I agree, it tends to sometimes become a problem for me. Something I need to watch out for.I get it. It also depends what work is for you. If it's only about "productive" material actions but no inner work (like learning how to relax, be in the moment) then things can get out of balance.
Yeah, I agree with both of you here. Tony is clearly in the "mental toughness" camp. The biggest giveaway, imo, is the emphasis Tony has on "conditioning". If you read his books, Awaken the Giant Within or Unlimited Power (I believe you have read Unlimited Power @MTF, if I remember correctly you are/were a big fan?) a large portion of them are about "conditioning" or Tony's version of it which he calls neuro-associative conditioning (itself a variant of NLP).You're right and I was wrong. I watched this video and it's super clear that Tony is all about training the mind like a muscle, which is essentially building mental toughness. He does mention he's very spiritual but I'd say that it's in the background compared to his training.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Zbykf7hqk
Anyone who emphasizes "conditioning" or "training yourself to become" is not in the same camp as people like Eckhart Tolle or Michael Singer who are about "unconditioning" yourself, "unlearning" and "being".
To me, the contrast is most clear if we compare CBT (which is in its essence similar to NLP, or NAC) and mindfulness. We know that both of them have therapeutic effects that lead to changes in behavior, but the way they lead to those changes (the mechanism of action), is very different. I remember chatting with David Burns (the Doctor who wrote Feeling Good, which introduced CBT to the general public), and he seemed to be very much opposed to mindfulness on the grounds that its results aren't guaranteed in a step-by-step formula, you do this, you get this result, the way things are with CBT (which is really about re-conditioning). Indeed, mindfulness can mean a plethora of things, and isn't even well-defined in the scientific community. So I remember him saying that if you're depressed then you want the treatment with the most solid proof at changing lives.
It seems that CBT works by replacing one thought pattern ("I am worthless") with another ("I may have failed, but now I'm wiser and I'll do better in the future"). Since thoughts cause emotions and behaviors (which further accentuate the thoughts), by changing the destructive thoughts you strike at the root, and ameliorate the troubling behaviors & emotions. This is literarily a form of conditioning. You're conditioning your mind by force/willpower and repetition to think in a certain way.
On the other hand, mindfulness works by creating a space between you and your thoughts (ie, by generating UNDERSTANDING). So "you are not your thoughts" - separating your thoughts from your identity. In this case the thought "I am worthless" comes to you, but it is no longer amplified by your mind with other thoughts, such as remembrances of your past failures, because it is seen for what it truly is: just a passing thought, not something that is part of your identity. Over time, the thought "I am worthless" is drained of emotional energy, rendering it powerless, and then it disappears. The practitioners of this brand of self-help would claim that the "conditioning" camp creates superficial change. Meaning that all this conditioning merely represses the unwanted thoughts/behaviours deep down into the unconscious, where they resurface in a different form to trouble you. And the only way to truly fix it is to do the required inner work and drain the thought of its emotional energy.
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