Where Are You on the Robot-to-Human Scale?

Here's one of those fun online surveys that fits really well with the theme of this blog and the practice of internal gongfu.

How Emotionally Repressed Are You?

In this forty item survey, you are instructed to check each item that "makes you feel something, anything." The listed items include a mix of situations and references to movies or other stuff you might see. Depending on the number of boxes you check, you'll fall into one of these four categories:

You are an emotionless robot. You’re barely human, and basically don’t care about anything. I’d say you should be disappointed, but you wouldn’t even feel that.

You are pretty emotionless. But some things will penetrate your cold, dead exterior and make you engage with humanity.

You are pretty emotional. Most things will penetrate your shell and you’re generally happy with the world.

So emotional. You are so emotional. You’re continually excited, or sad, or just feeling all the feelings. Literally anything you see makes you feel something. I’m not sure how you function.

And here's how I would interpret these categories in terms of learning internal gongfu:

You are an emotionless robot.  You are probably also numb to any bodily kinesthetics outside of smashing your thumb with a hammer. You should probably pass on this whole internal thing because you'll never get it in this lifetime. You'd make better use of your time focusing on martial mechanics and techniques.

You are pretty emotionless. You can probably feel your muscles like when you are doing physical labor, exercise, or stretching but you are probably numb to anything past this. Developing this internal thing could take you f-o-r-e-v-e-r! You'll need to work on improving both your emotional engagement with life as well as feeling more in your body. Hope you (and your teachers) have lots of patience and perseverance!

You are pretty emotional.  To the extent that you can feel emotion as a bodily reaction, and with proper coaching, you are probably best positioned to make easy progress.

So emotional. You are about as close to being a "natural" as they come. Your biggest challenge will be refraining from giggling from the sheer enjoyment of discovering, "I didn't know I could do that!"

Happy practicing everyone!