Lesson: Watching someone else’s life diminishes my life. (7/11/21)
Solution: Focus on living your own life.
Situation:
– All the time spent watching people do activities on TV, could be spent doing activities myself with people.
– All the time spent viewing images on social media could be spent taking pictures in real life.
– All the time spent reading about other people’s lives to see what they are up to, could be spent reaching out to them, interacting with them, building memories together.
Commentary:
Taking a break is OK. Relaxing with entertainment is OK. The mistake I made was I fulfilled my desire to live a better life by watching videos of the better life I wanted to have. I spent time immersing myself in the life I wanted to have through YouTube, instead of spending time moving myself to the life I wanted to live. I celebrated the career success of celebrities as my own success, instead of remembering that while the celebration is shared, the actual achievement and the rewards are not shared: My life remains where it is, and my life doesn’t get better when I celebrate achievements of people I don’t even know in real life.

Lesson: Blame the perpetrator, ask for help from the bystanders. (7/16/21)
Solution:
– Put the blame on the perpetrator, not the bystanders. Blaming is how you lose support from people who otherwise would help you. If you go to them and you ask them to help you make it right, they will. If you go to them and call out their failure, you have lowered your chance of getting help.
– Focus on the perpetrator: who did what and when. Someone did you wrong: Describe what they did and make that the central detail of your story. Don’t get distracted by what ‘should have happened’ and who ‘should have helped’ and what others ‘should have done.’
– Focus on the present. The mistake I make is focusing on prevention and trying to think of ways to keep things from going wrong again. While prevention is valuable for future events, prioritize the present threat and danger of what is going on. Pursue preventative measures after the present damage is mitigated and you are safe.
– Inform and forgive the bystanders and treat them better than the perpetrator. The mistake I make is to hold those responsible for ensuring things go right to a higher standard than those who did the actual crime. This is wrong. I should blame the person who does bad actions more than the people who don’t even know it’s happening. I shouldn’t blame them for not observing or noticing when they can’t: it’s behind closed doors, etc.  The bad person is often strategic so they go undetected. Blame the bad person for their bad actions, inform the bystanders of how the bad person got away with it so they can get better at detection.

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