Multi-Tasking and living in the NOW

When we become more like the person we want to be, we like what we do and we therefore can appreciate it more. We love what we are doing. We love who we are. We do not want to go back to a past version of us, nor do we care for a future version. We appreciate the life we have.

The only reality is the now. Now is the only time that counts. Now is the only time we can make a change. The past is gone. It lives on only in our memories. Let it be there. Don’t keep wishing for it to come back. Because it never will. And the future lies ahead. Only our plans can influence it. And those get messed up more often than not. Longing for the future to come will only hinder us from appreciating the present.

We should learn to live in the current moment. To fully appreciate it. But to fully appreciate we need the present to be aligned with our vision. With who we want to be and we need to be fully living that very moment. Our attention is this very precious thing. It is essentially the same as our time. We have to be mindful of what we spend it on. And when we are multi-tasking, we decide, that something is not important and not good enough to completely focus on it. And we end up not living those moments. We end up wasting them.

Not only does half-heartedness not lead to happiness. But it deprives us from feeling fulfilled. Because we never allow ourselves to get emotionally involved in anything. Because we are doing something else at the same time. Or because we are thinking about the past or the future. Maybe we just have too many commitments. If we cannot go to class without constantly being on our phones planning the next party, we most likely will neither listen to what we are actually wanting to learn nor are we planning the party well. We will have to re-plan the party and read through the materials of that lecture again. And in the end we will end up loosing time and hating ourselves for it.

I get a lot of weird looks because I decide to first and foremost be a student, because I love studying. And that is my commitment. I rather commit to one thing and do that right with good to amazing results than do three things at a time, messing at least two of them up and not enjoying it.

The other point is: If you are not committed to what you are doing. It will make you plain unhappy, because frankly you’d rather be somewhere else. This is why we have to be careful with what we commit to. Because we may slip into commitments that do not suit us. And of course this is a journey of trial and error, but we have to be aware of that.

And finally multi-tasking prevents brilliance (granted not always). If we cannot focus on the one thing we are doing we have a harder time understanding it and it is nearly impossible to do our best. Which means that our growth is hugely limited and therefore multi-tasking will prevent us from reaching our full potential. And that is just a waste of our resources and plain sad.

I believe there are things that work great together. Like riding a bike and listening to music. Or looking out the window of a driving train and listening to music. I even think that depending on the music it can even be listened to while studying. Though that last part is extremely debatable.

But I also have experienced how just being in the moment focusing on only one thing makes me feel at peace. Makes me happy. In fact I am texting, writing this post, listening to music and singing along from time to time right now. I could also imagine drinking a cup of tea as well. But it works for me. However I am slowing down to notice how good it feels. Slowing down to tap into how I feel deep down. Taping into my body a lot more often than I used to. And with the realization that it feels good comes the gratitude and the love for my life and inevitably happiness.

I am aware it will not always feel like this. But the more I practice it now. The more it becomes a habit. The more often I take a few heartbeats to take insanely deep breaths and just be there, the easier it will be to appreciate my life when it is getting harder again.

So all we need to do is know what we like doing. And do it well now. Appreciate it. And smile.

Memories and their impact on us

Determinism. According to Wikipedia “Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes”. I like to hate on Determinism. Why? Because I had a very good friend who used it to justify anything. And even though he denied it, it felt to me that he was not taking responsibility for anything. To this day I still remember. And I remember that I have chosen to not use Determinism to be able to do whatever I want. But I also know that our past and our circumstances have an incredible impact on us.

This is just one example. I will always associate Determinism with that friend. And I will always remember the conversations we had about how we hardly have any free will and how helpless and sad that made me feel. But it is not the only thing that I associate with Determinism. Because I have seen that point of view, I was able to make up my own mind. And Memories are a perfect example, for how our past is part of us, but not what defines us.

We have memories. Maybe we associate a song or a movie with a certain person or situation. And every time we get confronted with said song or movie we remember. But the thing is: if that memory pains us we can do something about it. We can reprogram our brains to associate the movie or song with something else. It is like we are overwriting the memory. It is called learning. And yes, we may never forget anything that once was correlated with that song or movie. But that is actually a good thing. This memory is part of us. And we learn something with everything we experience. But just because we do not forget, does not mean that we will always remember that certain person or situation with the particular song or movie. And it will definitely not make us loose ourselves, just because the song was played in the mall.

When we look into our past, we will find things that we consider mistakes. And there is no use in denying anything. Just because we wish something never happened, we cannot simply forget it. Those memories are part of who we are today. And coming to terms with those things means admitting our mistakes. Sometimes even regretting them. But we cannot dwell on them. Because our past does not define our future. Our past may be an explanation to certain things, but do not let it be an excuse. We must learn how to rewire our brains such that we do not suffer an emotional reaction every time we think of certain chapters of our past. (Don’t get me wrong, emotional reactions are nothing to be ashamed of. But there are certain times, when we’d rather not show them, because they would be plain inappropriate.)

We cannot deny our past. But we can decide how we react to it. We can decide what we take from it. We can decide how we want to live right now.

I do not know if some day I will not feel triggered every time I run across a craft-knife or a classical razor-blade. But I know that I have not cut in a month and that this is something I can be grateful for. Every time I see those blades I can remember the pain of this world. And I can be grateful that I have experienced some of it. Because it means that when I say “I understand, what you are feeling.” I am not lying. I know that my cutting has given me a totally different approach to addiction and I dare say I understand it better now. And if all it did, was teaching me how to be less judgemental, I am grateful.

I do not deny that I have the urge to take a blade and just run it over my skin, especially in the evenings. Especially when I am alone. But whether or not I do is not predetermined. Just because I have cut in the past, does not mean, that will do it again in the future.

A totally different aspect of memories is, that I believe it is, what ties us to people. Because if we could not remember, we would never get close to anyone. We would never learn to value or fear the people in our lives. And this is important to keep in mind, when we want to interact with people. When we wish to get close to someone. Sharing memories is probably one of the strongest bonds there is. And the friendships that can grow from those bonds is precious beyond words.

Forgetting someone we share a lot of emotional memories with… I do not think it is possible. We come across people in our lives, that we may wish to forget. But chances are we will never get them out of our heads. Because we do not simply forget memories. We can do the same as with anything: Reprogram. But we will never really forget. And I wish I could say I am okay with that. And some day I think I will be. Everyone who we across will teach us something. And we do not want to forget those lessons. The pain will fade with time. But the memory will stay. We will remember. And thinking about it is beautiful, because sharing memories with someone we may not engrave our names in their heart (huh this line is cheesy) but we will engrave the lesson that we taught them in their brain. Which is worth so much more.

All in all: we cannot forget our mistakes. We cannot forget people. But we can choose our future. We can choose to learn from the past. And to not make the same mistakes again. And this way even when we cannot get rid of the painful memories, we grow. We learn to understand the world and ourselves. And those memories will keep the lessons alive. This is forgetting is not even that desirable. We want the pain to fade. I get it. I really do. And it will fade. But there is no need for us to fight the memories. Fight our past selves. We just need to have the courage to accept who we were and who we are today. And then we can decide who we will be in the future.

The vision of who we shall be

I got lucky enough to know that my fear had a deadline. To know that at some point I would have an answer. And I got lucky enough to get the answer I had been hoping for and not the answer I had been so afraid of.

But now what? When we are lucky enough to get the chance to leave our fear behind. What do we do next? When our entire life had been evolving around that fear. (It does not have to be fear. It can really be anything you have been evolving around and now stopped.) How can we move on?

I think there are two crucial parts: One is looking back and figuring out what went wrong. And what went well. This is important, but I think it is quite self-explanatory. It allows us to deal with the emotions and not bury them inside us. But we do not want to live in the past. We shall not be devoured by regret. (In fact this could be the topic for a whole separate blog post.)

The other part is looking into the future. And sometimes, when we have been so caught up in something we need to actively create a vision of ourselves. But why would that be helpful? A vision allows us to measure our actions by. If something makes us more like the person we are in that vision, it is a productive action. But why do we need that?

Because we need a direction. Until this point we have been evolving around whatever it is we are leaving behind. Now it is time to evolve around something positive. Around the person we want to be. In my vision I never say: “I am not a self-harmer.” I say things like: “I am a strong, independent woman.” Such a positive vision, a vision of what we want to be rather than what we do not want to be, is very powerful, because it motivates us to go on. And it gives us somewhere to go. Somewhere we want to go. And every time we are able to take a step towards our vision, we will be able to love ourselves a bit more. Because we did something that made us better.

In the self-harm and self-hate context this is so important. Because we tend to be trapped in all that negativity. And I know I could not even have written this post last week. I think us hating ourselves… as sad as it is: It is part of who we are. And yes, we do have to fight it. But we cannot fight negativity with more negativity. We cannot fight the fact that we hate ourselves, by hating that we hate. That’s… recursive. So instead we need to find something about us, that we can love. And that is why we need a vision: because we want to be like the vision. And every time we get a little closer to who we want to be, we are allowed to be proud of ourselves. Love ourselves a bit more. Trust ourselves a bit more. Experience that we are actually not as much of a failure as we always like to make ourselves believe. And that I call taking control of our lives. Actively fueling our self-confidence instead of letting negativity destroy us.

But how can we create a vision? What inspires such a vision? There are many sources for that: People we admire. Ideologies. Quotes. And more mundane: Books, movies, series, music, pictures. I usually work with 4 categories:

Me and university
Me and my hobbies
Me and myself
Me and others

In each of these categories I determine what is important to me. I write it down and that is how my vision is born. Then I take one or two points in each category and figure out a way to actively improve that point. I make a plan. And most importantly: I try to ask myself on a regular basis: “Is this how the person in my vision would act?” or “Is this bringing me closer to the person I want to be?”. This is not entirely about accounting for the progress we make in becoming the vision, it is mostly about remembering that positive vision. Getting into the mindset of that vision. Because we can so easily forget, what we want to fight for. So reminding ourselves of it is always a good idea.