Aug 6th 2021
It’s a familiar aphorism - the waiting for a shoe to drop, the “all good things must come to an end”.
My recent good thing was the streak I’d been on with work and personal development. I’ve been doing a fantastic job of eating well, exercising, and working my butt off by studying for the GRE, coding, reading, writing, and educating myself on investing, crypto, etc.
That all came to a screeching halt the past two days as the result of one simple decision. I thought I’d let myself game with my brother for an hour.
I’m a very all-or-nothing person. That doesn’t make me special or unique - it’s just an observation. But when I play, I play hard. That became especially apparent over the pandemic lockdowns. I was stuck (by choice, of course) inside and spent a HUGE portion of time gaming and eating crap food.
What changed? As restrictions eased, I started getting out more. I started going to the gym. I started counting my calories and I set a rigorous (some might even say TOO rigorous) daily schedule which acknowledged several goals I wanted to accomplish and set aside time for those goals.
Things went well for the first week-plus of following this schedule, but by the third week, I was starting to feel extremely stressed. I was starting to look for a way out. So I called my brother and asked if he wanted to game.
Just one game turned into just one day, and that one day turned into a shame-filled binge of isolation, avoiding responsibilities, and ignoring the principles that had carried me so well the past few days.
I’m sure everyone has experienced this in one way or another, and I’m almost certain that I will experience this again. What I can say is that I’ve noticed over the past few years of trying to improve on what I might call my bad habits, is that the slumps have become less like canyons and more like gentle valleys, and they last less amounts of time. So there is hope. At least that’s what I’ve experienced in my life.
Nobody is perfect (except my Mom). What would a perfect day look like for me, anyways?
Is it checking off the tasks I need to accomplish? No, I’ve done that before. Is it performing well in my tasks? Getting recognition from others? No, or else I would have given up a long time ago.
I think the ideal way of living for me is to be okay with what happens and what doesn’t. Let me go into this further.
I noticed since I made my schedule that I’ve become increasingly impatient with others. Any slight deviation from the schedule, any intrusion, feels like sand under my fingernails. So that’s one side of the spectrum - trying to control events outside of my control, which includes:
That list goes on literally forever. But when I’m engaged in my character defects, or my unhealthy behaviors (which basically looks like a concious decision to shirk my responsibilities, screen my calls, eat a LOT and fry my brain with video games and TV), I’m similarly trying to control several things which are outside of my control, which include:
So in either circumstance, the underlying issues are the same: a desperate (and ultimately futile) attempt to control the world around me. In the interest of time, then, I present my thesis:
Perfection is the attainment (or rather, the acknowledgement) of seamless unity with the world and life’s circumstances.
Sound a little granola-y? Perhaps you’re more interested in grounded, practical actions to avoid your bad habits? Let’s return to The Four Agreements, which I referenced a few posts ago. I think it provides a way to apply my proposal practically.
The Four Agreements is briefly touched upon in an earlier post.
I want to post the Agreement I think is most relevant to “falling gracefully” although all of them apply in one way or another:
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
So there it is. What does that have to do with anything? And why didn’t I refer to number four, which is “Do your best?”.
I think this speaks more to my post because it reminds me that I’m powerless over others and it’s none of my business how they act. It’s only my business how I act.
This means that if I want to be fit, it’s up to me to go to the gym. It’s not my trainer’s fault for rescheduling or my buddy’s fault for bailing.
If I want to become a better coder, it’s not my friend’s fault for calling me up in the middle of my coding sesh or my professor’s fault for making lectures boring.
If I want to become more happy and useful to those around me (in a word, society), it’s up to me to uphold that ideal. It doesn’t matter if I was cut off on the way to work, or if the girl I asked out said no, or if I didn’t get accepted to the internship, or whatever. I don’t want to be the victim of needless suffering anymore, and that means that I need to stop taking this personally and instead take responsibility for the quality of my life.
The beautiful thing about this is that if this attitude were to be adopted fully, 100%, my life would transform overnight. Everything would suddenly be okay because I would be okay with everything. That, to me, is perfection. The acceptance of (and alignment with) the way things are.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t take action to change. In fact, I need to, if I ever want anything to be different. But the practice of this attitude (and it is a PRACTICE, as in A DAILY, REPITIOUS affair), has helped me to fall more gracefully, brush the dust off my shoulders, and get back up and keep walking.
With that, I’m done. I hope you have a wonderful and productive day.
Colin