✣ Living a Good Life and Shifting Ego Drive

2023W05

• Trying out a radical listicle approach for this week's post.

• The goal:

  • See if it can convey as much nuance as the paragraph format.

  • See if it can increase comprehension.

• February starts gently. The week started slowly with a much more forgiving pace.

• In the middle of the week, a friend recommended "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch.

• It was a reflection from a dying professor about chasing childhood dreams and ultimately living a good life.

• I was so inspired by his lecture, as he seemed to have no regret and had his life fulfilled. I aspire to lead a good life like this man.

• My three takeaways:

  • Help others. Randy argues that the joy of life is enabling others to achieve their dreams, and why as a professor, it was a perfect role for him.

  • I can resonate with him this sentiment. I love supporting and enabling others to succeed as much as getting the achievement myself.

  • Be help-able. Letting others help you require skills to be open and persistent.

  • To loosely quote Randy, "Brick walls are there to see if someone wants something badly enough to tear it down."

  • Setting a goal is essentially matching aspiration and opportunity.

  • Interestingly, Randy juxtaposes "be help-able" with "help others," as it was easy enough for people to help others. But people often seem awkward when it comes to asking and getting help.

  • Don't forget to have fun. Randy reminds us to not only do fun things but to have fun — to make and find happiness and joy in whatever we do.

• Overall the week felt less tense, predictable, and somewhat boring. I love it so much.

• Things that I enjoyed this week:

  • A newly opened coffee shop around the neighborhood, Second Floor Coffee. They had fruit (presumably from juice or puree) infused coffee specialty, which makes its americano sweet and fruity.

  • Second Floor Coffee is suitable for working from a cafe. I like a coffee shop with a proper table height and plenty of electric sockets for you to work with your laptop.

  • Keeping up with my exercise routine and water intake. Electrolyte helps me to feel hydrated throughout the day. One liter of water with half a teaspoon of salt and apple cider vinegar easily becomes my daily staple.

• Question of the week:

  • “How to be assertive? And how do we make good decisions?

  • I find it hard to stand up for myself because I think too much about what others would feel or think about my decision, although I know I have the right to make that decision.”

• I used to think I was nice because I was considerate of what others might feel. It often made me hold back from saying something essential or standing my ground on my opinion.

• However, as I grew up, I realized the root of it is not wanting to be perceived as nice, but rather:

  • Afraid of being judged. I was too conscious about my image instead of doing what was necessary. I listened to others to maintain an image, not genuinely considering inputs and feedback to be better.

  • Afraid to own the consequences of my own decision. It was easier for me to blame others when I let others steer my decision, and later it turns out that I failed.

• It was not as genuine as I thought, so I looked inward and played around with the idea of ego (self) to check my intention and reason of doing things:

  • Owning more of my feelings, starting by recognizing and labeling more emotions.

  • Owning more of my opinion and changing my attitude to focus more on becoming better instead of being right. It includes being mentally ready to be wrong most of the time. I became more comfortable saying, "I don't know (yet)."

  • Owning more of my decision. I slowly realized that no matter how deeply people influence my personal decision, at the end of the day, I will be the one who bears the consequences (most of the time alone).

  • As the saying goes; strong opinion, weakly held.

  • Owning more of my limitation and boundaries. I elaborated more in this post about communicating boundaries to build respect.

  • It reminded me of an idea from "Courage to be Disliked" book, which mentions about separation of tasks/concerns; I loosely remembered it as: my part of the task is just to do and not worry about what other people think or say, that's the task of other people.

• I favor gradual and intentional change over sudden switches, so the reflection above definitely takes time. At least for me.

• Start small, and learn to say no (saying no is the anecdotal epitome of assertive communication) to a safer and more understanding peer.

• Experiment with different communication styles. We might be getting used to the style we are comfortable with the most. Other communication styles need to be trained, like muscles, to become more well-rounded.

• "Radical Candor" book has some practical ideas on communication style, especially on exercising assertiveness with an easy-to-remember saying; "Caring personally, challenge directly."

• Last but not least, one major epiphany for me to be more authentic was that people are busy thinking about themselves anyway, more than they think about me.

• Question to you: If you read until the last item, is this writing style comfortable to read and easy to comprehend?

• Question to me: I'm experimenting with a Q&A to gather anonymous/non-anonymous questions. The Q&A might be a basis for the next publication post, so if you have questions about the void, share them with me here https://rep.ly/arieare.