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Monthly Archives: August 2017

A poetic rant to the self

Combat numbness. Choose to live. To play over sitting on the sidelines.

Stretch yourself. Force yourself to let go. Harden yourself against fortune.

Demolish your ego. Do things you never thought you would. Be unafraid to be a new person day-to-day. Escape the confines of whoyouwere and whoyoushouldbe to become whoyouare.

Mastery of self requires you to expose yourself. It requires vulnerability. It requires you to have a diversity of experiences and see who manifests as a result.

Self knowledge comes from unknowledge. From self-exploration, self-discovery, and self-creation. The lines between these are blurred. Practice being comfortable with ambiguity, being comfortable with discomfort.

Abandon ideas of who you are to learn whoyouare.

The Mythical Silver Bullet

The silver bullet. The ultimate misguided notion of living. The pinnacle of lazy-thinking.

If I just get that new job/move to the right place/read the right book/lose the weight/get into the right relationship, then things will be better.

Life never works this way. While these things help, there is no silver bullet. Life is a messy process of figuring things out. We try things, experience the results of our trying, learn from those results, and grow.

All too often the idea of the silver bullet is actually extremely detrimental. It provides the ultimate form of hope and, as a necessary result, always fails to deliver.

Seek out where you’re looking for silver bullets in your life. When you find them, figure out the work you need to do (messy, day-in and day-out work), and get after it.

Giving and Getting

Feedback loops constantly amaze me. When you go up or down, it tends to compound into a spiral, either for better or worse.

Action, purpose, and achievement force you to become more efficient and effective, creating room for more action, purpose, and achievement. Focus breeds focus. Effort breeds energy. Good habits breed better habits. Happiness breeds happiness. These all breed flow, the ultimate state of human creativity, achievement, and possibility.

This is how the Elon Musks of the world happen. Elon is the result of positive feedback loops compounded over decades. There’s no normative judgement being made there— I’m not saying he’s “better” per say, merely that what you practice often breeds more of that thing. This is why it’s so important to be aware of negativity and the bad habits that bring you down. Dedicate every ounce of energy to stamping them out. To flipping the switch.

Because while it may seem like a colossal effort to flip the switch, the energy will flow more freely from there. It takes the most energy to meet the critical mass, and it only gets easier.

It only gets easier.

You get what you give.

Playing the game

I’ve been conceptualizing life as a game lately, more so than ever before.

In games there are rules, some of them absolute, others arbitrary and made up. There are relationships, both to the environment of the game and the other players. Perhaps most importantly, the most rewarding part of the game is not the end, but in the playing.

The end signifies the game being over, a moving on with uncertainty afterwards. To focus on the end or a specific benchmark in totality would be foolish. The important part is what’s happening right now.

In life, it’s easy to be too idealistic about the game & board you’re playing on. If circumstances don’t line up with you ideal conception of reality you can opt-out. Refuse to play. Sit on the sidelines with the hope that the “right” game will come around.

The fact is, there is no perfect game, and it’s foolish to look for it. The thrill of the game is learning the rules & constraints, getting to know the players you’re playing with, and finding out how to unlock the fun within.

This metaphor is meandering, but the point to be made (mostly to myself) is this: be wary of being overly idealistic of the circumstances you’re in. Life is a game best played with zeal. There’s little to be gained from sitting on the sidelines.

With love,
Justin

Forcing Functions

Forcing Function (n): any task, activity, or event that forces you to take action and produce a result.

I recently moved to New York City, gaining access to the infinite options the city provides. You can do everything in New York, but it comes with a price: it takes more time, money, and energy to do anything.

Why would anyone opt into a situation where doing anything is more difficult?

Because it forces you to figure yourself out.

While time, money, and energy are normal constraints, walls that you have to be wary not to bump into, in New York City they compound, becoming a room where the walls are closing in on you. You have no choice but to figure out how you want to use those extremely limited resources, and soon. It moves you from “like” to “love”, and demands you trim the fat of what you don’t want in your life, even if minor.

While we can hate forcing function for rushing us, pushing us too hard, and forcing us to decide, we can also love them for presenting us with the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and focusing us in on what is essential.

Silence

I once had a friend give a talk on silence where he said nothing for the first 4 minutes and 33 seconds (an allusion to the famous John Cage piece).

The audience’s reaction, as he tells it, was priceless. Initially, confusion- everyone assumed something was wrong, despite the presenter saying nothing and seeming very content with the current state of affairs. Over time this evolved into murmurs of confusion and nervous laughter.

This is obviously an extreme case, but we’re fundamentally bad at silence.  Silence with others. Silence with ourselves. When was the last time you took 10 minutes to be silent in both action and thought?

A synonymous question- when was the last time you took 10 minutes to indulge yourself in purposelessness? You might be thinking “Sounds boring”, to which I have 2 rebuttals:

  1. If you’re as busy as you think you are, when was the last time you let yourself be bored? Sounds like a nice reprieve.
  2. Don’t mistake “tranquil”, “pensive”, or “calm” with “bored”.

Take 10 minutes. Put the phone, tablet, and computer away and embrace silence.

But what’s driving the stress?

I journaled this to myself last week and felt it would be a valuable share. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.

Amazing what you stand to learn about yourself when you replace the word “stress” with “fear”. It’s the result of a simple root cause analysis— what’s driving your stress?

It’s always fear.

Fear of running out of money and being left on the curb, fear of being alone forever, fear of being unhappy forever, fear of being uncomfortable forever.

Fear is engrained into us. You’ll be hard pressed to remove fear entirely, but we can control our reaction to fear (stress). Make peace with the fear. See it. Use it to heighten your senses and mental capabilities. But don’t destroy yourself by activating stress, worry, and anxiety. React with a cool calm collection. See the fear, shake its hand, welcome it as your comrade in arms.

Intentions vs Rules

How often do we set out with the intention to change something in our lives and fail miserably?

We set an intention to clean up our eating, drink less, face our fears, be more productive, and then, in the face of temptation, fall back into our old ways. One way to model intention is viewing it as a means to change while being compassionate with ourselves. We intend to change, but it’s okay if we fail.

The problem with that model? It makes change a a function of willpower. We’ve left ourselves an out. We’ve begun by telling ourselves that it’s okay if we slip.

What if we moved from willpower to discipline? From intention to rules? Think about it this- for all of you non-smokers out there, how often do you find yourself smoking after a long day? How often do you find yourself drinking and driving? If you’ve ever quit any unhealthy food (say soda), how often do you find yourself drinking soda?

The answer (if it’s a rule): You don’t. You don’tallow it.

It’s a line you don’t cross. You don’t even allow for the option.

This is not some grand life hack- it’s a simple decision about mindset. When you want to change, do you set out with intention, or with decision and discipline? When you decide to commit to rules, there’s no need to worry about compassion for yourself. You won’t let yourself slip, and that is the ultimate gift you can give.

Asking for help

I’m awful at it. With the near-ever-present availability of the internet, it’s easier than ever to think that you can figure everything out yourself. It’s just a google search away, after all!v

The truth is, the internet’s an ocean, and sometimes you wind up looking for a needle in a haystack, one very specific fish in a vast ocean.

You know what’s often a better “algorithm” for figuring things out? People.

People have preferences, they ask questions back, they understand the context of you as a person, and, if they don’t know, they probably know someone who does. They also have the added layer of accountability and followup. The internet will rarely ask you if the fish you found was what you were looking for.

When you get stuck on something today, try calling a friend, asking a co-worker, or poking that acquaintance you just met. They can probably help and, even if not, there’s something magical in the asking.

A Heuristic for Living in the Moment

Last year I had a discussion with a friend about that oft-used phrase, “Living in the moment.” After years of hearing and saying it, it became clear that I had no clue what it meant. Until then.

You see, I think whether or not you’re living in the moment can best be revealed by two questions:

  1. What excites you right now?
    OR
  2. What is thing you’re waiting for?

For my entire life, the answer to the first question was “I don’t know, nothing really”, and my answer to the second was months, if not years away:

Graduating high school and doing well at a good college.
Graduating college and getting a good job.
Waiting for the company you’re working for to sell for billions.

That was what excited me, what I was waiting for. Looking at those answers, it’s clear that living in the moment was not happening.

What am I excited about now?

Going home to visit my family.
My bike ride to work tomorrow morning.
Getting my close friends together at a bar next week to listen to jazz & play games.

The difference in time horizon, from 4-5 years to less than 1 month, is perhaps the most powerful indicator in a change of focus. From living in the future to the present. To being here.