Identity

I'll warn you.You might hate this post. You'll probably reject my ideas. Why? Because it'll attack the very core of who you think you are. I don't think I'll convince you of anything. My best hope so far is to awaken your curiosity. 

What is an Identity. Is it a name? A job? Things liked? Music listened? Hobbies? Moral values? Opinions?  If you would have to define yourself, what would you say about you? How can you explain all the choices you made throughout your life? And what does it tell about your identity? If you'd do that, it'll only be a snapshot in time.

I wrote a post about changing according to yourself to become the "someone" you really are by trying to find out what you may have lied to yourself to be complaisant. But it lead me to more questions about my true identity.

My technique was simple at first. It was to create more and more situations where I got to make a decision about who I wanted to be. I thought that if it's something I'd choose, then It'd be me. Instead of letting things go and become me. However, I think I found out that this is nonsense. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still think it's a pretty good way to work things out but it fails at revealing who I am. Because I am not. "I" is such a deceptive word. 

Most of you probably know this famous Descartes quote : "I think, therefore I am". You probably learned this in a philosophy class. If I remember correctly, I couldn't think of anyway to disagree with Descartes until recently. To me, "to be" isn't the result of the "I" making the action of thinking. Descartes was searching for a certitude of his own existence. He couldn't be certain of anything he was seeing, touching, hearing, eating ... you get it. But the only thing that he could be sure of are his thoughts. 

This explanation doesn't get further than that. It was satisfying enough to prove someone exists, but it fails at finding what this "thing" that exists is. This "I am" that does the action of thinking.  It is our own identity and if I have the power to forge it, to change it with influences or choices I'm making throughout my life, then thinking cannot be the action the "I" does to be. Thinking over seed the "I". 

I'm really sorry to point it out but our language is deficient in providing me a way to write this sentence without using the "I" word. But "I" is the ideas I create to be an "I". In other words, "I think, therefore I am" is incomplete to me. It should be "I am thoughts, therefore "I" exist". I don't want to make it look sloppy but unfortunately it is. That's because our concept of "I" is in contradiction with what I'm saying. 

For now on, I can't be anything else but thoughts. I'm not a name? A job? Things I like? Music I listen? My hobbies? My moral values? My opinions? I'm only the idea I have to be all these characteristics and my ideas have the power to change them all. 

Conclusion, only my thoughts exist and "I" is the representation of them.

I'm too sexy

Dear readers,

I'd like to show you a "not so stupid" stupid thing I did. I went to this karaoke bar I usually go to hang out with some friends. I never sang. That was until last week-end. Listen to the video. It's a good laugh as I probably was the least sexy man in the place. You can hear people cheering for the big man and not for the performance. It's pretty cool. I wasn't taking myself seriously.

Don't worry I'm not showing this to you only for the fun of it. I intend to explain how I felt before and after. If you remember a previous post called "Fears" ( if you don't I invite you to read it ), you probably figure where I'm going with this post.

Before 

I was playing pool with a friend and I was playing bad. I mean, we played like 6-7 games and I lost them all without being close to win one. For the record, my friend wasn't playing like he was a world champion. I was simply disgusted with the way I played. 

After being humiliated at the pool table I wanted to do something completely unexpected. I went to give to the DJ a piece of paper on which I wrote my name and the song : I'm too sexy. After all, my humiliation wasn't that bad. Let's get it worst I thought. As the waiting for my turn got longer and longer I began to feel nervous, anxious, even impatient. I'd say it's pretty normal to feel like that. 

But I took a moment and I stopped to ask myself why I'm feeling this way. So I started to ask myself questions. What are the consequences? What worst can happen? What do I fear? Every answer I came up with can be found on this blog. It was absurd to apprehend the moment I'd be in front of a crown making goofy moves. There was no consequences to justify feeling nervous about it. So it made me more calm and more focused on what I was about to do. I think the result speaks for itself.

After

Right after, I felt a rush of ...  a rush of ... I can't find words to describe it. It was something. People having fun, laughing, shaking my hand in admiration for the balls it took me to amuse the crowd at the expense of my dignity. At this exact moment I knew I was right about most fears being absurds. That I wasn't all talks no walks. I was proud of myself.

Later on, we returned to the pool table. This time, I wasn't the bad player I was early on. I was awesome. I played like I never did before. I was like a world champion. I won 5 in a row in a decisive manner.  It's all about how I felt.

Conclusion

I think this experience is some kind of a rebirth. I can use it to face every situation where fears are absurds to become more fearless and I hope it gives my blog credibility.

Unresolved issues

Conflicts between individuals often go under the radar. I'm not talking about the conflicts that lead to a fight. I'm talking about the things you get over because you think that's what you should do. Nevertheless, they're problems. You may put them in a closet for many reasons, most often it's because you don't want to hurt the other person or a third person you care for. It's like politic. I think it's inevitable. That's part of the "everyone is an hypocrite at some degree". 

We're all acting at some point. Now that the Christmas/new year holidays are over, I want you to think about all the simple things you did to show "genuine" feelings to almost everyone you met. From old high school friends to all the uncles, cousins and such. I'm not saying that you have conflicts with them. You probably don't. I'm simply pointing to you that we fake most of our feelings for many reasons. 

When the kind of conflicts I'm talking about occur, We use this same fake image we all used during the new year holidays. It's a social mechanism. First of all, you need to learn to manage theses opposites feelings. Why? because if you don't then you're stacking them. And if you do, then someday you'll eventually explode and it could turn out to be ugly. I know, it happened to me. 

The truth is, you'll never get along with everyone at 100%. They'll do things you disagree with and they'll root for others you may dislike. If your the kind of person who stand up for your opinions and beliefs, then be prepare for fights. Unless, like I said, you learn to manage these feelings. It's important to stay true to yourself. So it's more important to not put others to the same level of expectations you put yourself to. That way, you're not putting yourself between conflicts and persons. Instead you let others have their own level of expectations about themselves. Then, if you need to fake a feeling, it won't become a burden. It will be managed. 

Fears

In the past weeks, I had thought a lot about fears. About how we manage them, about what is their purpose. How it is related to our inner animal. My thinking got me to an interesting way to look at fears. I'm pretty sure I didn't discover anything revolutionary but I think it's worth a post for me, and a read for you. 

First and foremost, what is fear? Well, it's a more difficult to answer question then it looks. You could enumerate an endless list of fears. You could tell it's a feeling when you feel threaten and you anticipate something awful. The actual definition is : "A feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger". Quite frankly, I really don't like these definitions. Why? Because it implies that absolute danger create absolute fear and it also implies that what from any danger possible, there's any fear possible.  I think it's not true. For the record, some fear-related illnesses exist because people see dangers where there might not be. And I think it's almost the same whatever we decided it's an illness or not.

Thinking of fears, of my own fears, I came to a different conclusion. Fears are illusions. Nothing else. You probably know the famous Roosevelt's quote : "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Well I think it holds more wisdom than it looks. In our lives, we most of the time feel fear by anticipating consequences. For example, in particular situations at work our behaviors might be influenced by fear of facing consequences like being fired. So you might use more diplomacy with co-workers/bosses. When meeting a girl you might somehow be afraid to be rejected so your behavior might show less confidence. 

There's endless situations where the fear of consequences have influence on our behaviors and it all comes down to the same fear. Fear of loosing. From loosing your life to loosing a competition, fear exists because you're afraid that you might not win. That's why fear is an illusion. Because it's not real. When you feel fear, you haven't lost yet. It's only because you anticipate the consequences you want to avoid that you feel it. 

If you think "animal". Fear is more of a reflex. A mean of defense to survive. When a cat is frighten by a dog. It run away for the same reasons you won't tell your boss what you might think of him : the consequences. Fears are created and not real. Well fear of death might be the one fear you can't avoid because it's a core-animal mean of defense to survival. But it's still an illusion because it hasn't happened yet. 

OK I know what you might think. I'm really not telling you to go tell your boss you don't like him because you shouldn't fear the consequences because they're illusions. I think you should find some kind of balance. Understanding and identifying fears makes them less harmful. It helps you see what are the consequences the fears originate from and it gives you a chance to evaluate which consequences are worth taking a chance and which are not. 

Down the road, it's all about what you can win. Telling your boss he's a jerk gives you little. However asking an attractive girl out is worth taking a chance. Oh that's true, You might have to face the consequences of loosing, but until it happens, it's nothing else but illusion. So that's why fears are absurd. When evaluating consequences, you should be able most of the time to tell you this : I'll face the consequences when they will happen. 

So I guess, as a conclusion, the only danger you should be afraid of is death. Anything else are not dangers. They are consequences and you got to be the one who decide which consequences are worth taking the risk. Fears are illusions and you should see them as tools instead of walls.         

About changing

In many post you can find on this blog, one of the redundant secondary subjects is about changing. I know it could be easy to talk about evolution but I still prefer to use the word "change". In other posts I pointed things that might trigger changes. But it's not really how it came to me. Changes came from situations I analysed. 

Normally with this blog, I'm exposing the problems and I'm talking about the solutions I came up with. But you need to understand that theses thoughts are complex. Probably more than it looks like because I'm not good enough to communicate all the things I thought of during the process. But that's not really the point. The point is : change must come from a situation you analysed yourself. Not a single thing I'm saying in this blog can be read and taken as it is. To the very best, I hope it'll open you eyes on something you never thought of before. 

Change is inevitable. You'll do it throughout your life. Over the years, I found out that to be complaisant , obliging with yourself is to knowingly accept to change according to others around you. It might be good enough for many persons, but I don't find it as optimized and rewarding as changing according to yourself. Also, I surprisingly noticed that I'm influencing much more my entourage then they influence me. I came up thinking it's better this way as I'm feeling I'm more in control of my own life. 

Here's what I do. When It's time to go to bed, I take the time to think about my day. About my behaviors. I'm trying as much as I can to be cold and distant with myself. Like I'm talking to a second me. To become an observant. It often reveals things I need to change. Let's make an easy example. I was talking with a friend and about a particular topic and I gave him an answer that was more like I'm finding a motive, whatever it is, then telling to myself what is the real motive. That's what I call lying to myself. 

For the record, we don't do this on purpose. We just do it while things happen. Because events go too fast for us to think and act at the same time. Too often, you say the first thing that make sense but it's rarely the truth. It's like correcting your mistakes after writing a text. Seeing and telling yourself the truth about why you do what you do is the first step you need to take to be the engineer behind what you want to be over what you might become if you let others do this for you. 

In this case, like anything, it needs repetition to get better, you'll find more situations when you lied to yourself and you'll make the adjustments until you completely change on something you wanted to change. 

To talk a little bit about myself. It might looks like I'm an expert but I'm not. There's still a lot of things I want and need to change and probably more things I don't know yet. But for now, I can tell you this. I'm getting that feeling, like I'm working to unleash the real me and it feels really good. I can't imagine where it will lead me but I know it's for the best. I'm living it.