you can convert every piece of advice into an open-ended inquiry, an exercise in paying attention to what happens if you follow the advice more vs. less
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"the way to date good is to be yourself" ➡️ pay attention to what happens on dates when you are more vs. less yourself. what does it even mean to "be yourself"? what is your "self"? who are you being when you're "not being yourself"?
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"stop eating this list of bad foods" ➡️ pay attention to what happens when you eat the bad foods. what feels good about them? what feels bad about them? in your mouth? in your stomach? on what timescale?
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"get more sunlight" ➡️ pay attention to what happens when you're outside in the sun. what feels good about it? what feels bad about it? how does it affect the rest of the day?
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the goal of doing this kind of thing is to expose more of your bodymind to the actual consequences of various actions, so that its preferences for what actions to take can eventually update naturally instead of needing to be overridden top-down by shoulds
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since you are learning about the actual consequences the results are naturally attuned to the specific context of your actual life instead of cookie-cutter off-the-shelf the way generic advice is. you can learn what does and doesn't work for you
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this is actually an idea i first came across years ago when i read the inner game of tennis but i think i've been really underrating it this whole time
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