When Goals Burn You Out

     

Recently in an ultra-productive spur of events I went from 0 to 60 and managed to fill my time with commitments that two weeks prior seemed like a good idea. I then began to notice that I would return home feeling drained and I could now sympathize with breadwinners who come home from work and check out in front of the television with a beer bottle in hand. I experienced a similar scenario, except that in my attempt to recuperate my energy I chugged bottles of Gatorade as if my life depended on it.

I would have avoided the exhaustion if I had been a tad bit smart about goals and followed the traditional left-brained method of setting them.  “What are SMART goals?” you ask.

Smart goals are:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant &

Time-Based

But how would a right brainer go about setting goals? With a tempting subtitle How to Have the Life You Want Now! Stephen Shapiro’s Goal Free Living revisits the true purpose of goals as well as the shortcomings that come with sticking to them. He advises his readers to maintain a healthy relationship between their goals and their aspirations and reminds them that their achievements may not always result in increased happiness. Shapiro introduces this reality check, not to discourage you from pursuing your goals, but to help you see the value of living your life NOW. For Shapiro, the hypothetical reference points that goals provide you with are meant to motivate and inspire you instead of filling you with anxiety or dread at the sight of looming responsibilities.

All too often we’re waiting for exterior conditions to change to give ourselves permission to live, permission to see if life will render itself in HD after we’ve proven ourselves worthy, disciplined, or self-effacing enough. Shapiro’s book is replete with wisdom of effortlessness but I’ve attempted to winnow down the sections most relevant to a Type K.

1. Use a Compass, Not A Map

The problem with setting goals is that they affix us to a pre-determined result.  Such specificity can blur your recognition of peripheral opportunities that arise en route to your destination. Instead of using a detailed map to guide your actions, Shapiro recommends using your passion, skills, and values as the magnetic force that guides your intuitive compass.

Set Themes to Your Goals

Why do you want to achieve your goals? Because you believe that achieving them will increase your happiness, health, wealth, security, etc. While these are worthwhile reasons to pursue your goals, Shapiro reminds readers that only 8%

of Americans actually follow through on their resolutions. Instead of setting resolutions or SMART goals, he recommends setting themes. Themes take on the form of general statements like “explore my potential as a writer” as well as desired states of being such as “health”. They form more creative outlets than SMART goals. Translating the goal of exercising into a theme turns into: “explore pleasurable activities that give me a work out”. *Ahem*

Even though themes eliminate “specificity [of] design” they are enough to steer you into action with a sense of curiosity. Shapiro recommends setting themes at the beginning of each year, but I suspect that they work well for month-long or perhaps even weeklong commitments— as long as you ensure that you allow enough time for your intentions to germinate into workable action plans. Setting themes to your goals reminds you that you can enjoy the states you seek to achieve now as opposed to postponing your happiness. That is your privilege in your claim to an abundant life.

Trust that you are never lost

Shapiro encourages readers to stop second-guessing themselves and to “trust that they are never lost”. Instead of viewing goals as a carpool lane with limited opportunities to steer off-course, he depicts goals as a beautiful winding road with an exit at every mile to appreciate the landscape. The vignette reframes so-called mistakes as worthwhile detours that enhance your life experience by providing you with new sights and knowledge. For Shapiro, there are no right or wrong pathways, only decisions: “remember that no matter what path you are on, you are on the right path if you are enjoying it and playing it full out, then it’s the right thing to do”.

2. Want What You Have

In other words, count your blessings. Appreciate what you have, appreciate yourself, and how your particular situation fits into a broader picture. Chances are, if you’re borderline normal, you’re doing pretty well. And if improvement is necessary, there’s no need to take this information personally. In one Shapiro’s exercises he asks readers to rate their life on a scale from 1 to 10.  Most people feel that 5 “represents deep depression” and rate their lives a 7, which implicates “a small step above misery”. Increasing the appreciation for your life can immediately increase your ratings to a 9 or 9.5 and there’s no reason to evaluate it otherwise. Performing this exercise instantly changes your outlook, and it’s the only variable you need to change to experience a new life.

3. Embrace Your Limits

Taking into account your humanity, as well as your fallibility, can ease the pressure of perfection that you seek to achieve through your goals. Even though achieving goals can temporarily prove to others that you’re a robotic super human, know that such a pursuit of public victories leads to an unsatisfying, asymptotic path that negates the true origin of your value. What do you do after you bomb an interview that you researched, rehearsed, and prepared for? You connect with your humanity. When you exhibit this type of self-acceptance and you can look at your inadequacies as “attributes rather than deficits…your inadequacies [will] no longer control you; they [will instead] connect you with the rest of us”.

The Type K’s Middle Path

Goals without aspirations are lifeless and aspirations without goals are fantasies. It’s possible to have a grand vision running in the background of our minds without having them interfere with our present access to our well-being. Even though goals challenge us to stretch ourselves, the more ordinary we make them to be, the more likely we’ll gravitate towards doing them. And, we won’t call them goals. We’ll call them habits, inclinations, instinct, or hobbies. So does the Type K opt out for an easy breezy goal-free existence or does he set SMART goals? It seems that the emerging theme to the Type K’s lifestyle is balance. The Type K sees himself as a potion maker and tries a combination of right-brain and left-brain techniques to mix the right amount of flexibility and discipline into a moldable regime that will allow him to pursue his ambitions at a pace he fills comfortable with.  

The Type K sets SMART goals from time to time but he always accompanies them with the overarching theme of well-being.  Even though he challenges himself to arrive at a specific destination, he uses his internal compass to guide him and remains open to the possibilities that life brings him. When he makes decisions, he doesn’t look back for fear of turning into a pillar of salt. The Type K commits to his present happiness, and understands that there is no such thing as the future. There is only this moment. And he very well knows that the next moment will very much resemble this moment if he cannot amplify his appreciation for this moment.  He appreciates the abundance of where he stands and the mere perception of where he’s headed is enough to fulfill him now. The Type K knows that his true goal is to  “live fully and die empty”.

They Should Have Taught Us To Fail

I still remember the exact spot where I sat in my sixth grade class and the unfortunate motivational poster that hung above me- “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars”. Well, I had learned to associate stars with dead people from The Lion King (Mufassa chronicles that the Great Kings of the Past become stars upon their death) and naturally misinterpreted an already problematic poster to mean that if you aimed for the moon and missed, you would die trying. In my mind, people would then pay homage to you as a failure. Looking back through my school days makes me realize how education is really a masked competition of who could lead the more monastic lifestyle. The institution taught us to revere heroes without being encouraged to replicate their rebellion, to critique before teaching us to create, and to memorize perfection without acknowledging the value of imperfection.

The value systems that schools use to grade students do not translate well in real life. This is one of the reasons why baby boomer employers perceive us as the soft, silver spooned millennials- we lack evidence of our self-perceived specialness. Huffington Post’s “Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy” showcases the following caricature that reveals one of the common frustrations of quarter life crisis:

                                                                                            photocredit: waitbutwhy.com

This personable stick figure named Lucy remains frustrated as she experiences an unglamorous reality because it doesn’t match up with her expectations. Part of the problem lies in the fact that her education never taught her to fail. In a generation whose education rewards perfectionism, it’s not difficult to see how motivational posters “Shoot for the moon” exacerbate the problem. Following our dreams has become as hackneyed a phrase as success and happiness. When we realize that our dreams resemble a gestalt illusion of our fears, following our dreams becomes synonymous with following our fears. The more practical motivational poster in my sixth grade class would have read something along the lines of: “Fail loud, fail clumsily, fail until you’re no longer afraid to fail”. Seth Godin, prolific marketing expert, would advice waitbutwhy’s Lucy to lower the stakes of failure and have the initiative of poking the box.

How do you get “A’s” in real life? Seth Godin puts it very simply: “If I fail more times, I win”.  In one particular interview with Behind the Brand’s Bryan Elliott, he recounts how he taught a relatively easy course at New York University’s School of Business that had no homework or exams. The only task that he assigned to his students at the end of the course was to call a person and sell them a subscription in front of the class. He states that “1/3 of the class did not do it” and that they would rather take a failing grade because they perceived the stake of being embarrassed in front of their peers too high. For a generation that’s been raised to dream big and simultaneously minimize the margin of error in their performance, the fear of failure threatens to neutralize the initiative of taking action and creates the perfect stagnant storm.

In Seth Godin’s schema of success, it’s not a matter of whether or not desired results can be obtained. Desired results are inevitable after failing enough times. He instead, places higher value upon having the initiative to take action.

Outline of Godin’s book Poke The Box

1) Take Action
2) Watch what happens
3) Modify action and take it
4) Repeat process as many times as necessary

The nature of our struggle to take action is purely a mental one as Ephesias 6:12 clarifies:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”.  Those heavenly realms are the quarters of our imagination, the chambers that can materialize clouds of angst, fear and insecurity into solid brick walls of limitation. The real spoils of this mental scrimmage are reaped at the point when action is taken, after defeating the mental chatter that justifies inaction. Reframing success as such prevents us from repeating the fallacy of postponing happiness until desired results are obtained.

The Type K fails for the fun of experiencing new sights, sounds, tastes, and stories. He does not take failure personally. A fully developed Type K remains curious over the possibilities that a failed situation can bring.

“Fuck it!”- The New Miracle Mantra

This week’s emotional journey took me back to the Tao and as a result, I’ve been saying Fuck It all day long and quite honestly, I’ve never felt better! In John C Parkin’s new book, F**k it! The Ultimate Spiritual Way, the author translates Lao Tzu’s notion of “letting go, giving up and relaxing our hold on things [attachment]” into the Western dysphemism. Parkins writes that when “we stop taking seriously something that we usually take very seriously” we can release that attachment and exchange it for the freedom that comes from taking life less seriously. “Why would I want to do that?” you ask. Because taking life too seriously can tether you to an ego-driven existence. Saying Fuck it! to the things that are giving us anxiety puts things back into perspective and opens the pathway for miracles to occur. After all, the miracle of transformation begins with a new thought.

Check out Michael Neil’s formula for miracles from The Inside Out Revolution

  

                                                                 Mind+Thought+Consciousness=Reality
                                                      Mind+New Thought+Consciousness=New reality

This transformation can occur in the relaxed state of non-expectancy where we can become receptors of new thoughts and inspiration as opposed to repeating a behavior that reacts to the memorized script of fear. Choosing to make peace with the uncertainty of a circumstance places you in the tipping point that leads you to take action. For example, you finally stop giving a fuck about the potential of failure and start writing your first book.

The author also underscores the importance of relearning our insignificance. He rationalizes that once you realize that you are “one person among 6.5 billion people on earth” you stop obsessing over the small things that hold you back and gain the true freedom of being yourself.  The expression gives us the opportunity of becoming children again and inheriting the Kingdom of God because we can experience “the miracle of existence” with new eyes (Mark 10:15). Taking into account that last week’s entry focused on self-worth, this philosophy seems to create a paradox in our journey towards authenticity. Though self-worth generates the freedom to forgive our selves and reach for our dreams, attachment to self-worth presents its own problems as well.  

An excessive attachment to self-worth can lead to an unjustified feeling of entitlement, one of the most prevalent complaints of the Gen Y youth. The resolution to this seeming contradiction rests in Aristotle’s definition of virtue as “the mean between two vices”. For example, between the excess vices of cowardice and recklessness lies the virtue of courage. Cultivating a healthy self-worth means rejecting both a superiority and inferiority complex.

Surrendering to the conditions of the present moment reminds me of the Zero Limits Joe Vitale speaks about in his controversial book Zero Limits: the Hawaiian System for Health, Wealth, and More which has received much criticism for over simplifying the Hawaiian Ho'oponopono philosophy. At the core of Joe Vitale’s book is the recommendation to reach the illusive state he calls zero limits:“Zero Limits is about returning to the zero state, where nothing exits but anything is possible. In the zero state there are no thoughts, words, deeds, memories, programs, beliefs or anything else. Just nothing.” Giving up and saying Fuck It to a situation can put us in contact with this space and can synchronize us with new possibilities. To run from a memory free program very much resembles Eckhart Tolle’s philosophy of remaining in the present moment. Nevertheless, miracles occur in a moment of reframing and saying Fuck It to a situation does not ignore fears but faces them head on.

My only complaint against John C. Parkin’s book is that he utilizes a style that tries too hard to come across as trendy. Nevertheless, besides the Inside Out Revolution, F**ck It the Ultimate Spiritual Guide is another essential survival book for the aspiring Type K. 

                                              Photocredit: http://dudespaper.com/fk-it.html/

 

The Type K’s ultimate understanding:

“So say Fuck It to whatever you want to be. And just be who you are. There is no need to be anything else. There is no need to self-develop, or improve. There is no need to be like anyone else. You are just fine exactly as you are right now. Just feel that now, all those bits of you that you don’t like, that you’re embarrassed about, they’re all fine. What you think of as your worst side is just the same as what you think of as your best side.” – John C Pakin

Self-Improvement vs. Authenticity

This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my favorite writing apps, Notesplus, received an update. The update forced me to backup and relook at some of my earlier attempts at journaling two years ago. As I read over my entries, I felt an immediate sense of sadness for I saw my younger self attempting to diagnose my crippling sense of confusion that I felt at the time. My family opposed my first relationship, my relationship with God began to outgrow the dogma of a religion, and I was struggling to improve my grades in college. I performed normalcy for each agent in my life as a way to avoid conflict. When I tried to daydream about my aspirations and ambitions, I found I couldn’t because they reflected the idealism of the people I most respected and as a result, my “dreams” felt foreign to me. What’s worse, I’d created myself to suit their idealism. Perhaps this inability to define my independent spirit came from not fully rebelling during my teenage years, but I had split myself into different people and they pulled me in very different directions. As I walked on the precipice of what I thought I knew, my entries reflected the last moments of a comfortable and painful stability. I remained unaware of what was to come and how completely my paradigms were about to shift. Before I crawled into the rabbit’s hole, I attempted to appraise the risk involved in trading the unknown for the silver lining in the cloud, but I had completely underestimated the cost. Given the choice, I would do it so differently and I would never consider repeating the process again. Is this what you call regret?

At the core of my unhappiness was the way I used to tether my public victories to my value. And when they began to dwindle, so did my self-perception of my self-worth. I used to think that loving people meant pleasing them. And walking away from church strengthened my relationship with God but the decision occurred almost unintentionally. If I could, I would have advised my younger self to have the courage to “follow your bliss” and ignore everyone else’s input along the way. But I didn’t know Joseph Campbell back then and I hadn’t exercised my intuition enough to know that I could trust it. As I returned to the present tense, I felt proud knowing I had improved and that I had become wiser. But I erred in thought. I didn’t become “better”. I’d merely become more authentic. It’s not about being the best you you can be. It’s about clearing the noise and letting your authenticity of your soul shine through you. To say otherwise entraps you in a rat race of self-improvement and you risk walking behind the shadow of your ideal ego feeling unfulfilled. Being perfectly imperfect really means accepting your incompleteness and loving the perfection of your present self.  Who you are is enough. In fact, it's more than enough.

The challenge then consists of freeing yourself from the guilt that you could have acted differently. Oprah embraces the wise words that her mentor Maya Angelou gave to her when she reminisced over the mistakes she had made in her twenties- “When you know better, you do better”.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/The-Powerful-Lesson-Maya-Angelou-Taught-Oprah-Video

Forgiving yourself for who you were and loving yourself for who you are can mark the start of your new beginning. 

The Practicality Behind Procrastination as Taught by Neil Fiore's "The Now Habit"

What better way to procrastinate on writing a cover letter than to blog on why we procrastinate? Nicholas Lore reminds his readers that life is a series of projects in his book Now What? The Young Person’s Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career (of which my only complaint is that the book is too thorough for a Type K but a definite must have for quarter life crisis).

Personal projects emerge from goals that have materialized into a series of concrete steps after we’ve made the mental switch from “I would like to be/do/have” to “I will make [insert project here] happen”. But all too often, the idea of creating seems more attractive than its actual execution. The initial momentum then fizzles out into another sad fantasy lost to the realm of great ideas. So let’s chop through the mental stumbling blocks that stagnate our productivity karate-style!

Neil A. Fiore’s The Now Habit, perhaps my favorite book on time management, re-frames procrastination as a defense mechanism that attempts to preserve “our sense of worth and independence”, a claim that contradicts the common assumption that procrastination is a symptom of a lack of self-discipline. Fiore distills the three major culprits that sabotage our creativity: “the terror of being overwhelmed, the fear of failure, and the fear of not finishing”. As the “what if’s” start to infiltrate our best aspirations, the imagined worst-case scenarios can lead to paralysis. But instead of using affirmations, visualizations, NLP, EFT, or other techniques that attempt to minimize, repress or ignore those fears, Fiore acknowledge the value of fear and offers some techniques that materializes that energy into an action plan. 

Karate Chop! Fear of Being Overwhelmed

Fiore provides a few universal reminders to ease the start of any project:

1. It’s natural to feel anxiety at the beginning of any project.

2. Give yourself enough fudge time and start early so that you remove the pressure of doing the project correctly the first time.

3. Turn off that critical voice! Give yourself the freedom to create something god-awful at first.

4.Don’t look at the skyscraper without noticing the blueprint. In other words, imagining the ideal end product can backfire unless you see it as the outcomes of a series of steps.

The Reverse Calendar tool advises the reader to work from the final deadline and work backwards, setting sub-deadlines to divide the project into manageable chunks. This process reveals the necessary steps that need to be taken, that may have otherwise remained invisible at first glance. Instead of ignoring the fear, this tool diffuses the initial anxiety into a practical plan. Try this! Scheduling baby steps  (i.e. open book on Monday and read one page) will allow you to gain familiarity with the project and disassociate it with fear. Hey! This project is now beginning to seem doable.

Karate Chop! Fear of Failure

What if I don’t get the job, the grade that I want, or [insert gut-wrenching scenario here]? These are very real possibilities that attempting to suppress can prove detrimental to creativity. Most of us are conditioned to use these negative consequences as a way to motivate ourselves into action in the hopes that we can wrangle the best performance out of us.

But sitting and thinking through the fears for a bit longer can bring them to a slight simmer.

Fiore challenges his readers to ask themselves:

    What would I do if the worst really happened?

    How would I lessen the pain and get on with as much happiness as possible if the worst did occur?

    What alternatives would I have?

    What can I do now to lessen the probability of this dreaded event occurring?

   Is there anything I can do now to increase my chances of achieving my goal?

Asking these questions allows you to not only generate a plan B, but also access information that can strengthen plan A. Removing the element of worry allows you to create in stress-free environment. This uninhibited mindset is the miracle space that geniuses tap into making their craft seem effortless. While working on a project Fiore reminds the reader that “Trying to control things so they go just as you imagine them takes enormous energy, keeps you blind to what could go wrong, keeps you from planning for a strategic retreat, and drains you of the energy necessary for bouncing back.” Once you make your fear a concrete obstacle, you can devise a tangible plan to overcome it and frees your focus on giving your best effort.

Karate Chop! Fear of Not Finishing

Fiore prescribes “persistent starting” as the third antidote for this third type of fear. Resistance towards the end of the project may emerge because your hard work is almost ready for evaluation. By far the most important piece of advise from this book comes from its warning to not allow external conditions dictate your sense of self-worth. Instead, it advises to carry a rock solid understanding that you are more than your accomplishments, relationships, vocations, possessions, obsessions and most certainly the outcome of this one project.  Congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come and keep starting the project over and over again until you finish it. When you’ve reached a particularly sticky situation, Fiore advises to “come up with a partial situation” and stay with it for an additional five minutes before you drop it. By “never ending down” you make it easier for your future self to pick up the project again. Here’s another revelation from the book- you might feel resistance to finish your project because you’re afraid that its success will demand more work from you. Fiore reminds the reader to keep this project separate and know that you have control over how much work you can take on.

The overall message from this book is clear- we are not naturally lazy and that in the case that we catch ourselves procrastinating, to scrutinize the fear. This process can provide feedback to the gaps of information we need to tend to. Here’s a great poster that I stole from Bre Pettis’ blog, a super cool entrepreneur and artist who wants to put a 3d printer on your desktop. Written in collaboration with Kio Stark, the Cult of Done Manifesto came into being in 20 minutes. 

http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html 

Poster Credit: Joshua Rothas

Ode to The Circle (and Cycles and Spirals Too)

As I explore the topic of natural growth vs. will-powered growth, there seems to be a shape I keep encountering- the circle.

Laurence Boldt takes practical Western philosophy with the more intuitive Eastern Zen philosophy and produces harmonious Type K-friendly books. In the Tao of Abundance he writes “All things return…within the time-bound realm, a circular pattern evades the whole of life- from womb and tomb to the cycles of the moon, from day and night to the seasons- the wheel of life moves in a circle.” Nature’s custom to operate in cycles can be seen in the sacred geometry of The Flower of Life.  It is said that all things physical replicate this pattern- take embryonic division for example. This figure is constructed by a single circle reproduced six times at equidistant points and captures the ecosystem of creation.

                                              

And yet taking circular pathways in life in general is not something that the Western school system encourages (certainly not public schools). Instead it teaches us to project ourselves into the future and create a linear plan to arrive at destination B. If in case we encounter a true interest, we must keep this newfound knowledge as a closeted hobby and endure self-sacrifice so as to prove our perseverance when we arrive at point B. If we’re lucky, we remember the old adage to “enjoy the journey” but this linear mode of goal planning stifles the future with the logic of human experience, which is limited by what’s been done and what’s been seen. Laurence Boldt observes, “In the West, we know a great deal about lines, but we have forgotten the power of the circle. We know about lines of reasoning and logic but discount the circle of intuition. We know about deadlines, timelines, and lines of history but discount the cosmic cycle of return… Now lines have their place, but life is a circle- and the way of life is circulation”. Running around in circles then, has its own virtue. To ignore Mother Nature’s cyclical wisdom in our own personal lives denies a fundamental truth regarding human nature- that we work in cycles, we create in cycles, and experience abyss and bliss in cycles (Ecclesiastes 3).

This is the macroscopic view that success coach Michael Neil utilizes in his newest book The Inside-Out Revolution. Neil looks at the gambit of human emotions and notices that people naturally display the characteristics of resilience and perseverance. When we accept that excellence, wholeness and well-being is our natural equilibrium, we stop attempting to fix ourselves because we recognize that we are not broken. When we become lost in the whirlwind of our fears, we cannot strategize our way out of the confusion. To do so would go against the current of our momentary reality and no amount of positive thinking can fool us into thinking otherwise. The easiest way to separate water from sand in a jar is to let it sit still. The clear water can then be poured out into another beaker. This perspective makes strategizing from a point of clarity seem effortless. In terms of personal effectiveness, Michael Neil’s philosophy warrants that we will automatically return to those things that we need to do if we have chosen to create from a state of abundance as opposed to a state of lack.

Similarly, Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, understands that personal growth occurs in cycles as demonstrated in his mockup of The Upward Spiral:

                                                         

Imagine yourself walking on one of those lines and failing to notice your walking on an incline because the slope is so shallow. Personal growth can be as easy or as difficult as we make it to be. 

Is it possible that as we grow into our dreams we can remain so entranced by the magic of our vision that we anesthetize ourselves from experiencing growing pains? This question places less emphasis on deadlines and willpower and focuses more on our ability to follow an authentic desire with joy.

What would happen if we detach ourselves from the belief that it takes hard work to achieve success (however each individual defines success) and accept its polar opposite?  Note: This is not a Gen Y-er’s attempt to undermine the long-standing principle of hard work. That’s already been done (Blame Tim Ferris).

But what does it mean then to inhabit the circle, to have nowhere to go and nothing to be? And at the same time, how do we reach for our dreams without reading our incompetence as a testament of our own self-worth? The Type K appreciates the abundances of point A and reaches for point B out of curiosity, knowing full well that he can find all the happiness that he needs at point A. 

The bottom line: don’t be a square, be a circle!

The Type K

“What is a Type K?” you ask? And are you one of them? (Hopefully by the end of this article you’re wanting to become one.) We all know of those anxious Type A’s who are highly organized, task-oriented, and prized for their left-brained, analytical abilities. And we are well aware of those infamous Type Z’zzzz whom society chastises for “going with the flow”, oftentimes following an unstructured lifestyle that caters to their creative impulses. I envision the Type K as a grand master sensei that balances the best of both worlds— he maintains his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds. This is his ideal equilibrium, the natural resting point that follows his core tenets:

The Type K’s Tenets

          1.     I am love.

          2.     Loving life expands my world.
    3.   My expansion depends on whether I choose or refuse to love. 

Pursuing goals does not have to entrap us in a rat race of self-negation and self-loathing. Even our focus on personal development can leave us mired with the notion that we are not good enough, that we need to experience public victories to feel worthy or do things to feel “more enlightened”.  And sometimes we need life to kick our own a**** to grow and snap out it. But we don’t need to see a prude, wide-eyed secretary evaluating us when we retreat into introspection.

Who Am I?

I’m a young adult who finds herself in the abyss & bliss of quarter life crisis, attempting to sort out the difference between childishness and having a free spirit. I am reviewing a year’s worth of journaling to re-learn the material that made an impact on my well being and hopefully contribute to somebody’s growth in the process by recommending the talks and books that helped me develop and love myself more. I’ve attempted to grow from straight willpower (a Type A approach) and pure positive thinking (a Type Z pitfall) and failed.  My primary purpose is to feel comfortable knowing that I’m perfectly imperfect and complete in my incompleteness. My goal is curate information that nurtures a Type K’s natural approach to growth and get in touch with people who feel the same way. Please feel free to comment, share or even better, subscribe!