What is A WarriorSelf? Why Do We Need It?
"The world is full of people living lives of quiet desperation - preferring the certainty of their misery to the misery of uncertainty"
Henry David Thoreau
The Starting Point
SIMPLE FACT OF LIFE: Human Beings are simply not likely to change the way they are - no matter how bad they want to. Rather than thinking of this as some kind of character flaw, think of it as a fundamental part of human nature. In fact, it is "built in" to the design of human beings.
As a species, we humans are driven to provide certainty, even when that very certainty is strangling our life force. Yes, certainty provides value, and it would be a chaotic world if there was a total absence of it. But as valuable as it is, our conscious and subconscious addiction to it robs us of our self-determination.
So much so that most of our efforts to effect life-style changes are decisively ineffective. Not because we don't want changes, but because we are not conditioned to tolerate them, even when they're desirable. Part of our intolerance is a matter of what we are comfortable with. But a more important part is because we have designed our lives around providing that certainty. Almost everything we do - all of the people we associate with, our physical possessions, jobs, habits, etc. - is in place to promote certainty.
No matter how badly we want something, or how much we need it, our ability to get what we want is decisively undermined by our addiction to certainty!
In the Warrior Model, we distinguish three "selfs" that all people have:.
1. Your Natural Self - who you were when you came out of the womb.
2. Your Educated Self - who you became over time. Everything you know about everything comes from the Educated Self. This is the part of you that craves certainty.
3. Your Warrior Self - who you become once you have discovered the components of your Warrior
If you've never thought about it, then the chances are you have been living your entire life inside of your Educated Self. And it is this "self" that is addicted to certainty and contains all of your expectations about how life is going to go. When the Educated Self is calling the shots, there is very little chance of anything EVER being any different.
But when your WarriorSelf calls the shots, you are no longer limited by the history, addictions to certainty and expectations of the Educated Self.
THAT is why you need to wake up Your WarriorSelf!