If I Were Still King ...

Failing As Hard As I Can

You need to fail before you can really succeed, as success without failure is just good luck.

When we want to learn a new skill, we start by failing at it. Miserably in fact. When you first pick up a violin or a flute, you are going to sound terrible playing it. When you learn a new language, you start by completing garbling the syntax, the words, even the sounds of the letters themselves. Your frisbees whiz nowhere near where you want them to go. Your figure drawing looks barely better than a stick figure. You'll get five or ten minutes into jogging before you keel over from exhaustion.

In short, the first step to succeeding is to be spectacularly unsuccessful at what you want to do. 

This is, of course, the point where many, many people just hang their hat and say they're done. We have such a strong social stigma against failure that we see failing at something as a sign that "we should not be doing this". As though success will simply be handed to you on a silver platter when you are supposed to have it.

And it's very easy to convince ourselves of this being the way things ought to be. Afterall, if you look around at people who are successful, they're not failing. That amazing artist you admire produces so many beautiful pieces of art. The concert musicians play stunningly complex music flawlessly in front of hundreds or thousands of people. These people are being wildly successful, so how can failure play any part in their success?

Because they already did their failing in the past. They were busy failing quietly while no one was watching and now they are succeeding while everyone's eyes are on them. Of course back then it was the present. They had to face their doubt, their fears, and the fact that they were failing at what they were doing, day after day. But in spite of that, they kept failing time and time again, day in and day out, working towards 10,000 Hours of failure so that they could finally start succeeding.

Of course, not all of the failure looked the same. First you would have stick figure drawings which were total failures. Then as they started to get rough shapes right, they would be failing at proportions. Then they would fail at shading or coloring things properly. Next they would fail at drawing difficult poses, or fail to capture complex textures. Each time they fail by progressively smaller and smaller amounts, and their failures would start to look more and more like success.

This is where the second, critical pitfall comes in - the moment where these people are failing by a small enough amount that some people can start appreciating their work. After so many disappointing failure, their efforts are starting to be recognized. So they stop. They have learned to do it "good enough". They have reached a mediocre level at this task and have laid down their burden, accepting that this is "as good as I'll get."

The masters-to-be, however, see that they are still failing. The failings are small, almost invisible to the less trained people, but they still register subconsciously. The people who will go on to become great SEE that there is still failure in their work and they decide to keep failing, harder than ever before. They come up with new, more extreme ways to push their limits, to force those imperfections into the light. Only when finally the failings have been reduced to a level that the master can no longer detect them will there be peace.

The Education system is where a lot of us spend twelve years (or more) of our time learning about success and failure. During these critical years we develop our understanding of the role that success and failure play in our lives, how to deal with them, and what they mean to us. We stigmatize the kids who do poorly ("the dumb ones") and praise the kids who do well ("the smart ones"). The kids who are doing well are succeeding, while the ones who are doing poorly are failing.

In actuality, both groups are failing, they are just failing differently. The "smart kids" are the ones who are failing quietly at home or in study groups. They're failing when they study flash cards, or create mini-tests, or make multiple drafts of essays. They fail when they ask a friend to edit their work, or when they challenge each other with questions. By contrast, the "dumb kids" aren't taking the time to fail up front. So when it comes time to hand in their homework or take a test, they fail where it counts instead of in the safer environment where it doesn't count.

If, by chance, you end up like I did in school where you are able to reach a mediocre level without failing, watch out. The level of success keeps going up and you haven't taken the time to develop the skills to embrace failure in private. Eventually you lose ground against the tide of failures because you haven't learned how to manage them. They're going to catch up to you eventually and in the worst possible way.

This failure-based-learning doesn't just apply to the skills you learn in school. It also applies to the social skills necessary to make friends, to manage a romantic relationship, to land a good job, and to ask for what you need. Yeah, those were all hard lessons to learn.

So if you want to learn anything, start by embracing the failures as much as possible. Because they're not going to go away. Of course, you only have so many hours in a lifetime in which to fail, so it's best to start as early as possible and pick the things you'd like to get better at the most so you can start failing at them as quickly as possible.

 

Please consult these videos for extra credit:

 

 

 

Moving Between Worlds

There is a world in which heterosexual sex is the only acceptable kind of sexual activity. Where men love women, women love men, and nothing else is tolerated. And then there is another world in which homosexuality, bisexuality, heteroflexibility, homoflexibility, pansexuality and asexuality are all embraced and respected.

There is a world in which gender roles are strictly defined, where males dress masculine and act like men, where females dress feminine and act like women. And then there is another world in which cross-dressing and gender-blending are accepted and love. Where androgynous, transgender, transsexual and genderqueer individuals are free to act and dress as they please.

There is a world in which everyone knows you don't inflict harm on the people you care about, where acts that leave bruises are only seen as abuse - profane and unforgivable - no matter the context. And then there is another world where we can consent to the unthinkable, where we can embrace painful pleasures, where power can be given and taken without diminishing the other side.

There is a world in which a romantic relationship is between two people, and another one which doesn't place a number on it.

There is a world in which ethnicity, religion and skin color is of utmost importance, and another one that doesn't distinguish based on these things.

There is a world in which people are self-serving and greedy, and another one in which people care deeply for each other.

There are worlds in which people are judged based on their accomplishments, their perceived intelligence or their failures. There are worlds in which your musical taste, fashion or ability to speak English matter more than anything else.

These worlds can be combined in any combination of imaginable forms - a heterosexual poly world is a valid combination, as is a homosexual monogamous world. A gender-diverse racially prejudiced world exists, as does one where race doesn't matter as long as you conform to gender roles. Moving into one larger world doesn't immediately put you in all larger worlds - each one is its own journey, its own set of trials, its own challenges to reach.

If you are here reading this, you probably have already moved between some of these worlds. You may remember the struggle of finding the people, the connections, the language or the ideas to express the new world you were looking to join. You may remember the wonder of your first step into a much bigger, brighter world - whether it was through entry into college, or meeting the love of your life, or travelling to a distant location. You might have stumbled into it by chance, or you might have set out on a journey to discover what lay over the horizon.

So if you feel trapped.
If you feel contained within the social norms of the world.
If you feel like everywhere you look, there are insurmountable barriers to you.
Then remember that there is always another world out there. A world in which the things you once thought were barriers no longer exist. A world where you can have both sides and the fence. ;)

Believe in it. Look for the signs that point the way. Act as though you already belong there. You will find it and it will find you.

I hope to see you reach it. There are so many good people waiting for you. <3

Rejection Redux

One week after my Rejection post, this video is posted on TED

 

 

"You don't sort of look into your soul and find your True Self. What you are partly doing at least is creating your True Self."

I enjoy the serendipity here. :)

Rejection

I had to break up with someone very dear to me today. I knew it was coming for a long time, I could feel the tension mounting, and it was finally time to let it all go.

It was over quickly, they just turned and left without a word of protest, just a hurt expression on their face. There was of course the usual bitter sting of departure, the moment of doubt before saying it, and the ones afterwards that maybe I should go back and try to make amends. Maybe, if I plead, they'll come back. But I know now that the seal is broken, the air has been let out, and the magic won't come back.

Today, I rejected my True Self. And I encourage you to do the same.

My True Self, some would say, is the part of me that I keep hidden deep down inside. That immutable, unchanging, fixed part of me. The "real me" that I keep hidden from the world, that I'm afraid of getting hurt. The part of me that I should never question, that I should trust whenever I'm in doubt. The part of me that I should refuse to compromise on.

Maybe your True Self is a writer who can never get started on their big book. Or maybe your True Self is a romantic who can just never find the right partner. Perhaps it's a great orator who is afraid to get up and speak. A painter who can imagine beautiful images but never picks up a paintbrush. A musician who is haunted by music they wish they could play but don't know how to play a single instrument.

I rejected my True Self for three major reasons: accountability, immutability, and whininess.

First, if a part of me wants to make a difference to my whole, they must stand up and be counted. They can't just tug and tug for me to get ready to do something, then walk away when I'm finally ready to start. After dozens of purchases of various art supplies, gaming books, computer science books, and preparing for project after project, my True Self keeps neglecting to show up and make use of what I have paved the way for them to be able to express. Every time they propose a new project, it's missing an ingredient, which the rest of my gestalt needs to go acquire. Once acquired, of course, the True Self is mute and unresponsive, unwilling to make good on what they promised they'd do.

Second, the idea of some piece of me being "unchangeable" no longer sits with me. I spent pretty much the entire time from age ten through twenty-five basically operating as a very introverted person, who kept few friends and didn't really want to do much. During the time that LJ was popular and those little quiz memes were circulating like wildfire, I did a Myers-Briggs one that scored me as a pretty classic "bookworm": INTP. This was my "true self" - Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving. This was how I was supposed to feel "comfortable" relating to myself and the world around me, which corresponded to how I WAS relating to the world around me.

After I moved out to Vancouver, broke up with my wife and forced myself into the social scene, I realized that I was changing. Not just little by little, but rather quickly when placed in the new environment of looking for friends. I recently redid a Myers-Briggs personality test, and scored dramatically different than before: ENFJ - Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging. Now my "true self" was supposed to be comfortable with meeting lots of people and acting on emotions. Conveniently this seems to be how I am relating to the world around me - now.

If "the world's most widely used personality assessment" is going to get tripped up by a few years of personal growth, then I don't really see there being much hope for quantifying my True Self into any discrete, rational form.

Lastly, HOLY SHIT is my True Self whiny. If there is one part of my gestalt that is more annoying, more needy, and more prone to making bad decisions than the rest of me, it's the part that has managed to get itself enshrined as the "true self". Seriously, having a part of me claiming that it's the one that gets to make the decisions that are "the best for me" is crippling.

I no longer believe that any part of my mind is an unchangeable "real me" that is free from accountability of actions. No part of my mind gets to pass off with the excuse of "well, that's just the way I am I guess."

But if a part of me tries to claim such, I'll be happy to show it the door.

Trust Must Flow

Trust. With only five letters, it has a lot of meaning weighing in behind it. It's one of those words that is deceptively short for the amount of meaning there is behind it when you say "I trust you."

Of course, we've all been hurt by someone we've trusted too much and they've done something which broke our heart or trust. It may have taken days, weeks or months to heal from it. Some people carry that heartbreak with them for years afterwards, pushing away anyone who gets close. Inevitably, it all boils down to the same question: since it hurts so much, how do I avoid getting hurt by someone I trusted?

 

 

 

The most obvious solution to most people is to treat our trust like it's locked inside a fortress. Any time someone approaches who we might have to trust, we then start agonizing over whether or not to trust them, how much to trust them, and what if they betray our trust. There may be difficult protocols to get in, an extensive waiting period of examining a person before they can be trusted, or in many cases outright refusal to trust based on a trivial piece of information.

Of course, this never guarantees perfect security. Most high-security prisons have been escaped from in the real world and countless high-security facilities have been breached. In our modern high-tech world the single greatest threat to the security of these facilities is social engineering - the art of manipulating people to get a piece of information that would be difficult to obtain by conventional means.

Keeping people are arms length opens up what I see is a critical flaw in this system - you have no basis for how trustworthy anyone is. If someone you know approaches you and asks for your trust, you have no history of their trustworthiness because you've never had to trust them before. You are faced with the critical choice of trusting them with almost no useful information and resort to irrelevant information as the basis of your trust ("well he's kinda cute, so I guess I can trust him.") In essence, despite the fact that you've resolved to be a fortress against untrustworthiness, anyone with reasonable charisma can approach you and have fair odds of being let past all that security unchecked.

The biggest problem to me is that all this Fortress Trust stuff focuses too much on the negative aspects of trusting someone (the possible future breach of trust) at the cost of ignoring the many positive aspects of trusting. By keeping trust locked away in a tower, that very human connection of having someone to confide in is lost. If trust was just a game about waiting to get hurt, we wouldn't play it.

So my conclusion is ... the trust must flow.

I believe that a better way to deal with wondering about who to trust is turn the situation around backwards. Instead of starting with trusting no one, start with trusting everyone - a little bit. Anyone who comes in contact with you is immediately given a small slice of trust pie, paid up front. Discard the old adage that "trust is earned, not given" and be the first to offer a reasonable amount of trust.

This of course doesn't mean you immediately entrust your life, worldly possessions and identity in the hands of a total stranger. Start with a small piece of information or a favor. Confess a hidden flaw, a dream, or a fear you have. Let them see a small token of your trust in them without them having to ask for your trust first. Essentially, take control of the situation by issuing trust first.

Once they have received the largesse of your trust, you are able to see how they react to being trusted. Some people enjoy repeating privileged information to others. If you have confided in one of these people, your information may soon make it back to your ears, and you will have been able to infer their truthworthiness. Some people enjoy using information as a weapon against the people involved. An untrustworthy person may soon turn that information back against you or try to exploit it.

If the person repays your trust with some of their own, then you can pay back into the relationship and reap the benefits. If they do not repay the trust immediately, give them time or offer more pieces of trust. Do not prompt them for their trust - this will make them defensive or make them unwillingly divulge information. If they are just a sponge for your trust, then quietly draw your trust back from them. If they anger at the lost trust, then this is also a poor sign. If they don't even notice the trust evapoarate, then they are simply indifferent to your trust and so it would be wise not to waste it on them. Do not throw pearls before swine.

This ebb and flow of trust, mutually shared without reprimand, must be the ideal state of a relationship. It makes building a knowledge of someone's trustworthiness immediate and instinctual. By being actively involved in granting trust, it becomes easier to recognize people who are making obvious plays for your trust, as well as those who will not respect your trust. Lastly, by having multiple people you are actively engaged in trusting, even if someone betrays you, you are never cut off from your only source of trust.

Be Proactive Not Reactive

Be Proactive Not Reactive. A lovely comic about learning the advantages of planning.

The Walls We Build

Humans have been building walls for a very long time. The excavation of Jericho (the biblical city) suggests that its earliest walls may have been built around 8000 BCE. If we use the Walls of Jericho as a basis, we've been in the business of putting up barriers for a very, very long time.

For only slightly less time however, humans have been coming up with interesting and novel ways of overcoming walls built by other humans. From stealthy grappling hooks to cunning sappers and brutish catapults, we have devised dozens of ways of overcoming walls.

There are and have been other famous walls around the world: the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall and the Western Wall. They have been used as symbols of unity and symbols of discord. One wall shelters us while another divides us.

Walls are a powerful symbol in our minds - an imposing obstacle which is difficult if not impossible to overcome. A barrier that stands in our way and prevents us from reaching a destination, or at least taking a lengthy detour. But the encircling wall can also be the symbol of hearth and home, of sanctuary against a chaotic and destructive world. Or it can become a prison if enclosed too tightly.

 We name the walls in our minds differently depending on how we see them. If the wall is preventing us from reaching our creative potential, we might call it "writer's block". Prejudice and bigotry are walls that colour our views of people around us. Morals and rules keep us from straying too far from what matters most. Habits and comfort zones just keep us from straying too far in any given direction.

I don't believe it is possible to be a functional member of society without walls in your mind somewhere. You need some boundaries that tell you what is possible and what isn't, what to expect from someone and how to treat them. But too many walls, or walls in the wrong places can be equally disasterous.

So why consider these walls at all if we need them? Why talk about them if we need to have walls in place for us to be able to function? Who's to say what are the right walls and what are the wrong ones? Aren't my walls just as good as yours?

Walls are usually blinding to what is actually occuring on the other side of them. This has been used to the (dis)advantage of people throughout history by thinking the impossible, by thinking outside the box. Not everything outside the box is valid, useful, popular or practical. But the right piece of information gleaned from outside the box of common knowledge can be a powerful tool - it has raised empires up, and then razed them again.

When we learn something new, we are rebuilding our walls to accomodate new information. Most of what we can learn from our general education system is in the form of external world knowledge - politics, science, mathematics. If we continue this metaphor a little further, the schools teach us how to take information and expand our walls to accomodate it. We unlock new, greener pastures and can explore areas that were previously unknown to us.

Sometimes we also construct a wall defensively, to protect us from a predator. While this certainly applies to victims of emotional abuse, we all have been hurt by those we loved in some way. We build protective barriers to keep others at bay, lest they hurt us again as we have been hurt before. But even if you build your wall to keep a wolf at bay, the wolf will not lurk there forever. It will grow hungry for new pray and move on - though our wall still stands.

Rarely though are we taught how to tackle our own walls, to see if they are still valid, to look beyond them and imagine what lies there. To see that the once dangerous wolf has moved on and it is safe to venture forth again. To find greener pastures without having to rely on other people to tell us where they are.

If you encounter a wall in your mind and you've never even seen the other side, then I endorse overcoming that wall if only for a little while. Climb it, tunnel under it, walk around it, dynamite it, or just install a window. Do something so you know what's out there. It might be the greenest pasture you've ever seen.

Inertia

Let's talk classical physics for a moment: F = m * a .  Force is mass multiplied by acceleration. How much force you need to apply to something to change its speed is proportional to its mass and to how much you want to change it. This formula describes inertia - the resistance an object has changing its state of motion or rest.

If your car is headed in a sound, good direction, then inertia is a good thing - it keeps you from getting blown over (a lightweight vehicle is more prone to winds for example). That is, until it comes time to stop or change directions. And unless you're driving across Manitoba on the TransCanada, you're going to need to change directions.

There's another point here too of course - the sister of inertia is friction. In a system where two otherwise similar objects are moving along, the heavier one will experience more friction. The net loss in speed should be the same if the objects don't have any additional force being added. But if they are being driven by a motor, the heavier one needs more force to maintain its speed in the face of friction. In short - if you have two objects both being pushed with the same force, the more massive one will move slower. Given the same input force, the more massive object may come to rest while the less massive object may keep moving forward.

Your life plays by similar rules. The objects in your life give you mass. I'm mostly thinking about physical objects at the moment, but it applies to other areas too (your friends and acquaintances for example). 

If your possessions are mass, then the world is full of friction. The friction coefficient changes often (rough in hard times, smooth in good times) and it's hard to predict. Adding more mass is all fine and dandy, as long as you plan to keep upping your force to match and don't try to change directions too quickly.

Of course, maybe you're like me and you have decided you're having a hard time adapting to new changes. Or maybe you're realizing that you're starting to slow down and want to get back up to speed. Rather than looking for ways to increase your force, you could instead look at ways to reduce mass. Even if you do increase your force to go along with it, reducing mass will mean even faster acceleration.

Beware especially of things which have a built in system to get you to add more mass. A TV is only so good without a console or a DVD/Blu-Ray player to go with it. And once you have those, you'll need games to play and movies to watch. Or maybe you'll just sign up for a monthly subscription for cable television. But then you might turn to TiVo to record your favorite shows, or Netflix for streaming content.

Before you know it, you've invested twice the initial cost into something in order to be able to get its "full value". Buying the movies without watching them is pretty pointless though, so now toss in dozens or hundreds of hours of time into it.

And you know what - I've done it. I've fallen for that whole trick - hook, line and sinker. And I probably still will at some point in the future (or the very recent past - oh hi Skyrim). I'm not above the sudden, compelling urge to acquire material things. But I've started countering it by using its worst enemy - getting rid of things.

I have far too much stuff in my house (which is one of the reasons I haven't downsized my living space yet). So I'm working on reducing it. Aggressively. We're talking bags and bags of stuff I once thought was "so amazing and awesome" but now is more in the ballpark of "hey, I haven't seen/used this in years". Trash, give away, donate or whatever - just get rid of it as fast as possible. I've been probably overusing the trash mechanic, but it helps keep me from balking or chickening out.

Once it's dans la poubelle (as they say in French), it's not my problem anymore. An immediate kick of juice for it being gone, then tie up the bag at the end of the cleaning session and throw it in the bin outside.

So try it. Start making your life simpler by reducing the mass of your life. Some of the best things to throw out are the ones that keep waying you down with regrets for not using them more often. Fire your possessions.

We Don't Know What We Want

The thing about relationships is that there’s a lot of talk about respect, which is important.  Vitally so.  But we rarely talk about the corner cases where it’s necessary to disrespect with love.

“Respect” is often a synonym for “I do whatever s/he says s/he wants”… but while that guideline’s a solid wall for strangers that should be abided, it gets tricky when you’re dealing with someone you’ve known for years.  The “I do whatever s/he says s/he wants” logic assumes that Person X knows exactly what they want when it comes to life, and by giving them everything they request, you’re giving them everything they need.

Problem is, what we desire does not always get us what we actually want.

I Love My Wife Because She Disrespects Me -- The Ferrett

 

Lost at Sea...

Imagine you're a captain sailing the high seas. You're supposed to sail due east across the ocean (say from Europe to North America). You put your compass on the table and the needle points north. You point firmly in a direction and start sailing, knowing that all you need to do is keep sailing in that direction to get to your destination.

It's a few days later and you start to notice your crew is getting restless. There's a lot of whispering around the ship and they're not meeting your eye. Eventually you corner your first mate and demand an explanation. He explains that the crew is concerned that our heading might be off.

You thunder and blow about how obvious it is we're on the right heading, you're following your compass and it never steers you wrong. You're defensive, you're hot-headed, you threaten throw him overboard if he ever questions your command.

"Of course captain, but the sun is rising to the starboard side instead of in front of us."

That's when you look down and notice the magnet sitting by your compass, steering you wrong the whole way.



You've plotted a course, you planned everything, but you missed a crucial detail that's steering you wrong. You're on a course leading you far away from where you wanted to be. Sometimes you're the only one who doesn't see it because you've convinced yourself that you're on track. You're following your internal compass to find your way, but everyone else is looking to the sky to see where you're going.

Keep verifying your internal views against the world around you. If following this course of action is supposed to make me happier, are other people noticing my happiness? If this is supposed to help me make friends, am I socializing better with people?

Make your compass accountable for getting you to where you want to be and don't pin it on the wind or the waves. They will always be there.