Babies

It's almost too cliche; as my best friend dies(/is killed by himself), a baby is born into my family. End of movie. Fade to black. Cue credits and touching music. Nonetheless, that's what happened. Within about two months of the suicide, a birth. Perhaps I'm creating order and meaning out of meaningless static. They've got a word for that. It's a natural tendency of the human mind, to recognize patterns. Thus, seeing faces in the knots of some interesting wood, or in the stucco of a ceiling, if you stare long enough. However, I notice this with a certain tongue in cheekyness, not attempting to draw overmuch meaning from the incident, except noting the interesting effect created by that juxtaposition:

Life goes on.

we keep making babies, at an unsustainable rate, no less, and so the race goes on. Holding my newborn niece in my arms, this is the thought that kept coming into my mind. "This little lump is going to be a teenager in 16 years. Now, she is simple, her life is eating and sleeping and growing. Her understanding is barely different from a newborn kitten. But in a year, she will be learning things no other animal will ever get close to understanding. In ten, she will have a full mind, likes, dislikes, self-consciousness, a distinct personality. Another ten, she will be a grown up like me. I looked at her and saw her future, her life. The person she would become. A whole person. A whole life.

I suppose dan could have lived another three times as long as he did. Another three lives. Then again, any of us could die at any time. These bodies are not invincible. But whether it's dan that grows up in this world or Noa (my niece's name), someone will. Someone will inherit the earth. Someone will screw and have the next generation. Hopefully they won't just screw but enter into the procreative act with love and intention, but it's not necessary, apparently. If it was we wouldn't have an overpopulation issue but an extinction issue, at least until the figured out what was wrong.

The baby is cute, just like all babies are. Kittens, puppies, and sprouting sunflower seeds, they all have this beautiful freshness, newness to them.

That's not a good enough reason to have a baby though, since they're a crapload of work. Few if any animals are as helpless as a newborn human baby. Animals in general are tougher than humans. We've traded that in for adaptability.

I still want to have kids though. Not because I think it's cute, or I'm supposed to, or I've got some idea that it will make me happy. All those things may be true, but the main reason I want to have kids is I think I'd be a good parent, and I want to give that to some kids. Most of what we learn from our parents is by osmosis. Not what they tell us but what they are. I've focused my whole life on becoming a good person, on healing myself first, and doing what I think should be done, rather than telling others to do what I myself have not. When I see someone doing something I don't like, I look within, and see if I can change that behaviour in myself.

It appears that, for the most part, people in our society do not grow. They get older, but they stay basically the same, inside. That is not the way it has to be. I myself am constantly morphing, purifying out constrictions, fears, illusions. And it makes my life richer, day by day.

I'm not even particularly good at it. There are lots of people I've read about that seem to go about the process I'm doing much quicker. Maybe they're better at it than me. Maybe they were born less messed up than me. Don't know, doesn't matter.

A lot of what I do, in terms of my own growth, I do for the next generation. I think, I hope, that they will start off closer to where I am when I have them. I have dreams, for who I want to be, but I don't see them happening, for myself. Not this lifetime. Not at the speed I'm going. I'll still try, because there's nothing better to do, but maybe I can give it to the next generation. What they do with it is not my concern. They will have to make there own choices when the time comes. For now, my job is to make myself ready for them.

This is of course jumping the gun a bit on a more immediately relevant issue: how to pick up chicks.

;)

-io

Insanity and Relationships

Girlfriends. Romance. Addiction.

It's not fair to anyone, the illusions we cast over ourselves and other people, playing make believe. I was never good at acting charming. I used to be good at manipulation, but it hurts way to much to do that any more. So my illusions hurt mainly just myself. Internal fantasy, rather than externally acted out. I guess it hurts the people in that they don't get to meet the cool person named Isaac, when I withdraw.

And it certainly hurts me, when I decide I need someone else to be happy, and I don't have someone else. I'd like to meet me, and become intimate with that person. But I have the hardest time of all loving myself. But I'm the only one I can count on for sure. If I can't get what I'm searching for, inside, then getting it outside is a lot harder for me.

Not for some people. Not everyone has trouble with getting relationships. Perhaps most people have trouble getting relationships that are consistently nice, but they still exist. And probably without all the time spent on internal work that I've spent. Most likely, I'm either in a remedial class, or else I've just got a specific relational problem. Or else it's just a part of my personality that's not actually a problem but becomes a problem because I think it should be different, and because I think I need to have a relationship to be happy.

Lets take a look at a transactional relationship analysis of recent days.

Me meet girl. Previous acquaintance. Attracted to girl, think that I want a relationship with girl. Want to share my feelings honestly about these feelings, way, way, way too much thinking beforehand about it. What I'm going to say. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of conversations in my head. None of them satisfactory, because I don't know what a satisfactory initiation of "dating" looks like. My experiences with dating girls has been woeful. Perhaps not significantly more woeful than the rest of the population, is essence, but in appearance, more woeful, because they haven't even resulted in a relationship. Part of that is my inability to date someone I'm not attracted too. It feels sleazy to me. Like I'm using there infatuation for my own personal ego stoking. I want something mutual, but perhaps that is too much to ask for the beginning of a relationship.

Anyways, girl mentions "incidentally" that she is dating someone. Obviously she wants to clarify our relationship, not get my hopes up, because I've been fairly upfront and I'm sure she strongly suspects, if not outright knows, that I have a crush on her. I on the other hand, am very confused about her. Sometimes I think she's interested in having a relationship, other times (certainly when she has a boyfriend) there is definitely not that vibe there. Not sure if she 'just wants to be friends' (blow my brains out, but fine, at least I've got someone who really triggers my emotional romance issues to help me find hidden places of pain) or is keeping me around as a back up boyfriend (not sure how I feel about that either, kind of disposable and cheap.)

Anyways, I get sad, because when I ever have expectations about women and romance they get kicked in the balls repeatedly and then thrown into a sewage treatment pool with concrete boots on. (the ideas, not the women) This is no exception. Expectation = let down, in my book, specifically in regards to women/romance.

What I really need is probably very simple: I need to learn how to give to myself the feelings of acceptance, love, safety and constancy of love, and worthiness that I seek through the validation of a loving partner. I think there must be more to it though, since there are plenty of people who have relationships and still seek those things. I think part of that is maybe an ability to settle. Another part is an ability to present an attractive image and be charming. Another part is perhaps the ability to quickly connect with people and keep then interested/feeling good around you.

I'm not sure if I should try and develop these skills, or just work on the primary problem:

that I am deeply attached to having a relationship. it would be a lot simpler, perhaps, if I could actually just get a relationship and then see for myself if it gave me any of what I'm looking for. I know, in the part of my mind that's not insane, that it won't. Just like I knew with sex. With sex I ended up learning through experience. It was useful to know, but it was only necessary because I didn't trust myself and my knowing.

So I need to trust myself, here, if I want to move through this issue quickly.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: I have a strong attachment to having a relationship where I like a girl romantically and she feels the same about me. I get my feelings of love and particularly worthiness, from other people, though it always feels partial, not enough. I believe, insane as it is, that someone I 'love' 'loving' me the same way, is how I will finally be able to believe in myself. Without that, it seems impossible. That love is an ideal for me. it's the highest, bestest most complete form of acceptance and validation I can imagine. The fact that I haven't had that kind of relationship is proof to my subconscious that I am not worthy, not a worthwhile human being. Maybe this is hard to believe that someone could actually think this way, but it's entirely probable that you, the reader, have something that you believe that is of a similar level of insanity. the trick is it hides itself, justifies itself, so you don't see it. Because if you did see it, it would start to shrivel up and die in the light of obvious common sense.

However, with some of these big issues, even recognizing the insanity isn't enough to heal it. Eventually, the belief is hanging on through shear emotional tenacity. It is completely illogical, it is just a crazy person, railing against the world, blinded and maddened by hurt or fear or rage.

Like this thing. The bottom line is, for whatever reason, I feel like the crud you scrape off the bottom of your shoes with a stick, and I see a mutual romantic relationship as a way out.

No wonder there is so much energy being put into it. It's almost unavoidable, for anyone put into a similar internal environment: factor a) you feel horrible. factor b) you've been led to believe that there is a way out of feeling horrible.

It's an innocent movement, though it is sad in that it's doomed from the get go.

But until I can find a way to give myself the feelings I'm looking for, I too am doomed to search for it. As long as I'm suffering and sad, I'm not going to stop searching. The pain eggs me on. Say what you will, but pain is an powerful motivator.

The best I can do, as far as I can figure, is to search in the most likely location. Which is within me. As for methodology, I think my principle angle is the right angle for this problem: Truth. Be truthful. Particularly with yourself.

I am grateful for the opportunity to heal, though it hurts quite a bit.

signing off

-me

Current status

It's hard to describe how I'm doing right now. It's hard to know that. I've gone through huge changes in the last few months. That's what my memory tells me. But I can't feel that. I only feel the changes when I'm in the midst of them, screaming like a little baby, helpless and confused and not caring much that this discomfort is allowing me to open in new wonderful ways. When the discomfort is there, I'm just thinking and feeling the discomfort. That's my job.

I've been dealing, and have dealt with, some huge failure issues. I'm currently dealing with sex, relationship, and self-love issues. I'm a very different person than I was, three months ago. Dealing with the suicide of your closest friend will do that. But that can either destroy you, or be a portal into deep levels of healing and growth. There's nothing in this world that isn't safe. Pain is safe, injury is safe, death is safe. The only thing that feels unsafe is you beliefs about these things. And that is something mental, and can be seen clearly, and thus unwound. And often the only way you even find these areas of pain is when something crazy happens, something you absolutely, really strongly don't want to happen. And then it happens and it hurts in all sorts of ways and you get to be led by the pain to the places within you that are scared or angry, the areas of darkness in your heart, "where the sun don't shine."

And with a good pure, simple method of piercing through that darkness (and it requires awareness, you can't just tune out and let something else deal with it.), the worst thing that could happen to you is your greatest gift, once you are done unpacking it.

I recommend Byron Katie, I recommend Tree Preaching, I recommend feeling the body. If you don't know one of these things, drop me a comment if your interested in an explanation.

I don't care what method you use, just fine one that works for you. Works means: the emotional block that was bothering you, gets dealt with, and gets dealt with quickly, because this process doesn't need to take a huge amount of time, if your doing it correctly. And works means that, to whatever extent you've dealt with it, you've dealt with it for good. This is not about things that you distract yourself from, or pretend away, only to have them come back bigger and stronger than ever once the stimulus gets big enough that it breaks through your wall of denial/distraction.

When you finish work on an emotional issue, that level of the issue is done, gone, no longer exists and an energetic block in your emotional body. You will almost certainly meet it again on a deeper and more profound level, when it's time, but you will notice serious differences in how you act and react in situations related to the issue. You may have to use your memory to make this comparison though, because once an emotional block is really gone, it's like it never existed at all, and so its hard to remember it was ever that bad, because the memories that involve that issue have lost there emotional charge.

That's my experience, anyway.

Current Issue theme: Sex and Romantic Relationships as addictions (addictions to fantasy or onanism, in my case.) And self love.

On the horizon (maybe): Boredom, and feeling like I'm not doing anything useful.

Current physical status: Fairfield, Iowa. Sitting on a futon I'm using as a bed at a friend's house. Thick, egg shell colored cotton sheets. A bowl of cereal to my right, a wireless router in front of me that makes a constant, high pitched screeching sound at all times that I imagine is what it's like for mice living somewhere that someones plugged in one of those ultrasonic "mouse be gone" emitters. A white noise creating AC unit to my left, drowning out all sounds not in this room. It's dark because all the Venetian blinds are shut, to keep the heat of the day out. I'm about to delete some of my porn collection from my little laptop, so I won't worry if it breaks or someone decides to snoop around in it. Then, I'm going to go get some weird type batteries for my camera, because I found an old but nice film camera in my aunts house, alone with a bunch of unused film. I've been considering getting a digital SLR or slightly lower end nice camera, but I didn't, because I wasn't sure if I'd actually use it. So now I can find out. If I use all the film up, then I guess I would. If not, then I've just saved a couple hundred bucks.

Feel it in your body

I like that blogger keeps tabs on when I write things, so I can just immediatly free flow and not have to look at the date. When I've journaled in the past I've waited till the end and by then I've forgotten to put the date in at all. anyways, here we go, it's been a little while:

Saw the sunset driving to the grocery store. As I started down a hill, a break in the tree's, and a magenta haze, with purple mountain silhouette emerging from the fluffiness, sharp and crisp. And a single wisp of cloud, bright blazing orange.

Gencon was very fun. It made me happy, it made me laugh. Being with friends and fellow gaming enthusiasts. People who like to dress up in costumes and play games and sword-fight. People who like anime and solving puzzles and magic and fantasy. People who needed some way to be with friends, because for one reason or another, sports wasn't an option.

I fought with some professional boffer sword fighters, I learned the secrets of making boffer swords (fun noodles (the pool toy), pvc pipe, and packing tape, mainly) I participated in a Mystery science theater 3000 with hentai, I played true dungeon, where I went into a dungeon with some friends, solved puzzles together, fought monsters, and role-played. And I made some new friends.

Then on the plane ride back I promptly started feeling very bad. Hit by the truck of sadness. I've been trying to process through it in two ways: trying to trace back the answer to the question, "who is feeling these feelings?" and alternately just feeling the physical sensations accompanying the mental anguish. The second one is more do-able, though less powerful and immediate in it's results, but sometimes the issue takes some softening up before it can be penetrated directly with the light of awareness. Whatever this is, I'm on to the next cycle of whatever it is I'm dealing with.

I'm going to take an intuitive stab, and say it's my identity as someone who is put upon by depression. For a long time I've seen myself as a somewhat Byronian character (not Byron Katie, but Lord Byron, the poet, who was very melodramatic, romantic, brooding.) It was how I coped with the shittyness of my life as a kid. I was lonely, I loved girls and the love was unrequited, and I was too shy to really make something happen. I was too shy to do anything, and I didn't have the attention span or discipline to excel in something and thus feel good about myself that way. So, I interpreted that as meaning I was just cursed by life. Which I still feel is a fair interpretation. I just bit it with the birth lottery, and randomness gave me a bum hand.

Interesting that I also sometimes think of myself as exceedingly lucky, to have been given all the opportunity and teaching that I have gotten. The circumstances, the people who've crossed my path, the experiences I've had, my families support. It's really a mixed bag, and I see the glass in the light of whatever I'm going through at the moment. It just so happens that for the first part of my life, most of those moments were negative. More recently, there's been more of a balance, beginning to lean towards more positive even. Dan's suicide temporarily changed that balance back to mostly negative, but that is moving slowly back up to where I was. Which apparently is not a given, in the case studies with these kinds of things. I may have some fucked up karma, if you believe in that, but I've still got better luck than those who are fucked up and never learn ways of healing and real growth. Though I guess there are other ways of dealing with that stuff. Like breaking a bone, even if you don't set it right, given time, it will heal anyways, and you'll adjust your posture and gait so you can get by.

In any case, I was recently reminded of one of the best "experiences" I've ever had. It lasted for about two weeks, I think, but maybe it was less. It was characterized by incredible surges of bliss and energy. As far as I can remember (which is pretty badly, I admit) the main theme of that time period was that I took the point of view that everything that happened to me was a lesson, and really lived that.

The dude I'm working with suggested I take the perspective of being the healer, rather than the victim, of the depression, sadness, whatever. I like that.

He also reminded me of the saying, that you are what you eat, and what you eat is not primarily what comes in through the mouth and gets pooped out the butt, but what comes in through all the senses, and the mind. This is one of the reasons I often do so little art: If I create something, I like to create from what I am feeling, right then, and if that is something negative, I don't want to release that into the world. I don't want someone reading what I write and being brought down by it. I realized I might be doing that with some of what I post, since it is sometimes rants of that nature. I'll try to keep that in mind for the future, and save the toxic stuff for my private journal.

I am an Uncle now

My sister just had a baby. Today. I am an uncle.

My niece is cute. She has a very distinctive face. I bet she'll keep it her whole life.

Life is interesting. It's in an upswing, in one of those phases where the energy that had been missing so long comes back in a bursting flood. The energy and bliss make me crazed. It's not a balanced state at all, but it is very enjoyable, like the thrill of adrenaline. It is a feeling of accomplishment. I feel on top of the world. So far, whenever this has happend, I have assumed it would just keep going and now my life was finally picking up, or else I was dreading it ending. What I really need to be careful of is burning myself out. I have enough energy to run myself into the ground, and little enough care for my body that I would permit it.

Inertia is destroyed by energy, but energy is made more helpful and creative by balance. Otherwise it burns itself out, like a raging fire. Balance allows the energy to course through me, without catching me and carrying me along with it.

The lesson for today, an auspicious day for my new family member, is: listening to your inner voice and respecting it, is something the Universe dearly wants you to do. That's what I've been doing and it's why I'm feeling so well. No simple formula am I espousing. This is a balance, which I do not know the future of, that has been hard won, by continuously doing things to upset the balance, and thus learning what not to do, one mistake at a time. You cannot hope to get this by listening or reading and emulating. This experience is born purely by experience and practice. Though what brought me here was the intention to master this way of functioning. That is still my intention, only now it is strengthened, by my direct perception that nature smiles on me when I do it.

Happenings and wishes

things start to become clearer. The thread of my life that was dropped so that I could process my loss, is at the very beginning of getting picked up again. There will be more, always. For now, let it be noted: I'm on an upswing.

There is a block in my throat, energetically, emotionally. A block in my flow of expression. it needs to be opened. It's being opened. It's giving me a tremendous headache. That and the over-intense workout I just did.

headache.

today, you are my spiritual lesson.

the lesson is: when following other peoples orders to push harder, you can push yourself to your very limit. And you do, ignoring your own voice within that tells you when it's really appropriate to stop. And when you do that (ignore your inner voice), you suffer, your life goes out of balance. When you listen, your life comes into a harmony, synchronicity, and magicalness that is worthy of re-telling around a campfire.

goodnight.

p.s. It is feeling really nice, listening to myself. Which means: when I don't want to do something, I stop, when I want to do something, I do, when I don't know what I want to do, I wait till I do.

And whatever I think, is met with a passive acceptance.

I'm ending tonight with gratitude, because that is something I can always do, that feels right. Gratitude is interesting. Things are beautiful, and that is appreciated, and gratitude is somehow the aggressive form of appreciation, which is receptive. The universe is a gift to me, and my spontaneous gift back, is appreciation. Though it's not totally spontaneous. It requires a conscious decision, to put my awareness on it. Thus it becomes a really nice gift.

It's interesting how I feel like I don't want anything, but in actuality, there are lots of things I want. How does that work? It's like, the things I want are skin deep. Just entertainment. There's a tacit understanding with the universe that whatever happens, is ok. There are things which my heart desires, but they are superficial desires, and I can't take them very seriously. When I look back in my memory, for something especially amazing, to ask for again, if a genie popped up, I'd have a hard time. Three wishes, go:

trivial things:

I'd like to be able to fly, unaided, like super man.

I'd like a teacher, in the flesh, who matched with my learning style, and could help bring me to my highest potential. And was dedicated to doing so. Who I meet, and spend whatever time is necessary with them.

I'd like to be reincarnated whenever I die, and come back where I left off, evolution-wise, and with resources to support my goals of full development.

The first wish is purely for fun. The second is already fulfilled, in all important aspects, by what I call God. The meeting in flesh is for my own vanity and lack of faith. And I think it's likely that death will function like that for me.

You see why my desires are taken lightly then. The important one's are fulfilled, and the rest are just for shits and giggles. Sometimes they are fulfilled, and I shit and giggle. Sometimes not, and I've already forgotten. Or I'm rejected and I feel bad for a while. I feel bad in regular cycles anyways, so no real change there.

ok, lets try going to bed again.

First, laundry folding.

Beat me upside the head with a carrot and call me Nancy: an exploration into Motivation

I wrote a paper, back in the day, on Motivation. Because it was of great interest to me: it seems to be such a central part of everyone's lives. It's a glaring example of one of those things our education should really deeply cover, both theoretically and especially practically, but doesn't even touch on it, in it's frantic scrabbling to get kids to remember the dates of the Napoleonic wars for one week so they can pass the memorization test.

If you know how to effectively motivate yourself, you will be successful in any filed you go into. If you can transfer that skill to other people, you will be successful as a leader in any field you go into.

There are two, no, three main ways I see, for motivating people: the carrot, the stick (which I always found interesting, to picture, because I would see a white rabbit with a carrot dangling from a stick like a fishing pole, and when the carrot wasn't working, the very same stick used as the fishing pole for the carrot was turned into the beating stick, without even bothering to remove the carrot, thus creating a rather interesting symbology, as the rabbit was being beaten with the carrot flying around erratically on the end of it's string.) And the God Within.

Carrot is familiar to all of us: I want you to do A, so I say I'll give you B if you do A. If you want B enough, you'll do A. Tada; motivation success. Or else, self motivation: I want B. I need to do A to get B. If I want B enough, I'll do A.

Stick is also familiar: Do A or I'll beat you with B. Or self motivation: I'm afraid of B, so I'll do A to prevent it.

The God Within is my third category, and so may require a bit of explanation. The Root of the word "enthusiasm" means "the God within." And the motivation strategy goes like this: I want to do A, so I'm going to do A.

This comes from my eastern philosophy background, but is a very simple concept: it's the idea of enjoying the process, rather than just enjoying the result. When you are enthusiastic about doing something, it's because you genuinely like doing it. Maybe my stated goal is to make a Bow that I can practice archery with, but my primary goal may be simply the enjoyable process of creating the bow, cutting out the general shape, slowly scraping away growth rings, testing the flex, working around knots, enjoying the fresh air and the feel and smell of the wood, and the challenge of the task.

This can go along with carrots or sticks.

Now we come to the problem shooting part of this analysis. What happens when B is not enough motivation, either positive or negative, to make you do A?

I really want to learn how to get past that initial awkwardness barrier of striking up a conversation with strangers. And of getting through the initial stages of getting to know someone I'm interested in, and expressing interest. That's B, my desire, my goal. The stick side of the motivation is I feel like a heel when there's someone I want to talk to and I don't, because I'm shy. The Carrot side is I'm really curious about what having an intimate relationship is like.

However, neither of these motivations are enough to overcome my demotivating factor, which is that it scares the poop out of me to approach women. Perhaps if I felt truly horrible about myself for being shy like that, or desperately wanted a girlfriend, then it would be uncomfortable enough where I am, to change states.

This happened once in my life, when I was super depressed. The pain of my current situation was enough that I would try anything to try and get out of it. And my way out was meditation. I started meditating very regularly. Thus began my spiritual journey. This is very often how changes in people take place at first: people becoming sober, revolutions happening, etcetera. We humans don't like change, really don't like it, and so things have to get pretty awful for us to be forced to really change how we function.

This is unfortunate, because, looking at the change from the other side, it's a much better way of being, generally, and if we had changed sooner, we would have saved ourselves a lot of misery.

This is very well illustrated by the whole world today, with it's outdated and harmful systems of education, politics, energy, business. Energy is a simple one to look at for me. There are ecologically sustainable systems of living, that would give people a higher quality of life by far, and that would not only stop putting ecological diversity and the planets homeostasis systems in jeopardy, but would reverse the destructive trend we've created.

However, we are changing over in a very slow way, and, at least in large scale, only when the alternatives become unbearable. Cuba is a good example, for oil dependency. They got cut off from oil imports, so they had to change to more renewable systems of living. Which turned out to be great for them, once the changes were put into place.

Lets make this overly simple: what we have here is an extremely unequal evaluation of current happiness vs. future happiness.

If your current happiness, on a scale of 1-10, is a 3, because of your current way of living, and you know of another way of living, that would put your happiness at a 7, but you would have a temporary discomfort adjustment of -2 to happiness during the time you were changing, most people would not opt for the change. It's not logical, but that is the choice most people make.

(in reality it's much more complicated, but I'm simplifying to highlight a specific point.)

So, we want everyone to be able to switch to the better life, or at least be able to switch ourselves.

How do we overcome this "change discomfort" barrier?

Things that have done it for me in the past:

--Wait till the current way of living becomes unbearable (the current way of living for some reason drops to a 1). Works occasionally, but not under your control. No one, or very few, are going to intentionally make there lives miserable. That happening is just a gift from God. Not a technique you can decide to use.

--Find a way that doesn't cause as much change discomfort. This is sometimes possible. Often it involves taking a lot more time, energy and/or money (which is really the representation of both, in our modern society). Sometimes you get other people to hold your hand, show you the most efficient way, or, it it's an external thing, do it for you. Often it's just a matter of time and intention slowly undoing things. Your consciously working on yourself, but at an easy pace. If you have the patience, this can work. Sometimes though, there are issues that refuse to be easy, and either need a full frontal assault or else won't budge. Often the only way they get moved is when option one happens, and living with the issue becomes unbearable. This is what I call "tough love" ;)

--Learn how to enjoy the process. This is the God Within option. If you can learn the skill of enjoying the process of change, it's like negating or reducing the temporary -2 to happiness. This is a subsection of the other method, but it's important enough to get it's own paragraph. If you don't have money and you don't want to spend extra time, this is often the only feasible solution.

A few useful tidbits:

--Set attainable, specific goals. When your designing a way of self-motivating, you want to put all your focus on positive motivation. Live and our minds already give us way to much negative messages. When you set measurable and reasonable goals, it's encouraging and fun when you fulfill them. Sometimes we're fuzzy on weather we've made any progress at all, and it's nice to be able to look back and see clearly that we have. That's positive reinforcement, and that helps lower the -2 change penalty.

For some goals it's a bit more fuzzy, like spiritual enlightenment, because the end goal is really unknown, and even the path more than a few feet infront of you is unknown, and setting goals for spiritual growth is hilarious in it's futility: the ego always sets the goals, but it's not the ego that has control, in this game. However, you can still identify what your next step is, what your blocks are that you need to work on, and that allows you to look back and see that progress is happening.

--Look for a friend, teacher, coach, or group to work with. This lowers the happiness penalty, often even turning it into a happiness bonus. I can't stress enough how useful this is.

--Discover your passion. There's not enough time in life to do everything every person you thought was cool did. Also, you might not even enjoy the things that people you look up to enjoy. That's fine. You've only really got time to do one thing in this life, and that's be you. Some people can fudge this with sticks, fearing other peoples opinions or there own inadequacy. Sometimes for quite a while. Ultimately it will leave you feeling empty inside. This step is difficult as hell, in my opinion. So that means, it's difficult as hell for me. Your results may vary. This is all about respecting who you are enough to listen to what it is you want, rather than what you think you should want or be.

It's a lot longer of a journey than just picking up a book by some guy or gal who you think is swell and saying, "I'll have what she's having". But ultimately it's the only way you'll ever be happy with your life. Better to start now than realize you've never lived as you draw your last breath on your deathbed.

At first I thought this meant finding some "thing" that I "did". But as I continue to explore this quest, it seems more likely that the answer to this question is a way of living, alive to each moment and alive to what your heart is saying, right now, not thirty years ago on that hill when God told you what you're supposed to do with your life. Maybe that will happen, but it seems more common that comes after you've settled into being alive to your heart, each moment. It makes logical sense too: first, you learn how to listen and honor yourself. Then, you discover what you really like to do and what you're good at.

As a closing thought, I'd like to remind you that your life doesn't start when you get struck by lightning and realize your destiny is to fight crime as Skunk Man, but that it starts right now. That infact, what your divine job is, right now, is to be confused and searching. It's hard to see, in the fog of that job, but there is just as much beauty in the struggles you are facing now, seemingly alone and uncomprehending, as there will be when the fog has cleared and you move with the unerring accuracy of your heart.