Was re-reading the highlights from my Kindle, and found an excerpt of me reading The Upside of Stress, which was a month before our first kid brith day.
There, the author challenges the reader to ask oneself three questions related to stress, to motivate the reader to rethink stress, and realise that the cost of avoiding stress is higher than actually do what one is stressed about, and hence not doing that instead. Apparently, procrastinating.
1. Missed opportunities: What events, experiences, activities, roles, or other opportunities have you turned down or cut out of your life because you thought they were (or would be) too stressful? Has your life been enhanced or narrowed by these choices? What is the cost to you of missing these opportunities?
So, by this she means that one may not be aware that engaging in something would bring them some benefits. That’s true, and it’s a rationalisation of a kind. But as a person who’s struggling with accumulating any resources to do any task.
First, I thought to write a kind of essay in my recent Unnecessary Tasks bit, but then realised, it may become a haunted task, which is precisely what I was trying to talk about. I did not come to the haunted thing, so it’s a topic for some future post of mine. By doing all that, I want to diagnose those things that deplete my mental energy, and address them then.
And the core idea of all this, is, in the fashion of another book, Essentialism, to actually cut down those activities. Also, in that very post, I missed to formulate another aspect of doing this: push-yourself-too-hard. I’ve been reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, and that was a hard read. A friend just mentioned that book in some context, and I thought like ‘hey, why won’t I read it?’ I was eager to try to read books that aren’t typical to me, and I was reading a lot back then, and so I thought that would be cheap to actually pick some random book, and just give it my read. I’d love to live in the reality where that’s possible, and I’d love to be that person one day. But I’m not that person at the moment, and that book was unnecessary and just polluted my reading by poisoning it, as I had to force myself at finishing it. I read it entirely, instead of throwing it away for good. And I think that was rather a wasted effort. Perhaps, I’ve got some English language training with that. But that’s a silly argument, any English book would train you in English, for some way or another. Be it very well-written, or just grammatical garbage.
Think of some other things you miss when you spend all your energy doing something that you’d rather avoid doing at all cost. Yep, that may be growing, sometimes. But some other times, it would just teach you nothing and give you too many negative aspects in return. So, the true wisdom is in actually undertanding where you are, and what you’re capable of in that very situation. Not underestimating yourself, so you won’t mistake something difficult but doable, achievable, with something that would take too much effort, and you’d just stretch thin, instead of coming back to that very task a bit later.
As a proper example, when I was a young kid attending Karate lessons, my teacher forced me to do a hundred push-ups, for my misbehaving. That was the last lesson of my four or five years at Karate. I did the pushups, but I damaged my right arm to the point of being unable to move it for months ahead. My mother finally got the leverage to force me stop attending Karate (which was maybe just one little thing I loved in my childhood, apart from sitting in front of my computer like an idiot).
About some six-to-eight years later, when I was in my early twenties, and in a severe depression due to many real-life negative events, I decided to kill myself with as much sport as I could do. If I was ever scary of overdoing sports, perhaps I’m no longer after that. I was the poster boy for that gym bro: early morning runs, followed by street exercises (pushups, pullups, situps, squats, running in between), then some afternoon eating, mostly steaks in restaurants, with gym, swimming pool, and sauna in the evening. I lived by that daily, for a year or so, and it produced impressive results. I could do (and I did a lot!) a hunderd pushups within one go, to the point they stopped being effective. I asked my trainer whether I can do something about it, and he said I need to take extra weight on my back. A gym buddy friend joked I should rather ask that girl out, and/or find a girlfriend, and perhaps my energy would be tamed, to some degree.
I couldn’t push myself to hundreds of pushups by doing hundreds pushups. That won’t be effective, not to say unhealthy. I arrived at that point by doing very little, slowly, but steadily.
That’s why I think that it’s just dumb to force yourself regardless of any real world signals. If you feel it’s too much, that may be true. Especially if you calibrate yourself often.
2. Avoidant coping: What activities, substances, or other “escapes” do you turn to when you want to avoid, get rid of, or numb thoughts and feelings related to the stress in your life? Are these coping strategies a good use of your time, energy, and life? Do they enhance meaning or help you grow? Are any of these coping strategies self-destructive?
Some of my coping strategies are self-destructive, and I accepted that to some degree. I chose them based on whether they actually help, and what’s the cost. My most effective coping strategies are sex (not always and easily available, so masturbation comes a handy replacement), sweets, and gaming (which became WarCraft). Also, writing. Writing helps a lot, and it’s a separate, completely different, activity that is the farthest you can get from self-destructive.
- There’s no point in talking about sex, as it gets you only benefits (considering it’s not the dead horse you’re doing that with, and it’s a grown-up person who wants it too, and you do birth control, or are ready to have kids, just in case the sex session would be fruitful in that regard).
- There’s a lot to talk about masturbation. I’ve been jerking off since my early childhood, and despite my mother telling me it’s very harmful, and that was very harmful for me… the self-beating, and attempts to stop masturbating for the rest of my life. Which made things only worse. At some later point, I had just accepted she knows very little, and I shouldn’t blame myself. I’ve come a very long way with that activity, and it can teach you many things about yourself, your pleasures, and enhance your sex life tremendously, if done right. (Just try to avoid porn, and if you do porn, be picky, and do it as little as you can get away with.) I masturbate from time to time, and I come from doing that a few times a day, to a few times a week. Which, I think, is much more healthy too. There’s nothing much to talk about it, but I intend to write an essay on the topic, as I think I have plenty to tell. Especially to some prudes. The type of an old-fashioned person I hugely disrespect.
- Gaming is very effective, if done right. It’s mostly free, if you’re able to control your submerge level. I cannot delve into the game to be lost for a week or so, and so for me, that’s half an hour of WarCraft 3 that does the job. It works great on Linux (with just Wine), and I play it a few times a week, when I have some free time for myself, in front of a computer. I can spend some ten-to-fifteen minutes, and that helps winding off too.
- I don’t like alcohol, so most times it’s a no-go for me.
- Reading helps as well. As with writing, that’s nothing of self-destructive, unless you read some complete idiots not realising who they are and the narratives they push. Ah, I did not specify that I meant books, not the internet. Reading internet is a waste of time, and if you’re reading this, note that you’re reading internet, not a book.
- Ah, and eating sweets, I’d keep it for some next time, it’s a huge topic for me. Unfortunately. That’s definitely a harmful thing.
3. Limiting your future: Is there anything you would like to do, experience, accept, or change, if only you were not afraid of the stress it might bring into your life? How would your life be enhanced by pursuing any of these possibilities? What is the cost to you of not allowing yourself to pursue them?
That reads different from different perspective. A decade or two ago me, meaning all alone and no family, I could avoid anything new and unexpected, because I afraid it. These days, I do not afraid of the stress per-se, I afraid I’m completely depleted on resources, and hence, doing something completely new would mean me missing it too, as I miss other activities due to exhaustion. I do not experience most things, simply because I’m having no resources for them. So, incresing is simply wrong strategy for me now. First, I need to decrease what I do, free up my resources for something new, that I would like to do, and do that then.
I understand this metal exercise is to show someone that them doing nothing and avoiding trying something they want.