It becomes effortful to *not* do it. It pulls you in and demands you keep working.
Discipline is fighting yourself.
Wasted energy. Wasted creativity.
Put that instead into figuring out what you actually most want.
Solve problems in doing what you want with reason, not force.
It sounds cute and simplicistic — like meaningless motivational self-help talk — but the world really does work this way.
Problems really are soluble. What's stopping you really is conflicting ideas. Force is trying to reach answers/truth using brute authority instead of reason.
"I've tried everything! Self-discipline, Beeminder, social media time-outs, Tony Robbins, waking at 5am... Nothing seems to work!"
I learnt this skill even exists as a thing in 2018.
(CFAR introduced Gendlin Focusing, then I heard the body is practically relevant to emotions ~somehow~, and that intellectuals like me have a blindspot about that. Humph!)
Sucked at it for 2 years.
2/
I found Gendlin Focusing very difficult at first.
First, it was hard to find sensations in the body at all. Or I’d catch one and it would flit away.
Words dominated my mind instead.
Then, the only way I could hold on to a feeling was intensify it until it was overwhelming.
3/
Never mind particular frameworks, what are some the most fundamental concepts and skills for happiness and free thought?
Thread on some I’ve found
👇
[P.S. You can see why it’s hard to claim one framework will solve all your problems.]
1. Ability to think any thought, rather than have your mind flinch away from it.
Found in…
- Buddhism: equanimity
- Art of Accomplishment: impartiality; non-resistance
- Alexander Technique: expanded awareness
- Karl Popper: non-authoritarianism
- TCS: non-coercion
2. Not having your conscious explicit mind interfere with your subconscious inexplicit mind.
Found in…
- Alexander Technique: non-doing
- Kahneman: System 1/System 2
- write drunk edit sober
- life-threatening sports like BASE jumping
- improv
- Ian McGilchrist’s whole deal