About keeping promises you make to yourself

Draft
Well it really is essential. Well why? Hmm i’m not sure. It is what makes you believe in yourself. Literally. Imagine that you talk to your friend and you agree to meet for a beer the following day. When the day comes you stand at the agreed spot and he does not show up. You get a bit annoyed but carry on with your day. Later in the week you again run into them at university and agree to meet for a beer the following day. The next day you again stand at the agreed spot and he does not show up. Now next time you see him at campus and he asks you if you want to go for a beer the following day, you reply that you would like to but you don’t believe that he will show up. If he told you he would be there the next day you would not believe him.

Why is it so bad to not believe him? Well it is sad really. Because you wonder why he would lie to you. And why he would choose to make the agreement if he was not going to show up. Maybe, when he made the commitment, he thought that he, the following day, would have energy to do it. But then when the day came he did not. You can respect that, but it shows you that your friend does not know himself very well, and that he does not prioritise you or prioritise keeping his word over relaxing or doing something else. So after not keeping his word multiple times, you know that his word is not worth anything. You can still spend time together at campus but each time your friend tells you he will do something you say ‘right’ and do not believe a word.

The result is that you learn that if you make a commitment with your friend, then all it will lead to is disappointment and a feeling of being let down. This feeling hurts. And after experiencing it enough times you might stop making commitments with your friend because you don’t want to feel that feeling.

It is the exact same thing with your own promises to yourself. When you, over and over, make promises to your self and don’t keep it. You learn that your word is not worth much.

Why is that a bad thing? Well because your belief in your word is what makes you feel capable of doing things. For example, if you feel unhealthy and you feel sad because your girlfriend just left you because you don’t take care of your body. You might feel a desire to change that and get in shape. But that desire will amount to nothing. Because in order to get in shape you need to work out for an extended period. Meaning that you go work out today. But also next week, the week after and the week after that. In order to believe that you can get in shape you therefore need to believe that you can promise yourself that you will work out each week, and keep that promise.

So if you don’t believe that you can keep the promises to yourself, it leads to not believing that you can do the things that you want to do and get the things you desire. Having things that you desire, but knowing that you will not be able to achieve them is a terrible feeling.

Okay. So when you don’t keep promises to yourself, you loose that belief that you can keep your promises. That makes sense. There are different types of promises. One type of promise is a goal. For example i will get in shape by working out two times a week, Monday and Wednesday for the next four months. So we would be able to say that if you don’t keep the promises to yourself, you stop believing that you can reach the goals you set. And you might be afraid to set goals because you don’t want to end up disappointing yourself again.

Addition
Now there is something more. In the act of breaking your promise to yourself, something happens. Lets say you promised yourself to wake up early because you wanted to go to a fitness class in the morning before work. You went to sleep early and slept eight hours. But as your alarm goes off you look at the time and choose to sleep longer instead of working out. What happens here? Well in the moment you are to choose between getting two more hours of sleep or working out. Why would you choose to sleep longer? Probably because you are a bit tired and it is comfortable. But why did you set the goal of getting in shape to start with? Well you set it because you wanted to become more healthy. Well why did you want to do that? Because you thought that that would make you happier and give you a better life. So you did it because you wanted to improve your life? Well why did you want to improve your life? Does someone like you deserve a better life than the one you have? Well yes. Why? Well because i deserve it. Why do you deserve it? Well because i am good, and i have value and i am important.

Now when you choose to sleep longer instead of working out. You probably tell yourself that it does not matter that you miss one day. Or that you will just work out harder next week. But unconsciously you know that you will not work out harder next week. Because you are not a person who keeps the promises that you make. And you know that missing this first work out day will make it easier to miss the next. You know this because you have seen yourself break your own promises year after year and you know how this will go. So when you choose not to wake up and work out. Deep down you know that you are choosing not to get in shape. Now i thought that you wanted to improve your life because you deserve a better life. But now you choose not to get in shape anyway, and thereby you choose not to improve your life anyway. What changed? You knew that you would be tired and that the bed would be comfortable in the morning when you made the promise. What has changed that now makes you choose not to improve your life? Do you still have worth? Are you still important? Well yes. Do you still deserve to get a better life than the one you have? Well yes. So you deserve a better life. Why then do you now want to improve your life? Well because i would rather sleep. So you don’t find it worth it to experience the uncomfort of getting out of bed, in order to improve your life and get in shape? Well no. So you value not being uncomfortable right now higher than improving your life. Yes. Okay. Do you still want to improve your life? Yes. Do you still want to improve it if it means that you have to put in the effort? Well no not at this moment. The fact that i don’t wish to get up shows that quite clear.

About always saying whats true

Journal
Well i don’t really know what to start with. It seems kinda obvious. Why is it important for you to say whats true? if you had to give three reasons what would they be? Well it makes you happy about yourself. That could be the first one. It makes everything you say resonate with other people, and they will usually respect you more. That is quite an important point because that was first made saying the truth important to me. This point could be good to start with. What about a third reason? If i had to say something it could be that it makes you move toward in life and not stop yourself. Lets start with the second point.

How telling the truth became important to me.
Well there was a time when i was not as social as i am now. And when i say that i mean that i did not understand how the social world really worked which ended up making it difficult to say the right thing when i was talking to people and have people like me. So it was difficult for me to be liked by other people. At this point i would often have conversations with someone where i got so conscious about what i needed to say or respond with that would make them like me the most. All interactions started to be difficult because i didnt know what i needed to say in order to make someone like me the most and i often ended up thinking that saying something would make them like me and then after i said it i realised that it was not the case and it instead had the opposite effect. I would often say things which was not completely true or alter the reality i told people i had because i thought that they would like me more if i told them about that reality instead of the reality that i actually had. But it was always my experience that the interactions where i did were the worst interactions i would have and would be where i connected the least with people and where i felt that in the end they might like me even less than before. I realised that this was the case, and that was one of the things that made me start trying to not lie when talking to someone. Because when i lied about myself then i would always end up making people like me less. And i didnt want that to happen.

About the art of agreeability

About anger

Lets start by trying to define anger. I think that all anger comes from hurt. Without hurt there cannot be anger. This is the foundation that we would build our thoughts about anger on.

How can we be hurt? If we find the different ways in which we can become hurt we find the ways that we can become angry.

Fear. Imagine being a parent to a kid who is running around having fun in the city. The kid does not pay attention to the road and suddenly it almost runs out in front of a car that is speeding by. The fear that you experience in that moment might turn into anger towards the kid, the car or yourself.
Physical pain. Someone kicks your shin.
Someone taking something you perceive as yours. If someone tries takes your laptop while you are in the bathroom.
Loosing something that you care about. I was thinking that in the case with your laptop it might also be all the things that you have on your laptop that it hurts to loose. All your notes, all your files, you need it in order to study successfully. It is valuable to you in so many ways.
Someone not following the norms that you follow. If you care deeply about the environment and the fact that you don’t throw trash on the ground. Then seeing someone throw a plastic bottle on the street in front of you could make you angry. Or if you are driving and someone cuts you off then you might become angry because they don’t drive in the way that you expect yourself to drive. In this case it might also be because you feel that they drive in a way that is dangerous and that it could potentially hurt someone.
Someone hurting an innocent animal. Why does this hurt me so much?

I might look into the above a bit further. It is not completely clear so far what types of hurt there is. David Whyte said that “Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family, and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt.”. Here states that anger is a type of compassion. A compassion that shows up when we perceive that one of the following is hurt,
Another person | The world | The self | A life | The body | A family | Our ideals |
He says that anger arises when we perceive one of these to be vulnerable and about to be hurt.

So the idea is that it is not logical to blame anything other than nature and the universe for the harm or threat of harm to something you value. It is not possible to conclude what it is that has caused situation to happen the way it has.

An example is that you walk in a park and suddenly feel a hard bonk on your head. It hurts like hell. You grab your head and realise that the back of your head is bleeding a little. You look around and find that a branch has fallen of the tree just as you walked under it. You cant really get angry at the tree for causing you harm. It cant be said that it is the trees fault that the branch broke of. There was a storm yesterday that almost made the branch break of and made it week, maybe a bird landed on the branch and made it break. Still it hurts and you feel incredibly unlucky and think “ahhhhh, why did this happen to me!”. The anger that you feel here is caused by the injustice of the situation and the anger that this creates is directed towards nature and the universe. This is the anger that appears when you feel truly unlucky.

Lets imagine another scenario. You’re walking in the park, and suddenly feel a hard bonk on your head. It hurts like hell. You grab your head and realise that the back of your head is bleeding a little. You look around and find that someone was trying to throw a branch to a dog and ended up hitting you in the back of your head. As soon as you realise that they hit you with the stick and made your head start bleeding you get angry. It hurts and because you see the person as the reason for the unjust pain you direct your anger at them. You think “What are you doing, don’t throw sticks to your dog if you cant throw properly. Open your eyes and look around you idiot”.

But the situation can be analysed in the same way. Maybe their parents never thought them how to throw, and they were always just talking in the breaks in school and never learned how to throw properly. Then you might say, okay its fair enough that they don’t know how to throw a stick, but if they don’t know how to throw then they should’t throw sticks in parks where there are other people. True, but maybe they are walking their friends dog for the first time. And they have always seen people throw sticks so easily. Maybe its their first time trowing a stick and they thought that it was much easier than it is. They didn’t know how difficult it was. It can’t be their fault that they didn’t know that. Is it then their parents fault that you got hit because they didn’t teach their kid how to throw a stick? But there is reasons for that too. Or maybe the person was distracted and didn’t see you because their dad just died this morning and they are overwhelmed with grief and couldn’t think or see clearly.

The point is that there can always be reasons that “justifies” the action. From that it can be argued that there never is one place where the blame can be placed for something. Anger therefore would not be able to rightfully be directed towards it.

But if the hurt happens because someone

About life being a dessert with different oasis of passion

About keeping your accomplishments to yourself

About addiction showing you what is bad for you

About how living another persons life

About not saying what you will do before its done

About making yourself excited about small things

About checking that you have the right intentions

About happiness not being a feeling but being the lack of wanting something

Journal
I was just reading about psychoanalysis. Reading my past notes about the unconscious. I was reading the following,

Jeg’et påvirkes af det rationelles sekundære processer, såvel som det påvirkes af det underbevidstes primære processer. Det’et er det underbevidste som som leverer en række følelser. Følelserne, medbringer motivation (energi og retning).

Then i thought,
well if all emotions have energy and a direction. What direction would happiness then have? It does not really seem like it has a direction.
Then i thought,
maybe happiness is not an emotion then
Then i thought about this,

Like if i wanted a dime when i was five years old, and it would make me happy, if i still had a dime then i should still be happy. But it doesn’t work that way. Does it? So we think that getting what i want makes us happy. When we get what we want we experience this blissful moment, when we got what we want, we don’t want anything else. And the joy that we experience, the release that we experience, the happiness, is not because we got what we wanted, but because we’re no longer wanting. We for a moment experience the great happiness of not wanting anything.
– Adyashanti

Maybe when we experience happiness it is the experience that for that certain amount of time, we do not want anything else than what we have.

This could be when you sit with a coffee in the mortning in your favorite chair, and for that brief time, you have forgotten all the other wants that you normally have. You have forgotten that you are trying impress your boss so you can get a raise. Or that you want to read the articles for the course you have so that you do well on that course.

Maybe its the same if your best friend really wanted to study something, they were super nervous about wether they would get in, you sit together waiting for them to get their answer. They get in. You are both incredibly happy in that moment, hold each other and jump up and down. The reason you experience that is because for that brief moment you have everything you want.

Maybe then, one way to be a bit more happy, is to think more often that, right now, doing what im doing, being where i am, i want nothing else. There is nothing that i would ask for right now.

Thats difficult. I was about to extend the previous line with the following,

Maybe then, one way to be a bit more happy, is to think more often that, right now, doing what im doing, being where i am, i want nothing else. There is nothing that i would ask for right now. Not that i had read and understood all my articles, not that i had more money to travel. If someone asked me if i wanted this right now i would say no.

But this would seem to ruin the moment that i imagined. Because it would bring focus to it. And bring the want back. But that is funny. Because is it then that happiness comes when you don’t want more money to travel. Or is it that happiness comes when you have forgotten that you want money to travel. Maybe the want does not need to disappear. Maybe it just need to be forgotten for a moment. Or maybe when it is forgotten it is actually gone. That would be interesting to think more about.

About thinking about a world where you don’t exist anymore

Journal
Yesterday i was talking to Maria about weather or not we would want to leave messages to people when we die. That was a weird thought for me. Because it was making me make a decision of wether i wanted to have an influence on peoples lives and the world after i died or not. Both options clearly show that the world will continue and the life of everyone will continue as they always have. And i was thinking that i would die, and the following weeks after i would watch my friends and family read the messages and see what impact it had on them. Knowing that no matter what would happen after that i could not influence anything. And essentially my existence as the person watching the lives of my friends and family would not really matter at all. I think that thought is quite powerful. Because it forces you to momentarily believe that you are not the center of the universe, and that the world would pretty much be the same without you.

I was reading the notes about psychoanalysis and the grandiose self, which said that,

Det grandiose selv er den del af dig so ser dig selv som det almægtige centrum for verden. Det grandiose selv er altid opmærksomhedssøgende og kræver bekræftigelse fra omverden.

I then thought, what would happen to the grandiose self if you kept imagining that scenario and thereby kept reminding yourself that the world would be the same without you.

About respect being something you can use to reduce your jealousy based judgement

Journal

About living in the present and how that is what happens when you are at parties or festivals

Journal

About impulses showing up as a badge which can be accepted or ignored

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Things that seems to be true from The Alchemist