The price you pay is that it will change you

[Will_V]

All around the world, on every media platform and in every corner, there is information on self improvement. Much of it focuses on a sort of background self-work. Do this habit, do that habit. Do this when you get up, do that when you go to sleep. Eat this, eat that. Read this, read that. Stop doing this, stop doing that. It implies a continual state of preparation, of ordering and reordering, buffering and storing certain resources, jumpstarting and re-jumpstarting the engine of motivation, trying to get it to run faster and better.

But what are we doing all this for? Are we sick, have we fallen out of a state of normal functionality? And if so, what was the original path upon which we enjoyed that functionality, from which we have so grievously strayed?

I’ve always been fascinated by animals and the way they respond to the events of their lives. Sometimes their lives are easy – get up, eat, sit around, maybe go for a walk, go to sleep. Other times their lives are not so easy – they hunt and are hunted by other animals, in a world where life could end in a few seconds, with little or no warning. Yet, regardless of how easy their lives are, they seem to respond in functionally the same way. Their ability to smoothly transition between the natural states of existence - resting, sleeping, eating, exploring, hunting, pursuing or being pursued, mating – it remains intact, almost effortless.

Why can we not do the same, when our lives are so much easier? Are our lives really that complicated that we are constantly at a loss for what to do, or are continually unprepared for it?

The more I’ve reflected on this question, the more I have understood something about the human mind. It is not difficulty, pain, challenge, or hardship that we fear – what we fear is to be changed, for the world to act upon us and shape us into something we are currently not.

All that preparation that comes out of the self-improvement environment, all those tangential habits and routines espoused by the self-improvement gurus, it is not preparation for a specific event or challenge, nor is it really about improvement per se. It is about preparing psychically for the possibility of being changed by the world, for that moment when we step outside and suddenly, unforeseen circumstances surround us and we don’t know who we are, or where we stand. We are trying desperately to feel ready.

But is all this activity and effort necessary, and are our preparations effective? Well, in short, it’s not necessary, and not effective. Most of it is pseudo-activity, a charade for the entertainment of our conscious mind, to feel like we are taking ourselves to a better place, when in fact we are simply coming to terms even more with doing nothing of substance. In fact, what we really need is for the world to act upon us and show us who we must be.

…

The more you read about neuroscience, the more you come to the realization of how little effect our consciousness has. We say things and promise things to ourselves that, no matter how earnestly we proclaimed them, never happen. We make big plans and are then led away from them immediately afterward by our impulses. We think about the things we want to be, but then continue to be the way we always were. We are full of intent, just waiting for the moment when opportunity arrives to combine with it into action ... and we wait. And the sands of time pour themselves out as we wait, until there is none left.

Yet, during that time, barely noticed to us, we went through all sorts of challenges and transitions. People we love die, we get sick or injured and recover (or deal with a permanent set of limitations), we finish university and get a job, we get married and have kids, we grow older and start to come to terms with the finiteness of our lives, in short we go through all sorts of life path altering events … and we navigated them more or less without any ‘preparation’, without having done any cold plunges or red light therapy to get ready for them. And in fact, many of these things are a lot scarier to think about as eventualities than the things we struggle to coax ourselves into doing.

What gives? How come, as mechanisms optimized through millions of years of evolution, we malfunction so badly? Is our consciousness just there to make us aware of how useless we are at directing ourselves?

Well, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine a conspiracy theory so profound that it can account for a hundred million years of becoming more and more useless.

No, there is nothing functionally wrong, but there is a failure to understand the mechanism that we are, and use it effectively.

…

It is one of the core principles of any of the deeper insights of psychology that our conscious and unconscious minds are, in some ways, like siblings. In turns they compete, suppress, or inhibit eachother, sometimes even attack eachother, and sometimes work together in peace and harmony. Although we feel as one, the conscious and unconscious halves are not contiguous, nor does one rule over the other.

We would like to think that our conscious mind is in charge, but some basic self-awareness will put paid to that notion very quickly. At best, the control our conscious mind has is like the control that a tiny rudder provides to the captain of an oil tanker. Hoping to point the tanker where you want to go at a moment’s notice by kicking that rudder around is a fools errand.

Then for what are we conscious? How come we are aware of so much, can see so much and think so many things, if we cannot really control ourselves?

Well, the answer is in fact quite simple, and it has to do with the intended role of consciousness. Our conscious mind is there not to tell our minds what to do, but to give us the ability to choose the circumstances in which we place ourselves, so that the world might act upon us, so that we might be changed.

…

The only true sculptor is circumstance. When we try to sculpt ourselves, it melts and washes away as soon as the sun shines on it. We are simply not powerful enough to make shapes that last. The only way to create a form with edges that can withstand all the seasons and events of life, is to put ourselves out where pressures and forces exist that are much more powerful than the weak directives of our conscious minds, so that they can sculpt us.

The reason animals can live such a range of different lives without apparent difficulty is because they live at the mercy of circumstances far beyond their control, pursued by famine and predators, propelled forward by hunger and the will to live. They do not consult themselves as to whether they feel ready or prepared, they simply face everything as it comes, as best they can. And, as it turns out, this is a pretty good way to become ready.

But this change, this sculpting in the forge, is what we fear more than anything else. It paralyzes us. Not because of the pain, not because of the difficulty, but because of the risk of existential annihilation. Because the ease of life has made it possible, our ego has made its bed with a complex array of ideas, illusions, and rationalities, and we lie enshrouded in it, listening to the roar of the thunder and the pounding of the rain and the screaming wind outside, and we wonder what would be left of us if we were to do nothing more than take a few steps outside the door and it were all ripped away from us. And so we do not move.

But in doing so, we do great damage to ourselves. The human mind and body, much like other animals, is more than anything else an adaptation machine. That is what nature spent so much time creating. Everything within it is built to absorb forces and stresses, extract important information from noise under all kinds of pressure, and to coalesce and pull with great energy toward objectives upon which the immediate continuation of life rests.

90% of what we are is activated only by circumstance. All of our most powerful drives, engines that can warm us (and others) in the coldest nights of our lives, and propel us through overwhelming misery and confusion, lie dormant, because we do not put ourselves in any context within which they can be used. Instead, the other 10%, our tiny, fragile ego, coopts our entire sense of reality with its fears, cutting us away from the truth of what we could accomplish or endure if only it were a necessity, so that all the depths of our capabilities vanish, to be replaced by the window through which we look out fearfully at everything outside.

Remember, the role of your consciousness is not to bark orders or preach sermons or put you to work doing pseudo-activities. Instead, its role is this:

First, to find and go to the place where circumstances can create, of necessity, the person you want to become;
Second, to observe your adaptation to those circumstances and optimize them;
Third, to take care of your rest and recovery between challenging, shaping experiences.

Everything else is, in a word, bullshit, and a waste of the great adaptation machine known as the human being.

If you want success, all you have to do is go and meet it in the place where it has always been. The price you pay is that it will change everything about you.

 

[ElChe]

Incredible post @Will_V

Your thoughts and insights always seem to hit at some deep truth, and get me thinking about what you say for awhile afterwards.

I'm graduating college soon, and with the newfound freedom I'm gonna be thinking about how I can apply these ideas...

Out of curiosity-- do you have any standout examples in your life that come to mind, where you've kinda jumped off the cliff and built your wings on the way down?

 

[Will_V]

Incredible post @Will_V

Your thoughts and insights always seem to hit at some deep truth, and get me thinking about what you say for awhile afterwards.

I'm graduating college soon, and with the newfound freedom I'm gonna be thinking about how I can apply these ideas...

Out of curiosity-- do you have any standout examples in your life that come to mind, where you've kinda jumped off the cliff and built your wings on the way down?

Yes.

When I was 19, I was a socially anxious virgin with no social life, spending most of my free time alone in my bedroom, stuck studying a degree I was starting to become disinterested in, and beginning to get involved in online leftist stuff (specifically socialist political movements, not woke stuff). In short, going nowhere fast.

For some reason (I can't remember exactly why) I signed up for an exchange program to brazil for a year. I listened to some online radio in portuguese in an attempt to learn the language, but when I got there I really had no idea. I remember ordering a burger at the train station after I landed using sign language. I didn't know anybody, didn't know the language, didn't know anything about anything. I just knew that somehow I needed to break free of who I was before.

I just threw myself into everything that seemed difficult at the time. I went to every party I could (the students I stayed with were very welcoming and invited me to a lot of stuff, which helped), started training kickboxing every day (2 hours a day), went to random bars and clubs alone when there wasn't anything going on, traveled around the country and a few other countries with just my backpack. Got a gun held to my head on one long distance bus, another bus got stormed by the police who found a few kilos of cocaine embedded in the seat in front of me, went into a club in argentina at midday and nearly got mugged by the 'security' lol. Had lots of fun experiences and dodged a few bad ones.

Still awkward as hell socially, and couldn't get laid to save my life. Spent a week at a 24/7 house party during carnaval where everyone was banging except me (the ugliest girl there tried to give me a shot - probably at the behest of my buddy - but I was too busy trying to figure out how to get the hottest girl there, who ended up getting banged by a skinny effeminate dude with a nose ring, which blew my mind at the time). Despaired of getting laid, eventually another buddy invited me to a brothel, I couldn't stand the place and left. Kept going out alone, started learning a bit of game, eventually got laid with a fun girl who I ended up spending 3 months with. Got laid a bunch more, had lots of great times there.

That year changed me in ways I didn't even realize until I thought about it long afterward. The difference between the beginning and the end was monumental. I don't even know what my life and outlook would be like if I hadn't done that. And before I went, I didn't even know why I was going. I just went out of a fatalistic knowledge that out there, somewhere, was a place I needed to go.

There were other times I just dived in - like the time I bought a sailboat and moved on board, the times I started random businesses (most of them unsuccessful, one that is doing well). The post I wrote here was prompted by starting jiu jitsu just recently, which I have no experience in whatsoever, and pushing through that first month where I'm just trying to survive against the blue belts, and observing my body and my instincts start to adapt to the demands of the situation.

But nothing was quite as profound and transformative for me as that time I went to another country and threw myself into a different world as a listless teenager with no path, and let the experience reshape everything about me. I could never have planned for that or prepared for it, the only way was to go as-is and let the environment do its work upon me. And I'm very glad I did. It made me realize from that point on that if there was anything I really wanted, the only thing I needed to do was to go to it and let it teach me how to make it mine.

 

[the player of games]

Very interesting post but I'm not convinced. I accept your premises, but not your conclusion.

The more you read about neuroscience, the more you come to the realization of how little effect our consciousness has. We say things and promise things to ourselves that, no matter how earnestly we proclaimed them, never happen. We make big plans and are then led away from them immediately afterward by our impulses. We think about the things we want to be, but then continue to be the way we always were. We are full of intent, just waiting for the moment when opportunity arrives to combine with it into action ... and we wait. And the sands of time pour themselves out as we wait, until there is none left.

Yet, during that time, barely noticed to us, we went through all sorts of challenges and transitions. People we love die, we get sick or injured and recover (or deal with a permanent set of limitations), we finish university and get a job, we get married and have kids, we grow older and start to come to terms with the finiteness of our lives, in short we go through all sorts of life path altering events … and we navigated them more or less without any ‘preparation’, without having done any cold plunges or red light therapy to get ready for them. And in fact, many of these things are a lot scarier to think about as eventualities than the things we struggle to coax ourselves into doing.

I know all about the promises we make to ourselves and how we fail to follow through. I need only read my journal from a few years prior to realise how I haven't changed, at least in the way and to the degree I wanted to. In the second paragraph I've quoted above, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that we manage to handle major life changes without preparation. I've recently handled deaths of loved ones and a reduction in physical abilities, but there is a difference. I have no control over a loved one dying. I have little control over my health over and above don't do unhealthy things, do healthy things. Despite that, stuff still goes wrong. The point I'm making is that when misfortune visits us, we don't have a choice. We handle it because we have to. What we fail to handle is voluntary change.

Unless you can describe a way of forcing circumstances upon ourselves such that we are forced to change in the way we want to, I don't see how we can use what I think you are telling us.

When I was 19, I was a socially anxious virgin with no social life, spending most of my free time alone in my bedroom, stuck studying a degree I was starting to become disinterested in, and beginning to get involved in online leftist stuff (specifically socialist political movements, not woke stuff). In short, going nowhere fast.

For some reason (I can't remember exactly why) I signed up for an exchange program to brazil for a year. I listened to some online radio in portuguese in an attempt to learn the language, but when I got there I really had no idea. I remember ordering a burger at the train station after I landed using sign language. I didn't know anybody, didn't know the language, didn't know anything about anything. I just knew that somehow I needed to break free of who I was before.

I just threw myself into everything that seemed difficult at the time. I went to every party I could (the students I stayed with were very welcoming and invited me to a lot of stuff, which helped), started training kickboxing every day (2 hours a day), went to random bars and clubs alone when there wasn't anything going on, traveled around the country and a few other countries with just my backpack. Got a gun held to my head on one long distance bus, another bus got stormed by the police who found a few kilos of cocaine embedded in the seat in front of me, went into a club in argentina at midday and nearly got mugged by the 'security' lol. Had lots of fun experiences and dodged a few bad ones.

This is not normal behaviour. This already marks you out as an exceptional person. There are a gazilion people who go abroad each year to countries where they know nothing of the language nor the people. They come back more or less the same as when they left. At 19 I was also a socially anxious virgin, but I can tell you I wouldn't have had the willpower and conviction to suddenly take up kickboxing and do it for 2 hours a day every day. And going to random clubs alone, especially in a foreign country? Forget it! Now, yes, I've done it, but when I was 19? No way. It wasn't the going to Brazil that changed you. It was what you did when you were there. You could just have easily stayed in your hostel room or just gone and seen the sights and that's that. But you didn't. You'd already made the key change, somehow, somewhere inside of you. Brazil was just an excuse or a trigger. Circumstances didn't change you. In fact, I would argue the first thing you decided to do was to change your circumstances. So you went to Brazil. And then you decided to take up kickboxing, hardcore. And then you decided to go out solo to clubs. And so on.

So let's try again. How can we create circumstances that force our hands? Since this is a game forum, how does one turn oneself into the master seducer that one wants to be? Go out and let the circumstances mold us? I would aver it is not the circumstances that are molding us. It's the fact that we've decided to go out and we've stuck to that promise. Again and again, day after day. How can we burn our own bridges so we can achieve that?

 

[Will_V]

The point I'm making is that when misfortune visits us, we don't have a choice. We handle it because we have to. What we fail to handle is voluntary change.

Unless you can describe a way of forcing circumstances upon ourselves such that we are forced to change in the way we want to, I don't see how we can use what I think you are telling us.

You're absolutely right that the thing we fail to handle is voluntary change. And the point I am making is that we are not really designed to be able to choose to do things that change us in profound ways, from a position of not immediately needing to do them - that is, of not being concretely punished and rewarded for the extent to which we have adapted to situations that demand that change from us.

That's why I say that a lot of the culture of self-development is pseudo-activity, because it is missing the aspect of concrete reward and punishment.

For one thing, the culture of self-development rarely talks about reward and punishment, but instead focuses on things like discipline and self-control. That sounds all very good, but such terms refer to things that our subconscious minds (which do the heavy lifting of real change and adaptation) do not really understand, and are not built to respond to at a deep level.

To go deeper on the concept of reward and punishment, there are two types of it that in my opinion are practically worthless. The first is that which we exact upon ourselves as a result of our intention to change - "If I don't do X, I'll punish myself with some irrelevant little 'punishment' in the form of Y, and if I do it, I'll 'reward' myself with some other irrelevant little thing". This amounts to little more than a sort of psychological bdsm activity between a person and themselves, for the viewing pleasure of their own ego, and usually fizzles out once the entertainment starts to become boring.

The second form of rewards and punishments that I think don't really work to actually effect change, are those which we derive from a projection of ourselves into the distant future. "If I don't do X, in 10 years I'll be disappointed in myself". "If I do X, in 10 years I'll be rewarded in the form of Y". I think such ideas may have value in terms of immediate motivation to begin the process of change, but are simply not enough to sustain and anchor a new identity.

What does work to create change is immediate punishment and reward from the outside world. If you don't become smooth and skilled at seduction, you suffer rejections from women. If you don't become smooth and skillful with a martial art, you get hit or submitted by your opponent.

The punishment and reward must come as a generalized feedback from our environment, something outside of ourselves. And this is important, because we are not designed to split ourselves into the multiple entities involved in the interaction - the master and the subject, the disciplinarian and the malleable student, the teacher and the pupil. When we try to be all these things, we are at best only crude similes of them, with much internal conflict.

Things work far better when all the parts of ourselves are pulled together into one single entity, facing in one direction against an oncoming influence that we cannot control beyond the certainty that it will reward or punish us according to our performance. To fail to place ourselves in front of it in the first place is the greatest mistake we can make.

This is not normal behaviour. This already marks you out as an exceptional person. There are a gazilion people who go abroad each year to countries where they know nothing of the language nor the people. They come back more or less the same as when they left. At 19 I was also a socially anxious virgin, but I can tell you I wouldn't have had the willpower and conviction to suddenly take up kickboxing and do it for 2 hours a day every day. And going to random clubs alone, especially in a foreign country? Forget it! Now, yes, I've done it, but when I was 19? No way. It wasn't the going to Brazil that changed you. It was what you did when you were there. You could just have easily stayed in your hostel room or just gone and seen the sights and that's that. But you didn't. You'd already made the key change, somehow, somewhere inside of you. Brazil was just an excuse or a trigger. Circumstances didn't change you. In fact, I would argue the first thing you decided to do was to change your circumstances. So you went to Brazil. And then you decided to take up kickboxing, hardcore. And then you decided to go out solo to clubs. And so on.

Yes and no. You are right that the changes that occurred were a result of my actions once I went to a different country, and not simply a residual effect of going there. But the truth is that I was not able to do what needed to be done until I went there, until I took the concrete step of leaving the environment I was used to and immersing myself in one that I was not. So to an extent, the changes that I experienced then were a result of going there per se.

Because for one thing, that change in environment forced me to confront weaknesses I had, which I hadn't had to confront until then.

When I arrived, I was put up in a big student accommodation with a group of mainly colombian students, in total we were some 10 people or so. There were two guys in particular there who were fantastic with women, and there were two super hot girls there, one colombian and one mexican. Of course I immediately wanted to do something with these girls, but I had no idea, and after a couple of conversations it was clear to them I was a somewhat shuttered, awkward personality with no game, and they didn't talk to me much. The guys I got along with allright, they were very cool, but as I lived there day after day watching them easily handling and having fun with the girls I wanted, and after going to the exchange university and seeing all these beautiful fiery brazilian girls with curvy bodies walking around, I began to really suffer my lack of capability.

And I was invited to parties, and I went, and it showed me even more how far away I was from the guys who were cleaning up.

In all these cases, I had to go somewhere and put myself in a position where I had to either change or suffer rejection or embarrassment. And that was the real catalyst.

In Australia where I grew up, it was too easy to avoid all this, to follow the path that I had, over time, created for myself, in which many of the opportunities that were available, and many of the deficiencies I had, were not revealed to me very regularly at all. So I had to consciously leave that path and walk a different one, one I wasn't used to or comfortable walking, where rewards and punishments came thick and fast as a result of my actions.

...

Whenever there is psychological talk there is talk about innate personality. I will say about myself that I have always been a competitive person, but in many ways a lazy one. I have always struggled to make myself do things that I know I 'should' do, I've always been pretty uncooperative with rules, and I find that, in a vaccuum, my life quickly becomes a series of a few very simple activities, carried out day after day, usually alone. As I like to say, all I need is coffee and sunlight, and perhaps something to observe and think about, and the rest doesn't matter to me all that much.

But I am very competitive with a strong libido, and once I want something it's not hard for me to go all-in and sacrifice pretty much everything to get it. It's always been this way. I did it with football (soccer) in high school, I did it with kickboxing in brazil, I did it with girls. Once the ball is rolling I can think of nothing else. It's like a different animal is awakened and goes to battle. So I have learned that what works for me is to go to a place that makes me suffer and lose, until I change.

Is this unusual? I don't think so. Everyone is born selfish and lazy, and the world teaches them at some point to become something else. From this teaching, some people receive the message that the world is something whose explicit rules they must conform to and find a secure identity within, and others receive the message that the world is simply an arena for great success or great failure. Both receive the same punishments and rewards for the same context, but respond differently in terms of which direction it moves them. Is there an element of innate personality in effect? Perhaps. But the game is always the same, and it can be always seen for what it is by anyone, if they want to.

So let's try again. How can we create circumstances that force our hands? Since this is a game forum, how does one turn oneself into the master seducer that one wants to be? Go out and let the circumstances mold us? I would aver it is not the circumstances that are molding us. It's the fact that we've decided to go out and we've stuck to that promise. Again and again, day after day. How can we burn our own bridges so we can achieve that?

It is simply a question of going to where the punishments and rewards are, and not trying to avoid them or find an easier route.

In a way, it's a perspective thing. If you believe that you have to achieve success and avoid failure in order to get any value from it, it will be very hard to go (because you know that you won't succeed at doing something you're not yet good at). But if you believe that your job is simply to go, follow the script, endure the result, and keep a basic awareness to spot mistakes, the process of change and adaptation is automatic. It is more or less simply a question of placing yourself there. It is precisely this process which we have been designed for, which all the unseen equipment of our minds and bodies has been prepared for over millions of years. Our conscious mind, which is virtually all of our conscious experience of reality, is but a small, and in many ways irrelevant, part of that.