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Life: Design vs. Acclimation

 
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(Been thinking again, y'all.)

A-- I am a passive person who shifts my habits to fit the circumstances that happen,  
B-- rather than a person who shifts the circumstances around him by conscious choices and habits.


Wondering today where Permies people find themselves on this spectrum.

I currently feel that I am much too much on the passive side of things, so I have begun to implement more "Life Design" principles this Spring. For me at this time, it primarily means developing more income streams, other things too though.  I am working through a recent bestselling book on the topic to help me target priorities. (Every generation has its bestseller on this topic, and I will put them to good use because surely I own them all now--ha!)
 
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I think I'm 2/3 A and 1/3 B.
 
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I like to believe that I make conscious choices while being able to fit into circumstances that happen.

Maybe I am 50/50 while sitting on the fence.
 
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I'm reminded of this...
serenity.jpg
[Thumbnail for serenity.jpg]
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Regarding the income-design aspect of this all: Since I am 90% of the time Person A, I would be happy to coast for a good long while on the amount of money my husband has earned for the last several years. However, as costs continue to rise dramatically, more and more of a budgetary pinch has developed as the months (!) go by. I would prefer to go back to what it was like several years ago before the pinch came--but ...this means that we will have to increase our household income.

This is what brings me to the 10% of the time I act as Person B. When I just can't coast anymore, I know I must design. So I am going to draft some digital assets this week.
 
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I shift my circumstances to the best I can, and adapt to what I can't change. And keep shifting circumstances as I am able to.
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Pearl Sutton wrote:I shift my circumstances to the best I can, and adapt to what I can't change. And keep shifting circumstances as I am able to.


Yes! I was pretty sure your attitude toward life is something like that. You're so lucky--I see that as the optimal way to go through life!

In passive mode, I tend to treat everything as "circumstances I cannot change." But not folks like you--with tons of ideas in your brain, you must be able to pretty quickly see options and possibilities for any given type or size of situation. But after seeing these options/potential projects, how do you personally discern which ones to get started making happen? Are you at all afraid of (seeming) failures and dead-ends, or do you look at life as a really good, fun game, and the more experiments the better?
 
Pearl Sutton
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Rachel Lindsay wrote:....with tons of ideas in your brain, you must be able to pretty quickly see options and possibilities for any given type or size of situation. But after seeing these options/potential projects, how do you personally discern which ones to get started making happen? Are you at all afraid of (seeming) failures and dead-ends, or do you look at life as a really good, fun game, and the more experiments the better?



Hard question. Yes, part of my brain weirdness is I drown in ideas. My morning prayers ask for help to "dance and surf the flow" of them. When you surf on a wave you don't get dragged under and ground into the gravel on the bottom. Sometimes I spend a lot of time being ground into the gravel of all the ideas. But when you dance them, and surf on top, and feel like you are flying, that's the best thing in the world! I wish my whole life was spent in that state, I'd get an amazing amount of really cool stuff done!!

Part of the reason the question is hard is there are big problems to solve, and small ones. Small ones are low risk, and low effort, these I go for the most results that will affect the problems at hand with the least time/money/effort. I'm not afraid of those failing, they just mulch back into my "I need to do something about this" pile or my "I need to modify that more" pile.

Am I afraid of small dead ends? My past is littered with tons of them. They happen. I say "huh, that sucked." and think of what else wants to be done. Crafty type folks have a term "UFO's" UnFinished Objects" I have piles of them, not only in craft stuff. They are in my tools, my notes, the systems I start making and fail to finish, my permies threads I never get written (I have pictures etc all ready to go for over 300 threads at any given time, they just don't get done...)  

Experiments are fun, I don't get to do anywhere NEAR as many as I want to. I have thousands of cool things I want to try, the ideas drown me, I love doing them, but generally life gets in the way of it all more than I want it to.

Big problems I break into smaller problems, but they are riskier, and yes, I get paralyzed by fear "What if I spend all this money, time and effort and it fails?" My bad coping style there is I get busy doing other stuff, that often doesn't matter as much, but that is lower risk. Distraction by overwork. "No time to think about the big project today! I have things to get done!!"

Am I afraid of big dead ends? Oh yes. I have nightmares from hell about the possibilities of big projects failing. Locks me up bad with fear. Part of my problem is I have no back up, no one to bail me out if I falter or fail. And no real back up plans on the really big projects. I throw the dice and hope I can pull it off.  It's hard to throw those dice sometimes. REALLY hard....

:D
 
Rachel Lindsay
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My GOODNESS! I guess, as always, there are challenges on the flip side of everything.

I am trying to be more idea-prone, though! In the last few days I make sure I always have a notepad very close by to jot stuff down. And just knowing it's there seems to be helping me generate ideas. Generate and organize.

Now I just have to figure out how to get over the fear of iterating things. (I'm currently also reading "The War of Art" and that's a big psychological help!)
 
Rachel Lindsay
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The first step with all design work seems to be observation. With Permaculture, #1 = “observe and interact”, of course. So this is my week to observe and record my energy and engagement levels in the various tasks and happenings of my day. Next week I will sort through my noted observations for patterns.

Patterns; the good, the bad, and the ugly... Supposedly observing these patterns will help me target aspects of my life that I want to change, to amplify or to diminish. I can't wait to see what insights I get from this, because firstly I am curious and want to "know myself" in general--but I'm even more curious to see if this process will truly lead me to better brainstorming solutions for problems and improvements for the good things.
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Related to life-design: I have to struggle to keep an attitude of gratitude. In this life-design project, I am taking a hard look at things that I will label as "design problems." That sounds like a rather negative thing to do. I wonder how I will be able to keep working on gratitude while simultaneously troubleshooting my life for improvement!  
 
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I suspect I'm mainly type A.
I coasted along in jobs that were "fine", "OK", "alright", until the day that they weren't and I made a change. I hate that effort when you end up in a very similar situation, just with different headed notepaper!

I'm also very good at "not seeing things". By this I mean there are a lot of non ideal things in my house that I just live with. I tell myself that my four dimensional house has this that and the other, but none of them will come to pass until my husband and I get round to doing something about them. However we (especially he) have a lot on our plates and there is no point stressing about something that we can live with for the moment. I count my blessings and concentrate on doing the small things I can do, whilst planning the larger things - sometimes in minute detail and with extra bells and whistles because dreams don't cost anything!
 
Rachel Lindsay
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I've done some "prototyping" today for two income streams--
1. We've gotten a few (new) car parts out of the garage (originally purchased for cars we no longer own) and they are on the dining room table labelled and ready to be photographed and put up online for sale tomorrow. We will start to learn how to sell online!
2. I am working on an e-book/e-resource for my site visitors who are in choir. Put in good time on it two days in a row. It's fun so far, and there is a market for it, for sure!
Bias-to-Action-Copy.PNG
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Rachel Lindsay
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So action begets action...it's a funny thing. My husband has now got his car parts photographed (yay!) and while I was working on my e-book I had another idea that will be even quicker and easier to launch, maybe take a day or two to put up online. I am so happy we have started getting out of the slump we've been in for years!

(Side note: My husband has had lots of "upward-spiraling" going on lately--I persuaded him to join a gym this year (hahaha, after I did all the sign-up work, found one that was open at 2a.m., and managed the payments!). After hearing how good I felt after going paleo for several weeks last month, he has started a Keto eating plan, and he looks great and feels great after only a week and a half of it. I am so happy. Hoping we'll both be unstoppable for a long time now!)
 
Rachel Lindsay
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(More quotes from the book I'm working with, just because.)
Build-Forward-Copy.PNG
[Thumbnail for Build-Forward-Copy.PNG]
Then-They-Build-Them-Copy.PNG
[Thumbnail for Then-They-Build-Them-Copy.PNG]
 
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Rachel Lindsay wrote: In this life-design project, I am taking a hard look at things that I will label as "design problems." That sounds like a rather negative thing to do. I wonder how I will be able to keep working on gratitude while simultaneously troubleshooting my life for improvement!  

Do you feel you could rename it something like "design challenges"? To me that would sound less negative.

Patterns; the good, the bad, and the ugly...

This is a common saying, but sometimes labelling things "good" and "bad" isn't as helpful as using more descriptive or guiding words:
Things that work well for me.
Things I want to change.
Things I *will* change because x will work better than y.
Things I need to think about... because sometimes the reason they are not happening or changing is because I haven't figured out where I want to go. (This is a biggie for me. A project will stall, but a week later I'll be thinking about it, or even something else, and suddenly go, "Yes, that's what's bugging me. I need to try doing it this different way." In other words, give your self time to do the problem solving that may be needed.)

I don't know if these ideas will be helpful. You're following a book, so you've got guidance, from that. However, if it isn't feeling quite right, see if changing a few words makes a difference. Hopefully, you will keep making progress!

 
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Jay Angler wrote:Do you feel you could rename it something like "design challenges"? To me that would sound less negative.


What's negative about problems? Life is full of them, and they motivate us to address them. Sometimes deeper understanding leads us to realize they aren't what we initially thought and may not be problems at all. The rest of the time our efforts lead to solutions -- and oftentimes developing new skills.
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Rachel Lindsay wrote:I've done some "prototyping" today for two income streams--
1. We've gotten a few (new) car parts out of the garage (originally purchased for cars we no longer own) and they are on the dining room table labelled and ready to be photographed and put up online for sale tomorrow. We will start to learn how to sell online!
2. I am working on an e-book/e-resource for my site visitors who are in choir. Put in good time on it two days in a row. It's fun so far, and there is a market for it, for sure!



Everything is up online now, as we hoped! We've gotten these balls rolling, and boy does it feel good this Monday morning!

Notice: I don't expect to become millionaires from these tiny things--what's huge is that we finally got off our rear ends after years of making excuses, and instead made something happen. I am super chuffed!
 
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"Make excuses or make it happen" is what a teacher told me once.
 
Jay Angler
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Rachel Lindsay wrote:--what's huge is that we finally got off our rear ends after years of making excuses, and instead made something happen. I am super chuffed!

Yes - being "self-motivated", being a "self-starter", "setting one's own agenda", when most people grow up with other people setting their timelines, due dates, and responsibilities is very hard to do, and I know far too many people who don't seem to have risen to that mindset. That is a very important milestone to celebrate!

So what's next? Are there things on your list of "need to be done to improve my day to day life"? Are they things that a bit of extra cash from your web project could facilitate? Or are they things that you can accomplish with either just sweat equity, or by searching out cheap or free materials to work with?

I tread a fine line between putting things on my electronic ToDo list, and giving myself permission to let the timelines slide. I like to put a few things in the 'today' section that are easy to accomplish even if it's just as repetitive as "clean up the kitchen", because I know I get satisfaction with the self-acknowledgement that it got done. Not everyone is motivated by that sort of thing. A friend used to put tiny stickers on a chart on the fridge for her daughter, because that *did* motivate her. My kids would have considered that a waste of time. Everyone's different. Figuring out who you are and what helps you get more of those "super chuffed" feelings is a journey worth tackling!
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Jay Angler wrote: So what's next? Are there things on your list of "need to be done to improve my day to day life"? Are they things that a bit of extra cash from your web project could facilitate? Or are they things that you can accomplish with either just sweat equity, or by searching out cheap or free materials to work with?



What's next? Regarding our income-earning projects, more, and better, hopefully--trying to see everything as an "iteration" and constantly building from what we have.

Got to learn how to garden with perennials and start foraging food--two things I feel totally at sea about, but must try small experiments and see what happens!
 
Rachel Lindsay
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Today I sold my first PDF! YES! It has finally happened--and it worked! And the customer is happy. And I am happy! Everyone, join in the happy with me!
 
What I don't understand is how they changed the earth's orbit to fit the metric calendar. Tiny ad:
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