SmokeAndMirrors

Hey, three things that really help me a lot are: 1. Getting my work/study environment as clean as possible, with everything I need at hand and anything I don't need out of reach. 2. Continously reminding me that the task at hand is a part of the way I decided to go, and therefore a necessary step for my overall goal. 3. Continously reminding me that the task at hand is a great opportunity to grow my self discipline, just like weightlifting is for muscles. bye paul

Hi, I think the amount of sleep one needs differs for every person, but when you get it is a matter of habit. You most likely could get used to it, without bad effects on gym performance or anything else, you should make the shift slowly, though. Yes, you could "make" yourself for it, but no, you are not a pussy, sudden and extreme changes to your lifestyle just make you "suffer" (homeostasis). I got so used to waking up at 4:50 because of work, that it just stayed like that for more than a year after I quit that terrible job (I do not like to get forced out of bed either^^). Paradoxically I get up more easily whenever I could just sleep in, and these are the days when getting up early is really enjoyable to me. The moment you tell me to be somewhere at a certain time and I have to get up to meet that, I hate getting up no matter the time. At the moment I try to get up at 6, no matter the day of the week, it is just easier to have the same time every day, rather than sleeping in on the weekends and shifting back every monday. (I will try to get to 5:30 afterwards) So why do I still want to get up early even though I do not think the time of your sleep makes a differance? That is simply due to the way our society uses the day. I want to be awake at least 1 hour before I have to leave the house, rather more (that's why I try to get it to 5:30 eventually, have to leave at 7 during the week), so I can do some morning ritual things that really help me (stretching and breathing, lemon water + wheat grass, shower, breakfast, reading, planing the day). It is not only my work that starts at about 8, it's basically the whole society that get's going, and I want to be an active participant. It is hard to organize life (meeting friends and family, shopping, ...), if your wake-sleep-cycle is fundamentally different. So in order to be there right from the start, while still being able to do my morning ritual, I just have to get up early. If you live alone on a mountain, don't want to do a morning ritual or do not care for the social stuff, you probably do not benefit from getting up early. "The early bird catches the worm." might be true for many birds, but you probably wont impress any owl with that saying (they are pretty happy sleeping in, leaving the worms to the day shift and eagerly catch mice during night time, I suppose). So in short: It strongly depends on the circumstances of your life, what time is the best for you to get up, as long as you sleep the amount you need and get done what you want to get done during your waking hours. It just so happens that most people live in a "daylight society", need to be at a certain place at a certain time, and would profit from a morning ritual, hence the well meaning advice to get up early. bye paul

Hi, I can relate to your problem of lacking intrest in converstations, I often experience that. You should try to cover it up by smiling and acting interested, but that is not a permanent solution of cause. In the long run you really need to become interested, and if they do not talk about stuff you are naturally interested in, focus your attention on your wish to be able to talk to them in the future. I do not try to remember every single detail in such conversations, but already try to frame the converstation into the image I have of that person and how this particular part fits into it. That opens up oportunities to actually talk to them in the future without always having to find new topics or talking about yourself (which is what introverts don't like, right?). If you do this you are interested in what they say and they will feel it, just not because of what they say (which they'd prefere, but wont notice the difference), but because of what you want to achive with this conversation. Ultimatly your goal should be to switch from only active listening to talking as well. If somebody comes to you after an exhausting day and tells you about stuff that does not concern you, why not simply wait for a good moment and switch the topic to your exhaustion? Not to tell him to leave you alone, just to say something. Often times it helps to get a conversation started that actually does interest you to just tell the other person the state you're in (Answers you might receive: "Yeah, the boss was really mean the whole day!", "YES, this customer really IS a bitch!", "Really? I could help you with that tomorrow"). And don't worry, before you know it the other person will talk about herself again, that's just how people are, you wont be suddenly exposed with all your weaknesses or something like that. Doing more creative stuff is also a good idea, not only does it give you more confidence, as stated by vizual, but also more innocent topics to talk about. You need to share pieces of information about yourself, if you want to be a good conversationalist in usual small talk, hobbies are great for that. If you get to this point, just talking about small things in your life, you might already enjoy conversations. Most people enjoy talking about themselves the most, introverts don't share much information about themselves, so they often times do not enjoy conversations. It's a circular thing, sooner or later you need to talk a bit about yourself to have fun during conversations and for the sake of not leaving an awkward second (third,fourth,...) impression. Nobody expects you to talk about your early childhood the first time you meet, but after a few conversations at work they naturally feel inclined to some information about yourself. If you keep that from them, while they are trying to tell you about themselves, they somewhat have to think you judge them not trustworthy of you personal information. I can, also like vizual, recommend "Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People", it is a great book about the interaction of people and how these interactions are experienced by both sides. I read the book a while ago, and it helped me a lot, even though I never considered myself "bad with people", but there is always room for improvement. Like I said above, boring conversations where a problem for me some time ago. Neither the title of the recommended book, nor my post should make you think this conversation stuff is all technical and bad people (like me?) try to use and influence people for their own advantage. It just helps to get started this way, in the end it should all flow naturally, be fun for all and of mutual benefit. But for it to work that way, everybody (you too) has to participate in it. bye paul

Hi, How about doing the most important things to achieve your goals and have fun doing so? I certainly do not want to mock you by putting all three options in one answer, I really think that it's the truth. You should decide what you want in life (goals), naturally you have important things that follow out of this decision, and, to make sure you stick to it, you should structure the necessary activities in a way that you enjoy. That's easier said than done, I struggle a lot with it myself. I just read a great book about exactly that topic: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow. The book analyzes all kinds of enjoyable activities and what they have in common, no matter if it's work, sports or anything else. Even more interesting is how different people experience the same things differently, and why. After reading that book you basically know what makes a good experience, and that it is more about HOW you do it than WHAT you are doing. I try to implement some of it in every aspect of life, but it's to early to talk about my results. The key is: It is possible to combine all of your choices, and not only possible but rather advisable! I do not know enough about you to give an example out of your life, but I have one out of mine: I don't like shopping for groceries, but it needs to be done. If there is no food in the house it seems to be the most important thing. My goal is to get smarter, get finacially independent and help other people. So in order to enjoy shopping I made little adjustments: First, I only do it when there is enough time to stop at a nearby park (needs a little planing in advance) and read a few pages (alignment with my goal of getting smarter, at least I hope and tell me so :P). Second, I always take the money for my bottles in cash, instead of letting it reduce my receipt, and put it into a piggy bank (get's me motivated, hey I get money!). Too bad I only can help somebody once in a while on my way, but I still have fun shopping, after making these adjustments. byebye paul

Hi, I was going to say: B. Franklin and Gandhi, but you got these two already... so, what's about: - Sam Walton - Made in America - The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie If you like business they are a must! If not, at least A. Carnegie is still a very interesting and illuminating read! (I have added the ones you listed to my wishlist )

Hey, I do agree, often times it is either one way or the other, but it is certainly possible. There is a Junior (chemistry) Prof. at my university who looks like he is going to the gym at least every other day lifting heavy (!!!) weights. So he certainly is investing a good deal of time into sports AND progresses really fast on the academic (junior means he is way under the age of "normal" prof's).

Hi there, First things first: Don't stress yourself out because of this! Many people do this and live, and many did it and got rid of it. Rather see it as a good place to start improving even more. I would try to make two smaller problems out of the big "plant smoking problem". First problem: Smoking cigarettes day in, day out. Second problem: Smoking (too much) Weed. I can hardly help you with problem nr. one, I am a smoker myself (and will definitly watch the video posted, thanks for that!!!) While smoking weed myself, not daily though, I limit it to the evening and special free time activities during the summer like BBQ in the park. I am strongly convinced that stopping to smoke weed opens up untapped potential though, but let's start small. There is a huge difference between beeing stoned the whole day (first joint at 11 am.) and beeing stoned at night: You just lose a fraction of the day! Besides, you limit the control the stuff has over your life to the evening hours (and a little in the morning, for most people). Let's face it, usually you do not achive much after smoking a joint, right? I would try to implement a simple rule: Weed after 8 pm is fine, before it is not! A great advantage of this rule vs. stopping altogether is, you do not feel that something is taken away from you (at least not as much). Whenever you "crave" a joint during the day you can look at the clock and say. "just 6/4/2/1 hours to go". After 8 pm you are (at first) allowed to "blow your mind", but what you will find is that 1-2 joints do the job. You can drag out the smoking time for a single joint quite a bit, so there are good chances you will be fine with just one. This way you can have the pleasure and comfortable feeling of weed (and the looking forward to it) while still spending a productive day in advance. The second big advantage of this aproach is, you will start to see "weed/pot" in a different light, it's not a solution anymore, now it is "just the nice stuff at night". When, at first, you feel compelled to smoke before 8 pm (some shit ruined your day or something) the next joint isn't too far off and you do not have to deal with the problem "forever" (of cause you do, but you still seem to have the illusion that beeing stoned helps). If you postpone the weed smoking, you are forced to deal with the problem for a couple of hours while beeing sober. This will, in the long run, ensure you that this is actually possible! If you stick to that rule it wont be long before you actually look at the clock, it's 9 pm and you didn't even think about smoking weed before. Now you already lost the compulsion to smoke as soon as you are allowed to, and you are on a good way to quitting it altogether (if that is what you wish, by now you can probably already DECIDE if you want to smoke today, or not). You also will get to enjoy the "clean time" of your day more and more over time. Potheads usually waste a lot of their energy just by smoking weed, to feel that by comparing the evening with daytime, will also contribute to a smarter decision about smoking weed at night. So in general it is all about starting to really FEEL the advantages of not smoking weed, while not depriving oneself of it right from the get-go. This strategy did work for me and three of my friends. The last of my pothead friends modifeid it: Just one joint a day, nevermind the time of the day (he has a irregular schedule everyday). We are all experiencing strongly decreasing weed consumption without feeling any loss. The key is that you do not have to give up weed at once to have the benefits of smoking less. But what you certainly HAVE to do is getting your mind to shift the perception of weed from "the way to solve my worries" to "just a nice thing to do". And last but not least: You do a lot more than I do in certain areas of life! 20 minutes a day meditating? That's more than 99.9% of all people on the planet do (including me)!!! A daily work-out? The same thing!!! And how are those things just "small commitments"? You obviously are able to make such commitments, make the next one: Weed after 8 pm is fine, before it is not! bye bye paul