CONGRUENCE

Carl Rogers was a psychologist who formulated the psychological theory of congruence. It can be illustrated roughly like this,



Rogers held that self-actualization occurs when a person's ideal self is congruent with their actual behavior. According to Rogers only an individual who is actualizing in this way qualifies as a fully functioning person. Rogers identified seven characteristics of the fully functioning person:

1. Openness to experience : No need for subception, a perceptual defense that involves unconsciously applying strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from entering consciousness.
2. Existential lifestyle: Not distorting the moment to fit personality or self-concept but being open to what is going on now, and discover in that present process whatever structure it appears to have.
3. Organismic intuition: Trusting their own judgment and ability to choose behavior that is appropriate for each moment.
4. Freedom of choice: The ability to make a wider range of choices. Taking responsibility and being determinate about their own actions.
5. Creativity: Freedom to be creative and adapting their own circumstances without feeling a need to conform.
6. Reliability and constructiveness: They are open to all their needs, and will be able to maintain a balance between them, allowing them to be reliable and constructive.
7. Rich full life: The life of the fully functioning individual is rich, full and exciting and suggests that they experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely.

Rogers calls the life of the fully functioning individual "the good life": This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.

How do we become fully functional, congruent individuals?

One way to be congruent with ones ideal self is simply to lower the ideal self to the actual self. Another strategy is of course to raise the actual self to the ideal self. Generally we set ideals that are either too low or unrealistically high to avoid feeling the need to try at all. If you want to work on this balance, one of these three strategies might be helpful:

#1: Set New Standards for Yourself
Who has crafted your self-image and standards in life?
Define your own self: who do you want to be?

#2: Set your Mood
When we are incongruent there is internal conflict, and our moods will be all over the place. Do not let internal or external circumstances dictate what you feel.
Consider: What am I looking forward to the most today, or what could I decide to do today that I can look forward to?

#3: Keep Your Word and Follow Through
Following up on your own words grounds you as a powerful agent that can reliably make things happen.
Ultimately, we want the feeling that we are following through with our own intentions, that we are doing what we know we should be doing.

COMPETENCE

We all need to feel that we have some competence and an ability to master certain things in our life. When all around us we can so easily see examples of superior excellence, it can be hard not to question our worth, including our abilities, intelligence, strengths, and even our future as a valuable contributor. Self-doubt can cause both performance anxiety and apathy. If we are anxious we may constantly fear failure and in the process becoming angry, disappointed, and feeling hopeless. If we are apathetic we may use it was shelter to shy away from challenges, we may procrastinate and end up with a lack of drive and passion for living life fully.

All of this causes us to stop trying, learning, growing and contributing. We often won't ask for help when we need it, and we hide our inadequacies and vulnerabilities for fear of being found out.

In general, we can say that our subjective competence level determines...

1. What we will give attention to.
2. Our choice of tasks and activities.
3. Our effort level.
4. How adaptable and resilient we are.
5. Whether we will lead or follow.

All of this in turn will shape our confidence, in what has become known as the "Competence-Confidence Loop": The more competence you have, the more confidence you feel in trying new things and taking on new and bigger challenges; the more you do that, the more mastery you develop and the more competent you feel.

So how do we activate the loop, or rather spiral, in a positive direction?

#1 Assess and Direct Your Desire to Learn

Assess why you want to lean and what would prevent you from doing so. Learn to choose learning challenges that actually light you up and shape your future. Is this goal or activity relevant to my future identity? Is it an intrinsic or extrinsic value? Will you get something out of it? How long will it take? Can you convince yourself that it will pay off? Will you be able to create meaningful relationships along the way? Will I have enough tiem to focus and do a good job learning and doing this new activity? Do you have the required resources? If you don't, is this just an excuse? Will I be given the trust and decision-making authority I need to feel as though I am in control and able to make things happen?

#2 Set a real challenge and plan for success

Are you at the same level of skill and mastery in any important areas of your life that you were at three years ago? In other words, are there any meaningful areas of your life where you don't feel you've grown? Work on setting real, time-bound challenges that that have observable effects throughout to avoid fooling yourself. Write them down and have a clear plan. Whatever learning-challenge you choose, push yourself.

#3 Integrate success into your identity

Do you feel a sense of pride in accomplishing things? Do you feel and register it when you do progress? Do you take time outs to celebrate your victories? If we never feel accomplished, it is hard to keep pushing for success. If we never get any sense of accomplishment, we can forget our victories and lose our confidence. It is important to keep reminding ourselves that we have pushed through obstacles before and that we can do so again.

CONTROL

"The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons." - Nathaniel Branden

We each have a need to control ourselves and our lives. In spite of this, it is important to recognize that some things are out of our control. If we can see the difference between the aspects of our lives that are in our control and those that are not, we can keep up motivation and growth.

As creatures of action and perception our control is generally mediated by thought. When thought is unconscious, we are controlling the world around us through instincts and habit, generally working on assumptions laid down in the past.

Sometimes these mechanisms of control can become obsessive, leading us on to irrational trajectories of perception and action.  It is therefore essential to be conscious of our thoughts, especially as they are created on instinct and habit, to unlock the hidden freedom we have in each encounter with the environment and others around us.

Perhaps the most pernicious and all-encompassing thoughts are associated with the ego or sense of self, which always has an agenda to control new information in a particular way. We can generally see this in others, when suddenly they become defensive and irrational to a simple question, and yet, where are we when this happens to us?

It is therefore important to keep a keen awareness of our own outlook and character in everyday situations, to remain free from the unconscious agenda of our own ego or sense of self.

In general it can be difficult to give ourselves a space to be free. Everywhere we are judged not only by others but by ourselves, and the instinct to control can get overaggressive. When this happens, instead of meeting new challenges that might push us out of our comfort zone, we instead minimize the external uncertainty to remain in control, often leading to isolation and in turn depression.

It is therefore important to be conscious of introducing new and challenging information into your life, to prevent your lower self and the pitiful agenda of the ego to downplay the richness of experience, instead of facing up to humility.

With that being said, it is extremely important to have some measure of control over the things you work with on a day to day basis. Without getting feedback that your contributions matter, as in a 9-5 office job, it is easy to become discouraged and apathetic.

In the near future, when cryptocurrencies and cryptostocks becomes the norm, we can all have shares in the projects we help contribute to, and I think as a consequence we will see a dramatic increase in people of all stripes participating in and being engaged and enthusiastic about a wide range of such projects.

People working on such projects will be more motivated and feel that their work is more meaningful as they have a stake in its success.

Blockchain Apparatus is a voting system based on the Blockchain, providing a transparent, secure and incorruptible voting system. Blockchain Apparatus has been developing several innovations and working to put software in control of will execution. The Denver-based startup announced this week their latest developments and their innovations are bound to change how people manage their estates.

http://blockchainapparatus.com/

Motivation Monday #1

The cryptocurrency revolution is at heart a breaking free from old structures that have imposed their agenda on us - taking us hostage. In the old structures, all our blood belongs to them. For each transaction of value, for each investment, someone else makes a constant profit on our blood. The search for freedom is eternal and within each of us. In revolutionary times, nothing resonates more than freedom. When someone reminds us that freedom is possible, the window opens and a flame ignites to spite what is. Without freedom, we all suffer and lose motivation to keep fighting.

We must hold on to freedom in all its forms - internal, social and physical. Internal freedom is the ability to free oneself from unconscious habits and impulses that instill fear, uncertainty and doubt into our hearts. Social freedom is the ability to ignore the cults and choirs of conformity and caution. Physical freedom is the mastery of practical skills and economic wealth that frees us from material constraints.

We all want to express ourselves, to have personal power, and to be able to contribute and have influence in the world. As pure beings, we are causal agents united in our understanding of our selves and the world around us. Living consciously and intelligently requires us to shed bad blood. With cryptocurrencies we now have a real possibility to express ourselves without being slaves to a preordained structure or agenda.

We now have the freedom to live our lives on our own terms.

https://twitter.com/rustyrockets/status/581759681066078208

https://www.startjoin.com/trewsagents

Let's see how much one man with almost 10 million followers on Twitter can do for Startcoin:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/startcoin/#charts

"There’s just one thing left to discuss: mining. Proof of Work implies the inefficient conversion of electricity into heat, Ether and network stability, and we would quite like to not warm the atmosphere with our software more than is absolutely necessary. Short of buying carbon offsets for every unit of Ether mined (is that such a bad idea?), we need an algorithmic fix: the infamous Proof of Stake."

Seems like Ethereum schedule includes PoW -> PoS transition.

Frontier (test net) -> Homestead (PoW) -> Metropolis (+GUI) ->  Serenity (PoS)

https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-process/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEYaLzRDyIA

"what are you trying to say with this line, how is it you?"

"you know what, it's not about me, it's about the people"

stripped down feelings shatter notions of class

it does not matter who you are, or where your are from

everyone has a right to be free