AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

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Quadalupe
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Quadalupe »

I recently stumbled across this site: http://sigbovik.org/. It's about totally silly CS "research", like "how to create the longest portmanteau" (edit: see the yt video here https://youtu.be/QVn2PZGZxaI). But all projects have an air of childlike fun and glee about them. Which is exactly what you often can miss in day to day "programming" work. I am often chasing that high and have in the past looked for other jobs when I noticed my hype declining. But maybe there are ways to rekindle this at a current job? I don't know if you or others have experience with this, but it would be a great skill to have!

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Quadalupe - Thanks! I'll check that site out. That could also be useful for future job interviews.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Building a social life - Wrap up

Before I started working on this goal, I had severe social anxiety, and the prospect of talking to strangers absolutely terrified me. Between COVID isolation and working from home, I found myself going days without talking to anyone. It was really draining on my mental health. But after roughly five months of forcing myself to go to random things, I can safely say I'm a lot more comfortable attending meetups with people I don't already know. I haven't made any friends yet per say, but I do know a few of the regulars at the groups I'm going to, and I'm no longer afraid to approach people. And while I do still have larger social goals than where I'm currently at, such as making closer friends, building a tribe, and maybe getting into dating again, I feel like now I'm at least reaching my daily social quota to the point where the isolation is no longer a drain on my mental health.

I have a core staple of three groups a week I'm going two (two board game groups and one DnD group). My plan is to keep attending these and then throw in a few wildcard meetups occasionally on the weekend. This is going to be my holding pattern for social engagement for now. This is enough to keep me stable, and the bigger social goals can wait until I've made progress in some other areas in my life.

Building up a social network is time consuming, and it's something I've found incredible draining mentally. Working on this goal has come at the cost of every other goal in my life. Because of some of my mental health struggles, my energy levels are limited, and I'm constantly having to balance pushing myself out of my comfort zone so that I make progress with the very real threat of overextending myself and then crashing for days.

So I can safely say I've met my goal here and I'm ready to move onto the next thing.

Next goals: diet, exercise, and mental health

I've been trying to improve my diet and exercise on and off since January, and I've had some mixed success. I usually manage to go to the gym twice a week and eat two thirds my meals at home, which is good, but there's a lot of room for improvement here. I need to do more research though on what success here actually looks like though, so more information coming soon.

And if anyone has any resources/journals about improving diet/exercise, I'd love to hear it.

Mental health
I'm going to be referring to the Nine Levels of Ego Development here, which is like Kegan but a little more granular. Anyway, after doing a lot of introspection, I've come to realize I'm stuck between the Achiever stage and the first postconventional stage, The Individualist. I oscillate between these two stages depending on how much stress I'm under, which is making me think I have a very strong subpersonality stuck in the Achiever stage, and that's what's holding me back from getting to the Individualist stage.

For those of you unfamiliar with the framework, Achiever is basically the highest level of targeted level for the professional/conventional world. Individualist is the first "postconventional" stage, which is where you start to move past socialization and into deeper levels of self-development. You can think of Achiever as "perfected" Kegan4 and Individualist as proto-Kegan5.

Anyway, in order to grow past these mental blocks, I've been doing a mix of IFS, Plotkin, Jungian analysis, cognitive functions, and some of my own techniques I made up. I've been trying to discover my own subpersonalities and assign them to the shadow parts of my personality/shadow functions, as well as their ego development level.

Getting in touch with your subs can be a bit difficult if you're not used to thinking this way, but I've found a few things that work. I try to use some active imagination techniques from Jungian analysis to see what directions my brain tends to wander in. I also pay close attention to when I feel internally conflicted or distressed and then "ask" internally for who's feeling that. This can give you a general idea of what type of subpersonality might be trying to talk to you. Projection is also really useful in discovering subs. If you catch yourself being upset over a trait in another person, that might be a sign of projection and the Self trying to inform you of a sub with that trait.

Once you've narrowed down a bit on the type of sub you have, it helps to try and talk to them. I try to write journal entries from the sub's point of view, which helps me understand them better. I also give mine names and try to imagine what they might look like. This helps with the Jungian active imagination techniques. The idea here is to paint a symbolic landscape of your inner psyche so that you can discover aspects of the Self that you've suppressed.

Anyway, these are the subs I've found so far, in order of strength:

"E" - West sub, Ni-Te, Kegan4 - Acts as the Magician archetype when healthy. When unhealthy, E veers toward escapism and isolation. Contains the freeze response. Most of my creativity and desire to write/draw comes from them.

"I" (the letter I, not the pronoun I) - North sub, Te-Ni, Kegan4 - Acts as the Parent archetype when healthy. When unhealthy, acts as an inner critic. My ability to plan and understand complex systems comes from her. Contains the flight response.

"F" - South sub, shadow Fe-Si - Kegan2.5 - Victim archetype. Contains the fight response. This sub is stuck feeling interpersonally wounded and doesn't know how to heal from that. He lashes out at others to avoid being hurt further and feels so nihilistic about trying anything that he prefers to give up before he's even started. Seems to be the sub that contains all my unhappiness about being a salaryman.

"A" - South sub, Se-Fi - Kegan2 - Rebel archetype. Doesn't care what anyone else thinks and just wants to have a good time. Craves excitement and adrenaline.

"R" - East sub, Fi-Ne - Kegan3 - Inner child archetype. Contains the fawn response. Afraid to take up space or express needs or wants. Wants to remain compliant to avoid conflict. When allowed to express herself under healthy conditions, this sub is capable of enjoying small wonders in life.

"N" - North sub - Tyrant archetype. I'm not in very good contact with this one yet, but this sub seems to contain the expectation that I conform to social roles, even if complying with the social role would leave me deeply unfulfilled.

My plan here is to keep discovering/understanding these subs using Jungian techniques and then use the exercises outlined in the Plotkin book to develop aspects of myself that I've been ignoring. My hope is that by developing my shadow/sub personalities past their lower ego/kegan levels, I'll be able to overcome the internalized roadblocks that are stopping me from moving into the postconventional stages of ego development. And once I move into the postconventional stage of ego development, I'll be able to move past the unhealthy attachments I currently have, such as my inability to quit my job.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

FYI: The Cook-Greuter link doesn't work(?)

I'm interested in seeing where this is going---I recall at least 3 forumites pursuing this angle. Is it an MMG thing? In my case, the Plotkin approach with subpersonalities (I'm also reading Wild Mind) is endlessly confusing to me. If I had to venture a guess, the idea of conversing[, seeing, journaling, drawing, ...] with one's subpersonalities as if they were [virtual] persons suggest a strong Fe-dimension from the author. That along with organizing them along the wheel suggests that Plotkin is either a FeNi(ENFJ) or NiFe(INFJ) like Wilber. I think this also requires the reader to posses a well-developed Fe, which I do not, to apply the framework.

Instead I find myself formalizing the subpersonalities by splitting them into the stack components. This T-based framework works so much better for me.

I like Cook-Greuter but I think it (by construction) demonstrates a fair bit of WEIRD bias in terms of how the developmental lines has been arranged. I suspect there are multiple roads leading to Rome and perhaps even different Romes. This particular development line reads like what has been going on philosophically in the English speaking west during the 20th century or so. E.g. achiever/expert corresponds to a modernist society; pluralist is beginning postmodern waves in a modernist background society; and higher levels follow individual gurus. For example, the idea about exploring nonduality via language and contrasting terms (wet/dry, dark/light, ...) seems like an exercise in rather 1960s 1970s pop-linguistics.

(Growing on in mostly postmodernist society and specifically learning how to consciously form deliberate but arbitrary constructivist frameworks (physics) followed by emigrating to a nation of experts and achievers and building a strategist's strategy for this environment ... means that my perspective on Cook-Greuter's arrangement is somewhat round peg in square holeish.)

In terms of ego- and unitive-awareness, most of the depth-work authors seem to come from the NF-side and the religion/humanities. This means the experience is mostly described in terms of emotions, feelings, and words. I'm somewhat disheartened that I've found no exceptions (outside of MBTI) to the idea that the limbic Fe/Fi-perspective [of those NF-authors] is NOT the only lived experience.
(On the language side, there's a bit of interest from the likes of Sheldrake and Penrose. Older insights from e.g. Schroedinger or Mach has been turned into "quantum woo" by subsequent generations who couldn't "calculus" their way out of a wet paper bag.)
Perusing the literature, it would thus seem that feeling is the only road to nondual unity---a road that is long and hard and seems to require lots of psychotherapy to resolve. Yet from my NiTe perspective, the road appears so trivial that I still suspect that I've misunderstood it: The thinking mind is the involution of the universe as it becomes increasingly self-aware in local spots (in the form of someone's neocortex) and in turn creates feedback connections with other parts of the universe. Unlike the emotional or sensate perspective, the ego does not need to exist as a construct. It's simply the universe "doubling back" on itself once a mind (<- locally involuted place in spacetime) achieves sufficient "complexity" enough to understand itself and you (the human who grokked that) are simply along for the ride (as a vehicle for that brain). And by mind I don't mean grey matter within the brain case, but the total feedback systems occupying the neighborhood of a particular spacetime location. That mind is mostly contained within the skull but also extends somewhat outwards depending on influence (self, tribe... planet x back and forward in history) but in most cases it dies with the body. Most plants, animals/humans don't influence the universe much after their body dies. Only in rare cases, think Einstein and Aristotle et al, do the waves of influence keep crashing in. It's hard to wax poetically about it though. It just is what it is.

Sorry for the semi-hijack.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

Great internal work @AE! I am very curious how @AE interprets all of these ideas as you have actually taken the time to grok them and try out some of the techniques based on a solid foundation of previous internal/philosophical work.

I would love to be able to translate between the ideas (IFS/stack theory/plotkin), but I am currently stretched too far with other projects to prioritize the background reading to make the connections/translations. I will have more time in July.

WRT to a MMG group, I am leading one that is ecology/nature/adventure based and all of us decided to try Plotkin out as the internal development tool leading towards a solo-wilderness fast. It is hard work both interpreting him and trying the exercises. We will post more in other threads to not clutter here unless relevant.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Jacob - What Plotkin is doing is essentially mixing IFS and Jungian analysis into his compass framework. IFS is more of a therapeutic technique to resolve trauma/mental illness, and the Jungian stuff is more of a positive psychology framework. Jung himself typically preferred to work with people in middle age, and a lot of his stuff is about moving past the internalized roadblocks you're socialized into during the first half of your life so that you can live a fuller life after middle age.

Both of these, however, are driven essentially by trying to engage cognitive functions other than Te in order to generate original or novel insight. With trauma/mental illness, a lot of these dysfunctions need to be resolved in ways other than Te because you usually don't logically box yourself into mental illness. It's hard to rationally think your way out of mood disorders, etc, and so a lot of therapeutic techniques for mental illness have been developed to use other cognitive functions in order to target parts of the brain other than the prefrontal cortex. Something like IFS is primarily targeting Fe and it's useful for people who struggle with interpersonal trauma/difficulty because you're essentially using Fe on yourself so that you can later use it with other people. That is to say, sometimes the only way to recover from interpersonal trauma is to go make new relationships, but the trauma/mental illness makes it so you can't trust other people. IFS is essentially restarting this brain circuit in a virtual way. Likewise, Se is often used in somatic therapies for the same reason. I suggest the book "The Body Keeps The Score" for more information on non-Te therapeutic techniques if you're curious.

(The most Te-heavy therapeutic technique is probably cognitive behavioral therapy, which is essentially replacing incorrect thoughts with correct ones, but it's not what Plotkin references.)

The Jungian archetypes are what Plotkin is referring to with the parts of his compass that are the "true self" and not the subpersonalities. These are all very NF, but the real goal of the Jungian archetypes is to spark new insight. Mental illness and middle age are somewhat similar in that sometimes you need to internalize radically altered perspectives to move past them, and so this use of archetypes is an NF way to do it.

In terms of non-dual awareness, another thing Plotkin is doing is suggesting techniques that invoke altered states of consciousness because experiencing altered consciousness can bring you insight to your normal consciousness state. It's a sort of kennen vs wissen thing. You can logically understand we are all just the universe rolled back on itself, but experiencing it is completely different than just knowing about it. Things like meditation, fasting, self-hypnosis, etc are all ways to invoke altered consciousness without psychedelics, and altered consciousness brings you lived insight instead of theoretical insight. (The "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" lectures go over this in the early episodes)

I know for me personally, after my DPDR episode, I ended up with a radically different understanding of myself than before the experience, and this is largely because dissociation is an altered state of consciousness. I can describe dissociation to people, such as the physical and cognitive symptoms, but this is very different from experiencing a state where "you" stop existing. Once you realize that "you" is a construct of sorts, and you really live through that, it's easier to let go attachments to the maladaptive parts of your personality. So a lot of the Plotkin altered consciousness exercise are designed to invoke things like this.

Also, it's one thing for me to say "the self is a construct," but these techniques help you understand what that construct is made out of. Ie, which parts of "you" are socially constructed? Where did that belief come from? You can see that the Self is made up of a Witness that exists regardless if "you" exist or not. What is the difference between you and others in this case? Where does the line between the Self and the context it resides lay?

Note that with altered consciousness, it needs to be done inside of a safe environment and with the right framework, otherwise the experience can be awful. This is why the depersonalization invoked through meditation is often a positive experience vs the depersonalization invoked from stress. Both are a form of dissociation, but the framework and context makes all the difference.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

Wow! This description/translation between the methods makes a lot of sense. Thank you for writing it up!

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

@AE Thanks! That was superhelpful!

Relating the various [therapeutic] approaches to the stack makes a lot of sense. (Obviously the stack functions is where I do my [first order hardware] sense-making.)

Over the past year or so I've been trying to understand the unitive experience in a rather haphazard way by reading random authors (no framework or map). Without exception (so far), these have either been someone's autobiography or a "my theory fits everybody"-prescription. Just like accounts on exercise, diet, investing, blabla... (*)

As a result I've felt like a square peg being hammered into a round hole to the point of wondering whether I'm being gaslighted. E.g. Plotkin makes a comment that "it's inhuman not to have these strong feelings; followed by a list of 10 exercises to ponder one's most emotional experience with ... a long list of people and interpersonal situations." I guess I'm pretty inhuman then, due to not having strong feelings about everything.

(*) For example, the professional humanities (philosophy, sociology, psychology, ...) who do a lot of reading, writing, and talking insist that all our constructs are made out of language. Well, maybe theirs are... but I suspect a basketball player's constructs are made out of kinetic awareness and movements that are impossible to put into words. As such as basketball player who wants to achieve of flow (mushin / mind of no mind) with the game of basketball should rather not approach it by "talking words" about it.

What remains is whether the unitive experience mainly exists in Fi, which is where most of the literature/gurus currently seems to find it, or whether it's also found in different ways in Fe, Si, Se, Ni, Ne, Te or Ti.

I'd assert that some variation can be found on any of these channels. Lets consider Te. I know I'm pretty close, not Pierre Teilhard de Chardin close but pretty close. I also know that a rationalist STEM-based technician, who is used to "pushing around equations" to "find answers given by ..." has some years to go before they develop "physical intuition" or "mathematical maturity" to develop a sense of ("it just looks right") aesthetics. As such they're not as close. With Te drugs are not required to separate the viewer from the viewed. Instead a different perspective is added. When enough perspectives have been added (Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Everett, ...) new patterns emerge. And so on ... until the pattern space is complete. (Filled by the correspondence principle.)

By extension ... the F, S, and N dimensions are maybe similar with similar barriers or mountains to climb.

One of the distinctions between T and F .. is that T, especially NT, tends to be rather sure of what they know and what they don't know and why they know it. Well, lets back up ... at least NTs at or past the rationalist stage (think lesswrong and other fans of "critical thinking") are pretty sure. This is because formal operations can operate on themselves.

I am however not sure whether F has something equivalent to Piaget or MHC in terms of preconcrete, concrete, formal, systemic, paradigmatic ... and so on operations when it comes to emotional processing. Identifying subpersonalities, drawing or journaling them, and having internal conversations between them seems like the emotional analogue of the concrete->formal logic stage, that is, where emotions turn into complex feelings.

The previous sentence is my most important insight/contribution here. Perhaps it's trivial. But if it's true it also suggest that [critical logical/systems] thinking both as a field and in its implementation in the public is much much farther ahead (in terms of complexity development) than the emotional equivalent.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Pilgrim »

Hello @AnalyticalEngine, I recently stumbled across your journal. I relate to some of your feelings of depression. I'm not near informed or perhaps smart enough to understand all the discussion of the stack and personality distinctions or contribute much to this in-depth analysis.

However, I do agree with what @AxelHeyst wrote last year about changing up environment as a cure. Particularly entering a community. In America, there is very little natural community. Living in an RV park or a marina (where I do now) is maybe one the better options for community. University too (as you mentioned in one of your posts), particularly living in a dorm.

In my late 20s I was single and depressed. Had a good paying job and money in the bank, and no motivation to do anything. Nothing I could think of sounded fun. I wasn’t suicidal, but I didn’t care if I lived or died. I ended up quitting my job and moving to Israel to volunteer on a Kibbutz. Made myself do it. One of the best decisions of my life.

This led to a long chain of events that changed my life and took me out of depression. But it was the people I met that changed me. E.g. a Polish volunteer taught me how to travel like a hobo, how to hitch-hike, how to throw oneself into the world and let the world carry you. Later the two of us traveled through Egypt together. I learned that I needed to be in community as a single person to stay sane.

To that end, I later joined a volunteer organization in Haiti where I spent three years in tight community (we lived together, worked together, did recreation together) and out of that situation met a woman I fell in love with and married and… well, the rest is history.

Yes, I spent my savings on that 5 years of no-official-job-volunteering-various-places-living -in-communites countries experience and I came back to the States broke (7 years ago), but it was the best use of that money I can think of.

All the best in your journey!
Last edited by Pilgrim on Tue May 10, 2022 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Pilgrim »

<deleted, probably off-topic too much, don't want to derail AE's journal>

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Jacob - I think the root of the issue is that we don't understand consciousness very well scientifically. Because we don't really understand it, the best we can do is NF-type exercises where we push the boundaries of our understanding of the self or reality in order to break out of the limited perspective waking consciousness imposes on us.

As an example, "the self" doesn't really exist. If you imagine a robot inside of an environment, in order to interact with the world, the robot must create a map of the environment, and by necessity, that map of the world includes a copy of the robot itself, because the robot is in the world. The robot, therefore, perceives itself as the model of itself (its ego), but the model of the robot does not include the entirety of the robot. That map of the robot doesn't "exist," but it is experienced. This is what makes consciousness so difficult to understand.

You can see this play out in many states of altered consciousness. Waking consciousness is often experienced as a single sense of self, but altered states show us that the single self is an illusion. You can take LSD to experience ego death and have no self. You can self-induce trance states to become another self/ego entirely, such as what shamans used to do when they "became" wild animals or when people on LSD "become" objects. If I can have one self, then I can have no self or multiple selves, as the idea that I only had one self was always just the model of myself my mind built. It was never real.

But I can't really tell you how the brain constructs a sense of self. We have some research on it, but our understanding of consciousness just isn't there. So I can't explain the limits of consciousness in Te-terms, but I can experience the limits of consciousness in NF terms.
Jacob wrote:For example, the professional humanities (philosophy, sociology, psychology, ...) who do a lot of reading, writing, and talking insist that all our constructs are made out of language.
This idea is called post-structuralism. It's a branch of philosophy that was spawned in the 60s due to advances in linguistics. The innovation came about after the discovery that you don't understand a word by itself; you can only understand it because you understand it in relation to other words. For example, if I talk about a "branch," you only understand what a branch is because you understand what a tree is and what leaves are. Your understanding of a woody, tall plant that loses its leaves in the winter as a "tree" is only possible because you understand all these words in relation to each other.

Thus when philosophers talk about constructs being made of language, they're referring to the social/cultural world, which shapes our understanding of the physical world. For example, an athlete only knows what a "ball" is through his culture. He only knows the rules of the game because they've been taught to him through language. His experience of sport is therefore, at least partially, mediated through language, because that's the part of his experience that's been taught to him, and it's the only way he can describe his experience to other people[1].

Post-structuralism gets into this idea that we don't experience reality directly; rather, our senses basically create a hallucination based on input from reality, and our language/culture is what gives that subjective experience meaning. The exception that proves the rule here is how the brain breaks down during psychosis. You can subjectively experience things that aren't there (hallucinations) and you can have strongly held beliefs that don't make any sense (delusions). And yet, things are not considered delusional if they're commonly held in your culture, even if they aren't "true," which is why when we talk about psychosis, we have to talk about consensual reality. If I want to get absurdly deconstructionist, I can argue that trees don't "exist" because drawing the boundary between the carbon atoms in the CO2 in the air and the carbon atoms in the tree's leaves is arbitrary. If I were a ray of gamma radiation, would I care what's a tree and what's the air? We as humans only understand trees and air because our physical senses create a sensory hallucination of trees and air, and then our culture/language tells us the meaning of trees and air. Ergo, reality is a consensus and language structures constructs.

[1] I'm sure there's subjective brain constructs that operate independently of language, such as how many animals operate, but given that language/culture mediates so much of our existence, it might be hard to find many that are completely spared from post-structuralism. A key difference between humans and animals is the way our language links our brains together to create knowledge beyond our individual selves, which is how our species took over the planet.

Now obviously, I can't decide reality doesn't exist and declare myself a dog and go live in the park[2]. Our understanding of "dog" and "human" might be cultural constructs, but much like currency, these things still exist. Therefore greater understanding involves pushing yourself toward the edges of self/reality without losing touch with consensus reality. Much like an onion, there are multiple layers of what one is and what one is not and the degree that is controlled by culture/language/hallucination and "actual reality."

[2] An exercise left to the reader is to analyze why I can't declare myself a dog and have it accepted but I can declare myself the opposite sex and have it accepted in certain social circles. This is not a glib conservative talking point; deconstructing why one is accepted but the other isn't is going to tell you a lot about psychology and the nature of identity.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Pilgrim - Your absolutely right about environment being critically important, and this is something I realize more and more as I recover from the depression.

Just as an example, at work, I have every incentive to become a Loser and put in the minimum effort. I used to hate on myself for doing this, but as I've restored my ability to feel anger/frustration, I realize this keeps happening to me because of my environment. The nature of a large organization is to treat all the employees like cogs and the bureaucracy overrides your ability to be proactive or push back on things you don't like. Because you have to simply accept what is handed to you and you can't push back on these expectations, the natural reaction is to passive aggressively become a Loser and simply detach from whatever you're doing/put in the minimum effort.

But what I realized is that it's not my unique personal fault I keep doing this; the system is set up this way, and acting in any other fashion goes against the incentives built into the system.

The thing is, I don't like being a Loser. It feels bad to be constantly underachieving and being utterly detached from whatever I'm doing. But instead of blaming myself for this and growing frustrated at myself for being unable to implement changes that go against every structural incentive, I'm better off to recognize this is not a good environment for me and make changes so I'm not constantly being put in this position.

I think when you start acting like someone you don't want to be, it's a huge red flag to not be in that environment. I've really only been able to realize this after making significant progress with my mental health, but I do absolutely agree your environment/the people you are around is a huge component of the journey.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by fingeek »

The thing is, I don't like being a Loser. It feels bad to be constantly underachieving and being utterly detached from whatever I'm doing. [snip] I'm better off to recognize this is not a good environment for me and make changes so I'm not constantly being put in this position.
This is a really interesting point, and one that resonates with me too - I too don't like being a Loser in my primary-job-work mode. But, the something that's keeping you in this position is stronger than that something that's suggesting you change right? - In terms of values and beliefs hierarchy, what's that belief (limiting belief or useful one?) that's keeping you where you are. (For me, I realised it's 1/ safety/security, and in the last year 2/ easier, to give me the room and energy to be able to focus on non-work things).

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@fingeek - There are two beliefs right now that are keeping me at work.

1. The first is a lack of an actual actionable ERE-quit plan. Basically, 10 years ago, I read the MMM "Shockingly Simple Math" post and just hoarded money for 10 years. This is great in the sense that I probably have enough to FIRE with (although maybe not now that the market is down), but the investment vehicles this money is saved inside aren't that useful. For example, about 90% of my NW is either home equity or inside 401ks. I can't really get this money to spend and so I keep working, and I've been bogged down in other goals so that I haven't thought about this enough to fix the problem. Additionally, my spending has crept a lot because I'm now 401kFI but not moneyICanSpendFI, but my brain goes "look we're FI; who cares if you buy coffee," which has lead me to a lot of threading water.

2. The second is that being a software engineer represents a lot of security for me, and because I work from home, it's ""not that bad of a job."" I'm not convinced that my particular skill set here is ever going to stop being useful, and if we're really looking at a long decline, this implies I'm going to be working more in the future, not less. The scenarios where "economy falls apart but software devs are still needed" seem higher in number than the scenarios of "the world falls apart and you should have learned to grow corn." Further, I ""should have enough free time"" to grow corn now and be a software developer; the reason I'm not learning to grow corn is the untreated mental health conditions. So what I really need to do is fix that and then I can learn to grow corn and stay current in software for maximum security.

I used to have a third limiting belief, which was "I can't quit my job or I'll turn into a sad hermit." I fixed this one by addressing all the fears I had about turning into a sad hermit by fixing the emotional blocks that were making me act like a sad hermit. So at least that one is resolved. And then there was a fourth, which was "I can't quit until I know what I want to do next," but I've moved past this one by developing a lot of hobbies and realizing I can just spend more time in them to find more opportunities (writing for example).

Note that this ""should have enough free time"" may or may not be true depending on how much work is actually draining me. Ie, if the cause of the executive functioning that's stopping me from learning to grow corn is because work is depleting me or if it's something like ADHD or if I'm just not using the right system.

fingeek
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by fingeek »

Really interesting, pretty close to my path to date too! :).

Have you considered/tried an extended sabbatical? (Sorry, am only now going through your journal backlog). I took a year off (tldr with kiddy, thought "now or never" and "test retirement") and a lot of my original beliefs were proven to be false. One of which was "I don't have time/energy for X, but I will when I retire". The first 6 months were great as I lost the burnout and developed some hobbies (some of which remain), but then I devolved back into a sort of directionless malaise and ultimately got back to work excited and refreshed. I've kinda realised that the answer to "what would you do if you retired?" is currently "sort of what I'm doing now, but in a slightly different jailcell".

Great to see you're recognising and addressing the things that are preventing you from getting to the next steps!

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

fingeek wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 1:57 pm
The first 6 months were great as I lost the burnout and developed some hobbies (some of which remain), but then I devolved back into a sort of directionless malaise and ultimately got back to work excited and refreshed. I've kinda realised that the answer to "what would you do if you retired?" is currently "sort of what I'm doing now, but in a slightly different jailcell".
I haven't taken any time off, but this is one thing I was worried would happen to me given my personality. Past-me had a pretty bad tendency to do nothing except go to work and play video games, and I knew this was something I needed to address before I quit. I've made some significant progress, but what I've learned is that being self-directed is a skill, and it's important to be extremely proactive with your own happiness/goals. I don't think it's important for me to know exactly what I want to do when I quit FT work, but what is important is I've already developed the skills/habits that lead someone to being self-directed in the first place. A big element of learning to own your own life is to begin directing yourself from a place of "passion and purpose" rather than "panic and deadlines." But learning what motivates you is important, as is learning to structure your own day and set your own goals.

One reason I chose to work from home is that it provides a bridge from the complete structure of corporate life to the structure-less nature of no job. I've learned some important skills working from home, such as how to socialize outside of work and manage my own time better, so that has been helpful.

I've always had it in the back of my mind that I would pursue art or writing more seriously if I quit. I have no idea if I have what it takes to be an actual writer or artist, but at least those hobbies do have avenues toward tasks that can make up a "career" outside of corporate.

shaz
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by shaz »

I think you have been making great strides when it comes to building a fulfilling life outside of work. I hope you can see how far you have come in a short time.

zbigi
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 1:40 pm

2. The second is that being a software engineer represents a lot of security for me, and because I work from home, it's ""not that bad of a job."" I'm not convinced that my particular skill set here is ever going to stop being useful, and if we're really looking at a long decline, this implies I'm going to be working more in the future, not less. The scenarios where "economy falls apart but software devs are still needed" seem higher in number than the scenarios of "the world falls apart and you should have learned to grow corn."
Same here. Also, the life where you have to grown your own corn sucks, so I'm willing to take a risk that that world never materializes - because, even if it does and I have prepared for it, my life would still be rather miserable. In other words, ensuring survival across the widest possible range of negative scenarios is not my highest priority.

zbigi
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

fingeek wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 1:57 pm

I took a year off (tldr with kiddy, thought "now or never" and "test retirement") and a lot of my original beliefs were proven to be false. One of which was "I don't have time/energy for X, but I will when I retire". The first 6 months were great as I lost the burnout and developed some hobbies (some of which remain), but then I devolved back into a sort of directionless malaise and ultimately got back to work excited and refreshed. I've kinda realised that the answer to "what would you do if you retired?" is currently "sort of what I'm doing now, but in a slightly different jailcell".
+1. I think that for most regular people ERE is somewhat of a red herring, because we're simply not internally motivated enough to fill our life with projects which can lead to income. It's just so much easier to continue on the path you've been on, and for much more money, than to learn for example woodworking and hope to see some money out of it someday. Also, most people like the things that more money can buy (eating out, travels, bettter house, helping friends and family), so switching to alternative, potentially more interesting but low-paid careers, really hurts them there.

ERE seems to make most sense for people who are both very disciplined/driven/smart and also for some reason trapped in a low-to-mid-paying career. Not surprisingly, this intersection is rather small, and it's just so much easier for such people to switch to a well-paying career instead of adopting ERE. (There's the ecological motivation for ERE as well, but again the fraction of people who will make large life sacrifices for the sake of the planet is super small. It's just sooo much nicer to be selfish.).

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@shaz - Thank you, shaz, it has been quite the journey, but I do feel as if I have made significant progress for the first time in my life. While I feel I lost most of my 20s on the altar of depression, Covid was such a significant wake-up call that I have now been motivated to make the very significant changes I need to. I think what is most important is that one learns to be proactive about one's own happiness and fulfillment in life, a task that is not always easy.

@zbigi - The approach I am now attempting to take is to consider my job as a broader part of my web-of-goals. This has the advantage of not automatically ruling out employment, but one is also not making it the centermost aspect of one's life. With this approach, one has the option of cutting out the "FT corporate" node if something better comes along, and you have spent the time to build up alternative networks such that other opportunities do come your way. This is essentially the WL5->WL6 transition, which is the next step in the journey I am trying to understand. The goal here is to stop viewing things in terms of money and more so in terms of the other values it brings to your life. (Since money is not "real"; it is but a means to an ends.)

For me personally, because I am single and do not have children, I still have (in theory) enough time outside of work to build up these other aspects of my life. I have been spending most of my time currently attempting to fix longstanding lifestyle problems, and as such, have not had as much time to focus on alternatives to work, but I believe I will be able to soon. Fortunately, I have made significant progress here, and it is starting to pay off.

I am reminded of the Mad Fientist's 5th year update blog post where he describes the fact he realized it was never his job holding him back from making music, it was the fact that he did not take his own creative ambitions seriously enough and did not make time to move past the psychological blocks stopping him from that pursuit. This is how I feel about writing at this point as well. It is entirely within my power to become a "real" writer right now, I just need to take that pursuit seriously and stop getting stuck in the trap of making excuses.

This all really goes back to the limiting belief of me not having a real ERE plan at present, so I am considering that I may need to go back to the basics as such and develop something more actionable that what I do currently.

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