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Here’s a thought for me today. Work is currently where I am fighting hand-to-hand combat with self, swallowing some bitter chunks of truth.

Jordan Peterson on Abraham and Isaac:

We’ll start with a truism, stark, self-evident and understated: Sometimes things do not go well. That seems to have much to do with the terrible nature of the world, with its plagues and famines and tyrannies and betrayals. But here’s the rub: sometimes, when things are not going well, it’s not the world that’s the cause. The cause is instead that which is currently most valued, subjectively and personally. Why? Because the world is revealed, to an indeterminate degree, through the template of your values (much more on this in Rule 10). If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you might become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.

12 Rules for Life, page 170. Emphasis in original.

What you like (your values, preferences, things you choose to do and own) will influence what you see in the world. This is the reticular activation system so beloved of self-help gurus. Think of “red” for instance, and all of a sudden you will see red things everywhere. (I remember David Allen doing that once.)

What you like (or dislike—it’s the same thing, just in a different direction) not only helps you see what you want to see (or don’t want to see), it motivates you to action in response. And your actions cause a result.

That’s the idea. The universe is not randomly throwing meteors at you (though it might). The universe is not placing people in your life who hate you.

No. It’s much more likely that the ideas you cling to most are affecting your perception (“she hates me” is believed, without evidence, just completely in your head because you have ideas about how lovable you are). This thought in turn motivates your actions (“well, I will reject her first, because she obviously hates me and this relationship is doomed”) and then life develops accordingly (“I am lonely”).

At work. What’s the deep idea that’s holding me back? That’s preventing me from being all that is possible for me?

Hiring. Working with others. Relying on others. It’s in there, somewhere. Cloaked in self-reliance and industriousness, but it’s there—some kind of rugged individualism mode which has served me well but should be balanced with other attributes. Social, communal, cooperative attributes.

Yikes. Assume this thought has some truth. I just let it out of my head and into my thumbs without editing or coaching. All I tried to do was be as precise as possible in articulating the idea.

What will I do about this? And how?

That is what Bob called it.

You start arguing with yourself, in your head. Do this or do that? What is right and what is wrong?

Or you start having imaginary arguments you’ll never have with people you’ll never meet. That’s me. All the time.

Deadly.

It’s not to say that you will not face dilemmas. Of course you will. Life is filled with intractable dilemmas. And then you die.

Most dilemmas, however, are self-generated. Optional. Relatively inconsequential. They’re easy to resolve.

Three ways to stop the debating society in your head:

• Have some fucking principles. Don’t be a squishy moral relativist. “Don’t lie” is a good principle.
• Choose the harder path. Faced with uncertainty, pick the difficult alternative.
• Know that most choices are not fatal and are reversible. Give yourself permission to fail and reverse course. This just requires abandoning the feeling that everyone is looking at you and judging you. They aren’t. They’re thinking about themselves. 😀
• Stop talking to yourself in your head and start having a conversation with God in your head. Or out loud, I’d you feel like it. Break the doom loop.

The crows take flight noisily. A peacock reacts.

No music or podcasts. Just the early morning sounds of the neighborhood.

I stopped writing here because I thought I had nothing to say. I’m nothing special. Others have amazing insights and I’m just a plodder.

All true.

But that’s not the point.

I’m writing for me, to free myself. The fact that others are more eloquent doesn’t matter. Or rather, it is a gift that can make my life better. Other people’s achievements do not subtract from my life—they can only add to my life.

In retrospect I have quit a lot of things by comparing myself to others.

Also. Thanks to a friend for nudging me to keep writing. Thanks Chris.

Heat wave here. Lunchtime walks would be brutal. But I will do two workouts today. I will complete the challenge.

Up at 5:30 a.m., feed the dog, inescapable biological imperatives, and out the door at 5:42 a.m.

Walk.

I’m too busy. I should be running to the grocery store to get things I forgot last night. My first call is at 8 a.m. I have so many things to do today. I think of all of them, an avalanche.

I feel rushed. Agitated by all the tasks of today, as if they must all be done now. Right now.

Despair. “Do not do things that make you hate yourself” as Jordan Peterson said in a short video I watched a couple of days ago. I can’t win. I hate myself for walking. I hate myself for not doing All The Things Right Now. And I would hate myself for not walking, for missing the window of time available now, and forcing a lunchtime walk in 90 degree heat.

Walk. Before I know it there are 8 minutes to go on my 45 minute walk. This is doable. I will be OK today.

Living my life . . . don’t drive a car using only the rear view mirror and binoculars. Do the now tasks now. The later tasks will be done later. Or not.

The lesson: just walk.

Also interesting. I planned to wake up at 5:00 a.m., not 5:30 a.m. I almost quit while I was still in bed.

But. I. Didn’t. Quit.

Finally, from Meditations:

Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.

Meditations 2.5

Up before 6:00 am. Feed the dog. Drink a cup of coffee and a quart of water (!) while reading 10 pages of Meditations.

Then run 4 miles around the neighborhood.

And I’m still at work at the regular time.

Let’s remember this feeling. It was a bit of a struggle to persuade the brain to run, but two blocks down the road I knew it was right.

Do not use your brain to think. Just do.

Thank you Andy Frisella, a stranger to me who I will never meet, for the creative spark that became 75 Hard, then sharing it freely until it found my daughter. That’s how the planet gets better.

I can now carve off out four miles effortlessly. No hard breathing, just a comfortable, sustainable pace. I don’t watch my speed but let’s say it’s about an 11 minute mile pace. You’re faster, I’m sure. You do you.

Running makes you think. I thought about how to think. What happened to me and how I learned to think? Here’s what I came up with.

Scale. I needed to understand scale, and my relation to the universe. How simultaneously I was so small as to be invisible and immaterial, yet be the center of the universe. Marcus Aurelius talks about this a lot. Well, he talks about scale, but not so much about relativity. He talks about understanding how little space he occupies on this planet or the universe, and how little time a human consumes in relation to infinite time.

This opens the mind to the possibility of humility. Humility is essential to growth. Arrogance, pride — these will bar the door to growth and peace of mind.

Ignorance. Having wrapped your head around how small and insignificant you are, the next thing is to deeply accept how little you know. You can see this by comparison to one of your peers. You can see this in your own life: what you know now compared to what last-year you knew.

More humility.

This opens the mind to the idea that you’re more likely to be wrong than right. Keeping a “probably wrong right now, but willing to learn” attitude is the result.

The importance of knowing the difference between ignorance and error must be understood and accepted. Welcome ignorance, shun error. Admitting your ignorance is the key to growth. persisting in error guarantees you will stray further and further from The Path.

Desire. A desire for something more than you have right now is what you need next. You’ve conceded that you’re small, insignificant, and ignorant. What will you do now? Give up and distract yourself with earthly vices? Or is there a pilot light in your soul that is struggling to light your inner furnace?

A friend is an entrepreneur at heart (currently a successful and valued employee at a large company) who is struggling to make the jump. He finds deep satisfaction in the hard task of plotting his three years from current reality to the new reality he can see. He compared himself to people around him, who took pride in doing the minimum necessary to not get fired, so they could go shopping, or vacation in Hawaii, or similar busy-but-empty behaviors. He’s not wrong.

They look at him as though he is an alien.

Not everyone has Desire to change. Some people just want to sit on the couch, drink beer with their friends, and talk shit about the Lakers. They are losers and they don’t know it.

That’s as far as I got in my thinking while pacing downhill, back to home.

. . . to yourself.

“Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.” That’s from Jordan Peterson.

The 75 Hard challenge has given me a couple of opportunities to see this in action.

First, with myself. On Day 33 I forgot to take a picture of myself. On Day 34 I briefly entertained the thought of lying and continuing with the streak. Within a couple of seconds the thought was gone. You can’t lie and get away with it: you know the truth, and knowingly, deliberately compromising your own integrity . . . well, I don’t know if anything more destructive than that.

Oddly (or maybe not) within 30 minutes of starting over on Day 1 of the challenge — by telling myself the truth — I felt better, stronger. Success, I felt, is inevitable for me. By that I mean success in the small task of completing the 75 Hard challenge, but also more generally in life itself. All because I told myself the truth.

Second, with another person. I was describing the 75 Hard challenge to someone, and my reset at Day 33 simply because I didn’t take a picture. The response was to wonder why I didn’t just take a picture and carry on. I marveled, silently.

Those who have eyes to see, etc.

Don’t lie to yourself. If it’s you against the world and you fail, it’s not the world’s fault. No matter what external “cause” you can point to, something is going on inside you and that’s the real problem. Fix that.

Just as a barbell reveals the extent of your physical weakness, the world (or more precisely your reaction to the world, your opinion about the world) simply reveals the limits of your mentality. Your mistaken beliefs in your abilities. Your ignorance. Your arrogance in refusing to accept new information. Your unwillingness to refuse the seductive lure of cynicism, resentment, or envy.

The friend who suggested lying about the Day 33 picture failure will pay the price for living with that mindset. I will pay the price for telling the truth. (As near as I can tell, it cost me a few seconds of disappointment that I had to reset to Day 1.) We don’t get to choose, when faced with a “lie or tell the truth” decision, to do neither.

The Great Filter.

Today is Day 10. I am doing 75 Hard with greater clarity and a sense of ferocity that I previously lacked. I think that’s because I told the truth to myself.

75 Hard reset.

Day 33 – did not take a picture. What’s hilarious is that I did the second workout (my last task) and thought the thought — phone in hand — “I must take the picture now”. Yet I distracted myself and didn’t.

75 Hard isn’t hard. 75 Hard is just a mirror that reveals me to me.

That barbell isn’t heavy or light. It just reveals my current strength. The exam is not hard or easy. It reveals my current state of knowledge and my study habits up to now. Etc.

Day 1 today.

Maybe I should say it is a challenge to be bold, presented to me by a book.

I got the second Jordan Peterson book (Beyond Order). The title of Chapter 2 felt like a direct, personal exhortation:

Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.

Problem. I don’t know what that is (but Peterson addresses that in Chapter 3). What could I be?

Answer. I don’t know. Murky, tentative, I’m afraid to pick one thing or another.

But! I have an idea of what I how I want to do it. Not the aim, but the physical method I will use, day in and day out, because I want to and because it is important and because, surprisingly to myself, I enjoy it.

I have the recent experience at work (the last week or so), which has changed my trajectory. It looks, well, better than what I was doing before. So I’m iterating towards . . . I don’t know.

I have today’s experience at the gym. The session was deeply rewarding. The reward was not in the accomplishment but in the being there, midday, getting sweaty and poking the boundary of my accomplishments outward just a bit.

A single-minded aim at the mundane — again and again. Do that thing at work. Again. Again. Again. Do that thing at the gym. Again. Bump the weight 10 pounds. Again. Again. Again. Pay attention to and support the people I love to the best of my ability. Again. Again. Again. Again.

Maybe that’s it. I’m finding inspiration in repetition and routine. Me, who has the attention span of a gnat.

So let’s just follow the “again” path for a while.

At work: no new customers. Care for those I have now.

In personal life: continue the daily practices I have embedded. Daily exercise, daily spiritual reading.

Amongst the humans: appreciate them, tell them so, and give gratitude and support as often as I can.

Again.

And again.

Then do it again.

And see where it leads.

I’ll give myself 1,000 days to see how it goes. I will expect zigzags and recalibration and resets. If a future choice presents itself, choose the harder path. When given a choice between more or fewer, pick fewer.

Excerpt

I’m putting this here, typed from the book with my very own thumbs, because someday I will want these words and the book will not be close at hand.

Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualize. Stumble toward it. Notice your errors and misconceptions along the way, face them, and correct them. Get your story straight. Past, present, future—they all matter. You need to map your path. You need to know where you were, so that you do not repeat the mistakes of the past. You need to know where you are, or you will not be able to draw a line from your starting point to your destination. You need to know where you are going, or you will drown in uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos, and starve for hope and inspiration. For better or worse, you are on a journey. You are having an adventure—and your map better be accurate. Voluntarily confront what stands in your way. The way—that is the path of life, the meaningful path of life, the straight and narrow path that constitutes the very border between order and chaos, and the traversing of which brings them into balance.

Aim at something profound and noble and lofty. If you can find a better path along the way, once you have started moving forward, then switch course. Be careful, though; it is not easy to discriminate between changing paths and simply giving up. (One hint: if the new path you see forward, after learning what you need to learn along your current way, appears more challenging, then you can be reasonably sure that you are not deluding or betraying yourself when you change your mind.) in this manner, you will zigzag forward. It is not the most efficient way to travel, but there is no real alternative, given that your goals will inevitably change while you pursue them, as you learn what you need to learn while you are disciplining yourself.

You will then find yourself turning across time, incrementally and gracefully, to aim ever more accurately at that tiny pinpoint, the X that marks the spot, the bull’s-eye, and the center of the cross; to aim at the highest value of which you can conceive. You will pursue a target that is both moving and receding; moving, because you do not have the wisdom to aim in the proper direction when you first take aim; receding, because no matter how close you come to perfecting what you are currently practicing, new vistas of possible perfection will open up in front of you. Discipline and transformation will nonetheless lead you inexorably forward. With will and luck, you will find a story that is meaningful and productive, improves itself with time, and perhaps even provides you with more than a few moments of satisfaction and joy. With will and luck, you will be the hero of that story, the disciplined sojourner, the creative transformer, and the benefactor of your family and broader society.

Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindlessly at that.

Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, pages 86-87.