Work

How do some go further? How do some grind longer? How can some withstand so much more abuse than you? Do they have IT? Yes and no. That IT isn’t some magical set of genes that allows some to do and some to not. That IT is just a never say die, always push forward attitude. It isn’t a grand motivation but a bunch of little motivation at critical moments.

Pain isn’t remembered. The suck you experienced last workout isn’t something you can remember aside from “it sucked” the actual memory of HOW you felt isn’t something you can accurately recall.

Just like the “good ole days” that you remember so fondly. You know, the days where everything was perfect and you were the cat’s pajamas.

“If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?” –Dogen Zenji

This bit of wisdom illustrates my entire point quite succinctly. Work is the key to success in ANY arena. Work has the same flavor in all things. It is hard, it is thankless, it is repetitive and yet it is the key to happiness. We, as a societal whole have forgotten the value and satisfaction that is directly derived from hard work.

There are a couple of key things that lead us to this delusional state where one believes results come without putting in the time.

One is the instant connection we have with everyone else. We are constantly inundated with the lives of others. With that constant updating comes a subconscious comparison of us to them. A perpetual posturing between you and everyone else. One minute you think, “Ha! I am better in x arena, LOOK AT ME!” and then in an instant you think, “Oh shit! LOOK AT THEM! They are doing y, why am I not doing that?” The fast pace of the modern spin on “Keeping up with the Jones’” does not allow people to process and file their lives. Your brain requires sleep to catalog the information collected from your five senses on a daily basis. If you do not allow yourself to sleep and catalog these experiences, you will die. Before you die, however, you become an incoherent jumble of flesh and bones that is merely here. The other piece of you, we will call it spirit for ease of conversation, needs this same type of rest in order to catalog as well. The problem that most people have is they do not realize that this type of spiritual rest is critical if you want to truly LIVE. Think about what most people do. They wake up in a man-made box with an artificial climate and ingest artificial “food”, get in a man-made box with an artificial climate to transport them to another man-made box with another artificial climate. They spend most of their day there, somewhere in the middle they ingest more artificial “food” then get back in their man-made box with artificial climate to transport them back to their man-made box with artificial climate. There they plug in to an alternate reality in order to pass time before they ingest more artificial “food” likely while they remain plugged in to the alternate reality until it is time to sleep so they can hang on enough to repeat the cycle again. Have you ever stopped to think why your daily shower is the favorite part of your day? Water is REAL. Water isn’t man-made. In a small way you are EXPERIENCING something REAL. Your spirit craves reality. Unplugging from the man-made and being quiet and realizing what you are and where you are is essential. Most people are in that spiritual phase of incoherent jumbling that comes right before spiritual death.

Another reason follows directly from the first. Perspective. In order to see where you are you have to take a step back and see where that is in relation to the other things around you. This, however, takes some work. Remember, work is hard and staying plugged in and unaware is easy. But work is satisfying. Gaining perspective by stepping back and seeing that we are all on different paths with similar features allows you to see that you do not, in fact, need y when x is where you are. Y may be further down your path or a place that you have come from, either way x is your current flavor of reality. Right now is the only time you have with x. If you spend your time with x thinking about y, then you miss the beauty of x. There will be a time when you are at t and when you think about x, you think, “Meh, x wasn’t very memorable.” That is because you did not make it so.

That leads me to the largest point. Ownership. Plugging in to the artificial and shunning the natural reality deprives you of perspective which allows you to play the victim of your own actions. If people were ignorant, which some are, they would not justify their actions. Those who justify not doing things to improve know, even if it is just visceral knowledge, that there is more. Once you start to justify your actions, or lack thereof, you are shifting ownership from yourself to something or someone else. There is no one else that is responsible for your actions other than you. If you are not living up to YOUR maximum potential, it is because you have chosen not to. That choice is yours. The choice to change your habits in order to grow and experience is also yours. YOU have the POWER within you to do and experience whatever you want. There is but one key: work. Work is nothing more than purposeful actions toward a goal.

In order to own your life you must unplug from the artificial in order to gain perspective.

That little motivation at critical moments that is mentioned at the beginning of this is derived from that perspective. Once you see the bigger picture, you have a map. With that map you plot your course. In those critical moments where the work seems unbearable you use that motivation to reach your goal and push forward. You feel that pain, whether it is physical or emotional and you see that it will not kill you. Once you experience that pain and gain the knowledge that pain is temporary. You increase your capacity for it. Next time that same level of pain becomes the norm and you can push through even greater levels of pain. It takes work in order to be able to handle “advanced levels”. If you are at the ground level and you try and push through an “advanced level” more than likely you will not achieve your optimum result as you do not have the foundation needed for success. That can be avoided by centering yourself in the here and now.

To answer the original line of questions now that we have set a foundation. Those who “go further” and “grind longer” do so because they have built the tolerance needed to do so. They started in the same place you are starting, the beginning. There is nowhere else to start. There is no magic key to attaining your goals. It just takes work.

The first step is unplugging, that is easier said than done but if you are seeking an article such as this you have already begun. The rest is up to you…