Archive for the ‘Self Development’ Category

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:

___

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.

___

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?

Whelp, we better get to it.

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

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.

___

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.

__________________________________

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.

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

 

As I stated in my first post, I have begun a Life Experiment involving a focus on positive outcomes. 

For well over a week I’ve taken time before the majority of my day’s major activities and focused on what I wanted to do, what I wanted to get done, and how I wanted to experience and move through the activity or event itself.

Some of the times I felt as though I was wasting my own time (part of my mind was saying “let me just DO things, come on!”), while other times I felt as though I had benefitted myself through the habit.

After a short while of practice and reflection, I think I’ve come to understand visualization and imagining positive outcomes a little bit better, and here’s the breakdown:

_________________________________________________________________

Reticular Activator System:

Before getting into this project, I was already aware of positive visualization (imagining ideal scenes, imaging ideal outcomes, etc…) as a tool that would gear our mind towards that which we desired most.

The portion of the brain called the reticular activator system is generally thought to be the place in our minds that determines what we pay attention at any given time. If we focus on hair styles and think of nothing but styling hair, we will notice hair styles everywhere, we will pick up on details about the styles of hair that we see on anyone we meet or even everyone we see. That’s what we focus on, and so our reticular activator system shows us that information in as many ways as possible.

The idea is, if you focus on failure, your mind will only notice the millions of ways to fail and will not open your mind to methods of success. It will keep you trapped in behaviors and thoughts which bring about what you think about – failure. 

Hence, if you think success and your mind is geared towards what you actually want in your life, your filters will align to let you see all those factors which will lead to your success – it will bring you to manifest behaviors and notice new perspectives that will further your objectives.

That’s the premise.

 

The Value of Visualization:

During my personal experimentation, I noticed that positive visualization is useless unless it serves one of two functions:

• Enhances the experience you feel (brings about happiness or charisma or compassion, or whatever emotional resource you deem to be best)

For instance, sometimes my visualization was not very specific or even particularly sharp, but I only thought of positive outcomes while listening to some fun music. This might not give me a clue as to what I should actually do during the event or activity, but it would bring me into an energetic and outgoing emotional state, which I would experience along with my visualization of the event – and also with the event itself.

Essentially, this is about involving feeling into the visualization process. Wether that involves getting pumped about an outcome you really want, or moving around energetically, or listening to some good music tracks.

• Enhances your meaningful objectives (clarifies what needs to actually get done, brings you to follow through on actions towards your goals)

For instance, a few times I barely visualized at all but wrote down different tasks to accomplish in a certain context or during a certain activity. This by itself was able to structure my experience of the event and make it more enjoyable and more geared towards my purpose.

I find that a simple check involving the question “what is my purpose?” will often yield steps towards that purpose. I did this at meetings, before teaching Jiu Jitsu class, or before going to the beach – all to just make note of exactly why I was going there and what I could do there in terms of my highest aims. This might be talking to someone in private, or asking a specific question, or buying something at the store, or dropping something off to someone I thought I was going to see. 

The Habit of Success-Thinking:

Additional future value of positive visualization is the fact that it aids in developing the habit of thinking about positive outcomes.

If we are able to gear our minds towards imagining absolute success in terms of any activity or event, we are on the track of getting towards those desired outcomes. We will help to gear our senses, our emotions, and our intellect towards what is best for the achievement of our ideal future.

We are what we think. We bring what we think into the world in far more ways than we are consciously aware of. Imagine if that entire process worked FOR us!

However, visualization needn’t be done during a pause before an activity in the way I did during this activity. It can be done far ahead of the activity, and most importantly during the event or activity. For this reason, my experiment (which I will provide the result for in a different post) isn’t an accurate measure of how much I “positively visualized” about a particular situation.

This brings us too:

 

An Ever-Present Function:

So long as we alive, our mind filters information to some degree. Wether we are walking on the beach, working on the job, or going to a social event, we are almost always thinking – at least to a slight degree, but often to a very noticeable one. 

If these thoughts swirl around failure, it will be difficult for us to achieve success (and if we do achieve it, it will be harder to notice). 

For example:

You plan to attend a social event with the goal of having fun and sharing stories and adventures with new people.

Before even leaving your house you think of how awkward you will feel trying to have fun with new people. You think about how people might react to you, you think about how that might feel. Your mind flashes with mental pictures of you off in a corner by yourself. 

When you enter the party, you remind yourself that you are here to meet fun new people and have a blast with them, but you can’t seem to achieve that end.

We might not consider what happened here to be formal “visualization,” but nonetheless, the reticular activator system was responding constantly to your thoughts. 

Since the inner pictures and dialogue were about failure in the given situation, you would have worked against yourself in two separate ways:

 

1. You would have brought your mind to notice mostly the information that would be related to your thoughts – and since your thoughts were about social “failure,” your lenses of perception would be likely to let through just that information to bring you to social “failure.”
2. You would have associated socializing – or that social scene in particular – with “failure,” with “rejection,” with pain. Doing this continually will bring you to generally fear these experiences in those given context, hence permanently keeping you from the attainment of your ideals in that realm.

Now let us imagine you think and feel a bit differently:

You plan to attend a social event with the goal of having fun and sharing stories and adventures with new people.

Before you even walk into the event, your mind spins with excitement around who you will meet there and all the fun you’ll have. You see yourself walking around and talking to everyone, spreading the party out and having a blast.

When you’re at the party itself, you feelings and thoughts are 100% aligned with your objective to have fun and meet new exciting people. You’re living your ideals because your mind contains no thoughts that aren’t congruent to the ideals themselves.

We might not consider this to be formal “visualization,” either, but the fact of the matter is that our emotional state and perception lenses were completely on “success,” and so we found it effortlessly.

Here you are aligning our thoughts with our ideals and so living out our ideals as an extension of your mental activity (which in this case is an excited, charismatic expression). You are also coming to associate social scenarios with pleasure, since that is the emotion that swirls in your body as our mind swirls with pleasurable thoughts.

To conclude, I have decided to slightly alter my Life Experiment to adjust for the details of how I believe the reticular activator system to genuinely function.

In my opinion, the most important thing about “visualization” is its effect on our perceptual lenses – which in turn affect our intellect, thought, and action. The subtle stream of thought before, during, and after an activity is likely to be far more important a determiner of our experience than a few minutes of visualization beforehand.

Hence, in addition to recording the duration and intensity of my visualization before an activity, followed by a rundown of my experience of the activity itself – I will do something different.

For at least one activity a day, I will also record something about the state of my mind during the activity. I will write about my focus during the activity, the inner dialogue I experience, and how I take control (or don’t take control) of it.

This might be a challenging task, since I will intentionally getting in my own head – which might bring about negative consequences since the most positive “flow” states (from my experience and from evidence in my psychology research) involve a certain letting go of self-awareness, a certain out-of-your-head-ness. 

This experiment will be longer than expected, but I’m sure it will be worth it in terms of insight and experience. I’m excited to dive into the understanding of the reticular activator and gain a better understanding of how we can come to control our perception and our experience!

 

 

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

 

We’ve all had times when we were completely compelled to dive into our productive work, and we’ve all had times when a part of us would do anything within reason to avoid it. I’m willing to bet that anyone reading this can think of at least 3 examples of both.

Understanding why this is implies an understanding of meaning, and of the factors that drive us to action.

 

On the job, striving for and creating compelling work usually implies:

• Having clarity in terms of what’s going on in the company and where it’s going (based off the company’s objectives and vision, as well as an understanding of what the company does to sustain itself)
• Knowing what it is you are doing, why you’re doing it, and what we are responsible for (involving our actionable plans, our reasons why we are doing the activity and its relevance to the company vision and core business, as well as what specifically we must accomplish and by when)

When we don’t know what’s going on in the company in the first place, if it often hard for us as workers to know that our actions are in alignment with that.

Consequently, we are not clear on why it is that we are doing what we are doing, and so we feel less compelled to completion.

Similarly, if we are not sure as to exactly what is expected of us, and what exactly we will do as an individual, we likely will not feel compelled to act.

If you’re boss runs into your office and quickly blurts out – “Hey, I need you to market our new whatchamacallit,” you’d probably want to ask him a few more questions before you followed his command.

Why? Because such a command is so vague as to be non-actionable. You need to know who you’re marketing to, you need to know how you should place the product. You need to know where this new thing fits into the company’s objectives in the first place.

Until you figure those things out (either from your boss directly, or by coming to a confident conclusion on your own), you will likely not feel driven to finish the project because you do not have what you need to confidently move it forward (meaning, actionable items, specifics as to what needs to be done, etc…)

I argue that the same can be said about our lives in general. In order to move forward in any life change, project or desired outcome, we need to have made determinations about our own highest objectives, our reasons for doing things in the first place, the specifics of the task involved, etc… It needs to make enough grand scene sense for us to be able to wrap our minds fully around it without feeling weird about it.

 

In life, feeling great while moving forward and making real progress on a desired outcome usually requires us to understand:

• Where we are in our entire life, and where we want to be (based off of our own ideals and purpose, as well as our values and what excites or compels us)
• What we need to do, why we’re doing it, and what we hold ourselves accountable for (involving our actionable plans, our reasons why as connected to our values, purpose, etc…, and a personal decision to bring about an outcome)

If you’ll notice, these criterion are more or less identical to those involved in getting productive work done on the job. 

These criterion apply far outside the realm of work (as ideas, or course they can be applied wherever and in whatever way you imagine, this is important to imagine). 

 

If you are putting an activity off, or if you feel down about something you are doing, be sure to have these criterion available. 

Recently I wrote about “Modeling a Fulfilling Life,” where I outline a process for understanding and recording a draft of important self understandings, visions, and objectives. It serves as a fine guide in this analysis of activities – which will help to streamline your priorities.

To refer to that article, click here.

 

Could it be said that some activity do not require these criterion? It could, yes, and I never intend to say out my opinions and thoughts as concrete laws of the gods. However, having these specific understandings under wraps helps us to look at an activity, process, or decision completely and not experience resistance.

It helps give us a sense of congruence in the idealistic and physical world, and aides in eliminating the kind of mental entropy that arises from not finding that congruence.

Thats worthwhile for me.

 

Recently I have modeled my own life and pursuits in an interesting format that I hadn’t ever thought of before.

I was listening to “Getting Things Done” on audio and I remember David Allen talking about “org charts.” I had no ideal what this meant, so I looked it up on Wikipedia (which – when combined with Google – can provide all the knowledge and wisdom any human will ever need).

Once I saw an “org chart” (short for “organizational chart”), I thought of its applications and how the hierarchical model would work in different contexts.

I thought about the purpose of my own life, and how the different facets of my life path naturally flowed from there. I then thought about the major pursuits I’m involved in, and the projects I am building currently. All of these aspects build off of each other.

I figured that an org chart might be a solid reference point where new activities and pursuits could be cross referenced, and where purpose could be reviewed, aligned with, or tweaked.

For me, this tool is nice to get a clear idea on structuring the way we make priorities – which basically boils down to:

• What do you value?
• What do you live for?
• What do you yearn to develop, create, experience?
• …What are you doing right now?

Thats what this is about on my end. That’s the kind of integrity and congruence that I believe to be immensely fulfilling.

I’ll run you through how I went about assembling an “org chart” for myself:

(Note: I am writing this as though its a kind of instructional, but of course its just the way I went about it. If you want to recreate an org chart like this for yourself I think you’ll find it useful, but this isn’t the best “method” or anything. To me, this chart is all about what works for me in terms of keeping my highest aims and priorities in line with what I’m doing with my life. If this idea resonates with you, roll with it. I’m not a Guru, I’m just a guy who doesn’t sleep because he reads and writes this stuff constantly.)

 

 

 

1) Highest Purpose

Come to a basic conclusion as to your highest reason for living, your purpose and most high objective.

Be warned, this will be a vague statement. Mine looks something like this “Maximal enjoyment, growth, and experience of richness for myself, with maximal benefit incurred to the world through me.“ I would like this to be my reasoning behind all action, my highest purpose. I aim to align myself with this purpose through my actions and choices.

You might want to emphasize your family or yourself, or you might want to de-emphasize yourself. Its really your own bag, here. 

Think about if you had one sentence that would be the base reason for everything you did. Write a bunch of them until one hits you in the chest. For now, use that one (you might tweak any of this stuff as soon as you feel the genuine pull to do so).

No matter what, make sure that your purpose is as boiled down as possible. In other words, do not mention your job unless your job has some form of immense, innate value in and of itself and serves no higher end. 

This statement will not be something very easily actionable – and by itself this broad statement of higher purpose will not provide you with any plans. However, it will be the basis for any planning you’ll ever make. Think about it, would you ever conscious plan out anything that wasn’t channeled towards your own highest purpose for living?

 

2) Core Pursuits

Determine the core pursuits and areas of focus that constitute the attainment of your highest purpose.

This involves understanding what actually achieves your highest objective. Again, these areas will also be relatively vague, but they will put some kind of form or context to the method in which you will attain and live through your higher purpose. 

For me, these areas include “Enriching Relationships,” “Innovation in Self Development,” and “Logistics / Health.”

For me, relationships of all kinds are the magnifiers of the human experience, and understanding how to manage, form, and cultivate relationships that are ideally enriching is a huge component in general fulfillment.

In terms of a purpose in work and creative endeavor, dedication to understanding and innovating in self development is something that will provide me with an outlet to produce presentations, understandings, and techniques to seriously better their own lives – while at the same time I will learn more about maximizing my own potential and living my life to the fullest on my terms.

The rest has to do with the factors that are required in the attainment of my other two branches off my highest purpose – anything that will help me experience more awesome mutual relationships / friendships / etc…, or anything that will aide in my continued, fulfilling innovation in the field of self development. This includes health, organization, and getting things done in general (which entails delegating tasks, 

You might have many more categories than I do, or you might have the same amount as I. I Would recommend that you group them in a manageable way. If you have kayaking, mountain climbing, water skiing, and snowboarding as 4 separate “core pursuits,” you might think about classifying  then together with “Health,” “Athletics,” or “Adventure.” Keep in mind that even these categories might fit well into other broader categories. 

 

3) Channels of Your Pursuits

Determine individual branches from your core pursuit that are central to you ideally maximizing them in terms of your highest purpose. 

A little wordy, huh? What I’m trying to get across is that each of these broach pursuits will have numerous branches to it, numerous sub-pursuits that are aligned with your highest purpose. If one of you’re core pursuits is Spiritual Development, then maybe your branches involve meditation, living the virtues of your faith, and studying spirituality.

For me, I can say that in terms of “Health / Logistics“, for example, I have three categories: “Health + Function” (includes all details on keeping myself physically and mentally sharp in order to live longer and experience more in terms of enjoyment and be able to contribute more), “Getting Things Done” (this isn’t a reference to the book GTD, it involves the broad category of moving projects and pursuits along with planned, organized grace so that I am able to do as much as I can in an optimally efficient way).

 

4) Ideals to Work Towards

Identify what ideal or set of ideals it is you want to be striving towards with your core pursuits – ensure that this relates to your highest purpose.

This is the base of the org chart diagram. If you look at my example org chart, you’ll see 3 large boxes on the bottom of the image correlating this the 3 core pursuits. I didn’t include text because it would be messy, but you get the point.

These boxes serve to be references to the ideals towards which your projects and pursuits aim. For instance, below the sub-pursuits of my “Logistics / Health” (in my actual diagram) I have a few bullet points that read:

• Increased efficiency and ability to delegate tasks and finish projects
• Spending as little time as possible on tasks that are not ideally enriching on my own terms
• Working towards holistic physical wellness

This is what the “Logistics / Health” category is about. I want to basically be as swift as possible in the processed and tasks that I will be heavily involved in, while looking to more and more channel my life towards the fulfilling experiences and activities that I most want to be enveloped in.

 

Adding Projects

Determine individual projects for your core pursuits, each of which will involve plans and next actions.

Here I’m going to cover the topic of “projects” in brief. If you really want to get into this, check out David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done.” Here goes:

It should be noted that “projects” are not on my sample diagram near the top of this post. I have a “project list” in a text file that I use for this purpose, the org chart itself is just a reference for me to keep myself reminded of and aligned with my purpose.

Once you’ve determined your highest purpose, as well as the branches that will be your pathway to that purpose, determine individual projects (long and short term) that will serve to maximize your efforts in those pursuits towards your purpose.

For instance, in my branch for “Innovation in Self Development,” I have individual projects for establishing a club for Self Development at my university, and a project for developing a presentation on productivity that I plan on giving to students at my school, and many more. Each of these projects relates directly to my ideals and purpose.

 

What its About

I find that if catch more people in the midst of most of their daily actions, you can ask them “Why are you doing this?” and they will not be able to provide any sort of informed response. In my opinion, being purpose-confused is no way to live our lives.

Like I’ve said before, this entire model – for me, anyways – is about being able to reference a system to make my decisions clean and in line with what I’m all about.

Again:

• What do you value?
• What do you live for?
• What do you yearn to develop, create, experience?
• …What are you doing right now?

Those 4 questions might be the most simple breakdown of what this whole idea of modeling is about for me in the first place. Once the purpose, pursuits, and projects are aligned they tend to promote compelling, meaningful action.

This look at self understanding, combined with plan / action / purpose understanding is described in more detail in my article “Principle of Universal Motivation.”

 

Extra tips for doing it yourself:

Q: How many core pursuits and sub-pursuits should I include here?

A: Whatever is manageable and functional for you. You might end up with only 2 core pursuits that you channel your life towards in order to achieve your highest purpose. You might also have 12 sub-pursuits under one core pursuit. Mine might have some categories that are vague, but thats because I like this model to be clean and workable.

Q: What if I want to use categories other than the 4 categories that you included here?

A: By all means, go for it. Highest Purpose, Core Pursuits, Sub-Pursuits, and Ideals are just what I found most useful – it wasn’t sent to me from the heavens on a stone slab. If you want to include your biggest projects into this mix – do it! If you’d rather look at contexts of your life (IE: home, work, etc…) and not pursuits – do it! Do whatever seems to work best in terms of organizing our purpose in a graphic form – or whatever serves as the best reference to keep you on point with your greatest goals and ideals.

 

In order to actually get the most out of this as a model, you will ideally analyze each segment by cross-referencing your ideals and your life. Are your day to day activities aligned with your highest purpose? 

How can you channel yourself more fully into the core pursuits that will enable you to live your purpose? How can you turn your subjective desire for something into a real, finish-able project?

You will likely find times when you would like to edit your model. Projects will always be changing and should be updated weekly at least – but even your highest purpose and core pursuits may need revision over time, and it will be your genuine creativity that will mold them into something you can follow.

Have fun.

 

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

 

I’ll just kill some time before we go out tonight.

 

I’ve got to find a good way to kill some time.

 

Nothing much, just killing time this weekend.

People tend to be interested in “getting through” extended periods of time in order to get to other, future periods of time. 

They might “get through” work so that they can come home. Or they might “kill time” watching TV until they head off to work. Some do both (oh, the horror!).

People “kill time” when they are stuck in a traffic jam, or in line at a bank. Some do so with friends, or while they are getting paid to be productive at work.

 

What this boils down to is disengaging yourself from your life. It involves holding so little value for the present moment that one wishes for time to be “fast forwarded.” 

This shocks me. WAIT a second… is this moment of your life not worth something? Would you really rather just get to the future? How short would your life be if you actually COULD fast forward it?

The fact of the matter is, we have to live our lives, there is no fast forward option. We must live every second of it some how or another, or we must perish. But:

 

Can it not be said that we can enjoy, learn from, gain from, and somehow find the richness in every millisecond of our lives?

 

This is the question I pose, this is the call I make to engaging fully in our lives.

 

So you’re stuck in a traffic jam…

•     Do you have some audio programs of great music with you?
•     Do you have some business calls to make?
•     Could you shoot out a group text to meet with your friends this week?
•     Could you look program your GPS to identify certain places as “Favorites?”
•     Can you at least roll down the window, breathe in, and appreciate this very second of your life?

You could make up your own list for nearly any situation you will ever face in your life.

 

Even in the face of emotional pain, living in this second could be seen to be part of the richness of life – something to learn from and experience to develop a stronger resolve, to instill a deeper desire to make the most of our own lives.

The “worthwhile-ness” is in the experience of the beholder. It is the meaning we find in this very moment that determines its value to us.

 

At any given moment you can find meaning, joy, growth, and/or benefit from a situation. When you find yourself eager to “fast forward,” or yearning to “get through” or “kill time,” ask yourself:

• What can I appreciate and enjoy in this situation? It could be a wonderful visual scene, a fun experience with others, an opportunity for problem solving, etc…
• What can I learn from this situation? It could be something new about someone you know, it could be how to deal with stressors and still take the best action, it could be studying a book on a topic of real interest to you.
• How will living this moment benefit my entire life? Maybe you will know not to make that same mistake again, maybe you’ll learn something important that you can refer to for the rest of your life, and just maybe you can drink in the situation and be grateful for your life.

When you understand your self-determined purpose for being alive, you can relate any situation in your life to your values and determine how to act in accordance with your deepest purpose. I consider this to be a main constituent of fulfillment and an invaluable step in being engaged with our lives adequately.

Savor this second, you only have so many of them.

 

 

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

 

Can you remember a situation when you made a heartfelt VOW with yourself?

This usually happens after a disturbing and painful experience – maybe you offended a friend – maybe you lost a lot of money – maybe you drank too much. You wanted to change, to develop yourself or take meaningful action.

You have such a FEELING about what’s going on, about what you want for yourself… you VOW that you will NEVER do (X), or that you’ll ALWAYS remember to do (Y).

 

Yeah, you feel it big time. Here’s the thing (I love saying “the thing” by the way, I think its hilarious… back on track): 

You can probably think of a time – not too far after your vow – when you broke it.

 

We’ve all been there. Why didn’t it “work?” Why didn’t our vow bring about change in our own behavior? We felt so strongly, we wanted to change, we really did!

Even a heartfelt, genuine vow often cannot change our behaviors because it does not provide us with action to follow, with measurable progress or feedback – it simply states a strong preference.

When the situation comes around where you could enact the change, you don’t think of the specific actions to take in order to fulfill your vow, and even if you do, you might unsure if it is best in that scenario. So nothing changes.

 

This is why planning is necessary. With a legitimate plan, we can do our thinking beforehand and find appropriate ways to implement the change we desire. We can THINK ahead of time, and so when the time comes we know what to do and how to do it.

Maybe we turn down invites to specific bars, or to be around certain people. Maybe we determine a logical method for reminding ourselves of our important meetings. Maybe we draw up a full blown business plan with the help of some friends who are also business owners.

These activities imply determining how to get to the outcome we desire – the strategies and actions involved!

 

So… what, then, is the worth of a genuine, heartfelt vow?

It is a starting point for meaningful change – it can be the diving board for real, meaningful, congruent plans for changing your life drastically for the better.

If you catch yourself making a heartfelt vow NOT to do this or to ALWAYS do that, determine wether this is a rational vow to make, and if it is, begin planning the specifics immediately.

Stating your preference, even with feeling, will not bring about the kind of change that you seek. Only determining what that change would require can do that. That requires thinking ahead of time – that means planning!

 

Vowing? Are you sure you’re serious about it? Well then… make plans and make it happen – otherwise it probably won’t. Give your brain something to reference, something that makes sense, something you can be sure of, something that you can act upon.

 

Most of us have read about the importance of our inner dialogue (“self-talk”) at some point in our lives. I think that even people with no contact with personal development material have an understanding that what they tell themselves in their head effects their feelings.

Though you might not consider yourself to be a negative person, and though your dominant thoughts may not be negative – it is likely that you can still catch pockets of disempowering thought and emotion pop up irregularly in your life. 

You might have internal and external dialogue that is very positive in its framing of your experience (For instance, you might frame a flat tire as a challenge instead of a tragedy, or a barking dog as an attention test instead of an annoyance) yet still find loops of thought that restrict you from joy and growth.

These don’t have to be times when you break down in sadness or throw silverware in anger, just little blips that ripple on the screen of your conscious / unconscious.

• It could be looking out a window – remembering familiar joyous scenes from your past – and finding yourself feeling blue because you’re focusing on how you will never get that time back.
• It could be thinking about a recent weak attempt at changing your behaviors – followed by thoughts of past attempts that failed as well – followed by accompanying feelings of helplessness.
• It could be driving home from work and noticing yourself feeling down – thinking about how rough the next few days are going to be.

Identifying these blips and bringing them into conscious awareness allows us to re-program our thought loops so that these disempowering thought loops – be they old or new – are eliminated or used as empowering fuel.

Here’s a good way to work towards reprograming yourself to take the empowered perspective:

1.   Be aware of your thought and identify what its telling you.

Understand precisely what emotion you’re feeling and what thought loop it originates from. It is likely that the emotion will be your first cue, although you may catch your thought loop before any significant emotional effects are felt. 

2.  Come to see what you would rather be experiencing:

What kind of feelings and thoughts do you want to be living in right now? If your current patterns make you feel like not taking action, settling less than your potential, feeling sad, then what DO you want your expereince to be like? What would you rather experience and how would this new feeling effect your present reality? Ask yourself these questions and gain insight into your own ideals for in this moment.

3.  Immediately take on the thoughts that would enable your ideal experience: 

So you want to feel excitement? You want to be able to brainstorm new ideas for business success? You want to feel at peace? Determine what you would have to be thinking in order to feel the way you want to feel. Imagine how a new mental focus would guide your faculties to action and change your experience.

These very basic steps can be done in your mind at any time, although it may be quite useful (especially as you begin using this tool) to write out the steps for yourself.

Now that this quick process has been explained, lets go into a few examples:

      Lets suppose you feel a subtle sinking sense of despair, and come to realize that it emanates from thoughts of a romance now gone. You feel a sense of hopelessness as you think about your past mistakes and your inability to find another partner.

      You determine that you’d much rather feel excited to meet new people and take what you learned from your past engagements into future relationships. You want to feel energized instead of down, enthusiastic instead of hopeless, eager to expand instead of eager to hide. You recognize these feelings to be empowering for you, they will not only make you feel better in the present, but they will bring about a habit of healthy thought and action to follow through on your value of meeting new people.

      You decide that in order to feel the way you want to feel, you would need to focus on the excitement of meeting new people and applying what you’ve learned form the past. So you focus on organizing some parties, who to invite, and how fantastic it will be. You think about meeting interesting and attractive people and become excited and enthusiastic by recognizing its value to you and taking action in that direction. 

Here’s an example of a write-up of this process – in other words – this might be what it looks like when you write out this process for yourself:

      As I sit planning out my day this morning, I know I feel down – but I wasn’t initially able to put my finger on it. Through a little more introspection I realized that my thoughts continually travelled to specific times in the past when I allocated my time improperly. I thought about how all of my time studying my past career could have been used to study topics that are more relevant to my current career and other important aspects of my life. These regrets were the course of my sinking, lazy feelings.

      I want to feel compelled towards the future and not stuck analyzing past actions. I have nothing more to learn from them and would be better off letting go. I want to feel involved and ready to take action on my current goals – on what I want to learn and contribute. I want to feel optimistic and happy, too.

      The thoughts that will result in the kinds of experience I desire are ones focused on present action and my compelling current and future projects. I decide right now to think about what really excites me about my current projects. Reviewing these factors and honing my mind into what’s exciting will empower me, and bring me to take immediate action. I can think about the past to learn from it (and I recognize its value in this regard), but I also recognize that I want my resources available to me here and now to do my productive work.

Even after just learning this skill, you can apply the idea immediately the next time you catch a disempowering thought loop.

The idea is to get your mind used to immediately identify and alter any loops that don’t bring your faculties to focus on what will bring about your growth and enjoyment. Consider it to be like a game, whenever you feel a twinge of negative emotion, this new pattern will intervene and find out the best way to bring you to a desirable state, mentally and emotionally.

 

Recently I’ve embarked on a Life Experiment to read 1000 words per minute by the end of June 2009. This has given me the impetus to study speed reading thoroughly, and to practice my reading skills often.

There are a few ideas and tips on speed reading that have had a MASSIVE impact on my ability to read swiftly and retain good levels of comprehension, and thats what I’m going to bring to the forefront today.

Though I’ve seen a lot of techniques and tips out there, here are the 5 that I’ve found most helpful (I’ve recently gone from about 250 to 750 word per minute):

 

1. Expanding you peripheral vision - Nothing new to speed readers, but the idea is critical: if our vision is wider, we are able to take in more information per eye movement. Our eyes snap to another spot on the page about once every 1/4 seconds. Though 4 words per second might seem quick, it only amounts to 240 words per minute. If we can take in big chunks of a line at a time, it will not only allow us to take in far more information, but it will FORCE us out of the habit of reading word for word in our head, or mouthing the words (a dreaded habit!). Increasing our peripheral vision also means we do not have to read to the side of the page – we can let our peripherals pick up the end of each line and the biginning of each line.
2. Chunking and looking at big words - This probably helped me out more than anything else in terms of technique. Its important to be able to identify where your eyes will ‘blip’ to next – by separating the line into digestible chunks and/or by focusing on the large words. I do a bit of both. Once you get used to it, you become more and more capable of finding rhythm on any page, and your eyes skip masterfully from “chunk” to “chunk.” This rhythme is what eventually develops into a natural flow across lines and down pages. 
3. Record what you remember - To increase comprehension, it helps to recall the main points of what you’ve read on paper. Directly after speed reading, pick up a pencil and jot down the main points of what you’ve just read and all the details you can remember. This will give you an idea of your comprehension – which you can track over time to gauge your improvements.
4. Set up a proper reading environment – This helps big time. Especially when speed reading, I’ve found it very important to keep your back strait, to sit upright at a desk or table, and to have enough elbow room to read comfortably. I’ve found that slouching and laying down put me to sleep when I read – and sitting up strait puts me in “student mode.” Reading faster definitely requires alertness. 
5. Breaking from comfort zones - This is the underlying driver of my increased speed, hands down. Speed reading to me is about constantly challenging yourself to APPLY everything that you learn. This involves reading at far greater speed than you are comfortable with. This forces your mind to adjust and catch up in comprehension. Below I include one exercise I use to increase this skill.

 

Pushing your comfort zones exercise:

This is something that I’m sure I didn’t invent, but I’ve never seen anywhere else. Get a good book, and determine about how many pages per line the book has. Then count down in rows until you reach the number of words you strive to read in a minute (make sure its well over your usual capacity). Get out a timer (most cell phones have one) and see if you can read the entire segment you identified in a minute flat.

For me this is about 900 words per minute. For example, if a book has about 11 words per line, I read about 82 lines per minute. You might not always have an ideal amount of comprehension at first, but with time be reading the same pages and different pages you will find that you brain is forced to “keep up” with your eye-rhythm. timing yourself over and over you’ll notice jumps in comprehension and reading speed.

Experiment with these ideas on your own – and I encourage you to check out some resources for speed reading. Different resources include different tips and techniques, some of which work better for some people than for others. I, for example, do not like to use a “pacer” when I read swiftly (using your hand or an index card to guide your eyes while reading). You might really like pacers as a tool.

 

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

 

I’m going to lay it out right here in the beginning of the post. This is the money content: boredom is a mindset. With a slight adjustment in your tolerance for boredom, with a vision of what does engage you and what you value, and with a few simple preventative measures and habits, anyone can kick the boredom curse.

 

Boredom is: “an emotional state experienced during periods lacking activity or when individuals are uninterested in the activities presented to them.”

So how do we prevent this experience? How can we basically ensure that boredom is not part of our experience any more? It sure seems hard when you’re stuck in a line at the bank, or at the doctor’s office, or a traffic jam. 

 

Here I’ll break boredom prevention down into 5 components:

1) Understand what You Value and what Engages You -

Boredom implies not being engaged, it implies seeing no compelling reason to act or think - it implies the belief that if the world does not spoon feed us something fun for our brains, then we will necessarily suffer from boredom. You must understand what does in fact engage you. Do you like to learn about physics, gardening, psychology? Do you enjoy socializing with new people? Do you like playing chess? The key here is to understand a) what you learn from and can immerse yourself in, and b) what you enjoy doing.

2) Change Your Perspective -

Before we mentioned that it is maladaptive to believe that if you world does provide our brains with fun, then we will be subject to boredom. Why is this maladaptive? Because it is false. Why is it false? Because we can change our perspective. Instead of labeling a situation as uninteresting, how about tuning your mind to find what IS interesting, what IS engaging, what you COULD do to make the most of the situation. We should always seek to find ways to maximize our moments, to find something to draw from them – be it warm human contact, deleting old numbers from your phone, updating your calendar, etc… We can find something to learn, something worthwhile to do and engage ourselves with. How about we instal a new belief that we will live in alignment with what we value every second, not just when the outside world seems to give us nice things to explore with our minds. Stuck in a long line? What do you value, what do you live for, what could you make from this situation? Meet someone, do some visualization of a future task… the focus is always yours to control!

3) Change Your Language - 

Language has a massive effect on our perspectives and our mindset. One bit of advice that will instantly benefit you in eradicating boredom is eradicating “bored” or “boring” from your lexicon immediately. There is no reason to use these words. Saying that you are “bored” implies that you do not have the will to change your perspective and stay engaged / enjoying your situation. Saying that something or someone is “boring” implies that it is an innate quality within that person, place, or thing. This is the opposite of the truth.

4) Change Your Body - 

What if I told you to imitate a “bored” person, or an “uninterested” person… would you be able to do so very easily? Maybe you would slump over a little, stare off into space with half-opened, and look frustrated and discontent. Bam, you know what it looks like. What do YOU look like when you’re bored? I’ll bet its exactly as you described it. In addition to changing your inside, change your outside. Sit up strait, open your eyes, find things to engage yourself with in an alert and enthusiastic way. Just moving and acting like this will put you in a state of alertness, it will give you access to the resource of alertness. This is what your body moves and feels like when you really are engaged, so your brain will take you to that state more easily.

5) Be Prepared -

I think this is where things get really fun. Inevitably you’ll enter situations where the amount of engaging / fun activities given by the environment seems minimal. This might be a lecture, a long drive, etc… For long car rides, I like to have on some audio programs, or enjoyable / thought provoking music. For a doctor’s office, I like to bring in an iPod (again with audio programs) or an interesting book I’m working on (usually psychology or philosophy related). If its a meeting that you anticipate will not be very productive, plan some important issues to bring up, or focus on setting up an appointment with someone in the meeting you want to speak with, etc…

 

As a final tip: If you ever find yourself feeling bored, record the event or situation when you go home that night, and use these steps above to understand how you could change the situation to something meaningful the next time you’re in a similar scenario.

 

Follow these basic guidelines and avoid boredom altogether. Seriously! I cannot promise you advice to keep you from ever experiencing loneliness, or sadness, or regret – but I can say that by abiding by these basic ideas you can bypass boredom as an experience.

Boredom’s algorithm seems to be so much easier than those other emotional experiences (it would take too much time to dive into them all now, haha, believe me!). I don’t consider myself different than most, and I can tell you right now that I have not been bored in about two years – since I caught onto this. 

Take these ideas and run with them, constantly look to engage actively with your life and towards your ideals – “being bored” doesn’t ever have to happen again.

 

 

(WARNING: This post is not encouraging anyone to develop an affinity for the longest lines at the grocery market, nor is it intended to keep people in jobs or situations that do not provide the ideal in terms of engaging material and activity. I would actually advise striving for life situation that involves as much fun and engagement as possible, a life in line with your values, a life of your design!)

 

 

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!