#175 Perpetuating painful comfort

ByLukas
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We naturally move towards pleasure and away from pain – with one exception: painful comfort.

If you’re used to believing that you’re bad at languages, there’s painful comfort in struggling with languages.

If you’re used to negative self-talk, there’s painful comfort in negative self-talk.

If you’re used to working 12-hour days, there’s painful comfort in working 12-hour days.

If you’re used to constant conflict, there’s painful comfort in constant conflict.

If you’re used to neglect, there’s painful comfort in neglect.

Painful comfort is keeping you comfortable AND hurting you.

Years of conditioning have given it an irresistible pull – until you decide to take a leap of faith and start believing that you, too, can change.

Where are you perpetuating painful comfort in life?

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    #208 How to get out of your self-improvement prison

    ByLukas

    You feel bad because you don’t write.

    And when you write, you feel bad because you’re scared of the inevitable day you stop writing.

    That’s how you create a self-improvement prison.

    And that prison has only one way out.

    Intend to do what’s good for you.

    Then realize that even if you don’t live up to that standard all the time, you’re still worthy of self-love and self-trust.

    Focus on intention, not outcome.

    Focus on cultivating elastic discipline rather than on becoming a habit hardliner.

    Focus on the general direction of your life, not a day-by-day judgment of your every action.

    Maintain a majority vote for who you want to be.

    Realize you’re not going to be perfect today – and being perfect isn’t the goal anyway.

  • #20 I’ve never tried that before, so…

    ByLukas

    In the series of unlikely life advice: a quote ascribed to Astrid Lindgren’s legendary character Pippi Longstocking.

    I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.

    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6773397-i-have-never-tried-that-before-so-i-think-i

    Only after reading this quote I realized how often we all hold the opposite belief: I have never tried that before, so I think I am not (and will never be) able to do that.

    What a sad and disempowering belief.

    Which begs the question…

    Where are you disqualifying yourself before even trying it out first?

    What would life be like if your default belief is that things you haven’t tried before are possible for you?

    How would that change your decisions?

    How much fear and frustration would you leave behind?

    Might be worth journaling about.

  • #2 Why I write

    ByLukas

    If writing and creating every day were as vital to my survival as drinking water, ingesting food, and bonding… What would life look like?

    Biologically, all behavior is driven by pain, pleasure, and the triggers and habits that come from repeated reaction to those stimuli.

    So I eat because I want to escape the pain of hunger – or heartbreak, sadness, and frustration.

    I connect with others because I’m neurologically hardwired to feel pleasure when bonding… and pain and deprivation when I’m abandoned.

    Similarly, I write because I want to escape the frustration of not being able to put into words an insight.

    I also write because I enjoy the rush resulting from finding the words that convey what I want to say.

    I write because I love the tingling in my back and neck when I combine those words into sentences with just the right rhythm, just the right cadence capturing the meaning, context, emotion of what I want to say…

    I write because writing wrests the essence from the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions racing through my mind and body.

    I write because when when I write, I feel that at last, I can make sense of life.

    And the more meaning I find, the more likely I am to write.

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    #76 Build Discipline by Starting Small

    ByLukas

    The trick to building discipline: stick to your projects more often than you quit, so your actions start overruling self-defeating thoughts.

    So how make sure you stick to more of your projects and habits

    Make them feasible. Start small.

    Write a couple of sentences in your journal every day.

    Write short articles.

    Walk for 5 minutes.

    Do 2 minutes of breathing exercises.

    In the long run, you’ll probably have to build up volume and intensity. But first, start small. Build trust of completion. Become disciplined.

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    #93 Second-Hand Memories and Trust Issues

    ByLukas

    Memory stores the lessons we extract from learn life experience. And to do so, it relies, modifies, adds, subtracts, highlights, and hides.

    What about second-hand memories? Accounts of past events we didn’t experience ourselves, wars, volcano eruptions, scientific discoveries,…

    For knowledge to accumulate, to stand on the shoulders of giants, we need to transmit such lessons too. Not just as data or accounts of the past – also as memories.

    But transmitting second-hand memories require trust.

    Can we rely on the interpretation of others?

    Who do we allow to control the narrative?

    Parents? Elders? Teachers? Governments and politicians?

    YouTubers? Influencers? Bloggers? Twitter gurus?

    AI models and chatbots?

    Objective data doesn’t exist. Objective memories don’t exist either. So if we can’t trust second-hand memories anymore, collective memory and our whole learning model collapses.

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