Dan502

"is over-committing yourself to acquire a result, setting yourself up for failure?" It's not clear because we don't know how you're over-committing yourself, in what way, why, or what constitutes failure. Should you work 80 hours a week or go to the gym 5 hours a day? If you want to, sure. Maybe you'll fail. Maybe you'll succeed. It might be risky. You might enjoy it for a while. I can't tell. Start by working for 35 hours a week and going to the gym twice a week and if you like it, do more. I'd probably delete this response if I could as I'm not sure if it's helpful but this was what I thought.

@7thLetter I don't know, why are you using extreme manipulation, what do you mean by that? How do you feel about it? What're the results? What're the consequences? Do you need to do it? Why do you need to do it? How long do you need to do it for? To what extent do you need to do it? Etc.

I used to operate on dying companies. Now I resurrect dead ones. I had a junior role at one of the big audit firms but found it too much, took a year out, wrote a book, then took an even more junior job in the UK civil service. Back when I was looking for work, I created a belief that once I found a steady job, I might train to become a psychotherapist. I haven't really pursued it, though.

One idea might be to get some metaphysics from the anime. Find a character you identify with and watch the fall and rise through a challenging situation. Maybe you can even find someone dealing with sadness from the past while working on theirself. Then look for a way to overlay that onto your own situation. The mindfulness would be finding a way not to get completely sucked into the anime. Even if you just use it to help you embrace present circumstances.

2005 I leave uni with a business degree. I figure if I can understand businesses, I can help them solve problems and make money. I like the idea of becoming a management consultant. Until I find out the hours are long and there aren’t many entry-level jobs. I have an overdraft. Because last year I had no money and I wanted to go skiing, so I got an overdraft. I decide to get some temp work. I find a job stapling bits of wrapping paper together in a warehouse. I do the wrapping paper job for a couple of weeks until it ends. I feel stressed and disappointed in myself for not trying harder to find better work. I get a job packing data sticks in another warehouse. It’s better than the previous job. I get asked to test some graphics cards. I fry the graphics cards because I’m tired and not concentrating properly. I get asked to go back to packing data sticks. I maintain an active social life with the friends I made while I was at school. I hang out with my friends three to four times a week. I live at home to save money. The data sticks job ends. My dad tells me I should become an investment banker. I go and see a hedge fund manager who lives down our road to get experience. I don’t really understand what he’s talking about so I stop seeing him. I call a load of London temp agencies. I get some data entry work for two weeks at a large Indian bank. I’m the only non-Indian guy in the office, apart from one other guy. When the temp job ends, I call more agencies. I get a contract for some admin work, refunding fraud victims at a publishing company. I attend a couple of interviews during lunchbreaks and before work. I take an online IQ test on my lunchbreak and score 136. I buy the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and spend a lot of time playing it. 2006 After nine months, the admin contract ends. I quickly get a temp-to-perm job as an expenses clerk at a financial services firm. I start playing six-a-side football on Monday nights. For some reason I find the job difficult and don’t get on with the people. After three months I’m told to leave. I get back in touch with various temp agencies. One of them gets me an interview at the large audit firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I attend the interview and I’m offered the job. I find the work at PwC stressful. I work at least an hour of overtime every day. I write in my diary that my days in this job are numbered. 2007 I continue socialising outside of work, going to the pub three to four times a week. I continue playing six-a-side football on Monday nights. I think about work a lot and keep writing in my diary that I have a lot to do. My three month review at work goes well. I dig out my rollerblades and go skating around London for two hours. I lie on my bedroom floor and cry from work-related stress. I become angry about something at work and break my phone in half. I get made permanent at work. I buy a new stereo and a 42“ plasma TV. I discover the videogame World of Warcraft and play it a lot. I start working out how many hours I can playing Warcraft in my free time. I continue feeling stressed about work and make mistakes. Our six-a-side football team does well and finishes high in the league. I attend a work team-building day at the Emirates stadium. 2008 I continue socialising, roughly three times a week. I make six vague new year’s resolutions but make no effort to track them. I reach level sixty in Warcraft. I continue to find work stressful. I get angry about work and break my phone and security pass, then throw away my keys. It’s the third phone I’ve broken in anger since joining PwC. I replace my phone, my security pass and my keys. I briefly consider looking for another job but don’t do anything about it. I book a meeting with HR but then cancel it and book a holiday to New York instead. I paint my bedroom yellow. I get food poisoning in New York. I alternate between visiting tourist attractions and being ill. I get back from New York. The world economy collapses. I get sent to Lehman Brothers in Canary Wharf to work on the insolvency. I get to make lists of bankers that I think should keep their jobs. I stay up ‘til 2am making a graph of the bank’s intercompany debt. A reporter asks me for comments on my way home from work. I decline. I start tracking in my diary how much exercise I get and how much fruit I eat. I return back to the London Bridge office and start reviewing large insurance deals at work. I find my new role more interesting and less stressful than the administrative work was. 2009 I come up with ten categories under which a person could assess how successful their life is. I regularly go out and run one or two miles for exercise. I start to think I’m getting more heart palpitations than usual and worry about my health. I see a doctor, who tells me I’m fine. I meet an actuary and date her for like a month. The actuary breaks up with me. Getting dumped makes me feel insecure and inadequate. I resolve to move out of my parents house and start studying insurance. I go on holiday to Rome with a few friends. I study for one module of an insurance qualification. I take two weeks off work and spend them studying and playing Warcraft. I sit an exam and get a certificate. I try studying for another insurance module. I get angry, throw the insurance book across the room and break my TV remote. I decide to stop studying insurance. I take a Mensa home IQ test and score 148. Mensa invite me to sit a supervised test. I don’t bother attending. I continue to track my exercise, my fruit consumption and other things. 2010 I continue to socialise, going to the pub with friends on average three times a week. I go skiing in Austria for a week. I visit Madrid for a long weekend. A senior manager I work with says she’ll support me if I go for a promotion. I canvass support from other colleagues and get promoted. I continue playing Warcraft a lot. I go on holiday alone to Toronto for a week. I find out a kid from my primary school is now a gambling addict. I frequently work evenings and weekends. Sometimes I go out and run five miles during the evening or weekend. 2011 I come across Tony Robbins while browsing through videos on YouTube. My sisters’ friends put a post on Facebook saying they’re looking for a housemate. I move out of my parents’ house and in with my sisters’ friends in East Dulwich. I run from my new house to the Shard and back. I stop playing Warcraft. I play Mario Kart and sing karaoke with my housemates. I draw pictures on the whiteboard in the dining room. I get some Tony Robbins CDs, invest in a bond and sign up to a 10k run. I complete the 10k run. I get up early and go for a walk every day for a month. I run fifteen miles and sign up to a marathon next year. I download the dating app Plenty of Fish. I run twenty miles. I discover TED talks and watch a bunch of them. I discover Gary Vaynerchuk through his TED talk and start following him. I visit Ikea and buy a plant for my room along with a nice red blanket. 2012 I make a resolution to go to bed earlier this year. I don’t follow through on it. I start getting into work at 8:15am rather than 9am, to get more done. I increase the volume of networking events that I attend after work. I go on holiday to Vegas with my family for my mother’s 50th birthday. I catch gastroenteritis, become dehydrated and take a week off work. I go through a two month phase of making brownies. I perfect my brownie recipe and share it with friends. I read a third of the Companies Act 2006. I run most of the Edinburgh marathon but walk the last two miles. My job becomes more administrative. I get bored and ask for a change. I get sent back to Canary Wharf on secondment to the Lehman Client Money team. I feel like the secondment is a big change. I get kind of stressed. I notice that I’m frequently staying up late and turning up to work tired. I attend an intense, interactive insolvency simulation course. I decide that I prefer “back office” to “front line” insolvency work. I date a Spanish girl almost daily for a week. She speaks very little English. I book a trip to the Polish Tatra mountains and go walking there alone for a week. My parents get divorced. I don’t feel like it affects me. I date a couple of other women. My role on the Lehman secondment becomes more complex. I find it hard. 2013 I go on a date with a 19 year old. My boss discovers I suck at complex financial reporting. Especially when I’m tired. I do some good regulatory work though. I talk to a few people and arrange another secondment for myself back at PwC. Our team’s HR director finds out about the secondment. He says I probably shouldn’t just arrange secondments for myself without telling HR. He agrees to it though. I start working in a new team. I find the work hard and the people insular. I create a matrix of all of my feedback at work from 2006 to 2012. I continue dating various people. I get terrible feedback from a Lehman manager and tear the curtains off my wall. I screw up a project handover and get thrown off the project. I stick around in the team for a few weeks before leaving and help to sell and off-license. There’s a leak at the off-license which requires a plumber to fix it. I can’t find a plumber who takes corporate Amex so I pay the £358 fee myself. I talk to my people manager about moving back to my old team. He shows me a job spec. It looks too difficult but I take it anyway. Outside work, I binge-watch Netflix, binge-eat junk food and often stay up late. I realise that at some point I might have to leave PwC and take a huge pay cut. I inadvertently end up dating women from quite a few different countries. I chat online a lot to a woman who lives in Brasil, who I never meet. I book a solo trip to Turkey but oversleep and have to reschedule the flight. I meet a Turkish paragliding instructor who notices how lost I am The instructor shows me a photo of a guru and suggests I look him up. On the plane home, I read the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle By this point I’m using several dating apps. I spend three days in a very untidy council flat with a woman in her mid forties. The woman shows me an OSHO video. He looks like the guru from the photo in Turkey. I watch quite a few videos of OSHO on YouTube. I catch a train to Grantham in Lincolnshire for a date. I chat to women online so much that I feel overwhelmed and have to speak to a counsellor. I go for a drink with my boss, which I enjoy as I have a crush on her. 2014 I make several resolutions and do nothing about them. I feel like a loser for not having a career, a house, a car or a girlfriend. I experience an ususual spell of happiness that lasts three days. Sometimes I take the train aimlessly into the city and walk around. I stay up late and am often tired. I eat a lot of junk food. I download Tinder. I sort of date a Lithuanian girl for nine months. I start writing a book about myself. I turn thirty and complete a Monopoly board pub crawl. I continue dating. I visit Kerala in southern India for my housemates’s wedding. My boss tells me I’ll be “destroyed” in this year’s apprasial unless I improve. When the appraisal comes, she refuses to give me a rating. The moderators don’t know what to make of this. They average out my ratings from other projects. I get a reasonable result overall. I start overseeing and editing a technical newsletter at work and write several articles. I start working on another project. Several months in, my boss takes me into a room at 6pm on a Friday. He explains I’m not performing well enough. I try to reason with him. He disagrees. I approach another manager at work for advice on managing my workload. She says to pretend the tasks are ants and elephants and that I have to kill them all. When I press her, she admits she doesn’t really know how she manages her work. I write in my diary that my days in this job are numbered. 2015 PwC issue us all with the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath I sit down one Saturday morning, order a pizza and take the StrengthsFinder test. The questions are all situation-independent so I score straight down the middle. The result is that the online algorithm can’t score my test. I read through the book myself and pick out what I think my top strengths are. I start thinking about attributes that I have in common with each of my parents. I sketch out an early draft of my attributional family tree. I read The Road Less Travelled by Scott Peck. I slowly stop socialising apart from the occasional drink with a friend. I get given a 4 rating at work, which is the lowest rating. I take a day off work to de-stress. I read Sapiens by Yuvah Noah Harari. I go on holiay alone to Latvia for a week. I become responsible for another team newsletter at work. I get moved on to working on the administration of a Lehman group company. I make mistakes and fail to take enough responsibility on the project. I watch Shelly Kagan’s open Yale undergraduate philosophy module on Death. I read an article containing Gurdjieff’s indelible advices to his daughter. I visit the PwC careers service to learn more about other departments. I discover the messaging therapy website 7 Cups of Tea and become a listener. 2016 I develop uncontrollable anxiety and start visiting a psychotherapist weekly. Within weeks I am more emotionally stable. I continue seeing the therapist. I write an article about Blockchain for the team that I work in. My therapist says I may be suffering from a lack of relationships. My landlord falls ill. My housemates and I are given notice to move out. I listen to an audiobook of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I continue dating various women. I move in with three strangers on The Isle of Dogs. I feel nervous about interacting with my new housemates. I live off takeaways for two months rather than using the shared kitchen. I receive a 4 rating at work for the second year in a row and am issued a written warning. I attend a disciplinary meeting with three senior people. I’m put on report for a second time at work. I work even longer hours and sometimes hide on the seventh floor to work extra overtime. Outside work, I discover an online Christian chat room. I sometimes visit the chat room to interface between believers and nonbelievers. My boss rants at me for 45 mins about some letters. I spend 3 hours trying to deal with the rant and then give up and go home. I hand in my notice at work. I write a ten page account of why I’m leaving, covering the last five years. I start dating a woman called Hetal. My old boss gives me the book Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. After ten years at PwC, I leave the firm. 2017 I update my LinkedIn profile and add contacts. I try to start looking for work but don’t feel ready. I feel uncomfortable being in a relationship and break up with Hetal. I spend a month playing World of Warcraft. I publish fifteen short stories on the writing website Medium. I start looking at jobs and register with lots of agencies. A CEO at a startup invites me to an interview because he likes my blog. I spend on average one or two hours a day job searching. I apply for over a hundred training jobs. Hetal gets in touch. We meet twice, then part ways again. I discover Leo Gura and Teal Swan and watch some of their YouTube videos. I spend a month applying for a training job at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. I start the job and realise I’m uncomfortable single-handedly arranging large training events. When work finishes, I go back into the office to try and understand things. I lie around drinking cans of beer in the park trying not to be stressed. I talk to HR about how I feel and resign after little more than a week. I start cycling along the canals and continue writing on Medium. I apply for over a hundred writing and editing jobs. I make a website for my mother’s boyfriend. I visit two psychologists to see if I have any diagnosable conditions or disorders. I try several strategies to cope with the noise my housemates make after 10pm. I read From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Dan Dennett. I watch the film Into The Wild about the life and death of Chris McCandless. I write several short articles using the content mill Copify. I live for a week on tinned curry and frozen vegetables. My therapist suggests I see a life coach. I buy a printer and a pack of plain A4 paper. I spend a week putting together a folder of information about myself. I catch a cold and create a sauna by sellotaping the kettle switch on for thirty minutes. I start volunteering for a couple of hours a week at a mental health charity. I spend a month searching for and meeting with various life coaches. I choose a coach. Her name is Sarah. We meet in Clapham. I start blogging daily and spend a lot of time working on the blog. I divide my time up between blogging and working on the coaching exercises. I attend a talk about the afterlife at Watkins bookshop. I attend a conference at Google on marketing tools for non-profits. The noise from my housemates at night becomes unbearable. I become extremely tired and irritable. I stay up until 3am most nights and walk around Canary Wharf to avoid my housemates. I decide to move out and put all of my time and energy into house hunting for a month. I continue blogging daily and watch the film The Martian. I spend a night at an Air B&B in Neasden to get a good night’s sleep. I discover and start following Jordan Peterson. Miraculously, I find a room for rent on the same road that I used to live on in East Dulwich. I interview for a room along with another guy. The landlord chooses me. I sell lots of my posessions. I leave the Isle of Dogs suddenly. I move back to East Dulwich. I make a list of forty recruiters and spend a day calling them from sunrise to sunset. 2018 I continue with the career coaching exercises. I take long walks to try and sleep better. It doesn’t really work. I make more calls to recruiters and send them my CV. I focus on searching for marketing or communications jobs that involve writing. I commute to the Barbican and the Ideas Store at Canary Wharf to use their free Wi-Fi. I often think glumly about how I wound up unemployed and living in someone’s loft at 33. I meet an ex-housemate who’s unhappy at work and pretend to be his career coach. I participate in a research study about people with leaky heart valves. I attend an open evening at Birkbeck about studying psychology. I apply for a part-time job as a university note-taker for disabled students. I attend a test for the job by phone but when I dial in, all I hear is a newscast. I take notes on the newscast. The recruiter is impressed and gives me the job anyway. I start note-taking for an IT student at a University of London campus near Whitechapel. I watch Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning psychology lectures on YouTube. I meet up with Hetal for a drink. It snows heavily. I enjoy this very much and walk home in it. I do a good job of balancing the note-taking work with looking for jobs. I take on another student, who reads Maths and Economics. I stop receiving long emails each day from Hetal. I stop writing a daily blog after eight months. My grandad passes away and I attend his funeral and burial in Durham. The note-taking job finishes for Easter, with only revision lectures afterwards. I attend an interview for a communications job at the Royal College of Surgeons. The college says they like me but they’re putting the job itself on hold. I start looking for administrative temporary work and meet with several agencies. An agency gets me an interview at the Government Legal Department in Croydon. I write From Balls of Dust, a story on Medium about the evolution of consciousness. I start working in Croydon. I find the people friendly and supportive. The toilet in my room leaks so I stop using it for seven months. I continue building up the folder of information about myself that I started last year. I start to feel calmer in general than I have been since about 2012. Possibly ever. I make a smaller folder about the job I’m doing, containing all kinds of relevant information. I take several personality tests. I review and compare them. I go out and cycle really far, then spontaneously get drunk and hug a stranger. I start recording my thoughts on my phone. I copy the thoughts from the phone to an Excel spreadsheet monthly and categorise them. I create a collection of self-help concepts and keep it on my phone for reference. I buy a new gaming laptop and start playing World of Warcraft again. I apply for a permanent job in the team that I work in. I score 98% on the verbal reasoning test but fail the judgement test. I continue playing Warcraft and practising the judgement test. - End of 2018 -

When an unintelligent person wants to end a discussion, they'll use a phrase like "It's a free country", "I'm entitled to my opinion" or "Let's agree to disagree". Such people have their uses but you won't learn much from them. And yes, they do use it as an excuse to stop thinking.

I liked EQ 2.0 because it is full of examples and comparisons of real-life situations and how emotionally unintelligent and intelligent people might handle them. I tend to categorise my own emotions into six groups: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, shame and disgust. There are many subtleties within each group.

@Norbert Lennartz I've been agonising over your comments for about an hour now. I'm looking forward to the conscious politics content. I expect Leo will do some good research and I've no doubt he will give God his due.

It's really interesting that you're not sure what's causing the suffering. Are you eating enough and the right kind of foods while you're at work? Is the temperature in the office and ventilation consistent? Are there any circumstances at all that are different when you have bad days? Does it happen at a certain time of day? The amygdala is the part of the brain that's associative but not in a logical way so one possibility is that something seemingly normal and unknown is triggering this however sometimes with a bit of detective work, it can be solved. And then there's my initial reaction, which was to write "You're suffering at work and you think that's unusual? Dude, have you never worked before? :)" I'm just kidding with this last point although you never know.

Thanks, friend

I hope the therapy goes well.

I would ask why you worry so much about getting cancer. I hear that sometimes the mind can create health fears as a way of subconsciously dealing with something entirely different. However unlikely and counter-intuitive that may seem. To the extent that you feel able to apply a different perspective to a situation or a thought, what perspective you apply (e.g. the "it's a test" perspective) seems up to you.

If a child expects to catch a glimpse of Santa at Christmas, he or she may be disappointed to find out Santa isn't real. We can grow out of our expectations.

Guacamole is pure devilry!

I suppose from a survival perspective, energy is a word we use to communicate the sense that something is in a state or configuration that may facilitate processes that enhance our survival.

It's true that self-actualizing could be something that a person might try and get into in order to support their ego, either consciously or unconsciously. With the marathon analogy, I was trying to explain that if a person wants to grow and develop, they generally have to put in some work. And that work is self-actualization. I suppose if a person tried to run a marathon and failed for whatever reason, or succeeded but didn't feel fulfilled, or was feeling philosophical, or arrived at some profound insight, then they might conclude that the experience was in some sense bullshit. @Nahm that's a lovely message you just posted by the way.

In the world right now, there are thousands of people who have the goal of running a marathon. Is marathon training bullshit? Have you seen Leo's video "Mankind is the bulshitting animal"?

Absence of human connection was the thing that stood out for me most in your story. I like what @Truth Addict wrote: "Ultimately, I think you will have to find a job that doesn't bore you, probably start with a job that is easy and simple, and from there on, you let life guide you."

Really really difficult. Really difficult. - Sometimes focus on the work not the people although when focusing on the people, try to understand why they are the way they are - Form strategic alliances if possible - Plan your escape - Get clear on how you got there - When working with an angry person, if you bring awareness to the interaction itself, it's possible to develop the ability to catch lightening bolts like Yoda does when he fights Dooku (metaphorically speaking).

When it comes to giving advice, I suppose one way would be to take a more therapeutic or coaching style approach and to ask questions or offer up suggestions rather than giving actual advice. This is just a suggestion! I'm probably coming at this from quite a green angle. I've just realised the question was mainly about language. I think it's a good point. Hard to completely eradicate. I guess forum users and mods can look out for it. And gently check what sort of answer people are looking for.

Really glad you're sharing these summaries

You tell her that's a good question can I answer it directly with you after the talk? With an added wink for charm

Have you ever taken an autism spectrum test? You can find them online for free. I'm not saying you might be autistic, I'm just wondering what you'd score. I could be way off with this comment, it was just my initial reaction. Or maybe try a personality test. I'll assume your IQ is fine since, for one thing, you write well. Also are you tired a lot or anything like that? Any lethargy, apathy, trauma, stress? I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this.

1) That I'm the most important thing in the world 2) That I will probably suffer horribly and die one day 3) That my life is unfair in some ways 4) That I'm, potentially irrepairably, inadequate in some ways, even by my own standards and that I have an uncompromising dark side 5) That the pursuit of certain comforts and pleasures are desirable/necessary/worth it. 6) That some of the pleasures I pursue bring too much shame and judgement to be mentioned in public. 7) That I'm happier these days than I've ever been 8) That sometimes I can help people 9) That physical things exist 10) That I prefer cats to dogs in general 11) That I don't know what colour is

When a child is five, the parent might say "this is how to tie a shoe" and show the child an easy knot. When the child is seven, the parent might say "this is how to tie a shoe" and show the child a harder knot. Was the parent lying to the five year old? In a way, yes and no but it's the wrong question. The right question is whether they were telling the right kind of truth at the right time, which is whatever is most loving and helpful.