Information is like milk. It tends to go bad over time

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Information, knowledge, possibility, attitude, skill, capacity… they, all, in one way or another, are information. And they behave like milk. They go sour… useless… bad.

You may want to ask the question before you research, buy information, ask questions: ‘am I doing this just in case I’ll need it later or am I doing this because I need this to move forward right now.‘

The first, just in case learning…

…is probably what you have been doing, wanting to raise your vibration, getting well, finding an activator, getting in shape. And while you are doing it, your life, your relationships, your work are suffering, because what you are doing is not what takes care of your life.

This is one of the key aspects of being strategic in your business, your job, your relationship, your health, your life. It allows you to do less while getting more. Of focusing on only the things that are absolutely necessary.

Just in time learning…

In my 26 years in Landmark Education, a great life experience for me, I noticed that people who came in with the ‘just in time‘ attitude, wanting that little piece of the puzzle that was missing for them, right then and there… never came back to do more courses.

Instead they went out and did what they needed to do to put that little piece of the puzzle to the area. To the area where exactly that piece was needed.

So they left behind the ones that were participating with a ‘just in case‘ attitude, hoping that when the sh!t hits the fan, or when the rubber hits the road, when the skill, the mindset was needed it would be there.

This group’s experience was: it wasn’t there when it was needed.

Why? Because all of what they learned became mind-knowledge, Tree of Knowledge, not real knowledge.

To turn something into real knowledge, you need to be up to something.

Your life, the size of your life is the size of your projects. If you want a bigger life, a fuller life, a more meaningful life, your main tool is your projects.

And to activate the knowledge, to need the knowledge, you need to need it. How you need it is through projects.

So what is a project?

A project is a process where through many steps you go from A to B. Both the A, the starting point, and B, the result point, are defined, and are preferably in time… They also need to be visible: inner results are not accepted. Feeling better is not an acceptable result for a project. And you may feel better.

The dictionary says: a project is an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim

It can be a big project or a small project…

While doing a project you’ll need an awful lot of what I teach… so a project allows you to be a just in time learner… and turn the new knowledge into useful tools… capacity activations into active capacities, and your life worth living… eventually.

So it is a project that is the key to growing…

nothing else can help you grow and become more, become the person you’d like to become.

1. get the knowledge when it’s needed, right now. At the time when acting on it is convenient, timely, and serves a useful purpose: move the project towards its outcome, or get over some obstacle in the project.
2. Take the actions where the knowledge is needed. Right away. No delay. Even a day’s delay means the almost certain disappearance of the usefulness of the knowledge.

I would not have known this without our recent experimenting. Experimenting with capacities.

1. One person finally had the time to use the capacity after two days… by that time the capacity turned off.
2. Another person used the capacity partly wrong… It was the detached capacity, and she was imagining being away from the emotions and thoughts, but imagining happens in the mind… so no result. But the intention was there, and there is still hope that her detached capacity can be kept alive. When I checked it  it still had a little bit of life in it.

So, what is really going on? How can you be so wrong? And why?

• Only someone poised for action will benefit from motivation. Or inspiration, stuff like that. When she is ready to stop hiding and face the ugliness that awaits her… then she will.
• learning things ‘just in case’ is a duping device. Self-duping. You are duping yourself thinking that you are smart, that you are doing something. But the action is not constructive, and it doesn’t move anything. This is also true for most conversations… most of what you do.  And then you pretend to be surprised that nothing happened, in spite of the fact that you were so darn busy.

I have a list, I named ‘things to do when there is nothing to do.‘ Of course there is never a time when there is nothing to do, but there are times when I am tired, bored, listless and I don’t feel up to doing anything.

The list has a lot of stuff I can do that is semi-constructive, mostly maintenance stuff… that I can almost do mindlessly. Perfect for those times.

But I never pretend to learn something I don’t need.

Now, what do I do when I find something that is interesting?

How do I make it useful? I flash out my cone of vision***, and see an aspect of it that is the perfect fit for what I need to talk about, the perfect beginning of an article.

So I create a file with the words I need to remember what I wanted to write about, and save it as an article.

And when I have nothing to write about I just whip out these article starters, I have 676 of them, and pick one that I have more to say about and just continue writing.

I turn my ‘just in case’ situations into seeds for ‘just in time’ opportunities.

Here is another thing I do that has been producing spectacular and unexpected results for me.

I am in a quasi coaching program… where there is a lot of lecturing and hardly any coaching. So when I get up from the call, I am clear that I got nothing…

So I decided that if my life is my life, if my money is my money, I’d better make it work for me.

And I looked how to use the ‘lectures’ immediately… i.e. make a project that needs those darn lectures.

Not in the future, but right now…

And by gosh it worked. I started an entirely new type of project, a new type of coaching, and it uses the quasi coaching program and also a home study program I bought somewhere else to provide the learning I need to be effective in this new project.

All because of this distinction…

Can you do the same? I think so. Is it easy to think up a project? Not really.

In the worst case the project can be turning around and teaching what you learned to someone who needs it ‘just in time’… it may become a new occupation, a new business for you, that my new project will likely turn into.

So what should you do now?

If you know you are committed… and if you know that you need someone to remind you what you promised, then you can use my ‘hero program’ for that. It is a private area where you and I talk to each other in writing, and you can formulate your projects, you can plan your steps, you can see what distinctions are missing… so you can grow.

Get support when you need it 

*** How do you ‘flash out your cone of vision’?

The eyes are operated with muscles. Tiny muscles. They can alter the shape of the globe. When you ‘flash out your cone of vision’ you essentially pull back the front of the eyes, and that results in the widening of your cone of vision.

Most people never consciously do this… and they end up with atrophied eye muscles, and a very narrow cone of vision. They see less of reality in one glance that would be enough for decision-making, connection-making, pattern recognizing, and seeing the action you need to take to get to where you want to get to.

Practicing those muscles is possible wherever you are. Muscles are not like knowledge… It is too late to start developing them when you know you need them. Muscles are the kind this saying refers to: ‘It is too late to dig a well when you are already thirsty’.