About Life

About Life

Time Elasticity

Posted on

It’s even cliché to talk about it since it’s so common, time flies by when you’re having fun or when a deadline is looming, time crawls slowly when you’re bored or are waiting for something.

Or rather, we perceive time differently depending on our mood, this is not a universal phenomenon, it’s caused by our unreliable perception of reality. This is good because anything that’s caused by our brain, can be controlled by us to an extent.

I used to think that I couldn’t achieve anything useful if I didn’t have a block of two or three hours free for it. I have been changing that and taking advantage of even 5 minutes in between tasks to move forward at least a little bit. It makes a difference in how I perceive both how much time I need for tasks and how fast/slow time goes by.

Changing our attitudes in a simple way can help us alter our perception of time to our advantage.

About Life

Gearing Up

Posted on

I have been working through all the courses in Zwift, trying to complete all of them. I have completed a lot of them already but some of the later ones are hardcore and it’s probably going to take a few attempts and some more training to be able to finish it. It doesn’t matter though, I don’t have a deadline and every time I fail, I will gain fitness and insight for the next try.

I don’t recognize myself, the person who just wrote the paragraph above, the person who did extra time on the trainer today, who is this guy? If you asked me a year ago that I would be training at 5am 6 days a week and doing extra, on purpose, I would have told you to seek help for your delusions. Something has been clicking ;ate;y and definitely clicked more today when I finished my goal for the session and decided to not only go on, but to double it. I am enjoying this pedaling pain and it’s so strange.

About Life

The Past Doesn’t Exist

Posted on

The past doesn’t exist anymore. It was a fleeting moment that for a second was the now. It turns into a story we tell ourselves through the lens of our imperfect memory and our biased feelings.

Does it make sense to keep reliving it? to keep replaying the suffering that is no longer there? I don’t think it does and even though it’s difficult, the practice of letting the past be is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. Accept and move on.

About Life

The Future Doesn’t Exist

Posted on

We spend a lot of our time worrying about the future, anticipating what’s going to happen and pre-reacting to imaginary scenarios. The problem is that when we do this we feel all of the stress, anxiety and dread. We feel all of this in advance, because of something that hasn’t even happened yet.

Think about this for a minute, we suffer because of things that do not exist. The future hasn’t happened yet, it literally doesn’t exist.

What’s the point of feeling all of these negative emotions and their tangible effects on our bodies, for something that is just a phantom?

About Life

Saying Goodbye To Inanimate Objects

Posted on

Someone broke my favorite kitchen knife today. I had been using this knife for years, almost every day. Seems silly but it is one of my prized possessions because of how much value it has brought to my life. It’s just a knife thought. I bought it at the store as part of a set and it doesn’t have a history. It’s just a knife that I bought.

It was an accident and the person who broke it was very apologetic. I told them that it’s ok and I would try to fix it later, after all it’s just a common knife. This got me thinking about how I would have reacted to this a few years ago, I would have been angry, would have probably had lots of negative thoughts about this person for being careless and this simple event would have ruined my day. But it’s just a knife, and I can probably repair it.

It’s strange to think about how our reactions to loss, however trivial, can change dramatically if we reframe our outlook. It was nobody’s fault that this happened, even if they could have been more careful, it’s not a huge deal and using a different knife won’t change my life in any significant way.

But I would have reacted with anger in the past, not only about this but about many things that used to fill me with rage but now don’t phase me, because in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, we will survive and overcome.

About Life

Three Questions

Posted on

It is very important to look back. Not to beat yourself up about what went wrong, but to recognize what went right.

This doesn’t mean that we should ignore what went wrong, on the contrary, we should always review it and extract learning opportunities. Don’t dwell on what you messed up, not the lessons and move forward.

At the same time, we need to recognize all the things that we did right and figure out how to continue doing them well while correcting with the lessons learned from the mistakes.

The three questions that will help us reset and rebalance our perspective:

  • What went well?
  • What went wrong?
  • What will I do differently this time?

Do this regularly, at least weekly, and you will notice a gradual but consistent improvement in everything you do.

About Life

Listening To Your Own Advice

Posted on

Helping people is a very good way to help yourself. If you are giving and willing to support the people around you, it does wonders for your mood and your outlook.

I have been reading a lot about motivation, mindset and focus in the last year and have amassed a huge arsenal of ideas, techniques and advice. I am able to help people with these topics but have found myself in a strange situation: I am not listening to myself.

Many times I come out from a session where I’m helping someone with their focus problems, and then after the session waste an hour or two being unfocused for no reason. Why? If I have the tools to help myself get back on track, why do I let myself be sidetracked like this?

It’s very interesting to think about how we kind of assume that the rules apply to everyone else but us. This is incorrect most of the time and we should trust ourselves and trust the process.

About Life

The Problem With Comfort

Posted on

A year or so ago I started meditating. I had always dismissed the practice as some mystical nonsense and never gave it a chance. I later read about some of it’s benefits and scientific studies about it and decided to give it a chance.

I started slowly with 3 minute sessions that were extremely difficult for me, it’s amazing how uncomfortable it is to be alone with your thoughts some times. I have always “needed” some sort of background noise at all times, slept with the radio or TV on and always carried a portable music player of some kind. Silence has always made me uncomfortable so that was more of a challenge than I expected.

Eventually I was able to move on to 5 minute sessions and finally settled with 10 minute sessions. I currently have a 388 day streak in Headspace, but that’s not really reflective of how I have been doing the practice for the past few weeks.

I got too comfortable. I decided that spending the 10 minutes in the morning was no longer necessary, I thought I maybe didn’t need it anymore at all, but decided to move the meditation to right before bed. I technically kept meditating every day but not really, because I would fall asleep before finishing it. It became background noise.

Coincidentally, I’ve been experiencing unusual anxiety for the past couple of weeks and it took me many days to put two and two together and realize that the increased anxiety was related to my half-assed pseudo meditation.

I got too comfortable and took the benefits of consistency and mindfulness for granted, and have been paying the price for weeks. After returning to my daily proper morning meditation sessions, it has been night and day. I no longer have the augmented anxiety that I was experiencing.

The comfort zone is dangerous and it can make you dismiss and underestimate the actual practices and habits that got you there, then it can set you back a few steps. It is a lesson to be learned many times.

About Life

Choose Your Pain

Posted on

They say that procrastination is about pain avoidance, you don’t do what you’re supposed to be doing and instead choose to do something else to avoid the pain of a difficult task. Instead you choose the pain of guilt and anxiety because the avoided obligation won’t magically disappear.

“Many people delay taking action because they hope to avoid suffering. They keep searching for a path that won’t involve tradeoffs. But some form of suffering is always inevitable. The process of taking action is the process of choosing your pain.”

James Clear

Is it really worth it to endure the guilt and anxiety in exchange for a small reprieve? Unlikely, it seems to be an unfavorable transaction, you spend your time doing something else while still thinking about your obligation and you will eventually still have to do it anyway.

It’s very clear that choosing your pain is an effective way to prevent procrastination, just tough it up and start. But what about worrying about a future obligation? Sometimes we experience that same guilt and anxiety for something that might come later, but we can’t do anything about it yet.

I think that choosing your pain can also be effective to reduce the unnecessary stresses of worrying about the future. We all know that it doesn’t do any good to fret about things you cannot control and cannot predict, but it’s often very difficult to keep this under control. Meditation helps a lot but committing to what’s going to happen and being determined to be present in the moment in the meantime is something that can be very effective in controlling unnecessary anxiety.

About Life

It’s Not All About You

Posted on

It’s counterintuitive, but I have found that things related to motivation usually are. When you’re having a bad day, when you fell slow and unproductive or even when you feel miserable, a good option that you normally wouldn’t think about is to try and find someone that you can help.

If you spend these kind of day trying to find ways to help yourself, you will only find more reasons to be disappointed. That’s how mood distorts our perception.

I have found that if you instead try and find someone you can help, it can do wonders for your motivation and your mood, if you approach it with the right attitude. If you see it as a burden or as people getting in your way, then it will only make things worse. However, if you reframe it as an opportunity to do something valuable on a day when you’re feeling “off”, it can turn around a bad day.

If you’re going to be slow and useless on your own stuff sometimes, it could be worth it to change gears and help someone else instead and likely the satisfaction of helping others can pull you up from the pit.