In all honesty, math was never my strong point. I can do the simple things. I know the basics pretty well but for the most part, I am grateful for calculators and things that do the math for me.
But, regardless of the items which can either add, subtract, multiply or divide; this does not remove me from the responsibility of understanding how to do the math.
I say this from a different angle because to each person comes an individual and unique set of personal mathematics.
By now, there is an obvious match between our thinking and our feelings. At this point, we understand that our thinking is interconnected with the end result which are our emotions. By now, it is clear that our thinking is based on a pathway of patterns and behaviors, concepts and experiences. This is where biases can lead us to inaccurate assumptions. This is also where past thinking overlaps and reaches over to impose on future beliefs and possibilities.
For example, we are creatures of habit –
These habits become our routines and so our mind and body respond to these routines in an orderly fashion and in a habitual form which becomes automatic.
For example, when we wake up in the morning, we typically go through the same routines. We roll out of bed the same way. We reach for the same things. We do the same things, which is neither bad nor good; but instead, this is simply a pattern of understandable living.
We know where everything is. That’s why we keep things in their perspective places. We know where the soap is. We know where our toothbrush is and where the toothpaste is.
In fact, we brush our teeth the same way each morning and there’s no thought in which side of our mouth we start with or how we brush our teeth.
There’s no real attention to where we keep our coffee mugs or where we keep the tea, coffee, juice, vitamins, daily medications or anything else that we use because this has become part of our morning routine.
We have created a pattern of living to simplify the math of our daily life. This way, our surface thinking is free to think about other business like current events or the news which, of course, nothing is too pleasant when it comes to the news.
Either way, we create a process for ourselves that readies us for the day ahead of us. Essentially, our mind is always working.
Perhaps we might be thinking about the different directions we have to face in the day ahead of us. We might be considering the work ahead of us.
Or, quite often, we might think about the people we’ll have to see or interact with. Some of this can be pleasant and some of this can be anything but pleasant.
Our mind is working; therefore, we are considering how to navigate through the upcoming obstacles ahead of us. Or, we might be basing our day on predictions that are solely based on past experiences with people who might be seen as unsafe for us or untrustworthy.
If we have challenges in front of us; or if there’s an anticipation of a problem or dispute ahead, oftentimes, our mind is calculating and thinking of things to say to protect ourselves or how to create our own best defense just in case everything goes wrong.
I used the word “wrong” which is an interesting word in this case.
I say this because everyone has a natural and basic need to be right, which means the last thing anyone wants to be is wrong.
I also say this because in the challenges which come with personal identity, often, our assumptions of right or wrong can leave an impact on our personal worth and value; hence, this is part of why people freak out. This is partly ego, which is nothing more than a porcelain figure in our lives to which we so desperately hide the cracks or the faults and flaws in fear that this will be seen as imperfect or shattered.
But rather than digress too much, I will go on from here –
There are times when we expect an argument. But where does this come from?
We base this on old or past experiences and, therefore, in our mathematic assumptions, we add old troubles to new equations.
There are times when we consider our math before the argument takes place and we create a preemptive plan. We look to defend ourselves.
Don’t believe me?
Why else do people look to find excuses when they know they didn’t do something up to an appropriate level? So to save their little porcelain doll (AKA: their ego) they come up with an answer to an expected list of challenges or rebuttals.
Just in case.
And why?
Why do we do this?
The answer is to keep us safe and protected.
So, we plan our strategies through an emotional mindset to cover our tracks or to C.Y.A. (as in Cover Your Ass!) which, of course, I say that we plan our strategies through an emotional mindset – but emotions and strategy do not always coexist or coincide well with each other.
In the math of understanding our own sanity, we agreed that we have to understand the triggers that disrupt our personal service.
We need to know where the inaccuracies of our personal math comes in.
We have to understand the calculations that lead us to our mental math because, quite often, our challenges come from inaccurate calculations in our emotional mathematics.
So, why do we freak out?
Why do we “lose our cool”?
Why do we worry so much?
Is this a simple addition of our fears and concerns that no matter how we try, we won’t end up with the right outcome?
Is this part of a habitual assumption because if something happened to us once, that means it can happen again, which means shame, blame, fault, guilt and regret can happen again to expose the faults and flaws and the cracks in our “porcelain” selves.
By now, it is obvious that our thinking can dictate our feelings and our thoughts and feelings respond internally.
This means that chemically, our bodies take on the chemistry of the thoughts in our mind.
Thus, it’s clear that the internal voice can either rebuild our sanity or adversely, our thinking can destroy our sanity and tear us apart.
So?
What does this mean?
I can say that, yes.
It’s easy to become frustrated. It’s certainly easy to lose our cool.
It’s easy to look around and find faults.
it’s easy to judge someone on appearance.
It’s certainly easy to look around and although we all live in glass houses, people in glass houses should not thrown stones. Yet, we still do!
It’s easy to be distracted by things, like some asshole who cuts you off on the parkway, only to drive slower, especially when you’re in a rush.
It’s also easy to believe that this same asshole who doesn’t know you at all is somehow tied to a plot to ruin your day or wreck your commute by making you late.
It’s funny how the math adds up in our mind and how we calculate this as if acts like this are truly personal. It’s funny how crazy we can be sometimes.
Right?
Adding more color, it’s amazing how we add the unfortunate characters in our life and calculate them into our personal equation. We personalize other people’s flaws and defects. We internalize outside troubles and personalities and, once more, we assume them and think ourselves into crisis and habitually believe ourselves into catastrophe.
The challenges of breaking these habits are effort based and more and more, the hardest of all changes are the steps we take in the beginning because nothing is easy at first.
We recognize that valuable changes and important transformations are not simple.
There only necessary.
Consider the right handed person who has to try and write and use their left as their dominant hand. Now, think of the left handed person who has to do the opposite.
Think of the patterns we’ve created for ourselves on items such as our cell phones and then what do we do when we buy a new one?
We adjust ourselves to create an understandable pattern so that we can navigate as quickly and as equally as our habits with the phone that we had before.
We don’t like discomfort.
We don’t like disruptions to our simplified life.
Even if our life is complicated and our routines do nothing in favor for our better living, our patterns and routines are understandable to us.
In simple math, we have to understand where we complicate our personal equations.
We have to learn what thinking triggers an internal reaction. When we find this, we have to create a method of replacement so that our mind can understand the new translation of events.
Otherwise, we remain in our habitual patterns.
We have to create a new loop for our brain to react to old cues so that we can initiate a new and understandable reward to the brain, which says, Oh, I get it now.
“I can just do this instead of that now!”
Change is a life-long process.
Good habits are intentional plans to support good and healthy thought patterns; in which case, as it is with any habit, our body knows which way to go without any input from the mind.
For example, without thinking about this, I know which lane moves quickest when crossing over the George Washington Bridge in the morning.
I know which lane moves fastest at the toll booths.
I know where to go if the upper-level is closed. While this is not my initial or daily pattern, in case of delays or emergencies, without thinking, I recognize the detours and the closures.
What comes next, you ask?
This triggers a response that takes me into the left lane and a short ways down, I make a left onto the ramp that goes to the lower-level of the bridge.
Of course, after years of making this trip, I know which lane moves best and where to turn, when to do it, and how to get to work; all without using effort from the mind because I have formed these habits after years of commuting.
I know where I put my keys. I know where I keep my wallet. I know where I keep my morning meds and which pill goes where in the size order of my pill-bottles.
I do this to keep the math as easy as possible because in my mind, “we got grown-folk business to think about!”
At best, we have to learn to change our math.
To promote our best possible self, we have to learn new patterns of mental navigation. Otherwise, yesterday’s problems still exist today.
If we think about this, we can see how old topics of discomfort branch out into next-day patterns and, habitually, we create a loop of thinking, feeling, living and being that supports our past.
But not our future.
I say this now and I say this often.
We are in the effort business.
Not the results business!
I remember when this was told to me because I must have heard this at least a thousand times before.
Until one day, my ears heard this differently.
Maybe this was a moment of awareness. Maybe the student was finally ready and likewise, the teacher was there to appear.
But either way, I woke up in the sense that I recognized the strain and stress that I had put myself through. I saw how I kept my levels of sanity and so, I learned where I needed to improve.
I realized the patterns of my thinking were disloyal to my best potential; as such, it was nearly impossible for me to be at my best because my thinking was leading me elsewhere.
Again, I say it’s easy to quit.
It’s easy to be mad.
Just look around. The fights are everywhere.
If it’s not politics, it’s an argument about identity or a fight between personalities.
Or, if it’s not that, it’s a misconceived notion that “everyone’s full of shit!” and “If you want something done right then you’ll have to do it yourself!”
If it’s not that, it’s some asshole who shoves their way into the subway because they seem to forget there’s a great big world out there and that they’re not the only ones who need to get downtown on time.
It’s easy to see the problems.
There’s a lot of static in this world.
There’s a lot of resistance too.
It might not be easy to see the forest from the trees and it might not be clear that the world is always a beautiful place. But life is always changing and we are always evolving.
The world is an endless stream of chance and opportunity.
It took me a very long time to understand this.
Opportunities might not always be the same for everyone. But even still, there’s always a choice and there’s always a chance. There’s always an opening. There’s always a way to improve yourself from within.
First, we can start by improving our mental math and then, once the word problems in our head begin to clear up with solutions, our vision starts to change because we can see things from a clearer perspective.
I say this because if this weren’t so, would I still be here trying to reach you?
If this were not so, then I would have quit a long time ago.
Or more, if the math above were not so, then I would have been one of the names that were added to a list of unfortunate statistics which dictates the list of people who never made it.
Update your personal math
Then . . .
Let’s see what’s next.
Deal?
The Written Addiction 