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The Superpower of Monks and Psychopaths
If you had to come up with one thing that monks and psychopaths have in common, what would that be?
The lack of baggage and fear.
Regular people fret about things. Their bad upbringing. How people will accept their ideas. What this person thinks about them. They are basically saddled by the past and worried about the future, so every action is 25% of what it could have been.
Psychopaths don’t do that, and neither do monks. They just are.
Psychopaths don’t care about the failures they had in the past, and they don’t care about if they might fail in what they’re doing now. They just take action. And monks are disconnected from the very concept of caring, so they’ve got that locked in as well.
As a result, they’re able to act in a pure, vibrant way that seems superhuman to most. They act without fear, without hesitation, and with full commitment to the action. Because to them it’s the only action. It’s what’s in front of them at the moment, and that’s what matters.
Psychopaths are great with women, they get promoted, and they tend to be liked by others. Monks can sit cross-legged for 40 years at a time and cut boulders in half with their hands. I’m pretty sure I have these right.
Anyway, the point is that they act without fear because they refuse to let either regret or fear stop them.
We shouldn’t try to be psychopaths for obvious reasons, and becoming a monk is not for most. But we should take this concept of rejecting baggage and fear as a valuable lesson from both of them.