Program Yourself to Persist! February 2, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Goals, Personal Growth, Productivity, Psychology, Blogging , 1 comment so far
The following methods that I suggest will add a sense of persistency to your behaviour no matter what kind of an endeavour you decide to apply them on.
But before you do so, make sure that you genuinely want to increase your willpower in achieving the goal you’ve set out to accomplish, or the journey you’ve decided to travel upon. If it’s something that undoubtedly empowers you on an overall and lasting level of life quality, your odds of succeeding are in your favour.
Add subtleties
This advice is aimed directly at your subconscious mind, but you have to consciously make the adaptation. Here are a few examples right off my blog. When I started running the carnival of improvement, I decided to number them 01, 02 and so on, instead of 1 and 2. It gives both yourself and your readers the subconscious message that you’re aiming for double digit entries, which is a sign of persistent behaviour. It may seem like a silly little detail, but it works like a charm for me as it delivers the correct perspective of me wanting to make it a tradition to host the carnival for several weeks ahead.
This is exactly the same method I used when I posted the statistics of this blog for January of this year. Since I named it ‘January, 2007′ instead of just ‘January’, it has the power to enhance my perseverance in posting a similar entry at the beginning of every single month, and beyond the year 2007. Surely, small subtleties like these go unnoticed by the majority of people since it may not be that obvious that you’re running a marathon here.
Make it more enjoyable
When I decided to live by a polyphasic sleep pattern and add a 30-minute exercising session after all 6 naps every single day I knew that I had to lure myself into it with a carrot.
I decided to stop listening to music altogether (I’m a big, big music junkie) and only allow myself to listen to music when exercising. Without this change it would have been far more difficult to get myself out on a stroll when it was raining, snowing and -15 degrees outside. That’s what my schedule looked like and I stuck to it long enough to know what it’s like to live that way.
Let others know about your plans
This advice does not fit all people and I’ve seen it backfire for those who haven’t first improved their own self esteem, aversion to procrastinate and their go-getter attitude to adequate levels. Notice how I blurted out a few goals I’ve set to accomplish for February in my previous post. It was no blurt, but a conscious decision to empower myself to keep the promise I’ve made to hundreds (or thousands) of readers.
Do not apply this method if you know you’ll crash and burn when you know that you don’t know anything about flying your proverbial airplane, or how hard or demanding it is! Keep the information to yourself then and make a list of things you want to consider adding persistency to. Pick the one that you would love to see yourself making a habit of and create your own form of penalty if you fail to persist. Choose carefully who you decide to tell your goals and dreams to.
Allow yourself to stop
Sometimes it’s just against healthy reasoning and logic to keep on doing what you set out to do because of changed circumstances, or simply because you’ve tried something new that just doesn’t make a positive impact in your life. I urge you to try lots of new things throughout your life, but never let your ego or pride hinder you from admitting that what you set out to do just doesn’t make sense to you any longer.
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Empathy or Equanimity? February 1, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Communication, Emotions, Society, Personal Growth, Philosophy, Relationships, Beliefs, Abilities , 5 comments
I was recently faced with yet another new challenge of battling two concepts against each other and introspectively seeking out an answer on which one is better, if both are good or if neither of them are. It seems that this is what I do and it goes to show by the articles I’ve written so far. So let’s break it down into details and see if we can find a reasonable answer.
Empathy is the ability to listen to a troubled individual and literally opening your mind up so that all the problems, worries, negative emotions, traumas and anxiety can flow into you. You literally feel the pain as you balance the garbage so that the other person starts to feel better when the weight gets transferred off their shoulders and onto yours. This is basically what therapy is about, or starts out as. Therapy Doc Linda Freedman posted a great analysis of it.
Equanimity is then exactly the opposite of empathy as it’s an inner state of total deflection from external negativity, misery and nuisances. This means that whatever inner emotional state you are in is very stable, completely of your own making and other people’s misfortunes or troubles don’t mean anything to you on a mental/emotional level. Comedy and Humor blogger Andrew Brunelle wrote a more in-depth post about this state on his blog.
A quick overview of these two concepts makes you think that empathy is service to others while equanimity is service to self. But is it that black and white?
The pros of empathy is that people will love to seek you out and open their heart to you, if that’s what you want through mastering this skill. Moreover, empathy doesn’t necessarily mean that you only use it to acquire negative feelings, but you might use it to gather some positivism and greatness for yourself when you surround yourself with uplifting people. The con is that it might be hard to turn off that connection in places where there’s little joy to go around. Additionally, it may take time to rid yourself of the miseries that you’ve taken upon yourself from a ’session’. Empathy is to improve the world through suffering (or easing suffrage).
The pros of equanimity is that you fully embrace the concept of your thoughts creating your circumstances. It is also the way of living in total emotional balance and harmony as opposed to the roller coaster of empathic living. Whatever you’re facing, it won’t paralyze, discourage or disappoint you, be it either things or people that affect your objectives. The con of it is that you may find it difficult to spontaneously rejoice over your own or others’ fortunate events. You might also become somewhat of a recluse as people don’t find much interest in spilling their guts over you, because they feel distant in your presence. Equanimity is to improve the world through leading by example (as in showing people that you are calm and unshakeable when facing otherwise stressful, terrifying or wretched events).
Equanimity shouldn’t be confused with indifference though. Or that a person becomes incapable of taking action. Or even that such a person is foolishly unafraid or unaffected by immediate danger. It could be described as total clarity of the present moment, but without having emotions influence your decision making or mind-set.
I believe each person is innately orientating toward one of these concepts more than to the other - as with an MBTI preference. Even though one can’t experience both concepts simultaneously, the question is if one can master them both and use which ever state of mind suits a given situation. This would mean that you can have the pros of both and focus on lessening the impact of the cons of each that I mentioned.
Personally, I’ve always been following the discipline of equanimity very strongly. Empathy has naturally seemed to me as something I want to avoid as I feel I’m meant to orientate towards equanimity. My guess is that if I’d start to practise empathy with much effort, then my level of equanimity would suffer. But I’m not ruling out the possibility that a person can make such a mental shift as easily as pushing a button.
What I do suggest is that a person picks a side, any side. And moving from there it’s all about improving the chosen skill as far as possible to help balance society in the right direction. Both skills aim to reach a balance, either internally within each individual or then on the plane of interrelationships. So unless you happen to be a person who finds himself or herself capable of mastering both states whenever you want, my best bet is that you focus on the one that seems more right to you and that you practise it constantly to make it even better.
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