Finding Yourself Everywhere

Looking at how you habitually react in similar situations throughout life.

On the surface, every aspect seems different, but your patterns of behavior carry everywhere.

My example: trying to learn a difficult skill like cold approach in 2 years and almost destroying myself with it is like me overeating for many years, which caused digestive problems and other things, also like my desire to fit more and more exercises into my gym regiment which I run the risk of overtraining and running out of time for, in addition to my desire to overwork on my business, fit more and more activities into my daily schedule and see activity as king instead of depth, etc.

"How you do anything is how you do everything."

At one time or another, we have all heard this quote and others like it. It reminds us that how we show up in one part of our lives will closely resemble how we present in others. It's all too easy to get fooled by the differences that seem to exist between work, family, romantic relationships, mental and physical health, finances, friendships, hobbies, and the like. "There's no way that what plagues me in one area will continually pop up everywhere I look", but it does. For example, fearfulness and timidity in making friends and extending social networks does not often stay in just that aspect, but it spreads to fearfulness in our jobs or businesses, fearfulness in romance, and anywhere else where it is possible for fear to gain a foothold. Those who build the ability to push to the end of a hard workout or a hard mental exercise often can persevere until the end of tough situations that appear in any regard, because they've built the willpower and fortitude to do so. As annoying as it initially may seem, our habit patterns actually tell us a lot about ourselves and are a blessing in disguise. Let's look at a pattern from my own life: "overeating". The reason I put it in quotations is that the desire to consume more food than can be properly digested and to do more than is possible in an allotted time or specific situation amount to the same thing. In both cases, you are trying to cram too much into too little.

The physical act of overeating itself was developed back when I was a young child, but I didn't notice this until years after being on my journey in cold approach. I started approaching from a place of scarcity, as I was not popular with girls in my social circle. I knew that it could be a long, winding road but I was trying to go from beginner to mastery in 2 years flat. Anyone who does cold approach knows it's a pipe dream to go from initiate to master in 2 years, it takes 2 full years just to get a handle on your approach in various settings without even mentioning everything else that you have to do in set. Because of this ridiculous goal and the grueling pace that came with it, I actually ended up burning out and losing a sizable amount of skill in the non-active recovery time that came later. Leaving my whys for another time, we can even see the disastrous end result is the same as the physical act: improper "digestion" of concepts, experiences and knowledge, leading to over-repeating mistakes, not taking the "nourishment" from what I've studied and practiced, the production of "excess waste" of time and energy, "bloating and sluggishness" mentally and physically.

I'll relate it to another area: the gym. When I first switched from Planet Fitness, which is a simple facility for beginners, to LA Fitness, which contains higher weights, turf area, plyo equipment and the like, I was blown away. It was a dream come true that I could use all of this extra equipment and add in unique exercises that were more functional. Maybe you already see the kicker; no matter what, there's only a certain amount of time that I can be optimally functional for. Anything beyond that and I am wasting time and energy and possibly hitting the threshold for overtraining, which is harmful. Through all of my excitement I had to take into account that if "my eyes are too big for my belly", I'm doing myself a disservice.

I could do the same for everything conceivable, but you get the point. We all have patterns of behavior that transcend activity limits. Once we realize this, we can take control of these and change for the better.