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How to develop fortitude?
Specifically when someone you love or whose opinion matters to you greatly attacks your way of life, your beliefs, or even on a smaller scale just makes you feel ignored, pushed around, etc.
I find I quickly lose confidence in my "inner voice" when my loved ones, particularly family, do this. Generally when a stranger does this to me it's easier to let go.
Does anyone have a useful visual metaphor or story around this? I try to see myself as a rock and their words like arrows pinging off me but it doesn't work.
EDIT This has drawn a lot of attention so here are some specifics.
The "ignored" is primarily my manager who has not indicated "hearing" me in our daily meetings for the past year. If I speak he will sometimes speak over me. Every single other team member hears me and responds, except for him. It's obviously humiliating, and I've been able to tolerate it, but I recognize it's been subtly eating away at me.
The "pushed around" is in response to a DMV worker, who signaled at me to put my mask on while I was in my car. She gave me instructions for the driving test in the makeshift course the DMV made, I did not understand her instructions. (This may have been my fault for not understanding her instructions.) After she told me I had failed, when I asked for more clarification on the test directions, she took off her mask and began to yell at me and my partner, spitting on us in the process. I essentially broke down in the car after. I would like to, in the future, not be emotionally impacted or feel impact on my self esteem after such incidents.
The "greatly attacks your life and belief" is that I'm working in aerospace and defense and am Asian American in my early 20's. After the shootings I felt called to devote my life to lifting up voices typically ignored or silenced by the mainstream. I am now quitting my job for several reasons, the primary one as I was starting to get published on op-eds regarding anti-Asian racism and wanted to give myself time to redefine my goals.
After I submit my resignation, my aunt called me and spent an hour yelling at me over the phone for being irresponsible and ungrateful to my mom. When these conversations happen, I feel like I am in danger of losing my "fortitude". As in, I want to keep intact my concrete desire and wish to do well for the world, rather than making my family happy by taking a job they think is good (this is limited to the subset of jobs under "top earning doctor lawyer or engineer"). My default is to go along with my family' wishes to be filial to them, but I don't want to lose my vision for making the world better just to fulfill their wishes for me. I feel that previously my fortitude to be vegan was also subtly ground away by my family who did not support it.
Incidentally, a lot of the comments below have been great. I read a comment where one user stated that feeling ignored and pushed around may be the norm in adults life, and that after a certain period of time you train yourself to accept it. I would like to train myself, somehow, but I have experienced these kinds of situations many times and I feel like while I am certainly able to continue, internally I'm still distressed.
frankk response:
It sounds like you have a sound idea on right and wrong. If you're not uncertain, and have conviction in what is right, and stick to it, do your best to be polite and respectful to parents, coworkers, etc, but stick to your conviction on things that are right, and that are important.
Developing samadhi and jhana in a holistic way is your best bet to strengthen fortitude. Obviously that's not going to happen right away, but using little mental tricks like visualizing and so forth, is not going to have power without samadhi. What I mean by holistic way, is doing enough physical exercise at least 1.5 hours a day, eating healthy, 2-4 hours of meditation a day or as much as you're able. When your jhana battery gets charged up enough, you'll have internal energy/viriya that gives you courage and strength to follow through with your convictions and principles. If you protect and nurture your internal energy, don't overindulge in sex, drinking, gambling, sensual pleasures, and meditate instead, you'll feel the difference in strength (physical and mental). If you go celibate for 100 days and meditate a lot, you'll feel a big difference, especially if you're young and healthy.
When I was a kid I was shy and afraid of public speaking, afraid of even answering the telephone. Now, I'm totally fearless in those situations, completely relaxed. I regularly stand up to bullies, and am not afraid to question and criticize even the most popular and powerful. If I had 20 million followers on facebook, and they were all bullying me and telling me I'm wrong, but I know that I'm right, I'd just laugh them off and pity those fools. That's samadhi.
Forum discussion
Stackexchange moderators shut down that thread prematurely, so I restarted the discussion here:
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