What’s the point of all this? Well.. it’s the eve of a New Year, not only in Gregorian terms, but also in the Chinese Lunar calendar. I am admittedly, not great at keeping up with culture (hey, that’s why I have family/friends that are into tradition), so I have no idea if there’s any concept of New Year’s resolutions in Asian culture, but it’s been interesting talking with friends over the past weeks about their goals for 2012. A lot of health-related goals, some that have already floundered (giving up soda), others that are struggling but a work in progress (lose X pounds). As for my own goals..

So far it’s been a good year, but I’m not quite satisfied.. I feel like if I continue with my current trajectory, I’ll slip back into complacency. I want to continually push myself. Remember there’s breakthrough change and there’s incremental change. The problem most people have with New Year’s resolutions is that resolutions are mostly breakthrough change. Things that sound really great, and would be fantastic if they were achieved. Problem is, that’s like telling someone with no outdoor experience to go climb Everest. It’s daunting. I’ve never been a fan of the sink or swim school of learning. Some people love it because you can see results really quickly, it’s high risk high reward. I’d rather slowly build a solid foundation than hope for it to all come together at once. With incremental change, the key is to set small goals, achievable goals, and build discipline and continaully hit those small targets. Eventually the difficulty increases and within a few months it’s amazing what you’ll have achieved. I mean hell, if you told me at this time last year that I would be performing at salsa parties I’d tell you to piss off and sober up.

But enough of the general principles, as a rough sketch of a concrete action plan for myself, I’m setting 3 personal development goals:

1) Create something new
2) Do something that scares you
3) Learn something new

Even these goals, simple as they are, are daunting to me. That’s why I’m going to make it easier for myself. One goal each day. Plotted out on a calendar with a goal assigned to each day. For 30 days. Let’s see where I am in a month.. maybe I’ll ratchet it up a notch then. How are your goals coming along?

The ultimate double edged sword, and the greatest gift we each have, is our own minds. It truly is extraordinary.. the limits, or lack thereof, of what the human brain can come up. It’s given us countless art forms, languages, taken us to the moon, to the depths of the ocean floor, to the tiniest nanoparticles. Yet, there is a time and place for everything..

See, our minds can also be our greatest hindrance to our bodies. Think about when you were learning something for the first time.. a sport, an instrument, etc. At first, it was very difficult and required a lot of mental concentration. But, as you improve, the mind steps aside and ironically, the less you think about it, the better you perform. How do you get to that point? Practice, practice practice. Practice until it becomes second nature.. from a tentative uncertainty as you start out, to a comfortable level, to second nature without having to think at all. Then in high pressure situations, tell your mind to take a nap. Get out of the way so you can do what comes naturally. In booting the game winning kick, Michigan State’s kicker was taught by his coach to think about brunette girls on a beach. Don’t think about the situation.. the potentials and  ”what if”s. Let your body do what comes natural.

Maybe that’s why people meditate.. we’re too much in our heads. Especially now with the cell phone culture, the mp3 players and iPods.. just plug in headphones, wander through your mind..  when it comes time to talk to someone, there’s that bit of awkwardness as we try to come back out of our heads because somewhere down the line, social interaction with other people has become unnatural and interaction with things, with technology, has become second nature. Am I the only one that finds that strange?

Note that these aren’t resolutions. I’m not “resolving” to do anything. That makes it sound like a chore, a burden. No, these are goals that I aspire to achieve. Change that I want to realize. See, the cycle of creating change in one’s life is very simple. Very very simple in principle, hard to actualize. I’m sure I’m not the first person to come up with this but this came to me on the Bart ride home.. what I call the momentum cycle:

Perception => assumption => choice => action/inaction => perception.

Your perception, your world view, paradigms, etc drives certain assumptions that influence the choices you make to either take action or not, and that action will either shape your world view or inaction will further reinforce it.

For example, the kid that’s been fat all his life:

It’s genetic (perception) => why bother, I can’t do anything about it, might as well live with it (assumption) => eat healthy/work out (choice) => inaction => remains fat and reinforces perception

A more positive outlook: It may be genetic but ultimately it still comes down to me (perception) => I can be anything I want to do (assumption) => fix diet, start exercise regime (choice) => action => starts seeing results and changes in body, which reinforces positive outlook

The marvelous beauty of this is that it really is completely in your hands. Each action that you take builds further momentum while each time you do nothing serves to reinforce the status quo.

Unfortunately, changing that outlook is very difficult, because these are ideas that we grew up with, stuff that we’ve been told, directly or indirectly, to be true our entire lives. Usually we need an initial spark, a catalyst to grease the wheels and start the car rolling.. for the fat kid it might be a success story, seeing someone else’s transformation. That said.. my 2012 goals:

Continue to invest in myself: Keep doing things that make me a better person. Continually learning.. both academic and physical, learning programming, dance, working out, etc.

Investing in the future: Grow my bottom line.. whether through job opportunities, or an entrepreneurial side venture. The pipeline must be enriched.

Focusing on relationships: Becoming more of a people person. Actually taking an interest in people, in others’ experiences. Refrain from assumptions and judgments.

Deliver on commitment: Ideas change the world. But it’s not enough to have an idea. That castle in the sky requires a solid foundation and the will to see it through. It’s easy for me to come up with an idea, be motivated to start it.. but I can never finish. I lose interest and set it aside. Let’s see if I can see a project through from start to finish..

Carpe Diem. Seizing opportunity when it presents itself: Most difficult goal on this list. Will definitely require judicious use of momentum cycle to change my current habit of see opportunity, mull over it, watch it wave as it passes by. NO, that will not happen anymore. I want to hardwire into my DNA that if I see an opportunity, I go after it. Unknown be damned, I’ll improvise on the fly.

I’m genuinely curious.. what do you think of this list? And what are some of your goals?

I was mugged a few days ago. It was only 7pm, I was walking down the street to the bus stop headed for my weekly salsa class. I’ve walked this route often enough I could do it without thought in my sleep. I had my phone out, checking the bus times because they’re always 100% accurate and I *hate* the feeling of getting to the stop and seeing the bus just pulling away, that disappointment and frustration that washes over briefly as I watch it disappear down the street. Anyway, turns out that despite my neighborhood supposedly being very safe, walking around in any part of a major city alone with your phone out when it’s dark is a bad idea.. long story short after a minute or so I was on the ground with multiple bruises and 4 guys taking off the opposite direction with my phone and my bag. Not going into too much detail but I messaged a friend on my computer who called police; they showed up on my doorstep 5 minutes later to take a statement but I’m almost certainly never going to see my phone again.

I’m OK physically.. the bruises will heal, I’m using my old 3G for a few months, and yet.. the incident has forever changed me:

It’s changed my view of San Francisco. I used to walk around with the naivete of invincibility, almost. My perception was that yeah you hear about crime all the time but it’s never going to happen to me. SF isn’t that bad, I live in a great area. But at some point or another, it just might happen to you, and you become that statistic.. Be On Alert. It sucks. It absolutely SUCKS that you can’t even walk around your own neighborhood without taking the proper precautions but that’s how it goes.

It’s changed my view of people. When I lay in bed trying to sleep, I still get flashbacks of the incident. The most vivid image that comes to mind is this black guy in a dark baseball cap and baggy clothing, the yellow light of the street lamps overhead, telling me to hand over my phone while his buddies surround me. I still feel so much rage.. and vengeance. Like that feeling of how utterly helpless I was in that moment, and how I never want to feel that way again. If I were to let the emotions take over, I’d be grabbing a high caliber assault rifle and go all out Rambo-style hunting down groups of minorities. It sucks because my perception was that SF people are super friendly and I had nothing to worry about. It sucks because it directed my emotions, my hate, towards a particular race; every time I see a scruffy black guy my eyes narrow and my fists clench, I want to shout racial epithets and wail on him. And yet, I live with two African American women and they are the sweetest people ever.

It’s changed my view of myself. I’ve realized that the world isn’t all rosy and wonderful. There’s a lot of bad shit out there. Bad people. Good people in bad circumstances. But everyone in one way another, is only out for themselves. And that’s the way that I’ve got to be thinking. There are 3 types of people in this world: spectators that watch things happen, doers that make things happen, and the ignorant that pretend things don’t happen. I’ve been the latter for too long.

What’s interesting though.. is the role of emotions. Emotions don’t just go away, they have to be channeled somewhere, into some kind of action. For me, it’s spurred a lot of thought. And right now, stuff like brazilian jujitsu and learning/buying a gun are very real options. We’ll see though.. expect a 2012 goals entry to follow shortly.

On Monday night, I learned the basic steps to the Brazilian dance zouk. Tuesday was a follow-up class. Besides learning the footwork and technique the most important lesson I’ve learned is two-fold:

1. Dance is about the physical connection. Sounds obvious right? But it’s easy to get wrapped up in perfecting the technique that you forget you’re dancing with another human being. Being able to lead and follow is about being in tune with with another person and it’s a large part of what makes dance fun. That genuine human connection.

2, When one of my instructors saw my frustration and focus on mastering a part of my technique, he reminded me, “it’s not about you, it’s about her. You want to make her happy. Let her show off.” I let that sink in a bit.

Yesterday and today I went to salsa class. Something felt off yesterday and I couldn’t place my finger on it. I think it was just shaking off the rust and trying to catch up to a faster pace. Today I felt much more comfortable as the instructor pointed out small adjustments that made my feel much smoother. But the biggest lesson was at the end of class.

I was chatting on the sideline to one of the guys that came with his girlfriend/wife when a woman approached me apologizing for last week (I had asked her to dance after class but she wanted to dance with her friend, which makes sense and I had completely forgotten about it). She asked if she could make it up and we danced for a bit. Now keep in mind that while I’ve been dancing salsa for a few months now and I’m not a total beginner, I’m nowhere near the comfort level where time seems to warp. And this woman was breathtakingly good, on the performance team, etc. But she was patient and she went with me, helped me fix a few things and joked around and made me comfortable when I made mistakes, which was.. quite often esp. as the track changed to a very fast-tempo song. In short, she focused on me and made me feel happy. I was literally grinning ear to ear on the way back.

Really, the key to human happiness then, is really simple: people want to feel genuinely appreciated in a nonjudgmental way.

I’m sure you’ve all been in situations where someone’s acting fake or insincere. They’ll say things for the sake of conversation but not actually mean it. And it sucks because it’s like why make the effort at all? I’m not guiltless either, but I am going to start paying more attention because it was such a good feeling. Genuine appreciation. Give and take. Or rather give > take.

Fun fact: the suicide burrito at John’s deli in downtown SF contains ghost pepper (Bhut Jolokia, which rates around 1,000,000 Scoville heat ratings).

Source: Wikipedia.

As an adult, there is no one to make you do things. No one to force you to challenge yourself. Challenge your limits. That motivation. That desire has to come from within. And it’s hard. It’s very tempting after a long day of work just to come home and veg out. That’s what most people do. No shame in it. It’s a hard life. But if you have a dream. If you have ambitions, goals, you’ve got to push yourself. You’ve got to want success as much as you want to breathe. You don’t know the possibilities until you try. You don’t know the limits until you push past them. It’s an mindset change.. start asking not why, but why not. Not can it be done, but HOW can it be done. That drive has to come from within. You have to stay hungry. Stay foolish. RIP Steve Jobs.

On the flip side, when you’re learning something new for the first time, everything seems super fast paced, because your brain struggles to process all the new sensations and mechanics. Salsa dancing has been like that for me. When I first started out I was so clueless and I had to think about each and every step. Now the basics are second nature.. but whenever I’m learning a new move, it’s the same sensation, that hurried sense of panic that sets in for just a moment as my brain catches up to my body.

Think about the activities you do — is time slow or fast for you?

I’m only a few chapters in but one part that’s really struck a chord with me is experts. The book talks about how things change when you’ve honed your craft for a while (perhaps the 10,000 hours that Gladwell suggests?), when you’ve an expert — that you see the world differently. It’s the process of seeing something and recognizing it as a situation you’ve seen/been in before many many times that you develop this intuition. That you can’t even describe or begin to teach really. You just do it.

For me, a good example is badminton, a sport I’ve been playing for many years now. Most people when they see a clip like this, have trouble following the shuttle as it flies back and forth across the court. I have no problem following it, and even moreso on the court, when my opponent is on the other side smashing the bird at me, it’s like time slows down and for a fraction of a second I can see the smash frozen in midair coming at me and react instinctively, without time for conscious thought.

It takes time to build up that instinct, that memory, muscle memory. I’ve been struggling with catching footballs lately. I do what most novices do — I see the ball coming and extend my hands to grab it as it heads towards, which results in funky looking “alligator hands”.

Instead, what I’m supposed to be doing is forming  a “W” with my hands to act as a basket for the ball to land into.

But it’s not intuitive. It’s not something I’m used to doing so I still need to practice it on a weekly basis till it commits to muscle memory. The cool thing about muscle memory is that once you’ve got it down, you’ve really got it down..

Random fact of the day: a lot of those annoying CAPTCHAs you see to verify that you’re a human? They’re part of a massive book digitization program.