Long Rant About Habits, Motivation and Trauma

[Yonkon]

I wrote this spontaneously on 4chan and thought maybe you guys could extract some value from it. It's a lengthy rant with many typos, but it felt good to let it all out.

 

ok, here is my advice. You need to focus, and focus only on one thing. Only one thing at a time, otherwise you will crash and fail. The question is, of course, on what do you focus on?

You have a shitload of options, but in my opinion it all boils down to building good habits. Habits will save your life, habits will make everything easier. You basically are your habits, have shit habits, have a shit life and so on. The two next questions of course, how do you build habits and wich habit do you choose? The first one is easy: Do one thing everyday till it becomes so natural for you that it feels like taking a shit or brushing your teeth - with no resistance to it at all. The problem is, your mind and body don't want that. They want to maintain homoeostasis (google it, it's crazy stuff). So you will be pulled back, you will slack of, don't do the thing thats good for you, you will fail. But only if you focus on more than one thing at a time. Here is the easy way to build a good habbit: do it as the FIRT THING in the morning, as soon as you possibly can. There is no other way. In the morning you have willpower overload, in the evening you are depleted. If you don't start your day with the new habit you want to implement, you will fail. Do this for many days. For some it takes 30 days, for some it takes a 4 months to get your habit really "ingrained" in your mind. As soon as the habit get's fixed, it belongs to you and it's crazy hard to lose it again (look at your bad habits, you know how hard it is to drop them) When one good habit becomes part of your identity, it will stay and push you through life. Results will build on each other, creates a Snowball effect. More on that soon.

Next Up: Wich Habits to choose.

 

"Wich habit is the best habit?" This question will change everything . Ask yourself, wich one thing, when done every single day of my life, will bring me the most reward over time? This is such an inspiring question for me. For me it's meditation. For you it could be journaling, working out, creating art, reading for one hour, going into nature, or planning and visioning your future life. Do it once every two weeks and it will be nice, do it every day for the next 30 years and it will violently shake up your trist life. Just Imagine what would happen in the next 30 years if you stick to your habit and master it and what would happen if you stay the same old you in the next 30 years? Realy imagine it, take 5 minutes for both scenarios, really feel those both very real possible futures for you. To realy find the best habit for you, just try stuff out. Without the intention to build a habit around it but to have fun and find something authentic for yourself. I did soccer, tennis, deep sea diving, video games, hiking, video animation and drawing until i found my true passion: creating electronic music. You have to try stuff out. Find the one thing you see the most value in - maybe it's reading nonfiction books about psychology i don't know, but choose one thing when you found it and NEVER let go. Build your habit around that one thing and stay for it. Because then everything will change. Because of the compound effect. Next Up: The compound effect.

 

I do this shit for 5 years and slowly i am feeling the impact of the compound effect, or the snowball effect or what ever you want to call exponential growth. Because this is it. Exponential Growth. This will change Everything. Look at this curve. ( https://potsandpansbyccg.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/exponential-growth.png ) Imagine this graph shows your fulfillment in life trough out time. What will happen in the next year if you implement on good habit? Here comes the hard truth: probably nothing much. If you read self help literature or meditate for one year, you will get some nice results, but nothing great or very inspiring. People around you will probably not notice it. This is normal. But what will happen is the following: By sticking to your one good habit, many micro habits are getting build for you automatically. If you meditate you will notice your emotions and bad thoughts earlier. If you lift weights you will be more confident and have a better posture and so on. Why is this important? All this micro stuff builds momentum for you. If you are a tad more confident, you maybe will be introduced to a new circle of friends. Or maybe you will talk to a girl you wanted to talk to. Nothing crazy, but nice. This motivates you, all the little moments of success will give you fuel. Maybe this new circle of friends of yours will take you to a festival and there you have the best 3 days of your life. This will motivate you, this gives you strength to do something more, maybe there is really more to life than all the bullshit around you, all the gossip and bad entertainment. You will AUTOMATICALLY do more stuff that is good for you, will will be reading and thinking more on your own, without extra effort, because you got a little taste of the good life. All this little extra stuff that you do will also build on top of each other. Finally you are taking a bit more responsibility. Here it get's really good. Start to fix your life and people will slowly notice. Start to eat clean, fix your room (i know but it's true) not because you read it in a book somewhere because you fucking want to. People will notice your attitude, they will respect you more. This fuels you even more. Everything fuels you now, you don't even have to motivate yourself because now you are getting positive feedback from the outer world. This is a big point in your life, when you notice that your surrounding reacts to you more positive than before, you want more of that. Now it's time to let go of the brakes you desperately hold on to. This is Fear.If you just let go of all the fucking anxiety and doubt in you, then you will reach the breaking point. Look at the graph, do you see the breaking point, where the line just skyrockets after some time? This is you without your brakes. But it takes time. For me it took 4 years to feel that this shit is real, now i'm right in the process of letting go and fuck holy shit i am fucking scared. I am at the tipping point. This Post is important to me. Is anyone still interested? Will share more.

 

 

Let's talk about brakes because boy do we have our brakes on. To really get what i mean with brakes, look at children on a playground. Most of them don't have brakes, or aren't stuck on them. Most children are pure energy, pure potential, and they use it as they please. To have fun, to experience joy and excitement. It's pretty inspiring. What will happen to the kids? They will be forced to sit still, shut up, behave, fit in, impress others, buy stuff. This is modern survival, if you can't fit in, impress and buy, you are socially dead. It's true, and it's rough. I was this kid once, completely spastic, autistic and happy. Then i embarrassed myself in front of other people. Then again. Then i failed something that was very important to me. Then i got humiliated by a teacher and so on, everyone experienced this stuff. The shame sits deep and it fucking hurts. What do we do? We want to NEVER experience something like this ever in our lives again. The thought of it makes us sick. What do we do? We put on our brakes. We censor ourselves. We sit still. We behave, try to fit in. I was so fucking bad in fitting in, and i still am (but now the perspective changed dramatically.) It is a horrible experience to feel like an alien. You get stiff, you tense up, all of the authentic movement of yours gets lost in robotic and calculated gestures, this is the safe way. It really is, with brakes on it's hard to get humiliated. It's hard to really fail at life, because society is easy. Get a job, have kids, it's possible with the brakes. But you life in a shell, behind a mask, behind your defense mechanism. Because your goal at the moment is to not screwed it up again like you did in Highschool. You try it with force, hold back the "weird" you and try to emulate other people you saw on tv, in school, your role models etc. So know we know why we have our brakes on, but why shouldn't we? It's easy to life with brakes, why not keep them? Because it robs all of your energy, of your potential, your health, your joy, your creativity, your sex, yourself. All of marketing is only possible because of your inner depletion. "Feel depressed and anxious? BUY this, consume that, achieve more, impress more, become famous. Then you will feel great!" This is marketing. The next time you see an add, be conscious of the inner need that gets triggered by it. Look at celebritys who kill themselves, look at Avicii and all the others. Success will not make you happy, no material success really. But this is what the brakes want, what marketing wants, what the scarred and humiliated child wants.

 

Now we get a bit more practical: How do you release the brakes? First of all, this is not for everyone and if it is for you then maybe the time is not right for you. Not all people should face their trauma head on, it's the hardest thing you can do while you live. Are you ready to feel all the suppressed shit, all the tension, do you really want to know how bad things really are? Are you ready for the truth? No is a valid answer. When i first had a glimpse of truth i had a full blown panic attack and felt pretty unstable for 3 weeks. Because i had no good habits. It's important to have a somewhat functioning life with somewhat good habits before you attempt to do the deep work, it will ground you, it will give you a strong fundament you can build on. If you don't have a strong fundament a little blow of wind can knock you on your ass. So if you sleep till 1 everyday, don't have steady income and are alcoholic do not face your trauma head on, it will ruin your life. Take things slowly, start with the little things described earlier.

 

So what can you actually do to release the tension (because that what it is) to release trauma, to finally release the brakes? There are of course many answers. There is a whole market place for those kind of things. Emotional Healing, Mental Health, Self Help, New Age Spirituality - there a millions of books, techniques, religions and products out there who claim to have the answer. Most of them are completely rubbish, scamming their way into the hearts of gullible people. I'm more on the gullible side, so i experienced the problem first hand. So here is a warning: Be careful. Don't be hyper critical of all the new age chakra interdimensional ghost healing stuff but do your research, listen to people, experiment, be open minded but carefully. I clearly have to say: I don't know the truth, i don't know what really works for you, what is really working and why. I can only share with you what helped me, what really gave me benefits. At the end of my rant i will probably share some resources with you. In the next post i will describe the most helpful techniques i found.

 

If you are unclear about the one habit that you want to implement, choose meditation. For me it's literally THE THING that turned everything around. Meditate for 1 Year and you will be more calm, meditate for 5 years and it will radically transform your personality, your view on life, on everything. If you think i'm exaggerating you are probably right, but it really feels this way for me. It's crazy. But you have to do it right. And you have to do it daily, for at least 20 minutes (but don't start there, go with even 1 minute if the start is hard for you) At first you will obsess about techniques, "AM I DOING IT RIGHT??" This will be probably your neurotic response to your first meditation sessions. It's normal but a distraction. Technique is a distraction. Thinking is a distraction. Almost Everything is. Some months ago i noticed that even by breathing you distract yourself. What do i mean with that? Take a deep belly breath, then do it again. Focus on inhaling very deeply and cleanly. It hurts, it's not comfortable, it's not normal for you, because you get conscious of all the tension in your body, all the pain, it's all there. What do you do? You breath shallow, into your ripcage, you distract yourself. It's crazy. Breath for 10 Minutes into your belly, i bet you can't. (By the way, deep breathing is one of the technique that is working great for me)

 

So Drop all the distractions of the mind, that is the goal. Just be, no thinking, no avoiding, no distraction. You sit, you breath, you feel, you go deeper. And deeper. Then you hit something, it scares you, you go back. Then you forget that you noticed something. Maybe you have the urge to stop meditating. Here, again, it's important to have a strong habit. Go deeper, experience the thing you are trying to avoid, just let go, fall into it. It will get easier. The first year will be hard. But stick to it, just imagine what could happen if you stick with it for 10 years. My Book recommendation: The Mind Illuminated. Great for Beginners, almost no bullshit, very comprehensive mediation guide.

 

The second thing i recommend is body work: stuff like working out, yoga, deep breathing, and lastly bioenergetics. The Tension, the brakes, are stored directly in your body. Do you have chronic pain with unknown or mysterious cause, some psychosomatic symptoms maybe? In most of the cases it is because of stored trauma. Shamans knew it, but now the west is catching up. Release the tension, release the trauma, set your energy free. Then you can finally be yourself again, talk and walk like you really are. When you release energy, you can fuel it in your work, you will be more productive, more energetic, people will notice. You will be more attractive, more glowing. I don't want to sell you anything, it is reality. But it's hard work. The most effective thing i found is bioenergetics, and it's shocking that so few people know about it. Basically you create tension in your body while breathing deeply, you hold it, feel the pain, pain gets released, more energy. I could talk a lot about this but i will simply link you a youtube channel that helped me immensely

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCziZ5Oc96aEp735kJupZLiA

He has a Playlist on Bioenergetics and a shit tons of exercises and workouts. If you do all the workouts you will be a different person, you confront your trauma head on and it hits you hard. So be careful and don't over do it.

Yoga is also great, combine it with meditation and clean eating and you will feel great. There is so much stuff to discover. I finally startet with lifting weights and i already can see positive effect it has on my psyche.

 

TLDR:

 

Habits

 

>Change your Life by changing your habits

>only one habit at a time

>contemplate deeply: wich one habit, when done every single day of my life, will bring me the most reward over time?

>do it first thing in the morning until it's a part of your identity

 

 

Compound Effect

 

>constant small effort over time creates incredible, exponential growth

>Every small success speeds up the progress

>One good habit will create a ripple effect that brings micro habits, wich brings more success wich brings more momentum

>Worship Exponential Growth

>It will take years

 

Brakes

 

>You are afraid of your own potential

>Your true motivation is to hide away from your trauma

>material success will not fill the hole

>Face the Trauma, release the pain, get your life back

>Do it slowly, do it in a controlled way, have your shit together before going deep

 

Techniques

 

>Meditation

>Yoga

>Bioenergetics

>Psychotherapy

>Lifting Weights and Sport in general

>creating authentic art

 

 

Books

 

Emotional Healing: Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender, The Sedona Method, The Work by Byron Katie, The Gift of Imperfection

 

Productivity: The One Thing by Garry Keller, Essentialism, The Bullet Journal Method

 

Other Stuff: Meditations by Marc Aurel, Siddhartha by Hesse, Psycho-Cybernetics, Mastery by Leonard

 

Youtube Channels

 

Bioenergetics:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCziZ5Oc96aEp735kJupZLiA

 

The greatest Self Help Resource on Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ActualizedOrg

 

[Recursoinominado]

Great text, i liked your approach of hammering on the basics, i really need to apply this. 

[Bill W]

Thanks. I will read it properly tomorrow. Initially I was overwhelmed by its length but I've browsed it and it seems great. Will also look at the links and reply in more detail tomorrow if I can. Thank you. 

[Bill W]

On 4/26/2019 at 7:20 PM, Yonkon said:

ok, here is my advice. You need to focus, and focus only on one thing. Only one thing at a time, otherwise you will crash and fail. The question is, of course, on what do you focus on?

You have a shitload of options, but in my opinion it all boils down to building good habits. Habits will save your life, habits will make everything easier. You basically are your habits, have shit habits, have a shit life and so on. 

"Wich habit is the best habit?" This question will change everything . Ask yourself, wich one thing, when done every single day of my life, will bring me the most reward over time? This is such an inspiring question for me. For me it's meditation. For you it could be journaling, working out, creating art, reading for one hour, going into nature, or planning and visioning your future life.

Find the one thing you see the most value in - maybe it's reading nonfiction books about psychology i don't know, but choose one thing when you found it and NEVER let go. Build your habit around that one thing and stay for it. Because then everything will change. Because of the compound effect. 

People will notice your attitude, they will respect you more. This fuels you even more. Everything fuels you now, you don't even have to motivate yourself because now you are getting positive feedback from the outer world. This is a big point in your life, when you notice that your surrounding reacts to you more positive than before, you want more of that. Now it's time to let go of the brakes you desperately hold on to. This is Fear.If you just let go of all the fucking anxiety and doubt in you, then you will reach the breaking point.

Are you ready for the truth? No is a valid answer. When i first had a glimpse of truth i had a full blown panic attack and felt pretty unstable for 3 weeks. Because i had no good habits. It's important to have a somewhat functioning life with somewhat good habits before you attempt to do the deep work, it will ground you, it will give you a strong fundament you can build on. If you don't have a strong fundament a little blow of wind can knock you on your ass. So if you sleep till 1 everyday, don't have steady income and are alcoholic do not face your trauma head on, it will ruin your life. Take things slowly, start with the little things described earlier.
If you are unclear about the one habit that you want to implement, choose meditation. For me it's literally THE THING that turned everything around. Meditate for 1 Year and you will be more calm, meditate for 5 years and it will radically transform your personality, your view on life, on everything.

So Drop all the distractions of the mind, that is the goal. Just be, no thinking, no avoiding, no distraction. You sit, you breath, you feel, you go deeper. And deeper. Then you hit something, it scares you, you go back. Then you forget that you noticed something. Maybe you have the urge to stop meditating. Here, again, it's important to have a strong habit. Go deeper, experience the thing you are trying to avoid, just let go, fall into it. It will get easier. The first year will be hard. But stick to it, just imagine what could happen if you stick with it for 10 years.

 

Thanks for this. The above are my favourite parts of your post and what I resonate with the most. I had a look at the book recommendation link and will give that a miss, although it does have a load of good reviews. I am no expert, but I think I have enough reading material and video's on meditation to be getting on with. I will take a closer look at the guy and the bioenergetics. What I like about his YouTube channel from what I see, is that he has a lot of 3-5 minute video's as well. I like to get a feel for things without having to watch a 60-minute video (lazy I know, but time is limited).

A book I found really good by the way is this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1847946240/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 

[d0ornokey]

Enjoyed the read