Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
– Mark Twain
A friend of mine is having a hard time.
As an empath I have the bad fortune to connect to whoever I think about. So I am sitting here, having all kinds of bad feelings. I am on the verge of crying. My stomach is lurching… I am feeling my friend’s feelings, right now, this very moment.
Not pleasant.
He has been at it for many years, longer than I have known him. Hoping for a miracle, for a business, for a million dollars, that he could make without having to become different, without having to relate to the world differently, without having to do different.
He wants to get to the Ph.D. level without doing the work of elementary school, high school, college, graduate school… yeah, shortcuts, babe.
And truth be told, we all hope for shortcuts, because the scenic route is not much fun for most people, for most projects. It takes time.
That is one of our biggest issue: if it takes time then you have to manage your attention. You have to take control of your attention, wrestle back the control, and direct it where we want to direct that darn attention, not where it is pulled, jerked, seduced to.
Anyone in control of their attention is a winner… almost an automatic winner.
We live in an “attention economy”… meaning attention is in the shortest supply. When it’s spent: it is gone.
So everyone and everything is shouting around you, whispering around you, flashing around you… and you, the zombie you are, follow the shouting, the whispering, the flashing… and at the end of the day, none of your attention when to where it would grow your life… it went to where it grew the noise.
No one is immune to it, but some people have a better handle, a better system of organization, a higher level of awareness around it.
I have three computers, all three turned on 24/7. But I work on a gutted one that can’t show videos, flash, anything fancy, so I can work uninterrupted, except for your email, which I want to see.
All marketing and product emails go to places where I can’t see them. My phone doesn’t ring. My text program doesn’t ring. I have done an awful lot to remove the attention grabbers that kill my life and kill my business.
I have trained myself to play solitaire on my computer to make myself able to look, reflect, ponder, remember… be conscious of the inner happenings… while my hands and eyes are busy doing the solitaire. If I browsed, or read email instead, I would never give myself an opportunity to stop and see what’s going on.
I read a lot. I read fiction. I seek out authors that allow me to make my own decisions by only showing me what a character does, instead of their opinion of it. They give me enough details to give me a vicarious experience of having lived that moment… not like some American movies: no experience, with a few exceptions… I write about them when it happens. Two-three times a year.
If you are not a reader, you are trapped in the little box of your own mind, and you’ll get little box results.
My friend is not a reader. He never considered becoming one. He has the illusion that you can live in a big world with a small-box mind… not likely.
If T. Harv Eker said one thing that is useful and worth the near 50K I spent on his courses, it is this sentence:
It is not the millions of dollars you’ll make, it is who you need to become to make those millions.
One condition is: you need to enlarge your world. By reading fiction. Not trash, but good literature. And by practicing taking different turns in life: actions that do not come from your small box, from your knee reflex.
I can’t do it for you. All I can do is provide a platform where you can practice it, share it, be supported.
That is what this new “Reclaim your life” course is about… long term, tiny steps, day in/day out.
Most of you are campaign people: can’t sustain anything longer than a few days. Don’t sign up. It is not for you.
My friend is a campaign person… Stay in the small box with him.
Look at your financial situation. It will show you to what degree you are able and willing to sustain effort.
Look at your education level: It will show you to what degree you are able and willing to sustain effort.
It is not that you can’t change… it is that you probably have your life set out to live an uncontrolled, or out of control life.
In my private practice I would not take a new client if they needed to see me right away, because they didn’t know how their schedule was going to look like the day after, or the week after.
Why? Because if you are not in control of your schedule then you are not in control of your life, and you cannot promise sustained effort anywhere… you are leaf blown about by the wind.
Until you get your life under your control, and to the degree that you get your life under your control, to the same degree you can trust yourself to grow your life.
If you haven’t done that: please don’t apply to this program, you’ll quit, and waste your money.
