of the Groundhog Day festivities, and performs other charitable acts around town. In the process, he gains the affection of the townsfolk and truly becomes a better person. Where his earlier attempts to manipulate Rita into liking him failed, his sincere efforts to be a better person and live a good life draw her to him. They end up having a quiet but enjoyable and genuine time together and he awakens the next morning to find that he is finally freed from the time loop. The movie ends with the two of them heading out to enjoy the day and planning to move to Punxsutawney as they have both grown fond of the town and the people who live there.

The message I took away from Groundhog Day is the importance of recognizing when I need to learn a lesson, figuring out what it is, and then making it a regular practice in my life. In the movie, Connors is freed from the time loop and allowed to continue his life once he learns to think of himself less and think of others more; his priorities in life were out of balance and only after he got them in order was he set free. Those who, like Connors, became stuck in one season of life with no end in sight later realized that they were kept there until they learned whatever lesson they needed before they could move on. I’ve gone through many such seasons and that pattern seems to have been present in each of them. My own experience as well as the uplifting message of the movie affirm for me that the rough times contain a necessary lesson and making it part of my life is the way out. That’s why Groundhog Day is one of the best and most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. 

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The Power of Relaxation

Posted on October 10, 2018 by admin

This is a very timely blog post for me as it’s about relaxing, which I haven’t been doing nearly enough lately. While this includes spending time at rest without doing much of anything, I’m talking about being able to relax during daily tasks. It’s easy to get caught up in the rush of modern life and spend most of the waking hours stressed out or even in a state of panic. The faster and more intense life gets, the more important it becomes to know how to be at ease even when moving quickly, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

When I find it difficult or impossible to relax, it’s usually because I feel like I lack control in whatever situation I’m in or the situation is different than I’d like it to be. It took me a long time to realize this but once I had spent enough time working on myself, it became clear to me. I noticed that relaxing made every situation smoother and more enjoyable. Even when I was busy moving a lot of things around at my job or playing sports, relaxing and not worrying about how things were going helped. I found that it’s possible to do my best, expend a great deal of energy, accomplish a lot, and want things to work out for the best without stressing over any of it. This also makes me less likely to get emotional if a situation doesn’t go how I want it to go or make mistakes due to rushing through it. 

I’ve mentioned communication in several posts and how I’ve worked hard to get better at it. While reading books about communication, writing many of my thoughts down so that they’re better organized, and practicing it a lot have all been helpful, the thing that has made the biggest difference for me is relaxing. My best conversations and most eloquent moments have come from states of relaxation during which I wasn’t worried about what to say or how to say it. Ideas for both writing and speaking seem to appear most easily when I’m relaxed and not stressing over what to talk about. If I’m relaxed and easygoing, I think others pick up on that and act accordingly; the same appears to be true for when I’m stressed out or nervous. 

Communication is a major part of interacting with other people, but speaking is only one aspect of it. Not every moment has to be filled with words, and some moments are better left in silence. My tendency is to rack my brain for something to say during any moment of silence that lasts more than a few seconds so it doesn’t become “awkward”. However, as I’ve learned more about how to relax and take control of my mind rather than be controlled by it, I’ve started giving some moments space to be. I’ve found that saying something just for the sake of speaking or preventing an “awkward” silent moment tends to create more awkward moments than silence does. Relaxing into a moment prevents it from becoming awkward and offers space for everyone involved to be with each other, continue the conversation when it feels natural, or part ways if they so desire. Additionally, being relaxed around others helps me not feel embarrassed or ashamed if I say something or make a joke that doesn’t get the reaction I was hoping for.

As you might have guessed, there are several books and online resources that have helped me relax and worry less. The ones I’ve found most helpful have been The Power of Now, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Four Agreements, and The Righteous Mind (the last one may seem strange to put on this list but I included it since it helped me understand why people believe the things they do and that it’s not worth getting emotional in interactions those with whom I disagree). Charisma on Command has a lot of great videos on mindset and this one in particular has been a huge blessing to me. And last but not least, I’ve gotten a lot of useful stuff from The Art of Manliness website; even when I’m not looking for life hacks, it’s still fun to read through the articles. Knowing the importance of relaxing and how to relax has done a lot of good for me and I hope the ideas and resources in this post help you as much as they’ve helped me.

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Review of The 4-Hour Workweek

Posted on October 9, 2018 by admin

The 4-Hour Workweek is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. Tim Ferriss packs a lot of information into the book about how to free up vast quantities of time and live more of your life on your own terms. I’ll do my best to sum it up here and hit on a few of his best points. 

Ferriss talks about how he started his own company while working a regular job and quickly built it up to the point that it was bringing in $70,000 each month. However, he was also spending the majority of his waking hours working, which eventually burnt him out and drove him to seek an escape. To accomplish this, he streamlined his business by eliminating the 20% of things that caused 80% of his problems and focusing on the 20% of customers that provided 80% of his profits, a process known as the Pareto principle. This dramatically reduced his workload and allowed him to take a vacation in another country. By using online virtual assistants to complete the majority of his remaining work and setting up a plan that required minimal involvement from him, he was able to greatly extend that vacation into what he calls a “mini-retirement”, which he tries to take as often as possible now that he’s perfected his system.

As you can see, Ferriss thinks quite differently than the entrepreneur who spends most of their time working and has almost no time for anything else; he essentially flips that idea on its head and encourages his readers to do the same. He spends most of the book providing suggestions for accomplishing more at work in a shorter span of time using the Pareto principle, arranging to work remotely rather than having to go into the office every day, starting a business that requires minimal involvement from you, and delegating tasks to virtual assistants whenever possible. Additionally, he offers ideas on how to spend your time once you’ve freed it up, including information about cheap places to live in other countries for anywhere from a few months to more than a year, exciting things to do when you get to your destination, getting plane tickets to just about anywhere without breaking the bank, and the comparative safety of a number of different countries so you minimize your risks while traveling.

I greatly enjoyed reading The 4-Hour Workweek. It felt to me like a crash course in a new way to live, so I’ll probably have to reread it several times to make the best use of it, as well as continue my research about business. However, it was wonderful to imagine myself in some of the possibilities Ferriss describes and his mindset fits quite well with my own. I’ve spent the last few years moving away from a materialist mindset into more of an “experience” mindset. I’d much rather save up my money and go on several nice trips a year than spend that money on cheap trinkets, cable TV, or something else that drains money from me while providing me with little to no enjoyment. Several of my goals in life will require a great deal of time freedom as well as financial freedom, and Ferriss offers insight on how to acquire both. Additionally, I don’t want to get stuck in a system that makes me miss out on my life because I’m always working and never have enough time to pursue my interests, passions, and life purpose. Reading The 4-Hour Workweek gave me hope for the future I’d like to have and a lot of great ideas on how to bring it to life. If any of this sounds interesting to you, then I recommend checking it out. It’s definitely a book worth reading.

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The World Around Us

Posted on October 8, 2018 by admin

Everything we can perceive about the world comes in through our senses. There are many things about the world that we can’t perceive due to the limitations of our senses even when they’re working properly. Certain frequencies are too high or too low for us to hear, we can see only a small portion of light on the electromagnetic spectrum, and so on for our other senses. Additionally, most people have at least one sense that is deficient in some way, such as poor eyesight; everyone starts out with limited senses and anyone with one or more poor senses is at an even greater disadvantage.

However, all our senses do is gather information. Our brains receive that information and ultimately make sense of it. We can be shut off from information about the world if something goes wrong with our brains even when our senses are working properly. The question then becomes: how can we truly know anything about the world? If everything we can perceive about the world depends on our senses properly gathering information and our brains correctly interpreting it, then our knowledge ultimately depends on the trustworthiness of our brains. But how can we know our brains are trustworthy, especially when they can be fooled so easily through optical, auditory, and other types of illusions?

One might propose that we can compare our ideas about the world to the world itself and see if they match, but there is a problem with that. What use is comparing our ideas about the world to our perceptions of it in order to judge the reliability of our brains if the accuracy of our perceptions requires our brains to be reliable? Rather than providing a solution, this ends up taking us in circles without ever getting us closer to a definitive answer. Without some way to view the world objectively outside of our senses and our brains to test the validity of our ideas, we end up with only our subjective experiences to go by.

Michael Stevens covers this subject much better than I can in a great Vsauce video. This is interesting to think about and discuss with others, but, as Stevens says in the video, may frustrate some as it (as far as I know) doesn’t have any clear, objectively provable answers. Personally, I just enjoy thinking about it and don’t worry about its implications. What do you think about all of this? I’m interested to hear your thoughts about this subject if you’d like to share them. 

Michael Stevens from Vsauce talking about this subject
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