This concept fascinated, yet bought up so much fear inside of me.  I admired those who could do it, not being able to see how I could do it.  I’ve never being much of a hugger, and I grew up in a non-hugging culture.

A few months ago I found a local meetup group that actually just did this – that would go out as a group, hold those Free Hugs sign for a few hours and resolved to overcome my fears to join them in holding the Free Hug sign and hugging strangers.

First Attempt – Restaurant

The group meets at a restaurant then head out to hold the Free Hug signs. I had met with them the previous day to make the signs. I walked to the restaurant feeling a deep uncomfortable feeling, and after being there for a few minutes, I just walked out. Inside of me was this huge fear telling me “get away from there”.  I went home, feeling dejected for having let this emotional fear just walk me out so soon.

After that I made a few reservations online for more such events but I found one reason or another to not show up. Yet, I was still fascinated by this concept, and I felt it would be an important part of my personal growth to overcome this fear.

Second Attempt – Parking Lot

I decided for my second attempt, that I would just observe. I went to the location, which this time didn’t meet in a restaurant but simply met at the meeting place where the Free Hugs event would take place. I saw five to six of them holding the Free Hugs sign in a row. I went to park, which due to the location was rather far from the location where they met. I got out of my car to walk with toward the location.  Boom, again, this irrational huge fear emotional uncomfortable feeling came over me, and I thought “I can’t just stand with them, it’ll look like I’m with them!”, and I walked away, went back into my car and drove home.

I decided I needed some support so I started talking to some other people about this, both online and in private. I still wanted to overcome this fear, and still felt very drawn to doing this.

A little while later, I finally met the organizer and talked to him about how I was intimidated by this. He invited me to just come and observe which is exactly what I sought to do at the third event.

Third Attempt – Observing the Free Hugs

I went there and this time, I was able to stand with the people holding the Free Hug signs.  I ended having so much fun just observing them.  People were laughing so much, the huggers, the huggees, and I was laughing and having so much fun from watching them and taking pictures and being around them. It was such a healthy feeling.  One girl said that was the most fun she’s had in the 6 years she’s lived in this city.

I even got hugged a few times without holding a sign!   Sometimes, there’d be 3 or more of them in a row holding a sign, and I was at the end with no sign, just talking to one of them. More than once, someone would come and hug every single one of them, and then come to me, and they’d just hug me too assuming I was one of them. So I got some hugs that way too and I enjoyed them.

After being there for an hour, I got comfortable enough that I went and hugged all of the people holding the “Free Hug” sign (there was about 6-7 of them). That was fun too.

It was truly amazing watching it.  Even though these people holding the free hugs were getting rejected by probably 80-95% of the people walking by, because there was so many people walking by (this was a very busy sidewalk), they were still getting so many hugs. They were laughing, and having so much fun even when there’d be a moment where nobody would be hugging them. I even saw a car stop by the side of the road, and 4-5 girls came out to hug the girl that was holding the sign near the street.

I also saw guys hugging guys – plenty of that. I had some guys hug me, and even though I can’t recall a time in my life where I hugged a guy I wasn’t really good friends with, I didn’t mind it at all and it was fun. I even saw more than one though-looking thuggish guys with tattoos go all huggy on guys and girls who were holding the sign. It was interesting watching peoples’ behavior – how some people were laughing, how so many people took pictures of this event, how some would just go and hug one person, and some would go and hug everyone who held a sign (there was about 6-7 holding the sign). A lot of people ignored those holding the signs too, or would smile and go on. There were so many different reactions. However, whenever there was hugging, it felt and seemed like friends hugging and it felt like so many reunions so much of the time.

Then near the end after 3 hours or so of being at the event, I decided to go ahead and hold the sign up for about 5-10 minutes. So I did that and I got some hugs, and it was great. However, I was able to hold the sign only when there were other people holding the sign right next to me – actually when I had one of them to each of my side. Even though I felt a lot of anxiety and I wasn’t that comfortable with the sign, I was still able to do it and be open to get hugged. It felt like we were doing this as a group and I was just one of the group.

However, when the people with the signs next to me moved away from me to walk around on their own, I couldn’t hold the sign anymore – this overwhelming feeling of “who the hell am I to hold that sign” overwhelmed me and I had to put the sign down.

Having experienced the joy and fun of other people holding that Free Hug sign for several hours, and having being able to hold it for 5-10 minutes myself, I resolved to come back again another time and overcome my fears. I didn’t know how I’d do that, but my resolve and motivation to overcome my fears was greatly increased.

Fourth Attempt: Unconditional love for oneself turned out to be the answer to overcoming this fear

Several days before the fourth attempt, I came to several deep insights that were holding me back here.

1) The belief that “Everything must be earned”.

That was a belief that I grew up with.  That’s a good saying in the sense that it helps one work hard and not simply sits there wishing for a handout. I’m sure that’s how it was meant.  However, I unconsciously took it to the extreme, and felt that everything and really everything must be earned. Thus, under this belief, a hug from a stranger wasn’t earned yet, since I hadn’t developed a close friendship or romantic link with them.  I decided to let go of that belief.

2) I didn’t feel worthy of hugs from strangers, or from someone I wasn’t close with. It comes from conditionally loving myself instead of fully unconditionally loving myself.

The answer, the antidote to that is to develop unconditional love for myself. How could I do that? Someone I respected greatly told me that the first step is to “Imagine how it would feel to love yourself unconditionally”. I spent several days in that state, in that state of just imagining how it would feel to love myself unconditionally. When I did that, I could start to see myself holding the Free Hugs sign with joy and love and not caring what people thought, having no fear, and thus being there to receive hugs.

Thus I spent a few days visualization just that – being able to hold the Free Hugs sign all alone while feeling unconditional love for myself. Two hours before the event, I started to feel very nervous; I sensed the nervous energy in me.  However, I knew that would be all right, I could recognize that nervous energy being the same nervous energy I sometimes get before I give a public speech. It wasn’t the kind of fear block I had gotten earlier. Thus, I knew I could work through that without a problem as long as I kept visualizing positively.

I arrived at the event, hugged the guys already present and immediately proceeded to hold the Free Hug sign! I looked into people’s face and it was such a relief to be able to hold this Free Hug sign without any fear coming up! I spent the entire 3 hours holding that sign, feeling unconditional love, connecting with so many people.

I had such an incredible experience! It was amazing, feeling so good, so much unconditional love, and connecting to so many wonderful people in this way.

When I drove away to my house, I had tears rolling down my face at how touched I was by what happened, by connecting like this with so many people and by having overcome this deeply held back fear. I thought, what a wonderful lesson, on how love turned out to be the answer to overcome this deeply held fear I’ve had for so long.

I did take two exams two weeks ago, and I got an A in both exams, after some last minute studying.  I wasn’t stressed out for the exams, which was great.

The joy of getting an F

Today, I took another exam.  I’m usually good with predicting my grades.  Previous to this exam, in my MBA career (this is my second semester), I had taken 12 exams including final exams.  I’ve had 11 A’s and one B.  I’ve pretty much predicted accurately my score on each exam, and most of the time I was able to correctly predict how high or low of an A I had within just a few points.  I’m just saying that to say I have a good record of predicting my exam score.  I believe however, that today, I got an F on my exam.  I probably scored between a 40-60 on my exam, and if I got very very lucky, maybe between a 60-70.

I tried to study before the exam, but I had some emotional issues that striked me concerning something that I was going through at the time.  Thus, although I really tried, I couldn’t focus that much on studying for my exam.  I don’t blame those issues however, because had I kept up with the material as I had planned to at the beginning of the semester, I wouldn’t have been in the position of needing so much time to study before the exam.  The emotional issues could have thus striked me, and I’d have been ok with it in terms of my exam performance.  Furthermore, this is an emotional issue that has been striking me many times, and I’ve been lazy at addressing it as well.  Had I addressed this issue earlier, and attacked it head one much earlier, it wouldn’t have striked me at this time.  Thus, had I been more proactive in either one of those two domains, I wouldn’t have had the results in this exam.  It’s a big reminder (and lesson) that I truly need to be much more proactive in at least dealing with my emotional issues and be much more responsive to facing them head on instead of trying to bury them and have them come up later at an inopportune time.

The interesting thing for me however, is that after the exam, and knowing I had probably gotten my first “F” in many years of schooling, is that I felt completely ok, and accepting of it as I walked out.  The exam counted as 20% of my grade, so even with only a 50% on the exam, I could still get a passing grade if I do well on the rest of the course.  Instead of going to eat junk food which is my way of dealing with bad event, I instead treated myself to a fruit smoothie which is my way of celebrating my achievements after an exam.

It’s a huge improvement not to feel terrible about doing so bad, my ego is no longer involved in how good of a grade I get.  It used to be as recent as last semester.  I used to feel I had to do well on my exams so my professors would know I’m worthy of being a good student, and that my future employers would feel I’m worthy of being a good employee.   If I thought I might do badly, I’d feel that it meant I was a lesser person, not as worthy.  Doing so bad on my exam here and yet feeling fine afterward is a great indication and proof to me that I’ve been able to detached my ego from my grades!  So that’s a great improvement for me.

So, that’s why I labeled this section, the joy of getting an F.   It’s great to see this detachment from my ego grade-wise, and it’s another great reminder and push to take care of my emotional issues much more pro-actively.

Conclusion

So, I probably won’t be blogging about this goal anymore.   Anyway, I didn’t feel it was a good fit for this blog, it didn’t seem to fit what my blog is really about.   I really want to explore and write about growing in the area of socialization as well as what I’m learning about fear and love.  I’ve got some exciting posts in my head just begging to be written .

Update 1:  I got the result of my exam.  It wasn’t an F, it turned out to be a high B.  The exam was purely essay question, so I felt very sure what I answered was much less then what the professor wanted, but it turned out, it was mostly what he wanted.  I actually “earned” a high C, but the professor miscounted the points when he counted the points of my exam and gave me one full letter grade higher then my points warranted.  I was quite suprised, even somewhat shocked I was so wrong on the prediction of my grade, but I was nevertherless pleased.  Not estatic as I might have been otherwise, because my ego wasn’t tied into my grade, but I was still pleased.  Thinking I had an F was still a good learning experience.

Update 2: The professor caught his grading mistake.  My grade was downgraded to a very low B.  I’m still fine with it.

Group Projects

For two of my classes, we are required to complete projects in groups of 3-4. I don’t know if I will count the time I spend meeting with my group as part of my 20 hours. First, it’s something I don’t have 100% control over, and in fact, I may not have that much control over it. Second, it’s not pure studying, a lot of time we have fun talking about other stuff, and it’s been quite enjoyable so far. Third, the time we meet has been and will be over lunch or dinner. That’s time I wouldn’t spend studying anymore. Fourth, and most important, I do not want to become too hang-up about making the most of my time in group meetings. If I start feeling that every minute I spend in a group meeting is a minute they all take away from my ability to study on my own (due to my 20 hour limit), then I could become very rude, sharp and frustrated with them. Then that’d be very counter-productive to forming a good group synergy. The results of the group would suffer, including my own grades. So, for those reasons, I’ll note how much time I spend in group meetings for analysis, but I won’t count them in my 20 hours/week goal.

Quiz

I took a pop quiz in one of my class. It was over material previously covered in the lecture. I found myself easily answering the quiz and knowing most of the answers easily, easier then most of my classmates. I ended scoring a 100%. That is significant for me because it validates the approach of putting a lot of attention I am putting in class to remember the material during the lecture instead of simply aiming to understand.

Time Management

One of the interesting effect of this 20 hour per week goal is that I’ve already started taking action toward my term papers that will be due at the end of my semester. I have one term paper that will be 20-30 pages long. Since I know my semester will be busier later on this semester and I’ll have more of a challenge in doing all I need to do for school in  20 hour per week limit, I’m feeling pulled to working on it now instead of delaying.

How I feel

I’m still feeling much more organized and much more proactive then last semester with this goal. Knowing that I have 20 hours to devote per week to school makes me a lot more willing to spend one or two hour on a specific task way ahead of the time it is due, knowing that I am saving an hour or two later on. Furthermore, I feel I am more holistically allocating my time instead of just looking at my time in the view of the now.

The good

First, I found myself paying much more attention in class, even on the first day and second day, as well as when I read the textbook.  Previously, I’d read the textbook, and listen to the professor speak with the idea of understanding.  Now, I’m reading the textbook and listening to the professor with the aim not just to understand, but also to memorize so I don’t have to memorize it later.  So, I was a lot more focused in class.  I used some downtime in the professor’s lecture to go back over some of the stuff he said and review and memorize what he said.

Second, there was an interesting spill over effect.  Focusing on getting the absolute maximum out of my 20 hours of studying, carried over to my trying to get the maximum out of my other hours during the week. I found myself triaging more effectively.  This is good for my other goals.

The bad

First, I felt very stressed.  I felt I was trying to rush as fast as possible through my studying.  So I wasn’t able to feel as comfortable as possible.  I felt anxious too, that I wouldn’t be able to do all the studying I needed to.  I’m now countering that by visualizing feeling relaxed and going with the flow.

Second, I realize my memorization skills aren’t up to par.  This is part of the ready-fire-aim approach I’m taking to doing this.  I’m going to buy a book and read it so I can better memorize and recall the information for school.

The Neutral

Even though I only officially spent 20 hours on schoolwork, I probably spent another 10-20 hours related to school activities.  That was driving to school, walking to the different buildings, waiting between class, visualizing success while I’m exercising, preparing my lunch for school, etc.  I’m not counting that as part of my 20 hours, because I can be productive and active in doing other things during that time.  I can listen to personal development audio books and pod casts, I can think about other subjects, I can focus on my other goals, etc.  However, I feel now more pulled to make productive use of that time.  As time goes on I feel I’ll be making much better use of that time.

Conclusion

Overall, I really like the effect this goal has on my week.  I felt I got much more accomplished in less time, and I organized my school week much better due to the result of this goal.

I’m setting an ambitious goal for myself to:    Earn A’s in each of my class, while limiting myself to only spending 20 hours per week total on my MBA classes.   The only exception is when I have exams in which case I’m willing to raise the limit to 25 hours for that week.

For some schools, that’s very easy to do.  For other schools, that’s impossible.  For my school, I feel it’s possible, but it’s going to require a lot of discipline, a lot of focus, a lot of dedication to making it happen.  Not for getting the four A’s – I can get that if I dedicate myself.  It’s getting four A’s in only 20 hours per week.  That’s going to be the very challenging part.  For me, it will require a lot of mental focus, some discipline, maintaining my life to the utmost capacity, and learning the best ways to manage my time, my physical and mental energy, and my learning capacity.

Why I’m doing this: It’s exciting.  It’s scary.

It’s exciting because this means I’d be able to spend a lot of time working on my other major goals in life.   I have some exciting goals I’m focused on, that will only happen if I focus a lot of time and energy on it.  Therefore, this goal will help give me the time to focus on these other goals.

It’s exciting because it would help me get closer to being the kind of man I want to be.  In my ideal future, I work about 15-20 hours a week leading a world-wide non-profit organization.  Thus, to achieve that, I need to develop my self-discipline, my mental focus, my ability to work on something very important to me and make a big difference in it, and yet make sure I have plenty of time to work on the other major important things in my life.

It’s scary because I could completely fail.  Because by setting this goal, I’m saying I intend to only work 20-25 hours per week on this.  This means that if I can not even pass my class on that time amount, then so be it.  I thus stand a chance of  failing my classes.  However, this is the exciting type of scary – the thrill you get when you walk on the edge of a cliff.

I will keep track of how I spend my time on studying, learning, and going to class.  I’ll break it down to analyze how I’m spending my time on a weekly basis.

I intend to make weekly posts on this blog, to post about how it’s going, what I’m learning about how to do this, share my failures and successes, as well as my on-going grades.

I then decided to go to the bookstore to get me a novel – which is something I pretty much never do as I buy my novels from thrift stores.  There, I ran into one of my new friends.  She had been feeling quite bad because one of her dear friend was in the hospital.  I was feeling so loving and so connected, and I stayed there, talked to her for about two hours at the bookstore.

When the bookstore closed, we then went to her apartment to talk some more.  When we got to the apartment, I thought, hey while we’re talking, I could focus on sending her love energy since she isn’t feeling well and it may help her.  So while talking, I did just that, focused on sending love energy to her.  At one point she leaned her head against my shoulder and then asked for a hug.  We had never hugged before as she would just shake my hand when greeting.  Yet the hug felt very natural, not awkward or anything like that as it may have been earlier this year had the same situation happened to me.  So, it just felt so incredibly natural to just hug her and to even increase my focusing of sending her love energy.  I was able to concentrate more on that since we weren’t talking anymore, so the love energy I sent her was probably stronger due.  We ended hugging for about two hours while sitting on the couch….!  It felt so good to hug her, so warm, and she was feeling very good from it too.  We eventually layed down on the couch, hugging each other and we fell asleep like that.

We woke up a little bit later, and she went to her bed to sleep and I went back home and went to sleep.  I was able to sleep so good, and I woke up feeling so warm, and she did too.  All of our troubles were forgotten for a while as that warm feeling that next day was just so incredible.  There’s just something so warm about hugging someone for such a long time, just caring for each other like that, while sending them love energy.

A number of days ago, I found myself sitting in an doctor’s office. I saw an old lady talking to probably her teenage grandson. I realized then that since I read Rose’s article on that, I hadn’t really come across old ladies, and here was a great opportunity for me to assault an old lady. So I started to think of her as my friend, and I interjected myself in and ended having a great conversation with her, with her telling me so many great things. She probably did 70% of the talking, but it was great! It was funny to hear her talk of the days when the Mafia owned the Las Vegas Casinos and how much it was better then then now with the corporation owning the Casinos!

Then recently, I went to a meetup.com group that was a dinner party at a restaurent. There were 70 people scheduled to be there, and I didn’t know a single one. On the way, I focused, as I almost always do since I read Steve Pavlina’s book, on feeling connected to everyone and added the part from Rose’s article that everyone was my friend and that I’d have a good bit of fun. When I got there, I realized the crowd wasn’t as young as I thought, with maybe me maybe being one of the youngest, although I think there were a few other people in their 30′s. Now that I’m back in school as a graduate student, I’m quite used to being surrounded by people younger then me. At this dinner table, I ended sitting at a table with several older ladies around me – the grandma types. I was bummed out for 30 seconds, feeling so young and out of place.  Then I remembered Rose’s article, and decided to assault those ladies.

So I assaulted those ladies, and ended having a great time! One of them was so damn energetic and so damn fun – she seemed like a 20 year old in how much energy and how much laughter she had….!! It was so fun – that one lady and I were joking so much and we bounced off situational jokes on each other so well. At one point I thought, man if she was 30 years younger, I’d have being interested in asking her out. I also ended talking another good bit with another guy too in his 40′s or 50′s and it was great – he talked about some fascinating stuff. I had a great time, people would be passing by and I felt like everyone was a friend, and I treated them as such.

I got home and as usual (since my focus on this started a few months ago) after a social event I write my post-analysis of what happened so I can pick up what went well (so I can reinforce what I did well), what I learned, and what I could have done better (So next time I can try that). While writing my post-analysis, I realized “wow”, I didn’t feel the single bit nervous, and had absolutely no apprehension going there, and even when I stood there wondering where to sit among all these so-called strangers. It didn’t feel strange for me to sit among “strangers” there and ask if I could sit next to them. So I really got a lot out of thinking of everyone there as friends on my way there.

So I had an evening of a lot of laughter and I really enjoyed it, in part to the concept of assaulting old ladies.

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://seeker5.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/assaulting-old-ladies/feed/ 1 seeker5 http://seeker5.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/new-direction/ http://seeker5.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/new-direction/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:06:32 +0000 seeker5 http://seeker5.wordpress.com/?p=50 ]]> It’s been a while since I’ve posted!  So much has happened, I’ve moved 1100 miles to another state, and have started a completely new life as a student.

Lately though, I’ve been feeling the urge, the itch to again start blogging again.  However, I’m going to take this blog in a new direction, for now.

I’ve read Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development for Smart People book and I want to implement the principles he talked about hardcore.  I feel that I resonate strongly with the desire to develop the principle of Oneness and Courage.  There are three basic principles to personal development – Truth, Love, and Power.  Oneness is a combination of the principle of Truth and Love, while Courage is a combination of the principle of Love and Power.  Thus by aiming to increase my sense of Oneness and my Courage, I’ll also be working on Truth, Love, and Power.

I had initially read the book through it.  Now I’ve started again and really applied myself.  Steve raises a lot of deep questions in each chapter.  I did take some time answer them in my own head when I read the book the first time around.  This time around, I’m answering them on my journal, and I’m coming up with deeper answers.

I don’t know how often I’ll post, or what I’ll post.   We’ll see! 

The funny thing is I ended doing things before I knew I wanted to do, but felt restricted from doing it because I was asking myself “What should I do? What must I do?”. Other habitual questions I’d ask would be “What must I do to get closer to achieving my goal?”, “What must I do now?”, “What would fill me up?”, “What would satisfy me?”. Kind of either what do I need to force myself to do, or how can I meet some unmet need. “What would I love to do now?” with no expectation of regard for end result, but simply being in the Now and let the energy flow out of my heart is something new.

I can see that one of the things I did just for the love of it – blogging about my bad financial beliefs, ended being very beneficial because I really had to sit down and think about it, and thus help remove one of my stumbling block.

Today was my first day doing this. I’m curious to see what would happen if I did this for one week – what would be the results? So, for the next week, I’ll aim to ask myself frequently from a heart-centered outflowing way “What would I love to do now?. Then I’ll check to see what happens.

“If I was garanteed to be poor for the rest of my life, what would I choose to do?”