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someone once said something like "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 you couldn't trust anything I said
this was true both internally and externally. I was a bullshitter by default. I would say things to make things go away, and then I would forget what I said. at some point I got into several tangled webs that led to people getting angry and upset with me, which I hated myself for
this took *years* to fix, and my attempted solution to the problem was overkill – I tried to impose tyrannical order on my chaotic whirlwind self. I made some progress, and I also made myself utterly miserable (which I felt like I deserved, for being a lousy person)
a thing I understand intimately– which people who are still struggling are often surprised to hear, bc they assume I'm a natural– is that when you're wack, your mechanism for fixing yourself is also wack. it's like looking for your glasses when you can't see without your glasses
the broad question of "how do you rebuild trust that is lost", I had to deal with that, internally. after all, I had a long history of betraying my own trust! there's evidence! so how can I trust myself? idk. I beat myself up over every failure, then wrapped that in jokes &apathy
I think on retrospect I'm lucky that underneath ALL of that, in the core of cores, I did still have a love for literature and music. I say earnestly that I'd give my life for musicians. I would. I think that's the light that saved me – the non-coercive, shining spirit of humanity
but ok, even if I believe that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I still have to walk my way out. and the way to do that, when you have zero sense of balance, proprioception, muscle control, bla bla, is to put one foot in front of the other, firmly, and then do it again
and what that looked like, for me, is announcing "I'm going to drink a glass of water now", and then drinking it. Hey, look, I just did 1x thing that I said I was going to do. "I'm going to do 10 pushups now." Hey, that's 2x things. And I earned my trust back, 1 step at a time
this process had all sorts of second-order effects. it's like how you "just" wanna play basketball with your friends, then you end up quitting cigarettes, eating healthier, sleeping better, etc, all to boost your game. then you realize that, actually, living healthy feels great
anyway, a cute vestigial remnant of this whole process is that I still announce what I'm about to do before I do it. It's like a little ritual I have for myself. Every time I do what I say, I build trust in myself, I build self-respect (which I didn't have until... 25? 27?)
It still actually surprises me a little bit. When something I say will be done, gets done. When you've spent a lifetime making shit up (it all started with "I will do my homework"), it starts to seem like magic. What I say will happen, happens? It's like magic. I'm a magician
Of course, I still make mistakes. I underestimated how long it would take me to get my ebooks published and updated. But I no longer think "ah, fuck, I'm a fucking bullshitter and nothing I say has any meaning". I now think, ah, I made a mistake, I must recalibrate & renegotiate
what I'm finding is that there's a sort of "economy" to it? eg my ebooks are currently "in the red" re: projections. but that's okay – because my youtube vids are coming along beautifully. I've been publishing 1 every single day for almost a month. Joy to the world
I guess this is just to say, if you feel like you don't trust yourself, I feel you. I know how wrong it sounds when someone says "well, just start believing in yourself," like b*tch, you have evidence that you're not to be trusted!!! I know. ❤️ The thing is to build the tiny wins
@visakanv Love this. I never put words to it, but I think self-trust is why it’s been helpful for me before to have a running todo list on pencil/paper for literally every small intention, just so I would write it down and say I would do it before I started and distracted halfway through
@visakanv I think @nireyal’s argument for maintaining a schedule is similar. The metric of success becomes how closely you align with your intentions. I’ve been modifying this by writing out my day’s agenda in Google sheets and in the next column documenting plan adjustments as I go
@visakanv Someone: "can you help me with this thing?" Me: "right now?" Someone: "uhhh I was thinking some nebulous time in the future" Me: "can we just do it right now?" Someone: "no" Me: "okay come find me when we can do it right now"