WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH MY LIFE?

First of all, let me preface by saying my TypeSeven- The Enthusiast. personality seems clearer to me than ever.

Sevens are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. Playful, high-spirited, and practical, they can also misapply their many talents, becoming over- extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.

At their Best: they focus their talents on worthwhile goals, becoming appreciative, joyous, and satisfied.

• Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain = FOMO. BREAKING BONES
• Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content—to have their needs
  fulfilled =  SPIRITUALLY, MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY
  

Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.

As long as Sevens can keep their minds occupied, especially with projects and positive ideas for the future, they can, to some extent, keep anxiety and negative feelings out of conscious awareness. Likewise, since their thinking is stimulated by activity, Sevens are compelled to stay on the go, moving from one experience to the next, searching for more stimulation. This is not to say that Sevens are “spinning their wheels.” They generally enjoy being practical and getting things done.

On a very deep level, Sevens do not feel that they can find what they really want in life. They therefore tend to try everything—and ultimately may even resort to anything as a substitute for what they are really looking for.

“If I can’t have what will really satisfy me, I’ll enjoy myself anyway. I’ll have all kinds of experiences—that way I will not feel bad about not getting what I really want.”

On the positive side, however, Sevens are extremely optimistic people—exuberant and upbeat. They are endowed with abundant vitality and a desire to fully participate in their lives each day. They are naturally cheerful and good humored, not taking themselves too seriously, or anything else for that matter. As we have seen, the Basic Desire of Sevens is to be satisfied, happy, and fulfilled, and when they are balanced within themselves, their joy and enthusiasm for life naturally affect everyone around them. They remind us of the pure pleasure of existence—the greatest gift of all.

We can see this in action even in the most trivial areas of their daily lives. Unable to decide whether he wants vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream, a Seven will want all three flavors—just to be sure that he does not miss out on the “right” choice. Having two weeks for a vacation and a desire to visit Europe brings a similar quandary. Which countries and cities to visit? Which sites to see? The Seven’s way of dealing with this will be to cram as many different countries, cities, and attractions into his vacation as possible. While they are scrambling after exciting experiences, the real object of their heart’s desire (their personal Rosebud, as it were) may be so deeply buried in their unconscious that they are never really aware of precisely what it is.

^People who have gone out to eat with me or travel by my side can attest to this..I love my options and will exhaust myself in the pursuit of life to try everything…

—

Reflection– YES, I am impulsive. YES, I like to seek new experiences.

I acknowledge that by doing so much that I spread myself too thin and can never form concrete long-term relationships/commitments.

Currently, this is my level 4/5 as a Type 7. I’m hoping to get to Level 1

Level 4: As restlessness increases, want to have more options and choices available to them. Become adventurous and “worldly wise,” but less focused, constantly seeking new things and experiences: the sophisticate, connoisseur, and consumer. Money, variety, keeping up with the latest trends important.

Level 5: Unable to discriminate what they really need, become hyperactive, unable to say “no” to themselves, throwing self into constant activity. Uninhibited, doing and saying whatever comes to mind: storytelling, flamboyant exaggerations, witty wise-cracking, performing. Fear being bored: in perpetual motion, but do too many things—many ideas but little follow through.

Level 1 (At Their Best): Assimilate experiences in depth, making them deeply grateful and appreciative for what they have. Become awed by the simple wonders of life: joyous and ecstatic. Intimations of spiritual reality, of the boundless goodness of life.

I acknowledge my security blanket of having encouraging, free-spirited, “we support your decision to do whatever you want as long as you are happy, healthy, and treat other people with kindness/respect” parents gives me the support to take on higher risk for career/living situation exploration.

I’m undisciplined and scatter-brained. I’m privileged. I’m appreciative. And I am loved.

Also a point of inspiration-
Life is simple. Do the things you love and do it often.

So…..with that all in mind. Literally, all I have been thinking about past month^, I feel wholeheartedly justified in my decision to quit my job.

What spurred it to action was when I had started reading Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg over the weekend. One quote stuck to me “The cost of stability is often diminished opportunity for growth”

I thought of my values, my options, my energy, my passion, my integrity, my time, my commitments and my own definition of “stability”

The next day, I gave my notice.

Your career should be about growth or utilizing your strengths and skill set to better yourself, company, society in the process.  I went for a well-paying job knowing that it was good income, low stress, great people to work with, but soon found out the actual position was not demanding of my self-worth. I worked hard throughout high school and college for a reason…how can I live up to my word and integrity if I’m being inauthentic to myself and compromising my love for learning in the process. The opportunity cost for me is time. The time I could have used to acquire more skills on a professional and personal level.

I feel justified in my decision and walked out of that authentic conversation with my boss feeling more liberated and excited for new possibilities than ever.

I could have stayed longer and may have had a possible promotion (maybe in like 5 years..), but project management and following “process” isn’t for me. Hell, I’m beginning to think a typical 9-6 isn’t for me anymore.

I had my “one year” benchmark to reevaluate my progress/potential for job growth. Assessed the situation. Understood the consequences of my decision.

Now I’m onto the next.

Check out this article by Penelope Trunk, career adviser for 20-something’s

Make life more stable with more frequent job change

Moreover, my understanding of stability is knowing you have a life where you can do what you love, during your whole life, not just at the end.

“Your career is a jungle gym, not a ladder.”

What does “stability” mean to you?

If it means killing yourself to retire early. Get a house. 2.5 kids. dog. pool. backyard. Then by all means, sprint to get there. Who am I to judge?

Studies show that happiness leads to success, not the other way around. A successful career is one that stirs up a certain level of excitement, passion, and happiness in a person. Every person’s exact definition of a successful career is different.

Without adding money or salary into the definition, every person is going to be inspired by a slightly different occupation because individual interests, morals and values vary from person to person. So, ask yourself, do you love what you do or do you just do it to out of fear of being UNreasonable or vulnerable.

Out of fear that if you quit your job, your dream of being x and doing y will be one barrier/excuse less to pursue your dream.

I recognize I’m a job hopper. But don’t worry that my time will be wasted.

So, please when you ask me “why?” or “what are you doing after?”, just know that I’m going to respond by saying “why not?” and “i’m figuring it out now…LIKE RIGHT NOW.”

But really though, I’ll be staying within WeightWatchers until the end of June. Going to California for a week to visit friends/determine whether I should live there in 2 years. Thinking of going on a biking Shikoku pilgramage in Japan in August to gain peace of mind. Go to Taiwan to study Chinese at Shi Da University with my sister from Sept-November to get back to my roots.

Come back, with a fresh mind, and start climbing that jungle gym all over again. STARTUP STYLE.

WISH ME LUCK.

We have a responsibility to awe.

AWE– “an experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it”

My Definition:  when your physical senses interconnect with your mental psyche to be absolutely ravished emotionally by something so much greater than your current situation,  where the hair on your back sticks up and you let your subconscious take control. You breathe and take it in. You don’t question one of the biggest mysteries in the world. You just let it be.

It could happen in an instant. and then its gone. Off thinking about rent, rashes, oh a rabbit just hopped on by…

The moment when you sneeze/yawn and you can’t hear/smell/taste/feel anything in that ONE LITTLE INSTANT. You don’t think about it. Moment’s over. You felt good doing it. Can’t force it to happen again or give meaning behind it because you can’t recreate something that’s already gone. AWE.

So I love Jason Silva right now. His energy is electrifying. Take a moment and let this video sink in.

I took the liberty to transcribe what he had to say….Yea, you could say this is all I do when I have free time at work now…whatever beats Pinterest.

“so i think A LOT about the contrast between banality and wonder, between disengagement and radiant ecstasy, between unaffected by the here and now and by being absolutely ravished emotionally by it.

One of the problems of human beings is mental habits. Once we create a comfort zone we rarely step outside of that comfort zone. But the consequence of that is a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation.

aside:

Hedonic Adaptation: supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness

Over stimulation to the same kind of thing..to same stimuli..again and again.. renders said stimuli invisible. Your brain already mapped it in his own head and you no longer have to be literally engaged by it.

We have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, nor hearts the neither feel or understand.

The Wondering Brain– one of the ways we elicit wonder is by scrambling the self temporarily so the world can seep in.

Henry Miller says that even a blade of grass when given proper attention becomes a perfect magnificent world in itself.

““The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”

Darwin says attention sudden and close graduates into surprise and leads into astonishment…into stupefied amazement.

That’s what rapture is. That’s what illumination is. That’s what that infinite comprehending awe that human beings love so much.

How do we mess with our perceptual apparatus in order to have the kind of emotional and aesthetic experience from life that we render most meaningful?

Because we all know those moments are there. Only are these moments that we appreciate the fresh, the hardly bearable ecstasy of direct energy exploding on our nerve endings. This is the rhapsodic ecstatic bursting forth of awe that expands our perceptual parameters beyond previous limits and we have to reconfigure our mental models of the world in order to assimilate the beauty of that download.

That’s what it means to be inspired.

To breathe in.

To take it in.

We fit the universe through our brains and it comes in a form nothing less than poetry .

We have a responsibility to awe.

How to be “Great”

I’ve been positively gleaming or glowing these past few days.

The conversation usually starts off as something like this

A: How are you doing?

B: Great, just GREAT!

I can’t even articulate how great it has been which is why I have a goofy smile on my face all of the time.

So I’m going to try this…

What does “great” even mean?

For me, being great or capable of “greatness” means you’ve overcome being “small”

To be great means that instead of asking for “fish”, you’ve requested “fishing”

if I request you to teach me “fishing” I have the power to create much more, albeit potential of failure/rejection/shame.

To be great, means you’ve achieved a breakthrough in performance..whether that be getting recognition/promotion at your job, or finally coming to terms with your sexuality, or being able to run 5 miles without stopping. You’ve come a long way and even when there is nobody on the other end of the finish line to say “hey man, you’re awesome.” You know it in yourself that you’ve achieved something “great.”

I’m in the process of mastering my life to achieve “Greatness” and here is my outline.

1. Making a difference and contribution

• To be powerful, means you have the ability to inspire “groups”
• By starting with the individual, you can conquer anything in the world.
• Take the time to think of what matters to you in your community and dedicate some time to just think of what YOU can do to make a difference, small steps = big changes
• INDIVIDUAL (alter one’s feelings/emotions) -> RELATIONSHIP -> FAMILY -> GROUPS -> COMMUNITY -> ORGANIZATION -> SOCIETY -> WORLD

2. Mastering reality

• Being with something exactly the way it is instead of adding/deleting from a statement and constructing a story based on assumptions- adding meaning to nothing.
• To separate your thoughts, feelings, intuition from what’s real in front of you : What’s happening versus the story
• To be present instead of letting the past determine your future

3. Mastering identity and ultimately the self

• As “identity” you can either be part of something or not something. As “self” you are the space in which it all shows up. You are who you show up to other people and your actions are correlated with what is occurring for you…directly influencing how you occur for yourself in dealing with those situations
• Be unreasonable – Being reasonable means being controlled by your reasons. You may feel compelled to find reasons before you can do something. Being UNreasonable means doing something simply because you are doing it, taking responsibility for it, and enjoying it as it is.
• Be vocal- Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will open. Just say it/do it and know that whatever the outcome, its better than just sitting around and waiting for “something”
• Be expressive – To communicate that you are happy instead of saying “I am happy” by self expression is a skill. Perform to your hearts intent without fear of judgment.

Ending with a quote:

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.” – Lawrence Persall Jacks

Live, love, learn,

TIFFLIN(ning)

10 Aspiring Qualities for Daily Existence

My aspirations is to pursue one quality per day or to do as many as I can.

Striving not for self-improvement or to write in a way that i am weak or inadequate (i do that enough in my mind) but to extend my body’s comfort zone into behavior and feeling.

Higher Purpose: I am here to serve. I am here to inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. I am here to find my true self.

Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed.

Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone.

Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do.

Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them.  I will invent something in the mind that the world desperately needs.

Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible

Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently.

Bonding: when I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger.

Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him or herself.

Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

– Taken from “The Book of Secrets” by Deepak Chopra