Mind

Limit your inputs

• A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
• Analysis paranisis
• “ If you wish to improve” Epictetus said, “ be content to appear clueless in extraneous matters”
• “ The one thing I am sure is my ignorance for everything”
• There is ego in trying to stay on top of everything
• costed our peace of mind and have opportunity cost

Empty the mind

• meditate
• Be present
• This is the way
• “Emptiness is the fast of the mind”
• modern people with internet are mentally over fed
• Too work up with a problem is self defeating
• Do long, low intensity work (e.g. shooting arrow, golf, long distance riding) to take you mind off, but not unfocus, like meditating
• (Summarizing reading)

Slow down, think deeply

• What is essential is invisible to the eye
• No one gets there by focusing on what is obvious, or sticking with the first thought that pops into their head ( your first thought/ draft rarely be your best)

Start journaling

• Journaling as a form of therapy, meditation
• “hypomnemata” notes to oneself
• Weapon of spiritual combat, to silence the barking dogs in your head
• “Where am i standing in my own way? What is the smallest step I can take toward a big thing today? Why am I so worked up about this? Why do I care so much about impressing people? What is the harder choice I am avoiding? Do I rule my fear, or do they rule me? how will today’s difficulties reveal my character?”

Cultivate silence

• Deliberately create a absence of voice
• We have to step away from the comfort of noisy distractions and stimulation ( your current work)
• We have to start listening

Seek wisdom

• Don’t stop learning
• Stop learning is allowing your ergo work over you
• Reading with arrogance or confirming preexiting opinions do not help
• Seek teachers (be it people or books)

Find confidence, avoid ego

• Avoid:
  • Driven by ego or hubris
• Paralyzed by fear and doubt
• Ego is self sabotaging and painful and lonely
• Confidence is:
  • The freedom to set your own standards
• Unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself
• Admitting you’re incorrect opinion
• Believing you have all it takes to face the responsibility
• With confidence comes with:
  • openness
• Reflective
• able to see themselfe without blinders
• Room for stillness, by removing unnecessary confict and uncertainty and resentment

Let go

• Too much willful will
• “… It should happen like this …”
• “… My model is correct …”
• There is ego in that “The hits on the target”, Kenzo said,” are only the outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness your self abandonment, or stillness.”

On to what is next

Spirit

The domain of the soul

“For what is a man profited”, Jesus asked his disciples, “if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

• An open heart
• Meaningful relationships
• Selflessness
• Moderation
• A sense of right and wrong
• Mental stillness will be short-lived if our hearts are on fire, or our soul ache with emptiness. We are in capable of seeing what is essential in the world if we are blind to what’s going on within us. We cannot be in harmony with anyone or anything if the need for more, more ,more is gnawing at our insides like a maggot.
• Many people in modern world live like an island, a stranger to everyone, a stranger to himself

What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-call mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child’s soul? An adolescent’s?… A tyrant’s soul? Thee soul of a predator- or its prey? - Marcus Aurelius

he who seek stillness must come to:

• Develop a strong moral compass
• Steer clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires
• Come to terms with the painful wound of their childhood
• Cultivate relationships and love in their lives
• Place belief and control in the hands of something larger than themselves
• Understand that there will never be “enough” and that the unchecked pursuit of more ends only in bankruptcy ( try to sprint in a maratholn, or one too many break away)

Choose virtue

Heal the inner child

male depression, I dont want to talk about it

• It is dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect your wounded inner child
  • (inablility to start a relationship?)

The insecure lens.

The anxious lens.

The persecuted lens.

The prove-them-all-wrong lens.

The will-you-be-my-father? lens that Leonardo had.

Who are these idiots to tell me what to do? Why are they always trying to boss me around? Why are they so unfair?

This is water. This is water. This water.

The real value of education is the ability to choose what is valuable for YOU. What has meaning for YOU.

• Think about it: How much better and less scary life is when we dont have to see it from the perspective of a scared, vulnerable child? How much lighter will our load be if we are not adding extra baggage on top?
• It will take patience and empathy and real self-love to heal the wound in your life.

Doctor, I let you go.

After recognizing and embracing our inner child, the third function of mindfulness is to soothe and relieve our difficult emotions.

• A pause between strong emotions
• Will it be helpful if I yell at somebody?
• Will it be helpful if I be passive aggresive?
• Say your child see you yell at somebody, what will they think of you? what is speaking about your Logo?
• Nobody owe you anything
• The functional adult step in to reassert and reassure
• Give more, Give what you didnt have; Love more, drop the old story.

Beware desire

• Spiritually broken, at the whims of his worst impulses, unable to think clearly or prioritize.
• Lust is a destroyer of peace in our lives, a person enslaved to their urges is not free

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all - Joseph Epstein

An envious man pains himself as though he were an enemy

• What will happen to me if I get what I want? How will I feel after?
• To the Epicureans real pleasure was about freedom from pain and agitation
• Desire, “the ever-present enemy of the wise… which like fire cannot find satisfaction.”
• Jounaling, by oberving and then writing about his own behavior, he wa able to hold himself accountable and himself better, resist from harmful desires

Enough is enough (the e-word)

• Say you archived everything you want in life, This is it? Now what?