Day 254 -What behavior do you dislike about yourself? How can you change that?

 

 

I found myself in a particular pattern I did not take note of before. What kind of behavior do you go into when you have a task to complete but very limited time? The particular task you are working on you have no idea how to do so first you have to research it and test it out before you can finish it. With me what comes up is stress and frustration and then generally very unpleasant to be around with.

The thing is that it does not have to be this way. Reacting towards events in your life like I did is not supportive and it’s unnecessary. Sure when you run out of time and see you cannot finish the task in time you generally have stress, but when you look at the whole situation the stress does not contribute to anything. It does not make the time go slower and it does not magically make everything work out so that you can do the tasks. All it does is leave you feeling like shit.

The fact is that regardless of how I feel about it – the end result is the same. There was simply not enough time to finish the task and looking back I did the best I could and that is all there is to it. I cannot change the time flow, I cannot make time go slower – so what is really the point of going into stress and frustration? If anything what it does is cloud your judgment making you ineffective, because you are reacting to a situation instead of directing it.

What I have found is that it’s a pattern I have a created, almost like a habit. Whenever this happens then that happens. If I am in a situation of needing a task completed with not enough time means I must go into stress and frustration. So what I have done now is worked in stopping that pattern: When I find myself in a situation where there is limited time to do a certain task – I stop the reaction. I stop the frustration and stress and breath and be here in the moment.

This tool can be applied in many situations in life. If you have a pattern/habit that you would like to stop you need to write a new script for yourself that you can replace the current behavior. If you do not change the pattern then it will simply continue for the rest of your life – I Do no not want to live with this particular pattern anymore so I choose to stop it.

Have a look in your life and see where you live out patterns/habits/behaviors and know that you do have the power to stop and change yourself.

Day 189 - Why Speaking is so Difficult – The Silent Type

 

Thus far I have covered preferring to be alone, not being good with people and not being able to communicate effectively which are some of the dimensions behind a typical silent type character. Today I am going to write about speaking.

I have never been able to use words effectively to express myself. I could not say how I felt, because the words simply did not come to me in way that can explain it exactly. So I decided to not speak allot, because I felt it was a waste of time. What I did not realize back then is that the reason why the words did not come was because I did not have the words – I did not have the vocabulary. It is fascinating how such a decision greatly affected my life. If I realized the importance of vocabulary in my school days I would have done better at school. Instead I compromised myself and developed a personality and defined myself as being the strong silent type. A wonderful justification and excuse.

Looking at this whole situation I see now that being the silent type was not “just who I am”, it was a choice I made based on my fears and not having the tools to communicate effectively. I was not born this way – it was a choice and now I choose to rather be effective with communication. Now to go venture forth on my journey. Without an effective vocabulary I cannot be specific with words. I did not understand the importance of vocabulary back then. In School they say it is important to read – good advice I ignored.

The first step in effective communication is developing your vocabulary in order to use words effectively so that is what I am going to do – learn, understand and apply new words. Interesting point here is with me being a musician and writing songs I always had great difficulty writing lyrics for my music and that is because I did not have an effective vocabulary. If I had an effective vocabulary writing would be easier.

A very useful phrase I have learnt is that knowledge is useless without application. The next step is to place myself in situations where I use words and speak to explain things. This will assist me to communicate effectively and support me to get over that uncomfortable/nervousness I have whenever I explain things. A simple thing to do here would be to start doing Vlogs so that is what I will do – push through the resistances and make videos until speaking effectively is as natural as breathing.

Speak, king, quest, journey, video, vlog, support, DIY, directive, practical, loner, silent type, personality, Desteni

Day 187 - Not being Good with people - The Silent Type...

 

Today I ran into somebody and said hello and the usual greetings. I notice that I am always uncomfortable in these situations and usually simply smile and find ways to end the conversation. I have always been “the silent type” and was never really good at meeting new people. I have defined myself as being the strong silent type and told myself it’s a “lifestyle choice”. That is a very nice way to hide from the fact that I am not good with people, because I never really worked on this point or developed the skills in order to be effective with people.

What happens then is that when I run into somebody I know the uncomfortable feeling I have is not knowing how to handle myself in this particular situation. I see other people being al relaxed and genuine when in the same situation, like it is natural and then I would judge myself for not being so natural and ask myself why I cannot do this. The answer is simple – I never taught myself how. I have the tools to do this and it is time to start.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be uncomfortable when running into someone I know

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to investigate the reason why I am uncomfortable and to simply accept it as a part of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as being the silent type – not realizing that I did this, because I was not good/effective with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to work on becoming good/effective with people and push through to make it happen.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that the uncomfortable feeling I have is because of thoughts and feelings and the belief that I have created that I am not good with people

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I meet/greet people to allow thoughts and feelings to direct me and then want to end the conversation based on that instead of not allowing myself to be direct and to direct myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to even before I go to the person to meet/greet them create anxiety within myself, because I am already thinking about how I am going to do this and remember that I am not good with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to stop the thoughts and feelings and not to participate in the moment with the mind.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing right now when I meet people – within this I realize that doing this removes all that unnecessary bullcrap that complicate things from the equation and give me the opportunity to actually participate within what I am doing.

I commit myself to stop defining myself as being the silent type and not good with people – instead I push myself to practice and develop a natural expression in order to be effective with people.

I commit myself to stop participating in thoughts and feelings and beliefs when I meet/greet people that I define as being uncomfortable – Instead I breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing

I commit myself to stop wanting to end conversations based on how I feel at the moment – Instead I Direct myself and don’t allow feelings and thoughts to direct me

Day151 - The Idea Of Leadership

 

I have thus far written about my experience of being a leader – or, shall I say, more my idea of leadership. Here I am going to write about what I believed  leadership to be, my idea of leadership and how it determined my behavior, as well as the consequences an Idea of leadership in my mind created in my relationship to my physical body and my life experience in this real world. Essentially, showing how an idea of something, when not cross-referenced in one’s relationship to self, the physical body and this world – can create/manifest consequences for oneself.

As I now look back - my first mistake was not defining leadership and what it actually means, practically. I simply dived right in not being ready or preparing myself for it - I did not direct myself effectively, in terms of actually establishing for myself ‘who am I’ as a leader, and what are the implications / responsibilities of becoming a leader in my relationship to self and others. 

When I got to the farm and started doing tasks, I did not see myself as a leader. It was first only me and LJ and we both worked together. I remember one of our neighbors who helped us out with the basics, like how to operate a tractor slasher(its a machine that attaches to a tractor and cuts grass) and others things we did not yet know how to do. In a conversation he said to me that he knows I will be the one directing things around the farm in terms of tasks and showing people what to do and how to do things. I laughed at first, because I did not see myself doing that. So, he must have noticed something in me that I have not yet recognized/seen/realized for myself.

Sometime Later as more people came to visit and stayed, wanting to help out and participate around the farm to learn new things - I noticed that I was indeed the one people came to for advice, and I was directing tasks. I was not alone in this, because if I got stuck I asked others for assistance like Bernard who basically knew how to do everything, practically. I wanted to be like that - to know what to do. To be able to solve problems in the most sufficient and practical method. This was a challenge for me that I enjoyed, solving problems – but not only solving them, finding/establishing the most easy, efficient, direct and practical way to do them. My mind tended to really complicate situations, lol but when the practical solutions was shown – it was actually SO SIMPLE. So, from that perspective I liked doing these jobs, figuring things out, challenging myself from complexity to simplicity, practicality.

In time, I learned through assistance given and trial and error. I wanted to be the first person to do something new. For example how to lay down a concrete floor. None of us have ever done it before so the first thing was to know the mix - the amount of sand, stone, concrete and water required and how to mix it properly. I wanted to learn it first, because that is what a leader does - to be able to show others how to do something you should be able to do it yourself first so that you know what to do. So, with most things - I did things first to learn and then showed others. 

My idea of being a leader back then was to be able to do everything and show others how to do it. To be able to direct people effectively as well as motivate others. I also believed that I was the most effective person when it came with farm activities and by that logic I should be the one who does everything. That was a mistake, because in that I did not give others the opportunity to learn all new things. I did show them some things that even if they made mistakes it would not be big. Tasks like leveling a block of wet cement to make it smooth and shape it perfect level for a floor I did myself, because I feared if they made mistakes and the concrete dried it can’t be fixed again.  Also since I knew how to do things - because I have done it so many times - I did it faster. Another idea of leadership I had was to get things done fast and since I was the most effective I could get things done fast and did not give others the opportunity even though there was no real rush. I created the rush, the belief that tasks must be done fast to get to the other task. There was always so much to do I wanted to get to everything at once not even giving myself a proper break some days.

So, what as ‘cool’ was the point of getting to know something and showing others, directing others effectively and motivating them and that in that context I was at that stage the most effective person. But, the ‘mistakes’ were in regards to me not showing others how to get to know something, me not showing others how to DIRECT THEMSELVES effectively, me not showing others how to become the most effective person within specific tasks – so, I took it all onto me, and me alone, and did not assist/support others to become equal to me within the same process I have walked to stand in the position that I was standing. And so we would have all, in fact, become more effective in various responsibilities with equalizing our skills/learning from each other.

Eventually I realized that I cannot do everything myself and then delegated and gave others an opportunity to learn, but I should have done that in the beginning.

If I could go back I would give myself one thing - patience. To go tell myself to relax and Slow Down. To realize how I got to be effective - others showed me and I learned by doing a task myself and there was always somebody that could assist me if I got stuck. And then give that opportunity for others. Being a leader does not mean to know how to do everything and to be the best at it FOR ONLY YOU, it’s about acquiring the skills and knowl edge and to equally pass it on, doing one’s best in the process of acquiring skills/knowledge – I mean, ‘giving it your all’, because that’s your self expression, but to also ‘give it your all’ for each one, as oneself, to establish that ‘self leadership’ within self and a particular task. It is to be able to teach what you know and what you have done yourself and thus certain what works and what doesn't. Being a Leader is not to have followers, but to be able to teach others how to become a leader as well.

I later realized that I was not in fact the most effective at doing everything. For example I remember Andrew came for a visit and he was interested in wood work - making tables and cutting slats. Once he got started he was amazing and really good at it – a lot better than I was even though I have done it for a long while. And so I looked who was the most effective where and directed people according to that. 

I had a warped idea of what it means to be a leader and made a lot mistakes on the way. Eventually it became natural to me - people came with questions and I mostly had answers, but as you have read in my previous blogs I was still allowing stress and impatience to direct me. Right now for the last few months, because of my Grave’s Disease I am no longer able to do any physical activities so I had a break, so to speak. And it’s pretty cool, because I can now see what I have done and how I lived and prepare myself to walk anew with the realizations I’ve had in relation to the past.