What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0184

9151.  To value something, we must reject what is not that something;
9152.  We are defined by what we choose to reject.  If we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all;
9153.  Honesty is a natural human craving, but part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no;”
9154.  Romantic love is kind of like cocaine.  It’s frighteningly similar to cocaine.  It stimulates the exact same parts of the brain as cocaine.  It get you high and makes you feel good for a while, but also creates as many problems as it solves as does cocaine;
9155.  There are healthy forms of love and unhealthy forms of love.  Unhealthy love is based on 2 people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other.  They’re using each other as an escape.  Healthy love is based on 2 people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support;
9156.  The difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship comes down to 2 things: 1) how well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility; and 2) the willingness of each person to both reject and be rejected by their partner;
9157.  Anywhere there is an unhealthy or toxic relationship, there will be a poor and porous sense of responsibility on both sides and there will be an inability to give and/or receive rejection;
9158.  Wherever there is a healthy and loving relationship, there will be clear boundaries between the 2 people and their values and there will be an open avenue of giving and receiving rejection when necessary;
9159.  People in a healthy relationship with strong boundaries will take responsibility for their own values and problems and not take responsibility for their partner’s values and problems;
9160.  What do poor boundaries look like?  “You can’t go out with your friends without me.  You know how jealous I get.  You have to stay home with me.”  “My coworkers are idiots; they always make me late to meetings because I have to tell them how to do their jobs.”  “I can’t believe you made me feel so stupid in front of my own sister.  Never disagree with me in front of her again!”  “I’d love to take that job in Milwaukee, but my mother would never forgive me for moving so far away.”  “I can date you, but can you not tell my friend Cindy?  She gets really insecure when I have a boyfriend and she doesn’t.”
9161.  When you have murky areas of responsibility for your emotions and actions (i.e., areas where it’s unclear who is responsible for what, whose fault is what, why you’re doing what you’re doing), you never develop strong values for yourself.  You only value becomes making your partner happy.  Or your only value becomes your partner making you happy;
9162.  People can’t solve your problems for you.  They shouldn’t try because that won’t make you happy.  You can’t solve other people’s problems for them either because that likewise won’t make them happy;
9163.  The mark of an unhealthy relationship is 2 people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves;
9164.  A healthy relationship is when 2 people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other;
9165.  The setting of proper boundaries doesn’t mean you can’t help or support your partner or be helped and supported yourself.  You both should support each other, but only because you choose to support and be supported not because you feel obligated or entitled;
9166.  Entitled people who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as victims eventually someone will come along and save them and they will receive the love they’ve always wanted;
9167.  Entitled people who take the blame for other people’s emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they “fix” their partner and save her/him, they will receive the love and appreciation they’ve always wanted;
9168.  The victim creates more and more problems to solve not because additional real problem exist, but because it gets her/him the attention and affection s/he craves.  The saver solves and solves not because s/he actually cares about the problems, but because s/he believes s/he must fix others’ problems in order to deserve attention and affection for herself/himself;
9169.  Victims and savers both use each other to achieve emotional highs.  It’s like an addiction they fulfill in one another.  When presented with emotionally healthy people to date, they usually feel bored or lack “chemistry” with them.  They pass on emotionally healthy, secure individuals because the secure partner’s solid boundaries don’t feel “exciting” enough to stimulate the constant highs necessary in the entitled person;
9170.  If you make a sacrifice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to not because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing so.  If your partner is going to make a sacrifice for you, it needs to be because s/he genuinely want to not because you’ve manipulated the sacrifice through anger or guilt;
9171.  Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations;
9172.  It can be difficult for people to recognize the difference between doing something out of obligation and doing it voluntarily.  So here’ the litmus test: Ask yourself, “If I refused how would the relationship change?”  Similarly ask, “If my partner refused something I wanted, how would the relationship change?”
9173.  People with strong boundaries are not afraid of a temper tantrum, an argument or getting hurt.  People with weak boundaries are terrified of those things and will constantly mold their own behavior to fit the highs and lows of their relational emotional roller coaster;
9174.  People with strong boundaries understand that it’s unreasonable to expect 2 people to accommodate each other 100 percent and fulfill every need the other has;
9175.  People with strong boundaries understand that they may hurt someone’s feelings sometimes, but ultimately they can’t determine how other people feel;
9176.  People with strong boundaries understand that a healthy relationship is not about controlling one another’s emotions, but rather about each partner supporting the other in their individual growth and in solving their own problems;
9177.  It’s not about caring about everything your partner cares about; it’s about caring about your partner regardless of what s/he cares about;
9178.  Without conflict, there can be no trust.  Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits.  No one trusts a “yes”-person;
9179.  For a relationship to be healthy both people must be willing and able to both say “no” and hear “no;”
9180.  Without that negation, without that occasional rejection, boundaries break down and one person’s problems and values come to dominate the other’s.  Conflict is not only normal then; it’s absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship.  If 2 people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation and it will slowly become toxic;
9181.  When we’re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice.  Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting;
9182.  While investing deeply in one person, one place, one job or one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience rewards of depth of experience;
9183.  There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for 5 years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade or when you’ve been working on the same skill or craft for half your lifetime;
9184.  The older you get, the more experienced you get, the less significantly each new experience affects you;
9185.  Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous;
9186.  Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your attention and focus directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy;
9187.  Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more again?
9188.  Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would;
9189.  The rejection of alternatives liberates us (e.g., rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breadth without depth);
9190.  Breadth of experience is likely necessary and desirable when you’re young.  You have to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in, but depth is where the gold is buried.  You have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up.  That’s true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle and in everything;
9191.  Getting a bruise on your chest because your girlfriend bit you (too hard) . . . check;
9192.  You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions;
9193.  Popeyes’s spicy chicken sandwich is better than their regular chicken sandwich. . . . I might like it more than Chick-fil-A’s chicken sandwich . . . sacrilege;
9194.  If there really is no reason to do anything then there is also no reason to not do anything; that in the face of the inevitability of death, there is no reason to ever give in to one’s fear, embarrassment or shame since it’s all just a bunch of nothing anyway; and by spending the majority of your short life avoiding what was painful and uncomfortable you have essentially been avoiding being alive;
9195.  Death scares us and, because it scares us, we avoid thinking, talking and sometimes even acknowledging it even when it’s happening to someone close to us;
9196.  In a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured.  Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary and all metrics and values suddenly zero;
9197.  In order to compensate for our fear of the inevitable loss of our physical self, we try to construct a conceptual self that will live forever.  This is why people try so hard to put their names on buildings, statues and on the spines of books;
9198.  I’ve spent $156.35 on a (woman’s) purse( . . . that is after the 50% off discount);
9199.  Smoked paprika is great on devilled eggs;
9200.  Our immortality projects are our values.  They are the barometers of meaning and worth in our lives and when our values fail so do we psychologically speaking;

What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0183

9101.  Do your best to spend at least as much energy expressing your positive feelings as you do the negative ones;

9102.  For any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something;

9103.  If you’re sitting there, miserable day after day then that means you’re already wrong about something major in your life and, until you’re able to question yourself to find it, nothing will change;

9104.  Many people are able to ask themselves if they’re wrong, but few are able to go the extra step and admit what it would mean if they were wrong;

9105.  The potential meaning behind our wrongness is often painful.  Not only does it call into question our values, but it forces us to consider what a different, contradictory value could potentially look and feel like;

9106.  Being able to look at and evaluate different values without necessarily adopting them is perhaps the central skill required in changing one’s own life in a meaningful way;

9107.  Would being wrong create a better or a worse problem than my current problem for both myself and others?

9108.  Beliefs are arbitrary; worse yet, they’re often made up after the fact to justify whatever values and metrics we’ve chosen for ourselves;

9109.  If it’s down to me being screwed up or everybody else being screwed up, it is far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up;

9110.  If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself;

9111.  Failure is the way forward;

9112.  Failure itself is a relative concept;

9113.  Making money by itself is a lousy metric for yourself.  You could make plenty of money and be miserable just as you could be broke and be pretty happy;

9114.  Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something;

9115.  If someone is better than you at something then it’s likely because s/he has failed at it more than you have.  If someone is worse than you it’s likely because s/he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have;

9116.  We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at.  If we’re unwilling to fail then we’re unwilling to succeed;

9117.  A lot of this fear of failure comes from having chosen bad values;

9118.  Bad values involve intangible external goals outside of our control;

9119.  Better values are process-oriented;

9120.  If your metric for the value “success by worldly standards” is “buy a house and a nice care” and, you spend 20 years working to achieve it, once it’s achieved the metric has nothing left to give you;

9121.  For many of us, our proudest achievements come in the face of the greatest adversity.  Our pain often makes us stronger, more resilient and more grounded;

9122.  Fear, anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather they are often representative of the necessity pain of psychological growth.  And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential;

9123.  Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments;

9124.  It’s only when we feel intense pain that we’re willing to look at our values and question why they seem to be failing us;

9125.  If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it.  Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head;

9126.  Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it;

9127.  Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation;

9128.  When the standard of success becomes merely acting, when any result is regarded as progress and important, when inspiration is seen as a reward rather than a prerequisite, we propel ourselves ahead.  We feel free to fail and that failure moves us forward;

9129.  Attitude isn’t everything, but it is one thing that can make a tremendous difference in your life;

9130.  Your attitude is the paintbrush of your mind;

9131.  You cannot disconnect attitude from reality and expect success;

9132.  Your attitude can’t substitute for competence.  Some people confuse confidence, which is a function of attitude, with competence, which is a function of ability;

9133.  Your attitude can’t substitute for experience;

9134.  Your attitude cannot change the facts;

9135.  If you don’t like something, change it.  If you cannot change it, change your attitude.  Don’t complain;

9136.  Your attitude cannot substitute for personal growth;

9137.  Your attitude will not stay good automatically.  It’s easier to maintain an attitude than it is to regain an attitude;

9138.  Attitude alone isn’t going to cut it.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t really, really important;

9139.  Attitude is a key, powerful ingredient in the recipe for success, fulfillment and purpose;

9140.  While your attitude isn’t everything, it can do a whole lot for you; in many situations, it’s the difference-maker;

9141.  Your attitude makes a difference in your approach to life;

9142.  Your attitude makes a difference in your relationships with people.  It influences how we see others and it determines whether we lift others up or deflate them.  The right attitude allows us to learn from each person we meet, every one of which who has something to teach us;

9143.  Your attitude makes a difference in how you face challenges;

9144.  How do you go about changing your attitude: 1.  Evaluate your present attitude.  Mindfulness and awareness are key to improving an attitude that desperately needs changing; 2.  Have a desire to change.  No choice will determine the success of your attitude change more than desiring to change; 3.  Change your attitude by changing your thoughts.  Attitudes are nothing more than habits of thought; 4.  Manage your attitude daily.  Maintaining the right attitude is easier than regaining it.  As the great John Wooden said, “Things turn out the best for people who make the best of the way things turn out;” and 5.  Take responsibility for your attitude, which is totally in your control.  You can’t control the weather, but you can control the atmosphere of your mind;

9145.  The only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief or one person;

9146.  Travel is a fantastic self-development tool because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves.  This exposure to different cultural values and metrics then forces you to reexamine what seems obvious in your own life and to consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way to live;

9147.  We need to reject something otherwise we stand for nothing.  If nothing is better or more desirable than anything else then we are empty and our lives are meaningless.  We are without values and, therefore, live our life without any purpose;

9148.  The avoidance of rejection (both giving and receiving it) is often sold to us as a way to make ourselves feel better.  But avoiding rejection gives us short-term pleasure by making us rudderless and directionless in the long term;

9149.  In order to get a(n) accurate/good reading, you should put more than just the tip of the meat thermometer (probe) in (the meat);

9150.  The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values;

What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0182

9051.  Just because busyness works to keep you distracted that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea;

9052.  Just because you manage to keep scary emotions at bay (by being busy) that doesn’t mean it’s healthy, productive or in your best interest.  It doesn’t even mean it’s easier or less painful;

9053.  You can’t outrun your emotions.  Distraction is at best a temporary relief;

9054.  When we sweep our emotional struggles under the rug with constant busyness, it’s like taking out a loan.  You get a little breathing room for a while, but you’re paying interest.  And the interest rate on emotional loans is far higher than most people realize;

9055.  How many relationships suffer because one person is so busy and preoccupied that s/he can’t be truly present and available for her/his partner?

9056.  How many physical ailments are made worse by the wear and tear and constant stress that comes from always being busy?

9057.  How many genuinely exciting and interesting experiences are given up because we’re too afraid of giving up control over our tightly managed schedules that prevents any alone time with our own thoughts and feelings?

9058.  The real tragedy for people, who get in the habit of using busyness to distract themselves from their own thoughts and feelings, is they miss out on life;

9059.  People preoccupied with busyness spend their entire lives playing defense against an imaginary opponent; the opportunity cost of which is that they have no time or energy to play offense and really go after the things they truly love;

9060.  Your mind is not as scary a place as you imagine it to be.  Yes, it contains frightening thoughts and difficult feelings, but you’re underestimating your capacity to deal with those difficulties head one;

9061.  Many of us are in the habit of using overly intellectual ways to describe how we feel as a defense mechanism;

9062.  You have to be vulnerable to describe how you feel with plain emotional language.  And because most of us are afraid to be vulnerable with our feelings, we subtly avoid it by intellectualizing how we feel (e.g., transforming our emotions into ideas because ideas hurt less);

9063.  When we avoid our emotions, even with the language we use to describe them, we signal to our brains that those emotions are not just painful, but dangerous which means we train our brains to be afraid of being emotional;

9064.  By avoiding being vulnerable about how we actually feel, we make it hard for other people to help and support us because we’re hiding and obscuring how we feel;

9065.  The next time you’re experiencing painful emotions and someone asks you how you’re doing, think about it like this: What would an 8-year-old kid say?  How would they describe how they feel?

9066.  When we observe ourselves feeling bad and then judge ourselves as bad, weak or immoral for feeling that way, we add a second layer of painful emotion on top of the difficult feelings we were already feeling;

9067.  Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional;

9068.  When you operate under the assumption that every painful emotional experience is bad, you get yourself into all sorts of unconscious habits designed to get rid of those painful feelings.  Trying to avoid or get rid of your feelings is a losing battle.  You’re only increasing their frequency and intensity in the long-run;

9069.  If you want to develop a happier, healthier relationship with your emotions, remind yourself that just because a particular feeling feels bad that doesn’t mean it is bad or that you experiencing it is a bad sign;

9070.  Learn to accept your emotions even the painful ones.  You’ll still feel the pain, but you’ll save yourself a lot of suffering;

9071.  It’s ironic that so many of us are compassionate, understanding and gentle when faced with other people’s difficulties and emotional struggles, but, when faced with our own painful emotions, we tend to be judgmental, intolerant and harsh with ourselves when we’re struggling;

9072.  We’re (pretty) mean to ourselves at precisely the moments when we should be kind;

9073.  Your self-talk is largely a learned habit generally picked up from parents or caregivers early in life and then reinforced via friends and ourselves as we get older;

9074.  How we talk to ourselves is a habit nothing more nothing less;

9075.  If you’re in the habit of talking to yourself in a harsh, judgmental way (especially during times of emotional pain), you’re going to be fueling the flames and increasing your suffering;

9076.  Decades of psychological research has confirmed, how we feel emotionally is mediated by how we think and interpret the world around us.  How we habitually think (and talk) determines how we habitually feel;

9077.  A(n obvious) sign that your relationship with your emotions needs work is if your inner narrator is a jerk;

9078.  Realize that no matter what kinds of self-talk you’ve built up over the years, with practice, they’re changeable;

9079.  You can learn to be more compassionate and gentle in the way you talk to yourself and especially the way you talk to yourself about the way you feel;

9080.  When we’re upset, we need our inner voice to be a friend not a bully;

9081.  Another hallmark of an unhealthy relationship with your emotions is that you lack confidence in your ability to manage difficult emotions on your own;

9082.  While reassurance feels good temporarily (because it alleviates some painful emotion like anxiety or guilt), it easily slips into a vicious cycle of ever lower and lower confidence in one’s own ability to tolerate and manage difficult feelings and uncertainties;

9083.  Like most addictions, reassurance-seeking is a trade-off of our long-term happiness and health for short-term comfort and ease;

9084.  Instead of instantly calling your daughter/son to see if s/he made it home after her/his flight, wait 15 minutes and prove to yourself that you can live with your anxiety instead of instantly alleviating it with reassurance;

9085.  Rather than peppering your partner with questions about how s/he feels (in order to alleviate your anxiety), give her/him some space trusting that s/he will come to you if that’s what s/he wants or needs;

9086.  If you’re in the habit of putting things off in order to escape some unpleasant emotion(, the fear of disappointment is a common one,) it could indicate that you’re not very good at managing difficult emotions and doing what needs to be done anyway;

9087.  Motivation and confidence are feelings that result from doing worthwhile things.  They’re an effect not a prerequisite;

9088.  It’s possible to do difficult things while feeling anxious, embarrassed, angry or whatever;

9089.  Feeling good is nice, but it’s not a requirement for taking action;

9090.  You don’t need to eliminate painful emotions in order to live your life.  It’s only through living your life alongside all of your emotions that you learn to manage them effectively;

9091.  No matter how severe the emotional struggles, a person with a clear sense of values and desires tends to be quite successful overcoming his/her struggles.  It’s as if having a clear sense of your values and knowing what you want makes it a lot easier to work through any sort of challenge including emotional ones;

9092.  Not knowing what’s really important to you in life is a major emotional liability;

9093.  When your whole way of being in the world is oriented around not feeling bad and staying safe, identifying what you really want and pursuing it with energy and passion is a frighteningly foreign concept;

9094.  If you have a hard time identifying what’s really important to you (e.g., what your goals, dreams or passions are), it could be that it’s your relationship with your emotions that’s to blame;

9095.  If (on a basic level) your life revolves around avoiding emotional discomfort and staying safe from emotional pain, you wouldn’t have developed the “muscle” required to take life by the horns and really chase after what you want despite how you feel;

9096.  In order to develop this “muscle” for identifying and chasing after what you really want (e.g., for making a life and not just floating through it), you need a healthier relationship with your emotions especially the painful ones;

9097.  You’re never going to find the courage to do difficult but rewarding things if you’re terrified of anxiety or embarrassment;

9098.  You’re never going to reap the benefits of big risks if you assume you must feel confident beforehand;

9099.  If you’ve got that nagging sense that there must be more to life, figuring that out just might come down to cultivating a different relationship with your emotions;

9100.  By letting the tears flow, you are letting out what hurts while making more room in your heart for positive thoughts and feelings.  Expressing your pain is actually a good way to make it stop;