Just One Look Forum Archives

I don't know if this is a very relevant or any use to anybody but I thought I share it here anyway. I've been browsing various lifehack web sites recently. A lifehack is a practice, habit or a shortcut to take care of things in life as efficiently and easily as possible for optimal performance. They're typically related to diet, exercise, sleeping and organizing work, for example. I've taken up Intermittent Fasting (Fast-5 method to be exact, where you eat within 5 consecutive hours and fast for the rest) as a diet hack and it has done wonders to my life. Another one I just started experimenting with is HIT, high intensity training with weights (short but intense for maximum benefit per unit of time) But what triggered this interest in taking care of things well and efficiently is the looking about three years ago.

I've come to think of the inward looking as the mother of all lifehacks. Nearly everything gets distorted without their proper context and nothing is in their proper context if it's in the context of fear. Your eating gets out of control, your exercise neurotic, you don't sleep well and you escape to work if your mind is enslaved with fear of life. But freed from it, you're neither neurotically obsessed nor in denial with these things. And the looking is a true hack in the sense thats it's easy, fast and comprehensible to all. It's simply the single most important and most beneficial thing you can do to yourself. The second most important hack is the attention focusing training.

I've come to think that to do anything the best way possible you need to start with inward looking, if you haven't done it already. It sets the proper foundation. It applies to any area in life whether it be scientific, artistic, technical or anything else people do. So one avenue to spread the word about looking could be as a starting point to any skill or practice one does or teaches. For example, if I were to teach landscape painting (my special interest) I would set the session with inviting people to look at the "me" where the vision and sensation of the view ends up. After looking inward you look outward to the world, the view in front of you and the thoughts and feelings it evokes. This way you would have accomplished the single most important life intervention without even realizing what you've done. Later on, if the interest is there, you could expand on the inward looking. The trouble with it is that it's kind of too good to be believable unless you seen it's effects in your own life.

Seppo

Yes, Seppo. I've noticed a similar efficiency in my life and habits. You put it very well. I've noticed I don't have the same neurotic habits in eating and exercise/lack of exercise, two source of weirdness and compulsive, trance habits for me. I also like to bring order in my life in small and big ways.....cleaning, cooking, gardening, and adjusting my life in small and big ways to make it a bit more pleasing and symmetrical. Things happen more easily too. I often experience a putting off of a job or chore out of habit and then just do it very quickly and wonder why on earth I procrastinated. Before the looking I would put things off and then somehow make things onerous and difficult to match my anticipatory dread.

Maybe you could post the looking on the life hacks website?

Yes Jackx, I could do that if I find one that allows posting. Some of them probably have a comments section.

I've been thinking about organizing my life in a systematic way, like budgeting my money, organizing all the stuff that needs doing (with GTD, Getting Thing done- method for example), making a meal plan etc. even a life plan, what I want to do and achieve in various areas in life. All the major sectors of life. But I have a strong urge and will to control everything to get a feeling of security, and I've come to doubt this motive. I'm also quite lazy. So it doesn't come very naturally to me, yet. But the interest seems to persist. I'm a procrastinator, too, but some of this stuff seems to happen kind of on its own, almost accidentally and keeps going. Before looking I didn't see much point in anything and didn't have the energy. I just wanted to escape it all. I didn't think anything good could happen to me, anyway. That feeling has vanished or hasn't reared its head for long time, now that think about it.

Another thing I've noticed is that little pleasant flashes of images and associations about various things in life keep occurring in my mind spontaneously. They're like TV commercials, they can be about many different things, but they present life situations in a intriguing and teasingly positive and exciting context. I don't know what that is about. Sometimes I'm even a little put off by them, but that might come from a fear reaction. Like I feel they're irrelevant fantasy. Does this happen to anybody else?

So many things in life seem to develop exciting potential, and there's just not enough time to study and explore them all, and become good at them. How to know which one deserves the work and dedication? I don't worry about that too much, really, but it's a question that still demands my attention.

I guess the looking and focused attention free up a lot of energy previously diverted to fear and angst. We have to do something with that energy, right? I spent a perfectly enjoyable afternoon knocking around my basement trying to make it more energy efficient.....solving problems and creating new ones. I was totally absorbed in the work and the physicality of my movements. Life is a never ending source of conundrums and puzzles. Our bodies and minds just seem to create an agency or connection between disparate materials and energies.