Life Philosophy

• I noticed that for some of my possessions, I treat them with carelessness because I know that a higher quality, more expensive version exists.  For example, clothes: sometimes I will warm wash clothes that should be cold washed and vice versa, because the monetary value of my clothes in the grand scheme of the clothing industry is on the lower end, so there’s not much value to be lost by washing them wrong.  However, if I start buying clothes that are 10x or 100x more expensive than my current ones, I would definitely try to take good care of them, since washing them wrong would lose me a lot of money!  At the same time, I realize that if I were to become 10x or 100x richer, the expensive clothes would “feel” as “worthless” to me as they do now–I can afford to buy a new one if it gets too ruined.  What this tells me is that my philosophy is not sustainable: you should not value your possessions based on their relative value in comparison to objective external standards, nor should you value your possessions based on their relative value in comparison to subjective wealth.  Instead, you should realize that value is given by you to the product–value comes from within.  If you decide and believe that this shirt is valuable, you will take care of it, and if you don’t, you won’t.  So the real question here is: do I value my clothes?  In the past, I cared very little about my looks, so the answer was not at all.  Now, I am starting to care, so the answer is yes, I am beginning to value them (because of lessons from Understanding Your Body Image).
• Too much long term investment is difficult to handle, because when you are investing in 10 different projects, and all of them mature in 2 years, what do you do during those 2 years?  Can one survive 2 years of nothing but work?  Unfortunately not, due to the human limitation that is your mental sanity.  You must plan for and include short term victories to keep you going for 2 years without going insane.
• The opportunity to complain can be stifled by commitment.  If you made a well thought out commitment to something, then you have accepted it fully and there’s little room to complain: you would just be complaining about yourself.  However, if you did not commit to something, and that something demands or requests your attention, then you have a better justification for complaining.  Example: For events where the full plan is not known ahead of time like a hang out session, I can only commit to the details that are known.  When new details arise as a result of mood and opportunity, I have new commitment decisions to make, and it is only then that there is an opportunity to begin complaining. If you only committed to spending 2 hours, and you got sucked into spending an extra hour you didn’t want to, then you can complain.   If you committed to spending 3 hours from the start, then there’s no room for complaining.
  • Sticking to your commitment is also important: If you committed to spending 2 hours, and they propose a 3rd hour, say no (if you can) instead of complaining.  If you can’t say no, only then do you have a legitimate reason to complain (though you should learn not to complain as a life philosophy, but that’s a separate topic).
• Leadership can give you a sense of self worth because it gives you importance and purpose, but it shouldn’t be the only source of self worth, because then you will mistake self preservation with staying in power.  People act desperately to stay in power when they make that mistake.
• There is a difference between having the right to do something and the ability to do something. I have the right to run a mile under 5 minutes, but I can’t do it.  I have the right to be successful, but I haven’t been.  Don’t mistake the discrepancy between having the right to something, and actually having it for unfairness: it’s just part of life.
• Business vs. Personal: it’s the thought that counts in personal affairs; it’s the execution that counts in business.
• The content matters more than presentation. Substance. Presentation can get you in the door, but you’ll be thrown out if the truth that comes out has no substance

Self Improvement

• I attempted to limit my free time to 18 hours a week, assuming that all the free time was to be spent socializing and keeping in touch with people. However, I quickly realized that I did not include any time at all for myself, and that we all need some time alone to process our lives.  As a result, I actually had much less than 18 hours a week available to socialize–the ratio of time spent alone vs. with people is probably one measurement of introversion and extroversion.
• A plan does not just consist of a description of the goal.  A plan isn’t complete until it includes execution, and execution isn’t complete without a beginning, middle, and end.
• I used to think self-employment would mean unlimited freedom and flexibility: I was wrong.  As a human being, I need to eat and sleep, and when you forget about those things, you suffer both in happiness and in productivity.  Your flexibility is limited by your body.
• Importance of Commitment: when you’re working on a long project, the incremental improvement may seem so small as to be unnoticeable (the same reason you might not notice someone you see every day changing, their hair growing, etc), and you may get discouraged and want to quit.  That’s where commitment will save you: it keeps you in it when you want to leave.  If you give in and quit, you miss out on the chance to achieve the results you started out hoping for.  It’s only when you view things from a long enough timescale that you can make comparisons that are noticeable.  Therefore, commit and follow through to see results, and don’t give up in the middle: if you think it’s not working, it might not be because it isn’t, but rather because you just don’t notice.
• If something is “easy,” it doesn’t mean it is actually easy, it just means you were fortunate enough to have the appropriate life leading up to this point in order to make it easy.  Someone who spent their whole life cooking chicken would find cooking chicken easier than someone who spent their whole life buying McNuggets.  On the other hand, if something is hard, it doesn’t mean that it will always be that way: when you first try something it is likely to be difficult.  This is normal and expected and should not deter you from continuing: keep at it and eventually you will develop the skills for it to be easy.
  • Weight lifting is a great analogy for patience, and how lack of patience can result in injury, pain, suffering, and a belief that the world is unjust, a belief that is misplaced.  If I want to be an Olympic weight lifter, I will injure myself if I start out trying to lift a Wold Record.  I need to work up to it.
  • One of the big reasons why people are impatient is because it’s difficult to see and understand skill levels unless you already have a good understanding of that discipline.  For instance, if I know nothing about tennis, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what to look for in order to judge whether someone is OK, good, or amazing at tennis: they all look the same to me.  Most people starting out will look at professionals or someone who has years of training and say, I want to do that, and then be disappointed or discouraged when they can’t.  They aren’t seeing and realizing the big picture: the understanding that it will take years.
• I used to be lazy and not make my bed, so that at night I’d just curl up, grab the conglomerate mess, and go to sleep.  However, this has yielded inconsistent results, with some parts of my body covered and some parts not, resulting in strange temperature distributions that not only cause discomfort but potentially sickness as well.  One night, I felt very cold half way through the night, so I pulled up what I thought was two layers of blankets. However, because I never made my bed, what happened instead was I pulled up only one layer all the way, and the second one half way up.  As a result, when I woke up, half my body was freezing.  And thus I learned why people make their beds: it’s not just to make it look nice and neat, there’s also a functional reason: so that you can rely and depend on the performance of your bedding to be consistent and present.
• Financial Lessons From America’s Elderly – Business Insider

Business Advice

• This month I really chased building a following and releasing more writing quickly–subscribing to the “done is better than not done” and “move fast break things” philosophy. While making mistakes and getting tons of practice is great, you can go too far: what I realized was I was moving towards lower and lower quality posts, to the point where it was not worth people’s time to click and read because the value added was so small.  As a result, I was not only diluting my brand, I was loosing current customers AND giving new customers a bad impression.  Thus, I resigned to accept the fact that I cannot rush quality.  So instead of pushing to do full scale marketing for my website and book while it is incomplete, and then improving the quality over time publicly, I should work on it internally, improve the quality over time, and then, when it passes a threshold of quality worthy for my customers, engage in marketing.

Relationship Skills

• One of the signs that someone is authentic with you is if they ever disagree with you or criticize you.  No-one is just like you, liking and disliking the exact same things as you: everyone is different somehow, they just might not show it.
• Make up is only a mask and a fake identity if it is not approved by the owner–if it is not in line with the person’s inner self and expression. If the makeup originates from within, the concept conceived, then it is part of your identity.  If someone else chose it for you and you don’t approve it, then it is an extension of someone else’s reality grafted upon your own.  This lesson is to teach the haters of makeup that the makeup itself is not superficial and evil, it’s how you use it. Same with weapons and etc.
• Alcohol lowers inhibitions, making it more likely for people to do dumb things, which is what it’s typically known for, but it’s also interesting to note that alcohol also makes it more likely for people to share deeper feelings and get the help that they are too afraid to ask for while sober. Vulnerability is key in making meaningful relationships.

Social Skills

• Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important – Fortune Cookie
• There is a time and place to voice disagreement, and it is not all the time.  Sometimes a discussion that on the surface feels and seems like light banter, can underneath be someone politely being unhappy.  I had a conversation with someone about how an object was similar to Topic A, but the person responded by saying it’s more like Topic B.  I took it to be a light hearted, trivial argument over trivial details, and objectively it was–the answer didn’t matter materially. However, I later found out that person was having an exhausting and tiring day, and so due to their weakened physical and mental state of mind, that person may have strongly latched onto the argument, projecting their frustrations into it and at the same time being more affected by the outcome than I was.  Be aware of context and timing so that you know when someone can take a joke, or handle an argument, and when they aren’t able to.
• It is hard to know when to get involved with arguments, and when to stay out of it.  Most of this skill will come from experience.  Things to think about is your relationship to the people and parties involved, how they will interpret what you have to say, what you hope it will actually accomplish, whether you should even get involved, and whether you should get involved now or later.

Life Lessons Jan 2014

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