Unless you leave in the questionable comforts of a cave and away from the screeching on social media, you have certainly met them.
You probably have them in your life and in your work almost every day.
Stubborn people.
You find them infuriating, but at the same time you secretly envy their ability to stop at nothing and to continue on their mindless rampage through your life.
Stubbornness and wilfulness are fundamentally different cognitive dynamics.
The difference is mindfulness.
That’s a radical difference. The root of one is mindlessness, the root of the other is mindfulness.
What is stubbornness?
“I started doing the first thing that occurred to me and I’m already doing it so I’m not stopping to reexamine it. I’ve attached my ego to it like a millstone and I will sink with it.”
What is wilfulness?
“I have crafted a Vision of what I want to do, I am applying my Will to it and I will never stop until I have it done.”
WHATEVER IT TAKES.
Bit of a difference, isn’t it?
Stubbornness is a misapplication of Will in its raw form. Stubborn people are shooting haphazardly at things they may or may not genuinely want, they may or may not find fulfilling, they may or may not self-destruct over.
Stubborn people are often more successful than the average mediocre just because the average mediocre is lazy, passive and avoidant. Stubborn people get their way because the mass of weaklings roll over.
You don’t. You also mind your own stubbornness, so you don’t bury yourself under the millstone of your ego.
Stubbornness is about ego. It’s about serving stubbornness and serving ego. The mature Will to Power is directed towards your Vision. It’s a sniper rifle with materiel-busting ammo in service to You.
Will must be nurtured and directed.
We nurture Will by applying it and directing it. We direct Will towards the Vision we have charted. We don’t expend Will on useless squabbles.
You can get drunk on Will the first few times you break past a pain point. If you have become masterful in anything or built anything grand, you must have already experienced this electrifying sensation.
Why electrifying?
Because Will feeds on friction and grows through friction.
Most times when you move into action determined to do WHATEVER IT TAKES, you will find no friction – and not much Will. Your only harnessing of Will occurred in the initial step of decision to do WHATEVER IT TAKES. As you move through, it turns out that the task you set for yourself is so easy that you never really need a significant amount of Will to persevere. The friction is minimal because you had been deluding yourself about the scale of the challenge.
Societies are weak. People are weak. You haven’t the slightest idea what you’re capable of.
You will first begin to know the magnificence of Will when you start laughing from the pain and find yourself in need of a deep-cleaning service for your private vomitorium.
I found that need while writing my doctoral dissertation.
I’d wake up sick, write sick, and go to bed sick. No matter what I did, I got nothing but nausea in return. I honestly don’t know how women deal with it over nine months of pregnancy.
I was in a daze during those 2-3 months of intensive writing. It was entirely self-inflicted and it didn’t have to be that way.
And I have never been so consistently drunk on Power my entire life.
Because I didn’t stop.
About the same time, I had one of the worst health situations in my life, when I literally cried and coiled in bed for an entire day. Not because I was afraid, but because the pain was that brutal.
I laughed at that too, and was drunk on Power.
Understand.
Neither of those things come even close in difficulty to anything that requires thorough application towards greatness.
Which should not deter you; it should encourage you.
People go through much worse in life like it’s a walk in the park.
You will get a sense of your Will as you start applying to the required drudgery of whatever work you want to master. You will learn to direct it and feed it, but only if you keep your eye on what moves you – your Vision.
If you lose sight of the WHY or don’t have one, you will suffer and you will burn out.
Don’t be stubborn. Assume formlessness, like water. But, like water, never give up on reaching your final destination – the path charted by your Vision.
Remember this distinction next time you’re dealing with someone’s self-destructive stubbornness.
Say nothing. Just flow around and on your way to greatness.
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Go forth and conquer,
Your Daemon
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