Their Power Grows

Classic internet response: "I can bother as many people around me as I want to cuz I have a sacred entitlement to be myself." To a quote about growing as a person while being yourself and not bothering others.

“Seeds do not make a sound when growing, but can even reach the sky. Learn from them.”

— Matshona Dhliwayo

Somehow, this is the first time i figured out the sigma male community has taken up the stoic name as one of their own.

Good lord above i hope noone thinks ive been preaching sigma male content.

Oi ve.

Why I think self-pity is the bane of our joy

Stoicism is an old philosophy which is only now starting to have a modern rennecaince with new ideas and concepts. This is great, because it allows us to develop brand new doctrine to fit the world around us, and terrible, because it means we don't have the answer for everything. However, one of the things that are being explored the most as of now is self-pity. This is a very prevalent state of mind in the western world, where it has become so common to complain about the small things that it can seem almost competitive.

Our ability to complain has combined with our ever-rising standard of living to create cartoonish complaints that we are gasping to share with the world around us, who are trying to voice their complaints. As Vers writes: "Alle kalder ud, men ingen gider at svare" (Everybody needs to be heard, but nobody is willing to listen). This has lead Neils Overgaard, a man I deeply respect and look up to, to create what he calls the "immigrant test": Basically, you take whatever thing is bothering you in the moment, and you imagine that you have to tell it to a mother of 5 children who has left Sudan, crossed the Sahara, been illegally exported across the Mediterranean, and finally landed in Greece, ready to live out the rest of her life at the lowest bottom of our society. Your task is now to look her in the eyes, and tell her about the problem that is letting you down, and if you think you can do that, THEN it is worth thinking about.

Self-pity is not the same as complaining, though. I would argue that self-pity is what happens when you systematically feel rightious to complain and the world around you validates this feeling. And what you're doing on a psychological level is train your mind to focus on the negatives and hold on to them, so that you can pass them on to others. Surely, my friends, a brain that only notices and focuses on the bad things is not a happy one, right?

So how do YOU avoid self-pity and the need to complain in general? Well, you're not out of options (though it may be tempting to say that you are). In this post, my advice will be to FORTIFY. Back in the day, people used to say "man up", but that's kinda turned into a toxic thing that means "push it down", and it's also only for men. So now we have the new word "fortify", which is much better. How do you fortify? That's up to you, but it should ultimately make you a more emotionally resilient person. Focusing on the next step can be a great way of fortifying, for example:

Your car breaks down on your way to work. You are going to be late. Do you: A. Have your mood be ruined over the situation, complain to your boss when they ask you why you are late, and get pissy when you get the repair bill? B. Accept that the situation is out of your hands, focus on getting your car towed and finding another way to get to work, and calmly explain to your boss that your car broke down and you still showed up ready to work?

It's entirely up to you, but option B is not only a calmer, more pleasant way to handle the situation, but it also makes you a more resilient being in the future, because your brain will recognise your handling of the situation and be calmer the next time something unpredictable comes up, thus marking the start of a good spiral.

There will be more in the next post, to make it easier to digest.

Love you all! - Anthony

Finally found where this came from.

Taxes?

To the person commenting skibidi on all my posts

it was funny at first but you can stop now

You don't deserve your empathy.

This is a pretty provokative statement. But you don't deserve to feel bad. It is not a privilege you deserve. And the sooner you accept it, the faster you'll be capable of properly take responsibility of yourslef and your life. It may be the case that your parents are fucked up and/or idiots, that you have had to experience and endure some messed up shit, that your health isn't perfect, or that you wish you looked or felt a different way. But nobody promised you that life would be easy. And if they did, then I'm sorry, but they lied. There is only degrees of imperfect lives. Your life is exactly your specific degree of imperfect. Danish poet Dan Turéll said that "it's not easy to be anyone". The only certain part of human existence is misery and death, according to buddhism. That's why you shouldn't view the adversity that will (and it will) be forced upon you in life, and the same goes for hardships and mistakes. That's what life is. If you wanted to have a life without adversity, go play Homescapes. I can feel bad for you, if you perhaps grew up in a home with alcohol abuse and mistreatment, or if you have experiences severe disease or death in your close family at a young age. I am aware that some people get a shitty hand in the great card game of life. And it's never a childs fault, no matter what they are subject to. But that doesn't mean you are going to benefit in any particular way from feeling bad for yourself. At least not for long. Maybe you're capable of taking an objective look at recent events and say "yeah, that was total horseshit", or "yeah, that was millions to one, how unlucky". That you should feel bad for yourself, just like you would for any other person who went through those events. But once you've recognised that, leave it. Because if you keep it around, it'll weaken you up. The road to pitytown is a slippery slope, and once you're there, you let go of your responsibilities.

Yes, yes, yes!

Only thing I can add to this is telling yourself "I will do x", where x is something that is somewhat inconvenient. The point of x is doing it because it sucks and is inconvenient. Doing this wont just build dicipline, it also shows your brain that you're loyal, which builds up trust, and eventually self esteem. X also shouldn't be a large thing, and can be a series of things.

RECLAIMING DISCIPLINE CAN LOOK LIKE:

• keeping small + manageable promises to yourself daily

• healing your attention span (ex: reading books, watching movies without scrolling, letting yourself be bored)

• moving from "I'll try" to "I will"

• reframing pain + difficulty as often where the growth happens

• showing up as the person you want to be

• making mindful & nourishing choices VS choices that result in instant gratification

There's a reason for that, you know. When the body is near death, the brain decides that ultimately, it wants to not die, and so it goes into a special, extremely harmful state where it presses every body on the keyboard and releases as many positive chemicals it can, to try and keep itself awake. What you are doing is effectively the same as huffing gasoline. You are getting high on your body's very last survival mechanism to try and prevent a total organ shutdown. And you enjoy it.

if u starve for long enough u start feeling like ur high sometimes its my fav thing ever

3 am motivation

Guys, do NOT get motivated at 3 am!!! (gone wrong)

Yeah so basically, it's a little tragic to think about. Why do we get it? I can't say I know with certainty, but it's either that we run out of distractions and our brain thinks it's finally time to be productive (which is sad in the way watching a puppy try to play with a cat that's not having it, is sad). The other reason is that our brain doesn't want to send the motivation until it feels confident enough that you won't actually do it, so it does it late at night when you want to sleep. In this case, that's just a serious lack of self-dicipline where it feels uncomfortable to do something productive due the Feeling of Resistance.

I do think it's the first one, which sadly is the less straightforward one of the two to solve. I don't know exactly how to overcome it, but I do know that I have overcome it myself, so it is possible. Make your own conclusions on this one, I'll just explain how productive work usually goes for me (when it goes right)

I get something assigned. I mentally make a note of it, when it's due, and how long it will take.

Later on, I decide when to do it. This may be immedeately after the first step but not always.

5-15 minutes before it's time to do the task, I pull it up and ready myself for it. This basically just means reading up on it, remembering what it's about, and letting my subconsious work a little.

Here's where I usually get that motivation. While I technically don't have to get started yet, I will often pick up on a good way to start, and decide to go immedeately. The entire feeling of resistance is eliminated and the work ends up not being that difficult.

When the time for the task has come, I clear my mind and start working. If I don't know how to get started (meaning that no sudden burst of flow and motivation hit me), I write something terrible until it gets me on a road of productivity, and then I fix the start later.

For the record: This does not always work. At all. Litterally today, as I was writing this, I should have been getting started on an assignment.

So yeah probably don't believe anything you hear me say, the hell do I know.

Love, as always, from Anthony