Fiasco Mondays is the new project and it's an extension of the Fiasco Classics magazine. In fact, it's like a brother to the Become Cooler section. It's 2013 and we're taking over. There will be all sorts of new stuff happening in the future but lets keep a few surprises for now.
I want all of us to become better people this year, improve as much as we can in as many as areas that we can. TR is just a small part of our lives but inspiration lies everywhere, and we're going to inspire each other like crazy and make sure that we enjoy even the smallest of things.
But anyway, back to the fucking topic. All of us find ourselves in situations when we have a shitload of doubts and we go back 'n forth debating with those two voices in our heads (you all do have two voices, right? Otherwise, I may be crazy but I don't even care so it's like whatever). When we're worried about something we try to persuade ourselves that it's all good and we're looking for the right reasoning.
On the other hand, there are those moments of clarity when reality (or whatever) hits us in the face and we know for sure what is what. However, those moments are rather rare and we're quick to forget about it and we often need to remind ourselves to keep our eyes on the target. There is a real cool way to maintain and/or regain focus. It's what I call - the reassurance triggers!
The reassurance triggers is a concept of having a certain referent/idea/phrase that stands for something that you've already calculated. Let me elaborate. This is in a way a way of naming things. Like you have the word "bitch" for a person who has certain negative characteristics. When you hear the word "bitch" you don't always go thinking what "bitch" means and look for definitions but you automatically know what the word represents, its meaning is a job for your subconscious and it's just a second nature type of thing.
To clarify this with an example and get to the point. I've spent time thinking why should I be confident in my abilities and whenever I don't feel confident about something, what I would do is remind myself of the previously conducted reasoning and try to persuade myself that I really should be confident. This takes time and sometimes you can't just go back to the mind-state of being confident and it's hard to deal with the self-doubt. What I started doing is put that reasoning under one name, which in my case is "Kobe Bryant".
What this means is that whenever I don't feel confident about performing I just say the words "Kobe Bryant" to myself and that saves me the time of going through the whole reasoning all over again. It's also a way to fake the confidence, which is something that you (or at least I) have to do at times. Even if I don't truly feel confident at the moment, I say Kobe Bryant and I take it as a definite truth. What I know is that when I'm in the most clear state of mind, that reasoning is indeed true and if I've already gone through all the self-persuading and came to that conclusion (that my confidence is real) then it must be right, so basically what I'm doing is I'm trusting my "other" self.
The "other" self thing usually happens when you do something bad. Like, if you drink a lot and you start feeling bad, at that moment you know that you've crossed the line and that you shouldn't have drunk that much. So the next time you get to the point of that line being near, you know that you should stop and even if you don't want to stop you know that you'll regret it afterwards. What one would usually do in such situation is go through the reasons of "why should I stop, again?" and try to reassure themselves that they should indeed stop. If you have a trigger for this, you can just say "insert random phrase" and just take it as a given and not go through the whole thing once more.
Btw, I choose "Kobe Bryant" because that bustard is an egoistic piece of badassness (not even a real word) and he can be really motivating at times. Here's a recent quote of his:
Have you ever been intimidated on the basketball court?
Never. Not at all. My mind doesn’t work that way. It’s something that’s never even entered my thought process. The last time I was intimidated was when I was 6 years old in karate class. I was an orange belt and the instructor ordered me to fight a black belt who was a couple years older and a lot bigger. I was scared s---less. I mean, I was terrified and he kicked my ass. But then I realized he didn’t kick my ass as bad as I thought he was going to and that there was nothing really to be afraid of. That was around the time I realized that intimidation didn’t really exist if you’re in the right frame of mind.
