Self Understanding is Self Clarification

Posted in General |  Email This Post | by James Rick

The process of self understanding is really the process of self clarification. Why do I behave the way that I do? What do I truly value? What do I truly want? What are the highest value actions in life? These questions are worth deep investigation, for the answers not only tell us who we are but what we wish to become.

Massive Action Requires a ‘Tight’ Routine

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

WHY DO HABITS FORM?

Habits preserve conscious processing power. Scientists have concluded the conscious mind is capable of processing up to around 2,000 bits (e.g. 2,000 characters) of information a second whereas the subconscious is capable of processing 4,000,000,000 bits of information a second. What these studies exemplify is that conscious brain power is a limited resource. Therefore, the brain must allocate repetitive information to the subconscious so the conscious can filter new information.

WHEN DOES A ROUTINE BECOME A HABIT

A routine becomes a habit when it has been turned over the subconscious. The subconscious takes over acts that have been performed repeatedly by the conscious as a way of preserving this limited resource. Scientists have observed that habits generally take about 30 days to form.

It’s important to note that chemical dependencies also play a role in how fast a habit can form and how hard they are to break. Addictive substances like nicotine, caffeine or heroine are external, meaning generated from outside of your body but addictions to substances can also form internal chemicals such as dopamine or adrenaline which are released during intense experiences like skydiving or sex can also play a role in what I call ‘habit change resistance’. Habits linked to addictive chemicals will require a greater level of commitment.

CONSCIOUS EFFORT IN HABIT FORMATION

The task is to be aware of habits before they form; this is when habits are easiest to create or change. After a habit has already been formed it becomes far more difficult to change. You must first identify the habit (by observing repetitive behaviors that you can’t fully explain) and then consciously work to replace wasteful habits. The longer a habit has been running the more conscious effort it may require to replace.

ARE YOUR BEHAVIORS PRODUCING DESIRABLE RESULTS?

Study your current behaviors – how many of them would you say are habitual? Now for the big question – ARE YOUR HABITS PRODUCING DESIRABLE RESULTS? In many cases because the habits formed during early childhood and adolescence little thought (conscious effort) was given to the habit formation process. This is like a child choosing the most important programming for its life operating system. As an older, wiser individual does it not make sense to go back and evaluate the choices you might have made as a child?

HOW DO HABITS APPLY TO TAKING MASSIVE ACTION?

For many years I wondered what it would really look like to take massive action to produce results. It sounds great ‘massive action’ – but what does it mean? I read all kinds of books on time management. I spent countless hours creating to-do lists, schedules, time logging and using life management software programs. What I have realized is that the answer is not a system ‘out there’ so much as it is ‘in here’ – in the brain, in the subconscious.

What I was trying to do was exceed my 2,000 bit processing limit consciously when all I really needed to do was decide very clearly on the actions I wanted to take on a regular basis that would eventually be picked up by the subconscious. These actions are what I call ‘evolutionary’ actions (even though the actions are generally the same, their content evolves over time) – like planning, meditation, reading or writing. There are a few ‘maintenance’ actions that should also be built into the routine like eating healthy and exercising. Once you carefully choose the actions you want to perform over and over again – you just have to exert enough conscious effort to get over the habit formation hurdle.

If you take the meager 2,000 bits of conscious processing power you have on a daily basis and you work like a little each day at sculpting a routine, you will eventually turn the task of ‘massive action’ over to your subconscious. When an action is taken over by the subconscious, in theory your power to perform that action goes from an army of 2,000 to an army of 4,000,000,000. Imagine if you turn the wrong action over to the army – uh oh is right!

And remember an action applies to doing, feeling and thinking. So if you want to produce more desirable doing behaviors, or more desirable feeling emotions or more desirable thoughts – you must begin today to re-shape the habits that form your life. So I leave you with a step by step plan for habit reformation.

STEP BY STEP HABIT REFORMATION

Step 1: Identify behaviors, emotions or thoughts you no longer wish to perform. If this is your first time doing this exercise – begin with physical behaviors, they are the easiest to notice.
Step 2: Before you attempt to eliminate the behavior – ask yourself what value are you honoring when you perform this behavior? (Assumption: All behaviors, emotions and thoughts must serve you in some way.) Your brain must be honoring some value system in order to perform the behavior. Sometimes simply becoming aware of the underlying value of unwanted behaviors can liberate you from those behaviors because you can still honor the value if it’s important– you’ll simply choose a more serving behavior to do so.
Step 3: Decide on the values you want to give the highest priority to.
Step 4: Decide on the actions you associate with your higher values.
Step 5: Begin designing a daily routine that will incorporate the new actions in your every day life. (This action is going to become a habit soon!)
Step 6: Notice if it’s working or not and make the necessary changes to your routine.

EXAMPLE:
Here’s an example of how these steps would work:

1) I no longer want to smoke. (I don’t smoke by the way :), this is just a simple example)
2) Smoking relaxes me. I honor my value of relaxation or PEACE. (Now I’ve clearly identified the value smoking honors – I can see the absurdity of smoking. There are other, healthier ways of meeting my need for peace or relaxation such as meditation or deep breathing.)
3) For now, I value HEALTH over PEACE. (I am now telling myself that I’m willing to sacrifice a little peace to be healthy. This clarity will help me when I’m craving the PEACE a cigarette brings. This is an important stage in the habit reformation process – because all behaviors honor some value, you have to temporarily sacrifice that value and replace it with something you value even more. It’s usually the sacrifice of a value WITHOUT a clear replacement that causes unwanted behaviors to continue. Imagine how difficult it would be to try to stop smoking when smoking is the only behavior that honors PEACE. If you weren’t aware of the fact that smoking honors PEACE, you wouldn’t have come up with a replacement behavior that also offers PEACE, so you’d be making a sacrifice with no clear benefit or replacement for your value system – which makes the change nearly impossible. In short, a sacrifice can only occur when you have clearly given another value higher priority or you’re honoring the same value with a replacement behavior.)
4) The actions I associate with my higher value HEALTH, would be eating healthy, exercising and NOT smoking – (but remember because smoking honors PEACE, I can increase my chances of NOT smoking only by replacing smoking with a behavior that also honors PEACE. Again, if I simply try to NOT do something – there is a big hole in my value system – my brain will automatically ask the question - how will I achieve my peace? If I do not have a HEALTHY replacement option, in a time of weakness I might sacrifice HEALTH to meet my need for PEACE.)
5) Now I need to simply add healthy eating, exercise and meditation (or whatever your replacement activity for smoking might be) to my daily plan. To make sure I’m eating healthy I could plan WHERE I’m going to eat, or WHAT I’m going to eat. To make sure I am going to exercise I can plan WHERE I’m going to exercise, or WHAT exercise I’m going to do or WHO I should invite to exercise with me. To make sure that I honor my need for PEACE before I even feel the need to smoke – I will proactively plan my replacement activity – in this case meditation or deep breathing anytime I feel like I need to relax.
6) I might suddenly realize that smoking honors more than just my value for PEACE, (and I might find this out after I give in for other reasons) instead of getting frustrated – it just means that maybe I just need to investigate a little further. If I was honoring HEALTH and I was feeling PEACE, yet I still needed a cigarette – aside from the obvious chemical addiction, what could I possibly value more than HEALTH or PEACE that I felt the cigarette gave me in that moment? Ah ha, maybe I felt like the cigarette gave me CONTROL over how I was feeling. So even though my body is going through withdrawal, the reason why I wasn’t strong enough to deal with those withdrawals is because I wanted an immediate solution for CONTROL. Now I can use this new discovery in steps 1 through 5 to possibly succeed the next time.

Can you see how this step by step approach is so much better than trying to STOP an unwanted behavior without understanding the underlying mechanisms that cause that behavior in the first place?

A CLEAR PERSPECTIVE

Can you imagine just trying to stop smoking and then starting again and stopping and starting again – without a clear idea on why you start or why you’re stopping? It’s like blindly slashing your way through a jungle. You might make it to the other side- you might also fall into a canyon and die. Why take the chance when you can survey the land from your helicopter above? This is the clarity you’ll have when you begin to link behaviors to your value system. You can move with precision and make the decisions that have nothing to do with how ‘strong’ of a person you are and everything to do with your value system – the root of human motivation and behavior; the epicenter of habit creation and reformation.

4 Steps to Slowing the Mind Down

Posted in Full Potential Project · Power Lists and Formulas · Spiritual Guidance |  Email This Post | by James Rick

Take time to withdraw from the world, let the mind slow down and observe with clarity what’s important. Do not be fooled by the senses that offer the illusion of ‘aliveness’ where there is only noise. Behind all senses, behind all thought - there you are.

STEPS TO SLOWING THE MIND DOWN

1) Do a focused breathing meditation. Make an effort to get to ten breaths without thinking of anything else. Saying the statement “I’m right here, right now” over and over again while you take each breath in and out will help bring your focus into the present. If you think of something else start back over at breath number one. If this is your first time it will take some real effort. And you may get frustrated - good - frustration will serve as a fuel for a greater will to focus.

2) When you’ve achieved 10 breaths you can let the thought of counting go, and begin to notice the air moving in and out of your lungs. Just feel the sensations of air breathing in and out of your lungs.

3) After several breaths of just noticing sensations, begin to sense the universe breathing you every time you breathe out. Color the breath in your mind and visualize it filling your lungs and entering the world to be shared with other life - plants, humans and other creatures. Sense the greater connection with all life.

4) Let the exercises go. Notice how much the mind has slowed down at this point. Just relax in the calm. Observe yourself in the present, ask the question “Who am I really?” over and over again. Your mind may begin to drift at this point - do your best to remain aware of where it goes. Notice how you feel - be as present as possible.

This exercise is one form of meditation. As you begin to slow the mind down and train your brain to focus you will notice your effort to meditate goes through the four traditional stages of personal development:

1 - Unconscious incompetence - Sleep walking through life - vulnerable / reactive to environment.
2 - Conscious incompetence - You are aware of what you want to focus on but your mind strays quite often.
3 - Conscious competence - You are aware of what you want to focus on, your mind strays less often.
4 - Unconscious competence - You have achieved a deep level of awareness. Presence is your middle name.

Social Inertia and How to Overcome It

Posted in General |  Email This Post | by James Rick

Inertia is a force that governs the way matter behaves. In a ’social’ context it is the force that often times governs the way you behave in social settings. By becoming aware of social inertia you can radically change your approach to social situations and achieve a higher level of success in your interactions with other human beings.

GETTING ON THE SAME PAGE

Inertia - inertness, esp. with regard to effort, motion, action, and the like; inactivity; sluggishness.

Newton’s first law of motion states that “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.”

INERTIA AND THE FIRST LAW AS IT APPLIES TO SOCIAL SUCCESS

It has been my observation that because our bodies are made up of matter we are vulnerable to all of its laws. What applies to matter ‘out there’ also applies to the matter that makes up 100% of our body.

Among laws like gravity (the force pulling our bodies down), or entropy (the force that causes our bodies to age), we are also greatly influenced by inertia - the force that dictates an objects momentum; if at rest it’s easier to stay at rest - if in motion it’s easier to stay in motion.

In a very practical sense - if you do not interact with people very often, it’s EASIER for you NOT to interact. If you do interact with people on a regular basis, it’s EASIER for you to interact. And here’s the kicker - social inertia appears to reset EVERY DAY and sometimes only in a matter of hours. Here’s what I mean.

MY EXAMPLE OF SOCIAL INERTIA

I find that when I first wake up in the morning social inertia has crept into my psyche. Yes I can say hello and be polite but when it comes to interacting beyond just politeness, what I call a quality interaction, especially with regards to interacting with the opposite sex it takes a little ‘revving up’.

Now of course some people are just more naturally talented in social settings or their aptitude for socializing has been going for so long its more hardwired into their system. But for many - it’s the force of social inertia that creates a wall to more quality interactions in greater quantity - especially with regards to dating, attraction and the like.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL INERTIA IS ALL IT TAKES

Once you understand the concept of social inertia - you realize that your ’shyness’ or excuses for not communicating with people really just stems from not doing it on a regular basis. You can set the force of social inertia in your favor every day by communicating with everybody you meet. And if you find it difficult to communicate with the opposite sex - you can start in small indirect ways by asking “what is the time?” or “where is this street?” and even these interactions begin to move the ball of social inertia.

BE AWARE OF SOCIAL INERTIA

Notice when it was easier in the day to interact. Sometimes within just a few hours of the ball of social inertia will have started to slow down and suddenly you might be a bit more withdrawn again.

If you truly wish to make new friends, business connections and create more opportunities for love in your life - keep the ball of social inertia moving by taking little opportunities to connect with people. Don’t judge them based on attractiveness - every person you connect with will keep the ball of social inertia moving and when you come across someone you are attracted to you can direct the conversation a bit more towards whatever end you wish.

The overriding point here is to KEEP THE BALL OF SOCIAL INERTIA MOVING. It is my observation that most people never even get it moving and so they call themselves “shy” as a way to rationalize it. Or they don’t move it for most of the week and then they try to go out on a Friday or Saturday night and get all nervous, drink alcohol and hope someone will come talk to them.

Don’t rationalize why you’re not communicating with others - this is a trick of the brain! (The logical brain creates stories to ‘fill in the gaps’ for why the more ancient emotional or instinctive parts of itself react the way they do.)

COMPETENCE BREEDS CONFIDENCE

When you keep the ball of social inertia moving you’ll acquire a new self image (no matter what your old self image). Why? Because you’ll have new competencies in social interaction and as your skill level improves you’ll have increasing confidence in your ability to communicate. The cycle becomes viciously positively - positive feedback becomes the reward for reaching out.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In human society, there is not much reward for remaining reclusive. A socially successful person will meet many new friends, many new potential business partners and will have a greater selection of potential mates.

Every day make it a point to get the ball of social inertia moving. Begin with the next person you make eye contact with.

Optimism Vs. Pessimism - And How to be a “Real Optimist”

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

A common misconception is that optimism means ignoring facts and pessimism means being real about them. That’s why you’ll often here a ‘pessimist’ say - “I’m just being real about it” or you’ll hear an optimist say “There is a five thousand pound elephant standing on my foot but I’m trying to think positive about it.” ..

First of all - DON’T DENY THE FACTS. The facts are facts. But don’t confuse facts with perspective.

FACT - Someone close to me has died
PERSPECTIVE - It’s an unfortunate event

FACT - I lost an arm
PERSPECTIVE - It’s a tragedy

FACT - I lost one million dollars
PERSPECTIVE - What a horrible mistake

FACT - A person with whom I was committed had sex with another person
PERSPECTIVE - I have been betrayed

Now here’s the key distinction: A pessimist takes a fact (which is neutral) and spins them into a negative - then they call that reality. An optimist takes a fact and either ignores it, or spins it into a positive without dealing with it first - then at some point they might give up positive thinking because they think ‘it doesn’t work’ - like it was a trick that could stop challenging events from occurring.

Being ‘real’ means being fully aware of the FACTUAL reality - WITHOUT making a judgment. Try to get the full picture before you make a judgment. Then if its an immediate issue, ‘deal’ with it immediately. If you put your hand on a hot stove, don’t think positive about it - just deal with it. Afterward when you reflect on what happened before you make a judgment like “I’m so stupid” or “I always put my hand on hot stoves” use the default question: “What is valuable about this experience?” (I won’t put my hand on hot stoves, I”ll avoid giant 5,000 lb elephants and I’ll appreciate the hands and feet that I have.)

By:
1) honoring facts
2) taking immediate action to deal with immediate conflicts and
3) reflecting on events in a way that will help you extract the most value from them
you’ll be a “real optimist’. As a “real optimist’ you’ll have have ‘better luck’ and it won’t be a trick of positive thinking.

What Happens When You Set Standards Too High?

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

When you set unrealistic standards, you are making a commitment that you just can’t keep. It’s like walking into a gym with the bold plan to lift 500 lb weights your first time. It sounds like a glorious idea and it will make you feel significant to tell people of your high standard. But in practice when you try to lift the weight and it falls on your throat, the experience might cause you so much pain, embarrassment and self disappointment you never attempt to set any standard, or you end up settling for far less than you’re actually capable of.

~~~
Someone brought up an important point for clarification in the last newsletter: the difference between standards inside yourself that you completely control and standards outside yourself that are generally beyond your control - and therefore INEVITABLY violated.

“My struggle was over allowing a friend to come into my home with filthy bare feet, green with horse dung, and walk diet onto my floors. This was a standard of disrespect to herself and to me that I had not encountered before but I was allowing it for fear of being offensive whilst being offended. Next time I will speak kindly but firmly and put a stop to it.”

You will find that setting high standards outside of yourself, like house cleanliness can actually cause you more stress than necessary. The difference here is control. You can set personal standards within yourself and control them. When you start setting standards about your environment - outside your control you are setting yourself up for aggravation. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set external standards, it just means that if you insist on maintaining these standards you should readily communicate them and be flexible in changing them.

To properly assess the value of your standards:

(1) Look at where the control is: when you commit to a healthy lifestyle who has the control - you do. When you commit to a clean house you only have moderate control, if it’s important to you set the standard but be open about it. No standard that is important to you is worth keeping silent. It’s HOW you communicate openly that will determine whether you still have a friend or not after you voice it.
(2) Take the long term view. A house is temporary, the house will eventually get dirty. Personal growth is long term. Keeping commitments with the self are long term. A friendship of open communication and mutual respect is long term.

In short: the value of a standard is based on your level of control and the long term impact.

- James Rick
http://www.jamesrick.com/blog

What Happens When You Don’t Follow Your Own Standards?

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement · Spiritual Guidance |  Email This Post | by James Rick

When you don’t follow through on your own standards, it’s like making a commitment with yourself and then breaking it. Anytime you break a commitment with yourself you feel a sense of disappointment. This self disappointment can erode self image making you feel even worse. If this has been going on for quite some time you might tell people you lack discipline, you are weak or lazy and even joke about it as a way to restore some sense of self image - when laziness becomes apart of your identity you might then feel it’s okay.

Forming an identity out of un-serving behaviors can be quite dangerous. A belief that you are your behaviors can lock you into a pattern that you may never get out of unless: a) you reach a bottom and decide enough is enough. Or b) you realize and embrace the idea that your potential is so much greater than what you are now displaying. When you can envision a reality beyond what you’re currently living, this potential reality can excite you with enough energy to aim higher and set new standards even if they are a more challenging way to live.

Is a Child’s Tendency to Organize Things Evidence of Evolution?

Posted in General |  Email This Post | by James Rick

In my response to one author’s question: Why Do Many Toddler’s Have a Desire to Organize Things? I wrote:

According to some learning theorist, children organize things outwardly because that’s what their brain is doing with information inwardly. The brain is only carrying out instructions that occur on an even smaller level. The brain itself was created by this information. The protein bits and bytes found in DNA.

Do you think this information organization stops delivering instructions just because you experience life on the macro level? No - the information organization keeps going constantly in response to your environment.

And if you think about it (because thinking is organization), we recognize intelligence as the ability to organize chaos. Edison sorted through an infinite number of possible configurations for creating a light bulb and because he was finally able to identify the right combination we consider him intelligent. Einstein took an infinite number of scribbles and produced a formula that ‘made sense’, was usable or in other words - organized. The formulas were always there, but it took intelligent life to organize it into a coherent structure.

Nearly all humans are intelligent to some degree though, when you consider that out of an infinite number of actions (such as making sounds into speech or blocks into buildings) humans produce what appears organized.

Intelligence is the one force in the universe that appears to be organizing information, while everything else in the universe appears to be breaking down into disorganization (entropy.) At the same time, where does that desire to be lazy or destroy come from? I believe it comes from entropy (personified by some to be Satan) inherent in all nature. The battle for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is really the battle between spiritually guided intelligence (guided from a higher power) and entropy (the tendency to destroy or in lesser forms laziness)

Yes indeed, it is my observation that a child’s desire to organize things is evidence of evolution. Not the dumb Darwinian excuse for evolution, but an intelligent force I refer to as evolution. The evolution I refer to is alive and has some higher power behind it.

Why Is Setting and Honoring Personal Standards Important?

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

Personal standards determine your degree of tolerance. The higher the standard the less you’ll tolerate. Personal standards are important but of even greater importance is discriminating where to set standards. If you have high standards for everything - you’ll eventually have a nervous breakdown. But high standards for areas that are most important are critical for developing motivation to improve those areas.

Human beings take action when they are fed up with something, not concerned (which is when they complain) but fed up and will not tolerate any more.

If we broke this down into action steps:
1) Determine the areas of your life that are most important. (I define the six major areas of life as: physical, mental, spiritual, social, emotional and financial)
2) Now describe where you’re at in those areas. What does the current reality look like. What are you currently SETTLING for?
3) Now describe what you’d like your life to look like in these areas. What kind of personal standards would you need to set in order to get fed up with the way things are now? (so you can develop the motivation to take action)
4) Now in your mind decide that you will no longer tolerate the way things are and decide now that you’re not sure what you’re going to do, but decide that you’re going to do something!
5) Now begin thinking with a blank sheet of paper, write down all the ideas as possible ‘plans’ for improving each of the six major areas of life. Consider the best idea and take action on it. Trust that although it may not be the best idea, if you at least take action on something better ideas will come along and they’ll be easier to carry out because you’ve got momentum.

All actions in life are experiments. And failure should be thought of as feedback. If something doesn’t work, try something else. If that does not work, try something else. Personal standards are key for staying motivated to continue in this process.

Free Is Your Reality

Posted in Perspective · Spiritual Guidance |  Email This Post | by James Rick

You will feel a sense of ‘higher truth’ when you maintain you awareness of the temporariness of all life - instead of being shocked you accept whatever should enter your awareness that justifies this fact.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable when you consider temporariness - feel what it feels like and let go of controlling the feeling, just accept it.

The consideration of temporariness is more true than any illusion of security you’ve created. Though you might cage yourself to feel safe (the comfort zone). The security the cage creates is an illusion because the cage is in free fall!

A reality that frequently considers temporariness can feel scary at first, but when it really takes hold, it can be liberating; no longer bound by the fear of losing security you overcome fear. Free is your reality.