• A description of some cool accomplishment by the author or someone he knows
• The behaviors which lead to that accomplishment
• The world-view which allowed the accomplisher to feel comfortable with the behaviors

For example, recently an article titled “How I Landed A $50/hr Side Gig With Very Little Effort & How It Relates To Picking Up Chicks” made it to the front page of HN. It can be broken down to:

• I landed a $50/hr side gig with very little effort
• To do this I was concise, friendly, abundant, value-offering, indifferent
• I felt comfortable acting this way because I believe:
  • You have complete control over the universe because it only exists in your head
  • Other people are only projections of your own consciousness. If you are not a friend to everyone then you are not a friend to yourself.

Which part do you think comprises the self-deception?

Models for Overcoming Fear

These kinds of articles are perennially interesting because, at their heart, they’re moral stories about overcoming fear. The author describes a situation where most people would feel fear – fear of humiliation, fear of loss, fear or failure – and shows how his world-view allowed him to cope with the fear well enough for him to exhibit the behaviors which lead to his success. These stories keep alive our hope that we, too, can overcome our fears and live how we want.

However, these stories present their world-view as fact, and I think that’s where the self-deception lies. The world-view is considered to be absolute truth, when really it’s just a model that’s proven useful.

I think this is easy to see in the example above. You probably would not agree that “you have complete control over the universe because it only exists in your head.” You could try this model out for yourself by compelling the universe-in-your-head to add millions to your bank account, only to find that all you’ve done is whittled away another fraction of your life. Yet, it’s undeniable that this model has helped the above author and others to overcome their fears and do cool shit.

The world abounds with wacky models that help actual people actually overcome actual fear. Some people believe their obstacles are put there by God as tests for them to pass. Others believe that mortal life is a game played by immortal energy beings, just for the fun of it. And some folks believe that there is nothing more to life than what we see; when we die, that’s the end, so we better make the most of it. Wacky!

Models for Justifying Fear

Just as models help us overcome fear, they also help us justify fear. When we were teenagers, one of my best friends made all her decisions based on the statistical likelihood that she would be successful. She adopted a model of the world where her fear of failing had to be heeded: “Since so many other people have failed at being an artist, it’s likely I will fail too. I will therefore become a teacher, avoiding the pain and humiliation of constant rejection.” Obviously she never said that, but that’s how it seemed to me.

I’m not saying she was wrong to think this way. What I am saying is that we adopt different models to help us cope with fear, and that we often deceive ourselves into thinking these models are absolute truth. When our models have outlived their usefulness – when they no longer allow us to be happy – we find it hard to change them because we believe that our models are reality itself rather than interpretations of it.

Which models are more useful – those that help us overcome our fears or those that justify them? Well, this is honestly a bit of ridiculous question. These models are more complex than the question allows, and besides that, I think that there’s no One True Model. Rather, it varies by person and context.

Regardless, it’s worthwhile to breakdown our world-views, our models of reality, so we can better understand them and, possibly, change them.

World-Views Dissected

Our world-views are made up of three parts: the universe, you, and your relationship to the universe. I’m stealing from Ayn Rand a bit here, but those parts can be broken down further (I apologize for compressing all of philosophy into three ridiculous lists):

You

Yeah, this has gotten deep. Are your abilities fixed, or are you capable of improving them? How about your emotions, your personality? Are you good, bad, amoral? Does it depend? What does it depend on? Does it depend on who you have been up to this point? Does it depend on who’s asking?

The Universe

Is the universe benevolent? Malevolent? Indifferent? Is it chaotic or orderly? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it meaningful or meaningless? Are you capable of comprehending it? Is it all in your head? Do you control all of it? Part of it? None of it?

Society

What is your place in society? Are you able to influence other people? Are you controlled by other people? How much control do you have, and in what situations? Do you fit in? Will you never fit in?

Obviously, it’s possible to ponder these questions for millennia. Hopefully what’s listed here will help you to analyze your own world-view and to analyze other possible world-views.

The Model to End All Models: Life as an Improv Game

This article wouldn’t be complete without my own unimpeachable advice on what works. Lately I’ve been experimenting with approaching life as an improv game, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

Improv games have the following guidelines:

• There’s a set of rules, but within those rules anything can happen.
• You don’t control what will happen next, but you control your reaction.
• Whatever happens, run with it. Say “yes” to it.
• It’s only a mistake if you say it’s a mistake.
• You’re there to make your team look good.
• Your team will support you.
• Have fun, or else.

This model has greatly helped me overcome social fears. It’s helped me approach life with a much more adventurous spirit.

Perhaps in another article I’ll give a real-life example about how this approach has served me. I could call it “How I Went from Folding Laundry for The Man at $8.75/hr to Living in Hawaii and Making $90/hr Working for Myself at 21 Years of Age”. It’d be about accomplishing cool shit and overcoming fears along the way. It would be ninety percent true.

In the mean time, I hope this article has helped to clarify your own thinking about the way you cope with fear in your life. My belief is that once you accept that your world-view is only a model and not absolute Truth, it’s easier to discard it in favor of a more useful one. One that will make you happier.

After years of being a caregiver for someone with a debilitating neurological illness, the stress had taken its toll. I was unhappy with my life in a number of ways and I didn’t know how to deal with them. From day to day I:

• felt the emotional burden of watching someone suffer, knowing there was a limit to how much I could help.
• didn’t handle conflict well. I would get inappropriately angry with some people and would just roll over for others.
• was unable to relax. When trying to relax I felt like I needed to work and vice versa.
• was constantly low on energy.
• wasn’t being honest about my wants and needs.
• felt like I was’t making progress on my side projects.
• felt like I wasn’t making any progress in becoming the person I wanted to be.

All during this time I tried again and again to address these issues. I would meditate, run, write in a journal, try to talk to people, throw chicken bones. However, my attempts were scattered, and even if something helped I wasn’t able to stick with it.

I tried to get a hold of my life and my attempts to achieve balance using the Getting Things Done
system, and though it was helpful, it’s simply not designed for the emotional/psychological issues I needed to address – and am still addressing, though more successfully.

Of all the self-help books I’ve read (and I’ve read many), none give you the tools to permanently integrate their advice into your daily existence. So Steve Pavlina’s book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, recommends journaling every day. Fantastic idea! Only… do I do that before or after I’m done reading his book? Because I’m reading his book every day as well, and there are a lot of other books I want to read, and also I’m trying to meditate and breathe and deal with life.

After re-enacting this scenario innumerable times (they say that insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results, right?) I’ve muddled my way into a system to actually accomplish meaningful change. It has helped me, and I hope it will help you. I also hope you will tell me about your experiences with it so that it can be improved.

Changing Yourself is a Different Kind of Project

What I’ve discovered is that you can’t treat matters of your inner life the same way you treat other projects. That’s right: dealing with your emotions is not the same as having a garage sale. Learning to be honest about your needs and set better boundaries is not the same kind of project as putting together a TPS report. (though if you’d like to tell me how they are the same, please do). The endless stream of personal productivity tips available won’t help.

No, sir. Accomplishing meaningful change takes time. More than that, it requires you to consistently address your issues from day to day, week to week. It requires continuity from day to day, so that you can constantly build on what you’ve already accomplished. And it requires a stable environment, where both normal life and emergencies are handled while leaving you time to take care of yourself.

A Case Study in Fail

To see what I mean, here’s an example from my own life of trying to change and fail, fail, failing. As I mentioned above, I’ve been (and am) a caregiver for someone with Lyme disease. Because of her Lyme, Su often can’t find the right words for what she wants to say. She also is very susceptible to feeling frustrated and angry. The result is that she can often say things that are hurtful to me. Eventually I started to react by getting very angry and either holding my anger in and exploding later, or just saying hurtful things back immediately. Both reactions resulted in pain and stress for both of us.

Time after time I would tell myself, “I need to stop reacting that way. There’s no reason for it – she doesn’t mean to say things that way, and even if she did, it doesn’t do anyone any good to get angry back.” But when I would try to address the issue, here’s what would happen:

• When I thought about addressing the issue, most of the time I wouldn’t even try because I felt like there was no way I could follow through. Because my life lacked stability, I didn’t have enough confidence to even try.
• When I did actually manage to try, my attempts were scattered. I would sit and mentally rehearse reacting positively for two nights in a row, and then just stop. My attempts lacked consistency.
• Then perhaps a month or two later I would start again, and have no memory of what I’d done before and what had worked. I had to start over because I lacked continuity.

What Actually Worked: Creating and Following Routines

To create the stability, consistency, and continuity I needed to change, I defined a set of daily routines. Here’s a routine for a typical work day:

• 7:00am – 7:10am feed cats
• 7:10am – 7:30am eat
• 7:30am – 8:00am exercise
• 8:00am – 8:30am meditate
• 8:30am – 12:00pm work
• 12:00pm – 12:30pm eat
• 12:30pm – 4:30pm work
• 4:30pm – 5:30pm personal project
• 5:30pm – 6:30pm personal
• 6:30pm – 9:30pm anything
• 9:30pm – 10:00pm read

Once I defined my routines I felt very motivated because I could see that I was giving myself time for my responsibilities, my wants, and my needs. My stress went down because I saw that I didn’t have to worry that I wasn’t spending enough time working, and I also saw that I was giving myself space to relax.

Once I started actually following my routines, I felt phenomenal. Before, I would often forget to eat and as a result my energy would plummet. Once I started eating at regular times my level of energy stabilized (and I became less of a zombie and more of a human).  I also gave myself time to exercise in the morning, and that made my body feel energized and “fresh” throughout the day. So, on a physical level I did much better, and that contributed to my overall well-being.

Routines, by their very nature, create stability. With my routines in place, I felt better able to handle stress. If I was having a hard time with work, I could better endure because I knew that I would stop working at 4:30 and wouldn’t have to think about work for the rest of the day. It was easier to deal with Su’s illness because I had time set aside specifically for talking to her about her needs and for taking care of her. She didn’t need to interrupt me as much throughout the day while I was trying to work or concentrate.

Routines also create consistency. Every day I was meditating at the same time and working and  addressing my personal concerns. The consistency with which I did these activities allowed me to focus on them fully and to have confidence that I was doing them well, and improving from day to day.

For continuity, I kept various journals. When I’m done working every day, I try to make a note of what I’ve done and what I need to do next. I also try to keep track of what I need to learn. For my personal life, I’ll often print out a word or phrase for what I want to work on that week. For example, I’ve printed out “Don’t take hostility personally” to remind myself not to remain detached from someone else’s negative emotions. Then, every day, I’ll write about my experience trying to do that. Having daily routines in place helps keep things fresh in memory, which is instrumental for continuity.

I’m not entirely pleased with my system for achieving continuity, though, and have been looking for new ideas. I’ve also started working on some software that would help me in this area :)

So, defining daily routines has been the basic practice that’s provided me with the stability, consistency, and continuity that I need to grow as a person. My routines address my physical and emotional needs by defining times for exercise and reflection. I also now have time to work regularly on my personal projects (like this one! this one right here!) The result is that I feel a ton better and I’m accomplishing more.

One of these accomplishments is an iphone/itouch app, Control Time, which helps you create routines. There’s a marketing page for it which gives more reasons for why routines are helpful. Even though it’s written in marketing-ese, I tried to make it entertaining and useful. You can also check out Control Time in the app store.

One last note about routines – an unexpected consequence of trying to follow the same routines week by week is that I’ve had to change my relationship to time. If you don’t change your relationship to time, following a daily routine WILL DESTROY YOU. What I mean is, it’ll be nerve-wracking because you end up feeling like you don’t have enough time for anything. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk about how to not be destroyed by time when you change your relationship to it.

To close, here’s a passage from a Mary Oliver book, A Poetry Handbook, that arrived just today which is surprisingly and happily relevant:

If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet — one of the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere — there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them. Writing a poem is not so different — it is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind. They make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen. Or, they make appointments with each other but are casual and often fail to keep them: count on it, nothing happens.

The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem — a heart of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say — exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: no unconscious, not conscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself — soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.

Why should it? It can wait. It can stay silent a lifetime. Who know anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live? But we do know this: if it is going to enter into a passionate relationship and speak what is in its own portion of your mind, the other responsible and purposeful part of you had better be a Romeo. It doesn’t matter if risk is somewhere close by — risk is always hovering somewhere. But it won’t involve itself with anything less than a perfect seriousness.

A couple years later I set out to hypnotize people. Wagging a watch in front of my friends’ faces and intoning “You are getting very sleepy” had little effect. By that time I could read well enough to consume hypnosis books at the local library. I learned to put myself in a trance, making myself unable to lift my own arm. Making yourself immobile didn’t seem suitably spectacular for a super power, so I moved on to practical endeavors like building electric motors and crystal radios.

Still, the promise of hypnosis is compelling in a deep, almost primordial way. Since the time of our earliest ancestors, we humans have believed in the power to manipulate the world – our environments, our fellow humans, and ourselves – with mere words. The ability to wreak devastation or relieve suffering with spells and incantations still captures our imaginations. What I would give to be able to say “abodicus immaculatus” and have my house cleaned!

Many even believe in this power literally, especially when it comes to religion. Here in America, the majority still believe that prayer offers us a direct link to God, and many believe that saying prayers can relieve illness or financial hardship. One sect of Buddhism holds that you merely need to recite a prayer, even without meaning it sincerely, and after death you’ll exist in nirvana as a buddha on a golden lotus for all eternity, while in ancient Jewish tradition pronouncing YHWH, one of the names of God, was punishable by death.

Our species is at once terrified of what words can do and faithful in their power to heal and save, and hypnosis is still viewed in both these lights. A quick google search for “evil hypnosis” yields this quote: “It is obvious that hypnosis is lethal if used for evil purposes.” If you’re willing to take this risk, you’ll find that hypnosis can help with “weight loss, smoking cessation, pain management, public speaking, creativity, astral travel, self confidence” and on and on and on.

***

I began seriously trying to learn hypnosis again in high school, mostly out of curiosity. My interest was piqued after reading an essay by Aldous Huxley where he described the beneficent uses and effectiveness of hypnosis. I remember thinking to myself, “If he thinks it’s so great then maybe there’s something to it.” So once again I immersed myself in hypnosis books, this time with a realistic idea of what hypnosis can accomplish. (Sorry, but it’s not possible to make a male model try to kill the prime minister of Malaysia by playing “Relax”.) None of my family would submit themselves to my budding powers, so it wasn’t until college that I actually got a chance to try and hypnotize someone.

After a lot of badgering, my new friend Lea agreed to be hypnotized. One night we went to her dorm room and she lied on her bed while I sat nearby and tried going through a script. We both tried not to laugh when the script had me saying “Remember: you are in control. You are in the driver’s seat” over and over in my best monotone. Lea never did get hypnotized all the way, but she said afterward that she became deeply relaxed and that it felt good. Even if I wasn’t 100% successful, the experience was thrilling.

However, the real power of words was revealed years later when I deeply hurt Lea without realizing it. She had come to visit me in the house we had originally rented together after our first year of college. During our year of college and co-habitating we went through some crazy, crazy stuff together – family problems, relationship problems, and one surreal night at the hotel where I worked involving college applications, Aerosmith, gun shots, and flooding – and we’d become great friends. So it made me really happy that she was staying with me and we’d get to spend time together. Yet, one morning a few days after she arrived, she was gone.

The previous night we’d had a discussion about politics – healthcare, actually – and I acted like a complete ass. I didn’t just disagree, I was strident and contemptuous in my disagreement. I cut her off, raised my voice, acting in a way no friend should act. Looking back now, my behavior seems even more ridiculous because my views on healthcare have completely changed, matching hers.

Eventually we smoothed things out and we remain great friends, but I’ve tried not to forget the lesson of that experience. Lea had left a note that said I must think her stupid to say some of the things I did. I’ve never thought Lea stupid, but I was so concerned with making my points that I succeeded only in pushing her away, rather than connecting with her and understanding her, as I would try to do now.

Over time I’ve come to appreciate the inescapability of the fact that we’re islands of consciousness, that we are forever bound to see the world from within our skulls. Some people claim that they’ve achieved a feeling of oneness with all of humanity, but I certainly never have. It’s often a struggle to bridge the vast gap between my island and the islands of those I love most, to say nothing of acquaintances or strangers. Words are a material — perhaps the most abundant — for building those bridges, or destroying them.

***

Last year I saw a different friend for the first time in five years. We had been through a lot together and it made me more than happy to see him, but it quickly became obvious he had changed. The morning after arriving he asked, “Hey is there a place around here I can get some Bud Light?” For the remainder of his stay he almost always had a drink with him. Over six days he drank at least thirty-six cans of beer, plus some bottles here and there. Despite the amount he drank he seemed pretty normal, and I probably wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t seen the cases he bought.

Except one night when we were driving home from the beach. My friend is a very kind, very gentle person. But that night his voice got louder and his speech slurred as he inexplicably argued with me over something that had happened nine years ago. I was scared that night but more scared the next day when he didn’t remember what happened.

Eventually I tried to talk to him about his drinking. I told him it worried me, that even if he considered himself a functioning alcoholic that it was unhealthy for him and dangerous. Looking back, it’s almost like I can see my words soaring toward him, shining and proud and certain. And I can see them falling, can see them limping forward to die at his feet.

I wasn’t able to persuade my friend at all, and I’m afraid that I may have alienated him. What could I have said differently? “Look into my eyes…”

I’ll always love him, I’ll always care about him, and I’ll always be his friend. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to regain his trust. In the mean time, I’m not as concerned with “wielding” my words. I’m cultivating the ability to really listen – not just to what’s said, but to what lies beneath. And in this endeavor, the words of James Merrill have left their mark on me:

“Salt lick big as a fist, heart, hoard
Of self one grew up prizing above rubies –

To feel it even by a grain dissolved…”

Rather than inflicting my “hoard of self” upon people by insisting on my cleverness, my wisdom, or my rightness; rather than hailing others from my superior position, I’m learning to open the fist of my heart and reach out.

Expecting that I’ll get help instead of expecting that I’ll encounter conflict and resistance has made me more open about my work. My tendency is to be quite shy about my own work, but I’ve since tried to go out of my way to share it with people.

For example, recently I created a post on Hacker News (and emailed the Boston Ruby Group) asking the folks there if they wanted to start a small group to give and receive writing feedback. The group has 15 members now, and though most appear to be lurkers I’ve met a few great people and got some really excellent feedback on the copy for Control Time.

One fellow I met, Aaron Dragushan, has a site similar to this one: Upgrade Me. It has some great productivity tips, but aims to be about more than just productivity. Exciting stuff! You should check it out – the content’s well written and each post is a pretty quick read.

And by the way, if you’re interested in joining the writing feedback group please do and introduce yourself. We could use some more active members :-)

Thanks to my brother Matt for creating the icon and to everyone who tried out the app along the way. Thanks also to the writing feedback group for helping me write ad copy.

This is the first app I’ve submitted, but it won’t be the last!

Update (Jan 4): Wow, the app has already been approved! You can see it on iTunes.

But first: what is motivation?

Motivation is Your Emotional Energy for Making The Right Choices

Every few months I get excited about doing barefoot running and tell myself I’m going to do it consistently. Running appeals to me as a way to have more energy, to feel healthy, and to clear my head. I have all the gear: running pants, running shirt, a nifty pair of shoes with virtually no sole. And every few months my excitement peters out and my gear collects dust in the closet again – a scenario I’m sure you’re familiar with, in one way or another.

That initial burst of motivation is not enough because changing your lifestyle is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It takes time (some say weeks, some say months) to develop new habits or shed old ones. During that time you’re constantly encouraged to not follow through, whether by yourself or others. If you’re trying to lose weight, for example, you have to pass by McDonald’s and Burger Kings on your drive to work. You have to navigate past countless pastries, candy bars, and other crappy foods when you go grocery shopping. Change is a matter of consistently making the right choices, day in and day out, until making the right choice becomes as easy and habitual as it once was to make the wrong choice.

Resisting the wrong choices and making the right choices takes energy, and motivation is that energy. The reason why I haven’t been able to stick with running is that I’m constantly faced with the wrong choices in a very compelling manner (“Running hurts, but watching movies is fun!” or “It’s cold outside man! Also did I mention that running hurts?”), draining my motivation. My initial burst of motivation isn’t replenished, and my intention to run dies a quiet death.

Instead of just accepting that your motivation will eventually wither, you can deliberately make more. Just like baking a delicious cake, making more motivation requires you know the ingredients. That’s right, making yourself more motivated is just like baking a cake.

The Anatomy of Motivation

Motivation has two main components, Incentives and Confidence. Each has a variety of sub-components.

Incentives

An incentive is, circularly enough, any factor which motivates a particular course of of action or counts as a reason for preferring one choice to the alternatives (says wikipedia). The same incentive will vary in effectiveness depending on how important it is for the individual person. If a gang leader offered to pay you less than minimum wage to risk your life standing on a street corner to sell crack, you would probably decline. Yet there are people who have accepted that offer.

Incentives also differ in their polarity. Positive incentives are incentives that you desire, whereas you avoid negative incentives. You might read to avoid failing a class or to experience the pleasure of expanding your mind. Most people tend to be motivated more by one than the other, and it helps to know which type of incentive works better for you.

There are a few major incentive categories, and it helps to know how you respond to each. In the future I’ll write more on each category individually:

• Social: Social incentives involve gaining or losing social esteem. An example would be telling your friends that you’re going to stop smoking. The need to keep their respect by keeping your word is a strong motivating force.
• Moral: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory
• Financial: This one is too
• Personal: Life goals and personal passions would fall under this category. One thing I want to point out here, which I’ll explore more in another post, is that a feeling of worthlessness can be a debilitating form of incentive that completely drains motivation, preventing people from making lifestyle choices.

Confidence

Confidence here refers to your belief that you’re capable of making the right choices. People suffering from addiction can often strongly recognize the need to quit – the addiction is destroying his life and the lives of those he love – but feel helpless to fight it.

Confidence depends on many sub-components:

• Knowledge: It’s easy to give up when you feel confused. Since you don’t really know what’s right, you settle for what’s familiar.
• Feedback: Taking “knowledge” one step further, it’s essential to get feedback. Chart your progress, get feedback from friends or whoever – whatever works for you.
• Expectations: If you underestimate how much time or effort it will take you to do something, it’s possible you’ll get frustrated and feel like you’re not up to the task. On the other hand, if something is easier to do than you expected, it can be a real confidence booster.
• Other people: Think of what it’s like to have a boss who shoots down your ideas versus one who supports and encourages you. This component’s especially important when “other people” have power over you, whether actual or merely perceived.
• Time: In my opinion this is a very important part of confidence that’s often overlooked. Feeling like you don’t have enough time to change your lifestyle is enough to prevent you from trying. The perception that you don’t have enough time and don’t know how to make it is so detrimental that I’ve made an iphone app to address those issues.
• Self-confidence: Your overall feeling of self-confidence obviously affects how confident you’ll feel about accomplishing a particular goal.
• Skills & Equipment: These need the least explaining and are the most straight-forward to acquire.

Troubleshoot Your Lack of Motivation

Now that you understand what comprises motivation, you can begin to ask questions that allow you to uncover why you’re not motivated. There are innumerable resources on specific facets of motivation (some of which we’ll cover on this site in the future), but the following troubleshooting outline should allow you to figure out what needs fixing and give you a good start in fixing it.

• Do you struggle with conflicting incentives?
  An example of this would be trying to lose weight but being afraid that you’ll lose friends who are uncomfortable with a healthy lifestyle. (It sounds weird, but it happens. People are weird.) You might be able to talk to some friends and work things out, even have them join you; or you might have to decide what’s more important, keeping your current friends or being healthy. Or it might be that you have a pantry full of cookies that are always tempting you, in which case you can just throw them out. Either way, it helps to be aware of of the incentives pulling you in the wrong direction.
• Are your current incentives important to you?
  You might “know” you need to stop smoking because it’s destroying your lungs, but that’s not an important enough reason to stop. Then you might fall in love with someone who can’t stand smoking, and allova sudden you find the motivation to quit. Hooray! You now have an incentive that’s important to you.

  If a goal is truly important to you, it’s even possible to “manufacture” an important incentive. Two that work great are writing your goal down and telling other people your goal. In the first case, your incentive is to not let yourself down, while in the second your incentive is to not let down others. What’s most important, however, is knowing what kinds of incentives work for you and structuring your life to include them. How to do so is a topic worthy of a blog post, and in the future I’ll provide one.

• Where are you lacking confidence?
  Go through the list above and ask yourself if you’re lacking confidence in that area. There are myriad resources that address each area of confidence, and in time I hope to list some on my site and add some of my own. In the mean time, you can always try the best way to gain confidence:
• The Best Way to Gain Confidence is to Join a Group with The Same Goals
  Joining like-minded people is bar none the best way to gain confidence. You’ll be able to learn from their experience and thus gain knowledge. They’ll be able to teach you the skills you need and loan or give you required equipment. They’ll help you set realistic expectations because they’ve already been through what you’re trying to go through. They’ll provide you with encouragement and feedback. You’ll be glad you’re not going it alone.

The next time you’re lacking motivation, you can pinpoint what’s wrong and take the steps necessary to get more motivated.

Now go out there and be somebody!

It was around summer of 2008 that I realized I had become mean — a small person, constantly irritable and ready to cut down others. I went through nearly every day in a sour mood, showing annoyance and contempt toward those I interacted with regularly and interpreting their behavior as putting me down. It was like I was an angry drunk without the benefit of actually being drunk. At the same time, I clung to trivial diversions like video games and TV, all the while feeling like I no longer had time for anything I liked. In the mean time, my fledgling consultancy had crumbled and I felt like a professional failure.

I was ashamed of myself. I knew I had to change something, but what? And how? For the previous year and a half I had been making chaotic attempts to change the way I felt and behaved. I would start to read a book and stop after the first couple chapters. I would start to create a new habit – for example, of exercising regularly – and quit after a week. Nothing stuck – or, more accurately, I couldn’t stick with anything.

Near my place in Hawaii, 2006

Life hadn’t always been like this. I’ve always been a tinkerer, and as a teenager I fell in love with programming. Beyond its inherent joy, I saw programming as my ticket to freedom, allowing me to go where I wanted and do what I loved. I dreamed of being able to sit on a beach, working on a laptop with a tasty drink by my side. In November of 2005 that dream was realized when I arrived at the Honolulu airport with my laptop, my suitcase, and a little extra money to spend time settling in.

The next year was incredible. I made new friends and grew my business. It was awesome to finish projects quickly and successfully and have my clients tell me how happy they were with my work. At the same time, I was able to work on my own projects for fun and learn new programming languages and technologies (like javascript, ruby, and ruby on rails). And the food! Just minutes a way were handful of great restaurants that had delicious food for cheap prices. For five or six dollars I could buy enough to last me two days. Nearly every morning I woke up to sea breezes blowing my curtains, and I could see a bit of the ocean from my gigantic bedroom window.

Then in December of 2006 my long “vacation” came to an end. The last memory I have of Hawaii is of driving up a hillside in the early afternoon with the sun shining down. Below me the island stretched out to the ocean, and it was beautiful.

I left Hawaii for Massachusetts. When I got on my plane in Hawaii, it was seventy degrees (fahrenheit) and gorgeous outside. When I touched down in Boston, the temperature was below freezing. Better (and perhaps more honest) writers than I would resist symbolizing the weather like this; alas, I find the transition indicative of the upheavals I would deal with in the coming months.

What brought me to Massachusetts, anyway? After years of searching and suffering, my girlfriend had finally received a treatable diagnosis for the disease that had disabled her: Lyme Disease. In order for her to receive better medical care, we moved to Massachusetts, where we would be close to “Lyme-literate” doctors and friends as well.

Lyme Disease, if it goes untreated, can cause severe physical and neurological damage. Its victims are left without energy and in constant pain. Lyme sufferers also experience memory loss, rages, aphasia, and a host of other symptoms that leave them doubting whether they are, or ever will be, the person they were before getting Lyme.

My attempts to develop a system for constant personal growth and fulfillment are primarily the result of my taking on the role of caregiver for my girlfriend. At the time, I thought of it like I did my work projects. It would take a little extra effort for awhile, and then it’d be over and I moved on to something else. But work has never been so stressful, nor so heartbreaking.

Snapshot of my mind after interruption

Some issues which caregiving brought which I’d never dealt with include:

• Being interrupted urgently, often, and without warning. Programming requires long stretches of concentration and can be like building a house of cards in your mind; interruptions, even slight ones, can knock the house right over. Being interrupted over and over makes it difficult to even start concentrating in the first place.
• Living in a constant state of emergency. Will this new medication cause a negative reaction? How bad will it be? Ambulance bad, or “just” throwing up all night bad?
• Watching the one you care for suffer, and knowing there’s nothing more you can do about it.
• Feeling guilty about everything. Guilty about being healthy. Guilty about being sick, when sick. Guilty about not doing enough. Guilty about doing too much and being exhausted. Guilty about trying to relax. Guilty about feeling guilty.
• Feeling angry about feeling guilty.
• Feeling angry and discouraged over the perceived lack of caring in others, including friends and family.

Over a period of years, these experiences wore me down completely. Trying to balance my full-time job, caregiving, and my personal life continues to be a challenge, but I think I’m improving. This site is part of my effort to accomplish meaningful change – to continuously learn about myself and others, to grow as a human being, and to do the things I love. I’ll be focusing on the principles of change more than the techniques. I hope you find it useful, and I look forward to continuing this conversation with other like-minded people. Onward and upward!