Dad's Learning Part 6 (A Continuing Series)
This one is separated into a bunch of parts because they don't quite fit together yet.
Different format this time. This week has been… unfortunate.
“Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.”
― Roy T. Bennett
Last Week’s Session and Thoughts
Well it's that time again. I didn't have any assignment this week but I wanted to keep up with this public journal (which is essentially what this is). So it's a little different as these are just notes I took during the last session with some thoughts added on.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Don't allow the infinite possible outcomes paralyze you. You are going to make mistakes. Learn from them.
Be afraid to make a mistake twice.
This is where learning from your mistakes comes into play. Truly pay attention to what you're doing, what's happening around you, and be honest with yourself. You will learn to avoid the silly mistakes, the dire mistakes, and the understandable ones. What you do not want to do is make the same mistake twice. That, if it becomes a pattern, makes a foolish mistake turn you into a fool.
I will be following up on this thread later. This must be part of the book.
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Don't rely on motivation, have discipline.
Discipline will get you a long way. Motivation can be useful, so take advantage of it, but it lasts only until your first step backwards.
You won't always have it or feel it (motivation), some things suck but still need doing.
Generally speaking I am not motivated to clean the shit off the shitter, God forbid it somehow accumulates on the side of the bowl and isn't readily swept down by the flushing water, but it cannot be left there. It needs to be taken care of, motivated to do so or not. You can argue not wanting shit to be an ever present fixture in my bathroom is a form of motivation, and I would agree with you, but just don't rely on it. Sometimes laziness or lethargy can easily trump that motivation.
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What causes trauma?
The kid asked me this one. I have no idea how to keep this succinct, but I tried:
A violent shake up of one's world view.
Sounds reasonable and correct to me. Physical trauma is a different story. It's probably something along the lines of great force finding a stopping point in a body.
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Life's a game, avoid playing dirty.
When you are playing with the neighborhood children, presumably as a child as well, if you wanted to be invited back to play again, you have to play fair. This is playing the meta game, the game that encapsulates or contains all games. The game of games, per se. If you cheat or play dirty, nobody will want to play with you. Obviously, you cheater. Don't play dirty in life either, so people want you to stay around.
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Make a resolution, but keep it to one or two, not a long list.
A long list of resolutions for the new year is a good way to accomplish nothing. Everything we do is hierarchical, or needs to be prioritized. If you have 200 things you want to do, you will accomplish none of them. That's just too much. Parse that shit down to one or two. Accomplish those, or get them habituated, and then add another.
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New Years Resolution
Do I have an actual issue with them, apathy towards, or am I afraid to make them because I don't keep them?
Hey, I touched on this already here.
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I have a fear of failure - a time in my life when I have failed is something I need to remember.
I didn't take a test in high school, blamed it on the teacher, I avoided it to spent time with a girl. Or did I spend time with the girl to avoid the test? I am unsure and I need to explore this more. Either way I was a teenage boy so this seems reasonable, but I definitely felt horrified about blaming it on the teacher. I lied to my school, to my own mother even. I can definitely try and rationalize it to myself still today and say I thought I shouldn't go into the classroom, but that wouldn't be genuine. Sorry Mom, I love you.
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My expectations for my writing haven't been set.
When we do not set expectations, we set ourselves up for failure. Expectations are the foundations of our ambitions and goals. They are what keeps whole the passions and projects we have.
Unspoken or unidentified expectations lead to disappointments. We do not know what the goal or the actions look like, so we can never identify the good. This means it is automatically negative, whatever the outcome.
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I am building that foundation. We don't become who we are overnight. It requires talent, dedication, and process.
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Quote: "The formula of frustration fabricated expectations *plus* failed reality *equals* feelings of frustration
"Fabrications are unreachable goals we place on ourselves or someone else.
They are unspoken and presumed the party should know or know better."
They fail due to these problems
That leads to frustration.
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Sometimes there's a healthy sense of fear, but we cannot allow the spirit of the fear to keep us from getting to where we are going.
A healthy sense of fear is a respect for the potential downsides.
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Love,
Dad