This has been a draft since 2015. Time to see the light of day.

From depression and sadness comes self evaluation and the openness to change things. From this, spawns the opportunity to shift your thinking and improve yourself. I hope this post is a way for me to document these thoughts that I have, right now, to keep me moving forward.

Sometimes, I feel like what I am doing is moving backward, particularly with the development of my social self. These last few months have seen my outgoing self supplicate in congruence towards a certain special individual, unsurprisingly (in retrospect) leading to my ultimate rejection. I know full well the saying be yourself, everything else is tragedy, yet seem to have difficulty putting it into practice. No more.

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Paradigm Shifts

Predictive sociality

• I used to approach all problems with the same reasoning - understand - predict - calibrate. In other words, look ahead, reason the potential outcomes, and work my actions towards promising opportunities.

• But, If I am honest, this approach is less than effective- even retarding, in social circumstances. In a social setting, outcomes and specifics are entirely unpredictable, and attempting to reason them sets you up with expectations which play with your head. Worse still, continually having expectations broken and being put on the spot engineers an anxiety complex, further damning hope for improvement.

• Instead, it took a previous mentee (I) - now turned mentor - to realise that this approach is far from reality. Whilst no action should be entirely devoid of reasoning, you cannot attempt to predict social interation or outcomes. Instead smile at how unpredictable it is, throw yourself headfirst into every opportunity you get and take pride in not knowing how it will turn out. Goes well? kek. Badly? Epic banter. You cannot let yourself think about all the things that can go wrong, or you will never be surprised by all the things that will go right.

• In terms of challenging habits, that means:

  • No more playing out conversations in my head ahead of time ... It throws you off in the moment.
  • No more fantasizing about potential outcomes ... It messes with your head when they inevitably dont occur.

Shia LaBeouf style Motivation

• If the whole world had no fear and no anxiety, what a world it would be.
• Finding the inner strength to do what you really want to do is still a major challenge. Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to help you across the line.
  • Technique one: Baby stepping
    • Start by taking little steps towards your ultimate goal (the one that gives you the anxiety). Remind yourself that this is just one step, still innocent, you are still in control. For example. if you wanted to get a girls number, you would start by taking your phone out of your pocket.
    • Step by step, you get closer to the goal, till there is only one thing left to do - in our example that would be to ask for the number.
    • In this moment, remind yourself of all the steps you did to get here - and that taking all those steps before, you meant to do it and they were easy, this one will be no different.
  • Technique two: Taking control of your legs
    • The instant when you are aware of an action you could take, a war - a mind war sparks inside you. On one side, your ego drives you towards what your truely want. On the other side, our emotions attempt to maintain the status quo, and generate fear and anxiety to attempt to keep you in stasis. Reader, whatever you do, it is your job to make sure the ego wins, because otherwise, you are not yourself, just another shell following the whims of an invisible force attempted to stunt your development.
    • You know what you want. You know what you feel. In this instant, you push your emotions down in a wave, gaining control of all the muscles above the wave. Push it down to your toes.
    • You know what you want. Your emotions are going to make sure it's not easy. But you are in control of your legs now, so you walk towards your decision even though your emotions make sure your not comfortable. Baby step it.

I want this to be a living document, so I expect to add to it over the coming months.

... its not quite about thinking and reasoning, but a lack thereof. It's about being able to just... let go and trust yourself. You don't feel like you need to deal with it, it just happens.

- Taylor Ian

Br,

-twitchyliquid64