My Best Four Months
I needed to make a change. I was stuck in a vacuum, clawing my way out just to get sucked back in. Any momentum I built would be reversed before it could take me anywhere.
I am still stuck, but still clawing. This is why I came up with a new method. It may not work, just like the others, but I have a shocking confidence in it. It feels different.
No, I feel different.
I will simply live the best four months of my life. During this time, I am selfish. More selfish than I have ever been in my life. So selfish I can ask the question: What do I want?
This is day four of the best four months of my life.
My Best Four Months
I chose four months because it is long enough to possibly achieve something, even with setbacks, but is short enough for the end to always be in sight. I can stay excited about it, because it is not eternal.
It is a trial run for the life I want. I’ve lived for the expectations of others, and I’ve lived for the ‘one-day’, but I can’t remember a time where I lived in a way I truly enjoyed.
Enjoyment isn’t a hedonistic romp. Embracing my base wants may give me my best couple of hours, but it would make for a terrible four months. Even here, a balance must be struck between shaping the world and plugging into the experience machine.
I have four months to be happy with myself.
The Start
A decision by itself does not produce change. I have habits, pains, and obligations holding me down. Each of these I have been addressing.
Bad Habits
There are three options for overcoming a habit.
- Willpower: This is the most immediately effective, but short term solution. It need not be will though. Here obligations or pains can be used to make the habit less appealing, but this is a temporary aid that uses negative emotions to fight actions that produce negative emotions. It is not a solution I want to hold to for any prolonged period of time.
- Short-circuit: This is to tackle the habit-loop directly. A habit goes cue-action-reward. This is to removed the cue. Without the cue, the action is never triggered.
- Overwrite: This is to tie another action to the cue. A positive action. This is the most effective long-term solution, but it is the most difficult short-term solution. It involves not only defying the bad habit, but taking a positive action as well.
My focus is on the third option: overwriting bad habits with good. In this, my focus is split. I mitigate the bad and build the good. I accept some slow-build and setbacks in this method, but the best me is one with good habits.
Overwriting is the only method that can make me who I want to be.
Tangibly, this means starting small. Every day doing a little bit better. I now go through my emails every day. I sleep at least seven hours. I eat healthy foods.
These are not a lot, but they are big for me. With eating, I had the advantage of cleaning out my fridge before visiting family for Thanksgiving. This allowed me to ‘start fresh’ with the food in my fridge. I still have to fight the desire to go pick up some chips and cheese dip, but successfully so far.
Bad habits are the dark little threads that pull back any progress you make. You need to have a plan to deal with them early on if you hope to keep whatever gains you make.
Whenever I feel the pull of a negative habit, I bargain with myself to do just a little bit better. When all I want to do is watch TV, I give myself twenty minutes of action for twenty minutes of TV. It’s not perfect, but its better.
Also, when I feel like I need to eat some total garbage, I push it off to tomorrow. I even plan a time to go get it, but its ridiculously early. So far, I’ve chosen the extra sleep over the food every time (that won’t always be the case, but its a heavy deterrent).
Pains
Pains are those chronic negative emotions that weigh everything down. The big one for me (and many others) is stress.
Stress everywhere.
Stress everything.
Stress stress stress.
I feel overloaded with stress, and I default to avoidance. Too much stress, too much uncertainty, and I ignore it all. Now I am in a worse position, and the stress compounds.
This isn’t always an issue. I found that I can handle the stresses of activities I enjoy, treating them as competitions. I am extremely competitive.
But, when beyond the stress is monotony or pointlessness, I break down.
So, I did the most reasonable thing I could think of. I dropped everything. Every stressor. Every activity without point or fun. I just stopped.
Not everyone can do this so completely as I can. I was in a masters program for computer science. I have no dependence. I have enough money to live on for four months (helpful). I have the ability to detach. So I did.
This may sound like shirking my responsibilities. That is 100% corrected. I shirked. I shirked real good.
It’s not a shirk to watch more TV and eat more doughnuts — I’m actually doing less (although still too much).
No, this is a shirk to build. Build myself. Build my writing. Build my coding. Just build things.
If I can’t find the joy in anything I’m doing, than I need to do other things. It’s easy to say (albeit a bit wordy), but to do it is scary. I still haven’t told people. I need the freedom to explore in this time, and too much support can feel encaging.
I know. What a terrible problem.
Without unnecessary pain, my spirit is free. I can explore. I am lighter. My quality of life immediately doubled. I haven’t felt this relaxed in over a year. Even my breaks were fill of things I “need” to do, that I hated and didn’t actually serve my goals.
I let go of my pains.
Obligations
This is the one I am uncertain about.
I have a tendency to put the wants of others of my own needs. That’s a whole thing in itself.
I am in the position that no one really relies on me. I can cut ties. I must allow people to be disappointed in me.
It’s its own form of exposure therapy. I stop looking for others to tell me how to live. I isolate my own voice, so maybe I can finally hear it.
I am being selfish. Yes. Yes. Yes. How many times have I used the word “I” here. C’mon, this is about me.
What’s Next
I am four days into my four months. There is a lot of trial and error ahead. But they are trials and errors I have fully committed to.
So, here’s to what’s next. 🥂
