A list that will be updated as I refer back to it.

• You already know how to work hard, be disciplined, etc. You can just decide to. There is nothing wrong with you preventing you from this. You can (and should!) still work hard towards your goals on days you feel terrible and would push the p-zombie button if you could. In fact you’ll feel proudest of working on those days.
• “You are in control of every action you take” is the mindset that leads to optimal unification of mind and resolving of inner disagreements. If you believe you are not in control, that blocks the process. Actually ask yourself what you want to do and iterate if the first answer isn’t accounting for some things.
• You have access to your realistic optimal policy at all times, e.g. What a Keeper shard in you would bid for, given the limited influence (and very high wisdom) it has.
• You can reward yourself for doing trivially small things to build morale & momentum. (and self-criticism hurts morale, and managing morale is critical). Rewarding yourself for following your ~optimal policy is a great idea!
• In general deliberately optimizing morale day-to-day by graphing it and noting down things that effected it is quite effective. There’s a lot of levers to pull and awareness to build.
• You can meditate as gradient descent on suffering. Curiously iterate and improve your “get out of suffering jail free card” mental motions!
• Don’t steer towards negative emotion to “process it” if you don’t know what you’re doing is positive then don’t fuck around with your head.

Some more “Goggins” flavored stuff which I predict I will endorse less / rewrite I get more enlightened & understand minds better.

• Don’t trust thoughts about if you should do a thing, trust how you know you’ll feel (about yourself) after doing it. Better? Then do it.
• Related: If you’re in a bad place, you might have to do some fucked-up shit to build confidence. Can’t sleep? Tried everything? You can just do work you’re avoiding or go for a run, whichever will make you feel better.
• Nothing, I repeat, nothing, your mind says is fully true. You are always doing what you want to, don’t disassociate & abdicate responsibility for your choices. You decided to open twitter. Reify the whole not the parts. Do not create division.
  • You got bad sleep and spent half the day procrastinating therefore you can’t recover? Bullshit. You’ve had days in which you did.
  • You feel crippling doubt, hopelessness, like your path is doomed, so can’t do it? Well, understand enough to know if it’s got a point (are you spinning your wheels?) but if not, do it anyway
  • You are not too screwed up to do it, many, many people have had worse demons and done it. You simply decide to, then do it. And when you waver you decide again.
  • (I have more of the lies I tell myself collected in a doc. Might add more later.)
• Never forget the koan which is David Goggins, and the relevant experiences.
  • (But also don’t tighten or use self-hate or pain based motivation at all. Decouple that.)
• You don’t want to flinch away, flail, etc. You want to succeed the hard way. So stop reflecting and act. If you see no path do the obvious, straightforward thing to make progress.
• The best way to control future actions is to control present ones
• You can accept and feel emotions while continuing to act the same. Feeling your feelings is always happening, no need to change plans, and you can always feel it later (if it’s still there)
  • (Or understand it, then take the action it wants. If you can’t understand or the action is weird though, that’s fine.)