2-Truth Tuesday: Mind Control, Pleasure is Suffering, and The Secrets of Habits
Truth #1: The power of mind control
Mind control is real. But it's not what you think it is.
Unable to fall asleep at night? Or ever wonder how one person can conquer the world by doing so many things at a high level?
It's the ability (or inability) to exercise ruthless control over what you're thinking about. Both are at different places on the same spectrum.
Too often, while engaged in one activity, our mind jumps - thoughts about one event bleed into another. For many years, I was unable to control my thoughts. I remember nights being up until 2 or 3 in the morning. So I would get angry at myself for being unable to stop thinking - making the problem worse.
Killers are able to compartmentalize and hyper focus on only what's at hand.
Take it from them, not me:
Napoleon Bonaparte: "Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard,” he once told a minister. “When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep? I simply close all the drawers, and there I am — asleep.”
Elon Musk: “Musk is a ruthless task-switcher, not multitasker. Every couple of hours he switches his mindset. From neuralink to Space X, to machine learning… It’s not like he’s thinking about one thing while working on another.” Here’s his biographer, Walter Isaacson, remarking on this ability.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I don't merge and bring things together as one big problem. I take them one challenge at a time. When I go and study my script for a movie, then that time of day when I study my script, I don't let anything else interfere." He has similar quotes for bodybuilding.
How to control your own mind? A truth for another Tuesday.
Truth #2: Pleasure is suffering
I've been hammering this into my mind:
We've all experienced suffering and pleasure. But most don't understand the relationship between the two.
We have become accustomed to relieving suffering by seeking pleasure. Yet we don't realize this traps us in an ongoing cycle of unhappiness.
Pleasure is rooted in desire. Suffering is rooted in fear. And desire and fear are two sides of the same coin and need to be viewed as such.
Pleasure isn't driven by actual experience. It's driven by anticipation. Our mind's intense and immediate desire to be in a different state then it currently is.
More dopamine is released from anticipating pleasure, then from actually experiencing it. "Cocaine addicts get a surge of dopamine when they see the powder, not after they take it." (J.C. A.H.)
100% of the brain's nucleus accumbent are activated when you desire. 10% of the structure is activated during the actual experience itself.
Now, what makes one suffer (anxiety, stress, worry)?
Suffering is an avoidance of your current situation by projecting yourself into the future or past.
Take a cold plunge for example. The hardest part of any plunge is your anticipation of how cold the water will be (in the future). Or, remembering and trying to actualize your experience in the past. Your mind trying to handle a situation it's not currently in. Once your in, it's not suffering. It's just cold.
Takeaways:
Pleasure: Your craving pleasure is the result of projecting yourself into the future based on dopamine and rewards you've experienced in the past. Aka Desire.
Remember this: Desire for pleasure can inspire great action, but use it intentionally. Otherwise you will not find happiness and peace (because your never satisfied with what is).
Suffering: Your suffering is the result of the mind intensely projecting you into the future or the past and assuming the worse. Aka Fear.
Remember this: Suffering breeds in inaction. Relieve suffering by removing yourself from a situation, changing it, or accepting it totally.
Framework to combat fear and desire:
With both suffering and pleasure being rooted in an identification with the past and future, I've been reminding myself: "The past is gone - it's dead. The future brings me closer to death. All I have is right now."
Book I'm reading: "Atomic Habits" by James Clear
Banger. Here's the breakdown:
"I'm not where I want to be. I'm not even close. Where do I start - Is it even worth starting?" These feelings will keep most stuck in the mud of inaction, anxiety and impulses. Especially when every time you open social media you're blasted with MF's kicking ass.
When all you see is success stories of people hitting goals, and when all your asked is, “What are you goals?” you might put 2 and 2 together and think “Hitting my goals will make me successful.”
Wrong. Here’s the secret of Atomic Habits:
Winners are not goal oriented. They are system oriented. It’s inputs vs. outputs. In the words of the prolific NBA tanker Sam Hinkie, "Trust the process".
Here are why habits are so important:
They compound over time and change our outcomes (goals)
They are the vehicle of changing your identity. Your behaviors reinforce your identity and thus your habits reflect your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.
After hammering you with the importance of habits, Atomic Habits teaches you how to shape and create them. Empowering. I synthesized the book into a my own 7 step system for creating and sticking with habits. I’ll include it in next week’s newsletter.
Quotes I'm Pondering - On Being Open Minded and Adaptable In Life
“Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.”
-Lao Tzu
“I may have had many projects, but I never was free to carry out any of them. It did me little good to be holding the helm; no matter how strong my hands, the sudden and numerous waves were stronger still, and I was wise enough to yield to them rather than resist them obstinately and make the ship founder. Thus I never was truly my own master but was always ruled by circumstances.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
