Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society’s bad moods.
~ Paul Graham
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Growth
Growth
There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.
~ Fred Rogers
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New associations
Instead of feeling complacent about what you know, you must expand your knowledge to related fields, giving your mind fuel to make new associations between different ideas. You must experiment and look at problems from all possible angles. As your thinking grows more fluid, your mind will grow increasingly dimensional, seeing more and more aspects of reality. In the end, you will turn against the very rules you have internalized, shaping and reforming them to suit your spirit.
~ Robert Greene
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Antifragile
The aims of safety-ism were noble. They saw that young people were experiencing greater amounts of anxiety, stress, and depression than previous generations and sought to remedy their angst by protecting them from anything that could potentially harm or upset them.
~ Mark Manson from, https://markmanson.net/trigger-warning
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It always seemed obvious to me that wasn’t going to work. When I find something which triggers me, that’s a problem with me; That points me towards something I can improve upon. The problem is not the problem. The problem is my attitude towards the problem.
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Metamorphosis
You must want to be a butterfly so badly, you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
~ Sekou Andrews
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Destruction
If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness.
~ Tracy DiNunzio
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Humiliation
There is no change, no attempt, no reach that does not look strange to someone. There’s almost no accomplishment that is possible without calling some attention on yourself. To gamble on yourself is to risk failure. To do it in public is to risk humiliation.
~ Ryan Holiday from, https://ryanholiday.net/life-happens-in-public-get-used-to-it/
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I believe I’ve developed a healthy level of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when it comes to trying things with a risk of failure. I think this is one—possibly the only—upside to having terrible self-talk. I’ve told my self horribly critical things so many times… and then had that criticism proven to not be the case so many times… well, now I just try things.
Except for people’s names. I’m developing a phobia around saying people’s names. It just feels like the least I could do, when having a conversation with someone who I need to introduce to others… the least I could do is say their name correctly. Perfectly, even, on the first try. …in their native language’s proper pronunciation. What could possible go wrong?
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Intentional complications
In search of escalation, McPhee complicated the formula. If the standard profile focuses on one subject, why not, he thought, try to profile two subjects who shared some peripheral connections? That is, go from A to A + B.
~ Steven Pressfield from, https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/16/complicate-the-formula-john-mcphees-deliberate-practice-strategy/
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Also, a “complication” has an interesting meaning in the world of mechanical clocks.
I complicate things quite often. I clearly see the value in pursuing complexity; it requires increased skill and attention to detail. But—and you saw this coming, right?—every complication is an invitation to dive into a rabbit-hole.
The challenge for me is two-fold. First, to always keep the number of simultaneous rabbit-hole dives restricted. Rabbit-holes seem to multiple, well, like rabbits! One, two, or three at the absolute most, is all I can truly pay deep attention to. This is hard for me to stick to. Second, to learn to exit when the passion has subsided. By definition, (my definition that is,) a rabbit-hole is a non-esssential journey. Each of the journeys improves my life and some number of them are essential, but no one rabbit-hole in particular is essential. I must always remember to exit when I’m no longer interested.
To wit: Recording 60-seconds of practice (in the context of podcasting) every day is supremely useful as it enables exploring complications. There are countless opportunities to explore with each 60-second recording session. I fell madly in lust with the practice. I worked on a few different ideas, and made improvements. …and then the Spring romance subsided, and in a rare instance of following my second self-admonishment above, I walked away from the practice. …after not even two weeks! #winning
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Were mistakes made?
The biggest factor in getting something to go from hard to easy is normally exposure. The more you encounter something, the less intimidating it gets. Your emotional relationship changes. There’s less uncertainty, your skill in dealing with it improves, your resentment for it fades, your craving for ease or salvation disappears. It has become easy.
~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2013/03/how-to-make-hard-things-easy/
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That is so obvious, yet it’s so worth repeating.
What lies outside your comfort zone? Growth.
Yes, there are other things beside growth, outside your comfort zone: Fear, danger, and mistakes, for example. Irrational fears you know you should work through. Danger you know you should avoid. But what about mistakes? When’s the last time you made a mistake?
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