Fundamentals?
The greatest warriors are not those who fight just once, but those who return to the fight repeatedly when no one else is willing or able, they are the ones who fight the last fight not just the first one. They do so by returning to the fundamentals, they bring their full energy and resources to any and every moment without fail, when they lose, they lose by the numbers and mitigate the harm, they do not run, they withdraw in good order. Whilst our daily lives might not require such heroics, they do need the same stoic stamina to turn up and put in your best performance every day. As such it is worth spending time on your resting stance, being ready to be graceful, at ease and operate from a place of joy and love, to respond with deliberate action rather than unthoughtful reactions.
This requires practice, and the best time to do so is when your world is peaceful and calm. That is when you decide what your right actions and right mind should be, before they are tested by the real world and its sharp edges. And when dealing with the real world, it is best to keep things simple, so return to your fighting stance to take on the world, breathe through your nose and feel your diaphragm move your whole stomach naturally, loosen any tension and fill up your space, then remember to focus on your triple Alpha response of acceptance, awareness and action. The breath resets both your body and mind, which are of course two component parts of the same thing, they are interconnected and inseparable, and breathing returns you to your default setting of neutral emotions as does loosing the tension that you are carrying, which then allows you to see what is in front of you without the filters of anger or fear. It gives your mind space in which to accept what is happening in this moment without expectation or your usual habits of reaction, then you are able to be aware of more information, you are able to empathise with others in real-time instead of with hindsight, which then allows you to act positively to achieve your goal in that moment rather than reacting blindly and purely from your own perspective.
And whilst this sounds simple and straightforward, though it is simply not how most people act, the most common habit is to just react, to follow your usual habits, responses and your normal narrative. We have stories about who we are, the kind of person we are and what we do, though they are just stories and they can be changed by the actions we choose to take, and the most powerful action to change who you are, is the action you are taking now in the present moment. Just by reading this article you are choosing to be someone who is mindful of their actions, who examines their life situation and choices, and not to blow smoke up any personal spaces, even quite small steps towards personal growth puts you ahead of the vast majority of people who are just treading water, who are only surviving, working all hours and never getting ahead. Do not feel bad about privilege, only about wasting it, if you have any small advantage ride it for everything it's worth, you do not get good participation prizes in life, you get what you want or you do not, depending on whether you act to get them.
That is why you want to keep on returning to the fundamentals, resetting your stance with a breath and then face the world with your triple Alpha of acceptance, awareness and action. Small advantages occur all the time, it is only by being aware of them that we can take the advantage of them by action. If we are lost in regrets or failed expectations, if we are not paying attention to the present by not accepting things as they are, when we spread our awareness away from the moment, we literally get lost in thoughts, possible futures and memories, and put all our awareness into those rather than what is actually happening. Without the first two, right action is impossible, you need situational awareness to be able to act appropriately, any other action is just habit and reaction, and the right mind to be able to undertake right action, is only available to minds that are in the present moment with their full resources and energy. Half a mind, a mind that is multitasking, that is dividing its thinking about the future and past, worried about what is fair or what other people think, rather than firmly on the present, is not just half as good it is exponentially worse than even a random response.
Our minds can only be incredible on a single task at a time, please do experiment that with this in your real life as you are only going to believe this to be true if you experience it as being true. Even activities that seem to go together like listening to music and reading a book, when you separate them into single activities are made so much richer by having a single, undisturbed focus on them. In past history, things were simpler, we only had one thing at a time, when we were gatherers who hunted, we naturally focused on that as our sole occupation, distractions, a lack of focus meant death, and there was not even social media, we had a single mission and it is something that does not occur naturally in our modern societies. These days we have to choose to make the space both literally and metaphorically. We have to create the conditions for flow and high quality activities, which mirrors how we hunted, we have to create the opportunity for ourselves to enjoy losing our sense of self and engage wholly in a single task and the hunt.
And the triple Alpha of acceptance, awareness and action repeatedly returns us to a primed state for these activities to occur. Acceptance and awareness is the hunters stance, a stalking pose and a way of moving through life, it opens you up to what is happening in your environment around you, you trust your experience and competence, but you are open to the unexpected and novel, and it allows you to use your judgement to guide your action. By returning repeatedly to this stance, you are building a truly effective habit that is powerful because it is in alignment with your nature, and gives you the most flexibility to adapt and take right action. It's very simplicity is why it works, it engages your senses and disengages you from your internal world, it moves you into a state of being in the world which is always the most effective place to take action from. Rather than fighting the invisible windmills of our minds and imagination, there is enough in the real world to worry about, that needs our effective action without creating our own Demons. Bring the whole of your energy and resources to the real problems both in your life and society, by taking your fighting stance and being ready to fight for the world you want.
