What Edward De Bono Taught Me

Sanity Lost, Sanity Gained, Peace
Alpha-Beta Testing the New Self

Centering : "If I loiter in an environment governed by rules, ideals and morals customized to (what I think would) suit the accomplishment of my goals/priorities/happiness (based on my knowledge of myself), I'd get back on the right path with more experience, without much effort"

In people-centric scenarios, extremes generally occur in pairs. If you've seen one extreme with a person(s), you can experience the other extreme only with that person(s). You can't hate a person you haven't ever loved.

"I hate Trump". No, you don't. You hate his system of governance. Why can't you hate him unless Ivanka tells you to? (assuming she knows him on a personal level (#FamilialPerksFTW), better than you do and you believe her.) Because hate based on non-personal and solely external information is disagreement or disapproval. True hate needs figurative penetration. Unless you have your own definition of hate or you've planted cameras and microphones in Trump's den(s). 

I was living with false definitions of sanity and stability in my head until New Year's Eve, 2015.
2016 showed me what instability truly felt like, subsequently, convinced me that I wasn't a stable person. I wouldn't have known stability and sanity had I not known their extreme opposites.

 In that one dead year, I involuntarily attempted to tackle problems that were deep-rooted. More of a situational "I'm messed up, I need to get myself out of the gutter right now", than a, "the future will demand so and so personal changes, let me start working on them now" kind of issue. Life didn't need external changes, it needed mental restructuring. Funny, but that wasn't the most challenging bit. The need to change was prompted by the positive and negative gestures of a human agent (X), a very special friend, also, the only I'd had in a while. (Value, in inverse proportion with number (kept low, intentionally)) The side-effects of the transition process weren't going to be felt by just me but all parties involved, primarily, X. What was the most challenging part? Psychologically convincing X of the mutual long term benefits of my decisions that couldn't be directly communicated, to prevent predicted short-lived hate that I was most afraid of. X, at least visibly, wasn't on the same page as mine. Bringing him to it needed rashness on my part.

He was the stable one, I was paranoid (the result of being able to foresee events precisely, most times). X hid/lied, while I expressed. The gradient between the amount X hid/lied and the amount I expressed kept increasing. Contemplating the reasons behind X's compulsive lying made me blame myself to a point that wasn't harm-free. Academic stress coupled with emotional baggage kept reducing the effectiveness of all hope-keeping activities I'd gotten myself into for sanity's sake. My mind, quite naturally, started looking for shortcuts and backdoor solutions. Failed, horribly so. The troubled state and my urge to get out of it, forced me to do, what then felt like the dirty work. 

Deep emotions rob the most logical of their logic sometimes, and that's what happened, as predicted. I felt vicarious pain in addition to my own.

The best part about pain is that it follows a bell curve. It needs to reach a peak magnitude to be felt less eventually.

With time, unanswered questions receive answers. "Whys" turn into "Ahhs". The puzzle becomes less complicated.  You make peace, then some more. You change.
It's a beautiful process.
My recent experiences demonstrated the magic of Centering. Centering, in my book says that, if I loiter in an environment governed by rules, ideals and morals customized  to suit the accomplishment of my goals/priorities/happiness, I'd get back on the right path with more experience, without much effort. 
When things go wrong, remind yourself that a night is always followed by a day.

 P.S. :  I was lucky to have X intentionally or unintentionally show me my faults than cover them to protect the thinning stability of our equation then. I only wish the best for him.

Zaijian.

Chameleon Culture

Analysis Paralysis, The Disillusionment Maze

The abstract touch-me-not layer. Bitter Filter, Fibrosa, Vasculosa, Nervosa, Perspective.
Ante Script : If my theories hurt your pseudo-stable thought-set, I'll know they aren't entirely untrue. Alter my view while I alter yours. #ConversationalRecursion

 Multiple options, offline and online communication forums, endless social opportunities, social media,  CommTech in general are biphasic w.r.t. usage. Excuse my love for fancy self-made terms (chose to not see the alternatives, hah), but I call all of the above 'inconveniento-conveniences' (ICs). The extent of a person's vulnerability to/usage of ICs hints at his/her degree of fickleness. Most of us are getting altered psychologically by ICs and the trends they've given birth to, in a way that is hampering our relationships, simplifying the process of leaving one for another with little or no guilt, introducing dangerous thoughts, creating unnecessary debate in easy situations, making us raise redundant life-related questions, giving birth to an unneeded identity crisis(specific to the person), over-governing our process of fixing priorities. Sad part?  We don't know what we really want, because the wants keep changing, howsoever desperate they may be in the moment. 

 What's responsible? Primarily, ICs.

Most expressed wants/desires in equations, these days especially, are either impractically ambitious, entirely mood-based, lacking long-term pragmatism, selfishly considerate (oxymorons are good food for thought) or emotionally unviable.  Popular relationship philosophy : No room for repeated mistakes in the equation? The fun's gone? Replace the person in it with someone who accepts and tolerates those repeated mistakes every time rather than improvement or elimination of weaknesses that led to those repeated mistakes. Why? Because the ego hurts lesser in replacement than in improvement. Adventure has become a relationship priority while stability comes way later. Surprising. 

Need an ego-boost? Generate it internally and independently not externally. It'll probably last longer. 

How do I build an ego tunnel that's sustainable in a century owned by "Le Fickle-Minded"? Fool myself, maybe convince my brain of false reality, given that my own perception is entirely true? Yes. (The default state is all pessimistic, saves trouble.) Just so all the externally generated negativity doesn't taint my compressed innocence. 

How do I feed my desire to be unselfishly nice in a world that lets the manipulative flourish faster  than the genuine can? Prompt people to fake the niceness through my gestures for a bit, so I can treat them the way I would've, had I known they were genuinely nice, for as long as my emotions and self-protecting tendencies let me. 

Why take the complicated route? To prevent robotic behavior, trust and intimacy issues that result from disillusionment. To kill expectations. Creating a temporary false reality is analogous to adding steps at, say, positions 3,5 and 7 in a 1-10 emotional ladder. The pain's way lesser when you fall from 1 to 3, 1 to 5 or even 1 to 7. Gradient 9 situations can be emotionally taxing. 

Why do equation-templates exist? "We're family, ergo, we must do this". "We're dating, so we must say 'I love you' even when we don't feel like it." Isn't customizing an equation to suit the emotional needs of  the involved parties a better idea? 

                                                                                     Zaijian.