Choosing your attitude, part 2

The thing that took the most of my time in the past two months was another writing project – a guide for high school students  on how to run their student parliaments successfully.

It was a helluva challenge from which I learned a ton, and I’ll write more about it when I finish it – which was sort of supposed to happen today, because I’m sending  in the preliminary version tomorrow for review and I have to finish it in the next few days. However, what happened today in the meantime was pretty much everything: a stomachache that knocked me out for half a day, my computer died and I barely managed to extract my documents, the other computer I’m writing this post from is about to fail, In the next 48 hours I’ll have to learn Indesign because my designer is leaving the country and I’ll have to do it all at a friend’s office on a spare computer.

As one bad thing after another started coming up, I began to get frustrated. Then, before the emotion really enveloped me, I recalled one of my lessons:

These are the circumstances before you. They might be very tough and completely unfair.  Yet, some of them you simply cannot change right now. But, you can accept them and choose your attitude towards them.  Then you will be able to give your very best and get the most out of them.

This time, in a situation in which I usually get anxious, it worked. I’m calm. I can’t wait to learn the new program. I’ll work as fast as I can, and if I break the deadline, well, it couldn’t be helped.

At least that’s how I feel now. Tomorrow we’ll see if it was only a momentary rush.

Doing what matters 2

In his life-changing book Man’s search for meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote of the three things in which one can find meaning: “(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.“ Behind the second one is love, which he sees as the ’’…the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire […] The salvation of man is through love and in love“

His philosophy of life is simple, yet truly profound and completely applicable in our everyday lives. He developed it out of his incredible life experiences, including the harrowing years of suffering in the concentration camps – his thinking has been as backed and tested by reality as possible. If there were one book I should choose to live by, this one immediately comes to mind.

And yet, as inspiring as I found it, I was yet to truly apply it to my life. One of the things in which I continuously sought purpose was the work I did. Since high-school, I felt that youth activism was something important to me, and I was involved in and/or led numerous projects, organizations, student parliaments, informal groups, protests and so on.

Though I was successful in a number of these endeavours, I failed in many more. In fact, all this time I felt like my successes were akin to weak torches on a dark road: illuminating parts of it, but not really showing where you’re going or whether the road is really the right one – or whether it’s worth being on it at all. There were always some circumstances out of my control that would cause problems, but there are always such circumstances in life and they can hardly be an excuse. The real reason why I couldn’t do something successfully long term was the following:

I never focused on the things that mattered. I couldn’t focus because I didn’t know what truly mattered to me and because I didn’t know how to say No to everything else.

Still, the good thing about ’’not saying No“ is that you’re saying Yes to a lot of new experiences, people and other things. Eventually I ended up doing an experimental English language workshop in December 2008. It was very successful and I felt like I should pursue this road further; so, three months later I did another one. It was here that something special happened:

The workshop got off to a great start and kept getting better. But while the thrill of a successful project was nothing new to me, here I was beginning to feel such intense happiness that it soon turned into exhilaration. It was almost like falling in love, but not in a person – I fell in love with what I did.

I can’t really describe it in any other way. It’s like you have a whole additional source of energy that keeps you giddily enthusiastic and efficient. Everything you do suddenly makes sense and you feel calm certainty about both the present and the future. You develop a new kind of unshakable focus, and you easily say No to things that would pull you away from what matters to you.

This was the first time I felt something like this and I thought it would last forever. I shared my joy with all who would listen, and many noted how different and more confident I seemed; all of a sudden I felt a lot wiser. After the workshop ended, I had a much deserved summer vacation (though it wasn’t really a vacation per se – I was yet to learn how to rest. Yes, I know how to make simple things very complicated) and I couldn’t wait to start new workshops and other projects.

Then came a string of circumstances, some sudden, some subtle, that slowly pulled me away from doing the workshops that mattered to me. Looking back from this perspective, I had strong reasons for the choices I decided to make, and I feel I would be too hard on myself if I thought I should have chosen otherwise. After all, one should always be allowed to make a mistake for the first time.

Besides, these mistakes would contain just the lessons I needed and in the end they taught me a lot, as they always do on the rare occasions when we actually really think about them. But first I had to lose the thing I was in love with and then fall in love in something else entirely.

 

when one thing brings so much

Last night in our class we did one very important position for leaders  – I don’t know what it’s called so I’ll try to describe it:

We step with the left foot forward and rotated to the left (ideally 90 degrees). Our frame is dissociated to the left and our entire weight is on the left foot, with the tiniest amount of support (or more accurately, contact with the ground) remaining behind on the right foot’s toe (which we used, in this case, to help in rotation).

We learned it as part of another move, but later in the class we focused exclusively on practising this position – our teachers stressed how important it is, by also showing us all the possibilities that come out of it. As they were showing us how it is integrated in the dance, I felt a tingling I haven’t felt in a while: it was a moment of inspiration that gave me a vivid glimpse into the road ahead, of how much this posture will mean to my tango. This very much affected what happened next:

on sloppy posture and sloppiness in general 3

The intro, and reports 1 and 2

I’m not as focused on my lustrada, or even my posture, as much as before. I’m still aware of it as a priority, but it’s difficult to constantly keep it the No. 1 priority. Numerous thoughts and impressions pass through a person’s head during the day, and with so many of them being about tango, it’s difficult to stay focused.

It’s the same with my fight with sloppiness. After the initial plan which brought some good results, it’s like reaching a plateau in which it’s hard to stay focused.

I think the problem is with the plan itself. You have to change it when it can no longer apply, or if wasn’t that good to begin with. Though they had their good points, I think that what both of my plans lacked was one simple, but crucial thing – a schedule.

I’ve managed to update this blog daily for more than two weeks straight because I’ve told myself I’ll write a post each day. So, I know what I have to do, I just need to find the time to do it.

In the case of my two forms of sloppiness, there’s a whole lot of concrete tasks and exercises I could do, but what I just realized was that I never put them in any sort of time frame.

So, I’ll try to spend at least 15 minutes per day working on each of them.

on sloppy posture and sloppiness in general

So, three days ago I decided to choose one fault in my tango and one in myself which I need to work on. For tango, I chose the lustrada.

Even though it was one of the first moves we learned, I wasn’t happy with the way I did it. Often when I did it, I felt that I couldn’t turn my partner on her axis without bending her back at least a bit, and I would also bend my posture, my head and shoulder falling downwards in the process. After she did the lustrada, I would sometimes use my arms when leading her over my foot, forgetting to initiate the move from my standing leg and use my entire body.

Since the new “class season“ started, the first classes were dedicated mostly to being present in the dance, so it was the perfect atmosphere and opportunity for me to focus a lot of my attention on the lustrada and what happens with my body when I do it.

I stayed both in the beginners and advanced class, so I was able to practice with various partners. What I quickly noticed is how much my posture actually bends when I rotate my partner in her axis. It was a visible jolt in my dance; by the time I would finish my sidestep and begin rotating my partner, I would already notice my back arching forward and then I would also do the rotation kinda sloppily. It almost wouldn’t matter whether I did it with a beginner or someone more experienced – it was almost entirely my mistake.

Being so focused on my posture, I started noticing all the other moments in my dance where it would become sloppy. I know that in general I have a tendency to fall a bit forward with my head and shoulders, and it’s something I’ve been working on, but this focused practise gave me a much stronger appreciation of how important good posture is and how much more I need to work on it.

It’s still too early to talk about any noticeable improvement. Several times when I managed to do the lustrada with a really good posture, I could sense the pleasure of doing it right, but also the physical and mental strain of keeping your body in a position it is not used to. So, a long way ahead.

As for my personal fault, I decided to work on my sloppiness. I think a lot of us are sloppy to a certain degree –repeatedly putting our keys somewhere and forgetting where they are the next moment and so on. But with me, this extends to also not knowing where my important documents, books and other things are. I just don’t care about stuff, I guess, and it clutters up all around my room at an amazing speed. Of course, every few months or so I would need some important document or such and then I would spend hours looking around the house for it, cursing and promising myself to finally tidy my stuff up. You can guess if that ever happened.

As I was leaving my house, I thought about how to approach this issue and whether it was really that big of a deal. When I closed the door, I realized I didn’t take my keys, and of course when I got back to my room I couldn’t find them. Later that day I again thought that solving sloppiness shouldn’t be that difficult… and when I bought a new mouse for my laptop, I remember the first thought when they gave me its warranty: “Oh god, where the hell am I gonna put this paper?“

As I  was putting that stupid warranty in my bag, I accepted the fact that becoming organized is going to take some work, but I cracked an optimistic, if a bit grim smile on my face – at least I was thinking about the topic seriously.

So, I got back home and thought about what to do. Looking for productivity blogs and internet advice sounded like a lame bailout, so I sat down and tried to think why I’m sloppy, how the sloppiness manifests itself and what I can do about it.

Though I did give the subject some thought during the day, I was still amazed that it took a less than 10 minutes to think it through and write it all down on a piece of paper. Some interesting stuff came up, but for now I’ll mention just one of the things I decided to do –I put a small box on a prominent place in my room in which I will hold all the stuff I usually carry with me (keys, wallet, mp3 player, glasses etc.), so that I can easily find it when I need it.

In the next few days I’ll have some good opportunities to work on my posture and sloppiness, so there will be a more detailed report in 3 days. The overall impression, like from tree days ago, is that focus brings great results. It might not even matter what we really choose to focus on, as long as we pick something.

Working on your mistakes

I’ve always wondered why it’s so difficult to work on your faults or do better what you already do well. I think a lot about the subject of proactivity and personal growth and these topics are very integrated in what I do (and will do) for a living. I also blog about it, and, of course, ironically I have written only two posts in almost a year on my blog on proactivity.

We’re really not equipped, as a society, to deal with ourselves. Who knows how much would change if there were, for instance, some sort of class in schools where the only task for the entire year would be: ‘’choose one of your faults. Work on it for the entire next year. Put in a short written report of your progress every three days.’’

Even in tango, to which I dedicate a huge amount of time and in which I try to be very present both in classes and in the milongas, I notice an interesting recurrence: Every so often during my dance I would briefly sense that I’m obviously doing something wrong. It might be that my head falls forward too much when I do the giro or that my left foot is too open when I make a step forward. In any case, these are the sort of mistakes that are obvious enough, something that is below your general level of dance enough, that they clearly register in your consciousness.

And what did I most often do about it? Usually nothing.

In one way, that is enough too. The fact that I’m clearly aware that I’m doing something wrong, and that I repeat the mistake (and thus am again and again aware of my mistake), does seem to send some sort of signal to my brain. After some time, I would fix some of those mistakes, even if I didn’t work on them consciously.

But that’s the funny part – I’m fully aware of how faster I would fix my mistakes (and improve my tango in general) if I were to focus on one when I notice it and then consciously try to work on it and fix it. So many times during a practica I would simply dance, without really giving any thought to what I’m working on.

This has been improving as of late though. For instance, I knew that I had to work on my stepping forward. I would think about that and occasionally try to be more focused, and some tiny progress would be made. However, when at one practica I actually spent a mere half an hour with my partner strictly walking forward, completely present and focused all the time, I noticed a significant improvement in my walk a few days later. Still, I have yet to do this sort of focused practice and mistake fixing regularly (I should say that I am very focused and present in our classes, and I’ll write about that in more detail soon – it’s my personal work on my tango that is lacking in focus)

Perhaps there’s no need for a big plan and schedule? Maybe the solution could be as simple as that: choosing a mistake or some aspect of your tango you want to improve, and reminding yourself to work on it until you’re satisfied with your level of progress? And then simply picking another one?

And how would that work with the rest of your life? How about choosing one of your obvious faults and looking for ways to constantly work on them?

I guess I’ll pick one tango mistake and one personal fault, then, and work on them. And write my first short report in three days.