164) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 17: "Feeling Seen"
Being socially interdependent is built right into our DNA. It’s our existential evolutionary heritage; it’s the Wisdom of our Ancestors, shaping our very essence over the generations, giving us our strengths and the abilities we rely on for resilience in an often-harsh world.
163) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 16: The Final Step to Rational Self-analysis; Sub-section 4 -- Eating Better
With cooking, there are a few basic heuristics, that can REVOLUTIONIZE your cooking. Without becoming an expert, without memorizing a bunch of stuff, without following a bunch of recipes, you can still turn yourself from a frozen-pizza type of cook, to “Hey! This is really good!” type of cook.
162) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 16 - The Final Step to Rational Self-analysis; Sub-section 3 -- The Life-Altering Sorcery of Combining CONTEXT with Competence
The more precise you can get, in terms of the behaviours you need to undertake in order to accomplish your goals, the better. Because, once you have precisely identified The Things you need to Do, then, as illustrated above, you can pull the precise CONTEXTUAL levers that you need, in order to make Doing The Thing into the default, the Thing that is practically the easiest to do in that situation.
161) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 16: The Final Step to Rational Self-analysis; Sub-section 2 -- The Power of Context
The thing to emphasize for effective goal pursuit is emphatically NOT “taking personal responsibility.” While not COMPLETELY unimportant (obviously), this whole “make your bed” mantra is only a tiny, tiny piece of the puzzle, and if over-focused on, it becomes basically a huge, shaming, blaming, counterproductive, disempowering lie.
160) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 16: The Final Step to Rational Self-analysis; Sub-section 1: Give Up Your Willpower
Maaaan, you walk out of that theatre, your heart elevated, your eyes a little more open, your mind spinning with visions of your future awesomeness. You are READY!! Like, tomorrow, as soon as you wake up, you are STARTING. Success is YOURS. RRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!
140) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 4 - Backlash (or, as my therapist likes to say, "Shame is a tricky bastard")
If you are on a path of healing, you are also on a path of backlash. It’ll happen, and when it does, it’s VERY HELPFUL to remember, it’s ok; it’s just a backlash; keep going.
139) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 3 - The Spontaneous, Seemingly-Magical Transformation of Motivation
Keep in mind, the “self help industry” is an INDUSTRY. It, decidedly, does NOT thrive on wellness, but ironically, on illness. Nothing quite as good for the bottom line than repeat customers!
138) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 2 -- The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Self-Improvement
Keeping an open mind & heart is one of the most fundamental necessities of a healthy life, and of wisdom in general. It seems terribly difficult for people, especially some people, to do this, to accept the uncertainty of opening to new ways of thinking, or to appreciate values, lifestyles, beliefs, that are different from their own.
137) Wow…weird. I healed: Part 1: The struggle and the miracle
Do you struggle with this feeling, like you “can’t” share positive things about yourself? Do you know where it comes from? Because that’s a pretty good place to start if you want to get through it, and eventually be free from it
136) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 15: FACT Exercise #2 -- Choosing Meaning over Control
If you feel shitty, that’s ok. I mean, it’s not exactly great, like yay, yippee, I feel shitty! No, but its “ok” in the sense that feeling shitty is just part of life. It’s inevitable.
But we have more strength than we are so often willing to tap into. If we HAVE TO, we can overcome those shitty feelings. At least for a while. At least for long enough to get some Really Important Things done.
135) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 14: FACT Exercise #1 -- Focusing
The thing about telescopes (and microscopes, and binoculars), is that you can’t see shit out of them until you get them aimed and focused properly. Before you do that, they’re actually worse than your naked eyes; everything is just a blur and you have no idea what you’re looking at.
Self-healing and personal growth are exactly like that. Until you know what you’re aiming at, and focus yourself properly, you’re not going to get anywhere by “trying to improve”. You might even get worse, because there’s nothing quite like failing, for someone who struggles not to feel like a failure.
134) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 13: Avoiding the Shit
The only thing we really get better at by avoiding our problems, is avoiding our problems. We become Level 10 Shit Avoiders. Our defence mechanisms, fantasy thinking, distractions and other “coping strategies” become our super-powers. Pretty shitty super-powers, eh? No wonder Marvel and DC don’t have movies about Avoidance Man fighting bad guys….
133) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 12: You are strong enough
If it’s been hard to read this, I’m sorry. But if it’s the truth, then it’s the truth.
This can change. You are strong enough. Your ancestors made sure of that.
132) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 11: FACT cares about your feelings
This is about YOU, living the way your heart most deeply desires. It’s about YOU finding your life more meaningful. It’s about learning to intuitively connect with that which makes your heart sing. And if you’re doing THAT, then who cares how much someone else has accomplished?
124) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 10: Finding out who you really are: Rational self-analysis
The family of techniques I am calling “rational self-analysis”, work, therefore, by orienting you towards things that are compatible with your “authenticity”. As you decide, discover, and become more aware of “who you really are”, you will therefore pattern your life more effectively around things that are compatible with your authentic self. Instead of running around trying to please other people all the time, or trying to hide or make up for your perceived deficiencies, or trying to “cope” with the stresses of life, you will instead be more capable at exercising your agency effectively. You will become a more powerful actor in the world.
120) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 9: Healing, and the Doctrine of Original Awesomeness
As far as I’m concerned, healing is dramatically NOT about self-improvement. It’s NOT the positivity movement. It’s not changing yourself, fixing yourself, or achieving anything, really. It’s not goals. It’s not a vision board. It’s not “believe until you achieve.” It’s just BEING, yourSelf. It’s learning/remembering to be who you already are. Who you were born as. Who you have always been.
119) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 8: Oops, I fucked up
Once we are the center of someone’s world, or at least are manipulated into believing that we are, we become like putty in their hands. And once they started being unhappy with us, finding faults, being displeased, criticizing, criticizing, criticizing, we’ll knot ourselves into a pretzel trying to make things right again.
118) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 7: Resistance, the sneaky bastard
Society’s general response to this, ubiquitously shared from the well-meaning friend to the well-meaning internet commenter, from the self-help speaker to the solutions-oriented therapist, is, in essence, just do it. Just change. Just stop thinking the bad thoughts and holding on to the negative beliefs. Just stop focusing on yourself and your problems and look at how you can be of service to others. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself for all the things that haven’t been perfect, and practice gratitude for all the blessings in your life. Not uncommonly nowadays, I hear echoes of Jordan Peterson, sternly telling Bucko to sort himself out.
112) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 6: Backlash, resistance, and dissociation
In the example of procrastination, your wiser self (or maybe it’s your motivated, goal-striving self) knows that Doing The Thing is the right thing to do, and has convinced itself that it WANTS to do that thing. It will feel a sense of self-integrity, authenticity, if it follows through on its intentions.
But then there’s a bunch of other selves. And they say, “Fuck Doing The Thing; I want to Do a Different Thing.”
111) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 5: What Backlash can teach us about ourselves
But the inner emptiness eventually must be faced. We crash, through relationship failure, career burnout, addictions spiralling, etc. In one way or another, karma catches up with us.