Tag: presence

P-ing Over Productivity

MarlonLeave a comment

We live in a society where our worth is tied heavily to our sense of productivity. If you’re not doing enough, then you are not enough, by definition. You can feel this any time you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while. Almost everybody’s go to question is work related. Such versions of these questions include:

“Where do you work now?”

“How’s that job of yours, you still there?”

“Are you working?”

It’s as if we’ve become human doings as opposed to human beings. We forgot what it was like to just be a human without needing our jobs to define our character. It’s funny too because the word work carried a double meaning. On the surface it pertains to working at a job. But then if you dig a little deeper, it also carries the implicit question of are you functioning?

Today we’re going to delve into The Six P’s of Productivity so that we are no longer squashed by the expectation to be and appear productive in the eyes of our peers, and learn how to approach life in a more meaningful way that is less dependent on how you look to the world, and more focused on how you feel about your personal experience.

  1. Presence
  2. Practice
  3. Progress
  4. Pacing
  5. Purpose
  6. Patience

PRESENCE

What I love about writing is that it forces me to focus on one thought at a time. My ADHD brain usually races from one to another in a seemingly nonrelated manner. What writing affords me is the ability to slow down my thought process and to get a visual sense of how my thoughts are either connected or disjointed.

Within the process of writing, I try my best to not think about anything else but the topic at hand whether it’s my personal journal, my novel, or this very blog post right here. As soon as I let my mind distract me and tempt me toward doing something else, then I will lose that chance to express my feelings and ideas in a coherent manner. Either I will give up on writing or end up writing something incoherent and all over the place.

This is why it’s importance to eliminate distractions as best as possible and train your mind to think only about the task at hand. Any thoughts that are irrelevant to what you’re doing, you can make a quick mental note to take action on later, but if you’ve sat down and decided to write, paint, or compose a piece of music, then that is all you should physically be doing and that is all you should be thinking about.

And all that takes…

PRACTICE

Practice makes perfect, they say, but what they don’t say is how perfectionism prevents practice. What often prevents us from getting things done is a feeling of incompetence and the lack of confidence which I’ve touched upon in 3 Ways Perfection is the Ultimate Procrastination, and the only way to gain any sense of competence is practice.

Of course you’re gonna suck at something at the beginning. As I always say, much thanks to a quote from a Street Fighter graphic novel ala, “a master was once an awkward novice.” You need to get over yourself and realize that it’s not about how you appear to others or even yourself in your mind, rather it’s about mastering a craft and doing what it takes to become a said master.

And all that takes practice. Consistent, messy, and grueling practice. Read the books and watch the videos you need to learn about music composition all you want, and you can even daydream about being a famous musician all you want. But none of that will really amount to anything if you don’t practice your instrument and just play the damn thing to eventually achieve some sense of…

PROGRESS

Being present when you practice anything, you are bound to achieve some level of progress. No matter how little your progress is, it is important to take stock of it, especially if you’re feeling stuck. One way to do this is to write in a Progress Journal and keep track of all the things you get better at in your given field.

This idea of a Progress Journal is so important that I wrote about it a second time many years since the initial post, but ADHD interconnectivity of my blog aside, even mentioning how much I wrote about progress so many times speaks on the importance of it because from each successive post about progress marks different milestones in my own personal journey.

In your own personal journey, progress is going to be something very close and intimate to you in a way that no one else will ever truly understand, unless you have a good mentor keeping track of your progress along with you from an objective and an emotionally detached point of view. You kind of need both your personal connection to your progress and your mentor’s detached point of view to it in order to strike a balance toward proper…

PACING

Whenever you start a new job or hobby, it is important to also pace yourself so you don’t burn out. As an ADHDer, I’ve had so many hyper-focuses that almost everything I love doing creates a tinge of fear in me because I remember all the times I would sacrifice eating, sleeping, and even relationships just so I can continue enjoying the dopamine rush of doing something new and exciting.

So while you do want to become present in what you do, practice it consistently, and track your progress, you also want to pace yourself so you don’t burn out as fast as I have many times. For instance, when I wrote the first draft of It Starts at Home, back when it was called Dear Stupid Diary, I wrote about 6000 words a day because I couldn’t stop myself. I got addicted to finally becoming present to the point that my entire sense of time had gone irrelevant.

It’s very seductive when we find something we really love to do that it can easily consume all of our time and energy to the point of costing other aspects of our lives. So don’t forget to take your appropriate breaks and to pace yourself accordingly so that you save your energy and excitement for another day and sustain that consistency over a longer period of time. It is much better to do a little each day for a long period of time than it is to everything all at once in one day, only to risk losing all that initial euphoria and end up doing nothing the next.

Pacing becomes really easy when you’ve discovered your…

PURPOSE

Why you do what you do is a deeply intimate thing only you and a handful people will ever truly understand. Whenever I feel stuck on any creative project, I always ask myself, “why am I even doing this again?” If it’s because I want to appear productive and impress people, or even prove to myself that I’m not as lazy as my ADHD forces me to be sometimes, then I’ve already lost.

However, when I remember that it’s because I love creating things and enjoy the presence it affords me, then I am better equipped to keep at that task at hand. This blog post itself has been a challenge because the first draft was all about my work experience, which is ironic because of how I opened this post about not tying our self worth and identities to what we do for work.

But upon this rewrite, I’ve regained a sense of my purpose for writing Your Write to Live blog posts: to share my own personal experiences in a way that helps others overcome their own sense of dread and resistance toward living their best possible lives. Essentially, much like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, these blog posts are reminders to myself on how to think and act better in my life. But unlike Marcus, I’m intentionally sharing my thoughts with you in the hopes that they can also provide relief and assistance to anyone else beyond myself.

But whether I help anyone or not, or even start to follow my own advice, we all need a little…

PATIENCE

It’s easy to get impatient when we can see who we can be if we just tried hard enough. A lot of people’s negative emotion is due to not fulfilling their potential that they often see looming in the distance. It becomes a bit of a judge and executioner of our current selves because we’re not who we could be. And while it is helpful to know that you can be better than you are now, thus driving yourself toward personal development, it is also important to be patient with yourself.

Sometimes we’ll stumble and fall along the way, and that’s all part of life. Maybe you can’t be present enough to practice consistently. Maybe you still feel like you haven’t made progress no matter how much you try to take stock of your progress. Maybe you pace yourself poorly and lose sight of your purpose.

When all these things fail, always remember to be patient with yourself. There’s only so much progress one can make at a given time. We all wish we had all the time in the world to do all the things we want and achieve what we want, but life often gets in the way with emergencies, social obligations, and random illnesses and other setbacks that prevent us from moving forward.

Be patient with yourself and with life having trust and faith that whatever holds you back is only temporary. Nothing in life is permanent, only short term or long term. So be patient for the storm to roll by and maybe you’ll find yourself in a place of calm once again, ready to excel at what you love once more.

Trifecta of Tribulations 3: Creating My Own Reality

MarlonLeave a comment

Welcome to the final stretch of the Trifecta of Tribulations!

In Part 1, I began by sharing my Ralph Wiggum dream that lead me to engaging my Shadow Side. This in turn taught me how to have a healthy detachment from desired outcomes so that I don’t stake my entire identity and existence on external outcomes.

And then in Part 2, I shared how the swinging pendulum of Optimism and Optimism can be balanced when you adapt the 60:40 Principle.

Now we top off the Trifecta of Tribulations by going back to my roots and paying infinite homage to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.

Welcome, to the Present Moment

I have read more than a fair share of personal development books over the years, and while I have gleaned a ton of value from all of them, nothing will ever be as powerful as The Power of Now.

When I first read this book 10 years ago, it actually did change my life in numerous ways and on numerous occasions upon several re-reads. The idea of being mindful of present moment isn’t anything new, but having read The Power of Now at the right times, Eckhart Tolle’s delivery of this important message never ever fails to transform my life.

For the unitiated, being present simply means paying full attention to the present moment without having to label your environment or experience, and of course disallowing the internal dialogue in your head from having any power over you. You can even go insofar as to not even think at all like an intentional meditation at any time and anywhere you choose.

While Awaken the Giant Within opened me up to the idea of positive thinking, The Power of Now taught me to stop my excess thinking, which is often the source of many life’s problems. We tend to view the world through a specific lens and the world then manifests itself in ways that embellish what we tend to focus on.

Focus on the negative, and all you experience is the negative despite having good things pass you right by. But then of course you can also be too positive as to ignore that life brings with it some inherent suffering, hence my 60:40 Principle. Know which mode of being to focus on while acknowledging that the other polarity continues to run in the background so that they don’t sneak up on you and overwhelm you.

Kind of like what it did to me when my Pessimism returned after many many years of trying to supress it. I fell into the habit of trying to stay positive all the time and trying to ignore that I would have to deal with any amount of emotional and personal hardship that I am again reminded of being neccessary for human existence.

We are always in a constant flux of becoming more or less than what we can be. Being is becoming.

Shaping Your Reality

When I was having my trip to the Underworld last month, a lot of it was due to my own excess thinking. I obsessed over when I would ever get published and often got upset over my lacking comprehension of the Korean language. I was so focused on getting over there that I was closed off to appreciating the here and now, which is the only time frame that ever truly exists. The past was once the present, the future will later then become the present, and no matter which point in time you think about, you do it all right here. Right now.

I had my doubts over whether or not my Optimism was bullshit or not, but what I think the real issue was was the ungratefulness I had for where I was in life. Sure, we can never be truly satisfied as there is always more to grow towards, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take stock of where you are and appreciate it.

If I had only taken my own advice and appreciated how far I’ve come, I probably could have avoided all the emotional pain I felt the past month. But I digress, I feel that it was entirely necessary to experience these issues to test my values and see what I would be without them. Simply put, it’s quite scary to consider, and I am now thankful that optimism and happiness are a ton of hard work to achieve, else it would not feel as valuable since the satisfaction is in earning these things.

Beyond being happy about having gone so far with my novel and my Korean studies, I forgot the most simple thing to do in moments of distress: breathe and take stock of the present moment. Nevermind my achievements thus far and what I have yet to achieve, the true happiness I was seeking was available at any time if I had taken a moment as I do now, to just breathe and be present.

In the end, I have always been in control of my moods and thoughts.

Not all of them are going to be pleasant, and not all of them will be easy to ignore, but what’s important is how I handle them.

So whether I’ve been clinically depressed or not,  it has ultimately always been my choice whether or not I bought into such an ancient suspicion of my mental limitations.

Being Authentic

Even within this post I am starting to write simpler headings and hopefully in a simpler language. Amidst all this turmoil I realized how much I’ve relied on my intellect to cover up how stupid I really am in different aspects of life, as well as using my intellect to either build myself up or tear myself down.

Whichever way I’ve gone, I’ve realized that both the Optimism and Pessimism are authentic expressions of my being. They only times either have them have been bullshit was when I’ve engaged them in excess extremes without taking in account of their polar opposites.

When my friend was sharing his problems with me, or whenever my study buddy expressed some self doubt in her English skills, as well as some hesitance toward adding a romantic aspect to our relationship (this particular relationship has ended, but that’s a story for another time). My excess optimism in these relationships caused friction because I was dedicated to changing their personal experiences to fit my own selfish needs. I wanted them to stop having their negative emotions and wanted to be that annoying ray of sunshine to brighten up their day.

And likewise when another friend of mine gave me the space to let my Shadow Side spit its venom out, I noticed a moment where being Pessimistic became exhausting because I was trying to deliberate and prolong it beyond what felt natural and neccessary.

Then I had this moment of laughing at myself because of how “quickly” and “anti-climacticaly” I had escaped the Underworld. I was simply reminded of how much of a master of my own reality I have been, even though the start of this bout of depression started from questioning my own power over it.

Now I may be wrong in asserting this, especially if there are people out there who do suffer from severe psychological issues that require treatment, but I do think we are the ultimate gods of our own realities. This doesn’t mean delude yourself into thinking that everything is alright when it’s not, but I do mean staying calm and as stoic as possible when observing the situations in our lives that cause us distress.

If you’re happy, take it all in stride because it is but a fleeting emotion to behold.

If you’re sad or angry, take that all in stride too because it is also a fleeting emotion.

Whichever myraid of emotions you ever experience, be honest about your experience, no matter how irrational it may seem.

Give yourself the time and space to express these raw emotions until they lose their grip on your mind and body. Once again, I cannot stress enough how helpful journaling is, especially if you can’t afford therapy or are not yet ready for it. Sometimes we just need the permission to be wrong. There’s always time to step out of that funk and observe them from the outside as I am now doing in regars to the month I’ve had. On a daily basis:

I’ve fallen in and out of love with a woman.

I’ve fought and toiled with a friend.

I’ve contended with and confided in myself.

And in the end, no matter what has happened, I have always been in control of my own experience. While I do need to accept that I can’t control certain circumstances, most especially the way others feel, I am now reminded of something I have forgotten lately: I cannot hold energy. Its natural state is to move and to change forms. And that can only be possible by being authentic with how I feel and constantly re-learning to regain my composure after I’ve allowed all aspects of myself to express themselves.

The Constant Ascenscion

I’ve accepted my lot in life.

I have more privileges and advantages than others.

I also have more limitations and disdvantages than others.

Life is going to be difficult because we are in a constant flux of death and rebirth. It’s okay to feel a little sad and crazy at times because being happy and content will always slip through your fingers like quicksand. While pleasant and enjoyable when they come into our field of experience, they are not worthwhile goals in the end.

Admirable and worthwhile goals transcend mere pleasure. They are the goals that adding meaning to your life and are good in ways that trickle through your interactions with the world. Being in the service of others while also feeding your own sense of fulfillment  toward your purpose is how to live a truly meaningful life.

That is all for the Trifecta of Tribulations. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and gleaned some value from it. If you’ve read each entry since the first one, my most sincerest thanks goes to you. I know I’ve started to surpass my usual word count with these posts, there was just so much I needed to share and express to bring all this into the proper context.

For those who were looking for a more bite sized and actionable version of what I was trying to teach, I will consider writing a condensed version of all this where the focus is more on the action side of things rather than the personal experiences that taught me all this.

In any case, thank you and have a great day! Be sure to leave a comment and follow Your Write to Live for more self-knowledge on Meaningful Mondays and writings tips on Workshop Wednesdays!