Viewing entries tagged with "self-improvement"   //
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it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

4

I got what I wanted for Christmas.

Piles of it. Sheets falling from the sky, melt­ing instantly on your wind­shield, forc­ing the traf­fic to 20kph on the high­way. So much that you have to brush off your car if you leave it parked for more than a minute, but the sky glows orange for you to savour every second.

house in the snow

 

Not that I cel­e­brate Christmas, but I do enjoy the trap­pings of the sea­son. The lights and the dec­o­ra­tions and the spirit and the snow. I’m just sick of the con­sumerism. It seems per­verse to see all this fancy paper wrapped around a box only to be torn off and thrown away. To see peo­ple scram­bling to buy things just to have some­thing to give. I’ve got it just right, where I don’t exchange gifts with any of my friends cause I don’t want either side to feel obliged. I’d rather give a present when the time is right for both peo­ple, and save my money so it’s some­thing spe­cial every now and then. The last thing I want is to be a scrooge, but the older I get, the more I feel like that’s what I’m turn­ing into.

The hol­i­days are the only time I truly veg out. I watch more TV on Christmas day than in the entire year com­bined, marathon reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars and Cake Boss. Shows that are fas­ci­nat­ing in short bursts with the right com­pany and snacks, but never good enough to make a point to watch on my own.

trees and night

 

I was lucky enough to spend some qual­ity time with a cheap elec­tric gui­tar. The body was dusty, the strings were dirty, and the into­na­tion left some­thing to be desired, but the action had me feel­ing like all the time I’ve spent with a stiff steel-string acoustic has paid off. About a month ago I put down a $200 deposit on the nylon-string beauty I’ve always wanted (with the promise that I’d get my deposit back if I didn’t like it) so I could wrap my arms around the body, run my hands across the glossy fin­ish, and feel the fret­board beneath my fin­gers. Guitar has been my only ther­apy lately. The only thing I can throw myself into and for­get about every­thing else, the only part of myself that I can tan­gi­bly tell is improv­ing, some­thing I need to be feel­ing right now.

I’ve never been this uncer­tain about the future, and it’s freak­ing me out. I already had a feel­ing 2012 was going to be a new start. My projects would be done by the end of the year, I’d have a nice lit­tle break, and I’d be ready to begin again. Now I’m forced into that real­ity, and life is soon going to be very dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if I’ll be able to han­dle it, but I sus­pect I won’t have much of a choice.

Date  December 27, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

a short break in adolescence

6

I’ve been feel­ing like an adult.

This isn’t due to my fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties or my tidy home or any other things I used to use as a mea­sure for matu­rity, but from feel­ing like every­thing makes sense. Like I have all the answers the way adults seem to do, because I can see the big pic­ture, I under­stand what truly mat­ters, and I don’t sweat the small things anymore.

It’s only now that I’m at a point where I feel like a grown up. Like this is finally who I’ll be for the rest of my life.

That’s not to say I’ve fin­ished grow­ing, that I’m not human or infal­li­ble, but there aren’t the same strug­gles or changes that I used to have, so my emo­tions and atti­tudes have evened out.

For a while I won­dered if I’d just become another turning-30 cliché, but I real­ized it was never about age. Various things have brought me to this matu­rity, from con­ver­sa­tions to rela­tion­ships to trips far away. It all hap­pened to be around the begin­ning of a new decade in my life.

Maybe I’ve been feel­ing this way only because things are going so well. It’ll take some hard­ship to test how far I’ve truly come as an adult, but until then I’ll try to live like a child, cause too often youth is wasted on the young.

Date  October 5, 2011
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Categories  Thoughts

the art of longing's over

0

So the great affair is over but who­ever would have guessed
It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed

On a sleep­less night in Paris, I came upon the sud­den real­iza­tion that the last thing I should be think­ing of was a per­son I hadn’t spo­ken to in more than half a year.

It brought to mind some­thing Jason told me once, about a pol­icy his life-coach has for his ses­sions (which are very forward-focused): if you bring up some­thing neg­a­tive from the past three times, the life-coach would end the work­ing rela­tion­ship cause it’s in indi­ca­tion that you’re hold­ing on to some­thing that keeps you from mov­ing forward.

So there’s three things you can do:

  • change the situation
  • change your­self
  • noth­ing (which implies that you stop bring­ing it up, because you’re not doing any­thing to improve the situation)

For so long, hope meant that I’d been try­ing to change the sit­u­a­tion. And when I finally, finally, finally under­stood the futil­ity of it all, I knew I had to change myself, and come to terms with what I didn’t seem capa­ble of accept­ing. Being in another coun­try, sur­rounded by an indul­gent, hedo­nis­tic cul­ture and filled to the brim with hap­pi­ness, was exactly what I needed to gal­va­nize myself into that change, and end things on my terms.

I’ve been set­tling back into my reg­u­lar life, and I don’t feel much of any­thing now, except free. Like I’m finally in con­trol, above water, instead of tread­ing it.

Date  July 3, 2011
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Categories  Random

la petite mort

3

I’ve been spend­ing too much time around friends and fallen heroes, stay­ing up too late, run­ning away from my thoughts, pun­ish­ing my body, killing myself one day at a time. The exhaus­tion is numb­ing — exactly what I need — but I know I can’t keep this up for­ever. I used to lose a day here and there, think it’s Wednesday on a Thursday. Now I lose entire weeks. I’ve decided that it’s all okay as long as shit gets done.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been feel­ing trapped. I’m too busy to see past things as they are right now, a vic­tim of my own self-distraction, so it feels like I’ll be here for­ever, stuck in this end­less loop of heal­ing and heartbreak.

I’m still try­ing to find that del­i­cate bal­ance between accept­ing myself (which risks com­pla­cency) and striv­ing to improve (and the con­stant dis­sat­is­fac­tion). At the very least, I’ve come to the real­iza­tion that there’s a dif­fer­ence between the things that hap­pen to us and the way we react or deal with them, and since you have no say in the for­mer, all you can do is improve the latter.

Sometimes you have to die a lit­tle inside to fig­ure that out.

Date  May 18, 2011
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Categories  Random

i know i found the recipe for me

2

All I do nowa­days is dance. Not in any coor­di­nated man­ner, mind you, and cer­tainly not in the pres­ence of any­one else.

I’m only now start­ing to real­ize how nec­es­sary it was for me to sur­vive that cru­cible last year, and how impor­tant it was for me to save myself. It hasn’t tem­pered the extremes, but they don’t last as long anymore.

Blue Mountain village at night

 

It’s com­fort­ing to know I’ve been through this before. It wasn’t all for noth­ing. I’m a lit­tle wiser now, and I’m not going to make the same mis­takes again.

This win­ter hit us heavy once more, and like it I refuse to die.

Date  March 22, 2011
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Categories  Photos Random

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

10

Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I didn’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines painted on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I didn’t even know existed until I found myself feel­ing empty when I didn’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­ity (or lack thereof) will limit me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I started tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­lier songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapted for the soprano ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re never as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­ity unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for another hobby, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the limit of my abil­ity. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in another few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

Date  May 3, 2010
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Categories  Random Video

Protected: The self coming true

8

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Date  April 21, 2010
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Categories  Thoughts

Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by

4

While I’ve always been very appre­cia­tive of what we did have, some­times I won­der about what we never had the chance to do.

Sure, I bared my soul. I sur­ren­dered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just any­one. I told her how pro­foundly impor­tant, won­der­ful, and remark­able she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I never gave up.

It wasn’t because we hadn’t reached that level of trust. It was a way for me to pro­tect myself. To feel as though she didn’t have all of me, so I wouldn’t be left as open and vul­ner­a­ble when the end finally came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed any­thing1, but because I won­der what it would have been like for some­one to know me com­pletely. To feel vul­ner­a­ble and safe, all at once. Even know­ing I’d be heart­bro­ken even­tu­ally, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keep­ing all my girl­friends at arms length to pro­tect myself. I can’t go through life hold­ing things back any­more, con­stantly wor­ried someone’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no mat­ter how sta­ble a rela­tion­ship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feel­ing uncom­fort­able, because the more you share, the more com­fort­able you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go for­ward now, as a wiser per­son, a stronger soul, a bet­ter lover.

I sup­pose I’m feel­ing nos­tal­gic, or miss­ing her, as is my wont when the sea­sons change.

  1. Cause it wouldn’t have. [↑]
Date  March 7, 2010
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Categories  Thoughts

My Therapist is a Rockstar

2

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­apy tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I didn’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s never been any­thing permanent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­ify my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cover such a com­plex topic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↑]
Date  February 21, 2010
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Categories  Random

Surrounding Myself With Great People

11

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­ally involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting value in mate­r­ial things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too competitive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because other peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

Date  June 9, 2009
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Categories  Random

Psychoanalytic Reflections 05

5

Sometimes I come out of a ses­sion feel­ing great. Sometimes I come out feel­ing like a mon­ster, like some hor­ri­ble, fucked-up person.

During my first ses­sion, my ther­a­pist noted that this was a mutual process. It wasn’t as if he was going to sur­gi­cally remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us work­ing together, with a pro­gres­sive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m deter­mined to fix myself.

Dependence

  • I have a gen­eral feel­ing of incom­pe­tence, which leads to a lack of trust in my own judg­ments. As a result, I have a very dif­fi­cult time mak­ing deci­sions because I’m par­a­lyzed by the fact that I may make the wrong one.

    • I can trace this back from my child­hood to my early twen­ties when my par­ents were over­bear­ing and would never let me make any of my own deci­sions. In fact, they would make most of my deci­sions for me, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant ones, like my pro­gram of study in university.
  • The result is that I tend to ask peo­ple for advice on every­thing, although I’m depen­dent on Pat the most. This is because Pat is so smart and expe­ri­enced, and has never, ever let me down. What I’ve come to real­ize, how­ever, is that Pat is so smart because he’s already made his mistakes.
  • This was linked to my anx­i­ety, where I felt like I couldn’t han­dle any­thing on my own.
  • I’ve been try­ing to fix this is to keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mis­take, and that some­times, mak­ing mis­takes is the only way to learn.

Unrelenting Standards revisited

  • I real­ized that I tend to have unre­lent­ing stan­dards when it comes to life in gen­eral, but espe­cially in my writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, or art because I feel like this is the only way I will ever dis­tin­guish myself and be worth some­thing. I feel like if I’m not the best, then I’m worth­less. As a result, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to enjoy my life, even some­thing as sim­ple as sit­ting down and watch­ing a movie.
    • The roots of this are more dif­fi­cult to trace than I ini­tially thought. While my par­ents were a tremen­dous influ­ence in terms of mak­ing me feel like their love was con­di­tional, I believe a large part of this life­trap has to do with me mak­ing up for my emo­tional depri­va­tion by fill­ing my deeper empti­ness with success.
  • Even when I do some­thing that I know I should be proud of and sat­is­fied, I feel like there’s always another thing to do, another level to reach. While this fuels my self-improvement and has got­ten me to where I am now, I’ve come to real­ize that there’s an imbal­ance between the effort and the pay­off. I work too hard for too lit­tle enjoyment.
  • I may real­ize this, but it’s a hard habit to break. I have a feel­ing that I’ll need to fix my emo­tional depri­va­tion at the same time to do so.
Date  May 25, 2008
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Categories  Thoughts

Tai Chi Progress

4

My under­stand­ing of Tai Chi seems to come in the form of a sine wave: the more I learn, the more I real­ize I don’t know, and as I adjust for more and more details, other details get lost.

For the last few months, I felt like I was get­ting nowhere. The con­cepts made sense in my brain, but not in my body. My teacher has said that Tai Chi is already too intel­lec­tu­al­ized, and as a per­son who’s never been very phys­i­cally co-ordinated and tries to com­pen­sate in SHEER MENTAL POWA!, this holds true espe­cially for me. Until I’ve mas­tered telekine­sis, how­ever, I’ll be reliant on more tra­di­tional means of movement.

In the last cou­ple weeks I feel like I’ve reached another level of under­stand­ing, as rudi­men­tary as it may be.

One thing that helped a lot is when a senior stu­dent showed me what ward-off (peng) felt like. As he stood with struc­ture in his body, I tried to push him1, but ended up push­ing myself off him and falling over. In order to move him, I was forced to use the proper tech­nique (since he’s con­sid­er­ably big­ger than me), and expand with my entire body — legs, waist, arms, chest, lungs — instead of sim­ply try­ing to move through him.

Then we reversed roles and he pushed me until I could chan­nel his energy through my feet. It was the first time I ever felt grounded, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing the idea. I still don’t really under­stand it, inso­faras I couldn’t explain it to some­one else.

Adapting this all to the form is some­thing else. I try to focus on one thing at time2 but it falls apart in other places. At this point, I’m just try­ing to get all the gross mechan­ics to be nat­ural with­out hav­ing to think about it, hop­ing that I’ll even­tu­ally be able to fine tune every­thing else.

  1. It reminded me of the feel­ing of squeez­ing a rub­ber stop­per, some­thing with give but not much, that becomes expo­nen­tially dif­fi­cult to com­press. [↑]
  2. Such as stay­ing at one level with­out being rigid (con­sid­ered “breath­ing”), relax­ing my lower back, think­ing of my body being anchored through my legs, and keep­ing struc­ture and intent in my palms. [↑]
Date  April 3, 2008
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Categories  Random

Defining Myself Through Others

8

I’ve come to real­ize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from oth­ers, albeit to a much smaller extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my par­ents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a com­ment about not being good enough, or unsup­port­ive silence. Their con­stant crit­i­cism led to low self-esteem and feel­ings of inad­e­quacy. Yet another exam­ple of how they mind­fucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reac­tion. Remnants of my old, inse­cure self creep­ing up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit completely.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mat­ter what any­one thinks of you.

Date  December 18, 2007
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Categories  Thoughts

Becoming Pat

5

At the core of our beings, Pat and I are the same person.

What sep­a­rates us is our emo­tion, or lack thereof. Pat’s the log­i­cal one, I’m the emo­tional one. I’ve always looked up to him — his strength, his morals, his per­son­al­ity — with­out really under­stand­ing why.

It’s only in the last year that I’ve come to real­ize Pat is a Taoist. This comes with the real­iza­tion that I’m a Taoist myself, and explains why I try to be more like him.

The inter­est­ing part is that he doesn’t even know that he’s a Taoist — sort of like Winnie the Pooh — which is exactly what makes him a true Taoist.

One of Chuang Tzŭ’s para­bles illus­trates this point. In an abbre­vi­ated ver­sion, Knowledge seeks a con­scious reflec­tion to know the Tao, and asked Silent Do Nothing and Reckless Blurter, before ask­ing The Yellow Emperor (ahhh, the Romantic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Chinese fables):

Knowledge said to The Yellow Emperor, “I asked Silent Do Nothing and he kept quiet. Not only didn’t he answer me, but he didn’t even know how to answer. I asked Reckless Blurter, and though he wanted to tell me, he didn’t, and even for­got my ques­tions. Now I’ve asked you, and you know all about it. Why do you say that you’re far from it?”.

The Yellow Emperor said, “Silent Do Nothing was truly right, because he didn’t know any­thing. Reckless Blurter was nearly right, because he’d for­got­ten it. You and I are far from right, because we know far too much”.

The same is true for Tai Chi1, or any mar­tial art for that mat­ter. Dissect it too much, and you lose the mean­ing. Think about it too much, and you don’t react. As Michael Babin wrote in his arti­cle on self-defense train­ing:

It is sad but true that real skill comes from seem­ingly end­less drilling of the basics and then learn­ing how to transcend/forget most of what you have so patiently learned.

In other words, learn­ing struc­ture is essen­tial to learn­ing to react to a com­plete lack of struc­ture (i.e. a real fight); but if you focus on struc­ture for too long it becomes counter-productive to “being with­out struc­ture” in mar­tial terms. One of the many annoy­ing para­doxes in the inter­nal arts.

One of the many para­doxes in the Taoist phi­los­o­phy as well. As much as I try to study it, learn it, and apply it, I find myself think­ing about it too much. As a result, I occa­sion­ally stray from being cen­tered, and lose my balance.

It’s the con­scious reflec­tion which Knowledge is seek­ing that pre­emp­tively dooms his search. This is my prob­lem as well. I buy Taoist books with a thirst for knowl­edge, but they’re all telling me the same thing now. Not that the books haven’t helped at all, but I feel like I’ve reached a limit. Perhaps even the sim­ple act of writ­ing about this is counter-productive.

I have the under­stand­ing, but I can’t apply it with­out think­ing about it first, and it’s the attempt to apply it that ruins the point. I’ve yet to reach a stage of pure reac­tion and spon­tane­ity, like Pat.

But I’m get­ting there.

  1. Yet another exam­ple of how Tai Chi is the phys­i­cal expres­sion of the phi­los­o­phy. Or per­haps this could be reverse-generalized, and said that the Taoist phi­los­o­phy is reflected in every­thing, such as mar­tial arts. [↑]
Date  November 25, 2007
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Categories  Thoughts

Oh, The Humanity

0

Although not in any nar­ra­tive Herbert Morrison sense.

I had a dif­fer­ent entry half-written, but the dark­ness was debil­i­tat­ing. All I wanted was a sec­ond sun; it felt like a case of SAD because the night was mak­ing me both anx­ious and uneasy. It’s noth­ing close to a panic attack, but it was bad enough that I felt com­pelled to called Pat to help talk me out of it. He’s one of the only peo­ple I can count on 24/7, and just talk­ing to him for an hour helps me fig­ure out more about the world than three months of writ­ing here. I know my eyes’ll feel like lead weights tomor­row for stay­ing up this late, but I need to get this entry down before I lose it. Hopefully, know­ing that it’s Friday will be enough to keep me alive through the day.

Self-improvement has dri­ven me for most of my life, a never-ending goal that’s guided me through my actions and beliefs. This is usu­ally based on com­par­i­son, since improve­ment is always rel­a­tive. Those who can accom­plish what I have dif­fi­culty doing always have my respect, and give me some­thing to work towards.

Before I com­plain about get­ting six hours of sleep the pre­vi­ous night, I think of Navy SEALs who get four hours total dur­ing Hell Week, a five day under­wa­ter train­ing exer­cise dur­ing the first phase of the BUD/S. That’s when I real­ize that I should be able to sur­vive an extra hour of work with­out much dif­fi­culty. When I feel like throw­ing my hands in the air after work­ing on an ad for four hours, blinded by the depth with which I’ve star­ing at the mate­r­ial, I think of my boss who can work through count­less inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions. That’s when I real­ize that I should keep at my work, because per­se­ver­ance will almost always yield results.

If I can sur­vive it, any­thing can make me stronger.

But as I dis­cov­ered tonight, every­one has their weak­nesses. Even Pat. He’s always seemed as solid as a rock, com­pletely unfal­ter­ing, but he admit­ted that there are also moments of weak­ness, how­ever brief. Times when he can’t get any work done because some­thing is both­er­ing him that he can’t let go. Times when he just doesn’t feel like going out or social­iz­ing. To find this out about Pat, was to dis­cover that the most cheer­ful, friendly, con­fi­dent, and men­tally strong per­son I know has his off days. Even the hard­est work­ing, most pro­duc­tive per­son I know occa­sion­ally falls vic­tim to a case of the Mondays or the 9–5 grind. There must be some sem­blance of bal­ance, in how much to push one­self, and how much to accept.

To strive for per­fec­tion is fine, but to lose sleep over imper­fec­tion is foolish.

Being a dom­i­nant, respon­si­ble for another per­son, means that one should be solid as often as pos­si­ble, but even this extreme case should allow for some lee­way. This doesn’t mean that I won’t try as hard in my attempt at dom­i­nance, but know­ing this cer­tainly makes the approach, and even self-improvement in gen­eral, much easier.

Some may say that it’s a fal­lacy to com­pare one­self to other peo­ple. After all, every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and tol­er­ance lev­els, and it’s no fault to born bet­ter at some things than others.

But even then, everybody’s human.

Date  September 23, 2005
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