Pursuit of excellence or pursuit of pleasure and why?
Which do you put first, which would you ideally put first, which books do you like in relaiton to this?
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Pursuit of thinking about things other than necking myself desu
>>8059828
Do you have convictions? Do you have ideals? A pursuit of excellence for the mere sake of being excellent will fall apart or achieve only superficial appearance.
>>8059616
Pursue excellence. The pursuit of pleasure is not pleasurable and quite frankly hedonism is quite pleb tier. Le do it cos dick is good yolo XD.
Where as if you take a more stoic approach, improve yourself, strive to read great works, enjoy great didactic art, get fit and then by the virtue of hard work, you will be able to get those earthly pleasures we all seek. You will then be confident and talk to qt3.14's and get that sex you want.
Tldr pursue excellence and then the pleasure will come
>>8059844
For me personally it is pretty fluid. I have very general ideas about what kind of things can 'rightfully' be called excellent, namely creativity and rational thinking. However I have certain sub-projects which are more specific which generally tend towards these things but with other goals which indirectly achieve them. E.g. becoming good at guitar (in terms of what i deem good) and gradually instilling a curious disposition rather than apathetic and how to do these things well.
At bottom I always want to make it a project of being. Have an idea of how I'd like to be and pursue it as effectively as possible. To me, that's pursuit of excellence.
>>8059873
Sounds a bit unstable.
>Have an idea of how I'd like to be and pursue it as effectively as possible.
If your desire is to be a certain person, then how could this work? To be excellent as a guitar player your passion must eminate from your relationship to the guitar and not from the desire to become the image of a person who is passionate about guitars.
Now i'm just speculating from my own past experiences, but do you constantly get excited by certain prospects of being, of certain self-images to which you wish to live up to, just to find that you don't have the energy to actually pull through, so that your attempts collapse and you find yourself desiring to lose yourself in consumption and pleasure? If yes, then welcome to the club
>>8059884
>To be excellent as a guitar player your passion must eminate from your relationship to the guitar and not from the desire to become the image of a person who is passionate about guitars.
I don't really understand. My image of myself as a guitar player is my imagined relation to guitar playing that I think'd work best to achieve the kinds of guitar skills I want. I then make an effort to turn that imagination into reality and recalibrate if it is not right in practice and so on.
If I desire to be good at guitar then yes I need to become a person who is passionate about guitar but I happen to think it's not all that hard in terms of what to do. Applying it is hard but the actual actions are straightforward.
Remove gratification from other sources, leave myself with guitar, build the habit until I itch to play guitar, give myself an imaginary pat on the back when I practice as I think I should and less so when I don't.
Implementing it requires lots of effort, that's the hard part.
As for the second part, yes. But I also have pretty strong faith in habit. I think about it as a 2 month commitment. Commit to the thing you'd like to do routinely for 2 months without fucking up and it'll become automatic and you\ll want to do it provided you don't fuck it up by watching porn all day or something similar which saps energy.
It worked for the gym, I crave the gym. It's working stronger and stronger for guitar, I itch to play. And it's not working as well for meditation, but it'll get there I believe.
>>8059903
Though, the issue is i regressed by watching porn and that completely fucked it. So now I just know that me + laptop is a very likely impediment to what i want to achieve. So as soon as I can get rid of it, I will
>>8059903
>yes I need to become a person who is passionate about guitar but I happen to think it's not all that hard in terms of what to do
I don't think this works
>build the habit until I itch to play guitar
I think the people who reached excellence in guitar-playing didn't need to force themself until it became a pick, an intuitive synergy emerges for such people.
Maybe we simply have different perspectives on excellence. I'm really thinking about literally ''excelling in something''.
>>8059931
Yeh, I see this often and I think it's a cop out.
I think people tend to have this romantic notion that they just bonded with something when they were young and then they became great and it's just so pure and great yada, yada.
The truth is very often the greats at whatever (minus the uber crazy greats like mozart) were either forced to do it as a child by parents or had next to nothing to do as a child except that thing. In some ways people aren't that complicated, if you mix a reward feeeling from doing a thing and maybe a pat on the back froma parent, then something may be formed. Imagine if someone you deem great at something had been beaten and forced not to flourish in whatever field they're now in. It wouldn't have happened. Though this is obvious, it's just to point out the romantic notion of destiny or w/e i think is bs.
I don't forc myself to play guitar in many areas. E.g. i love just noodling, improvising and so on. But i also acknowledge I have to learn scales and play with a metronome and do finger exercises and trim my nails and it's all a bit tedious some times. I do not believe even the greats enjoy some of this stuff that you just have to do. I doubt they'd do it out of joy if they didn't have to to become excellent. But that's part of the work, it's not just a lovely fairytale.
As for how this does not match up with excelling at something, I don't understand where you're coming from
>>8059884
>do you constantly get excited by certain prospects of being, of certain self-images to which you wish to live up to, just to find that you don't have the energy to actually pull through, so that your attempts collapse and you find yourself desiring to lose yourself in consumption and pleasure? If yes, then welcome to the club
thanks i was just starting to feel good about my life
>>8059966
problem is usually a perfect ideal that you need to make a herculean effort to achieve and which you can't sustain. The most effective way to pull through imo is to gradually purge shit habits and form better ones which give you a better shot at getting to your ideal until you have chipped away and grown as much as you desire and you can keep going
>>8059949
>The truth is very often the greats at whatever (minus the uber crazy greats like mozart) were either forced to do it as a child by parents or had next to nothing to do as a child except that thing. In some ways people aren't that complicated, if you mix a reward feeeling from doing a thing and maybe a pat on the back froma parent, then something may be formed. Imagine if someone you deem great at something had been beaten and forced not to flourish in whatever field they're now in. It wouldn't have happened. Though this is obvious, it's just to point out the romantic notion of destiny or w/e i think is bs.
I don't disconnect hard work, frustration and rejection of bad habits from my notion of passion and synergy. I simply do not believe that you can teach yourself to start loving guitar. Or that you become a person that becomes passionate about guitar. Sure, they may be forced into their field but that is just the first step. But here again maybe our definitions differ, for me with excellence i really mean people who excel from the rest in a meaningful way.
>>8059983
I don't think we differ on the definition, just the variety in means of getting there.
Firstly, I don't even agree you have to like something to become excellent at it.
I think it's hard to disagree that Agassi wasn't an excellent tennis player, he excelled from the rest in a meaningful way and he fucking loathed it.
Again, i still think you're being over romantic about how much one should automatically love every aspect of what they want to be great at.
I already quite like guitar, it's not like forcing myself to stick at punching a wall. But the liking is growing into a loving as a get more and more competent and the reward from improving pays off and i understand it more deeply and it becomes more of who I am. I think this is essentially how any love works but it's just the conditions for it are hard to bring about because usually when things get rough you can just fuck off and watch tv or bate. By recognising that and saying, no, for now I won't do that and just continuing I have found new, deeper realms of love and appreciation for guitar. This is how it works for me. And there is always more to go and that excites me in a way that it did not when it was less familiar and I was less good.
I think this is me in a sense forcing (more like guiding) myself to love guitar but I don't think it's artificial and I do think it allows for the possibility of meaningful, authentic excelling. Which for me is excellence
>>8059971
That sounds like "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big"
If you haven't checked it out you might want to.
