Strategy Archives - Spartan Christianity

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.

Continue Reading: Motivation

Isolate and Annihilate

When the Romans were laying waste to the Gallic tribes around them, they frequently utilized an important strategy. It was the strategy of “Divide and Conquer”. We will learn about another strategy: isolate and annihilate.

Now when we hear this phrase, sometimes we do not think of it the way the Romans would have thought of it. We hear “divide and conquer” and think about splitting up a task and working together with our team to finish it. We think it means to separate our forces and send them in all directions.

What the Romans meant was that the enemy must be divided if they are to be conquered. So, when it came to the tribes of Gaul, the imperative of the Romans was to split them up. Cause them to break their alliances or fight amongst themselves and they could be destroyed one by one. The Romans would cause internal division so that their enemies could be more easily defeated.

Today I propose to you a slightly different idea but with a personal development application. I call it “Isolate and Annihilate”.

What it means is that we are going to list all the faults we want to eliminate in our lives and start attacking them one at a time. We will split them off from each other, not viewing our faults as one giant mass, but instead as tiny individual parts adding up to a pseudo-powerful whole.

This may seem simple, but the classic religious approach to personal development has always been the “flash in the pan” method. Apply a massive amount of effort for approximately four days and then give up and remain the same for the rest of the year. It is the New Year’s resolution of the church.

This is why year after year, people in the church make no progress on themselves. Think about it: how many people in the church do you know who have actually improved areas of personal weakness in their lives? Perhaps 2%?

While there are plenty of people who talk and preach about changing themselves, in reality, no one is willing to put in the effort to change.

It is an element of human nature, and change is expensive for the human organism. Just as most people are not interested in the general concepts of self-improvement, most people are also not interested in spiritual improvement. They are interested in it enough to talk about it, but not enough that they take action.

Here is our protocol for actually making improvements in ourselves. Isolate and Annihilate.

I – Identify the Enemy

It is hard to fight an enemy if you do not know who the enemy is. War is difficult if the enemy is dressed like civilians and you cannot tell the two apart. You need to have a firm idea in your mind of what you are trying to improve before you can actually start to improve it. Most people make mistakes right here! They go to war with the vapor and are surprised when they get lost in the fog.

Perhaps they want to get in better physical shape, so they just mindlessly start exercising and “eating healthy” with no real direction and end up going in circles. They have not identified specifically what their problem is. Is it a lack of muscle, excess fat, or lack of heart health? It could be any number of things, but without identifying exactly what the enemy is, every attempt at change will be ineffective at best and will fail at worst.

To correct this, we need to make a large list of all the faults and undesirable character traits we currently have.

Write down everything from character flaws to sins you are at war with. Make this list exhaustive; leave nothing out. You are going to total war, and everything must be considered. Do not be alarmed if your list seems massive and unconquerable. That which can be identified can be destroyed, and you have just identified every enemy you have.

Draw a line down the center of a blank piece of paper. On the left put character flaws and, on the right, put sins. The right side should have more behavioral components while the left should have personality components.

Just by making this list, you are ahead of the majority of people in the world. Because now you have a written list of enemies and by virtue of that you have a written list of goals. Once you have your list, move to part two of the protocol.

II – Avoid Taking on Too Much Change at Once

As mentioned before, the classic error of most people is attempting too much change at once and burning out. When it comes to their health, they try to change their diet, weight training, cardiovascular exercise, and sleep habits all at once. They do this even though in every one of those areas they have not practiced discipline for years. The result is that they burn out, quit everything, and are back where they started.

What we want to do is select just one behavior, flaw, or sin to focus our efforts on. So, on your list, take a pen and circle the biggest bottleneck trait or behavior. Circle the most prominent character flaw or sin you are dealing with. This should be the one that, if crushed, will have the greatest impact on improving your overall character. Most men have “that one thing” holding them back from being truly excellent. It could be gossip, a bad temper, or a drinking problem. They may have many other smaller level evils, but there is always one behavior that is so prominent even the people around him can see it.

After circling the biggest problem, put a box around the smallest problem.

This can be some habit or behavior that is annoying despite being quite small. If you fix it, it should give you a certain sense of pride and confidence that you can change other aspects of your life.

So, in the end, you should have two flaws identified: the biggest and the smallest.

III – Attack One Flaw at a Time

Do not try to tackle your whole list at once. You need to systematically destroy one fault at a time. What would have happened to the Roman legions if they have tried to conquer every single tribe in Gaul at once? It would have been a disaster. They would have needed to spread their troops so thin that they would have been overrun at every battle.

Rather, they needed to systematically break down the oppositions so they could be crushed. You must do the same. Forging your character is a systematic process that will take time and persistence and will not work if you attempt to change everything about yourself at once.

IV – Choose the Dragon or the Wasp

Now you get to make a decision: do you attack your largest or smallest fault first? While you can do what you want, I would encourage you to try attacking the small fault first, especially if you have never tried to change yourself in any major way up until now.

The reason for this is that once you crush that small, annoying part of who you are, it will fill you with a small dash of confidence. The net value of your character increases and you begin to think positively. You start to believe that you actually do possess the power to change yourself, and that belief will lead to even more change.

Begin to work your way up the list of personal defects that you made earlier.

Systematically crushing them one at a time from weakest to strongest. All along the way you are building confidence and positive pride in your character. You are developing the inner belief that is going to allow you to face the dragon with a ferocity that you did not even know you possessed. You will have built the strength of character by forging your own path and improving yourself. Once you get to the dragon, it will not even be a problem. Through the strategy of isolate and annihilate, you have demonstrated the power of your will.

Of course, you always do have the option to attack the dragon first. I think for a great many people that would simply be too much to ask. They cannot muster the willpower and long-term discipline to stay focused on an enemy for that long. They will begin to break down, lose focus and doubt themselves. Then they will question why they even tried to change in the first place. Finally, they will quit on themselves, because they had not developed that level of inner strength necessary to face the dragon.

I will not deny that if you can attack the dragon first and crush it, it will do wonders for your mind. Then you can enjoy an easy descent as you systematically crush your character flaws in reverse order, moving from the strongest to the weakest.

Continue repeating this process until you have the character you want. Truthfully, you will likely never be where you want to be. You will never believe you have arrived, but that is okay. It does not mean you should not work to improve yourself. The rewards of wisdom and character that come from correcting your behavior are valuable beyond measure.

V – Hold the Line

After your character is established, when you are finished with your isolate and annihilate strategy, it needs time to solidify. You do not want all your hard work to fly out of the window. Yet how many people lose fifty pounds for a wedding just to gain it all back over the next year? How many men quit smoking, drinking, using drugs, or looking at pornography only to fall back into that pattern of behavior time and time again? To avoid this, we need to hold the line.

Holding the line is primarily mental. The reason is that most people relapse into their old behavior because they think, “Well, I’m in shape now so that means I’m good to go! No need to keep training and managing my nutrition”. That attitude is a recipe for disaster, but it is the most common attitude in human beings. We like it when things take care of themselves after we have done our part. Unfortunately, character will always require some degree of upkeep. It will not be a large amount of upkeep, but it will still be required.

I submit a different mentality to you today. Once you correct your behavior, you should double down on your discipline. Become even harder and more aggressive about your training. Become more militaristic about your self-discipline. Not in a self-flagellating type of way but understanding that this attitude allows for the maintenance of gains.

For at least a few weeks, you need to train the mind to never let its guard down.

You are at constant war against the enemy, and he is waiting for you to look away or fall asleep at your post just for a moment so he can strike. Prevent this by being hyper-vigilant and intense.

Maintenance is mental, simply do not let your guard down until you have made your new character or behavior completely automatic. You need time to establish any new behavior as a habit. Once you are automatically performing the way you want to, then you can slowly begin to transfer your attention to the other parts of yourself that you want to change.

To isolate and annihilate is to split your overall character into small components, select the areas that need change the most, isolate them and crush them. Through this practice, you will gain limitless personal control and strength.

2nd and 3rd Order Consequences

A mark of a man is the ability to think beyond the present moment and consider the 2^nd and 3^rd order consequences of an action. While most people make all their decisions while stuck in the present moment with no thought for the future, a man looks ahead to see how his present action may affect future outcomes.

2^nd and 3^rd order consequences are the results that come after the main action (with its 1^st order consequence) is taken. And it usually happens that actions that are enjoyable at the moment have painful long-term results and vice versa.

Food that is bad for you tastes delicious (1^st order) but the result is that it makes you fat and lethargic (2^nd order). It just so happens that food that does not taste the best is typically good for you, especially in the long run.

The ability to look past the present moment and whether it is enjoyable or painful is how a man thinks.

You too must develop this ability. When you are going through your life and trying to make decisions, always look past the here and now. Look forward to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4^th order consequences. You need to be in the habit of thinking about how your decisions impact you long-term.

If you look around you at your peers, you will often find them doing the opposite. In college you will find them studying some simple subject matter, staying up late playing games, and hanging out with friends. They have the time of their life for a few years but later realize that they have no marketable skill. They have nothing to offer the marketplace so they end up with a low income. Then they sit around complaining about the “greedy rich”, how they are righteous for being poor and how college days were the “good ole days”.

But you have the chance to take a different route.

It is not that you never have any fun or relax, but you are focused on your time. Instead of studying an easy subject, you decide to learn a difficult STEM field or a trade. For a few years, you focus, gaining skills that the marketplace actually values and making yourself more and more of a man. A few years later and you can already see how much farther ahead you are than your peers.

They took the easy path and it led them to mediocrity. You took the difficult path, and it is leading you to wealth. All of this is because you were able to look beyond the immediate gratification of the moment and concentrate on the future. This single skill will make you more successful than 80% of your peers.

So, what are some tips to help you along this path of thinking long-term and delaying gratification?

I – Start Working on Your Vision for Yourself

You have probably heard this tip thousands of times in the self-help community, but it is no less true. In fact, you probably already have a vision for yourself. To even possess the ability to delay gratification, you must have the ability to visualize in your mind a 2^nd and 3^rd order result that is more desirable than the 1^st order pleasures. That alone is a great secret to success, but also is the reason many people fail in various pursuits.

The lack of a compelling future vision can spell the difference between giving in to immediate gratification or pressing on with discipline. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the practice of sexual discipline until marriage. Among many reasons men do not wait for marriage is the fact that no one in religion paints a desirable picture of marriage. No one can describe marriage in a way that appeals to men.

You can blame society for perverting marriage into a high-risk/low reward deal for men. You can blame 2^nd and 3^rd wave feminism or the government. Or you can blame the feminized men running your local church for portraying marriage in a way that placing women as the objects of worship.

Either way, the disastrous result is that men do not have a compelling vision of marriage. And as a result, they have no reason to commit to it.

They hear marriage praised in vague, non-specific terms from the pulpit, but degraded in crystal clear terms from other men. Everything they hear from other men is negative, and everything they observe through their behavior is negative as well.

This clarity of speech about the negative aspects of marriage paints a crystal-clear image in the minds of young men. And that image is one of pain and suffering in marriage. But every time some man wants to say something good about marriage, it is shrouded in vaguery. Marriage is described as “Fulfilling”, “holy”, “The best thing I ever did”, “wonderful” but are never provided with any specific evidence to support those claims. Not only is marriage described in words that are so poorly defined that they would cause even a seasoned religious man to be confused, but they are never supported with any real-life evidence.

The result of this is that the negatives of marriage are easily and clearly portrayed while the positives are vague and lofty.

When the vision is not clear, the actions do not follow the vision. Actions follow the clearest vision and avoiding marriage seems to be the best decision because the negatives are extremely clear.

This is just an example of the effect of the vision, which underscores why it is so incredibly important for you to create a compelling vision in your own mind of a future you want to live. The clearer you are about your vision, the more meaning you will ascribe to the seemingly insignificant actions it takes to get there.

Get as clear as you can about your goal. Write down everything you want to achieve. Just start with your work so you do not get overwhelmed. Write down what you want to do. How do you want to spend your days? What do you want to experience mentally while you work? How do you want to feel when you come home? How much money do you want to make? What will you wear on the job?

Write down everything you can. The more you write the clearer your vision becomes. When your vision becomes clearer, your actions become easier.

Spend some time visualizing yourself doing exactly what you want to do. See yourself in your mind’s eye working, being excellent at your craft, and earning fantastic money as a result. Train your mind to see yourself as a success before you even become one. Get your mind accustomed to self-confidence and esteem. Clear visions produce clear results.

II – See the Consequences of 1^st order pleasures

You likely do not need help with this tip because if there is anything religious people are good at; it is about threatening you with consequences. While they tend to get carried away and focus exclusively on the negative, what they are saying is important.

It is necessary to understand the price we pay for actions we take, whether good or bad. Write down all the consequences of not taking action or of taking the wrong action. You can probably look around you at your peers to collect evidence for this. How often have they taken the easy road and had it come back to bite them? Likely often enough for you to notice.

They waste several years studying liberal arts and earn the same $10 per hour 5 years after graduating. They laughed and giggled their way through college and then walk around wondering why they are not successful, blaming everyone but themselves for their situation.

Add their experiences to your pile of evidence. The more evidence you gather, the more you will be compelled to avoid those same behaviors.

Draw Out The Enemy

Sometimes it is not wise to engage in outright war with your fellow man. While I mean this primarily in the social sense, it can also apply to physical violence. Many times it is better to peacefully draw out the enemy.

When we engage in total war, we can anger someone and make a lifelong enemy. While I have no problem with angering others, it is not a wise long term strategy. Especially if the goal is to acquire power, make connections, and secure trade.

An angered enemy has no interest in a trade embargo with you. And you must always consider the effects that your actions have on various business opportunities.

In this brief post, let’s look at a simple way you can allow an enemy to defeat themselves instead of having to attack them directly. Every frontal assault, while extremely satisfying, will have the opposite effect that you intend for it. When have you ever been insulted by someone else, demolished in a social debate, and then actually converted to their line of thinking?

Ego always prevails over truth.

To draw out the enemy is to allow them to spread themselves too thin. They come too far out of the “fortress” of their mind and are trapped. You draw them out by asking them questions. simple, innocent questions. Then you allow them to believe they are gaining the upper hand, as you express to them that you are impressed by their reasoning. this compliment causes them to lower their guard and they can be drawn out even further.

Eventually, you have drawn them out so far that the kinks and cracks in their argument begin to show. But you continue to draw them out with more questions, pretending to ignore the obvious holes in their argument. Continue to draw them out until they are spread so thin by their own words that their position collapses in on themselves.

Ideally, you would perform this technique in the presence of as many witnesses as possible. they will think you noble because you did not engage in a frontal assault. they will think your enemy foolish because they could not defend their own position is a simple, civil discussion. By doing this you have destroyed your opponent without violence. You have engaged in civil discourse and laid open the truth.

Read: Patience

You have drawn out the enemy, and they have been defeated.

Remember the second battle of Ai in Joshua 8. They drew out the enemy by pretending to retreat out of fear. This drew the enemy out of the city and allowed Israelite guerrillas to overtake the city and set it on fire underneath the very noses of the Canaanites. Do this to your foes, especially those who hide under the title of “Christian”.

Read: Tribalism