Chasing Hard 101

Thank You...

for being here. I hope I can do justice to the time you will be investing on this page.

Introduction

I sometimes think a lot about the hard things that people do. How is it that some people can do things that scare me so much?

How is it that somebody is able to get into a ring and take blows and still stand up to the beating over and over again? How is it that somebody runs into battle knowing fully well the outcome might be death? How is it that somebody is able to face a bully even though, rationally speaking, he should just walk away? How is it that a small group of activists are able to bring down mammoths?

I think that if we look around, we can find countless examples of individuals doing things that seem hard, and yet, they are just as human as we are. They weren't born with "special" powers/gifts. And even more fascinating than "How?" is "Why?"

Being Born

Let us try to think about infants, when we are that young, everything is hard. Imagine a newborn, he is so fragile that we have to hold his neck while picking up. He has limited mobility, cannot even control his fingers, arms, and legs coherently. He has such giant people moving around, doing funny things. He has no way of getting food and the only tool he is forced to use is crying to get the attention of his caretaker. He has no language to express himself. He cannot even clean himself.

Gradually, he learns to move his arms and legs, developing increasing control. Slowly, he learns to smile back when he is happy. Slowly, he learns to turn and then sit. Then comes attempts at crawling. Trying to stand up again takes months and he keeps falling over and over again.

Just imagine, if an adult loses all his motor abilities, his muscle strength, and is reduced to the state of an infant again. I think the mere thought alone would scare most of us to our core. And yet, a child goes through so much and never gives up. Does he "Quit" because he cannot do what everybody around him seems to be able to do so easily? No. When you are that small, your instincts push you. You are not using your rational brain, you don't yet have the "Governor" that stops most adults from trying, you are just doing what nature is urging you to do. You are "Learning" exponentially, the rate of learning is possibly the highest in those years.

One more thing, I don't think infants associate all these activities which are "hard" from outside with fear. They just keep doing it. It is always so fascinating to me to witness this. If we take a step back from being "busy" and just observe an infant, there is so much to learn from a little lump of flesh that smiles after every fall and can melt your heart in an instant.

The Monkey Mind (MM)

I have dealt with the Monkey Mind a little bit in my early posts. I think the "Monkey Mind" is like a Governor, it is a mechanism trying to protect us in every situation. It has evolved to provide immediate reactions to take us away from danger and ensure our survival. All this is fine for physiological dangers but most of us are no longer in danger of being eaten by a saber-tooth tiger anymore. The psychological impact of the Monkey Mind requires more investigation. I think it hates the unfamiliar. Anything that it hasn't dealt with before is a "No Go". The MM will come up with such elaborate threat analysis reports that you'll be paralyzed and it'll always play the "worst-case" scenario over and over again.

If you become a slave of the MM, it'll convince you that anything new, anything even slightly outside of your comfort zone, is "Impossible". Not Hard but Impossible.

Coming back to the infant we met earlier in the post, imagine, he had a MM that'd scream at it every time it tried to stand up "You keep falling, again and again, this is not just pathetic, it is damn dangerous. You will break your leg, you'll break your neck, sit down and cry, you'll get whatever you need."

My apologies for trying to sound so dramatic but seriously, just think about what would happen to an infant if he loses the instinct to "push".

Grown Ups

Having met our younger self, the undefeatable warrior, let us now take a look at us "grown-ups". We now have reasonable motor control, we can sit up, stand up, move around, grab things, feed ourselves, even have arguments. Everything that an infant struggles with is taken for granted. All of these powers were developed as a reward for listening to our instincts when we were infants.

We are reasonably independent, we now have conscious brains which helps us analyze things. Process things. Make choices. Get things done. All of which is great but what we often forget is that we now have a MM that is fully developed and is still trying to keep us "safe". It is running in the background, engaging the "fear response" at will anytime we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory.

• "Don't quit your job, the market is really bad, how will you pay your bills?"
• "Don't stand up to your boss, you'll get fired."
• "Don't run so much, you'll hurt your knee."
• "Don't write online, everybody will judge your English, laugh behind your back, you are not a writer."
• "Don't talk to that girl, look at how much attention she is getting."
• "Don't call up your mentor to ask stupid questions, what will he think?"
• "That guy is a millionaire, do you think he'll have the time to take your call?"

Another important function of the MM is to conserve energy:

• "Don't go to the gym, take it easy today"
• "Stay in bed a little longer (I really don't want you to go out running in the cold again)."
• "Have the tasty, fatty snack, why bother with bland salads"
• "Why bother with Fasting, just fill your face with food 24x7"
• "Why read that book which is forcing you to think, just turn on Netflix and entertain yourself."

Concluding Thoughts

The whole point of this post is to realize that we all go from being "incredibly driven" as children to becoming slaves of the Monkey Mind. Yet, if we did not do what was hard for us as children. If we somehow had the ability to rationalize back then, we would never have grown into functioning human beings. Looking back now, it was probably hard for everybody to be so helpless and paralyzed but I doubt we felt that way then. In fact, I read somewhere that we lose the ability to remember our early childhood, the struggles. I think it is called infantile amnesia. Anyways, sorry I digressed.

All this is so fascinating for me because I have realized that although the MM can be really useful if I start listening to it exclusively, pretty soon, I'll be reduced to a lump of flesh with no "Life". Eat, drink, sleep, survive. Waiting to be reduced to fertile soil once again.

In the following posts, I'll try to share my experiences (so far) of consciously challenging the MM to the point where I am increasingly learning how to use the "fear response" as a signal to get excited instead of letting it paralyze me with anxiety. I am realizing that "Life" has so much to give if only we can learn to negotiate with the MM just a little bit every day.

As always, do share your comments and feedback. If you have some suggestions that you can share with the readers, that would be much appreciated so please don't hold back.

Read Next >>

I hope I could do justice to the time you have just invested. If you wish to explore more, I have linked the next article below for easy reference:

• Chasing Hard: Experiments

Footnotes

• Start Here
• Monkey Mind
• Infantile Amnesia