Mindful Blobs

Looking back from my current place onto my childhood, I see myself doing stupid things. Baby stuff like eating sand or insects. And a lot of crying to get my needs met instantly. I feel okay to look at my younger self with compassion and love. I totally understand, that my 4-10 year old self is of course reacting from a completely different state of mind, than the one I am using now.

Even looking back at my teenage years, which were driven a lot by self-image and insecurity issues, I can now see, why it was so hard for me to act from an authentic place back then and out of fear rather chose to blend into the crowd.

These past events from my childhood and teenage years, got reframed by my current model of the world. Which took a while, but now I understand and embrace these as stepping stones, which were essential to become the current me. But isn’t it the same with myself from only a week ago? Or a day ago? Or, going one step further, isn’t it the same with myself from one minute ago?

For instance, after I screwed up, by saying something out of anger, reacting from the wrong state of mind or just ate something I don’t really want to eat out of mindlessness, isn’t the awareness that I did something „wrong" exactly the distinguishing element which separates the old me from the current one? By curiously examining what exactly caused the slip up, we might find that we now know something, we just didn’t know a moment ago. That there was a pattern running us, an emotion driving us or something deeper we had to cope with. Now we know, which makes us aware.

By finding, that our model of the world, again, changed a tiny bit and is different now, than it was just a moment ago, and seeing, that this makes us a slightly different person, we might be able to right away have the same compassion for ourselves, when doing a mistake, like that we have, when looking back at our childhood days and our slip ups back then.

By accepting, that our model of the world is constantly changing with every interaction, we can accept that we are now more intelligent than ever and that everything we did wrong or will do wrong, doesn’t happen because we are not good enough, but because we acting from a different state of mind.

I have trust issues. I have trust issues with myself. I am not trusting myself.

Again and again, after starting new endeavors, programs, routines, projects, diets, I did not follow through. There is a pattern. It’s ridiculous and kind of sad. But the past is the past and al that matter is now, right? So, lets examine some examples and see what has happened:

One day I read about „drop shipping“ and I was hooked. I thought to myself, okay I can make a website and I can set up an eShop. So I had the plan to create an online shop for everything related to LEDs. I love creative illumination and I surely felt inspired. I bought a domain name, set up an eshop, designed the template and started to implement the HTML/CSS template for the shop software, but as soon as I was about to enter the first products, I stopped. Why?

Because I wasn’t inspired to sell LED products. I was inspired by setting up the eShop, designing the website and creating a user experience. In retrospect it is really important to check, what inspires you and where the motivation comes from. That what I loved to do, wasn’t congruent with what I intended to do, although it surely felt that way.

As some of you might now, I am a software engineer and game designer. I create games. Which can be defined as a changing user experience attached to a goal system. I love it. But even with a burning passion behind it, out of countless game projects only TWO crossed the finish line. And I think there are multiple reasons for that.

Choosing the wrong primary motivation is definitely one reason I didn’t follow through. Often times, reasons for starting a game project came from seeing other games succeed, and, let’s be frank here, ripping of a good part of their idea to make money. Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think every game must be 100% original and every similarity is to be avoided per se. I think that game creation is, as other art forms are, based on interpretation and iteration. Different artist attacking the same idea from different angles, mixing and challenging ideas and by that creating room for originality. But here it comes: I was coming form a place of making my "work" easier. I saw a successful product and was thinking to myself: "How hard can it be to do that?" I was coming from a place of „getting rich quickly“. It wasn’t that I was inspired by a game concept and had a different angle on it, no it was just about the money.

But there are a lot of clones on the app stores, you might say. There are tons of flapping birds and candy crushers, you might say. It can’t be so hard to clone games, you might say.

Here is, where the values come in: I value good game design. I value a thoughtfully crafted user experience. I value little gimmicks making players smile. I value the art of creating games. And to get all this right, takes a lot of time. („Perfectionist“ I hear you say. Stay put, we’ll come to that.)

So, whenever I started a „rip-off“ game, I wasn’t able to just rip it off. I needed all of my values poured into that. It had to be perfect, because it was my baby. Sounds great, right? But here it comes again: Because I was starting the project only from a left-brain point of view, i.e. making money, I wasn’t feeling it. I was not able to sustain the commitment, which is needed to create all the things I value in games. So, in the end, money motivation wasn’t enough and another game project got buried.

Another point, why some projects might have never met actual players, is my need for certainty. It is important to create a really good game, a polished game and a game free of crashes and bugs, but there is point, where another iteration, doesn’t change anything. You can’t please everyone, and you don’t want to, but this is another post. So iterating on the graphic style or on the colors to shift them from one "perfectly good“ solution to another „perfectly good“ solution, just to be sure it is right, is not about creating good work, it is about fear of rejection. Avoiding the fear of not being good enough.

Let alone games, lets talk about: Smoking! I never considered myself to be a smoker, but at some point in my life, I started smoking, when I was at parties or in bars. It was just another drug besides the alcohol. So there I was, smoking at „special occasions“, which led to smoking at work with colleagues, and at some point to me buying cigarettes. But the interesting part is, that I never thought of myself as a smoker. I was sure I can quit every time and that it is just a temporary thing. I’ll just stop. Which I did. Over and over again. Until I realized, that the idea, that it is just a temporary thing, led me to a slippery slope of justifying to myself, that it isn’t „that" harmful, as long as it is just a temporary thing. That’s a good amount of self-deception there and this on and off smoking behavior plays a big role in my self-trust issues.

I think one thing that might help me here, is the shift of perception. The „harm“ of just one more. Just one more cigarette, one more beer, one more look at your mail or at Facebook. This „just one more“ is nothing less than one lost chance to finally break the chain of „one mores“. There is nothing temporary in a lot of small actions done over a long period of time.

Next! Fitness! As I (hopefully) was an off and on smoker, I was an on and off fitness enthusiast. Now and then came the point, it might be a certain feeling or a certain weight I reached, that I said: „enough is enough!“ I found out a new fitness routine and a new diet and BAM! I was on. Until ... I was off again. Why?

Perfectionism again. Whenever I fell of the wagon, I justified, that now that I screwed up once, everything is lost and I totally switched over to couch-potato mode, which in my case is, work hard and go to bars hard mode, which leaves no thought for health and fitness, often going along with the smoking habit kicking in again.

But as we have seen earlier, perfectionism is often just a symptom and not the reason. I guess the reason here is, that I was working towards a goal. "Yeah, and what? You need goals!“. I hear you. I am with you on that. Goals are great, but goals are tricky here. Why? I give you a glimpse into my thought process: I was thinking, that as soon as I reached a goal, I can finally do X again. Where X is, eating Ben & Jerries or Drinking or whatever it was, I was forbidding myself, because of the regime I put onto myself. So it was just a matter of time, till I will slip back into old patterns. Either after I reached my goal, or as soon I decided everything was lost, because I „fell of the wagon".

So here we are: I was constantly searching (mostly unconsciously) for a reason to stop this regime. I was just waiting for me to fail and to fall back into „my normal“ mode. And that is, why goals are tricky here (in the first place).

The way out of this is to shift your identity. To shift your „normal mode“. If you feel, that you are an „athlete“, you will act like an „athlete“. Form this feeling the right actions and ideas are unfolding from within you naturally, and are not govern by a separate „model“, which you put onto yourself intellectually. If you feel, that you are a „runner“, you run, no matter what! If you feel that you are a writer, you’ll write and make time for it.

After you are an athlete, you should have goals. But these goals are coming from a place of setting a direction on the journey of being an athlete and aren’t a door out of a regime you aren’t happy with.

Wow, I think by now I have covered a lot of the different ways I failed in the past. The good thing is, by analyzing this, I can create a checklist to set me up for a more fulfilling way to tackle new projects in the future:

Shift your „normal mode“. Attach a new label or get rid of not helpful ones. I AM _______

Check if you are truly inspired from the heart, and not just tricked by your brain to follow some „easy path"

Check that your project (what you have to do) is congruent with your inspiration and values (what you want to do)