To do 100 Pushups, You Must do 100 Pushups
Trying to achieve a goal usually means it will fail
Look - Shiny Hawk
Stumbling and tumbling, mostly up but often enough down to know how much it hurts, crumbling. I am picking up on my last post, found here, that talked about emptying your goal-bucket.
The thing about dumping it out is the freedom-feeling. All those hang-on-the-wall super-important moments come clanging and banging out of the bucket. They make you notice by the noise they make . . .
I did. I polished, admired, and tossed them into a different bucket. A bucket I don’t carry with me anymore. And now they are gone. As they should be. Let’s not Al Bundy this thing. Now the goal-bucket can hold New-Now-Normal goals.
Let’s talk about them. I imagine that you and I have many similar goals. Or maybe, aspirations. Not like the “what I want to be when I grow up (veterinarian)” thing. More like, now that I am here, now what?
So I happened upon a couple of writers here on Substack whose posts spoke to me about counting things, assessing things, and planning things. All the spectrum-y things that attract me. Look - Shiny Hawk.
Non-obvious stuff I've learned from doing this for awhile now
And
Those are they. I encourage saying fun things just to say fun things. And write fun thinks. Those specific posts really hammer in on the need for self-awareness, goal-setting, and time management. Their beauty is their non-reliance on - actually rejection of - jargon and buzz-words.
Straight-up talk. Genuine voice. Authentic reality. What I am reading is roughly lining up with how things are going in my life.
So, this is where I got to a sticking point. There is a sea-change happening in my life, and I’m not sure how to share it. That is, share it without it seeming like a desperate cry for help. Or so I thought.
I read a book this morning given to me by a very good friend. The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz is pretty fascinating. It unshuffled, unlocked, and restocked themes, topics and torments tossing and turning in my head.
“The greatest journey you can take is the one within yourself.”
-- don Miguel Ruiz Jr.
As you can see, I bookmarked a few pages. It boiled down to this for me, and this is something I believe my writing has explored over the past year; the friction to self-realization starts with self-rejection.
I wrote a whole series that focused on my “fear of success”, which was actually a “fear of commitment”, that in turn, was born of the “fear of rejection’”. Ultimately, that fear of rejection by others creates the false narrative of self-rejection.
Because I believed others that believe that I am not good enough, I must punish myself harder and stronger and longer than anyone else. Meanwhile, as my good friend and philosopher Valentina Petrova rationally pointed out in our series of self-discovery linked to below, nobody really cares.
Is The Fear of Success Holding You Back?
Failure is Common. Success is Rare. Why? My Q & A with Valentina Petrova.
Does America Need Psychosynthesis?
Please read the post below to understand the tricks the mind plays to sabotage your success. The more you know, the less crazy you feel.
Tricks your mind plays causing you to misbehave - Part I
Spotlight, Halo, Horns effects, and Anchoring
Basically, because humans are so self-obsessed, we think everyone else is always staring at us. Uh? Self-obsessed, remember? All of us. Nobody cares about you. Or your silly insignificant issues. Which then causes us to freak out when nobody cares about our issues. But that's another post!
It starts with words. Communication. With oneself. What words and phrases do I use to describe myself in the middle of the night? How do I dream about myself? What images from my dreams do I paste onto others to fit my need for control?
The book talks about that in a practical way. It uses the words do and act. It rarely uses the word try. When the word try is used, it is to describe a failed action, as in the sentence
Trying to avoid responsibility is one of the biggest mistakes we make because every action has a consequence.
I’ve spoken about my marriage and The Wife in prior posts. I have always had the agreement to not use the names of any of my family members in my writing. Deceased grandparents don't count.
Well, after 30 years of an incredible and amazing marriage, it has come to an end. We mutually decided after serious lengthy attempts to make things work out. The words we choose to use to frame the dream we inhabit in our reality has lasting impact.
I did not have a failed marriage. It lasted 30 years, produced two incredibly amazing daughters and nurtured an incredibly amazing son, and made it through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It just ran out of emotional gas.
Coupled with a career-change-reversion and a physical move into an apartment on my own, I got the hat-trick of emotional gut-punches. I still stand. And will remain so.
That is the point of the book. And in essence, my writing over the past year. You have been with me on this journey of discovery. Can we call it self-discovery if you are here riding shotgun? I believe so.
Make this one life you have the one you want to have. You are projecting emotions already. Just think about it. What emotions are you projecting in your life?
Is it fear or love? Each is a quiver full of arrows. Ready to hit its targets. You wear both quivers. You got the bow in your hand. Which arrow do you pull?
Ric
#16 Meat Loaf Tribute
I put these playlists together with the conceited hope that my musical taste in matches yours. Or that you may indulge me by listening. Build your own dream, populate it with your own indulgences.
Meat Loaf has been around my life as long as I can remember. Not like always my go-to favorite. More like a cool old shirt found at the bottom of a drawer. Instantly yeah! That’s the one.
Enjoy.
The career change is actually a career go-back. I appraised real estate in the 1980s and 90s. Yikes! That is scary as hell to write that out. The camera from the good friend is so cool. You have shared the roads of my mind over the past year.
Now I share the actual roads with you. The visual stimulation is overloading, between the vagrant camps, the graffiti, the skyscrapers and their cranes, the churches and beaches and everywhere else.
You achieved your goals. You just didn’t know what they were until you got there