For that matter, don’t fold, spindle, or mutilate either.

WTF is with that last one, anyhow. Folding mail and spindling mail (meaning sticking it on a metal spike) are things any office that gets a lot of mail might do, especially back in the old days before mechanical sorting and the like.

But mutiliate? Was there ever a time when it was a common practicle to mutilate mail? Did every large office’s mailroom have a dedicated mail mutilator who had to specifically told to skip this letter?

Old Pro :Whoa there son….. stop right there.
New Hire pauses with an envelope between his teeth, about to bite down on it.
Old Pro : See that warning there? That means this one you do NOT mutilate.
New Hire reluctantly takes the envelope out of his mouth and puts it in his OUT tray atop a pile of horribly mangled mail.
New Hire : That’s too bad. It smelled delicious.

Or was it the mailman who had to be warned not to mutilate the mail?

If so, the implications are staggering.

Anyhow. Back to the point I assume I was going to make.

Oh right. Tonight’s topic is a continuation of yesterday’s thoughts on grit.

Specifically, we will be discussing how to acquire it.

Now the easy, flippant, and unhelpful answer would be to say you acquire it by not giving up on things when you really want to flee.

This is no doubt true as far as it goes. Grit, like many other mental faculties, can probably be compared to a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it, etc.

And that is a perfectly logical and reasonable approach.

But this is not a logical or reasonable problem. The choice to collapse and escape no matter what the consequences is not the product of reason.

It is the product of panic. And panic is the opposite of reason. A panicking person is fully adrenalized and therefore has about the least access to the rational reasoning part of their mind as is possible without a total loss of sentience.

So “just stop doing that” is not a helpful response. You might as well be telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking”.

Wow, problem solved, huh? Good thing you came along!

The question is how does one get started on the path to curing what amounts to an addiction to failure. The loser is a loser because they go for that sweet, sweet release of tension and stress they get by failing out of a situation every single fucking time.

The first step, as with all addictions, is admitting you have a problem. Us losers generally have enormous elaborate justifications for our choices and our poor life outcomes and it is not an easy thing to ask of people that they abandon all those explanatioins and excuses in favour of better results in the undetermined future.

It is the only way out of the maze of cages that is a loser’s life. But that does not make it any easier. I will totally understand it if people decide that, for now at least, they would rather stay in the warm familiar trap rather than begin gnawing their leg off.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

Once you have reached the point where you are ready for the next step, the next step is to begin as softly and slowly as possible.

You do this by examining your life with an eye towards finding the least challenging place in your life where you have been (or at least, usually do) pressing that fail button, and try holding on through that.

And it doesn’t even have to be a total resistance. It can be as simple as counting to three before you hit that panic button.

That way, you are in no sense trapped in the situation – you are just pausing for a few seconds before giving up.

This is an important first step because the way these panic disorders work is by generating a huge. overpowering wave of emotion that blots out all reason and restraint in order to overwhelm you and make you press that panic button.

But while this wave of emotion is very tall, it is also very brief. Simply waiting a few seconds will, over time. let your reason re-establish itself and give you the mental clarity to maybe decide to take things a little further.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to resist the urge to panic and flee once you have given yourself those vital moments to regain control.

But the vital thing to remember is that you remain free to exit the situation any time you like. Once again, YOU ARE NOT TRAPPED. The exit door is right there and it’s wide open. You are not taking any options off the table.

All you are doing is slowing things down a tiny bit. You will get that sweet release just like you usually do.

Just a few seconds later.

Once you get used to that, you can lengthen the delay. Or you can keep the same delay but try it on something a little more challenging, and work your way up from there.

At some point, the forces of failure will try ganging up on you by trying to convince you that because you didn’t manage to delay yourself that one time or that you backslid for a couple of days, that means the whole thing was a total failure and you might as well quit because the whole thing is futile.

This is total bullshit.

Failing once or twice at something doesn’t mean you will never succeed at it. And it doesn’t mean the whole thing was not worth doing either.

This is just that same failure fixated part of your mind trying that exact same trick – hitting you with a huge wave of emotion – to get you to give it that rush of relief that it really wants when you give up on improving yourself.

But do not believe its lies. Setbacks and failures mean absolutely nothing. You will still have the same options as if you had nothing but a long unbroken string of successes. Nothing has really changed.

Grab hold of that thought so you have it at the ready for when those failure addicts in your mind come calling to get you to give up on the one thing that can free you from their grips and open the whole world to you.

Because now, you are ready for their bullshit and can call it out for what it is.

And no fucking failing part of your mind can withstand that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.