take baby steps
this is section 2.5 of introspect. “I always love it when people say ‘baby steps!’ to imply they’re being tentative, when actually baby steps are a great unbalanced, wholehearted, enthusiastic lurch into the unknown.” – @OliveFSmith It can be useful to compare and contrast different domains in your life, particularly ones where you are successful […]
self-worth
this is one of those things where someone is trying to make you feel good with comforting noises, which is honestly sweet – but if you’re a thinking person and you investigate this a little closer, there are a lot of followup questions. What IS self-worth even? (original thread) If self-worth is worth that you […]
write your memoirs
(2024nov update/comment: while doing some recategorizing, it struck me that this post fit in almost every single category I have on the blog. It really touches everything. It’s very central. It really helps to know the story of your life so that you can tinker with it. It’s a source of great power, in my […]
the solution to your imposter syndrome is not inside your head
The problem of imposter syndrome (under-estimating yourself) and Dunning-Krueger (over-estimating yourself) are both addressed by Talking To Other People so you can revise your self-estimates. I think people don’t talk to other people enough, and aren’t really listening properly. Listen to a dozen other people talk about their problems. really listen. it’ll cure your imposter […]
“Shouldn’t I want to make the world a better place?”
The following is a section I cut from an old draft of INTROSPECT. I’m inclined to say no. Not until you’re ready to handle such a heavy burden. As with weightlifting, carrying too much can hurt you. “Should” is one of those words that seems fairly innocuous, but can end up becoming a very invasive […]
“i’m such a failure”
This is a collection of posts and videos about failure and mistakes. learning to be ok with mistakes: It’s the panicky flinch response to a mistake that really definitively cements a mistake as a mistake. otherwise it’s just interesting dissonance you can work with and around mistakes contain buried insight. My personal growth really began […]
todo lists as narrative devices
every one of us is living in some kind of story. who are you? what is your name? where do you live? are you a student? what do you like to do for fun? oh you like football? what’s your favorite team? why? do you want to go to university? why? what would you like […]
iterating Introspect
I came up with the idea for INTROSPECT sometime in 2018 or so, even before I thought of writing FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD (which I choose as my debut ebook). INTROSPECT has been through multiple drafts, iterations and rewrites. In retrospect (hah), I had to write some of the earlier versions of the book just to […]
👑 earn self-respect
(see also: self-loathing, self-worth) I think it’s important to earn one’s own self-respect. What does that mean? Well, you have to have a sense of what you respect in people, and then you have to conduct yourself in a way that you deem respectable. I respect people who are… Friendly. Sometimes friendliness is a “cope”, […]
🤝 how I rebuilt my trust in myself
A friend once said, regarding my Twitter, “I like how Visa says he’s going to do something, then immediately does it.” It’s actually an ADHD coping mechanism. If you ask my friends from my teenage days, they’ll tell you I was unreliable, full of shit, and that you couldn’t trust anything I said. This was […]
🏛 the prestige trap
I’ve had several conversations with friends who’ve been incapacitated by the burdensome bullshit obligation to Have A Meaningful Life / Be Remembered / Do Important Work. It strikes me as socially inherited bloatware that causes tedious lag, which ironically prevents you from being awesome. When people say things like “just be yourself”, I think often […]
learned catastrophizing
I get young people in my DMs all the time. A common thing I notice about their despair is that they do a lot of generalizing (“I can’t seem to study for this test” → “I can’t do anything”). Lots of catastrophic thinking, things get very grandiose. I remember this feeling too. I think there […]
😂 learn to laugh at yourself
One of my private beliefs that doesn’t translate very well is that true comedy is sacred. And not sacred as in solemn, but sacred as in profound. & even fart jokes can have a profundity to them if you get it right. But strangely few comedians seem to get it. Maybe I’m delusional? I think […]
🤔 do you know what you want?
dec2024: I wrote this blogpost years before I wrote the book Introspect… vaguely feel like this post should become a summary of the book, or otherwise help to contextualize the book, slice-n-dice the book, make something good out of the book. Instinct is that I should make it people-shaped and catalogue conversations I’ve had that […]