-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
What’s up? Here we are back once again and it feels fine I tell ya that. I’m blown away by the support you all give so big thanks.
But let’s not get it twisted, you’re here because you want some advice; I don’t blame you, life is a tough thing at times. So, it’s wise to get guidance whenever you can.
Based off the title it might be hard to decipher what the topic for this week is going to be. Don’t stress, let me get that out of the way. It is about the realisation that many of our problems that we face are overblown to a comical degree.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trivialising anyone’s experience and I’m not saying that there aren’t circumstances that might put someone in danger. But for the most part, even when the worst case scenario occurs, it actually isn’t that scary. So, the title is meant to represent that someone has come to terms with the issues or consequences facing them and says resolutely “I’m still here!!!”. Imagine shouting that victory cry at the top of a mountain, that’s the scale I’m going for here.
What’s going on when people almost get that fight or flight response to life’s challenges. Well, it’s just that, their body and mind has isolated a threat to its existence and that in turn triggers the response. The person’s stress level will rise which will cause a whole number of different problems in all aspects of their lives, which is not good.
Now, a method I use to get rid of that horrible fight or flight response is to repeat the phrase, “Without the mind there is nothing to worry about”. What this does is make conscious the fact that life’s worries are usually a product of your mind’s worrying and catastrophising. When you abruptly switch the mind’s focus using this phrase you will find that your problems don’t have as much of an emotional hold on you.
You’ve shaken the emotional baggage off. Next is to weigh the issue or problem in a balance light. We do this by asking ourselves after saying the previous phrase, “Will this really matter in five years”. A problem people have is that they don’t think to the future that much unless it is about their own death. The reality is, most issues or problems you are facing right now will have no bearing or impact on you five years from now. So, why stress yourself to death over something you will probably forget about in a couple years? Seems silly to me.
I recently went through an experience where I had to use those phrases a lot to get through it. But in the end I can out the other end and I can triumphantly say “I’m still here!!!”
Like always, thanks to all my Hedites who make this whole thing so much fun.
Remember to leave a like and a follow, or share it if you can.
Posted on December 10, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
After writing last week’s post about spiralling I had a thought about what it kinda meant to go through a positive spiral over a period of time. This post won’t be the longest but I want to talk about one main observation.
I’ve alluded to this before but I think like most ideas of self development they are worth repeating. We both understand that you can’t help someone else if you yourself are in disrepair. So, developing yourself is about first getting your affairs in order then from there you can start to lift up your friends and family. Next, it would be your immediate community that you raise up, and who know’s you if you keep going you might save the population.
The mechanism that pivots throughout that process is your focus, or you could call it you perception. At first, it is cast inwards towards the self, at this point a lot of what you do will be about making gains in your life. It might be a gain in the amount of money you make by getting a better job or gain better health and wellbeing by exercising more, there are endless examples.
However, you can only gain for so long before it all gets a little dull, take a look at someone like Jeff Bezos, all the money in the world but it can’t change the fact that no one actually likes him. Not even employees, whose jobs depend on his company care for him (I do know that is because of the horrible working conditions, ie no bathroom breaks). But that’s just a symptom of the perpetual individual gain mentality.
What needs to happen is the pivot towards giving instead of gaining. I’m not saying give away everything you own. It’s more like once you have a comfortable personal situation, your sense of fulfilment in life will only truly stay strong if you can find ways to ease the suffering of others. That aid can be monetary or it could be volunteering of your time.
But the key perceptional shift is that your interests, hobbies and projects will at that point start to revolve around others. You will still be involved of course, but the people that share in the bounty of your hard work and planning will ever increase as time goes along. I’ve noticed this in myself, goals and values I held for the longest time, or at least held in high regard. Now, don’t move me at all, and my own trajectory in life has completely changed away from what was planned.
It’s wild, I still feel like I am the same person but in saying that I also feel like I’m nothing like what I was before.
My Hedites, chase your own perception pivot, or maybe you’ve already had one in your life. If so, tell about it below, I would be very much interested to hear. Besides that, leave a like and follow.
Whoops I guess it wasn’t that short of a post. Anyways…
Posted on December 3, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
In the past I believe I have hinted towards what I want to talk about today. But in this post I want to address in full respect.
The idea following from the title is about spiralling. Now, when you hear that word used to describe someone’s behaviour or current state of affairs, it’s not usually in a positive light. It tends to take the form, “their life is spiralling out of control” or the like. That might be true in that case, but that shows only one facet of spiralling.
In reality, spiralling can only go in two directions. One is the commonly associated one, of a negative spiral, the other is the opposite, a positive spiral. These are the only two states you can be in at anytime; the idea of plateauing isn’t possible, and I’ll explain that further down.
A positive spiral is obviously the ideal state that we want to be in, I mean in relation to its alternative form. It is the feeling you experience where many if not all domains of your life come together, and create an environment where the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. If you felt it before you would know have wonderful that feels, everything just seems to fall in its place, almost without resistance.
Pursuing that positive spiral is a task of paramount importance for all humans, it is pathway to a much more fulfilled and healthy life. Self development and the techniques we have talked about on this platform lay the groundwork to provide a framework for attaining said state. This is one of the main reasons I harp on about these ideas, because the compounding effects overtime are remarkable.
The negative spiral shares many similar traits with its counterpart, except the outcomes for the person in question are reversed. The different areas of someone’s life come together but in this instance, they multiply the suffering and directionless people experience. After the spiral twirls around enough times, the person is in such a horrible place that is highly unlikely that they will ever be able to pull themselves out. What results is a life with more misery than is needed and can end up with the person ending their directly or indirectly.
It’s worth mentioning that the signs of a spiral are small, they always are at the start. However, in time and depending on the person’s behaviour, the spiral will start to become pronounced. At this point, friends and family will begin to take notice and comment, usually privately about the changes they’ve noticed. For a positive spiral, they might comment how surprised they are by the change, but for the negative spiral it is an expression of concern.
This idea isn’t a revolutionary or complex idea; I think most people grasp it and also inherently know it to be true without being consciously aware of it. That speaks to the truth of its cause and effect relationship in people’s lives. If you read and watch my content, I know you are somewhere on that positive spiral. That knowledge makes me happy. Keep it as a principle that you will choose to stay on your positive spiral, because it can only ever go up.
In relation to plateauing, it isn’t possible for one simple reason. Time passes. People may think that they’re not in negative spiral, just plateauing. But that isn’t the case, and let me use an example to illustrate why. Let’s take a 20 year old person, could be any age really but let’s run with that one. So, they have all the habits, behaviours and values of a 20 year old. Now, lets fast forward 5 years to 25 years of age, but they still have the same values, habits and behaviours of when they were 20. This should start to raise concerns because there is a necessity for us to grow and mature as people. But if no growth occurs, we get older but not wiser or more skilled. Without overdoing the explanation, the longer no growth continues the further the person falls behind and that is indicative of a negative spiral.
Like always, much love for my Hedites hitting up every post, it means a lot.
That’s all for now, but more to come so hit like and follow.
Posted on November 26, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
This short story revolves around the idea of belonging to two worlds, and having to deal with th challenges that arise from navigating the two. It is based on my own experience and feelings during that point in my life. I’ve come a long way since and seeing that progression as a person is encouraging. While reading it, you might be able to relate in the way that even with people around you it can feel like you’ve got nobody; meanwhile, other people seem to be fully supported by their family and friends.
The story takes a dreamlike feel when it comes to explaining the environment in which it takes place. The reason for this is that I once had a dream when I was much younger that was very similar to what goes on in the story. The dream focused on my loss of connection that I felt from not really having a relationship with my grandparents. For context, both of my grandparents lived in a different city; I did see them every year or second year but not frequent enough to solidify any significant bond.
Another misfortune was that my time with either of my grandfathers was cut short, early on in my life. One died from lung cancer when I was seven. While we were banned from visiting my other grandfather due to him alleging that my brother and I weren’t actually related to him; so as you could imagine my dad dissolved all contact, I don’t blame him for this. Missing guidance from a grandfather is something that affected me during my teenage years when I think back on it. I’ve learned to not let it hold me back, but I wanted to express what I went through.
It can be found on Amazon and Kobo, if you have Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus you can read it for free, go check it out with the links below:
Posted on November 23, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
My journey of personal development and improvement has been going on for about 3 years or more now. One thing that has always been somewhat of a pain is that I’ve always felt that I was kinda doing it alone.
The difficulty was that there weren’t many, if any people that I could talk to about such things. Even worse was that no one I knew truly held similar values as mine or consciously worked towards a better version of themselves.
Friends of mine wouldn’t be interested and if they did hear me out, they weren’t convinced with the merits of what I was putting forward; that was because from their perspective, life took a very pessimistic slant so what was the point of trying was their takeaway.
Or my friends would want to change the subject to something less exciting, like what new tv show or movie they had watched (what an overdone conversation piece that is in the 21st century). Nevertheless, I wasn’t offended, I knew that the things I was thinking and talking about just weren’t what people were into, especially in the early twenties life stage.
I do lament not finding someone who shared the same passion as I did, that kind of relationship is usually uplifting, even more so when that passion is personal development. Being able to bounce ideas off someone else and also to be able to provide feedback and advice to them was something I wished I had.
But it wasn’t meant to be, well at least for now.
The point I want to get across to you is that even though I would have liked to have had a confidant in this arena; it didn’t happen but that didn’t mean I was doomed to fail or anything like that. No, the reality is personal development is just that, personal, so there will always be an overwhelming proportion of the responsibility that will lie solely with you.
If you have connected with people who help to support you on your journey, then great. I am delighted to hear that because as the saying goes, many hands make for light work. But if you don’t like I didn’t, don’t despair. The private victories you attain by yourself will lead to public victories which will well and truly make up for anything you may feel that you missed out on. That last part was something I learned in the past year or so.
When it comes to your plans and goals, I want to leave you with this final thought:
“Those that are not helping you to attain your goals can never truly understand the motives and mechanisms behind your designs”
Thanks once again my Hedites, you are the best. Drop a like, a follow and share this place on any space you can.
Posted on November 19, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
Okay I know I’m late in getting this one out the door, the worst part was this piece was completed at the beginning of this year. I just got caught up with university assignments and work amongst other things so that delayed my editing. In reality, that is just a convenient excuse that I tell myself. Sorry about not keeping to the schedule I defined, November’s story will be posted in about a week or so.
Now that is out of the way, let me give you a brief introduction to my 11th story to be posted. When I started writing this one, it was early in 2021, I still was working within the pandemic response to COVID in NSW. I wanted to craft a story that managed to weave social class commentary, intrigue and romance all in one. I’m proud of what I put together, but I still feel that there are areas of improvement to be refined upon. Oddly enough, the inspiration for this story was a page from Frank De Mulder’s Heaven that I happened to come across.
It can be found on Amazon and Kobo, go check it out with the links below:
Posted on November 16, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
Dang, I can’t believe another week has gone by. But here we are, so what are we gonna talk about today? Well, I’ve been reading this book about the history of philosophy throughout the world. It’s an expansive topic to cover in a book, I’m almost done and I felt that the author did a good job at tackling the differences and similarities in a nuanced way which didn’t pick favourites.
Even before reading this book, I had spent time reading through classic examples of both Western and Eastern philosophy. Some examples include: the I-Ching, Nietzsche, Victor Frankl, works by the Stoics, Dao De Ching and others. Now, I’m not saying that I’ve read everything out there but I’ve dipped my toes in enough times to get a feeling for the water.
A passage and illustration in this book really highlighted to me a key conceptual difference between the two broad camps of philosophy. Eastern philosophy is more linked to what is known as Intimacy, I’ll explain what that means in a moment because it isn’t what you think it is. Western philosophy is more aligned with what is called Integrity, once again, these concepts have poorly chosen names because it invites people to make incorrect assumptions.
Okay, I’m hoping when I explain this, that it makes sense but here we go.
So, imagine that every member of society is represented by a small equal sized circle, that also means companies, businesses, cultural customs, nature and the environment… everything gets a circle not just people.
For Intimacy, make the circles overlap one another so it kinda looks like chainmail, each circle interlinks with the others. This is one of the core principles of Eastern culture and philosophy. Even though you are your own person; you alongside everything else is not distinct from the rest of the whole. In other words, the land, society, language and people are linked together, so your thoughts and actions should be in relational to the whole and not focused solely on yourself.
Integrity, is a bit different. Instead of overlapping circles, the circles stand apart from one another as to clearly distinguish one thing from everything else. Now, you might argue that even though the circles are apart, they still sit in relation to one another. And that is true, but in the integrity concept, each circle has their individual identity and essence shown to be their primary feature. This idea of integrity is more typical of how Western cultures think and act, more in an atomised way where it is about individual freedom and individual success.
Having said all that, let’s not fall into a binary way of thinking; even though Eastern cultures tend to focus on the group rather than the individual, while the Western cultures are a bit of the opposite. In reality, both Eastern and Western cultures have a mix of Integrity and Intimacy, it just depends on which receives more emphasis.
What was the point of all that? I’m glad you asked, because even I thought I was rambling. Well, the first point is, philosophy is cool because we can learn there actually is a whole lot we have in common with other cultures (so when you see me, see yourself). The other point is, incorporating intimacy and integrity into your own life is an important part of self development. You need to derive and develop your individual essence and character but having said that; you also need to think about your impact within your culture and community, are you adding to the burden of others or are you easing the burden?
Anyways, hope that helped, the book by the way is “How the World Thinks” by Julian Baggini.
Thanks once again my Hedites, you always make me so proud, I sometimes think “Man if they even apply a quarter of what I talk about, I know their lives will change for the better in time”. And I know that because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
You’ve got what it takes!!!
Posted on November 12, 2021 by Jordan Hedi Productions
Jordan Hedi Productions
Jordan Hedi Productions