#analysis paralysis once again what else is new

[elvhendis]

Told myself I would wait until I have 5 chapters before posting my fic but I'm honestly so tempted to post it now

[maespri]

danaganronpa 2 characters ranked by how painful their death was (and why)

yeah i'm doing this again but for danganronpa 2, what else is new. welcome! gonna talk about some of the anatomical science behind the deaths in dr2 and use that knowledge to rank how painful certain deaths would be.

spoilers ahead, and trigger warning! this post is going to go into detail about death. it's going to get descriptive and gory. if you'd rather not read about it, please keep scrolling!

everything under the cut, because this is going to be long, warning you now!

as usual, some backstory: i have a special interest in anatomy & physiology. i find it very fascinating to study stuff like this, which has led me to making my third post of this caliber! with all that said, i'm not an expert, and these are just my personal opinions- if i do get something wrong, please correct me! now let's get to ranking!

this ranking only covers traditionally "human" deaths (aka, mechamaru is not covered, because he's a robot).

quick glossary:

arteries: carry blood from the heart to other parts of the body. veins: carry blood from other parts of the body back to the heart. hypoxia: inadequate oxygen supply. exsanguination: death caused by bleeding out. hypovolemic: loss of fluid in the body, often referring to blood or water. shock: life-threatening condition where the body does not have enough blood circulating through it. asphyxiation: deprivation of oxygen which can result in unconsciousness and/or death. aspiration: when something you swallow "goes down the wrong way" and enters your airway or lungs. TBI: traumatic brain injury. immolation: death by burning.

the tier list:

OUCH!!! (most painful):

nagito komaeda: this is the longest analysis in this ranking for what i hope is good reason. to say i was horrified when i came across his body would be an understatement- it's brutal.

for starters, he slices up his legs quite badly. this is instantly going to cause bleeding, albeit not yet life-threatening. if it were, he would have had to slice his femoral arteries. i'll blame the fact that he doesn't on his luckiness. at worst, his legs are hurting and burning like hell. that + blood loss is making him dizzy/light-headed. but the fact that nagito is lying down is actually helping him stay alive, as doing so helps your blood pressure. i'd imagine the adrenaline is going to start pumping for him now as his body fights to keep itself from passing out/bleeding out; adrenaline may cause him to be in less pain as he's setting everything up to stab his hand, but he'll definitely be getting dizzier from pain + losing blood.

speaking of, let's move on to him stabbing his hand.

i first just want to point out that the amount of willpower + sheer strength he would need to do this is astronomical. it is not easy to lay flat on your back and slam your hand down onto something hard enough to go straight through. and doing all of that while your limbs are tied up and you're bleeding profusely out of your legs? it's absurd; i'd verge on saying it's impossible, actually, but i'll suspend my disbelief lol.

so, admittedly, i kind of lost my mind analyzing nagito's hand injury, because. i can't come to a conclusive answer about how painful it'd be for him. here's why:

my immediate thought was that this would hurt horribly, for obvious reasons. i thought nagito might actually might have something really interesting going for him when it came to this injury, which is that he somehow managed to avoid severing any tendons or nerves in his hand. i attributed that to his luckiness, once again. the reason i thought he didn't sever any nerves/tendons is because he throws the monokuma stuffed animal pretty far away from himself after sustaining the injury.

but then i remembered that if he did put a knife through his palm, paralysis would only occur distal to (above) the injury- aka, he'd only lose feeling in the area above his palm. therefore, you could argue he did actually sever his nerves and tendons. he just threw more with his arm, and that's why it worked.

but then i was like... throwing something that far away from yourself while you are lying down and your other arm is tied up would practically be impossible without utilizing a lot of power in your entire hand. not to mention- nagito should be feeling pretty weak, dizzy, and light-headed by now, considering the injuries to his legs- all factors that would make it even more difficult to do any of that.

so... there are basically two options here. A) nagito lost any feeling in his hand after the knife impaled it. he would have felt a blinding pain for a moment, and then total numbness. he somehow managed to throw the stuffed animal despite all of that. or B) the knife miraculously managed to avoid hitting any nerves/tendons, allowing nagito to throw the stuffed animal anyway. his hand would hurt horribly. it'd feel like a hot iron pressing on his palm. but this option is, simply put, egregiously inaccurate anatomically.

so... here's what should have happened when nagito injured his hand:

some form of hand/finger paralysis. your right hand has three major nerves running into it; to grossly simplify it, you've got the radial nerve (running across the top of your arm/hand) and the ulnar and median nerves (running on the underside of your arm/hand). nagito's injury, straight through the middle of the palm, should have, at the very least, severed his ulnar and median nerves. the radial nerve tends to stray more toward the right side of your hand on the right hand, so if he missed it by a few millimeters/centimeters, i could understand that- but as for the other two? yeah, he'd have to get insanely lucky to have missed them. it's. weird.

but even if the blade did miss these nerves, they could not have missed the tendons/bones/blood vessels/etc. in his hand, so that's just insane.

so basically: it either hurt really badly or it didn't hurt at all. before i lose my mind over this even further, let's just move on to him impaling his abdomen.

the angle in the game makes it a little hard for me to discern where exactly was punctured, but it looks like it hit his stomach, potentially part of his small intestine, his left kidney, and without a doubt, his abdominal aorta. if the poison had not killed nagito, the impalement to his abdominal aorta + all the other damage would have almost instantly killed him. we're talking within seconds. given that nagito is presumably dead when the spear impales him because of the poison, obviously he wouldn't have felt any pain- but if he were... um. i don't think i have to explain that that would hurt like a motherfucker.

so let's move on to the last aspect of his death- poison.

death by poisoning is actually grossly misunderstood by many different types of media, because most poisons rarely kill within seconds. even cyanide, which is considered one of the most dangerous poisons in the world, takes 3-5 minutes to result in death. so how do i think this worked for nagito?

well, there are a lot of variables that tie into this. how long it takes to die from poison depends on three main factors- the dosage, the type of poison, and the size of your body. the poison in dr2 is made-up, which makes my life a lot more difficult. i don't think we know the exact amount of time between everyone throwing the fire grenades and finding nagito's body, but it's gotta be at least a few minutes, which gives nagito some time.

i guessed he may have used phenol (very hazardous poison that can rapidly cause death), or perhaps hydrogen sulfide (can result in unconsciousness after a few mere breaths)- but using phenol or hydrogen sulfide would almost certainly leave a trace on nagito, such as irritation to his eyes or skin in general.

so my guess is cyanide. it’s most potent when injected intravenously, but it's second-most potent form is gaseous. with a high enough amount, it could probably kill him within a few minutes.

death by cyanide is incredibly painful. cyanide actually kills you by causing cell hypoxia- aka, your cells can't use oxygen, which makes them die. you'll feel like you're suffocating. your entire body will start to feel like it's burning due to acidosis (cells releasing lactic acid as they are damaged). your muscles will contract and you'll have one final burst of adrenaline throughout the entire body before actually dying. often victims of cyanide poisoning may slip in and out of consciousness- the fact that nagito doesn't makes me believe he used an incredibly high dosage of the poison.

so... yeah. definitely the most painful death in my opinion.

official cause of death: poisoning, resulting in cell hypoxia.

YOWZA! (very painful):

ibuki mioda: ibuki (my favorite character in DR2, so sad!) is strangled to death with a rope.

let's talk about how strangulation actually leads to death. it starts with the cerebral arteries. your brain receives oxygen-rich blood from the heart through these, the internal carotid arteries (which bifurcate, or divide, into the common carotid arteries), and through the vertebral arteries. these arteries ultimately come together to form the circle of willis, providing blood and nutrients for all parts of your brain.

when blood becomes deoxygenated (which happens naturally as it flows through the body), it is sent back to the heart. from your brain, this blood travels through your jugular veins, which are situated on either side of your neck.

when you are strangled, it puts pressure on these veins. this extreme pressure prevents proper bloodflow from the brain and ultimately results in hypoxia- this is what causes you to pass out before you actually die. the pressure on the windpipe also causes intense pain and makes it impossible to breathe, preventing the rest of your blood from getting the oxygen it needs.

within thirty seconds to a minute, ibuki would have fallen unconscious, but she wouldn't have been dead yet. mikan would have had to continue strangling her until her body became fully and truly oxygen-less (which may have taken another 2-5 minutes), at which point ibuki would actually be dead.

while all of this is happening, her body would have quickly kicked into panic mode. i know ibuki had despair disease which made her incredibly gullible and willing to do anything, but if i'm remembering correctly, we don't hear anything about mikan asking ibuki if she can strangle her... which makes me think this truly was a surprise attack on the girl.

in which case, ibuki would have been struggling and panicking the entire time mikan was strangling her. not to mention, in a lot of pain. eventually she'd become light-headed enough to pass out, but until then, her throat would literally be getting crushed by a rope.

overall, not a fun way to go out. very long and painful.

official cause of death: asphyxiation.

gundham tanaka: gundham is killed by a stampede of animals.

the most common cause of death in stampedes is asphyxiation; destruction of the thorax or upper body damages... literally everything in that area, most notably the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels/arteries. bones break in there and splinter. you can't breathe. it'd be blinding pain.

not to mention all the rest of the body that gets stepped on. literally all of your bones have the potential to be broken from the force exerted onto them. all of your blood vessels and arteries everywhere else are also going to be crushed and burst. your nerves? absolutely destroyed.

ultimately, gundham gets thrown in the air, lands (which probably hurt even more, and potentially damaged his back in some way), and has one final breath to smile at his hamsters before he dies.

the fact that he's able to smile before he actually dies is literally crazy, because this would be an insanely painful death. i mean- just imagine breaking all of your bones and not being able to breathe. you probably don't even wanna picture it.

official cause of death: hard to pinpoint exactly, but likely traumatic asphyxia and irreparable damage to internal structures and organs.

aughhh (painful):

impostor byakuya togami: the impostor dies from getting impaled multiple times in the abdomen by a metal skewer. looking at the monokuma file tells us he was impaled three times in the neck and around 5 times in the lower abdomen.

right off the bat, being impaled directly in the throat would result in a broken windpipe, esophagus, and potentially part of the carotid artery, making it impossible to breathe + causing hemorrhaging. he would literally be choking on his own blood. it also looks like teruteru manages to hit him directly where his subclavian artery would be, and we all know that any sort of hit to an artery is immediately going to cause some pretty huge problems.

on his abdomen, the area where his abdominal aorta would be is also highlighted as having been stabbed multiple times, as well as the area around it. two hits to two major arteries in quick succession... he's probably not going to be alive for longer than a few seconds.

those seconds are going to be excruciatingly painful, but the reason he isn't higher up is because of exactly that- it's a few seconds. all things considered, this is a relatively quick death.

official cause of death: exsanguination.

peko pekoyama: similar to the imposter, peko is stabbed to death. the first stab is to her back; quickly after, she is swarmed by the others, who stab her as well.

i don’t have much to say besides that the initial stab to her back is obviously going to hurt, unless the knife manages to land in her spinal cord, in which case, sensation could be cut off above the point of injury. but that’s just wild conjecture.

obviously, being stabbed to death is going to hurt. being stabbed to death by a swarm of minions? going to hurt even more. fortunately peko would likely not survive long enough to feel every single injury. the chances of her surviving past the first few stabs are low, due to the fact that A) she’s likely to be hit in an artery or vital organ rather early on which will lead to a faster death, and B) even if she somehow isn’t, blood loss in general is going to cause her to die.

when the body loses too much blood, it goes into a state of shock. without enough blood, nutrients, and oxygen flowing to the vital organs, the body quickly begins to shut down. i’d imagine peko lost blood at a more rapid rate than one usually would due to the sheer amount of stab wounds that would have been on her body, so… peko probably died after less than a minute.

overall… yeah, painful!

official cause of death: hypovolemic shock leading to exsanguination.

nekomaru nidai: nekomaru has a bazooka fired at his abdomen <- absolutely insane sentence??? ok anyway.

so… first of all, there is no shot in hell he’d be surviving that beyond maybe a minute or two. the damage that would cause to countless organs in his abdomen (his stomach, kidneys, intestines, pancreas, to name a few) plus the collateral of shrapnel presumably flying around (hitting his heart and lungs) would immediately be irreparable and fatal. he’d immediately go into shock and then just bleed to death.

you tend to feel far less pain when you go into shock as your brain tries to protect itself from trauma. but i won’t deny that because of nekomaru’s more muscular build, his body would be stronger and healthier and therefore fight harder to keep itself alive. it would probably take longer for these processes to kick into gear and actually spread across the entire body. so what i’m trying to say is- yeah, he’d be in blinding pain for a little, then likely feel numbness, then die.

official cause of death: shock, irreparable damage to abdominal organs.

owie (painful, but not as painful as others):

hiyoko saionji: hiyoko’s throat is slit by mikan. there are a few variables that changed the way i viewed how exactly this killed hiyoko, but the main one was time. mikan would have had to kill hiyoko in a way that would be short and efficient because she had a limited amount of time.

in order to die quickly from a wound like this, the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and/or the trachea would need to be cut. you have one of each of the mentioned on either side of your neck, and your airway is more in the "center" of your neck. (fun fact: the pulse you can feel on either side of your neck is the carotid artery!)

given mikan's anatomical knowledge + the way hiyoko's body looks (she only has blood trailing down off the left side of her neck), i would guess mikan likely cut the carotid artery and jugular vein on the left side of hiyoko's neck. i would guess she also cut hiyoko's airway in some way as well, as doing so would definitely kill hiyoko even faster.

all of the above would cause hiyoko to aspirate (sending blood down her windpipe), choke on her own blood, and begin bleeding profusely. death would occur within a couple of seconds from blood loss and asphyxiation alone.

this would hurt seriously bad. your neck is an incredibly sensitive area of the body. hiyoko would be terrified and in pain the entire time she bleeds to death. which is. so sad. but like i said- luckily, it would probably be over pretty quickly, within a few seconds.

cause of death: hypovolemic shock leading to exsanguination.

uncertain (i'm not sure!):

mikan tsumiki: mikan earns the only entry in the 'uncertain' category, because i was flabbergasted when i watched her execution.

um... being blasted into space... i can't say i'd really know what that might feel like? i can go check for you guys???

the most i can say for this is that mikan would asphyxiate from the lack of oxygen in space. she'd go unconscious within fifteen seconds. within three minutes, she would be dead.

so... official cause of death: brain hypoxia.

*EDIT: so i totally misunderstood mikan’s death. this wonderful person made this post talking about it and i added on with my own thoughts! check that out instead if you wanna hear a better explanation about mikan’s death.

so quick (too fast to really be painful):

chiaki nanami: chiaki is crushed with a tetris cube. she falls into this category because such a death would result in a very brief flash of blinding pain, then nothingness. the mere force exerted from the tetris block to the top of her head might actually kill her before she even has time to register pain in the rest of her body. and if the brain is damaged in such a manner... yeah it's all over.

official cause of death: could be a TBI, could just be having your entire body literally get crushed.

mahiru koizumi: mahiru is struck on the top of the head. her file very specifically clarifies that she dies instantly and did not feel any pain. so how exactly would you painlessly kill someone with one strike to the head?

well, for starters, it would have to be one hell of a swing. it's difficult, but not impossible, to hit someone's brain in a way that would immediately kill them.

think of the brain like a television; if you half-unplug it, the screen may glitch, and it may start cutting out, but it's still displaying whatever show you've put on. that's what happens if you injure your brain, but are otherwise still alive. but if you fully unplug it in one full motion, it just cuts out. black screen. that's what happened to mahiru's brain; it just unplugged.

when peko hit mahiru's brain, she likely damaged some sort of vital structure in a way that caused mahiru to go unconscious, but maybe not die. some sort of brain bleed may have started, which then caused mahiru to actually die, as her skull would swell and stop being able to function.

this makes more sense to me. like, i know monokuma says it's "instant," but... i really think mahiru was just unconscious, and then maybe a few seconds to a minute later, she was actually dead.

either way- official cause of death: TBI.

teruteru hanamura: teruteru gets put into a volcano full of lava <- once again absolutely insane sentence??? help? anyway.

you might be wondering why the hell he's in 'so quick,' but it's because he'd be dead in seconds. lava penetrates your skin, starts boiling you alive, swells your airway shut, etc. it's over in seconds dude. even if it weren't, he'd pass out from the shock within seconds at the very least. he may have felt a flash of blinding pain for a moment before darkness, but. that's that.

official cause of death: immolation.

...and that's it!

if you for god knows what reason read all this, thank you so much! anatomy is truly a passion of mine.

questions, comments, concerns (of which i'm sure there are many)- i'm an open book. i'm not a professional by any means, but i am insane. bye!

[studentbyday]

my 🧠 feels like ✨cHaOs✨ and so this post will be ✨cHaOs✨

I went to the biochem Q&A sesh today

and OMG DID I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS I DID NOT EXPECT TO HAVE THAT MANY but I'm glad I attended, else it would've taken longer to get a response but now I have to revise (and by that I mean cut) a LOT from my paper and re-think how I'm doing it, if I'm doing it right or veering off topic (bc one thing when you're researching a disease new to you is that there's sm info out there and you're like 🙌🏻 EVERYTHING IS RELEVANT 🙌🏻 but no- only the biochem-related aspects of the disease are relevant for this assignment). idk how off-topic i actually am or if i'm pretty on the mark, but ngghhh tHe FiRsT dRaFt Is DuE On TuEsDaY *frantically waves arms, noodle-like* 🙌🏻 that doesn't feel like a lot of time to write the whole thing in all the detail i want so i can get useful feedback 😫

catching up on psyc notes (total ch finished this week: 2/5)

idk why but pomodoro and perky jazz music is the only thing keeping me focused for this.

fixing biochem paper

i read somewhere on here about having a document of your cuts in case you need it again later. useful advice, that. 👏🏻 also, i think what i should do first is make notes in a separate doc and THEN decide what to do with all that info...it might sound like it'll take longer but it's more efficient than writing a whole bunch and then realizing half of it is info you don't need. my stupid panicky brain couldn't realize that in the beginning (even tho that's what it had done b4 for other "essay-like" assignments) and was either stuck in analysis paralysis or just editing and re-editing, but better now than later (i haven't written THAT much beyond the intro anyway 😅)...

in other news, i got enough sleep for once bc i went to bed super early and ACTUALLY FELL ASLEEP BEFORE 12AM LIKE WHAT IS THIS MADNESS (ig i finally tired myself out enough these past few days 🤷🏻‍♀️) and despite waking up multiple times throughout the night bc i'm not used to the schedule, i am well-rested 😌 and my back is still being annoying but at least it's a little better than yesterday + i get to study while cozy in bed 🥰

[adobodemon]

New Years Resolution Manifestation Rant Listicles

and yes I'll put it under Read More for all of our sakes. Happy New Year 2014 everbody!!

Prelude: Who I want to be

lemme be real for a sec. I am going to be turning a serious age this year. rhymes with flirty. I have had time to get grown but now it's time to get wise! It's time for me to get behind the wheel of my life again. I felt like I was behind it 4 years ago but We All Know What Happened. It Is Happening To All Us. Coming back home to my parents stunted my growth a little and also I feel it erode at my current friendships. I feel like I'm doing a good job of improving myself, but this year I need to improve my relationship to others. So yeah in short, less autopilot, more hangouts with friends, less overwork, more hobbies...

How will I go from Consoomer and Doomer to Improover and Dooer?

1. Be more consistent with what I want to practice - that goes for working out, digital art, other hobbies I may want to pick up... saw a Tiktok once saying that we need to pick up slow activities again bc clearly, the need to be instantly gratified has poisoned almost every aspect of our lives. InstaGrat also helps us be in autopilot a lot easier, we can't think, we can't breathe, we can't taste our food before swallowing it down. this year I'm going to change that by planting a lot of seeds that I may not see bloom for weeks, months, years even!

2. Approach people with curiosity - not the best communicator as I've said many different times on this blog. I always catch myself trying to make the conversation about myself and how I can relate to it instead of asking the other person more about themselves or what they think. I've seen enough thinkpieces on other sites recommend this that I might as well try it for myself and see how it works out.

3. Get off my damn phone - already made steps towards this! Tiktok and IG are gone from my phone, whenever I go into a huge timesink like Tumblr (sorry) or Discord I set it up so I get an annoying pop-up telling me all the other things I could be doing! (I will share this Shortcut w anyone who needs it, iPhone exclusive tho sorry)

4. Appreciate all the stuff I have - while I am nowhere need as bad as my mom who needs to go to Burlington and buy 3 whatchamacallits or else she has a nervous Boomer breakdown, I do admit I own and have access to a lot of things I take for granted, like books, games, tools like my iPad, PC, etc. I will fight against analysis paralysis, I will squeeze the life out of all that I own, I won't spend another day bored inside my head if I don't have to.

5. Collect. Organize. Do. - one of my oomfs indirectly changed my Youtube algorithm for the good and I've been getting a lot of videos from Improovtube. skimmed through a video that suggested a neat system for getting things done: Collect your thoughts and desires. Organize your tasks. Do the things that make it happen. and just like that every self improvement book I've read is useless. lol no but really it's crazy that that's all it boils down to. I will investigate more on this system but for now this seems like a good modus operandi.

Epilogue: Specific non-specific goals

Completing my year long art practice regimen

Reading more of my physical books and manga (and I get to see their spines when I finish :D)

Bigger boobs

Becoming a homeowner

Homoeroticism

Going to at least 5 group activities and meeting new people there

[windvexer]

Get started w/ witchcraft

(inspired by yesterday's discourse)

1. What interests you about witchcraft? Make a list if you want. Consider topics like magic, spirits, nature veneration, gods, divination/fortune telling, community, and a deeper understanding of our own universe.

2. What are your boundaries when it comes to witchcraft? what are you NOT interested in? A lot of times, this includes deity worship/relationships and spirit interactions. Whatever your list of boundaries is, if you write them down, put a big circle around it, then a lil smiley face, then the word "good!" next to them.

3. Very broadly speaking we can divide all witchcraft into 2 activities: research and doing. Now if we zoom in a little bit (once again broad strokes here) we can divide 'research' into information gathering and integration/reflection. Further, we can divide 'doing' into doing things and being ways.

info gathering: read the book integration/reflection: do I agree with the book? how does it fit in with my beliefs? doing things: exercise to improve psychic powers being ways: being psychic & evolving worldview to account for the new way you are

You can info-gather without reflection, and vice-versa. You can be ways (I'd hazard all of us are being ways right at this very moment) without taking specific magical actions. You can take specific magical actions that aren't meant to change the ways you are being in the world.

Yes?

Ye.

Think about it, and decide how much of your 'witchcraft time' you would ideally devote to each category, % wise, like a pie chart. Maybe right now you want to do 95% info gathering, 5% reflection, and that's all. Maybe tbh you want to do 70% doing things, 20% info gathering, and 10% reflection.

There's no wrong answers and you're not dedicating yourself to anything. Its just a tool, mostly to help you not get sidetracked or feel pressured into doing practices you aren't into right now.

4. Choose things and get started. If you're into research rn, try any 101/beginner book in the topic you're interested in, or any book that appeals to you. building knowledge about witchcraft isn't a jigsaw puzzle where everything slots perfectly together so you want to make sure you start with the corner pieces. it's more like a chaos salad. get going with any ingredient, and enjoy more complex and nuanced flavors as time goes on.

If you're into card-reading or spellcasting, or energy work, or chilling w/ gods and spirits, get to it :D Honestly just start.

5. If you're ever feeling stuck, in a rut, lost, etc., examine your interests, boundaries, and your ideal time pie chart. Have you been doing too much research and giving yourself analysis paralysis? cast a wee spell! Feeling weird and exhausted but also wired all the time? stop casting spells, sit thee down and read a book.

6. If you're really worried that some bad stuff might happen unless you pay your 'beginner dues' studying & practicing magic you don't necessarily want/need (except in that something bad might happen if you don't), this next part is for you:

You don't need to be an adept in protection magic before doing anything else. Are you already under spiritual attack? Then sure, why not start there. But if not, you're good. If you're really worried, a single house ward or personal ward will suffice.

You for sure don't need to hang out with gods to be a witch. No worries there. Don't need spirits either.

Do not make oaths, and don't initiate into anything :) Initiations and dedications are often considered to be an advanced step, NOT an initial/introductory step.

Nobody needs to gift you a tarot deck.

Think about things you'd like in your life, pick spells for that. Or, scroll through spells until you see one that catches your fancy.

There's a lot of witchcraft out there. There's no reason to compel yourself to do something you have baggage about or that makes you feel nervous. Ouija isn't evil but if it gives you bad vibes, why bother?

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? 

[andotherbiases]

Titans at the dawn of the world

Fandom: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay Pairing: Ko Moon-Young/Moon Kang-tae Rating: Teen? (The whole thing takes place in a bed) Warnings: N/A Summary: Kang-tae and Moon-young the morning after the events of episode 6 (minor spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet).  Notes: I haven’t written anything in years and this hasn’t even been beta’d, oops. More of a character/relationship analysis than plot-y.

It comes to him all at once. 

The whisper of a breeze upon his cheek. The scent of damp trees long forgotten. Clear melodies of early bird songs, and, somewhere in the distance, waves lap at the shore with the rising promise of a spring day. 

He greets the morning with a sigh. Limbs stretching as his eyes open and blink once, twice, and land on the balcony, its doors thrown open to the world beyond.

To the world anew. 

It is early yet, and he has beaten the sun to these hazy skies of soft blues and dusty pinks and smokey purples. And there, in the inky shadows he sees her face, at once angelic and soft, but her eyes are clear and daring as she stares at him and gives away nothing else.

Except for her hands, of course.

He can feel them still, her palms pressed against his chest as her fingers grabbed and gripped at him throughout the night, never loosening or lessening even as her sobs subsided and her breath grew deep and long. 

Even now, with her eyes upon him, waiting, expectant of something that he doesn’t know, can’t begin to understand, her fingers are still twisted in his shirt. And that is when he registers her cold toes against his calves, his arm around her shoulder. Her small her body tucked into his side as they lay in her bed. 

Her body feels like a contradiction, really. When he sees her outside of this place, she’s all sharp edges and words, full of bluster and impulse and the sheer confidence of an imposing, unfathomable figure. She takes up space unapologetically and moves about the world like it belongs to her, like it owes her something, and she takes from it with the assuredness of someone who knows that this is true. 

It makes her seem like a titan, colossal in all the ways that matter and unbound by laws, by convention, by expectation. 

And yet, here in his arms, she feels small and fragile and delicate. In her bed, her body is all soft curves and warmth. 

He hadn’t intended to stay the night. Had tried to tuck Moon-young back into bed, but every time Kang-tae tried to extract himself from her grip, she would frown and tighten her hold. In truth, he hated seeing the distressed look upon her face, the deep line that formed between her brows that he knew she had not meant to let him see. 

Perhaps it was that secret expression that made him stay. Maybe it was his own fatigue, or perhaps even his own desire to care and comfort her that eventually had him settling them down in her sheets, his arm secured around her. 

Moon-young doesn’t need him to save her, he knows this well. But, undeniably, there is something about her that draws him in. When he was younger it was easy to dismiss his attraction as gratitude, as the flush of a first love. Now, however, it is harder to put into words what exists between them. History? Trauma? Regardless, he always comes back to her, is always returning to her, even when he knows he should walk away. 

But now, feeling the weight of her gaze upon him, he wonders if it wasn’t a mistake to stay. If he had chosen wrong. He knew that the night had cost her something. Kang-tae witnessing her nightmare and sleep paralysis was deeply intimate and private. Worse, it wasn’t something freely given. 

He wonders if he should apologize. If his presence is unwelcome, an intrusion, even. Is she mortified to find him there? Does she even remember the events of the previous night? While he has grown accustomed to the feeling of her eyes on him, for the first time, he is unable to hold her gaze. Kang-tae moves to disentangle himself, an apology forming on his lips when he notices, rather, feels, the slight shiver run down her back. The words shift and re-form in his mouth, concern for her well-being once again coming before all else. It is a feeling he understands and one he latches onto. 

“How are you feeling? Are you alright?” He couldn’t hide his worry even if he tried. 

He didn’t try.

Beyond her shoulder, dawn is breaking on the horizon, casting golden hues upon her face as she blinks up at him. 

Kang-tae has never once doubted the fact that Moon-young was beautiful. Even when he didn’t want to admit his past connection to her, when he could barely acknowledge her presence in his current life, he always knew she was pretty. But like this, bathed in the light of a new sun, honest and vulnerable--like this, Moon-young is breathtaking.

“You’re still here,” she says with that voice of hers, deeper still at this early hour. “You didn’t run away.” 

There’s a question there. Hidden and difficult to tease out given their history and their present and all the things they don’t say or only say in half truths. Even still, Kang-tae understands.

“No,” he replies. It is a single word, but it feels heavy on his tongue. It hangs thick in the air between them. 

But then Moon-young nods, accepting what he’s said and what he means, and finally releases the white-knuckle grip she has on him. She busies herself smoothing down the wrinkles in his shirt. She doesn’t move out of his arms and he doesn’t pull away.

“My mother appears in my dreams,” she states, peering up at him as if a little unsure. Kang-tae understands that too. This is new territory for both of them. He holds his breath, and listens when she continues.

What Kang-tae doesn’t know yet are the words for what has him staying there with her, or even what it is in him that feels so alive when he’s with her, but in the soft light of dawn, he thinks that he wants to be brave enough to find out. 

[painted-crow]

Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 2

On what it’s like when I burn Bird secondary

Usually, when I burn either Bird secondary or Badger secondary model, they’re down for weeks or months at a time. I know they’ll come back, which isn’t always true of burned Houses in general but that’s just how mine work. Right now Bird is having a minor upset and it’s been out for a few weeks; it was about to come back when life stress happened and smacked it down again. This time I can predict that it’ll be back in maybe two weeks when everything’s settled down, but usually it’s not that tidy—I don’t always know why it’s having problems or what to do to get it to recover. Usually I just wait it out.

The burned state looks different for Bird vs Badger, of course. I’m probably going to struggle with writing the Badger side, either because I’ve forgotten the details of what it looks/feels like or because it’s actually simpler. I lean towards the “I’ve forgotten” angle. My memory is very bad during depressive periods. (You’d think this would leave my brain goblins fewer cringey memories with which to taunt me at 4am, but no.)

But that doesn’t matter right now because today we’re talking about Bird.

Tipoffs I’ve burned Bird

Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’ve burned one of your Houses. It doesn’t always have a clear start or end, and you might not notice the gradual slipping into exhaustion and lack of confidence in your House. Here are some things I catch myself doing or thinking when my Bird peaces out on me.

I start thinking I’m not good at things I’ve spent years studying.

I get a panicky feeling of resistance when I think about working on projects that wouldn’t normally give me problems.

I struggle with self-doubt about my ability to learn new skills.

This one’s complicated: the society I live in holds Bird up as the way it thinks intelligence should look. So, in burned-Bird!Paint’s mind, that makes it arrogant to assume that you're better at using Bird than others, because it suggests you think you're smarter (and thus better, because society says that too) than them. Therefore, if I’ve learned how to do something, my impulse is to assume that anyone could. Anything I’ve already learned is obviously easy, because I learned it, and so it isn’t rare or valuable.

Weird analysis paralysis cocktail: I feel perpetually unprepared to do stuff and too afraid to move forward, but I’ve also internalized the “you’re never going to feel ready so just start now” advice—which is supposed to spur you into action and probably works if you’re a Lion, but it just gives me something else to beat myself up about.

Sometimes Bird secondary starts feeling more like a toy than a tool that can actually be effective. If that's happening, using it feels kind of self-indulgent and not terribly useful--it seems good for entertainment, but not for anything else.

That last one is really fricking weird and it took me months to figure out what it was and put it into words. It’s obviously flawed—it’s circular logic sitting on top of societal prejudice—but when you’re depressed, the kind of clarity you need to verbalize and pick apart something that complicated is often nowhere to be found, especially when your perception in general is skewed due self-hatred.

I can’t do that “just start now” thing Lions do—it terrifies me. But that’s fine. Other people don’t casually pick up new skills or binge-read nonfiction or hoard resources like I do—maybe that’s intimidating to them—and that’s fine. Both approaches are useful and powerful, objectively, and philosophically I “should” be okay with owning my abilities. That’s harder than it looks on paper, though.

There’s one more.

The value of skills is subjective, circumstantial, and easy to underestimate.

I’m a jack-of-all-trades style Bird. Lots of things interest me. But every time you decide to invest in a new skill rather than continuing with an old one, you sort of start over. Not completely; some skills transfer and there’s a lot of value in having a range of knowledge, especially in terms of creativity.

Still, though: you enter each new field as a total noob, you stay long enough to become a kinda competent noob, and then when you’ve learned what you want and maybe built the thing you wanted to build, you leave. Rinse and repeat. Usually you don’t stay long enough to become super-skilled, and people in your community don’t specifically ask you for help.

…Until they need something other than the thing they specialize in, and you happen to know it. Suddenly you’re the expert in the room. You know how to get the project started. You know where to research, who to ask about advanced topics, what all the search keywords are, and where to find the supplies. Suddenly you're valuable, and maybe you're not used to feeling valuable. It can be kind of a jarring experience.

It's especially jarring when someone you know needs something and you're like, "oh I can take care of that, I spent six months studying how to do it and I have the resources already" and the other person gives you a look of deep skepticism and you try to convince them that no, really, it's not a big deal, you can have that done in a weekend or two if they give you the right information and... they don't believe you can do it, you guess. It's easy to misinterpret a "this sounds too good to be true" reaction for "I don't believe YOU can do it.”

My old draft had a note about how I should build myself a portfolio site to demonstrate stuff like this (except that my tastes develop faster than my actual skills in most fields, so I tend to dislike my own work and don't want to display it). But actually I’m wondering now if Badger secondary isn’t part of the problem. Sometimes I just volunteer to do stuff for people I only kinda know, without naming a motive or a price tag, and seen through that lens it’s hard to blame them for feeling awkward or skeptical about accepting. It’s not a big deal to you, but it is to them—too big to be just a favor. And then the people who do accept freely given help tend to take advantage of you… I guess I need to cultivate more Courtier Badger if I want to give my Bookkeeper Badger model stuff to do.

(Bonus bullet point: “I don’t know if I can really say my House is burned... it’s just not totally there right now? The stuff I’m dealing with isn’t THAT bad” is another tell that you’re burned. I’ve had to stop myself from writing that sort of thing several times over the course of this post. I’ll let myself bring it up for the opposite reason, though: if you’re thinking this, you may be underestimating the damage because you’ve forgotten what you’re like healthy. This goes for mental illness in general too. Don’t undermine your own experience.)

What I do instead

I’ve learned to be flexible and work around times when my Bird isn’t at 100%.

For example, this is why I have three novel projects running at once, with varying levels of complexity. The least complex of the three is new—I started it back in February, and working on that one instead of the others has let me stay productive and continue using Bird without pushing it past its limits. Plus it lets me keep making art, which as I’ve mentioned, is important to my general wellbeing.

If I’m able to section off my work like this and focus on the things I can do, and selectively procrastinate the ones I can’t (that aren’t super urgent), I’m usually fine—as long as I stay on top of my mental health enough for things to swing back around so I can catch up. It’s very, very difficult to recover if your needs aren’t being met.

I can be kind of a productive powerhouse when I can get my brain to actually process dopamine correctly (thanks, medication!) so if I can manage to work on something useful, I don’t always have to be too picky about what it is. That also means that if I can’t work on the things I’d normally use Bird to do (whether it’s burned or I’m just worn out), it’s a good excuse to catch up on more menial things like paperwork and laundry and whatnot. If I’ve let those pile up, dealing with them will improve my environment and my mental health and get Bird to recover faster.

What I shouldn’t do is continue to press on with my normal work, if I can avoid it. There have been times when people needed me to deliver the creative or technological thing I was using Bird to work on before it burned, and I had to push through and get it to them anyway, and it’s not a good situation for me.

*cue flashbacks to the three or four times that’s happened for months on end, dissociates for 10 minutes*

ugh okay brain can you not do that right now? trying to write a post here

Where was I? Oh, right. I was making a point.

Take the pressure off your burned House if you can.

I think when you burn one of your Houses, it's injured and you're actually worse at using it than people who just don't have it as one of their Houses. Say you're a bowling champion but your dominant wrist is broken. You can choose not to play at all until you recover, or you can try to play with your other hand but you're probably going to be worse at it than a lot of casual players, and that feels really bad because being good at this matters to you.

^ copied from the old draft of this post. I was going to write a smooth transition into that point, but it didn’t work and I’m not going to try to rewrite it and get “ERROR 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR” from my brain again.

In any case, this post has been sitting around for a week already and I should probably just publish it now. ^^;

[thisdreamplace]

Hi, what would you (or a general person) think/feel/act like if they were happily employed with a major paycheck?

I'm asking coz i feel blockage when I try to imagine living in the state of this manifestation. Fears of being incompetent at interviews and unable to answer questions properly or rambling crop up when I try to even imagine having that amazing job

Worse, I mean not worse, coz ik circumstances shouldn't matter, thing is idk idek the specifics of the ideal company or ideal job post of my desire

Ik I want eg:

an exorbitant salary (financial independence), even tho I fear I won't be able to negotiate at all (I'm not exactly a bargainer)

a role of responsibility where i can learn from the higher ups while inspiring those below, with a level of autonomy

Work that's not tedious or repetitive

So on and so forth

Even tho I don't have much job xp (again, Im prolly invalidating myself here, coz the fact is, I've come to realise even if I win a Nobel Prize, I'll keep feeling I haven't done 'enough'), I do have amazing, hard-as-hell-to-get qualifications (and again... I feel I'm not enough like wth whyyy? ;_; I've met so many people who've got half of these qualifications yet they're more confident and can actually flaunt that while I feel, not like an imposter, but ig worthless when compared)

The worst is Ive always freaking felt it in my bones I'm worthy of a higher role than my current self can achieve (by current self I'm referring to the fact that I do have issues eg nightmare interviews in the past hovering over me, beliefs of being incompetent or unqualified or being unable to answer difficult questions (since I was a child, I've been told, disparagingly alas, that I'm only 'book smart' and could only ace studies by 'rote learning', which is untrue. In fact thanks to that, I actually developed a memory issue whereby I'm unable to memorize stuff easily (btw one of my secrets to academic success has been understanding concepts, mind mapping it all mentally, having a solid grip over foundations etc. Ok I digressed) anyhow, I really do feel unprepared to answer questions (in fact one of my fears is being asked an intrusive question (like hey, why are you eg so pimply? (Btw I'm not, this is just an example) in front of everyone and being at the center of attention in that way 😱) so yeah, I hope you can sense the myriad of beliefs holding me back (and sometimes I feel nauseated to even think of 'facing' these beliefs or fears. Like, it's as I wrote to u rn that I realised I fear looking incompetent, except this case is so severe coz I feel like it's worthless if it's not done perfectly (or as near perfect))

So how do I manifest here? Hell, my mind starts hurting if I assert: okay, let's at least prepare, no, at least LOOK at a job interview question

Ik the Law says I can assume anything and that'll work. So how do I assume I'm, y'know, a confident gal who does not have the aforementioned state of mind? Or how do I defuse the root issues linked to childhood/past stuff? Or better yet, what state should I focus on assuming/taking on? I have no idea how to start. And thanks to analysis paralysis (it took me years to acknowledge this even) I'll end up prolly doing nothing then another month will pass by with me doing nothing and then I'll type another frenzied ask

PS: yep, Im aware of the self concept topic, but I hope u can shed some light on this specific matter at hand, kinda customized?

Ty

😰

So to begin with, scratch everything and literally focus on your self-esteem and your concept of self. No, you don't need a good self esteem to manifest, but I'm really passed pretending like it should be optional. Every one of us deserves to feel good about ourselves, for ourselves. And you're holding yourself back so much by not allowing yourself to feel good about who you are. I mean, you list how accomplished you are and yet it's still not good enough for you?

It's confusing because if you felt in your bones you were worthy of something better, how can you sit there and but yourself down so easily? Your reality is giving you what you actually feel worthy of. And it's not what you desire.

You're the only one holding yourself in this story. You know the law says everything is happening now, meaning all desired experiences and versions of yourself are available to you now. You tap into them by using your imagination and dwelling there. So, stop sticking yourself to this story that doesn't help you. You feel unprepared because you keep saying so. You keep replaying this memory of things going badly, when in reality there's not even a past. You're the one keeping it alive by being so consumed by it and thinking it's so real. But see, the past only exists in your mind. It doesn't exist elsewhere. And just like with everything else in our mind, we have the power to decide what is and is not so.

Plus, the comparison game has got to come to an end. Everyone is you pushed out anyway. A win for one person, is a win for all. Who are you comparing yourself to, besides a reflection in the mirror? There's no point. The more you let go of the old way of thinking and allow yourself to remember more and more who you truly are, the easier it'll be to let go of wanting to compare yourself all the time. It's literally your reality. It's your world and everyone else is just living in it. Seriously. You're literally at the center of your world. You're at the heart of it all, there is no one else but self.

Self concept isn't something to push to the side. I notice a lot of people know about it and then go, "ehh but what else is there?" Like, I did the same thing. And that's why my journey was full of detours when I could have just went straight to my destination.

How do you do this? Well, you do have some idea of who you want to be. I mean, I'm guessing you want to be the opposite of every undesirable trait/experience you mentioned? So therefore, (if you want to write it down, please do), you need to decide the mindset you want to focus on manifesting within yourself. Let the outer world be for a bit, it's time to focus on you and only you. Here's an article that gives an example of how to get clear on the version of you that you want to embody.

And then once you get clear on that, really, the only task you have is to wake up everyday and thrive to focus on keeping that mindset. Sure you might slip up, sure some days you may not do well keeping it at all, but it doesn't matter. You keep persisting and it gets easier and becomes your new normal.

You see, I like how Dylan James says manifesting is not a trying process because it makes sense. For example, you didn't try to end up with the experiences you have surrounding career right now. However, you manifested it due to your concept of self. Change your conception of self and without trying, that perfect career you desire will find you. It can be that simple. But we have to allow it to be. Plus, you really only need to focus on yourself. You don't need to have a list that consists of your must-haves in a job, or anything. (Unless you truly like to make lists like that.) Because the truth is, our desires are from God. Therefore, we never need to worry about telling our Godself what we want. Our Godself already knows. So if you are unclear, you can trust you'll be lead exactly where you want to go. Being specific or being general makes no difference and it's okay to approach manifesting with either one. You'll always come out successful no matter what. But the change begins within. There is no one to change but self.

Hopefully this is helpful! You got this! 💖

[idiot-extraordinaire]

Rest easy, Naya

I don’t know how I feel. I think I just needed to write this to process everything I’ve been feeling these last couple of days. 

I think it’s a mix of grief, shock, pain, sadness, heartbreak and yet the feeling of some sort of closure.

I still can’t believe it.

I’ve been going through a rollercoaster of emotions over the last year, stuck in analysis-paralysis about decisions I felt I had to make about my future, my job, what the next 10 or 20 years of my life were going to look like. I didn’t pray in that time. While I was going through all of that stuff, I didn’t pray.

I started praying again as soon as I heard about Naya going missing. I kept praying for her to be ok, for her to be safe, for her to come home to her little boy. Every succeeding day, it felt like I was praying for more and more of a miracle, but I held out hope. Sometimes it felt like denial. Fortunately, my fandom life and my social media (IG only, don’t use twitter) are kept quite separate, so while posts did occasionally come up in my explore page, I didn’t have to face them too much. I deleted the tumblr app off my phone because I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to lose hope, I still wanted her to come home. My only updates came from the Brittana discord.  

When I woke up this morning, I went on discord and read the news and it felt like my chest was collapsing. The more I read, the more I felt tears in my eyes and before I knew it, I kept crying. I’d manage to pull it together and then I would read another tribute from one of the cast and I would start again.

The only person I’ve really lost in my life was my grandfather. He passed when I was 14 and I remember getting the news and feeling stunned. I didn’t cry at first, I think I was too stunned and I didn’t know how to process it. I still don’t know how to process what’s happening now. He was 80 and he enjoyed a good smoke from time to time, but his death was still sudden. I had never lost anyone before. I didn’t cry until the day of the funeral, a week after he died. I don’t know if it was the sad music the funeral parlour was piping into the room as the mass was happening or watching my cousins and brother start to break when they gave their tributes, but I finally started crying and I couldn’t stop.

Honestly, right now my chest still feels heavy. I think the hope that Naya would be found alive, stopped me from breaking, stopped me from crying because I was praying that when all was said and done, there would only be tears of relief. But here we are.

I found Glee very late into its run, so I never really went through mourning Cory like many of those in the fandom. In fact, I had never fully understood the grief people felt at the passing of a celebrity. And if this is what it feels like ---FUCK--- it hurts. I don’t think I understood how much Naya meant to me until I got that heavy feeling in my chest when she was confirmed missing.

I found Glee late, but when I fell in love with Brittana, I fell fast and I fell really hard. Then I fell down the fanfiction rabbit hole and man-oh-man. If I thought I couldn’t fall harder for those cheerleaders and the wonderful women that played them I was wrong.

I think it’s really impacted me because Naya showed me that it’s ok to be unapologetically yourself, because the people who matter will love you anyway. It’s better to be hated being yourself than liked being someone else. It’s something I’m still learning to do. Naya was there as I grew into adulthood, through college and moves and new jobs and life choices and angst, I had her songs, her scenes, her interviews, her podcast appearances and through social media. I had the wonderfully crafted stories made by authors who loved her and her character, just as much as I did. I found the community who loved her just as much as I did. People found each other because of her. She gave us so much and I’ll never not be grateful.

I still keep on crying on and off and I imagine it might be that way for a few days. I haven’t listened to any of her songs or watch any of her scenes, but I hope I’ll be able to again. Her version of “If I Die Young” was playing in my head over the last couple of days, a weird and heartbreaking feeling because it wasn’t one of her songs that I would often listen to. I am hopeful, though, in my belief that as long as there are shippers and fandom, Naya’s legacy and her work will live on. I know a few years from now, some unsuspecting kid will stumble across her cover of “Valerie” or “Songbird” and fall down the rabbit hole as many of us once did.

I’d always wanted to create for the fandom, but time, life, work, angst, and a variety of things would get in the way. I still want to. I don’t know if it will help heal or it might take some time to get there, but I want to create to help keep her work alive. As I’ve learned, art can have a huge impact on your life that you don’t even realize.

Naya died so suddenly and tragically young, I think everyone is still reeling from it. This shouldn’t have happened. I think about a minor change in the timeline making everything different. Making it so that we are not all here mourning the loss of this young, beautiful, talented and loving woman who had so much more life to live.

I send my thoughts and prayers to her family, her son, her friends and all those who loved her. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for them. She died saving her son, she was a hero. She loved Josey so dearly and I hope that those around him will make sure he grows up knowing how much she loved him and feeling that love. With all the tributes coming out, you can tell what a kind, beautiful soul she had, how wonderful she was and what a loss this has been. She left this earth a better place than she found it. I hope her family and friends find peace and closure.

She’s up there goofing off and laughing with Cory, now. I’m sure he’s looking after her.

Thank you for everything, Naya. Rest easy. We love you. We miss you.

Be kind to yourselves and each other, everyone.

P.S. Kong-Kong, if you see Naya up there, let her know how much she means to me and how much we all miss her.

[the-pisciest]

VIRGO MERCURY “The Mercury Virgo thinker likes to tinker and has a knack for solving practical problems. She's prone to worry, though, and analysis paralysis. Virgo is considered a mercurial sign, and those with this placement have gifts of communication. The thinking processes are concise and have a sense of order built-in. If this is your Mercury, you're apt to be a wordsmith, someone that builds up language carefully. This orderly mind frame translates to a high level of competence in whatever field of work you engage in.You like to approach new situations in a detached way, and coming to your own conclusion after you've collected all the facts. This makes you a cool head in a crisis.You're able to be matter-of-fact when others lose their clarity in emotions or passions. You express your views in a modest way and don't usually need others to validate your perspective. The Virgo mentality is self-contained and whole unto itself, which makes you a clear voice that grasps the essentials.” Churchyard by AURORA “Words pointy like arrows Wounds no one can see He closed all the windows As his anger broke free I will not remember You as somebody nice Please will you remember me And cry?” Kathy’s Song cover by Secret Sisters “And the song I was writing was left undone I don't know why I spend my time Writing songs I can't believe With words that tear and strain your mind And so you see I've come to doubt All that I once held as true I stand alone without beliefs The only truth I know is you.” One by Sleeping at Last “Hold on for a minute 'Cause I believe that we can fix this over time That every imperfection is a lie Or at least an interruption Now hold on, let me finish No, I'm not saying perfect exists in this life But we'll only know for certain if we try.” If we Were Vampires by Jason Isabel “The fragile heart you protected for so long Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong It's not your hands searching slow in the dark Or your nails leaving love's watermark It's not the way you talk me off the roof Your questions like directions to the truth.” Like Everybody Else by Lennon Stella “Been drilled in my head forever Be better Turns out I’m just like everybody else Don’t even go near a mirror It’ll kill ya Trust me you don’t wanna see yourself.” Smaller by Haley Gene Penner  “It’s a tired fascination with everything I’m not and wasted nights wondering  trying to figure out oh, maybe if I’m quiet maybe if I’m light maybe i’ll be something someone you would like.”

Monster by Lola Kirke “What if nothing's wrong What if it was all just a song Waves break when they want to Guess I should take a cue from some.” Cigarettes and loneliness by Chet Faker “I'm walking through each smile Everything is over turned See everything that dies It takes a small piece to rust Well now the stones been thrown The trust is dust.” The Wire by HAIM “Always keep your heart locked tight, Don't let your mind retire, oh But I just couldn't take it, I tried hard not to fake it But I fumbled it when I came down to the wire.” Bird Song by Florence and the Machine “Well I didn't tell anyone, but a bird flew by Saw what I'd done he set up a nest outside, And he sang about what I'd become He sang so loud, sang so clear I was afraid all the neighbours would hear, So I invited him in, just to reason with him I promised I wouldn't do it again.”

[xsoldier]

Neural Repository: Consciousness Stream on Self Pain

You always see the faves of the depressed people who've killed themselves, and they're smiling and happy. That's likely because tendencies of hyperaltruistic behaviour get exacerbated when there's an extreme lack of dopamine. People become disproportionately more likely to take more harm upon themselves than inflict it upon others. But they're not always that way. Some people are just genuinely cheerful and love putting out happiness into the world.

I know I was.

What most of you don't know is that it's the one year anniversary of the first time in my life that I can remember deeply and wholly wanting with my entire being to not exist. To be done & gone. To will myself into nothingness. To disconnect my conscious self, and just let my body be a stand-in until I could return. To freeze myself in stasis and come back to life later. Or just die since none of those other things are actually options. It wasn't for months still that I'd actually experience the helplessness that lead me to knowing exactly how I'd terminate my life, or experience the emotional roulette rollercoaster of not doing so (about 6 separate times now) purely through the luck of circumstance of brain chemistry in the moment.

Suicide is very much a crime of passion against self. Opting out, and unsubscribing from the flow of the every day that you just can't handle anymore. It's harder when you've very carefully thought through everything and still come to the same answer. I wasn't surprised when Dana killed herself. She was about the only human whose absolute desperation and inability to escape the moments of self were like a reflection of my every day. She dealt with depression and I didn't, and I learned a lot from her. I was so annoyed when she died, because it filled me with an imperative purpose that I had to fill, and it meant that that option wasn't available for me. I talked everyone through it that I could, I spoke about her death, and I never even received a farewell or details about why. The reason that I always spoke so definitively despite that is that just about my only skillset is recognizing patterns of human emotion, and it was like staring in a mirror.

I've probably aged a decade in the last year. You can be around people all the time, but that doesn't overcome the pervasive sense of exclusion and loneliness that becomes all-consuming from where we need it most. We work long hours, because taking time off makes things worse, as the only sense of belonging and purpose is the small refreshing breath of being useful when you're drowning in an ocean of complete despair. Drowning people don't LOOK like they're drowning. They don't yell, or splash, or cry out for help. They just struggle a little differently, and then sink.

I don't remember what happiness is. That's not to say that I haven't BEEN happy and had wonderful experiences over the last year, it's just that every moment sense, instead of experiencing bad moments, life has become a series of the good moments merely being momentary distractions from the deep and inextricable sensation of the endless chasm of the complete and utter abyssal void that is what remains of me. The deepest, most delicate, sensitive, and vulnerable part of myself was utterly disintegrated and my happiest and most confident self is obliterated as being less than worthless. The start of my descent was the limb-shattering drop to rock bottom, followed my months of clawing through bedrock with shattered fingernails splitting to the bone. The only constant sensation of being buried in the scalding frozen blackness, slowly suffocating within the claustrophobic emptiness of being absolutely abandoned.

I know people cared about me. I know people care about me. None of that even scratched the surface of this place. They were a glowing distraction that faded, just making every moment more and more desperate. It's like sleep paralysis, where even as soon as you know what's happening, and every moment just gets worse. It doesn't matter that you understand it, or that you know what it is and how it works. It gets worse. Loneliness is the health equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes A DAY. Our brain experiences the social pain of abandonment the same way that we process the physical pain of being HIT. You want to escape it and what's worse — you don't want help. You don't want pity. That hyperaltruistic trigger means that even causing someone a fraction of the inconvenience that the every day pain causes you actually makes you feel WORSE not better. You are a constant net negative on literally every. single. interaction. for yourself, but it's smaller when you just let it happen. Once you start talking about it, it ends up echoing like a scream that shreds your vocal chords to pieces in seconds and adrenaline and desperation are literally the only things you have in your veins.

Each day, you recognize yourself less. You end up yearning for the worst days you can remember, because it feels like a comforting familiarity. You don't yearn for good times, because you literally can't remember what they feel like. They're a distraction, not root cause analysis. Anything that isn't digging at the core of the issue is extraneous and worthless, and nothing else consumes your thoughts. It latches on to your basic survival instincts for food & shelter, it encompasses the entirety of your need for social inclusion. The idea of self-growth and healthy focus without meeting those other two things first literally doesn't exist, because your brain is CERTAIN that you are moments from death during every agonizingly hour-long second that you experience that state.

As serotonin drops your general harm aversion for others and self drops at the same rate. It doesn't make a dent in the hyperaltruistic behaviour meant to secure you a tribal in-group to help ensure your survival. Eventually you're a net negative on ANY given scenario, and you don't want to try with another group. You enter a state of apathy and learned helplessness. Every response to attempts at improving elicits a dysfunctional response, so there's no telling what actions or behaviours net a known outcome. The momentary improvements are eclipsed by the shattering insecurities and inability to do anything positive. I'd been sleeping with a weighted blanket for months to prevent the crippling anxiety, and my medication hyper expresses my need to take action on things met with an insurmountable apathy as a roadblock to all basic needs. I start to experience panic attacks to positive stimuli because I'm so used to dysfunctional response that I'm ACTUALLY afraid of feeling good, because the drop I experience afterwards is so far down. Every one of the brightest and most positive moments I've felt has been suffocated, and the darkest moments I've felt were the brightest. My friend murdering herself kept me alive, because it gave me a purpose. My friend who I saw 5 days a week for the last 5 years being DEAD was the moment that made me feel the most hopeful about myself in the last year. Knowing that I feel that makes me feel even worse. I've almost murdered myself 6 times this year — I didn't though. That's just circumstantial luck and brain chemistry because I'm existentially horrified of injury, hospitalization, or being in a mental ward. Deep down, I can't do it without a guarantee that I won't be certain that I'm gone and experience as little pain as possible in doing so… and that just hasn't happened yet.

It's part of why I left America and all of the resources I had behind. It's infinitely harder for me to kill myself here. I knew that the moment that suicidal thoughts were replaced with panic about my extant plans for self termination being derailed in my new surroundings. Again — it's a crime of passion against self. It has a lot to override to put you there, but I felt it was necessary to call out that I've spent a year with this as my constant daily "normal" and being very used to overwhelming thoughts of suicide and being well-beyond the most utter insignificance as my day-to-day, and it was necessary to time-stamp those thoughts.

Don't ever feel bad if you did or didn't reach out to a friend you lost to suicide. It's a very weird beast, and there's no telling how it's going to manifest. If we all had an "off" button on our arms, every person would have used it at some point, and the things that hold us back or let us make one vary greatly from person to person. I don't want to be remembered as someone who was happy to combat and offset all this pain and sadness. I just want people to know that I was that kind of person when I WAS actually full of joy and happiness, too. I used to be really great, and I'm still trying my damnedest to make the world a brighter place inspire of myself, and inspire of the fact that you're not in it anymore either. I miss you @acrid Every fuckin' day. Even when I hate myself. I really try to remember the best of both of us, and put it up on display for everyone to see, because maybe somehow I'll find myself again some day, too.

[rogeramir]

A Code For Authentic Living

I have been trying for many years now to come up with a short summary of all the key principles (the golden principles, as I call them in my journal) I want to have in life in order to live meaningfully and, what I now call, living authentically. This is how it looks currently (and I’m sure I’m going to add to this list and re-blog it very soon):

Remember always: there is only The One. You and others are all images of The One. And you contain The One. The One lives inside everyone of you. Just as The One is called ‘divine’, so is each one of you divine. And you are not separate from one another. You are all one, like the fingers on your hand or like the waves in an ocean or like the leaves on a tree. Don’t focus on the temporary separateness, focus on the eternal oneness. Once you catch a whiff of the fragrance of this eternal oneness, you are on your way to reclaiming your own eternity. You have found yourself. (This is the most critical part of the Code and I deliberately start with the spiritual element. For me, this is the first and the most important element for a life worth living. You can throw away everything else included here and just keep this part and you’ll end up in the same place. Every other element of the Code is derived from this one.)

The ‘others’ are you. It is a myth that you are separate from others. Whoever you meet, you meet yourself. And all of your relationships are with yourself. Help these others without getting attached. Advise them if they need advice and if you are experienced enough to advise. Do not judge them. Do not fear them. Do not compare your life with theirs. In your interactions with others, try to rise above the everyday rules of behaviour that you have been using all your life and just remember the eternal oneness. With practice, patience and perseverance, this remembrance will bring a new kind of relationship and a new kind of love. Judgment and comparison will give way to understanding and compassion. This will happen on its own, without any struggle. A new love will arise, which you will not understand in the beginning. This love will be without any attachments, it will be towards everyone you come across and it will be without any give and take. Once you can see yourself loving everyone without exception and without any attachment at all and loving everyone without needing anything at all, then, for the first time in your life, you have experienced real love as opposed to the commercial love that we all practice which is based on a very well-defined give and take. (This is my conclusion on how to develop spiritual, positive and non-toxic relationships.)

This life is like a short trip and you are already on your way back from the trip, like a wave rising in an ocean and then going back to the ocean. You will rise again as a wave in another life. Observe and understand this process and live accordingly. (From the moment we are born, we are all on our way out. But we forget and we indulge in the ego-based life, which leads to temporary and meaningless pursuits.)

Practice minimal living – all needs, goals and attachments are like chains. Observe these chains in your own life and know that you have the option to free yourself. (The body lives in a world based on money. Money is needed when you are born and, unless you have broken free of the world of money, it will be needed when you die and at all times in between. And human desire is a bottom-less pit. It will never be fulfilled. If you are moneyless or jobless, you desire a nice well-paying job. If you earn in thousands, you want to become a millionaire. If you’re a millionaire, you dream of becoming a billionaire. And so on and so forth. Keep that in mind and watch your desires. Just observing yourself and your changing desires will bring about a change. Slowly, step-by-step, you will become less desiring and more content. Master the art of budgeting and living frugally. And you will notice your stress and anxiety levels going down. The less stress and anxiety you have, the more meditative you are. If you plan to leave the world of money, then plan the departure accordingly. Do not leave unfulfilled any prior obligations. The great Buddha ran away from the royal palace leaving his parents (the King and the Queen) and his wife and kid behind. He came back (as per some traditions) to apologize and tell his family what happened to him. His family eventually understood and forgave him and became his devotees, but the point here is that may be he could have done things differently instead of running away from his responsibilities. Yes, there is always the possibility of analysis paralysis i.e., not taking any action to fulfil your great purpose in life, but that can be avoided too. In any case, the world of money, possessions and attachments cannot be combined with the world of God, meditation and silence. Anyone who chooses the path of God will have to start letting go of all material possessions, tangible or intangible.)

Live truthfully today, not in the future. Whatever you keep for tomorrow will never happen, because there is no tomorrow. Tomorrow is only an excuse to maintain status quo. There is only today, this moment. Have the courage to grab this moment and live your life, as you think it should be, in this moment. If you keep postponing your ideal life to the future then this postponement will become a habit. If you start living your ideal life, then such ideal living will become a habit. In the end so much of what we want to achieve depends on our habits. (Start cutting out all the BS you practice in your relationships and your professional and social lives. And live today the life that you want to live; don’t postpone to future. Take small, decisive steps towards the long term objective.)

Live your life like a well-sharpened pencil and don’t spread yourself thin. Focus on doing what you really need to do or what you feel you are most passionate about. Find and focus on doing what you would do even if you are not paid to do it. That would be the thing that is really worth doing. It is like being with a woman or a man that you fall madly in love with, as compared to being with someone that you maybe like a little bit, or not even that. That is the kind of profession you need. Something that you fall in love with. Not something that you do 9 to 5, five days a week, and dream of getting off work and enjoying the weekend. No, once you find the right profession, then your whole week is a weekend. There is no difference between the week days and the weekend. You enjoy through the whole week. Work becomes play. Once you have found it, focus on it. For the rest of your life, just trim it as much as possible, so that you can give all of your time to your passion. Realize and cut out all the crap that you fill your day with just because you don’t have anything better to do. Find that something that will consume you like a raging fire. That is the one thing you should be doing. It is better to do that one thing very well than to do many things not so well. (I hope to give you at some point in future the name of the author and the book where I read this many years ago and it just got stuck in my mind: ‘live your life like a well-sharpened pencil’. If someone knows, plz forward to me too. Another author, Gary Keller, in his book titled ‘The One Thing’ says the same thing in different words, ‘don’t spread yourself thin’.)

Travel, explore, learn and share your learning. (That’s my agenda for the remaining life. One day I might find the place where I’d like to stay till the end of this present journey of life. Or I might find that all places are the same and that the differences are only in my mind.)

[beverlyfdole]

21 Quotes to Help You to Stop Overthinking (+ My 5 Favorite Tips)

One of the most common things that gets people stuck in inaction and in not doing what they deep down would like to is the destructive habit of overthinking.

You can overthink a small problem or challenge until it looks like a huge and undefeatable monster.

Or overthink something positive in your life until it doesn’t look so positive anymore.

And sometimes you may even be zapping a simple moment happening here right now out of all it’s joy and magic by overanalyzing and dissecting it.

I’ve done all three of those things. All too many times.

So in the first part of this week’s post I’d like to share 21 of the quotes that I’ve found the most helpful myself when I’ve gotten stuck in overthinking.

And in the second part I’d like to share 5 of my own favorite tips. The ones that have helped me the most to stop overthinking in the past 10+ years.

“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It's important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action.” – Robert Herjavek

”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.” – Brian Tracy

“Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot

“Don't get too deep, it leads to over thinking, and over thinking leads to problems that doesn't even exist in the first place.” – Jayson Engay

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.” – Leo Buscaglia

“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.” – Dean Smith

“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?” – Shannon L. Alder

“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.” – John Newton

”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” – George Bernard Shaw

“The more I think about it, the more I realize that overthinking isn't the real problem. The real problem is that we don't trust.” – L.J. Vanier

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” – Winston Churchill

“It's a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life.” – Paulo Coelho

 “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill

“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.” – Erma Bombeck

“Trust the still, small voice that says, “this might work and I'll try it.” – Diane Mariechild

“Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” – Benjamin Franklin

“A year from now you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

How to Stop Overthinking: My Top 5 Favorite Tips

1. Use a reminder to save yourself from winding up there in the first place.

Staying aware of your negative habit and catching yourself as soon as you start falling into that trap of overthinking as you go about your day can be a big help.

But just trying to keep it in mind at work, in school or in your private life tends to not work that well in my experience. Because we forget all the time.

So what’s needed for this to work a lot better is a reminder.

When I focused on getting a handle on my own overthinking I used a whiteboard on the wall in my home office. The message I wrote on that board was this:

Keep things extremely simple.

This helped me greatly to more often and quicker snap out of overthinking and reduce the number of times that the destructive habit grabbed a hold on my thinking.

Two other kinds of effective reminders are in my experience:

A small note. Put a post-it or something similar with your reminder somewhere where you cannot avoid seeing it every day. You may even want make a few copies and put them in strategic places like your workspace, bathroom mirror and on the fridge.

A reminder on your smart phone. This is the kind of reminder that I use the most these days. I use the free Google Keep app and usually set a reminder to pop up 1-3 times a day to help me to stay on track.

2. Reframe the situation and see it from a wider view.

When you’re thinking and thinking about something then ask yourself:

Will this matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks?

Zooming out in this way will help you to see things with clearer eyes and from a more level-headed perspective.

It will help you to not let medium-sized issues become something that causes more stress or concern than is necessary.

And to more quickly let go of situations where you’re honestly making a hen out of a feather (or out of simply nothing) and to not waste any additional energy on them.

3. Get out of your own head.

When you’re stuck in your own head and thoughts then it can be hard to break out of an overthinking loop about something.

A simple solution that works well but can be a bit counter-intuitive is to then direct your focus fully outward instead of inward.

Two good ways to get outside your own head are:

Help someone else out. Listen and encourage someone close to you that is in a negative situation. Help a friend to plan for a party or for an upcoming meeting or date. Or help out physically by for example lifting moving boxes as your friend is moving into a new house.

Exercise. I find that lifting weights or going somewhere on my bicycle and simply focusing on the exercise and my surroundings and nothing more to be a great way to get out of my own head and to find new energy and a sharper focus once again.

4. Simply small step it.

If overthinking becomes a way to procrastinate or to not face the fear of getting out of the comfort zone you’re in then small step it.

Find just one small or tiny step you can take to move forward. One small action that takes 1-5 minutes. Do that and focus only on that one step until you’re done.

This will get you moving, build momentum and often leads to more small steps being taken (as the first step is most often the hardest one).

5. Just realize and accept that you can’t control everything.

Not even if you think a situation through 50 times or more.

To try to control everything or cover any possible eventuality through overthinking so you don’t risk making a mistake or looking like a fool can be appealing. It has sometimes been the biggest reason for why I’ve thought things through all too many times.

But I’ve also learned that accepting that it simply doesn’t work is the honest truth. To prepare and plan is helpful but going overboard with it isn’t.

A better and healthier way forward is in my experience to understand that making mistakes, failing and sometimes looking like a fool is natural part of stretching your comfort zone.

It has happened to everyone that has wanted to live life fully and to anyone you may admire.

And for most of them those experiences have been very valuable.

Because such situations have helped to them to learn game-changing lessons, to grow and are often invaluable ingredients to their success.

[grabyourluck-blog]

10 Ways To Earn More Money In Your Internet Marketing Business

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10 Ways To Earn More Money In Your Internet Marketing Business

No matter what you’re earning now, you can earn more. A lot more. Six figures is very reachable and seven figures are possible; you just have to take the right actions to get there. In today’s article, I’ll share 10 ways you can start earning more with your business.

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1. Get serious about making money. A lot of people have the thought that “things will fall into place” and “then I’ll be earning a lot of money.” Sorry. Things do not fall into place on their own. You’ve got to have a plan for earning money, and then you’ve got to get very busy working that plan. The only exception is winning the lottery, and you have far better odds of dying broke than you do of winning even a six figure prize in the lottery. Focusing on the money you want to earn and then working your plan for earning it is the surest way to make the money you want.

2. Have annual and daily money goals. You want to earn $100,000 in the next 12 months? Then you need to earn $2,000 this week, and if you work 5 days a week, you need to earn $400 today. And if you miss the mark today, you need to make up for it tomorrow. Too high of a goal? Then adjust it down and work your way up. Perhaps you begin with a goal of $50 a day for the next month, and $100 a day for the month after that. Your goals need to be both achievable and a stretch for you. By stretching and meeting those goals, you’ll quickly discover how easy it is to earn as much as you set your mind and your efforts to.

3. Value your time. If you’re earning $100,000 a year and you’re working 40 hours per week, then your time is worth a minimum of $50 per hour. So are you performing $50 an hour work? Or are you mowing the lawn or playing with Facebook when you should be working? Just as you will never get this moment to live again, you will also never get a second chance to use all of your moments wisely. Before you switch on Netflix the next time, or play an online game, ask yourself, “Is this the highest use of my time? Does this justify $50 an hour?” If the answer is no, then you should be doing something else.

4. Get more done in less time. Find your most productive times and refuse to do anything during those times other than work. For example, if your best work time is 6 am until noon, then lock your door, shut off the phone, block your email and do nothing but work.

Develop habits that get more done in less time. For example, lumping similar activities together can be a tremendous time saver.

And eliminate any time wasters that are robbing you of your work time. For example, don’t meet a client in person if a phone call will work as well.

5. Outsource. Anything that can be outsourced should be outsourced, whether it’s building websites, posting in forums, writing copy, sending tweets, whatever. The more you can work ON your business instead of IN your business, the more you will be able to earn. “It’s better to harness 1% of 100 people’s talents and energies than 100% of your own.” But when you outsource, you can harness both and much more.

6. Avoid the paralysis of analysis. Two of the things that stop online marketers is being pulled in too many directions at once, or no direction at all. If you’ve got 15 different ideas on what to do next, odds are you’ll do nothing at all. And if you’re afraid to take the next step – whatever it might be – you’ll suffer the same fate. That’s why you need a plan – ONE plan – and then you need to work that plan. Forge ahead, step by step, and don’t worry about getting everything right because frankly, you won’t. And it doesn’t even matter that you won’t get everything just right. The best batters in baseball only get hits a third of the time. Odds are your averages will be better than that, but it just doesn’t matter so long as you know where the ball is and you keep swinging at it with all of your determination and might.

7. Charge more. A $7 info product can often just as easily sell for $17 or $27 – it’s just that the info product seller is afraid to charge more. Add in some videos and you can charge $47. Make it a complete course and you can get $97. Remember, you don’t need as many sales when you charge more to make more. Experiment with your pricing and you might be surprised.

8. Repurpose your content. If you’ve got a bunch of great blog posts, consider bundling them into an ebook. If you’ve got some awesome interviews with experts, get them transcribed and use segments as articles, or bundle them into a course. The more use you get out of the content you already have, the more you can earn.

9. Specialize. Dan Kennedy teaches that the more specialized you are, the more you will earn. A marketer teaching brick and mortar businesses how to market online will not earn as much as another marketer teaching dentists or chiropractors how to get new clients from online marketing, and so forth. If you doubt this, think of doctors. General practitioners don’t earn as much as specialists, and the higher the specialty, the more they earn.

10. Love your customers silly. Repeat business is the easiest business of all to get – you just have to treat your customers like royalty and cater to their needs. Provide excellent customer service and by all means ask them to upgrade or purchase your next product.

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10 Ways To Earn More Money In Your Internet Marketing Business

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10 Ways To Earn More Money In Your Internet Marketing Business

No matter what you’re earning now, you can earn more. A lot more. Six figures is very reachable and seven figures are possible; you just have to take the right actions to get there. In today’s article, I’ll share 10 ways you can start earning more with your business.

homebusinessideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/makemoremoney.jpg” alt=”10 Ways To Earn More Money In Your Internet Marketing Business”>

1. Get serious about making money. A lot of people have the thought that “things will fall into place” and “then I’ll be earning a lot of money.” Sorry. Things do not fall into place on their own. You’ve got to have a plan for earning money, and then you’ve got to get very busy working that plan. The only exception is winning the lottery, and you have far better odds of dying broke than you do of winning even a six figure prize in the lottery. Focusing on the money you want to earn and then working your plan for earning it is the surest way to make the money you want.

2. Have annual and daily money goals. You want to earn $100,000 in the next 12 months? Then you need to earn $2,000 this week, and if you work 5 days a week, you need to earn $400 today. And if you miss the mark today, you need to make up for it tomorrow. Too high of a goal? Then adjust it down and work your way up. Perhaps you begin with a goal of $50 a day for the next month, and $100 a day for the month after that. Your goals need to be both achievable and a stretch for you. By stretching and meeting those goals, you’ll quickly discover how easy it is to earn as much as you set your mind and your efforts to.

3. Value your time. If you’re earning $100,000 a year and you’re working 40 hours per week, then your time is worth a minimum of $50 per hour. So are you performing $50 an hour work? Or are you mowing the lawn or playing with Facebook when you should be working? Just as you will never get this moment to live again, you will also never get a second chance to use all of your moments wisely. Before you switch on Netflix the next time, or play an online game, ask yourself, “Is this the highest use of my time? Does this justify $50 an hour?” If the answer is no, then you should be doing something else.

4. Get more done in less time. Find your most productive times and refuse to do anything during those times other than work. For example, if your best work time is 6 am until noon, then lock your door, shut off the phone, block your email and do nothing but work.

Develop habits that get more done in less time. For example, lumping similar activities together can be a tremendous time saver.

And eliminate any time wasters that are robbing you of your work time. For example, don’t meet a client in person if a phone call will work as well.

5. Outsource. Anything that can be outsourced should be outsourced, whether it’s building websites, posting in forums, writing copy, sending tweets, whatever. The more you can work ON your business instead of IN your business, the more you will be able to earn. “It’s better to harness 1% of 100 people’s talents and energies than 100% of your own.” But when you outsource, you can harness both and much more.

6. Avoid the paralysis of analysis. Two of the things that stop online marketers is being pulled in too many directions at once, or no direction at all. If you’ve got 15 different ideas on what to do next, odds are you’ll do nothing at all. And if you’re afraid to take the next step – whatever it might be – you’ll suffer the same fate. That’s why you need a plan – ONE plan – and then you need to work that plan. Forge ahead, step by step, and don’t worry about getting everything right because frankly, you won’t. And it doesn’t even matter that you won’t get everything just right. The best batters in baseball only get hits a third of the time. Odds are your averages will be better than that, but it just doesn’t matter so long as you know where the ball is and you keep swinging at it with all of your determination and might.

7. Charge more. A $7 info product can often just as easily sell for $17 or $27 – it’s just that the info product seller is afraid to charge more. Add in some videos and you can charge $47. Make it a complete course and you can get $97. Remember, you don’t need as many sales when you charge more to make more. Experiment with your pricing and you might be surprised.

8. Repurpose your content. If you’ve got a bunch of great blog posts, consider bundling them into an ebook. If you’ve got some awesome interviews with experts, get them transcribed and use segments as articles, or bundle them into a course. The more use you get out of the content you already have, the more you can earn.

9. Specialize. Dan Kennedy teaches that the more specialized you are, the more you will earn. A marketer teaching brick and mortar businesses how to market online will not earn as much as another marketer teaching dentists or chiropractors how to get new clients from online marketing, and so forth. If you doubt this, think of doctors. General practitioners don’t earn as much as specialists, and the higher the specialty, the more they earn.

10. Love your customers silly. Repeat business is the easiest business of all to get – you just have to treat your customers like royalty and cater to their needs. Provide excellent customer service and by all means ask them to upgrade or purchase your next product.