Month: March 2021

It all comes down to that. “I am the only . . . .”

I just want to be accepted. Not feel weird, not feel uncomfortable, on guard.

I don’t want to be alone. Lonely.

My mind creates the feeling of apartness, difference. I am somehow different from you and therefore . . . you don’t accept me.

The problem isn’t you not accepting me. the problem is me not accepting me.

More important? There is no apartness.

How do I shed this “I am the only . . .” stuff? Because it’s self-manufactured. I am going to search and search until I find a distinction between you and me. Then I am going to seize on it as a reason to feel different, rejected, alone.

How do I shed the “If I am different, then I am rejected” belief?

Let’s start here: we are all different if we look carefully enough and we are all the same if we look carefully enough. I will start to feel connection when I look for the similarity in you — whoever you are.

It’s on me. Search for the oneness. Look for the connection with everyone I meet, with kindness. You find what you are looking for. So look with togetherness, ease, friendship, love. And it will be there.

Good thought from a Goggins video I saw. (Let’s write it down so the brain does not erase it!)

Build a time into your day/week/month/whatever to review where you are, what you learned, and reset. Just step back and observe. What do I know now that I didn’t know before?

This will keep you in sync with reality.

Maybe you’re in the right place, using the right tactics, thinking the right thoughts. Maybe not.

Related thought: one of the BTF Tony podcast episodes where he talks about looking at a target. He gives the example of “If the target was this piece of paper.” He would just look at it. Really look at it. No preconceived thoughts, no snap judgments. Just look.

Use that.

. . . is the place of judgment for your actions today.

That means we control the future, at least to a certain degree. The future is when today’s planted seeds bear fruit.

After a few decades of slow learning (and forgetting and relearning) I am becoming more and more convinced that my number one job is choosing my thoughts.

I don’t mean that I have control over my mind. All sorts of shit thoughts pop up all the fucking time. What I mean is that these thoughts are seen and allowed to leave. Or are replaced with other thoughts.

Current events tell me that external and visible religious devotion is valued more than competence and reality.

Seeing this has a tangible effect on my mentality, for the worse. Condemnation. Anger. Frustration.

Double down on competence. Double down on clarity. Openmindedness.

The carpenter told us “Resist not evil”. In other words (applying that idea to me, today) don’t stew on how stupid “they” are, or how obviously self-destructive an ideology is. Keeping those thoughts alive in my head damaged me. The stupid, self-destructive people are oblivious.

Instead, get the mind and body hard. Get clean. Get focused. live a life constantly congruent with reality. That’s my reminder to myself today.

Be clear on this point: I’m not some fucking genius. There are seven billion plus people. I don’t have it nailed down, and in fact the odds are that I’m wrong. Someone (many, many someones) have the facts nailed down better than me.

Just guard against bullshit thoughts. Bullshit thoughts create bullshit people. Choose what works, instead of what you want to work. Think about that. Do that. And shun bullshit people.

This exhortation to self was inspired by a typed-up quote off the Goggins Video channel on YouTube, posted July 19, 2018:

In everything you do in life, make sure you give everything you have. A lot of people in this world allow the crap of this world to control their inner dialogue. Make sure you live your life the way you want to live it. Follow your heart and give all you have in everything you do. Sometimes you may need to stand alone on your journey. Find the courage to do that.

https://youtu.be/fjuya1xeOMc

Here I sit. Big day in history.

I am watching another person close to me do it differently. “Let me try that again.” That is a ticket to doom.

Thank God I didn’t have that thought. I sat down and stayed, gullible enough to just believe until I saw it was true.

That which leads to a general agreement, and likewise to a perfect one, is an assured belief in certain facts; but if, lacking this assurance, all things are adrift in our minds, then doctrines are indispensable; for they give to our minds the means of unswerving decision.

Seneca, Letter __:62.

From this I deduce the following guideline: it’s easy to know what to do when the facts are clear. When the facts are unclear (e.g., when contemplating what happens tomorrow or the next day), you need “doctrines”, or deep guiding principles.

Yesterday’s facts are relatively clear. I’m not being clever there. Yesterday is a matter of memory only, therefore malleable depending on your mood and other facts. Yesterday can be altered. You can change the past, and in fact I would guess that history changes all the time.

Spiritual principles are needed when considering the past, too. But that’s not what caught my eye today.

The question of “what do I do now?” is what matters. How do I act, right now? And because facts are barely known about the now (how much can I really know?) and no factual knowledge is possible about the future, the only answer is deep spiritual principles.

So if you really look at it, reliance on facts is probably misplaced: we reinterpret the past to suit ourselves, the now is inherently only partially perceived, and the future is wholly unknown.

That’s why a kit of three or four or possibly five ideas, constantly in mind, can guide me to better choices. This is analogous to the Jocko “four laws of combat” method of operation.

Seneca, in this letter, seems to be overly complex but maybe that’s because he is making a collateral argument (precepts, doctrines, etc.).

I don’t know explicitly what my personal equivalent is for the four laws of combat.

Keep it simple is a start. Let’s explicitly adopt that as the first guiding principle of my life, shall we? (I am addressing the busload of little “me” brains that constantly talk to me haha. I am a committee of legion and they are an unruly and contrarian bunch.)

These two qualities, the one of recklessness and the other of sloth, cannot be respectively checked or roused unless we remove their causes, which are mistaken admiration and mistaken fear.

Seneca, Letter __:37.

Mistaken admiration: I see something, want it, but do not see the whole picture. Maybe I don’t see the whole picture because I don’t want to see the whole picture. Maybe I am currently incapable of seeing the whole picture. Maybe it just takes a while for the whole picture to appear, just like developing film for an old-style camera.

No matter. Moving too fast means I encounter reality, not just the tantalizing appearance that attracted my attention. Haste.

Mistaken fear is the inverse of this. I see an incomplete picture and rather than focus on what I see, I imagine what I don’t see. Inaction. Sloth.

How do I avoid haste and sloth?

Not by making considered judgments at every step, though that is essential. No, avoid these by having an inner compass that dictates decisions and actions. Then I will be less apt to be pulled off course by the shiny.

In a word, Seneca would say “virtue”. Build an appreciation for virtue first. Unfortunately, that is so vague a concept as to be useless to me at the moment.

I’m here.

Dominant attitude for the last several days: sad, numb, despair. Stuck.

Correlating facts: big projects long overdue, cash flow bad. Stopped the daily running because of a sinus infection, so lack of hardcore exercise. No daily reading (or skimpy efforts) and no writing here. Email inbox deep in unprocessed messages.

I’ve started daily practice of cycles (5 or 6) daily to get stuff done. It helps. I’m getting momentum at work.

I need a teacher, in the philosophical sense. We all go up and down emotionally. We can’t remain on the peaks at all times. Encouragement and exhortation from a trusted, insightful companion goes a long way to help us traverse the ravines.

I need practices and procedures in my life that are designed to survive the worst times. Don’t optimize for moments of peak performance. Build floors through which you cannot fall. It’s analogous to the “don’t be stupid” advice given to the question of how to succeed. Simply win by not making dumb moves, not by being exceedingly brilliant.

Acknowledge that my brain is a fart in a windstorm. I don’t keep on the beam for years at a time. Instead, accept this.

Ride the swells of interest and attention, and when they wane, grab the next swell, propelling me ever forward to the shore.

Which means of course that I need to keep in mind my Quest. Whatever that is.

Living a good life is a matter of doing simple things.

1. Avoid stupid, obvious errors. Lottery tickets won’t make you a millionaire.
2. Do the obvious, right things. Get enough sleep every night, eat healthy food, etc.
3. Don’t stop.

That should work. Our fickle Goddess, Fortune, may have a gift for you, but for the things within your control those three rules are sufficient.

If you strive to avoid stupidity, you will develop a sense of how to spot it. You will correct your course of action when you inevitably fall for something. (We all do). In other words, all other principles for living will come from this.

If you strive to do the obvious, right things, you will develop a thirst for knowing what is right. This thirst will keep you pointed in the right direction. And a focus on the obvious will help you stick with impactful, obvious actions and help you avoid spending time and effort on inconsequential matters.

If you keep going, success is inevitable. That is true no matter what Fortune delivers.

This way of life gives Fortune fewer opportunities to give you hand grenades and more opportunities to give you cupcakes.

It’s pretty easy to follow this path, at least for me. Decisions are based on a handful of emotional responses I watch for.

I do stupid stuff or have stupid ideas? The emotions are evident. Laziness or haste indicate an unwillingness to consider the big picture, thereby missing an obvious flaw in my reasoning. A feeling that I’m so clever indicates a possibility that my thinking is flawed. Yes, I’m smart enough and skilled enough to outwit a casino’s odds at the dice table. Watch for these.

Do the obvious right thing? Look for and appreciate the boring, the cliché, the slow. Save money from every paycheck? Boring. Make your bed? Cut Cheetos and Diet Coke out of your diet? Well of course but . . . .

How do you plot the general direction for life? Your compass must point somewhere. How do you choose which way to go?

I remember as a teenager/college kid vowing I would never be like my parents. They had a station wagon and lived in a suburban house. Years later, I had a blinding flash of the obvious: I was married, lived in a suburban house, and had a minivan. And life was good. Very good.

The path blazed by millions of others over hundreds of generations just might be a good path to follow. Don’t worry. There is an infinite universe of fantastic possibilities within even the most prosaic endeavor. You won’t be bored.

Afterthought. Let’s bring this back to personal impact. This is not some self-help book I’m writing here. It’s an exploration with an audience of one: me, the author.

Do the obvious today. There is a job that needs to be finished. It’s bedeviling me. It’s hard, boring work to get it done and shipped. Let’s ship it today. Obvious: do the boring. Sit with a piece of paper and a pen and edit by hand until finished.

The Jocko video.

It applies daily to my life. Bumps happen in life, big and small.

Accept.

Take a breath.

“Good.”

Take action. Go on the attack, if you will. Don’t be passive. Move forward.