My best attempt to capture how I function, how I aspire to be, and the lessons I've learned along the way.

📢 Core beliefs

The following statements model my subconscious's default settings. Most of the voices I hear automatically relate to one of these statements. I developed these in Core beliefs and values exercise.

1. "My worth comes from my value to other people".
   1. I sometimes panic if I am not in contact with others, or feel like I have no "real friends".
   2. I keep myself busy with social things, even at the expense of my health (sleep, eczema, anxiety).
   3. I ruminate on my interactions with others, beyond the point of helpful analysis and to the point of depriving my presence for life.
   4. I often feel insecure that I am not interesting enough, which in turn deprives me of the presence I could use on my interests.
2. "I need to be excellent in order to do something".
   1. I often don't finish projects or take ages without accountability because I'm afraid of not being excellent (ie Georgism short 01).
   2. I struggle to sing, play guitar or synth because I get overwhelmed with choice and making it "sound good" instead of just playing.
   3. I feel frustrated when others offer me helpful advice if I believe I should have anticipated or thought of it myself.
3. "Relaxing anymore than minimum is wasteful".
   1. I do not make time for relaxing, filling my days until I'm burnt out or disconnected with my needs and wants.
4. "I am an imposition on others, and they won't tell me when they're not okay".
   1. I often find myself tip-toeing around people, especially those I love. Some of my trauma has taught me that I need to analyse other people's behaviour (tone, body-language, words) and pre-emptively cater myself to them. This is because I don't believe they'll tell me when something's wrong, or I feel that I'm responsible for their feelings because My worth comes from my value to other people.

⚓ Core values

If my core beliefs are my subconscious's default settings, then my core values are my chosen settings which should balance or override them. They represent the way I would like to see the world and spend my time. They're ripe for meaningful Tattoos, too.

My core values, and their lemmas or restatements, are as follows.

1. To love someone means to see them and be seen by them, and I love myself.
   1. For those I love, I want us to deeply understand each other. This means that we both commit to No withholds; I can trust that they'll tell me when something is wrong, and that they'll tell me the things they love about me. Words of affirmation is naturally one of my top languages for expressing love.
   2. I love myself, which means I truly see and understand myself for all my endearing qualities, blunders and quirks. I am allowed to feel sad when I upset people, but I do not deserve to shame spiral. Furthermore, I am enough just as I am, but I'm excited to be more.
   3. This value is an antidote to I am an imposition on others, and they won't tell me when they're not okay. However, I don't really care about getting everyone to tell me when they're not okay; it's not my job to emotionally regulate everyone all the time. If I care enough to ask someone if they're okay and they say they are, then even if I sense otherwise, it's not my responsibility to draw it out of them.
2. People are generally awesome, even when the world sucks.
   1. Do not lose your faith in humanity. To shield yourself with baseless distrust is to cut yourself off from the beauty of so many connections and experiences. We can do awful things to each other, especially when influenced by past traumas or entrenched powers, but do not hold this to the average person you meet.
   2. People are products of their circumstances, and so you should treat them with kindness when you want to change their mind. I know few people who receive anger and can look upon themselves to find their part in the matter. Basically, don't become absorbed by the mob of cancel culture.
   3. Kind non-zero-sum diplomacy should be drawn in confrontation until it fails. Every human has a right to feedback if they're open to it. It's not my responsibility to change others, but our needs and moods are too complex to be left to inference. Speak your heart to people with consent, non-judgement and curiosity, in the belief that you will both emerge stronger for it.
3. Presence is the ultimate gift to every person, including myself.
   1. Presence (the flow state) is the key to joy from so many things; your breath, nature, learning, making, conversing, having sex. Hell, I reckon people are drawn to speeding on motorbikes because of the presence it brings them.
   2. This necessitates the importance of good health through food, exercise, sleep, lack of stress and access to relaxation. You'll struggle to enjoy the flavour of your breath if your lower back is aching; you can't sustain flow in making something if your diet and sleep don't provide enough energy, or if you have so many tasks to do it's stressing you out.
   3. My curiosity for Communal living, Natural farming and a simpler way of life is because I want to find a lifestyle that makes it easier to induce presence more often than the busy city life I grew up in. I want to practice yoga myself and teach it to others because it's a fantastic framework for experiencing presence and healing aches and sores. I love learning new plant-based recipes and cooking nourishing food for others because it helps provide enough energy to be present. That's the ultimate driver at the base of so many things that I strive for. Minimising harm is a good aspiration, but maximising presence (which necessitates minimising harm) is an even better one.
   4. This value balances my belief that My worth comes from my value to other people. I believe everyone deserves presence, including myself, and I would like to help others more of it. But I am enough in and of myself, and presence helps me to remember this. It certainly brings me joy to provide to others, and perhaps I can never remove the validation this feels, but so long as I am not dependent on it, I have no problem with this joy.
4. The best is the mortal enemy of the good.
   1. This is here to counter my belief that I must do excellent work and produce excellent things to others to be valuable. I want to be in the state of making things - whether it's a meal, a song, a website, or something else - not because of the value of the finished product (to me or others), but because the state of making is a wonderful instance of flow. It's purely selfish, really. But I have a core belief that has gotten in the way of making since I left the academic and industrial environments where I excelled from my aptitude and training; that I must be excellent in order to do something.
   2. There is a joy in producing excellence for sure, but excellence is impossible without failure, failure is impossible without creation, and creation is not satisfying without flow. Excellence is a self-defeating goal, but so is failure.
   3. Attaching my worth to my ideas will allow external praise and criticism to dictate my life. If I allow myself to be comforted heavily by external validation, or wounded by external criticism, then I am dooming myself to waste time trying to change others' perspective of me, rather than following my own curiosity and joy.

🎁 Presence

1. To be present is to be in touch with my intuition, emotions and rationality, all at once. Being present allows me to get the most of the life in front of me, so it's worth prioritising for the benefits alone.
2. But There are many downsides to lacking presence. When I'm not present, it starts to affect my relationships too. This happens in communication breakdowns, double-booking myself, forgetting about hangs and the like. But also, I can feel when I'm so busy that I'm spending time with someone and I'm actually not able to hold space with them; my mind is thinking about all the other things I have to do instead of enjoying my time with them. One example of this blowing up 2025-07-03.
3. So I need some time to be present each day. Meditation feels like a non-negotiable, but also, some moments to just breathe, think about nothing, and allow anything that's been sitting in my body to come to the surface. I know it does this if I allow it the space. This also means I need to actively defuse my rumination, because Rumination deprives me of presence; intensely focusing on one thing deprives me of the freedom for my attention to wander to others.
4. I crave silliness, which comes from presence. While I have a tendency towards logic and analysis over emotion and this leads to great DNMs and introspection, I can forget what it's like to be a child. To keep my Inner child happy and in tune, I need to foster it with play.

What helps me to be present?

• 🏔️ Hiking, walking and running. Connecting with nature is spiritual.

🕯️Focus

Trāṭaka (Sanskrit: त्राटक "look, gaze") is a yogic purification (a shatkarma) and a tantric method of meditation that involves staring at a single point such as a small object, black dot or candle flame.

• Wikipedia

Focus is a tool to attain presence, but it's difficult because, well, we live in the modern world full of distractions and my brain is apparently deficient in dopamine.

1. ADHD is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the often bottomless curiosity and unyielding energy I have to pursue something I'm interested in. The curse is that when something is uninteresting, difficult or has boring chunks, it can be very hard to finish the task.
   1. I get easily distracted when work becomes difficult; I will do anything not to do the hard task in front of me.
   2. Presence helps me manage my ADHD. Taking breaks that force me to be present can save me hours of anxious and inefficient work.
2. I should only use the computer intentionally. As someone with ADHD, it's easy to get distracted and only realise much later. Todoist, timers, short-term deadlines and accountability are my friends.
3. The computer can make me emotionally disconnect and dissociate, so I should only use it sparingly. Time on the computer should be limited if I want to maintain presence, so I should be mindful not to use it too much. If I need downtime, perhaps read a book or go for a walk and podcast instead.

🌈 Emotions

In addition to My trauma, this is what I've learned about myself when the emotions go BRRRRR. When things go south, check out Emotional emergency pamphlet.

1. I am learning to emotionally self-regulate. When I'm upset, I cannot always identify the irrational assumptions I'm making, probably because I'm not good at sitting with negative emotions; I want to make them disappear as quickly as possible.
   1. Try to hold back the floodgates until you know you're not going to drown the valley. When it rains with my emotions, it pours. My difficulty identifying my emotions until they're overwhelming can make it difficult to have awareness for how others are feeling, such as on 2025-04-07 and 2024-04-10, even though it might be really important for us both to feel heard. In short, I'd really like to try self-soothe and hold space for both my emotions and other people's, at least asking if someone has the space for my emotions before I allow them to overwhelm me (or trying to remember this, anyway).
   2. Sitting with my emotions and assuming the best is the best way to self-soothe. Well, the best way I know of anyway. Also, self-soothing is a process of returning from Insecure attachment to Secure attachment. Unless someone's given me reason to distrust them (which, let's be honest, is difficult to judge when I've got Antagonism), I should try and read their behaviour through various good intentions, at least in addition to reading their behaviour through assumed intentions. This might allow me to defuse antagonism that lead to chats from my insecure self like in 2025-04-02 and the guilt of returning to my secure self (as I did in 2025-04-02#The followup; a life jacket for Insecure attachment).
2. Processing your emotions means sitting with them, not rationalising them. When I'm feeling upset or insecure, don't necessarily journal, just sit with my emotions. Jumping straight into journalling may engage the rational part of my brain, which is not equipped to deal with irrational issues. Said alternatively, I have a tendency towards logic and analysis over emotion. This may be because of some internalised lack of safety to feel my emotions; We go into our heads because it's not safe to stay in our bodies.
   1. When others are upset, problem-solving is not a great default. Most people just want to be heard, including yourself. Ask if they want analysis or advice before you give it. People are not problems to solve, and even when they have problems, they are not my responsibility. Check out 2025-08-04#People are not problems to solve for an example.
3. I have a tendency to shame spiral when I learn I've hurt people I love. I don't deserve this; Guilt is a helpful signal, but shame is not. This can make it difficult to process and hold space for their emotions when they might need it most. Luckily, I'm easily able to compartmentalise, so I should make use of it if I notice myself spiralling like this.

💕 Relationships

1. To love someone means to see them and be seen by them. This places No withholds at the centre of my requirements for emotional love with someone; I want to feel like we can talk about everything, without needing to talk about everything. This is an analogy of the low barriers to entry requirement in the free-market; you don't need actual competitors, you just need it to be easy enough for competitors to appear.
2. My brain easily defaults towards antagonism in my close relationships. As a means of self-protection via self-sabotage, it will try to assume the worst of people I love. This is something I'll have to gradually unlearn over a long time. If I am willing to find a compassionate reason for the negative behaviour of strangers, I should be willing to find one for my loved ones.
3. When you're upset, you don't always see others' actions clearly. I can rationally know something, and yet struggle to feel it. I'm yet to see if I can sit with upset feelings and come to empathise with another perspective beyond my own initial one.
4. Insecurity is a signal. Sometimes, insecurity is a sign that I need to work on something in myself to feel secure (like worrying that I'm not interesting enough). But other times, it's a sign that my needs aren't being met in relationships (like not feeling presence from another person).
5. Presence with others is delightful, and I feel upset when I lack it. I find it easy to be present with others, and the flow state of conversation is delightful. Conversely, it drives me crazy when someone is half-listening to me, and I don't feel good about not listening to someone properly either. I would rather talk less often with more presence than more often with less presence, because the latter harms my self-esteem (though I'm working on this).
6. Emotional drift happens when I'm on my own. When I'm starting to spiral or problem-solve in my Relationships, it might be better to call or meet up in-person to reconnect first; the reconnection may eliminate unhelpful branch prediction.
7. Use communities and friends to vibe over your interests, rather than just your partner. I like to share, but it doesn't all need to be with my closest friend or partner. Use a journal, communities and other friends to share my interests and deep-dives with, rather than just sending it all to my partner. This is something I've felt for a while too, deep down; I want to share all these detailed thoughts with people who'll appreciate them.
8. Escalating a relationship too soon can sour it. While being seen is so important to me, clarifying where the relationship is going (or trying to fix its future) before it's had time to form can invite over-analysis and detract from presence.
9. Think before you say if you're not in a good mood. I'm prone to saying things that are dumb or callous on reflection when I'm in a bad mood, which are occasionally cause for regret.
10. Consider the medium when communicating unmet needs to others. When you've got a need that's not being met, a grievance or something a little emotionally heavy, which medium should you use?
    1. Phone calls or IRL give you instant tonal recognition, no time to ruminate, and you can clarify things immediately (as long as you have an open and safe dialogue).
    2. Voice messages give you tonal recognition, but you can't clarify immediately, and you'll probably need to disclaim it with a text to say "hey there's something heavy here". This creates an emotional thunk, and they're not free; could you really go about your day with a clear mind knowing someone close had sent you a heavy message? You'd make time for it immediately.
    3. Texts have little tonal recognition, but they're light, quick and inconsequential. You can totally articulate your needs over text, and for lighter things, it might be better to text than voice message.