Low points: and how to get out of them

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, SimonD said:

I'm sorry but I have to push back on this and refine it a little

May have to get back to you on this when I get home. But yes, the environment (as Einstein said 'it is everything but me') does have an effect, but one can change how one looks and deals with it.

 

Today's Saturday Live had a bit about the power of doing nothing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002qrb4

 

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

When I visited, I thought of asking to see it.

But decided you and your family were too nice and kind to hear me laughing. Would have been rude.

 

Was it you who shat on the drive that day?

[SimonD]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

May have to get back to you on this when I get home. But yes, the environment (as Einstein said 'it is everything but me') does have an effect, but one can change how one looks and deals with it.

 

Today's Saturday Live had a bit about the power of doing nothing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002qrb4

 

 

I probably know more than most on the power of doing nothing. I've been a teacher of Tai Chi for over 10 years and my Master's research project in psychological coaching was about importing and integrating core aspects of Chinese philosophy into Western psychological models of adult learning and development. The research was applied so I had real world participants and measures of success - my superviser encouraged me to take that work to a PHD but children and other things at the time meant I didn't have the time or capacity. maybe in the future.

 

Embedded in Chinese philosophy and Daoism (not the religion but the classical philosophy) is the concept of doing nothing of course. But this is often misunderstood because it doesn't actually mean doing nothing, it means doing as little as possible as efficiently as possibly - or in more Chinese terms, to find a path of action in a situation with the least effort. And like with all things it's a process that has to be learned and part of the learning process is doing too much until you finally have the realisation you can do much less. So very much consistent with what I said earlier. Like the Tai Chi masters I've been taught by, where of course doing nothing is a central principle, they keep reminding you that to master Tai Chi you have to 'eat bitter' - it's really tough work, despite doing nothing 😉

[SteamyTea]

18 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Was it you who shat on the drive that day?

Yes, and I call around every other evening to do the same.

Thankfully @Pocster is paying for it though his livestream video channel.

[-rick-]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Yes, and I call around every other evening to do the same.

 

Is this why @Onoff put so much effort into his gate?

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, SimonD said:

means doing as little as possible as efficiently as possibly

Almost the same as production engineering. Then we sum it all up.

Think those drug cheating cyclists did the same, they called it marginal gains.

[SteamyTea]

Just now, -rick- said:

 

Is this why @Onoff put so much effort into his gate?

I wee into the box of wires.

[SimonD]

58 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Almost the same as production engineering. Then we sum it all up.

Think those drug cheating cyclists did the same, they called it marginal gains.

 

Yeah, that's about it. But from your science and engineering perspective, one of the classical models in Chinese thought from about 2500 years ago, which has been classified by complexity theory scientists amongst others, is a proto-scientific systems theory. It's got a lot in it that mirrors modern production and distribution approaches, but with one key different that we've tended to overlook/abandon - and that's the importance of redundancy.

[SteamyTea]

15 minutes ago, SimonD said:

and that's the importance of redundancy

As in a back up system, rather than an extra, unneeded system?

[ToughButterCup]

So far we've dealt with part of the thread title: Low points, and suggested ways of moving on. 

 

But there's more to it.

 

Forgiving yourself.

 

@Onoff hints at the issue earlier. We've all got fookoops , - hidden from view from others or not - which still get to us : sometimes years after the deed is fookedoop.

 

You've all heard

"Nobody knows, nobody knows" 

 

And a little voice in our heads say

"I bloody well do"

 

Get out of that without squirming. 

 

Any suggestions as to how - when some bloody annoyingness on your build stares you in the face years after the fact - how to let it go. Make it die. ? 

[SimonD]

10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

As in a back up system, rather than an extra, unneeded system?

 

Backups not unneeded extra systems. Back then it was about the effective management and distribution of resources that nurture the healthy function of a system - so that it's harmonious and balanced - across cycles of excess and deficiency. So water, for example requires appropriate storage as well as managed consumption to maintain consistent supplies across both individual and several seasons - what's appropriate is obviously governed by the wider context and environment.

 

It's been refined and still remains one of the central models used to simultaneously guide both diagnosis and treatment in Chinese medicine.  It's even been used over the centuries in the structure and function of government and society.

 

[SimonD]

52 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

You've all heard

"Nobody knows, nobody knows" 

 

And a little voice in our heads say

"I bloody well do"

 

Get out of that without squirming. 

 

Oh, yeah. Gets me all the time. I'm so glad this thread is here to expose the shared experiences 😄

 

52 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

Any suggestions as to how - when some bloody annoyingness on your build stares you in the face years after the fact - how to let it go. Make it die. ? 

 

Here' my two pennies worth which is influenced by my working with people psychologically and teaching my Tai Chi classes, but also from how I'm at ease with my mistakes building (well, apart from one - see below) - I actually appreciate them because of what they represent.

 

1. Don't try to make it die. The first step here is to embrace the f**k up, and do it in a compassionate way.

 

2. look at the self-build process as a learning process not at the outcomes.

I get this every week in my Tai Chi classes when students tell me they're afraid to practise at home in case they get it wrong and build bad habits. So I first ask them if they intend to build bad habits and they answer 'no.' Great start. Second is that I then explain that there is absolutely no way you can get something right first time if you've never done it before and to get it right you have to do it wrong many times, sometimes 1000s of times, if not more. I never tell my students they got it wrong, I just guide them towards improving.

 

Learning is about getting it wrong. You need to remind yourself about this over and over. I see stuff in my house and then just ask myself if I did my best at the time and have I learned from it. If the answer is yes to both, that's a great help. It sits much nicer for me and is comforting.

 

The only time I can't get over it is when I see some stuff from a disastrous period when I got a couple of people in to help me - paid trades - and they cocked up. I still look at those bits and wish I'd done that myself, because even if I cocked up I did it with my best intentions! But with time they're dissappearing into the unseen background

 

The important thing here is not to be narrow in your consideration of what you learned. This isn't just about learning a technique or build method, it's about whether you learned to make better decisions, learned to ask for help when you needed it, learned to be more self-sufficient, learned to be more self-confident. It can be learning about anything related to your experience.

 

3. Learn to think about whether what you've done is good enough, not perfect.

 

For me there are some Asian cultures that produce very high quality goods and appear to be perfect in many ways in what they produce. Now we all know they're not. But one thing that they all have inherent in their culture is to never seek perfection, or in some countries seek perfection fully in the knowledge you'll never achieve it. And also they purposefully leave something unfinished (a minor unfinished bit that most people won't see, but the make will!)

 

The reasons they take this approach is because nature is never perfect and it is still unfinished, and why go against nature. Instead look at creating overall harmony.

 

4. Time is a great healer. Get on with what's next in life and eventually those mistakes will fall away in importance

 

5. If you're questioning decisions you made that turned out wrong, stop to remind yourself that you were, literally a different person with different information to hand when you made the decision. You're now someone completely different with new knowledge and experience so you have no place to be going back to give the earlier you a hard time for those decisions. Again, go back to reflecting on what you learned and what you got out of the experience. And if you've got some interest, wonder how it will support you going forwards.

 

Maybe some of this helps...  

Edited 5 hours ago by SimonD

[Onoff]

2 hours ago, SimonD said:

Tai Chi

 

Do you know Willie Lim?

[MikeSharp01]

40 minutes ago, SimonD said:

 

Learning is about getting it wrong.

Those who don't make mistakes never made anything.

[SimonD]

58 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Do you know Willie Lim?

 

I know the name, but I have never met him. For the last 18,19, or 20 years or whatever it is now, I've been firmly embedded in the Chen-style lineage of Chen Xiaowang.

[BotusBuild]

3 hours ago, ToughButterCup said:

Any suggestions as to how - when some bloody annoyingness on your build stares you in the face years after the fact - how to let it go. Make it die. ?

Differing levels of annoyance require different responses. 

Severe annoyance, for me, means remove and replace or whatever will correct it to my satisfaction.

Anything else is dealt with by the phrase "it is what it is" which kind of sums up some of things @SimonD states more eloquently above.

 

In summary - fix only that which you can at reasonable personal and/or financial cost. Everything else is a lesson learned. 

 

FYI - the phrase comes from someone who worked for me many years ago. He used this phrase in daily worklife to describe situations that were not fixable or in some cases would cost far too much (time/money) to put right, but in themselves were not terminal, unlike his final medical diagnosis, at which point his phrase hit me square in the face! I now use it at appropriate times to remove stress from my life.

[Gus Potter]

On 30/01/2026 at 11:36, jack said:

We don't need more funds. When we run low, we ask for donations, and generally that gets us what we need to cover costs. All BH staff are unpaid volunteers and that won't change.

 

"New blood" isn't needed imo, but we don't have the advantage of lifelong endeavours like farming, gardening, or photography in terms of keeping members engaged over long periods of time. Many of our members join, hang around until their build is finished, then we never see them again (obviously for some *cough* @Pocster *cough that time could be measured in decades).

 

Over time, there'll occasionally be the need for a new mod or administrator, but we've handled that as needed. Most of the current staff have been here for many years and have no intention of going anywhere.  

 

I don't know why you think BH dropping down the rankings suggests we'd be trying to sell it. I can categorically state that there's not even the hint of a glint of an idea to sell. We have no income other than donations. I suppose someone could take over and try to monetise the site, but I don't think there's a lot of money in forums any more, plus any potential buyer would have to know that they'd lose a lot of the membership if they added advertising, sponsorship, or membership fees. I agree that the info in the site is of limited value, especially given it's publicly available to all.

Hi Jack.

 

Thank's for taking time to examine my text. 

 

"All BH staff are unpaid volunteers and that won't change." Great news to me and delighted to hear that.

 

"Many of our members join, hang around until their build is finished, then we never see them again" But that surely is the nature of the beast. It only takes a few to hang around out of the thousands of members to keep things current and BH "living".

 

"Over time, there'll occasionally be the need for a new mod or administrator, but we've handled that as needed. Most of the current staff have been here for many years and have no intention of going anywhere."   This is also great news, not least as life experience counts for a lot as does continuity.. and don't take this the wrong way mods, grandfathers rights, skipping a generation and trying to reinvent the wheel often leads to problems. 

 

"I don't know why you think BH dropping down the rankings suggests we'd be trying to sell it."  Ah I may have had my commercial hat on a bit squint! But I recollect that I was prompted by the drive to get onto the first page of the rankings and that is important if you want to position for selling an online platfrom. It just raised a flag at my end. 

 

"I can categorically state that there's not even the hint of a glint of an idea to sell. We have no income other than donations."  Music to my ears as it will be to many others and I'm please to hear that my "water" has in this case been ok after all and my concern unfounded. 

 

We have no income other than donations.  Many organisations would give their back teeth to be in a place like this. My only comment is that I think there was a donation tab, tried to find it @AliG. When joined BH I learnt loads, still do. I can see that the forum must be saving folks piles of cash at times and just think, I'll just send as a spontaneous gesture £50 quid as a thanks. 

 

Anyway to finish. Thanks Jack and to all the mods for all your hard work. 

[ToughButterCup]

"It is what it is"

 

Being generous with oneself is for many - me included - not easy. 

 

We self-builders 'see' so much more detail than we did before our build. The skill (curse?) extends to looking at other buildings - houses especially so. To me it's quite strange that I'm prepared to be more generous in my judgement about A N Other build than I am about my own. A lintel not quite right, a gate that doesn't close and latch itself easily.....

 

Maybe I need to grow up. 

[BotusBuild]

I have a perfection streak (maybe OCD) like many "hands on" self builders, and I hear what you're saying, Ian, about being less lenient with your own work than others.

 

I think we see more detail because we did the work ourselves. Could we have done better at the time, with the right tools, and maybe more time? Now we may have done the same thing multiple times, and through experience got better, sure, we know that first one is not as good as it could be. If you can fix the "bad" one, go for it. If not, accept it as a lesson learned.

 

Has my perfection streak disappeared? Absolutely not, and I'm still fooking it up every so often.

 

Ian, be kind to yourself. What you've achieved overall with your selfbuild is monumental. You know this to be true. Try to put the little things in context against that, one little thing at a time.

 

Hope this helps you a tiny bit

[Oz07]

No excuse for bad work but I learnt young you can mess something up trying to get a good job perfect. There's a couple of sayings with the same message.