I have ten unfinished articles on my desktop. It doesn’t feel I have enough to say in any of them to make them a real article.
This one is starting out the same way, to become an unfinished article. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make it a good article.
The base of this article an insight I had just now, five minutes ago.
The situation was: I have been screwing up everything I touched today. Watch my language, by the way.
So, I told myself: “Don’t be a jumping jack. Look before you leap.”
I closed my eyes, and I heard the little voice say: “I don’t know what to look at!” Whiny tone, imagine a 3 year old saying it.
And in that instant I was back at seven years old, crossing the street to go to first grade. We lived across the street from the school. And in the middle of the road, I said, to my mother, the same tone of voice: “I can’t go to school. I don’t know how to read and write!”
So this “I don’t know how” has been there a long long time. Probably costing me a fortune, either by quitting, or by jumping in, without looking, with two feet, eyes closed, only to screw up, get lost, lose, get killed… whatever the “game” offered alternative to winning.
You see, for an entrepreneurial person, like me, “I don’t know how” is 80% of the things I do on any given day. For you, because you have probably already given up growing, work a job, it’s 20%. But 20% is still significant, in a lifetime, that’s 15 years!
So conquering, or at least managing it would be useful, wouldn’t it?
So let’s look at this together, and see what we see.
“I don’t know how…” “Look before you leap” best buddies
The biggest difference between you and me, is that I have the “I don’t know how” nowadays coupled with “look before you leap”.
Now, do I know what to look at before I leap? No. Do I know how to look before I leap? Yeah, that I do know.
Here is the second biggest difference between you and me: when I tell you to look, you’ll look in your mind, trying to understand with what you already know, remember, blah blah blah.
Here is what I do: I look through squinted eyes, just like in PhotoReading. In PhotoReading you scan a book through squinting eyes. The trick is to not see sharp enough to see any of the words. That activates the real seeing, the intelligent seeing, that is not working through recognition.
Recognition, the word, is wonderfully accurate. re means again. Cognition means: knowing, mind-knowing. So recognition means that you go into the mind for a previous version of what you see. And get stuck in what you’ve already seen, what you’ve already known, no growth, no adventure, no expansion, no fun, and probably inaccurate actions.
Because nothing is quite as recognizable as the mind suggests it is. It is NOT the same, maybe it’s similar. No matter how you slice it, if you look through the mind, you’ll make mistaken assumptions, and screw up, or limit your self with what’s already known.
So I look through squinting eyes, for a minute or two, breathe, and breathe, and breathe.
Then allow the inner knowing, that is now informed about how the present is, to guide me.
Not comfortable, by the way. Allowing, allowing to be guided is horrifying, because it is based on a largely missing capacity, a capacity even I am weak at, TRUST.
The 2-3 minutes breathing, squinting, has double purpose:
1. you won’t act on impulse. Impulse can be running away, taking a break, quitting, or rushing into it. All impulse actions are to run away from the fear. But fear is like your shadow: it moves with you.
2. it allows the part of you to see that is not mind. The part of you that can see the big picture, that is not coming from “having to, needing to, wanting to, and should.” No greed, no hurry.
In the big picture, most of what you do is stupid, time wasting, a distraction, suicidal.
You know what to do, you know how to do it, on the intelligence level. But you don’t consciously know it: the MIND doesn’t know YOU know how to do it.
If you consider yourself your mind, that mind-you doesn’t know it, and you were accurate when you said “I don’t know how”. or “I don’t know what to do”
But the you, that is the Self, i.e. NOT THE MIND you, knows a lot, a real lot. And is happy to learn even more.
PS: I didn’t mention in the article, but anything that is a reaction is impulse. So when someone says something, and you flare up: you didn’t look before you leaped. You buy stuff, you sign up, you pay for my products and don’t register for it, you make up new passwords every site you sign up to, you promise without thought, you cheat without thought, and the list goes on and on. I am describing your life… If you can manage to conquer just 20% of this area, you’ll add many years to your life.
