Health Homework (32) Learn to use the bipolarity of INSPIRATION and OPPOSITION to (Re)Fuel your Motivation

Here is an efficient and practical exercise that I used this morning to wake up and warm up those neurons that had slept for the previous 7 hours

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau’s close friend and mentor, who came to grudgingly admire Thoreau’s argumentative streak, famously described him as “not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition.”¹

In my early 20s, I read Emerson’s description of Thoreau as “always manly and able…as if he did not feel himself except in opposition” and that idea stayed with me obviously for several decades—the idea of using opposition as a spark for motivation and action. Here, I revisit that idea and offer a concrete and efficient exercise.

You’ll notice that this idea was also reiterated by Nietzsche in Zarathustra:

“How I now love every one unto whom I may but speak! Even my enemies pertain to my bliss. And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then does my spear always help me up best: it is my foot's ever-ready servant. The spear which I hurl at my enemies! How grateful am I to my enemies that I may at last hurl it!”

In the section below, I offer an efficient and practical exercise that I used this morning; I’ll explain why this is efficient and practical; the reason—using Nietzsche’s phrase of “peak to peak” is described below.

“In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak; but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks—and those who are addressed, tall and lofty.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Here is an efficient and practical exercise that I used this morning; I’ll explain why this is “efficient” and “practical”; the reason—using Nietzsche’s phrase of “peak to peak” (quoted above) is described below.

This morning I had my morning coffee while reading sections of the book “1001 Smartest Things Ever Said” which is one of many books in this same genre of “success and motivation” that I acquired from my father, who gifted me with not simply the items but the idea and concept of motivational books and audiotapes since my teenage years.

In this instance, this morning I was reading from “1001 Smartest Things Ever Said” and found the book to be filled mostly with trite cliches perhaps punctuated at a ratio of 8:1 with a worthwhile quote.

• To be clear, I don’t consider this book “1001 Smartest Things Ever Said” to be a good book and I am not recommending it for anyone. The other book in the background of the photo included above is titled “Best of Success” and I read most or all of it when I was 16-years-old and then again later; at least then, the book occurred to me as a good one and I’ll have to re-evaluate it with my midcentury perspectives now.

• I just now took a look inside “Best of Success” and I remember that my father gave me my own copy of this book when I was perhaps ~20-years-old; I can note the differences between my father’s copy of the book versus mine because my father annotates with pen-lines while I annotate with colored highlights and a few written notes. As before, this book occurs to be as a good one, and one that I will read again and clearly in favor over the other “1001 S…T…E…S…” mentioned above.