Iron Truth

Hi all.
Let me start by saying that this Forum, despite its potential to be a negativity vortex, has done much good. I can acknowledge and respect that. It has also done some harm, maybe more that I can measure, but that's okay. I think we have seen that there is nothing good that doesn't bring some bad with it, I mean, clearly. What people went through specifically I will never really know, and I don't pretend to say that its easy to deal with trauma in life. It isn't.
However, a very good friend of mine just bump into this, he told me it changes his life. When I read it I thought of many people on this site. This is from a Website called "Iron Truth". FYI, I am not in any way connected to this site or the people responsible for it.

Please enjoy:

Familiar with adversity? Isn’t everyone? Especially you, right?

Faced with challenge? I bet you are. Or, more accurately, I bet you think you are.

Isn’t every day a struggle? Isn’t the entire population out to see you undone? Isn’t it all about you all the time?

Might you be wrong about how hard things really are for you? Could your perspective have suffered a skew or two along the way to where you find yourself? No, of course not. You’re the last of the sane, the sole champion of truth in a world of lies, aren’t you?

This is no fault of your own, of course. Nothing is your fault. You’re perfect, aren’t you?

That’s why you feel entitled to complain, to blame, to cast fault left and right to everyone but yourself.

It’s going to be a sad, terrible day for you (if it ever comes) when the realization smashes you into little pieces that all this time – all this wasted time – has been spent talking when you should have been listening, “teaching” when you should have been learning, blaming when you should have been introspecting, complaining when you should have been working.

By that time, sorrow will be yours to keep. You’ll find a way to announce to the world that you’ve been cheated out of your chances, that time lost is forever gone and that someone should have warned you, looked out for you. You’ll be bitter that the universe hasn’t seen fit to treat you how you saw yourself all that time – special.

You’ll cast blame and judgment on all the powers that be, seen and unseen, for keeping you down, for stifling you, for being hell-bent on ensuring your failure. You’ll lose yourself in your grief, mourning aloud with every breath for the death of the you that could have been, if only…

While you’re busy spitting acerbic hymns of vengeance and foul play, the world will leave you behind. Those at work will ignore you. Your complaints become merely background noise which all will tune out. Parents will point you out to their children. You will become a teaching tool for them. You will be an example of how not to turn out in the end. You will be reduced to a personification of every father’s worst nightmare for their sons, and of every mother’s for their daughters.

Is it too late for you?

Most certainly not.

You’re still alive. You’re still here. You’re self-aware. You have free will. Tomorrow will come, and with it, a second chance.

A second chance for what? To keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Excuses are pathetic attempts to get out of doing what has to get done.

Feel like the world has a head start on you? Show up early, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Need to know more? Study harder, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Weak? Train harder, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Tired? Go to bed earlier, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Depressed? Realize that you’re lucky to be alive, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Too cold? Layer up, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Too hot? Take the layers off, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Hungry? So are a lot of people. Keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Had a bad day? Everyone has bad days. Keep your mouth shut and do the work.

No one but you is out to get you. Keep your mouth shut and do the work.

No one likes a complainer. Keep your mouth shut and do the work.

Car broke down? Ride a bike. Bike has a flat tire? Walk. Unable to walk? CRAWL, keep your mouth shut and do the work.

You will find that the busier you become, the less time you have to talk about how life is trying to let you down, the less time you’ll have to invent excuses as to why you fail, the less time you’ll have to blame other people for not doing your work for you.

The more honest work you do, the further away you will drift from being the person you were – the one with a complaint for each little thing, the one with a world full of enemies, the one born under a bad sign, under a black cloud, hexed – and the closer you’ll draw yourself to becoming who you were meant to be: the one walking, not talking; the quiet one, working obsessively to realize their potential; the one who has begun to notice the self-sabotaging freaks on the street shaking their fists to the sky, casting blame and judgment on all the powers that be, seen and unseen, for keeping them down, for stifling them, for being hell-bent on ensuring their failure.

You’ll be the one who realizes how good you have it after all.

You’ll be the one who has taken advantage of one of a lifetime’s worth of second chances.

You’ll be the one who realizes that just one is all you need.

Kid

Is there a 'ding' missing from the end of your handle.

I mean show me someone who doesn't think they are doing the work?

And...

A person being told to shut their mouth usual hears that someone else can't.

That Iron truth site sounds interesting though, & thanks for the encouragement.

I'll check it out.

Thanks

I tried to cushion this, but it seems I failed.
This wasn't meant to sound like I was bringing down the teaching hammer on everyone. I meant to say, "this really helped my friend, It seems like some people feel like victims here, maybe this will help." If it doesn't help, that's cool. If you feel excluded, that's cool too.

Could not help to think of something after reading Kids post. It seems to me that those that only had a minimal involvement with the OBC, were new, or kept themselves at a "safe" distance from the teacher(s), (whereever they might be training within its confines) , compared to those that were the "staple", the ones that had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the work, usually were the ones who were always quick to point out to the latter of how "real training" should be done

Hey kid
Being misunderstood here can be an unavoidable initiation passage.(that sometimes never seems to end)

Sometimes on this forum you'll see masters of clarity posting baggage free threads that can feel like a personal fireside chat but the rest of us have to toil with the absence all the vocal, facial & body inflections that usually shows our real intent to others. Add that to the fact that many of us don't really know each other and it can end up sounding like a Morse code that is going to push buttons you never dreamed of.

If you do figure out that "cushioning thing" , I think we'll have something to put on some very blank OBC connect silks.
Cheers

Kid, reading your post brought to mind the often misunderstood parable attributed to Jesus about the labourers being hired at different times of the day. They all got the same reward although they did more or less of the work. When you finally do the work you then get the reward...with gassho, Lesley:sunny:

This initial post is pretty trippy. Iron Truth, huh? Well, I appreciate the reminder that whining is a drag for all concerned. But that Iron Truth could be told in a compassionate and positive way rather than in the condemning tone it is presented in, and I'd be a lot more likely to want to hear it. Actually, I don't think it's true, or at least that it represents anything but a small window of truth. Just one tiny angle.

I used to sort of swagger through life like that... All I'm saying is that life can take you for a ride you never expected and that you are not going to be in control a whole lot of the time and only on a certain level at the best of times. Do the work? What work is that? Who defines it, and for whom? This sounds like a real bad government whose country I would gladly ride out from on a really rickety life raft. I daren't say more because Iron Truth says to shut up. Ayn Rand meets Stalin. And they come to an agreement. Yikes!

But as usual, your input is worth reading, Kid, and not only so I can think about how differently we all see things.

And, Polly, as a note, I don't necessarily subscribe to this " Iron Truth". In fact, I find the title pretentious to be honest. i just came across the thing and though it might be helpful to some, you know?
Helpful as a bitt of added perspective, surely not as some sort of iron truth

Gasho

The "Iron Truth" material does come from a weight-lifter's website, leading me to think it's oriented toward haranguing someone to pursue their fitness goals. What it lacks in subtlety as a teaching I suppose it makes up for in . . . something else . . . not sure what. I have not yet found my own behaviour to be affected by someone else using the phrase "shut up".

Knowing how to teach is a tricky thing.

Yes, Lise, knowing how to teach is indeed a tricky thing.

On the other hand, preaching is easy.

Consider the following from Kid's first posting:
Let go guys. Those of you who want to read and share painful
experiences, you have my support. The rest of you who simply indulge and
instigate more trouble, please I encourage you to let go, and forgive
yourselves and others.
Further,
Be honest with yourselves, look at this forum and consider if its not
akin to a group of people who get together and can't stop badmouthing
someone. I know that's not what the SPIRIT of this place is, but it has
definitively developed into it.
It seems awfully obsessive, and even
those not meaning any harm at all (and I recognize there are many of
you with the best intentions) are caught up in a nasty cycle of
clinging, and indulgence. I am sure that honest contemplation will show
you that you are doing this, to those of us outside of the forum it is
painfully transparent how small your world in here has become, and how
little light shines in.
He, or she, tells us what 'honest contemplation' will show us. Oh dear.
Ol'ga

Kid, I got that you didn't invent the Iron Truth thing, didn't intend for you to take my comments personally but failed to make that clear. It's come into focus easier hearing that it was meant as a motivational tool for athletes. (Thanks, Lise.) Certainly it has some value, as I said, nobody likes a whiner. But it was such a broad-spectrum harangue, it surprises me that anyone would use that as a teaching tool rather than one that stresses gratitude. Unless, I suppose, you are a person in some sort of training.... military, physical, uh, spiritual? Interesting.

Now what was that story about the moat in someone elses eye? Mmm.. I must go and look it up.

Nice, lots of comments.
No offence taken on my part from anyone.
Like I've said before, I found this "Iron truth" through a friend, and though it could be helpful. I totally see how it can be to harsh and poky to be taken seriously, and in all honesty I am not above saying that it may have been a mistake to just post it here, where nobody knows me, where nobody knows that I am not actually a stuck-up self-righteous punk (Even though, I admit, those post might have sounded like it.)
Being told to shut up, while uncomfortable, might be totally needed. Not necessarily the case here, but again, though it might be helpful to some.

Ol'ga my heart goes to you. Again I can admit lack of judgement in posting the way I did. I hope you understand how odd this site can appear to someone new to it. Sometimes the comments are so far off on one side of the spectrum it can be veeery intimidating. I do stand by how small this place can be, and how much unbalanced it can feel in here. Forums on their own are almost as a rule an addictive thing, and may help shed light on somethings, but cast shadows on others.
I feel confident we can all agree how easily one's post can go rouge and be misunderstood ( be by how it was presented and or interpreted).
I don't take back what I said. I do apologize for be so impertinent in the way I said it. I still think it has valuable observations, Ol'ga. I think both you and I would benefit from softening up a little, specially when it comes to what we perceive to be real or true.

Sorry Kid, it seems that not everyone thinks that your two follow up clarifications of your Aug.25th posting were enough of an oops explanation to get you clear of all finger wagging as well you've been tagged by earlier postings.
Sometimes on a slow news day, in a small town rag, the smallest offence gets up on the front page.

The softening of your stance between entering this forum and now, gives me hope for my own struggles.
H

Kiddo, me, softening a little? But I am softness itself!

Ol'ga

Dear Polly --- "Ayn Rand meets Stalin." Very literally, L O L!!!!\
That meeting should have been arranged, one charismatic, feckless thug to another.
Thanks, I needed a good laugh!
--Dan

And P.S. Yes I can see that some people can use exactly the kick in the pants that's apparently available at Iron Truth. But FWIW, I genuinely wouldn't suspect anyone who regularly posts here to be so poorly functioning, no disrespect to Kid's friend. I've definitely not been hitting on all cylinders a time or two in my life.
Yeah, Ol'ga, you are just a fluffy teddy bear. Like the ones in Grizzly Man, for example.

Mark, What's your point? Since your comment comes after my post I assume you are referring to me. I don't do subtlety very well, you'll have to spell it out for me.
Howard, I hadn't read the Iron Truth post before and felt like commenting on it. I wasn't wagging my finger at Kid, I was wagging my finger at Iron Truth.

Yes. I am feeling distinctly testy. Perhaps I need to take a look at Ron White's talk but not tonight.

Hey Polly,
I think as far as Howards comments goes, it was more directed to my general tactlessness in posting, and how that's been less that fun for some....
I think Mark's was directed at moi too.

Thanks for the good humor Ol'ga!

Cheers

Thanks, Kid, you could be right. If so, there's my proof...I REALLY don't do subtlety. Am much more proficient at paranoia. Time to check out the Grizzly Bear.