Self-improvement

Insight

December 29, 2018

The greatest revelations are not when you discover something new and profound, but when you actually apply something you already “knew.” That is when information becomes real wisdom. Only then is it finally able to change who you are instead of just what you think.

~ David Cain from, Insight Is Not Enough

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I’ve been referring often to David Cain’s writing recently. Nothing wrong with that per se; it’s great stuff that makes me think. Anyway, you may wonder why that happens. Why do I seem to run in dashes of particular source material. It has to do with how I queue up reading material. I’ve some interesting hacks that I hope one day to share with the world. I hope.

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Insecurity

December 25, 2018

(Part 68 of 72 in series, My Journey)

The problem comes from how we deal with the feeling of insecurity. We might curl up and hide, lash out at someone in a hurtful way, harden our rigid views of the world so that everyone else is wrong and we’re continually angry. We might procrastinate and run to distraction, use social media to avoid feeling insecurity, try to control others or the world around us to end the feeling of insecurity.

~ Leo Babauta from, The Guide to Insecurities You’ve Been Waiting For

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I have been lucky—repeatedly over the course of several years—to have had Leo Babauta’s writing available to me. One theme that he repeats is the idea of being kind to one’s self.

The insecurity that I’m not good enough, in my own judgement, is deeply held. I regularly and often flee to easy comforts; it’s been many things over the years, but in the most recent years, it is food.

Not often enough, but sometimes, I find a way to practice being kind to myself. One that works well is: “Spend 30 minutes balancing on a rail. If you fall, simply get back on. Take your time. Be kind to yourself.” Each time I do this I know I will reach a barter-stage where I’m ready to be done. Each time I do this I know I will fall off often—it’s hard for me to even leave out the word “too,” from the phrase, “fall off too often.” Each time I do this it makes me sweat from the physical effort not from, (for example,) the fear. I do fear that some day this exercise will no longer work for me.

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Do you value your time?

December 24, 2018

Do you value your own time?

Do you actually do the math?

Suppose there was something you spent 10 minutes on per week that you could avoid doing—some chore you could eliminate. How much money is that amount of your time worth?

The first step is to value your time and it turns out this is rather hard to do. But just investing the time to think about it will shift the way you think about the way you spend your time. A few ways to put some brackets on how much you—not others—value your time.

If you know a specific hourly rate for your job, you could multiply that by 10. (The thinking being that you’re willing to sell that time at a HUGE discount because you’re gauranteed to be able to sell large amounts of it, on a well-known and convenient schedule. It’s a market balance between you and your employer.) Another possible valuation is to imagine some task you would hate; maybe it’s shoveling out latrines… and that you had to do an entire 8 hour shift of that; what hourly rate would you want? Or take your total current take-home annual income and divide by a “sane” 40-hours a week of work times 48 weeks and divide it out to get an hourly rate. Again multiple by how much you think you’re selling it at a discount based on the market forces with your employer.

Just doing the “how much is my time worth” math is valuable. Now, suppose you came up with $500/hr. (Which is a pretty reasonable amount for a reasonable human being in my opinion. Remember, this isnt how much cash you can earn at your job in an hour; this is how much do you value your time.)

That 10 minute per week task times 52 weeks? …that’s $4,300 per year of value that you “regain” by stopping that activity.

Suggested exercise: Do the math for your intentional hobbies and discover how irrelevant the physical costs are. Do the math for your “time wasting” activities and you discover how much you value your down-time, etc..

Update March 2019: Here’s something apropos from Seth Godin, Making Big Decisions About Money.

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Silent flute

December 22, 2018

I wish neither to possess,
Nor to be possessed.
I no longer covet paradise,
More important, I no longer fear hell.

The medicine for my suffering
I had within me from the very beginning,
But I did not take it.
My ailment came from within myself,
But I did not observe it
Until this moment.

Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.

~ Bruce Lee from, The Silent Flute

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Cord’s closing speech from The Silent Flute.

(hat tip: Martial Artist of Life by J Little.)

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Learning to say no

December 13, 2018

How to Say “No” Gracefully and Uncommit (#328)

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This is a two-chapter excerpt from a book, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown, a book about being an essentialist.

At the beginning of 2018 I latched onto the idea that by saying, “yes,” to something I am cutting off a nearly infinite number of opportunities. Whereas by saying, “no,” I am cutting off just one opportunity and leaving space for a nearly infinite number of other opportunities. That makes, “no,” the obviously better default answer, yes?

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Forgotten super-powers

December 12, 2018

Today we use tools without even thinking about it. Without a doubt, you are at this moment surrounded by (and draped in) all sorts of tools, equipment and technology. There are probably at least a dozen items in operation right now that are making your moment much better than it would otherwise be: clothing, writing utensils, computers, chairs, clocks, desks and eyeglasses for starters.

~ David Cain from, How to Enjoy Your Forgotten Superpowers

This is definitely an aspect of my Art du Déplacement, and self-improvement journey. I regularly—almost automatically now—run the train of thought he’s describing and it invariably serves me well.

In early 2018 I attended a winter retreat. On one morning, we all went out to hiking trails along a stream and water falls. It was snowy, cold, icy and sunny. I intentionally went in wool socks and my usual, minimalist running sneakers—with the insoles removed so there’s 2mm of rubber and nothing else between my socks and the world. I intentionally set out expecting wet feet (knee-deep snow in places), and my goal was to manage frost-nip and to enjoy the day. Result: Insane amounts of fun; New friends; Lessons learned; No injury; and I experienced a true winter-wonderland in a way I had never before.

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Sleep, part ga-zillion

December 5, 2018

Ample and quality sleep is one of the most important, and sadly neglected, elements of a sound mind and body.

~ Jarlo Ilano from, 5 Quality Sleep Strategies to Feel Well-Rested and More Productive

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(Emphasis mine.)

No.

Sleep is the most important part of my life. No exceptions. No equivication. No weasel words.

Sleep. Sleep? SLEEP!

Despite my issue with his characterization of the degree of importance, Ilano’s article is a good overview of some basic sleep ideas.

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Once may be your last chance

November 24, 2018

So it stands to reason that if you want a clean house (or anything else) you have to a) put in the effort to get it there — completely there — and then b) police it for little broken windows. Things sitting out. Tasks that have been ignored once. Duties that have been ducked once. Promises that have been broken once. Twice is too late; you have to start again.

~ David Cain from, How to Fight Crime by Making Your Bed

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The broken window theory is, in fact, very much open to debate. But setting that aside for a moment.

I definitely have a habit of chasing things down to their root cause on the first instance of trouble. I’m not anywhere close to perfect! But my first instinct is to stop what I’m doing and figure out what that thing just happened. I’m an imaginer of processes. I go around trying to find one solution which fixes two things, or better yet, fixes two things by fixing one and eliminating a second.

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What if

November 19, 2018

But what if we blocked all of our exits, and stopped ourselves from numbing out or escaping being present to our feelings and the moment in front of us?

~ Leo Babauta from, Refraining From Letting Ourselves Numb Out

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What if indeed!

Much of my personal changes arise from observing my habitual behavior and then putting up some sort of road block (or at least adding some friction) to derail me when I head for the habitual behavior.

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There’s nothing small about the world

November 18, 2018

(Part 66 of 72 in series, My Journey)

Now I realize I was not giving up anything of any use to anyone. The news never really added to my knowledge in any meaningful way. It just added a steady stream of limited and unsubstantiated viewpoints on select issues to my head, which is already full of limited and unsubstantiated viewpoints. The news doesn’t inform you about what’s happening in the world. The news only informs you of what’s on the news.

~ David Cain from, There’s Nothing Small About the World

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One of the first steps I ever took in turning my life around was to get a handle on my information “diet.” In the beginning, there was TV. I was horribly mistaken in thinking that it was possible to obtain any useful news from TV. (There’s plenty of entertainment on TV if you’re willing to guzzle advertising with it.) Early on, perhaps around ~1993, I realized you could use RSS (and it’s many descendent flavors) to watch [as in, “notice when things are published”, not “mindlessly stare at”] information sources of my choosing.

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The fix is human

November 14, 2018

This is an instance of what philosophers call testimony. It’s similar to the sort of testimony given in a courtroom, but it’s less formal and much more frequent. Testimony happens any time you believe something because someone else vouched for the information. Most of our knowledge about the world is secondhand knowledge that comes to us through testimony. After all, we can’t each do all of our own scientific research, or make our own maps of distant cities.

~ Regina Rini from, How to Fix Fake News

This is a nice introduction to the idea of “testimony.” By saying or writing whatever-it-is-I’m-considering, would I be building up, or tearing down my reliability as a source of testimony?

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Getting your brain back

November 10, 2018

Luckily, this problem has a solution: I call it Getting Your Brain Back, but it is a time-honored problem that has been solved by many people in the past. Originally limited only to company CEOs and world leaders, the excess of information has trickled down to the rest of us. To survive in this flood, we need to learn how to swim, in much the same way as busy and important people have always done.

~ Peter Adeney from, New Year’s Resolution: Getting Your Brain Back

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…and just how bad have things become? Try this short TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_bridle_the_nightmare_videos_of_childrens_youtube_and_what_s_wrong_with_the_internet_today

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Lifelong consistency is impossible

November 9, 2018

When someone is that afraid of being contradicted, they are no longer concerned with the truth, only with protecting their priceless investment in what they have said. To honor a statement you made yesterday as a binding declaration of who you are is a tragic, yet extremely common mistake. This is the fundamental error that plagues humanity: to mistake one’s ego for oneself.  Enforcing an impossible, lifelong consistency in what you say and believe can only lead to dishonesty and despair.

~ David Cain from, 4 Brilliant Remarks From History’s Wisest American

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When I thought I was basically “done” becoming who I would become, I got bent out of shape over all the problems I saw in the world.

Now that I realize that the only meaningful life is one where I continuously tinker with self-improvement, I see that–just like me–everyone else is on a journey of transformation… wether or not they realize it.

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Stem cell research

November 4, 2018

Things that are every bit as great happen every day in scientific labs, and no one cares. Maybe as a society we’ve become anesthetized to science — when really, it’s so exciting. We have so much to gain as a country if we invest in science and knowledge and understanding. I don’t blame the public for not understanding, though, or even legislators for sometimes not wanting to invest. They all look so much like my family.

~ Renee Reijo Pera from, In the Ticking of the Embryonic Clock, She Finds Answers | Quanta Magazine

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There are several science-y details in this interview that really startled me; Our knowledge of embryo development is vastly improved since last I looked.

…but mostly I just like the sentiment of wonder she expresses. “When is the last time I learned something new?” is a question I try to update the answer to every day.

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The secret to connecting with people

October 31, 2018

Let the other person have the privilege of being the first one to be understood. The biggest distraction to understanding someone else is self-importance. Needing to say something means you have to be thinking about it, and thinking about it means you have very little mental capacity left for empathy. Free up yours, and it will free up theirs.

~ David Cain from, The Secret to Connecting With People

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Empathy is the most useful ability I have ever developed. Sure, I first had to develop my abilities of self-awareness and self-assessment. But at that point, the need for empathy and compassion became plain as day.

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What’s wrong with the world?

October 26, 2018

This type of view of the world — and like I said, I think it’s the prevailing view — stems from an ideal that many people have in their heads of what the world should be like. They might not realize they have that ideal, but it’s there. And the world will never reach this Platonic ideal, because it’s just this image of perfection that does not match reality. Reality and this ideal are incompatible.

~ Leo Babauta from, «http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/whats-wrong-with-the-world-not-a-damn-thing/»

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This ties in with yesterday’s comments about the Beatles’ Let It Be. There’s certainly a peculier passion associated with youth. But there’s a much nicer circumspection of age. When things are going badly, relax for they will not last. Whent things are going well, relax for they will not last. The error is in not relaxing, not in the circumstances being observed.

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How to Make Money Buy Happiness

October 24, 2018

So let’s solve it. If we are really just buying feelings, who has the best ones on sale at the lowest price? Different people approach this problem with different levels of sophistication.

~ Peter Adeney from, How to Make Money Buy Happiness

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I remember when this sort of thinking seemed so alien. I remember when I truly believed the bill of goods I had been sold about the rat race, chasing success, consumerism, etc. Now I very explicitly use money to buy happiness. And then, having accomplished that, I move on to the important things in life.

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Does Your Story Have This Common Weakness?

October 21, 2018

Another common curse: the belief that happiness cannot coexist with an imperfect world. For you to be okay with your story, do you require any of the following to occur? A crime-free city. A drug-free America. The day corrupt officials see the error of their ways. The end of suffering on earth. World peace. The day everyone starts using their turn signals, and stops mixing up “there” and “their.”

These are tall orders. Certainly worth aiming at, but never worth waiting for.

~ David Cain from, Does Your Story Have This Common Weakness?

I’ll nitpick and say the following about his opening Indiana Jones story: The fact that Indy closed his eyes and did not look at the contents of the Ark shows that he changed. Instead of his literally ceaseless quest for artifacts, he chose to let this artifact remain unknown to him. That’s why the demons in the Ark spared him.

I digress.

I love that he’s writing about Indy.

…and the rest of this article is even better: So, does your story rely on the “deus ex machina” trope? …since this is reality, how has that bee working out for you so far? I can tell you it didn’t work out for me, so I rewrote the script of my life.

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The only resource more precious than time

October 8, 2018

Unlike money, everyone is ultimately on a level playing field when it comes to time. We all get the same allowance of twenty-four hours a day. Just as there are ineffective ways of investing your money, there are ineffective ways of investing your time.

If we all have the same amount of this essential resource, why do some people achieve so much, and others so little? Where we start from — in terms of economic class, skills and education — certainly has something to do with it, but there are just as many riches-to-rags stories as there are rags-to-riches stories, so obviously there is another factor at play here.

~ David Cain from, The Only Resource More Precious than Time

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I found the realization that it’s really my attention that is my limiiting resource to be both liberating and scary. Liberating because it means that all I need to do is focus my attention and long-term success is within my grasp. Applying my attention, even in short stretches, inevitably leads to progress on my favorite projects. And scary because every time I’m tired, run-down, don’t want to do something– every time, food or the Movie-monster call my name, entertainment or distraction– there are so many opportunities for me to turn my attention away from the things I find valuable.

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