The Bodies Litter the path

When I arrived at this place, I brought my own baggage. I imagine you did too.

Baggage about who I am. Baggage of what the Sith are and should be. Baggage about where I’m from. Baggage of what I’m capable of.

I’ve been here pretty consistently for a year, and I’ve seen a lot of people attempt this path - 99% of whom collapsed under the combined weight of the baggage that they brought with them.

Look through their journals - they left some of their baggage here. They had so much, they couldn’t take it all with them.

You know who you are? You’re already past this point? It’s not baggage anyway, but what makes you such a success? Awesome. Prove it.

Some of you will balk at this. The idea of having to prove yourself. But any community, even online, needs some method of noting good behaviour from bad. How can this be a meritocracy without any merit?

And more sinister - perhaps you don’t even realise that you’re failing. Perhaps your brain has convinced you that you’ve already won, and that’s why you don’t talk about your failures or successes.

I’d urge you to try. I thought I was successful, until I tried doing something a successful person would do. And failed.

How else would I know that I had only just started the path?

Set yourself a goal here, today. Visibly tell me something you’re trying to achieve. You can literally post it below. But I have three conditions; a) It has to be a SMART goal. b) It has to be something you actually want. c) You have to be able to fail.

And then go out and do it.

I’ll wait.

Back? If you’re anything like me, your baggage has made you fail in some way. Maybe you don’t work as hard as you thought. Maybe you’re not as smart as you thought. Maybe the task is harder to achieve that you thought. Maybe you have less time than you thought.

Maybe you’ll convince yourself that you don’t actually want this goal anymore. I guarantee this isn’t true - your mind is trying to convince you that it’s too hard. Because it’s lazy.

Now comes the stage of refinement. You take those maybes, and find a way to fix them. You didn’t have enough time to do it? Set your alarm an hour earlier. You’re procrastinating at work? Download “Timing” and measure how often you spend procrastinating, and get that percentage down.

By setting a “real” fix for an abstract problem, it makes the problem real. It makes the problem solvable.

Take ownership of your baggage. Is this not baggage that’s blocking you from achieving your dreams?

That’s a problem. Go fix it.

But don’t try and eliminate all your baggage. That’s not the trick.

Some of your baggage is actually benign, perhaps even beneficial. It’s your chain to bear for now, until it does restrict you.

The trick is to eliminate the chains that are holding you back. That are restricting you.

Leave the rest in place.