Archive for the ‘Exercising the Will’ Category

Funny image, to be honest I don’t even understand the message but for some reason I think its cool.

There were a few days I missed on this one, but most every day I carried this experiment out.

Part of me didn’t even want to record this experiment because I feel like I lost passion with it, but I cannot NOT finish what I start, so I’m going to at least throw up the details of what happened and go into a brief synopsis at the end. There’s a lot of very random “why would I do that”-type stuff in here, but hey thats what this experiment was about – being able to spontaneously act on something I set my mind to – even if I can’t rationally justify it.

Anyway, here’s a log of

‘Exercising the Will’ :

Day 1 -

I decided to eat nothing from 12:00 pm to 9:15 pm. I realized that once I realized that food wasn’t a possibility my mind let it go. If I didn’t set a firm line that I absolutely wouldn’t eat until a certain time, then I probably would have felt more hungry because my mind would have been able to consider food.

Its a good thing that the thought on not being able to eat didn’t run through my head. It was cut off with the possibility of food. Makes me realize (as I realized when I was cutting weight to compete in the Pan Ams in 2009) that thoughts of food – no matter what kind of thoughts – seem to result in a sensations of hunger.

Day 2 -

I had 4 hours to drive down to NY to train at a premier Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy. I decided to spend an entire hour with no music and no phone, focusing on nothing except what was in front of me – my immediate sensations.

This meditation exercise wasn’t easy, as my mind quickly channelled itself to mental dialogue which it deemed to be productive. I consciously shut all of this down and aimed to focus on the lights on the cars at night, the dark landscape, and my own breathing. There were a few times where I would see an electrical tower or series of trees and I was able to consider them beautiful. Genuinely focusing 100% on my senses brought me to notice those little scenes that just had something mystical and pretty about them.

Day 3 -

I didn’t think of a will exercise all day, and then while in the shower after a long day of training I decided to stand under the coldest water possible for 30 seconds. Its something I’ve always disliked massively, and going from super hot water to super cold water was a shock, it was actually a little hard to breath for a bit because my chest and intercostals locked up on me when I turned on the cold water.

Day 4 -

After going out and hanging with a friend at my house until about 2:30am, I decided to jog around my neighborhood. In the dead of night. In the freezing cold. Over a mile. Backwards! Haha if anyone was up they would certainly have thought I was nuts. I liked this one – this was something I definitely didn’t want to do but when the idea popped into my mind I thought “Time to exercise the will” and just committed to do it.

Day 5 -

I wake up and its freezing rain outside. I have a business meeting in 40-something minutes away. You know what I don’t feel like doing? Feeling that icey rain. So I decide to take the entire drive with one hand out of the car. Man it was frigid, I had to bring my hand in a few times to make sure there was still blood flow and to prevent some kind of frost bite.

Then on my way home I thought about cleaning my bathroom, and how I didn’t want to do it – it wasn’t necessary. I realized, however, that I had missed a day of this experiment and that I would exercise my will and clean the whole thing spotless as soon as I got home – so I did. Sure didn’t “feel” like it, but it was cool to do.

Day 6 -

Before hoping into the shower I realize that I haven’t worked my exercise of the will, and the first thing that pops in to my head is a headstand so I randomly just go into a headstand for as long as I could stand it.

Day 7 -

I have a cool party coming up in a bit, and I definitely want to make it a fun event. It dawns on me that I should invite some people. Some random girl walks by on campus and she’s pretty cute. I introduce myself and tell her about the party and how I thought she was cute and wanted to invite her. We talk briefly and get some laughs in. I get the phone number and I’m off.

Day 8 -

Believe it or not I was afraid of the dark for a long time – even into early adulthood. Could have been all those scary movies as a kid – I use to love horror. On this night I walked around my house in the 100% pitch black – basically going by feel. I even went into my basement and explored it – basically like a blind person would.

Day 9 -

After a hard night of training I am filling up my tank at the gas station but decide to do it in sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt. Its 9:30pm and its well below freezing. I basically aimed to allow the cold sensation to pass through – to take my mind off of it and appreciate my surroundings.

Day 10 -

I wake up and start reading some sport psychology – then I decide that until I’m done with this chapter I will not take my eyes off the book. It was a fun challenge because the chapter took me 2 hours (I take a lot of notes). I was fiending for breakfast after that.

____________

Thoughts :

I had fun with this experiment. I think that just acting because we want to act is a capacity we could all use to develop. There are so many times when “I don’t feel like it” has held me back – and I want to be able to take my best action regardless. That’s why I developed this experiment – to cultivate the ability to act without having to justify it with reason – because reason is often clouded by rationalization and bogus fears.

Part of me thought the experiment was silliness. And it was. Pat of me just though “why don’t you just do what you really think is best instead of doing all these random things for the sake of ‘developing the capacity.’ Why not develop the capacity in everyday life by taking right action on your own terms?” AKA: why not just do homework when I know its best to do homework, and study when its best to study, and talk to new people when its best, etc… and develop it genuinely like that.

I like that approach too, and thats definitely something I do on a daily basis, but I think having an experiment like this is cool too. Its weird how something silly and pointless like jogging backwards around the neighborhood can actually seem fulfilling when you make it a challenge to yourself – when you make it part of a meaningful project. It actually does give that feel of “damn, I can do that… I can do whatever I tell myself to do.” It does feel like flexing the muscles of the will.

Its not that I want to be able to be the guy that jogs backwards at 3 in the morning or does headstands until his skull hurts – but damn, I definitely want to be able to be the guy who can just ACT and doesn’t need to sit and calculate and get caught up in rationalizing “reasoning.”

It has been quite some time since my last post here on LE. I’ve been traveling to compete, teach seminars, and train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I’ve been writing performance psychology seminars for local sports teams, I’ve been applying to graduate schools (UPenn’s program for positive psychology is totally for me), and I have managed to keep and active social life.

Recently, however, I’ve decided to get into another bout of tinkering with human potential, and what better way to manage progress and ensure follow-through than to post it up on this site?

The Gist

Here’s what’s going on with this particular experiment:

Each day I’m going to make some challenging decision to either Do Something or Not Do Something, and either way I will follow through ruthlessly. For instance, today I’ve decided to not eat until after I’m done teaching grappling class after 9:00pm tonight. Tomorrow I might randomly drop and do 50 pushups while hopping in circles, or I might commit to only getting 3 hours of sleep.

Why would I ever want to challenge myself do following through on at least one random, out-of-the-blue thing that I determine for no reason?

To develop my will.

To develop my efficacy in my decisions ruling over my actions.

Think about it like this: When you tell yourself you’ll follow through on something, and you don’t follow through, you will usually come up with some rational construct as to why you didn’t follow through on your intentions. What I am doing is basically recognizing that I have no reason for doing an action other than demonstrating my will.

I am acting for the sake of developing the ability to act. Period.

My mind will say “Wait, don’t take this difficult action, there is no reason to do it!” and I will act anyway, developing my capacity to blow through any kind of hinderance to my intention.

My actions will not be random simple actions, they will be challenging and/or uncomfortable, such as talking to strangers, karaoke, limiting my sleep or food, limiting my phone use, etc… I do this because it is “uncomfortable” actions that my mind will be quickest to resist, and I’ve determined that “uncomfortable” is not a criterion for my mind to NOT follow through on my intentions.

But… why?

I think about it this way:

Often times when we set challenges for ourselves that are uncomfortable or unusual our mind will bring up enough rationalization to prevent us from following through.

Often times, this is because our present mind state (flooded with fear or with discomfort) is inferior to our mind state when we made the commitment to change or act (presumably, this was a state unfettered by silly fears and doubt, a state connected to our bold intentions).

If one is able to turn off fears and doubts as much as possible by placing action on following through in and of itself, one may be able to develop a will that is more and more powerful at directly effecting behavior - as opposed to a weak will.

That’s the theory anyway!

Getting Started

So today is day 1, the challenge came to me as I unwrapped a delicious granola bar. I thought “Hey, I want to eat this so bad, how about I don’t eat anything until way later tonight?” Hurray, something uncomfortable – something to push through and develop the will.

We’ll see how it works out, there will be at least another 2 weeks worth of these posts coming.

Disclaimer

I’m not a cognitive behavioral therapist, and frankly this experiment might not develop the kind of inner efficacy and strength of mental fortitude that I’d hope for it to develop, but either way I’m pushing forward into it, leaning into my edge, and I know for a fact that I will draw something valuable from it.

Until next time…