Are You Ignoring Yourself?

[THANOS]

Do you ignore yourself??

I came to the reality of realization. Realizing that I ignore myself plenty and am unaware of it. I subconsciously set up my failures because of my ignorance.

Like an example when dieting I did really good for about 6 months and cheated dieting with the occasional pizza and told myself that pizza was an exception because i can't resist it. Little did I know that leaving that weakness untouched is what caused my diet to end. Although I haven't gain a pound since then but the point is I hadn't lost weight since then either. Leaving that weakness and accepting it as a flaw and not trying to work on it was a sure thing for failure.

Many other times I tell myself not to do something but then decide why not and later realize that what I did shouldn't have been done. Although I do not regret for it is what I do is what it makes me in the future. Whether the future outcome be good or bad I must accept it.

I can say I am in the battle of my laziness and my true self but that would be a lie. For what I am is truly a lazy being who wants to change. But desires to remain in the comfortable lazy state.

Ok enough about me. The point of this thread is that i wonder if i am alone in this long battle of desires? This war against self? Do you ignore yourself?

 

[RageSk8]

Yeah, I ignore myself all the time. I have told myself I was going to quit smoking at least 20 times since I started school. Guess where the first four dollars of my financial aid check went?

 

[Maryjfl]

Same here, I set my mind to start doing myriad of assigments from school, but some of them seem too hard to accomplish. Here goes an unfollowed advice: you could organize a big task into many little parts, so that you go completing little by little the thing, and at least u believe that you are accomplishing something.
You could make a list of the reasons/motivations of why you have to do your task.
Good luck

 

[Nommos Prime (Dogon)]

In Human Nature?

My gambling and drinking habits are vices I know that I should avoid, yet I continue to play Russian Roulette on a daily basis. My behaviour is self-destructive, yet any denial of my desires is a cop-out and could be against my true will. Perhaps addictions/stupid decisions are more of an expression of an in-built flaw in the human condition. Maybe my will for self-preservation is eclipsed by my self-destructive nature.
The darkness in humans could have been a trigger for the emergence of the dominant intertribal warring species of carnivore (humanis). Maybe it stays with us through the aeons of evolution, which is why the more uncomfortable and disturbing facets of our nature and personalities are so hard to deny.

 

[THANOS]

I also realized by identifying and confronting my weaknesses i was able to have more control over what i do. Past few days since i made this thread I've already noticed big changes. More energy is one of the changes.

 

[TonySlim]

my wife wishes I could ignore myself, but I can't keep my hands to...others?

 

[mikelus]

I find I ignore myself when I make promises to myself. And I also find that my promises to myself trully annoy me.
I find that usually the promises to myself were related to an external idea. Are external ideas fictious? I feel it's a reality and needs to be understood, but is still an illusion of the mind. External ideas are from following some one else.

 

[hamlet69]

yes see HUMANS

is you see my HUMANS the whole race refuses to see itself as it really is.

 

[Another God]

This was a realisation I had at the end of last year. It occurred to me that we lie to ourselves consistently as a matter of maintaining our idealised image of ourselves. Sometimes there are blatent lies, but most of the time it is just ignoring the minor truths or altering our perception of the truth.

"I did a handstand because I want to be able to do what I want whenever I want, no matter what people think" May be a true reason behind you doing a handstand in the middle of a dance floor, but if you convince yourself that that is the only reason, then u are lying to yourself. AS well as that, you probably did it because you wanted people to see what you can do. You may have wanted to impress someone. You may have wanted some attention. You may have just been bored.
The point is, that usually there are a list of reasons behind our actions, some more influential than others, and irrelevant of their actual influencing power, we rank them in the order we wish to think their influential power to be. For that previous example, perhaps the real primary reason you did the handstand was because u are an attention seeker...but u don't want to think of yourself that way, so you tell yourself that you did it because u don't want to feel constrained by your social situation. That reason is more in line with how you see yourself: An individual who does what he wants. So, while both reasons lie behind your actions, you choose one, and ignore the other.

If you allow yourself to start seeing this (and it can be done) then you will see this happening with every choice we ever make.

 

[selfAdjoint]

This post reminds me that I think memory is like the old kids' game of "telephone". Your 20 year old self tells your 30 year old self just what he felt and did at that famous occurance when you were 15. And your 30 year old self tells your 40 year old self...and by the time you're 70 you have a complete mythology which would be a hoot to your 15 year old self if you could tell it to him. Harry Turtledove wrote a sad time travel story (pair of stories) about this called "Counting Up, Counting Down".

 

[Dark Wing]

this is interesting, am currently writing my prehonours thesis on this exact topic...

I would say that ignoring yourself is a way of trying to change an underlying belief system, and that if that belief structure is too strong inside you (you do not even need to be aware that it exsists, mind you) then you will not be able to ignore it for too long, and if you do then you may feel a general discomfort or guilt within yourself as you are violating yourself on some level unknown to you.

Sound confusing? good.

If you think of yourself as a web of beliefs that lie within your mind (be in subconsious or consious, you may not be aware of all those things) and of your ability to "care" about somthing as a result of these implict beliefs, then you can say that if you find you care a great deal about somthing then you have a belief system that is causeing that. you may not even know why it is you feel so strongly on an issue, it could be a gut reaction. Now, if you find yourself in a situation where you are trying to "will" yourself into doing somthing, and you have decided to, but when they chips are on the table you find you cannot continue with your action and decide to back out, then you have found a conflict between belief and social want. you may then try and explain your actions (or lack of) to your peers, so you do not seem to hold a belief that is unreasonable. if you find that all your actions that regard this belief you may try to change its weighted importance within yourself. this may or may not be possible.

What you can do it try and ignore yourself: ignore the feelings and wants and desires in your body to go and do somthing when you have a new reason to think that another mode of action will be better. but you may not always be able to do this convinvingly, or for a long period of time. if it so happens that you manage to form the new thought (ie. i will go on a diet) when the old conflicting belief is there (hell, i like pizza and its irrisistable) then you simultaniously hold 2 conflicting beliefs. So you eat the pizza and gain momentary happiness by fulfilling one of your beliefs, but then are rushed by an overwhelming feeling of guilt as you have gone against another equally strong belief: i need to diet.

So ignoring yourself comes down to a play of belief systems, some conflicting and some of which you are ignorent of even possesing. What the key is to do is to only hold beliefs athat are logical and in sync with each other. is this possible? not thew way we currently form our belief systems, which is through experience, but that entirly another question and i think i am already off track here.

now i shall give into my belief that i should be writing my paper and ignore the belief that physics forums is fun.

 

[BlackJack]

very good reply.

A question at this point. How fare we can we go ignoring ourselfs ?
For an example: I said to myself about one houndred times I should learn now instead surfing the web. We'll I'm surfing around because I need Informations for school but at the same time I look at stuff which reeaaally doesn't relate to anything I do in school . So a couple of days before my exams starts I get the feeling of panic and start to learn nonstop. So how can I push myself to do something I don' won't to do ?

 

[Another God]

Ha! If only I knew the answer to that question!

(I wouldn't be here right now if I did)

 

[THANOS]

One way to pushing yourself into doing something you don't want to do is to push yourself to want to do it. Studying doesn't sound fun to you so you tend to push it away. But if you don't study you might fail. Perhaps it don't matter if you fail or succeed because you feel forced into that school and it's not your passion. Perhaps the only thing driving you is external circumstances like satisfying your family or friends.
Maybe your plans don't interest you enough to seek that information. But you must look at the benefits of completing your work and use those benefits to create a drive that will motivate you to get cracking. But simply just saying I'll pass school and not have to repeat the year isn't enough to drive you. It will only create a drive of force and no one likes to be forced into doing anything. What benefits will that knowledge gain? If you view that knowledge useless then perhaps you aren't made for that particular subject and have passion for something else.

 

[BlackJack]

You missunderstood me there. Its not that I wouldn't like school. I do like to go to school, I'm one of the few who doesn't always "why do i have to learn ?". I know why I learn. Because to increase my knowledge and on the other hand see the truth behind simple things [which arent that simple, takes a while to understand how a bloody freezer works ]. Well learning is fun but sometimes I can't motivate myself to do it. Cos i drift of. Also a question: Why do people work better under more stress ? If have one day left to an exam and I didn't learn mouch before...hell you haven't seen anybody learn that fast , maybe you did .

 

[THANOS]

But the point of my post was a matter of interest. I'm sure you love to learn but if one can not find motivation in one particular subject then some knowledge is harder to gain due to lack of interest. Like some would prefer to learn how to fix a car rather then learn what flowers during the what seasons grow best. But it is what you find of importance and what you find dull or of no importance is what the drive and motivation comes from. In order to find importance on a certain subject which lacks interest or motivation you must find a reason to seek such knowledge.

Lets say you find the knowledge of flowers would come in handy in the future but do not have any means of using that knowledge as of now. In order to find motivation on flowers you must learn to like them in one way or another. Perhaps all you need is to buy some flowers or walk in the park. Something to connect you to the subject you are about to read. Because most of our motivations are based on connections we find with that subject. History and war will be of more interest if you watch a few war movies on the same subject. I am sure you get the point in my examples.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Originally posted by BlackJack
A question at this point. How fare we can we go ignoring ourselfs ?
For an example: I said to myself about one houndred times I should learn now instead surfing the web. We'll I'm surfing around because I need Informations for school but at the same time I look at stuff which reeaaally doesn't relate to anything I do in school . So a couple of days before my exams starts I get the feeling of panic and start to learn nonstop. So how can I push myself to do something I don' won't to do ?

From what you have written, you tell of "your doing", what you need to do to "push yourself" is to not push, stop yourself from indulging/doing, by either continuing on with the task that was at hand, (Net surfing FoR Homework stuff) or changing tasks, and going on to another one for the reason of controlling self-direction.

Try as much as you need to to find what works, then do that! and keep playing with the rest, never know what you might find, careful!

 

[ThOrNe]

Ha, yeah i have a similar bad habit of accidentally forgetting certain necessities like food or water until a point when the pain becommes too much to ignore.

 

[BlackJack]

Happend to me a couple of times too when I was playing computer games but i think i m past this period