On Healing: First you have to face it

 It’s been a long time since I last wrote for you, Rafael. Many reasons for that, between new job (reaching the top of my career as a security professional) and everyone in our house struggling with their own mental health. It’s been tough, namely in the  last year. But I think I’m finally starting to heal (with help) and I want you to know about it. Because if there’s something I’ve never been good at (not with myself, family, friends or anyone else) is to show my own vulnerabilities but it’s high time I do so or I’ll never heal. So I can be the best me, for you, your sister and your mum.

Actually, scratch that. Because that’s exactly why I never got to heal. I’ve always obsessed so much of being my best me for my family, my teams and companies I work for that I never prioritised ME and what I need. I’m human too, and sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I forget that everyone else’s problems are not my crosses to bear, they’re theirs. And I deserve more from me.

I’ve blogged before how my childhood was hard and how I had to endure things I shouldn’t have had to and dealing with things which weren’t mine to deal with. My father’s addictions, my mother’s mental health demons. And as it turned out, I’ve inherited both and they’re now mine to deal with too.

And now, at 40 years old, I’ve had a lifetime of avoiding my own healing needs, but no more. And as both you and your mum deal with your own issues, including your autism diagnosis that leaves you amplifying what happens around you, plus my own struggles with work-life balance, all combined has been overwhelming me. So I started going to therapy too, so I can heal a lifetime of repressing my feelings and emotions by focusing all my energy and waking hours on everyone else’s needs and struggles.

But I can’t do that anymore. I’ve lost the ability to keep them in, and that’s a good thing. No choice but to face them, and face them I will. And it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life and I never felt so afraid, because I don’t know who I’ll be on the other side of healing.

I’ve been telling myself for over 20 years that what didn’t kill me made me stronger (as the saying goes) but that’s not true. What didn’t kill me, left parts of me broken. It’s the healing from broken that makes one stronger, and I never allowed myself that and I had never acknowledged I needed healing. And being broken shouldn’t be a badge of honour. 

I need better coping skills, I need to voice my struggles and emotions and feelings and let my demons out into the world so I can look at them and dance with them. And I think this is my first breakthrough within myself. I’m indivisible from my demons. They’re part of me. I am them and they are me. So if I set the goal, as many do, as to slay my demons, I’m setting myself up to fail from the start. 

So if I can’t slay them, then I need to learn to dance with them and grab their hands, invite them to the journey of my life and give them a seat at the table, next to me and not as the shadow I refuse to look at. But I also need to set boundaries. Just because they’re along for the ride, doesn’t mean they get to be at the driving seat and I can’t let them guide me.

So, Rafael, this was about me but, I suspect, also about you. I think (and hope I’m wrong) that you’ll spend your life feeling different from your peers, like I did. That you’ll struggle with feeling inadequate or insufficient and I apologise as I know that sometimes I contribute to that and I hate knowing I do and I can only promise I’ll try my best to be better than that.

So I hope that, as both of us continue with our respective struggles and therapy, that we get better coping skills and that we both become better dancers. We both owe it to ourselves, first and foremost. I love you, son. And hope we both learn to dance

On showing up: the super power that never was

 This one is something I used to be really good at, then lost myself, but now and for the past 4/5 months. have been. finding it again and getting the results it it promises.

Both me and you, Rafael, struggle with. not being good enough at things. we'd really like to be good at.

We both share this (often) frustration in jiu jitsu, for instance.

We'd like to perform better, be more athletic, retain our knowledge and application of perfect technique much better, not just in training but also in sparring.

The problem we often have, is that of not putting in consistent effort, every single day, on things that could help improve our game. And so every time we have a bad training session, when we don't perform at the level we'd want to or think we should be performing, we get upset and impatient and feel like quitting. Like, no matter how hard we try,  that we'll always be lacking.

But those are exactly the days we should push ourselves, as those are also where progress is being done. We're finding all the ways that don't work, and that valuable.

As Danaher says "most people overestimate how much progress one can realistically make in 6 months and underestimate how much progress one can or could do in 5 years", if we'd just be consistent and did at least a tiny thing every single day.

Showing. up, consistently, whether one feels like it or not, is a super power that isn't.

Because it's not about being the best every day nor about really pushing yourself everyday, which can lead to burnout and injury. It's instead about consistency and showing up everyday, putting some level of effort even when, or especially when, we'd just like to quit.

Rafael, this isn't just about jiu jitsu. This is about life. This is about your struggles with your body image and your weight, and mine too as that's something else we also share. Consistent action is a super power that doesn't take genius or any special talent to attain. All it takes is a DECISION to endure, and I hope you take on the things you choose to become good at

On feeling and acting: the tiny space in between

 s we go about life and living, we feel feelings. It’s part of being human, a healthy human, and perfectly normal and that’s something which unites all of us.

What does set  some apart from others, is how much we let those feelings command or dictate our actions.

You, Rafael, tend to live with your “heart in your mouth” and that’s probably common and expected as you’re almost 8 years old as I write this, but I also have a feeling that me and your mum have been failing in giving you the tools so you can support your own emotional intelligence and emotional development. I hope I can do better. But let’s explore here both the impact and options all of us when dealing with our feelings.

When you feel those feelings, you most often let them rule over the actions that follow, which becomes particularly notable when something upsets you or makes you sad. But you should know, it doesn’t have to be that way.

It doesn’t have to be that way, because between feeling and acting, there’s a tiny space. A tiny space that, as you grow, I hope you get proficient at making use of.

It’s in this tiny space that all of us have the opportunity to introduce who we want to be, who we decide we are and impact we wish to have on others around us.

The way we react can be thought of as our lower self. It’s who we are when we are mindlessly going through life, when are not deliberate in our actions. But in that tiny space, there’s an opportunity we all must learn to take. It’s the opportunity to be mindful. A tiny space of deliberate action and responses, where we can put our philosophy in action.

Those of us who do so (or strive to do so consistently, but nonetheless sometimes fail) tend to do better for ourselves and for those around us, the ones we love and wish to serve.

This happens because in that tiny space, we give ourselves the opportunity to not only think of our immediate needs and wants, but use it to also consider how our traction can affect those around us. If it will make them sad, upset or unhappy. In that tiny space, we can realise our actions aren’t just our own as they affect those around us too. We can consider if it will be a good example of appropriate and mindful action (you’re not just you, Rafael. You’re a son, and a big brother and both of those come with increasing responsibilities as you grow older), or of will set a bad precedent or escalate fights or arguments with those around you.

I myself often struggle with making use of that tiny space, and something I’ll have to keep working on through my life, but I’m also sure that you’ll recognise my periodic use of it. And I try to do it, because I love you and our family and I understand the impact of me not doing it in how you and your sister can grow up to be emotionally intelligent adults (or not).

Rafael, try to catch yourself when you’re about to give in to immediate reactions and give yourself the blessing of that tiny space, the space of thoughtfulness and consideration of impact of what we do on others so you can act in accordance with who you want to be, who you decide you’ll be.

On Self-discipline: it's a personal choice, not something we can impose on others

 Hi Rafael,

It's been a few years since I blogged here. Been some busy years, including changing countries, depression and trying to find myself back again. A lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same, but I've now re-found philosophy in my life and wish to continue where I left off.

And what better way to start again, than with telling you about my own struggles. Particularly, with regards to self-discipline. Certainly something I've been hyper-focused for over 6 months now. again, as I was back when I wrote periodically on this blog, but that in between I lost on myself.

I can't know the type of man you'll grow up to be. That's up to you and how you perceive your context. and your circumstances. But in being your father, I realise I'm often not fair to you. Because Self-discipline is just that, Self. The queue is in the name. I can demand that from myself, and I should, but I need to be more compassionate, kind and understanding. I don't do this out of a want to be hard on you, but because I. see your. potential and would love to see you flourish into a disciplined man.

But here's the problem, one can only be strict with oneself. It's not up to me to enforce it on you. All I can hope is that my own self-discipline may inspire you to do the same, and to be tolerant of how you, your sister and your mum choose to live your own lives.

This is my struggle, but one as old as humans.

Cato (the philosopher) knew this. He said "I am prepared to forgive everyone's mistakes but my own"

Ben Franklin knew this. He. said "Search others. for their virtues, thyself for tthy vices"

Marcus Aurelius (the philosopher king) knew this. He said "Be tolerant with others, and strict with yourself"

I need to remind of what these great men said, and I need to embody these values more. That's on me. Just know that I often don't live up these ideals, not because I'm mean, but that it comes from a place of love and wanting the best for you. I apologise for my transgressions and promise I'll keep working on improving this within me.

And I must do it, for many different reasons. Not only to ensure I don't get to regret the impact it could have on our relationship, but also because taking care of my own self-discipline is hard enough work.

As Ryan Holiday (Stoic author) writes:

"The only person you get to be hard on is you. It will take every ounce of your self-control to enforce that, and not because it's hard to be hard on yourself, but because it's so hard to let other people get away with things you'd never allow on yourself"

This is true, and hits like a ton of bricks. Trying t o escape my own faults, will take more than a lifetime will allow me, so that's what I must focus on. 

Maybe one day, if you decide to become a parent, you'll understand better where I'm coming from, and the reasons for my behaviour. Or maybe you'll be a better man than me, and from day one, you'll be way more compassionate and understanding than I am. I can only hope for that to be the case.

In the meantime, I'll be working on my self-discipline, and. hoping that what I show you day in and day one may one day inspire to choose for yourself to live a life of self-discipline. Because those who do, always live lives worth living and legacy's they can be proud of.

On Mapping your life

I've recently become acquainted with a management technique called Wardley Mapping, which is used to assess business landscapes. Quoting from hiredthought.com:

A Wardley Map is a representation of the landscape in which a business (or anything, really) operates. It consists of a value chain (activities needed to fulfill user needs) graphed against evolution (a measure of how individual activities change over time under supply and demand competition).

Due to my knowledge and experience with personal development frameworks, and particularly when seeing the approach could be used to assess Practices, through the evolution from Novel to Best, I tried the exercise of mapping out a lot of what I write about in my blog and by consequence the things I value. 

For the past year, as I opened my own business and decided to tackle some knowledge gaps I felt I need to close to be successful and the coming of a second child, I lost many of the good habits I had up until late 2017. And I've been feeling that something is off in my balance, but couldn't completely put my finger in it until I've mapped this out.

Now, I can't say any of this caught me completely off guard, but this mapping allowed me to get a better understanding of why I'm feeling unbalanced.

If I just mindlessly (as opposed to mindfully) let myself cruise through life, 3 things are going to happen:
- I'm going to be living in my head (in yellow), with my only good practices being acquiring knowledge
- I'm going to eat like crap and not exercise (in purple)
- I'll going to let comfort stuff creep back into my life (blue)

I'm happy with none of those, so this tells the things I need to work on if I want to be who I said I'd be.

The other interesting insight, is that I'm clearly hiding behind the acquisition of more knowledge and not producing the security and philosophy blogging that I so value (in red).

The great news is that seeing it this way, tells me ONE thing I can easily do in order to become more balanced.

Stopwatch on learning time everyday, and the waking hours I get from it, I need to find a way to work on my other goals. I may develop this idea further into an actual framework for personal development using Wardley Mapping concepts as basis, and Stoicism as the underlying doctrine, but at the very least and knowing how cryptic some of my communications are, I may use maps like these in the future to position the message I'm talking about and the type of movement I'm trying to discuss.

Happy to hear thoughts about applying Wardley mapping techniques for personal development.

On losing your edge and finding yourself back

I've last written about creating temporary imbalances so you can have deep focus on a particular area of your life for a Rapid improvement in it. Sometimes, this is exactly what you need to quickly develop in one particular area of your life.

The problem is the apathy and laziness that settle their roots in your core. Breaking ties with ingrained mediocrity is difficult. Much more than keeping momentum when you've gotten used to the ride.

But breaking out of the bad habits that may have generated (in my case, certainly do) requires real application of willpower. So how to deal with it? let 's break it down to 2 key questions

who or what are you doing it for? Get the fire burning again, focus on it as you lay out of bed and remind yourself often.

what is the alternative? think if the path you set yourself on is likely to lead you to a measure of success. Chances are you feel Ugly if that is who you were. We can safely apply the "Law of Holes" to this problem. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

The main thing to realise is that it's unlikely you'll be a balanced and complete individual if you're only "hanging your hat" in your area. That's not what we're about, is it ? Using basketball terminology, this is triple-double and aiming to go from great to phenomenal, whatever that ends up meaning to you.

On sprinting: being imbalanced for rapid improvement

Hopefully by now, you've integrated the belief that the route to success in any endeavour in the long term is made with journey of continuous and consistent effort towards improving your expertise and areas that impact and affect it. But we should also acknowledge that's not the only tool at our disposal.

In "Linchpin", Seth Godin talks about the concept of sprinting and how you should be doing it often.

In my own words, sprinting in this context means creating a temporary imbalance in yourself by narrowly focusing unsustainable effort for a short period of time with the intent of a) deliver something of value (or shipping as Seth calls it) or b) quickly attain or improve a particular skill that you believe you require immediately and do not possess.

This can happen for a number of reasons, whether to take advantage of an opportunity for better or different work or to make you more effective at reasoning with and influencing others with the right advice and considerations. I've used it extensively through my career and plan to keep doing so.

But it has a cost, and one must understand its cost if we're to manage the its impact on ourselves. The cost, at least in my case, usually comes in one of two ways. loss of sleep or dropping other things which keep me balanced to use the available capacity to focus on that narrow sprint goal.

It's a price you should be willing to pay if you really care about it, if you're serious and if you want something almost as bad as you want to breathe. If you're not willing to pay such price, that tells me you just "kind of want it". That you don't really want something as bad as you say you do, or better than you want to party or look cool. Never fool yourself.

The danger here, which will be subject of the next blog post, is how to ensure you don't lose yourself and that state of imbalance doesn't stay permanent, to a point you no longer recognise or enjoy who you are.