Fear and Stress

Today it sank in better that the way the mind works is just fucking stupid from the start (or rather, appears that way from a human perspective, at least).

Let's give an example here.  You're scared of, let's say spiders.  You're scared of spiders, and somehow some that are deadly got into your house.  It starts to feel like you could end up being bitten by one at any moment, and obviously you want to avoid that.  Obviously you're attached to your life and to not experiencing such a probably painful death.  (sure in today's society you will probably just call exterminators, blah blah, but in this situation either you can't or it doesn't work well enough for whatever reason, but bear with me because this will get really relevant to probably every single person here by the end of this whole thing anyway)

Well then I've got news for you, if you don't somehow get out of that situation quickly, the only other 3 options that are going to be available to you (afaik), to keep your mental health and make it more likely for you to get out of it, are going to appear really stupid to you probably.  And I do think you can easily combine those.  But anyway, those 3 are to:
1.  Face it mentally and be brave enough that you're basically telling yourself that even though you're afraid you'll get through this fine. (even though your life is being threatened merely by being where you are)
2.  Detach from what you desire that is being threatened.  (even though that means you outright don't care about giving up on your life, although you can still *prefer* another outcome)
3.  Stop focusing on it.  (even though you need to do something about it because your life is being threatened)

In other words, in a potentially life-threatening situation where you really want to live and don't believe you can get out of the situation strongly enough (you can't let doubt or worry creep in much, you have to believe), the human mind is seemingly designed to just, destroy your life over time.  Because, one way or another, what you focus on (and the way you focus on it is important) will become more habitual and understood and prominent in your mind.  You become more and more likely to focus on it with the kind of intense emotion that you put into it, which in this case is fear.  So in that situation you're constantly focusing on trying to avoid dying while you always feel like you're gonna die.  In other words you're teaching yourself how to stress yourself out for the rest of your life, slowly killing yourself.  Within the realm of your mind, it only gets worse, because after all it gets more prominent because of your focus, even if your situation is staying the same.

Now, in this example, all you wanted to do was live in a way that you doubted and worried about, and that caused this.  However, that was only the most basic example.  Most people seem to live their lives choked by this kind of stress, because they need to pick one of the 3 options for something, yet they never did (for what are probably some pretty obvious and understandable reasons) and even when they were out of the situation that hurt them, in many cases they carry the feelings with them anyway and by now that's all they know, so there is no escape even after it is over except to pick from the 3 options.  And this can happen for any kind of fear that you want to avoid, it is not just about if your life is being threatened, of course.  So for example.  You have social anxiety?  Congratulations you're doing this.  Anxiety about losing your job?  Congratulations you're doing this.  It goes on and on.  Probably anyone here can find at least one way that they're doing this, that is very prominent in their life.

The basic idea here is to not *mentally* avoid what you fear.  Even if you pick option #3 you're still not doing that, you're having a good or at least better time focusing on something else.  And what is this concept of not mentally avoiding what you fear, other than stupid in the eyes of most of those alive today?

Whatever it is that you're trying to mentally avoid so much, if you really really don't want to do any of those 3 things to enough of an extent to save your mental health (and it will be understandable), then this way that the mind works is going to look incredibly stupid to you because all 3 options are going to look incredibly stupid, or perhaps even impossible.  Of course you might even flip it around though, and say something like, 'what, you mean the mind is supposed to be perfectly ok if I worry and stress myself to death?'  Well if you think that way, more power to you.

I'm not telling anyone to believe in the law of attraction but if you do then this whole thing gets so much more significant, because then what you're telling yourself with your focus for long enough (for example, "my life is in danger, always in danger, and I hate it") not only gets more prominent in your mind, it gets more prominent in your life as well.  But whether you believe in the law of attraction or not, it does seem to get more prominent in the realm of your mind at least, in the same way spoken of in law of attraction teachings!  Make of that what you will.

Also, it is very significant either way because the stress can destroy your health and your life, and the negative thought patterns can sap your motivation and turn you away from doing the things you'd otherwise do to improve your situation.  You might even consider that it doesn't really matter that much in this context if the law of attraction is real.

The way of the samurai, at face value may appear to be following option #1 which is to face it.  Actually I think it teaches to follow #2 which in this case involves not caring even if you die (although you can still prefer to live), at which point there is simply no reason to stress out even if you're staring death in the face.  I believe there are ways to use the other two options to great effect in actual combat situations, but not everyone is going to teach the same approach.  Of course, no matter what approach you take for something like combat, it is going to require a lot of willpower and bravery probably.

Option #1 is very interesting to me in particular and is perhaps the one that can look the stupidest to people, I would think.  There are situations in which you literally cannot even begin to understand how you can possibly be ok, and at those times of course the reasons for why you can't imagine it will be very obvious.  Let's say in an extreme example, your country goes to war tomorrow and you think your country will get bombed, and everything you've built up in life has been in your country, and all you know about other countries is stuff that seems really horrible.  How are you gonna just expect that you'll be ok, you might ask?

That kind of thing is why it might appear so stupid.  People seem to like to not only bury themselves in their thoughts, but also refuse to face the unknown.  The unknown would at least tell them very simply that they don't know about the mere existence of a lot of what they don't know, and that they can expect that much.  Yet, to actually stop burying yourself in your thoughts or to face the unknown, even when you're scared in order to look for hope in this world, with bravery, may appear thoughtless or stupid in today's world.  Why bank on what you don't know?  You don't even know that what you want exists in that case, at least not yet!  It could even be seen as similar to believing in a religion.  Yet this is how you look for a solution that you don't know about the existence of.  If you don't do this to at least some extent, you can't even look for it anyway because you will believe 100% that it doesn't exist and thus there is no point so you won't even look.

As far as I know, taking this to an extreme is one of the best ways for a person to save their mental health and become more competent in general.  It isn't even telling you to believe in some god or some particular cosmology or philosophy anyway, except that if you just stop hesitating and wrapping yourself up in your thoughts and doubts and worries so much, and have a brave and good enough attitude while banking on some way that you'll be ok, then you will be effectively telling yourself with your focus all the time that you're ok and will be ok and how happy this makes you, and then of course the happiness will become more prominent in your mind.  However this takes time and bravery to get used to and the whole time you're getting used to it, it will probably look stupid to some extent.  But once you do get used to it, if by some chance you believe in the law of attraction, theoretically you'll always be ok.  And even if you don't, you'll be ok in your mind which will save your mental health and very likely make you lead a much longer and healthier life where you're more willing to do the things that you feel like you need to do, because of not spending your time feeling demoralized and actually feeling a much higher sense of morale and motivation.

And in the process, your imagination will expand greatly.  Your life becomes full of possibilities, because you faced the unknown which is of course full of wondrous possibilities that you couldn't and even still can't imagine.