Improvements don’t come in a steady incline

“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

How many times have you heard this, after spending 10 minutes explaining that you’re finding something difficult? I’m guessing a fair few. Although it may not seem supportive, nor helpful, our audience are conveying a very simple and important message.

Change is difficult, get used to it.

We as humans have the irrational belief that the process of improvement is linear. Deciding what you want to improve is the start point, improving in that area is the end point, with a steady rising gradient connecting the two. It’s a lovely fairytale, but it’s looking upon the issue with rose-tinted glasses. 

Your road to improvement - no matter how large or small - comes with peaks and troughs. 

Lets take an example; building muscle. 

Most lads (aged 18-30) will initiate the idea of going to the gym in the hope that they can ‘get hench/swole/big/etc’. The concept usually derives from some minor ribbing off their friends, or even glancing at the cover of one of the popular fitness magazines. They see, they want, they ‘commit’. 

Fast-forward 3-6 months… 

The majority of our fledgling Mr Olympias have hung up their lifting belts, and slumped right back into their old habits - but why?

These guys saw what they wanted and assumed it was an upward trajectory from the second they walked onto the gym floor. They thought that all they had to do was pick up heavy shit like the rest of the meathead bodybuilders, and they’d be big in no time. 

Well, weren’t they disappointed. 

Their intentions were positive, but their expectations were not. The men you see on the front of those magazines have spent the majority of their time on this earth living the fitness model lifestyle. 

They spend 2-3 hours in the gym, 7 days a week. 

They eat a ridiculously low amount, regardless of the time of year.

They skip out on enjoying social occasions and birthdays, fearing their body will turn to mush overnight. 

These guys commit; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get that physique, and you were expecting to smash it out in 3 months? 

So expectations were high, surely as humans we have the capabilities to realign our forecast with reality, and continue to progress regardless? 

Possibly, but unlikely. 

Imagine jumping on a bronco whilst under the impression that it enjoys being ridden, and inevitably (at least to everyone else) being launched 6ft into the air and crashing to the ground. Would you re-saddle without question?

So, now we’ve crashed back down to earth, with our expectations looking like they’ve gone through the set of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, how about we tackle the whys?

Let’s go back to our previous example; why can’t any old person just walk into the gym, pick stuff up and eventually gain muscle?

They can, with emphasis on the word ‘eventually’.

Most believe that if your form is correct and you lift ‘heavy’ weight frequently, you’ll achieve your goal. Even though this belief has the basics covered, there’s a whole world of variables that are left in the cold. Namely; protein intake, sleep, nutrition, stress, anxiety, individual pain threshold, individual perceived levels of exertion, water intake, illness, diseases, age of individual, hormonal imbalance, injuries, handicaps, calorie intake, etc. Some of these things we can control, others not so much. 

These factors vary and fluctuate from day-to-day, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute. It all boils down to something I like to call, indirect variability. 

How on earth could our gradient of improvement remain stable, when all these inconsistencies are at play? 

In fact, I would go as far as to call it a miracle if you managed to go 6 weeks with consistent improvements, never mind 6 months. 

So instead of entering the world of self-improvement with your eyes shut, start by accepting the unavoidable negatives as par for the course. 

You will have moments where you feel like you’ve regressed.

You will have negative thoughts and emotions about your progress.

You will go to bed some nights feeling like you’ve failed.

You will feel like quitting… a lot.

All of this is part and parcel of self-development and it’s not only normal, it’s inescapable.

Difficult, stressful and mentally draining times, are what help our minds grow, adapt and prosper. Bad days are what put the successes into perspective. They give us a memory to look back on, when we finally achieve what we set out to do. They don’t feel like gifts at the time, but it’s exactly what they are. 

After all; how would we know what a good day was, if that’s all that we lived?

Control the controllables

Some of you are living a chaotic existence; paying bills late, forgetting birthdays, neglecting relatives, all transparent symptoms of a disordered lifestyle. Relinquishing the control that you once had over these elements doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the eventual outcome of allowing your list of responsibilities to grow, whilst doing nothing to enhance your mind’s abilities to cope with that demand. 

Everyone has responsibilities and they all require a certain amount of care, consideration and attention. However with so many plates to juggle, how can we possibly stay on top of them all?

First of all, you have to accept that you are not a robot. You are going to forget things, neglect relationships and put your needs before the needs of others. These are facts of life. Once we have accepted this, we can begin to find ways of maximising the amount of control we can have.

What would you think if I said I could significantly reduce your stress levels, just by getting you to write out a daily ‘to do list’?

I’d imagine something along the lines of:

“Check this joker. He reckons he can sort my life out by getting me to write a fucking list.”

Utilising lists will not directly impact the amount of responsibilities you have. However, clearing your mind of less important tasks can alleviate some of the pressures we place on ourselves. Gaining control over your responsibilities isn’t as simple as just remembering them. It’s being able to prioritise and manage your time effectively. Once your mind has been cleared of the inconsequentials, you can begin to home in on what has eluded you thus far.

So, how does this look in real life?

Instead of attempting to cram as much information into your brain as possible, and run around like a headless chicken trying to remember it all, we’re going to list what needs to be done in the order we need to do it. 

Eg:

1. Walk the dog
2. Go food shopping
3. Pick up dry cleaning
4. Kids party @12
5. Visit Grandma
6. Clean the house
7. Sort your tax return
8. Iron clothes for the evening
9. Pick up kids @5
10. Bath the kids
11. Get ready
12. Go out with partner @8

This might seem simple. Why would you need a list to remember your plan for the day? 

As a one off, this would make zero difference in how you cope with the pressures of life. However if you had to remember all of this whilst looking after the kids, working full time, holding down a romantic relationship and fielding calls from relatives insisting they’ve not ‘heard from you in a while’, I guarantee your tone would change. 

This is the elephant in the room when trying to understand how you got to this stage. It’s not the amount of time that these inconsequential additions take up, it’s that the additions keep coming. This is why you constantly feel confused by your seemed lack of ability in distributing your time effectively. It’s not because you can’t cope with the tasks themselves, it’s because you can’t cope with the volume.

Imagine your responsibilities sit on a scale of pressure. To feel the gratification that comes with being in control, your scale must remain in balance. The more responsibilities you have, the more pressure you apply, the more imbalanced your scale becomes. Once your mind reaches capacity, it will be forced to remove anything it can to realign the scale (and you thought that being forgetful was a trait not a choice).

Side note: This is also the reason why people who have very few pressures in their life, have an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. They lack pressure, therefore lack control. The scale works both ways. 

The satisfaction your mind craves is from control. To provide the best conditions for this concept to become reality, you must implement a manual removal of all unnecessary pressures. If something monotonous needs to be done, write it down. Remove the basics and allow yourself to prioritise and manage yourself in a way that provides you with that control. 

If you don’t, your lifestyle will remain in anarchy. 

Comparison Disease

Jealousy is a touchy subject. Most of us experience it regularly and yet pretend we’re immune to it’s ever-growing hold on the world. The feeling that someone else has more than you, is happier than you or is better than you, dominates the psyche of the anxious. This constant bombardment allows no rest from the negativity that invariably arrives as we are constantly viewing our lives as a state of ‘what ifs’. 

I guarantee that the people you feel belittled by would kill for some of the things you have. Yet, our mind has an intriguing way of focusing on the things we don’t have, rather than the things we do. This is ever present and envelops our mind on a daily basis, but it is especially prevalent during our time spent on social media. 

The internet was invented with the idea of connecting the world in a way that information could be passed and shared freely and quickly, dramatically reducing the social and economic gap that had emerged across the globe. However there were side effects that came along with the instantaneous dispense and consume culture that was cultivated. Over the years, this sharing of information has slowly turned from a creative encyclopaedia of factual intelligence to an incomprehensible dick-swinging contest. 

The internet was supposed to be a place of learning, yet it’s regression has taken the shape of a window into the life you wish you had. I highly doubt the inventors of the internet were sitting their on day dot, hoping that one day Mary from Derby could tell her 296 Facebook friends how many expensive holidays she’d been on this year - but here we are. The most fucked up thing about this whole situation is the consumers can see the chaos unfolding in front of them, but attempt nothing to avoid it. 

How many times whilst scrolling through Instagram have you said/thought something like: “I don’t care what you are eating”. Or how about: “May as well delete Facebook, just a load of people I barely know posting stuff about shite I don’t care about.”

Yet we continue to haemorrhage our time and effort into mulling over the goings on of other people’s lives, most of who we don’t even care about. That’s seriously fucked up.

These problems would be alleviated if our brains processed information based solely on logic and reason. However our mind has an unfortunate habit that it just can’t seem to kick - Comparison.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt

In a time were sensitivity runs roughshod and anxiety prevails, comparison is the greatest enemy to one’s happiness. 

Your insatiable hunger for information consumption, coupled with the holy bond between your mind’s worst habits, has resulted in a constant state of comparison. 

“Is my car as nice as his is?"

“I wished I looked like her in that dress.”

“She’s on holiday again? She’s so lucky.”

We realise we’re doing it and we understand that we have to stop, but like an addict hooked on their town’s most stepped on substance, we just can’t seem to put down the pipe. 

We’re consumed with consuming. It’s taken over us like a viral infection takes over it’s host. It’s our default setting, our return to balance, our homeostasis. 

There are huge portions of your life that are not only under appreciated, but completely ignored. Every single relationship you hold dear is one day closer to ending whilst you sit there comparing. Your kids are one day closer to leaving home, your partner is one day closer to giving up hope, and your parents are one day closer to being laid out in a box. All whilst you sit there contemplating what you could have, instead of what you do.

When asked about the subject of jealousy in terms of wanting what somebody else had, Jamie Alderton had this to say:

“If you wouldn’t swap your entire life with someone else’s, then why feel jealous?”

If you wish it were you going on 3 holidays a year instead of Mary, would you be willing to give up your kids to get there?

If you wish you could have as good a relationship as Steve and Jane, would you swap your parents for their’s to achieve that?

If you wish you could look as good in that dress as Sarah does, would you be willing to divorce your husband to get there?

I think not. There’s a good chance that if you sit down to consider what you find important in life, that you already have the majority of those things sitting right in front of you. You’re just that busy comparing the inconsequential details that you can’t see the wood for the trees.

Happiness is wanting what you already have. So put down your fucking phone and appreciate it, because one day it will all be taken away.

You have to be selfish to be selfless

Confused already? I don’t blame you. Since an early age, we’ve been taught that being selfish is a negative trait. Now, I’m not here to say that we should strive to be impulsively selfish regardless of the consequences or circumstances. I’m suggesting that, as with the majority of other behavioural concepts, there is a grey area that we should strive to live within. In fact, not only should we be looking to exist between these two poles, we should be erring on the side of selfishness.

Negative reactions enforce negative connotations

Here’s a hypothetical scenario that will highlight why we find it so difficult to be selfish…

Your recent actions have not only affected you, but the people surrounding you. One of the members of that group takes umbrage with your choices, and reveals their distaste. It may go down like so:

“Why have you said/done that? That is so selfish.” 

How would that make you feel?

I’m guessing a number of negative emotions/thoughts would be begin to surface. These sorts of confrontations tend to lead to conclusions such as:

“Oh no. I’ve done/said something without taking into the consideration how it could effect those around me. What an awful person I am.” 

This is completely normal. You would have to be a complete narcissist to constantly ignore the gripes of those around you, especially when it was your actions that lead them to feel this way. However, reacting in this manner puts a certain expectation on that group’s ability to identify what true selfish behaviour is. This is the grey area I was talking about earlier. 

The selfishness spectrum

Now that you have a grasp on why we find it so difficult to be selfish, let’s delve into the reasoning behind people’s struggle to contextualise the actions of those around them.

The majority of concepts lie on the spectrum. Left is white, right is black with a grey area separates the two. So why when it comes to the topic of selfishness do we think in terms of black and white, instead of the vast area of grey that divides them?

As society’s need for extremist division rises, so do the illusions surrounding the life lessons that invariably impregnate our psyche. In other words, our need to slot people into categories has become so integral to the way we judge others, that people must fall into a category for the situation to be understood. This craving for identifiable viewpoints which we can use to brand one another has generated misconceptions when identifying selfishness in others (or even selflessness, for that matter).

For most of us, the first experience of this happens at a young age. We are taught from as early as we can understand, that sharing things such as; toys, food, games, etc, is the appropriate way to behave. If a child fails to grasp this concept, and acts in an improper and possibly selfish manner, it is seen as the responsibility of the parent to correct the child. This creates the most primitive of correlations in a child’s mind. Not sharing is bad, sharing is good. Or, selfishness is bad, selflessness is good.

The mind of a child would struggle to think in more detail than this, but as adults our brains should be able to delve into the complexities of a situation and judge accordingly, right?

Wrong.

Here is where the generationally recycled life lesson comes back to bite us on the proverbial arse. The concept is forced with such validity, that people are taking these beliefs into adulthood. This wouldn’t be an issue if our brain allowed us to develop these lessons by adding situational context. However, the way we think and therefore judge a situation, tends to be an outcome of the environment in which we spend our time. Meaning, if you spend all your time frantically assigning people into categories during your day-to-day life, how could you begin to add rational context to your thought process?

Try this on for size. 

Your sibling has dinner plans with their partner, but has run into trouble as their normal babysitter has cancelled due to ill health. You are asked if you can look after your siblings children for the night, whilst your sibling and their partner go out for the meal. You have prior commitments with a friend, and therefore cannot help.

If your sibling was to react without rational thought, they would deem you as selfish and uncharitable in their time of need. However applying context to the situation allows the sibling to realise that it isn’t your fault that this situation has arisen, and that you probably would have helped if you hadn’t already made plans.

This example highlights the need to alter our own mindset, rather than blaming our deficiencies on the society we have created. Adding context to situations based on the facts that we are presented with, should be something that we actively pursue. After all, this constant pigeon holing isn’t just preventing you from growing into a fully functioning adult who is able to rationalise, it is cultivating a society in which people are marginalised for being ‘different’.

The selfishness paradox

After gaining an understanding for our reasons for avoiding selfishness and our abilities to judge situations based on their nuances, we have arrived at the epicentre of the problem. The belief we have established is that selfishness is do things to benefit oneself. Whilst selfless people do things to benefit others. The truth is slightly different. 

To be truly selfless you must possess the capabilities to be able to have a positive impact on a person’s life. These capabilities will include things like; energy, experience and positivity itself. For example, if someone is struggling to be consistently positive, it is unlikely that a downbeat relative would be of any assistance.

As I spoke about on a previous post, relieving your mind of it’s own issues is paramount to a clear and positive mindset (an essential aspect of selflessness). The byproducts of this mindset (knowledge, experience and time), provide you with a foundation to be able to help those around you to the best of your ability. Meaning not only is putting your needs before others going to help YOU in the long run, it will allow you to be in a position to help OTHERS. 

If you are your number one priority in life, the people directly surrounding you will feel the benefits from that. This comes as a consequence of your happiness. If you are happy, positive and able to help, you will find that the attitudes of the people surrounding you will follow suit. 

The majority of people follow the example set by others, especially when it seems like that person has got their shit together. This kind of person (successful, mentally and physically healthy, fun to be around and most importantly happy) will have made choices in their life that society would deem ‘selfish’. This is exactly why selfishness isn’t inherently a negative trait to hold. In fact it’s possibly the most integral trait one could hold.

Your success is predicated on your ability to be selfish in key moments. Your happiness is dependent on how you find the answers to your own problems and needs before assisting others. You can’t be happy without being selfish, and you can’t be selfless without being selfish. 

So, the next time your actions are deemed to be selfish, ask yourself:

• Does this person understand that putting myself first will invariably allow me to help others?
• Is this person applying context to the situation and judging my actions accordingly?

If both or either of these questions result in a no, I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about the outcome. To be selfish is a positive step toward being exactly the type of person you want to be, you just have to take it. After all, as you’ve continuously heard from flight attendants all around the world;

"Only when you have secured your own mask, should you attend to children or other passengers.”

You do you

We’ve all heard this before, right? Mostly from Fiat 500 driving, self empowered young women on the majority of social media platforms. It tends to be hollered as a form of superficial quip, gesticulating support for a close friend’s actions or decisions. But let’s side step that particular landmine for now, and focus on the words themselves.

You do you. It could be taken a number of ways. 

To concentrate on ones own progress, instead of the progress of others?

To look after your self interests because if you don’t, who will?

To promote self worth in an otherwise under appreciated individual?

I’m sure there’s plenty of other meanings, but we’re going to stick to one in particular.

Concentrate on solving your own issues, not the issues of others

Have you ever done something just to please someone else? I don’t mean offering to take the bins out, or buying a gift for your better half. I mean dropping all of your wants, all of your needs, all of your desires, just to make someone else happy? I’m guessing the majority of you have (even if it was just the once). Let’s visit that feeling for a second. 

How did it go for you? 

Did you get pleasure out of it? 

Did it make your life better?

Fuck, did it even make that person happy? 

At best, it may have brought that person a short-lived feeling of gratitude or relief that they no longer had to face this particular problem. Do you know why this is short lived, and can even sometimes feel under appreciated? 

It’s because you dropping everything you believe in to please someone else, not only doesn’t make any sense to you (now that you’re sat there thinking about it), but it doesn’t make any sense to the person you’re doing it for either. 

Allow me to explain.

Creatures who crave problem solving

Here I’m going to lay the groundwork for the processes that one can go through when attempting to take responsibility for the actions/decisions of others - especially in terms of problem solving. 

Example: You get some flatpack coffee table/sideboard bullshit from Ikea. What’s the first thing you do, when all the pieces are laid out in front of you? You throw the instructions to the side, and have a crack at putting it together. Sure, following the instructions of how to build this particular Swedish jigsaw would save you time, and make your life a whole lot easier. Still, it’s just not the same, is it?

Let’s relate this to something a little closer to home than Scandinavian furniture. You come across a problem in your personal life. Perhaps it feels like your boss is singling you out for criticism. Perhaps your best friend has bailed on some plans that you were really looking forward to. Perhaps, despite studying relatively hard, you still failed a recent exam. What is the first thing you do when confronted with these or similar issues? 

Whether it is conscious or not, your mind will attempt to solve the riddle, and come to a conclusion on what the next course of action should be. 

Side note : Not all people are like this. Some may cast aside any responsibility for their problems as soon as they encounter them. People you and I would refer to as, narcissists. We’ve all met them. Those people who believe themselves to be above the inconveniences of the rest of the world. People who proceed to funnel all of their problems downstream, for someone with less self-privilege to fix. Although this post isn’t about narcissists, I will say this:

Identify and remove these people from your life. No explanations, no apologies. 

These people are happiness vacuums, ready to suffocate everyone they come into contact with, 

and should be avoided without exception.   

But, let’s assume for now that we’re not narcissistic in nature, and possess the natural urge to fix our own problems. 

What happens when our mind comes back empty? If you can’t ‘do you’, what is the solution? 

You may ask a close friend or relative for their assistance. You may seek out answers from your preferred search engine. You may even throw caution to the wind, and write in to one of the many ‘help me, my life is fucked’ columns in your chosen tabloid newspaper/magazine. There are correlations with these reactions, but what is it?

Despite the fact that you’re asking for a helping hand, you are NOT asking for your problems to be fixed for you. You still want to ‘do you’, but now require a small amount of assistance. 

This is the part where the respondent (henceforth known as the facilitator) has a decision to make. They either attempt to guide you (the troubled) onto the path they may have chosen, therefore narrowing your options in terms of appropriate actions to rectify your issue. Or, they fix the problem for you. 

When choosing the latter, a never ending cycle of relationship DIY begins. The facilitator feels the urge to service the troubled in a bid to alter their happiness. I call this, ‘The Hero Effect’. This effect provides the foundation for the majority of unhealthy relationships, and is a key driver toward the amount of progress an individual will make. In other words;

How can ‘you do you’ when you are expending all of your energy on the problems of others, and how can they do them when you are relieving them of that responsibility. 

The Hero Effect

A feeling of satisfaction that an individual achieves by solving the problems/issues of someone close to them.

The Hero Effect is detrimental for a number of reasons:

1. The facilitator is failing to allow the troubled to satisfy their urge to problem solve. This will cause the troubled to feel unconsciously dissatisfied.

2. Whilst enabling the needs of the troubled, the facilitator’s issues will go unsolved. This will result in a negative headspace for the facilitator, forcing him/her to look for an escape from that negativity.

3. Upon resolving the issue offered up by the troubled, the facilitator will feel short term satisfaction. This will trigger a recycling of past behaviours in a bid to relive that fleeting feeling. Not only does this continue the facilitator’s cycle of distraction, it also provides the escape from their self-constructed cell of negativity.

4. Over a period of time, the facilitator’s plights will reach capacity. Not only will the action required to begin solving their issues feel monumental, but they will most likely be on the brink of clinical depression. This forces the facilitator further into the distraction cycle, in the hope that contributing to someone else’s happiness will fulfil their own.

As you can see, ‘You do you’ is an extremely difficult motto to live by when you expend all of your time, effort and energy on the problems of another. But not only that, the word cycle infers exactly the reason why these behaviours lead to clinical depression - it’s continuous.

Scenario

Boy gets mad because he has a problem.

Girl feels responsible for the happiness of the boy.

Girl then goes out of her way to fix the problem for the boy.

Girl fixes the problem and feels relieved that the boy is now ‘happy’. 

Boy comes across next problem.

Repeat.

That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to this particular behavioural flaw. The fact that you’re putting someone else’s happiness before your own is merely the tip of the iceberg. The submerged-portion is that once you solve/fix/remove that first problem, you’re already staring into the eyes of the next.

In his book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life’, author Mark Manson states:

"Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another."

So not only are you spiralling into a pit of misery - feeling like your life and aspirations are going down the tube - but the person who’s happiness you put before your own is producing problems on mass. This results in you working 24 hour shifts in their factory of meaningless servitude, hoping you’ll be able to put food (the endorphins transmitted through satisfaction) on the table (the neurons in which the endorphins are transmitted). 

Help me, my life is fucked

Now that you’ve got your head around the crux of the matter, you may begin to ask - I want to do me, but how do I break the cycle?

Scenario

Girl has a problem.

Boy enquires how he can help.

Girl explains her problem.

Boys listens, empathises, and offers solutions that the girl could put into action.

Girl chooses one of the options to fix her problem (or goes in a different direction entirely).

Girl eventually overcomes, solves or moves past her problem.

In this instance, the boy has aided the girl without the need to fix the problem himself. Leaving both parties satisfied with the outcome. 

This method may seem awkward at first, especially if you attempt to implement it into a relationship where the status quo has already been established. But you will not continue to grow by incessantly fixing the problems of others. In fact, your emotions will bounce from fleeting satisfaction to self loathing like clockwork. 

Not only will anxiety become your base emotion, it will become your identity. People who get shit done on a daily basis, were not born with that trait already instilled in their personality. It was conceived there through consistent behaviours contributing to that end. 

A person who eats well and exercises regularly was not born with this already programmed into their psyche. It took long term periods of committed action and endurance to implement those base behaviours. This then allows that person to see this as part of themselves, as part of their make up, as part of their identity. 

They did them, now you need to do you, without apology. Create your identity, establish your behaviours, be selfish. Because, as you’ll see in a future post, selfishness and selflessness are more alike than you think.