I have a friend who wants to do some self development. But how he asked the question today really got me thinking about the days where I wanted to dive into self development prior to life coaching.
Like it I find that I don't want to do something
I just don't and do something else
The problem is I think choosing something that was not really something I truly wanted
But now I know it's not so that's an advantage
Idk I overthink too much about every choice I make
What I fear is wasting time
From my experience, I spent a lot of time trying to learn some music theory when I was in my rock star days. But turns out, music theory isn’t something you can pick up like playing guitar by looking at tabs. Tabs just tell you where to place the fingers to play the music, but music theory requires you to learn and engage your brain.
I definitely wanted to learn music theory, but I never found myself actually studying music theory. This was a classic case of “I think I want to do X, but I don’t actually want to do X”. What I wanted to do was just mindlessly play some hard ass power chords, so that’s what I kept on doing.
In order to understand your thought desires and true desires, it’s important to reflect on your actual day to day. What does your actual day to day look like? Because chances are, it already shows you what you actually want out of your life.
For many people it will be living the same day as much as possible, because many people have experienced tumultuous days once and they never want to go through it again. So the safety keeps them away from the dangers of disruptive life, but at the same time it prevents any kind of new opportunities from their life. Like this, all your desires tend to have various side effects.
Of course, we can do our due diligence and research what we want to pursue. For example I’m considering emigrating out of the United States now, and this is a big move (we started considering this in summer of 2024). While it feels like it would be a good idea to move, we have to realistically understand that it will not be all good.
For example I’m learning firsthand French is really hard. And the more I research about France the more I understand that it is a country with a distinct culture and a rich history, so I will have to completely re-adjust to a different culture that’s not America.
So staying in the United States gives me stability and ease of life. But at the same time it keeps me in the same place. Moving to somewhere else gives me a new challenge and perspective on the experience of life. But at the same time it will take a lot of time, money, and energy for me to live a new kind of life.
I can do the thinking as much as possible, but after a certain point I reach a limit of how much I can get with thoughts. It is at this point I need to actually engage in the life and learn from experience.
This is very important for my friend, because my friend fears wasting time; there is no wasting time when you look at all of your experiences as an experience accrual. Sometimes you learn by head first and then experience with body, and other times you experience with body and learn by head later. In the end it’s all the same.
My friend also tells me:
Does it happen to you that you like a hobby something, but you don't really feel the need to do it. I am doing it now for a project, but I never feel like doing it, or I feel I am doing cause I don't know what to do in my free time, other than this atm
Again, the last sentence is important. When we don’t decide what to do with our time we will always default to whatever feels the most comfortable to us in the moment. So we keep living a moment driven life without a longer term trajectory for life. Read more about developing a trajectory of your life in this writing.
It is at this point we need to talk about something else: how do we differentiate between the so many “we”’s? For example, we thought we wanted to do X. But we actually want to do Y. And we need to make a longer term plan for us, because short term living for us is not necessarily good for longer term us.
Who the fuck do we mean by we?
When I think x but actually do y, is the thinking me me or the doing me me?
When I live life for my immediate comfort and don’t engage in any longer term development and limit the path of my life, I want to address that by thinking of longer term me with a different path in life. Then what am I? Am I the current me with the current set path or am I the future me with the intentional path?
What am I?
My friend also said this:
It seems I want to understand the world deeply
As someone who is currently trying to understand the world deeply, I think it’s important to understand the world deeply. But this has to start somewhere, because how do you start truly understanding something as big as the world in one bite? So the best starting point for such an inquiry is to look into the self.
Especially for my friend, diving into one topic to start to understand the world deeply will likely lead to disinterest and going back to regretting the decision with additional rumination about the next best usage of his time. We’re trying to avoid that pattern by looking into the most concrete thing that’s always staring at you in the face.
The question, “what am I?” is enough to ask over an entire lifetime. Where do I come from, and what happens to me when I die? So many parts of me change, so many parts of me are temporary titles to me, but there seems to be a constant thing called me. But depending on where I am in the world, what I do, my identity changes but there’s still thins thing called me. What is this me? What am I?
Perhaps more importantly, how do I differentiate between something that really feels like me but isn’t, versus actual me?
The temptation for these questions is to walk away from these questions because they make us feel existential dread or they feel like chasing clouds. But in the end of all self development it comes down to answering that question: what am I? All suffering ultimately comes from within, and don’t we all seek to improve ourselves because we suffer?
To get to the bottom of that question you need the ability to concentrate for a prolonged amount of time, which is composed of two types of stamina. Mental stamina is the ability to stay focused for a prolonged amount of time and physical stamina is the ability to retain a position for a prolonged amount of time.
The primary obstacle in developing mental stamina is overexertion and comfort. If you’re doing 10 things and trying to concentrate on one topic, it will obviously be hard to do so because your mind is so busy. Another reason you overexert yourself mentally is because you’re concentrating too hard with effort, like you need to solve 100 math problems in the next hour or so.
But also if you’re laying down on a Sunday afternoon with some sunshine on your belly, it will be hard to stay awake because it’s too comfortable. You need a certain degree of tension in your mind to keep you awake and not adrift, but you also need a certain degree of ease in your mind to keep you from overexerting. This is why meditation is referred to as “relaxed focus”.
The primary obstacle in developing physical stamina is the limitation of the body. Meditators typically meditate on the floor because we ideally want our meditation to be independent of devices and furniture. In practice when you sit down for a prolonged amount of time you will find that the body will ache. So without your body loosening up to retain relaxed focus, meditation will be a very painful experience.
To resolve this many rely on yoga. Of course you don’t have to just do floor meditation, there are many aids and meditation specific furnitures to make your time easier. But in general developing the ability to sit for a prolonged amount of time tends to have other healthy side effects so I would encourage development in the direction of yoga.
Going back to the conundrum of my friend, of course we can discuss all of my friend’s most immediate questions and curiosities. But in the end they all come down to, but is this what I really wanted to ask?. What do I really want to do? How can I tell if what I am going to pursue will be actually, really, truthfully be good for me? What if I regret it? What if there was a better use of my time?
Without a well defined sense of self, you will always be working with a moving goalpost. The question “who am I” seems so unrelated to any of the real life problems we may be facing. But would you rather solve 10,000 smaller problems to have more smaller problems or would you rather solve one big problem to put an end to all problems?
That is the spirit and development of Seon.