A warrior is not heartless. He has a heart full of passions, love and aspirations.
“If you are hurting it is because there is something you need to learn. If you hurt it is because you are not yet the strong man you wish to become. Pick up the cracks and change.”
To break the heart is the beginning of becoming free. Your heart hurts because you have tried to trap things within it that are not yours to keep.
“You must become a wave. Let things come and go with no attachment to fear.”
The fire inside a Stitched-Up Warrior is a fire that burns with an ever excitement and joy. An aggressive fire that spreads and takes on the world.
The warrior is astonished when he feels his fire burning out.
He feels angry at himself, “Why do I feel so fragile when recently I was so full of passion? “Is there something wrong with me, am I really this weak, this lazy?” the warrior asks himself.
The Raven laughs at the warrior, “All fires must die out.” “From the ashes comes a new birth.”
Lay down your sword, your strength, your arrogance. Be still, present. Transformations are begun by a humbling spark.
The Stitched-Up Warrior feels a warmth inside. He trusts that the darkness will subside. He will rest now. His aggression and discipline will soon return.
One thing you notice about mentally strong folks is they carry a booklet of sayings, phrases, and facts with them as a way to make sense of life. Mantras inscribed in their mind as cheat codes to take them to the next level.
Aubrey Marcus, “Go hero Go!”
Tai Lopez, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
Tom Bilyeu, “Don’t ask what is the least I can do, ask what is the most I can endure.”
Seth Godin, “Always be shipping.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Break the rules.”
Elliott Hulse, “I don’t finish when I am tired, I finish when I am done.”
Dave Goggins, “When your mind is telling you you’re done, you’re really only 40% done.
Justin Timberlake, “And we’re all going to hell, and we are all going to have the best stories to tell.”
Carlos Castaneda, “The warrior sees only challenges, the normal person sees either a blessing or a curse.
Greg Plitt, “Normality is what weak people call living. I call it death.”
They have made him stronger, fiercer, cunning. What tried to stop him failed and was overcome by his strength.
At some point in the past these scars frightened him, he wished he never came to receive them. But the warrior knows that without such scars one has not been tested, not been pushed, not tasted blood.
A warrior without scars is mentally weaker, softer, tamer. He has not had the pleasure of coming face to face with great obstacles and overcoming them.
The Stitched-Up Warrior smiles at his scars, he knows that more are to come and waits with appreciation.
Tai Lopez changed the direction of my life. He got me hooked on books, meditation and education all with his “Here in my garage” ad.
I was a sophomore in college. I was dumb, scared, lonely and I needed answers. Tai Lopez provided me with a strategy that I could use to live my life.
I bought his program The 67 Steps and it helped break down how I saw the world, provided me with the mindset on which the top performers run (MJ, Picasso, Steve Jobs) and showed me the habits to adopt that all happy people do every day (take care of their mind, body, and relationships.)
I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning to go to the gym, come back to my dorm and eat, meditate for 30 minutes and then watch a lesson from his 67 steps.
I was motivated to change and these lessons pumped me up. Every lesson would shock me with some statistic like most people live lives of quiet desperation, or that regret comes from “not” doing the things we want instead of doing it and failing.
Every lesson I felt as if my brain was changing, like the sound of ice cracking from being exposed to heat.
I look at my college days and I see an explosion of growth. I look back at that time with this tearful gratefulness. Because I see this lost soul but help learns to swim towards something even though he is still covered in darkness.
The 67 Steps helped me lose this childish naiveness of being dependent and helpless and provided me an education to fend for myself.
Tai Lopez taught me that happiness is growing and learning every day. If we stop we become irrelevant.
Better to live on the lessons of others that came before us, than learn these lessons the hard way.
I am always asking myself questions. Am I good looking, am I happy, do other people like me. These questions were the loudest in High School and dictated how I felt.
I was asking myself all of these questions about life, but I was giving myself the wrong answers. One question that I was botching up was “How much are you willing to give.” My answer in High School was “what’s the least I can do.”
That answer manifested itself in my soccer training, in my day job, and in the weight room. I thought the final goal was being comfortable and pain-free. I thought if I could do something with the least effort to finish something, the faster I could reach the comfort I wanted.
I suffered from that answer because it made me weak. It made me want to quit. I was unhappy because my mind, body, soul doesn’t like comfort. I get bored like a caged up parrot pulling off its own feathers because it has no where to put it boundless energy.
The answer that finally made me change course and excited to live was “What’s the most that I can give.” I stole that answer from Quest founder Tom Bilyeu’s Youtube videos.
I’m the happiest when I am in pain. When I am hungry for answers. I am reading, pushing myself at the gym, constantly meditating. When I am comfortable my day just goes by, it’s dull, I have no dragons to train for or hunt down.
I’m happy in pain because I am required to be strong. And to be strong is what I always want to be.
My strength is determined by the strength of my answers to the questions I ask myself. That is why I steal from strong people.
His energy radiates warmth, his body protection, his howl wisdom.
The warrior is surprised when he is blamed for letting the team down, or angry when he has been given more responsibility to be put upon his shoulders.
“Why do people look at me and expect me to command? I didn’t ask for it.” The warrior has wondered why he has always been pressured to lead; always burdened to look over others.
“Am I unaware of the presence I hold around others?” He asks himself.
Do people look at me and see fortitude, where I see a victim.
Do people look at me and see strength, where I see weakness.
Do people look at me and see trust, where I see fear.
A power radiates from the warrior that he has been afraid to understand. When he is finally ready to take responsibility good things start to happen. He is no longer being a passive bystander, instead he has an end in mind and pushes forward aggressively.
A Stitched-Up Warrior steps up to guide his team. To have the character to bounce back from failure, to have aggression when intruded, to lift up others when he used to expect others to lift him up.
The warrior may not notice it at first but they are waiting for him to step up and take command. And he does.
I saw this good-looking couple recycling cans early in the morning on my way to the gym. The surprising thing was that they were having fun, especially the girl. Where others would feel embarrassed about picking up cans and selling them, they had a joy doing it. They had smiles, the guy was composed, never diminished.
A leader like the girl’s boyfriend controls the energy around him. RSD Tyler says most people walk around in a durp state, with a blank expression on their face. They show a lack of purpose, drive, and hunger. They are victims of their own negative energy and the energy of others. This is all due to a lack of awareness over the energy they give off.
A leader steers the ship. A good leader creates optimism as his crew heads into a storm. He sets the tone for how other people feel and see the situation. A leader knows that if he shows fear or only focuses on the negative, the people around him will feel the same. But if he is courageous, happy, and smiling other people will have no choice but to overlook the negative and have a good time no matter the situation.
One thing a leader does is not let other people tell him how he should feel. People with low vibration energy will tell him that he works too hard or he should be tired. A leader even ignores what he feels. If it is not positive he will ignore the feelings of stress, fear, and tiredness and will seek to be positive instead. A leader does not give in to pessimism because he doesn’t believe in limits and it is the job of a leader to untap the unlimited potential in others and himself.
“Where there is a monster there is a miracle.” -Ogden Nash
Neil Gaiman’s advice on writing is similar to assembling a corpse and giving it life. When we first start creating, the writing is nothing but random pieces that don’t connect with one another. But the more we play with it, the more revisions we perform, connections start forming. The cold bones we lay out begin to gain warmth, blood starts moving and veins form to give nutrients to the heart of the story.
Neil Gaiman’s first piece of advice to artists is, “First drafts are not important, first words do not matter, they are imaginary, not real. No one cares about your first draft. You’re writing words that don’t matter.”
Just because you put the bare bones on the table does not mean they are going to put themselves together on their own. Many people see what they have on the table and are disgusted by it. They don’t want to go in and do the dirty work of playing with the pieces. It’s a dirty process and you want to hide that act from yourself and from others. You just want to open your eyes and see a beautiful creation. But it is a dirty job and you are going to have to go in and put eyeballs in sockets, and shoulders on hinges. The act of putting energy into something gives it life. No energy no life.
A trap many artists fall into is limiting themselves where they dig up their influences and material. Neil Gaiman says that writers, such as those who write about vampires and sci-fi can get caught up with only reading material about vampires and sci-fi. Neil Gaiman’s advice is, “Go and read outside your comfort zone- get pieces from different things outside of your interests.”
You have to gather kidneys and brains, not just hands. Leonardo da Vinci learned about anatomy, architecture, engineering. To make those intricate connections between story, characters, and problems you need to broaden your interests and read about psychology, neuroscience, and even about pottery. You never know where the next connection will click.
Gather as much material as you can, gather limbs and eyeballs so that you can add to your base and make your stories personal to you. Add your own mixture to an already congested industry.
Neil Gaiman says “You learn from finishing things.” See what you can do better, see where you could have put more work and see what doesn’t work. If a corpse cannot stand on its own two feet, it probably has extra pieces, too much baggage that it limps forward and falls. You put too much of what you copied from other authors, and not enough of you. Finishing pieces is not about adding more things, but not being able to take any more away.
It is only when we have the body in front of us, do we really know its purpose, the meaning behind its existence and the meaning it has for us.
And maybe when you have finished, you did not create something wonderful, but instead a monster you are ready to kill. You don’t want it from getting out, causing people to shriek in horror. The monster reveals your amateurish skills, reveals your incompetent self and you want to get rid of it.
It’s OK, this is just one piece in a body of work that will span years. So work fast, many will be failed creations. Do not get stuck on just one thing, but have many things you want to create.
It is a blessing to have just created something. Just like the quote at the beginning, a monster is a miracle because someone put the effort into creating something, be it God himself, or a looney scientist. The act of creating is hard. Most people don’t do it for that single reason. So create, eventually, something you give life to will be able to walk on its own two feet.
