Put Your Ego in the Box

I'd like to take a moment today and write a post about an idea that's been wandering about my head in many forms for years. I've inadvertently used the idea when talking with friends about things. And conceptually used it myself when trying to understand something new. I recently read about a form of it in a book on Zen. Consider it a look into how best to learn new models.

 

Can You Purely Listen...

In normal conversation, or on this sub in a normal exchange, what happens usually is one person will speak from a position within their frame, based on their models. Person 2 will hear what was said, immediate attempt to decode and "fit" the thought into their own set of models, and then, thinking they understood it, respond with how that does or does not fit with their own line of thinking.

 

Consider the riddle "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object?" The unstoppable force is an idea spoken. The unmoveable object is the receiving frame. It has the same feel as two cinderblocks colliding. Maybe somewhere within their structure micro-cracks form from the collision. But ultimately they remain their same solid self. There is no change imparted.

And that's not to say it's completely wrong to react with your model immediately. But in doing so, you're coming at the discussion from the standpoint of "my model is adequate to the task". And in a place where we're often working on moving forward and growing, depending on who you're talking to, you have to ask...is it???

 

Segway:

I want to segway real quick because it seems like a lot of you noobs in here need it. We've had a lot of guys lately have egoic reactions to criticisms from the mods and MRP approved. You can skip to the bolded End Segway unless some piece of your ego has ever felt "Why do the mods here have such big egos?" in which case, i'd read it.

 

See in every interaction you have with someone, someone engages as the student, and someone engages as the teacher. And the teacher usually walks away from the interaction with a better, more solidified overview of what they already know. And the student usually walks away with lingering doubt of what they know but useful hooks of how to build off that. The thing is, most people would rather feel better and more solidified, than have lingering doubt. So they approach interactions and instead of saying what they have to say and then opening their mind to a response, they simply listen to what is said back in an effort to figure out how they're going to link what is said back to something else they can say. There's a concept in social dynamics called active listening that's a very similar solution to this. Again this all has a lot to do with the ability to stoic-ly set aside ego. And the rejection of doing that is a way to protect the need to set aside your ego.

Part of what a mentor/teacher needs to do in order to establish a relationship to which they can teach and you can learn is to adopt a "way in" to your head. Every single guy who's earned MRP Approved flair on this forum has done so from creating a perspective from which they can actively understand an angle that you can possibly engage your problems from. And each of us are staring you down every week under a microscope watching what you're doing, because it allows us to read you like a book. I'm literally sitting behind my keyboard watching you navigate the model in your head. Horns is watching you feel through us and everyone in your life. 3KL is watching if your thoughts are directed at you or at outside forces. Barracuda is watching to see what game you're playing. Whinemoreplease, when he was here, was watching whether or not you approached life with integrity or self pity. Easydays is watching where you put your attention. ReddJive is assessing whether you approach life with strength and will. Redsfplus is watching to see if you're a little bitch. Stone is watching to see what you really want and if you're betraying that. And on and on. In order for any connection to be made though, there needs to be a receptive mind on your side within the mental realm that we attack it from. And that means clearing out the landing pad in that area of your mind, clearing your own thoughts out of it, to be ready to receive.

 

How we know whether or not you've cleared out a spot or if thoughts are parked in that spot in your brain is how you respond to an approach. Did our approach send you into an emotional frenzy? Make you answer curtly? Did you completely ignore what we said and continue on with you own idea? Did you covertly go "that's nice...anyway" and start telling us what you think? Or instead did you go "Hmm, that's something to think about." Did you ask a question to further consider what we said? Did you ground it in your own experience? Did it click something in you? Did you have an ah-ha moment and now you're elated?

And I know what you're thinking. Because once in awhile someone flies into a tantrum and asks shit like "Why are the mods so full of ego and want everyone to bow down before them?" The answer is we arent. The question itself belies the ego of the asker. There's a difference between being a position where a student has to set aside their ego to receive value, and a bully using the circumstance to increase his ego without giving value. A teacher needs to ask their student to move their ego out of the way to receive value. This shift in the balance of egos can look like a student having their ego stay the same while the teacher instead increases their ego. But that view itself comes from the student's ego. The notion is almost like asking "How come the teacher in school gets to stand up at the blackboard and we gave to sit here listening to him?"

And I know what else you're thinking. "But blarg, why is it that MY ego has to change?" And I'd answer "Because you're the one asking the question." If you ask the question, you're expected to move your ego to receive the answer. If you dont, you imply your model is up to the task ("I dont need the answer."). And like I said before if you feel your model is up to the task, then you're not coming at the conversation as a student. And that's totally fine. But if that's the case, you cant then go and whine that you arent learning anything or that mods are being egoic. Because you're choosing the dynamic when you ask (teacher-student), and then trying to flip the dynamic when getting an answer (teacher-teacher). All the while trying to receive the value (as a student). And at the same time not letting it land (because you dont want to move your ego). I'm sure your brain just short circuited reading that because it really is that stupid.

 

When I ask the question, I make it a point to set my ego aside. I know it's required as part of the dynamic. And yes, guys can come at a conversation as equals and still both walk away with knowledge gained. But it's because both of them are very good at switching their teacher hat for a student has dynamically within a conversation.

 

"But blarg, how come the advice has to be so pointy and rough?" Because the endurance of a new idea in your existing model is directly proportional to the impact that idea has on you. And trauma is extremely impactful. The locker-room is simply a vehicle that works based on how you yourself have set yourself up to learn. If you learn when I call you a retarded fuck. Then I'm going to talk to you like you're a retarded fuck.

 

One last question for me: "But blarg...what if you're wrong???. And my answer is: I probably am. In some way of looking at the universe my mental model wont jive with someone else's'. But guess what? And this is going to sound full of ego but I'd rather be wrong in the position I'm in, than wrong in the position you're in.

End Segway

 

So this clash of minds with no real result is an extreme view of what happens when there's no give. I want to swing all the way to the other extreme.

In the book The Heart of Zen, the author gives a koan. A koan is a riddle which a master gives his student. The purpose of the riddle is that in order to answer it correctly, the student often needs to go off and consider many often undefined or vaguely defined concepts in a way that will lead him to explore and develop entirely new mental models. The riddle is constructed in such a way that arriving at the answer tells the master that the student not only knows the answer, but also has a similar mental model from which the answer was generated. Which is ultimately the goal of teaching an idea.

This koan in particular was: "Can you purely listen without having an opinion?"

 

Upon reading this, immediately I thought I had an opinion on the answer (see? I do it too). But I decided to close the book and take a few weeks to think about the answer to that question. I mean...often students are sent away for years to think about the answer to koans. I could at least give it a few weeks.

A lot of my thoughts on the issue revolved around deconstructing the actual question and twisting and turning it every which way in order to put it back together in a proper thought. For instance the words "Can you"...does that mean "Do I have the ability? The complete 100% ability? Is it something I control like an arm movement? Something I partially control like a thought? Something I dont control like your heartbeat?" Or "purely"...what is pure? Without intent to act? To conceptualize whatever I'm listening to in an exact duplicate of the thought?" Things like that.

 

My answer for the most part was "No, you cant purely listen without having an opinion." But then a thought came back to me. It was a kind of thought that enabled a more pure form of listening based on someone else openly and honestly coming to me in a way that asked me to set aside my judgment, and simply make space in my head to consider an idea. As if someone said "Look I have something to tell you, and I know you're going to immediately start trying to interpret it or relate to it or twist it...but just listen for a moment".

This is also what I usually mean when I speak of open and honest communication to others. Saying it in a way that is devoid of the usual bullshit context of the game you're both playing and with intent to be considered pure. But also with the release of reaction to how someone else actually interprets it (Not getting butthurt if they receive it in a way that's still based on the game.) And in that way of speaking or receiving an idea, I saw with this kind of "setting aside" of myself that yes, I could purely listen...as if merely trying to construct the idea they were trying to tell me as they saw it, rather than add my own flair or analyze it through my models.

 

The explanation the author gives to the koan is a bit of a disconnect from what one might think the author is trying to ask with the question. But the answer, the lesson remains gold. The answer he says is "Yes, you can purely listen. (With the explanation of) if you think you cant (and he would ring a tuning fork and say) stop the sound of the tuning fork with your mind. If you cannot, then you are not under control of the listening."

What he's trying to say is that there is a part within you that receives the listening before the actual sound is attacked by the rest of your mind and transformed into something else. That piece of you is purely listening. But in order to realize it, to understand what it is, to see it, you have to understand that it requires you split and set aside all the you that happens after you hear the sound, and acknowledge the pureness that is you simply hearing it. Youre in control of the interpretation of the listening. But you arent in control of the listening. Keep this in mind.

 

Put Your Ego in the Box

Some vets may have already heard this story. I was sitting in a truck with one of my closest friends. We met that night to discuss the situation of our mutual closest friend who wasnt present. That mutual friend had a problem, and we both knew it. It was a very blue pill problem. And it was giving our friend a very rough life. So rough that we both knew that the threat of suicide wasnt an immediate threat, but the odds were going up.

It was early in my RP days. And my friend noticed a change in confidence in me and my interactions with people. And he said "I dont know where this change in you came from and I dont really want to know. But I think he may benefit from hearing something from you. Will you talk to him?"

 

And I looked at my friend and I said "Look, I understand the risk we both see here. Our mutual friend is a very logical guy. But at the end of the day the door through which the lessons I learned is a door someone has to voluntarily walk through. Not one that you can be convinced through." I said "I've experienced this many times before, and if I simply go to him and start spewing knowledge here's what's going to happen: He's going to take everything he knows and he's going to put all that in a box. He's going to put that box on the shelf. He's going to listen to what I have to say, and then he's going to immediately go 'that's cool but' and take that box back down and replace all his old ways right back while spewing forth what his models of the world were instead." I said "I know the risk of suicide is non-zero...but he needs to come to me." This is why overt red-knighting doesnt work (dont talk about fight club).

 

I've had this idea of the box for a long time. And it connects to the idea I talked about above in that instead of simply stalwartly mashing your model against another person's model, sometimes we will attempt to fool ourselves into thinking we're actually considering someone else's model when in actuality what we've done instead is to take everything we know about us, all the connections between ideas in our heads, all our models of reality and how things work, our emotion, our feelings...our egos...and we'll put them all in this nice, roomy, velvet lined box that we metaphorically made for them. And we'll take that box and latch it closed and put it up on the metaphorical shelf while we listen to someone else. But we know we're not actually listening to them. We're simply allowing them to talk. And as they talk we keep eyeing up that box and itching to retrieve it because we know the second they stop talking, we're going to be able to rip that box open and attack their idea with everything our egos have built into so far.

The thing is, we know we're doing this. We know it because when we rip our egos back out, they guilt trip us for putting them in there in the first place. But also acknowledge that there's something about what they've just told us that we've destroyed. We feel that loss. It's that weird feeling we get after the conversation like "why do I feel like I heard them talk but didnt really internalize what they said. We "made it" through the conversation but it was hollow."

Side note for the story: Our mutual friend actually did come to me after a month. And we had a drink and he just purely vented at me the entire time, not really giving me space to talk or listening to the few things I said when I did. Because I wasnt giving him immediate solutions. I was giving him long-term suggestions of a more complex nature. Teacher, teacher vs teacher, student. One more story.

 

That's not me...but if it was...

I've said it a few times here and there in the past, but I really hate when people say the phrase "That's not me." Whether that's listening to a new type of music "Oh no, I like punk rock. Rap? That's just not me." Or doing some kind of activity "I dont enjoy running. That's just not me." Or even acknowledging a different point of view "I'm not a dog person. That's just not me."

The reason I hate "That's just not me" is because if you're paying any attention to your life at all, you'll notice how damn often we find that we're always learning and experiencing something new, and 'who we are' is constantly changing. Everything that you've done in the past used to 'not be you'. And now it is. The question then comes "well what happened in the process of it becoming you, that allowed it to fall into the category of 'You' and not 'Not You'?

 

"That's not me...but if it was, how would I need to be in order to be it?" Once I found the power of this thought, it transformed my life. I could loosely define it as a sort of empathy for someone else, if that someone else was simply the You that you arent right now. It transformed my life because I could now uncover the doorways through which other people were entering into the realm of things that were not me, but they were making them, purposefully. I could then seek out that doorway instead of simply stumbling upon the doorway when life seemed to come together perfectly to show me where the doorway was.

For instance, Rap music...I used to not be into that. I used to not be into it because I felt that all they talked about was "bitches, the club, and money". When I started working out I found a section of it where the artists talk about real fucking problems like what to do when you strive for something and it doesnt come to fruition. What to do when thoughts of self-harm enter your head. What to do when the world seems to shit all over you. These thoughts gave me that dig-deep, that strive-through-suffering feeling that seemed to accompany lifting so well that listening to it has become a permanent staple of my working out. The way in was to find out how it benefited me. This happened by chance. I stumbled into it.

 

Noticing that I can stumble into it logically means that there are other things out there that arent me, that are future me, that I can adopt more quickly if I allow myself to search for them. It's an improvement within the search algorithm.

Now when I listen to other music that doesnt seem to be me, I make use of the knowledge that there is a way in to make this music me. It just doesnt seem to fit with the me now. I think "How would I need to be in order to be it?". I think "What about this do other people like? What about this could I like? Is it the beat? The bass? The melody? The words? The feelings? The personality of the person the lyrics are talking to? The social aspect?" And that's not to say that you will always find a doorway through which you will choose to walk to make that music you. But the key is that you will find the doorway. Whether you walk through it is your choice.

 

How does this relate back to MRP

As I go through OYS and talk to guys through PM and on chat, and sometimes in real life, a common problem I see is that I'll run through an idea and I'll get damn deep in the weeds about what's going on and how we're acting. And when I do, they will immediately reply with how that idea relates to them and what they're thinking right now. It's almost a compulsive need. A drive to respond to that stimulus immediately.

And the mind does a really funny thing when you do this. It thinks that because it responded to the idea, that the implications of the idea no longer hold weight. In a way it says "Whew...we batted that idea away with our own set of models. Onto the next thought."

The problem with that is that the way we learn isnt by taking the models that we have and applying them to life. It's by taking the models we have, applying them to life, and then studying the disconnect between the two. And more important, studying that disconnect over a period of time and allowing new ideas to form rather than trying to force those ideas through the existing models we have now because the existing models we have now are incomplete.

 

There's a necessary discomfort that one has to face wherein one really sits with ideas that they dont understand instead of immediately running them through the models we already have. You HAVE the power within you to purely listen to the input life and this place is giving you in your head before it gets processed through all the junk that sits on top that you (Story 1 above).

That power comes from a separation between who you are and all the models you have right now, and the act of purely listening to that input. You promote that listening by taking your ego and putting it in that box on the shelf and then letting it sit there for awhile (Story 2 above).

As you form the idea within the space in your mind unaffected by what's already there, you can start to see unique connections within it that you dont have in your model, and of which your model would have ripped apart or disregarded in it's own blindsight. From there then, you have the power to seek out the boundaries of this new model, and ask what would need to happen, who would you need to be in order to accept the new model in its whole within yourself (Story 3 above)

 

Many guys on here have read what I've had to write in the past and responded with "That's going to take some time to consider. I'll get back to you when i do." And when they do...from what I've seen...those are the men that I later see actually internalizing the notes we're all passing around.

Many guys on here have also looked at a post like this and thought "Why the fuck are we deep diving into how the mind works? Just act!" And the answer if you understood what I wrote above is that by sitting and watching what the mind does and then asking why it does it, you'll often find it does it because that's all it knows. And a lot of the time what it knows first and foremost is how to protect what it knows. But we dont learn from continually doing what we know. We learn from doing what we dont know. In the same sense, we dont learn by only thinking thoughts we know. We learn by considering thoughts we dont know. And those thoughts we dont know are "How do I need to act, how do I need to think in order to more efficiently get to what I want?"

 

Efficiently: The thing to consider is that thoughts are often associated with inaction (the image of the thinking man comes to mind). And action often associated with putting aside thought (an image of a guy simply pushing aside his approach anxiety and walking up to that woman). But sometimes thinking can be useful to more purposefully guide action.

When then do we know if what we need to do is act or think? If you believe you need to be somewhere other than where you are right now, you need to act. If you instead feel you're in the right place but simply need a better frame to view it, you need to think.

 

Those two ideas are true and seem to be mutually exclusive except that often unwillingness to act is the result of having a mindset that is not driven to act. Changing the mindset allows action. Likewise unwillingness to think is often the result of refusing to consider what your actions are doing for you. Consideration of the action allows for introspection and revision.

Notice I said allows action and allows introspection. You still have to walk through the door. Just like in my example above about finding new music...it doesnt mean I will walk through the door. It simply means I'll be able to more efficiently find it. How do we walk through the door?

 

Grounding

I've done some fucking deep diving into books and discussions with other approved members here and I hope they'll forgive me for putting all our ideas together...but the three ways it seems we use as catalysts to get ourselves to walk through doors is Doubt, Curiosity, and Play.

 

Doubt - I've posted about this before in my post Go out, test, and see who you are. Doubting your current models tears down that belief that "my model is up to the task." It invites a way through lies you may be telling yourself. It invites you to be a student and to look for teachers and mentors. And I think the draw to this place, the locker-room feel and doubt both follow the path of trauma, which is the number one way in which we open ourselves to change.

 

Curiosity - /u/easydayshardnights has commented on a lot of replies deep in OYSs about using curiosity to drive progress. In a way, curiosity is doubt stripped of ego. The "woe is me" is stripped away and we, almost from a logical standpoint, approach the world in such a way as to allow ourselves to re-learn it. It takes the form of a discovery of the new, and a reforming of the old. With new information, we ask "If this is true, then..." and predict new models. Then act to see if our predictions were right.

 

Play - Is a concept /u/oobertas talked about in a conversation with easydays here. The point of play was to remove the dependence on the outcome in an effort to simply explore and take in whatever happens to be present. It's almost a step above curiosity because curiosity still looks to assess an outcome, while play can choose to, or not. Play is more engaging for the sake of engagement.

 

I'd like to stop short of saying play is "best" and doubt is "worst"...because that would be akin to saying "achieving enlightenment means having no ego". (For the noobs, the state of having no ego is different than when we say "kill your ego". What we're saying when we say "kill your ego" is "kill your ego as it is right now"). I think all three are useful tools depending on where you are acting within your whole self.

 

All three of these things though do something that allows you to solidify those new experiences in your head in a process I call grounding. Because simply thinking thoughts or doing actions isnt going to lead you to growth. You've got to be watching when you do them, and then grounding them, using the experiences as anchors within your mind to solidify the experience within you. When a guy gets advice to STFU, and then reports back later a story of his wife throwing him shit and him just walking away, and then her being sweet affectionate in an hour...that's grounding. It links the idea of STFU to "that". What's that? The whole experience. When he thinks "shut the fuck up" now he isnt thinking literally of the words. He's recalling that entire experience from the feelings, how to push through the need to speak, how to walk away, how he felt about that, and the result. All in the snap of a thought.

And this is also why when guys come on here and we tell them to NGAF and they come back the very next post and say "I DGAF now!" it's infuriating because it's blatantly obvious there was no doubt, curiosity, play...there was no action, no thought, no grounding. It's merely parroting back what we said to do. It's hollow as fuck. And we see right through it.

 

Now...if you're still with me. I'd invite you to take a moment, and broaden your thoughts again. Take a deep breath, let the world back in. Look around the room. Consider the breadth of information in your environment. And examine the depth of our thoughts right now.

"Depth"...what does that mean? They're all just thoughts arent they? What makes one thought "deeper"? Its the fact that where we are right now is at a level that's so "deep" as to be unreachable during our normal everyday lives. Its unreachable because where we are right now is a thought that only makes sense when we take a strategic walk through all the layers of our models that build up to it. And the thought is so deep that the limits of our attention in our daily life isnt enough to allow us to keep all this in our heads at once.

 

If that is so then in order to live by the deep thoughts we have right here, we need to figure out a way to summarize the entire sub-model in such a way as to capture the nuance of it all, so that we can reference it in daily life when the world demands our attention. And this is do-able. I do it all the time. And these summaries I can tell you are much more impactful than the summaries one might find at surface level MRP like "acta non verba". That does not mean acta non verba is false. Big emphasis on that. But it is vague and shallow.

Why? Because the words it uses are words that invoke an idea of an easily followable dichotomy. Actions...not words. Do this. Not that. But I'm sure you've seen mentioned in here also a line like "Let her give her gifts freely." This is also a short slogan of words. But the words seem more amorphous. What gifts? Freely how? Give...somehow the thought seems incomplete. And that's because what the words are are not words themselves, but pointers to whole other sets of ideas. (If anyone is not familiar with computer coding, a pointer is a piece of data that stores an address to the actual data. It "points" to it.) The pointers point to these ideas we've spent the time to think out. But we'll find that we're able to operate off the pointers in real life in real time, rather than take the take to distill the information in 10,000 words like we are here.

 

Why did it take 10,000 words to distill these ideas? Because words are shit at communicating ideas. Words are mere approximations of entire sub-models in your head...but because they are so low resolution, they not only cant precisely outline an idea, but they are very easily confused for another idea entirely. And this is the reason whenever I get into long, 3 hour conversations with people about these deep concepts, that we often resort to defining and being very specific about the words we choose to use.

 

In the same way a picture is worth 1000 words, a thought is as well. So then, are we able to use thoughts to reference ideas and guide us where we want to go in real time too? Yes. And they are quite effective at it too.

So much so that a lot of the time when I take the time to meditate and notice things like I talked about above, I will come to a thought. The thought will be composed of ideas and feelings. And I will be able to grab and lock down that feeling as if to say my path to a better future will happen if I "head towards that in life...whatever that is." And in going through life, I'll be able to quickly reference whether what I'm seeing in my behavior, attitude, demeanor...in all my non-verbal aspects, if those things align with that that that I'm heading toward.

 

Quite often, when I'm chatting with easydays or Horns or ubermensch, what I doing is actually trying to convert that thought into words. And when I do, what happens is almost an "ah-ha!" feeling. A feeling that's odd because even though one part of me already knew and internalized the thought, it's as if another part just saw it for the first time.

I could go deeper and explain why this is. But I wont for now. The point is: we can use both words and these ideas composed of thoughts and feelings to guide us, summarize for us, and reference for us.

 

The other thing I'd like to mention is If that is so then I am here to tell you that this investment into thought, meditation, spirituality, the 'whatever-it-is' that you all know me for...that when you see me post you expect my post to have a flair of, that thing is what I've used over the last 2 years in order to deepen my ability to hold onto and attend to these deeper levels of thought in my daily life.

I dont know how exactly doing what I do and thinking what I think allows for it...but it does. The only analogy I can think of is sometimes when I go down in my basement and pick up my drum sticks, and put on a song, I dont think about the song. The sticks just go where they need to go. And i will tell you at times I'm literally watching myself in awe that they are really playing this fucking song correctly. It's a...flow...in which the entirety of my effort is focused, without the actual intent of doing it. (I say flow and laugh because I know once again I've given a nod to easydays...because he's talked about this.)

 

I say this because all this...whatever this is that we just did here...whatever journey we just went on with our thoughts...someone will actually believe is mental masturbation. And while I do believe mental masturbation exists...and the hallmark of it is thinking too much...I want you to consider: Was this it?

And it's okay if your answer is yes. Because it is not wrong to be okay living a life by which the depths of your thoughts are shallower than this and you are getting what you want. ("My model is up to the task"). But if this journey through my words brought out a tiny thought within you that asks "Holy shit...what was that? What did we just do here? Because I feel like it was important and I dont feel that feeling a lot. I feel like I will be able to use this somehow, even if I dont quite know how yet."...if you felt that...then I would hardly call it masturbation.

 

When we think of a guy who just "gets it", we see a guy who's acting. But more so, we see a guy who's action is on point. As if an entire being of a person is aligned in congruence behind it. As if everything he does seems to be backed by a mountain of depth as if it say that he's been through it all, he knows what he's doing with every fiber of his being. It's not a guy who simply acts the right way, but has an entire model behind it, with each node grounded in experiences he's done.

 

So what am I actually telling you to do here? Because it's not a checklist like the 12 steps of dread, or iron rules, or specific actions to take to achieve you goals. When I came out the other side of my MRP journey the first question i had, which I actually sought out the mods and called to ask was: "What the hell was that? What did this place do to me?" Not referencing the transformation from a beta to someone who uses MRP tools, but the process that it used to get me there. What was that? How can I harness it to move forward in the future? Not the tools. The tool to make the tools.

 

That's what this post was all about. How to ground experience in actions catalyzed by doubt, curiosity, and play. With an emphasis on finding a path of efficiency using both the tools of action and feeling out the world. And allowing those thoughts and feelings and experiences to solidify and land in a place in your mind that's free from the models that you've already put together, that your ego furiously defends, so that they have a chance to take hold.

Taoism often speaks of effortless action. See if you can crosscheck your life and assess whether when you do act, if your actions seem more like you trying to force something to happen using the strength biology has given men to push through adversity by default. Or if your actions seem to flow from a place of understanding and if those actions move easily to navigate the landscape of reality like a rudder through water.