Adam’s Peace

Note: This is part 2 of a 4 part series, not including the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?

– The Tao of Programming

Acceptance and Forgiveness are the virtues needed to find peace within our own subjective world.

Before going further, though, I do want to make a distinction. When many people see the phrase ‘forgive everyone,’ they think that it includes the people who have hurt you the most and who remain unrepentant.

Well, that’s exactly what I mean. Forgive the worst people around you as much as you forgive the best intentioned.

I am not saying that you should turn around and let them continue hurting you. Forgiveness and forgetfulness are separate concepts, even though they seem to go hand-in-hand. Forgiveness is a form of acceptance… I would like to describe what acceptance is, and how it leads to peace.

Defining the Virtues

Acceptance comes from the root word accept, meaning to receive. (Please don’t confuse accept with except… An exception is something unusual, and to except something means to separate it from a group.) The complement to accepting something is to give it, where we find the root for forgive. Of course, the beginning of forgive, for, signifies that we give first, or before.

Acceptance is the state of always receiving. Forgiveness is the state of always giving first.

[edit: I was wrong, sort of. See Jeff’s comment below]

Forgiveness First

All of evolution rests upon the principle of continuing the species. For some animals, that means looking out for yourself, and only yourself, until you are able to breed. Examples of these would be various spiders, fish, amphibians, insects, etc. These creatures tend to have a large number of young over very short periods of time, and among the carnivorous, cannibalism is common. They would be described as being independent The next group of creatures, which includes most mammals, as well as some spiders, fish, amphibians, insects, and most birds, have evolved to nurture their young until they become competition. These species often have smaller numbers of young, rarely travel in groups, and cannibalism is rare, but not completely unheard of. They are also usually described as being independent. A third group, composed entirely of insects, cares for every member of their family, with only one breeder (often called the queen). They are described as being co-dependent.

The final group is made up of creatures that have formed a community, yet each member still remains an individual, trying to breed and survive while remaining in the group. Examples are wolves, meerkats, lions, elephants, humans, and generally most large mammals, although some birds fall under this category as well. Their best description is being interdependent. These social animals all have one rule in common: To receive, you must also give.

What does this have to do with our own inner minds and subjective realities?

Well, among any animals we’ve studied, humans are perhaps the most social. There are species of monkeys that have thousand member clans, but outside of human society, it is extremely rare to find a united social group that has over 50 members. Humans, on the other hand, have millions of people living in different cities… There are nations with billions of residents, each person identifying themselves as a part of the whole.

Maps, Territories… What’s the Difference?

I think that our ability to have such large social groups is what allowed humans to use technology.

The English language doesn’t have a phrase for what I want to describe… Instead, I’ll use a psychological trick involving visualization.

Take five seconds to think of a block of wood.

Now, without trying to imagine a new block of wood, only remembering what you had imagined during those five seconds, answer these questions:

What color was it?
How much did it weigh?
What shape was it?
Was it rough, sanded, or splintered?
Was it thin grained or thick grained?

Here are my answers. For those five seconds, I had a clear block of wood that didn’t have any weight. It had the proportions of 1×2x4, was not splintered, but there was no texture to it, and it was thick grained.

While thinking about the questions, of course I tried to come up with answers that matched most blocks of wood… My first thought about color was that it was light brown… but when I first visualized it, I wasn’t thinking about color at all… Color simply didn’t matter.

It seemed that what did matter to me was that the block of wood had a rectangular, blocky shape, and it had a wood grain. If I thought to ask about a stick, then I would have imagined a small branch with dark brown bark and one natural bend… but I would not have thought of a grain, length, or weight.

In fact, throughout that entire visualization exercise, I never thought about the smell, taste, our sound of the wood… A lot of information was left out… yet I know that I thought of a block of wood.

This is how our memories are organized… We store the fewest details possible to identify something as unique, and we’re almost always wrong about those details. If you think back to your dinner last night, can you remember noticing the design on your plate? Can you remember how your plate was oriented?

Of course, these details are useless in our day to day life, so we don’t even want to remember them… Yet, it leads me to believe that our minds are extremely storage efficient; we can’t simply think of a block of wood and instantly get all of the information we need… We have to dig into the wood with all of our senses before we have a complete visualization.

And, we do the same thing with other people. Inside of our own memories, each person is identified by their most unique traits. I’m certain that I’m identified by many readers by how I meander through topics, take short tangents, and write monolithic posts. (Trust me, today’s meandering through topics is well worth it… I have a clear goal and a path to get there.)

Just as we have a ‘generic’ block of wood in our minds, we also have a ‘generic’ person in our minds. This generic person has all of the rules that we think people will follow… It is our model from which we build all other people in our minds. Unfortunately, if we found someone who exactly matched this generic model, we would quickly forget them.

We identify specific blocks of wood by putting unique labels on top of our generic block. If I wanted to remember my dad’s workbench, which was made up of three 8 inch by 12 inch by 4 foot logs that had been squared off, then I would assign labels of size, weight, color, grain, smell, texture, and the fact that it was always cluttered with tools. There isn’t enough detail for me to draw the bench from memory… but I could compare it to any other bench and identify it uniquely.

We do the same thing with people. Besides putting an appearance on our generic idea of a person, we also put personality quirks, voice, and long time behaviors on top to make a doll in our own minds of who that person is. Anything that we don’t know about that person remains generic… it gets inherited from our idea of a generic person. If we believe that most people are Jehovah-fearing Christians, then you’ll label your generic model of people as Christian. Only when someone doesn’t match your ideas of the generic Christian will you question your ideas and put a special label on your mental doll.

Taking Care of Your Generic Model

Our generic model of people comes from a combination of the most common traits that different people have. Fortunately, we don’t have to decide what is most common and what makes a person unique… Our dreams do that for us automatically.

Unfortunately, however, if we know a lot of people who we don’t like, our generic model of people will start taking on those same traits. By far, the vast majority of people want to be good. The problem, though, is that these people will match your expectations unconsciously… I personally guarantee that I’ll be the person you expect me to be.

This means that people will unconsciously fit within your generic model. It does create a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it also gives us a lot of subjective control over our environment. (Think about the Law of Attraction… This is where that partial theory of subjective power really comes from.)

If we change our subjective generic model, we change our expectations of how people would behave. As our expectations of people change, they subconsciously pick up on those new expectations and start acting accordingly. As people’s behaviors change, it changes our subjective generic model… It becomes a feedback loop that gets easier to maintain over time.

Starting a New Loop

How, then, do we jump-start the process of changing our expectations and our generic models?

Well, the same things that work on people in the “real” world also works within our subjective models. Humans are social creatures, which means that we respond very favorably to gifts of any sort… from money to cars to food, and even (especially) simply expressing your appreciation.

We can’t give gifts to our generic model directly… It is nothing more than a shadow and a script of default behaviors. There would be no point, because our generic model resides purely inside of our subconscious minds, and the best that our conscious mind can do is catch short glimpses here and there.

Instead, we can give gifts to the dolls that flesh out our generic model… We can give directly to our memories of people.

To find out what gifts would be most appropriate, we simply have to look at what we ourselves want. Remember, these imaginary dolls are a part of ourselves, and while they’re based on other people, they also respond the same way we would respond, if we were in their situation.

I know that if I ever hurt someone, guilt would eat me up… I would have two choices, either to ignore the guilt and justify my actions, or to seek to ease their suffering. If I saw that a person wasn’t willing to accept my apologies and gifts of penance, then I would ignore the guilt and patch up my ego as best as I could. This is actually how I see other people reacting to me as well… The best thing that I could do to someone who hurt me is to give them a gift of accepting their apologies and penance… of appreciating their concern.

Now, I don’t know if the real person would be willing to admit guilt or not until I’ve tried to accept their apologies… Perhaps they’ve sheltered their egos from harm so much that they’re incapable of understanding that they’ve hurt someone. That isn’t my problem yet, though. My problem is that my mental image of them is hurting how I view other people. If a person is being carried away by a raging river, I can’t help them if I’m stuck in the same river… In that situation, the best I could do for them would be to let them use my body as a flotation device… and then, I’d only be able to help one person once. If, instead of jumping in the river to save them, I brought a boat with plenty of line, then I could continue to save people until I ran out of room… then I’d only have to return to shore before venturing back to the river to save more.

Along those same lines, I can not ease the suffering of someone else’s ego if my ego is suffering… At best, I could only let them step on me and exhaust my ego’s usefulness. If, instead, I put my ego into somewhere safe (until my ego no longer causes any suffering… which is still years away), then I can go in and ease other people’s suffering as much as I want.

So, if I’m to help anybody, I have to be on a firm foundation and be the first to throw out the rope… I must give first, or forgive by appreciating their desire to ease my suffering… even if they have not yet shown that desire.

This is the key to starting a new feedback loop to change our expectations of others… We must be the first to give them a gift, even if they aren’t offering one in exchange.

Often, with people who have a heavily defended ego, it would be viewed as an assault to forgive them directly. Instead, sit down in visualization/meditation/prayer with their subjective doll and have that doll apologize. Return that gift of kindness by honestly accepting that apology, then treat the real person as though they had apologized in real life. More often than not, you’ll find another apology following from the person themselves.

disclaimer: If the person is a threat to your health and safety, avoid them, no matter how much their subjective doll has apologized and how honestly you have accepted them. I am not advocating you putting your life in danger. Use your best judgment and if you have realistic doubts, keep this as a mental exercise. Still forgive the person subjectively, because that will vastly improve your relationships with everybody else, but don’t put yourself into danger unnecessarily.

Staying in the New Rut

Forgiveness is wonderful for getting out of your old rut. Remember, though, that forgiveness is simply the first time that you accept and appreciate a gift from another person. The important thing to recognize, though, is that a rut exists simply because it is the most traveled portion of a road… Depending on the road, a rut can make travel easier or make it harder. Ruts in stone roads can smooth out the bumps, but ruts in dirt roads collect water, making the wheels eventually grind to a halt in the mud.

Forgiveness gets you out of the rut in the dirt road, but unless we find a different road made out of stone, then the moment we relax, we’ll find that we are back in the rut.

Acceptance is the stone road of the analogy. Acceptance is receiving everything into our lives as though they were gifts. If we accepted gifts all day, every day, wouldn’t we be very happy indeed?

It takes practice to recognize things as gifts, and some things take a wild stretch of the imagination to see as a gift. Personally, I can only see a silver lining in my hip going bad at a young age… the rest is a giant storm cloud for me right now. This is one area of my life where I recognize that I need to find more peace and acceptance.

The question is, how do we accept a gift?

Do we open the wrapping, thank the giver, then place the box in a closet? Does that really show that we accepted the gift?

How about if we took the gift, thanked the giver, and placed it in the trash? At least we’re not lying to ourselves like we would be doing if we placed the gift in a closet and never used it.

The way to accept any gift is to use it. If you’re given a sweater around December 25th, then you haven’t truly accepted the sweater until you have used it. At least take it out of the box and hold it for a moment. (I promise, I won’t be giving anyone any sweaters at the end of this year, even if they do have reindeer and snowmen woven in. Everyone can breath a sigh of relief now.)

How to Use Our Gifts

It may seem silly for me to have a section devoted simply to using gifts… Please bear with me, I do have a point coming up.

How do you use any object?

You simply pick it up and use it, right?

For large objects, picking it up might be inappropriate… A car, for instance, would be very difficult to lift. In this case, “picking up” the car would be getting inside and turning it on. Using it would be driving it to your destination.

What a lot of people forget, though, is that once they’re done using something, they set it back down. When you’re done with dinner, you put your fork down. When you have reached your destination, you turn your car off and get out. When you have used your remote control to change the channel, it gets placed on the couch so that it can slide between the cushions.

Our memories and emotions are gifts too. They must be used in order to accept them. If we don’t accept them, then we’re violating the first virtue, Honesty, and we drift away from reality. Even the most painful memories exist as gifts, and their purpose is to bring us closer to reality.

How do we use them, then?

Well, first, we pick them up. We search our memories for something that might be bothering us, or look for emotions that might be raw, and we pick one. Often, our subconscious mind will very quickly volunteer an event or emotion for us to work with.

Next, we remember what happened… Exactly what happened, not what we would have liked to have happen. If there were emotions involved, then we feel those emotions. If we have visualizations attached to those feelings, then we see those visualizations.

The last and most often overlooked step is to let go. Once we are done with that memory, we thank it and put it back in place… just as we are grateful to our forks so that our hands don’t get dirty while eating, or we’re thankful for our cars so that we can travel quickly. We don’t have to sub-vocalize a statement of thanks… simply appreciate that you had the opportunity to study it, and then let it go.

Just like you wouldn’t carry the fork you used for dinner around until you went to bed, you shouldn’t carry your memories and feelings around in your conscious mind until a new memory comes up. It is either the reluctance to pick up or the reluctance to let go of our feelings that keep us from accepting our own thoughts honestly and living within reality.

The feelings will still be there, if we want them again. When we let them go, we aren’t dropping them in the trash, they go into the care of our subconscious, which then re-examines the feelings and files them away. If we have memories that are somehow important, our subconscious will bring them up… We simply have to pick them up, remember/feel fully, and then give it back to our subconscious. If we missed something, then when our subconscious goes through its sorting routine, it will notice and give us back that memory. Fortunately, it will be easier to use that memory/feeling the next time it comes up, until we don’t have to worry about it any more.

Letting go is just as easy as setting a paper on our desk and walking away. The night crew (our subconscious) will file the paper appropriately, and let us know if we have more work to do in the morning.

Just as people appreciate having gifts accepted graciously, our own subconscious appreciates this as well. The more that you accept from your memories and feelings, the better the quality those memories and feelings will be.

Link Love

Just in case anybody was wondering, I do have a purpose for placing the Link Love section above the Reader Question section. This is so that there is always a little more interest in continuing to read, and because of this, people will read through the link love, hopefully find the presented site interesting, and when they’re done answering the question, will remember the last thing they read. In this case, it is presenting Adam Karemer’s site, JoyChaser.com, and highlighting his article How My Laptop Is Helping Me Lose Weight. It gives a useful tip in multitasking: Do something that commits you to doing something else.

In Adam’s case, he walks to his local coffee shop so that he can write his posts in a comfortable setting. This also forces him to walk back as well, pushing him further than if he had simply went out to walk around his neighborhood until he got tired. He starts with a goal in mind, and because he is looking for ways to group different activities, he ends up achieving two goals at the same time.

Reader Question

I have to admit, I’m tempted to ask who you would have the hardest time forgiving. That’s not a fair question, though, because there are a lot of defenses built up around the ego that prevent that question from being answered, and it isn’t my goal to destroy the defenses of the ego, but to lower them one layer at a time, at a comfortable pace. Also, there are some people who have been forgiving others for a very long time, and it’s not fair to give them such an easy question.

Instead… I’ve presented my analogy for human consciousness as a model that computers can host, both with the right hardware and software. Everybody has analogies, models, and symbols that help them understand topics better… What is your analogy for consciousness, what are its symbols, and what type of model best describes it?

For those who don’t care to look back in my archive, here is my model of consciousness once again:

Analogy: Computers

Symbols: Database arrays for long-term memory; “hashed” numbers for compressed ideas (immediate thoughts aren’t the actual experiences); processors for individual collections of neurons; sensors, keyboards, cameras for the different senses.

Model: It is a computer system made up of a lot of generic processors… different computers all built the same way. Each processor has different software running it, performing tasks such as taking in information directly (i.e., from the cameras, temperature sensors, keyboards, etc… the system’s senses), organizing and filtering the information, and either making decisions (the main consciousness), or sorting the information for future use (the sub-consciousness).

I came across an article on boosting willpower recently which cites some interesting scientific findings.

It seems that our willpower, that intangible factor of whether we’ll follow through on a decision or not, behaves more like a muscle than most people would expect.

Unfortunately, I could not read the study itself, because I would need to either pay $29 for that one journal article, or I would need to subscribe to the entire journal. I was able to piece together many of the findings by reading various other articles, however.

The Experiment and Findings

The basic experiment goes something like this: Gather two groups of individuals. Give the first group a task that requires self control, and give the second group a neutral task. Then, give both groups another task which requires self control.

If willpower were an emotional state, then we would expect the group that had been ‘primed’ by already showing self control to perform better on the second task. An analogy would be comparing the moods of people during a comedy show, and having half of the audience come in directly from another comedy show… The expected result is that the group that is already happy would continue to be happy throughout, or even become more happy, while the group that simply walked in from the street would have to work up to being happy.

In these experiments with self control, though, we see the opposite happening. The group which already showed restraint and discipline did worse on the second activity than the group which was free to do as they wished before hand.

The analogy behind this behavior would be asking two groups to run up several flights of stairs, except that one group would first have to do several sets of push-ups. The group which did the extra work before hand would have a lower blood sugar level, so would perform worse on their second task, if everything else were equal.

Now, keep in mind that this only shows one out of many different factors behind our willpower. This study isn’t creating a new model for what motivates us, it is simply adding more insight to an already huge model.

Other Findings

The study also found other factors. Those who have developed their willpower over time were less likely to get burned out and will be able to have more intense bursts of self-control. This is similar to a muscle developed over time becoming stronger and gaining more endurance.

Blood glucose levels play a seemingly direct role in revitalizing willpower. One experiment gave different groups a drink containing either real sugar or a sugar substitute, and those who had the real sugar performed better.

Mood plays a role as well. Those who are generally happier tended to perform better than those who were unhappy. The conclusion drawn from this, however, is still wildly debatable, as it only shows a correlation and not a cause. Perhaps mood directly reinforces willpower, or the factors that increase mood also increase willpower.

How to Apply This

Well, don’t give up your current self-motivating routine. Remember, this is just further insight into willpower, and is not a replacement of current knowledge.

With that being said, though, it seems that the best way to apply these findings is by treating our willpower the same way that we treat our muscles. That is, if we want more intense bursts of self discipline, we should perform a sort of ‘weight training’ routine. If we want to resist burnout, then we could apply something similar to a cardio routine.

As with any exercise routine, proper stretching is vital, and for those whose health prohibits the main routine, the stretching itself can be used as conditioning so that we can eventually start a main routine.

When applied to willpower, the best “stretching” would be a morning routine. For me, this routine would be, first, wake up at the same time each day, then eat breakfast, which improves the blood sugar levels, allowing me to get direct energy to feed my willpower “muscle.” During breakfast, I would evaluate my goals and plans, and set up a very-short-term plan that would extend until my next meal. After breakfast, I would clean the litterbox (first activity to get my muscles warmed up), and get completely ready for the day.

Once I have done this section of my morning routine, since I’m currently doing a 30 day trial to wake up early and work on TimeAgent, I would move straight to programming until it is either time to leave for work, or on the weekends, I would work until the sun comes up.

At this point, my main day would begin, and I would work on the various tasks in front of me until lunch, when I re-energize, “stretch” again, and plan my day until dinner. After dinner, my cool-down exercises would be straightening up the house, followed by doing whatever I want to do at the time.

Also, just as with exercise, it is important to work up to your limits gradually. Also, know which limits can not be improved. Just as a person can cause damage to their muscles from attempting to lift weights when they’re not ready, it is also possible to hurt the willpower “muscle” by attempting feats of discipline that are beyond a certain level. Personally, if I were immediately thrown into a CEO position of a large company, I would drive that company into the ground, and the fear of failure would likely keep me from ever trying again. Each time I fail to quit smoking, it gets hard for me to quit the next time… I’m damaging my willpower by lifting weights that are too large. That doesn’t mean that I can never lift those proverbial weights… It means that I have to improve my self-discipline by being successful in other areas first.

The bottom line: Train your self-discipline like you would train for a marathon: Start by jogging around the block.

As far as knowing which limits can’t be improved… I’m injured from running too much. If I simply started running again, I would quickly aggravate my injury and end up in worse shape… As I said in Wednesday’s post about Financial Peace, if I paid myself first and pay the people I owe money to last, I would end up running away from the problem as the stress builds, again making the situation worse. Instead, I work around these two problems. I work around my physical injury by riding an exercise bike, and I work around my avoidance issues by paying myself and the people I owe at the same time.

Perhaps, in time, my hip will heal enough that I can run regularly again… and perhaps by increasing my willpower in other areas, I can be more resistant to the urge to run away from my debts. Ideally, I can work on my avoidance issues directly, so that I won’t have to worry about it later. Right now, though, they are limits that I simply can’t push against without making the situations worse.

Link Love

I’d like to thank Scott H. Young, writing on his eponymous site, for bringing attention to the study. His article, Sprinting Theory: How to Have Self-Discipline on Steroids, is a great example of a clear writing style combined with a definite goal of improving oneself. Together with his various tips on how to manage specific aspects of your life, his site is certainly one worth paying attention to, from an information junkie point of view.

Week-End 30 Day Trial Report

For those interested, here’s how I’ve done so far.

This weekend, I slept in until 7am on Saturday and Sunday, and did not program. In fact, I did much of nothing the entire weekend, and it felt good. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the most productive use of my time, but I was certainly more alert on Monday.

Mon through Wed: I woke up at 4:30 instead of my promised time of 4:00. I did less work in the mornings as well, and was less alert during the days, although with my no-worries weekend, I was far more motivated after lunch on Monday.

Thursday and Friday: I woke up at 4:00. Thursday, instead of programming first thing in the morning, I did research for this post and wrote most of its content. Today, I finished off this post’s content, cleaned the litter box,

The rent is paid, and we bought enough groceries to last us through this next week, barely. This leaves us with around $60 in our main account. This needs to last for one week from today, until I get paid again… Fortunately, the only expenses we expect are fuel, maybe groceries, and cigarettes, although with fuel prices taking at least $30 out of our account each week, we are admittedly cutting it closer than I would like.

This being the third day of our budget awakening, we of course have no savings, no stocks, no IRA… nothing. We have about $10 scattered in our two savings accounts and the less-used checking account.

Today is also our Big Budget day of the month… I don’t expect to have anything new to report, though, as we have to wait until next month to have a fully accurate list of our spending habits. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking $40 out of the ATM for fuel for the coming week, and will be using the rest on cigarettes, although we will be using our debit card, as I don’t want to completely empty out the bank account too early.

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.