I want to talk about accountability. And discipline. And some other shit.
Accountability and discipline can be considered the most important umbrella aspects of skill acquisition or personal development in general.
I've come to believe that the most efficient way to improve your life is to catalyze the rate at which you integrate stimuli while mitigating the rate at which your brain automates cognitive function without your conscious intent.
The more quickly you can learn, the better you can govern the ordinances that indicate what becomes habit and what remains cognitive, the more thoroughly you can interpret and analyze everything around you.
(PS learn habit psychology, if you don't you're going to be operating on what may as well be 100% habit. Gotta know it to change it. observe your habits and take accountability for them.)
True accountability increases the amount of stimuli you consider worth cognition. Refining your accountability drops the "oh, i couldn't have done anything about that. it was totally random!" and replaces it with a gradual binding with causality. Cause and effect become your reality. There is no random. Random is a word for "too much for your little brain to handle." "Chaos." is all cause and effect independent of willpower, and willpower is most often a product of "chaos." Chaos theory is the determination of logic in seemingly random systems. That is the function of a brain unshackled to lethargy and arrogance.
(PS check out chaos theory [science] and Chaos Magic [occult/philosophy])
Discipline increases your ability to thoroughly act upon your deciphered stimuli. It isn't energy. It's willpower. You always have energy, you lack willpower. Will power is the only true governing power anyone has. It cascades into everything. If you refine your willpower in one aspect, it translates into others. "Breaking through walls" when working out literally shatters internal limiters you've imposed on yourself through indolence. This applies in everything. You break a plateau in the game you play because you refined through discipline, you run a new record, you have an epiphany in tennis because you grinded something until you no longer "understood" it because you can only "feel" it.
Discipline is the crucible you must dwell in until you can be trusted to be released from it - a successful release from discipline is a refinement that will yield disciplined choices without needing to be fostered.
Picture compressed, tempered energy inside a container far too small for it. It's going to be erratically trying to explode out because it "doesn't deserve this small container," "it's too big," "it's too much," "it's pain." If this energy is truly great, it will not conform to its container but optimize itself to grow through its restriction. It will accept the pain that its growth imposes because if it grows enough it will shatter its container. It may feel like its not possible sometimes, but no matter the durability of the shell, if this energy has infinite potential, it will escape. After such a crucible, do you think this energy will not perceive its next stage, its next surroundings as yet another crucible to break? The habit of discipline, of refinement, waxes permanent if nourished with true effort.
Furthermore, discipline augments your ability to "be here now." (good book, check it out) Heightened discipline attunes your mind to duress and opposition; you become accustomed to pushing aside your weakness and inability to maintain a highly conscious focus. This increase in conscious focus threshhold pours over into your unconscious focus. Without delving into a very heavy tangent regarding flow state (though not tangential exactly, because flow is everything,) let it suffice to say that all of these products of discipline are exactly what is required in performance situations.
The state of mastery is not pure refined practice, a product of discipline. It is not pure unbridled talent, unrefined by diligence. It is a connection between these two, as it is also a connection between not only your intended school of mastery, but also between all other derived abstracts from other schools of action/idea you indulge in - fuck it, from everything. The more thorough and omnipresent your accountability is, the more schools of action/idea you passively have progressing. Mastery can only be accomplished by someone fully immersed in their surroundings and trade with the discipline to suffer failures, critique, pain, suffering, social death, ego death, true death.
The moral of the story, next time you're pressing dough for MOD, bitching about how you hate pressing dough and it's boring - Just be there in that moment and realize that you are not the best or even above average at anything you're doing. There's no reason for boredom. It's probably even your fault your bored. You aren't trying. You aren't disciplined. Hell, worst case scenario, you can be looking at shit around you and find something to focus on.
Important sidebar - Fuck your ego, it is literally the devil
