There was a time not too long ago when everywhere we turned there was the same message.
The Test
Whether it was “safer at home”, “we’re in this together”, “stay 6 feet apart”, or whatever, we heard these targeted phrases echo across countries, borders and continents. It was hard to believe that these slick marketing slogans were not aimed to capture and weaponized people’s compassion and virtue. It was almost as if they were contrived in a focus group hosted by Johns Hopkins, funded by the World Economic Forum, the Gates foundation and their cronies in some pre-pandemic plan to create an international lockstep approach. Cough, cough… Event 201.
And yet many seemingly did not bat an eye at the sudden appearance of uniform commands that were in stark contrast to the constitutionally protected freedoms and rights of citizens living in free democratic societies. The fact that there was a pre-pandemic germ game exercise (Event 201) that enlisted more agencies bent on planning authoritarian controls, civilian manipulation and monitoring than working with medical expertise to consider how to repurpose drugs, explore risk stratification and focused protection methods should logically raise red flags or at least a lot of questions. Yet many still do not even know about this and dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.
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All those slogans could be viewed as saying one thing: COMPLY! Do not question and do not think for yourself.
This was even more obvious to some of us implied within the anti-scientific phrases of “follow the science” and “trust the experts”.
For those with enough mental acuity and fortitude, resistance to these hypnotic, repetitive and indoctrinating neurolinguistic programming-like commands was a possibility, but still not an easy one. Neighbors, friends, family, workplace associates, all the media, virtually every form of authority parroted these messages, while scorning, cancelling, and dehumanizing those who even questioned them.
If there ever was a measure of mental strength, it was this. It was the ability to withstand an incredible amount of pressure and psychological manipulation. As I mentioned, people’s identity as being moral and ethical were placed into question. Ironically, the tenets of Western civilization - prizing individual human rights as fundamental and inalienable - seemed to be thrown away in the blink of an eye. And in their place, some strange collectivist notion of self-sacrifice for the greater good was elevated as primary and nonnegotiable. In a situation that hardly called for this, everything from children’s schooling to life’s milestones to humane hospice and all other ailments and suffering were ordered deprioritize or even abandoned for one pervasive message, circulating through households, communities, and across the world. This would be the one narrative to rule them all and it placed the illogical, ineffective, and harmful pandemic measures leagues above all other considerations.
Making it through this period as a free thinking individual was a measure of mental strength. Don’t confuse intelligence or education with an ability to think for oneself. We saw many who had both high IQs and terminal degrees from top universities fall prey to blind allegiance of the diktats that had no rhyme or reason, showing themselves to be in constant contradiction, and affronts to basic logic and common sense.
If this was just a single chapter in history - a one off - perhaps it could more easily be brushed aside as an anomaly. However, similar things were seen during the Third Reich in 1930s Germany as well as in other places and times in history. Unfortunately, I believe similar things will be revisited again. This is why mental strength needs to be sharp like a samurai sword of the mind.
If you could recognize the absurdity early on, I tip my hat to you. If you recognized it at all, you deserve respect.
If you are just getting clarity on the clown world we have deemed acceptable, don’t get fooled again.
Build mental strength. Train your brain. Cultivate your mind.
In order not to fall prey to manipulative programming by government, media, and corporations, enhancing one’s ability to see through their false logic, emotional lures, and fear mongering tactics is highly advantageous.
Take note, for every aspect that might have been real, there were also aspects that were opportunistic tactics.
Rahm Emanuel knows politics, banking, and marketing - a powerful combination of manipulative fields.
One has to stay sharp as government agendas often place individual rights and freedoms as a lower priority when they have goals that conflict with them. This is not a unique behavior of those who rule. It is not the exception but the rule. A simple cursory review of history will show that.
Physical Strength Review
Previously, I discussed the value of building physical strength to enhance one’s survivability. The notion that without your physical health, everything else becomes less important has lead me to claim that physical strength is arguably the foundation for all other strengths. While I still hold this to be true, mental strength might be just as significant.
Mental vs. Emotional Strength
When discussing mental strength, it is hard to delineate between it and emotional strength. I suppose this is why mental health is a term used to describe the often emotionally turbulent clouding of rational thought. Touching upon the challenge of building mental strength will undoubtedly have overlap in the cultivation of emotional strength.
I would like to note that the term emotional strength is not implying a coldness or lack of emotional capacity. In fact, it might be the opposite. It is emotional regulation that is a highly significant factor in what I will discuss as emotional strength. Being able to feel all the intense emotions but not being governed by them is key in this cultivation. Being able to think clearly, rationally, productively, in the face of emotional forces is another vital element in fostering both emotional and mental strength. I believe it is this notion that ideally would lead the discussion of mental strength and emotional strength to be done concurrently.
That being said, allowing for subsequent distinguishing aspects is important too. You can have people who are logical but emotionally fragile. You can also have people who are emotionally regulated but lack the mental focus and rigour to tackle harder cognitive tasks.
Regardless of the exact border between emotions and rational thought, I believe we can improve our utilization of both. For our purposes here, I will focus on mental strength and in another opportunity, focus more on emotional strength.
Mental Strength
Now that you have already begun planning your physical training routine, it is important to recognize that you will need mental strength to stay focused and be wise about your efforts. Mental strength has many aspects.
The part of mental strength that I see as more distinct from emotional strength is in the attributes of focus, forethought, logic, critical thinking, and an ability to maintain a calm mind in the midst of stressful situations. This last one does involve the need for a greater capacity of emotional regulation.
We live in a world full of distractions. Attention spans have dwindled. The nagging voice in our heads often attempts to derail our efforts and lure us away to comfort and convenience. I covered this in 6 Ways People Are Being Made Weaker.
So, how does one cultivate mental strength?
In my opinion, part of it is cutting out or reducing the influences of the junk food of the mind and part of it is engaging in practices that develop the mind like a muscle.
Too much mindless scrolling on social media, TV watching, news, surrounding ourselves with people who indulge in the aforementioned and the likes, will over time soften our mental fortitude and cognitive acuity. Doing the opposite will have a contrary effect.
For example, I would encourage people to spend time:
Utilizing the internet for deeper dives into meaningful topics and long form discussions
Reading classics, philosophy, thoughtful and inspiring writers, and primary sources
Studying subject matter that applies to the pillars of society
Speaking and/or listening to people who are experienced in their field, are capable of independent thinking and insulated from superficial partisan rhetoric
Meditating
Being alone in nature
Let’s take a bit of a deeper dive into the practical ways to strengthen the mind.
Dos:
1. Meditate
Whether it be 5 minutes a day, or 20 minutes twice a day, or another configuration, the brain needs time to decompress from external stimuli. There are enough types of meditative practices that I believe you can find one that gives you what you need. It can be remarkable the clarity of thought and spontaneous insights that arise when one allows the mind to settle.
2. Read
Reading thoughtful books is for the mind what protein is for the muscles. It provides the building blocks for mental strength by infusing our thoughts with the reflective and creative work of those who have come before us. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel? Take the insights and clarity of others and build on that. It’s a cheat code.
3. Sleep
Poor sleep, too little sleep, or overly medicated sleep all detract from the brain’s ability to consolidate information from the day that just past. It affects memory, detracts from focus, diminishes patience, and lessens willpower. Consistent good nights of sleep will make you smarter. Missing sleep has been shown to lower one’s IQ.
4. Nutrition
You need the right amount of nourishment and micronutrients to function your best. This is true of the body and the mind. Put premium high octane in to have a Lamborghini engine of a mind.
5. Toxins
Mitigate exposure to toxins, whether that be from the food, water, or air. It might be impossible to avoid all of them but one can certainly make better choices in products and lifestyle to lower exposure. For example, there is no need to have a deodorant with aluminum in it or drink plastic bottled and/or unfiltered tap water.
6. Exercise
Moving the body, moves the mind. Exercise has been shown again and again to stimulate brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which enhances neuroplasticity and improves learning and memory capacity.
7. Reflection
This one can certainly be cultivated. Most of those who just “trust the experts” don’t take time to reflect on the logic and common sense of what those “experts” are conveying. It takes a mere glance at recent history to see that they are very fallible and often are making claims either beyond their field of expertise or with a reductionist lens that misses many of the nuances in real world applications. Thinking for yourself starts by thinking inside yourself. That’s the practice of intentional and sustained reflection.
8. Fallacy training
Learn the common fallacies. They arise in debate and claims all. the. time. Here:
9. Mental challenges
Push yourself with puzzles, riddles, strategic games like chess, and other ways to flex the brain. Resistance training of the mind is a good practice to grow stronger mentally.
10. Nature
Similar to meditation and reflection, time in nature allows for deeper thoughts while being in a parasympathetic state, that is, the autonomic nervous system moves away from a fight, flight, or freeze state and engages in calm thoughtfulness. It is well known in psychology and neuroscience that when a person is in a prolonged state of stress, their thinking moves to the limbic region of the brain away from the pre-frontal cortex where nuanced and higher functioning deliberation occurs. Thinking from the limbic region usually means that primal emotions will override good reasoning. Spending time in nature has been shown to swiftly reduce salivary cortisol in mere minutes, lowering stress, and improving a sense of well-being.
Don’ts:
I am not going to go into detail here for the sake of the length of this piece and to do these justice, they would need their own episode.
1. Alcohol - It literally shrinks the brain, diminishes willpower, dopamine, and is a depressant.
2. Overload on stress - This will move thinking away from higher ordered nuanced operations to emotionally charged primitive reptilian survival tunnel vision.
3. Indulgence in fear - This is the same as above but also makes one susceptible to manipulation and reactive thoughts rather than having the capacity for problem solving.
4. Be sedentary - This makes the brain slow down, depresses the nervous system, and leads to a lack of focus.
5. Ignore circadian biology - This affects everything from sleep quality to memory to mood to focus to a whole host of other physiological ramifications.
6. Social media scrolling - This a good way to move away from reflection, detract from focus, deplete dopamine, and train the mind to have a shorter attention span.
7. Neglect creating - This is a really big one which I believe is under-appreciated. Humans need to be creative. All consumption and no creation is a recipe for many issues. I believe humans should create more than they consume to feel and function their best. I wrote about it here.
There’s more, I’m sure but I will leave it for now.
These are some ways to do it. I’m sure there are more. What do you think?
Note: Recently, I experienced my first session of neurofeedback. I believe this modality has great potential for improving mental strength as well. After I complete more sessions, I will share my experience in greater detail.
Rant: The Death of Memory
More and more people seem to have less and less focus. It could be caused by social media, a rapidly changing and overstimulating world, toxins, and all the other things I cited in Six Ways People Are Being Made Weaker. Beyond that, people’s memory seems to be deteriorating rapidly. People both have less short term memory as well as some form of amnesia that seems to take away their ability to recognize the patterns they learned in history as they resurface in current events. This virus of degraded memory also seems to rob people of their recollection of recent key media reports and angles. What was once an outrage becomes a source of celebration and vice versa.
It seems without an ability to remember yesterday position of one’s chosen corporate news guide, people are easily convinced to change their thinking and support that which has a public history of wrongdoing. Everyone’s Pfavorite pharmaceutical company is a great example. With a long history of criminal convictions and massive fines for unethical and illegal activity, you’d think people would be wiser than to hold them as a benevolent saviour with no questions ask. That was not the case. Their repeat offences were not enough to give the public pause on throwing all their eggs in this one basket.
Whether it be the notorious self-interest and brazen profiteering of Pfraudlent Inc. or a politician with a series of scandals, parading about their double standards and pathologically lying, we seem okay to pretend none of that ever happened.
Is it loss of memory? A craving for suffering? The naivety of irrational hope? Cognitive dissonance? Or are the masses being hypnotized by the corrupt machine that plays them again and again?
One of the most effective tools in eroding memory and deflecting focus off the perpetrators with power is the weapon of distraction. It happens again and again. The next time you hear of something big happening in the news, consider what is not being talked about. Seek out alternative and independent news, citizen journalists, uncensored platforms. You might get an inkling that the thing that has been ‘forgotten’ - what you are being distracted from - is the real issue and the one that the ruling perpetrators don’t want you to know.
This is not conspiracy theory. It happens all. the. time. I wrote two articles that showcase this…
The trap is that the more we allow ourselves to be distracted, the more susceptible we are to being distracted. Distracted is the antithesis to focus. Proper focus builds memory capacity and utilization, increases attention span, fosters situational awareness, leads to competency, and so much more.
Instead of chasing the next shiny object, double down on what is here and now. Plan. Set a goal. Breakdown the steps towards it and follow through. Focus on what you want and not what they want you to.
Seeing a great deal of inability to focus. Our nervous systems are quite frazzled. Such a level of fear as was visited by the majority of us (whether we went along with the agenda or not) does something to our brain. The value in unplugging cannot be overstated. We are played from every angle. Thanks for your thoughts on this.