Archive for September, 2009
Some people like collecting bottlecaps, some people like rock climbing, others like pottery or oil painting. If we don’t make our living doing these things (which most bottle cap collectors do not), then we call these activities “hobbies.”
But what is the value of a hobby, and why does almost everyone seem to have a few? It seems like such a potentially rich part of the human experience, so we might as well understand it and aim to get the most out of our non-professional endeavors.
What a Hobby is About-
Before going any further, lets take a look at what a hobby is (thank you dictionary.com):
Hobby, n: An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
By this definition (one that I think most people would agree with), hobbies are basically fun little things we do when we’re not working – mostly because we enjoy doing them.
This enjoyment probably comes from a million different sources for a million different people. Some people play golf because they enjoy the sense of calm that comes when they are out in nature. Some people climb rocks because they’ve always been fascinated with climbing and its something they get a certain rush from. Some people collect butterflies because they like to marvel at the beauty of such a unique and colorful creature.
These activities provide people with variety in their daily experience, sometimes with a creative outlet, sometimes with a physical challenge, etc…
We “get into” these fun little outlets and we make them a part of our lives.
I think its admirable to be engaged in our own lives and our own fun, but I would also still ask the question “what else could you be doing?” or “is this what is best for you now?” to many people involved in hobbies, myself included.
Do I consider hobbies to be evil? Do I want to tell people to stop any practice of hobbies and just work at their regular job all day long? No, not at all.
I just happen to think that often times, a person’s hobby might not be driving them in the directions that are most important in their lives.
Are Most Hobbies Just Wasting Time?-
Maybe this is a bit of a harsh way to put it. I’m not trying to stir anger and outrage in the internet community.
Lets make it clear that I don’t consider myself to be the exception to this tendency to not remain aligned with what is actually most important to us in our lives. Its just an idea to bounce out there, see if it resonates with you.
A point to consider is that our hobbies might not be bringing us towards the ideals of what we want to experience, what we want to accomplish, and who we want to become.
The obvious example might be the man struggling to support his family who has a golf hobby. He might want to reconsider spending that kind of cash on the green, and invest those hours in finding a higher paying job or picking up some side work. Assuming he values supporting his family over playing golf as a hobby (which isn’t necessarily the case, but in this example lets assume it is) – he’d better reconsider how he allocates his time, energy, and money.
I’m not only talking about cases where someone’s hobby is blatantly going against something more important to them, I’m talking about even the most subtle and seemingly innocent cases.
Lets take the example of a college student who happens to have a hobby of playing video games.
If you were to ask this college student what was most important to him in his life, “video games” would likely not make the list (it might, but in this example lets assume it does not). He might include things like: fun, meeting people, living a long and healthy life, contributing to his community, and revitalizing the environment.
While playing video games, one might ask him how playing video games is aiding him in developing those things which are most important to him in his life.
Or you could tell him to write 2 pages about his ideal future scenario of where he wants to be in 5 years. He might go into detail on the types of relationships he would have with people he cared about, he might go into the kind of house he would own and the exciting job he would be involved in.
While playing video games, one might ask him how playing video games is aiding him in creating that ideal future that he drew out so enthusiastically.
In either case he would probably tell you to lay off, stating that video games are just for fun, just to relax, and that everyone needs fun and relaxation in their lives.
Here’s where I think it gets good. Just me personally, but I like this part.
Aligning Ourselves with Purpose-
I think that most if not all people do need some form of relaxation and fun in our lives. I might ask, however, if there are other potential activities that could serve the same purpose of having a fun and relaxing effect on us, while at the same time orient us towards our highest goals.
The general principal might look like this:
For any activity that fulfills any need, determine if that need could be fulfilled by another activity which might further our highest objectives in life.
Boom. There it is. Lets look at how this idea might be applied:
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Example 1: In the example with the college student looking for fun and relaxation, he might drop the video games and instead go play basketball with friends, or get involved in some environmental causes, or do some internet research on careers in his field, or go play pool in one of the dorms.
Any of those other activities listed could not only be fun and relaxing, but would also involve other things that student actually values in his life (IE: environmental causes, living healthy, meeting people, etc…). In this way, he is orienting himself towards that which he actually wants in his life, towards the future he desires.
Example 2: A man in his 50s is an avid chess player. He enjoys the fun and the challenge of chess, and he also likes being able to play with other people and meet friends. Let us assume that this man claims that his family is the highest priority in his life above all else, and that his other main objective in life is to innovate in his field of electrical engineering.
He might be able to switch his activities and find challenge in helping his children to better in school, or rekindling the fire of passion in his marriage. He might find fun in engaging his kids in new activities and encouraging their development. He might also find challenge and fun in new experiments and projects in his field of science.
The point is here, if chess doesn’t hold value by itself, and if family and engineering innovation are his highest objectives in life, then why doesn’t he allocate his energy and time towards enriching his family relationships and actually making progress on experiments in his field? If those are the things he actually does value most, then there seems to be not value not to.
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Am I saying that chess is a bad thing, or that videos games are a bad thing? Of course not, but I am saying that nothing is exempt from potential scrutiny in terms of aligning our lives with what we actually want to do with them in the first place – to what is genuinely most important to us.
It might very well be that for the older man, chess holds a value and an importance that cannot be filled by other activities. It might be that for the young student, video games hold a unique kind of fun and relaxation effect that actually charges him up and makes him ideally effective in achieving what he most wants to achieve and becoming who he most wants to become.
If they were to make that distinction for themselves, I wouldn’t question their actions.
However, I would probably ask them to look inside themselves and determine if those activities at those times were genuinely what they deemed best for themselves.
This doesn’t just go for hobbies, though, this kind of introspection, self understanding and prioritizing can (and occasionally should?) be done with any action or decision.
This brings us to the last segment…
What it Breaks Down to:
Now we’ve gone beyond the isolated occurrences of “hobbies” and onto the bigger picture of living on our own best terms.
Participation in hobbies, like any other action or decision, can be referred to against the reality of what is actually most important to that individual at that time in that situation.
The breakdown looks like this:
Given what you value in your life, given what you want to accomplish, experience, and become, and given where you want to be in 1, 2, 5, 10, 80 years, is what you’re doing right now the ideal action?
Now, if the above question was posed to someone and they could honestly say “yes,” then they are either neglecting the complexity of the question and blatantly placating themselves, or they are genuinely living with a greater degree of conscious involvement and depth than 99% of the population on the planet.
For instance, the chess playing man might genuinely believe that helping his children study could make them reliant on his help, and that he can only focus on innovation in engineering for so long at a time, so there are times when chess as an activity is genuinely best for him given what he values and wants to achieve – then more power to him – he seems to be living life “on purpose” and is consciously following through on what actually matters to him.
Of course we can know very little about what is “objectively” the best decision for us given our values and goals, so we can never do more than make our best intelligent determination of what our best decision is – but it seems to make sense to have a criterion to reference in making such a distinction.
Lets not forget that we have a massive capacity to deceive ourselves, and we will tend to rationalize and avoid change. However, if we at least set our compass we won’t be able to help getting closer to alignment with our highest values day by day.
…
We’re alive for how long?
What are we doing with this time?
What matters to us?
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Here’s a bunch of my personal notes from an inquiry on Integrity and Congruence. I argue that the
repercussions of living without this inner harmony has detrimental spill-over in many facets of
our lives:
Didn’t clean it us a tremendous amount to get “bloggy,” its just cold content, a mesh of a lot of schools of thought and insight.
Enjoy.
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Congruence means ‘in agreement or harmony.’ When I talk about congruence in terms of self development, I’m referring to a general sense of integrity within ourselves and with our behavior.
This implies understanding what you want to achieve in your life and acting in accordance. This implies understanding who you want to be and what virtues you want to exemplify in your life and acting in accordance. This implies knowing what youwant to experience in your life and acting in accordance.
Having this degree of real self understanding is massively valuable in life. Again, so much of our stress and anxiety originates from not understanding what we want, and from not actually taking action on what we want. Settling most of this works wonders.
I’m going to drop a bunch of mindset ideas onto the board right now and let you all soak them in. Like I said before this is big picture stuff, this is how we tie these ideas together into a way of living on our own terms.
COMPLAINING
Have you ever known anyone who was doing something but complaining about it the entire time? Kids do this all the time with schoolwork or sports practice, or fixing their car, etcetera. Basically anything that isn’t immediately fun or entertaining is put in the “complain” category.
I’m going to pose something to you guys, I’m going to throw out a perspective and see if it resonates with you. I pose that when people complain about something while they’re doing it, the issue is not the activity itself, but the fact that the person doing it is not sure enough that this is his best action and is not confident enough to make a clear determination and stick with it. If your car tire runs flat and you have to pull over to put it up on the jack, do get pissed and kick your car door? Do you curse your car and your life?
We’ve all seen people freak out on their cars when something like this happens, and the reason its ridiculous is because its a completely useless expenditure of energy. Kicking the car doesn’t fix it, and it also doesn’t help you avoid the issue in the future, it just adds another car door ding to your list of expenses.
You could say the same about a big assignment like an essay. Sometimes you’ll see someone writing an essay and they’ll say “man this sucks, I wish I could be at the beach” or “I’d so much rather be playing mini-golf” or whatever.
Again, I’ll pose they complain partially because they don’t have a clear enough concept of what is best for them in their lives, or what they want out of life and what that requires, and so they act on objectives – like schoolwork or fixing their car – out of a sense of “should” and “have to,” and they resist it the entire time.
Someone who exhibits congruence would probably not prefer a flat tire, but if their best rationally determined action is to fix the car (or apply the spare) – given where they want to be and who they want to me – then they’ll fix the car.Why resist the best action? This doesn’t happen unless you never confidently come to conclude what is genuinely best for you. The thing is, you can’t do that unless you understand yourself and are settled within yourself.
In the eyes of the congruent individual, reality is as such, his values are as such, and his objectives are as such. An action is chosen and followed through on, period.
Granted we can calculate the ramifications of every action and thought we ever have, but someone who is settled in themselves will be able to make a best determination and have the confidence and wherewithal to follow through. Decisiveness comes naturally from a clear understanding of the “what”s and “why”s of our lives.
TWO-FACED TENDENCIES
Lets go to another example. Do any of you know someone who conveys a different self to different people? They might totally agree with one person on a certain topic, and then agree completely with someone else who has an opposite view. I think the term “two faced” implies malice, but to be honest I feel that most of these people aren’t consciously malicious – though I’m sure some of them are.
Sometimes the matters at hand are trivial, and the individual tells one friend he likes vanilla ice cream best and he tells his other friend that strawberry is his favorite. This is silly but harmless. What if the matter at hand is more serious? What if this person is talking about who to blame for a conflict within a group of friends, and they end up siding with whoever they are talking to. This is remarkably common, right?
Again I’m going to get bold here and pose an idea to you all. This is something you can take or leave on your own accord of course, but hear me out. I pose that one reason why someone will put up all these fronts with different people is because they do not have a clear conception of their own standards, values, and preferences. They wait for other people to tell them what is right, what is important, even what flavor of soft serve tastes good. They are so disconnected and unsettled from any kind of self understanding or firm beliefs of their own that they talk and act in completely opposite ways around different people.
They haven’t developed the capacity to make distinctions for themselves and stick by them as real and authentic.
ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVES OF OTHERS
Another example: have you ever met someone who always seems to be running around for everyone else? These people make commitments with anyone who asks for a favor. If someone asks for help on an essay or needs someone to cover for them in a volleyball game or needs a ride to the airport, this person just agrees to it.
Consequently these people get run into the ground, right? They have so much of other people’s stuff to get done they barely have time for themselves. They rush to fulfill the objectives of others while their own goals aren’t met. At the same time, they commit to so much that often they forget their commitments or they are unable to fulfill them all – and sometimes this gives them a bad wrap. Seems so unfair, huh?
Time to pose another congruence idea. See if this one clicks, again I’m just putting this out there for you to gauge on your own. I pose that these people spend their time running around doing everyone else’s stuff because they don’t have a firm enough idea of what their own “stuff” is, and how to move it forward.
If you find someone who is always rushing around for other people, I encourage you to ask them what’s most important in their own lives and how they plan on going about it. I am almost guaranteeing and you will not get more than a vague, blurry, and broken vision. Here’s why:
If you don’t know how much you have on your plate in terms of projects and objectives, and someone you know requests a bit of your help, your mind will probably first look at your own life and determine if such a commitment is viable.
If your idea of your own aspirations or personal responsibilities and projects look like a gooey grey mass because you haven’t determined any of it firmly, then you’ll refer to that grey mass and assume that you can fit something else in there. And you agree.
On the other hand, if you have your purpose defined, and your specific short and long term objectives defined with next steps to take on each one, then when someone asks for your help on their own project or endeavor, you are no longer referencing a gooey grey mass of pseudo-ideas, you are looking at a well orchestrated map of your future and of your current allocation of time and energy. Hence, you will now make a rational determination depending on your actual ability to take on more activity, instead of aimlessly taking on obligations.
NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH ON PLANS
Have you ever known someone who is always saying they are going to do something, but they never do?
A common example is the person who drinks and says “oooh man, drinking sucks I seriously don’t want to drink anymore, seriously!” Then three days later they’re puking over a toilet saying the same BS?
Why is this? Why?
This happens because the person has to real standards for how they will act and what they have determined to be best for them given what they value in life. They probably don’t make any decisions based on their personal ideals and standards. The way they act with drinking is probably the way they act with everything.
If its perceived to be pleasant – and its a common behavior – then they partake in it. When there’s some pain associated to it, they totally bail on it… until they don’t feel so bad and they run the same circuit.
If there are no deeper understanding in terms of what you stand by as a person, if there is no pain and pleasure attached to real outcomes you want in your life, and the person you want to be – then you can’t help but be yanked by pleasure and pain in the present – you can’t help but be incongruent.
BOREDOM
We could say that someone who is bored just doesn’t have adequate stimulation or material around him to keep his brain occupied. Or we could say that the stimulation doesn’t fit to his specific interests or even to his values, and so he experiences the frustration of boredom.
The ‘quick and cheesy tip’ for this issue of boredom might be to remember to bring around a book when going to the bank or to have fun music to play in the car at all times or to avoid places that don’t offer enough stimulation or information.
These might be good tips, but I think that there is a deeper kind of development that we can achieve that strikes at the root of all boredom: being disengaged in the environment / with our live sin general.
I argue that if you know what you value and are actively oriented toward the attainment of your ideals, being who you want to be, and experiencing what you want to experience, you will always find a way to engage the present moment to exemplify your kind of excellence.
You could lock me in a dark room for 2 hours, and so long as I knew I wasn’t getting locked in forever (in which case I’d be franticly scrambling to get out), I would not get bored. I could do calisthenics, I could give time management speeches to imaginary audiences, I could focus intensely on all that I’m grateful for in my life, I could visualize my desired future, I could catch up on sleep.
The possibilities are always endless, if you seek to engage yourself in life you will find ways to do so – you will find ways to enjoy and learn from the present and orient yourself towards your ideals despite your surroundings – which is fulfilling in itself.
I will wager that the person you know to be bored more than anyone else has a very weak idea of what they enjoy in life, of what they want to do and who they want to be. Hold me to that one. If they did, they would DO SOMETHING about it in the present moment.
LACK OF DRIVE AND MOTIVATION
We might argue that someone without drive or ‘motivation’ is in a situation that lacks opportunity, or that he is born a more lazy person, or that he just doesn’t want to do ‘big things’ – and that doesn’t make him “bad,” does it?
A ‘lazy’ person just has weak reasons to do anything. If he had strong reasons to get up and accomplish something, or develop himself, or help others, or create works of art – he would do it. He just isn’t connected to what is compelling within himself – he isn’t connected to his own deepest values – to what brings him joy – to his dreams.
If he understood what was valuable to him in terms of relationships, fun activities, tasks related to his highest and most desirable goals – he would be striving every second of his life.
If he only had that degree of self understanding, then by virtue of congruence he would not be able to stay away from striving for his ideals – be they huge or small.
ISSUES WITH SELF IMAGE
Some people take the judgements of others to heart, or they take external failures to heart. It seems like these people might just be more ’sensitive’ than others. Their feelings are more easily hurt than most.
Band-aide solution: Tell the person to keep their head up, not feel so bad, and try again. Tell them that they are a winner for keeping up the effort.
Again, I argue that a much deeper issue is underlying this apparent ’sensitivity.’ I argue that a person who is so negatively effected by outside events – such as the judgement of others or apparent ‘failures’ – is in fact just unsure of their own traits and of what constitutes merit for them.
Their identity is not clear at all, so when someone else has a response to them, this is dictating reality to them, that is telling them the kind of person they are. They depend upon the response to see their identity.
Someone who knows the path they are on, who has made their own real distinctions about right and wrong, cool and uncool – they are rooted within themselves in that they know who they are and what they stand for. Outside events happen and people make judgements, but they have their own firm determination of their purpose and standards, and so they don’t feel like a ‘bad person’ and they don’t feel ‘out of place’ when other people respond to them negatively.
The sensitive person merely needs to get a grip on who they are and what they stand for, this will eliminate 98% of their dependance on other people to tell them their worth or quality.
Someone settled in their own world, someone who has determined his path and his character firmly – he will not be disturbed. His reality rests on internal pillars, not external ones.
INDECISION
This idea ties into the ideas of ‘boredom,’ ‘complaining’ and ‘not following through on plans.’
Essentially, someone who understands what they want to do, who they want to be, and what they want to experience will much more easily come to conclusions as to what is best for him in his life than someone with only very value, socially defined standards for themselves.
Someone connected to himself in this way will be able to identify what is best for him because he has a path to follow, while indecision typically plagues he who has no idea what he wants, why he wants it, or how to get it. Such a person will live in indecision.
Someone with a firm idea as to what they want, why they want it, and how they will get it will always be able to come to at least a direction to head in – if not a specific plan.
DEPENDENCE ON PRESENT STIMULUS
Someone who has no idea of what they value, of who they want to be, and of where they’re going with their lives will be very easily swayed by stimulus in the present.
Just like the person who couldn’t follow through on plans – they get sucked into what looks appealing at the time. Someone else has an idea that seems cool – someone else has a sense of certainty – they the incongruent person chases that.
They will tend to respond much more to what seems pleasurable in the moment, avoiding what seems painful in the moment – so much so that it will seem as though they are going against what they value because they do things like lie to friends or steal.
In fact, this isn’t really going against their standards because they don’t really have standards, they have vague ideas of how they ’should’ act, and these reasons are not true to them as individuals.
Someone rooted within can see genuine value in what they stand for. They have made “firm distinctions” (important bit of jargon) about what is important to them, about the kind of behavior they want to permit from themselves and others, about what they aim to do and who they aim to be. The standards that they are connected to within themselves provide pleasure when exemplified, and provide pain when violated.
Hence, the congruent person will have internal factors that they stay consistent to, and they are not only pushed and pulled by the apparent pains and pleasures around them in the present, but they are pushed and pulled by a commitment to what is important to them as people.
Here I’ve just put forward a bunch of different situations in which a lack of congruence plays a role. In the example of the person who resists the present activity, the individual lacks the ability to look at their situation and their own values and objectives in an accurate fashion. This being the case they cannot confidently commit to a course of action without resisting it or double-thinking it – they are not settled. In the second example, the gossiping individual has no firm sense of what is cool, or of what is right or wrong in their own world, and so they incongruently bend their supposed intent to random social pressure – they are not settled. In the third example, the busy body has no idea of his own life’s objectives and of what it will take to get to them, he lacks that crucial self-understanding and so bends to the requests of everyone around him – he is not settled. In the third example, the individual makes a vow to himself to avoid something, but the vow is based on nothing inside himself, it is based on pain in the present moment. As soon as it disappears he acts against what some part of him probably recognizes is best – he is not settled.
This idea of congruence basically implies living on your own terms completely and by your own standards.
It is obvious that this idea of congruence is not the only psychological factor at play in these imaginary scenarios, and its also not the only potentially valid perspective to take on these scenarios. In the first example, the anger might arise more from a surprised disappointment than from an ignorance or lack of confidence in terms of what the best action is. In the second example the gossiping individual might have pressing issues with self esteem and so depends on the acceptance and approval of others. In the third example the man running around doing other people’s tasks might hold exceptionally high standards for himself in terms of making his family and friends productive and joyous. Who knows?
The fact of the matter is – in my humble opinion and empirical first hand experience – getting an understanding of your purpose, of your own values, and of your own distinctions on how to live in accordance with your ideals, a lot of these other petty issues in your life start to straiten themselves out so easily. Soooo easily.
Its not like “okay, self-help book time, I’ll use technique 546 and when I feel resistance well up inside me, I’ll breathe in 13 times slowly through my left nostril…” And look, I have nothing against self-help books or teachings, I guess technically I fit in that category although I don’t use that term too much. But yeah a lot of that stuff is great stuff, but what if we were able to strike at it from a deeper level in terms of coming to meaningful evaluations of the world based on your own standards as a human being and acting along with your ideas in accordance?
Now we’re not as much talking about tips and tricks, we’re talking about personal identity and empowering ways to move through every facet of our experience. Now, you see, we’re talking not so much about the “doing” – about following steps and using memorized techniques – but more about the “being” – about living as a settled, confident, STRONG individual. This is a major aim for me in self-development terms, this kind of change in our deeper nature to becoming a more at ease, capable, joyous, bold person, and I’d certainly want you all to be able to strive for that as well.
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There seems to be a theme in the above issues. All issues obviously stem from a lack of congruence and integrity.
They all also seem to have to do with a form of indecision or lack of initiative.
BOREDOM – we cannot find something to do to stimulate or engage our minds
INDECISION – we cannot determine which actions to choose because we have no real reference
TWO-FACED TENDENCIES – we cannot determine which side to take because we aren’t sure ourselves
LACK OF DRIVE AND MOTIVATION – we aren’t compelled to act and so we stagnate
NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH ON PLANS - we aren’t connected to anything compelling in the plans we committed to, and so we do nothing about actually acting on them
ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVE OF OTHERS – we have nothing to act upon for ourselves and we find ourselves experiencing cognitive dissonance for picking up everyone else’s chores
This theme of indecision is likely because without an understanding of what we value in life, or where we want to be, or how to get there – we cannot adequately act. Decisions are more difficult when there is no meta-purpose to base them off of. Even the decision to make a business’s purpose one of profit is a decision that is either based on what a business is ’supposed’ to be based off of, or it is based upon what we genuinely value in a business to suppose our highest aims.
Having this internal reference provides clarity in terms of what is best for us in our own determination, and it also provides ‘motivation’ in that we follow through due to an action’s relation to what we value most in life.
Many of them also have to do with what looks to be a kind of dependence:
ISSUES WITH SELF IMAGE – dependence on the judgements of others to validate you
COMPLAINING – dependence on ease and pleasure in the present moment
BOREDOM – dependence on specific stimulation in the present moment
TWO-FACED TENDENCIES – dependence on the acceptance and validation of others
DEPENDENCE ON PRESENT STIMULUS – dependence on pain and pleasure in the present to leverage our decisions for us
This dependence likely springs forth from the fact that we are unable to provide ourselves with intellectual stimulation to be engaged in life, we are unable to determine the merit of ourselves, our actions, or our views.
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