Strange Woman Problem

I realized lately that I have a rather weird problem with women, strange in that it's about how they perceive me rather than how I feel around them. In short, my difficulty is . . . I'm way too comfortable with them! Why is this a problem? Well, it makes cultivating friendships for friendship's sake a lot more difficult since many seem to think I view them as a romantic prospect due to my ease and comfort, I think.

I grew up around virtually nothing but women. I never met my father and my grandfather died while I was still somewhat young, so my particular section of the family made it so I was in contact with women incredibly more often than with men. It was not a rarity that I'd attend a gathering and be the only male there. This environmental influence has probably made it so I treat women with super casual ease, rather than as if they were the mysterious "other sex."

It surprises me how often some people will assume I'm dating a girl just by the way I speak to her, and for the past several months that's been a very frequent question at work. Gosh, it seems like it's impossible to speak one-on-one with a female without being asked if I'm in romantic relations with her. Are men today so sheltered from women?

One thing I have to wonder is if there's some aspect of my behavior that I could alter in order to avoid the confusion, or if I'm acting reasonably and the misinterpretation lies solely in their incorrect perception. Sure I'd like to cultivate a romantic relationship, but first I'd like to tend to my friendships, including that with women. It complicates matters when my only intention is to be a friend to someone and I observe from their behavior a development of a crush. I'm vain certainly, but I don't much respond to that kind of attention, though am not resistant to it.

Thoughts?

On Riffing People

It surprises me to see that oftentimes people are blind to how they might be undermining their trustworthiness by engaging in petty behavior. Take, for case point, the instance of riffing a person out of their sight on some nonessential attribute of theirs, such as how they laugh, their weight, the sound of their voice, and so on. People have more than once come to me with the intention of establishing camaraderie by speaking of a known associate or nearby person in a joking and insulting way, but I feel repulsed. If they're so petty as to riff on so insignificant of attributes of a person's character, then what assurance do I have that I'm not being treated the same way when I'm out of sight? Not to neglect that it's indecent behavior, of course.

The act is made dishonest by witnessing these same people then conduct respectful relations with the person they previously riffed behind them. Such respectfulness is only a facade, for their true natures are hidden until that said person goes away once again. If only they knew.

When witnessing these petty people I am always perpetually skeptical of their trustworthiness. Needless to say, I conduct very hesitant and pretty shallow relations with these people.

After witnessing such actions I've made explicit to myself my own set of rules as to when I will and will not speak about another person. If I have virtues in mind, then I won't fear to praise them, even if they're in earshot. Vices, on the other hand, are a more specific matter. If it's a gross habit such as their picking their nose in my sight with a tissue, then I'll either address the matter with them or leave it be. If it's of concern such as their habits in the workplace, then I'll either address it to them or their superiors. If it's of intense concern like theft or the likes, then I won't be afraid to raise a ruckus. It is only when I have zero respect for them as a person that I feel free to riff someone, otherwise I try to do as little talking about other people as possible, to make my conduct with associates totally honest, even in their absence.

Always be aware that your actions that are seen are inevitably going to encourage people to draw conclusions on how you act when you aren't seen. If you take a person aside to needlessly riff another, then that person will have pretty good grounds of suspecting you doing the same to them, don't they?

The "Defriending" Plague

A most disturbing phenomenon I've witnessed these last several months is the quickness which people take to "defriending" people on sites like Facebook. It may be a small gesture, but it still symbolically indicates that a person is not only not willing to associate on Facebook, but is also repudiating a particular person in whole. When people block one another in order to avoid seeing them at all and close off communication, the rejection is even deeper. I recognize valid reasons for wanting to do this and have engaged in it myself, but after witnessing a few people I've valued do this to me, even if I only knew them online, I have become disappointed and disturbed.

People can add a very unique and rich value to life, one that is very complex given that people themselves are very complex. For happiness, it is much a benefit to have valuable people in your life and to nurture worthwhile relationships while avoiding and terminating bad ones. A very bad thing to do is to be too at ease with terminating relationships, for you could easily give up a deep value you might never be able to get back. One on hand you could do something that makes a relationship irreparable, and on another you could lose a person's willingness to acknowledge you and be an audience for your character, thereby preventing valuable relations that could happen or be repaired.

Given what's at stake, isn't it proper to address conflicts before resorting to terminating contact? Somehow or another, people I used to interact with on occasion, even if seldom, have taken to repudiating me in whole without notice or addressing issues. Maybe a certain political view I have or such has offended them, but I had no way of knowing since rejection was their first resort. Some people I used to deal with in person and others had writings I enjoyed, but now we're apparently on bad terms and separate, for whatever reason I do not know. It's possible there's an element of regret in their decision, as they might possibly still view my writings and networking profile as evident by their being on my generated list of friend suggestions. (Computer programming can't be anti-causal; I suspect that when someone interacts with my profile it might trigger their own profile to be suggested to me, or to appear in a top selection of another person's friends list.)

I'm concerned about this issue precisely because I myself had to resort to cutting a large portion of people out of my life out of necessity, which has been disappointing and hurtful to this day. Especially of concern is that I cut my best friend off from my life due to my past emotionalistic ways of treating people, which I've never stopped regretting due to the deepness of the bond we had. As a result I've done thorough thinking on how I ought to conduct my relationships and try to be as patient as possible in my dealings, only resorting to terminating contact once I identify they're ultimately detrimental to my values and that no resolution is possible, or at least that it's not worth working matters out. As such, it's disappointing when I see other people take such careless conduct in their own dealings.

Think before you defriend, or otherwise: farewell forever.

Being a Friend Repeatedly

I guess that article I posted about my life-guiding quotes was very timely, as I think rereading them has helped me realize why I'm feel discontent about my behavior regarding my lovability pursuits. As you might know, in order to cultivate more fulfilling relationships I've been working hodge-podge on nurturing a lovable self, which is mainly focused on obtaining my ideal self, where an ideal form of treating people is only a natural attribute. My reason is because I've had bad relationships with people in general throughout my life, so to better pursue my happiness I think I need to address some bad premises and habits adopted over the years.

The quote that made me realize where I'm going wrong is Aristotle's: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." After citing that I realized that in various concrete forms I do have a clear picture in my mind as to what my ideal self would be like, and have been feeling shame and guilt in noticing that I've either been lazy in constructing goals or have been unjustifiably derailing myself from desirable habits, such as ignoring a hurt friend rather than inquiring about their well-being. In other words, repeatedly, I am not striving towards my ideals.

The thing that has been bothering me in particular is my lack of openness. Even with the coworkers I've known for months now I am considerably a tightly private person, uncomfortable with even sharing that I'm a chocolate connoisseur who writes reviews. In order to construct and strengthen bridges some amount of personal sharing is necessary, so my semi-reclusiveness has been making it so I can only maintain kite strings along the river bank.

My hesitancy is due to not only the age-old fear or being rejected or witnessing hostility (as I had in my youth, to unpredictable things), but also to the age-old fallacy of expecting things to just happen. In my failure to introspect and notice, I've just been waiting around being with people with the expectation that it will somehow strengthen our bond as time passes, much like how a wine only needs to sit around to age. I am more friendly with my coworkers than when I started, but there still tends to be a lot of tension due to my withholding so much of myself.

And it's silly, now that I think of it, to be afraid, for I have little to fear from the people I know. Besides -- and most importantly -- the fear quickly goes away as I force myself to action and expose myself to discomfort. It's like jumping into a cold lake: The anticipation might be terrible and the temperature shock rather frightening, but once your body temperature adjusts it's no challenge at all. By making myself more open during the first few instances, I'll quickly set myself along the path that it'll become my natural deposition, and I'll no longer feel such discomfort ever again. Out of the millions of steps I can take in this direction, it is only the first few that will be uncomfortable.

I have empirical evidence too. One way or another, religion came up at work one day. It wasn't a very deep conversation, but it somehow came to question as to what my religious beliefs were, and with only a touch of discomfort I admitted that I was an atheist. Throughout it remained a friendly confrontation that has affected none of my relationships at my workplace for the negative. Now everyone knows a personal religious belief of mine, that I believe gods don't exist, and have suffered none for it. It was uncomfortable to begin pronouncing the first words of those sentences, but once into the paragraph I was at total ease.

To help myself more open and less shy I think I need to create more situations like this, so I'm thinking about pursuing a rather weird goal: Every day I go into work, I must tell at least three people one good thing that has occurred to me recently. Yes, bizarre, but appreciative on multiple levels I think. For one, it brightens up the atmosphere by opening daily confrontations with a talk about values. Secondly, it helps avoid those monotonous, meaningless greetings people tend to say by rote and hardly notice when they say it. It freshens up conversations, brings values more strongly into play, and assists in bonding, all in one. Starting today, I'll resolve to complete this goal every working shift I do and report the results on my weekly summary.

But still, to aid in the construction of goals to instill other habits I should take a shot at writing down a list of traits I view as essential to my conception of an ideal self. I think I might have tried that before, but then again if I did I think the slip of paper would be out and visible, so maybe I didn't. I'll undertake to attempt such brainstorming this week and share the results once I think I have a succinct list formed.

It's satisfying to me to have figured out what was bothering me about my lovability pursuits, but this is only one step in many needed. It's a challenge I look forward to, nonetheless: Happiness is worth it.

Quotes That Guide My Life

Everyone, in some form or another, appreciates a good quote. A quote becomes appealing when it condenses down the essentials of the views of someone holds, allowing them to hold in their mind very pregnant ideas in a very economical form. While, as par the norm, people tend to appreciate quotes as they come by them, I've been making an effort for a very long time to decide upon which quotes are most essential to the way I view how life should be lived. At one point I even took to collecting quotes and writing them all over the place to serve as constant reminders and inspiration, but I wrote down so much that appealed to me that the writing became too great to keep track of or check on a regular basis, so from there I struggled to pare down the list to the bare essentials that drive my being. I think I finally reached that point, and would like to share that list in hopes of inspiring you to comment with yours, and perhaps motivate you to decide upon your essential favorites.

So here are my top four favorite quotes in reverse order of personal importance, which I consider to be the driving force behind everything I do. Those with asterisks might be paraphrased, not exact quotes.

4.) * "Do something you would do for free and someone will pay you well for it." - Mary Kay

This has molded my view on my career. Certainly I'm greedy and would like to make a lot of money, even become filthy rich one day, but this quote helps me keep in mind what is the most fulfilling and practical route to riches. To become materialistically wealthy should not be my aim. It shouldn't even really be on my mind. My emphasis should be on becoming the best I can possibly be in the career field I love and have chosen to dedicate myself to for life. The material rewards I reap should not be sought after, but rather be a natural consequence to how well I've done to cultivate my skills and be the best I can be.


The culinary profession isn't a high-paying profession by its nature, but I'm not worried about that. My ultimate aim is still not totally clear at this point, but I'm thinking about taking an ultimately intellectual and entrepreneurial route in my career, for which training as a chef will assist me in that matter. If I want to make a million, or even a billion dollars, then my concern is becoming worth that as a person, not directly pursuing it.

I do well at my job because I love it, even as a mere dish washer . . . not become I'm chasing dollars. The payment is the consequence and reward, not the goal.

3.) "Judge, and prepare to be judged." - Unknown

While growing up, passing moral judgment was inexplicably avoided and done with extreme inaccuracy when practiced on occasion. When giving praise my elders would often detach their compliments from the known facts of reality and give statements that were totally unbelievable and false, and any vices and immorality often went unacknowledged and ignored, leaving people to suffer endlessly in relationships they refused to acknowledge were rotten. I never consciously avoided moral judgment, but my inability to make precise judgments in my youth led to me having terrible relationships with other people all the time, continuing associations that should have been terminated promptly, and having malformed estimates of myself due to bad standards of judgment. I suffered greatly due to not having good thinking methods for judgment.

Once I learned how to pass objective moral judgment, my relationships improved dramatically, as I knew better which people were worth associating with and who should be cut off from contact, and underwent a drastic self-improvement spree once I identified the standards I wanted to strive to and starting holding myself responsible for my habits. I continue my self-improvement endeavors to this day since I hold myself to the same moral standards which I use to judge other people I interact with. My life has become infinitely better because of that.

This quote keeps in mind three things: That it's important to judge others (lest you suffer bad associations), that it's a logical corollary to submit yourself to others' judgment (so that you become comfortable with your public status and make changes where appropriate), and that you, most importantly, judge yourself. Doing this has helped me treat people with objective consistency based on their deserts, feel comfortable on hearing others' views about myself, and evaluate myself when trying to determine where I'm pursuing my ideals or need to make changes.

2.) "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

This one is important to me more for moral reasons rather than, say, the optimization of talent. Building upon the last quote, another problem in my youth is that people often judged each other on the basis of isolated and rare incidents, often in the face of consistent evidence that flagrantly proved that things were otherwise. For instance, some people would take a consistently angry and malicious person and characterize them as happy and benevolent on the basis of one act or incident that made them feel good, such as observing them smiling once or doing a single good deed, despite the fact that 99 times out of a 100 that same person would act to the contrary. It's like these people were pretending the other 99 times didn't exist. As a result, once again, many bad relationships were continued even though they were generally and consistently bad, all because on seldom occasion things would be "good." You need to judge people on their consistent behavior if you want things to consistently be good, not the other way around.

Furthermore, this quote also emphasizes to me that it's most important to judge a person by their acts, not their intentions or emotions. Have all the good intentions you want: It's not going to qualify you as having a heart made out of gold unless you perform the deeds to match them. I've seen some truly awful persons characterized as practically saints all because they had good intentions on occasion, even if they did nothing in practice to put their intentions in action, and building on the above paragraph this would again be another thing which would be very rare and seldom to a particular person, thereby being an obscene dropping of the context.

In comparing practices with preaching it is the actions that ultimately matter more, if one were to weigh them in isolation, but it totality it is of course how a person's actions match up with their preaching that matters most. In this case I've even seen terrible hypocrites judged as good even as they seldom, even rarely or never practiced their stated ideas, all because they preached the right things. What a detachment from reality!

This quote has helped me be more patient and meticulous in how I judge people, and helps me make sure I'm keeping the entire context of their being and am paying attention to and weighing the right things. Unless a person has done something unforgivably bad, I try to avoid hinging my estimate of someone on the basis of an isolated incident, and use my memory to full advantage to collect and store incidents that I believe give indication of someone's moral status, and use the pieces to form a coherent picture which I'll use to form a moral judgment. But even after forming the judgment I still try to keep it open-ended to continue adding pieces of evidence which will either intensify my estimate of someone (such as by observing repeated virtue by a person I view as good) or cause me to change my estimate if the pieces of evidence start tilting the scales the other way, such as a virtuous person repeatedly indulging in moral failings or a bad person consistently working towards redemption. It keeps my relationships in a semi-fluid state to better enable me to treat people according to their deserts, depending on the totality of the context of their being I have observed.

And, of course, I hold myself to that same standard. It helps keep me straight and avoid making the justification that certain things are an exception to the rule of my being. For instance, if I'm exhausted and take a day off from my efforts to rest, then I'll judge it as a deserved exception to my usual strivings. However, if I chose to rest and laze about for three days in a row, then I'll judge that I'm dangerously close to becoming a lazy person in nature and will make the appropriate corrections.

1.) "A giant is as a giant does." - Rod Serling, from the Twilight Zone episode *Last Night of a Jockey*

Almost as soon as I heard it it became my favorite quote of all time. Anywhere I can post a quote online, like in my e-mail signature, this is always the one I choose, and I read it virtually everyday, never forgetting it. It's very similar to the last Aristotle quote, only I like this one for its emphasis on substance.

Another difficulty in my childhood is how concerned everyone was with appearances, most often in total divorce of substance. For instance, people around me were more concerned with looking happy to other people rather than cultivating an actual life of contentment, and knowing them in private I learned that their smiles were mere muscle flexing, as inwardly they lived a stale and discontent, and even downright miserable existence.

And what reward do they get for focusing so much on appearance, on how they look to others? Nothing. No spiritual contentment, material satisfaction, healthy relationships . . . jack squat. This obsession with appearance was only to ease the discomfort they felt in being seen by other people, and avoiding discomfort and pain is not the same as gaining inner peace and happiness.

Plus, this episode of the Twilight Zone shows how an obsession with appearances can actually ruin oneself. (SPOILERS) In it, a jockey (a horse racer) gets permanently discharged from his beloved profession and has to cope with not being able to engage in it ever again. A spiritual entity within him starts speaking to him and offers him a wish as his last possible resort to rising up and living a good life. The jocky wishes to be big, and the entity makes him into a literal giant. The jocky then goes into a kind of euphoric ramble about how amazed people will be by his size and how he'll be admired. He calls a girl up to ask her out on a date, but she turns him down even as he frantically boasts about how "big" he is. He's irritated until he suddenly gets a call from the jocky club, learning that they've decided to give him one more chance. He's relieved that he gets another chance at his beloved profession, but after the spiritual entity taunts him he quickly realizes that he's too big -- he can't fit into his clothes, sit on a horse, get out the door . . . his concern with altering his physical stature, his appearance, lead to him ruining his life because he thought greatness meant looking great to others, not being great. His concern with appearance over substance made him sacrifice his only chance at a fulfilling life. (/SPOILERS) 

And that's what I've observed with other people in my life too. People concerned more with how they look rather than how they are have given up the values they most wanted to achieve, all for the empty gain of receiving approval from others. The people I've observed that have lived this way have led lives with empty relationships, mediocre careers, undeveloped talents, shallow romances, and so on.

This quote keeps me concentrating on what the actual value of my efforts and practices are in regards to pursuing my goals, rather than how people perceive them and in spite of their disapproval. Deeper still, it keeps me focused on living a life of substance, of being a good person rather than trying to look like one, of cultivating my mind rather than sounding intelligent, of being authentically respectful rather than using fake manners, and more. The quote continues to help even beyond this, such as by helping me judge whether a practice is really beneficial to my life (e.g. a study technique), how deeply I value a particular person, if the entire context of my habits lines up with my ideals, and endlessly on. It's been a way long time since I've last seen this TZ episode, but I do own it on DVD and should watch it again soon, and probably won't ever forget it. I anticipate I'll be holding onto these words for the rest of my life. If I want to be a great person, then the substance of what I do needs to be great. We are what we do. A giant is as a giant does.

* * * * *

These are the quotes that have the strongest influence in my life and in the molding of my being. It took an extremely long time to get to the point I could pare down my list to this, but it helps me in every single facet of my life, from how I treat people, how I exert myself at work, how I utilize my free time, how I judge myself, etc.

However, I'd like to have for a top five. One thing I don't think I keep in mind often enough is how finite my time is here on earth. You and I are probably not going to live forever. Am I living as richly as I could and making the best use of the limited minutes I have alive, however many billions of them? I'd like to have a quote that essentializes how preciously finite life is, but haven't seen any. Could my readers suggest one?

While we're at it, what are your favorite quotes? And I'm not asking for a hodge podge list either: what are the quotes that really mean something to you? That may guide your life as the above four guide mine?

Maybe once I do gather a top five I'll print and laminate them, so that I may read them everyday.      

Weekly Summary # 38

Both an atrocious and good week. As part of a personal goal of leading a richer life -- I haven't written on that -- I enjoyed immensely some city fireworks on the third, but from there on I fell into a terrible funk that lasted most of the week. I felt plainly sad and disinterested in life, had my anxiety set on high, and couldn't figure out why. I think it was ultimately biochemical in cause given the funk was alleviated with some strenuous physical work, going for a walk, and eating something good, but it still lasted way longer than wanted. On Monday I watched a show after work to get rid of the gloom and ended up strangely exhausted afterwards, forcing me to rest the remainder of the evening. Tuesday was pretty wasted too, and on Wednesday I felt exhausted again and took a super long nap before work. Thursday I was so behind on things I just didn't bother. Awful.

On the other hand, the positive thing is that none of this transferred to my work. If anything my ambition and effort increased at work, where I continued to enhance my performance and find new ways to improve myself. While dropping the balls at home I did better and better at my job, something to be proud of. I guess because I like my job so much, since I'm engaged in my career after all, I couldn't help but feel better and more resolved once getting into a shift.

And on the sunnier side still, I'm proud that I at least took constructive action towards remedying my funk rather than letting it be. I kept up my introspective writing habits and paid attention to my needs, so while it's unfortunate that so much time was wasted I did what I could. The funk seems to have gone, and hopefully it stays gone.

The list:

1.) Try hand at creating banner: Done, the results being visible right on top. Even with its simplicity it still took more time than I wished it would, but still: That's another new year's resolution down.

2.) Read The Science of Chocolate, The Chocolate Tree, Crash Proof, and spring issue of The Objective Standard: Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Totally failed. While tackling other things these got severely neglected. Matters were especially difficult when I felt that mysterious exhaustion, which rendered me hardly able to intellectually guide my processes.

3.) Experiment with "scribble" book for reading: Since I did little other reading than of the Charlie Brown books I've rented this one has been neglected too.

4.) Practice tossing pizza with clothes at home: Only a little bit, but not enough to consider it a goal completed. I picked up a few articles of clothing to see how they might act given the techniques I've observed, and so far I'm not so sure I can find a dough substitute in my home, though I need to look more thoroughly.

5.) Tidy up room: Done to my satisfaction. While a more thorough clean up could be done, my primary concern is to make for a neater appearance, give some knickknacks designated spots, and give me additional surfaces to write and read on, and I accomplished that. I shouldn't ignore that other cleaning needs to be done too. (. . . Look at the dust on that ceiling fan . . . )


* * * * *

Judging my life as a whole, in the contexts of private improvement (studying, writing, etc.), character development (i.e. lovability), and work status, I think I've achieved the ideal strivings and attitude for my workplace endeavors while more work needs to be done for my character and private improvement.

At work I consider my efforts admirable. This week I finally managed to stumble upon a sign protector at the grocery store, which I need to protect the lists I create to enhance my productivity from the dish washing machine I place it on top of. Additionally, I've been doing an excellent job in maintaining my usage of a stopwatch to time myself during various activities, which has been giving me a real kick in the pants in regards to my exertions. I used these two methods to great advantage in my last job in Michigan, so to finally bringing them back has been jump starting my creativity on further personal innovations I could make to enhance my efforts. My job is going super well.

I don't have much to comment upon at the moment regarding my disappointment in my lovability pursuits, but immediately before me is how far I've derailed myself from pursuing my ideals habits. Namely, I want to cultivate a lifestyle that instills a voracious intellectual attitude as I had cultivated years before in my private studies and have since lost. Now I hardly even read. What's up with that? It's no good.

So for this week I'd like to exert myself in rededicating myself back to my intellectual goals by pursuing my reading more strongly, while at the same picking up the goals I dropped this past week. Throughout I'll probably contemplate where I think I'm going wrong in my lovability pursuits.

1.) Read The Science of Chocolate, The Chocolate Tree, Crash Proof, and spring issue of The Objective Standard: My failure to stay on top of this reading this week means I'll probably have to return these books to the library before I finish them, since I can't renew them. A nuisance, but I'll request them immediately again if I'm forced to. I'm adamant on completing those two chocolate books.

2.) Practice tossing pizza with clothes at home: I need to do a more thorough search through my clothes to see if I can find something that acts like moist dough. This is very important for my improvement at work. If I have nothing, then I'll see if I can borrow a wash cloth from work, since theirs work for the purpose of practicing.

3.) Experiment with "scribble book" while reading: Again, this is simply the practice of writing rough notes while reading to enhance concentration and interactivity, with no real intention of referencing the notes again.

4.) Optimize computer: A sloppily defined goal, but its intention is to get me thinking and search for ways I can improve my computing habits. For instance, I think I could be saving a lot more time in my efforts if I took the small amount of time necessary to find out how to make my computer boot up faster and process faster in general, and other such things. I've done some things already, such as installing Granola  to help save on utilities. I use a computer to improve my life, and I don't think I've been taking full enough advantage of that value, let alone getting all that I can out of it.

I'll probably add more later on in the week, especially if I have any epiphanies about my lovability pursuits, but for now this is all I want to dedicate myself to since I really, really want to improve my reading habits above all else in the immediate present.

This week may have been a bad one, but I intend to get back on the horse, as I always do.

Being Productively Intelligent and Intelligently Productive

As noted in my most recent weekly summary I intend to employ something called a "scribble book" to see if it can help improve my concentration while I read. In short, the book would be used for sort of rough notes, only it's not my intention to ever reference the writing again. I plan on performing conceptual exercises for terms I don't understand, writing repeatedly words I have trouble comprehending (e.g. medical terms, foreign names), writing down questions, and so on, all with the purpose of simply making myself more engaged with the reading. The writing is to help me become more mentally active in general and to tame my thoughts.

But overall I want to use this to tackle a more significant difficulty. After thinking about my problem with doing too much walking I realized that my overall trouble is that I like to spend too much time thinking in comparison to actually being physically active. Thinking is definitely very important, but the way I've been portioning my life has been making pure contemplation take up too much of my time. Think, for instance, if you were to spend more time at the gym than in the actual tasks of using your muscles and strength. The thinking grows my mind, but without the right practices it cannot make my life richer. My aim in this particular self-improvement endeavor is to help facilitate a lifestyle where the mental and physical are more closely united, where I can find myself with thinking skills I can employ while remaining physically active, rather than needing so much time for pure contemplation.

Pure contemplation has been troublesome in that I tend to get too attached to the mood, as described in my post about walking too much. After I come home I'm still stuck in the mood and want to continue my pure contemplation even though I should get myself engaged in my tasks. Eventually I have to force myself out of the trance, as left unhindered it could continue literally the entire day, so I want to find some way to readjust my character so that I can remain desirably mentally active, like on my walks, in spite of being physically engaged in other things such as washing my dinner dishes or taking out the trash.

The way I see it, it's all but a matter of establishing new habits and becoming emotionally attached to them. The reason why I value thinking while out on a walk so much is because I established a habit which has become part of my emotional attachments. Consequently, given my present arrangement it's difficult to conceive of myself enjoying contemplation in any other circumstance as ideally as this one. I think that if I force myself to change my habits, then I can make it so that I'll be emotionally inclined to continue the practices I view as part of an ideal self, namely a more balanced and integrated approach between thinking and acting. Of course, I'll still need time to sit and think things through, but right now my ratios are way out of whack.

I think further goals will need to be established in order to get the thorough results I want, permeating my entire character, but I think this scribble book is a good start. The demands of physical writing should help stave off desires to purely contemplate when I should be focusing on my reading. Aside from that, I'll continue timing my walks as I have and do further thinking (natch) on what changes I need to make.

Sense of Humor Update

Last week I spoke about some self-improvement I was undertaking to improve my sense of humor. Well, in the end I decided that my style of humor isn't that negative after all and that it isn't actually undermining my relationships, and lately I've noticed an actual positive in regards to the fact that I'm actually employing humor at all.

Lately I've noticed that at work I've opened up a lot more and am making witty attempts on a fairly consistent and frequent basis. This is very good news to behold considering that just a scant few months ago I was terrifically anxious around people all the time and kept shut tight like a clam while at work, always keeping to myself. I feel no discomfort barrier now, not even with people I'm just meeting. My sense of life has become much more lively.

Furthermore, I've been much more open with my moral judgment as well, being very expressive of my appreciation of someone and hardly being afraid to issue a condemnation when it is deserved. My fear of being responded to with irrational hostility has been very reduced, and in circumstances when I do face such reactions I feel no discomfort in my position and am able to keep a solid physical stance during such confrontations.

I'm proud of myself for having made such progress. Multiple valuable friendships have been the happy consequence, and no longer do I feel any pains of loneliness as I had a few weeks ago. However, there's still a ways to go. I still feel dumbfounded as to what to say when people ask me personal questions, such as what I do after work ("er -- uh, read, write, take a cold shower . . . "), and romantic aspirations are still going unpursued, though I need to work on a more serious conundrum before I get to that.

I have to keep singing the praises for Mind Over Mood. Its information has made the methods of successful introspection incredibly more clear now, to the point where I save time in my efforts and reap more benefits. It's a book I wish I read a long time ago rather than let sit on my reading list for so long, as I think I would be further along in my character development if I had done so.

Right now I want to keep the course in developing my good habits in nourishing friendships and introspecting on my emotions, and after I earn a more secure living I'll being pursuing romance with more directed effort.

Defeating Negative Humor

Well, I finally thought of another self-improvement goal regarding my lovability pursuits. I've recently noticed how terribly excessive my negative humor is, where I indulge in things such as mock bullying, playful character attacks, and more. As of far nobody has taken offense and has even been amused, but still I think it would be best for me to reduce such a style of humor.

More or less I think this is a bad leftover habit from my childhood when I still had to deal with some pretty hostile people in school. Even as I gained more friends I was still the butt of people's jokes on frequent occasion, and in a self-depreciating manner I somehow learned to play along and participate, joining in on the jokes against myself even as they were atrociously malicious. I remember one time I was playing hacky-sack with a group of people who named the sack "Benjamin."

The negative, however, does not amount to a positive, and dwelling on the negative can very easily give way for people viewing you as negatively equivalent to the things you talk about. People want to be happy in life and live where bad things are the exception to the rule, not the trend, so I ought not joke around and tease about it as if it were the consistent tone of living. It might be alright on occasion, but I've been going too far.

To help alter this bad habit I'm going to add to my perfectionism list a new category: Humor. I still need to do more thinking on its precise restrictions, so that I know what constitutes a violation, but for now I think it would suffice to say that I've betrayed my goal if I engage in any playful character attacks or self-depreciating jokes, though there could be more. Hopefully doing this will make me more aware of what I'm doing, as my other categories have.

Semi-Intimate Conversations

Stupid me! I didn't realize up until now that there was a conversational habit that could have significantly helped my lovability goals and contributed to my relationships. As noted, up to this point I've been immensely craving companionship on a very deep level and hoping to find friends to bond with at a spiritual depth and have open, comfortable ideological talks with. This applies to both a romantic partner and general friends. What I didn't see is that I could still fulfill my needs to a partial degree by engaging in what I call semi-intimate conversations.

As per my nature I strongly dislike shooting the breeze or engaging in any short bit of chatter, such as quick short sentence exchanges that only last a few seconds or quick how-are-yous, as I prefer to entertain myself with deeper thought processes that these kind of exchanges distract me from. However, why didn't I think to make these exchanges deeper than they otherwise ordinarily would be? In other words, I could be digging a deeper depth into these conversations that would allow me to be more enjoyably engaged and bond with a person.

For instance, if I asked a person whether they had a nice day and they said they enjoyed their fishing outing, ordinarily I would leave the exchange at that and move on, but instead I could deepen it a little by asking leading questions such as why they chose to go fishing, why they like it, how they got into it, and so on, that would turn a few second interruption to my train of thought to a thought process itself. It might not be philosophically deep, but perhaps it could lead there, and the depth would be of interest to both of us participants, though I need to be careful against becoming a rubberduck.

Even as I'm gradually getting surrounded by more people I have been missing out severely by not using this technique, and becoming a more undesirably quiet individual, especially at work. Just practicing this in even a small degree has done well to satisfy any severe craving for companionship, and more fruit is to be harvested through its continued practice.

Sympathize with Me: Only You Feel Your Emotions

In my article Don't Be a Baby I discussed constructive ways to complain about one's problems and argued that complaining in the wrong way constitutes whining that will undermine, even destroy your relationships, which can be a very painful thing if you desire someone to help you with your troubles. Recently I've noticed another irrational trait related to this that can also undermine one's relationships, namely the assumption that other people can experience your emotions as well with some kind of sixth sense.

Made explicit this is obviously a false belief. We know other people can't feel our emotions. But the irrational thing is that many can often mistakenly adopt this belief in the heat of intense emotion without acknowledging it, leading to irrational practices and nonconstructive results. Emotions are very real things, and when they become intense it can almost feel as if they're saturating the surrounding atmosphere itself, making it "feel" like other people can sense it too. In times of negative emotion this can lead to very troublesome and destructive practices.

I've noticed, for instance, that when some people become angry they act in a fashion as if they were trying to pulsate that emotion in a beam and invoke fear and misery at whoever provokes their wrath, as manifested in silent glares and hysterically angry facial expressions. And in other instances I've noticed miserable people do all they can to put their pain on display and mope as visibly as possible, perhaps hoping to emit a magnetism that will attract the sympathy they so desire. These practices of course have never led to the desired end-result: People quaking in fear or rushing in to sooth wounds. Instead it leads to an erosion of relationships, people desiring to avoid these people or ignore their negative periods when they arise, or decay the substance of any association that continues with these habits intact long-term.

I single out instances of negative emotions particularly since I've noticed this is when the assumption is most prevalent. When we feel bad, we obviously want other people to know about it and react, and given how real intense emotions feel to us it can be easy to assume it feels real to other people as well. But this is not the case. People do not have a sixth sense for other people's emotions. All they can observe is the behavior that manifests as a result of those emotions, whether it be glares and dirty looks or silence and long faces. Depending on how you act consistently and how these people relate to you will determine how they respond to you, and most likely they won't be able to treat you in the way you desire if you don't vocalize your desires and instead resort to hoping everyone will just "know" somehow. Worse yet, if you consistently act this way when experiencing negative emotions then you'll undermine your associations by pushing people away and giving them a reason to avoid you when you act like this. In Don't Be a Baby I pointed out that the pains and troubles of life are not what constitutes happiness, and so the same applies here since people will want to ignore you in order to pursue their own comfort better.

Given how strong some emotions can be it can be very hard, but you've got to work to always practice your best judgment no matter how strong any urges rise from your emotions. You've got to think objectively and be explicit about your concerns and desires with others when appropriate, otherwise you'll just stoop in your negative emotions as people are forced to either guess what ails you or ignore you until you get over it.

I admit I myself have been guilty of acting in such a fashion, and during a working shift I've realized how much it was undermining my lovability goals. People aren't going to value me if they think certain negative emotions are simply a part of my nature by default, and nothing will be worked out if I keep silent about it. Only I feel my emotions, and it's my obligation to deal with them accordingly in order to be constructive.

The most significant exercise of this fallacy that I've noticed is a particular schoolmate who practically destroyed his network of friends by hoping the display of his misery would bring him the companionship he yearned for. In trying his best to extrude an aura of sadness and depression he temporarily succeeded in garnering some sympathy, but without addressing the root cause he eventually repelled most everyone away and brought upon himself the very aloneness he was trying to remedy. He never made clear his desires, so people were left to guess, and without addressing root causes of his emotional problems they eventually gave up when they realized he was dragging them down with him as well.

People can be a great help in trying to work out certain problems, but the most important steps and efforts must be made on our own, such as identifying the root of our problems, initiating the important parts of the solution, and verbalizing how we'd like our friends to help. As Benjamin Franklin said, I believe, "He who does not counsel himself cannot be counsel'd."

Mysterious Character Traits?

Have you ever noticed a character trait that has persisted in your being for a very long time, and yet cannot identify when, where, and how you came to develop it? Usually I can identify certain facets of my personality by referencing periods in my life where I adopted new behavior-driving ideas and was influenced by certain experiences, but lately I've noticed there are some traits which seem to have always been integrated within me, but I can't figure out how I came to develop them.

In my case, I've realized lately how much of my being emphasizes the proper use of manners in order to conduct my relationships respectfully, but I have no recollection of where I learned them or else decided to adopt them by my own judgment. It's like I've always been this way, yet I know that's not true; there must've been some point in my personality development where I began structuring these habits.

A particular elder once gloated how they were the one that taught me my polite ways, but I know that's not true since their usage of manners is insincere and for appearance only, whereas I'm sincere and am aware of the various outcomes that could result of my treatment. A child can absorb their elders' characteristics very thoroughly, not only adopting the physical appearance of the practice, but also the ideas and psychological workings that give rise to them to begin with. If I had adopted my manners from the practices of my elders, then I too would have adopted them for appearance sake, but I didn't.

To clarify what I mean by sincere, I mean that the manners are employed in an honest fashion in order to treat a person respectfully, and most importantly it's also recognized that manners may not always get you what you ask for and that you should continue your respectful behaviors in alternative outcomes. As a classic example, take asking someone for the use or consumption of their property, such as tasting their food. The respectful way to ask, though not necessarily in this concrete form, goes something like "May I have some of [such and such]," and it's up to the person to decide how he'll respond. More often than not the person with the food will say yes and offer some, but it's also possible that he may decline and prefer to consume it all himself. Given that it is his property it is entirely within his rights to do so. Someone with truly sincere manners will recognize that a person may respond in this alternative way, and will continue maintaining their polite behavior in face of this experience.

A person who's insincere and employs manners as a matter of appearance, however, will not anticipate the decline as an actual alternative and will start acting rudely after the experience. To them, they expect the answer to automatically be yes and don't know how to respond to this other answer. It's probable that in these scenarios this kind of person will drop their facade and lets their true rudeness show. I've once been in such a position where a person asked to taste my food and I preferred to eat it all. I declined politely and thanked them for their respectful inquiry, but they became completely confused and immediately resorted to intimidation and trying to induce guilt. To them, manners are just a matter of decoration: They expect their use to get them unfailingly what they want. Since insincere manners are in actuality rude, they might as well have come up to me and said "Gimme that!" or else directly taken the food. The person who gloated of teaching me manners uses them in this dishonest fashion, but I've never used them that way. So just how did I become this way?

Have you had a similar experience too, where you identified a personality trait you have no idea how it became part of you?

Why I Don't Like Socializing in Groups

One topic I've been considering as of late regarding my lovability goals and pursuit of valuable relationships is what I consider to be my preferred situations for socialization, and in thinking about that I've realized again how much I dislike groups. Can it really be considered beneficial to friendships to socialize in such a manner?

The thing that strikes me the most are those images on social networking sites where people will post endless photos of themselves with countless people, many time in very intimate poses such as hugging or kissing each other, to indicate how close they are as friends. Yet, evidence suggests they don't see these people that often to have developed such a strong intimacy, as shown by consistent comments from various people on how long it's been since they've seen a particular person. Just how much do these people know each other as individuals outside of a group-setting? And in groups, why do they display such physical intimacy despite not having cultivated a true appreciation for each person as an individual? To me, it seems more like the person is inserting themselves in a group for the sake of being in a group rather than appreciating the group as a gathering of distinct individuals.

What irks me the most is how it seems that in such group settings everyone is concentrating very weakly on everyone and everything, so in the end they're not really socializing with anyone in particular, but rather anyone in general. The majority of my experiences have shown it's very easy to fuse with the environment in that setting by not talking or getting involved: Everyone's so caught up with what's happening in "general" that they hardly notice anything unique about a particular person. It's not about cultivating friendships, but rather being in a collective atmosphere. Most of all, it disturbs me how often people don't act like themselves in group settings, where they'll be one kind of person when dealt with privately and another person in front of others. I've seen people who are often calm in disposition in private often get hysterical, loud, and hyper in more populated settings, a direct contradiction to their usual behavior.

I am not saying, however, that it's inherently irrational to socialize in groups; rather, that too often it's done for irrational reasons and in irrational ways. For example, take the majority of how college kids conduct parties and whatnot. For me, it would be more ideal to socialize in a group after having gotten to know as many of the people as individuals as possible, or else be aware of how individual everyone is when being exposed to them during that time. Don't relax your focus, appeal to the whole group indiscriminately, and then allow yourself to forget everyone afterwards. It's nonsensical to me to think that someone would show great affection in kissing someone for a photograph, but then hold them at arm's length beyond that scenario. Moreover, these kinds of people I often see frequently change the groups they associate with, each new batch of photos showing a whole new smorgasbord of strangers.

I'm not sure if I'd ever truly enjoy group socialization in a rational sense, however. Even with intimate friends I've never much enjoyed being in groups of more than three. It's not shyness; it's just that I don't like asserting my personality to that great a number of people at a time, so I often stay quiet even if discomfort is entirely absent. Then again, perhaps I might change after pursuing valuable relationships more successfully. We'll see.

Anyhow, this is why I don't like groups. I much prefer getting to know someone more intimately and privately.

Feeling is Believing

I've been thinking about Mind Over Mood ever since I've read it, and have kept applying its methodology consistently in my written introspection. To my pleasure it has been resulting in positive mental health benefits, including making a habit of objective evaluations, coping with stress, controlling my behavior during intense emotions, and more, so I wish I would have gotten my hands on it a lot sooner. It's probably one of these best resources of our time on how to properly introspect, a skill that is horrifically deficient in our world. Most importantly, I've noticed that some of the its identifications of introspection gave me an epiphany on the means to my self-improvement, and could considerably change my efforts.

As you might know, since I've moved to Texas I've been rather lonely. My friends from my last restaurant are still in Michigan, and my craving for companionship has been for those similar in spirit to me, not just any old physical body. I've been running into some obstacles in meeting that need, such as my night-based job preventing me from attending an Objectivist Society club, so these past weeks I've been largely contemplating what I can do with my resources. What I haven't realized is that part of my venture in seeking valuable friendships was actually implicitly a self-improvement venture, and Mind Over Mood has helped me realize how.

The most important thing I've gained from reading the book is the knowledge that one's mental make-up is not solely a matter of one's thinking; in addition, one's behavior, environment, and social dealings also contribute elements to one's character, and while benefits can be distributed amongst the whole by making changes to a few isolated realms, ultimately the entire context needs to be taken in consideration in order to obtain optimal emotional health. For instance, I could have the best thinking habits, behavior, and have an enriching environment, but if I were a small kid getting beaten up after school everyday I'd still probably wouldn't be able to obtain full happiness, despite my rationality in the other areas. Likewise, I could be surrounded by perfect people, but still be unhappy given irrational behavior or flawed thinking habits. The whole has to be integrated. This explains to me why I often went nowhere in my introspection: I thought it was purely a matter of thinking habits, so I neglected the other realms, such as my social and general environment, thus holding myself back.

Aside from trying to add more value to my life, I think my desire to quench my loneliness is so that I myself can become a better person through dealing with better people. Noted many times before on this blog is that I'm often concerned with my lack of boldness and resistance to openness with other people, which I view as incompatible with my ideal self. Here I think the problem is that while I'm being rational in the introspection and general environment realm, I haven't taken proper steps to make for a gainful social environment, and that consequently is affecting my performance in the behavioral realm.

My difficult past with certain people is well-documented around here, so I'll leave that as a given. As such, I think the fact that I've dealt with so many difficult people throughout my life, and worse yet couldn't voluntarily get away from them for some time, has made me adopt some rather bad emotional premises about the nature of people despite my contrary intellectual conclusions. I know the risk for irrational, out of proportion hostility is unlikely in the dealings I'm engaging in today, but since I've dealt with people who so often got hysterical and upset at unpredictable things I tend to freeze up on sharing the content of my character since I "feel" everyone is somehow an emotional bomb waiting to go off. The things that have upset people in the past and caused strife were absurd and unpredictable, such as someone blowing up at being asked why they thought the sun faded colors, so on almost all points of discussion I tend to desire to keep to myself, making me quieter and more reserved a person than I'd prefer to be.

Concisely, the subconscious premises I experience emotionally differ from that of my intellectual and consciously held conclusions because my actual concrete experiences differ than that of my true beliefs. I've been persuaded by logic and reason to adopt a certain view of ideal people, but in actual reality I've been dealing with people who are markedly irrational, immoral, and even evil, so my emotions have been strongly influenced by the actual experiences I had and have.

So while I think it's ideal of myself to be philosophically open with others, I'm hesitant in practice since my experiences were those with people who became irrationally unhinged at such topics. In these matters I haven't be unreasonable or rude in the least: I was once threatened to be kicked out of person's house because my opinion didn't align with theirs on a pot roast, and scolded sharply when I stated I didn't like potatoes that much. These are just minor matters: philosophical and personal discussions have resulted in much more intense irrationality.

I want to be a bolder and more expressive person, so to self-improve in this area I think my search for companionship should head towards people who value open ideology and civil discussion, and defend their principles openly (like many Objectivists I know). Ideal people, in whatever degree, do exist and I intellectually believe in them, but I don't think I can derive the full emotional impact of that belief until I have the concrete experiences to base it upon, meaning I need to actually meet and deal with those people. The experiences you have will certainly not determine what kind of person you'll ultimately become, but they are a heavy influence that can determine at least some things, like how you emotionally respond to certain things and situations. I believe in being bold, but my character has developed into something quiet and reserved because that was the optimal way to deal with the irrational people I was forced to deal with for years and couldn't get away from, so it'll take some new, better experiences to uproot traits that are essentially defense mechanisms for dealing with irrational people.

My big mistake in my self-improvement ventures before is that I thought I could alter my character entirely though the will and practice of introspection alone, but now I see that it's slightly more complex than that. There are other areas that influence one's mental contents, so by neglecting those areas and concentrating entirely on my thoughts I have been stagnating in my growth.

And now that I think about it, the kinds of person I've been in the past seem to prove the importance of experience. The ideal time I have in my memory is when I was so philosophically open and conversational with other people, and I see now that that was during a time I spent a good deal of time with friends who enjoyed such conversations, conducted them civilly (including disagreements), and never resorted to hostility. When I transitioned to the current self I am dissatisfied with I was then at a point in my life where I was primarily dealing with irrational and emotionally unstable people, so my character changed in order to cope with what was a significantly unreasonable atmosphere. Even the wrong opinion on a pair of shoes, no matter how proper the manners in speaking them, were a potential cause of strife, so for the past years I've had to keep the majority of my thoughts to myself.

In summary, then, I think my pursuit of companionship is not only to fulfill a psychological need, but to also help me change as a person by being exposed to healthier and happier social environments. I can't feel, so to speak, the existence of rational and ideal people until I actually meet them and start dealing with them on a regular basis, so if I'm to move forward with my character improvement I should work to gain those friends.

To sum the argument up, introspection plays a huge role in one's character formation, but it isn't definitive. There are other, external factors to take into account, and neglecting them can lead to stagnation or even retrogression. The whole context must be considered. In order to fully feel the brevity of a healthier belief, then one should and must pursue concrete evidence and experiences that confirm that belief(s), otherwise one's conclusions and emotional responses won't fully align.

On a side-note, I think my desire for companionship shows I've finally established the confidence of my lovability. (I have been pursuing lovability goals here and there, but they're so scattered I don't think I could link to any one post.) I'll say it out loud: I think I deserve to be loved for the person I am. I've been long in the pursuit of virtue, so having done well to obtain it makes to yearn for my justice. Ah, but I'll have to wait longer. This point has also been making me angrier in conjunction, as I'm aware of some people who appreciate me and yet keep silent and distant in their treatment, making my loneliness even stronger knowing all the potential values there are.

Once again I must thoroughly recommend Mind Over Mood. Introspection is a very necessary skill that every person needs to practice, and this so far is the best resource I've ever perused on the subject. I've been aware of the importance of introspection for years now, and still this book has helped me make major identifications I haven't been able to on my own. Pursuing valuable people is a self-improvement venture in both making me live a more full live and become a better person. As I do successfully nurture these relationships, I'll be sure to cite what changes I have undergone.

Don't Treat Your Friends Like Rubberducks

You probably already know I'm a fan of a certain practice called rubberducking, in which one takes an inanimate object, like a rubberduck, and talk to it. I've used this practice for two purposes: 1.) To help me introspect on something by stimulating my brain through talking, and 2.) clearing up stress by venting through the talking. This practice has been extremely helpful for both purposes, and I continue to do it today, though mostly in my car since my current housing doesn't have sound-resistant walls.

Lately I've been thinking about why some people become so intensely fond of me, and have related it to the issue of rubberducking. While I recognize that I do have lovable qualities, these qualities aren't much on display to the average associate I come across, and at present I tend to be an overall quiet guy, so it confused me as to why some people become so fond of me when my characteristics aren't on display enough for them to know and love. Sometimes all I have to do is merely be consistently on the listening end of some guy's talking, and the next thing I know he becomes attached to my company. This has happened consistently to me in the past also.

It's kind of insulting to say it this way, but simply put: I've been used like a rubberduck. Given my quiet deposition I have given a vent for these people to satisfy themselves through talking or expressing their thoughts, even on IM, and they have taken this satisfaction as an actual fondness of me. While it's nice to think I could offer them such satisfaction, there's problems people should be aware of in conducting friendships like this, problems which have in fact led to me becoming unattached and dissolving friendships that were conducted that way in the past.

Primarily, this type of practice makes friendships one-sided. Only one person is expressing himself while the other passively absorbs, so while the listener may temporarily be satisfied by being trusted with the information he's listening to he'll soon find that the value may be going only in one direction. I know that when I was in such friendships that the other person tended to terribly self-centered (which I distinguish from actual rational selfishness, which I endorse*) and wouldn't return the same willingness to listen that I offered them. As soon as the topic went onto something regarding myself and my own life they would become disinterested and distracted with other things, sometimes going so far as to just give me one-word answers or irrelevant responses. These friendships ended up suffocating since I realized that while they enjoyed my company, it was only my willingness to listen that they valued, not the important aspects of my character, so separating from them didn't leave me missing them at all. The friendships weren't really friendships: The person was just rubberducking with a live human.

(*My distinguishment between selfishness and self-centeredness is that self-centeredness entails a person being overly concerned with things in reference to himself. For instance, a selfish person would be interested in listening to their friend since learning more about them and making them happy is a selfish value, but a self-centered person would be entirely disinterested in listening once the topic is no longer about then. Dan Edge wrote a good essay on it, but I can't find it.)

I don't think I've ever been caught in this situation, but it may be why some guys get stuck in the friend zone when associating with a female they're interested in. The female values that the guy is willing to listen to them vent and deal with their problems, but they don't seek to learn his character enough that they actually come to value him for the person he is, thereby keeping him stuck in his friendship -- or rubberduck -- role.

Healthy friendships trade value for value. Friends spend time both talking to and listening to one another with full conscious attention, and most importantly they identify each other's character and sustain the friendship for the deep value they find in dealing with people with desirable spiritual characteristics. Those are the fulfilling relationships that make life worth living.

So in assessing your friendships, it may be valuable to pay attention to the balance of talking versus listening that goes on between you and the other person, for you may find that the other people doesn't really value you as a person at all: You just might be a rubberduck.

Book Review: Mind Over Mood

I was prompted to pick up Mind Over Mood by The Objective Standard and have been amazed by how insightful it is on the nature of introspection and how to change your emotions. For years I've understood the importance of introspection in mental health and have been maintaining a diary for that purpose, but this book has introduced to me aspects I never considered before and helped me integrate phenomenon I thought were isolated and unrelated.

Emotions are caused by ideas integrated into our subconscious. This can be directly observed by witnessing that people can have different reactions to the same stimulus, such as a painting or news story, and that during the times of those emotions ideas and images of a certain nature go through our head. On that latter, one example could be someone who feels depressed at hearing a minor and polite criticism: During that emotion their premise of inadequacy could be exposed, as thoughts like "I'm no good" and images of past harsh scoldings could be filling their head. It can be tough to sort out exactly what type of information our subconscious has integrated, but in the beginning it was always an idea we accepted with our conscious mind.

This book is primarily an exercise book, as it sets up a entire system of ways to identify and keep track of what your subconscious is composed of, as well as demonstrating how some example patients are going through their troubles due to ideas or notions they accepted at one point in their life or another. Additionally, as you advance through these exercises you'll also track the progress of these patients as they get exposed to these exercises as well, and how they alter their characters as a result. This book is equal parts informative, practical, and inspiring.

The biggest help to me -- and why I've chosen to set as a goal to introspect every day this week -- is that this book has made me aware that there are more complex factors to take into account beyond that of assessing your mental contents when examining your deepest premises, such as your behavior, how you react to other people, what's immediately going through your head during intense emotions, and so on, and that all these areas are inter-related and as important to your mental health individually as they are together. My big mistake is that I thought only assessing my mental contents is what was important, so while I've made major headway in my introspection these past years I've always been held back by discounting things that actually mattered in the process. For instance, I missed out on valuable insights to my premises by ignoring how I responded to people in everyday life.

By including factors I have been neglecting I have come to realize I have certain emotional difficulties I didn't know I had before previously, and yet the evidence was always there. Case in point, I realized that I still arbor an intense anxiety when around other people, as in their presence I tend to become tense, still my thoughts, speak in monotone and one-word answers, and more. Furthermore, I also realized that this was due to my installing bad premises from having dealt with irrational people in times of disagreement, which was made worse by the fact I couldn't get away from those people for a long time, thereby having to deal with their outbursts longer than should have been necessary.The result is that I habituated ways of dealing with irrational people that became outdated when I got away from them, thereby undermining my relationships with the better ones I have access to. With the new thinking tools I've learned, I'm now working towards relieving that tension with success.

Another way in which this book has been beneficial is by helping me identify shorter methods through which I can make faster identifications, thereby cutting the time and awkwardness with which I go about writing in my introspection journal. I've always recognized that writing to be a value, but even filling up a page a day can be time-consuming, thereby discouraging regular practice, and sometimes when I have no thoughts on my mind I can't come up with any useful insights. I've altered my practices -- though lengthy writing is at times involved on an optional basis -- so that instead of article-like writing, I put down a series of sections that require specific information, which helps me integrate it all together into a single insight and plan a course of action. Those sections include the object towards which I'm expressing my emotion and what situation I was in (object/situation), what mood(s) I felt (mood), the thoughts and images that occurred to me (thoughts), how I'm responding to other people (social environment), my behavior (behavior), the evidence that supports the estimate I made (supporting evidence), the evidence that contradicts it (contrary), and my final assessment of the thing as a whole (final estimate). The contradicting evidence section has been especially helpful, as it's made me much more aware how many emotional premises I maintain that clash with the ideas I hold consciously.

There are some interesting things I would like to have seen addressed, however, given some odd situations. In one such situation I managed to alter a subconscious premise almost instantaneously and changed my emotions right then and there, and in another situation I managed to altered my premise only temporarily, but the intensity of the emotional change I experienced was striking. In the former, I managed to destroy my fear of amusement park rides by identifying what it is that thrilled me about them. I remembered a specific roller coaster ride in which I was frightened by some overhead beams that looked like they were too close, making me fear decapitation. Given that the ride has been meticulously tested, ridden on countless times, and the ingenuity that went into creating it, I identified that it was absurd to feel this way. Accidents do happen on amusement park rides, but rarely, so rarely that they're front page news when they happen. When I made this explicit my fear evaporated, and I've never been able to get a thrill on an amusement park ride since then. Why was I able to alter my premise so rapidly? My fear had been present for years previously. In the latter situation, I managed to alleviate my fear of needles by noting to myself that I was afraid of feeling pain, which has been refuted by previous experience. When I noted that, my next blood test resulted in no emotional discomfort, and I was even able to look at the needle while they drew the blood. The next time, however, my fear was back and could not be abated by restating that same identification, and that blood test was very tense. I grant that during the process of changing one's emotions that there will be fluctuations, but the comfort I felt during the first session was so intense that I thought I had been totally cured. Understanding these two points better, I think, could work to shed further light on efficient and effective introspection.

Other than that, I cannot think of another vice for the book. It's very rational, striving to detail the nature of emotions and the appropriate therapy through evidence-based reasoning, which results in astonishingly clear and persuasive arguments. Even the person with already pristine mental health will benefit from this book, as it will teach how to maintain that state and perhaps even rise it further. In any and all pursuits for developing our abilities it is of cardinal importance to know oneself intricately, for it is that knowledge that allows us to understand the causation behind our processes and to take the proper steps to make what changes need to be made. Without that knowledge, then mental health goes out of one's control, thereby reducing one's life to either lucky character formations or brutal struggles again negative emotions that just won't stop. Whatever your purpose or interest in reading Mind Over Mood, I cannot recommend it enough.

Loneliness and the Necessity of Friendship

Oh hum. Since my big move I've become much more aware of other areas of my being, and most prevalent seems to be my intense loneliness. I am entirely on my own in this state, everyone I used to associate with being in Michigan, and most significantly I've never met another Objectivist such as myself, only having spoken to one on the phone. This I think have been the source of my painful longing, so it's high time I put my lovability self-improvement skills to practice and actively nurture a social life.

Philosophically as of late, I've been contemplating the role of friendship in a human life, and have been pondering whether it's actually a basic requirement for happiness. Giving things a run through at different angles is making me realize that my previous resistance to this is due to my having accepted bad second-handed notions of the role of people in one's life, so I've made the mistaken as taking an incorrect and isolated view of some notion, treating it as the only/definitive one, and rejecting it on those grounds.

All of my youth I was taught that being alone is a bad thing and that having friends was a necessary "good" for some reason. These ideas were never explained in any deeper detail to me: It's just "bad" to be alone and "good" to have friends. I was bullied a lot as a kid and was constantly losing friends for some reason or another, so I grew up quite pained with my situationally enforced aloneness and resistance to friendship due to consistent losses, so I always hated the notion that being alone was bad because I was practically forced to be so. It wasn't until I discovered Objectivism and started building self-esteem that I became content and fine with being alone, while at the same time still being able to enjoy friendships. The difference is that I didn't panic about being alone from then on and didn't seek to be with people in order to escape this somehow bad state of being alone.

I realize now that, aside from the notion being empty to begin with, my elders were condemning physical aloneness; that is, being alone in body. Being emotionalists, they judged being alone to be morally bad because it makes them feel bad to be alone, so they're condemning on whim. The remedy they proposed was to haphazardly develop friendships in order to maintain physical contact with people, and they were so unsophisticated in their views that they encouraged me to maintain relations even with people whom I shared no interests with and was bored to death dealing with. As such, I've come to reject the notion that friendship is necessary since I've unthinkingly internalized my elders' false view.

Loneliness isn't about being alone in physical body; it's about being alone in spirit. People like to speak about the supposed paradox of feeling alone in a crowd of people, but there's no contradiction. The loneliness exists in the spiritual realm and can only be quelled by people spiritually similar to you. Dealing with people at random in order to physically be with someone will only serve to evade that matter, and once the people depart the pain will immediately return. First you need to know yourself, and then after having established that working knowledge you ought to seek people who appeal to your personal attributes.

Probably the thing I ache for the most is people whom I can be intellectually open with and discuss deep matters with without fear of them becoming hysterical. The ideal time in my youth I remember is those school lunches during which I was just beginning to discover Objectivism and would have deep philosophical discussions with my friends. Those conversations were immensely satisfying, and I felt such a intense pleasure being intellectually stimulated this way that my brain actually became physically pleasured. I don't thrive on total agreement within a group; in fact, it makes me uncomfortable since I want my positions challenged so I can move forward in my thought. I deeply respect people who can absolutely disagree with me and yet set down the matter as an adult and resume polite relations. Philosophy classes were also my favorite for this reason.

The friendship problems arose when I lost contact with these people. I still loved philosophical conversations like those, but soon my life became filled with people who can only tolerate conventional opinions, and the slightest deviations makes them fall apart and become undone. Since I don't meticulously pay attention to what are deemed to be popular and "accepted" ideas, I couldn't predict how these people would respond to my own thought-out stances. There have even been uncomfortable confrontations about whether it's reasonable to stick a sponge in the dish washer. This as a consequence is probably what has led to me becoming so reserved as I am today, where I tend to keep quiet about my opinions, as I was consistently in environments hostile to differing opinions. Recently I've become a little bit more open about my opinions, and have been reminded how refreshing it is to associate with people on such open terms.

While I'm certainly going to hone my views on ideal friendships as I go on, it might be most beneficial for me to seek out people comfortable with differing opinions, and where a better place to look than people who share my philosophy? Objectivism rejects whole-heartedly emotionalism -- using one's emotions as the means to knowledge and persuasion -- and given the group reviews I think I'd find very satisfying conversation there. Unfortunately, with my current work schedule it doesn't seem like I'll be able to attend any events in the short-term, but I'm going to keep a meticulous eye on this group.

Friendship, though I need to do more thinking, is necessary for one's fullest happiness, but not necessarily for a fundamental contentment. To be alone in the world spiritually can be quite wearisome, as even though I might hold conclusions to the contrary the world feels like a hopeless place when I'm surrounded by emotionalistic and provocative people, as I have been most of my life. Emotions are predominantly inductive, though they are greatly influenced by conscious thought, so constant bad experiences can add up negatively in one's emotional arithmetic.

My line of thought, however, is far from even having begun on this matter. A lot of this is admittedly not yet digested, and I'd be interested in hearing what other philosophers have to say about the nature of friendship, including the big one known as Aristotle. While I won't detail the specifics of my activities, I will in the future detail how I have been spiritually affected by conducting satisfying relationships. It might be alright to be alone when surrounded by bad people, but can you really make the most out of life in that condition?

Bearing the Bad Times

Times are undoubtedly getting bad. Not only for the United States, but for the entire world. The economy is quite bad off, and with current political actions it's probable, if not certain, that a bout of intense inflation (or hyperinflation?) could come our way and eradicate everyone's savings. US foreign policy is a mess, with our enemies largely being ignored and unimpeded in their murderous endeavors, leaving the possibility for devastation in the future, while American soldiers engage in fruitless combat in obscure locales for obscure purposes and clear-cut failure. Laws are getting more dictatorial and ambiguous, eroding freedom more rapidly ever before, and the assault is going to continue for years yet. With things as difficult as this it can be easy to get depressed in assessing the situation, and that's probably the mindset of most of the people in the US today, particularly Objectivists, who with special emphasis pay attention to the culture at large.

These past several weeks this is what has been upsetting me, mostly, as I hate viciously problems I have to deal with that are not of my own making or moral failure. I am thoroughly attached to the notion of living by my own judgement and living or failing by that alone, so to suffer due to someone else's evil is downright infuriating. But I must, as we all, deal with it, for it's a problem already long here, with no other option than for me to tackle it. While it's easily to speculate on the matter of degrees, it's hardly contestable that things are going to get worse. Life -- true life: full happiness -- will be delayed for all of us.

But I have come to terms with this negativity, and aside from recognizing it I am learning to cope with it. It can be easy to despair over such issues and to sense that things are hopeless. If they truly were, however, then wouldn't you be dead? Without any prospect of anything to live for, wouldn't you cease maintaining your life? Your sustained living shows you're still here on earth for a reason. I myself still believe life is worth living, and beyond that I believe there's still reason to be objectively hopeful for the future.

Even as terrible as things are, I still maintain the same optimism I had in 2009, and recent happenings are strengthening my case. It's too easy to lose hope for the future and happiness when a terrible piece of legislation is passed, such as mentioned in that post, or when a disaster happens, such as the earthquake in Japan, but we must remember to introspect on the entire context and to take a bird's eye view of things, waiting to arrive to conclusions until after a distressed mood passes. Additionally, I think there are also some methods to maintain some base level of contentment during the meanwhile, to bear the stress during the bad period.

The best sign of positive change is on the cultural front regarding ideas. As I've noted elsewhere, people are more and more starting to discuss and debate alternative ideas to long-held dogmas, which indicates that the battle of ideologies have already begun. You know how Galileo, the scientist, was arrested by a church and sentenced to lifelong imprisonment? (In his own home, I believe.) He was in a legitimately hopeless situation. His mind was so potent that he was identifying aspects of nature that nobody else had before, making him the only man in the world, at his time, to have knowledge of such facts. (I don't know much about Galileo, except that arrest was his fate.) That situation can be summarized as one man literally against the world, and in his own personal realm it was a battle in which he was overwhelmingly outnumbered and could not win in his lifetime, though at least passed on his ideas to other generations. Given the impossibility of his situation -- judging from the limited context of his personal happiness, not his cultural impact -- despair would be the logical and inevitable response of any person in his shoes, and reasonably so. But this is far from the situation today -- far, far, far away. It's not the case that only one or two people are holding positive ideas against a crushing world of opposition, but rather that there are thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people who hold better ideas to combat the ones being practiced today. And I don't mean just strict Objectivists either; in addition to those people, there are also helpfully sympathetic people who are, while not fully adhering to the philosophy, do agree with some of its most important aspects (e.g. the capitalist politics), and furthermore there are still good people who are neutral or innocently mistaken and can still be reached with honest and respectful debate. Even counting Objectivists alone is a sign of hope, as they are many and still sufficient to greatly offset any "one man against the world" scenario.

Besides that, many of the advocates of bad ideologies have self-defeating behaviors which thoroughly limits the reach they have. Evil ideas have bad and evasive epistemology at their root, so most, if not all, of these people who operate on these ideas have not thoroughly or honestly thought about them before accepting them, so their potency in persuasion is limited. People who are not honest usually ignore alternative ideas in debate, become hostile in their behavior, run away from challenge, and so on. Let's just think about these three behaviors. If they ignore alternative ideas in debate, then how can they strengthen their arguments to take into account the alternatives that are being given? Their opponents are made all the more powerful by such evasions. If they become hostile in their behavior, then what type of people are they going to appeal to or repulse? They'll likely garner the weak-willed afraid of disagreement and people who already agreed with their conclusions, and the honest and respectful people will listen more attentively to those who not only present their case calmly and respectfully, but also take into account alternative ideas and modify their positions to acknowledge them. And if evil apologists decide to run away from challenge, then what's going to stop the good guys from spreading their ideas? Fewer challenges mean fewer impediments, and with continued evasions the evil guys could wake up one day with a culture past its ideological tipping point. Truly the battle of ideas must be fought against the inertia of old ones, as the evil advocates of rotten ideas don't put up a competent fight and only have the advantage of pre-established traditions and habituated thinking.

Concretely, we can see good ideas are getting mentioned more and more all the time. Our politicians may be stuck in their thinking and destructive courses, but it seems the American people aren't staying mentally idle. Opposition to current politics is being sustained and strengthened by the continued destruction. Just look at how the Ayn Rand Institute is flourishing. In just a span of two or three years, they've been making more television and radio appearances, putting out newspaper columns and blog articles, giving frequent lectures, getting increasing donations and support, building new offices in various states, and there's probably more I'm not aware of. To see this dramatic increase of life in the institution in just a span of a few short years is impressive, and we can expect to see it increase its impact for a long while yet, especially given the sales spike of Atlas Shrugged due to the newly released movie.

In the meanwhile things are just going to have to get bad since cultural momentum has driven us to this point, and yes it will be painful. Aside from looking at the facts that justify objective hope for the future, there are ways to grin and bear the frustration in the meanwhile. As difficult things are, I've been thinking about what facets constitute thorough happiness in human beings, and I think that if we were able to just at least satisfy the very fundamental needs of our psychology in the meanwhile, things would be more tolerable during the period they must be bad.

My thinking is hardly in depth at this point, but I've been introspecting on how such a small thing as being back to work has satisfied me. I value my career to the point that I don't think I'll ever retire from working, unless it meant moving from one field to another, and being back to work has satisfied me on a deep level. During my labor-intense shift I noticed I was actually getting increasingly relaxed and started doing refreshing exhaling. Given my view on the role of work in one's life I have a psychological need to work, and working satisfies it. I don't even think all that much about the money; just whether I'm doing my job well. If things go to hell and we're all poorer, I would still be satisfied if I were still minimally employed, scraping by. I may not be able to pursue my fullest happiness given economic restrictions, but it would at least basically satisfy the need.

Another facet I've been thinking about is the need for valuable friendship. I tolerate alone time quite well and even enjoy it, but I'm starting the feel the pain of being alone spiritually. Given complications from my past life, I've seldom had satisfying relationships with people who share my worldview, and I crave to meet those people so as to add value to my own life and keep before me the good that exists in this world. If I were to satisfy that need, then my contentment would increase and my life would be richer, making for another facet of my being that has been satisfied.

What I'm trying to say here is that one's psychological needs is composed of various facets which have requirements for satisfaction, and to leave any one unsatisfied is to reduce one's satisfaction with life and bring on uncomfortable, even painful longings. I'm not sure how many facets there are, but I can at least think of career and friendship as two. I assert that if one were to satisfy the barest basic requirements of all these facets, then a deep-down contentment can be nurtured and render one more resistant to the stresses of the world. Without these general satisfactions, then the pains of the world will intensify in their stressful nature. To paraphrase Atlas Shrugged, with inner satisfaction set then pain will only go down so far, never succeeding to erode the fundamental contentment. I'll have to do more thinking about what other facets there are to be tended to, but I'm starting to take steps and am planning on leading a more active social life, including attending an Objectivist Society here in Texas.

The bad times are here to stay for now, but I don't think they will be permanently. There are many objective signs for hope for a better future, and we shouldn't let our emotions get the best of us and decide everything is hopeless just because a single bad event has happened. And even while the bad times are here there will still be some values untouched and available to pursue, contributing to the happiness of one's life, so while the bad times must be endured it is these values one should concentrate on.

If you or I really judged things to be hopeless, then I don't think either of us would continue living. Why would we? And yet, here we are. I think life is still worth living all the way to its natural end, and I think you do too.