Category: Simple Tactics/Quick Reads

The Ark into battle – 1 Samuel 4

In 1 Samuel 4, the Israelites take the Ark of the covenant into battle against the Philistines. This is something they were not commanded to do. However, this is something that we read about other pagan nations doing with their gods. They would cart the gods into battle to hope for better fortune in the outcome. Of course, if two nations both did this there would be a predicament – one god would be captured by the other nation. Whoever had the best strategy or most power would gain the upper hand in the battle and capture the god of their enemy. In some cases, they would also melt down the enemy’s gods, in order to add insult to injury. Many nations could not rebuild their cities until they were able to reclaim their god from the enemy who took it.

So why did Israel bring the ark of God into the battle?

Because even before they demand a king in 1 Samuel 8, they were already mimicking the other pagan nations around them. They are already copying the other groups that they see in Canaan. 

Everyone thinks that 1 Samuel 8 is the first time Israel caved to the pressure to be like the people around them, but they had already done it for generations. It is an illustration of the powerful urge that humans have to fit into the group. No one wants to be an outcast. Everyone wants to be “in” with the group and feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. The nation of Israel gave in to the urge to be like the nations around them. 

This is just another example of the powerful pull of negative influence.

While most modern evangelist groups today talk about being a good influence, the rational man understands that it is not always possible to be a good influence. Especially when you are already resisting the incredibly powerful waves of negative influences. 

I do not even understand what most people mean by “be a good influence”. It is a vague generality that gives no direction to a man. Should I go into some ghetto and expect my supposed goodness to pass to the meth slingers by osmosis? Will people magically be drawn to my alleged righteousness by simply being in the presence of it?

the ark
Influence takes much more than just being in the presence of someone.

It requires that the person being influenced actually wants to be influenced. Without that urge to model the person doing the influencing, the person being influenced will never change. No one changes just by being in the presence of one good individual. The powers of positive influence are so weak that you need at least five good influences just to be making a good influence on a single evil person. 

The lesson of 1 Samuel 4 teaches us that when human beings are pressured, they will give into the most powerful influence around them. And that influence in this case was the evil influence of the Canaanite nations. 

Understand: evil is stronger than good for the time being. The power of a negative influence is several times stronger than the power of a positive influence. 

Do not overestimate the power of a positive influence, and do not underestimate the power of a negative one. This is what most people in the church do and it makes them look like fools.

Related: Split From the Pack

Lean Into the Resistance

Our first reaction to being hit by some outside force, some adversity is to shrink away from it. I propose that men must retrain themselves to suppress this instinct and instead lean into the resistance. 

I learned an interesting fact from the Huberman Lab podcast. We commonly think of the hormone testosterone as being the manly hormone. It is associated with sex drive and muscle mass, among a myriad of other manly products. But it also acts to make effort feel good.

It makes it enjoyable to lean into the resistance.

Perhaps this is why men find great enjoyment in various sports, despite their difficulty. Otherwise, why would a man think it is reasonable to deadlift 800 pounds? He could have proved that he was a man of strength 300 pounds earlier. But partially due to this additional effect of testosterone men pursue things that are difficult. This is natural for us. In fact, we cannot thrive without real resistance. This cannot be resistance fabricated by society, it must be real. 

Think of the cultures and societies in the modern age that were robbed of resistance.

Related Recommended Reading: Leverage the Darkness

Consider Native American Indians who were given so much because of how leftists claim they were treated. They were given land, business, tax advantages, preferential selection in business and college, yet they are failures. They have incredibly high rates of alcoholism and diabetes and have failed to make use of the opportunities they have been given. 

Think of the black community. Culture continues to promote the idea that racism is growing and prominent in the world. They say that blacks have been kept down and treated badly and are still treated poorly in the world. What good has this done the black community? What good has this done to their rates of single motherhood and poverty? 

By making these two groups believe they are the victim of some crime, one of the many consequences is that this robs them of their freedom to lean into the resistance. Instead of being encouraged to work against a real adversary, they are made the victim of a crime. This is a passive attitude and robs men of the ability to be manly. 

What we need to do is learn to lean into the resistance of life. Instead of shirking away, playing the victim, or accepting limitations, we must learn to lean into the adversity and convert it into strength.

The next time you find yourself hitting some adversity, real or simulated, lean into it. Learn to attack adversity and convert it into strength. You can do this in a simulated manner in the gym. Learn to lean into the effort of your training instead of thinking of it as suffering. In doing so you will become more of a man.

Disassociate from Experiences – 2 Exercises for Emotional Control

Let me provide you with one of the most valuable tools you will ever hear about: the skill of disassociation. This tool is nothing new. Tony Robbins calls it “dissociating” and Jocko Willink calls it “detachment”. The ability to disassociate is a skill used by every master of emotion.

Essentially what it involves is separating yourself from your current emotions. you look at yourself as an outsider would see you. Then you try to direct the various ways you are acting or feeling. You poke and prod the specimen that is yourself, searching for inconsistency or irrationality.

When we have negative experiences, we tend to get sucked into the moment. We feel the worst of the worst when it comes to our emotions and our inability to manage them. This leads us to make poor decisions and act illogically. That is not the type of behavior befitting men.

What you need to be able to do is separate yourself from emotions so you can make good decisions. Or you can disassociate from emotion in order to lessen the pain of certain negative experiences. There are limitless benefits to dissociation and very few downsides.

Here is a simple exercise: when you find yourself in an emotionally painful situation, complete the following steps.

  1. Stop. Take a mental step back and a deep breath.
  2. In your mind, dissasociate yourself from your physical body. See yourself as if you were looking at someone else.
  3. Turn the picture of yourself to a black and white photo.
  4. Turn down the brightness on the image of yourself.
  5. Now with the highly stimulating pieces of your emotions quieted, ask questions about yourself. Ask yourself if you are beeing rational. Ask yourself these questions ina calm, cool, collected manner.
  6. Take inventory of everything that the person you are looking at (you) is feeling and analyze it objectively. There is no need to feel emotion here.
  7. Wait until you are calm.
Another option is to take this exercise even further if you find you are not doing well.
  1. Stop. Take a step back and a deep breath.
  2. Disassociate from yourself again and look at yourself in your mind’s eye as if it were a movie.
  3. Once you change the photo to black and white and make it less bright, solidify the picture in your mind.
  4. Then disassociate again. You should be looking at a version of yourself who is also looking at a dim, black and white picture of yourself. This is called “double disassociation”.
  5. Make the second disassociated verson of yourself black and white, dim and a small picture, then push the picture far away from you, as if it was on the other side of a 100 foot room.
  6. Then analyzse your emotions from the afar off perspective that you have created, and you will find you are better able to be rational.

What this does is put our emotions within our own control. It allows us to separate ourselves far away from what we are currently feeling. When we do this, the old painful emotions start to fade, they lose their power and the feelings themselves become far off.

It may take a few attempts for you to learn how to do this, but it is an incredible technology that you can learn to start taking a firm hold on your emotions. you do not want to run around your whole life having your emotions dictate your day-to-day existence. You do not want to wake up saying “I hope today will be good“. Instead, you have to learn how to make the day good by taking control of your emotions. If you can control your emotions, you can control the world. Impose your will on reality and bend it to you.

Everything we are after in life is some variation on emotional control. If we can control our emotions, and in turn learn to control ourself, we will have everything we want in life. We will be able to feel the way we want to feel and think the way we want to think. Who does not want that?

You can learn to get that if you start by using these two simple exercises to disassociate from your emotions.

Disassociate

Attack the Bottleneck

It has been said that it is a waste of time to work on your weaknesses. Because even if you manage to improve them, they will still never measure up to your strengths. So why waste your time? If improving every little flaw in your character will provide less of a return than concentrating on further improving what you already excel at, why bother? While that may be true, I offer an alternative. You should work on the bottleneck of character.

By that I mean you should attack the flaws that, if changed, will make the biggest difference in your life. These bottlenecks are what is really holding you back from being the person you need to be. Everyone has a basket full of flaws they could work on, but what are the biggest ones? What are the flaws you have that everyone else would notice and be able to identify? If you asked your family or friends about your biggest flaw, what would they say it is?

While you do not have to have that conversation since it can be extremely uncomfortable and unnecessary, you can still think about this question from your friend’s or family’s perspective. What could you improve about your character that would provide at least a 40% return on the investment of time?

Once this flaw is identified, you can get to work on fixing it. Do not stress yourself about your other flaws. There is no point trying to change a million things about yourself at once. Concentrate on the giant, then handle the small details.

Fixing a bottleneck will give you a massive confidence boost. You can maneuver that newfound confidence in a new direction, concentrating on other flaws until you have systematically eliminated every single one of them.

Bottleneck
Continue Reading: Motivation

Help Comes From a Position of Strength

It does not matter what kind of help you are talking about. Whether physical, emotional, or financial, any help you give others can only come from a position of strength.

If someone is suffering financially, the only people who can help them are people who hold a position of financial strength. The financially weak cannot help other financially weak individuals. Yet those same people, the greedy poor, will disparage those who have wealth on this earth. They will talk trash about the only people who can help them fix their current situation.

Also, emotional help can only come from a position of emotional strength. You cannot help someone who is suffering emotionally if you are also an emotional wreck. Helping one another typically does not happen in a lateral fashion, with two people on an even playing field helping one another out. Help only comes from a position of strength.

Lastly, physical help can only come from a position of physical strength. If someone is hanging off of a ledge, you cannot help them if you are also hanging off the same ledge. The only people who can help them are people who are above the ledge, standing on solid ground.

Position of Strength

If help can only come from a position of strength, why do we in religion disparage strength so much?

We glorify weakness and label strength as “arrogant”. Those who are strong enough to stand on their own two feet are ridiculed for their self-reliance.

The issue is that so many people who worship at the altar of weakness do not understand that it is our job as people to develop our own strength, as best we can. If we are to meet God halfway, it requires work on our part. We are charged with doing everything we can to the best of our ability and let God take care of the rest. But the weak want God to do everything for them. They do not want to do any work on themselves or their lives. They expect God to do everything while they sit back sipping mango juice on the beach. This lazy mental attitude is the reason that so few Christians hold positions of strength in their daily lives. Most are emotionally, physically, and financially destitute and proud to be so. This is not who we should model ourselves after.

If you want results in your life, you have to develop strength of your own.

You cannot always rely on others because they will not always be there to support you. You need to develop the internal strength to rely on yourself and no one else. Then once you have maximally developed your own strength, you allow God to handle the rest. But never expect God to lift your entire burden for you, He will not do it. That would rob you of the chance to develop your own strength. God will help you along the way, but it is your responsibility to develop your own strength to help yourself first, and others second. Because you cannot help others until you are in a position of strength.

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