Posts Tagged ‘conditioning’

Positivity

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

There’s a mode of thinking that says that if you want to do well or survive in this world you need to engage in positivity. The idea goes that if you spend all of your time dwelling on negative thoughts you won’t succeed at anything.

It makes some sense to me. I know that when I’m focusing on the negative I’m less motivated or willing to see the point in going forward with any goal. But I think a distinction needs to be made between positive intention and ignorant optimism.

Success in the face of adversity does require a positive belief that we can make our ideas into reality. But without the willingness to check that there is still ground beneath our feet we could be happily running straight over the cliff’s edge. (more…)

2 sides!

Monday, September 28th, 2009
Red and white sides of a Rubik's Cube completed.

Red and white sides of a Rubik's Cube completed.

After about 2 weeks worth of effort I’ve managed to complete 2 adjacent sides of a Rubik’s Cube on my own! I remember doing this as a child but had no recollection of how I had managed to do it back then.

I find one side easy, but even now I’ve got some doubts about whether I can reproduce the 2 sides very easily. We shall see! I bought the cube recently when I heard someone at work reminiscing. I decided that I wanted to see if I could solve it on my own and learn how to reproduce the solution.

To that end I’ve been leaving the cube out in a common area of the house and letting people mess it up for me. Every time I come back it’s in a different configuration so I’m forced to rethink my next plan of attack.

It amazes me that there are so many combinations from such a simple little device and that so much confusion can be found with a few moves. Slowly my mind is starting to understand the effects of certain actions.

On towards 3 and more sides!

Ethical conditioning

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

I tend to believe that ethics is a sort of sense, a faculty that is developed by making sound and unsound choices and gaining experience from living through the results.

Those aspects of an action (mental, vocal, or physical) that lead to benefit of any sort for any being push the action toward the ethical end of a scale, while harm of any sort to any being push it towards the unethical. In this sense most choices have some mix of the two and it is often the case that we find ourselves having to compromise, though generally through lack of awareness of the true nature of the situation.

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The benefit of discipline

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

I’ve had various struggles with discipline throughout my life. I wrote before about keeping focus, putting things off, and getting enough sleep.

Discipline requires dedication and decision making. Dedication is necessary for maintaining effort during adversity, and decision making is needed to ensure there is no stalling because of uncertainty. Both dedication and decision making demand a certain degree of belief in why the goal is worth striving for in the first place.

And so we come to meditation.

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