Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: mind

  • Theme:

    Pinning down the self

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    1–2 minutes

    The self arises, and we act. Occasionally, we can examine the emotive urge before enacting the impulse, but when we explore where the urge came from, the self recedes and dissipates, leaving us confounded.

    The urge to define (capture) “the self” is scientific. The compulsion to examine is the same urge that euthanizes butterflies and pins them to a board for cataloging.

    But of course, this captured “self” cannot contain the whole self, the leftover self is still studying and reacting to context, flitting away from the collection of facts pinned down.

  • Theme:

    “Should I” compels “When Should I”

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    1–2 minutes

    The brain struggles to make decisions. First, it asks, “What should I do?” and, with a lazy sleight-of-hand replaces ‘what’ with ‘when’: “When should I do this?”

    This mechanism has been studied, but suffice it to say: if you ask the question your brain attempts to turn it into an imperative.

    This is why what you ask yourself, what you fantasize about, is who you become. Simply by asking, and entertaining, your brain starts making it so.

  • Theme:

    recognizing kindness

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    1–2 minutes

    Recognizing kindness would mean understanding why the person behaves the way they are.

    For instance, if I pause to let somebody else walk before me, I am aware of a broader situation and avoid potential conflict. But the unperceptive person, they never sees it, or it just strikes them as odd.

    Is there kindness around you that you cannot perceive because you are too self-absorbed?

  • Theme:

    Humor and Efficiency (Right & Left Brain / Open & Closed mind)

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    1–2 minutes

    To be creative you must be open, which means to be humorous (seeing the odd angle) requires an open disposition. Once you have made a decision you must be efficient: practical, linear path making.

    To do both at once is to accomplish nothing: procrastination or chaos is self-defeat.

    Knowing when to release from the left brain impulse of rationality and invoke the holistic story-telling flow of the right brain -closed vs open- is how even the mediocre can transcend.

    To be the best, you become a conductor of groups of people, opening them and then focusing on them, letting them dream, and then motivating them to produce.

  • Theme:

    thinking is undermining

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    1–2 minutes

    Albert Camus says beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

    This is specifically in reference to tragedy’s ability to provoke suicide. However – and this is arguable – once you consider any position long enough you will see an alternate version of it, which will undermine your primary position.

    To think is to decrease your blind faith by abolishing an innocent or naïve acceptance.

    One must consider as well the zealot and mad-man, who think excessively and have an irrational faith beyond reason and must wonder if this is actually "thinking" or if true thinking is multiple perspectives dismantling monistic thought.

  • Theme:

    missing repression

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    1–2 minutes

    Do you find yourself looking for a reason to check in?

    We often think we are doing this for somebody else, doing them a favor.
    Still, it seems to be a means of grounding ourselves: this is who I am, this is where I am, please reciprocate my thinking of you by connecting with me.

    It is a pattern of behavior to reverify ourselves in relation to others.

    Many people complain that checking in is repressive control in a relationship, but once you don’t have the relationship you find yourself looking for and creating the repression you miss.

  • Theme:

    thoughts can self-liberate

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    1–2 minutes

    We empower our thoughts by focusing on them: by battling them, by pondering them.

    By refusing to pay attention to them, they dissipate; they self-liberate.

    Consider thoughts a byproduct of living that we manufacture, like methane or carbon dioxide. When we keep it inside, inside our brain in a little cage made of attention, we never let the idea release. These thoughts then agitate and drive us.

    It is not that thoughts themself are poisonous or toxic; it is our attentional focus that retains them until they replace silence and cloud our desires that harms us.

  • Theme:

    Negative Effort

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    1–2 minutes

    The true struggle is to do nothing, to remain open without your internal narratives.

    Procrastination (doing nothing) is active self-harm, replete with self-centered worrying. To truly do nothing is to lose self-concern. It is closer to a negation of noise or depletion of ego: it is the space in which you can open up before your instinctual response closes you back down.

    To subvert our striving or anxiety in order to clearly hear another requires a stance of ready reception: a negative effort, as Simone Weil calls it.

  • Theme:

    confidence over uncertainty

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    1–2 minutes

    While uncertainty is a hallmark of rational thought, people and institutions crave bold confidence and decisive action.
    Socially, the repercussions of slowing down, pondering, and thinking are seen as indecisive and wishy-washy, which undermines the authority of a leader.

    Making wise decisions requires time, and quality forecasting involves information. Which leaders cannot afford lest they lose their leadership.

    Unfortunately, humans persistently promote hubristic myopia because we cannot cope with indeterminacy.

    (“Acting on pretend knowledge is often the preferred solution.” Dr. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast, and Slow)

  • Theme:

    Creating your own misery to survive

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    1–2 minutes

    You create most of your own misery.

    Through your thoughts and feelings, you develop and then run simulations, which become anxiety-producing ruminations on possible harms. However, “survival” (which is why we undertake misery-making destructive behavior) is about ensuring the next step, not the fourth or fifth possibility.

    Staying present deflates enduring into being.

    (Staying present means rejecting the past harms from shaping your present reaction while not projecting into the future possible worries.)

    While this may not appear as thriving, it actively rejects self-harm until a moment when an opportunity opens from which you can succeed.