Will power seems to work very much like a muscle - the better conditioned, the stronger and more effective it gets.
There's a major caveat though (which I realized reading this article): kidding ourselves is very counterproductive, even self-sabotaging, when it comes to strengthening one's will power.
What's worse; when a persons is governed by their emotions, they don't always realize they're kidding themselves.
So I would say that could be essential first step to self mastery; learning how to be true to one self.
hey Eve. I loved your comment: "knowing one's self". very timely and well applied. That is the first step and both you and Athena said as much.
Traffic in San Diego, everyday is like being in a crowded parking lot. I experience it very few times, but I know it is there.
I suppose it is a kind of "will power" to keep doing that: to sit in traffic. I don't admire people who do. I am not equipped mentally to understand how or why someone would do that, let alone thousands- each day.
Why exercise "will power" as if it is some kind of positive thing?
I tend to say: I sure as hell aren't going to do that" and do something else.
The benefit of sometimes doing things we don't want to do as a way to exercise will power- is that allows us to do the things we do like, better, faster, stronger and with more gusto.
Then again, if we keep getting stuck doing things we don't like doing, it goes from being a training opportunity and begins to chip away at our mental muscle.
Am currently putting most of my mental energy into passing a very hard-core IRS tax preparer exam. I'm really enjoying the new knowledge, however, most of the exam questions aren't specifically covered in the class.
Meaning, one needs to know exactly what the question is, then research it.
At first I had a negative attitude towards the exams (am on the last, there are three.)
When I changed my view to "this is a great learning experience " instead of "you've got to be joking ", I could focus much better.
I am glad you are writing here because unlike Quora, your writing can be totally your production without having Quora’s boundaries. You are a beautiful writer. I am glad for links because I am not very techie. My first two months on Quora I could not find my own drafts. 😊
This post definitely sheds some light for me on your experience as a psychopath.
A lot of people seem to believe it takes "willpower" to tell yourself no. In reality, it takes commitment. Willpower is an effortful resistance to the impulse, countering the "yes" by saying the "NO" louder. The problem is that since it takes effort, it runs out. And yeah, people can feel guilty for their failure to override the impulse.
But what you describe is commitment. It might take effort to create and stick to that commitment, even some willpower now and then. But in itself, commitment is about choice, planning, and doing. I think playing the scenario all the way out until the end is a good suggestion, because if you only have a vague idea of the outcome you want and you're not convinced on what you need to do to get there, it's easy to come up with excuses and very hard to commit.
I think I’m probably too much the other way, too self disciplined. That’s not to say that I’m up tight, rather I can tend to drive myself too hard. This was most evident during my university years. I worked myself into the ground. I lived on cereal for months because I didn’t think I had time to grocery shop or cook and clean up after a meal. Needless to say, by the end of finals I was a whisker away from a self inflicted stomach ulcer at the age of 22. Too disciplined, unwilling / unable to give myself a break. I’m serious about certain things now too, but I’m not as extreme. Very much an all or nothing personality. I go to the gym every day, or, I don’t go anywhere near the gym. I’m not good at finding the happy medium.
Like most things, If you are at the top or bottom end of the scale, it’s generally not good. Somewhere in the middle is usually most healthy.
The unwillingness to sleep made me chuckle. I’m nocturnal too. My ideal would be to go to bed at 3 or 4 am and get up around noon. I love my nighttime hours, sadly the rest of the world doesn’t fit in with my preferred schedule.
I have read before that psychopaths tend not to need as much sleep as neurotypicals. Is this correct ? When I read it I wondered if it was to do with less requirement to process emotional data. I imagine the world of the psychopath to be ‘simpler’ in many respects, less to file and reconcile during sleeping hours. Just my interpretation, no idea if it has any foundation!
Actually, the sleep thing depends on the individual, not their psychopathy, so it varies pretty widely. This rumor seems to trace along the same lines as, "all psychopaths are geniuses". It's an interesting idea, but doesn't apply much past that.
Perhaps this belief relies on the fact that emotions will never spoil a psychopath's sleep, so they can sleep better.
Also correct me if I am wrong but if your environment requires little sleep a psychopath will do it without a problem, no emotional damage from that. I get depressed when I get less than 8 hours of sleep.
Do psychopaths get stressed when they don't sleep well?
Let me see, I get well rested on a solid 6 hours of sleep. I will take lots of melatonin and then usually setup my phone to play some sort of story either from audiobook or streaming so I don't get bored and get up to find something to do if I don't fall asleep fast enough. If I don't get enough sleep I will feel horrible and perform badly.
That’s interesting, there are so many myths aren’t there? Yes, I’ve heard the genius rumour too. I see intelligence as independent from empathy, so I didn’t really buy into that one in the same way. A lower sleep requirement seemed more conceivable.
It's definitely good to find a happy medium. In my experience, people can be "too self-disciplined" because it gives them a sense of control. Rather than being just about resisting impulses, it's an impulse in itself, to quell feelings of anxiety or insecurity. But of course it can lead to burnout, bad health, etc., because it's not actually based on desirable outcomes.
I'm glad to hear you're not as extreme now! I've struggled with all-or-nothing thinking myself, but I've learned to let go of it (mostly), because it really isn't the way the world works.
Yes, I agree with that. It seems that the need for control can cause a lot of problems in people's lives as well as being completely irresponsible can.
I think you are exactly right with the need for control. I would describe myself as exam phobic so feeling out of control in that situation definitely plays into my approach.
I’m disciplined in my approach to work, giving presentations etc but I would say my behaviour there fits into ‘normal’ preparation.
My kids are now at the age where they are taking exams. My anxiety for them is even worse. Give me spiders, snakes, roaches or gators and I am absolutely fine, show me an exam and I’m cowering in the corner!
Test anxiety is right up there with public speaking. They're both real common. Performance anxiety is a product of making the outcome extremely important AND doubting your ability.
I don't think any anxiety is fully irrational - there's nearly always some internal logic.
There was about 5 years when my father had delusions. He thought he was going to jail for poisoning the neighborhood. He'd had a company making cleaners in the garage. When he got a form letter from the city asking how he handled hazardous waste, he thought it was targeted to him.
If it were true, all of his fears and behaviors were rational. I had a scratch on my arm & it made him nervous. He never came out and said it, but it was pretty clear he was looking at it as evidence I'd been poisoned.
All of his behavior during that time stemmed logically from that belief.
I think your point about making the outcome really important is a valid one. There is a degree of logic to my approach, but overall it’s too extreme to be beneficial.
I remember having a discussion with my doctor not long after the birth of my second child. I was depressed and after chatting with me for a while he prescribed a course of anti depressants. I refused to take them. My logic for this was that we had moved to the US only a few months previously. I had no friends, no family there, just my husband, a new born and a 13 month old. It was a cold Tennessee winter, I couldn’t get out as easily with two little ones and when I did get out, I had no one to meet. So my argument was that it was logical for me to feel depressed.
He responded that it’s also very logical for people to grieve the death of a loved one, but, after a certain point that grief becomes unhealthy and turns to depression. I saw what he was driving at.
I still thought I was more logical though! Needless to say the anti depressants remained unopened in the bathroom drawer. It took about a year for me to feel like my normal self again. Difficult to say whether going it alone was the correct decision or not, but a little like your dad, it was very much based on my logic and belief.
All good advice. However, willpower, the way it can come and go, the way it varies so much between people and between endeavours, I think we're a long way from understanding what it really is.
I agree with you that not wanting to do the required thing on some level is part of what makes it difficult, but the emotional implications are not just an excuse. You have described how in psychopathy you don't get very attached to things and that low desire for things is coupled with even lower impulse control. So what you suggest works very well for people generally, with practice, in everyday matters such as bedtimes, doing chores before leisure, avoiding reckless behaviour and frivolous purchases. I don't doubt that you want certain things and certain experiences just as a NT might, but NTs are prone to that madness, at least occasionally, of wanting things absolutely desperately, at which point thinking of consequences can totally fail, even in otherwise sensible and self disciplined people.
So as with the difficulty of comparing pain and suffering between people, we have the difficulty of comparing degree of desire. You'd be cross with a party guest who ate your trays of appetisers before they even left the kitchen, but not if it was someone who had just stumbled freezing and emaciated out of the woods. At times, NTs wants can be as strong or stronger than basic survival needs. Yes it's crazy, and yes it is still necessary to hold people accountable, but the desire can be way on another level from the everyday.
Haha! Yes, a slight wariness of gators is wise. We lived in SC for a while and we had three resident gators on the subdivision. It was on the coast, and there was a lake within the subdivision. The gators would sunbathe on various banks of the lake, one just happened to be at the bottom of my garden. I became gator immune! Apparently they live in threes. If one gator is removed another will move in. It’s a case of better the gator you know!
Good question, I’m not entirely sure. Until recently, I would have said it’s fear of failure that bothers me. Now I think it was more to do with fear of letting others down, namely my parents. My mum would say ‘ just try your best’. On the face of it that sounds understanding but, my mum is highly narcissistic. In that context, I suspect the comment was designed to drive me harder. How much exactly is ‘my best’? Four hours work a night? Five? Six? So now I’m a little more cynical as to the influence my mother had on the whole thing.
Driving yourself into the ground obviously doesn’t work. I remember I was so exhausted for my German spoken final exam I couldn’t string a sentence together. That’s not an exaggeration either! So when my kids go into exams, I feel very much as if I am sending them into that room, on that day. Logically I know that experience is mine, not theirs. Emotionally though, it feels exactly the same. Raw panic.
Sounds crazy I know, I’m not a nervous person at all, but I would describe my response to exams as genuine fear.
I'm told by someone who lived in Florida for a couple of years that mostly gators are quite lazy, unless they are hungry, which is semi-rare because they are cold blooded and therefore don't need to eat to keep themselves warm. Also, because humans are so much bigger/taller than on-the-ground gaters, that mostly they are scared of humans, unless you get near their nests in which case they turn into "momma" gaters. So adult humans tend to be "not on the menu" -- though small children and dogs, yum.
These gators were disinterested yes, though I’m not an expert on them.
One of the gators was getting pretty big. A few in the neighbourhood were concerned as a couple of small dogs had gone missing over roughly a six month period. The management committee brought in a gator controller to assess the situation. His view was that the gators were well fed, older and pretty lazy. The big gator was sizeable, but to remove him on that basis alone was unwise as all that would happen, is that a new, likely younger gator would then move in. If younger, the new gator would be more aggressive and could cause more problems. The three we had had likely hung out for years, there was no in-fighting, everything was calm.
Almost every time I saw those gators they were just laying out on the bank directly next to the water, never together, always solo ( I didn’t actually know there were three until told). Occasionally we would drive in or out of the subdivision and there would be one walking in or across the road headed to a different bank. If one was at the bottom of the garden, it wouldn’t prevent me from being in my garden, but, I wouldn’t lay out next to it haha!
It was very much a live and let live approach that worked well. I’m not sure if the US has different types of gator, I assume so.
I'm glad you mention this because nobody ever seems to, the fact that one's 'best' is impossible to define. Only in time can each person work out what to them is reasonable, balanced and worth it in any endeavour.
I love this post more than any other so far. Given the infinite "jumping off" points, I will simply thank you for now: I admire your ability to reveal your own self and allow us freedom to respond as we wish.
This is the most relatable post of yours that I have read. I am a master procrastinator and I literally have to mentally plan everything I do, otherwise it doesn't get done.
This includes things like eating, brushing my teeth, and yes even playing video games, because my natural state is to literally do nothing but think.
I have been meaning to clean my room for about a year now, and still it is a mess. At least I have gotten into the habit of making my bed everyday so there is improvement.
I haven't considered that yet, though implementing it would require putting off the reward until after I have completed said task instead of just getting the reward right away. I will consider it though, perhaps I can implement it to what I'm already doing.
Currently what I'm doing to looking at goals in the short term rather than looking at overarching goals. I find it easier to tell myself, "brush your teeth, because they'll feel gross if you don't.", rather than "brush your teeth, because if you don't you'll need to pay for fillings at your next dentist appointment."
The reason I started making my bed was because I realized that I had improved sleep in a bed that was made, and that a lot of my sleep was disturbed due to lumps of fabric making the bed uncomfortable. It also makes my room look a little cleaner if the bed's made.
I think the reward system might help me associate certain activities as fun instead of something to drone through, if I do it right.
Ex-procrastinator here. What helped me in addition to what you describe was just doing neutral, non-unpleasant tasks the minute I thought of them or saw the need. Just on autopilot, a trained reaction. This created enough momentum and enough reward in terms of liveable circumstances and slightly improved self respect that less pleasant tasks then became easier to approach. Just a thought.
Will power seems to work very much like a muscle - the better conditioned, the stronger and more effective it gets.
There's a major caveat though (which I realized reading this article): kidding ourselves is very counterproductive, even self-sabotaging, when it comes to strengthening one's will power.
What's worse; when a persons is governed by their emotions, they don't always realize they're kidding themselves.
So I would say that could be essential first step to self mastery; learning how to be true to one self.
Nice read!
Thank you, Doso
And knowing one's self.
"Knowing one's self". -smiles-
What is passed off as "will power" may well be quite different: in a way that can't be expressed to others except to acknowledge when we see it!!
Hahaha. Have a great one!!
Would you please rephrase? I don't fully understand your comment. Thanks.
I concur. One needs to be honest to oneself, so one can know oneself, so one can master onself - the proof of which is in the pudding.
Dammit. I didn't see Athena had written the same!
I, for one, appreciate both of your kindnesses.
Thank you Doso.
hey Eve. I loved your comment: "knowing one's self". very timely and well applied. That is the first step and both you and Athena said as much.
Traffic in San Diego, everyday is like being in a crowded parking lot. I experience it very few times, but I know it is there.
I suppose it is a kind of "will power" to keep doing that: to sit in traffic. I don't admire people who do. I am not equipped mentally to understand how or why someone would do that, let alone thousands- each day.
Why exercise "will power" as if it is some kind of positive thing?
I tend to say: I sure as hell aren't going to do that" and do something else.
I think that many people have no idea that there is something different. It is simply life to them.
The benefit of sometimes doing things we don't want to do as a way to exercise will power- is that allows us to do the things we do like, better, faster, stronger and with more gusto.
Then again, if we keep getting stuck doing things we don't like doing, it goes from being a training opportunity and begins to chip away at our mental muscle.
It's all about balance, I think.
Yes, I agree
For sure!
Am currently putting most of my mental energy into passing a very hard-core IRS tax preparer exam. I'm really enjoying the new knowledge, however, most of the exam questions aren't specifically covered in the class.
Meaning, one needs to know exactly what the question is, then research it.
At first I had a negative attitude towards the exams (am on the last, there are three.)
When I changed my view to "this is a great learning experience " instead of "you've got to be joking ", I could focus much better.
Hmm, okay.
My first thought was, "that's a huge reason I moved out of Cali."
However, some people have to creep along in traffic due to their particular circumstance(s).
For me, exercising will power is utilized to change something in my life for the positive
I agree, but it can also be something that keeps your life neutral instead of falling into the negative, for a short term payoff.
Beautifully written and honest answer.
Thank you, Elinor. Nice to see you over here.
Hi Elinor, nice having you here!
I do the giant hits of melatonin myself. Have to shred credit cards from time to time as well. It’s possible to tell yourself no but it’s not any fun
Thus why so many people chose not to
I am glad you are writing here because unlike Quora, your writing can be totally your production without having Quora’s boundaries. You are a beautiful writer. I am glad for links because I am not very techie. My first two months on Quora I could not find my own drafts. 😊
I appreciate that, Elinor. I know what you mean about Quora, and it doesn't help that they change things around from time to time.
This post definitely sheds some light for me on your experience as a psychopath.
A lot of people seem to believe it takes "willpower" to tell yourself no. In reality, it takes commitment. Willpower is an effortful resistance to the impulse, countering the "yes" by saying the "NO" louder. The problem is that since it takes effort, it runs out. And yeah, people can feel guilty for their failure to override the impulse.
But what you describe is commitment. It might take effort to create and stick to that commitment, even some willpower now and then. But in itself, commitment is about choice, planning, and doing. I think playing the scenario all the way out until the end is a good suggestion, because if you only have a vague idea of the outcome you want and you're not convinced on what you need to do to get there, it's easy to come up with excuses and very hard to commit.
Indeed.
You make a worthwhile distinction.
Nice insight. The notion of commitment-versus-willpower rings true for me.
I think I’m probably too much the other way, too self disciplined. That’s not to say that I’m up tight, rather I can tend to drive myself too hard. This was most evident during my university years. I worked myself into the ground. I lived on cereal for months because I didn’t think I had time to grocery shop or cook and clean up after a meal. Needless to say, by the end of finals I was a whisker away from a self inflicted stomach ulcer at the age of 22. Too disciplined, unwilling / unable to give myself a break. I’m serious about certain things now too, but I’m not as extreme. Very much an all or nothing personality. I go to the gym every day, or, I don’t go anywhere near the gym. I’m not good at finding the happy medium.
Like most things, If you are at the top or bottom end of the scale, it’s generally not good. Somewhere in the middle is usually most healthy.
The unwillingness to sleep made me chuckle. I’m nocturnal too. My ideal would be to go to bed at 3 or 4 am and get up around noon. I love my nighttime hours, sadly the rest of the world doesn’t fit in with my preferred schedule.
I have read before that psychopaths tend not to need as much sleep as neurotypicals. Is this correct ? When I read it I wondered if it was to do with less requirement to process emotional data. I imagine the world of the psychopath to be ‘simpler’ in many respects, less to file and reconcile during sleeping hours. Just my interpretation, no idea if it has any foundation!
Actually, the sleep thing depends on the individual, not their psychopathy, so it varies pretty widely. This rumor seems to trace along the same lines as, "all psychopaths are geniuses". It's an interesting idea, but doesn't apply much past that.
Perhaps this belief relies on the fact that emotions will never spoil a psychopath's sleep, so they can sleep better.
Also correct me if I am wrong but if your environment requires little sleep a psychopath will do it without a problem, no emotional damage from that. I get depressed when I get less than 8 hours of sleep.
Do psychopaths get stressed when they don't sleep well?
I don't. I just go on with my life. Certainly being tired can affect performance, however, and it can make me less interested in masking.
That makes sense.
Let me see, I get well rested on a solid 6 hours of sleep. I will take lots of melatonin and then usually setup my phone to play some sort of story either from audiobook or streaming so I don't get bored and get up to find something to do if I don't fall asleep fast enough. If I don't get enough sleep I will feel horrible and perform badly.
That’s interesting, there are so many myths aren’t there? Yes, I’ve heard the genius rumour too. I see intelligence as independent from empathy, so I didn’t really buy into that one in the same way. A lower sleep requirement seemed more conceivable.
This one really does depend on the person.
It's definitely good to find a happy medium. In my experience, people can be "too self-disciplined" because it gives them a sense of control. Rather than being just about resisting impulses, it's an impulse in itself, to quell feelings of anxiety or insecurity. But of course it can lead to burnout, bad health, etc., because it's not actually based on desirable outcomes.
I'm glad to hear you're not as extreme now! I've struggled with all-or-nothing thinking myself, but I've learned to let go of it (mostly), because it really isn't the way the world works.
Yes, I agree with that. It seems that the need for control can cause a lot of problems in people's lives as well as being completely irresponsible can.
I think you are exactly right with the need for control. I would describe myself as exam phobic so feeling out of control in that situation definitely plays into my approach.
I’m disciplined in my approach to work, giving presentations etc but I would say my behaviour there fits into ‘normal’ preparation.
My kids are now at the age where they are taking exams. My anxiety for them is even worse. Give me spiders, snakes, roaches or gators and I am absolutely fine, show me an exam and I’m cowering in the corner!
Yikes, what is it about exams that gets you so anxious?
Gators, lol, depending on how close they are and what the situation is, it could be rational to feel SOME anxiety in that case. ;)
Test anxiety is right up there with public speaking. They're both real common. Performance anxiety is a product of making the outcome extremely important AND doubting your ability.
I don't think any anxiety is fully irrational - there's nearly always some internal logic.
There was about 5 years when my father had delusions. He thought he was going to jail for poisoning the neighborhood. He'd had a company making cleaners in the garage. When he got a form letter from the city asking how he handled hazardous waste, he thought it was targeted to him.
If it were true, all of his fears and behaviors were rational. I had a scratch on my arm & it made him nervous. He never came out and said it, but it was pretty clear he was looking at it as evidence I'd been poisoned.
All of his behavior during that time stemmed logically from that belief.
I think your point about making the outcome really important is a valid one. There is a degree of logic to my approach, but overall it’s too extreme to be beneficial.
I remember having a discussion with my doctor not long after the birth of my second child. I was depressed and after chatting with me for a while he prescribed a course of anti depressants. I refused to take them. My logic for this was that we had moved to the US only a few months previously. I had no friends, no family there, just my husband, a new born and a 13 month old. It was a cold Tennessee winter, I couldn’t get out as easily with two little ones and when I did get out, I had no one to meet. So my argument was that it was logical for me to feel depressed.
He responded that it’s also very logical for people to grieve the death of a loved one, but, after a certain point that grief becomes unhealthy and turns to depression. I saw what he was driving at.
I still thought I was more logical though! Needless to say the anti depressants remained unopened in the bathroom drawer. It took about a year for me to feel like my normal self again. Difficult to say whether going it alone was the correct decision or not, but a little like your dad, it was very much based on my logic and belief.
All good advice. However, willpower, the way it can come and go, the way it varies so much between people and between endeavours, I think we're a long way from understanding what it really is.
I agree with you that not wanting to do the required thing on some level is part of what makes it difficult, but the emotional implications are not just an excuse. You have described how in psychopathy you don't get very attached to things and that low desire for things is coupled with even lower impulse control. So what you suggest works very well for people generally, with practice, in everyday matters such as bedtimes, doing chores before leisure, avoiding reckless behaviour and frivolous purchases. I don't doubt that you want certain things and certain experiences just as a NT might, but NTs are prone to that madness, at least occasionally, of wanting things absolutely desperately, at which point thinking of consequences can totally fail, even in otherwise sensible and self disciplined people.
So as with the difficulty of comparing pain and suffering between people, we have the difficulty of comparing degree of desire. You'd be cross with a party guest who ate your trays of appetisers before they even left the kitchen, but not if it was someone who had just stumbled freezing and emaciated out of the woods. At times, NTs wants can be as strong or stronger than basic survival needs. Yes it's crazy, and yes it is still necessary to hold people accountable, but the desire can be way on another level from the everyday.
You make a very fair point. I don't have a comprehension of that sort of desire.
Haha! Yes, a slight wariness of gators is wise. We lived in SC for a while and we had three resident gators on the subdivision. It was on the coast, and there was a lake within the subdivision. The gators would sunbathe on various banks of the lake, one just happened to be at the bottom of my garden. I became gator immune! Apparently they live in threes. If one gator is removed another will move in. It’s a case of better the gator you know!
Good question, I’m not entirely sure. Until recently, I would have said it’s fear of failure that bothers me. Now I think it was more to do with fear of letting others down, namely my parents. My mum would say ‘ just try your best’. On the face of it that sounds understanding but, my mum is highly narcissistic. In that context, I suspect the comment was designed to drive me harder. How much exactly is ‘my best’? Four hours work a night? Five? Six? So now I’m a little more cynical as to the influence my mother had on the whole thing.
Driving yourself into the ground obviously doesn’t work. I remember I was so exhausted for my German spoken final exam I couldn’t string a sentence together. That’s not an exaggeration either! So when my kids go into exams, I feel very much as if I am sending them into that room, on that day. Logically I know that experience is mine, not theirs. Emotionally though, it feels exactly the same. Raw panic.
Sounds crazy I know, I’m not a nervous person at all, but I would describe my response to exams as genuine fear.
I did not know that about gators. That is really interesting. Are they relatively disinterested in humans?
I'm told by someone who lived in Florida for a couple of years that mostly gators are quite lazy, unless they are hungry, which is semi-rare because they are cold blooded and therefore don't need to eat to keep themselves warm. Also, because humans are so much bigger/taller than on-the-ground gaters, that mostly they are scared of humans, unless you get near their nests in which case they turn into "momma" gaters. So adult humans tend to be "not on the menu" -- though small children and dogs, yum.
Never mess with a “momma”! Something that translates across most species!
So true
Makes sense
Hi Athena,
These gators were disinterested yes, though I’m not an expert on them.
One of the gators was getting pretty big. A few in the neighbourhood were concerned as a couple of small dogs had gone missing over roughly a six month period. The management committee brought in a gator controller to assess the situation. His view was that the gators were well fed, older and pretty lazy. The big gator was sizeable, but to remove him on that basis alone was unwise as all that would happen, is that a new, likely younger gator would then move in. If younger, the new gator would be more aggressive and could cause more problems. The three we had had likely hung out for years, there was no in-fighting, everything was calm.
Almost every time I saw those gators they were just laying out on the bank directly next to the water, never together, always solo ( I didn’t actually know there were three until told). Occasionally we would drive in or out of the subdivision and there would be one walking in or across the road headed to a different bank. If one was at the bottom of the garden, it wouldn’t prevent me from being in my garden, but, I wouldn’t lay out next to it haha!
It was very much a live and let live approach that worked well. I’m not sure if the US has different types of gator, I assume so.
That's pretty cool
I'm glad you mention this because nobody ever seems to, the fact that one's 'best' is impossible to define. Only in time can each person work out what to them is reasonable, balanced and worth it in any endeavour.
Agreed
Yes, I think that’s right MC. Asking oneself the question, “Is it worth this?” I think is also very valid.
I love this post more than any other so far. Given the infinite "jumping off" points, I will simply thank you for now: I admire your ability to reveal your own self and allow us freedom to respond as we wish.
Best always.
And to you as well, Tim
This is unrelated, Athena, but is there a way to repel bullies by body language, demeanor alone?
Utter and complete disinterest
This is the most relatable post of yours that I have read. I am a master procrastinator and I literally have to mentally plan everything I do, otherwise it doesn't get done.
This includes things like eating, brushing my teeth, and yes even playing video games, because my natural state is to literally do nothing but think.
I have been meaning to clean my room for about a year now, and still it is a mess. At least I have gotten into the habit of making my bed everyday so there is improvement.
Something to celebrate. Have you added in a rewards structure for yourself? It can be most beneficial.
I haven't considered that yet, though implementing it would require putting off the reward until after I have completed said task instead of just getting the reward right away. I will consider it though, perhaps I can implement it to what I'm already doing.
Currently what I'm doing to looking at goals in the short term rather than looking at overarching goals. I find it easier to tell myself, "brush your teeth, because they'll feel gross if you don't.", rather than "brush your teeth, because if you don't you'll need to pay for fillings at your next dentist appointment."
The reason I started making my bed was because I realized that I had improved sleep in a bed that was made, and that a lot of my sleep was disturbed due to lumps of fabric making the bed uncomfortable. It also makes my room look a little cleaner if the bed's made.
I think the reward system might help me associate certain activities as fun instead of something to drone through, if I do it right.
Ex-procrastinator here. What helped me in addition to what you describe was just doing neutral, non-unpleasant tasks the minute I thought of them or saw the need. Just on autopilot, a trained reaction. This created enough momentum and enough reward in terms of liveable circumstances and slightly improved self respect that less pleasant tasks then became easier to approach. Just a thought.