Lent and Self-Discipline - [VerusAnimus' Reflection]

I enjoy lent.  I look forward to it every year.  I see Lent as a way to "restart."  It is a reset button for living a better life (similar to how New Year and its resolutions are a restart for a new year).  I personally think Lent's "restart" effect is more profound.  For those who don't know, the season of Lent is the forty days before Easter starting from Ash Wednesday and not including Sundays.

During Lent, you give up something earthly and personal.  It can be something you're addicted to or something you use a lot.  For example, you can give up candy, TV, video games, or even FaceBook. The point of giving things up is to build self-discipline.  By continuously rejecting things you "can't live without," you are building your self-discipline.  Your goal is to make it to Easter without failing.  If you make it, you will emerge a stronger person - both in will and in character.

I know this effect is real because I have been participating in Lent ever since I learned about it in my high school's youth group.  During my last few years of high school as an upperclassman, I gave up music.  To be specific, I gave up music from the radio, from iTunes, and from the Internet.  I am an individual who loves music and I wanted to challenge myself.  Giving up music was definitely a challenge!  To up the challenge, I included Sundays - so I effectively gave up music for about 6.5 weeks.

A side story: during my first year of giving up music (2009), I posted a song (Boom Boom Pow) from the Black Eyed Peas on my channel.  I have never listened to that song.  It was their first song since their last album in 2005.  I wanted to listen to that song but I stopped myself.  So I posted it on YouTube and left it alone.  Next thing I knew, I was getting millions of views on that video!  I finally listened to it after Lent and that song became one of my favorites by them. (((My YouTube Channel)))

Anyways, giving up music was literally muting my life.  Every single day I wanted to listen to music but every single day I had to resist the urge to play music.  I even asked my family to not play music so that I could accomplish this.  In retrospect, asking my family to give up music along with me was a bit selfish, which is why I don't give up music if the season of Lent falls during moments when I'm home for the majority of the season. Regardless, during Lent, my self-discipline grew.  I guess I can also attribute the growth in self-discipline to my family values, my church values, and growing up in a military town.  Nevertheless, by the time Easter arrived, I was so excited to listen to music.  However, since I was so used to not listening to music, I also didn't want to - I wanted to make a "new record" for not listening to music.  In the end, I ended up playing Boom Boom Pow and I got back into the music world.  I became more appreciative of music.  40+ days of being deprived of something you enjoy makes you appreciate it so much more.

This year I have given up different distractions: social networks such as Instagram and Twitter.  I find it really important to give those up because they are a complete distraction from school.  I'm in my last year of university and having constant access to these social networks brought my performance down.  That is why I couldn't wait for Lent to begin so that I would be forced to stop using those accounts.  Once Lent began, I hid my distracting apps using a Cydia app.  The app is available only on jailbroken iDevices.  In this case it is useful because it literally hides the app's existence from my iPad.  I could easily "unhide" the apps but I wont - the point of Lent is to have the self-discipline to avoid whatever I give up.

One may ask, "why do I have to wait for Lent?  Why can't I just stop sooner?"  Well, I could.  A lot of people could.  However, there's a psychological factor that comes along with Lent, something that makes things official.  It's easy to say you give up something and simply relapse back because it's not "official".
For example, consider this: an individual asks a roommate to pay rent for one semester because that individual can't afford it. The roommate agrees and they shake hands on it. However, a day before payment is due, the roommate backs out.  The individual argues that the roommate promised to pay.  The roommate says that it wasn't official and there's no proof because the agreement wasn't in writing.

There are probably better examples out there but this is an example I could come up with at the top of my head.  You can agree to giving something up but if it's not "official," you don't have a psychological obligation to follow through.  Yes, you may have your own code of honor, which would be nice.  Perhaps it's a side-effect of the society we live in but in some cases, people consider that things have to be "official" before any action is taken, or at least effort to take that action is made.

All in all, Lent is important because it builds self-discipline.  It helps individuals to build character.  It enables people to take their focus off their "addictions" and to turn their sights to other aspects of life, whether it's their family, school, or new hobbies. By making people realize that they don't know what they have until it's gone, Lent makes individuals more appreciative of the big and little things in life.

VerusAnimus

How To Easily Gain Instagram Followers - The VerusAnimus InstaFollowMethod

There are many articles online about how to gain Instagram followers.  I came up with a creative and easy way to gain Instagram followers.  I'm still fairly new to Instagram - I only became active at the end of summer 2013.  The following method looks takes a psychological/statistical point of view.  I came up with this idea simply through observation who interacts with my Instagram account, experimentation, and creative thinking.  Maybe someone else has thought of this idea but as far as I know, I discovered it myself.  I thought I would share my discovery with you all.  I like to call it the VerusAnimus InstaFollow Method.

Please note: If you follow my instructions then this method has very high probability of working - it has worked consistently for me.  The reasons for it not working is if you "travel" through an unpopular #hastag, it's not a busy time of the day and you don't like enough pictures.  This method is significantly better and simpler than many of the methods out there.

I have noted that there is a trend on Instagram where if someone "likes" your photo, it is common courtesy for you to "like" theirs back.  This sense of reciprocity is especially apparent when people like multiple pictures.  Of course, not everyone "likes back."  Anyways, this InstaReciprocity is the basis for my method.

The basis of my method is to creatively and inconspicuously advertise my account.  It selectively targets people.  For most people, it is fairly easy to receive a single like and not like back.  However, people have a higher probability of liking back when they receive two or more likes.  I begin my InstaFollow method by initiating InstaReciprocity.  Here are the steps for easily gaining more followers:

• I choose a hashtag that tends to have lots of pictures.  I “travel” through cyberspace to places such as #Seattle, #Vancouver, #trees, #snowy, or #railway.
• Once there, I choose a type of picture to focus on.  For example, I focus on scenery pictures.  Of course, you don't have to focus on any particular picture.  I have discovered that having a genre to focus on makes the process go faster.
• I scroll through the hashed pictures and tap the ones that fit my focus.  I like that picture and enter the user's page.  I check if they have a ratio in which their "following" is greater than their "followers."
• If they fit that requirement, I like one extra picture.  I only like one extra so that it's not obvious that I'm advertising my channel and so that I can speed up the process of targeting more users.
• If the hashtag I'm in doesn't have the proper ratio, I travel through a different hashtag and try that out.
• While I have gotten followers from around the world with foreign hastags, I tend to use local hashtags since "local" people are more likely to follow other who post pictures of similar interests. For example, #Seattle, #Washington, #Oregon, #PNW, #PacificNorthwest, and #forest works well for me. 
• Please note: I discovered that sometimes Instagram automatically "unlikes" some pictures if you double tap too many in a row when entering from the hashtag portal.  Just be careful about this.
• Anyways, since I like at least two of the user's photos, they would have a higher chance of feeling committed to enter my account and like my pictures back.  Remember, not everyone does this - that's why I have to repeat this process for multiple pictures for about 15+ minutes.
• Since the targeted users have a higher "following" to "followers" ratio, they have a higher probability of entering my account, liking my pictures, and following me.  

That's it.  It's that simple.  If you do this for multiple pictures for an extended amount of time, you are guaranteed to gain comments, likes, and followers.  I have gained numerous likes, followers, and comments every 40 minutes.  Sometimes I wait longer because I like to see the mass notifications.  This may not seem like much to some people but for me, it's a lot since only a couple weeks before writing this I had less than 70 followers.  

Remember, this can be time consuming.  Don't get stuck doing this.  There's a whole world out there to explore!

Some may note that this method is similar to the "scroll down and like everything you see" method.  In some ways it is and in some ways it isn't.  That method doesn't really attempt to gain followers.  It just likes every single picture.  My method is more streamlined in that the target is people with a higher "following" to "follower" ratio.  This method may take a couple more seconds per photo but at least it will result in easier followers.  

The whole process is a creative method I came up with by using lateral thinking after observing human psychology behavior on Instagram.  For those who think this is cheating, it's not.  All it is is very good "advertising."  I don't spam people's accounts an I don't force anyone to "click my user name" and follow me.  I don't want people to feel obligated to follow me.  All I do is make my account available to them so they have the free will to follow me if they like my pictures.  It's different and it works.

Thanks for reading this and good luck gaining more followers!  If you use the post in any way please credit me by citing my blog, my Instagram (@Verus_Animus), and my real name (Joel S. Atienza).

Also, check out my video for a real-life demonstration and proof that I gained 120+ followers in one week! 

If you like this article and/or it helped you, be sure to share it and follow my main Instagram at @Verus_Animus.

Shoutout to all my present and future followers!  Thank you! I couldn't have done this without you all.

Joel S. Atienza aka VerusAnimus
Electrical Engineering student
University of Washington

Bonus: Food account: @JVerusSAnimusA

Bonus for reaching the end: If you still have trouble finding the followers (which you shouldn't), then perhaps my followers will follow you. Hint hint.