Training Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Spartan Christianity

Train the Mind

In conjunction with the idea of using rational thought regularly, we must train the mind to be efficient, clear and filled with a large supply of knowledge to draw upon.

We must train the mind as it it were a physical muscle. All Growth originates from thoughts.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-6

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Proverbs 4:23

In conjunction with the idea of using rational thought regularly, we must train the mind to be efficient, clear and filled with a large supply of knowledge to draw upon. We must be in top mental shape in order to cast down every argument that stands against our faith (2 Corinthians 2:5-7).

Christians do not take the need for mental fitness seriously enough. They Never train the mind.

We become content with the status quo of the day: wake up, watch TV before work, hit our job, come home for more TV. Maybe occasionally we toss a little bit of book reading in there to feel good about ourselves or so we can brag to our friends. No one trains the mind these days, and those who do are worshiped. Those who train the mind regularly then have a chance to display their developed skill that makes the average man scoff and say, “I wish I was smart like that guy”. It has little to do with intelligence, and everything to do with work ethic and training the mind every single day.

You want to know where dementia comes from? Lethargy of body and mind. The American States with the most dementia deaths are also the ones that are the least physically active . Decay of the mind will come to us all, but we can slow the spread of that evil by training the mind every single day, consistently, without fail, just as you must train the body every day. An out of shape body is the physical manifestation of an out of shape mind.

Dump the idea that training the mind should be fun. The least fun, most difficult things are done the least, but have the best return on investment.

You have several options for training your mind: adding knowledge to the mind constantly is one of them. So you read and learn new things. You expand your mind with the knowledge others have worked hard to discover. You learn by linking new information you want to learn to facts you already have in your mind. The more you learn, the easier it is to gain even more information because you constantly expand your mental network, thereby have more knowledge to link new facts to more quickly. This is the compound interest of knowledge.

Train through math or logic exercises.

Math is built on logic, so training either one of these would give overlap to the other. Math is rumored to be able to physically thicken the brain. This is yet to be definitively proven by science, and may be an old wives’ tale, but the idea that the brain grows when trained should at least inspire us to consider taking action.

Train the mind by learning strategy.

Learn how to play chess, and in doing so you will learn how to play life. You plan several moves ahead and anticipate what the enemy will do. This can then be used in interpersonal relations with individuals. If you have an idea of what people will say to you, you can plan the best possible response ahead of time and avoid embarrassing yourself. If you know every atheistic argument better than the atheist, you can have every rebuttal planned and in place and ready to eradicate those arguments from the face of the earth.

You train the mind through meditation and focus exercises.

In the genre of mediation are several techniques or subgenres that you can train in to develop your control over your mind. The “Do nothing” method, the “observation of thought”, the “Focus on the breath”. For concentration, research access concentration, as “woo-woo” as it may seem, you should consider it and train in it. These are the essence of the control of the mind.

Good stewardship does not apply merely to our money, it applies to our mind. Would you let a car sit in the garage for 30 years with no maintenance and expect it to crank up and run perfectly? No you would not. Do not do the same thing with your mind like so many of the weak.

You hear the weak men say all the time”My mind isn’t what it used to be”, that is because you are not training it. The mind doesn’t grow while one sits around watching television. Sure, there are legitimate medical cases in which cognitive ability is impaired and nothing can be done about it. However, these are the exceptions. Most of us have no excuse to avoid training the mind, we should look in the mirror and behold the lazy man. Let’s get to work training the mind while we still have the opportunity.

Mantra

The trained mind is the path to success and peace.

Application

Pick one area you want to train the mind in and start immediately. Just establish the habit of training every day and never take a day off. It does not really matter what you do in the beginning. If you are being honest with yourself, doing a crossword puzzle would probably be more mental work than most men are currently accustomed to doing.

Once you are in the habit or working every day, then add the more difficult things. Start learning some math on your own, even if you hated it in high school. Even working in a book of logic puzzles is good for the mind.

Practice meditation by focusing on your breath and observe the thoughts that enter your mind as if watching them as a spectator of your own mind. Get to work learning new information or a new language. Just write phrases on flash cards and carry them with you.

Memorize scripture. Train your mind to remember faster, it can in fact be trained. Whatever you are doing, do it heavily, with intensity as a man.

Destroy your goals.

Build the mind you want you have through consistent action each day.

Focus on your skill.

Be a Man

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

Developing the Inner Drill Sergeant

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.”
2 Timothy 2:3 & 4

One of the problems with most men is the fact that they have negative self-talk and do not demand enough from themselves. We fail ourselves often because our standards are not high enough. In fact, most men cannot even reach low standards, much less the maximum standard that is required of a Christian man. What men need to do to combat this is to develop their inner drill sergeant.

A drill sergeant is a man who pushes army recruits through the army boot camp. A drill instructor is one who pushes marine recruits through the marine boot camp. You can watch a handful of videos online and see that these instructors seem like they are totally insane, but what they are doing to the men is completely controlled and calculated. Let us examine a few of the purposes of a drill instructor or sergeant and then learn why we must develop our own drill instructor in our minds.

A Drill Instructor Simulates the Panic of War

One of the purposes of boot camp is to get men used to the mayhem and chaos that they will experience in combat scenarios. Drill Instructors cannot give the men the actual experience of launching live fire (i.e. real bullets) at them, but they can give them the next best thing. Battle sounds, screaming, smoke and hard training can give men a basic introduction to combat.

A Drill Instructor Simulates Stresses and Hyper-Stimulates the Senses

Combat is no place for Zen meditation. Calmness and coolness under pressure are learned by being put under pressure, not by meditating on a soft pillow in a cool room with nature sounds coming from a noise machine. A drill instructor has to make sure that men are adapting and adjusting to combat sounds and stress. Men need to learn how to be calm during dangerous scenarios. The ability to be cool when you are in imminent danger is the type of skill that saves lives.

A Drill Instructor Accepts No Excuses

Blood could be dripping off your face. You could be vomiting on the ground or you could pass out from heat or dehydration, but it does not matter. You are expected to finish the job, training scenario or drill. Because even if you are bleeding, puking or passing out, the enemy will not call a “time out” and fan you back to consciousness while squirting water in your mouth. Men must learn to handle the physical demands of war or die. Drill instructors know this and will accept no excuses.

A Drill Sergeant Pushes Men Beyond the Limits of Their Limits

It is one thing to “go to the limit”, as if any of us truly knows what that is. But it is a completely different scenario to be pushed so far beyond your current “limitations” that you wonder how you could have been holding yourself back all these years. A drill sergeant will do just that for you. He will show you that the point where you thought you could do no more was just the beginning. He does not do this to torture you, he does this to show you that your limits are far beyond where you think they are now.

A Drill Sergeant is Brutal on The Men

Men are never physically assaulted by their drill sergeants, but that does not mean that they are given mental rest. The sergeant speaks to the men like dogs and trains them to ignore any outside stimulation. The only way the recruits can become hard is if they are treated brutally.

A Drill Sergeant Makes the Men Tougher

No one comes out of bootcamp as soft as they were before. That is the whole point of the training. You do not want to send men to war in the mental and physical condition that were in as civilians. Men must get tough if they are going to kill other men.

Recommended Reading: The Masculine Desire For War

Mantra

I will never accept “Good Enough” from myself.

Application

Even if you are like me and have never served in the military, it is still easy to appreciate everything these men endure for the greater good. It is easier to be grateful for the military now that we have countless documentaries that have recorded what these men went through and accomplished in their lives. You will find that thankfulness comes much easier after you watch a few video clips of men going through boot camp and being screamed at and trained at high levels. When you gain knowledge of the difficulties that others face in their lives, then it is much easier to be thankful for your own life and its luxury.

What you must do today is work to develop your own drill sergeant in your mind.

It does not matter what you think you are capable of now, you need a voice in your head that will always tell you the following truths:

You are not working hard enough, you can do more.
You have not reached your limitations; there is more effort left in your tank.
Whatever your current work output is, you should double it.
There is no honor in being weak and apathetic.
You have the responsibility to lead other men; would you follow yourself?
Your character is not good enough, work harder.
Your strength is not enough, train harder.
You must contribute more value to the world, learn and apply yourself.

The second you begin to feel yourself getting weak, you should imagine your sergeant is in your head and examining your current effort. Is he impressed by your intensity or embarrassed by your weakness?

The easiest place to learn to apply this principle is in your physical training. You are performing your exercise of choice and it begins to be painful. You reach your “limit” and consider stopping for the day.

Pull Out the Mental Drill Sergeant

That voice in your head should be screaming at you by this point. “This current level of effort is completely unacceptable. Is this how you take advantage of your freedom, by quitting like a pantywaist? No. You are better and stronger than that. Keep moving.”

Note: this is not negative self-talk. You are not telling yourself what a failure you are. You are telling yourself how much more you are capable of and expect of yourself. By telling yourself that there is more that you can achieve and that you are capable of working harder, you learn to tap into that extra work ethic you have buried in your mind.

You can eventually apply the same techniques to your spiritual life.

The minute you feel yourself slacking in your spiritual disciplines, unleash the sergeant. “Do you really think reading one single Bible verse is making you more spiritual? You are better than that. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you ‘don’t have time’ because you have plenty of time. You would not expect to improve your body by training for one minute, so do not expect to improve your soul by reading for 8 seconds. Work harder. You are capable of more”.

Apply the same principle to other areas of your life. If you find yourself losing control over yourself (Note Galatians 5:22) then you should be hearing the voice in your head: “No real man loses control over himself. You are capable of commanding your emotions. If you want a better life, then you better start controlling yourself. Have some character and improve because this current behavior is unacceptable”. You get the picture for how to apply this. It does not really matter what you are saying to yourself in your mind as long as it drives you to work harder.

Learning to push yourself in this way does not happen instantaneously. The biggest mistake so many people make when beginning any new technique or habit like this is that they expect instant, massive results in exchange for minimal effort. What you should aim for is small amounts of progress each day.

If you pushed yourself farther and harder than yesterday, then consider the day a success.

If you got your mental drill sergeant to yell at you a little and drive you harder, then consider the day a success.

By making small progress every day, you will eventually look up and notice that you have completely left your peer group behind. Now you need a new peer group of men who want to perform better and achieve more in their personal lives and careers. So, get moving now and leave your peer group behind. You do not want your life to be limited by their influence on you.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Master of Mind

The mind is the central command center for everything that will happen in your body.

“Let your eyes look directly ahead And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.”
Proverbs 4:25

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
1 Peter 1:13

The Spartan Christian believes that the mind is separate from the brain. The mind is the source of consciousness while the brain is a physical manifestation of what man thinks is the source of thoughts. While the brain will be left on earth after death the mind and consciousness endure. The mind is not affected by the various chemicals that are released and absorbed by the brain. Unlike the brain, the mind is not a physical entity.

All emotions can be simplified to various brain chemicals.

Science believes it can link every emotion with a certain chemical or a combination of chemicals. These compounds influence or are controlled by the brain, the physical structure. The mind is above these chemicals and compounds, it can even control them through the application of thought, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect.

The mind has the power to change the very chemistry of the brain and the body simply by altering the thoughts.

Simple but not easy.

The mind is the root of many problems, the majority of which are fabricated and are never realized. We allow ourselves to worry and be overcome by anxiety. We allow the body to be negatively affected by the mind. We entertain thoughts that drain our strength rather than thoughts that give us the mental edge. We have the ability to correct this, we simply have to overcome the initial friction.

The mind creates stress, anxiety, fear, anger, hatred, love, joy, gratitude and peace. Series of thoughts are linked together until they create these emotions and mindsets. In order to create good mental states and avoid negative ones, the correct thought sequences must be created while simultaneously destroying the negative sequences. If you can remove one step from the sequence of negative thoughts, you may be able to stop the entire emotion. If you can then interject a new thought you can translate the momentum from the negative mindset into the positive one. On these two foundational abilities rests the complete control of the mind.

Control the mind, or the mind will control you.

Application

The reason so many people have problems with their mental state is because they are unaware of it. The mind does not gravitate towards higher, nobler places of its own accord. The mind must be pushed to positive states by creating the correct thought environment. If you can master your mind, mastery of the body becomes easier.

By this point you should be an expert in the field of awareness. So as you know, the key to mental mastery always begins with awareness. How will you translate your thinking if you are not aware of the thoughts in your mind? You will not be able to.

Primary Objective I: Derail Negative Thinking.

If we can involuntarily “lose our train of thought”, then we absolutely can voluntarily derail our thinking if we apply effort. Human beings always want change to be painless and effortless. We must purge this thinking from our mind.

If you attempt to derail a train of thought but fail because it requires effort, do not give up. Shifting thought patterns will take focused effort, it will not come naturally because you have not practiced doing so for your entire life. The “Get in shape fast and easy” marketing strategy does not apply in real life, so why would it apply to our mental strength?

The train is derailed by first recognizing the thoughts and taking an objective, detached view of where those thoughts are taking you.

If your thinking is taking you directly to fear and anxiety, it must be averted. Become aware of the thought sequence that is in your mind and accept that it is irrational. Your thinking has no logic and no grounds and will likely never become realized in matters of fear and anxiety. Your fears almost never come true.

Upon this recognition, many individuals will find that they already derailed their train. For many people awareness alone is enough to correct the weak patterns of thought. This is why awareness is vitally important to any type of change.

The thoughts can also be derailed by switching the mind off completely. Note: this prevents you from creating positive mental states. But having no mental state is much better than having a weak, negative one.

If you are a man, you likely know how to switch your mind off unless you have some sort of disorder.

If you have a disorder, you should be a subject matter expert in it.

If you have a fear or anxiety disorder, you should be researching everything you possibly can about your enemy. You cannot defeat it without intelligence.

Lastly, get moving. You can flood your brain with chemical reinforcements if you will get up and train your body. Overcoming adversity and making progress are possible in the physical simulation that is exercise.

While training we are simulating adversity, simulating problems and challenges, and overcoming them in a controlled environment. The experience gained in simulation then transfers to life. The strong mental state you created in physical training then becomes a strong mental state in the real world.

You are already “in the zone” after training, so now it is that much easier to be in the zone in your regular life. There is no excuse to avoid training the body. The fact that training the body also trains the mind is an added bonus.

Primary Objective II: Generate Positive Thinking. Once you are aware of the thought, you can derail it by instantly replacing it with a different thought. This can be done simply by analyzing your situation and distilling the pros from it. This is the “Good” method promoted by Retired Navy Seal Jocko Willink in his text, “Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual”. Something terrible happens? Good. Your character improves. Stressed because you might not get the new job? Good. You have time to make a better resume and strengthen your weak faith.

The mind can also be shifted to something different by forcing a new train of thought onto the same rails as the negative train. Convert your mind to a subject that you are excited about, one that will benefit you later on down the road and your mindset will change.

You can focus on what inspires growth or on what promotes fear. Fear can inspire growth, but wallowing in fear never led to any type of progress.

Focus on your career goals, family goals and personal goals. Start adding to those goals and make them difficult for you to achieve. You will never be more proud of yourself than when you accomplish something extremely difficult. By focusing on goals instead of fear, you create a productive train of thought. Control your mind. Generate wisdom. Win your mental wars.

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