Trust & Control
"He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted." - Lao Tzu
The irony of life is the more we try to control, the more we attempt to force our will onto others, the less control we actually have. Jordan Peterson famously says “If you want to change the world, make your bed.” Let’s put our life in order and lead by example. It’s also been said that “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
We would be better to lead by example and to focus on what we can control (our actions, our opinions, and our perspective) than attempting to change the weather or other people. This is how we cultivate inner peace and actually create positive change.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you notice the more you try to control things the seemingly less control you have when it comes to your relationships?
The Domino Effect for Stress (& Everything Else)
Everyone experiences some levels of stress if they have a functioning nervous system and I'm confident that most of us would like to experience less of it. How often have we felt overwhelmed by difficulty? How often have we found ourselves crying alone in our car at night when driving home from work or screaming into a pillow? When we find ourselves in moments like these, it's clear we've reached a breaking point.
A University of Toronto professor, Stephen Morris, demonstrated that it would only take 29 dominoes to knock over the Empire State Building. Of course each of these dominoes would be progressively larger than the previous by one and a half times the size. The smallest eventually impacts the largest as you can see in the video below.
So how does this relate to stress? We don't consider the compounding effects that our behavior has or that stress can have on us. When we allow the pile of clothes sitting in the corner of our room to grow larger or fail to take the trash out for the second day in a row, even if we aren't always conscious of it, these things still tax our energy. Think about how you feel when you clean your room. I know for myself, cleaning can cause a definite change in the way I feel, and that's always for the better. It's like we're getting something of ourselves in order.
The domino effect when dealing with stress is sort of like the debt snowball strategy for paying off debts, by tackling the smallest debts first, more finances are available to take on the larger ones. By reducing stress through addressing the smaller stuff initially, we strengthen our resolve for the larger stuff later. The key here is that in the process of eliminating stress we don't add any unnecessary stress to our lives to keep us stuck. This kind of approach isn't something that can be applied to only stress and finances, but just about anything as well.
Consider making a list of things stressing you in your life right now. This might be work, relationships, living situation, finances, cleanliness, or something else. Once you've created this list, start to prioritize which of these can be resolved the fastest. What can be done now, today, this week, in a month, a year, or years? Then start taking care of everything that can be handled the fastest without adding anything to make life anymore stressful than it already is. Perhaps it might even be helpful to just journal how you feel at first before starting this and then taking note of how you feel each day. This way you can see the progress you're making.
_________________________________
If you found this post to be helpful, please consider sharing so others may benefit as well and leave a comment if you have any thoughts on the post. Also, if you would like to support me in a more tangible way, please consider becoming a supporter on my Patreon (Link Below) so I’m able to spend more time providing quality content to everyone.
Fuel for the Fire: Pain & Stress
Have you ever experienced overwhelming pain and stress? Maybe it was love lost, a heartbreak, financial difficulty, a health crisis, or something else. As humans with nervous systems, we are sensitive to the challenges and adversities we face, even if we aren't consciously aware of the effects they cause. Certainly we all would rather do with less pain and more of the pleasant experiences of life, but that's not how reality works. In fact, pursuing pleasure to it's fullest end will pull you right back around into pain, just ask anyone who's had a substance abuse issue.
So how do we make these unpleasant experiences a source of fuel, something the helps us to press forward towards more meaningful outcomes in life and towards our dreams? Part of the answer lies in the way we interpret pain and stress. Oftentimes it can can be easy to judge these things as categorically bad, however, in doing so we become resistant to them, only magnifying our suffering by resisting reality and experience itself. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do anything to resolve our issues, but we don't need to make them worse by resisting them.
When we place our hand closely over an open flame we begin to feel the urge to pull back because our body knows the harm it could bring to us if we keep it there. When we feel discomfort inside ourselves, we can't pull away from our own bodies, our own lived experience, and we can't split ourselves. Sure, in a sense we can do these things, but they wreak havoc on our mental health and wellbeing, leading to mental illness and disorder. However, when we choose to be accepting of the unpleasant feelings and sensations we are having, whether that's from a physical source or a more intangible emotional one, we dull the intensity we would experience from resisting or ignoring it.
Through accepting the experience as opposed to trying to change it we free ourselves from magnifying it. Now when I refer to trying to change it, I mean changing the way we feel through suppression, distraction, or the use of something psychoactive to change the way we feel. Of course we want to change it, but we would do ourselves an injustice if we try to change the symptom of the discomfort instead of the source. There are some things we can't change and I encourage everyone to look into some of my others posts on how to deal with that.
However, if it's physical pain, tending to our injuries, optimizing the healing process and accepting where we're at right now can make the process of recovery more expedient. On the other hand, if it's more emotional in nature, then it's allowing ourselves to feel what we feel and expressing those emotions fully in a healthy, constructive way. If there's anger, expressing aggression through the pursuit of goals and movement oriented activities can be helpful (instead of trying something destructive) and if it's sadness, allowing tears to flow can ease the heartache. When we begin to approach pain and stress with this lens on, we can begin to see how it fuels us and moves us forward, whereas resisting only slows the process of healing at best or brings us to a self-destructive screeching halt at worst.
_________________________________
If you found this post to be helpful, please consider sharing so others may benefit as well and leave a comment if you have any thoughts on the post. Also, if you would like to support me in a more tangible way, please consider becoming a supporter on my Patreon (Link Below) so I'm able to spend more time providing quality content to everyone.
Developing a Solution-Oriented Mindset Through Amor Fati
“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness
out of everything thrown into it.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Amor Fati” is a concept developed by the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics. It’s specifically a Latin phrase which means “the love of one’s fate.” We’ve all faced various forms of adversity and come upon different obstacles in our lives. The denial of reality can often stifle our growth and the repression of our experience can wither at us until we are left with no choice but to face it. Acceptance on the other hand is like the opening of our eyes to see what’s before us. It doesn’t mean we are content with where we are and where someone or something else is. It merely means we accept our experience or the obstacle as something that is real to us.
When we consider the quote above, I can’t help but think of a sail boat that takes in the winds to move itself forward. It’s capturing the experience of life, the reality of adversity and using it to move us ahead. It’s the flame which takes the pleasant and unpleasant, the adverse and desirable, the problem and the solution, and uses them all to be strengthened in intensity and brightness. It’s recognizing that no emotion is good or bad but merely information to respond to in a way that we see fit. We can use everything in life to serve us so that we move beyond what we want and don’t want, and into being resourceful in every way with everything.
This doesn’t mean we don’t cry or that we don’t express unpleasant emotions. This isn’t a fake it till you make with a deceptive smile. This is a way of seeing how even the worst things can be the greatest gifts and sometimes the best things can be our worst nightmare. Unexpected wealth can result in the loss of friends and other unforeseen consequences. Early childhood difficulty can develop a unique desire in adulthood to help others. How are we choosing to respond? When something occurs, are we willing to accept it as it is so we can adapt to it in such a way that we become better and those around us are strengthened by our personal evolution? How are you exercising “amor fati” in your own life?
Thank you for taking your time to read. If you're new, please consider subscribing and if you found this helpful, please consider sharing so others can benefit as well.
Into the Light (Poem)
In earthy darkness ever so deep,
Pressures confounding me as I feel myself weep,
Like rain,
Tears flowing over,
As the shell of my heart being so hard begins to feel exposure.
Moving upward and out of the bleak cold,
Trying to break free of the soil that seems like a cast iron mold.
Reaching the ceiling through earthly crust I push,
Tempted to relent and give up only to feel like mush.
Yet with a desire to grow inside,
The shell lets loose,
I begin the process to self-actualize.
Breaking through the earthy ceiling I must,
Into the light of day as the tears nourish a newfound trust;
That somehow through the suffering and pain,
Growth gives meaning to something that felt once endured in vain.
As my sprouting leaves begin to spread,
I start to receive the Sun,
Now my heart glows knowing I am not done.
With arms raised high I know I can grow,
And with a legacy of love like fruit from a tree,
I can forever nourish everything that comes after me.
Overcoming Learned Helplessness
Life can be difficult. In fact, there's some people who experience such levels of adversity that they end up developing a sense and belief of learned helplessness. There was some research done through atrocious experimentation in the 1960s that established this fact. I'm going to spare you the details on those experiments (look into them at your own discretion), but essentially it showed that when we move from a place of pain into another place of pain, coming to the realization that there's no escaping, we can be inclined to give up and stay where we are at because we perceive there's no freedom from our suffering.
How do we overcome this? Perhaps a story from my own life can illustrate this. I developed depression for the first time when I was 9 years old in foster care. I was praying that God would bring me back to my parents and in my 9-year-old mind I came to the belief that neither my parents were coming to get me nor God. That belief of being abandoned and alone caused me immense suffering. It was as if a dark cloud descended upon me in an instant. I felt frozen, unable to do anything to make things better. I believed I was ineffective and that my life didn't matter. My hope had died.
As a child I didn't have the resources and experience I do now. When I became older, I realized that I could either stand in the pain or I could take action and do something about it. It didn't take the pain away, but it reduced it. With time, I began to recognize that while I wasn't fully escaping my pain, I was mitigating and reducing it. As my perception on the issue changed, I was able to see that my actions were effective and they did help. Hope was being restored. Now let’s consider ourselves for a moment. Let's consider the areas in our life we feel ineffective. Have we given up? Is it because of the way we are seeing the problem in the first place? What can we do to make the best of an unideal situation?
Self-Acceptance & Change
There are two forms of memory, explicit and implicit. Explicit memory is declarative in nature. In other words, when asked what you did today, you’re able to declare (speak) about it. Implicit memory on the other hand is memory and knowledge that is difficult to be spoken of. When we are asked how we walk, we all know how to do it, but it’s not something we could easily explain.
We can explicitly declare we love ourselves, but implicitly our behavior can say otherwise. We can consciously love ourselves, but unconsciously hate ourselves. Even in ancient times, before we had a conceptual understanding of this, we could hear it echoed in the words of the Christian apostle Paul as he said, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15, ESV)
I believe it’s important to recognize that when our outside (conscious / explicit) doesn’t match our inside (unconscious / implicit) there is likely defense mechanisms and the persona (in essence the mask of conformity) at work. These are typically “white lies” that allow us to operate as if things were fine (giving the appearance of healthy living - correctness) or so that we are accepted by others (likability).
The problem with deception is it’s damaging. It creates neurosis (a mismatch of inner and outer being) and can be the beginning of many forms of mental illness. The closer we are to the truth (reality), the better off we are. We become more resilient to stress during change because we are able to adapt not to an illusion, but to the reality (truth) of the situation. A key component of this is acceptance (not to be confused with approval).
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person
“…we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.” – Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person
It’s in accepting the reality of the situation, accepting the reality of ourselves that we can finally understand what actions are necessary to change our situation. Recognizing where we are doesn’t mean we approve of our toxic behaviors, but allows us to see our lives as they actually are. So long as we continue to ignore the issues at hand, numbing ourselves to the pain either through ignoring it or some other external means, we will suffer continuously and find true lasting change either difficult or altogether impossible.
I’ll leave us with this profound quote from Abraham Maslow’s book, Toward a Psychology of Being, "By protecting himself against the hell within himself, he also cuts himself off from the heaven within."
References:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/implicit-versus-explicit-memory.html
https://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html
No Distractions
The title of this post says it all: No Distractions. This of course is one of the best ways to avoid procrastination, but that’s a lot easier said than done. So with that being said, how can it be done?
First things first is you obviously want to remove the big distractions like your phone. Something about that little computer that we put in our pockets is just so attractive to us, and we can’t help but pick it up and look at it every few moments. The best thing you can do is set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode -- that way your selected contacts can reach you if there’s an emergency, but you won’t get constant notifications from your other apps. I’ve found this helps a ton because I can remind myself that I’m still in touch with people if they need me, and I can comfortably set the phone down.
Another smart idea is to create a space specifically for getting work done. Funnily enough we see examples of this in comic books. Things would be a lot easier to get done if we all had our own batcave or superhero mansion. Unfortunately, most of us don’t, so instead we need to figure out how to efficiently use our space or divide it properly. Ideally you would have… well, a batcave with a huge library, a desk with all the room you could possibly need, your own personal gym, and a way to work from that room. Instead, we have to settle for less. Maybe you have a set of dumbbells you keep in your room so that you can use them during your breaks from paperwork, or some space in your backyard for you to exercise.
I also STRONGLY recommend spending some money on a nice desk. This will allow you to lay your things out so you can see all of them at once, and therefore won’t have to spend time digging through drawers and whatnot to find a pen. For people who do a lot of work with pen and paper, this is quite literally a way for you to lay your thoughts out and sort through them.
So you have your two main things to focus on: exercise and work/school. The task now is to essentially create a space where you can do these two things to grow your mind and body. Alternatively, you could also divide your “progress areas” between multiple locations. If you lack the space at home, this is probably the best idea for you because you’re borrowing space from others. Maybe you have a gym you could go to with weights and punching bags, but at work you have your own office. You could also consider buying a backpack so you could take your work to a local library or something that’s made for people to study. Then at home you could use your kitchen table for a little bit of work and maybe you have a set of weights to use in addition to calisthenics on the days you can’t make it to the gym.
If you divide your spaces up like this, procrastination goes out the window. You could wake up an hour or two before work to get ready, then you could go and get that done. Afterwards you could go straight to the gym (which is the best way to do that -- otherwise you’ll get relaxed at home). Finally you go home and use your space to do some recovery exercises and finish up that last bit of work you had to do. In short, you’re giving each activity a specific space.
.
.
.
We’ll explore ideas like these more in future blog posts, so definitely be sure to think of questions that you can leave in the comment section. Leaving questions and feedback allows me to understand what I should address next, which is a good thing for both of us. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok , Facebook, and Twitter @iamchrisgoode so that we can grow our community!
The Sands of Time
Another post with no quote today, because there’s another concept I’ve heard before that I feel like needs to be addressed.
As we’ve discussed many times before, stress is a powerful thing. You can either use that stress to your advantage or you can let it consume you, and there’s ways to make the first choice easier. We’ve talked about that idea quite a bit as well, so if you want to know more about that then feel free to skim through previous blog posts.
With that being said, I’ve often heard people say something along the lines of “Your worries won’t matter a year from now.” It’s a strange phrase... and strangely enough a lot of people seem to have heard it.
Although it’s technically true most of the time, it’s not really a useful piece of advice. Sure, it *might* provide some comfort in the short term, but most of the time it doesn’t and most of the time it doesn’t even apply. It’s the same as saying “eventually it won’t exist” or “things will get better.” Like I said before, these things are technically true and can indeed provide comfort sometimes because of that, but there’s a catch… these sayings don’t exist in the present. They exist in the future. Saying that things WILL get better or that EVENTUALLY you won’t have to worry about something only reminds you of the future.
The real truth, or rather the underlying truth, is that your stresses and concerns and worries DO matter right now; that’s why you’re stressed about them. Of course this is assuming that you stress over reasonable things. If this isn’t the case, and you feel like you’re struggling in your day to day life, then I encourage you to reach out and find professional help. I do what I can to offer solutions to some problems, but at the end of the day I can only do so much.
.
.
.
We’ll explore ideas like these more in future blog posts, so definitely be sure to think of questions that you can leave in the comment section. Leaving questions and feedback allows me to understand what I should address next, which is a good thing for both of us. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok , Facebook, and Twitter @iamchrisgoode so that we can grow our community!
Divide and Conquer
100th Blog Post, yay!!
No quote for today though, because I wanted to focus on a specific concept that doesn’t really stick to any one idea that I could find a quote for.
I’d like to preface this by saying that most self help influencers assume that everybody wants the same things: a lot of money, a huge mansion, three kids and a lamborghini. Although I’m sure everybody would enjoy having those kinds of things in one way or another, we can’t all practically get that. Not only that, but most people don’t even genuinely want that, they just want to be financially stable. My point in bringing this up is to highlight this assumption that most self help influencers have, and then explain that I understand that not everybody wants that.
Knowing this we have to ask ourselves what we really want. Obviously we don’t all want the same things, if that were the case then everybody would have everything they wanted and there would be no need for capitalism or any other form of marketing.
This is especially true when it comes to procrastination. We only have so many things that we can care about, and whether or not we like to admit it we won’t be able to care about all of those things all the time. Trying to do that just sets us back further.
To animate this idea in your head I want you to imagine that you have 20 apples, and you’re told that for every apple you eat you’ll make ten thousand dollars. Trying to care about everything all the time would be like taking one bite out of every apple -- yes, you made a mark, but it wasn’t concentrated enough to do anything and you haven’t made any real progress.
We add another layer onto this if we think about certain apples being worth more than others. Maybe eating apple #1 gives you ten thousand dollars, but eating apple #17 gives you a dozen times that. It makes more sense to eat the apple that gives you more first, and if you can go back for the other apple later then even better.
This way of thinking is probably above anything else I’ve discussed due to the progress that can be made when combined with other methods I’ve talked about. Focusing on only a few problems and chipping away at those will get you a lot farther than trying to tackle everything at once, so keep that in mind today when you start trying to get things done.
.
.
.
We’ll explore ideas like these more in future blog posts, so definitely be sure to think of questions that you can leave in the comment section. Leaving questions and feedback allows me to understand what I should address next, which is a good thing for both of us. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok , Facebook, and Twitter @iamchrisgoode so that we can grow our community!
Empty Mind, Wasted Time
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
This quote has actually been said by quite a few people, including T. S. Elliot, Soren Kierkegaard, Laurence J. Peter and others, which makes sense because it’s a good way of thinking.
In the last post I talked about how I wanted to begin focusing on procrastination and how it affects people's day to day lives. I still plan on doing that, but I realised that I didn’t explain much beyond the reasoning most people have behind procrastination. So today I wanted to give a broad solution to avoiding procrastination and preventing yourself from doing it at all.
Before I do that however, I’d like to go more in depth on today’s quote. Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Sounds like a contradiction at first, but after tossing it around in my head for a bit I began to understand. Time that I enjoy wasting isn’t really wasted time because I’m usually getting something done or building up enough energy to get something done. Therefore it’s not a waste of time.
Okay.. that seems pretty simple. Doing things I enjoy does more good than harm, so it’s not a waste of time. But then that made me curious too… if no time is wasted, then how come we do things like scroll through social media or play video games all day? Those things don’t really allow us to fully recover from things like exercise and they also don’t help us get anything done. They genuinely seem like a complete waste of time.
Then I remembered that there’s two parts to the quote, and I was forgetting about the part where it said “enjoy.” The thing is, it’s not really the constant scrolling that we enjoy as much as it is the opportunity for us to step away from our responsibilities and simply exist without stress. With this in mind it becomes clear that constantly being on our phones and whatnot isn’t really enjoyable, it’s just numbing.
Now that we understand that, we can begin to think of different things we can do to genuinely help ourselves. However, each person recovers differently, so we’ll have to get into that more in a future post. Until then, take some time to ask yourself what you can do in order to rest and recover properly in order to prepare for future tasks.
.
.
.
We’ll explore this idea more in future blog posts, so definitely be sure to think of questions that you can leave in the comment section. Leaving questions and feedback allows me to understand what I should address next, which is a good thing for both of us. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok , Facebook, and Twitter @iamchrisgoode so that we can grow our community!
Risk it to Win it
“All procrastination is just fear.” -- Unknown
In the last post we talked about procrastination and why it’s important to just keep moving -- and eventually how those tiny movements will add up to contribute to your success. In fact, we’ve talked about that concept quite a bit about a year ago, and the more that I think about it the more I begin to realize that one of our biggest problems is procrastination. We procrastinate getting work done. We procrastinate speaking to people or having difficult conversations. We procrastinate learning. Because of this, I’ve decided it’s best to put a majority of my work towards discussing procrastination, why it happens, and how we prevent it.
Until then, let’s stick to today’s quote.
Procrastination is simply fear of the unknown, which is a weird concept to think about, and it might not even seem like it’s true at first. After all, people usually procrastinate simply because they don’t want to do something… right?
Well yes, but it’s important to take a step further into that idea. Why is it that we feel like doing some things but not others? This question can be answered when we think about the things we enjoy doing as humans: sleeping, eating, relaxing, and playing (because we’re all still children at heart). This reminds us that we enjoy doing things because of the positive benefits we can get from them -- sleeping gives us more energy, eating satisfies our stomach and nourishes us, relaxing gives us time to think, and playing allows our minds to wander.
When we think of things in this way, it becomes apparent that we procrastinate because we’re scared or worried that we might not be given those positive benefits that we desire so badly. Or even worse -- we might have to give up some of what we already have. People are made to seek out things with little to no risk in exchange for high reward. Although this is great at times and keeps us safe, it can get in the way. If we don’t risk anything then we might be safe, but we also won’t gain anything either. Knowing this, we have to ask ourselves an important question: do we want to push through a little bit of pain and be disciplined? Or would we rather choose to do nothing and settle for what we’ve got?
We’ll explore this idea more in future blog posts, so definitely be sure to think of questions that you can leave in the comment section. Leaving questions and feedback allows me to understand what I should address next, which is a good thing for both of us. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok , Facebook, and Twitter @iamchrisgoode so that we can grow our community!