How to Adopt a Zero Tolerance for Weakness in Yourself

Let’s call the authority we have over weakness in ourselves autonomy, because it’s the authority we have over our own premeditated actions. Not all of our actions happen after some consideration. For example, you’re breathing and blinking right now. Do you recall making a decision to take those actions? Our survival instinct has the authority over those actions, not our personality.

In a future post, I’ll go in depth into the difference between power, control and authority. For now, here are a few tips and suggestions for achieving greater autonomy in the face of any weakness you find exposing itself in your personality which may be preventing you from taking action.

Cultivate realism

Don’t let anyone accuse you of being an optimist. Be logical instead. Optimism requires the denial of reality. For the very same reason, so does pessimism. The glass is half filled with water and half filled with air. Any other description of the cup of life is inaccurate at best (there is no such thing as half full — that would be “ 50% 100% filled”) and disingenuous at worst.

Instead, let’s see the possibilities for the future in terms of the accomplishments of the past. Remember when people said that there’d never be emancipation, women’s suffrage or a black President? (You do? Are you immortal? That is so cool — please DM me.) Pessimism, like optimism, is a rejection of half of reality. Rejection of reality is one way of lying. When governments present only one half of reality — even if that entire half is truthful — we call that lie propaganda. Don’t be the propaganda generator for your group of friends and family. Stick to the truth and acknowledging all the facts, viewing the horrifying parts and the joyful ones as being equally relevant.

Fear is your body’s way of warning you that you could be punished for the action you’re about to take

There are two ways to get and maintain justice: protest the injustice and demand that a specific solution be implemented by those in the position of authority to make it happen OR occupy a position of authority and implement it yourself. Both ways take time and involve a high degree of perseverance and a (very) high pain threshold, but the first can be done right now. The first amendment of the Constitution protects our right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Next time a link to a petition asking those in an authority position to take an action you strongly agree with gets posted on Facebook or Twitter and you hesitate to sign it, ask yourself if an authority figure from your past ever punished you for protesting injustice. We often attribute the traits of our first governors — our parents — to our current governors (the Government) even though our parents may have been (even!) more dictatorial and tyrannical than our state or federal government. In order to keep our actual government in check, and reverse the many civil liberties violations that have been legislated in the recent past, we will have to be strong — not weak — and protest injustice. I don’t believe that you would be reading this post at all if you weren’t already on the strong side of the strength-weakness continuum, but when you feel that hesitation, or worse, the rhetorical “what difference does my one signature/vote/phone call/letter make?” question pops into your head, ask yourself if isn’t really fear masquerading as a “sensible” objection.

Then ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen? Remember that brave people and cowardly people both feel fear; brave people simply protest injustice and object to abuse of power by authority anyway.

Emotions are information

Fear can be an indicator of weakness but it’s also an excellent way for the survival instinct to remind us that we might be making a huge mistake. Rather than try to eliminate fear (which is exactly what you should feel when in danger! also, going into fight or flight triggers lots of adrenaline and noradrenaline to flood your bloodstream, and who doesn’t like that rush?), next time you feel it, remind yourself that emotions are information. Fear informs us that we are in danger. Let it be a matter of probability: How likely is it that you will be punished by the authority whose injustice you are protesting? Those of us who are lucky enough to live under a regime that allows us to tweet and blog on a whim may take that for granted. If you know someone who has been punished for expressing their freedom of speech, may I ask, what action have you taken to support them? Whether with a few bucks or by sharing their censored words on a censoring platform?

Sadness, like fear, is often viewed as a weakness, as an indicator of someone who is “really emotional” as opposed to, say, “really successful” or “really powerful.” At some point in our early life, (usually on or around the time our brains “set” at age 25 because our pre-frontal cortex — which governs impulsivity — has stopped growing and subsequently our car insurance premiums plummet because we are less of a risk to insurers because all of a sudden we are a hell of a lot more likely to stop at a stop sign instead of “totally pause”) we arrive at a realization followed by a conclusion. The realization is a given, but the conclusion varies for everyone and will define our attitude toward power and authority for the rest of our life. The realization is that the amount of corruption in the world is widespread and devastating. The vast majority of people then conclude that they cannot change it. This is because they perceive themselves to be weak but may not even be aware of seeing themselves in that way. The next time someone says to you, “I’m not strong like you, [your name],” you say, “Yes, you are strong and that’s a lie. There are two kinds of greed, greed for power and greed for money. Whoever told you you weren’t strong wanted to profit from your perception of self as being someone who isn’t strong. Whether they wanted to gratify their desire to have power over you, make money off of you, or both, they were lying, and you are strong.” LOL if they humor you for even a second. It is more likely that they will not perceive themselves as being weak but instead perceive you as being stupid/ignorant for thinking you have some kind of power. The irony here is that only people who are aware of the incredible degree of power they have ever get anything done that makes a lasting difference in the lives of many people (for good or ill). So watch for indicators of weakness not only in others but in yourself.

When you come across a person who is metaphorically holding up this red neon sign that declares, “there’s nothing I can do. I’m simply not powerful enough,” they are displaying submission, sometimes to Life itself. A few of the indicators are sarcasm, hatred, and gross predictions of the future. Sarcasm, as John Knowles said, is the protest of the weak. Hatred is a declaration of impotence, anger is what we feel when we do eventually/finally become aware of our power, and confidence is what we feel when we are finally expressing that power by taking action to right the wrong and correct the injustice. And predicting the future (for example, “we’re not going to have a female president; it’ll never happen”) is faux omniscience; when people predict the future in this general way and in a presumptuous tone, it is usually a compensation for overwhelming feelings of fear caused by not knowing what is going to happen. This is an act of self-comforting, the adult version of thumb-sucking. These people are mainly talking to themselves, to reassure themselves that the unknowable is knowable. Now please consider how much pain they must be experiencing to feel compelled to constantly self-comfort in this way. From that perspective, don’t you feel lucky — and grateful — that you are strong enough and brave enough to handle going into that place of “I don’t know” and still feeling ok? And, the more consistently you take action, the more pressure you’ll personally be exerting to shape the future, and the less you’ll have to guess at what the future holds because you’ll be sitting in the front row as it takes a more and more clearly defined shape in front of your very eyes.

When you feel sadness, know that you have detected injustice. Feeling sad is how you know. Now, what are you going to do? What action are you going to take to change the situation?

Joy can be measured in the absence of pain

Happiness is an emotion — not a goal. The concept of the pursuit of happiness (thanks, Founders) has irrevocably influenced what we as Americans think of as the meaning of life. As human beings, we know we are capable of feeling joy even in the midst of injustice and crisis (think old school SNL). May I suggest that you write down on scratch paper or a note card, “what would it be like if I had a happiness scale and could actually measure the emotion joy in the same way I could weigh coffee or sugar or flour?” Maybe your pain:happiness ratio is 1:1. The most intense joy is often measured in a total absence of pain. What action could you take to get out of pain right now? Now, what action could you take to get into joy?

BONUS CONTENT not in the original blogpost:

Let’s also start measuring joy in time spent in the absence of pain. Literally in minutes spent not feeling pain. Consider the fact that 6 hours (360 minutes!) of sleep spent in a warm cocoon of blankets, sans nightmares/night terrors, is 6 hours spent in a bed-cocoon of bliss (i.e. JOY).

Now, it’s likely that we have goals we want to achieve and we predict our lives will be “better” once we reach them. Maybe! I certainly hope so. This won’t change the fact that happiness is an emotion, and because it is a feeling, and feelings last for a finite period of time until replaced by another emotion, it can be measured in minutes. You could even switch from the emotion joy to the emotion curiosity while reading an article that peaks your interest. I posit that if the idea you’re thinking about and reflecting upon leads you to feel inspired, motivated, or similarly uplifted, then you remain in a state of feeling joy because you remain emotionally in a state devoid of pain.

I wrote a bucket list in 2014 and one of the items I added was: go on a vacation to a Club Med resort.

In 2020, I achieved this goal and spent nearly a week (70,560 minutes) in the absence of pain in Cancun, Mexico. Not every minute was spent in relaxation and peace. I was nervous and excited while horseback riding, alert and aware of the location of my passport while making the trip from airport to airport, and actually sad when I observed the poverty on the streets outside my tour bus window on the way to the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá. The observation of poverty which led me to feeling sadness was the only number of minutes during the trip in which I was not also in a state of joy. The key to resolving this type of empathy-based sadness (i.e. sadness someone else is feeling, not sadness from an event in our own life) is to ask, what action can I take to make this situation better? “There’s nothing I can do” is the lie that locks people into hopelessness and despair. Or, that sucks people into the vortex of depression which I posit is an ongoing conflict between the mind’s perception that we should feel one way (content! thankful! happy!) and the awareness that we do not feel this way. Then, within that mental boxing ring is the misperception (i.e. a programmed belief, usually planted into our minds by our first governors — our parents) that there is no action that can be taken. And, that that is ok! There’s nothing you can do, so don’t try! Don’t even try. This attitude in turn is reinforced culturally with aphoristic bumper sticker style philosophy (“whatever”) as a display of submission to life itself as if your very existence were a master puppeteer who not only controls your emotions but your subsequent paralysis/inaction! To say nothing of the obedient (albeit unwitting) surrender to the motives of powerful decision makers who profit when we spend money on things and drugs to numb or reduce this sense of overwhelming impotence.

Solution: Once we are proactively voting with our dollars, minutes, and our ballots for local, national and global policies that are morally consistent with our values, we are able to answer that internal plaintiff cry “what can I do?” with “I’m already actively doing it” instead of with “nothing - it’s just the way it is.”

It is the way it is. Right now. Not forever. Not if you can help it. You object to abuse of power by authority regularly. You protest injustice daily: every time you vote with your minutes, dollars (or Bitcoin, whichever currency) and your ballot. Oh, it only matters who counts the votes? Then why aren’t you an election observer? Oh, everyone in Congress is corrupt? Why don’t you run for office? Because everyone who gets in and actually starts to make a difference gets assassinated?

Ok. That I can’t argue with. Consider this though. You have to die anyway. You will die. You are gonna die. All of the people who were put to (public) death as punishment for objecting to abuse of power by authority left the world a better place than it was before they were born. Their legacy was, quite literally, making the world less of a shit hole than it was when they got here. I do congratulate you, my reader, for having an intact survival instinct that compels you to avoid increasing the likelihood of your death. Just know that it’s already 100% likely. I’d rather die instantly in a car accident or plane crash or by a sniper rifle than from cancer. Just saying.

In the mean time, you can spend your minutes and dollars supporting brave people who are trying to make a difference and indeed may be killed for it. They were going to die anyway, eventually. The difference between us and them is their moral compass compelled them to take action despite the risk. They may have adopted a zero tolerance policy for weakness in themselves. They felt the fear and took the risk despite knowing the outcome can’t be controlled. That they could only control their own personal effort and action toward the outcome they desire.

In which we ask God not to stop the pain (a prayer which often cannot be answered) but instead to increase our pain tolerance:

Finally, many of you know that I pray to God every day for both world joy and world peace (and whatever miraculous and logical interventions attaining these goals would require). I often share these prayers on Twitter. There is another prayer I have used with great success that I hope will benefit you as well, if you are a person who prays. Oftentimes in life, we could find ourselves in a scenario where we actually cannot change the circumstances. I posit that we would ideally continue to take action daily to TRY to. But if those attempts fail, one way to strengthen our perseverance is to ask God to increase our pain tolerance. Maybe you have experienced the pain of rejection: for example, repeatedly applying for or interviewing for jobs but just not getting hired. May I suggest you pray, “God, if you cannot stop this pain, could you please increase my pain tolerance.”

After you pray this prayer, may I suggest that you thank God for the ABSENCE of unpleasant situations in your life. For example, I might pray, “Thank you, God, that I am not unemployed, that I am not paralyzed, that I am not being diapered, force-fed, or sleep deprived in a captivity-based scenario, that I am not stuck in an unhappy marriage, that no one is cheating on me, that I do not have anyone in my life actively attempting to gaslight, deceive, or hurt me, and that I do not live in a war zone or a war-torn country. Thank you, God. Please, God, let there be world peace and world joy.”

You know those gratitude diaries? Lists upon lists of things we’re soooooo thankful for! Forget that. The brain doesn’t work like that. Imagine if you were told to be content with all the things you’d already learned. Do you think you could suppress your own innate human curiosity by just re-reading only the books and articles and thought pieces you had already read? Sounds like torture to me. In much the same way, when we are confronted with our own innate human desire for some new interesting experience, some new interesting thing, we would ideally not waste our creativity on being redundantly grateful for all the existing good in our lives. (It could also a very powerful indicator of unhappiness: “me thinks the lady doth protest too much” is what comes to mind when I see that overly thankful instagram post. Another possibility is that the person has been told in the past that they are ungrateful and are now compelled to declare how thankful they are to anyone in earshot.)

That being said, gratitude is still an amazingly effective way to put life in perspective, and put in perspective fast. Did you wake up tired? Thank goodness you woke up. Were you up all night because your neighbors were tending to a crying baby all night? Baby cries are annoying, right? Yes, so are the sounds of bombs going off. Does your foot hurt from stubbing your toe? Oh, too bad. It’s nice having feet, right? No one cut them off while making a torture porn video on the dark web. And so on. And so forth.

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A slightly different version of this piece was originally published on my Messages to Millennials blog back in May of 2013 — wow, that was a long time ago! If you would like to see the original, please click here.

HEY, WAIT A SEC, wasn’t this text in yesterday’s substack email to subscribers???!!

Yes, yes, it was. I was beta testing the title of the post to see which one gets more reads. The original blogpost from 2013 had the title above. The slightly edited (I had to remove a complimentary reference to the ACLU now that they have taken an open stand against body autonomy and against medical privacy and civil liberties and for fascist tyranny and vaccine mandates) post you read yesterday had the new title, “Measuring Joy in the Absence of Pain.” BONUS CONTENT at the end. I added a few paragraphs to thank you for humoring this A/B testing, and as always, for subscribing to my substack.