Search Results for “doubt” – Page 2

Weighing the good and the bad

October 28th, 2021

The brevity of good — it’s as if the shelf-life of positivity yields to the durability of the negative.

Pessimism turns the world upside down to the point that the Earth’s emotions feel flat.

How do you wake up and shake up the good vibes?

First, you come to expect that the future will be better than the past. Hope is the oldest and most dependable survival tactic in the book. But despair is also in the genes.

Imagination is the great equalizer — it dreams upward and downward. You decide what to latch onto. The challenge becomes how to stay grounded in the good and the bad.

One uses the pragmatist razor to assess the criteria in all subjectivity, deciding which of your beliefs have cash value and convert in the real world.

Practicality withstands all doubts and hopium. It saves you from irrational exuberance. What works, and what we strive to want to work is the philosophy that seems to work best.
Thinking things through

April 25th, 2022

What we’re thinking of right now often feels of the utmost importance.

Negative thoughts, in particular, turn passive onlookers into nervous inward-facing participants. The face twitch, lip biting, short breaths, full-bodied elsewhereness — says it all.

The nerves light up like a Christmas tree, flaring internally on a rollercoaster of emotions. The brain gets stuck in gear, a sprain only that a transcendent redesign can heal.

Thankfully the world challenges our inner landscapes, knocking us in different directions, often for the better — engaging in imaginative doom-musing gets pretty dull anyway. The tension of outside interruptions helps in breaking up the rote neural circuitry.

The mind snatches the nearest pen to think things through. The beauty arrives with the movement; a flow crystalized into an arrangement. But it’s the delicate pause, the silence between the notes, giving way to mind blurbs that might be insightful.

Thinking is a mysterious process.

The mind vacuums and spits out everything in abundance: anxiety, doubt, optimism, and possibilities., creating a twister of emotion. Thankfully, disfluency has elbows, becoming a welcome distraction. Trapped between provocation and constriction, we finally settle down.

Writing recenters thought from the chaos of the monkey mind and helps us decode the insanity of reality. The extra clarity allows us to put our insides out there more aggressively. We can, on the contrary, improve the quality of life through the grittiness of diverged thought.
A simulation of self

December 28th, 2021

The neural synchronization between individuals — we can talk to each other without saying a word. The brain emits answers, and humans reap the rewards of non-confrontation. Silence is a form of communication.

What we can’t signal is the reflection of our unexamined desires. Such remain hidden in the caverns of the dormant self, the unconscious. At the heart of it all sits a person and a self-portrait they are still working on. We are the audience.

So why is self-talk so broken? If we can simulate a conversation with a stranger, we can interpret the inner-narrative, allowing the purest expression of the human self. Perhaps we are suffering from too much closeupness.

There are white fountains at the end of the mind. But only if we cease the wrestling with identity. We usually think before deciding how to react and trip over ourselves. Life, like writing, is freest at the tip of observation and flow.

The geometry of thought says that when we put our minds in the world, the environment unshackles all the hesitation and self-doubt for us. Honesty is a perfect medicine, for it has no disabling convictions but real life. It saves us from drowning in the simulation of self.
Stress test

November 17th, 2021

Stress is the great equalizer and our biggest distractor. It is worse than a sting from the ludic loop, mere fodder for over-thinking.

But we can dampen its attentive nature. We can do things to get unstuck from the chaos of the monkey mind. The quickest mood modulator could be a psychedelic to reset the state of consciousness. But that’s unlikely. We shouldn’t have to medicate our problems away.

A more realistic and organic opiate is to exaggerate the stress trigger by incubating it to a standstill. Think about anything enough, and one gets bored. How long can one replay the mental movie without falling asleep or wanting to move on with the business of living? After all, we’ve got stuff to do.

The anxiety headache brings us to the second option. Doing or worrying about something else is also a vehicle for rebooting the internal wires. We are too busy to get caught in robotic old forms when we can exert voluntary attention to another external component.

Stress, doubt, anxiety are all breakable, proof that humans can work mind magic to solve their problems.
When in doubt…

November 3rd, 2018
- Let your art make the rounds. Don’t hide it.
- Don’t try to be everywhere. Pick a place and be consistent.
- Rules are recommendations. Feel free to break them, recast, and remix them.
- Rest when you’re underperforming. Don’t quit.
- The muse is nonexistent. Inspiration is bunk. Habit is a bicep curl for the brain.
I hope the above helps you push through CRAP (criticism, rejection assholes, pressure) like Meryl Streep once did. Bonus points for embracing the messy middle.
Intent to discover

January 24th, 2022

Working out our ideas in public, whether via a speech or blog post, is an opportunity to dance with fear. The amygdala senses nothing but survival when the stakes are drawn in the continuous present.

Luckily, taking on vulnerability and accountability often leads to something of value. Starting before we’re ready begs the question: what else is possible when we put our mind to it?

When we actively perform, we have something to play with, revise, and perfect. Practice is a magical power that sharpens our discipline and improves our craft.

Of course, there are many periods of consolidation. There’s typically an apex and then a dip in form, the latter compelling us to keep learning and keep going despite inevitable gaps in knowledge. The more we know, the more we need to know. We come prepared to discover.

Making stuff means showing up and expecting to get trammeled by pernicious doubt, distractions, and feelings of inadequacy. We have to surrender to the possibility of sucking. What if the labor of love is a waste of time?

We invest in the work with the intent to discover who we are, explore possibilities, to reap the rewards of persistence. The hardest part awaits further.

As they say, the road is better than the end. They don’t tell you that enough along the way, or maybe the advice falls flat because fledglings are too perpetually restless to listen.
Starting the process, dancing with maintenance

September 8th, 2021

The room of our mind decorates itself with doubt. Anxiety is a thinking problem, a challenge to contain the inner narrative that bears the footprints of our decisions.

Extreme self-belief and passion offer the antidotes to quitting. Immersed from the start, we dance with persistence when times get difficult.

Evolution is an imaginative process. As we gain exposure to the world, it becomes our oyster for exploration and experimentation.

Each creator finds their own problems and lets their identity roll. We build and sustain a system of habits to avoid wandering about in the fog. We do, however, remain changeable as we mine for secrets of the interior self.

But it’s not just the drive to begin. Finishing matters most. The world is a better place for those that ship projects out the door. Artists need feedback. “Another flaw in human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance,” once said Kurt Vonnegut.

So which is more difficult — the start or the maintenance? Both are equally important as an emphasis of action.
That which tints

January 8th, 2022

We don’t want to consume things too rich — otherwise, we get fat.

Hedonism is a distraction from distraction. None of those daily binge sessions amount to anything but a temporary enjoyment, an attempt to medicate some unconscious problem away.

The same goes with eardrums; anything that sounds good gets in the way of the business of living.

Yes, straight-shooters get the emotionally augmented dopamine hit from pursuing the sweet. But there are no cheat codes to achieving long-term serotonin. Open book tests amount to nothing without knowing where to look.

We hunt not for the solutions, but the right problems to solve. And to do that, we need to establish an environment unmoored from excessive stimulation and hand-fed answers.

The trick, it seems, if we are to remain healthy and do things that matter is to find something that creates an ambiance of balance while inspiring a modicum of doubt.

So we create a neutral yet complementary and seeming invisible setting, such as the color gray laced with an ambient soundtrack in the background.

Obscurity provides luminosity. A tint keeps one locked into space and time, producing a focus that widens the thinking and expands the mind to glowing originality.

If one needs to power off to achieve alertness (re: aliveness), follow through. The pleasure of wanting the moment anticipates its existence. Maintaining a mental harmony within the shades of our surroundings is the best place to engage our internal weather.
How to stem the fright

December 9th, 2020

The actor slips over their words; the violinist freezes mid-song; the shortstop misses an easy grounder.

Mistakes happen, no matter the expert. But how many errors are due to overthinking?

We worry as a preventative, living through hyperbole in our heads before experiencing any such horror in real life.

Dizziness of anxiety indicates a lack of preparation. Deliberate daily practice not only improves our skills but also quells our fears.

We work better when we unthink. Doing the work reconciles with the monkey mind.

We may be unable to think ourselves better, inculcating a hardened thought as a placebo. But we can strengthen habit, cementing positive action through bicep curls for the mind.

Uncertainty tries to shipwreck lives. Doubt likes to spread and replicate like a virus, preempting all our efforts and encouraging us to play it safe.

All the energy comes from beheading the internal resistance and replacing it with hard work. We must permit ourselves to attack life and refuse to negotiate with the dialectic and its ”what ifs.”

Thankfully, we starve for expression. Our craft is a serious matter.

Discipline is freedom. It’s the only thing we can fire up to help control rising self-doubt.

The most significant gains in confidence come from executing the production process itself.
Tighter the brief, the deeper the craft

April 1st, 2021

Once we commit to a creative project, we make choices within it. We narrow down everything into a tight brief so we can build something conclusive.

The frames in place help guide our unconscious decisions. There’s no blur between what we’re making and what we want to make.

Slowly but surely, we commit to a process despite all the doubt. We gather a proper stream of blood flow and breathing, focusing free-flowing talent into a concentrated effort.

Distracting opportunities have to die for the most important craft to live.

We don’t need more of anything; instead, we play with what we already have. We hunker down on the front lines and figure out how to shape our materials. Boredom is welcome, as it provides the opportunity we need to have the next big idea.

And once the art is out there, it’s out there. We try not to take feedback personally — not to repress or ignore negativity — but to acknowledge we shipped!

How we perceive our work is more important than how others look at it. Society is either too polite or doesn’t care. Passion, care, sticktuitiveness — these traits are leverage.
The streak goes on

December 25th, 2020

Writing can be a painful activity. The idea of thinking and starting from scratch every day frightens the resistance.

But just as in exercise, the trick is in getting started.

Knowing that we can remain uncharged by the underground voltage of curiosity and enthusiasm, we have to depend on a non-thinking routine.

Showing up to practice is the number one priority. Then one writes poorly and gradually with more force, putting the bones in our words.

Discipline is a secret hidden in plain sight, only visible in the long look beyond the glance.

Swimming in impulses and doubt — remembering the possibility of revision helps tame the symphony of perfection.

Relaxed in the process, mincing and mixing words into a jigsaw puzzle of sentences holds material and belief more firmly.

We finish another day until the brain strains for another run tomorrow.

Addicted to vocation, flush with anxiety, we numb all feelings with the most adamant flow.
Ignoring the inner-critic

October 6th, 2020

We paint from what life gives us. We are the sum total of our experience.

But how often do we underthink our motivation and overthink action? Sometimes, it makes sense to think big and pull the life out of ourselves.

Stop doubting and start doing

The doer is a different breed. Dreams are meant to be followed, broken, failed at, and remixed.

There’s nothing more disruptive than someone chasing a so-called “pipe dream” with consistency and patience.

Why is the inner-critic so afraid to break the shackles and live up to their best?

To doubt is to do — doing is a way of building up courage and establishing narratives.

Stop doubting and start doing