Looking at people 4

Two different people whose opinion I quite value criticised these posts as only perceiving, but not making any conclusion. Maybe the following posts will include more false conclusions, but I see it as training.

Person 1
Middle-aged man, state of shoes says office work, as well as an HP laptop bag. No ring, not married. Carrying his laptop around on Saturday says work at home too, which means being busy. He seems tired on a nice, sunny weekend afternoon which goes in favor of previous claims. He’s got money (relatively expensive clothing) but he’s sentimental, keeping his leather bag even though it’s somewhat worn-out. Or is he maybe less aesthetic and more utilitarian? Don’t know. Every other piece of clothing is quite new. He succeeded in life and he’s proud of himself because he didn’t start great: strong thick hands and fingers imply manual work, maybe masonry.

Just one person today.

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Getting stuff in control

I’m going to jump straight to the point: I’m soon going to be 21 and that will make a full year of my decision to improve myself onto “superhuman” levels.

Now, there’s no hurry and time is here to be savoured and enjoyed (just like food 🙂 ), not passed or rushed through, BUT I would like to see more progress and I would like to systematize what I’m doing just so it becomes clearer to myself and so that I can measure it.

What I’d like to do the most is apply the SMART system to these goals I wish to achieve.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-framed or -based. So, for example “I’m gonna be more productive at work” changes into “By 20th October I will have completed 45 sales to customers X, Y and Z”. Quite a change of perspective. The latter sentence obliges you to something, while the former is just vague.

Now, the problem is here that some of the goals aren’t really measurable. What I CAN measure though, is how many times do I “exercise” perception, memory and so forth. So, counting deliberate attempts of exercising, sessions, so to speak.

And so I came up with a plan/program of my exercises which could potentially serve as a draft for others, or maybe just advice, but I plan on sticking to it. The first three month period, or semester, consists of the following subjects:

Mnemotechnics 1

After three months, the student should be capable to remember up to 50 vehicle registration plates, up to 1000 unconnected one digit numbers and 2 decks of shuffled cards. The main topics are:

• Major system
• Dominic system
• PAO system
• memory palaces (loci) and journeys

Literature:

• Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer
• http://mnemotechnics.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

Non-verbal communication 1

After three months, the student should be more aware of other people and their communication, emotions and intentions. The student should also apply concepts to himself and his own communication and be capable of communicating with others while at the same time being capable to perceive and analyze others’ signals.
The main topics are:

• the FFF reflex (freeze-flight-fight)
• changes vs. static states
• pacifiers
• an introduction to lie detection

Literature:

• What every body is saying, Joe Navarro

New language 1

After three months, the student should be conversationally fluent in either a new language or a continued language. The choice of language is free, but “big”, widely spoken languages, are preferred. Examples: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, German, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and so on. The focus is on phonetics of the language and the student should learn how to transcribe sounds into phonetic symbols. The literature is diverse, but various grammars for foreigners are recommended, as well as finding native speakers via Livemocha. This is also useful.

Meditation 1

After three months of practice, the practitioner should feel more relaxed and less stressed, and be ready for deeper, longer and more complex meditations, such as Prana Bindu. There is no literature as it is very simple: find a lonely spot, somewhere where you won’t be distracted, sit comfortably with your back flat and up, do not lie down, relax all the muscles you can except those that keep you sitting and breathe normally. Concentrate on your breath, observe it. When thoughts come up, discard them and focus on the breath. Sessions should last anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour.

That’s all for this post, the next one will be more about physical training.

Observation pt3

I found out that the emotional side of observation is quite important to me. It’s like this: if I’m interested in the world and the people in a child-like manner, positive, just accepting, not cluttering the information provided by the world with my “emotional” filter, bad feelings, being irritated or controled by a bad day, I observe quite more.

Here’s a workout I used to do and still do sometimes. It’s a nice thing. Start a stopwatch for 3 minutes. Observe everything around you. Listen to everything. Watch everything. Smell everything. Try to note everything that happened. If someone coughed, note it. Was it a single cough or several ones? Was it a cough of a sick person? How many cars have passed you? How many of them were the color yellow? What were their licence plates?

The ultimate goal would be to be able to have this sort of awareness whenever you want to. It might lead to clutter of unimportant details which would be bad for analysis. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It’s having a lot of details on hand. You should choose which ones are important for further analysis, not closing yourself to details you think aren’t worth noting. The point is, here, to create hyperawareness.

Physical training

A lot has been said about physical training and I’m no expert, but maybe someone finds these views/experiences useful.
First of all, it’s important to train anything. “At least, break a sweat per day” is a good maxim to begin with. Just using your body, doing  something, is really good.
But then, good just isn’t enough. Four years ago, when I was 16, I was overweight, weak and slow. Only physical training I got was through PE at school, and everyone will agree that 45 mins of mediocre activity three times a week isn’t all that much.
That started to change when I took up Parkour. Later on, I took up Wing Tzun. That was two years ago. Now, I’ve found that:
– when I’m just starting with a new discipline, I learn the basics of it much faster than it takes me to go from the basics to perfection
– it’s important to be present when training, attitude is everything
– the input from people more experienced than you is invaluable and it’s important to listen to them
– however, that what makes no sense other than superficial, shouldn’t be taken as the Holy Scripture
– creativity is underestimated in any discipline and creative solutions to something are as important as the “normal” ways of doing it
– repetition is everything
– one should not be limited by their own system (things you arren’t ALLOWED to do)
– proper form and posture isn’t that important per se, sometimes it’s the best solution and sometimes it’s completely unneccessary

Soon I’ll be adding constant weights to myself in order to simulate high gravity training. In other words, Goku’s training 😀
https://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=ZuxcbB_n­Ih4&feature=you­tube_gdata_player

Observation pt2

I’ve found that sometimes it’s extremely hard to concentrate on observing your surroundings and that it often depends on how tired you are, how much has your willpower been depleted (for more info on willpower and it’s role this is a great article –> http://artofmanliness.com/2012/01/01/willpower/) and so on.

Sometimes, I just forget I need (want) to practice my perception skills. And that annoys me. I think that it would be helpful to have a like-minded person near myself. It’s like this: I want to introduce something new in my life in an unchanged environment. So basically, when I come home, I don’t look around just because I NEVER DID. And even if I’m great at looking around and perceiving stuff at some other place, at home, it’s completely different just because, when I’m at home, I’m used to not looking around. In a more general manner, places, events, various people in my life, for me they all have specific ways in which I behave when I’m with them. They condition my behaviour, so to speak.
Of course, it’s not unbreakable. But it is the harder way. If I had a Sherlock Holmes right next to me the whole time, the process of my change would be completed much faster.

But I’m moving towards my goal: for example, usually when I came home, I would never look for my dad’s motorcycle. Basically, I’d just come in and that’s all.
After my decision of becoming superhuman or “overhuman” (the idea kind of came in the beginning of 2012. but I really decided I’ll become superhuman on my 20th birthday which is in March) I would do as I do always. Come inside the yard, park my bike, enter the house. But something different started happening. I found myself wondering did I see his motorcycle or not parked in front of the house.

A couple of months later, the same procedure, just this time, I was completely aware if his motorcycle was there or not. So, not exactly a giant leap, but a small step on the way.

Maybe it’s possible to manipulate the fact that other people influence my behaviour. Maybe, if I start sharing with them that I’m actively perceiving things, maybe they will start doing it to a little and then maybe they become my own helpful Sherlocks. I mean, I think it makes sense. Watson was completely blind to the world around him untill he met Holmes. After some years, Holmes  made a profound change on him. Every time they were together, he would be much more perceptive because of him. And he didn’t even strive to train and give some power into it, it just came naturally.

So, still wondering. Being Sherlock Holmes when around friends or not?

Observation pt1

One of the most important aspects of developing mental capabilities is observation, developing constant perception. To perceive, not just to see, as Sherlock Holmes would say it.
He (SH) stated that a good practitioner of the detective science should have three highly developed areas (or capabilities):
1. Perception
2. Analytic capability (deduction)
3. Fund of knowledge

Now, I think these principles should apply to me too. With some additions.

Firstly, perception. It’s imperative to use all the senses, not just sight. And it’s really neccessary to have control over the senses. Imagine when you are studying an object. You hold it in your hands, perceive it, and really focus on it. THAT is what you (that is, me) should be doing the whole time with your surroundings. And with all senses. I have been trying to do that for a while now and my experience is that it’s hard. It’s really hard. My mind just wanders to something else. I loose focus. And I have found that I can’t both think with concentration about something and at the same time concentrate on my surroundings. Multitasking kind of fails here because I’m trying to give 100% of my concentration at two separate actions. But I’ve found a rule that gives good results: trying to follow CHANGES in the environment and human interactions. So, at times such as meeting a friend or bumping into a stranger or walking into a bar, one should really focus and stop thinking in a concentrated manner, and in any case, stop daydreaming.

The Bene Gesserit explain their mental state like this: image there is a scale, and on one side there is unconsciousness, in the middle is consciousness and on the far other end there is – hyperconsciousness.
This is what I’m looking to achieve.

Granted, the process of perception is connected highly to the process of analysis/deduction/thinking and one cannot go without the other. But it’s neccessary to know how big a portion will one of the two take. If you are lying in your bed, at home, and there is a certain problem you are trying to solve, then the numbers are certainly not going to be in favour of perception. But if you were to walk outside, or meet a friend, then the powers of concentrated, problem-solving thinking diminish a little and give way to perception. One immerses oneself into reality.

This blog & me

This blog is to serve as a public log of my life philosophy put into work: trying to surpass human limits.

Surpassing human limits, and by that I mean physical and mental limits. In this blog you will not find gimmicks and tricks that help you surpass financial limits nor anything of becoming superhuman in the domain of “moral”. It is not that such subjects don’t interest me, it’s just that the mental and the physical are, so to speak, cornerstones, and the financial/moral/anythingelse are mere additions.

In order to describe what I want to achieve:

Physically
I am not interested in general fitness. I want to achieve general “adeptness” in all domains of useful physical activities (self defense and, generally, movement – running, swimming, jumping…) and moreover, a stunning superiority in some specific areas. Namely, martial arts, sprinting speed, Parkour efficiency and body strength.
I currently train Wing Tzun Kung Fu and Parkour.

Mentally
I want to develop perfect memory, amazing analytical capability, superior perception and complete control over the mind-body unity. L from the anime “Death Note” and Sherlock Holmes are both good examples of steps on the way. I assume that the final goal is to become something like one of the sisters in the Bene Gesserit order in the fictional universe of “Dune” written by Frank Herbert.

A lot of work in front of me. A lot. To finish, here’s a picture of Goku eating.