An Unconventional Life Tip
Over the summer, I decided to clean my room, both in a figurative, Jordan Peterson sense, and in a literal one.
Now, I’m far from a minimalist; I have a ton of stuff. Generally speaking, I figure you need a lot of stuff if you’re going to follow your whims, and don’t really get the minimalist crowd. Let’s just call it a creative difference and move on.
So, I have a ton of stuff. That requires maintenance and, sometimes, tidying stuff up.
However, let’s put the “Black Hat” in “Life Hack” here and forego talking about organisation and instead talk about an unconventional tip I came up with when I discovered an old folder of mine.
An Old Folder Dedicated To My Achievements
Friends of mine will tell you I might tell you I’ve lost my way in recent years. I’m tempted to agree with them in the sense that relative to my potential, I’m far behind where I could be.
Never had this been more clear than when I opened an old folder I had. Inside were certificates, badges, photos, little memoribilia of trophies; everything from sports achievements when I was a kid through to certifications I got as an adult and newspaper clippings that my Mum probably cut out when I was younger.
They’d all found their way into this little folder. And I remember back when I was a teenager and young adult, I had a healthy sense of what you’d call confidence if you liked me and arrogance if you didn’t, and that was probably aided by occasionally looking through this folder and even the silly little things basically created a chain of, “You’ve done a lot of stuff and you were pretty good at all of it.”
And here’s the psychological principle at play…
Your Brain Constantly Updates Its Sense Of Self Based On The Environment
(Since my return to blogging, these headings have been consistently clunky.)
Here’s the thing: regardless of whether you believe we have a fixed personality or not, we’re at least in part monkey-brained social animals who define themselves in no small part based on our social environment and our physical environment.
This, studied, verified and if this weren’t a blog post at the end of my day, I’d link the scientific studies on; we constantly update our sense of self according to external parameters. Presumably, that comes from some biological history in which our position in a tribe heavily moderated whether we were part of the gang or beaten half-to-death and left to be eaten by whichever historic creature scares you most.
Now, the stakes are far lower, but still lying underneath your conscious self-conception and presumably having an effect on you.
Ergo, if the environment reinforces you’re one of life’s unlucky or losers, you’re in a negative, cynical cycle.
If, on the other hand, you’re surrounded by the idea that everything is awesome and you are the most awesome thing, then chances are you’re in a virtuous cycle.
With that said, let’s get to the point.
Hackedy-Hacking Your Subconscious By Building An Ego Shrine
There are the white-hat hackers when it comes to life; the “get up ten minutes earlier” and “make sure to hit inbox-zero” and that’s all great in a milquetoast way, but it’s boring.
When I talk about Black Hat Life Hacks, it’s because, like the hackers of old, I’m attempting to find a shortcut that allows for massive results relative to the effort put in.
In the article above, I talk about how the environment affects your conception of self. Now I’m going to make a simple suggestion: we deliberately reinforce the idea that we are fantastic.
We can do this by continuing the work (My Mum and) I started when I was a kid.
Make note of every single achievement. Little, large, silly, serious. Your Masters in Law can go right next to your “I was brave at the dentist” sticker from when you were five years old.
This can take whatever form you like, so I won’t get specific; but there will be times the universe makes you feel like a failure, normie, boring or not living up to your potential. In those cases, having a long list of things you’ve done, built, acheived, won, survived, thrived, etc. on hand to prove that assumption wrong is worth more than its weight in gold.
More on this to come.