How to Grow

I usually wake up feeling tired, a bit afraid and anxious of how the day will go, and constantly investigating my behaviors leading to negative events. This has become a chronic behavior. An example: why am I performing like this at work? Why am I not like the others? Why can’t I converse properly and stay engaged with people? Why can’t I just be normal like others? My answers: It probably is because you were always like this. You are an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. You are trying to force yourself to be like others. You hold others in a pedestal and assume they are the ground truth. You probably are suffering from some mental disorder thus preventing you to be normal - having a car, having a clean and well presented room. This list goes on. 80% of the time I am thinking about such themes. My reasoning changes every time I think about this. There are times when I think I got the answer which sort of makes me happy and times when I feel hopeless. It is a vicious self-created cycle I believe, which has probably been around my whole life.

I want to stop this. Here’s what I want now: * I want to be present, and not ruminating. * I want to be good to others and myself.

I think the first key result (KR) should solve 90% of my issues. The second key result is a positive byproduct of the first. It is more important since it extends beyond myself.

I have tons of thoughts such as the aforementioned. Always forgotten and changed. I think in order to achieve the above KRs, I need to: * Catch myself before I ruminate. * Practice positive thoughts (forcefully) * Practice positive actions (forcefully)

Strategy: I believe the way to achieve the above KRs is to have a metric for evaluation. By setting a regular cadence, one could carefully evaluate and track progress. For example: today I will try to classify my thoughts into 2 categories - good and bad. And count them. I won’t do anything else. I can set a daily cadence for this. After one week I will add another daily task which is to increase positive thoughts by 10%. And the next week by 20%. The graph wouldn’t look linear since there could be so many external negative events. We can also add a fixed daily task about reminding to do these tasks, the way Duolingo does. There could be an app where you could set such goals. I’ll look into it after this.