January - Self reflection

This month has been crazy good. Loads of events and I’m posting this now because I need to post and procrastinating was clearly working so well! I was supposed to post 10 articles last holiday break and I totally didn’t. I won’t beat myself up (not too hard..) as I know the price of that is probably months of psychological damage. I have enough foresight and experience to know that much thankfully.

And because right now I can’t write a quality article about the things I actually want to write I’m going to blog because that’s the next best thing I can do.

I’ve also not been working as I should’ve after work each day and I’ve come to realize why.

It’s because my head got so inflated from all the positive feedback I had been getting recently. I knew humility was important but I didn’t realize the impact it had on me until today when I was wishing to go home and relax because apparently I was good enough where I was.

What the hell Mygo?? What happened to obsession with self improvement? It was out the window because I felt good about myself but not in a healthy way.

I realized that my desire to improve was largely driven by the lack of skill I was aware of. This is why every top athlete or every top competitor faces the danger of complacency. And they have to imagine they’re actually number 2 or perform some mental gymnastics in order to motivate themselves to strive for higher.

I’m supposed to improve my problem solving by practicing algorithms. I’m supposed to also improve my expression by blogging. Why the hell haven’t I done it? I guess that’s why this post exists.

I have so much to write about and I haven’t written anything because I’m scared of how awful it will actually sound when I read it.

So yeah, today I’m changing that. I’m going to write these low quality posts until I’m sick of writing so badly that something gives. And I’m hoping that somewhere along the way several dots will connect in my head and I’ll reach that next level of expression.

Or maybe I should just write a practice article here that gets buried over time. Like I’ve been itching to talk about empathy. Because I think a lot of people try it and they’re just awful at it. And of course they don’t know why.

The biggest mistake that people make when they attempt to empathize is that they try to imagine what it’s like to feel what someone else feels WITH THEIR OWN SET OF VALUES. Not the person who they are imagining but their own. And this is why it just doesn’t work.

No, the only way anyone can empathize really well is to actually imagine what it’s like to believe what the other person believes AND THEN apply the situation to them.

That’s true empathy and that’s the only way. But without a good imagination or a good understanding of how belief systems work like believing in a god or religion, true and accurate empathy will be impossible for a lot of people.

–unfinished–making a call will continue this later