Adam’s Peace

Note: This is the introduction of a 4 part series, not including this introduction and the conclusion.

Here are links to each article in the series:
Virtue 1: Honesty
Virtue 2: Acceptance / Forgiveness
Virtue 3: Awareness
Virtue 4: Responsibility
Peaceful Virtues: Conclusion

I have come to find that there are certain ways of thinking that lead directly to a sense of inner peace. The good news is that applying these virtues in small doses can lead to large changes in your life.

In the short time since I’ve really started applying these virtues, I have found my own life improve dramatically. I have a clear vision of what I want, and for once, I have a real path to achieving my goals.

No, I didn’t change my goals. I’m still selfishly seeking money. I still want to expose everybody to the idea of personal peace, for the admittedly selfish goal of providing world peace. I still want to play games on my computer, watch R rated movies, and listen to my music as loud as is comfortable. (I must be getting old, though, because ‘comfortable’ when it comes to music has been dropping a few decibels over time.)

I’m still the same person I was, just with a different idea of what day-to-day tasks make me happy.

The Virtues

• Honesty
• Acceptance/Forgiveness
• Awareness
• Responsibility

It’s a nice, short list. That’s always a bonus. Also, following this list can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You can dwell on your every act and constantly compare it to this list, or you can incorporate this list into your paradigms for viewing the world and make it largely automatic. There is no best method for applying these virtues, except for the method that works best for you. Personally, I find it easier to refer to this as a checklist whenever I’m making a large decision, or whenever I find myself procrastinating. When I’m making my moment-to-moment decisions, I trust that my momentum is pushing me in the right direction.

Honesty

I think of this as the foundation for the other virtues. There are times when I have to ask myself, am I being honest?

This applies both to my honesty within myself as well as my honesty with other people. If I’m not being honest, then I’m not working with reality, whether that reality is objective or subjective. Let me phrase that again: Honesty is our connection with reality, whether we’re working with our inner imagination, the ideas of other people, or we’re working with the physical laws of the universe.

If we lie to ourselves, we create a different reality… one that we can’t live in. I’ve lied to myself many times, especially when it comes to my knowledge of computers. Humility can be good when you’re trying to be diplomatic, but it is not honest, and it drives a wedge between you and reality. People are comfortable around humble people, because they know that they won’t be challenged, and that they can hold on to their own established perceptions of reality. False pride, as we all know, is also damaging. The key here is to find out the truth of your abilities and live that truth.

Acceptance/Forgiveness

Everybody in society has memories. Without memories, we would not be able to learn, and without learning, growth and improvement are impossible.

There are three things that we can do with our memories: We can love them, hate them, or change them. Of course, if we changed our memories, we would be breaking the first virtue, Honesty, and we would be disconnected from reality.

Our memories are a part of ourselves, and we are never separated from them. If we find ourselves hating our memories, we find that we are hating ourselves. Acceptance and Forgiveness change how we feel about our memories, without changing the memories themselves. Acceptance allows us to learn from an event instead of avoiding it. Forgiveness allows us to remove control that we have given to other people.

It is important to remember that Acceptance and Forgiveness are not the same things as complacency, admitting defeat, or condoning a person’s actions. You are accepting that the situation happened. This does not mean that you have to let that situation happen again… Rather, the goal here is to learn what you can and make certain that things turn out in your favor in the future. This goes right back to honesty… If you avoid thinking about a situation because it causes emotional pain, then you are removing yourself from the reality of what happened. Forgiveness is also not done for the benefit of the person being forgiven, it is being done for you. I have talked about this before, but it seems to me that each person creates a ‘paper doll’ of everyone they meet… a version of that person made up entirely of ideas and memories. Just as all of our thoughts and memories are parts of ourselves, these paper dolls are also a part of ourselves. When you forgive, you are forgiving that paper doll… If that paper doll has power over you, then you reduce that power.

Awareness

Just as Honesty is our foundation, and Acceptance/Forgiveness allow us to live with our pasts, Awareness supports our present.

Nothing exists outside of the present. Everything is happening right now. Our memories are just the momentum of our movement through the time which is always Now. The past doesn’t exist anymore in any universe, and we all know that it will never be tomorrow today.

By Accepting and Forgiving, we give ourselves power to act within the only time we can act: right now. By being aware, we can break our momentum and do the things that we choose to do.

If we’re not aware, then we are simply acting according to the script of everyone’s beliefs. By using our Awareness, we can re-write those scripts and be who we want to be.

Responsibility

As Acceptance/Forgiveness deals with the past, and Awareness deals with the present, we can’t be a whole person without also looking towards the future. Our Responsibility allows us to look ahead and lets us make the decisions right now that allow us to work towards the future.

Remember that you are not responsible for the past… You can only be responsible for what you can change, and the past is one of those things that simply can’t be changed. You can use your responsibility to change the present, but the present is already halfway in the past. Fortunately, the present is also halfway in the future, and the future can always be changed. You are directly responsible for your future, partially responsible for the present, and the past only exists to learn from.

So, where is your momentum leading you? How can you act in the present that will change your future? That’s responsibility.

I will have more posts about these virtues later, and I know that these aren’t the only virtues out there… What virtues can you think of that I missed?

Link Love

Jean of Cheerful Monk writes on a weekly basis about emotional mastery topics. Her posting style is different from most other blogs out there: She introduces a topic, relates a personal (or historical) story, and then asks her readers to share their own personal stories. This week’s topic is on The Power of Forgiveness. The way that Jean relates her own stories, then honestly listens to other people’s stories is something that I respect very much, and the conversations in the comments can leave lasting impressions on everyone participating, leading to insights that wouldn’t be possible from just one author.

Even though I don’t ask for personal stories all of the time, it is her ability to communicate with the participants on her blog that has inspired me to ask questions on my blog as well. I can’t call the people who visit her blog ‘readers,’ because they do so much more than simply read. If you don’t want to share your opinion here, then by all means, share your opinion over on Jean’s site… She will love to listen.

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.

The reader comments on the post Subliminal Subjective Expectations from Friday have given me a few things to think about.

First, I’m noticing that people expect me to be honest. Vitor of The Fractal Forest was the first person who used the word honest, but our resident Urban Monk Albert started the ball rolling when he said that I should be myself, living the ultimate form of honesty. Kara-Leah (who is no longer blogging, so unfortunately I can’t link to her site) didn’t write the expectations that she wants me to live up to… rather, she proposed a new idea: to live without the filter of expectations. Using her advice could most certainly lead to living the truth, since without expectations, only the truth remains. Finally, Jonathan of Advanced Life Skills points out that people expect an uncommon amount of honesty from me.

For those who haven’t done so yet, I highly recommend reading each comment on the last post.

What is my opinion of all of this? Well, I’m flattered, and a part of me feels undeserving of such high expectations.

Which came first, the expectation or the behavior?

Vitor said that an expectation that other people have for him is that he will be responsible. Expectations like these are both created within and reinforced from outside. People expect Vitor to be responsible because he is responsible… and he continues to be responsible because people expect him to be. It creates a nice little paradox, and a question of which came first, his responsibility or the expectation of his responsibility.

I haven’t always been expected to be honest. Indeed, the opposite was expected out of me for a very long time. Just as in the movie The Matrix, nobody knows who started the war between AI and humans, the fact remained that there was a war. It seems more likely to me that it was a mutual distrust, slowly building up until each group, from their own point of view, could honestly say that the other group started it all.

One of the strengths of the much-hyped Subjective Reality model is that it concentrates on what is happening right now, without blaming the past or the future. After all, if neither are set in stone (since we can always change who we are right now), then the past and future have less relevance to our lives. It turns out that it doesn’t matter how Vitor started being responsible, except if you want to duplicate his first steps. It matters that he is responsible right now, and if the feedback loop were to fail at some point, it would be more difficult for him to remain responsible.

I grew up thinking of myself as a liar. It was easy to think of myself that way, because that is what I saw other people expecting out of me. Perhaps I pushed my boundaries a few too many times as a young child… Perhaps my father was too quick to judge my behavior… How I became a liar doesn’t matter, and both my father and I could rightfully argue about why I became a liar… but that doesn’t matter today. I changed my expectations about myself, and I changed my behavior. When other people noticed my behavior change, they changed their expectations about me. This change in their expectations made it easier for me to continue the behaviors I wanted, because I didn’t have to worry about living up to those ideals… I could now enjoy living up to those ideals.

Scott H Young of the eponymous site ScottHYoung.com seems to be working on people’s expectations about him partying. Now, personally, I think that partying is a great thing. It allows us to find pleasure which, if used responsibly, greatly relieves our stress and allows us to open our minds to new experiences. From what I can tell of his latest post, Partying and Personal Development, Scott (probably rightly) believes that people have certain expectations about people who party, and vastly different expectations of people working on personal development. After all, the poster-boy of Personal Development is Steve Pavlina, a color-blind vegetarian who listens to new-age music and uses his desk water fountain as a type of clock. The typical party-goer gets D’s and C’s in college, rarely studies, and is often found on the street at night combating alcohol poisoning by regurgitating their stomach’s contents. (To be honest, I’ve fought off alcohol poisoning more times than I care to admit. For nearly two years, I would be violently ill from drunkenness about once a week.)

Scott is trying to change the expectations of his readers by describing his motivation for partying. Instead of going to clubs in order to get drunk (as I’ve done many, many times), he goes to meet people and improve his social skills. I went to bars in order to escape from an unimaginative life, where he goes to challenge his shyness and gain inspiration. The methods are the same… We go out, find a bar or club, and order drinks… but the results are different because our expectations are different.

Jump Starting an Expectation

Probably the most empowering part of this whole process that I’ve been going through has been sharing it with others. By admitting that I have lied (or at least not been completely honest) before, and publicly stating that I am working towards changing my motivations, I created both the chicken and the egg at the same time. When I started being completely honest on this blog, I had my own doubts about how successful I would be. I just knew that if I couldn’t be honest, then it wasn’t worth the trouble of writing here. It was becoming an exhausting chore to keep up the false image, especially when so much of my life was pushing me in different directions. Once I put it down in words and saw that people were reading it, I gained motivation to keep up the ‘new me.’ After I noticed people’s expectations about me change, it became much easier to be honest, and the ‘new me’ simply became ‘me.’

Of course, it isn’t all roses and kittens. Lying is addictive, though fortunately there aren’t withdrawal symptoms like with physical addictions. Lying gives me adrenaline, which gives me pleasure. I still have to recognize when I’m starting to lie, and interject a short pause while I take stock in myself. Fortunately, my wife has become very observant, and recognizes that the short pause means I’m considering a lie, so at that point, there is absolutely no way for me to lie and get away with it. Just as she expects me to continue to get better at telling the truth, I expect her to continue to be wary and hold me accountable, so that I don’t lie again.

Another expectation that I’m working on is to get housework done. Unfortunately, there is no way for people online to double check on me and hold me accountable to myself, so I can’t ask you to change your expectations here. Besides, if I ever did master the act of cleaning the litter box daily, then what example of irresponsibility would I have to write about? It would turn into an example of responsibility, and I would probably sound like I’m preaching when I explain how I was finally able to get past this hurdle.

Perhaps that is part of the problem, though. I am concentrating on overcoming my problems so much that I don’t actually act.

Yes, I do suffer from the common Personal Development Newbie problem of thinking instead of acting. I am improving, though, at a drastic rate. Each time I rate my progress though, I keep seeing the horizon get further and further away, instead of noticing that the place I started at has dipped below the horizon behind me.

Quote from KL: In this gap, joy and love explode effortlessly. Or they don’t.

There is one more thing that I’d like to add before wrapping this up. KL left a comment that seemed to be a little cryptic. Here’s my understanding of what she said, and if I get it wrong, KL, please correct me. (I’m also adding in a few of my own thoughts that I’ve had since after reading her comment as well… I definitely threw my own tangent into this)

Talking about changing your expectations is all great and wonderful… Actually changing your expectations is also great, if that is what your goal is. What about not having expectations, though?

Well, the truth is that our expectations are tools of the ego. Our expectations about ourselves are the very foundations of the ego, and our expectations of others are the tools that the ego uses to gain control of our environment. If we live without expectations, then we are outside of the control of the ego. Trust me when I say this: I am nowhere near the ability to suppress and overcome the ego. I am, however, taking the first steps.

It is said that the state of mind that comes with overcoming the ego is one of bliss, joy, and peace… as pleasurable as any drug without the nasty side-effects. That’s quite an ideal to live up to… yet it takes a discipline that I’m barely becoming aware of in myself.

I’d like to throw in an analogy, simply because I like analogies so much. Think of your own muscles. Chances are, you’re able to sit still for long periods of time… your arms and legs don’t go flailing about randomly. If you tossed a wadded up paper at a trash can, you can usually make it in, or at least get very close. The wadded up ball of trash doesn’t go flying behind you, at the very least.

What about children, though? Infants don’t stop moving except when they’re asleep… They’re always doing something. If you have ever seen a toddler learning how to throw a ball, you know that the ball has just as much chance of landing on the kid’s head as it does of landing anywhere else. The reason why you can sit still is because you have learned how to move your muscles. The reason why you can toss paper in a garbage can is because you have practiced and fine-tuned your movements so that, rather than clumsily dropping the paper behind you, it is second nature to move your arm in just the right way… you don’t even think about how you’re moving your arm anymore, or even notice when you lean slightly forward as you make your toss.

The same could be said about our expectations and the ego that these expectations create. I feel like the toddler learning how to toss a ball so that it at least lands in front of me… I have just recently learned that I actually have control over my expectations, just as infants have to learn that they have control of their arms and legs. With practice, perhaps in time, I’ll be able to wield my expectations like a professional. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to hold my expectations still long enough that I can feel that bliss, joy, and peace. Until then, it is a matter of testing and trying… of changing my paradigms to see which ones produce the best results, and changing my expectations until I find a mold that I fit in perfectly.

Of course, if I do decide to live without expectations, then I wouldn’t expect the peace and joy… It would come, or it wouldn’t, depending on what was really there.

Link Love:

I already included Scott H Young’s site in this post… and I think that this would be a perfect time to introduce him to everybody. I found Scott’s site after looking at some of the features of Google Reader, and seeing his site as one recommended for me to read. Scott is a pantheist, as I am (though he prefers the label atheist, because it is easier to explain). Scott is a vegetarian, as I am not. And, Scott has some pretty good articles, such as the one about partying and exploring personal development.

And now, the reader question: If people had to sum up their expectations of you in one word, what would it be? Do you feel that you deserve that expectation? And, what did you do to earn that expectation?

You might want to ask your friends and family about this one… I certainly didn’t expect my main expectation to be honesty.