Fight etiquette
Difficulties abound. Woke up early and talked with some people on the phone about a very difficult situation, but everyone is positive and ultra helpful. I am forcing myself to remain positive, while keeping in mind the seriousness of everything that is happening.
I’ve been getting advice that perhaps I’m playing too nice. Everyone likens this to a fight or flight dichotomy where I must choose to fight. With passion, good intentions, and power. I need people to help me, but people who are not helping should step back. My strong suit has always been to play nice, to appeal to a person’s better self, to try to inspire collaboration and partnership rather than opposition. Fighting for cooperation, however, leads one to never strike out aggressively at someone who’s causing problems. This is the move that many people say I should make. I don’t even know what my aggressive move would be though. I can’t do this on my own, I need help from my adversaries as well as my friends.
Which strategy is best? I realize that my strategy is being employed right now simply because it’s my strong suit, and not necessarily because it’s the best strategy.
release technique
At slow weights today I mentioned to Sherry that I feel like there’s a mental block for me right now when I reach the failure point. She asked me what thought or image or feeling comes to mind when my muscles reach failure. After imagining my way through it, I realized it’s panic and “I can’t”. I imagine myself explainingto someone (her) why I can’t continue, and argue to myself that I’m doing my best.
This strikes me as interesting because first of all this is parallel to other events in my life. And the slow weights could be a good place to begin practicing and training myself for a better response to the point of failure.
She mentioned the Release Technique. A program by Echart Tolle, Lestor Levenson, and a few other self-help gurus. About reaching that point of failure and turning towards it, releasing the desire to change the failure, and letting it pass through you.
We talked about how discomfort is merely the desire to change reality. Embracing reality, going towards the feeling rather than running from it, allows the feeling to move through you and past you. You learn that the thing you were running from is not nearly as uncomfortable as the discomfort created by running away from something that you can’t run away from.
There’s a valuable piece of knowledge in there somewhere.
Kinds of enjoyment
I’m gonna do a panel for a silly overnight conference thing. The topic will be enjoyment and the panel will be about the different ways to enjoy something, and an attempt to come up with a system for classifying the kinds of enjoyment we can experience.
- Enjoy something for its physical properties, and the way we experience them through the senses. Sensual enjoyment.
- Enjoy something for its social or cultural properties. Its worth and meaning to you and/or others. Social enjoyment.
- Enjoy something for what it is.
I think there are a couple other categories of enjoyment, but they’re on my home computer. I’ll need to add them later.
Rich in feelings
People don’t really talk about feelings because it’s seen as an indulgent activity. To talk about feelings is to take them out of the place they belong (the background) and make them a more visible part of the narrative. We prefer feelings to be felt but not acknowledged, except in very general happy/sad/angry terms.
Feelings are everywhere, we’re experiencing them all the time, and yet it’s annoying to actually talk about them. It’s like talking about your dreams. It’s too personal, and also too ego-centric at the same time.
Feelings are the payout of life. They are the reason we want to fall in love, or get a raise, or avoid getting in debt, or avoid having a relationship fall apart. They are the reward and punishment for everything. Yet they are also fleeting and difficult to pin down. You can’t make a feeling happen directly. You can set up a scenario that often leads to a feeling though… like having a drink, or traveling, or shopping.
Then there are activities that have a variety of potential emotional payoffs. Like moving to a new city, or entering into a relationship, or changing jobs.
What good is money if it doesn’t give you a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of money that drives us to it? The feeling of pure potential, of style and luxury and adventure?
What good is stability or a family or a relationship unless it gives you a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of security or community or love that drives us to these things? The feeling of being accepted, loved, respected?
What good is health if it doesn’t give us a feeling? Isn’t it the feeling of balance, strength, and clarity that drives us to be healthy?
What good is adventure? What good is power? What good is a beautiful hike? What good is a great book or a great movie or a great show? They are good when and if they generate a feeling. And not just a feeling but a good feeling, one that goes with the appropriate activity, the one that we were after.
And then the feeling goes away and, if we liked it, we continue looking for ways to bring it back. Hobbies, likes and dislikes, and all kinds of daily activities are structured around this pursuance of new or old feelings.