The Joy of Being a Father

Welcome back!

I’ve finally made a decision to start my mornings one hour earlier, so today I got up at 5am sharp. I’ll leave the reasoning for this change and my first impressions of this experiment (I’ve been trying to wake up around 5am for the past week or so) for another post, as today I have some other story to share with you.

 

Our little daughter is 4 months old

And this means to us that her regular naps and feeds are on a more relaxed and flexible schedule now. We’re still on a full alert, so she wakes her mother up and gets her milk whenever she’s hungry, but this doesn’t have to happen every 3 hours now. It’s been a while since we’ve progressed to a practically full night’s sleep – from midnight to 5am, and this week we have relaxed even further by pushing 5am feeding to a later time, up to 6am.

Most of this had been happening without my participation. Since my presence was not required for the breast-feeding, I was usually fast asleep during the night’s feeding or early morning’s. So when I was getting up around 6am, the girl would usually be up as well, and after swapping smiles and kisses I would leave her to go and enjoy my shower.

 

I was in for a suprise

When I woke up at 5am and heard the baby was already awake, I went into her room to find out that she was so full of energy and so happy to see me that she was practically pulsating with joy. Elizabeth now knows how to laugh and her excitement of seeing one of us approaching her cot is incredible. It was a surprise for me to find her in such an alert state so early in the day. What I never realised is that usually she’d be well fed and therefore rather peaceful and sleepy by my 6am awakening. So I naturally thought that’s a norm for her early hours. Boy, was I wrong! :) She’s amazingly active and happy!

I didn’t have any particular plan for the extra morning hour I got today, and so I took Elizabeth out of her cot and we had a wonderful 45 minutes or so of talking to my mother-in-law and showing her our early photos and videos of the baby. Somehow Elizabeth feels so comfortable in my hands! She’s prepared to even stay quiet if you hold her, she would be like an angel sitting on your hands and smiling at you.

 

A happy father I am

I must admit once again. I’m a one happy father! :) It’s a great joy watching the little one grow up on us so quickly, because every morning brings something new – a skill she masters, a face expression she mimics, a sound she learns to make… And it’s so exciting to watch her do all these things, that sometimes we drop everything else and just lie on our bed together – all three of us: Elizabeth, my wife and me. We put the baby between us, and lie there in the sunlight watching our little wonder move and smile and laugh and try oh-so-many-more little things we thought we’d never be so amazed with…

Discover Your True Self

Discovering your true self is a crucial stage in your personal development

Just think of this: how well do you know your true self? And what is it exactly that you know? How many personal facts or character features do you know? What do you think of your true self? Is this the ultimate pride you’re feeling, or maybe shame or even fear? Your self-growth and the success of personal development efforts are entirely dependent on how well you know yourself and how you feel about your personality.

I hope you will forgive me for starting my entry with questions yet again. It seems to me that I quite enjoy starting some of my personal development articles this way. Probably, because no matter how much further I progress in my self-growth, I always get to some next level of self-understanding only to ask the next round of questions. It seems impossible for me to reach a point where I’m going to run out of all the questions and just sit there not knowing what should be done next, feeling that the quest for personal growth is over. I’m always full of questions. I’m always keen on learning something new. And sometimes it’s not clear at all whether it’s my questioning that makes me learn more or it’s my learning which makes me question everything.

My true what?

Yes, you’ve read it correctly. Your true self! And if you think you don’t know what I’m talking about, think again. Your true self is how you feel yourself when nobody’s watching. It is where your deepest thoughts live. It is what you ultimately think of yourself, how you treat yourself and what you fear others might see inside you. It is your most native and real personality.

Strangely enough, up until some quite recent point, I honestly believed that your true self is something you’re always aiming for as a person. It is the much better you which lives in your dreams – a successful guy or a beautiful girl which you always wish you could become one day. I thought becoming your true self is only about improving or gaining something about yourself. Turns out, I was wrong.

Your worst fears

Have you ever done something you wish no one could ever find out about? Chances are, you have. Do you still remember what exactly it was, and why you didn’t (and maybe still don’t) want anyone to find out about it?

Quite often, we do something and then try and justify our behaviour using things, events and people we see around us. A little bit less common but still very popular is to go through this process the other way around – justifying our actions, and then actually making them.

We do something only to realise how stupid it was, and this is when you can easily hear the inner voice of yours. That’s your true self talking there right now. This is the voice which, depending on your character, will either encourage you to take even more actions or discourage yourself as much as possible. This is the inner voice which easily controls a great part of your self-esteem. And like it or not, your true self is absolutely right in most cases.

So what happens then? We hear ourselves thinking about some events and we hear quite reasonable explanations inside our heads on the subject. We get to hear all the truth on the topic, and nothing but the truth. And if we’ve just made a mistake, most likely this is the moment when we feel ashamed. We look at what we’ve just done again and again and we simply can’t comprehend how something so stupid could be so easily done.

What’s the next usual step you take? Honestly now? Most of us will try and cover the tracks. We’ll pretend we didn’t notice something, or we’ll make it look like we don’t feel so good and we can’t possibly be held responsible for whatever just happened. Sometimes we won’t even bother with inventing or showing anything, we’ll just try running and hiding away. And we succeed at this, too! So quite often after doing something, it is really only ourselves who know what really happened and have the power to explain or fix the things done. But we very rarely do.

Why? Because that’s the human nature. We always have this fear. The fear of showing our real self, the fear of being exposed, the fear of being rejected for what we really are. This is because on top of our true selves, we’ve always got some layers of our personality – and as we go through our lives, these layers just keep adding up unless we do something about them.

Layers of personality and your personal growth

Rediscover yourself

You can still probably remember the times where you could speak or act freely, without any fears regarding the impact your behaviour may have. Do you remember how good you felt back then? And can you spot what exactly have changed since then?

While I’m sure you have your reasons for changing over the past years, not all the changes you’ve gone through were really that necessary. And luckily for you, there is still time to revert some of these changes. And here are just a few steps which will help you rediscover yourself:

The Power Of Habit Put To The Test

This week marks the end of a 3rd month of my experiment with to-do lists optimization. I can definitely call it a success, not so much for the difference it made in my approach to organizing daily tasks, but more for the eye-opening effect it had on me. Over the course of three months I’ve been slowly progressing from one level of understanding the process to another, and it seems incredible that it’s already been 3 months, cause it feels more like 3 weeks.

A few days ago I’ve decided to continue my organizing process improvement, and that’s how I decided to find a software which would help me make such a progress. So from this week on, I think I’ll be posting quick reviews on the various software packages and websites I’ve tried using for various stages of my daily organizing, so hopefully my experience will help you see which things will suit you and which will definitely not.

Being a reader of LifeHack, it was fairly soon that I came across a brilliant list of gtd software on Listible, and that’s the list I’m using to find new ways to improve my productivity.

I’ve been using a 45-day trial version of MyLife Organized product for the past few days, and I’ll be definitely writing a review for this software shortly, but for now I just wanted to concentrate on the power of one of my habits put to the test.

3 months of improved organization made some irreversible changes to my lifestyle, and most noticeable ones are these:

• Improved productivity
  I’ve definitely improved my productivity – tracking all the things I have to do, be it any organizing system at all, helps you be conscious and fully aware of much more activity of yours. You can’t possibly keep all things in your mind, it’s just a waste of your precious thinking time, so by making a decision to write things down you effectively boost your productivity level up by simply making sure you’re staying focused
• Being confident and comfortable
  It’s very hard to explain the relaxed feeling of being confident about every little thing you should be doing at any moment of your day, and to also feel really comfortable at times when you’re not doing any of a listed task. Simply because you know you’ve accounted for everything, you stop worrying so much about things you’ve possibly forgotten to write down or do. You realize that it takes only few seconds to jot the note in your organizer, and you trust with a confidence that once your task is in organizer, you’ll inevitably come back to it and make sure the task is completed in a timely manner
• Less things to remember and worry about
  By making sure you take notes about every little thing which is likely to need your time and attention in future, you’re offloading the task of remembering this action. You write it down, and you forget about it until it’s time to look into your organizer again and process this action. Give it some time – few weeks at least, to work out this habit of writing everything down and then forgetting about it. This was one of the best advices I’ve got from reading the Getting Things Done book by David Allen.

So the last few days felt really weird because I didn’t feel the impact of my transformation at all. All I’ve changed in my process was the storage system. But since I already have the habit of trusting this system and never worrying about things once I know they’re in the storage system, I didn’t have to reinvent anything or get used to any new habits. It’s fascinating how easy it was for me to simply give up my 5-section A4 organizing tool and switch to using the software.

So that’s the power of my organizing habit put to the test. And although I don’t want to call it a successful test until it’s at least a few weeks time from now, I’m already fairly confident that the habit of having some storage system for my daily tasks is strong enough.

Am I being impatient?

The last few weeks were really trying for our little family. My wife has to spend most of her time studying as she approaches the exam week, so it was mutually agreed between us that I’ll do my best and make sure our little daughter is happy enough not to cry or demand her mother to come and help.

It was so much easier said than done though! What we had found out in just few days was that I’m absolutely incapable of keeping the little one busy for much longer than half-an-hour or so.

I’m totally in love with our little daughter, I absolutely adore her, but after we have:

• smiled at each other and even tried to laugh (she’s yet to master her laughs)
• played together and waved hands
• made few photos of her (luckily she’s not old enough yet to tell me she doesn’t like me taking photos. Or maybe she simply does like it)
• had a very intelligent conversation or two (she’s very talkative and it’s amazing how quickly she learns the intonation. She can go on for hours “talking” to us – so it’s a real pity she does not say any words just yet, we’re so eager to find out what it is she’s trying to say all the time)
• rocked the cradle (a desperate attempt on my part to kill some time and please the girl at the same time)
• played hide and seek (it’s almost as if she feels when one of us is in the room or not, she does not have to see you to know you’re somewhere around)
• drank some water
• spit the soother out few times and made it absolutely clear it was urgent and important for me to go and get the replacement one right away

… and, finally, started crying, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I got really irritated.Funny enough, it’s always an irritation with myself. Somehow I can never blame the little one for her crying. I always know there must be something else we can do to help her, and it’s annoying when various ideas pop up in your mind but none of them work. So I get irritated for being helpless, and just wish I knew better what to do.

I usually admit myself to be a coward and retire. I give up and run for help, so my wife comes along and comforts the little angel and in no time it’s all back to normal again. There’s nothing better for a child than a mother’s hug, I guess.

Don’t Be Afraid To Show Your True Self

This entry marks the start of a new series of my posts: Don’t Be Afraid.

I’d like to concentrate on our fears because this is one of the most powerful factors which affect your actions. Just think about how many things you would do differently if you had absolutely no worries and fears about them?

 

The Fear of Showing Your True Self

Absolutely all our actions are evaluated by ourselves before we take them. And such evaluation is done to make sure we understand as much as possible about what good and bad consequences a particular action might have. Some actions are so simple or physical, that they take only few seconds of judgment before we take them. They require virtually no risk assessment, and we’re fairly sure of the outcome. Other actions, however small they seem, will mean much more to us or to people around us, and so we take some extra care and time to make sure such actions are really what we think we want. And it is only when your evaluation is over and you feel confident about the decision you’ve made, you follow it – you either take the action or drop it.

Today I’d like to talk about one of the most common fears of all – the fear of showing your true self to the world.

 

Your image of yourself is just an expectation

In modern society, it’s all about having a positive and strong image of yourself. When you go to work, you want to look intelligent and confident. You want to make smart decisions and take appropriate actions. You want to be as good as you can possibly get. Every day, every minute and every moment.

With your friends, it’s a very similar story. You want to be witty and funny. You want to be popular among your friends and to be a good friend at the same time. You’d like to socialize in as relaxed manner as possible. You’d like to be able to make friends with anyone. You want to be a person everyone likes.

In your family, you probably want to be your best too. It’s about being the perfect husband and a loving father. An ideal wife or a super mom. You want to have a really nice family. You’d like to have a better understanding with your partner. You’d like to spend more time with your kids. You’d like to smile to your next door neighbours every morning and get a smile back.

All these images I’ve just brought up in your mind are expectations. Some of them are expectations of our own, others are the ones of people around you. And no matter whose expectations these are, they invariably put some pressure on your actions. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you know there are some expectations to be met. You know you have to try your best and look your best in order t o meet these expectations. If you don’t meet expectations, this brings frustrations. For some of us, being frustrated with yourself is the worst frustration ever. For others, it’s quite acceptable, as long as other people whose opinion we value are not frustrated.

 

The image of yourself you live by

These roles of a perfect professional, ideal husband or an incredible friend are something we use as a guidance. These are the images of ourselves we live by. But what happens quite often is that by following expectations and trying our best, we reach a point in our life where we feel like we’re pretending to be someone else. We get appreciation and admiration from people around us, and we think: “No, it can’t be true. That’s not me they’re talking about, that’s someone else”. And that’s how the fear is born.

From this moment on, you get more and more unhappy about your real self. You see everything as a game of pretending to be someone else – a much better person than you really are. You start judging your own thoughts and actions in a completely different light, and it’s very easy to get caught up in your false self-beliefs. Do you really like waking up at 6am just to make it to your workplace by 8am? Of course not! It’s this someone else you’re pretending to be…

Do you like dealing with all them problems you meet everyday? No! It’s the professional person you’re trying to be that makes you do it. And do you like sitting at late meetings? No, but you have to because otherwise people will understand who you really are. Who wants to see such a horrible image of you, the real you? The person who loves lazing all the mornings in the bed and driving a car above speed limits, the person who hates working and likes enjoying a glass of beer on a sunny beach? A person who finds some (if not all) the meetings too stupid and pointless to even attend, and who has a better idea of what needs to be done in most situations at work? Surely, you don’t want anyone to know that you’re that bad.

At this point, the fact that most of things suggesting how bad you really are never happen somehow doesn’t matter to you. This idea gets out of your focus, and all you concentrate on is that no matter how many good things you make happen on a daily basis, you’re still afraid to admit that some of them you would do differently or wouldn’t do at all if you weren’t pretending to be a better person.

 

Learn to accept how good you are

A similar kind of fear exists for every aspect of your life. It’s very hard to explain, but people automatically accept that anything bad they do or even think is their true self, but it takes much more effort to persuade them that something good they do or think is just as real part of their personality. And this disbalance in self-beliefs is so incredibly strong that even when we do some really good things and take right actions, instead of appreciating it and enjoying the moment, many of us manage to think something along these lines: “Well, it worked this time. So what? Everyone seems to be really impressed. Argh… If only they knew how scared I was to do it. If only they really knew that it happened due to a sheer luck – like, I didn’t know myself if it would work or not… And now everyone’s giving me looks and it seems the chance had saved the day, but somehow I’m not happy, but miserable to an even bigger extent…”

Do you recognize any of these thoughts? ;) I bet you do, that’s because you’ve had them more than once! And you felt almost guilty for doing the right thing! How twisted is that?!

Now, I urge you: don’t be afraid to show your true self! Cause it is you, not anyone else, who does all the good things for you. You’re not pretending to be someone else. You’re being yourself! Remember: you’re only as good as you really are. These expectations which force you into doing good deeds on a daily basis – they’re nothing more than your conscience. Quite often you have a situation which you know you can walk away from, and nobody will ever know you did. But something makes you take the action and make something good happen once again. Do you really believe it’s the result of pretending? Of course not! It’s the real you! It’s as real you as it gets!

 

Don’t be afraid to show your true self

If you felt scared when doing something people now admire you for, tell them about it. They will admire you even more. This will help them realize you’re as human as all of them, and it did take some courage for you to take the action. If you feel lazy in the mornings – that’s okay to live with. Most people are! It’s natural, and people like being natural. If you’re afraid there’s a misunderstanding gap growing between yourself and your partner – talk to him or her, don’t be afraid to seem vulnerable. Show that you really care, talk to her and try to work things out. It will help, believe me.

It really is okay to have some dark secrets. All people do. Some secrets are darker than others, and some things are meant to be kept to yourself only. But it doesn’t mean you have to feel guilty for them. And even if you do, it doesn’t mean you should also feel guilty for doing something good. Don’t think your true self is just something bad you’re constantly trying to hide. Admit it that you have a good side too. Don’t be afraid to follow your heart and act like you think you should, not like you think others would like you to.

That’s all for today. The topic is so vast that I may have to revisit it at a later stage, but for now I’ve said enough. Let me know what you think. I’m keen to learn what you agree and disagree with, because only by talking to each other we learn and grow. I also hope I’ve brought a relief even though most of the things seemed trivial enough. But this is simply because, luckily for us, not everything has to complicated in our lives :)

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