Audra Edmonson

Help, I’m a Self-Improvement Junkie: Discovery Series

May 7, 2018May 2, 2018 Audra Edmonson9 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot of Mark Manson articles lately. I really like the guy. He gives good advice, hard advice, with wit and swearing and a little (okay, a lot) of ouch.

There was one article he wrote that had me sitting back heavily in my chair, blowing a breath into my hair as I stared at the wall above my computer.

He said too many people have become self-improvement junkies. And this was not a good thing. Well, he said it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not as good a thing as the junkies think it is either.

Here’s what he says about junkies:

Self-improvement junkies feel like they need to jump on every new seminar, read all the latest books, listen to all the podcasts, lift all the weight, hire all the life coaches, open all their chakras, and talk about all their childhood traumas — both real and imagined — incessantly. For the self-improvement junkie, the purpose of self-improvement is not the improvement itself, rather it’s motivated by a subtle form of FOMO (fear of missing out). The junkie has this constant gnawing feeling that there’s still some magic tip or technique or piece of information out there that will create their next big breakthrough (again, both real or imagined).

Self-improvement for the junkies becomes a kind of glorified hobby. It’s what they spend all of their money on. It’s what they do with their vacations. It’s where they meet their friends and network. – Mark Manson

That’s me. To a T. I know me, and that’s me. Yikes.

I’ve turned self-improvement into one of my major interests. I was proud of it. Super duper proud, because I knew I was just getting better and better all the time.

But wait, what about my panic disorder that developed in the midst of my junkie reading? What about the latent anxiety that has gone unresolved since childhood? What about the depression I struggled even to accept was real? What about that?

Self-improvement books hadn’t made it go away, no matter how many techniques and toolkits I built.

I had the positive thinking down. I knew how to reframe situations. I could throw a book at anything.

I was a junkie, riding the highs of each book and inspirational article I came across. It’s the exact same feeling I have when I get a new idea for a story, or a new idea for a D&D campaign, or a new idea for a crafting project. In other words, it flows just like all my other hobbies and interests. It makes me happy, but that is not the same thing as being healed.

So I’m a junkie. Great. Now what?

Fortunately, Manson tends to follow up his brutal life lessons with practical advice.

The only way to truly achieve one’s potential, to become fully fulfilled, or to become “self-actualized” (whatever the fuck that means), is to, at some point, stop trying to be all of those things. – Mark Manson

His advice? Become a tourist instead of a junkie.

Other people only come to self-help when shit has really hit the fan. They just got slapped in the face with a divorce or someone close to them just died and now they’re depressed or they just remembered they had $135,000 in credit card debt that they somehow forgot to pay off for the last 11 years.

For self-help tourists, self-help material is like going to the doctor. You don’t just show up to the hospital on a random Tuesday saying, “Hey Doc, tell me what’s wrong with me.” That would be insane.

No, you only go to the hospital when something is already wrong and you’re in a lot of serious pain.

These people use self-help material to fix whatever is bothering them, to get them back on their feet, and then they’re off into the world again. – Mark Manson

This is golden advice, even to my junkie mind. I want to be in “the world” again, or even for the first time, since I’ve spent most of my waking memory engrossed in the improvement of every aspect of myself.

But the problem with obsessive junkies is, as Mark points out, flawed, because it assumes that there is something to be improved. Something wrong in the first place. It stands in the way of the present, the now, where life is actually lived and enjoyed.

I like how he relates his solution to the 80/20 Principle as well, telling us to just focus on not messing up the biggest decision in our lives. He doesn’t mention what those might be, but I would put job and marriage in there for sure. Maybe attitude as well, especially regarding a growth over fixed mindset. Raising kids with love would be another one. But the little things, the daily habits, morning routines, perfect fitness regimes, and all the other stuff junkies (aka me) thrive on…maybe those don’t matter as much.

Not maybe. They don’t. On my deathbed I’m not going to have my habit trackers before me feeling proud of all the checkmarks. I’ll want my family around me, my legacy, my work made with love.

I feel like a lot of people are junkies, and a lot of them don’t realize there’s anything wrong with it. I was just like that the instant before I read Mark’s article. I thought all those books would help me live life, but while I was busy reading about having a great life, the life itself was moving away from me.

Thanks, Mark.

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Drop Your Potential

May 3, 2018August 7, 2020 Audra Edmonson6 Comments

In my near-constant reading on self-improvement and psychology, I’ve encountered the theory several times that the idea of potential can be potentially damaging.

It was a bit of a shock, really, because most self-help books tend to talk a lot about potential. How you’re not meeting it (Use All Of Your Brain!), how you can improve it (Take More Classes To Beef Up Your Resume!), and how much latent potential you have (You Can Do Anything!).

The problem is, potential is something “out there.” Something unfulfilled. And we’re likely to never feel that we’ve met our potential. Few people, even those gung-ho, driven, hustling work- and play-aholics who live intensely amazing lives probably wouldn’t say, “Yeah, I’m good. I’ve met my potential. I don’t have anywhere to go from here. There’s no more improvement for me.”

Potential is always a step ahead, like a fluttering, incorporeal dream we always imagine we see but can never quite reach.

Now consider this statement: You have so much potential.

That’s usually said in a well-meaning spirit. You can do great things. You have so much available to you. That sort of vein. But that well-meaning phrase is often an indictment. Especially if what the parent or teacher who said it meant was that the student or child or employee or whoever could have the fancy job and high rise apartment and six-figure salary, and so when the child or whoever doesn’t get that, there’s the unspoken idea (or spoken, as is often the case) that they’ve failed.

They haven’t met their potential, because they didn’t want it enough. Or they didn’t work hard enough. They were not enough.

It could also be self-motivated pressure. I have so much potential, I can do everything I want, including starting my own business and having a great family and volunteering in my community and socializing with my friends and….and… And it doesn’t work out that way. So then they feel like they’ve failed too.

Potential is, by definition, in the future. It means having the capacity for something in the future. Not now. It’s a paper dream that keeps running away and the pressure and anxiety it creates can be terrifying.

If you live with the idea of potential, you’re likely to live in a state of perpetual unfulfillment in your present, because only in the future have you somehow met your potential and gotten…what? Everything?

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer. – Jim Carrey

The solution is two-fold.

First, we need to practice contentment. In her book Present Over Perfect, Shauna Niequist talks about her transition from an overstrung, high-functioning, always on it career mom with a family to a less-than-perfect, much happier mom. She started saying no to things so she could say yes to the important things, like spending days on the floor with her kids playing instead of traveling for speaking engagements.

From the outside, her life looked amazing; speaker, writer, hustler, and mom who managed a house and was a hospitality queen. But she says that the reality was she was crashing down, and her life was moving so fast she couldn’t enjoy it.

That’s what it looks like when you chase your ultimate potential. Nothing is ever good enough right now, but if you work harder and faster, it could be. (IT’S A TRAP! Thanks, General Ackbar.)

So being present, in the moment, and content with where you’re at is key. You have to start there.

The second solution builds on the first, because, as I’ve experienced, when you move from fast to slow because of burnout, the temptation to become lazy is strong. You’ve worked so hard, once you get in the mindset to be a little easier on yourself, you start justifying doing nothing and turn complacent.

Contentment and complacency are not the same thing. Complacency means you’re sitting still, safe wherever you are, while still being unsatisfied. Fear or laziness keeps you stuck in your comfort zone.

Contentment means you are happy with what you have, and you’re enjoying yourself, but you’re also pursuing those things that interest you. You’re still up for a challenge, but it’s from a place of peace, not fear.

I believe that potential is a new fad, like positive thinking, like treating your self, like hygge, like minimalism. A feeling that is yearning for something good but missing the mark.

We’re not living in the future. There are a billion billion paths the future could take, so you don’t know where you might go. You might gain it all or lose it. Being overly concerned with your potential and where you are in relation to it distracts you from the present, from enjoying where you’re at with who you’re with.

I think we all need, even for just a moment, to drop our potential.

A Year in Pictures: 2016

May 2, 2018May 2, 2018 Audra Edmonson2 Comments

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset — The Tancheon River near my apartment in Korea

Processed with VSCO with f2 preset — A cliff-face in Jeju from my first ever vacation with friends. Absolutely fantastic week.

Processed with VSCO — The beautiful black beaches of Jeju. These are the only beaches I like.

20151031_131234(1) — Autumn at the Paldang Dam. We went biking along it and it was beautiful.

20160329_121557(1) — More Jeju beaches cuz damn

20160617_112528(1) — Field trip to a farm

20160712_075805 — Selfie game starting out…strong?

Decorating things and beginning a papercraft obsession

20160801_142957 — Making chia seed pudding at Summer Camp

20160802_101305 — Summer Camp Field Trip!

20161006_130549 — Rooftop recess – we were only there for a semester but dang that place was hot.

20161022_174239 — Halloween view at Everland

20161022_183848 — The eats at Everland – German sausage and beer plate.

20161022_203407 — And the Halloween parade…

20161129_212344 — That moment when you decide to buy a tiny Christmas tree because the spirit is strong but the physical space is lacking…

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset — Walking home past the bakery. It’s these kinds of views I miss most – the ones I saw almost every day, the ones that meant home for more than two years.

DnD — 2016 was the year I started D&D, and so shall always live in infamy.

Boxing3 (2) — I also started boxing, so that was a thing.

IMG_20150821_145824(1) — Adorable cafe street near the Tancheon River.

IMG_20150901_165110(1) — I started bullet journaling this year too…this planner didn’t last long.

IMG_20150902_121253(1) — View on the walk to work. These tiny houses were full of flowers and cute as a button.

Four-Month Check-In: Habits

April 30, 2018April 29, 2018 Audra Edmonson2 Comments

We’re a third of the way through the year (time flies?). When I think back to the day I flew home, it seems so long ago, and it also seems like no time at all.

I thought it would be fun to share how I did in my habits this year and to see how they’ve grown or changed.

January

As you can see, I did well in the few habits I started out with. I’ve talked about what they were and why I chose small goals before so I won’t go over that again, but you can see it was a good month for me habit wise. This was really important because most days, just doing those few things was all I could manage. I added in Bible reading halfway through and that went well, but it took those two weeks for me to feel comfortable adding a fifth habit. #BuildALadder

February

I started sleeping better and feeling more energetic, so I added in walking. My idea was to add it in and see how I had done at the end of the month. As you can see, it didn’t go so well. I actually think the biggest block was location; every other habit I could do in my office, but the treadmill is at the other end of the house, and most days I simply forgot.

March

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But in March I decided to become more intentional with walking and did pretty well. I also added in crafting, because I have a lot of projects that I want to finish, and unless I made time, they would lie there. I decided to keep the habit mini-sized because crafting is a relaxing hobby and I didn’t like the pressure of having to do it.

April

And April. I added the “no spend” category, which I knew I couldn’t make a full run of, but it was nice to see how often I didn’t spend money. It was also kind of a wake-up call because there were so many days I did spend even a little bit of money. I made an expense tracker for the first time in my bullet journal (I always used an app before), and that made it easier to track. The month overall was a little spotty, because I had a lot more social engagements (yay) that took my focus away from doing my habits. That’s something I’m going to be working on in the next months; keeping my habits going even on really busy days when I don’t have much spare time. After all, that’s the point.

Habit tracking has been really good for me. I find it provides the accountability I need to keep doing things. If I just keep the desire formless in my head, I know I won’t follow through, but it appears that even the small act of making x’s on a page is enough to keep me faithful. I was curious about that because keeping up with habits has been a problem for me in the past, and I wondered how I could overcome it without getting a full blown accountability partner or another more hardcore method.

But it seems to be working! What has your journey with habits looked like? If you have trouble knowing what to do or how to keep it up, I suggest reading both Mini-Habits by Stephen Guise and The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.

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Excerpt from my journal; July 2017

April 26, 2018April 6, 2018 Audra EdmonsonLeave a comment

I decided it was time to start this series again, especially as I’m documenting my recovery from panic disorder. I feel that sharing exactly what was going through my head in the months leading up to it and after would be helpful.

I stopped originally because I’d reached the point of my vacation to New Zealand, and had this big idea to do a whole post on what I did and where I went (along with sharing all the best pictures), but it was such a huge undertaking I never got around to it, and I felt like skipping that would have been…bad? I’m not sure. It just didn’t seem right. But NZ will have to wait. In the meantime, I’m going to pick up where I left off after the vacation (you can read the first in the series here and the most recent post here).

***

July 18

My words are caught up behind my hands again. It feels like I just opened the floodgates. All the words are rushing up, and I can’t sift through them. I want to tear my throat out to let them pour out, bloody and mangled, onto the floor.

It’s just a bad day. Not a bad life. Not a bad year. Just a bad…month, maybe. You don’t even know that yet. Don’t borrow tomorrow’s troubles. Just…just.

I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where to start.

I got back from New Zealand. I was going to do so much. But I collapsed into a ball of nothing yet again. A sleeping, tv watching, bean eating nothing. I can’t even be sarcastic about it. All my life lines have dried up.

What do I want? What do I want from the rest of this year? What are my goals? I can’t even begin to decide. My head is warped, wrapped around the bud of my silence, holding so tightly, afraid of letting it bloom into truth.

Hose me down. Rip me up. Tear my skin to pieces, leave them scattered for someone to follow to my fleshly corpse. I need to burn my heart out. Call it out. Stop it. Grow up and work. Laughing in our face saying wake up you need to make money. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Sunfire on my skin, racing to the beat of my heart, racing up my arms to my head to blind me. Blinding, bright, burning, stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I can’t bring my head and heart to heel. I want…something I can’t name. Something I can’t identify. Something that feels cheap and shitty. I don’t know whether to find poetry in the prose or chuck it all up and live in my head.

What what what what what do I want? Who who who stares back at me with such deep hatred of my shallow thoughts? Who is that monster in the mirror, so cheaply fat and lazy and cliche? Is that really me? That’s my body? Meanwhile inside I’m a caged monster on the prowl, growling threats and spewing hate at that image. Such a battle can’t be good for the host. I will die some time. Better on my own terms. But which “my?”

Asking all these dumb questions. Asking, always asking and avoiding answers. Avoiding answering. I hate you, mirror girl. I hate what you stand for. What you’ve done to me in the past to make me see you in the reflection.

Such vitriol is childish. Miserable. Victimizing. Selfish and wanton and undesirable. Grow up. Work. Live. Laugh. There is no shame in joy. There is no shame. There is no virtue in misery. No virtue.

Well, anyway, returning to real life, tomorrow school starts for real. I’m bringing lots of personal work.

July 26

Briefly, summer camp is going pretty well. In many ways. Of course, there are problems, and I should have sat down and specifically realized that, so it wouldn’t come as such a blow, but it’s okay. I got over it. Am getting over it.

I had a night terror the other night. I had a dream a man was breaking in. I was near my front door and saw it was unlocked. It was the middle of the night, but just before I could get to it, it opened and a faceless old Korean man came in and toward me. He didn’t do anything in the dream, but I think I tried to raise something up to stop him and he batted it aside, and my arms were limp and heavy, and I woke panicked. I wasn’t moving – sleep paralysis – but I was screaming softly. Then I went back to sleep again.

I’m not sleeping well, and I’m not sure why. I think it’s just stress from camp but I wish it wasn’t. It’s stupid to be so stressed and know the cause and not be able to handle it.

It might also be the heat. It just reaches in and saps my strength away.

July 27

The last few weeks I’ve had these occasions where I don’t know who the person is in me. Or the body I am in. I feel disconnected. I don’t know who this body is. I don’t know what this mind is. I don’t know which part is feeling and thinking and acting, and the first two seem entirely separate from the last. I’m dissociating. Huh. Apparently, it happens during stress, even stress from boredom.

For me, I would guess the cause is too much immersion in a world not my own, too much investment in people not myself. So not enough time in my own head, and not enough time letting me out. No writing, no art, no creation. Nothing but work, TV, and stress the past two weeks. Also not enough sleep. That’s a big one.

I need to read. I need to write. I need to create. I need to get the flowing waters going.

I would like to be a stone.

Stone

Charles Simic, 1938

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river,

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed.

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill—

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star charts

On the inner walls.

July 31

I dyed my hair this weekend. Honestly, being totally and one hundred percent truthful, I’m not happy with it. It looks good, and it’s fun, so it’s okay, but it’s not what I wanted.

However, let me give the full story. I was waffling between rose gold and strawberry blonde, and ended up going blonde. A couple of friends took me to their stylist, who was very nice and did pretty much what the picture looked like…but it was so orange. Maybe it was the bleaching, or the dye he used, or just my hair, but while the ends were a very pretty gold, the bangs and crown were just…orange. Like sherbert orange. Scoop me up and pop me in a bowl. I hated it. I felt ugly, I felt weird, I felt super uncomfortable.

I decided to get it changed the next day. I know that’s a big no no and it might have damaged my hair, but I didn’t care. I wanted darker. I went to a foreigner-friendly salon in Gangnam that was much better. It’s now a darker red, but almost fire engine. Fun, but too vibrant for me. I just don’t look at myself and see this color ever. I have to tap into another side of my personality now.

I guess the journey to perfect hair takes time. I was hoping for insta perfect though. Like a salon could see a picture and make that EXACT color.

I need to get back to normal. This camp is throwing me off. I keep waiting to be ready to deal with problems that come up, I can’t settle in my mind to anything. Even journaling is hard around the mental hypervigilance.