Day 264 & Dynamic Meditation Revisited

Day 264 Record Keeping
Day 233 Fixed Meditation 
Day 179 Bodyweight Exercise  (3 bridges, 3 dragon lifts)
Day 106 Writing = 75 (139 words)
Day 279 Eating = 64
Day 36 Work = 67
Great sleep, ok wakeup. Still really sick but getting better. Dragon lifts are getting better - I’ve been using a dresser to walk up to get my middle and a bit of my upper back off the ground, which helps immensely in scaling to improve the exercise.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited
I’ve been recently talking to my mother about dynamic emotional control. She has a lot of anxiety issues and I see where I get it from. I’ve shown her methods to counteract it and she agrees with what I say about chronic anxiety. At one point I was showing her how much my week improved when I did it, and it really reminded me how much my life would change for the better if I were to really attack it again. I want to write down a course for her, and I think it would be a useful exercise to jot down on this blog for other people who might have anxiety.

Last night I had a rather stressful situation, and I managed to respond with the best part of myself from a position of strength and confidence. It was hard. I wanted to be petulant and angry and lash out like a child. I also wanted to do what I normally do, which is close off in wounded hurt silence.

Instead I managed to navigate the two extremes - calmly expressing my point of view. I couldn’t have done this with lip service - just mouthing the proper words and still being angry - I had to be calm through and through.

Doing this was a definitive improvement to what I would have done just a short 260 some odd days ago - a milestone in improvement. It was a sign that my meditation practices ARE indeed doing something.

I still believe that going back and tackling dynamic meditation as a habit would be ground breaking - as I told my mom, it will utterly change your life.

It’s times like these that I’m reminded at how many things I want to do, and how many of them are foundational. Personal finances, working on a personal learning slot, working on the craft of writing, and even something as simple as being an early morning person in order to get a faster start in the day. All of these things would boost everything.

That old feeling of doing everything at once rises up. But I’ve reaped many rewards by doing exactly the opposite - and the feelings subside. I’ll get around to all of those things - and conquer them - all in their due time.

Day 65

Day 65 Record Keeping SRHI = 68
Day 33 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 73
Day 32 Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 60
Great night sleep, ok wakeup.

I keep thinking I’m going to try something for Dynamic Meditation, and then don’t. It was suggested that I try a number of things, each individually for a week, and see how it affects my progress. 

I’ve already done listing out all my instances of doing dynamic meditation in response to negative emotions welling up.

Starting today, I’m going to do it in timed intervals. I’m going to attempt doing a focused meditation and check of my emotional state every hour and seeing how that works. I will try to do this for a week, and then try something else.

My failing motivation to try new things to see how “continual habits” work is due to another rise in the SRHI for the habit - this happened before at the very beginning, but it turned out to be a false positive. This one feels false as well.

Day 45 & Improving Automaticity

Day 45 Record Keeping SRHI = 57
Day 13 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 46
Day 12 Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 52
Great night sleep, great wakeup. Extremely depressed upon waking up, blasted through it with meditation.

I feel that the automaticity element of my meditations could use some work. I imagine waking up in the morning and just automatically going through my fixed meditation. I imagine going through the day and just naturally doing my meditations as soon as I encounter a negative emotion.

I think periodic monitoring will help with dynamic meditation, like I did in the very beginning. But for fixed meditation I usually go through a script that I’ve written down. I did this initially so I could pretend like I was reading something when worked at an office last year. But now I don’t need that. 

Today was the first time I did it without the script, and I think that’s a good thing, and might help with the automaticity, especially doing it while still not quite awake. 

Day 35, Second Day of Meditation

Record Keeping SRHI = 57
Fixed Meditation SRHI = 17
Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 40
Good sleep, bleary wakeup, high carb day yesterday

Well things have been going really well so far. The first thing I noticed was that there was a jump in my Record Keeping SRHI. My internet was down this morning so I didn’t immediately do the task. And I felt this nagging sensation that I was incomplete - so of course all the questions regarding “feeling weird if you don’t do the task” got higher scores.

The second thing was that there was a HUGE jump in my Dynamic Meditation SRHI, from 12 to 40. I was wondering if doing a “continual habit” would have this affect, and it certainly did on the scale. I do this task throughout the day so frequency questions got a high score, as did questions regarding the automatic quality of the task.

And that was one of the big things I took away from yesterday’s Dynamic Meditation. I am starting to, very quickly, do this automatically and I wonder if this can be applied to other habits of instance - tasks you do only once a day. 

I recorded 51 instances of negative emotion yesterday, and this was definitely a low number since I went out and didn’t bring a pen to record individual instances during that time.

Here are some things I learned

1. Facing Fear takes a lot out of me, but the process starts to gain a momentum of its own.

2. I have problems being present in a moment. For example, I had to watch a video for a course I’m taking - I immediately started searching for something else to do because the teacher wasn’t going fast enough for me. I countered by using vase breathing to tune into calmness and being present

3. I worry a lot about not doing what I should be doing from an outsider’s perspective judging me. That is, I imagine what another person would think of me, and I find myself wanting in that person’s eyes, then I start worrying about it. 

4. Maybe it’s because of the frequent nature of this exercise, but I"m getting good at it fast. There are many instances (especially with anger and exasperation) where I noticed that I either nipped it immediately after the emotion, right at the bud, or even a few cases where it was before the emotion fully blossomed - I just caught it before I went down that path. This is really awesome.

And here’s the breakdown for anyone who cares - I’m going to do the breakdown initially and then stop later - but I think it’s important to do this in order to spot patterns.

Breakdown: 

Fear 4
1 invoicing
1 new article idea
1 coursera course video
1 watching other coursework videos online

Anxiety 14
1 Sadness of issues covered in a tv show
2 of being judged by other people
5 Tension in neck
1 lip picking
2 general worry of what i should be doing next 
1 oh my god its 12:30 i haven’t done anything
2 watching a video and fiddling, feeling like I needed to do something else

Notes: Lots of issues regarding the need to be productive.

Pessimistic Thinking 8

3 what if I’m being too presumptuous in sending a friend a link
2 Fear of potential reasons why someone is not emailing me back for a work thing
1 email - what fresh hell awaits me now
2 thinking about how i’m not doing enough to enjoy the outdoors 

Notes: Many issues regarding other people judging me.

Anger 23
1 jealousy of Facebook post - how the hell did she get to do that it’s not fair!
1 at how little i’m being paid by a client
1 gross incompetence of a person I’m working with
4 exasperation at slow internet - caught it before all 4 times!
2 kitchen anger  caught it before! X1
1 Anger at not bringing my id when i needed it when going out
2 fit of anger and frustration at my work industry- caught it before!
2 interruption of a video I was watching
4 annoyance of speakers milking presentations - caught it at the moment! x1, nipped it right at the bud x1
3 exasperation of bad teaching in a video nipped it in the bud 1 time nipped before
2 Facebook anger - nipped before x1 ! Nipped immediately x1

Notes: Amazing how much anger comes from the internet

Affected by Other people’s mood 2

Day 34, Lots of Stuff About "Dynamic Meditation"

Record Keeping SRHI = 51 Day 34
Fixed Meditation SRHI = 13 Day 2
Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 12 Day 1

So today’s post involves lots and lots of stuff about what I’m calling Dynamic Meditation or Dynamic Emotional Control.

I made brief notes every time I had to stop worrying, relax, etc. In yesterday’s post I provided several instances- Fear, Worry/Anxiety, That Gaping Hole, Depression/Sadness, Anger, Guilt and Pessimistic Thinking. I added a section on obsessiveness (checking and rechecking email) which on second glance I’m lumping with Worry. I also added a section on Not Being Affected by Other People’s Emotions (that’s a long one to capitalize!).

General Notes:
1. Overall it felt like a game, and an awesome game where I always win. 

2. I recorded 39 instances throughout the day, and this is probably a low figure. Actually recording them made me sharply realize how necessary this is and how amazing this habit will be for changing myself for the better. But not changing myself as in “I’m a person who works out every day” but rather changing the fundamental baseline matrix of who I am as a person and how I internally react to life. I cannot stress this enough.

3. As the day went on and trends presented themselves it got easier to cut off trains of thought before they started turning negative.

4. While I had a set of techniques in place, most problems were solved by willing it away. I was surprised at this. I just refused to walk those corridors in my mind, and most of the time that was enough.

5. Times where it wasn’t enough included Fear and Anxiety. For Anxiety I would do spot checks on my shoulders, breathe deeply and relax. For Fear I would do the task I felt fearful of. This last one was really difficult, but I almost felt myself searching for another task I could do that I feared like it was a game where my character would get stronger by facing a harder boss. 

6. This was incredibly difficult. We all have this assumption that emotions are weather and we have to just get soaked, riding out the storm. By doing this I proved to myself that I can change the weather itself. But it’s such a uphill battle because I’m so used to living at the mercy of my initial emotional reactions. Stepping back and controlling it is such an alien concept to me and runs counter to my habits. 

7. I was incredibly successful. There were only a few instances where worry would gnaw at me and I couldn’t make it go away. This surprised the hell out of me, and I’m not expecting this to be the case in the future. I didn’t have to deal with a day of crippling depression, which does happen, and I’m eager to see how this works on one of those days. Nor did I have to deal with a frustrating work problem or confrontation, which will test me even more, as I have issues with these.

8. This is one of those cases where recording it all forced me to step back. This backs up my idea that record keeping is a huge help in this endeavor.

9. This is the first time I felt a glimpse of true freedom.