Bad Habits

I am slowly starting to sense how difficult it is to get rid of bad habits. Today, I dropped my relatives at the railway station and was returning home. While I was in the railway station, a thought occured to me that I could go to crossword and have a look at the new books. Two things here - I could not resist myself from entering crossword and once I was in, I was feeling bad to come out without buying any book. Without much thought, I spontaneously asked for a book, bought it, came out and sat in an rick. This is bad. This is really bad. I need to improve self control.

The other thing is that. I woke up and forcefully did it. It has become a compulsion for me. Clearly this is addiction. I need to get myself out of it. I will get out of it.

I am currently reading As A Man Thinketh and it repeats again and again that we are what we think. But, I kinda disagree with that. The actual thing is - we are what we thought and we will be what we think.

So, think good thoughts. Imagine yourself talking to yourself about getting rid of bad habits and seeing yourself not doing such things. Imagine yourself of doing problem solving, thinking about a vision, being a friendly guy with everybody, doing programming extensively, doing exercises etc. Then it will automatically become a reality.

Imagine what you want to be and believe that you are it. The habits won't let you do it, but you have to overcome them. It is through active thinking and imagining that old habits gradually fade away. To get some confidence, you can think about some of the past old habits that were ridden of. That way there is some positive outlook.

If I am to get any better, if I am to get any use of my reading the book, then I have to think new thoughts.

You see

It is just practice. Whether a chess grand master recognize a configuration in a flash of a second, whether somebody types fast, whether somebody codes a lot, whether somebody thinks some thoughts that others might not be able to, whether a cricketer throws a ball straight onto stumps, whether Federer incesstantly pours aces on his opponent, whether somebody is able to talk fluently, whether somebody is pretty disciplined, whether somebody is a master in the art of living...it is all just practice.

That is it, it is just practice. Only by doing practice will we become perfect. Otherwise we are effectively concentrating on the end instead of focusing on the means. Keep practicing..whatever it is..keep practicing.

My mind

is completely confused and utterly directionless. I have written about this before. But I am doing it again. I want to get hold of everything. I dont want to specialize in a particular thing because I seem to have insecurity. I am inherently insecure. I should do something to get out of this insecure feeling. I dont know this is the cause for zero state or the zero state is the main reason why I am insecure. I am not able to figure out.

Also, I need to have a solid vision. I need to get my past right. I mean whatever is haunting me, I need to fix it up. Otherwise, it seems like it will continue to haunt me forever. How am I going to do that? How am I going to fix it up? I dont know. But I have to do it.

I need peace of mind. I should not be disturbed by fellow beings. I should be inherently peaceful. That is the first and foremost thing that I should strive for. Next, I need to have a vision. A vision as to what my ultimate goal in life is, how am I going to achieve it. This is not just in professional case, but also in all other aspects like personal, financial, mental etc. But it looks like professional is the most significant things that needs to be achieved. I need to get peace of mind. May be it is not that difficult to have a peaceful vision and solid committment. I can do it. I believe strongly that I can achieve such a state of utopia. It is a positively reinforcing state of me. How good will it be if I have it. That world consists of just me and nobody else. Serenity is of atmost importance.

Addictive Thinking

I found a couple of documents that talk about addictive thinking. The author says that the key feature of addictive thinking is denial. That is, we deny whatever we don't want to consider. Another reason for addictive thinking is a feel good factor. It feels good to get into patterns of addictive thinking - and addictive behavior thereof. Just for that feel good factor, we deny the rationality, we deny the reality. In the end, we just become addicts.

There are some addictive thinking patterns:
Self-pity stance: We pity ourselves and wait for others to come and pity us - this is just wanting a reinforcing behavior externally, so that we can continue to keep ourselves in that stance.
Good person stance: We just focus on the good things that we do and ignore the bad things that we affect either directly or indirectly.
Unique person stance: A stance where one thinks that s/he is unique in facing such circumstances and so whatever s/he does is right or OK.
Fear of exposure: It is fear of self knowledge, excessive or inappropriate trust, addict pride or zero trust. I seem to have this zero state problem. Zero state is one that consists of the beliefs that - a) one cannot change, b) everyone also believes that s/he is worthless and c) the worthlessness will last forever and cannot change.
Lack of time perspective: This is a state where we neither learn from past mistakes or plan for the future. We want big success with little or no effort. We make choices based on what we want to be true rather than what is true. This is another pattern that seems to be the most common in me.

Other addicitive thinking patterns include - selective effort, use of deceit to control, seek pleasure first (the one that I can see in me), ownership stance. I don't seem to have the second and the last patterns. Will have to carefully observe how the first one manifests in me.

In short, I see that I have succumbed to my thinking patterns. I need to raise above them. Whenever I get at these things, I need to think and feel differently. I had, in the past, captured this particular thought in my remember notes:

When you feel inferior, when you feel dejected, when you feel disillusioned, when you feel anxious, that's when you have to feel different. That's when you have to gather courage and move forward. Thats when you grow, thats when you learn, thats when you mature.

Some more thoughts

about me.
Today I was observing the solution to the modified binary search problem. I thought that I was thinking why a binary search won't work, but I was not at all thinking how to modify the binary search. I saw it. Great to see that solution. So, I think my dont focus my energies on how to obtain a solution, but rather focus on some arbitrary things.
Another thing is my overwhelming at the sight of complexity. It just bogs me down. I fail to take control over such situations. I fail to acknowledge that to tackle complexity, the two necessary things are - abstraction and divide&conquer. With them, I can tackle anything.

Three keys to achievement

They are belief, action and timeliness.
This link puts beautifully what belief is. I have never seen such a beautiful definition anywhere.

Belief combines your thoughts and feelings, which go out before you, drawing those things to you that reinforce your essential beliefs.

The author goes on to say how the goals are affected by our beliefs. Again beautiful words, that I have never heard before:

Having set yourself a goal to achieve, you can just "believe" your goal into existence. If you totally and absolutely believe that whatever is needed to achieve that goal will manifest itself, then your goal will be achieved. The trick is in how well you "believe" - this requires absolute and utter conviction, absolutely no shadow of doubt, not the tiniest "if". It requires you to "know" the goal is true is sure as if you are seeing it now. It needs not just your thoughts but also your feelings aligned in "believing" that the goal already exists for you.

Believing is necessary, but action is even more necessary to make the belief a tangible reality. Ah, how fragile is reality - we can make it easily and we can break it too easily.

There are still some things..

that I am not consciously realizing...which I think I should have realized long before, if I concentrated on it. They are:

• Lack of fire in the .
• Setting non-SMART goals for each day
• Lack of courage
• Lack of planning
• Lack of emotional intelligence
• Lack of composure and calmness (mentally)

I was reading an article today in the morning, it says that the source of all illnesses is mind. With a proper frameset of mind, miracles can happen, with lack of proper mindset disasters will happen. It says that stress results not because of being busy all day or getting tired, stress results because of presence of contrasting beliefs in the mind pulling us in opposite directions. The article also cites a clean example - if you think that you will have to wake up for long hours and sleep early, there is stress. If you think that you will have to keep studying to get through in an interview and dont do that, there is stress. In that way, when we do something and we believe we should not be doing it, there is stress.

If I look back, there is just this in my life ever since I started doing that and became conscious about it. I always do something and later regret for not doing it. This IS what I keep doing all day long. No wonder, I get heart pains now. There is a lot of stress now in me. I need to free myself of it. There is a need to look at things differently. There is a need to be happy. There is a need to think positively.

There is also a need to have a proper goal. There is a need, before having a proper goal, to have fire in the belly. What is the sole purpose in life? What is the most important thing that you want to achieve before you die? You need to think about it.

There is absolutely no discipline in life, because of which things dont get done.There, there is some dissonance between the expected state of things and the actual state of things. Stress. Somtimes it is because of fear. Sometimes it is because of pessimism. Sometimes it is because of habits. Sometimes it is because of lack of discipline and sometimes it is because of over expectations. Whatever it is, there is dissonance and hence there is stress. So consciously, you have to get things done. Remember this.