And on that note, here’s a quick post on how to get back on the wagon.

Guilt / Shame

It’s natural to feel guilty or shameful after having gotten off the wagon. You had hopes for yourself. You thought you could trust yourself. You disappointed yourself. You want to fix things, so you wallow in guilt because it seems like guilt should be a good motivator.

“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I do things to avoid this feeling in the future.”

The problem is it doesn’t work this way. It certainly hasn’t for me.

Here’s the thought progression I go through:

“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I really don’t want to do things because I’m shamed into them.” –> “I’m stuck.”

Sometimes I end up doing the things I’ve been shamed into, but it’s usually for reasons other than shame. Example: I have homework assigned on Monday that’s due on Friday. Monday – Thursday I feel guilty about not having done my homework yet since I’ve had plenty of time. Thursday evening I finally do my homework. I do it because I don’t want to fail. I don’t do it because of the guilt/shame.

Step 1: Notice When You’re Feeling Guilty. Ask yourself when guilt has been useful to you in the past. Guilt is used so often that it can be hard to wrap your mind around that idea that it doesn’t work. That’s why you need to take an honest look at how guilt and shame have affected your productivity in the past. I’ll bet that more often than not it’s paralyzed you rather than motivated you.

Also, really, do you want to use hating yourself as motivation to do good things? Do you want to do good things out of fear of self-punishment?

Why Did You Get On the Wagon?

You had some sort of motivation for getting on the wagon in the first place. What was it? Get in touch with that feeling… with the excitement.

Maybe the reason you started to work on your painting was because you had this beautiful image in your mind’s eye that you wanted to see on canvas. Maybe you stopped painting because you forgot how beautiful the end result will be. Reveling in the future beauty can be enough of a motivator to get you back to your easel and your paints.

Step 2: Figure out what your original, intrinsic motivation was. Feel the excitement. Start moving.

Given the choice between motivation by guilt and being motivated by the excitement that got me started…

Similarly, let’s say you were the recipient of volunteer work. Who would rather receive services from: Someone doing it because they were guilted into it or someone doing it because they genuinely wanted to?

Let go

Maybe the reason you want to do your homework early is because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do. You can hear your parents’ saying how they wished you’d work on your homework as soon as you got it, but the voice is always theirs, not yours. You got off the “doing your homework early” wagon because it wasn’t your wagon. It was your parents’. You had a not-very-compelling extrinsic motivation, not an intrinsic one.

Step 3: If you don’t have an intrinsic motivation, let go of your guilt. It’s not your problem. This step is harder than it sounds.

In the Middle

Many times the situation won’t be clear. You may realize you’re primarily motivated for extrinsic reasons, but you still feel compelled to keep trying. Or maybe you have good intrinsic motivations but you keep feeling stuck. In these cases, look deeper until you find a fear or an intrinsic motivation or both.

Going back to the school example. Maybe you look further and find that you do actually like learning. When you get into the homework, you don’t mind doing it, and most of the time you actually enjoy yourself. However, you’re afraid if you don’t take the time right after school to watch TV you won’t watch any TV by the time you go to sleep. So you procrastinate on the school work and it’s hard to muster up the energy to do homework after the fun of TV is over.

Some possible solutions might be to try limiting the time you spend on not-due-tomorrow homework. Maybe spend only an hour on it each day right after school, and promise to spend at least an hour each day doing something purely fun. Or something. The next time you get off the wagon, you can ask yourself if you’ve been getting enough time to yourself and you can remind yourself of how much you love and want to learn. You have a place to start.

Once you figure out what the underlying fear is and what the intrinsic motivation is, coming up with things to try is straightforward. Just think of a solution that might work, feels alright, and try it.

The homework example has both an intrinsic motivation and a fear, and I think most of the time we get off the wagon, it’s because of a combination of the two. There’s some reason we got started. There’s some fear that this change in behavior is aggravating.

Step 4: If you’re motivation isn’t compelling enough but you can’t let go, look for the fear that’s stopping you and the intrinsic motivation that’s keeping you from quitting.

If you’re really stuck ask a friend to help you out. They may be able to see what you’re afraid to admit.

A Bit More On Analyzing Failure

Analyzing failure has it’s place, but it shouldn’t be the default thing you do. Instead your default action should be to figure out what it is you’re trying to do.

If your goal is to get back on the wagon, then it’s much more fruitful to remember why you got on it in the first place.

If your goal is to prevent getting off the wagon in the future, then analyzing why you got off is useful.

It’s tempting to start analyzing first. It feels good to figure out why you failed. But knowing why you failed won’t help you get started again. Use the right tool for the job.

Apologize and Move On

It’s more important to move on than it is to apologize. If someone hasn’t updated their blog in months, and out of the blue starts again with no explanation for why they left and why they’re back again, it’s easy to forgive them if they just start updating regularly. On the other hand if they write a long apology including plans for the future and then the blog goes silent…. well. Empty apology, much?

The same goes for promises to yourself. If you exercises for 3 months straight and then stop for no reason, it’s way better to just start up again  without formally apologizing to yourself than it is to apologize, make more promises, and then not do anything. In fact not doing anything at all is better than an empty apology.

If you have a history of making empty apologies, try this instead. Try getting back on the wagon, and don’t explain yourself. Just do it. After some specified amount of time, allow yourself to go back and apologize for that gap. Use apologizing as an incentive to actually make the change.

Good Luck!

The Hard

Overwhelmingness

Lots of sewing to do. Little time and energy.

Not keeping my schedule

I made a schedule that would enable me to have time for writing and sewing and relationship time. I kept to it on Monday and Tuesday. After that… yeah not so much. I’m trying not to feel too guilty about it.

Work is Hard

Yep.

The Good

Punch Brothers

Saw Punch Brothers at The Ark on Wednesday. Awesome.

If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a progressive bluegrass group. By bluegrass I mean they play bluegrass instruments (mandolin, banjo, guitar, fiddle, bass) and play some traditional tunes. By progressive I mean they don’t play many traditional tunes and when they do they sound… different. Mostly they play their own stuff, and it’s very very good stuff, but not really what one might think of as bluegrass.

The best way I can think to describe it is modern classical music with bluegrass instrumentation, a steady rhythm, and vocals that sound human.

I’m so glad I went.

Also The Ark is the best thing ever.

Aaron helped with Sewing!!!

Honestly he often helps with sewing, but it especially helpful this week. He put together my shifts and his hood and hemmed three cotehardies. Because of that we should have just about everything done by Pennsic.

I like sewing.

Yep, still like sewing.

The Learning

I get good insights at the Ark

At the Punch Brothers concert I kept thinking about all these things I wanted to write about. Kinda frustrating since I didn’t have a good way to record them. Maybe next time I’ll take some time after the concert to write them down… or something.

Being in the Moment

I tend to spend a lot of my time fantasizing about the future. Be it a week from now, a month from now or a few years from now. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it does. For instance, it bothers me when I’m out camping and instead of appreciating the moment I’m in I spend my time thinking about how I should go camping more often and visualizing a life where camping is a major part of it.

This week I was visualizing how I could do sewing for a living and it really took over my brain. I had a hard time focusing on the sewing I was doing and a hard time sleeping. Gah! It really hit home that I need to take a few minutes here and there to ground myself. To appreciate where I’m at right now.

That’s it for me. I’ll be back about two weeks from now.

The Hard

All of it’s related this week.

Bad Times in My Head

Depression. Guilt about depression. Shame for said depression. Believing my feelings are invalid. :-/ Not good times.

Is it over? It’s not as bad as it was over the weekend, but not sure it’s over yet. We’ll see.

Feeling a bit burned out on sewing

Mostly because I’m not sure I can get it and other things I want to do done in time. I can probably get the cotehardies finished, but the hose and the hood and the shifts… not so much. Unless I take time off work, which I can’t since I’m already going to be out of days due to Pennsic. Alas.

Not really able to enjoy my me time… even though I need it

Has to do with the burnout and the guilt. How can I be spending time on me when X, Y, and Z need to get done too?! Not that I have energy to work on X, Y, and Z. It’s just bad.

May have taken on more than I can handle

Gave up one SCA position for another. The other’s more aligned with what I want to do, but it may end up being more work than I bargained for. We’ll see.

The Good

Bweesness for Blogging

Last week I thought of a way to get some valuable experience for this blog. I’d love to be able to tell people to go out and start a business doing what you enjoy doing, but as of today I’ve never actually had a side business of my own. So, I think I’m going to start one… and blog about the experience. The one caveat being that I’m already feeling overwhelmed. How can I take on more?

Also that’ll mean my life will consist almost entirely of money making or potential money making activities. I don’t know how comfortable I am with that. :-/

Still this is a good thing. It’ll be valuable life experience if nothing else.

Chore Schedule

We have a roommate now, so we came up with a chore schedule with everything that needs to be done in order to make everyone happy. So far so good, although it’s only been up for half a week. Methinks think it’ll work, though, because of the accountability. I don’t want to frustrate both Aaron and the Roommate.

The Learning

Sovereignty

Havi writes a lot about Sovereignty, and for a while I didn’t see the value of applying those ideas to my life. Respecting your capacity is over-rated. A lot of people do less than they are capable of. I don’t want to sell myself short. Etc. But this weekend I started thinking that respecting my current capacity to do things might be a good idea.

I have a hard time saying no to things I would want to do if I had infinite time and energy. So I say yes to positions, or go to events and then don’t enjoy myself because I really ought to be doing something else. At events I’ll often beg out early if I realize that’s what I did. I feel better afterward. Positions are a lot harder for me to quit for some reason. :-/

The thing is, no one is happy when I say yes to things I can’t really do or stay in positions I can’t do well. I just need to say something like, “I’m sorry, my intuition says that that’s not the right thing for me to be doing right now. Have Fun/Good Luck!” It’s hard because it’s rejection. I don’t like to be rejected. I don’t like to dole out rejections. But people still aren’t happy when I say yes when I really should have said no.

So, I need to figure out what my boundaries are. I have a lot of data to work with now. I should be able to come up with something reasonable.

Wedding

Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:

• I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
• I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
• I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
• *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
• It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
• It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.

Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. Yay!

Guilt

I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:

• I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
• I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
• Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
• Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
  1. Figure out why I broke it.
  2. If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
  3. If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
  4. Then I do whatever I can to fix it.

  So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.

  Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.

So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I think we all know that it’s a good idea to take control of our lives. Ideas like independence, self-actualization, autonomy are parts of the American identity, and they’re spreading throughout the world. We want to be powerful forces in our own lives.

And yet it’s now acceptable to blame our parents for our hangups. It’s acceptable to blame the schools and the economy for our joblessness. It’s acceptable to blame fast food restaurants for our bad diets and credit card companies for our crippling debt.

Disconnect much?

Taking responsibility for our lives isn’t easy and isn’t natural, but it’s something we know we ought to do. That’s why it’s on the path less traveled.

So, what’s stopping us from accepting responsibility?

We Expect that Authorities Know Better Than We Do
I’m no psychologist, but I’m willing to bet that anyone who feels controlled by their parents believes that their parents know more than they do. Their Inner Bunny takes on the voice of the especially difficult parent and reminds them of all the times said parent was right. This time is no different! Etc. Person can believe deep down that she’s right but she wants parent to see it that way too. That’s the only way to KNOW it’s right, after all. But parent is not perfect, and does not want to admit that, so person feels trapped.

The solution here is to be rebellious. Not stupid rebellious, of course, but when your heart of hearts tells you something that your parent won’t like, listen to your heart of hearts. Be kind to your parents, though. They’re not perfect and they’re probably trying their best.

…courage to change the things that I can…

We Fear We’ll Prove We Really Are Powerless
If you don’t try then there’s always hope that you could succeed. If you try you might prove that you can’t.

I used to have this problem in school. I didn’t want to try too hard, lest my best turn out to be mediocre. I wanted to be able to tell myself that if I put in a bit more effort I could have aced some test. It’s not a good habit if you actually care about learning the material.

With school, I never figured out a good way to get over this problem. I think perhaps if I cared more about the material than I did about my ego, my life might have been better. But that’s just speculation.

With other stuff the solution is twofold.

1. See Failure is part of the journey. Everyone messes up once in while. Most of us mess up a lot. The only time you’re really a failure, though, is if you quit trying. Learn to accept that. Learn from your mistakes. Failing will get a lot easier and you might just start to redefine failure as simple learning.
2. Take Small Steps. Make your next action toward getting out of your hole something you know you can accomplish. Don’t go on a starvation diet. Find something healthy you like to eat. Don’t trying waking up two hours earlier than normal every day. Try five minutes first. This won’t help if your overarching strategy is off, but with most habits you want to instill you’ll be a lot more successful. In the end you’ll save a lot of time by going slowly too, since you don’t have to go through the shame recovery phase.

…courage to change the things that I can…

Responsibility Sounds Like Shame
It’s not that hard to go into shame mode when you realize you could have made different, better choices. It’s even worse if all that time you knew you could have acted differently. You’re a bad person for having wasted so much of your life, right?

That’s not the point, though. The point of looking back is to see how much power you had. Hindsight it 20/20. Hopefully you’ll be able to trust that you have as much power now as you did then.

Forgive your former self. She wasn’t perfect. She was doing her best. Your responsibility to her is to do better today.

Responsibility is not shame. It’s accepting your own power.

…to accept the things I cannot change…

Sometimes Outside Forces Really Are in Control

You can do everything right and still get cancer. You can do everything wrong (well maybe not everything, but a lot of things) and live ’till you’re 100 and remember where you left your keys. Life isn’t always fair.

And because life isn’t always fair, why play the game as if it is? Why take responsibility at all? The rules can’t be trusted.

The thing is, on an individual level, the rules mostly work. The person you are after you start exercising will feel better than the person you were before you started. You might not feel as awesome as your sister, but that’s besides the point. You may not start out with a trust fund in hand, but if you play the game of life right you’ll probably be able to do what you want to do.

If you get cancer (or hit by a drunk driver or laid off in spite of doing excellent work or whatever) accept it as something you don’t have control over. Then focus on what you do have control over. How you want the rest of your life to get, for instance.

…wisdom to know the difference.

As I said, it’s acceptable these days to know why you have the problems you do and then not do anything. To assign responsibility to someone else for where your life goes. That’s not a good thing. It undermines your own power. And quite frankly your life is primarily your responsibility.

Taking responsibility for your life, acknowledging your own power, is difficult, but totally worthwhile. That’s why it’s on the path less traveled.

Kitty reads book to avoid trying new foods...

We all know escapism is bad. When you’re reading a novel so you can avoid doing your taxes, that’s bad. When you’re reading blogs instead of writing for your own blog that’s bad. When you’re giving your spouse attention to avoid doing housework that’s bad. When you’re doing housework to avoid your homework, that’s bad. Anything you do so you don’t have to think about what you ought to be doing is escapism, and escapism of that sort is bad. Avoiding the things you have to do in your life does not lead to good things.

What’s interesting is that under different circumstances these activities wouldn’t be escapism. Most people don’t think giving their spouse attention is ever a bad thing. Scheduling time to catch up on your favorite blogs isn’t always a time waster. Watching TV can be a good form of recreation.

Virtually no activity is inherently escapist, and just about any activity can be escapist. Family can be an escape from work. Work can be an escape from family. Housework can be both something to avoid and something to help you avoid something else.

You’ll read on lots of blogs that you should “stop reading and go DO your thing“. It can be a bit disconcerting. Is it bad to read and plan? Is action the only good thing?

Methinks these experts are addressing people who are using “good” activities to escape from the stuff they have to do. This is a bad practice because it demeans the activity. You aren’t doing the activity because of it’s worthwhile-ness. You’re doing to avoid something. The worthwhile-ness of the activity just makes you able to rationalize your doing it instead of what you don’t want to do.

Your spouse won’t like it if you’re giving him/her attention so that you don’t have to fold laundry.

Look at how you spend your time. What worthwhile activities are you doing to escape from some part of your life? What “not so worthwhile” activities are you doing because you love doing them?

Also, I’ve heard that people experience these things differently. Some people hear a voice. Some see an image. What I write here is how I experience these things. Your mileage may vary.

With that said, let’s get on to the terms.

Heart of Hearts: This is the part of yourself that can’t be fooled. It communicates in feelings. When you ask yourself a question it’s the flash of feeling you get before you can verbalize your answer.

Sometimes you won’t be able to hear your heart of hearts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have anything to say. If you’re out of practice, for instance, it will probably be very quiet and you need to listen harder in order to hear it. It could also be that you can’t handle the truth.

In general your Heart of Hearts has something to say about everything, even something as mundane as brushing your teeth in the morning. Mine says “Yes, this is the right thing to be doing. Why are you asking me?” Of course, I’m translating from a feeling, I don’t actually have a little voice in my head.

Intuition: You may have wondered, how do you know when your heart of hearts has something to say? The answer is Intuition. Intuition, like your Heart of Hears communicates nonverbally, but to call that communication a feeling would be a bit strong. It’s the “something is not quite right here” “feeling”. It’s the part that tells you something you spelled doesn’t “look right”. Or says that 2 * 254 = 502 doesn’t look right.

When your Heart of Hearts has something to say, but doesn’t feel comfortable talking to you, your intuition will let you know.

Like the bunny in this picture, your Inner Bunny can be quite destructive if left to its own devices.

Inner Bunny: I haven’t actually used this term before, but I probably will in the future so here’s the definition. Your inner bunny is old old programming. It’s the part that tells you food is good, sex is good, sleep is good. It’s the part that really believes in fear. It’s the part that craves security.

Your inner bunny will have an immense amount of power over you if you don’t pay attention to it. And even if you do try to pay attention to it, more often than not it’ll run away because is it just got caught. Being found out about is scary! Like a cute little bunny, when it’s scared it needs to be petted and feel it’s secure. When Bunny feels secure Bunny will help you.

If you’re a fan of Seth Godin, you may recognize this term as “The Lizard Brain“. It’s the same thing, but has a more heartwarming connotation. And even if you want some ruthless visualization, you can always think of the Killer Bunny.

Intuition lets you know if you’re talking to your inner bunny. The big cues that you’re dealing with your inner bunny is irrational fear.

I sometimes confuse Heart of Hearts and Inner Bunny because they can answer your question at the same time. To illustrate, let’s say you’re going to give a presentation and you’re scared. You ask yourself “why am I scared”? Part of you says SCARED! FEAR! THIS IS THE WOST THING EVAR! That’s Inner Bunny. At the same time if you’re listening you’ll hear, “You’re scared because Inner Bunny says you’re scared”, and if you pay attention you’ll hear the implication that there’s no reason to be scared.

The two things aren’t the same thing. Your Heart of Hearts speaks from a place of calm. Your Inner Bunny is usually not very calm. But they do talk at the same time, and often your Heart of Hearts will point out that Inner Bunny is the one causing you trouble. Once you get used to listening to Bunny you won’t need to listen for Heart of Hearts because you’ll know what it has to say.

Subconscious: All of these things are part of your subconscious. Any part of your brain that speaks in feelings, I say is part of the subconscious. The part that controls how your limbs move or your automatic breathing function…. yeah not so much. Those things probably should have their own name, and for the time being “subconscious” isn’t one of them.

Of course, I’ve been using “subconscious” all willy-nilly like on the site, and I will fix that in the future. These parts really are different, and I intend to refer to them by name in the future.

If you want to take up running, but believe that if you do you’ll ruin your knees, you won’t run.

If you want to get out of debt but believe that your life won’t be fun anymore, you won’t get out of debt.

If you want to work on your blog daily, but believe your voice isn’t worth being heard, you won’t write.

Of course there are ways to combat each of these mental blocks. If you’re the runner afraid of bad knees you can run barefoot and take up Chi Running. If you’re afraid of deprivation but want to get out of debt you can work on paring down the stuff you don’t care about. (Is it possible to feel loss over something you don’t care about?) If you’re the insecure blogger you can practice writing in your journal or educated yourself so that you are worthy of being heard. The real problem is not the blocks themselves, it’s that we often don’t know when we are mentally misaligned.

So, how can you know when you’re mentally misaligned?

One way is to align your environment, try to achieve your goal, and see how you do. If you fail after aligning yourself with success, there’s a good chance your subconscious is working against you. Ask yourself why you think you failed. “I’m not disciplined enough” is not a good answer. Look deeper. Ask yourself why you don’t want to succeed. If you really can’t think of any reason why you aren’t able to achieve your goal, work more on aligning your environment. Then try again. If you fail again, and there’s still no physical reason why you’re failing, your subconscious is involved. Some part of you doesn’t want you to succeed.

Some good ways I’ve found to get my subconscious to reveal what it’s saying.

Thinking: Just plain old sitting around and thinking about it. I ask myself, “why am I failing at running” and I hear back “because I don’t feel good when I do it”, “because I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong and will injure myself”, “because if I go through the whole ritual (warm-ups and stretching) it eats my day”, … These are my mental blocks. This can be the fastest way to get answers from your subconscious, but in many situations it doesn’t work. For instance, if you feel embarrassed by a certain belief you need a lot of practice to be able to hear it. Thus, while this tool is very powerful, it won’t always work, especially if you don’t have much practice with it.

Writing: Writing acts as assisted thinking. Sometimes I have a lot of ideas floating in my head and I just need to get them all down somewhere. On paper, on the computer, doesn’t matter, just as long as I’m not thinking in circles. And once in a while I’ll get lucky. I’ll see something I’ve written down and a lightbulb will go off in my head. Maybe that embarrassing belief is now so painfully obvious I can’t miss it… or something.

Talking: As useful as thinking and writing are, they’re both solo activities. They work only as well as you know how to use them. Other people have the advantage of being able to see your subconscious at work. They can tell you you’re yelling when you don’t realize your are. They can tell you when you’re using negative language when you don’t realize it. They can tell you why they think  you’re having trouble completing a task. Sometimes they’ll even be right, but even when they aren’t, you’ll learn something.

Reading: When I’m really stuck, I turn to books. I’ll pick something related to solving my problem, and usually I’ll get some kind of insight while reading it. The book may not directly solve my problem, but, solely by virtue of being on the same topic, I’ll usually get at least one lightbulb moment. Going back to the running example, I know I want to run so I might read a book on running. While reading the chapter on “treating injuries” I might finally hear the little voice in my head complaining about ruining my body. In spite of the book not addressing that particular problem, I still would have had a realization about the problem.

In short, you can’t bust your mental blocks until you know what they are. Taking some time to think, write, talk, and read about the areas where you haven’t been successful can help you figure out what those blocks are. Once you know, the solution to your problem is usually straightforward.

Here’s the definition I’ll use, and for clarity I’ll use two generic names: Alice and Bob. When Alice is getting Bob to do something he wouldn’t ordinarily do, she is manipulating him.

It’s a pretty wide interpretation of manipulative. If Bob is biting his fingernails, and Alice tells him it’s bad for him, even that falls under this definition of manipulation. Her technique might not be effective, and she may be saying it for his benefit alone, but that’s besides the point. Alice is still trying to manipulate Bob. Alice is still trying to change Bob’s behavior.

The thing to realize here is that manipulation in this broad sense is part a part of life, and it’s not always a bad thing. In fact, it is often wise to allow yourself to be manipulated. If someone shows you that your behavior is not aligned with what you profess to believe, you’d do well to reconcile that. If someone is calling you to be a better person, you shouldn’t fight it just because someone else suggested it.

So the question is, what’s the difference between positive and negative manipulation? The answer is quite simple: positive manipulation is when someone gets you to do something that makes your life better in your eyes. Negative is when it makes your life worse in your eyes.

As far as your life is concerned the form of the manipulation really shouldn’t matter. If someone uses guilt to get you to do something you already know you ought to be doing, you should still do it. The key thing here is you know it’s the right thing to do. The fact that they used low-blow tactics is beside the point.

Similarly if someone appeals to your higher values–a method of manipulation I particularly like–and calls you to put more time into your non-profit group of choice, the time spent there may not be the best for you. If you already spend lots of hours at your day-job and then spend as many at your non-profit group your family and friends may get short shrift, and you may find that the new use of your time hasn’t made your life better. The fact that the person used a good method of manipulation is, again, besides the point.

In other words, when someone is attempting to get you to change your behavior it’s the content, not the form, that matters.

This changes, of course, when you’re the one trying to change someone else’s mind. The content is still very important, but most of us have a hard time taking advice that’s presented in the wrong way. If you want to be listened to you’d do well to get both content and form right. That’s what this Friday’s post will be about.

These days I’m fundamentally happy with myself, and I’ve found that being happy helps way more people than just me.

A Few Reasons You Should Work on Your Happiness

First off, when you’re happy you are more pleasant to be around. Misery may love company, but no one in a so-so mood really wants to be around someone who’s miserable. By being happy you either lift other people’s moods or frustrate them by showing them what they’re missing out on.

It’s only when you’re happy with life that you’re really, truly in a position to be able to help others. Oh, sure, there are plenty of people out there who bury themselves in their good works–doctors who work overly hard to avoid their family, teachers who focus more on their students than their own kids–but these people aren’t really doing as great work as they think they are. They send the message that you can’t have a good home-life and do great service for others.

If you don’t believe me, just think about your own life. When you’ve been depressed and sad, are you really in the best state of mind to help others? Are you really focused on other people’s best interest or are you actually just trying to distract yourself from your own issues?

When you need help, who would you rather receive advice from? Someone who’s fundamentally happy or someone who’s giving you attention to avoid dealing with their issues?

Is it even possible to be happy all the time?

The short answer is, it’s complicated. No one can feel happy 24/7. Feelings are fleeting. If you’ve got a stomach ache you’re not going to feel as good as when you don’t. If you lose someone close to you, you’ll probably feel sad. Etc.

It’s not really about feeling happy 24/7, though. It’s about your default mood in life being happy and content. It’s about feeling good about who you are and where you’re going. When you have positive feelings about these things, you general state will be positive… how can it not be? And speaking from experience, it is absolutely possible to have this be your default state.

How Does Being Happy Affect Your Motivation to Help Others

The happier you are with your own life the more you will want to help others. You’ll want people to experience the good things you are experiencing. You’ll want to do something about the suffering of others.

There’s more to it than that, though. Happiness is a stabilizer. When you feel happy you feel like you can take on the world. But too much stability is a recipe for boredom. If you’re too happy with your life, that happiness will make you unhappy. (Weird, I know… but life is weird that way.) If you’ve ever thought that the promise of eternal bliss in heaven sounded a bit boring, you’ll know what I mean. If I had to bet, I’d say this is a leading cause for why people who seem to have it all sometimes do incredibly stupid, self-defeating things.

If you’re wise you’ll channel the restless energy caused by too much personal happiness (stability) into finding a mission. As I said earlier, you’ll be frustrated by people you know who are suffering. Not to mention that there are plenty of things wrong with the world.

In short, the pursuit of your happiness increases your motivation and ability to help others. It’s not something you should ever feel guilty about.