#382 Today you’ll chase fulfilment
Today, you’ll force yourself to chase fulfilment, not instant pleasure.
Because when you start getting the taste what’s on the other side of your avoidance…
Soon enough you won’t need brute force anymore.
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#106 Pick your freedom battles
ByLukas
Most people don’t really want the freedom to do anything they want, in other words, a life without constraints.
They want the freedom to set their own constraints.
To decide, “I want to spend my time writing,” instead of saying, “I am supposed to become a lawyer because that’s what we do in this family.”
To decide, “I don’t drink alcohol,” instead of saying, “My social circle forces me to have a glass when I’m out.”
To decide, “I want to live in that house, drive that car, and go on that exotic holiday, and I’m going to make it happen,” instead of saying, “I’m constrained by my talent, potential, current job, or where I grew up.”
To decide, “I have time to learn a new language because it’s important to me,” instead of saying, “I’m too busy, I can’t (or don’t deserve to) do anything nice for myself.”
Good or bad, beneficial or misguided, constraints are always there.
Because life constantly forces you to make decisions, and every decision leads to a new constraint.
Since it’s challenging to be aware of your decisions and their long-term constraining effects, which constraints do you consider important enough to set consciously (and spend considerable time and effort doing so)?
Where do you allow others to dictate the constraints you live within?
Who do you allow to dictate the constraints you live within?
Pick your freedom battles.
#166 It’s not about goals, it’s about the questions they raise
ByLukas
“If successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.”
https://jamesclear.com/goals-systems
It’s not about having goals. It’s about the follow-up questions goals raise.
“Will pursuing this goal be good for me? Physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially?”
“Is there any part of myself, my environment, and the people I care about that will suffer if I pursue this goal?”
“Who will I have become when I have achieved this goal?”
“Who do I need to be today to achieve this goal?”
“Which actions can I take today that bring me closer to achieving a goal?”
Repeated actions will overrule your thoughts. Repeated actions will change your identity. Better choose your goals and your actions intentionally.
#179 Intellectual understanding vs Internalized knowledge
ByLukas
Intellectually understanding that the perfect speech includes a strong opening, humor, a dramatic demonstration, rhetorical elements, and emotional appeal doesn’t mean your next speech will contain those elements right away – and that’s okay.
You don’t have to master this today.
Intellectually understanding the nuances and body positioning of a yoga pose doesn’t mean the next time you stand in that pose, you’ll perform it perfectly right away – and that’s okay.
You don’t have to master this today.
Intellectually understanding verbs, tenses, or case systems in a foreign language doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use them correctly in conversations right away – and that’s okay.
You don’t have to master this today.
Turning intellectual understanding into internalized knowledge and skill is a slow, layered process:
- Intellectually understand which things to do differently from before.
- Mindfully become aware of the moment when you need to do things differently.
- Do things differently from before.
- Repeat every day.
#416 From now on, I do…
ByLukas
Today could be the day you become who you’ve always wanted to be.
All it takes is one small change.
I used to do this.
But from now on, I do that.
#43 Quick-Start Guide to Stream of Consciousness Journaling (Morning Pages)
ByLukas
On 1. January 2021, I started writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling a day. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s 663 days in a row: an inner dialogues of 1989 pages poured in to piles of journals.
Stream-of-consciousness journaling is also often called Morning Pages (a term coined by Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way“).
The idea is that you wake up in the morning and before you do anything else, take a journal and pen, and you start externalizing the voice talking to yourself in your head on the page.
You don’t stop to think about perfect phrasing (your inner voice never stops talking, either). In fact, you don’t lift your pen off the paper at all until you’ve filled 3 pages.
Shopping lists, to-dos, dreams, interactions, worries, fears, excitement, goals, friends, family, memories, ideas, goals,… whatever’s on your mind.
No poetry, no perfect prose, no structured sentences, no coherent insights – unless that’s what flows out of you.
No judgment either. You never even have to read this back.
Nothing but pure, unfiltered stream of consciousness.
This simple practice has transformed me.
Why write Morning Pages?
- The feeling of liberation once you’re able to relax your mind and channel your stream of consciousness. Like an athlete “in the zone”, your mind becomes one with the pen in your hand, and words flow from your head and heart onto the paper. Once you get it, writing 3 pages becomes easy – after all, your inner voice never shuts up.
- Intentionality. When I write them by hand, it seems to slow me down just enough to get in the zone, calm my racing thoughts and think more slowly and deliberately.
- Creative breakthroughs. You start by writing down everything on your mind in an unfiltered way, free of judgment and stress. Then, you start “sculpting away, day by day.
- Externalizing thought patterns, loops, destructive self-talk. Once they’re on the page, it’s hard to ignore the way you speak to yourself.
- Recognize recurring patterns and topics that come back over and over again.
Tips for success:
- Write 3 pages today. Not more, not less. But do it today. Cut yourself off when you reach 3 pages. Today. Repeat tomorrow.
- Don’t read your notes back. Don’t show them to anyone. You want this to be pure, raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness. This is not publication material, this is a representation of your messy internal dialogue.
- If you have a creative breakthrough or interesting idea while writing your Morning Pages, keep writing until the 3 pages are full; then make a separate note about the idea or insight you had.
- See it as a huge unpolished pile of thoughts with interesting connections; then use that to uncover interesting connections, good ideas that you can further develop. Good ideas and insights will be buried in a sea of fluff – and that’s fine. Volume matters. (again, sculpting away, day by day)
- Julia Cameron suggests writing your Morning Pages right after you get out of bed – before your ego wakes up.
Or don’t do any of the above and just write.
Write first thing tomorrow morning.
Don’t overthink it, just write.
Don’t read it back, just write.
Don’t worry about grammar, just write.
Then when you’re done, write some more.
#25 Pre-emptive disqualification
ByLukas
In the series of self-sabotaging behavior I’ve observed in myself and others: “pre-emptively disqualifying yourself”.
Before you even start, you’re depriving yourself already of any potential benefit of the exercise because you don’t know if you’ll get the EXACT benefit promised/desired by you.
“This exercise might have cured your neck pain, but I’ve always had neck problems, it won’t chage anything.”
“You might be able to write every day, but for me, in my situation, that would never be possible.”
This shows a lack of understanding of learning principles. Because with any exercise, program, diet, methodology, you’ll never get the exact same results as someone else, because you can never replicate the exact circumstances and actions of a person.
Instead, you do the exercise/program/diet/… within the framework of your own personal context/skills/past experience. Within that context, it will guide your learning process. But the outcome resulting from it is personal.
Variance is to be expected, and this is a good thing. Because this is how innovation happens: actions in different types of circumstances lead to slightly different results. Sometime that leads to disappointment, sometimes to real breakthroughs.
Getting different results, then, is not a reason to pre-emptively disqualify yourself, or to claim something doesn’t work. Because the true value doesn’t lie in getting the exact same results as someone else, but rather, to consciously set the general direction of our lives.
Every day, we have to make so many decisions that lead us down different future paths, so modeling someone and using their actions as a guiding principle will greatly increase the probability of you going in the direction you desire, and getting results in the same ballpark.
For example, I’ve been doing Dylan Werner’s yoga classes on Alo Moves (my go-to online yoga/fitness/meditation app) consistently for almost two years now. Even if I continue to follow his exact schedule for two more years, chances are, I still might not be able to do something like this:
After all, we have a different body structure, different gene disposition, different circumstances, and I’ll have to adapt his schedule to my personal capacity.
Still, if I follow his schedule I’ll definitely become much stronger and healthier than if I chose to model a couch potato, watch TV and eat fries and burgers all day. And that’s what it’s all about.
Modeling, in that point of view, are an effective way to accelerate your progress and lead your life in the direction you want, without you having to know exactly which results you’ll get.
In other words: when you let go of the need to predict exact future outcomes, you can stop pre-emptively disqualifying yourself, and start pro-actively setting the direction of your life.