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The Black Box.

Mar 2, ’11 7:28 PM

Over the past two years, I’ve contributed more than 100 posts spanning over 600 different subjects.  For me, writing has given me the opportunity to think about ideas, events and people in new ways.  It has also allowed me to heal.

In some respect, Incubator has been a black box.  The inputs to this “black box” have been my experiences and ideas.  The resulting outputs could perhaps be best summarized via the tag cloud located on the right-hand side of the page; as of the date of this posting, “awareness” and “design” are the two most popular themes.

However, to boil the past two years into this discrete summary would do some injustice to my contributions to date.  Thus, I think it’s important to call attention to several key outputs:

  1. You haven’t believed in yourself as much as you’ve should.
  2. You have a lot of talent, but you are not using it to it’s full potential.
  3. You fail very slowly.
  4. You have trusted others to “make” decisions for you.

To take a lesson from books I’ve read, it’s perhaps more positive to state these outputs in a slightly different way:

  1. Believe in yourself.
  2. Maximize your talent.
  3. Fail quickly.
  4. Make your own decisions.

Of course, these are four outputs – summarizing down to one leaves the following:

You can do better.

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Mental Evolution II (“Turning Point”)

Dec 9, ’10 8:28 PM

I recently came to the conclusion that what I have been dealing with for an extended period of time (years) is something called learned helplessness.  Learned helplessness is a condition where you find yourself believing that you have no control over the outcome of your actions.  It stems from a stream of negative events that demoralize and ultimately cause one to give up – albeit temporarily.  While I don’t know when this period began, I do know that this period is ending.

I have always labeled myself as a realist – which, in my mind, has been a balance between optimism and pessimism.  The challenge that I have been facing over the past several years – particularly in 2010 – is that when reality presents you with continuous challenges, one can become overwhelmed with trying to make sense of what has happened.  I’ve found that this original sense of realism has become replaced with that of pessimism and extreme caution, both of which has resulted in stagnation and an inability to advance into territories that will ultimately make my life more fulfilling and positive.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I have been amazed at my recent ability to quell feelings of positivity when they arise because I no longer trust these feelings will last.  By default, these positive feelings rarely have a chance to develop and a self-fulfilling prophecy is created.

This is a turning point because feelings of learned helplessness and the tendency to employ a pessimistic perspective can both be overcome.  Setbacks no longer need to be classified as disasters.  I have too much potential to allow this pattern to continue any longer.

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