Topics to discuss
The motivation to relax into and overcome pain, stress, fear, fatigue, and difficulty physical and emotional.
Philosophical Tools:
- it is not pain, but fear of pain that I’m afraid of
- only now exists, and I could live like this forever
- I am only the summation of my actions. Make them good
- the only way out is through doing this action. “The only way out is through me”
- asking myself the question: what would it be like to just do everything right for once? Attain perfect posture
- in every direction there will be pain
- The thought progression: why should I do this? It is difficult, maybe I should stop. But then why should I do anything? Because there is something there, something redeeming, something positive about these actions, and I will walk through walls to achieve it.
- death is inevitable but mediocrity is not-- some risk, even of death, is okay
- I must not fear, fear is the mind killer, fear is the little death that brings total obliteration
- what is it to “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave betimes, let be.” ~Shakespeare, Hamlet
- Do not trouble yourself with those who are failing, but instead figure out how those who are succeeding do it.
Why:
What I’m Running Away from:
- just because other people are getting by without doing this thing does not meet is okay -- do I want to end up like them?
- Consumerism -- blinding and single-minded focus on the procurement of means coupled with a fear and lack of skill at searching for ends. I do not want to become Tim Ferris’s “fat man in the red BMW”
What I’m Running Towards:
- for the sense of Chi
- for memory-- pain in the present makes it easier to return to earlier places in your memories, because suddenly doing so, dwelling fully in your past, is the path of least resistance
- for the nascent will power centers in my mind
- for the sense of lightness that comes the next time I will try the same action
- for a person
- for myself, my own health