Lovability Update

Don't think I've forgotten about my goal of developing a more lovable self, did you? I haven't; I merely have been procrastinating on writing about it. Things are going exemplary; in fact, I would go so far as to consider this goal complete in the confines that I have defined it.

To refresh your memory, in anticipation of future romantic pursuits I have been working to develop the traits that I consider to be part of an ideal self and would thus be desirable to the type of person I would want to appeal to. I certainly have a lot of work to do in regards to aesthetics -- though I must be careful to distinguish between sincere traits and second-handedness (e.g. being polite as a consequence of a benevolent sense of life rather than striving to please others) -- but for now I have chosen to concentrate on two essentials: Keeping anti-values out of my conversations as much as possible and being honest in my words and actions. To track my progress I have written two categories in my pocket notepad, "honesty" and "conversation", and have been putting slash marks next to them whenever I commit a violation by being dishonest (in whatever degree or form) or adding too many anti-values to my conversations, though the latter isn't absolute.

These categories never posed too much of a problem in my life to begin with, so I've never gone above adding two or three slash marks in a single day. With practice, however, I've managed to get it where I never add slash marks to these categories anymore. By striving to self-improve in these areas I have kept them in the forefront of my mind, and by doing that I have altered my habits. In trying to change oneself for the better, habit is key. The only further improvement I can make in this realm, I think, is to continue my practices and further ingrain the habits. Consequently, even though I really don't need them anymore I will continue to write out the above categories in my notepad so that I'll maintain a constant awareness of them throughout my days. Even if I never add another slash mark next to them again, it's always good to know what role honesty and value-oriented conversation plays in my life.

I have also been making progress in other pursuits beyond this. I don't remember whether or not I've mentioned this before, but in the past I've been having trouble expressing my ideas, the content of my true being, without experiencing emotional discomfort. Consequently, most of the time I've have been overly reserved in person rather than being as expressive and open as I'd want to be. This is not only bad for my lovability goals (you need to be open about your ideas if you want them to appeal to another person), but also for my goals in influencing the culture for the better. I can't change the ideas in the culture if I don't speak about my own, no? This is an important thing to change. Through whatever unknown mechanism I have activated, I have managed to become a lot more comfortable in expressing my ideas. The emotional barriers just seem to be slowly diminishing. It seems odd to me that this is happening since I haven't taken any conscious action towards establishing such comfort, but it is nonetheless happening. I hypothesize that it may be due to me becoming more comfortable with the people I constantly deal with, so I'm not truly sure about my status in regards to sharing my ideas with complete strangers. Something to test out?

From here on out I think I mainly need to work on ingraining these habits and making them more intense in degree. To accomplish that all I need to do is merely continue my current practices. As for the aesthetics I mentioned above, I refer specifically to the portions of personality that give rise to one's style of expression; to improve these features, I'll pursue an enrichment of my intelligence and wisdom through study and allow the personality traits to arise naturally from these.

It's hazy to me as to when exactly I could have considered this goal largely achieved, but nonetheless I consider this an accomplishment by this date. This also means that now there's more room to pick up other self-improvement ventures, but I want to be careful. Too often I have been in the habit of picking up venture after venture until the point is reached that I simply cannot maintain awareness of them all, resulting in my neglecting them all in some way. What to do next will be food for future thought.