These are the words that I wrote down this year, at different point in time, and next to them I added some more to describe what they meant to me.
Patience. I realized that many challenges end up naturally solving themselves with time. Looking back at the past, a lot of the issues I've had were due to a lack of patience. Some people talk about resilience, but I find that there might be little difference between the two.
Spotlight. I was always someone that loved attention, but never someone that necessarily liked the spotlight. Perhaps young I did not notice it, but at some point I did, and then I hated it. I'm probably not the only one that hates being in the spotlight, but my job now requires me to be in there, and so I must against all instinct seek it, go towards it.
Act. I've noticed that when I act, things are easier. In some places, perhaps due to my undiagnosed autism, I just do not know how to act. And akin to Abed in Community, acting makes me more human. I've heard that people take on different roles to go on with their lives in the different settings they find challenging. So I'd like to do more of that now.
Accept. Ah, stoicism. For life is painful sometimes, but as soon as I accept it peace reappears.
Inner child. I've had stressful moments, in which I noticed that brainsplitting could work. I've heard that some see our irregularities as consequences from past traumas. In these moments, looking at our fearful self and consoling them by being the comfort that we did not have at the time can yield results. I want to try that more. It feels more powerful than just accepting, it feels like part of us is strong enough to reassure the rest of us.
Change the framing. That's an old one, but I need to constantly remind myself that a change of framing is often the main solution. Noticing the thoughts, short circuiting them, understanding why we feel this way, and creating a new alternative way of seeing things so that our brain can safely take it. Rinse and repeat.
Don't indulge. Well, I like to indulge, so I wrote "don't indulge" on my list one day. I could lose weight, or be less lazy, and so on.
Be present. Don't live in the past, don't live in the future, appreciate what you have. Every moment is fleeting, time with loved ones is a gift, life is about noticing and appreciating what is happening, slowly, instead of keeping our head burried in the sand, grinding until we realize one day that we're too old to do that, we waited too long to appreciate life and what it has to offer.
Why worry about a shot you haven't taken yet? This one is similar to being present, in a way. I think it came from Michael Jordan. I don't really watch sport. I don't watch basketball, and I don't watch Tennis too. Matter of fact, I don't know who Roger Federer really is, but at 13:15 in this video he says the following which stroke a chord with me:
In tennis, imperfection is impossible. In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now I have a question for you: what percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%. In other words, even top ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose, every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, okay, I double faulted, it's only a point. Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again, it's only a point. Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 playlist, that too is just a point. And here's why I'm telling you this: when you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it's behind you, it's behind you. This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to fully commit to the next point, to the next point after that, with intensity, clarity, and focus.
Perspective. At 4:24 in this video, Lady Gaga says:
I think an artist needs essentially more than discipline or even talent um is um a perspective. If you are always changing what you do based on what other people say you completely lose yourself and you become just you know something that's constantly affected by what's around you as opposed to stable and your own and like autonomous and your identity.
One might understand this as a synonym of "vision", but I think it is more than that. It's about having a view of the world, and it's about imposing it on other people. The latter is important, because it's certainly not about letting others impose their own views of the world, and how things have to be, and where you fit in that world, on you. Way too often do I do that, where I let someone say something that ends up affecting me, and makes me deeply question if I'm not doing things in the correct way. I often need to remind myself that there is no correct way, there is no ranking, there is no adequate pace, there is no single box that fits me, I am my own vessel on my own river and it'll go where I decide it'll go. Anybody who says otherwise is a sad soul and they don't deserve to make you steer the ship.
Challenges. I believe one grows through challenges. Time must be spent to figure out what we want, and then a challenge must be created in order for us to work towards something. I failed with my gym program because I did not understand the main idea of lifting weights: "overload", which is that you should increase the weights you are lifting over time. I never tracked that and thus I never really improved. But this year, so far, I already managed to accomplish two challenges I gave myself: dry january earlier this year, and a 10k race a few weeks back. This idea of self-given challenges has been with me for a long time, but I want to increase the frequency of these. One challenge a month would be a great thing for me to experiment with. What could I challenge myself with this month...
Small changes. I always thought I had to make big changes in my life, in order for me to really change, and the previous point on self-given challenges goes in that direction. But hearing Warren Buffet saying "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken." made me think that most large changes I've seen in my life started as very small tweaks in the beginning. This last point ties with all the previous points: I should alter my trajectory a bit in each of these dimensions, until they become important mindshifts that are part of my personality.