Based on personal experiences, endurance to survive and hopefully thrive in doing important things for a long time needs two things : Rhytm and System.
Rhytm, like in music, it keeps the song going in steady beat from the beginning to the end. Kind of rhytm we have is mostly decided by what kind of habits we do. In mental health issues, it starts when one is slowly losing control over their rhytm and they couldn’t reclaim it and pick up themselves.
But, rhytm alone is not enough. We need the melody (and lyrics) to make a song beatiful and meaningful. Drum can’t stand alone without any other melodic instruments.
The next level is about combining everything into one solid form called system. To build a system that works for many areas in life, it starts with having one that works in our personal life. Solid systems outside is the result of solid system inside.
Deciding the rhytm and building system are two that I have been constantly doing unconsciously in many areas of life. Whenever I am in the new setting, I always sit and observe first how I will operate in the new environment.
It explains why the first thing I have done after arrive in new city is tidying up and unpacking right away after returning back. Losing the rhytm is detected as a danger for my system and it makes me can’t function properly.
It explains why I couldn’t survive daily full time job and only lasted for two years and never returned. Spent most of my daily rhytm in other people’s systems doesn’t fit and help me to achieve what I need and want to do in life, if I continued to stay there.
Building the system that works doesn’t happen in an instant. It needs trial and error. What works for some times might not work for another time.
This is actually a very much self reminder after witnessing a lot of changes happening in this year. “Was it this hard at that time?”. Trying to make sense whether I am getting impatient or what.
When things run well, it’s easy to say your system works.But, when it doesn’t, you start questioning whether it’s time to change or you have to wait and see.
A long-term project called life requires constant improvement and attention.
In understanding the relationship between myself and money, I found some patterns :
In personal finance, I have always been loyal and frugal.
In family finance, I have always been royal, love exploring new trials, while keep being rationale.
In bussiness finance, I have been quite royal when it comes to the sustainability of the business, but often playing small when it comes to the expanding the wall.
I see that I behave differently in front of every bank account/card and unconsciously categorize purchases according to which department they belong to. I always try my best to draw a clear line when I choose which bank app/card should I pick to pay for the transaction.
Setting boundaries to others indeed start with setting boundaries to yourself.
This year’s noise has been among the most overwhelming. All in personal, national, and global levels. It feels like having overstimulation inside out.
The brain seems to have taken on too many duties and is unable to stop processing a wide range of circumstances that occur in sequence or simultaneously throughout the year.
Keep trying to make sense of things that happened beyond my shallow comprehension. Try to rationalize the behavior that I thought was impossible to perform by a supposed decent human being.
In another lane, witnessing how a 20-year difference can really pass by, and how it’s really possible for one not to move an inch from where they were. But, things are never static. Things that I call not moving, it is actually moving, but, instead of progressing, they are regressing.
Being 20 years older and regressing without realizing it.
It disturbed me more than I realized. I have been talking to myself about what actually bothers me.
I haven’t figured out the answer but found a similarity in all these examples.
“Learned helplessness is a psychological state where you believe you have no control over what happens to you. This occurs after a person has repeatedly experienced stressful, uncontrollable events, leading to a feeling that your actions don’t matter”.
I understand change is hard. But not until this year did I see what life could be like if we really neglect the homework that should be done, skip the training that should be learned, and keep walking without a compass or clear direction. It could bring you literally anywhere before you realize you’re actually lost. Like you have no idea where you are, and it is a point of no return.
What’s worse, even after you realize it, you still don’t know where to go, because you’ve been accustomed to living a life without thinking for many years.
For someone who often suffers because whose brain couldn’t stop and doing too much thinking, it’s perplexing.
One who is regressing is actually asking the same question as one who is progressing: “How do I end up here?” Only with different tones. One with astonishment, while the other with confusion.
I have been searching for the root of learned helplessness other than stress and trauma. Is it possible because of multiple bad decision-making that keeps compounding? One bad decision-making that is not bothered to be fixed?
The level of thinking greatly influences decision-making, and it requires a certain level of intelligence —the higher, the better? Not really. At a certain point, thinking alone is not enough. It won’t bring you results. Doing and executing are the real work of decision-making.
How do we even know whether a decision is good or bad? Before making it, one that feels harder, seems impossible, and stretches the heart and brain to the maximum to execute is usually a good one.
After living it, we will slowly be shown the result. At this point, is it possible to turn a bad decision to be slightly better one? Possible. But, we have to do the homework. Slightly harder than before, but, the sooner it is realized, the easier to fix. This too needs thinking
Doing and excuting need one ingredient that I didn’t realize I have been having growing up due to many unintentional circumstances that push me to keep exercising it : courage.
I think courage is the cure(?) of learned helplessness. Since it’s learned, it can surely be unlearned. But, courage is not given. It’s practiced through continuous execution.
I also realized how important it is to live with good, honorable, and respectable wants. Not only needs. Not to gain other’s approval, but to respect yourself.
Wants make you think, make you hopeful, make you go out and try, and make you feel alive. While, helplessness is the root of hopelessness. It’s hard to imagine to operate life with such state.
Thinking, doing, and executing is hard. But, the consequences of neglecting them are even harder. Maybe this is why people say life is hard. Neither choice is easy.
Maybe this is also why the Quran keeps repeating certain lines many times :
“Afala ta’kilun?” (don’t you use your intellect?)
“Afala tatafakkarun?”(don’t you think?”)
“Afala yatadabbarun?” (don’t you reflect?”)
The more examples I see, the more I understand how powerful the intellect is.
I have said enough.
One line from Murakami keeps playing inside my head while writing this :
There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.
Closing this with a line found in Medium :
“Writing is how to make sure your train of thought arrives at the station”.
Things sown during the twenties were slowly and constantly reaped in the forties. Not (just) money, but more like habits, mindset, struggles, and any hard choices made in the 20s start returning the investment in the 40s. At least, it makes life slightly easier than many.
As a parent, I just realized that the training to deal with a certain decade starts a decade before.
Any training done consistently in any decade will compound in the subsequent decades. We really become what we repeat over and over again. The good and the bad. Unless we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our life, and we call it fate, said Jung.
To be authentically transparent and honest about ourselves, it’s essential to have regular alone time during our youth. To separate from the crowd, to listen closely to your own voice and thoughts, and to think about where we want to go and what we should do to get there. If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable, said Seneca. Being able to sit with yourself is a highly underrated skill that many people don’t realize the importance of.
Two hardest ibadah in Islam are two : Shalat and marriage. One that we have to do daily, maintain regularly, and take care of mindfully. Two that if we neglect, the effects won’t show instantly, but slowly, unnoticed, and before we know it, it crashes the entire system. Taking care those two is the foundation of sanity in adults life. Nothing really works if these two don’t.
I really need to break the writing absence by starting small.
Two 15th anniversary for things that have been taking me places, witnessing many of life’s ups and downs.
Adding another two of the things that get through the years with me this month.
You know that anything new that brings us happiness will eventually adapt to a new normal, and it will slowly become our new regular, losing its spark. A book said it takes exactly 87 days for a honeymoon period to come to an end.
It’s called “hedonic adaptation.” Anything that initially brings you joy tends to lose its appeal after 12 weeks. The brain treats your new possessions/ habits/new life like expired milk.
The funny thing is, it’s only applicable for positive things. A negative experience can last for years. Trauma, destructive and painful experiences, doesn’t have an expiry date. We carry that all through the years and can still remember it fresh, no matter how much time has passed.
In such a situation, nothing and no one really makes anyone happy. So what does?
Finding novelty in consistency. The same thing that you treat as something new, periodically, regularly, over and over again.
Surviving, Taking care of, Keep maintaining the excitement, For the same things over long years, that’s the brain job. It requires thinking, not (just) feeling.
A recent event gave me another frown and uttered disbelief. It was another thing that I thought could happen in any random social media post I encountered, but to deal with this in reality, I keep questioning myself: What kind of world is this?
That was one of the passages on my previous post.
I don’t know since when, whenever something happens, something that has a direct or indirect impact on my life, something that I still have to deal with in the future, I have this constant annoyance inside to make sense of everything. Recent events on a personal level have been constantly disturbing and need to make sense.
Like Hermione, when in doubt about something, go to the library. I have been through my old reading for days and went through my gallery, where most of the contents are captured from articles I read in the past. I am also typing some questions in the learning machine. I have certain answers that I keep repeating whenever I discuss the problem with someone. But I am still not satisfied enough to stop wondering.
During sit and stare session in tahajud (this again another 4 am post), I suddenly remember one word I wrote in my latest YPM post. Then my mind jumped to another recent writing on the draft about my daughter who starts copying a certain habit of mine and elaboration of how habit and characters formed. There is also certain pinned post on my feed that I keep re-reading regarding this disturbing event because it amplifies the truth of what I wrote there.
From there, I keep connecting some of the recent conversations, looking back at some of my personal experience and some others related to me, and I start feeling a bit settled.
One phrase that could explain the event :
The absence of internalized values.
Previously, I can only make sense the behavior by calling it weak character. But then, what’s behind such weak characters that lead to certain behavior?
It must be something deeper than that. How does characters are built? Through long years of repetitions of habits. Habits can be good or bad.
Then, how does one build good characters? By doing long years of hard things.
How does habit formed? Internally : from genetics. We bring certain instilled preferences in ourself inherited by genetic from our ancestors. Externally : from our environment.
How does environment help to promote habits? Internally : Motivation and willpower Externally : System.
Some habits we carry in our genes flourish because it grows in the right environment while some failed to thrive because it doesn’t meet the right soil to grow.
I learned that we might not carry any genetics of certain habit, but, environment has enough power to perform certain habits.
Anything we have internally doesn’t really work without working on the external factors. Something that we don’t have internally might grow when there is strong pressure externally.
One of the reasons why certain schools are in high-demand because they provide everything to build good characters. The seeds are different, but with the right environment with good system, it makes bad habits have no place to grow.
So, what drives our attitude and behavior at the most basic level? It’s our beliefs and values. Values and character are deeply interconnected, with one forming the foundation and the other serving as its outward expression. Values are the beliefs and principles that guide a person, while character is the consistent demonstration of those values through behavior and habits over time.
Our core values are usually inherited from our closest people. Parents, teachers, or the bigger family. We pick our initial values from our surroundings.
Based on personal experience and seeing some results when someone becomes a fully mature adult by the end of their 30s and 40s, value transmission needs a strong connection and countless repetitions until it can be safely internalized during our formative years that persists through adulthood.
If it doesn’t take place at home, other circle with stronger connection might take the job. Friends, schools, etc.
“Adolescence is considered a critical period for the development of values and identity, when parents serve as important agents of socialization of their children (Alwin, 1984, Smith and Self, 1980, Starrels, 1992). However, parents compete with other socialization agents (e.g., peers, teachers, and media) such that adolescence marks a turning point when parental influence begins to wane (Younnis & Smollar, 1985). Adolescents begin to remove themselves from their parents’ sphere of influence and expand their own identity and values (Hoffman, 1984, Kroger and Haslett, 1988). The process of individuation accelerates as children experience important life transitions such as moving out of their parents’ home, marrying, and having children of their own, which lead to greater divergence from the values of their parents (Bucx, Raaijmakers, & Van Wel, 2010). Because timing appears to a key feature of value socialization, it is important to consider both pre- and post-adult children when studying the transmission of values between generations (Acock and Bengtson, 1980, Bengtson, 2001, Erikson, 1950, Hitlin, 2006).
Children couldn’t learn from someone who they have no connection with. No education could ever take place without connection. No values could be transferred without a strong connection.
Connection needs presence. They say quality is more important than quantity? Only true with adequate quantity first. No quality before quantity. Numbers can’t lie. Low quantity has a higher probability of low connection.
Can children from the same home and parents end up with different values? It’s very much possible. The child’s temperament, birth order, family situation, schools they attend, and things they experience growing up might all contribute to different values adopted.
How do we judge successfully transmitted values?
It’s how people behave when they have full authority over themselves. Things they do when they have all the resources on their hand. Things they do behind supervision and closed door.
The core values will also have an impact on ethics and morals.
Any behaviors an adult displays is the reflection of successful values that he adopted. Whether from home or another environment.
There is one memorable line from the current podcast I listened to from a marriage counselor :
“Value is not taught, it’s caught”.
(Deep breath)
An adult without clear values will never have clear goals in life. It is translated in every aspect of life. Living in confusion, picking up the easiest way to live, driving aimlessly until it crashes into something, the consequences of which must be handled not only by himself, but unfortunately, by others too.
Adults with unclear values even unable to internalize and own their mistake properly and do something to fix it the right way.
I never knew how scary it is before it truly happens before my eyes.
(Deep breath).
It took me few hours to finally finish this writing with countless revisions.
I think I can put my mind on ease a little bit now.
The past few days have been intense and feel like out of this world.
The chaos happens inside out.
Life, as I know it, has never been easy. But, previously, I felt like mine was the only one that was hard, while others seemed had it easy and strangely, I considered it was normal.
But the past few days, as a citizen of this country, we have been exposed to the ugliest realities that seemed to absurd to understand. It feels like living in different parallel worlds.
What makes it even more confusing, this also happened on personal level. The past few months,I have been dealing with something that I thought I could only read and see as something happened to others, but dealing with it first hand, it’s hard to explain that it is real.
Recent event gave another frowned and uttered disbelief. Another thing that I thought could happen in any random social media posts I encountered, but, to really deal with tbis in reality, I keep questioning myself : what kind of world is this?
Those tranquil days seemed so far during this period. Is it what those Palestinians feel daily for almost two years? Like there’s no predictability that makes you feel safe and secure.
How we call it live?
I currently experience the curse of knowledge, the consequences of noticing too much and intense, and the downside of being a long term thinker. At times like this, absorbing too much create some burden. Funny there are always indeed two sides of something.
At times like this, what I need is more detachment. Less instead of more.
Caring too much is exhausting. At times like this, certain amount ignorance is indeed a bliss.
This is not a 4 am post, but another written in the dark one while having a bit of trouble getting sleep and I desperately need throwing a short rant into the void.
A YPM alumni posted a writing about life in YPM and it triggered more alumni to give their testimony too. I am enjoying YPM’s little reunion on the comment section while keep reflecting and being currently on the down slope of parenting.
Reading those comments make me realize few things.
Not all the students become great/famous pianist. But, all agree in one thing. The result of all the rigorous training done for years are same for everyone :
the good characters stay, Especially for those who reached certain level.
Lower grade in YPM is about building discipline, consistency, resilience, and many kind of internal characters.
Upper grade in YPM (if one is given the chance) is more about displaying years whether those characters have been successfully internalized or not.
Before grade 6, if you don’t pass, you can repeat the year. Starting grade 6, if you don’t pass : out.
The brilliant one goes directly to PK 1. The not so brilliant one (like me) goes to Pra PK. It’s like another second chance of grade 6. If you don’t pass : out.
In PK 1 – PK2, if you don’t pass all or half of the subjects, repeat the year.
PK 3 is the final destination. The end of journey.
They pick 2-3 student to be taken as teacher, if they tick all the list.
Looking back, I think, those who could proceed and survive PK years, are ones who got the characters internalized, more than the skills.
Ones who, in spite being scolded hard weekly, keep coming. Ones who might be not so talented, but keep trying. Ones who keep juggling between task and challenges, they give their all to finish it,no matter the result.
Evening Replass is where we have play in front of others, being criticized openly and bluntly. Twice a week, From 7pm-12 am. It might sound weird, but, I have never seen an empty Repclass room even during school exam, like final test or even UAN. They don’t choose between school or YPM. They embrace both responsabilities equally.
Having/doing/surviving YPM in my formative years, it’s like a ‘shortcut’ to be a functional adult.
The most significant tangible result is nothing written on the paper, but when I look around my peers and realized I was entering 20s fully ready to deal with the most uncertain period of adulthood.
because I am good, but because I have been trained to deal with whatever adult should deal with.
Adults :
Pay their own bills.
Doing multiple roles.
Doing things we don’t like, but we have to.
Having clear goals and know how to achieve it.
Saying no to many things that doesn’t align with the goals, be it job offers or marriage proposals (plurals).
Fully aware that good life comes with price and willing to pay for it.
It’s certainly not because who I am. It’s the works that many people do for me in my formative years and YPM was the huge part of it.
Working and volunteering with the 20s for the past few years, I see it as one way to paying forward for all the hardwork done on me.
Succesful education can be considered by two characteristics : competency and character.
In YPM, they nailed both.
Closing this with one of the most favorite quotes from a book :
“Teachers (and great education) affect eternity. No one can tell where their influences stops”.
The past few days, life gave me huge lessons about few things. Or maybe show me some test to my character.
It showed me how reactive I am. How quick I was jumping into conclusions.
It showed me how much improvement needed regarding my communication skills.
It showed me no matter much I think I know what to do, at certain point, I will be slipped.
It showed me the complexities of raising a child. No matter how much I think I know about my child, there will be more than I don’t know and teach me those I don’t know through certain circumstance that doesn’t make sense.
I feel humiliated, embarrassed, disappointed, stupid, all level of shame from the lowest to the highest. On the other side, I feel confused, worried, defeated, and extremely exhausted. It has been countless session of talking inside the head and tears flowing suddenly. Even when I am currently writing this.
This is actually the real life test to certain thing that I seem to understand during learnng, so it gives me a chance to see how much I understand when it happens in real life, not through others, but first hand experience.
But, this also one of the moments of confirmation how precise Allah’s timing for everything. While facing this lesson, He let me deal with it ‘alone’ to make sure I am the one who get the lesson.
I wrote to the smallest details at the beginning of the year. It happened again this time. Been wondering why it kept delaying while for the past few months it has been consistently on time. It came at the right time to remove some of obligations while dealing with huge commotion.
Other than the emotions mentioned above, there’s one thing that gives me some light :
The amount of courage that helped me get through this. Years spent training this trait through doing hard things and decision making, turned out to be the most useful while dealing with turbulence in life.
Another thing I realized, we, as human, will never be done with ourself until the end. When we think we have done with ourself, then another layer will be peeled, whether we like it or not. Onion peeling event would always sting in the eye.
After many observations and countless volunteering sessions for the pasr few years, I found one similarity between those who always feel they are entitled to something : they have fixed mindset too.
When I realized this, it explains several things that I don’t think make sense and only consider them as, to say it in my own native language, “ngga tau diri”.
Yesterday, I watched a video about Genius Thinking that explains with one model call The integral AQAL model from Ken Wilbur which explains the reason why some people can get the life they want while some others don’t .
Based on the AQAL model, getting the life that you want is a very complex and complicated process. It requires high level thinking from personal level to society level and it starts from the ability to know how to think.
Writing this rings a bell about many things I read and heard in the past. In the entitlement post, I wrote about my daughter of how I considered her to be entitled due to many privileges she had.
I also remembered her language therapist few years ago once said that she had fixed mindset and one of his therapy goals was to train and improve that. At first, I was quite taken back hearing this from someone else, knowing all the daily routines that we’ve been doing for years, one of the goals is to promote growth mindset. Learning things, making her doing her own chores, doing hard things, etc. But, at certain point, it wasn’t enough (yet).
Now, it feels make sense because being entitled is indeed one of the characteristics of a fixed mindset person.
I see some improvements as years go by, Alhamdulilah. But still, I don’t want to take it for granted. I always think we have still a long way to go (this line alone, without I realize, is the way one with growth mindset thinks).
It also rings another bell about this country. There was once a research regarding the PISA result that said more than half of Indonesian kids had fixed mindset and it showed in their learning result.
Our education relies heavily on result, like exam result, and that is the most fixed mindset thing ever. While the base for growth mindset is process and it is what it takes to instill deep learning so they can employ deep thinking. All questions in PISA test requires that level of thinking.
No wonder we are in 78 out of 81.
It rings another bell too observing people in my surroundings. Those I often consider solely as “ngga tau diri”, turns out it’s not just about that, it is the fixed mindset that translates to many things in real life. Their thinking is limited thus their problem solving. They can only perform linear thinking to every problem. If it’s A, then B. Like there’s only one solution to every problem. They take shortcuts in many things in real life to solve their problem due to lack of understanding and thinking. (I remember writing line in previous post about raising onlies).
Naval said in his famous quote : The only true test of intelligence is not IQ, but if you get what you want out of life. There’s two parts of it. First, getting what you want which means you know how to get it. The second one is: wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place.
I now know how hard it is.
It explains why those people I consider entitled, their life stays the same and shows no signficant improvements throughout the years. The scary part, if I look back, who they are when they are little and young , they carry it until they get older. Close to no change at all, they are getting older with a bigger problem to deal with.
I currently deal with something that shows the cost of not teaching thinking properly when one is young is too big to pay when they’re old. Literally and figuratively.
This writing alone makes me really reflect on how I raise my daughter.
Am I on the right track?
Do I bark on the wrong tree?
May Allah make it easy and guide us through all the way.
Amin.
(This is also another 4am post that is finished two hours later and triggered by recent certain circumstances that made me realize I have a lot of biases inside of me. But, I still couldn’t help saying, in my native language, “masa gitu aja ga ngerti sih?” while dealing with this kind of people).
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After publishing the writing, I searched few readings in my library and journal. Found an interesting Journal about the correlation between Psychology Entitlement (PE) and luxury brands consumption and fixed mindset. Whoa!
This post and recent events also made me looking back my old post that said :
A Penny for My Pensieve 