From False Virtue to the Smallest Real Step

Show Notes

The week closes by connecting everything back to a practical question: once you have done the uncomfortable work of sitting in the discomfort, named the gap honestly, and stopped covering it with false gratitude or limiting belief language, what do you actually do next? Brian walks through the cable toe as the other Masonic symbol active in this pattern, arguing that when used in conjunction with virtue signaling it constrains behavior just as effectively as any external obstacle. Saying I am not the kind of person who can have a beach house or write a book is the cable toe deployed against yourself.

The antidote is not a dramatic overhaul. It is the smallest possible action that moves toward the actual experience, not a performance of wanting it or a plan to earn it, but a direct dip into it. Rent the beach house for a weekend. Drive a friend's car. Test the experience before deciding whether the wanting is real, because sometimes it is and sometimes it dissolves on contact. Either way, you are working from honest information rather than from a story the mind built to justify staying still.

Brian closes by noting that aspiration is not a character flaw. The signals the body sends when confronted with someone else's success are not signs of weakness or greed. They are fuel, and the whole week has been about learning to use them rather than convert them into something safer and more socially acceptable.

• How the cable toe functions as a self-imposed constraint on ambition
• Naming the gap as the first honest step toward action
• Breaking large objectives down to the smallest viable experience
• Why testing an experience directly can resolve a desire faster than planning for it
• Aspiration as a legitimate and productive signal rather than something to manage
• Turning physiological discomfort into fuel for a single small step

The sequence across this week is a complete working example of the awareness, reflection, analysis, action cycle applied to a pattern most people carry without examining it.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] All right, so we went through this process to deconstruct our own sort of transmutation of gold into lead by turning ambition and desire into gratitude, into a false gratitude that's not really appreciation, but a kind of virtue signaling that we use to essentially commiserate with our colleagues.
[00:20] Okay. Now, again, we're walking through the mechanics of a scenario, and it's one that I experienced at one point in my life. When we start to talk about this for your situation, obviously yours might be wrapped up in a completely different set of causes and effects, and that's okay.
[00:39] But if you're like me, then there's a good chance that what we've been talking about all week is this understanding that oftentimes we create these responses that look wholesome and are essentially masking an underlying discomfort.
[00:58] And in masking that discomfort through this wholesome lens, we justify inaction.
[01:03] This is a super common thing, I think, for people to do.
[01:10] And as we work to deconstruct it and figure out how to respond to it, we have to be able to call these things as they are.
[01:18] When we have these challenging beliefs, we will activate the cable toe, and we'll use the cable toe to constrain our behavior.
[01:29] We'll say things, these limiting beliefs like, I'm not the kind of person who can have a beach house, or I'm not the kind of person who can write a book, or I'm not the kind of person who can have a really fancy car.
[01:47] And when we use our cable toe in conjunction with this virtue signaling kind of stuff, we are weaponizing these processes against ourself.
[01:57] So how can we deal?
[02:01] How can we take this discomfort and turn it into action that's not paralytic, that doesn't turn into false virtue?
[02:08] It turns into something that is what we probably would consider to be real virtue.
[02:13] And the simple thing to do is once you've named the gap, I've identified what it is that you're trying to solve.
[02:23] Like, hey, this person has this nice thing.
[02:27] I would like to experience this nice thing, or have this nice thing.
[02:33] Put parameters around it.
[02:37] Change the conversation.
[02:39] Wow, that is really nice.
[02:41] I've always dreamed of a house up in the mountains by the lake.
[02:46] Or have I've always dreamed of a really nice car.
[02:50] Maybe you can do a trial balloon.
[02:54] You can send up a little signal to see what that looks like.
[02:59] Maybe instead of immediately going to, you know, doubling down on your work and trying to find enough money to afford some of these things,
[03:07] or doubling down on your relationships so you get to that rock star level of I enter the room,
[03:13] maybe you can try and dip your toe in some of these experiences.
[03:17] Maybe you can go rent the beach house for a weekend.
[03:21] Maybe you can try and drive your friend's fast car.
[03:24] And see if that's something you really want.
[03:28] Because sometimes when we see things that other people have, we think we want them and we don't.
[03:35] And again, we activate all of the tools we have at our disposal to justify inaction.
[03:43] But if you break it down, big rocks into small rocks.
[03:48] Take the smallest possible action towards that step.
[03:53] Towards that objective.
[03:54] Towards that experience.
[03:56] Maybe even having the experience directly without having to go through all of the stuff to get it.
[04:01] Like, again, renting the beach house.
[04:05] There is few things nicer than having a beach house.
[04:09] And it's having someone else's beach house that you don't have to clean.
[04:14] So when you start to look at things like this, and you play with these experiences and begin to sit in some of these discomforts,
[04:23] you realize in a lot of ways just how kind of fictitious they really are.
[04:27] How the mind creates these false beliefs and behaviors.
[04:31] I'm not, you know, it's more virtuous for me to have less.
[04:35] Or it's more virtuous for me to not do this or not do that.
[04:40] Not appear opportunist.
[04:42] Not appear maybe, you know, like we have these grand designs and objectives, right?
[04:49] Maybe aspirational kind of stuff is virtuous in its own way.
[04:56] And maybe if we try and pursue some of these things we gloss over and translate into more socially acceptable prisons,
[05:07] maybe you'll stop feeling them to begin with.
[05:14] Maybe you'll be able to turn these signals that your body's providing into the fuel you need to start one small step.
[05:22] Think about it.