Habits are awesome

I was a wreck last December. My brother marriage was around the corner and I had to pretend everything was alright. In fact, I was underweight, I was severely depressed, supremely under confident, shy as fuck, my family was worried, my future was uncertain (I dropped out of my masters) and pretty much nothing I did brought me happiness.

Now, over the last few months, I underwent a metamorphosis. A transformation that makes me look at my past self weird. I don’t quite identify with that guy anymore. My belief system changed. My confidence levels are through the roof. I’m healthier. I weaned off of my bad habits gradually (still a lot of work to be done there). I’m apparently an extrovert now! I know my job (my dad gave me a job. It’s cheating I know but I’m still getting a salary.) I’m self motivated (people still have to slightly nudge me if I’m oblivious to my life tasks). I’m happy (work gives me a lot of satisfaction. Maybe this a slippery slope because if I don’t get a lot of work done for the day, I still feel a little sucky).

Okay. Enough said. What did I do? What changed in my mental game? What did I do different from all those previous failed attempts?

Note: This is a random mind dump with little editing. Please look past any mistakes and awkward phrasings.

What did I did

First things first. I am lucky I had the support system I did. My parents and my brother were endlessly encouraging. They nudged me sometimes and kicked me when it was not enough. They moulded me into what I am now. I let them push me. That is what made the difference. I accepted the fact that my was not working out.

I let them push me. That is what made the difference.

My ego used to convince me that everything I did was right. It still does. But the notice it. Me being wrong was not possible. Now rationally, it was impossible for me to be right all the time. But that doesn’t matter one fucking bit. Knowing something is different. You have to be super vigilant to not make the default (sucky) action.

Externally, it was my support system.

Internally, it was pretension.

I watched this video by Horses a few months back. It is a video essay (yeah I know, they’re cringe but apparently they’re my favourite genre according to my watch history) on how pretension despite being perceived as something immoral, is very essential in self improvement. Now, I don’t remember it being the direct cause of the change in my mindset, but now that I’m writing this piece, it definitely validates my experience.

Initial awkward phase of pretension

When you start doing different, that is doing the things you’re used to (or saying no to what your mind tells you to do and you usually say yes to), you feel awkward. People around you feel awkward. It isn’t natural for you to get out of bed at 7 let alone 6. It isn’t you when you get to bed at 10. It isn’t normal for you to do things you said you would do. It isn’t normal for you to call people casually. It isn’t natural that you take up responsibilities proactively and deliver. It’s as if you are possessed by a spirit of a long dead responsible person (very convoluted comparison I know). But in fact, something similar happened I believe.

I actively chose to shed my former self. I actively chose not to do most of the detrimental activities my mind told me to do. I chose to do the courageous thing rather than the cowardly thing. I kept choosing to put myself out there unafraid of criticism.

It became a self-reinforcing cycle. The more I pretended, the more I became the thing I was pretending to be. It was all a play. I pretended I didn’t care about what other people thought about my pretension at first. Then I started to actually not care.

Saying no and saying yes

Not being able to say no fucking sucks. Past-me didn’t know the deadlock it put me in. I was afraid of thinking far enough to consider the ramifications. When you say yes to everything, you don’t have control of your own time. It fixes your schedule without you being a participant in it. When you don’t say no to a YouTube binging session late at night, you’re fixing the future of either being late to work or missing the gym, or being super tired the entire day. If you don’t say no to going out on a working day, you’re missing work.

There are consequences to saying no. But there are consequences to saying yes as well. Even harmless things.

Saying yes to the right things is just as important. It was very subtle with me. I used to express disappointment in being invited to take part in activities which used to rob me of my time with my addictions or a random can-be-done-later activities without thinking through the consequences. Each time you signal no, either explicitly or through your body language, people catch onto the fact that you’re not interested in doing something, or you don’t like them or whatever. But the result is being invited less. Then less becomes rare. And rare becomes never. You become isolated and isolation is very bad for you.

I started out by saying yes to things first. Can you do this simple thing for me? Yes sir. Do you want to go out? Yes! Please! Do you wanna play? I’m busy weekdays, but weekends are fine for me. What about you?

Then, I escalated to scheduling lunches and dinners with friends actively. It is nice being the initiator for once. I was never the one to invite people over or engage people in a conversation about doing something. It feels awesome.

Being careful when I say yes

Past-me used to promise a lot of things to a lot of people. Things I never deliberated over and forgot. Guilt. Lower confidence. Lower trust. Lower responsibilities. Bad, bad cycle here too.

I stopped saying I was going to do this thing and that. I just did what I wanted. When people requested me to do something or the other, I just stopped saying things. Then I eventually graduated to saying yes to things I could reasonably do and I was confident I could deliver. It snowballed from there. I started to say yes to things I could do more often and got confident enough and used to it to the point where I didn’t need to think. My confident grew. I don’t feel guilty about things I didn’t do nowadays. I am taking up greater and greater responsibilities. Things are good.

Work

Starting work at dad’s put all the things together. I had to go a long way before I was ready to physically and mentally handle the work. But once I felt ready, I started right out.

Knowing what needs to be done clarifies your thoughts. You don’t feel guilty about not doing what you’re supposed to anymore. What needs to be done should be done before 6. After that, you can spend the time however you want without guilt.

Conclusion

I have a lot more I want to say, but the article has gotten very long already. I will check off the “blog for half an hour” todo and stop writing for now.