My Personal Directives

A friend quipped, "What, you're just giving this to us for free?" Yes, please, learn and benefit from my many mistakes.

Reduce

• Expenses
• Assumptions
• Low quality distractions
• Possessions of low utility (factors include beauty, comfort, amusement)
• Premature optimization when faced with quandary (problem that can only be managed, not solved)
• Attachment to outcomes (suffering disparity between expected and actual)
• Unnecessary complexity
• Frustration when I fail to anticipate something or be prepared for it. Related:
• Excessive self-sufficiency rooted in trauma
• Pregrets (about "not having done enough"). See section Cautions/Considerations below.
• Thrashing and despair over the big picture of assholes playing lethal zero-sum games. Specifically, temper my compulsion to trace probabilities into darkness. On the up side, it has helped me understand some basic economic incentives and social impact. However, to maintain sanity, I need to reduce scope down to feasible personal directives and projects.

Continue

• Operate with integrity according to my values
• Direct care and support for self, Mom, and partners
• Exercise unconstrained love (not unconditional)
• Tithe toward mutual aid and other worthy causes
• Cultivate high quality connections; lean toward those with reciprocal energy and similar values so we can encourage and learn from one another
• Seek novel input, including the absurd
• Question everything
• Be open and vulnerable, but take no shit
• Be encouraging, but don't fall into toxic positivity. Allow myself to vent some frustration, but not into chronic negativity. Generally raise the tone, but also keep it real.
• Execute "loving processes"—life ops/maintenance routines built to care for my people and myself. These routines encode reasonable trade-offs, are repeated until they are automatic, then execute with few if any mental spoons because the decisions are already made (simple examples).
• Waste zero energy arguing with strangers, and not much more than zero trying to directly persuade anyone of anything
• Compassion for others

Expand

• Compassion for self
• Good: take sufficient care of myself so I have the wherewithal to continue. Better: operate in a way that generates rather than depletes my resources.
• Grow with partners. (There is a detailed list of intentions that could be applied to any important relationship. With permission I'll adapt and share it later.)
• Add, extend, refine loving processes. "I'm made of love and processes." That's the deepest meaning of my robot sleeve tattoo.
• Document important processes (tag Process) whether designed or discovered
• How to qualify projects and pastimes: Note and analyze those gaps. If worthy of further attention, add to menu.
• Help others see and become the truest and best version of themselves
• Promptly acknowledge/query/listen/comfort/guide/reset(?) my out-of-kilter feelings/parts when they arise rather than just enduring until they eventually process or subside to ignorable level. What are they trying to tell me?
• Communicate more precisely, using fewer hard assertions. E-prime is good for this.
• Approach every situation with curiosity, compassion, and appropriate level of confidence. Be bold without hubris. Explore, while conscious of my purview.
• Wu-wei (unselfconscious appropriate action or non-action; efficient and ethical blend of systems I and II thinking)
• Find a healthy place between self-discipline and self-indulgence (though that's probably a false binary, like all of them)
• Combat perfectionism with postmodernism: embrace ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and chaos. Accept that life is, and I am, in a constant state of change and disequilibrium.
• Inquire about current state, preference, and process of others instead of assuming based on observation and history
• For higher compatibility with most people, be more willing to dwell in ambiguity for longer;
• When there is both tension and good will, extend communication/negotiation rather than adapting or exiting prematurely
• When seeking answers to a hard question, don't get discouraged upon finding myself deep in the weeds and realizing it isn't the right question at all. Try again from another angle.
• Quality of service given and received
• Become more aware of my needs, convey them clearly, and receive gracefully. Be alert for opportunities to make reasonable bids which, when fulfilled, allow others the warm feelings of generosity and competence that I also enjoy when I give.
• Break or bypass asymmetric systems—especially those used to stratify wealth, status, and rights
• Bypass, reframe, transcend? Intervening upstream is harder but more efficient (part of gap analysis)
• Notice immediately accessible wonders; grok the "isness" of each thing more frequently than abstracting it. Be Here rather than There. Be Now rather than Then. Flow instead of being attached (ironically, this includes not being attached to Taoism, Zen, or any other flow framework).
• Opportunities to un/relearn
• Awareness of edges, thresholds, cusps, meridians, phase transitions, liminal spaces, intersections, nexi
• Opportunities to help with things that are more distressing for neurotypicals
• Ignore the constant; attend the coefficient; target the exponent.
• Physical movement and catharsis
• Understand and use my charisma (several claim I have it?)
• Listen to individuals and groups who need help; believe their experiences, respect their boundaries, support their decisions, and let their wisdom guide my help accordingly
• Can I apply my hard-acquired experience for benefit of others? Would it be effective or appreciated? Certainly most people don't want or heed unsolicited advice.
• Be willing to do the grunt work

Cautions/Considerations

• Why do I feel I should be doing something more than the loving support and interactions I already do in the world? Is it not enough to do what seems right at the appropriate time as I flow through life? Should I purposely maneuver myself into situations requiring more? See note "Antidote to guilt."
• Rather than finding The Project or My Calling, I could just extend my existing light/vibe
• To add is folly; to abstain, wise; subtract, divine
• Don't make a significant promise while inebriated or unusually happy
• Beware making more or deeper commitments to "solve" something
• Don't inflict iatrogenic harm by leaping in to fix something. Maybe it's that way for a good reason. Maybe it needs a gentle approach. Generally avoid intervention unless it is obvious that lack of intervention in a given case is much more dangerous.
• There is evil in the world—but try not to immediately attribute to malice what can be explained by apathy, neglect, or ignorance. Or, as the Brits say, "cock-up before conspiracy."
• To have freedom I must endure some loneliness; to have security, I must endure some limitations. (Old principle formed by trauma, though it contains a kernel of truth).
• All seekers are on the knife-edge between mystery and mundanity, hope and hopelessness, sanity and insanity. To acknowledge that edge is daunting—but to ignore it is folly.
• When I choose to fight monsters, take care not to become one myself
• Make intentions, not vows. Every time I have made a vow, the universe has eventually given me the following choice: break the vow, or in keeping the vow cause something even worse (I have, therefore, solemnly vowed to make no more vows).
• Indulge in a minimum of snark, sarcasm, and cleverness, i.e., try not to get invited to Salons. Spicy takes are delicious but sometimes fuel cynicism. Prefer earnest clarity when expressing myself.
• Although willing to adjust how I allocate myself, beware of destabilizing important things that are working well
• Pattern recognition feels compelling, but all categories are arbitrary. Some are useful for specific applications. None have inherent meaning beyond the definition. In no case should they be construed as universal limitations, or worse, absolute truth. (Riffing on the quip of George E. P. Box, "all models are wrong, but some are useful.")
• Prematurely setting a specific mission reduces scope of possibilities. Never setting it is inefficient as multiple ideas vie for attention.
• Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between
  The courage to change the things I cannot accept
  And being an impatient, judgmental asshole.
• "When we lose the Way we find power; losing power we find goodness; losing goodness we find righteousness; losing righteousness we're left with obedience" —Tao Te Ching 38 trans. Le Guin). I span: A bit of the Way; some power; mostly benevolence (sincere, but too worried about "doing good"); still rather righteous (holding and asserting strong opinions). Caution: in my enthusiasm to evolve to the Way, don't use as an excuse to be lazy.
• To Do or To Be: the falsest dichotomy
• Eschew excessive extrapolation and premature optimization:
  A plan that resonates with the true self
  Emerges from one's unique pattern of intuition-driven operation,
  And as such need not be deliberately designed or sought;
  This is freedom (PDF).

Key Questions for Growth

When stakes are high, how do I handle:

• A gap between expectation and outcome
• New information
• Uncertainty

2022-01-02

By Val Delane
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND