In life you have two different types of paths to power, many assume the more powerful of these two is simply overwhelming strength. I hope to describe this and explain why that’s not always the best approach.
In my greatest estimation, this is not the case. I reckon that it comes from fluidity and ease of movement equating to greater speed and agility. When placed into the context of a movement and physics, you can see that this equals greater net force.
This sort of mentality of placing more of a focus onto speed and fluidity translates into all blocks of life in terms of being a strategy for life. Its one that many people don’t fully master until much later on in life despite being present in all of our lessons growing up. (Assuming you’re brought up in the same style as me.)
The opposite of this strategy for power is utilizing direct means of bulldozing through life. These are the people who will constantly try to swim against the grain and force their way into success in the most direct way utilizing only their brute strength and sheer force of will. To channel my inner anime and manga nerd, I would call this the Vegeta path. It's more direct, easy to give into, but the type of person who can sustain this is extremely rare.
We unfortunately don’t have an inexhaustible supply of energy and do get tired and weary. The ability to simply trying and brute force one’s way through life and overcome any obstacle alone and through being defiant sounds cool but is almost impossible to keep up. We get weary, we get tired, we gas out.
Meanwhile, the more replicable but also difficult to master is the Goku path (Yes I’m still using this analogy). This path involves relaxation, going with the flow. Going with the moment but not giving into one's urges, instead utilizing the flow of life and transforming that energy into your own. This is obviously a lot more complicated and difficult to explain as it tends to rely on understanding not just yourself, but also life around you.
Its a state of being moreso than an actual strategy for life much like “Ultra Instinct” in the Anime Dragon Ball is more of a technique than a form. If you can understand the ebbs and flows of life, know when the right moments to strike (Metaphorically Speaking) and when to relax, or get out of dodge, then you too can perfect this style. It’s much more advisable considering efficiency is prioritized in this life strategy overall.
So now that I’ve nerded out enough, lets bring this back to tangible examples as everything discussed thus far has been metaphysical or done through literary examples. When focusing on the way that you should go about life, you’ve got to ask yourself some questions:
"Do I understand life and how people we encounter in life function?”
”Do I know myself?”
For either strategy to work, you must know this approach. If you don’t understand life, then how can you successfully bulldoze through it OR use what it throws at you to an advantageous manner and what can be dodged or sidestepped. This knowledge of self and world simultaneously are why so many people tend to fail.
Everyone wants to go the Vegeta path and then wonders why they hit roadblocks in life and fighting it. They’ve miscalculated both themselves and their amount of energy to continually bust through roadblocks and don’t know enough about the world to pick the battles in which they want to burst through full steam ahead. These would be the people who will think they can challenge their superior at work without any sort of plan to recover when they are hit with a pink slip or don’t have any sort of leverage to be challenging anyone, let alone a boss.
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There’s also the issue of not knowing how much power you already have or can generate. This goes back into knowing one’s self. I’ll use an example from fighting to help make my point:
If I throw a punch and my muscles are stiff, tight, and tense, I'll have to push my muscles to the brink to continually add more speed whilst working against my own body. If I already don’t have enough innate strength to generate the necessary force of the punch from brute strength alone, that punch is going to not only fail to make a dent but also be tiring and slow.
Whereas if I'm loose, don't worry about applying pressure and instead throw a loose but fast punch, my overall force and speed improve with laxity and proficiency of mastering the pure technique of the punch. Eventually the ease of throwing it at any time begets more power over time as my muscles also become attuned and stronger from the constant use of proper technique and looseness.
Net efficiency will always trump greater inputs of energy. I believe that if we can learn to utilize our energy and simply maintain our own life force while rolling with whatever life gives us, we can achieve greater than if we try to constantly imprint upon everything we touch via sheer force and raw power. It will also lead to greater perseverance in life as well.
To go back to the example of talking to one’s boss, lets try being the employee that always does as he is told and when told something questionable by the boss, rather than a straight up challenge to authority, you simply use the ego and teachings of the superior against them. This can come in the form of,
”I remember that when you showed me how to do _____, you always taught us to ______, does this mean that in this instance we’re able to disregard what you showed us?”
This statement is a great example of instead using the forces that life has provided and continues to provide against the boss rather than outright telling the boss “He’s wrong” in a blatant challenge as our “Vegeta Path” follower would have.
By now you’ve probably guessed which path I tend to follow. You can even see this within my Twitter strategy as it's very rare that you will see me finding people to go out and attack or following trends in order to imprint my own opinion... I'm more concerned with going with the flow of what my life and immediate situation entails. It is what allows me to not get as mentally fatigued on Twitter as most people tend to do.
To bring it back to fighting in an attempt to give these lessons more context for those who are visual learners:
The greatest skill one can master in fighting is the counter. It's not the strongest punch or the best takedown. It's not even the most impregnable defense. Both rely on sheer strength. The counter, however, is a beautiful application of rolling with a punch to negate it in the most efficient way whilst remaining in perfect position to strike back & doing so quickly and loosely. This would almost always score more points or deal more damage than trying to simply go in and throw the strongest punch through an opponents guard hoping to break through with one’s own power.
Strength is temporary and fluid, changing with the tide of battle and stamina of the warrior. The person who has the greatest amount of energy at that time can access more of their strength than someone who may have greater strength but wastes it. Therefore, why does it make sense trying to fight unnecessary battles or crash through someone’s guard when you can take the Goku path, go through the steps, and wait for an opening to present itself and take it fluidly and quickly with little wasted movement?
The funniest thing about this lesson is that we all learn this from day one... It's simply "Be yourself." This allows you the most efficient access to your strength and let's you be truly in the moment. No need to get in to a character or tense up to the act or react. That’s the subtle beauty of this approach (The Goku Path), its in each and every one of us from the beginning and we simply have to take the time to refine what we’re already know and are good at.
To close this soliloquy, unless you’re legitimately “Built different” and you know it, it makes almost no sense to try to force one’s way through life and waste so much energy when you there’s always a better path to power…. Unless you really can and just want to at least.
The Path to Power Conundrum: Which Way Western Man?