Posts tagged with "self-improvement"

Becoming Pat

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. [↩]

Oh, The Humanity

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.

Trinary Maturity: The Girlfriend (or The Lifestyle)

It’s easy for some­one to asso­ciate an expe­ri­ence with the last mem­o­ry involved. I’m not with­out guilt in this issue myself. I’ll admit that the rough patch­es near the end of my rela­tion­ship with Loo have come to define the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle unfair­ly. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how much it’s helped and changed me.

In real­i­ty, I learned more from my time with Louise than from any pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. This was a per­son who inspired (and pushed) me to be bet­ter, but it was­n’t only her, it was the lifestyle as well.

I try not to have too much respon­si­bil­i­ty at this stage in my life, so when I do have it I take it seri­ous­ly. Being a dom­i­nant means that respon­si­bil­i­ty is assumed over anoth­er per­son, anoth­er being, anoth­er liv­ing soul. To be giv­en this respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a bond of supine trust, pro­vid­ed me a sense of con­fi­dence I had nev­er felt before.

And with this trust came a reju­ve­nat­ed zeal for self-improve­ment. She was strong her­self, so I had to be stronger. If Louise’s con­tri­bu­tion was to push, my con­tri­bu­tion was to grow. It helped me fig­ure out what I want in the next few stages of my life. I stopped slouch­ing. I start­ed speak­ing with more author­i­ty. I start­ed walk­ing into restau­rants first, some­thing I could nev­er do before, for rea­sons I could nev­er explain. I demand­ed more out of life.

In the end, it did­n’t work out. The dynam­ic was­n’t right. Unfortunately, I nev­er felt like I was able to com­plete­ly han­dle every­thing until it was actu­al­ly over. Funny how life works out like that. What I’ve lost is only rel­e­vant now.

But what I’ve gained is more impor­tant.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

Trinary Maturity: The Job

The first cat­a­lyst involved in my “trans­for­ma­tion” was my job. It could be said that the only rea­son this job was so sig­nif­i­cant is because I had nev­er had such a job before. Perhaps things would be dif­fer­ent if I start­ed my cur­rent career at a dif­fer­ent time, although the same could be said about the oth­er two fac­tors.

I was hired to work close­ly with one of two own­ers, a man with the dri­ve, mind, wit, and per­son­al­i­ty to run one of the top com­pa­nies in the indus­try. I see myself as a tool, an exten­sion of his per­son, respon­si­ble for things that he does­n’t have time to do. By free­ing his time, the com­pa­ny is able to grow faster, because his resources can then be put to bet­ter use.

My role is as a sort of sub­mis­sive. This works out well, because in (most of) the rest of my life I’m dom­i­nant. Like me, many sub­mis­sives at work are also dom­i­nants at home, and vice-ver­sa. People want change from the every­day life of their career, and in fact, my sub­mis­sion in this role is what makes me a bet­ter dom­i­nant in oth­ers (more on this extreme­ly sig­nif­i­cant point in the forth­com­ing part of this series).

I don’t have the per­son­al­i­ty to run a busi­ness, the way my boss does­n’t have the per­son­al­i­ty to work for some­one else. Our roles are clear­ly defined, and I’m much more pro­duc­tive as a sub­mis­sive in this sit­u­a­tion. It’s this pro­duc­tive­ness that has giv­en me so much con­fi­dence. I know how good a work­er I am, how inte­gral my role is in the com­pa­ny, and how dif­fi­cult I would be to replace.

Relational roles aside, how­ev­er, there are sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors of my job that con­tributed to what I con­sid­er explo­sive growth. The respon­si­bil­i­ty I have was a big thing. As the only IT per­son there, I have to make sure that all our hard­ware and soft­ware is suf­fi­cient for what we’re doing. When the nature of the busi­ness changes, the upper ech­e­lon comes to me for a solu­tion, whether it’s upcom­ing VOIP imple­men­ta­tion to save on long dis­tance, wire­less track­ing of our pick-ups and deliv­er­ies, or some­thing as sim­ple as a serv­er upgrade to han­dle the mar­ket growth.

Even things like mak­ing phone calls have changed me. I was nev­er com­fort­able on the phone. Only a year ago, order­ing piz­za was a dif­fi­cult thing to do, and Trolley can attest to this after get­ting him to call for me sev­er­al times. The only expla­na­tion I could come up with for this behav­iour is that there are peo­ple on the oth­er end, but I still can’t real­ly make sense of this aside from poor self-con­fi­dence. All I knew was that my tele­phone shy­ness was a prob­lem. I got over it by forc­ing myself to make phone calls at work. After all, one does not stop a project at a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion when one’s boss wants some­thing done. I still have my off-days, of course, when I avoid mak­ing calls alto­geth­er, but those are few and far between.

Not only has my job sparked a change in me, it’s paved a way for oth­er growth as well. Even finan­cial­ly speak­ing, I now have the free­dom to pur­sue my oth­er goals and hob­bies.

Every day I work, I’m thank­ful.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion

Cornus Canadensis

Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digres­sion.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was mid­dle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized poten­tial.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amount­ed to most of my child­hood. It has­n’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I final­ly feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly. I think dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­o­gy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tal­ly be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­bral­ly at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once point­ed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ous­ly being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I nev­er under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had nev­er dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.