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Improving Ourselves to Death
31–40 of 109 posts
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#32I know I will likely catch a lot of downvotes for this, but I found the teachings of Jesus to answer questions of how to run life. As well as the Proverbs of the old testament, and many other scriptures. Seek and you will find. When I get stuck, I found in the past I would look for excuses on why something isn't working, or why is this happening to me, or when will this end. But when I started to actually "seek" I al…
Thank-you for sharing your story. You'd probably appreciate the lectures of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Clinical Psychologist. Award-winning lecturer. He loves to bring in Biblical references into his teachings. "A Good Father Helps You to Become Your Best Self" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA5iEKvHNxk
That was pretty cool, thanks for sharing that, I think I started down a rabbit hole with Jordan Peterson youtube clips. :P
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#33I know I will likely catch a lot of downvotes for this, but I found the teachings of Jesus to answer questions of how to run life. As well as the Proverbs of the old testament, and many other scriptures. Seek and you will find. When I get stuck, I found in the past I would look for excuses on why something isn't working, or why is this happening to me, or when will this end. But when I started to actually "seek" I al…
TBH, and I say this as a pretty staunch atheist, Jesus sounds like he had a lot of his shit sorted. Most of what I've read about him is just him being fair and advocating respect of everyone involved.
Between about 1000 BC and 0 AD it seems as if humans worked out how to get along in life. I'm on your side in following Christian scripture but I think you can use any of the major texts that emerged during that time and get reasonable results.
In fact my main beef with self-help programs is that they tend to regurgitate a lot of basic lessons that already exist in ancient texts in cleaner and more direct forms, such as Matthew chapters 5-7 in the New Testament (aka the sermon on the mount). I certainly found this to be the case with the type of new age precepts that seems to be popular in training classes for corporate employees.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#34I know I will likely catch a lot of downvotes for this, but I found the teachings of Jesus to answer questions of how to run life. As well as the Proverbs of the old testament, and many other scriptures. Seek and you will find. When I get stuck, I found in the past I would look for excuses on why something isn't working, or why is this happening to me, or when will this end. But when I started to actually "seek" I al…
TBH, and I say this as a pretty staunch atheist, Jesus sounds like he had a lot of his shit sorted. Most of what I've read about him is just him being fair and advocating respect of everyone involved.
In my experience most people that claim to be "Christians" don't follow Jesus' basic teachings. Even the most staunch and dedicated will often fumble through an excuse as to why they don't do what he said to do.
Paul wrote about people that did not follow Jesus or the bible as following God naturally. (in Romans) One of my neighbors is a Buddist and he's a great to have next door. (cleared the snow from my driveway a few times without even me asking)
I have been personally shamed by the good behavior of other people outside my own "faith" group, including atheists. The Jordan Peterson video linked in a near comment pointed out the need to be challenged and take on responsibility, and have difficulties. I think the only way I was able to change some things about my religious beliefs was to hear the criticisms of my "sect" openly and face them.
My big religious change came when I was publicly confronted and shamed by a member that had left the group I was in. I started to fear disobeying true leadership in Jesus more than a man with authority. (being shamed, and wrong at the same time sucks) Proverbs says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
Well, I no longer follow men blindly, and it's funny what you see in Jesus when you have no religious baggage telling you what he meant...
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#35I know I will likely catch a lot of downvotes for this, but I found the teachings of Jesus to answer questions of how to run life. As well as the Proverbs of the old testament, and many other scriptures. Seek and you will find. When I get stuck, I found in the past I would look for excuses on why something isn't working, or why is this happening to me, or when will this end. But when I started to actually "seek" I al…
TBH, and I say this as a pretty staunch atheist, Jesus sounds like he had a lot of his shit sorted. Most of what I've read about him is just him being fair and advocating respect of everyone involved.
"Most of what you've read about him" is not equal to "most of what he said".
The most charitable source for this is probably Lewis's trilemma, which argues Jesus was either correct (he's the son of god), he's evil, or he's deluded.
More polemically, you have anything written by Christopher Hitchens on the subject.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank-you for sharing your story. You'd probably appreciate the lectures of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Clinical Psychologist. Award-winning lecturer. He loves to bring in Biblical references into his teachings. "A Good Father Helps You to Become Your Best Self" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA5iEKvHNxk
That was pretty cool, thanks for sharing that, I think I started down a rabbit hole with Jordan Peterson youtube clips. :P
Glad to hear it! I love listening to him - he sincerely has improved my life through his teachings.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#37Very Interesting read. I'm someone who has been reading some self-help literature for the past year. Topics include Mindfulness, Buddhism, Stoicism, Social skills, Positive psychology, Habit forming, Assertiveness. I'm in my early 20s, and I justify this phase as un-learning the coping mechanisms/bad habits I formed in my childhood/teen years. Well intentioned but highly critical parents damaged my self-esteem; I als…
You will notice over time how Stoicism is actually philosophy, it grows on and with you through the years. I know you did not mean it deeply but it is not self-help, no need to leave it behind after you finish your readings; and it's okay if you see it as self-help too though, no dead classical greek dude will come after you to question it :-)
It seems like most people come to this sort of thing to improve their lives. If your life is already fine, learning for the sake of learning is great. Most people whose lives need changing are stuck in habits and, speaking from experience, learning can come to replace the time spent on bad habits.
Which seems great, but it never gets applied, and your life continues to have the problems you set out to solve. It's easy to get stuck in a loop: If I just click through to this one article, maybe it'll have the answers...
Personally, I had a breakthrough in the last few weeks when I did the following:
* Instructed Firefox to not save history. Not being able to immediately jump to my go-to distractions with two keystrokes helped break the cycle, and not having sites in history adds just enough friction to keep me away. I also make heavy use of reader mode. This means I'm better able to focus on what I do end up reading.
* Switched to Microsoft Launcher, removed the Bing box, and installed DuckDuckGo. Stories disabled (they're getting rid of it soon anyway), JavaScript disabled. The abundance of sites that completely fail without JavaScript is a great habit breaker.
* Stopped saving articles to Pocket. Now I decide in the first paragraph if it's worth reading now, which is different from deciding whether it's worth reading. Farnam Street (https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/) has been tremendously helpful here because it's almost all good. Still, it's easy to get stuck in a loop reading it. Too much of a great thing is just as bad as too much of a good thing. If I were advising myself four weeks ago, I would suggest reading only the 10,000 or so words of their page on mental models: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/
* Started using Thunderbird's feed reader. It's more tedious to manage feeds, which keeps me from piling every new site I find on to it.
* Mindfulness meditation. I'm not very practiced at it, but saying (in my head) "break the cycle" while focusing on my head helps a bit.
* I make extensive use of Evernote's Windows 10 app. It's fast, and having a place to put ideas I have and read saved stuff keeps me away from the browser. This is one thing I want to have as fast as possible. The longer it takes to access the system and structure my ideas go into, the less likely I'll do it, and the less likely the thought will survive long enough to record.
Basically, I choose my frictions. I put orange cones around the stuff I want to avoid and try my best to clear the way to things that keep me moving forward.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH, and I say this as a pretty staunch atheist, Jesus sounds like he had a lot of his shit sorted. Most of what I've read about him is just him being fair and advocating respect of everyone involved.
"Most of what you've read about him" is not equal to "most of what he said". The most charitable source for this is probably Lewis's trilemma, which argues Jesus was either correct (he's the son of god), he's evil, or he's deluded. More polemically, you have anything written by Christopher Hitchens on the subject.
I think he was deluded about being the Son of God, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the ethical precepts he advocated. A life lived by the major tenets espoused by Jesus in the Bible - treat other people the way you would want to be treated, be compassionate to people who screw up, take care of people who are less fortunate than yourself - would be a good life. Not surprisingly, those are tenets that are common to most ethical systems, whether they are religious or philosophical.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Most of what you've read about him" is not equal to "most of what he said". The most charitable source for this is probably Lewis's trilemma, which argues Jesus was either correct (he's the son of god), he's evil, or he's deluded. More polemically, you have anything written by Christopher Hitchens on the subject.
I think he was deluded about being the Son of God, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the ethical precepts he advocated. A life lived by the major tenets espoused by Jesus in the Bible - treat other people the way you would want to be treated, be compassionate to people who screw up, take care of people who are less fortunate than yourself - would be a good life. Not surprisingly, those are tenets that are com…
Remember, he said we were all children of god. It was the hero-worshippers of the day that turned him into a special person. I don't believe he claimed to be any more than the rest of us.
Re: Improving Ourselves to Death
#40I'm a little frustrated at the tossed-off reference to Plato and Aristotle at the beginning - "The good life may have sufficed for Plato and Aristotle, but it is no longer enough." - because I feel like that ignores the fact that both Plato and Aristotle, along with a lot of philosophers, actually had a lot to say about physical fitness. Plato was a champion wrestler, and both he and Aristotle viewed physical education as a fundamental component to living the good life. Xenophon quotes Socrates saying this:
"For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health."
The whole article feels a little too mired in presentism, and ignorant of the history of self-improvement ideas.