Stay seated
Stay in line
Stay quiet
Stay put
Stay back
Stay still
Stay down
Stay here
Stay inside
Stay away
Stay home
The order to stay has been with us since we were children. Usually it is intended to protect us. Often it is associated with danger, and something we should stay away from. However, sometimes it is used to control us, and move us toward harm.
Stay is a hard word to hear because it grates against what we are. At a core level, humans are barrier breakers. We are all born with a genetic code to fight against, rise above, and break through obstacles. This is one reason we keep surviving as a species: We must not stay.
Staying has many negative connotations. If food stays warm too long, it spoils. It is a bad idea to stay still in our careers because we should advance. If we stay the same, we will fail to improve and grow. If we stay at work too long, our health suffers, just as it does if we stay awake too much at night. There can be problems with staying.
What if Columbus had stayed in Europe? What if Lincoln had stayed away from a conflict over slavery? What if America had stayed home from World War II? Some of our best history is marked by times we COULD NOT stay away.
Of all the stays, the one that bothers me most is stay down. These words grate against my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Deep inside me, the code reacts, and a lethal alarm sounds. I have no option. I must NOT stay down. These words have this impact because humans are not supposed to stay down. If we find it easy to obey these words, it means something has gone very wrong with our brains.
Nevertheless, I seem to be running into people who seem more inclined to stay down. They are better at following orders, even if the orders are bad. Maybe it’s just easier that way, but it seems that many of us are forgetting what we are. We are behaving more like lambs than lions.
Staying down is not something that works well in life or in war. The movie, The Pianist, is based on a true story during World War II. The movie accurately portrays masses of Jewish people corralled and marched to the Warsaw ghetto. They were told to stay inside the ghetto while the Nazi’s built walls around them. The ghetto became their prison. Partitioning cities to contain prison districts was a common practice in the war.
It is striking to consider the two polar reactions people have in these horrible circumstances. Some are followers. Hoping for the best, they do what they are told. Others react ferociously; to escape, undermine, and break through the evil surrounding them.
I wonder how I would react in their circumstances. Would I have the strength to stand, or succumb to stay? While it is certainly not a pleasant question, it is an important one. In the prison camps, some people had insight that their confinement would end badly. They realized that hope could not be found in following orders. These people did not stay down. They began hoping, looking for, and planning strategies to escape or strike back.
Some had insight and moved against threat. Those who moved against threat were not fearless heroes; they acted in spite of fear. Would I be able to do the same? In the darkest of circumstances, how would I react? How strong is my will?
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will”.
Indomitable means impossible to subdue or defeat. Is your will indomitable? When confronted with grave, hopeless circumstances, will you stay strong?
I am a trainer of neuroplasticity. In this field, we believe that virtually anything can be practiced and trained. Today, do you see yourself as someone who caves in to adversity, or someone to stands and thrives against it? When was the last time you considered standing against massive threat? If you think you will never need such strength of will, you are naive.
Humans are made to rage against the storm. Storms always come.
There is a quiet danger to living in an era of relative peace. It is poor training for storm raging. If we are trained to believe the worst that can happen to us is a stock market crash, we are grossly mistaken, and ill-prepared for actual adversity.
Consider the news accounts of executives who commit suicide after their company failed, or they lost a fortune in the stock market. Humans were made to manage MUCH more duress than this, yet this is how weak many of us have become. We've trained for nothing, so when a small wind challenges us, we stay down.
How are you training for indomitable will?
The purpose of today’s blog is to introduce you to deep brain training. This is training that is rarely done, yet some of the best brain training to do. It is training to be a tower of indomitable strength.
**IF you suffer from PTSD or a serious anxiety or depression disorder, DO NOT try this. Other techniques would be safer. MP3 has other resources we recommend for those suffering from these more severe conditions. Please contact us for more information.**
This will take 15 minutes, once a week. Find a quiet place. Close your eyes, and imagine the most terrifying thing you can. This is not your typical meditation, and I don’t recommend doing it at night. Perhaps imagine being a Jew in a Nazi war camp, being kicked, spit upon, and hungry. Go deep. Imagine this extending on for 5 days. You’re tired. It’s hard to sleep on a wooden rack. Your stomach hurts from lack of food. Winter is getting closer. It’s cold outside and you have no warm clothes.
On the 5th day, you feel hope slip away. Your will is being broken. On the 6th day, life is bleak and hopeless. Your vision is blurred and you feel numb. On the 7th day, you see a soldier strike a prisoner with a rifle butt. The prisoner falls, tries to stand, and the soldier says, “stay down”.
This is the turning point. All at once, a voice shrieks from every cell in your body,
NO
Your vision becomes clear, and the numbness is gone. In place of the numbness is a bright burning fire that has burned in every human, in every era, since the dawn of time. The fire burns because this is it’s nature. It cannot stay down.
Every week, once a week, for the next 24 weeks, take a 15 minute trip into the depths of hell, come out stronger, and stay….
sharp, focused, powerful, determined, ferocious
Stay unstoppable