Variation on a theme...

[alexpgp]

So there I am, reading Mark Owen's No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL, and I run smack across something that reminds me of all my recent reading on Stoicism.

It turns out the author is on a cliff-climbing exercise not far from Las Vegas, and he's not doing too well. In fact, he's struggling. That's when an instructor free-climbs up to him, takes a drag on his cigarette, and the following exchange takes place:

"Hey, man," he said in a lazy, raspy voice. "Just stay in your three-foot world."

"What the hell are you talking about, bro?"

"Only focus on your three-foot world," he said. "Focus on what you can affect. You keep looking around, and none of that shit can help you right now, can it?"

I shook my head no.

"You're calculating, how far you're going to fall," the instructor said. "You're looking down at Jeff, but he's not going to come up and help. You're looking out at the Strip. What are you going to do, gamble your way to the top? Don't look at me. I'm not going to help you either. This is up to you. You're climbing this rock. Stay in your three-foot world."

This little pep talk apparently was enough to get the author to focus on the task at hand, and he moved upward, "so focused it shocked me when my hand reached over the lip of the cliff at the top of the climb."

I know I've used something similar to this technique in a lot of contexts, including translations in which I was working under deadline to get through the most utterly boring and turgid text you can imagine.

Speaking of translations, work came in and work went out. I still have a bunch of invoices and sales contracts to work on over the weekend. I also feel like going to a museum, or something.

Cheers...

Comments

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

Interesting bit of advice. AW

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Excellent advice. One could apply it everyday.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Not everyone could, and not all the time. I quite often stress myself into an anxiety attack instead on the way to that state of mind.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Focusing on the work entirely produces the best and fastest results, or maybe the best quality/time ratio, but for me, this state is very difficult to achieve, a bit too much pressure to get there results in a spike of anxiety and a huge loss of productivity.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I've been in the same position, having the same kind of reaction (except in my case, I would've said overcoming my anxiety was simply not possible instead of merely "very difficult to achieve" :^).

How I got from "there" to "here"—not that "here," which is better than "there," is any kind of perfect state—is not something I can reliably describe, but a major part had to do with ceasing to care what others thought of me, which left me free to repeatedly fall down and get up on my own without the added burden of dealing with my peers laughing at me.

That said, there is no simple, step-by-step path here. But there is a path.

Cheers...