Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

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white belt
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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by white belt »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:11 pm
Testosterone. Get some. Years of losing almost definitely reduced T levels. Seek to increase it. It's probably (?) impossible to have too much endogenous T. @Kriegsspiel
It is absolutely possible to have too much endogenous T (at least if you want to be a functioning member of society), it's just if you're on these forums then I'm going to hazard that you are not one of those people. High T results in higher aggression, impulsivity, libido, etc. If you're lucky enough to have family/financial resources, that might just mean you play contact sports in high school/college and get in bar fights every weekend, frequently getting bailed out of trouble by family members. If you're from a lower socioeconomic background and are lucky enough to have a mentor at a young age, you may be able to channel that dynamic into competitive sports (e.g. Mike Tyson) or similar activities. If you are not that lucky then you are probably in and out of the prison system for violent crime.

Each person is going to have a natural range of T levels which is in a large part influenced by genetics. The basic advice to boost T like get good sleep, have sex, eat enough protein, do resistance training, and ensure adequate micronutrients will make a small difference.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Axel Heyst wrote:I'm quite happy to define "winning" as "seeing things in the real world looking like I imagined them", whether that means "I cross the finish line FIRST MFER CHYEAH" or "I'm on a nature path on a crisp spring morning and the dappled light shimmering off the grass brings tears to my eyes while I feel the warmth of my partners hand in mine".
LOL. I ended up with the Law of Attractions Journal in a White Elephant holiday exchange. I think there is something to be said for activating a more "feminine" or "sensory/emotional" approach to "winning." Not so much because "if you visualize it hard enough, it will come to you", but because if you don't do this at all, your victories will tend to be hollow and short-lived. So, I was going to make a vision board to go along with my 2022 goals spreadsheet, but I got distracted by my "sexy men over 60" image search and my weak desire to order one of everything in the New This Year category from the Whole Seed Catalogue.

Another problem I have is made evident by the fact that when I was reading aloud some of the questions from the Law of Attractions Journal, and I got to "Who will hold me accountable?", one of my smart-alec sisters who knows me too well immediately responded "Nobody." There's a word for a sense of agency taken a bit too far and that word is "willfulness": a stubborn persistence in doing what one wishes. I think it results from a lack of supervision in childhood.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by AxelHeyst »

@wb, well, point somewhat taken, I just meant there's not a biological level of "too much T" unless you've got a real health issue and are an outlier. Sociocultural environment definitely can take high T and wreak havoc. In other words, there's no natural amount of T that *by itself* is going to make you go off the rails if you weren't already pointed over the cliff. I'm just basing this off all the people I know who have way above endogenous levels of T in their system at most points in the year and continue to function mostly fine. Anyways the main point I was making is that if you suspect your T is low, "boosting" it with healthy lifestyle practices and diet isn't going to cause you any problems because the impact is as you say not large.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Scott 2 »

I saw this in Axel's journal and hesitated to comment. I don't have the answer. I might be a perfect example for loss of desire. But, the question carries implicit assumptions about achievement as an end. I've drifted away from them with age.

Maybe it's ok to just be? Let life happen today and see what is tomorrow. You are already a whole and complete person. Your lived experience is valid. The course you are on is sufficient. There's no need to strive for change. The person you are today is fully deserving of love and acceptance. If desire emerges, good. If not, also good.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by AxelHeyst »

I think it’s perfectly fine to just be.

But let me put it this way, as a hypothetical scenario:
I want to just be. But I’m not okay with just being. I used to be into concrete achievement, but became disillusioned with it, and let it fade. Now… I’m unhappy. My days are filled with ennui. Everything is grey, in a bad way. I desire to have a graceful relationship with just being, with non-striving, but at the moment I don’t.

^what that person is saying, is that they desire for their reality to be something different than it currently is. Should they be encouraged to get over it? To accept perma-ennui? Or should they be encouraged to do the work necessary to achieve that state of release of achievement?

I’m pretty orange, so I frame it as achieving non-achievement. Which, perhaps, is doing it wrong. You could frame it as peacefully releasing all attachment. Same same. The paradox that achieving the release of ambition requires… ambition to release ambition. Otherwise you’ll always have it. The point is that the point of this thread isn’t to become a hustler. It’s to rebuild a healthy relationship with desire, however that is defined and whatever that looks like for the individual.

Edit: I see that I didn’t (don’t?) really grok what you’re saying, Scott, and my response wasn’t really aligned with what you were saying. I think your points are worth much reflection. And, for anyone like me who feels that their natural desire, grit, and toughness did not naturally subside but was instead beaten out of them by a dysfunctional system Lovecraftian in its cold indifference to the dreams and struggles of mortals, and want to reclaim their desire and don’t-quit for themselves, for their own aims and purposes, and possibly for service to purposes higher than themselves, this is a discussion for sussing out techniques, strategies, and principles for doing so.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by boomly »

This works for me.

I kick back, relax and intend to do nothing forever. I explicitly don't daydream about the future, or mull over how the world might need to change. Everything is perfect and fine, nothing needs to be changed, and laying here completely relaxing until the end of time is the best thing to do.

Depending on how mentally exhausted I am, sometimes it takes just a couple minutes, sometimes an hour. But, I suddenly start having an interest in pursuing all manner of activities. Projects I was sick and tired of just an hour previous seem like exciting ways to spend time.

I'm not sure what's going on neurologically, but I suspect I'm triggering something homologous to a bipolar manic episode.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Ego »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:52 pm
I think it’s perfectly fine to just be.
I don't.

I think it is perfectly fine to view reality as it is and to accept those things we cannot change. Just being in the moment is wonderful, momentarily. Just being in the moment is a disaster if done permanently.

For a good thing to actually happen we must:

1. Want it (Desire)
2. Know HOW to get it (Skill)
3. Actually execute (Courage)

Just being is not conducive to all three.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by ducknald_don »

4. Realise it might not arrive anyway

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Ego:

Is that how a flower attracts a bee?

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Ego
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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Ego »

Maybe it plays a role in how the bee makes the honey. Which reminds me of one of my favorite sayings. Bees don't waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than shit

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego wrote: Bees don't waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than shit
Shit might be nutritionally superior. Depends. I'm sure that you would agree that one man's trash is another man's treasure. What's better, the dank chaos of the marsh left untouched, or the rigid glory of the megamansion subdivision that takes its place after a human with a belly full of EXECUTION exerts his will?

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Scott 2 »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:52 pm
want to reclaim their desire and don’t-quit for themselves, for their own aims and purposes, and possibly for service to purposes higher than themselves,
Isn't finding a want like this the hard part? It's what I might expect to emerge from a space to simply exist.

To some extent - my response is specific to you as an individual. You speed ran the ERE knowledge domain, are burning new territory and investing in the community. Balancing that fervor with an opposing force is constructive. Give your brain the space to process. Loss of desire can be symptomatic of over extension - heading into or from burnout. Good stress is still stress. It accumulates.

Yoga practice beat this in to me. I started with a must win, 100% determination attitude. At one point, I tried so hard that my jaw locked up for days. I had trouble eating. Teachers (and my wife) were like "hey, maybe try going at 75%, see what happens." Of course I ignored them and doubled down. Once injuries made 75% my only option, I relented. You know what? It works a lot better.

There's a sutra that gets rolled out all the time - Sthira Sukham Asanam. Essentially - in posture find steadiness and ease. I find it a useful mental anchor.

AxelHeyst wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:52 pm
this is a discussion for sussing out techniques, strategies, and principles for doing so.
Are you looking for people's experience in adopting change strategies? IE - 7 habits, atomic habits, getting things done, etc.?

Alternatively, is it possible to point out where in the model below you are trying to play? Is it going from contemplation to determination?

https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Mod ... ries6.html

Image

Moving from pre-contemplation to contemplation has always been my challenge, so my response naturally went there.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by AxelHeyst »

--

A model that might be useful?
I'm just going to use the word "grit" here as a blanket term for don't-quit and desire to win.
  • Probably all humans have some level of Natural Baseline Grit, that is established by some young age (9? 12? birth?). This is the level of Grit that, for the rest of their lives, they either have or want to have. If their grittiness falls below this level, they'll feel grey. If their grittiness rises far enough above this level, they may feel uncomfortable with how aggressive they are (??).
  • There might be some natural rate of grit decay over time (possibly related to changing hormone levels?), which might be a constant or might be subject to change via will. In other words, if you take specific actions to halt grit decay, your grit decay rate might be 0.
  • Every human might have a Grit Ceiling, a level of Grit that it's probably not possible for them to achieve.
  • There probably will be a continual evolution of conception of what grit and desire to 'win' is over one's life, depending on how thoroughly they pursue inner work. At 16, their grit and desire to win might be dominant in their relationship to competitive sports. In their 20's, career hustling. In their 30's, it might present as their dedication to building a good, secure home environment for their families. In their 50's, it might present as a drive to spiritual work and self-transcendence. The order of these could be all different for different people, just trying to think through ways it could "present" at different levels of depth or ego development. I'm hypothesizing here that just because one's idea of what winning or grittiness consists of changes through time, doesn't mean that they are necessarily losing grittiness. It's two different things: one's definition and depth of understanding of desire, winning, grit, and one's amount of grit.
  • After the Natural Baseline Grit (NBG) level is set, any changes to Actual Current Grit are due to environmental effects and Natural Grit Decay (which may be 0). If you experience an upwards spiral of confidence via a series of wins, your grittiness might increase. If you experience a deep enough downwards spiral of confidence via losses and/or random consequences of actions, your grittiness might decrease.
  • Because the NBG is another way of saying "how much you want to want", your Dissatisfaction with Actual Current Grit is going to be a function of (NBG-ACG)=Delta_grit.
  • There might be some level of Grit that, if you fall below it, you experience permanent/irreversible damage: your Grit Ceiling drops. If your Grit Ceiling drops below your Natural Baseline Grit... that's a really big bummer, because you'll continue to *want* to have that level of grit, but be unable to re-attain it. This is the red-alert danger zone of burnout, where if you're getting close to damaging your Grit Ceiling, just about any course of action to stop the downwards spiral is worth taking. (Nine more months to FI? Doesn't matter, quit now, or commit to hardcore slacking - do whatever you have to do.)
Implications of this model: the things that are in your control wrt Grit essentially come down to intentional environmental design. Avoid downward confidence spirals at all costs. Seek out upwards confidence spirals. If you're getting close to deep burnout, run. Use your sense of self-understanding to diagnose your delta_grit, and take appropriate action.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by AxelHeyst »

Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:51 am
Isn't finding a want like this [the want to increase desire] the hard part? It's what I might expect to emerge from a space to simply exist.
Ahhh.... I've been conceptualizing this exercise as for people who posses that 'want' to increase desire. I wasn't sure I had anything to say to people who don't want to increase their desire - I'm not trying to tell anyone who currently doesn't want to increase desire that they should. Maybe they should - but I don't know. I expect a space to simply exist is a great place for that want to emerge. But then.... isn't that advice for people who want to increase the desire to increase desire? How many levels up are we going here?
Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:51 am
To some extent - my response is specific to you as an individual. You speed ran the ERE knowledge domain, are burning new territory and investing in the community. Balancing that fervor with an opposing force is constructive. Give your brain the space to process. Loss of desire can be symptomatic of over extension - heading into or from burnout. Good stress is still stress. It accumulates.

Yoga practice beat this in to me. I started with a must win, 100% determination attitude. At one point, I tried so hard that my jaw locked up for days. I had trouble eating. Teachers (and my wife) were like "hey, maybe try going at 75%, see what happens." Of course I ignored them and doubled down. Once injuries made 75% my only option, I relented. You know what? It works a lot better.
I think I have a similar-shaped story. GROW, DAMMIT has always been my MO. My short work with yoga practice (among other things) helped me see how much of a knot I was trying myself in. But... I think this is what I'm saying about how one's grit and desire to win evolves and matures over time. When I was younger, I thought that tensing every single fiber of every muscle in my body, letting out a viking war bellow, and hurling myself at whatever obstacle I set my mind to, was the proper way to approach every endeavor. With time, experience, and yoga, I've learned that it's often much more effective and non-damaging to work from a place of steadiness and ease. I "win" more now because I've throttled back, just as you say. I don't think of that as a lessening of desire to win, I just suck less at it now. (or, I'm more efficient at winning now in terms of energy expended/win.)

This thread isn't about how to redline our mind-body-soul-entities, how to scream GROW DAMMIT even louder, it's about how to find the most appropriate use of our desires, inclinations, grittiness, et cetera - and in particular it's about how to repair damage done by dysfunctional environmental factors to our natural levels of desire/grit.
Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:51 am
Are you looking for people's experience in adopting change strategies? IE - 7 habits, atomic habits, getting things done, etc.?

Alternatively, is it possible to point out where in the model below you are trying to play? Is it going from contemplation to determination?
This is really interesting... thanks for this. I think I'm more going from determination to action, but also I find my natural grittiness showing signs of blossoming without intentional action simply because I've removed myself from the negative environmental factors that had depressed it. So, to point out the noted limitation of that model, "The model assumes that individuals make coherent and logical plans in their decision-making process when this is not always true."

It's like every once in a while I'll accidentally exhibit some gritty behavior, and then psychologically *wince* because I'm expecting (due to training) to get smacked in the face like usual.... and then I don't get smacked in the face... and then I go oh, neat, maybe next time I'll do more even, that'd feel good, and I'll wince less next time. Only recently have I noticed this dynamic, and it occurred to me that I might be able to take some intentional actions now to help the process along. I want these mental whips and chains the fuck off.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by jacob »

viewtopic.php?p=253515#p253515

Some comments to the effect that there may come a point where grit has maxed out in terms of what grit can do and so it's naturally/rationally shut down. This is perhaps why gurus all seem to converge on being present-oriented (as opposed to future- or past-oriented) and adopting a like Fe-based attitude of the present being a "perfect" [Ni] pattern. This is highly turquoise and I suspect unitive turquoise reflects some typology pattern that's very strong on Se, F(both), and Ni. For INTJs that's a case of the reach exceeding their grasp.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Perhaps actions become less ego driven and more ritualistic; manifest the garden I’ve designed vs. plant something every day?

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Scott 2 »

When you try, you are going to get smacked in the face. Building a constructive response to failure is the hard part. A resilience vs. anti-fragile distinction seems worthwhile here.

- Resilience - Optimize environmental factors. Minimize when bad stuff happens. Have a robust process. Traditional success literature.

- Anti-fragile - Make small check-ins and frequent failure normal. Keep slack in the system to absorb those disruptions. Use the face smack as an opportunity to learn from another perspective. IMO this is the sustainable source of grit - self perpetuating. Taleb, systems thinking, etc.

Atomic habits stood out to me in how well the author addresses anti-fragile behaviors.


I retired due to burnout from a dysfunctional organization. With time - I gradually re-framed it as a dysfunctional relationship. I was complicit. My personal priorities conflicted with the broader organizational priorities. As a result of factors I didn't see or value, my attempts at change often met resistance. Even worse, my enthusiasm for objectively superior ideas could come across as condescending or arrogant. Never my intention, but when people don't feel seen as individuals, they respond in kind.

Recognizing this made it far easier for me to forgive - both myself for failing and the organization for failing me. Letting that go was helpful in recovering from burnout. That is when I began to rekindle my baseline level of grit (as you've defined it).


I am still incredibly cautious around the idea of high grit as an end, or even the means to an end. It's effective, no doubt.

But do I want to live that way? Will it cause me to miss essential elements of life, because I'm too focused on maximizing every moment? Will it preclude relationships with people who could vastly broaden my perspective, because I'm insufferable? Will clinging to control close off deep experiences already on offer, from those already in my life?

Retirement opened my eyes to such mistakes in my past. It's part of why I raise my hesitance.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by George the original one »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:20 pm
I think there is something to be said for activating a more "feminine" or "sensory/emotional" approach to "winning."
When it came to instructing/coaching women in racing, I realized a change of wording was needed. Telling a man they can be more aggressive works well because men automatically translate the instruction into reality... telling a woman to be more aggressive got a head nod, but no change in behavior. Eventually I changed my instruction for most students to "show more passion" and women automatically began translating the instruction into reality. Men are not quite as quick on the uptake about passion, but they get there.

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by Jupiter »

Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:10 pm
I retired due to burnout from a dysfunctional organization. With time - I gradually re-framed it as a dysfunctional relationship. I was complicit. [...]
Recognizing this made it far easier for me to forgive - both myself for failing and the organization for failing me. Letting that go was helpful in recovering from burnout. That is when I began to rekindle my baseline level of grit (as you've defined it).
I am sorry to hear about your burnout, Scott 2. I am interested in knowing if it was in part coming from a desire to not abandon what you got yourself into, event if it was dysfunctional. In most contexts, giving up on or letting go of something is considered as loosing. However, vegetating in an ill-fitted workplace or in another infertile situation will also not allow someone to win. Sometimes we have to loose in order to regain the capacity to win. Everything willing to grow needs proper nourishment, space and time.
Scott 2 wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:10 pm
I am still incredibly cautious around the idea of high grit as an end, or even the means to an end. It's effective, no doubt.

But do I want to live that way? Will it cause me to miss essential elements of life, because I'm too focused on maximizing every moment? Will it preclude relationships with people who could vastly broaden my perspective, because I'm insufferable? Will clinging to control close off deep experiences already on offer, from those already in my life?

Retirement opened my eyes to such mistakes in my past. It's part of why I raise my hesitance.
Is grit a manifestation of intransigence for what your life is supposed to (not) look like?

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Re: Rebuilding Atrophied Desire (to win)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Gtoo:


I’m such a timid driver, I didn’t even get my license until I was 32. I blame the instructor who warned me that there might be small children playing in the piles of leaves on the side of the road. I finally had to tell myself that I had as much right to be an idiot on the road as anybody else.
Men are not quite as quick on the uptake about passion, but they get there.
I was thinking they might start small. For example, what does FI smell like to you?

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