Self-improvement: Not What You Do But Why You Do

It's very important to realize before you do anything, the reason you're doing it. If it's not for a meaningful purpose, you probably should not be doing it. And you should always be truthful to yourself on the real reason why you're doing it.

It's often easy to trick your mind into thinking on one reason you're doing something when that really is not the real reason. Do not just stop at your mind; look at your heart and ask how you feel. Most of us are gifted with conscience within our hearts and more often than not that'll be the gate which can see our true reason rather than the reasons given by our complicated mind.

For instance, today, I was thinking that I should isolate myself again to try to get a lot of work done to make up for slacking off recently. This is what my mind was saying. But then I asked my heart and it said only one word "guilt". If my heart had said something like "triumph" or "expectation", that'll be different. But I cannot base this action on this feeling since I understand enough about myself that I can be easily distracted when I'm completely isolated. And I know that more "guilt" will be tacked on the present "guilt" because I'll be ignoring other obligations I need to do today if I just completely isolate myself. I'm just digging a larger hole for myself.

The heart is simple like that--emotions that can be expressed in one word can say more than any fancy reasoning needing a paragraph. And it typically is more honest than your mind but do both to confirm.

So to sum it up, two things to keep in mind as going through life:

1. Before doing any activity, ask yourself why you're doing it.

2. Know the real reason on why you're doing it by looking at both your mind and your heart. In other words, your reasoning and your emotion.

Self-improvement: Cycle of Thoughts and Moods

While wondering why I was feeling mildly depressed earlier, I had a mild epiphany. Negative moods like depression is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, I realize now that sometimes I like to be unhappy. Without these negative moods, how can I come to revelations like this one?

Moods are not meant to be controlled but they should be influenced to form right proportions.

One should not expect to be happy all the time but neither should one expect to be depressed all of the time. An excess of negative or positive moods surely limits one's experience and perspective. The trick is to attain the right proportion of all these feelings so that life can be experienced in its entirety without being blinded by overwhelming joy or overwhelmed by hopeless despair.

Moods cannot be controlled directly but thoughts can. And a consistent string of thoughts form the mood. So if one can direct the thoughts into a coherent picture, the mood naturally forms. The idea is to control one's thoughts.

How do one control one's thoughts? Besides just forcefully controlling one's thoughts (which may be very hard), there are multiple options to indirectly affect it as well. For me, these two work well:

1. Do things that are conducive to certain thoughts.

2. Go into environments that influence thoughts in a certain way.

For instance, if I want to feel depressed and alone, I'd like to find myself in an abandoned construction site on a wet cold day doing absolutely nothing but thinking. If I want to feel happy and sociable, I'll hold a party or talk to random people. If I want to feel imaginative and creative, I'll write my novel. If I want to feel focused and alert, I'll write some code or work on building something.

Many people have the notion that they have to feel a certain way to do something. But it's really a cyclic approach. One can do something because one feels a certain way. On the other hand though, if one does not like how one feels at the moment, why not do something or go somewhere to change one's thoughts so as to change one's mood?