Show-Up Sunday — How to Reach Self-Mastery

Welcome to #3 of Show-Up Sunday! 👋

Reading time: 2.5 minutes

Buddhist philosophy explores:

• Nature of suffering.

• The purpose of life.

• How to reach enlightenment.

The 5-Hindrances are five mental and emotional obstacles that prevent us from achieving self-mastery.

Today, we will explore each of them and how they can be overcome.

We are all dealing with stress.

It is present in our life every single day.

Today I wrote a thread on how to become stress-free.

I told you about 4 techniques that Shaolin Warriors use to reduce stress:

• Physical exercise.

• Mindfulness and meditation.

• Spirituality.

• Mental discipline.

The problem was that the thread was already long, and I couldn’t talk about mental discipline there because it was required to break down all the 5-Hindrances.

That’s why I continue the thread here.

(If you came here from the thread, I appreciate it)

So, let’s talk about mental discipline.

It is a broad topic.

And we can talk about it all day. Even writing books on it. But today we will resume the talk on:

• Which are the 5-Hindrances.

• How to overcome them to reach self-mastery.

So, the 5-Hindrances are:

1. Sensory Desire

2. Ill-will

3. Sloth and Torpor

4. Restlessness and Worry

5. Doubt

Sensory Desire

The first hindrance is the sense of desire.

This is the craving for physical pleasure or material possessions.

It can manifest as a craving for:

• Food

• Sex

• Money

• Material Objects

How to overcome this?

Practice mindfulness and meditation.

Become aware that material things aren’t permanent.

Ill-will

Ill-will is about anger.

It can manifest in 2 ways:

Hatred or resentment towards:

• Others.

• Oneself.

To overcome it the best way would be to practice kindness and compassion towards all beings.

Sloth and Torpor

The third hindrance is sloth and torpor.

This is manifested through the inability to focus or act.

To overcome this practice awareness and alertness.

In this way, you become more mindful of your thoughts and actions.

Restlessness and Worry

The fourth one is restlessness and worry.

It is a state of agitation and anxiety that prevents you from achieving inner peace.

As you can see, most of the hindrances can be fought through meditation.

As well as this one.

Doubt

The final hindrance is doubt.

You find this obstacle when you don’t trust yourself.

To overcome it, start to work on yourself.

You are capable of more than you were told you are.

Don’t get discouraged.

If you don’t believe in yourself, how do you want others to do it?

Think about it.

The 5-Hindrances are mental and emotional obstacles.

We find them on our way towards inner peace and enlightenment.

Probably you don’t really care about Buddhism.

But what I wanted to show you is that to reduce stress levels you need to change your lifestyle before you go to a therapist.

Or before you start taking pills or stuff like this.

Most of the time our lifestyle creates most of the problems.

Of course, you feel depressed and stressed when all the long you:

• Spend 8 hours on your phone

• Eat crap

• Don’t exercise

• Don’t spend time with your friends and family

• Don’t spend time outside breathing fresh air.

Try to solve these problems first.

And if the problems persist you can go to the therapist.

Until you change how your mindset and lifestyle I think it is worthless.

But, this is just my opinion.

You can do whatever you want in the end.

I’ll still respect your opinion.

This was it for today.

I wish you a great week ahead.

Thank you for your time and don’t forget until next week:

Show up daily and make your life worth living.

Adios amigos!