9:30ish : 26g SPI / cocoa bev. I'm leaning away from resupplying, b/c iffy flavor and consistency
75mg SIF ; 1g phytosterol ; 5g creatine
+30 minutes : vitamin + evoo combo

start a new litter supply and change out litter genie after I eat my boogers
hyuk hyuk haw haw boooogerrrrrsssss

The last of the black bean, egg+chz taco seasoned brekaritos
deli sliced moozadell + trky on ww

KotB campaign session #3

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Refreshing my memory on Stutz's "The Tools": the first "tool" is what Stutz brands "reversal of desire". In essence: the natural human tendency to avoid unnecessary risk (experimentation, exploration, challenge, competition) often manifests as chronically talking ourselves out of action and filling time with self-soothing distractions instead.

What Stutz calls "reversal of desire" is to confront, pursue and embrace the opposite of comfort. We have a fine word in the constellation of comfort's antonyms, "discomfort", but Stutz embraces the term "pain" to advocate for psych-up self-chatter like "I love pain! Pain sets me free! Bring it on!"

I feel like this resonates with the fundamental sense of Stoic philosophy, although the Stoics focused more on "accepting adversity with calm dignity" because they fundamentally believed in cosmic fate more than mortal agency. -But Stoicism is also a gets-things-done approach to life; we're simultaneously fate's pawns, and fate's agents. The Stoic trick is to learn to feel OK about ourselves regardless of which role we find ourselves in at any moment.

I do feel like we need a more nuanced term than "pain", but I'm not sure what comfort-antonym conveys the underlying notion more compellingly and precisely. Risk? Challenge? Trial?

Stutz's "Pain sets me free!" reminded me of the slogan at the gates of some of the Nazi death camps, notably Auschwitz: "Arbeit Macht Frei", idiomatically "work is what makes one free" or "work sets you free". Of course we know that was really just a cruel inversion of the realities of the death camps - marginalized/"othered" captives systematically worked to death. That said, there's also a nugget of truth in a somewhat parallel proposition: "nothing worth having comes easily", a popular distillation of a broader Theodore Roosevelt quote:

"Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life. I know that your life is hard; I know that your work is hard; and hardest of all for those of you who have the highest trained consciences, and who therefore feel always how much you ought to do. I know your work is hard, and that is why I congratulate you with all my heart. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
- "American Ideals in Education", 1910

Even more basic than Stutz's choice of "pain" to convey the idea, I feel like "reversal of desire" is very opaque. I imagine myself chatting with a self-made multi-millionaire (i.e. not one of highly-visible fake "self-made" wannabes who are really mere extensions of corrupt family wealth). I ask them "what one idea deserves the most credit for your success" and they answer ... "Reversal of desire!" And now I inwardly roll my eyes because I have to ask what does that mean. Wouldn't it be so much more immediately direct, accessible and illuminating, if they just said "accepting that the paths to greatest rewards would necessarily lead through risks outside my comfort zone".

So if I was going to write Stutz with one critique, it would be to update his "reversal of desire" phrasing. Call it "embracing risk" or "normalizing discomfort" or there's probably a handful of even better ways to say it? but ditch "reversal of desire" :P