The Power Bible by Brendon Lemon and William Beteet
27 Apr 2021#NOTES
“How do I act against my own self-interest?” “What do I regularly that makes me lose respect for myself?” “What small things could I do that would make a big difference in my life?” “What do I respect about myself?” “What don’t I respect about myself?”
These questions are just a launching pad. Talk until you have nothing left to say. Do this practice every couple of months and keep track of how you have grown.
Ask yourself on a scale of 1-10 how much authority you have over yourself? What is one thing that you could do every day that would increase that number? Ask yourself “how do the foods that I eat impact my respect?” Think about what kind of meals make you feel worse about yourself and what meals make you proud. Imagine that you’re a character in a story. You’re you, but the best version of yourself within your own story. Take a moment and think, what does your character desire out of life. What are his or her goals? Where would that character need to live to accomplish this goal? What is standing in the way? What excuses does he or she not accept? What does this character look like? What does this character do on a daily basis? What kind of food does he or she eat? What does this character do on weekends? How does he or she waste time?
First, the better you get at accepting yourself the more people will accept you. Second, other people’s acceptance is unstable, so why base your ability to accept yourself on it?
Most people’s “standards” or “requirements’ are empty phrases made to fill the silence and make them sound more discriminating than they are to cultivate an image of a respectable individual.
Then there are things that we can change and improve. The immutable characteristics include things like race, skin tone, height, face structure, place of origin, etc. Rather than hide them, we need to ritualistically construct a narrative of pride around those features.
A phrase I’m fond of is “Ordinary actions for ordinary results, extraordinary actions for extraordinary results.”
The degree to which you will accept yourself will change drastically based on the social context you find yourself in. Ask yourself in varying moments of the day “On a scale of 1-10 how much do I accept myself right now?” Ask yourself “What would I do if I accepted myself a little bit more than I do?” After you give yourself an answer, go do that thing. • Pull out the recorder and ask yourself what physical features of yours do you find unacceptable, or that you think that other people don’t accept. After you get the answer, distinguish whether these features are immutable or mutable. • For immutable features that you find unacceptable, come up with a narrative of how these features are a strength, then when-ever you feel self-conscious about this, use that narrative to quiet your mind. Say this narrative daily in front of the mirror for maximum effect. The more regularly you do this, the more rapid an identity level change will take place. • Ask yourself in what situations do you find yourself feeling the most unacceptable? Why?
Know that many of us protect ourselves from feeling inferior by feigning disinterest. Stating that going to such events/clubs are beneath you. Ask yourself what events, clubs, and jobs do you
not attend because you are afraid they won’t accept you? Make an effort to start going to these events. If you are not accept-ed, run a diagnostic as to why; don’t allow yourself to use any excuses that involves an immutable trait.
So, in a sense, whenever I listen to Jocko, I lessen the power that the mainstream media has over my decision-making faculties and I strengthen my own. The most terrifying and awesome part of auto-suggestion is the degree to which it will control your actions. Listening to Jocko for a couple of hours a day for several months, it’s now impossible for me to hit the snooze button. I feel the compulsion to strive to become the strongest version of myself, to go to the gym multiple times a day, to reach out to the people I love, to assert control over the mind.
Free will is an illusion; the reality is that our decisions are highly contingent on context and how we have been conditioned. So controlling your conditioning makes it easier to control your actions.
A question I get a lot is “Can I just read instead of listening?” My answer is that reading is not as effective as listening. That’s because, with regard to the human species, reading is a new invention, it’s only been around for around 5000 years. There’s a good chance that your great grandparents didn’t know how to read.
We advocate listening to the same content over and over and over again because it becomes reflexive in the way you think. The more you listen to the same message over and over again, the deeper in your subconscious it goes. The actor Anthony Hopkins reads each of his scripts over a hundred times so that he can fully internalize the character
“Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. For when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
This is the benefit of hiring a coach and being in their presence, rather than just reading their book. You tend to hold yourself to the standard of the people you are around.
think “Should I listen to it right now?” Do it.
What is a place that you do not have freedom from the out-come? Why is this part of your life so important to you? What are ways that you could mitigate this need for control? • Identify the relationships where you are playing a finite game. Meaning, what situations or relationships that you focused on winning. How is that limiting you?
Interpret everything that people do or say to you as a compliment. Interpret your doubts as a symptom of not working hard enough or a sign that you need to find mentors or books to help you find a way. Finally, laugh off failures while taking aggressive action to ensure that mistakes will never happen again.
- Ask yourself throughout the day if your thoughts are out of a Victim frame or a Champion frame. • When you are offended by what someone said or did to you, look for a way to turn that gesture into a compliment.
- Periodically pick moments from your past that you felt victimized and find a way to laugh about the situation. This is best to do with petty grudges you hold.
- In situations when you feel powerless, ask yourself how you are responsible.
- Write out a list of places where you might have a rigid frame. Deconstruct beliefs you hold to be true to add layers of nuance to your understanding. Then do the same with opposing belief structures.
When I wrote this section I had just gotten out of a relationship where I was in love. We had made loose plans to live together, talked about getting married, and joked about the hardships that our kids might have. She took up my every waking thought. I experienced morbid anxiety about what I would do if anything bad were to happen to her. I experienced fits of rage and jealousy if I heard about her spending time with another guy. I
No matter how much evidence I had that she loved me, it wasn’t enough. I began to exist behind a filter. Weighing out if what I was about to say would make her happy or upset. This was strange for me as I am known as someone who speaks his mind. I would also find it difficult to tell her things she did that made me upset or I would tone down how upset her actions made me. Put bluntly, my runaway feelings for her made me dishonest. I was not telling lies but I also wasn’t telling the truth. All my words were measured so I wouldn’t offend her. I rationalized this as “I’m lucky to be with her” but the problem with believing I was lucky was that it implied that I was not good enough and that’s why I was “lucky.” This process made me lose respect for myself. I spoke with less conviction. I felt less creative. I had defanged and declawed myself. I experienced my life as a character in her movie.
The concept behind a transpersonal feeling of appreciation is this: you are willing to go to lengths outside of your ego and have no self-investment in any kind of outcome. So, a good example is a mother who has suddenly gotten so much strength they lifted a car off of their child who’s stuck underneath. That’s something that would never happen with the exception of the fact that their body is telling them so strongly that they have to act to save someone they love very deeply.
Many arguments and disagreements in relationships are actually the results of misunderstanding the frame of the relationship. Not having frame can be what’s actually keeping you from talking with your partner about real issues in your relationship. If you’re caught within your partner’s frame it might be difficult or even impossible for you to have an authentic conversation because you have been defined out of being able to do so.
“I will do ‘x’ for you, to get ‘y’ in return,” and implies the other party’s acceptance even though they’re not aware. Once this is done, no one acknowledges the contract. This is important because people who get caught in the friend zone end up in a covert contract of their own creation without even knowing it.
People who find themselves in that situation have a low tolerance for social pressure. They place other people’s needs above their own. Even when they bring up issues that they are having in the relationship to a third party, they tend to argue against their own interests. This takes the form of rationalizing the other person’s behavior as being their own fault. Often people who do this do not know how to advocate for themselves.
violence, crying, silence, and removal.
People do cry from being overwhelmed but criers use it to stop themselves from being held responsible for their actions. Criers will use their tears to stop a fight when they are being asked hard questions or being asked to do something that would be an inconvenience. This pattern of behavior is childish and likely a conditioned response to avoid taking responsibility.
A validation vacuum is where a person who regularly validates you stops. When somebody stops validating you, you will end up experiencing a myriad of emotions ranging from anger to sadness. These are all emotional states that contribute to diminishing your frame.
Someone who feels this way ends up getting stuck on the other’s lack of an appropriate feeling, and the argument begins all over again.
Do not do a false deal breaker, where you say the issue is a deal breaker for you, but when your partner doesn’t budge you fold instead; that makes the other person lose respect for your word.
For me, it looks like a practice of reminding myself that other people can be wrong and ultimately, I know who I am, so I don’t need to have other people tell me who I am. I even write these things
That being said, there are rules that matter and rules that don’t. The rules that don’t matter but you tacitly obey are the equivalent of you locking yourself in a social prison. Brendon: These kinds of rules are why you might be afraid to approach an attractive person that you want to talk to, get the job you really want, or even be the person you feel deep down.
A frame hack is to learn how to speak with certainty even when you are filled with doubt. The techniques we teach later on in the book will have a muted effect unless you have a firm grasp of your tone and volume in those situations.
If you are constantly using disqualifiers, such as, “it’s just,” “I’m sorry,” “no big deal,” etc. you’re likely in their frame.
“Am I in their frame? “Am I comfortable with being in their frame?” If you
There are also two types of personalities that ask questions, those who are interested in finding out about you and those who are interrogating you. The difference is that a person who’s interested in finding out about you will be asking questions in a way that flatters you, and probably have no nefarious underlying intentions. A person who is interrogating you is looking for weakness. Weaknesses in your story or weaknesses in your character or both.
“Brendon graduated college with honors in philosophy,” but the second you try to justify yourself to them you’re already feeding into their frame. Justifying yourself and attempting to name your bona fides is a mistake because they’re attempting to frame themselves as the authority of what is credible and what isn’t.