About 50% of mornings I wake up depressed, hopeless, and regretting that I woke up at all.
Why would that be? Because my view of my life is stuck in a particular vantage point, you could call negative.
And those mornings, with the exception of a few, I look around for ways to unstuck myself. Not because I believe I can… but because I learned to do that.
This morning I read the Monday Morning Memo… and was inspired to write my own based on the same general idea.
I had no idea that I can do it, I had no idea if it would take me anywhere: I had the flexibility to do it.
Did I know it was going to unstuck me? Not really. And it did…
Something similar I do every morning. Sometimes I have to do it over and over and over, sometimes I get swept away by the joy of expressing myself…
And rarely, nowadays, I indulge my hopelessness for a day or two.
Sometimes I talk to someone. Sometimes I read a book.
All these actions that take me out of the stuck point of view: “life sucks, people suck, it is hopeless to make a difference”.
I do it with my eyes open. I am aware when I turn or move, ever so slightly, away from my stuck position.
But it all starts with KNOWING that the mood is a result of my point of view… it has nothing to do with anything outside of me. Any circumstance. Anything that you did, or others did. ONLY my point of view. About you, about me, about my life.
I KNOW that the view of the world, the view of my life, even the view of you, can be changed with only the slightest of movement… and I know that I have the capacity, flexibility, to do that.
So I do it, every morning. I don’t do anything until I make myself flexible.
I don’t go for a walk. I don’t take a shower. I don’t do chores. I attend to the most important thing on earth: getting unstuck.
You can get stuck in positivity. I’ve had two friends that they were stuck there… and they were stuck in every other part of their lives as well.
Stuck is stuck… whether you are stuck in a nice place or an ugly place, it is still stuck. Whether your car’s transmission is stuck in first gear or fourth gear… you can’t go anywhere until you unstuck it.
So I attend to it, every morning.
It’s been even better for the past five week: I have been getting up before the sun… and get a few hours of alone time, me time… before the emails start to come in.
I have seen a definite increase in my productivity, in my mood, in my income. Because nothing competes for my attention: I can give it fully to the most important thing I can ever do: my mental hygiene. To getting limbered up, emotionally, and mentally… so I am not stuck in any point of view, any direction, any opinion about anything.
Now, this seems easy, or this seems difficult to you, but, just my experience, this is mostly impossible to you.
Why? Because the capacity of being able to move yourself at will, in time, in angle, in opinion is not active for most of view, because it is the capacity of winners. Big winners. Like Donald Trump and Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet.
And when they get stuck… with they do, occasionally, they become losers. And unless something or someone catches them, they fall from grace… we have seen that.
When you don’t know you are stuck, you stay stuck… even if you have the capacity to move, the capacity of flexibility.
Your actions will be consistent with what you see… and as long as you are looking from the same angle, with the same attitude, you will see the same thing… and your actions will be the same.
Sometimes it is obvious, more often it’s too subtle for anyone to identify it accurately.
I made it a habit, I made it a ritual, I don’t waste my time trying to identify the stuck view… I just start moving… like a runner or a gymnast, limbering up.
Every muscle, not just the muscle that you know you need. No, you limber up, or you’ll get hurt, and suddenly you’ll not be a runner, you’ll be stuck on the bench… in life, in sports, everywhere.
Yesterday, on the call, I identified people’s main way to get stuck. Your soul correction has a lot to do with it. You get stuck in hate, anger, judgment, superiority, trying to prove, complaining, wanting help, self-judgment, dreaming… you are stuck your own way.
But that stuckedness is just the linchpin. Just like muscles that get stiff, your view gets stiff around many issues… and you need to limber up for a meaningful, enjoyable, effective, and efficiently lived life.
I have noticed that people can get unstuck through a conversation with me, but then within a few days get stuck again.
Why? Because they don’t expect it. Because they don’t know how to limber up.
Because the capacity to move around, flexibility is painfully missing for them. It is a DNA capacity, and in the natural course of events, it comes through learning, observing, and lots of practice.
My father had the capacity open. It opened up when he was thrown about as a child… it was a matter of survival.
How do I know it opened up? Because in spite of his humble and disadvantaged beginnings, he became a celebrated scientist, statesman.
The most important capacity, I say, in his rise, was flexibility.
He never got stuck in entitlement. He never got stuck in poor me. He never got stuck in shoulds, and should nots.
He took things in stride, and I watched as he did… remarkable.
And yet, for years I was stuck in poor me, but not in entitlement. I was stuck in some part of my life, not in others.
Today, because I understand the inner machine-like workings of the psyche, I consciously limber myself up.
I watch leaders, and they need to talk to someone to limber up. To get cleared. To have someone to help them get unstuck.
They feel the misery, they feel the anguish, the anger, the greed, the hate… but they don’t have the capacity of flexibility… so they need someone else to unstuck them, to move them to a different vantage point.
I am talking about Landmark Education Forum Leaders, an other leaders whose job to get you unstuck. They need to get unstuck before they can get YOU unstuck.
It’s a lot of work… unless you find a constructive way to do it. But even if it is a lot of work, I promise it is worth it…
But finding a constructive way, doing something that is meaningful in addition to being limbering up is hitting the jackpot…
But you need to start with the capacity. Without the capacity it is quite hopeless. Without the capacity you’ll always need another to unstuck you… and they will only know to unstuck you in one or two areas… not the limbered up state you can get on your own.
