I’m always astounded by my wife’s sense of visual acuity. She’s able to pinpoint such minute visual things that I just pass over. She remembers what people’s earrings looked like, what items were in the painting we passed by five minutes ago, and so on.
With me, I’m like computer vision in the 90’s. I’m able to recognize shapes and colors but that’s pretty much it. But even with a guy like me I have some visual preferences, so when I see comics or artwork or a particular aesthetic I like certain things.
In these situations I ask my wife. “Hey, what’s the thing here that makes this thing look so good?”. It comes down to how angled something is, or how the stroke thins, or how something is shaded. These things I don’t even notice until she points them out.
It feels like I’m living with a magician. She’s able to add things to my life with the wave of her palm. After that I’m able to notice things better.
I’ve been on a practice of stopping some things I’ve been doing in my life. I’ve been doing this until the end of February. The subject of what I’m stopping is so deeply personal and even with my usual policy around transparency I can’t get myself to talk about it (it also involves other people).
Bu while I can’t talk about what it is, I can talk about the experience of stopping.
When I tried to quit something in the past it was always an exercise in forced restraint or a failure. In the absence of the activity the desire to participate in it surges up. But it doesn’t get any more specific than “I want to do it”.
Even when it becomes an unsurmountable amount of pressure it doesn’t get any more specific than “I want to do it”. This pattern was what I wanted to change this time. What if I engaged in stopping, but asked deeper about the desire? This is what really changed the game for me this time around.
When the urge comes up, I try to be more specific with what I want to achieve. Let’s work with an example. Suppose you want to stop watching shortform video. The urge, when unassessed, will look like “I want to open TikTok”.
But what is it I really want to do beyond opening TikTok? Because I could open it and immediately exit. That’s not exactly what I want to do (I presume!). What I want to do may be something like, “I want to mindlessly scroll and be entertained” or “look up that one person’s account and see what they uploaded”.
This is when you can learn more about your underlying desire, and why it’s so compelling. I need to bring the picture I like to my wife so she can see what’s appealing about it. Just like this, when the urge is burning hot it’s so much easier to examine it in a deeper way.
The feeling of resolution that you get when you look into the desire is much more of a profound experience than resolution by activity. When I just start scrolling I satisfy the desire but I don’t get to understand why I have the desire in the first place.
Anybody can take a cup of the waving ocean water and make it still by letting it be. Anybody can meditate and be at peace at a forest monastery in Thailand. But when the water is added back into the ocean and when you’re back in your usual life, things go right back to how it’s been because the heart has not been examined at all.
Being specific about your desire is the opening, then the bulk of the work is staying with yourself as you open your heart to yourself. I found a lot of memories I never connected together along with some feelings I got to understand a lot better. I recognized much of my behavior and mannerisms that connect to this feeling. I understood the people around me in the past so much better.
This part, I think I can talk about. I used to always think I was a fairly likable fellow, so people would generally like to be around me. In my introspections I thought about all the people I’ve lost over the years. The people I really liked, but can’t get into touch with anymore.
I remembered the things they said before they lost touch with me. I noticed so many things I glanced over because I was drunk with my own perceived likability, a glaring pattern that was now so obvious: they didn’t like me! Turns out I was pretty unlikable!
I’m not saying this as a call for pity. This actually made so much sense and helped me understand life events in a way I never understood before. It made me see how consumed I was in my own viewpoints and how prone I was to suffering because of it. I could let the people go, and it made me appreciate the people who I have right now.
I’m always astounded by the additional amount of honesty I could bring to my life. I feel like I’m at the limit of my honesty and boom! There are always deeper layers hiding underneath my default thinking patterns. These discoveries, when coupled with intentional pauses to everyday activities that bring up the desires, can have a great lasting effect even when the pauses are complete.
I’m going to be back to my normal life soon but I don’t see myself going back to the activities as I did before. How can I be so sure? I actually never felt this much resolution before and I’m not even tempted to break the pause earlier (this is something I’ve experienced numerous times in the past).
Because it works for me, I’m sure it will also work for you. Finding your urge, being more specific with it, you may need a bit of external help because you live in your brain. Like how I get help from my wife, get insights from me by hiring me as your life coach. You can get started by emailing me at billy@julylifecoach.com.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
