My site gets a lot of hits… people looking to find out how they too could become astute…
Astute people are happier, wealthier, more popular than others.
Of course they are looking for a quick fix to what the opposite of astute is: blindness, unawareness, cluelessness, being a bumbling idiot, or not being able tell their elbow from their ass.
I am not talking down at anyone… I was looking at myself to come up with those opposites.
We are clueless some of the time, most of us: most of the time.
If we looked at astute as the strait, the narrow body of water between two huge land masses… it is easy to see why there are so few people who are ever astute. and why it is easier to be not astute, than being astute.
So let’s define “not astute”, the land masses…
- No distinctions, vague and foggy notions of how people, society, life works.
- No pattern recognition… or alternatively seeing patterns meaning something… that is not true. For the most part, this is the cluttered attic of Drucker… all the rules we learned as we grew up… all made up, all probably wrong. all preventing us from actually looking at life with fresh eyes, that are, hopefully, more intelligent than we had when we were kids.
- ignoring elements of the landscape, or the world, or people, of feelings
When we only want positive things in our lives… I have talked this one to death, and it has made no difference.
Why? Because you insist on holding onto the beliefs that keep you small, miserable, and together.
You have your shit together… that is all you have together.
- ego insisting on already knowing, or being right, or such…
The ego is not willing to look anew, not willing to be wrong, it would rather be dead than change its mind.
You can’t be astute with an overbearing ego.
Recently this question has come up in my coaching practice: how do you tell intrinsic Self, intrinsic desire, from ego desire?
One student asked it this way
How can I confirm what is from my intrinsic self and what my intrinsic self says yes to? I can’t tell for sure.
And this leads us to what I really want to talk about today: how to be astute in deciding what is worth the effort? How to know that enough is enough… or you are only three feet from the fields of diamonds, so carry on.
Frightening, if you ask me.
You could waste years on something not worth to pursue… or you could stop pursuing something that can give you the life you always wanted.
The difference between the two is your level of astuteness.
Now, speaking from experience, you need to pay attention at what is going on inside.
I am most interested in resistance, unwillingness, balking…
For example:
- I have had my decade, maybe even two decade long resistance to marketing.
I want the results, maybe, but I hate the process. I hate who I need to be… especially when I look at people who call themselves marketers. Nah… thank you, I’d rather be poor.
- Another example: I just completed the third complete cycle of the 67 steps. I loved every minute of it (or most) and suddenly, like a horse… I am balking at the idea of listening to step 1 again.
Hah, how interesting.
So I did some muscletesting and I saw that I got all I could, or I wanted to get out of the 67 steps. I need to find another multi-step program for myself, so I can keep on growing.
OK… here is the question you should ask: is it the ego that is resisting, or the intrinsic Self?
Often it is hard to know. The two resistances feel very similar.
So this is where your intellect, your reasoning mind comes handy.
I have found the question useful: Am I protesting against the process or against the result?
As you saw, I would not mind to get the result of marketing, as long as I have nothing to do with the process…
For me, marketing is finding the perfect people to talk to. The people that want to buy my stuff.
Ugh… I’d rather keep on writing articles, coach my people, create new products, do webinars on what is important to me…
So the process is not palatable to me… it is my intrinsic Self that is balking.
Another way to ask the same question: Is there an in-order-to here?
In order to have an easy life, in order to be famous, in order to be loved, in order to be rich.
Prostitution is the legal name for this: selling yourself or your time for rewards… while not enjoying the process.
I have been asking the question, daily: Am I being a whore?
The allure of doing something in order to get something else is very strong. This week it was stronger that it has been in ages.
I found myself wanting to buy stuff… on ebay, on Amazon, want to get a ride to Trader Joe’s… hungry, ravenous, a huge hole to fill inside.
I think that the emotional energy transmission this week was alternating between feeling panic and feeling like a black hole… wanting to fill the emptiness.
Maybe it is time to post, again, the theme of the daily emotional energy transmission.
I think knowing that it is not personal can be a big help eliminating rash decisions.
