A simple reminder
Take Proper Rest Keep a Journal Take your time Start Now You are your environment Self Love
2022-03-23 13:24:12 - StringTheory
Taking Proper Rest - Willpower is like a muscle, it strengthens after use, but it needs a rest. Taking proper time to relax and set the task to do nothing and wind down I have found is essential, you burn yourself out, you want everything now and that just can't work. We have decades to perfect our lifestyle and craft. Going into over drive for 2 weeks just does not work. We get so tired and need rest. Sometimes on our days off I would set some goals, not do them and then feel shit and that would be my 'rest' day. You can see how that just messes up your mentality if you do that. TAKE TIME TO ACTUALLY REST.
Keep a Journal - This is honestly one of the best things I have done. I've been writing most days since March 2020 and I can look back and see every up and eventual down I have had in those 2 years. I can see the thoughts I was thinking, excuses I was making and solutions I was trying to come up with to counter the shit decline into doing fuck all. I like to think of it as working with my younger self to help come up with what works. It takes time, but anything worth doing does. Tbh I get a lot of inspiration from my younger self, you really write some good stuff relevant to yourself when it is just for you. It is like having a friend that wants the best for you and in turn you being a friend to your future self! LOG THE UPS AND DOWNS IN A JOURNAL AND LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES.
The Hedonic Treadmill - You may know of this phenomenon but I will explain it for anyone else who might read it. The Hedonic Treadmill is the shifting of the 'happiness' baseline in your mind. Think about wanting a promotion. When you get that new promotion and raise, your happiness goes up over the baseline and you feel great, you spend money, you tell your family etc. However over time you get used to this new role, this payroll. You now spend more money than you used to but still only save the same amount of money as you did prior to the promotion. You now want another promotion and your baseline happiness catches up to this new lifestyle and everything goes back to being well, meh. This is the exact same with self improvement. No matter what you do, or how fulfilled you become, it will always catch up to you. The high only lasts for a certain amount of time before we get back to the same old, same old. However, it sounds bad but it is a good thing. You are now not as impressed with the higher quality of life you are now living, this gives you either a feeling of drive to improve again or demotivation that you have stopped feeling this mental change that you have gotten better and then you eventually can slump below your new baseline back to before and that, really feels shit I won't lie. The idea is to recognize that you are still making progress, it feels hard again because you now are on another level. You have literally levelled up your standards of what satisfies you and that's fucking cool. Another analogy to explain is like driving a car. When you are going 30 you know you are moving but you can't feel anything. When you accelerate to 40 you can feel the acceleration and the momentum of the car speeding up, suddenly you know you are moving faster and it's new and exciting. However, after a while you get used to going 40, and feel the same as you did at 30, you know the car is moving but it doesn't feel like there's progress like when the car was accelerating even though you are literally going 10mph faster???? Exactly. Do NOT misinterpret your adjustment to higher standards as you getting worse, recognize when you are about slump and get the fuck up and live the life you want!!! SLUMPING IS INEVITABLE. AS YOU DEVELOP YOUR MIND ADJUSTS TO THE NEW LIFESTYLE, YOU CAN EITHER SINK BACK DOWN OR RECOGNISE YOU ARE IMPROVING AND REALISE THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER, YOU ARE GETTING BETTER AND KEEP AHEAD OF YOUR BIOLOGY!
Take Your Time and Start NOW - Baby steps, one foot after the other, do not run before you can walk. It can be demotivating but, Trust. The . Process. Trust it, if you set the goal last year to run a half mile everyday increasing by quarter of a mile every week. You would be running a 5k everyday by the end of the year. Couch to 5k takes 8 weeks. Imagine if you started 8 weeks ago! Be the the version of yourself who started the job and kept persisting. Yourself now and your future self are the same. Use how you feel now fuel you to how you want to be in the future. It is all about the self love to make yourself happy. START NOW AND START SMALL AND WATCH YOUR EFFORTS COMPOUND.
You Are Your Environment - Make your bed, it makes your room look nicer and when you have shit fucking day at least you can come back to a made bed :). You can tell so much about someone's life from there room. If everything is a shit tip mess, they are not in a good place. Not in the sense of organized chaos that creative types have, but as in non-vacuumed floors, dusty shelves, shit everywhere. Jordan Peterson said if you can't organize your room how can you organize your life? I think this is so true and there are so many different nuisances you can pick up too. Like for me I have been so busy and I am burning myself out, on the outside my room is neat, the bed is made, everything is in it's place, but that shit has not been hoovered or dusted or wiped for tooo long. It's little things you pick up on that you can use to recognize different problems that might not be overtly visible. YOU ARE YOUR ENVIRONMENT, ALWAYS TIDY YOUR ROOM.
Self Love - You are human, you have insecurities, worries, fears and doubts. Do not resent yourself for trying to figure out how to live in this complicated fucked up world, you only want the best for yourself, it is hard. Self improvement comes from a place of loving yourself enough to want to make yourself happy and fulfilled in the future. It's so hard, trying to improve is so fucking hard, but that's the beauty of it, the story of the hero overcoming the obstacle and getting greater. The hero being you, the obstacle being life. NEVER FORGET YOU ARE TRYING AND APPRECIATE THE EFFORT YOU PUT IN