Animalistic Tendencies

we all see glory in one form or another, to be the best, top of our field, even a monk, seeking enlightenment is only seeking to be the best monk there can ever be

But to be the best means being the top of your field, by definition to the exclusion of all those who share the same field as you

“To Be The Best, You Must Beat The Best”

Ryan McCarthy, Never Back Down

There is an old Chinese parable

About a snake who was found dead with his jaws wide open

In her zeal and ambition, the snake mistook an elephant for prey and died a little over a quarter up the elephant’s leg the second the elephant raised its leg and stepped

Because of its greed, the snake mistook the elephant for prey

But what if the snake knew and had paralyzed the elephant first, would the elephant’s inability to move has taken away from its sheer size

Would the snake still not have choked on its ambition trying to swallow the elephant?!

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Ever heard the question “How do you do you eat a whole elephant?“

The answer has always been “bit by bit“

Everyone has their fight, even if you don’t know it

And it is by design that the opponent will almost always be large, strong, complex, intelligent, resourceful, experienced, and creative, they will always be more than you in some form or way

It will always be the ant trying to take down the elephant

If the elephant is asleep, the ant may easily invade its system and seize function, assuming the internal immune system doesn’t eliminate the threat first

If the ant is with an army, taking down the elephant can be shared amongst larger groups

If the elephant is neither asleep nor does the ant have an army

the third option is to redirect the elephant’s strength against itself, like how a mouse, a fly, a mosquito could have you awake, turning over tables, breaking tables and hurting yourself, or agitating someone else who could hurt you

This is Brazilian Ju-Jitsu

When you redirect your opponent’s force, you force them to adapt or be destroyed by the same strength that was meant to protect them

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All structures are made of many different, complex systems working together to create a force and achieve an objective

no matter how strong, smart, young, wealthy, and skilled a person maybe they can always be taken down by poison which attacks the internal systems, a bullet/blade that severe physical structures, a strike to the throat, the eye, the groin, the temple, smack to the ear, strike under the armpit, behind the knee/elbow, reversing a joint in a direction it wasn’t designed for…

Are you starting to see it?!

This is how the snake failed where the ant could succeed

Are you starting to understand how to take down an elephant?

Caution: in any plan you make to defeat your opponent, always remember that they also get a vote as the result of that its execution

Final Points

The little bighorn (the end around move)

When universities would refuse to allow Facebook onto their campuses because they already had a social media site exclusive to their students

Founders of Facebook started spreading the site to surrounding colleges, effectively forcing the Universities to allow Facebook in due to the overwhelming pressure from the students who wanted to keep communicating with their friends in the colleges

When Ray Kroc wanted the McDonalds brand but knew he couldn’t get it through any straightforward method, he got the brothers to sign over exclusive franchising rights to him

Then he began buying the under on which each franchise was operating, effectively disabling the brothers from being able to create another McDonalds without his say so, and that is how they ended up selling it over to him

There are many ways to drown a fish, if you cannot get to its gills, go for the water, the opportunities are always there, you just need to slow down enough to notice

“Always Weigh an Opportunity Based On Its Potential, Not The First Paycheque”

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

Everything is like water, a boat can float on water, water can nourish the body, but water can also sink a boat or drown the body

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All emotions are like water, anger, happiness, sadness, arousal, they can either fuel your actions or lead them

If you view things from this perspective, you will realize that nothing is inherently bad or good

Flowing water can nourish the body but still, water can hide danger and poison the body

Are both not water?!

Lucky at Birth

Some things are neither urgent nor important but extremely pleasant like chocolate

Some things are urgent but not important like a text

Some things are urgent and important like assignments or work

Some things are not important but urgent like taking care of your health

The two most fortunate people who are born into this world are those born with everything and those born with nothing: those born with everything ascend to greatness because of a sense of duty and destiny, those born with nothing ascend because of a strong desire to survive and become far more than they are,

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To prove that it matters not what you were born with, for them, it only takes a small taste of achieving something, learning something, mastering something to understand that you can acquire the whole world if you only learn how

the true nature of something, first you see it as food, then you see it as a tree, then you see it as the creator of fruits and oxygen, then you see it as firewood, then you see it as an example of life than you see it as life itself, but what is it’s true nature?

Sigh…

Itching To Change The Past?

Learn to let things end the way they ended: awkward, painful, unsightly, and in a way you hated, learn to let them end that way

The deep need to reopen that door so you can make it end the way you wanted it to end doesn’t just open the door to a different ending but also a different hurt, different betrayal, worse ending

The need to change the ending is a feeling, it’s an urge, no matter how you justify it, it’s a craving

But before you do, ask yourself

Why is it so important that the ending be different?!

Are you perhaps hoping that the current ending wasn’t an ending but a cliffhanger to another chapter, perhaps one with the ending you desired, or no ending at all?

Can you honestly admit to yourself that the selfish desire to reopen that door at all costs is because you wanted things to go your way and the fact that they didn’t is causing you to become irrational, emotional, and impulsive?

So much so that you’re now willing to cause far more harm, erase your progress and hurt those who are currently in your life just so you can get the ending you want

Could this be less about the ending and more about an unfulfilled need that you’re hoping a possibly different ending may fulfill, even at the cost of great harm to you, everything your life currently is, and those around you?

Be honest with yourself, is this about them, or is it really about you?

Izanami

In the popular anime, Naruto Shippudden, there’s an ocular technique used to hypnotize your enemy into an illusion of their making

An illusion that puts them in a loop, where they are stuck forever getting the same outcome because they keep following the same key acts

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And the only way to escape this loop is for them to allow the situation to flow towards its natural conclusion and accept the conclusion as it is

The caster of this technique loses sight in an eye when they place their opponent in it, at the same time they make that opponent susceptible to suggestions

The key ingredient in making sure this technique works in the opponent is that they must have a strong desire to control the outcome

Like you wanting to do the same thing, go back to the same relationship until you get the desire you want

The caster in this case would be the person you keep going back to

Understand the analogy?

The Little Things

“It’s The Little Things That Get You Caught”

Denzel Washington, The Little Things

When you’re still new to something, a new sport, new job, new skill, anything really, at first it’s very complex, lots of moving parts

Almost too much to keep track of

as you advance to a competence level, those clusters of activities narrow down to a maximum of three, like with driving, at first it’s keeping track of the gear, the road, the mirrors, the steering wheel, the clutch, the accelerator, the break, etc.

Once you get to a competence level it’s three clusters: what you do with your eyes, what you do with your hands, and what you do with your feet

When you get to perfection it all becomes one cluster, essentially passive driving

But here’s what makes stunt car drivers, race drivers, motor testers and engineers experts, masters and pioneers

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They go back to make that one cluster a thousand pieces once more

by doing this they get to understand each part of the process, reverse engineering, tinkering, questioning, exploring, experimenting, and ultimately not only mastering driving but creating a completely new form of it

There are many clumsy things you did and enjoyed as a child, as a beginner, as a novice, things you did not fully understand or even comprehend

Here’s a simple example, you pay R500 a month for a gym membership, yet you take the car to the store, the bus to work, and lay on the couch all weekend

When you could take that same R500 and go join a hiking/running/cycling club, walk to the store and ride a bicycle to work

What’s hurting you at the point you are at in your life is not that you’re not working your ass off, it’s that you don’t stop to take a breather, and truly look at what’s right in front of you

You now go through the motions, mindlessly repeating because you get to think less and feel like you’re progressing because you’re being productive

But progression is not simply about how much you produce or how hard you work

“If Hard Work Is All It Takes To Be Successful, Show Me A Wealthy Donkey or Ox”

Anonymous

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It’s about intention, it’s about focus, it’s about going back to the little pieces that are seemingly insignificant and ask yourself “why? Why am I doing this?”

Why am I doing it like that?

What do I seek to achieve?

Is this the best way to achieve it?

You must evaluate constantly to keep advancing

Final Words

This is why when no one is looking, and you no longer have to pretend

You must allow yourself to be nakedly and selfishly honest with yourself

Brutally so

Because the truth is like the sun, you may hide from it, even more in the darkness (night) than in the light (day) but the sun never really sets, the earth turns and the sun remains where it is

Like the truth, and until you face the sun, like any plant, like any animal, you will not grow, you will not progress

Growth is tumultuous, it’s lonely, it’s scary, it’s painful, it’s draining, it’s truly a journey of beauty and tragedy

and most of the time you will feel like quitting, like resigning yourself to what feels like an inevitable fate of failure and crawling back to the comforts you left behind

But here’s the one thing they don’t tell you when you begin this journey

Once you begin, as the landscape, the people, the circumstances change in front of you, so do you

As without, so within

“A Mind That Is Stretched By A New Experience Can Never Go Back To Its Old Dimensions” .

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

So unfortunately even if you do get back to those comforts, the sex won’t feel as satisfying, the liquor not so cool, the conversations not so stimulating and the company not so comforting

Not because they changed, but because you changed

And it is usually at this time that you will realize that the only way out of this purgatory is through, right through to the end, the natural end

Basics Of Changing

The One Thing

there is no one thing you can do that will change your life because no one thing works without collaborating with another thing reading books and studying theory changes nothing if it is not accompanied by discussion, questioning, action, and evaluation

no one part of your body keeps you alive, the heart is useless without blood vessels or blood, so no, stop looking for that one thing that will change it all

Behavior

Who here goes into their WhatsApp, goes to their status, and checks the people that viewed that status update? Why do you do that?

If it took you more than a second to answer that question then chances are, your response was a confabulation (a false reason that came after the fact just to explain away the act),

If we’re being honest with ourselves, some of the things we do are emotionally pleasurable but have no logical sense, and some are downright dangerous and destructive

Like buying hot wings because you’re craving them and then justifying it by saying you’ve earned them because you worked so hard at your job or the gym

Or telling someone shit and then justifying it by saying that they needed to hear the truth when the truth is that you just wanted to vent and they were just unlucky to be in your path

Your Other Self

This is happening because there are two you’s, your conscious and subconscious, your conscious is lazy and your subconscious is compulsive, worse yet, your conscious mind prefers to do things that are labor-intensive and avoid mentally strenuous things

It always takes the easy way out when it comes to this part

This is why you work a 9-5 as a slave but can’t finish a book to save your life, because the 1^st one can be mindlessly done, even though it may be difficult and the other requires intention, conscious awareness, and focus

This is why you are busy as shit but haven’t progressed an inch in the past year

Purpose or Reason

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Reason dictates that if something hurts, it must be avoided, if it is scary, it must be avoided, if it is difficult, it must be avoided, if the chances or success are low, then…

You know the drill

Unfortunately, difficulty, fear, pain, all these “negative” perspectives, and emotions are relative, they are not the same across the board

When you are in a dark room in your house, and it is nighttime, you’re in your bed and heading to work tomorrow, you feel relaxed, you fall asleep

But if it is dark, in an alley, in a strange neighborhood, notorious for crime, that same darkness causes fear and anxiety

the same things that caused fear when you were young, may now go without notice or even cause pleasure, i.e. as a female, breaking your virginity hurts, but the same sexual intercourse on following occasions causes multiple, full-body orgasms that wet the surface on which you lay, causing blurry vision, erratic breathing and an almost out of body experience

Let’s pause the reason talk for a second

If you are driven by purpose, depending on the strength of that purpose, you push past your base instincts, your logic and reasoning, and your feelings

The purpose is what makes a mother jump in front of a blade to save her child, it is what makes a monk light himself on fire to bring attention to a cause, it is what makes a man work 16 hour days for 15 years to give the woman of his dreams the life she’s always dreamed of

It is what makes athletes/soldiers endure ungodly amounts of torture, pain, and training to reach their goals

So ask yourself, in everything you’ve done today, did you do it because it made sense to do it, or because it had to be done to reach a goal?

The Blind Test

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Now just to make sure that this is not just another intellectually stimulating post that leaves you no better in the physical world than you were before you read it, we now have to move to practical’s

No Theory/Piece of Information is worthy of your time, attention, and energy if it cannot be applied or put into practice somehow, somewhere, or on something/someone

Take a piece of paper, write down all the things you do exceptionally well daily, from brushing your teeth to your favorite workout

Now pick one activity from that list

Put a camera in a favorable location to monitor you

Now close your eyes and do that activity to completion

Once you are done, stop the recording but leave the camera there

Now put on headsets, put on very loud music, press record, and do the activity again

Once done, stop the recording

Record the third video of you doing the activity with only one hand

Then finally do the activity with only one leg

Now watch the videos and be completely honest about how well you did

the first two handicaps are meant to show you just how something as seemingly insignificant as sight or sound is so pivotal to you being able to complete an otherwise very simply activity

the second two handicaps are meant to indicate to you how situationally dependent your ability to do things is, they should show you that without certain advantages, you are far less likely to successfully and competently complete simply tasks

Final Words

Now that you realize just how mortal and dependent you are on your senses and the simple things your life just to get through the day

Write a list, of all the things you want to be, then write a second list of all the things you want to have, now write a final list of all the things you want to experience

With these three lists, you should start being honest with yourself about exactly what it will take, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, financially to have, be and experience those things

Now break those things down into the smallest, simplest steps you can take today, at the end of the day, evaluate how you did, then write a list of the smallest, simplest steps you can take tomorrow, then wake up and do them first thing in the morning

To change your life will require honesty, endurance, a high pain threshold, consistency, guidance, and clear goals

Leisure is not as much of a necessity as most of us would like to believe, and if you truly want to grow, become more, have more, it must be the first casualty of your cause: drinking craft beer with the guys, wine with the girls, PlayStation, mani/Pedi, watching the game or real housewives, all of this must take a significant hit because the time used for them is the time that must now get used for growing and improving

“Better Well Said Than Well Done”

Jim Kwik

Go Begin

Inch is Better

You’re more focused on the mile than you are on the inch that is why you are losing the race

As a guy, Ever had sex?!

And just given the tip?!

Repeatedly stroking just the tip

In and out

Slowly

Rhythmically

Finding every angle.

Every corner.

Every sweet spot

In Kyokushin karate, there’s something called Ichigeki: the one strike technique

Martial artists train their entire lives to master this one-strike technique. To be able to completely incapacitate your opponent with a single strike, ending the battle mere moments after it began

Most of us in this life is losing the race not because we do not have the stamina, not because we do not have the technique, not because we do not have the will or the desire but because we do not have the ichigeki

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We do not have Bruce lee’s two-finger pushup and sadly, we do not even realize that the reason we do not have that is that we do not acknowledge the journey that led to that ability in the first place

The inches

The simple small steps

The constancy

“Even a limping man goes not backward” Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Everyone remembers roger banister for the sub-4-minute mile but no one even speaks of the decades of training that proceeded it

Every motivational speaker, every pioneer, every revolutionist, every inventor has a journey behind them

The results tell the story of the journey, of the failures, the mistakes, the pitfalls, the achievements, the losses, the sacrifices

But like any breakout solo artist, they cajole, twist, and manipulate the story of the group, the true beginnings, the failures, the fuckups, the mistakes

But there are no results without the journey and there is no journey without the small simple steps

The inch…

Who Are You?

“Detachment is Not that You Own Nothing, Detachment is that Nothing Owns You”

The Bagavaghita

Are you familiar with the thought experiment The Ship Of Theseus in the field of Identity Metaphysics?

Well the theory goes that the ship used to travel around the world by Theseus is in a museum, as time passes the wood begins to rots

As each piece rots, it gets replaced with new wood

After some time, all the wood that made the original ship has been replaced with new wood

Now the question is after all the wood that made the original ship has been replaced, is the resulting ship still the ship of Theseus or is it a different ship?

Here’s the second scenario:

The wood rots, but this time it gets taken out, the rot is removed and the same wood is placed back into the ship

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Is it still the ship of Theseus this time?

Was your answer no in the first scenario and yes in the second scenario?!

Now let’s place this in the context of you, physically speaking, on average every 7 years every cell in your body has died and been replaced by a new cell

Meaning, every physical part of you is completely replaced every 7 years or so

Now if that is a fact, every 7 years

Would you still say you are the same person you were 7 years ago or are you a different person, are you someone else, physically speaking

The second scenario is if for the past 7 years we removed:

• Shitty days
• Bad breakups
• Fights
• Mistakes
• Heartbreaks
• Betrayals
• Missed opportunities
• Lies
• Deaths

The list goes on, now if we removed all of those things in your past and left only the good things

Are you still the same person?!

Attachment

Your identity is tied to your stuff, achievements, and social connections

When was the last time you felt like you no longer knew who you were?

A tumultuous situation suddenly occurred; new job, cheating spouse, office politics, family matters, career choices, social pressure, and suddenly you found yourself in a strange string of decisions and actions that make you question who you thought you were?

In a moment of weakness, you betrayed a friend’s trust, said hurtful things to a partner

Emotions lead to thoughts

Thoughts lead to actions

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Actions lead to habits

Habits lead to beliefs

Beliefs lead to personalities

Personalities lead to identities

Identities Trigger Emotions

Many of us reading this have never lived through a war, civil or otherwise, wherein a matter of moments you lost your home, your friends, your parents, your possessions, your achievements, everything that played a huge role in who you felt you were

Many of us have never gone bankrupt, or constantly had to move and create a new life every couple of months/years

But if it were all taken away tomorrow, who would you be? If tomorrow everyone you knew and respected started telling you that you’re a selfish, heartless, evil person and you deserve to die, would you still see yourself the same?

It is said that the two most powerful words in the English language are also the shortest

“I… Am…”

When it is all said and done

Who… Are… You?

Danger Of Getting What Your Want

Are you familiar with the infinite monkey theorem?

It’s the theory that states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will surely type any given task, such as the complete works of Shakespeare

Put another way, given a long enough time, anything that can happen will happen

So say you keep growing, learning, grinding

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Given a long enough timeline, you get to your destination, your dreams

But here’s the question, will you recognize it once you get there?

Will you recognize you?

Will you even still want it?

The earth has always been beautiful

In our society today, if you do not have a grand vision, some way you want to change the world, then you are wasted potential

But everything has a price

Even the dream you desire

When you embark on the journey

Ask yourself what is the one thing you would never give for that which you most desire, because at some point you will be asked to give it up

“Success is getting what you want, Happiness is wanting what you get”

Dale Carnegie

Was Your Childhood Shit?

You are the sum total of your experiences, views, beliefs and choices

Between the ages of 0 and 7, most of them got engraved into your subconscious and you titled them your personality.

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Unconsciously you make the same choices, date the same people, go to the same places and become friends with the same kind of people which perpetuates the same experiences which further convinces you that the game is rigged, that there’s a master puppeteer somewhere pulling the strings

You are partly correct, there is a master puppeteer but that puppeteer is not out there, he/she is in you, you’re subconscious

Remember Where It Started

As challenge number 1 in Navy Seal David Goggins’ book Can’t Hurt Me

you are asked to rehash your childhood, every single piece of fucked up event in gory detail, everything that you have done, everything that has happened to you, everything you have buried deep inside and vowed to never bring back up, you are challenged to bring it back up

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For it is the puppeteer that’s quietly pulling the strings on your life, through fears, insecurities, beliefs, bad habits ,and terrible choices in career, friends ,and relationships, it is their playwright that keeps you in the same path you keep trying and failing to get out of

And until you blast a blinding light on that play writer, until you go back and see that which made you, your path will always circulate back to where you are now

As Olivia Mogorosi likes to say “no matter how well you want to build the house, no matter how good the material, if the foundation is cracked, weak or poor, it will always fall”

This is nothing you ever have to admit to anyone but you know everything that happened in your childhood, no matter how small, petty or seemingly insignificant it may have seemed, you know the shit that happened in your childhood that makes your heart sink, that gives you the chills and swells tears in your eyes

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Write it down, write it all down and if you don’t like writing, take out a recorder on your phone and just start talking, because that is where it all began and until that foundation is exposed and improved upon, all else that comes after it will be rendered null and void

All your habits are hard to break because they are hardwired by countless repetitions and intense emotions

and to create new habits you will require the same, you will have to do these things when you’re tired, when you’re bored of them, when you’re no longer interested in them, when you’re feeling happy, angry, sad, horny, or just plain distracted, and that is how they will stick

David Goggins, Tom Bilyeu, Tony Robbins, Gary Vee, Patrice Motsepe, Tupac, Michael Jackson, Brenda Fassie, in all their stories reigns the power of repetition, that is because this is not a journey of physical acquisition,

This is a journey of self-mastery, self-respect and mental toughness, and as Tom Bilyeu famously states, “the whole point of life, what we call satisfaction is the desire to “feel good about yourself when you’re by yourself””

A Raw Example (don’t cry)

My story is not important but I would be a hypocrite if I advised being raw while not doing it myself, here is a piece from my beginning:

“Soon I made my first friend, a delinquent with a glass eye in the same grade as me, he would turn on me every chance he got to be part of the cool kids until they would turn on him and he’d come back, ask for forgiveness and we’d be friends again, we’d skip school and drink every chance we got, he’s mom and my mom were friends and they had both come from the same hood

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He loved dogs, I wasn’t a fan but the neighborhood had a very high rate of house break-ins, so I convinced my mom it would be a good idea, we got it, it shat itself and hide between rocks the second it arrived, I don’t know where it had come from but that dog had some serious PTSD, despite its severe shaking and wailing, one day before we went to school, Sabelo (my new friend) showed up to see my new dog, he noticed how scared it was and somehow began calming it down, despite his fucked up delinquency, the muthafucka as a dog whisperer, the dog calmed down and we chilled a bit longer, soon it was late to go to school so we decided to skip, we went outside to play with the dog (which I knew was a bad idea) and a neighbor saw us

At the time we were living in our newly built house which had no electricity or furniture or even paint on the walls, that evening my mom came home, took the steel end of a belt and proceeded to beat me over the head with it repeated until my head was full of open wounds and blood was dripping down my face. Despite the horror of the situation I didn’t feel much pain, physically or emotionally, to me I was paying a necessary price to have a friend I had never had and it was worth it, I didn’t cry out for her to stop nor did I cry period, when she was done, I looked at her but she wasn’t done

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In the den of night she marched me up the street to where my friend lived, we walked into the yard and my mom began yelling out his mom’s name, she walked out and her face went pale, tears began falling from her eyes from sheer shock as she asked how my mom could do this, I was still unfazed until mom my demanded she bring Sabelo out so he could see what would happen to me if he ever hung out with me again, he walked out with his stepdad (yes, he was a relic of his mom’s before life too) and that’s when the walls broke and I cried”

This is not a story about me

In truth my tale matters little to the relevance of this post, the purpose for my recounting of my begins is to show you that you can do it too, that your story matters, if to no one else, it matters to you,

it will always matter to you, and until you acknowledge it and face it, wholly and fully, it will keep pulling you back from your dreams, goals and desires, for it is a part of your story too,

It is the beginning, and it matters

Thank you for taking the time to read this

Feel free to like, share or comment below

efharisto (ef-hah-rees-TOH)