Continuation

Last time I went for my goal I was drunk and didn't actually complete it again, so I decided to do it again.  I realized that, although it's fine as "practice", I'd rather not complete my goals drunk.  Also, I want to try them on my own, and/or on the street as well.

So I went to an international party by myself.  I'm not a big fan of those, but they are great places to practice stuff and warm up for the rest of the night.  Plus, thanks to connections, I usually get into them for free.  So I had one drink, not nearly enough for me to even get tipsy, and went to work.  I didn't say "Hi!  What's your name?" to everyone, but pretty close.  Although it seems obvious objectively, it isn't until you really experience how friendly and welcome most people are that you start to realize just how much we inhibit OURSELVES, rather than are inhibited (by society or whatever bullshit).  Once you warm up, it becomes very natural and enjoyable to be sociable, even if you are an introvert like me.

Last weekend I was going through something tough so, even though I went out, I didn't complete any assignments.  No matter, I have plans to do so next weekend.

I'm going to greet and ask the name of everyone in whatever venue I wind up in next time.  That will be the very first thing I do.  I may even start with the most "difficult" people first (whoever looks weirdest or most intimidating).  If I don't go to any particular venue, I'll just walk up to some girls on the street and ask them.  I'm not sure how many or how long I'll do it, I'll probably gauge it in the moment.

In addition I have a "party" game I wanna try.  If I get a chance, I'll post about it next time.

Wedding weekend

Went to my first bonafide full-on wedding last Saturday.  Prior to that I attended a former student's wedding after party, but this time I was there for the whole shebang.  It was two hours of a lot of sermonizing (both literally and figuratively), a lot of trite and contrived well-wishings and enskying to God and love and all that.  I think it's great to praise and honor love, but next time do it with a little more heart and a little less head.

Anyway, after that was the more pleasant (albeit expensive) reception.

My goal this weekend was just to say "Hi, what's your name?" to everyone.  I got off to a very tenative start at the dinner.  I was exhausted and very much in my head, and mostly stuck to chatting with people I had met at the wedding or on the bus ride over to dinner.  But after a bit of assistance from the free wine, champagne and beer, I was off and running up to and at the after party.  I didn't quite say hi to everyone, and I was a bit intoxicated (though considerably less than the time before), but I must have approached at least 75% of the people, and I tried it a little differently than I had expected to.  See, I've been watching a bunch of the short (generally less than 10 minute) RSD videos on you tube, and I decided to give their way a try: I was very direct and assertive.  Rather than "Hi... what's YOUR name?" my approach was "HEY! What's your name?"  The responses were interesting.  It was very attention grabbing.

Regardless, I'm going to try this again, preferably with EVERYONE in the venue AND more sober.  Should be fun.

I'm going to keep this one brief since I'm off to work in about five minutes.

pushing past comfort

I've decided to take it upon myself to try something that feels uncomfortable because you're not "supposed to" do it at least once a week.  Generally these things are to be conducted in social settings because, quite simply, most of our actual discomfort comes from human interaction.  There's very little discomfort to be found in solitude.  Where I tend to think we feel the most acute discomfort is in defying what we have been socially conditioned to accept as inappropriate or improper behavior.  I'm not going to go so far as to do anything criminal or intentionally malicious or harmful, but things that other people may potentially dislike.

I'm going to start slow and easy.  The goal was simply to walk up to people (particularly women) and playing a simple guessing game with them.  Just bring a friend and say "We want to guess something about you," state what it is and then guess it.  That's it.

I didn't do it as much as I would like to have and I was more intoxicated than I initially wanted to be, but I did it, and it was fun.  One group of girls walked off on us before we got a chance to ask them anything, a few groups of people ignored us, but most were friendly and I even got a few hugs and one pair of girls asked if they could take a picture with us.

The point was to demonstrate to myself experientially that not only will no harm come to us for trying such a thing but that it can be enjoyable, not just to ourselves but to the people talking.  We found out, for instance, that one guy and girl just got married.  Another Korean guy started asking me stuff and tried to engage us in conversation, even after my friend told me he looked like he wanted to punch somebody so I shouldn't talk to him.

Something else struck me, and it wasn't until I got home and contemplated the night that it started bothering me.

I have another friend who has been, on and off, doing this sort of thing on a regular basis (granted, with attractive females exclusively, which I consider even more admirable).  I've gone out with him a couple times, and realized that any expectations I felt were only self-imposed: he never criticized or ridiculed any results I got.

This time it was different.  There was a group of five of us, and a couple times I was "rejected" outright.  Two of them laughed at the rejections.  I was a bit perplexed and I realized why: first, it seemed as though they thought of rejection as the status quo, or what was "supposed to" happen, rather than an anomaly.  Second, their comments proceding the laughter seemed to indicate that they were "better" with women than me, as they have not yet "failed" and so by default, they have a score of zero and I have a negative score.  I realize that's overly analytical, but I see no other reason to celebrate another person's perceived failure and the fact that NONE of them took any initiative the whole night leads me to believe this.

That's the other thing: NONE of them took ANY initiative (i.e. any risk).  I had to push them to enter into an interaction with me, and every time I did they expected me to lead and make the decisions.  I figured since it was my idea I was obliged to start, so I took each one of them, one at a time, and walked up to a person or two people or a group and initiated the conversation.  After that, I basically said "Ok, your turn." and no one did anything, so again I said "Ok, I'll go with you, but you have to come up with a question."  None of them did.  When it came time to asking, they each turned to me and said some variation of "What should I ask?"

They were also very anal about the actual game itself, missing the point that the game was irrelevant; it was a conscience excuse to get them to do something they unconsciously wanted to do: interact with women.  When I woud ask a binary question: "We're guessing whether or not you're students.  I say you are." they would get huffy about how they weren't prepared for the question or that it was an either/or question so they didn't get to creatively come up with an answer.  This baffled me.  Who cares?  It's a game!

Finally, in between interactions, there was no interest in pursuing it.  They all agreed to come out with me and try it, but once an interaction ended they would begin conversation that had nothing to do with their current surroundings; nothing about what questions to ask or who to approach or what was going on around them AT THE MOMENT.  It was all intellectual talk, talk absorbed in the future, the past or the abstract.  It struck me to just what propensity men will often try to "escape" even the slightest stress about what is actually happening by retreating into their heads or into conventional patterns of behavior.

I don't blame them, but I feel a little let down.  They seemed gung ho to try something silly, but when it came time to pay the piper, they seemed to back down, with commonly accepted mediocrity as their excuse.  I'm a bit torn in terms of what to do.  I'm not going to quit, but would it be best to do this alone?  Or to find more like minded people and limit myself to doing it with them?  Or to continue pushing people I consider friends to trying new things?  I think, deep down, most of these men WANT to push themselves, and maybe even want someone to help them do that, but I also think it doesn't matter what you WANT, it matters what you're willing to DO to get what you want, and I'm not sure how willing they are to be unconventional.

This was a first step, a baby step.  It's only going to get incremently more challenging from here.  Not necessarily more "exciting", but more challenging.  It will take stretching, it will take feeling discomfort and embarrassment and nervousness.  But that's the whole point: in the end, I will still be alive, and grateful for it.

Next up

"Imagination is everything.  It is the preview of life's coming attractions."

- Albert Einstein

I've decided I want to work on this blog again regularly.  I'm going to go through a series of exercises, some minor, some major, some temporary, some consistent, some seemingly insignificant (to you), others possibly seemingly impossible, but I'd like to keep a fairly consistent record of them.

The first one is part of my morning routine that I would like to maintain daily.  When I wake up, the first thing I do is literally hop out of bed and say "Ohayo gozaimasu!" (Japanese for good morning) in a powerful voice.  The very next thing I do is ask myself "How can I make today just a little more extraordinary then before?" and I answer that question.  Sometimes I accomplish my goal, sometimes I don't, but I always consider it.  I am answering that question right now (by writing, in fact doing a little more than I did before in regards to writing).  It never has to be anything big; it could be "ask someone how they're doing today." or "smile a little more often today."  or "do an extra 15 minutes of exercise".  Anything that makes you feel better than you would have otherwise.  The more concrete it is the easier it is to accomplish.  Saying "be happier" is close to useless because it's not a concrete action that you can picture in your mind.  Saying "smile more" is better, because smiling is an action, but "more" is a little vague.  Something like "smile at everyone I see" is perfect; it's quanitifiable, imagineable and attainable.

Finally, I've taken on an old exercise: maintain eye contact with people for a certain period of time every day.  Right now I just spend 5 minutes a day trying to hold eye contact with others.  It's actually more difficult than you might think (at least for me it is).  I noticed my body tensing, my breath stopping and other such fear-based reactions coming to the surface.  My mind started racing, worrying about what other people might do/say if they caught me staring.  I tried "multi-tasking"; consciously dealing with my "fear" while unconsciously trying to maintain eye contact at the same time.  It made it more difficult.  But I noticed something interesting (which I virtually always notice when I do things like this): the more I kept forcing myself to do it, regardless of my emotional or mental state, regardless of how difficult it was and how easy it would have been to excuse myself, the more the fear dissipated and I just starting feeling calm again.  This is the essence of behavior modification; the more you experience something, the more you force your mind to adapt to it and create a state of homeo stasis within you.  But like exercise, this particular modification either expands or stagnates, it never remains static.  In other words, if you do not continually practice, your ability will worsen, not stay the same.  But once you get over it, your comfort zone expands.  When your comfort zone expands, so does your personal sense of freedom.  Your body goes from "I can't do that!" to "It's so hard to do that!" to "It's hard to do that, but I can." to "I can do that."  That's what freedom is about.  When your freedom expands, so does your creativity.  Soon you discover things you believed you couldn't do, you can, and you start to wonder what ELSE you can do that you had thought you couldn't...

It's endless.  Enjoy the ride.

 

Sean Stephenson

If you haven't heard of Sean Stephenson, you should have.  Watch this link just to get a fraction of an idea of how enormous this man really is.  He's done ten times as much as people twice as "big" as him.  Watching him just speak to people was massively inspiring to me.  The first thing that came to my mind was "If this guy can accomplish as much as he has in as little time, what's MY excuse?"

Certainly, we all have the capacity and the freedom to create as many excuses as we desire, some may be more "valid" than others.  But in the end, so what?  Is that really what you want your life to add up to; a series of excuses with nothing to show for it?  Zoologically, that type of organism - the type that syphons off of life by consuming and taking without giving anything in return - is called a parasite.  Harsh, maybe, but how many times do people like Sean Stephenson have to prove their existence and the capacity of the human being before we finally believe it?  It seriously baffles me sometimes.