Great Quote Regarding Me/SPD

Oblivion wrote:I can imagine how thoroughly disgusting non-cat people must find this.

Who cares. Not as disgusting as human nappies... but i'll stop, so you can stop, derailing the thread.

I think we should be allowed to derail threads in this forum. It's the only way we're ever going to want to talk to anyone.

salles wrote:The path does not have to be rocky or narrow. It is our internal resistance makes it so. I know this without being quite able to put it into practice. Discipline and courage come easy if the desire is there. I mean do we really want to be happy or are we comfortable in the more familiar clothing of suffering?
For some reason , all those tools that would promote less suffering, such as meditation, fitness, mindfulness, yoga....seem like a chore. Why? when we know they work. we know they enable us to feel better. The benefits are noticeable, yet we resist.????

What you said has helped me a lot these past few days getting simple chores done that I would ordinarily have postponed until they got out of hand.

Growing up habituated to angst has made me unconsciously expect it as a daily baseline.

It requires conscious effort to straighten up, relax my breathing, and just be neutral. Being reminded of my constant 'internal resistance' was an eye opener.

Will need to practice seeing your comment in my mind's eye. Thank you.

salles wrote:The path does not have to be rocky or narrow. It is our internal resistance makes it so. I know this without being quite able to put it into practice. Discipline and courage come easy if the desire is there. I mean do we really want to be happy or are we comfortable in the more familiar clothing of suffering?
For some reason, all those tools that would promote less suffering, such as meditation, fitness, mindfulness, yoga....seem like a chore. Why? When we know they work. we know they enable us to feel better. The benefits are noticeable, yet we resist.????

When we grab the Doritos and TV, we enjoy an immediate reward, minus a nagging tax because part of us knows we're encouraging sloth.

When we start meditating, for example, in a spontaneous and haphazard way, there will be a big gap between the grudging decision to begin and the feeling of benefit. By the time we feel that benefit, too much time will have elapsed for our bodies to associate the benefit with the original reluctant one-off verbal decision.

While intellectually we associate virtuous (I hate that word) decisions with their benefits, that's too abstract to combat Inertia. Physical/body memory needs to come into play. The body-memory of meditation needs to be subconsciously linked to the feeling we get when we decide to meditate.

The real battle takes place at a primitive level, which is why we so often lose before becoming consciously aware that a decision is even possible.

The only way to cement a good habit is to do it every day, preferably at the same time, so a pattern emerges. The mind/body requires this pattern to subconsciously associate unpalatable conscious decisions with time-delayed rewards.

The internal resistance will be overcome by consistency. We need to force ourselves to do something good several times until The Butler of the Subconscious takes over, "Allow me, Madam.".

Sex is an extreme example of the overwhelming power of the immediate primitive reward system over that of abstract, logical awareness. Just as delayed reward can provide insufficient incentive, delayed punishment can fail to deter.