What can you do to finally start to amount to something, start to become worth a damn? Increase the IMPETUS for growth. 1
About 14 months ago I did something that started a whole new growth period in my life.
I started to get up early.
Looking from the outside, and looking from the inside, there was more to it… and I’ll share it, because it is significant. It shows how decision-making, direction, guidance, are not a straight-forward matter: not at all. 2
OK, here is the story:
It was November 2015, and I was still licking my wounds from having lost paradise… i.e. Amazon decided that my energy products cannot be sold on Amazon.
The loss was the loss of quick riches. Loss of future always hurts more than even having that future… The feelings are deceptive.
So it was not a big surprise that when I saw a get quick scheme, I jumped on it, drunk with hope. I was already counting my money.
To operate the scheme, you had to be at your computer at certain times.
1~2 am was ideal, but a tall order for me. So I got up at 3~4 am, and I was still making a lot of money… on paper.
It all turned out to be like that: paper money… lol. But I decided to stick with the early hour wakeup: I’ll tell you why. 3
Even though I live alone, the world is asleep at that hour. And the energy says: you are alone. With yourself. You don’t have to concern yourself with the world, with business, with busy-ness, nothing to continue, everything to look at with fresh eyes.
When I look back at different periods of my life, in the periods when I was up while others slept, I was incredibly growing. As a person. Skills grew. My center grew.
And in periods when I tried to do the same late at night: I didn’t grow.
When you try to be alone at night, you are alone in the contrast of “others are having a good time” or “others are enjoying their leisure time”… and because we are all connected, being with yourself is impossible. The other people who are awake get in the way: it is like going to the bathroom in the middle of the square… Can’t let go.
Even if you stay up past most people’s bedtime, you had to wade through those hours of not being alone… and by that time you are tired… your attention is gone, you have no glycogen left.
I have had two alcoholic boy friends who thought they were brilliant when they were drunk. But I can tell you: they spoke gibberish…
You produce mostly gibberish late at night. It feeds your delusion of being smart… delusion I said, and I mean it.
The biggest cost though is in the growth area. Because growth needs all kinds of energies. Night, the end of your day, is not ideal for growth. The ideal time is when you wake up.
You may not be a morning person, because whether you are or not is a matter of habit. There are no innately morning people, or innately night owls, that is a myopic view and a myth.
200,000 years ago humans did not try to do their best work at night… and genes haven’t changed much. We still cannot see in the darkness… had our eyes changed, I would say you are right.
But you still turn on the light when it gets dark, and fall asleep when you turn the light off… unless something bothers you.
I often read articles about people who get up early, and about their morning ritual. Exercise, running, walking the dog.
I guess it’s OK if they occupy their body so their right brain can center itself and start giving good information to the whole brain… but if they listen to music, or worse, some talk, they used up the best time of the day for noise.
I choose to exercise, when I do, or do anything like that around 11 am… by then my glycogen is gone… and I can do zombie stuff, like exercise. Like cooking. Like reading inconsequential articles. Sometimes novels…
The running on empty stuff… like eating.
So what do I use my mornings? To what is most important to me. That is penetrating the Universe beyond where I have. To see connections, see clarity, to see what has been never seen… so I can guide people in my care to the Promised Land, to the next level of human evolution.
Any humans awake within a few miles radius will actively hinder me in that activity.
Nebulous is the word I would use for activities outside of the 5-11 am range.
You need energy for a lot of things.
- The most important function of your energy is to direct your attention.The competition for your attention is tremendous. And unless you learn to direct it to where YOU want it to go, you are at the mercy of circumstances outside of your control.
- The other most important function of your energy is to learn new things, and manage yourself.The reason I say these two things together, because they belong together.Learning new things is unpleasant. Fraught with pain, anxiety, fear, and resistance.
Unless you can manage yourself to NOT act on those triggers, you will never grow, you will never learn, you will never build anything worth building. Like a life…
Unless you can practice and practice and practice managing yourself in an environment where other people’s energy isn’t pulling, isn’t working against your own intention, you will not be able to grow, learn, or build anything worth building.
Like a life that is worth living.
You cannot learn all that, unless it is concentrated time and energy for learning.
It is not an accident that children are herded to classrooms to learn the basics.
It is not an accident that real learning isn’t done piecemeal…
Learning needs more energy than anything else, because learning includes incorporating the new into the old… and that is a lot of disassembling and re-assembling, no matter who you are.
My least successful students are unwilling or unable to do the disassembling, and they cannot incorporate the new knowledge, because the old is in the way. The old, the inaccurate, the delusional, the mythical, the fables, the children’s stories.
The delusions created by fables… the inaccurate map of reality
Interestingly the fables of the people, their level of mythicalness, is detectable in the person: I can almost pinpoint their heritage through their delusions about life and about themselves.
The fables firmly teach agreements that were never made, and a worldview that is not accurate.
Examples:
- if you are smart you don’t have to work for what you want.
- The hero has the whole miracle machine work for him and get him through the tough parts…
- All you have to do is believe, and it shall be.
I don’t know the stories of different peoples. I have made a little study of it a few years ago, but I didn’t get to study all the stories of the world.
I know that Hungarian folk stories tell you to work, diligently, intelligently, and then you’ll have a chance you can take advantage of because you’ll be the right person for the opportunity.
I live that way. You can detect it in all my articles.
- Do what is difficult when it’s easy.
- Be prepared for a lot… and do the preparation every day, with the vision of a bigger tomorrow.
- Don’t do it because you desire that bigger tomorrow… it will just put you into daydreaming mode…
- Don’t spare yourself: you don’t know what will come and from where. Just become rounded and prepared for anything.
- Build forgiveness into the land… redundancy. Have more instead of less…
- Wasting a little effort is better than wasting a life
This flies in the face of Slavic stories where one can win without being prepared, or having invested any work.
Or Greek stories where it’s all up to the gods…
Or French, where it’s all up to how clever, how ingenious, how deceptive you can be…
All different cultures. All different realities to disassemble…
Not easy.
You need solitude, large chunks of uninterrupted time, and a huge ability to manage yourself to build a higher pain threshold and tolerance for unpleasant feelings.
It is never too late to build that up, but having the same hours as everybody else, is the worst thing you can do for your own evolution. You’ll end up like everybody else… and that is horrible.
Why? Because a “normal” person is miserable.
The inner tension of what is possible and what they have is tearing them apart. And then the constant pretending… Horrid.
And the conflict between one’s self-image that is based on delusion and the real self… I can feel it. I know when that is happening, no matter whether you are in Virginia, New York, or in South Africa.
So what do I recommend?
If you want to grow… but only if you want to grow… move your awake time to give you alone time.
Now, what if you don’t want to grow? Then you want to be busy to hopefully avoid having to face yourself, having to be alone with yourself. So keep doing what you are doing, if it works, or increase business, social time, to avoid being with yourself.
It works… somewhat.
You can avoid being with yourself, but can’t avoid the internal and below the conscious level conflict. And the misery. And the despair. And the “quiet desperation”.
- Impetus:
A moving, motive power, motivating force
impulse
stimulus
Synonym: encouragement, incentive, motivation
Antonym: hindrance, block - If you look closely, I got to the “right” path for me through a seeming misdirection, a step, had I seen it for what it was, I would have never taken: falling for a money scheme.
This wasn’t the first time I had Source guide me this way. It seems that “disassembling” or getting you out of complacency, comfort, is the first step for any growth to take place.
Just like in my story about the lightning that hit my kayak… there is no going up until you went all the way down, emotionally.
I see this on the people who ask me to guide them to become healthy. If they are just curious, or have a fleeting desire to get healthy, they will never rearrange their lives for health, or maybe a little bit.
The closer they are to be at their wits’ end, the more willing they are, the more able they are, and the healthier they become.
The more you are able to manage yourself to withstand discomfort, the higher you can go. In health, and in anything.
- Here is an article in pdf form, that I haven’t read, but that triggered today’s article… lol. waking-up-early-a-guide
No truth in that.
Glycogen is manufactured in the liver, and does not need consumption of sugar.
By the way, I am only using glycogen because Tai does, but he doesn’t understand physiology.
You could replace “brain energy, plain plasticity” and it would mean the same.
So no, do not eat a teaspoon of honey to increase to amount of energy your fritter. Instead start making something of yourself.
You have plenty of “glycogen” but spend it on useless stuff, like asking this question.
Here’s my stupid question of the day, Sophie: I read that taking a teaspoon of raw honey at night, before you go to sleep (provided you have not just eaten protein) will increase the amount of availabile glycogen in your brain in the morning. Is there any truth to that?
I don’t think so. I get up between 5 and 6. And I never listen to the 67 steps before 11. I use the glycogen for output, not input.
In your case designing the systems for the company, creating employee manual, and such, something that builds and is difficult.
You exhaust your glycogen and the 67 steps is like nourishment. The more tired you are the better it works. Refreshing
A how-to guide I was waiting for. So you wake up 3 or 4 am and I guess the best thing to do that time is the 67 steps right?