Mind the Beginner

Are you carefree? Do you really believe you are? Or are you just not getting what it is you should care about. Let’s face it, you’re careless and not smart or witty enough to be carefree. Being carefree means having nothing to be worried about. You’re either dumb and don’t see the problems in your life or you really did make an effort and know that what all the things are that you could worry about. After identifying those you made short work of it and are now carefree. Good for you!

Assuming that you’re just as dumb as me and just as obviously careless let’s press on.

Identifying things to worry about

Take out a piece of paper and start writing right now. Take exactly one minute to write down what you are worrying about and don’t stop until your time is up. You have 1 minute (click and start writing)

If your list looks a bit like mine right there at the top wil be:

• Money
• Purpose in life
• How you measure up to others

And lets not forget those classics like debt, uncertainties about your job and why your blog isn’t  as successful like those A-list blogs.

Stop it this instant!

Now you have your wonderful list of worries, it’s time to identify why they are there. For most of them it boils down to you just don’t care enough to do something about it! Check your worries, is there something on that list you can’t do anything about? Anything at all?

Yes that’s it, you’re being careless about your worries, doing nothing to get rid of them, letting them drain your energy day in day out. Oh yes, these worries drain you even if you don’t actively think about them. That’s what being careless is all about. You just lock them away in the back of your mind where they can wreak havoc undisturbed. And you’re wondering why you’re tired all the time right?

Now being carefree is a whole different ballgame. Seeming carefree at least because there is not a soul in the world who is totally carefree. It’s one of those “benefits” of being human. You get to worry about anything and everything during life.So, in the end, we’re all dumb and careless. It’s just a matter of dealing with it or not, your choice to make and your burden to live with.

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the art of listening,

Listening is a very important skill nowadays but also one forgotten. In conversation we’re often so preoccupied with what we’re going to say next that we don’t actually listen to what the other is saying. At the same time we like every conversation to center around ourselves so we end up with with constantly talking about ourselves without having a clue as to what the other is talking about. Sound familiar?  

As if that isn’t enough we tend to talk to much in order to get attention. There is a clue to the ratio of talking and listening that’s provided by our body: we have two ears, but only one mouth. You can use this to your advantage. Often the best talks people have are the talks where they get enough space to talk about themselves. You – now knowing this – can give the other all the room they want and listen carefully. Be sure to really listen and ask further questions about what the other is saying. This kind of attention has a profound effect on people. People walk away from the conversation saying it was a great talk. (And all that happened was them talking about themselves!) You can almost “make” people like you by asking about how they are doing and really caring about what they have to say. Don’t use such a chance to get to talk about yourself, really care about what they have to say and ask questions. 

Develop your listening skills and try and stay more in the background sometimes. Although you won’t be able to talk about yourself you will have made a great impression on the one you talked with. More likely than not they will now think of you as a great person. 

Get out there these next few days and give it a try. Actually listen to the other and forget about talking about yourself. Notice any differences? Please tell me all about your experiences

I’ve written before on handling all the information that we are bombarded with every day. But what I haven’t told you is what the key is to success in studying. Actually, the success to almost anything we try. The key is caring about what you are doing. If you care enough you won’t let yourself be distracted by other things because you take what you are doing seriously.

Take what you are doing seriously

Take this blogpost for instance. I’m not writing it in the wordpress interface or even in Microsoft word (Yes, I use windows) but a very simple and distractionless writing program called Q10. I’m looking at a black screen with orange letters. Nothing else in here, not even a command bar. It’s all done with keyboard shortcuts. Why do this? I care about my writing and don’t want any distractions.

Distractions always have an influence on what you are doing, how can you study properly with music in the background (barok music is the only exception, more on that in the near future) or with the TV on. You’re constantly being drawn towards the easy way out of studying into a passive kind of entertainment or Internet-related activities such as checking an e-mail the instant it hits your inbox. If you care about what you are studying or reading, would you have the tv on? My guess is you might even tell your housemates or family not to disturb you while you are studying right?

So how do we use this key? Fake it until you make it comes to mind, turn of any distractions and do only the one thing you should be doing. I’m not saying it will be fun every time but the better you get at studying the easier it all gets, you just might begin to enjoy studying. Deny yourself any sensory input other than the material to be studied. Care or fake to care about what you are studying and I promise you, you will get better at whatever you are studying.

How to apply this during class This is very simple: Let’s face it, there might be other places you’d rather be or other things you’d rather be doing but at the moment you’re stuck there. The only thing you can do that makes any sense is to pay attention. It’s just common sense right?

The key is to care

I keep wondering, what makes people care and why don’t people care about certain things. This came to mind while changing the oil on my motorcycle. A simple rule my father taught me was “you can borrow anything from me, as long as you put it back where you found it, and in the same state or better.”  Applying this rule I used his tools, cleaned them from any oily fingerprint and put them back exactly where I found them. To me this comes naturally, it’s just something you do. You take care when using something and you take care not to make a mess out of it. It also means cleaning up after yourself. 

Here another example comes to mind. I’ve seen my fair share of student dorms and I keep being amazed at the mess some people make, especially clothing and dirty dishes. Once used it’s “discarded” somewhere in the dorm and perhaps once a month things get cleaned up. Why is that? isn’t it just about the same amount of work to throw your dirty clothing directly into the laundry hamper? A flick of the wrist in stead of just opening a hand and it’s less clutter. 

You can actually see this in all of society, the mass consumerism and the rapid discard of anything not immediately functional anymore. Once something has served it’s purpose it’s tossed aside, not even a second thought goes into caring where it’s going to end up.

I’m sorry for ranting a bit but I wonder, is it normal to cast things aside when they have served their function? Or is it normal to take care in disposing of them properly? ….if taking care of proper disposal is the norm, how come there is so much garbage in the streets and so many dirty socks on the floor?

Once you have the 100 items challenge done, you simply can’t be careless about your things can you? Is this the key to caring perhaps? To not have so much stuff you don’t really know what to do with it all. To have so little stuff that everything is valuable. I think caring and minimalism go hand in hand, they just have to. 

What do you think?