Summary:

Our minds can be trained. How do we do it? Is there a way to "cheat" the system? Or at least make me have an advantage when it comes to how much shit my mind can understand? In this post I'll dive a bit into a theory about how learning works and what can we do to improve it.

Body:

There was post some time ago about testosterone, how it correlates to TRP principles. What fascinated me in particular about the content submited there is a single sentence. "Your body produces as much testosterone as it can take."

This is what testosterone is, a hormone produced that affects both body and mind in levels that can only be managed by someone that is ready to receive that change. To put this simply, it's like lifting. You'd get really strong if you could lift 3 times whatever your bench press record is, but if your body can't handle it, you won't. Same is true for testosterone, you could get really jacked if your balls had a tumor and started producing god's blood by the liters, but if your body can't take it, the detriments will outweigh the gains.

Most notably, the more testosterone that isn't produced naturally from your balls goes to your bloodstream, the less testosterone your body is going to make in the future. This is all basic stuff, what about the title?

At any point in time during your life, you have a million different stimuli being received, processed and made into a mental map of what is happening around you. We can only focus on a very microscopic percentage of it, and not by coincidence,the stimuli our minds choose to focus on is the stimuli it is used to, that is predictable or reliable in some way, or simply the stimuli we can understand. The core of this is that our mental map of the world is formed by previous experiences of similar stimuli.

You should've have connected the dots, experiences directly correlate to how we can understand the world. Not suprisingly, it is not when we succeed at a new experience that our brain changes our mental map of the world or begins to give new value to different stimuli, but when we fail. When our mental map of the world is proven wrong to ourselves, we can't help but have to change it. There are truths we can only understand after we accept what we knew as a lie. There is a relatable example to any of you. The Red Pill.

If you've got this far into this post, you might even be able to guess what comes next. We all had to destroy our beliefs in the blue pill before we could make sense of the red pill. We simply could not admit the red pill to be true before we could accept we were wrong about our previous map of the world. Why is knowledge the testosterone for the mind? Because it improves it? Not just because of that. Because we can only take it when we're ready to receive it.

You can lift, sleep well, eat properly and you'll see your testosterone rising simply because your body will know you can take the testosterone, so what do you need to do the same for the mind?

You can read, sleep well, eat properly, that will doubtlessly do wonders, but there is an advantage here that makes knowledge, while harder to endure, simpler to acquire. Failure. You must go out, do what you think will work to achieve what you want and fail as much as you can while trying your hardest not to, your mind will update your model of the world faster than you can understand. Both your body and mind want inertia, stability, success through the lowest effort possible, both hate change, unreliability and great efforts. But both will obey your will, because they have no choice, you do.

Do it the scientific way. Experiment with all your theories, create hypothesis to those that don't live up to reality, test them again and see what works and figure out why. Here's a step-by-step approach you can try.

1) Go out and cold approach.

2) Test out everything you think is right to the point you failed enough to be convinced something is wrong about what you're doing.

3) Work out the bugs out of the world model you created through repetition, experimentation and reflection.

4) Do it all again.

Alternatively. Change step 2 to:

Test out everything you think is wrong. I.E. act needy, give a fuck, chase, have a weak frame, fail shit tests etc...

Always, and I do mean always put something to the test before you even begin considering adding it to your world view. Just because something conforms to your world view, is something that would be nice if it was true, or because you want it to be true does not mean it is. Reality remains what it is regardless of how you feel about it. If you believe something good is true, where does that belief come from? From experiences, experiments and testing? Or from do you believe it because the world would be a nicer place if it were?

Conclusion:

  • You can only understand something new by being proven wrong

  • You must not believe something because it sounds good or makes sense, only after testing it and seeing if it stands up to reality

  • Failure is the best way to learn faster.

Might edit some things later, I welcome all feedback. If you have something you'd like to see in here, say it below and I'll add it. Any gross grammar mistakes that you want to see gone, just say it. English is not my native language.