In my last post I wrote about ways to lose weight without it turning into a downward spiral of self-absorption. I'm not angry and I don't want to compete against my friends so I am going to try an experiment. My first impulse was to buy a new book and try to do it exactly. This is my normal, go-to, reaction, and it usually doesn't turn out well. I usually buy the new book and then don't really follow the diet. Plus I have a problem with these diet books, they are so limiting! Their way is the BEST and ONLY true way to lose weight, you HAVE to eat x,y,z or you must NEVER eat a,b,c etc etc. I notice that most diets and diet books force you to a. become obsessed with your food (measuring, counting, calculating, etc) and/or b. limit your choices so you are stuck with boringness (no grains, no sugar, no cheese, no fruit, no fat, no starch, no carbs).
I want to lose weight but I also want the following:
1. I don't want to drink milk, but I also don't want to give up the possibility of diary as a condiment (such as cheese on my pasta)
2. I don't want to have to eat copious amounts of meat. I am limiting my meat consumption for ethical reasons and because I really believe that eating tons of meat is not healthy.
4. I love vegetables, fruits, and beans- I want to eat them more
5. I also love stuff that makes vegetables and beans better- oil, pasta, fat etc.
6. I love variety and good food. I want to eat many different foods that taste good.
8. I want a plan that is sustainable for life. I want to be able to eat happily without obsessing over my food or counting or measuring.
7. Sometimes I love to eat cakes, and pastry, and sweets, and soda, and fried things, large amounts of meat and all that good stuff.
8. I like cooking and want to eat at home more
9. I want to have strategies so I can eat out.
My experiment has to be centered around these preferences. Can I lose weight and keep it off while eating what I like to eat?
Here's what I'm thinking...
I've recently been reading into PeerTrainer and the Cheat to Lose program. You can download it for free on their website. It basically has a list of foods you can eat unlimited amounts of (the usual suspects: vegetables, beans, certain grains, limited amounts of oil and meat) and then for everything else you can eat 1000 calories of a day, or 10, 100 calorie cheats. I think this plan is great in its simplicity, and I have been loosely following it the last couple weeks and have lost a little more than a pound a week.
However, I have some problems with the plan. For example, it's hard to count calories for many of the "cheat" foods I like. How many calories is a dinner of Pad Kee Mao? Or what about the slice of pizza from the neighborhood pizza joint? What if I get it without cheese? I often feel like I am estimating the calories so much that it's like I'm losing the whole point of counting them. Also I stress about the calorie counting and feel frustrated when I can't count them correctly.
This is a personal preference. I hate counting calories. I have friends who have no problem counting points or calories, but I makes me crazy. I few years ago I tried weight watchers, my first real 'diet', and I started obsessing over the points and how I could stretch the points and enhance them through carefully timed exercise...it was making me nuts. I didn't think it was healthy to think about food in that way all day long and stopped the program. So for me, counting calories, even if it just 1000 calories a day isn't a long term option, and honestly I don't want to have to do it in the short term cus it's such a drag!
So here is my modified plan: Use that cheat to lose unlimited foods list, and just eat from that list all day, 6 days a week (with some little twerks here and there). Then on Saturday- eat whatever I want. The idea of the 1 off day is from Tim Ferris' slow carb diet. I like that diet idea too, but I don't want to stress about weather I am getting enough beans and meat and the whole low carb thing.
One other thing, I really want to increase my consumption of greens. So for every day I am going to buy myself a bunch of greens (a head of lettice and bag of chopped collard greens, etc) and I am during the day I'm going to eat those greens. I think this will be a good way of ensuring that I am getting enough vegetables and transforming my idea of a meal so that I structure my meal around the greens rather than around a protein or starch.
When I eat out on a non-off day I will order something low carb (preferably fish).
With this program, I know I'm not getting everything I want from my list every day, but I can have anything I want once a week. Even during my on days I can get most of what I want. So on paper at least this plan looks good. Now it's time to test it!
I will stick to this plan for the month of May, so that means I will start this Sunday. On Sunday morning I will weigh myself and take measurements so I can compare them at the end of the month. I will also track my athletic performance, energy level and mood. What I am interested in learning is weather
a.whether this plan is easy to follow,
b. whether it offers enough flexibility that I can stay on it long term and use it as a lifelong eating strategy (because otherwise those cheeseburgers sneak up on you and BAM!)
c. whether my skin improves at all
d. whether my energy levels change
e. whether my post work out recovery time changes
f. weather I lose weight and how much I lose
I will fill you in on my beginning stats on Sunday!
Friday, April 29, 2011
Losing Weight Without It Turning Into a ME Fest
This week I haven't been reading my assigned self-help books but I have been reading about food and nutrition and dieting. I've also been cooking, trying some new recipes, and thinking. As I may have mentioned before, one of the things I would like to do is loose weight. Not too much, I am 20 lbs away from my ideal. This ideal isn't set in stone, I could lose 10 and be like "damn girl you look hot!" and be totally satisfied. I want to lose weight because I want to be healthier, be able to do pull-ups, blah blah, blah, but let's get real, the reason I want to lose weight is because I want to look hotter.Who doesn't want their pants to fit a little better or to lose the muffin top? Yes, it is self-absorbed but it's the truth, so I might as work with it.
So how can keep this goal from turning into a self-absorbed downward spiral as per usual? Here are three ways to take the focus off yourself.
Anger: One way is losing weight with the power of anger. That d-bag who teased you as a chubby kid? Take a look at me now you beer belly'ed jerk! Just got divorced or broke up with a cheating boyfriend? Show that bastard what he will be missing out on!
I've known quite a few people who have been able to tap that anger, either an old seething anger from childhood slights, or a raw new wound, and use it to transform themselves. They craft themselves as their revenge. It's not about whether you are being good or not, it's about about sending a big "fuck you" to someone else. The object of their anger might not care or even know about these changes, but it doesn't matter as long as it makes the angry person feel better and allows them to changes. The danger is that when you stop feeling angry, which hopefully you will, your motivation to stick with those changes disappears too.
Competitiveness: Last year my friends and I conducted a year long biggest loser contest with bi-monthly weigh-ins and a cash prize at the end. I won. I think I was able to make the changes and win because, I love my friends and all, but damn it I really wanted to beat them and get the $$. It wasn't about me, it was about winning winning winning. Afterward other friends said that they didn't really tap into their competitive selves or see it as a contest, which may be why they didn't make the changes they needed to win.
The down side of this method is that it really only works in a limited competitive environment, like a biggest loser contest. Once the contest is over the motivation is gone too. I gained back 10 lbs in two months after the contest. You could keep competing, but do you really want to be a frenemy who is always competing with unsuspecting friends? There are people who are so naturally competitive that they do compete with everyone around them all the time, but these people generally suck and are not fun to hang out with. You don't want to turn into one of these types for the sake of losing weight, it's not worth it.
Experiments: Body experiments, a la Tim Ferris, are another method to loose weight without focusing on yourself. Use your body as a lab to test conventional assumptions. Does any diet work as long as you stick to it? Try a random diet out for a month and chart the results. Do the people at your gym say that you can't have real scotching fat loss unless you eat meat? Conduct an experiment where you try to get ripped vegan style. I don't think Tim Ferris thinks he's "being bad" if he slips up and drinks three cokes in the middle of the week. It may F with whatever experiment he's doing but he probably just notes the effects it has on his performance and moves on.
The weakness of this method is the same as the two above, once the experiment ends, the motivation ends. This is the problem with any method that doesn't focus on you, because, let's face it, the only thing we are able to constantly obsess about day in day out is ourselves. However, the experiment method does have one big advantage over anger and competitiveness. It's easy to develop a new experiment using your natural intellectual curiosity, you don't have to turn into a frenemy or have someone break up with you to continue your weight loss!
So how can keep this goal from turning into a self-absorbed downward spiral as per usual? Here are three ways to take the focus off yourself.
Anger: One way is losing weight with the power of anger. That d-bag who teased you as a chubby kid? Take a look at me now you beer belly'ed jerk! Just got divorced or broke up with a cheating boyfriend? Show that bastard what he will be missing out on!
I've known quite a few people who have been able to tap that anger, either an old seething anger from childhood slights, or a raw new wound, and use it to transform themselves. They craft themselves as their revenge. It's not about whether you are being good or not, it's about about sending a big "fuck you" to someone else. The object of their anger might not care or even know about these changes, but it doesn't matter as long as it makes the angry person feel better and allows them to changes. The danger is that when you stop feeling angry, which hopefully you will, your motivation to stick with those changes disappears too.
Competitiveness: Last year my friends and I conducted a year long biggest loser contest with bi-monthly weigh-ins and a cash prize at the end. I won. I think I was able to make the changes and win because, I love my friends and all, but damn it I really wanted to beat them and get the $$. It wasn't about me, it was about winning winning winning. Afterward other friends said that they didn't really tap into their competitive selves or see it as a contest, which may be why they didn't make the changes they needed to win.
The down side of this method is that it really only works in a limited competitive environment, like a biggest loser contest. Once the contest is over the motivation is gone too. I gained back 10 lbs in two months after the contest. You could keep competing, but do you really want to be a frenemy who is always competing with unsuspecting friends? There are people who are so naturally competitive that they do compete with everyone around them all the time, but these people generally suck and are not fun to hang out with. You don't want to turn into one of these types for the sake of losing weight, it's not worth it.
Experiments: Body experiments, a la Tim Ferris, are another method to loose weight without focusing on yourself. Use your body as a lab to test conventional assumptions. Does any diet work as long as you stick to it? Try a random diet out for a month and chart the results. Do the people at your gym say that you can't have real scotching fat loss unless you eat meat? Conduct an experiment where you try to get ripped vegan style. I don't think Tim Ferris thinks he's "being bad" if he slips up and drinks three cokes in the middle of the week. It may F with whatever experiment he's doing but he probably just notes the effects it has on his performance and moves on.
The weakness of this method is the same as the two above, once the experiment ends, the motivation ends. This is the problem with any method that doesn't focus on you, because, let's face it, the only thing we are able to constantly obsess about day in day out is ourselves. However, the experiment method does have one big advantage over anger and competitiveness. It's easy to develop a new experiment using your natural intellectual curiosity, you don't have to turn into a frenemy or have someone break up with you to continue your weight loss!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
work as meditation update
It's been a couple days since I started trying to think of my job as an opportunity to meditate. So far the results have been mixed. On Tuesday the day dragged. I could not meditate, I could not concentrate on my work, and no amount of conscious effort could make me like my job or feel content to be there. Today, Wednesday, the results were a little more positive. The day went by faster and I felt engaged in my work for the first time in couple weeks. It may have been the work itself was easier to get into, it may have been my new perspective, but either way it was a less painful experience than normal. I will continue this experiment and give another update at the end of the week.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The power of books
Much of this blog is (hopefully) going to be about how you can use books to change your life. I'm focusing on the self-help-ish genre but any book can change your attitude or mood. As I said in my last post my current job is a tad boring and mindless (I mean meditation worthy). But one the the advantages of a boring mindless job is that I can listen to to books while working using the text-to-speech function on my kindle. I haven't got this much reading done in years! This at work reading (even though I am listening I'll use the term reading because, well I feel like it) is done in binges. I spent 1 week listening to Infinite Jest for 8 hours a day, then spent a couple weeks listening to one 19th century English novel after another. I've just kicked off a 1970's dug addled phase starting with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've noticed some interesting things on these book binges:
1. You can get tired of anything. I generally like 19th century English novels, but I've read so many that I can't handle any more novels about parsons and country houses for a long while. I am damn tired of the class system as described by the lower upper class.
2. It's hard to read about jerks. If the main character is a jerk it's really hard for me to care about about him/her (usually it's a him) for me to finish a book . For example, I got through more than 2/3 of Sons and Lovers but then the main character just turned into a jerk and it seemed that all the novel was about was how the dude was an ass to the chick who was into him. I got disgruntled and looked up the book on Wikipedia, which gave away the whole plot, so I said F this and didn't continue reading.
3.That bring's me to a 3rd point. NEVER LOOK UP THE BOOK YOU ARE READING ON WIKIPEDIA, unless you love spoilers. For me, if I look up a depressing book on Wikipedia and it tells me that I have nothing but more depression to look forward to, then it becomes MUCH harder to get through it. If I hadn't wiki'ed maybe those depressing bits would have been sweet sorrow or profound, but once you know it's coming it much more like drudgery, at least for me. If you want to discription of the book without spoilers look on amazon.
4. You are what you read. If you immerse yourself in a depressing book you are likely to feel a little down, if you read a comedy of manners you may feel wittier, if you read a psychedelic drug novel you kinda feel high and twisted. I'm not saying to only read books that leave you happy. Often books that leave you happy are also shallow. Many of the best books leave you a little distributed after you read them. That's why they are great and why they stay with you long after you read them, because they trigger strong emotions and make you think. It's important to think and work your reading muscles. Try to read some books that will stretch and challange you just as you read books that you know you will enjoy. Balance is key since, going back to point 1, you can get tired of everything.
1. You can get tired of anything. I generally like 19th century English novels, but I've read so many that I can't handle any more novels about parsons and country houses for a long while. I am damn tired of the class system as described by the lower upper class.
2. It's hard to read about jerks. If the main character is a jerk it's really hard for me to care about about him/her (usually it's a him) for me to finish a book . For example, I got through more than 2/3 of Sons and Lovers but then the main character just turned into a jerk and it seemed that all the novel was about was how the dude was an ass to the chick who was into him. I got disgruntled and looked up the book on Wikipedia, which gave away the whole plot, so I said F this and didn't continue reading.
3.That bring's me to a 3rd point. NEVER LOOK UP THE BOOK YOU ARE READING ON WIKIPEDIA, unless you love spoilers. For me, if I look up a depressing book on Wikipedia and it tells me that I have nothing but more depression to look forward to, then it becomes MUCH harder to get through it. If I hadn't wiki'ed maybe those depressing bits would have been sweet sorrow or profound, but once you know it's coming it much more like drudgery, at least for me. If you want to discription of the book without spoilers look on amazon.
4. You are what you read. If you immerse yourself in a depressing book you are likely to feel a little down, if you read a comedy of manners you may feel wittier, if you read a psychedelic drug novel you kinda feel high and twisted. I'm not saying to only read books that leave you happy. Often books that leave you happy are also shallow. Many of the best books leave you a little distributed after you read them. That's why they are great and why they stay with you long after you read them, because they trigger strong emotions and make you think. It's important to think and work your reading muscles. Try to read some books that will stretch and challange you just as you read books that you know you will enjoy. Balance is key since, going back to point 1, you can get tired of everything.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Day 1
First an announcement: I've been reading Bird by Bird and I am cutting it from this month's book list. I think it is an excellent book but it's about writing fiction and I'm not trying to write fiction. If I ever get a the fiction bug I will definitely bring it back out.
So day one hasn't been that exciting. I have been reading "Are You Ready to Succeed" and part of what it's about is changing your perception of "reality". Basically Rao says that what we perceive as reality isn't real so why not make your reality enjoyable? Don't get hung up on whether this reality is "true" just suspend judgment and try it out.
I am trying it out on my job. I think my job is boring, like so boring that at multiple points during the day I don't think I can take it any longer and I have to fight to keep from talking my bag and walking out the door never to return. Soooo now instead of thinking "my job is too boring and mindless" I am going to think, "my job is boring, but it's also mindless enough that I can meditate while doing it. I sometimes get into a flow state and it feels pretty good. What other jobs give you the opportunity to meditate for 8 hours a day?!" I'll give you and update about how this changed thinking works tomorrow.
So day one hasn't been that exciting. I have been reading "Are You Ready to Succeed" and part of what it's about is changing your perception of "reality". Basically Rao says that what we perceive as reality isn't real so why not make your reality enjoyable? Don't get hung up on whether this reality is "true" just suspend judgment and try it out.
I am trying it out on my job. I think my job is boring, like so boring that at multiple points during the day I don't think I can take it any longer and I have to fight to keep from talking my bag and walking out the door never to return. Soooo now instead of thinking "my job is too boring and mindless" I am going to think, "my job is boring, but it's also mindless enough that I can meditate while doing it. I sometimes get into a flow state and it feels pretty good. What other jobs give you the opportunity to meditate for 8 hours a day?!" I'll give you and update about how this changed thinking works tomorrow.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Road Map and Month 1 Reading List
This post is about how I will organize this blog and experiment. Details may change but this is the general structure.
Looking at all my self-help books I saw that they mostly fell into 3 general categories: self, career, health. I think I could add an extra category too: writing. I have collected a small slew of writing books over the years because I always had a vague idea of wanting to become a better writer...except I never wrote anything other than academic papers that were assigned to me and that I usually wrote at the last minute. Ok enough about that, so I have 4 categories of self-help books. Each month I will take 3 of those books and try to apply them to things in my life that I care about: stuff like this blog, my relationships with my husband, friends and family, getting a new job, loosing weight (self improvement goal I know, but lets see how i can transform it), etc.
The first month I will read and apply the following books.
Career: You Majored in What? By Katharine Brooks
Self: Are You Ready to Succeed? By Srikumar S. Rao
Writing: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life By Anne Lamott
Happy Easter All!
Looking at all my self-help books I saw that they mostly fell into 3 general categories: self, career, health. I think I could add an extra category too: writing. I have collected a small slew of writing books over the years because I always had a vague idea of wanting to become a better writer...except I never wrote anything other than academic papers that were assigned to me and that I usually wrote at the last minute. Ok enough about that, so I have 4 categories of self-help books. Each month I will take 3 of those books and try to apply them to things in my life that I care about: stuff like this blog, my relationships with my husband, friends and family, getting a new job, loosing weight (self improvement goal I know, but lets see how i can transform it), etc.
The first month I will read and apply the following books.
Career: You Majored in What? By Katharine Brooks
Self: Are You Ready to Succeed? By Srikumar S. Rao
Writing: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life By Anne Lamott
Happy Easter All!
Crazy making
Focusing on something other than yourself isn't a sure path to sanity, it's just the more likely path. You can become just as obsessed with your marathon time as you can with the size of your thighs. I know, I am the obsessive type, and I can get throughly engrossed my projects. But I've found that when I get obsessed with a project I have periods where I feel great. I experience flow. I am in the zone. I am a productive machine! But sometimes I can get frustrated. There are times where nothing seems to work and I end up throwing things and eating lots of ice cream and maybe a few tears are involved.
When I focus on myself and self improvement projects there aren't those periods of beautiful calm punctuated with bouts of vexation, it's more a long downward spiral. Some parts of of the spiral seem fun (researching diets, starting a fitness plan), other parts are fast and painful, but it all leads down. In the end I feel shitty about myself. Even if I succeed, (and note that success in these self-improvement projects is often ephemeral and vague) I feel shitty about my old self and feel shitty about my current self as soon as I fall off the rails for a minute.
We all have to grow and develop. We can't stay infants forever. We have two paths to do this. One is by focusing on the actions and things you want to improve, the other is about improving yourself. Both involve pain. That's the price of being alive, we can't escape pain. My theory is just the the first path, focusing on actions and things you want to improve is less painful than trying to improve yourself.
When I focus on myself and self improvement projects there aren't those periods of beautiful calm punctuated with bouts of vexation, it's more a long downward spiral. Some parts of of the spiral seem fun (researching diets, starting a fitness plan), other parts are fast and painful, but it all leads down. In the end I feel shitty about myself. Even if I succeed, (and note that success in these self-improvement projects is often ephemeral and vague) I feel shitty about my old self and feel shitty about my current self as soon as I fall off the rails for a minute.
We all have to grow and develop. We can't stay infants forever. We have two paths to do this. One is by focusing on the actions and things you want to improve, the other is about improving yourself. Both involve pain. That's the price of being alive, we can't escape pain. My theory is just the the first path, focusing on actions and things you want to improve is less painful than trying to improve yourself.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
What I believe
Ok here is what I believe: Most of us are OK. As long as you are not abusive, violent, or cruel you are fine. You don't need to worry about improving yourself. But we all need to accomplish tasks and activities. We all needed to learn to brush our teeth and tie our shoes. Do I think I became a better person when I learned to tie my shoes or say please and thank you? No. I needed those skills to function successfully in our society but I was a perfectly fine human being before and after I learned those things. Learning and accomplishing new skills and tasks doesn't change your innate fine-ness.
When we talk about self improvement we really mean becoming better at tasks or activities or relationships that are important to us. I don't become a better person if I loose weight. I just become better at counting calories, or eating vegetables, or exercising, or attracting attention from dudes, or making other woman jealous, or looking good in skinny jeans, or lowering my blood pressure, or whatever result matters to me whether it is frivolous or serious.
What I'm trying to do is take those self-improvement goals and take them out of myself and make them more like the simple tasks and goals that I accomplish every day. Tasks that I don't associate with my self worth. For example I put on deodorant every day. I don't think that it makes me a better person or that if I didn't use it I would be bad. I just use it because I don't want people to stay away from me because I smell bad and because I don't want sweat stains in my shirts. On the other hand this is how I usually think about weight loss: OMG I can't believe I need to loose x amount of weight, how did I get this bad? What did I do wrong? I suck! I need to loose weight. OK now I've been trying to diet for two weeks now and I haven't lost much. What's wrong with me? I keep cheating! I have no self control! why can't I say no to pizza? I'm so bad.... and so on and so on.
As you can see putting on deodorant is about about accomplishing things I care about: not being socially offensive and not ruining shirts. Weight loss is about ME ME ME, how I have to weigh less, how I suck, how I am bad, how there are so many things wrong with me. I see my ability/inability to loose weight as a reflection on myself. If I can loose weight and keep it off I am a better person, I am good. If I can't then I must not be good enough.
When we talk about self improvement we really mean becoming better at tasks or activities or relationships that are important to us. I don't become a better person if I loose weight. I just become better at counting calories, or eating vegetables, or exercising, or attracting attention from dudes, or making other woman jealous, or looking good in skinny jeans, or lowering my blood pressure, or whatever result matters to me whether it is frivolous or serious.
What I'm trying to do is take those self-improvement goals and take them out of myself and make them more like the simple tasks and goals that I accomplish every day. Tasks that I don't associate with my self worth. For example I put on deodorant every day. I don't think that it makes me a better person or that if I didn't use it I would be bad. I just use it because I don't want people to stay away from me because I smell bad and because I don't want sweat stains in my shirts. On the other hand this is how I usually think about weight loss: OMG I can't believe I need to loose x amount of weight, how did I get this bad? What did I do wrong? I suck! I need to loose weight. OK now I've been trying to diet for two weeks now and I haven't lost much. What's wrong with me? I keep cheating! I have no self control! why can't I say no to pizza? I'm so bad.... and so on and so on.
As you can see putting on deodorant is about about accomplishing things I care about: not being socially offensive and not ruining shirts. Weight loss is about ME ME ME, how I have to weigh less, how I suck, how I am bad, how there are so many things wrong with me. I see my ability/inability to loose weight as a reflection on myself. If I can loose weight and keep it off I am a better person, I am good. If I can't then I must not be good enough.
Orgin story
I am 29 and I have spent most of my 20's trying to improve myself in some way. I don't know where it all started or why. Why do you suddenly believe that you are not good enough and need improving? As a kid I wanted to be better at certain activities or tasks, stuff like basketball or school or being nicer to my parents. I don't think I ever even contemplated the idea of wanting to improve myself for the sake of becoming a better me. But regardless I eventually did discover the allure and obsession of trying to be the best me I could be and in the process I have spent countless hours obsessing/beating myself up over it and accumulating many self-help books.
What's the result? It's been almost 10 years and I can't say I have become "better" in any real way. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that self help sucks. You can't improve yourself in a vacuum. If anything it leads to a lot of self-obsession and navel gazing. Which I guess is what the self help industry wants. The more problems you find with yourself and the more crappy and inadequate you feel, the more money you will spend trying to fix yourself.
If you really want to improve something in your life you need to look outside of yourself and focus on real things. You need to be that 10 year old who wants to improve her jump shot, not the 27 year old who wants to "get into shape" whatever that means. Don't improve yourself, develop skills so you can improve things outside of yourself. Whether that be a book you are trying to write a closet you are trying to keep organized, a 10k you want to run.
This may may seem like I'm just playing with semantics: don't try to shape yourself, try to shape something else and in the process you will change. Maybe it is just semantics, but I really do think that we would actually "improve" much more and be a lot less crazy in the process if we took the focus off ourselves.
Thats what this blog is about, a lab, Avtar Lab, where I (Avtar) can try out this theory myself. I will break out those self-help books I bought over the years. I was going to throw them away but then I thought that maybe they would be useful if used a little differently. Instead of applying the ideas and techniques to myself (where before they ended up not helping) I am going to apply them to activities and things in my life that I care about. Hopefully these books were not a total waste of money. I will blog about things like how hard or easy it is to keep the focus off myself, the books themselves, whether I am improving the things I want to improve, and finally how I change. I want to know if taking the focus off yourself changes the your perception of reality and the whole concept of improvement.
I know that in a way this whole blog could be seen a a form of navel gazing. But I am going to try to be more objective and scientific than I am normally. Also I don't think reflecting on your experiences is real dangerous navel gazing as long as you stay semi-objective, rational and thoughtful and don't downward spiral into ME ME ME ME thinking.
What's the result? It's been almost 10 years and I can't say I have become "better" in any real way. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that self help sucks. You can't improve yourself in a vacuum. If anything it leads to a lot of self-obsession and navel gazing. Which I guess is what the self help industry wants. The more problems you find with yourself and the more crappy and inadequate you feel, the more money you will spend trying to fix yourself.
If you really want to improve something in your life you need to look outside of yourself and focus on real things. You need to be that 10 year old who wants to improve her jump shot, not the 27 year old who wants to "get into shape" whatever that means. Don't improve yourself, develop skills so you can improve things outside of yourself. Whether that be a book you are trying to write a closet you are trying to keep organized, a 10k you want to run.
This may may seem like I'm just playing with semantics: don't try to shape yourself, try to shape something else and in the process you will change. Maybe it is just semantics, but I really do think that we would actually "improve" much more and be a lot less crazy in the process if we took the focus off ourselves.
Thats what this blog is about, a lab, Avtar Lab, where I (Avtar) can try out this theory myself. I will break out those self-help books I bought over the years. I was going to throw them away but then I thought that maybe they would be useful if used a little differently. Instead of applying the ideas and techniques to myself (where before they ended up not helping) I am going to apply them to activities and things in my life that I care about. Hopefully these books were not a total waste of money. I will blog about things like how hard or easy it is to keep the focus off myself, the books themselves, whether I am improving the things I want to improve, and finally how I change. I want to know if taking the focus off yourself changes the your perception of reality and the whole concept of improvement.
I know that in a way this whole blog could be seen a a form of navel gazing. But I am going to try to be more objective and scientific than I am normally. Also I don't think reflecting on your experiences is real dangerous navel gazing as long as you stay semi-objective, rational and thoughtful and don't downward spiral into ME ME ME ME thinking.
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