War and Peace
Winning the war on your mind by whatever means necessary.
When you set out to achieve something new, you'll be met with Resistance. No one is immune to this. Our brain wants predictable behaviors. It doesn't necessarily care whether these behaviors are destructive or positive. It just wants homeostasis, and pushes you back toward your habits any time you try to stray off the path. Steven Pressfield covers this in his incredible book, The War of Art. Every creative should read this book routinely.
This sense of Resistance can manifest itself in many ways, but the most common and most powerful emotion is fear.
We are often taught a cultural fallacy: Brave people don't actually feel fear. That's what allows them to be brave. This is a disgusting lie. It's just another tool Resistance uses to convince you that you don't have what it takes to live how you wish.
The brave are not those who feel no fear. The brave are those who feel the fear, but do it anyway. The little voice of Resistance in your head wants you to be afraid of growth. So, it tries to trick you into believing that bravery is an external feature that some people just have and others don't. Since you actually do feel fear, you must not be one of those brave people. Too bad. I guess it's scaredy-cat life for you...
This trick is the primary reason why the vast majority of people never experience the life they really want. The fear shuts them down before they even attempt to take the first step. And, fear has 100 more opportunities to knock them down if they really do have the grit to keep trying.
Listen, when it comes to determining what you really want out of life, you're going to meet massive Resistance. Most people, when asked, say they don't want to be a pawn in someone else's game. Most people, when they contemplate what really excites them, conclude that they want more quality time in life to pursue the things that matter most to them. This often means saving resources that afford them TIME to do those things, regardless of what they are. They land on bigger-picture values and what we might call the "higher-self" interests. They rarely value meaningless objects that will decay over time. They often think of their time, their friends, their family, their health. In other words, they gain clarity over what's important and reject what isn't important. They tend to understand that they only really have three primary assets:
Time
Health
Relationships
Really, think about this for a moment. What else do you find more important?
This will take time to fully grasp. After all, enlightenment demands patience. But, as this realization sets in, you become increasingly difficult to exploit. The endless advertisers stoking desire in you to buy their crap won’t be happy when you come to realize your true assets. The politician is going to struggle to influence your mind. The religious leader is going to have difficulty inspiring you through feelings of guilt and subservience. The gigantic food conglomerate won't be able to convince you to trade your health for momentary mouth pleasure. The pharmaceutical company has nothing to sell you when you're physically and mentally fit.
As your mind becomes more powerful, you become increasingly difficult to influence (i.e., control). You can imagine how this undermines the very fabric of most of our entire economic base. The power-hungry who sit atop their corporate, governmental, and religious thrones are well aware that they need the lemmings of society to willfully play a game. So, they wage their mental warfare with impunity, using the most effective tactics against the human mind:
Short-term desire
The longing for a tribe
Fear of missing out
Guilt
They'll employ every last tactic necessary to gain control over your mind in any way they possibly can, with the sole aim of getting you to sacrifice whatever little bit of what really matters to you so they can improve their bottom line. In other words, you're a gold mine, and they'll do anything they can to gain access to the riches inside you.
Simply put, there's a war on your mind. You didn't ask for the war, but you're a soldier in it whether you want to realize it or not. And, like the raging rapids of a mountain river, the enemy is relentless. The question, then, is what to do about it?
Well, the obvious answer is to fight. The easy answer is to wage war in return. Now, we're obviously not talking about a literal war or any act of violence, including in your own mind. We're talking about a mental war, where you have the option to resist and fight against the proverbial devil-on-your-shoulder that all these powers want you to listen to.
For some people, like me, it's helpful to actually wage an energetic war. For whatever reason, I feel a lot of energy and become action-oriented when I have a "fight" mindset. I get a "hell no" attitude toward anything I see as a threat, and feel what ultimately amounts to positive energy when I'm in this state. It might even be more accurate for me to describe it as a game, rather than a war. And, when I get in this fighting mindset, I'm hellbent on winning the game.
For others, like my wife, it's helpful to see what I call enemies as simply entities that are doing what they naturally do. It's as if there are these little forces lurking in the shadows, attempting to remain hidden so they can influence you indirectly. She finds it helpful to identify these entities and to bring them out of the shadows and into the light. She prefers to take an impersonal, analytical look at them so she can see them for what they are. There's no real feeling of animosity or "fighting" energy aimed at them. Rather, she takes an attitude of revealing their true nature, then simply living in a way that prevents them from influencing her mind. This is a more peaceful approach to dealing with these outside entities.
Regardless of what works for you, it's imperative that you establish what these entities are and what they want out of you. You must determine what it is that you actually want, then analyze how the desires of these entities conflict with your own personal desires. You must recognize that the mere act of considering this framework puts you in the upper 5 percentile of all people. This means almost no one will understand what you're trying to do. They won't understand why you live differently. They'll assume things about you that aren't true. They'll see your modest house and look down on you from their McMansion perch. Meanwhile, you'll have 10x the net worth that they do and much more overall freedom in life. You must learn to play a different game, and understand what it means to win this game.
Whether you choose to wage war or wage peace is up to you, but you must decide. The only other option is compliance. It's easy to see what you get if you choose compliance. Just look around you.
***
Actions: Grab a notebook and write down your thoughts.
Sit quietly and think about what really matters to you. Picture yourself on your deathbed pondering what you wish you would have done in life. Write down the top 5 things that are most important to you.
What forces are actively trying to keep you from getting what you want?
What step can you take right now to fend off at least one of these forces?
How hard are you willing to work to get what you want out of life?
Who or what is on your side, helping you to get what you want out of life?