Mochinmaxxing

Scroll the internet for five minutes.

You will see Mochin d’Katnus everywhere.

Men foaming at the mouth over politics.

Strangers screaming in comment sections.

A man destroying his own peace because someone said something stupid online.

Another man collapsing into anxiety because his plan didn’t work out exactly the way he imagined.

And yet another is drawn to the glowing screen like a rat after a bit of cheese. 

It is a massacre of the mind.

Not the body. The mind.

Cuts everywhere. Self-inflicted.

And the strange part is that most people don’t even realize they are bleeding.

Chassidus has a language for this.

מוחין דקטנות

Constricted consciousness.

And its opposite:

מוחין דגדלות

Expanded consciousness.

These are operating systems of the mind. 

Every human being is constantly switching between the two.

The Small Mind

The Zohar describes Katnus as a constricted state of awareness where a person becomes trapped inside the immediate moment.

Your problems feel enormous.

Your ego becomes fragile.

Your reactions become automatic.

Anger spikes quickly.

Koheles describes it perfectly:

כי כעס בחיק כסילים ינוח

“Anger rests in the lap of fools.”

The fool is not necessarily unintelligent.

The fool is constricted.

Everything feels personal. 

Everything feels threatening. 

A man insults you.

You explode.

A plan fails.

You spiral.

Your prayers become mechanical.

Your learning becomes routine.

Your life becomes reactive.

Chassidus calls this Katnus because your entire awareness has shrunk down to the size of your ego.

Funny, actually, your inflated ego is only large enough to fit on the head of a pin. 

You can see it everywhere today.

Outrage addiction.

Doomscrolling.

Jealousy over other people’s success.

Endless fear about the future.

Men who cannot tolerate discomfort.

Sadly, another example of Katnus exists in Torah life itself.

A man who only learns what he is told to learn.

Never opening a sefer on his own.

Never wandering into the Yam Shel Torah with curiosity.

Never wrestling with ideas.

He follows the routine.

But his mind remains small.

The Expanded Mind

The opposite state is Mochin d’Gadlus.

Expanded consciousness.

The Zohar associates Mochin with the upper three sefiros, Chochmah, Binah, and Daas.

the intellectual soul of the human being.

When a man remembers the bigger picture even while going through the inside of a problem.

The Mishnah in Avos gives us the definition of a Gibor:

איזהו גיבור? הכובש את יצרו

“Who is strong? One who conquers his inclination.”

Conquering your natural impulse means not allowing Katnus to run your nervous system.

A man insults you.

You pause.

You think.

You respond only when you are clearheaded, instead of reacting in the moment.

A plan fails.

You adjust.

You keep moving.

Challenges become training.

Nassim Taleb, in his famous and much-recommended book, calls this "antifragility." 

The trait where a person grows stronger from stress rather than collapsing under it.

Torah has been teaching this for thousands of years.

Mishlei says:

שבע יפול צדיק וקם

The righteous falls seven times and rises.

Gadlus is the ability to keep standing back up and growing from the experience.

Mochinmaxxing

In internet slang, people talk about “maxxing.”

Looksmaxxing.

Jestermaxxing

Chinamaxxing (this one really concerns me. It's all about returning to Chinese pagan practices.)

Optimizing a trait to its highest level.

Fine.

Let’s call our little dance through your mind ‘Mochinmaxxing.’

Training your mind to operate in Mochin d’Gadlus as often as possible.

You see, life punishes constricted consciousness.

And rewards expanded consciousness.

A man in Katnus panics.

A man in Gadlus sees options.

A man in Katnus complains.

A man in Gadlus adapts.

A man in Katnus collapses under pressure.

A man in Gadlus becomes stronger from it.

Your mind must be governed.

Not allowed to run wild.

And truthfully, more than all that, the goal is alignment with truth.

As the Torah says:

וידעת עם לבבך

You shall know in your heart. With your heart.

Knowledge that penetrates the heart.

That is Daas.

That is Mochin D’gadlus.

Katnus Moments

Even the greatest people experience Katnus.

The Baal Shemtov taught us that there are times that are mesugal for Katnus.

I love this word, "Mesugal." 

I always thought it meant "fortuitous" or "appropriate." 

No, it's so much deeper. 

It means ‘Spiritual Capacity.’

Each moment in time, each decision, each thought, has its own spiritual capacity.

Sometimes there are moments for Gadlus, and sometimes the moments' capacity is constricted. 

Fatigue.

Stress.

Confusion.

Spiritual dryness.

A person cannot live permanently in Gadlus.

Life is a roller coaster, they say…

But you can learn how to behave during Katnus.

That is a skill of its own. 

A Gibor notices the constriction.

He does not trust every thought his brain produces.

He slows down his reactions.

He buys himself time.

He remembers that the moment is smaller than it feels.

He forgives himself for the smallness and makes a plan to ride the wave. 

The entire goal is simple:

Do not make permanent decisions from a place of temporary Katnus.

A Mashal

A man climbs a mountain.

When he reaches the summit he can see everything.

The rivers.

The roads.

The towns.

Then fog rolls in.

Suddenly he sees nothing.

If he forgets the mountain exists, he panics and will walk right off the side.

If he remembers the view he already saw, he remains calm.

Katnus is the fog.

Gadlus is the vision on the mountain.

Your choice lies in what you are willing to allow yourself to see.

Operational Mochinmaxxing

“Very nice Adam. Now what do I do?" you may ask.

The following are some tools every man should build. 

And yes, I will utter the painfully cliché line, "This is for me as much as it is for you." 

I've lived too long in the katnus.

Time to break out. 

Work on the following:

Pause before reacting. - Five seconds of silence prevents endless regret.

Learn Torah beyond your assigned curriculum. - Explore the Yam Shel Torah. 

Curiosity expands consciousness. 

Dance through the pages. (More on this method another time). 

Practice Simcha deliberately. - Joy breaks the psychological contraction of Katnus. 

The Tanya explains that sadness paralyzes spiritual movement. 

Rebbe Nachman taught this as well, and if you are still a bit of a Kalta Litvak, David Hamelech taught this as well, although to be fair, David Hamelech probably was not a Litvak.

Practicing Simcha on purpose is probably the hardest avidah on this list. 

Start by listing 10 things you are grateful for if you feel yourself slipping into katnus. 

Train resilience. - Physical training helps. Hard things expand the mind. 

But any hard thing works. 

Do hard things in general. 

Physically, emotionally, mentally, and of course spiritually. 

Every day, do at least one hard thing. 

Don't even worry about completing it.

Lo Alecha, ligmor, and all that. 

Keep perspective. - Most problems are smaller than they feel in the moment.

You will die one day, hopefully at the ripe old age of 120.

Ask yourself, “When you are 120, will this thing that has gotten me all twisted up in knots even matter anymore?”

No? Then why do you still care, even now?

Remember the bigger story.

You are not the center of reality. 

Hashem is.

Mochinmaxxing is simply this:

Refusing to shrink your mind to the size of your problems.

Learning how to widen it again.

מתוך הרחבת הדעת

And again.

And again.

Learning how to be big, even when you are in a matziv that is small.

Baki B’shov. (But thats a Torah for another day.) 

Until expanded consciousness becomes your default.

P.S. Thank you Shmueli for helping me craft this. 

Was going to go off the rails, but you kept me on track.

Thank you!

P.P.S. This needs to be expanded a great deal.

I realize that the above is just a toe dipped in the water.

Please consider a paid membership so that I can put all my resources into providing a full Gibor Guide to Mochinmaxxing as well as more detailed books and guides for more Gibor growth.

Thanks!