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Tag Archives: happiness

Describing myself and being described

The PolyBlog
June 27 2021

In my last couple of posts (Feeling lost about feeling lost and Can you do a psych profile of yourself?), I’ve been talking about how I’m doing these days as I’ve hit a COVID isolation wall. Mental health, resiliency, a bit of mid-life crisis maybe, general squirrel-dom, it’s hard to define, but my brain is wrestling with some issues.

I’m reading the Robert B. Parker Spenser series and it has that Western / gunfighter feel to it at times. Manly but sensitive men doing manly things, relying on themselves and others, living by a code. Some of it is macho BS, some of it resonates.

One of the key elements in some of the early books is about how Spenser is generally “self-reliant” as well as “self-contained”. That resonated with me given my own back history of my five-years of “tadpole status” where I ripped apart my psyche from age 28-33 or so and rebuilt it in a different way, figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be. Like Spenser, I was self-reliant, but I knew that I wanted to eventually get married, have kids, etc., and to do both of those things, you have to let people in. Which I did. But in doing so, you trade off some autonomy. Not in a bad way, or unwelcome way, but a part of your soul goes with it, at least it does if you do it right.

But I feel like I’ve dropped too many balls in the last couple of years. Some of it started with my change in job at one point, something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but would be a change I might make differently now, if offered today. Not a regret so much as more info than I had, and no guarantees that the other choices would work out better or worse. I like to tell myself that I’m going to retire in about 4+ years, but I haven’t worked all those details out yet. It might be another 5 or 6, could be 9 or 10 I suppose. I feel like I don’t have a plan at the moment, and that lack of a plan is a bit endemic to my age and position. It isn’t a failure to plan, it’s that I know any such plan has way too many variables to be useful right now. The right thing, so to speak, is to go with the flow.

So, if not a plan, then what?

One option, as I described in earlier posts is to think of it as simply a journey:

  • Where am I now?
  • What is my destination?
  • What are the available routes to get there?

It’s an option, but when you are not as clear about the second and third parts, it’s not that helpful.

Another option, as per my last post, is more of a character test…who am I? What are my strengths and weaknesses? How does my mind work? In short, the psych profile I did. As an aside, I find it a bit intriguing, that post. In the history of everything I have ever written, that is probably the rawest. It is not the rawest thing I have ever done, some of that is the stripping bare of my soul in my tadpole days, the parts I didn’t even show my friends, but it is most likely the rawest, purest thing I have ever openly shared about myself and how my brain works. I got a couple of likes or hugs, and zero comments. Yet I know people read it, I can see the stats. Did I bore them? Was it mere mental / emotional masturbation? Or was it too raw? I’m not throwing a pity party that nobody commented, I’m really wondering who knows…I sure don’t. But I digress.

Another technique is a bit more challenging. It is, in a word, imaginative. You essentially try to answer the classic question of “Where do you see yourself in x years?” but with a much more pointed outcome in mind. You ask yourself a far more pointed question, one built not just in your own mind (internally focused) but on what others would say about you (externally focused). A balance between the yin of how you describe yourself and the metaphorical yang of how others describe you. Some people do it with a five year timeline. What would you like people to say about you in 5 years? Or they use 10 years. Or the inevitable, at time of death, what would they see as your legacy?

There are some risks in attempting this process, of course, not the least being some forms of toxic masculinity and stereotypes. The macho stoic man who never cries, never shows emotions, provides for his family, never backs down, blah blah blah. But if you’re careful, some of what can be revealed is intriguing.

Another risk is looking more for superlatives and adjectives than something that is a bit more pointed. “A good husband, a good father” are common catchphrases, and they show up in lots of obituaries. A friend to the people, cared about his community, etc. A thousand different phrases and they could apply to almost anyone, or more importantly, to two people who are completely different yet would have the same phrases said about them at a funeral or wake.

Ten things for your obituary

Over the next month or so, I’m going to write ten posts about things that I hope people could and would use at my funeral. Things that I see and that I hope they see. A yin and yang balance of perspectives in some form of objective reality. What would I want my legacy to be, beyond biology?

Posted in Health and Spiritualism | Tagged happiness, journey, mental health, spiritualism | 7 Replies

Can you do a psych profile of yourself?

The PolyBlog
June 23 2021

If anyone has been watching the Blacklist, they would know that much of the “mystery” of the show has been revealed in the last couple of weeks, written as if the show was ending before it was renewed, and letting many small cats out of the bag, if not the largest. I enjoy the show, and since it is on NetFlix, I watched the very first episode the other day, seeing how they described things, to see if any of the original content didn’t seem to match the latest version. Mostly I just wanted to watch the very beginning where he turns himself in and says he will talk only with Elizabeth Keen.

Yet in watching the episode, I saw a short scene that I had completely forgotten. Liz is meeting with an Assistant Director (her boss for the rest of the seasons, but she hadn’t met him yet) and he’s trying to find out ‘why her?’. She’s a newly trained profiler, first day on the job, and she has no answer. So he asks her to profile herself. She starts answering a bit about her work experience and he stops her…holds up her file and says, “I’ve read your resume and file. What’s not in there?”. So she profiles herself, how her coworkers see her, her plans for a child, her deep-seated desire to understand the nature of crime and the criminal mind as a form of control, etc. Cool concepts.

But it got me thinking. As I’m feeling lost, and wondering how to respond, can I profile myself? What would I say?

My profile of myself

I am an analytical introvert but can appear extroverted in situations where I have a predefined role or in a controlled environment, often betrayed by a desire to talk, mostly about myself or to tell stories. I like to tell myself that I’m a writer, based more on potential and abilities than actual results. I aspire, in all things, to be first true to myself or at least true to a self-actualized or sometimes self-aggrandized vision of myself. I assume other roles by choice, such as son, husband, father, worker, manager, friend, by the way I choose to live my life, but at the core, I see myself first, a single entity, the smallest indivisible unit I can be.

I talk a lot, digressing regularly, monopolizing conversations not as much out of mis-perceived narcissism or self-centredness as out of fear of chaos, loss of control. Talking helps me frame the experience, control the narrative so to speak, literally and figuratively and insecurity makes me talk more when I should listen or when I am already nervous around people.

I am obsessed with nuance. The shades of gray hidden in word choices, concepts that defy identification or discussion. Ethereal differences between similar concepts, positions. I would rather do the wrong thing for the right reasons than the right thing for the wrong reasons. If I can, I would choose to do nothing if not for the right reasons, even where failing to do so might not be what I want or the best solution for everyone. I frequently care more about the means than the ends, but even with means, I care more about the motivation behind choices. I can pursue nuances down rabbitholes to the point of analysis paralysis, well beyond what is “good enough”. I stop myself better in a work setting than I do a personal setting.

Living most of my life inside my head can be exhausting as there is no “off switch”. Yet I pride myself on my brain,. It is the most important part of my sense of “me”, and has been since I was very young. I don’t know if I have a soul, or a religious spirit, or an indefinable “consciousness”, but I have a functional brain, and I’m arrogant about how it works, an arrogance that can taint relationships with others, but I would choose to embrace self-reflection over friendship every time if I was conscious of it. It nourishes me and sustains me in ways the body can never do. Physically, intellectually, even emotionally, ironically. I analyse my behaviour, my feelings, my motivations. I constantly review, consider, judge my own behaviour. I can’t be “me” without it.

The physical world doesn’t interest me in the same way, or at least, not all aspects of it. My corporeal form is a mystery to me, a surprise anytime I look in the mirror to realize I even HAVE a corporeal form in a sense. I avoid manual projects requiring dexterity of movement, or skill in action, rather than the exercise of the little gray cells.

I have three competing thoughts at war in my soul, a triangular battle:

  • One side of the triangle is the intellectual ideal, a self-actualized version of me in thought and deed. Not as an abstract but as a vision of who I could be…self-contained, independent, resilient;
  • The second side is the ideal of the emotional me, the one that embraces others, builds connections, who is definitely NOT self-contained or independent, whose strength lies in connections forged with others…family, friends, a community, strangers on the street even; and,
  • A third side of the triangle, serving as the base for the war…the “real” me, I guess. Influenced by both, buffeted by the outside storms, living. Existing. And with the harshly clouded and biased filter of self-assessment and impossibly high standards, feeling quite often like a failure not in the attempt but in the result. Like I am not achieving any of the potential versions of myself that are better than the current one. Occupying space and time. Flotsam in the tide, no direction, no value-added beyond fate. Seeing too many trees in my life that need tending, not the forest that is often thriving.

I live with three great fears. The greatest public fear is the idea of wasted potential. As a father, as a husband, even as a writer. That I could have done “more” or “better”, even if I didn’t even know what “more” or “better” looked like nor how to define them. Yet the idea of wasted potential seems simple, obvious, clear.

My second less public fear is one that was nailed by a personality profile that I did some time ago (2004 or so). That the nuances I see, the ones that I think are the most important thing in the world, the pinnacle of my reason, the outcome of all my analysis and reflection are not only beyond my ability to explain to others but also that for many people, even if I could explain them, their reaction very well might be simply “meh”.

And of course the greatest fear, the greatest weakness based on the greatest strength…that my mind will falter, and whatever “me” that I am will simply cease to be. Not a physical death but a cognitive one.

Whew.

I don’t entirely know where that came from. It’s been germinating for a while, as you can see. But even with all that mental masturbation, I am not entirely sure where it leaves me. It’s unlike anything I have ever wrote about myself before, certainly rawer than anything I’ve written before either.

Yet it feels like I’m on the right track to somewhere. I just don’t know where the journey is going. Maybe I don’t need to. I know where I am, I know somewhat what my choice of destinations looks like. Maybe all that I need to accept for now is today’s step.

Posted in Health and Spiritualism | Tagged happiness, journey, mental health, spiritualism | Leave a reply

Articles I Like: Tips on how to be happy

The PolyBlog
May 9 2012

There are lots of gurus out there who offer tips on “how to be happy”, with most of them stressing the importance of finding your “one true passion”, or if you prefer the model espoused by Jack Palance in “City Slickers” to Billy Crystal, looking for your “one thing”. However, there are other gurus who suggest aiming not for the moon, but for the little incremental steps you can take each day as you go about your daily routine. An article on Success Magazine’s site follows this latter technique, and looks at different ways to try and improve your state of mind in the short-term. My reaction is below, but first, let’s start with some excerpts.

Gregg Steinberg, author of the best-selling self-help book Full Throttle says, “Happiness in everyday life is all about mastering our emotions. You can be miserable even when you are successful, and you can be happy even if you are not successful. Your emotional mastery is key to your happiness.”
…
Melanie Greenberg, a licensed clinical and health psychologist who has a Psychology Today blog called “The Mindful Self-Express,” believes that writing a gratitude diary is one of the “ingredients of a healthy, balanced life.”…Close your eyes and focus on the feelings of gratitude that these things bring you. Really breathe and absorb the feeling of being helped and supported.
…
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one day on a cross-town bus when she found herself asking, “What do I want from life, anyway?” The result is both a top-selling memoir and a popular blog titled The Happiness Project, where she writes about the tools and techniques necessary to achieve the ideal state of bliss. For one thing, she has started compiling a list of the “bare minimum” things we should do on a daily basis in order to be happy and healthy.

You can read the full set of tips via Boost Your Mood: 23 Ways to Up Your Love of Life | SUCCESS Magazine (link expired).

I’m a bit agnostic about the wording of the first excerpt about mastering your emotions. I think it is more about mastering your thinking process, more in line with traditional behaviour therapy techniques. In other words, finding alternate ways to interpret things and thus having that guide your emotions rather than trying to “master your emotions”. If, for example, your reaction to being “cheated on” is to get really angry, that’s not necessarily an emotion you need to master. It’s actually appropriate if your line of thinking was that it is the most personal of injuries from a trusted intimate partner. On the other hand, if you get really angry if someone gives you flowers, that’s an emotion that needs to be mastered cuz there’s an inappropriate reaction going on. In the first instance, though, most behaviour therapists would look at why the cheating is making you “so” angry that you can’t function or that you want to hurt the person in return. Is it because you have other buttons that are being pushed? Is it a violation of your core principles? Are you angry at yourself for feeling “duped”? Only by understanding those logic chains of thought will you be able to change the way your body interprets them and reacts to them.

The second excerpt, the gratitude journal, is an interesting way to do something that most spiritual advisors would simply list as “count your blessings”. It is something that has been on my mind of late, as I attempt my spiritual journey this year. I am not a great believer in the power of “prayer” per se, but I like the idea of saying “grace” before meals more. Probably in a completely non-denominational way, and not as a blessing of the food, but of an opportunity to just take a moment to reflect on your, well, for lack of a better word, blessings. Is “gratitudes” a proper word, i.e. things you are grateful for? 🙂

The final excerpt, on day-to-day increments, resonates pretty strongly with me as it is in many ways a key part of my goal-setting overall. Living a conscious life, mindful of our daily choices, and daily habits. And recognizing that little steps on some things you feel are important is just as empowering as achieving big huge goals too. I’ll have to check out her other offerings on the web.

Posted in Goals | Tagged article, goals, happiness, personal | Leave a reply

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