Where do you get your energy? Beyond air, food, sleep and basic securities, when do you get pumped up, how do you get on fire?
Accomplishments. It’s when you accomplish something you feel is worthwhile. When you progress toward your goals, you get energy. When you move away from your goals, you are drained.
But you need energy to get stuff done. And when you are energy depleted, it can be hard to even envision getting started on some tasks, much less accomplishing something worthwhile. Even when you are well rested and fed, you can still lack initiative.
That’s when you start small. Accomplish stuff through baby steps. You do one tiny semi-worthwhile step that give you a small drop of energy. You use that drop to do another, fractionally larger step to gain a bit more energy. And so on. As long as you accomplish what you can in the situation you are, you keep gaining energy. Keep the momentum going. And you will get pumped and on fire.
But be attentive. Whenever you feel an energy drain, stop and reconsider. Do something worthwhile instead.
You get to decide what is worthwhile. You get to decide what an accomplishment is. It could be anything from taking a short walk or painting a picture to helping a friend in trouble, earning money or salvaging a country. You decide the direction, you get to feel the effect of your steps – toward your goals or away from them.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Great post, Geir!
What an excellent post. Love it! This is exactly what I needed today and going forward.
I’m glad you found it valuable.
Exactly, Geir! How I have expressed it:
Yup 🙂
I think Mr. Newton said “A body at rest tends to stay at rest.” Also, I think Mr. Hubbard said “The human mind is engaged in the estimation of effort.” I’m retired and enjoy resting. Why do it today if I can do it tomorrow? (joke)
The flip side of the coin is some people are afraid to take it easy once in awhile. It might be called insecurity.
I was going to procrastinate today, but I decided to put it off for another time.
😀
Anything could be an accomplishment – even total relaxation – it’s up to you. Whatever helps in getting you closer to your goals. Simply put: Do that which works, don’t do that which doesn’t work.
For the purposes of the individual, I would define accomplishment simply as: That which gives you a feeling of accomplishment. It may or may not involve recognition, or the estimation of recognition from others, depending on how much you value or feel you need that to legitimize or evaluate your views. 🙂
Agreed. Simple, succinct.
Good points above! I’ve never been good a multi tasking so now I concentrate on single tasking – when and if I feel like it.
(joking again)
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two years looking into and contemplating some philosophical subjects and putting off some of the usual household chores like painting, organizing and moving things around. I’ve gained a pretty good overview of a few subjects so now I can call that an accomplishment and not feel so guilty about it!
It was becoming apparent to me that I might be spending too much time sitting around contemplating sh*t and it was time to take a break from that, so I found the advice in this topic appropriate. I think the Buddhists say when the student is ready the teacher(s) will appear – haha
yeah, let’s shape a form of you !!!
Nice video, Rafael. Interesting and very aesthetic
One of the subjects I delved into was nondualism. In my opinion it reflects a lot of Zen Buddhist thought and elicits a high degree of contemplation.
I watched a video by a nondualism teacher named “Mooji” in which he was reading a letter sent to him by an irate Indian woman. She was griping that ever since an older son became interested in nondualism he hadn’t been contributing to the household. (Basically he was sitting around contemplating stuff – lol)
Mooji thought about it for a bit and then decided that since the woman didn’t say the son was disrupting or damaging the household in any way, the woman herself was being selfish for begrudging the son following his path for awhile.
I doubt that Mooji made friends with parents supporting deadbeat children with that video!
Thanks Richard, and now do you recommend the practice of non dualism?. I Don’t. It is the state of mind of the weaked one, imo. Two or more is best 🙂 :
Hi Rafael – It’s surely a benefit of the internet that musical artists can easily present themselves to the public.
Here are a few opinions. My main reservation about nondualism is that it is possibly just a conditioned state of the mind. As concepts, samadhi and satori have varying interpretations and definitions. Keeping it simple, from http://www.dictionary.com
samadhi, noun, Hinduism, Buddhism. – The highest stage in meditation, in which a person experiences oneness with the universe
satori, noun, Zen. – sudden enlightenment
Also, from “Buddhism – A way of Life and Thought” by Nancy Wilson Ross
“. . . Zen instruction aims to curb the aggressive power of the ego, to make possible, in a revelation beyond the reach of words, a vivid awareness of the universe as an indissoluble unity, a totality of which man is an integral part – but not its arbitrary master!”
I’m guessing that hundreds of millions of humans over time have experienced some aspect of samadhi or satori, either as a random peak or transcendental experience, or by yogic practice.
Once again, just my understanding of it, nondualism suggests “I” is a self assigned identity such as name, age. sex, life history and so on. The nondualism “I” is a timeless observer of existence going by and might be accompanied with feeling of an irrelevance of current embodied self.
As mentioned above, it’s conceptual and beyond the reach of words and some people would consider it nonsense. I might call nondualists single minded rather than weak minded. Everybody wants agreement.
to add: indissoluble – 1. not dissoluble; incapable of being dissolved, decomposed, undone or destroyed. 2. firm or stable. 3. perpetually binding or obligatory.
” it is possibly just a conditioned state of the mind.” This is just my point. This theoretical state is just a concept learned from some old book.
No such thing as samadhi or satori?
My dear Richard, of course that samadhi is real but not as an absolute phenomena, just armonics or grades of it. Almost any culture have reported such experience, mainly assistd by drugs or hypnosis.
Hi Geir, sounds like you are discovering Ben Franklins 13 virtues.
http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/
His autobiography is a great read:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm
I think Ben was Zen like, afterall back in his day he formed a Junto Club, or blog.
It’s the way to happiness, although Ben never achieved his 13 virtues, but he tried, and lived a happy life and said he would do it again
Wilber: “Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don’t they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I’m sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual’s consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It’s at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?”[17]
Jump up ^
A bit of an explanation on the above. I didn’t know how to use clip and paste and at a family gathering this evening someone showed me how to do it. An accomplishment!
The quote is from a Wikipedia entry on Ken Wilber, Integral Theory
Integral theory is Ken Wilber’s attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a “theory of everything” (“the living Totality of matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit”), trying “to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching.” (from wiki)
Wilber has his critics but I enjoy some of his flowery prose – haha