Just do it

Have you ever had to make a decission, meet a deadline or get something done? Of course you have! But what if you do not see a possible route to the outcome? Maybe it has blurred your vision by complexity, uncertainty of variables or whatever stands in your way of seeing a possible outcome. Soon you’ll find yourself in distress about it and eventually your thoughts are out of focus and distracted, blurring any possible route even more. How do you go about and comfort yourself, that for instance ‘this is what your good at’ and mark your worries as unfounded?

A few years ago a friend of mine pointed me out ot a video-clip, that really helped me in visualizing a topic that is quite hard to grasp from plain text. By watching this video and trying to digest the theory that was laid upon me, I related some of the explanations to every day life and how to utilize it in a certain way. The topic at hand might be a bit mind boggling and might take some time to penetrate the grey mass, but I will try and put down my theory in words on how I deal with the blurry vision. But first take a look at the video clip:

My theory focuses around the 4th and 5th dimension and I’d like to take two quotes from the video-clip and write ‘em down here:

Quantum physics tells us that the subatomic particles that make up our world are collapsed from waves of probability simply by the act of observation. In the picture we are drawing for ourselves here, we can now start to see how each of us are collapsing the indeterminate wave of probable futures contained in the fifth dimension into the fourth dimensional line that we are experiencing as “time”.

So, the long undulating snake that is us at any particular moment will feel like it is moving in a straight line in time, the fourth dimension, but there will actually be, in the fifth dimension, a multitude of paths that we could branch to at any given moment. Those branches will be influenced by our own choice, chance, and the actions of others.

Theory
When I look up the definition of probability; “Probability is a way of expressing knowledge or belief that an event will occur or has occurred”. Reading this explanation of the word, I immediately think of stockbrokers trying to use the probability of certain patterns from history repeating itself. The use it to predict probable outcomes in a way that client and broker both get better from it, based on bunch of historical data.

What they’re actually doing in my opinion, is creating a certainty of a point in the future, on which they base their trust and confidence to act. And this is exactly the thing I’d like to use when my vision of reaching that deadline is blurred out. To explain it in other words, I’d like to compare it to the fact that in the past I have been doing and achieving certain things. Although I might not have always succeeded instantly, eventually my persistence payed off.

On this very ingredient I base my confidence. when the path is unclear. My mind keeps track of time, just like with stockbrokers use history to predict future of investments. Based of my successful achievements from the past, I create a point of certainty in the future. That of the fact I will meet the deadline one way or another, as I’ve shown myself before in other achievements.

By creating this confidence for myself, I believe in the power of myself and get rid of troublesome thoughts that are filling up my grey area. It’s not a failsafe solution, but it has been helping me a lot to get rid of troublesome thoughts, the ones known to take over your mind and leave you unable to complete any action, let alone make a decision for any choice. The chance and actions of others are somewhat harder to control, but having yourself in control really helped me out in past events of doubt and uncertain times. 7CVWGJVEWSDB

Whenever I do go out to a fast food restaurant, I usually order a large milkshake. For some reason I seem to think that I can drink a milkshake as fast as any other beverage, which almost every time leads to a Brainfreeze. At this moment in time I believe such a Brainfreeze should also be able to actually freeze my brain with the current storm that my thoughts produce in the gray matter… How did this storm originate? How am I going to tackle it?

Storm explained

” Storms are created when a center of low pressure develops, with a system of high pressure surrounding it. This combination of opposing forces can create winds and result in the formation of storm clouds.” – Source wikipedia

High pressure system
The past year I have dedicated my evening hours – besides my normal job – to studying and achieving my MCSA and MCSE certifications and with success I might add! Alongside all the learning, there were my other passions which also needed time in these same hours. I created quite the schedule to get all this done and still manage social life on a moderate level.

At the time I achieved both certifications, I felt stronlgy that a period of rest would really be the thing to cope with the dedication for certification of the past time. This is where the opposing forces are starting to work their way into creating a storm.

Low pressure
The past month I have been laying low when it comes to my evening hours. I still spend time to my passions and really find enjoyment in relaxing my mind for a period of time. Until recently the low pressure area was working out fine, but at my current point this area is creating quite a storm in my head. I believe this is due to the opposing forces are forming a storm.

Combination of opposing forces
My mind has been adopting to the high pressure way of learning and dividing my time over the evening hours. This state of elevated concentration of course can only last so long. But the complete removal of the learning element, surely created a drop in pressure and now in it’s turn is creating a storm of thoughts varying from innovative ideas to wanting to learn and spent time in sports more.

Tackling this storm
My way of dealing with situations like these, is to create a new schedule to up the pressure area, currently at it’s low point. I go about doing this by pin pointing each and every thing I want to do with my time and fix a “time spent” to it. Once I’ve marked all the stuff I want to do, ranging from daily grind to specific goals, I pour it into a weekly schedule.

This new schedule isn’t working for me when I’ m being strict to it for 100%, but it serves as a guideline through my week. I should refer to the 80/20-rule for this when saying:

I’m going to use 20% of my energy to get 80% of the schedule done, whereas the last 20% of the schedule will require 80% of my energy to get it done.

Concluding
The tackling measure is purely in place to bring the opposing forces in a balance and not to fully get rid of the storm. As my brainstorm generates ideas, questions the world, processes the daily impressions and fuels my creativity.

Achieving goals requires: focus, long-term diligence and effort. Success in any field requires forgoing excuses and justifications for poor performance or lack of adequate planning; in short, success requires emotional maturity. The measure of belief that people have in their ability to achieve a personal goal also affects that achievement. [wikipedia]

Missing a piece in the journey...

I know and also believe that it’s very important to set goals in life, sport, work and other areas, if you want to know where you want to go with it. It really comes down to emotional maturity as stated on the wikipedia article. But in many many cases the most important thing seems to be forgotten… How about enjoying the journey you take to reach the goal? I’d like to take it one step further by saying: It actually doesn’t even matter what the end goal is, but the journey that takes you there should be about enjoyment and getting satisfaction out of  it.

Of course I had my own learning moments, while I was discovering this for myself to be true. I would plainly set a goal and only focus on reaching it and in the end only feeling euforic for a few hours or maybe a even day. I would push through some boundaries, with only the end goal in my sights. The only thing I had been proving myself was that I could reach a goal if I really put myself to it,… but this is really exhausting and you can only do it this way for a certain ammount of time.

On the other hand, when you make the journey towards a goal more interesting by putting in some sub-goals and other useful stuff as you go on your journey, I find that it motivates me more. But even more important for me is that it makes the journey worhtwhile and more memorable than just having only goal-focus.

The big difference comes afterwards, when you’re recapping the moments you had in reaching your goals. When you’re more aware of the journey you’re planning to make, on your way to the end-goal it will be more memorable and long-lasting. This actually helps me out on setting new goals and finding motivation in less motivated times in journey’s towards new goals.

Making it more memorable, really puts in the additional ingredient needed to enjoy the goals you set throughout time.

One of the questions that an author of multiple disciplines/topics faces is the fact that you would like to attract the right crowd for your writing. At first it would seem logic to create an account for your own name as a brand and aggregate all your news through it. But lately you can spot a trend in how it might be better to not be working top-down, but bottom-up on reaching the your crowd of interested people.

Bottom-up
The way this works is that you want to reach the people interested in your specific disciplines/topics. So you’ll have to start at that level to let those people find your specific website/blog. If people are generally interested in the way you bring the news, they’ll start searching for your name and not the specific brand name. On the website or blog about yourself, you redirect people further to the topics you’re also writing about. In my opinion this way of working attracts the people you do want to have as followers, because they’re genuinely interested in the stuff you write.

Top-down
The reason why I dislike the Top-down way of working, is that people should not be pushed into following all that you do, share, post,etc. Your own stream of news, interests, shared items, posts and other stuff, might look cluttered to people who are only interested in one of the topics you write about. So offering them the option to find your sub-topics in a place of their own, leaves the choice to the reader.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please share it in the comments…

It seems that only drill instructors posses this skill and have  a way with it on bringing their message across to the ones they command. But getting some discipline into your own life and way of living should not be more then setting out the things you want to do and doing them.

Once you set your mind to something, you should go for it and time will aid you in getting the new mindset activated. For instance you want to change the time you start working from 9 o’clock in the morning to 7:30 in the morning. How are you going to go about getting this in your daily schedule? Read more…