Moving $0.20
That’s right, I’m getting more and more motivated to shift my pair of dimes… I mean, shift my paradigms.
The first thing to figure out, though, are what my current paradigms are. This isn’t just what I think should happen… but how I am actually acting.
I live in an objective world, with only my emotions crossing over and firmly planted in the subjective. My paradigm says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction… That quarks and electrons form the basic substance of the world.
The problem with that paradigm is it does not explain human interaction. It is an excellent map of all things chemical, but it does nothing for the behavioral world where money exists.
New Pseudo-Scientific Law:
The first paradigm shift that I want to make is one regarding people’s behaviors. I propose a new hypothesis: Subjective Behavior. People will behave the way that you expect them to.
This subjective theory has many applications. For a long time now, I have expected this site to grow very slowly… after all, who would want to come listen to me ramble on, knowing only half of the story? Because of this, I have about 30 people who are subscribed to the RSS feed. I also expected a very slow growth in the amount of income this site generates… and my Adsense earnings are hovering around $40, growing by an average of one dollar per month. (That’s total earnings… I haven’t received a check yet, despite having this site running for over a year.)
I have changed my expectations about people linking to this site. Before, I thought that many people would write many links about specific posts… after I had written some great posts. Well, people have linked in to the few select posts that I thought were great, but I have changed my paradigm about the whole site, and now the only links that I get are residual links from a list that circulated around the ‘net a couple months back.
I don’t expect great traffic from that list… but I could be wrong. Since that list came out, some great people have visited this site, and have made some great comments. Of course, some of the comments have been thinly veiled spam, but as in the case of Jonathan Wells’ comment that I approved this morning, some of these comments have been real gems. I don’t know how Jonathan found my site, but the list seems to be driving some high quality traffic, and it is introducing me to people who I would like to call friends.
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Yesterday, I was in a terrible mood. When I woke up, I imagined my wife nagging me to work on some unfinished projects around the house. By the time my wife had awoken, I had run a hundred scenarios through my mind, and I wanted to get something done… yet I simply couldn’t think of what I could do. When my wife woke up, she found me on the computer, debating whether I should start programming or find something else to do, and she said that she wanted help on a couple of projects that day.
Instead of agreeing with her, and getting up to make coffee so that we would both be motivated/caffeinated enough to get work done, I fell into despair that I hadn’t thought of the projects sooner. I agreed to help, and sat at the computer filling time with idle tinkering. About an hour later, my wife asked me about one of those projects, and I took it as nagging, so I responded back that I’ll start it later. Of course, she noticed the annoyance in my voice, so she rightly took it personally. When she responded with annoyance in her own voice, I felt justified in believing that she was nagging, and the day went downhill from there.
It wasn’t until late that evening when I understood that I was wrong in my reactions. By that time, it was too late to salvage the day, but I remembered something my wife had told me before… She wants to be treated as though she were helping me, and as though we want to be together.
That night, before I went to bed, she hinted a couple of things to me, such as to do the dishes. Of course, I was completely oblivious to the hint until this morning, when I noticed the dishes still in the sink. The key is, I behaved to her exactly as she expected me to: To her, I blew off the dishes, leaving them for her to do. I certainly didn’t mean to… and if I had realized that she was getting tired of doing the dishes by herself all of the time, I would have jumped up to help… but I was expected to ignore the dishes, so ignore them I did.
Exploring a Faulty Paradigm
The real question is, what do I currently expect from myself when it comes to housework, and what do I expect from my wife?
To be honest, I expect that I will forget the housework, and that, when I think of it myself, I will procrastinate until someone else does it.
I expect my wife to do the housework most of the time… to be resentful that she isn’t being helped, and for her to nag me when I am obviously not doing my fair share.
What, then, would be a better paradigm? Obviously, my current paradigm isn’t working… It is only adding stress to our relationship, and only reinforcing my anxiety.
Can I expect that I will remember the housework? Well, I’m perfectly capable of remembering it, with a little help. I don’t expect my wife to want to remind me all of the time… but fortunately, I have a handy PDA that I can use to set reminders.
What about my expectation about procrastinating? Simply remembering is one thing… I can easily set reminders. Getting up and doing something once I remember is a completely different beast. I have reinforced my paradigm about procrastinating to the point where, even though I know it is as simple as changing my outlook, I still see it as a very difficult prospect.
My strength must come from within. I can not find motivation outside of myself, because it simply does not exist. There are no magical words that someone else can speak that would be guaranteed to change my mind. There is no pill that I can take, or some other ‘easy’ way to change my behavior except to actually change my behavior from within.
Perhaps here is a key. I want to stop procrastinating now. I recognize that, in the past I have wanted to procrastinate… but all that ever exists is right now. When I am conscious and living in the moment, I have never wanted to procrastinate. This means that, when I am reminded, I am living in the moment… so I want to start something, and I want to finish something.
This is the paradigm shift of living now. I can’t control the future, and I can’t change the past. I do live now… so when my circumstances now allow me to eliminate procrastination, my [new] paradigm says that I want to work now, and enjoy this work now, and accomplish great and wondrous thing now.
Changing my paradigms about my wife will be hard as well. Rather than expecting my wife to do all of the housework before I get home, I need to be more realistic. I know that she is just about as motivated to get things done as I am, so my new paradigm says that she will do things only when she is living in the moment. She may or may not get everything done, so it gives me an opportunity to look around and see what I can do. It becomes an opportunity for me to create new habits and to practice living in the moment.
As for her resenting when I don’t help… that is a harder paradigm to change. She doesn’t want to resent me… so she gives me hints. Each hint should be a clue to double-check. Last night, when my wife asked how many times I had done the dishes in the new house, it should have been a hint to double-check, to see if I could do the dishes again. She doesn’t resent my inaction until she believes I have been made aware… so if I am conscious that she hints at things, even after my repeated insistence that I am terrible at getting hints (another paradigm to change. I can get hints, I just need to be aware that they’re possible), then I can prevent her from ever being resentful.
When it comes to nagging… I simply need to be aware of her hints… be conscious of the moment, and realize that she doesn’t nag, she gives straightforward reminders to come back to reality when it is obvious that the hints aren’t taking hold. My wife honestly doesn’t nag… I simply interpret her helpful reminders as nagging, because of my own emotional baggage and ego.
A Fifth of a dollar, shifted
My old paradigm is broken… I have tried to work with it for several years, but it simply hasn’t given me results.
My new paradigm says that all of human interaction is subjective… that is, by changing my own interpretations, I can realistically change what is happening objectively. To put it a slightly different way, this new paradigm says that, whatever I expect from myself and from other people becomes reality. If I expect more people to begin visiting this site regularly, then they indeed will visit more regularly, because I will take action and interact with people based on that expectation. In fact, that is one of my expectations, because I am once again getting comfortable in my own skin, and people enjoy conversations with honest, open people who are willing to explore their faults openly.
Hmmm, I wish I was wearing pajama pants…
HINT HINT!