I can’t imagine my past self being okay with not hitting every objective I set out. Knowing I missed journaling for a day this month or that I would set an unambitious goal where of meditating more than 10 days of the month instead of every day would’ve hit me with panic attacks. Ironically, the meditation practices really helped four years ago when I would hyperventilate in a meeting room at feeling like a failure for not meditating every day.

I wasn’t always so….anal….about my systems. I used to be your everyday run of the mill underperformer with no goals or ambitions, and someone who was fine stuffing his face with sugar nonstop. Trying wasn’t cool but being overweight and being among the bottom of your class turned out to not be cool either. So, I lost weight and decided to give a little shit. Turns out, the difference between C- and A is just listening to the teacher and applying the self a little.

But it never stopped with applying just a little as one starts on the treadmill of achievement and optimization. I’m not alone in this, as one learns as they progress through various stages of life that most people who achieve anything of note tends to be addicted to such a path…possibly even addiction.

It was nice to have a reputation that I was disciplined with things. If I woke up at 4:30 am every day for half a year, my friends assumed I did that for years. If I only ate egg whites and counted calories for a few years, then it was assumed I’d been doing that forever.

I just know it eventually became a problem for me. Innate to this process was the slavedriver in my mind that cracked the whip to never let up. Though I only woke up at 4:30 am out of necessity, it would feel like something mandatory for the sake of being “productive” later on. If I decided to enjoy life with friends and let go of my diet, guilt would follow quickly. If I failed to do a journal entry, I’d wake up at 1 am to complete it to check it off. There was never an exception. I followed the rule that keeping a goal 100% of the time is easier than 90% of the time. No one got an exception. Not even my family, coworkers or bosses. If I set a rule, I was going to keep it.

Typical of a human, I had taken a good concept and overdone it to the point it was destructive. I think I could say the net benefit was positive in regards to the progress I had made, but there are many qualitative costs I could not account for. Experiences that may have been missed, relationships that weren’t formed, etc…. History has taught that people will push any new concept to the brink until they are forced back into equilibrium when the system breaks. At the most microcycle, one merely needs to look at the New Years' resolutioners who populate the gyms every January and February. Instead of the normal eight people you squat and deadlift with, there are 20 others who lack all gym etiquette and seem oblivious of putting themselves at risk of disc herniation. The system goes to an extreme and it comes down to equilibrium where I’ll make one new friend who is actually serious about becoming stronger while the rest of the resolutioners aren’t seen again until next year.

Alas, people are only objective when they observe but that objectivity is nowhere to be seen when it’s their life. Such was the case with my obsession. I would plan my vacations meticulously with days preset with activities optimized for cost, time, energy, and “experience”. Most times it never went to plan and I would hyperventilate and need some time before my brain could function after being dealt a blow of feeling suboptimal. You would think that someone who had applied to engineering school to build missiles and tanks but instead went on to become an accountant and investor would be fine with things not going to plan. Turns out, not.

I had a rather hard time understanding that. I had a number of lovely people close to me tell me how I needed to let go but my grip on my habits and systems tightened further. After years of reflecting, I believe it had everything to do with my obsession for control. It’s probably why I am attracted to individual sports. It’s probably why I left home as soon as I could. Like everything we cherish in life, my love for control was a double-edged sword.

It would only be after years of reading philosophy from Stoics, Buddhists, transcendentalists, and combining that with literature on building systems that I would come to understand the difference between soft and hard systems. Hard systems being the rigid glass structure I had constructed for so long and soft being the malleable system that adapts and is antifragile. Evidently, I am a slow learner and that is something I’m learning to bear.

But, upon missing a journal entry on a Saturday to spend a wonderful day with my partner and feeling proud of myself for meditating five days over the last two weeks, I couldn’t help but be happy with the mindset shift I’ve had over the years. Some developments in life are not as obvious as being able to lift more weight than a year before. Sometimes, it becomes obvious after a few years of applying them to the point of becoming a noticeable mindset.

Such a development has been a cause to celebrate and to quote Kurt Vonnegut:

“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."