Your Selective Attention and Workout of the Week #44

Why are you reading this?  

Because you’re a friend or relative and you feel obligated?   Because I follow your blog and you follow mine?  Maybe.  But if you are a regular reader, the most likely answer is that you want to learn something that will make you somehow better informed or entertained.   And this is important because it speaks to a fundamental truth about consciousness.

What you see is determined by what you’re aiming at.

You could be reading one of a million blogs, but you aren’t.  Those other blogs are outside the narrow beam of your laser-like consideration.  It’s self-evident.  You’re reading this blog because you want to find something and you suspect that this might be it.

You don’t look at everything and then decide what interests you.  

Remember the famous video where a gorilla runs across the screen and nobody notices?  Have you read that over 280 people who’ve been convicted of crimes based on eyewitness testimony have been exonerated by physical evidence?  It’s called selective attention.  To see how it works, watch the video at the bottom of this post.

That’s why it’s so important to spend some time reflecting on what it is you ought to be looking for — because that’s what you’re going to see.

Over the course of a million years of human evolution we’ve been developing and using some very advanced technology to help shape and direct our knowledge frameworks so that we’ll see the stuff we should be seeing.  That technology is called by various names, such as Philosophy, Religion, Mythology, Folklore and so on.

In the absence of any spiritual technology you might be unsure what are you looking for.  And if that’s true, you’re prone to lack of focus, failure, unhappiness, mistakes, and poor choices.  You’re susceptible to traps, bubbles, misdirections, lies and manipulations.  Your success at living is impinged.

In search of direction, better spiritual technology, or an improved knowledge framework?

There is a couple of hundred pages of that embedded in Cabal Fang martial arts.  Get the new Cabal Fang book on iTunes, for your Nook at Barnes & Noble, or order a paper copy from Createspace or Amazon.

And now for the Cabal Fang Workout of the Week.

Workout of the Week #44: 6-Round All-in Conditioner

Set timer for 6 rounds of 3:00 minutes each, no breaks, and complete them as follows:

1. Military Presses.  Pick a weight you can manage — keep in mind you’re likely to be doing 50+ reps! — and complete as many as you can until the timer beeps.  Straight bar, dumbbells, doesn’t matter.  If you don’t have any weights at home, substitute a sandbag, two 1-gallon water jugs, etc.  No excuses.
2. Striking.  Hit the heavy bag with as much intensity as you can until the timer beeps.  No heavy bag?  Shadowbox instead.
3. Bag Lifts.  Squat down and body-lock a heavy bag with a good Gable grip.  Stand up and heave bag to shoulder.  Chump it over to the other shoulder, and re-position your grip.  Squat and place the bag on the floor (do not drop).  Do this as many times as you can before the timer beeps.  No heavybag?  Fill a duffle bag with folded sheets.  If you run out of gas, just stand straight and squeeze that body-lock with all your might.
4. Splays.  Get down and back up as many times as you can before the timer beeps.
5. Shrimps.  Choose a medicine ball you can handle.  Hug it to your chest and complete as many perfect and powerful shrimping maneuvers as you can before the bell rings.  No medecine ball?  Use a gallon of water, a backpack of books, etc.
6. Neck Bridges.  Start with a backward neck bridge.  Hold it until you can’t hold it any more, then switch to a front neck bridge.  No rest, just switch back and forth as little as possible.

If you’re not wringing wet with sweat when this one’s done, I’ll eat my hat.