You cannot get the motivation to go from 0 to 1? Stuck?

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Preamble: society, to confuse you, makes the words motivation, ambition, desire, greed mean different things… and that is how society controls your mind. By sawing confusion… get clear.

It takes energy to get anything done. Even to lose weight. Even to sleep… to sleep well. Getting that everything needs energy and that energy can get weakened, dampened, leaked is an important distinction.

When you get a distinction, when you really get it, it starts to show up everywhere. You start noticing. Ah, yeah… there it is again!

I know, I know, I have said this many times, and I will many more times. It is that important. And you are not getting it.

When you really get distinction, even if you just get one distinction, you’ll see that distinction everywhere. You’ll recognize it even when it only shows partially. Getting a distinction requires mental effort, and the ability to see the big picture, to see back and forward on the timeline, and to recognize things for what they are, without any noise, interpretation, or excuse and justification.

Landmark Education teaches through distinctions. There are four levels of ‘getting’ a distinction. Only one in a million actually gets a distinction on the fourth, the highest level. It is not their fault… getting a distinction on the fourth level is like being able to perform brain transplant surgery.

Experiencing a distinction, seeing examples of a distinction, requires less effort… Four people in a thousand can do it consistently.

For example: when you are happy, you have eyes to notice that the world is beautiful, people smile, and that is because you experiencing the distinction for yourself ‘being happy’. Happiness is a being state, and all being states are a distinction… When you shift your beingness, the whole world shifts with you.

That is the secret of the Soaring Method, or the Instant Coherence Solution… you alter the who and the what change with it.

My work is distinguishing, if you want to be really one-wordy about it.

Distinguishing is a mental process where a phenomenon is seen in all its ‘glory,’ cause and effect, and its dynamic. The result of distinguishing is a distinction.

The more distinctions you have the closer your map of reality is to reality.

Distinctions are the tool with which you navigate the world. No distinctions? You are lost: a bumbling idiot.

I measure this relationship between your map or reality and reality in your vocabulary in the Starting Point Measurements. We could also call this your astuteness. The average astuteness on the planet is 1%.

Each distinction grows the world you can see accurately. That is why I stayed in Landmark Education for so long (26 years).

I was one in the million who got it on the fourth level.

In the past six years, I have doubled the world I see accurately with distinctions I distinguished myself… not Landmark Education distinctions.

I am in the middle of doubling the world I see accurately gain, I just  doubled through reading Atlas Shrugged.

The new distinction I am adding to my ‘accurate vocabulary’ is ‘intrinsic motivation’, with what makes it really accurate is: what dampens it to the degree that most people do next to nothing from intrinsic motivation.

Why this is an issue? People who lose their intrinsic motivation have nothing or not much to harness, to work with, to produce results with, to benefit from.

We are born with different amounts of intrinsic motivation.

The main visible part of intrinsic motivation is curiosity. Not asking questions of other people curiosity, not idle curiosity, not ‘want to know’ curiosity, but discovering things for ourselves curiosity.

This intrinsic curiosity that is forcing us to find out, to test, to see it for ourselves. A motivating curiosity. Motivating you to read, to experiment, to observe, to think, to climb mountains, to squeeze into caves, to dive, to test.

To squeeze, to prod, to pull, to push…

Most children lose 98% of their intrinsic curiosity by the time they are three years old.

The culprits? Well meaning parents, well meaning siblings… well meaning… at least on the surface.

But under the ‘well-meaning’, people just want that annoying little creature to be quiet, well-behaved, and not get into any trouble. Be safe.

With what they do, they kill the spirit. They kill the fire. For their convenience.

This is the first thing you want to notice. That at certain age there is still curiosity, and then there is none… If you are lucky enough to be around little kids. And what replaces curiosity is some hunger for some reward.

You’ll see the later results of this in advertising.

Success coaches claim that they make Olympians more successful. Or CEOs more winning. Like Denis Waitley…

When someone is already a winner, when someone, by some ‘mistake’ has some of that original fire remaining, it is easy to help them use their fire more effectively.

Denis Waitley is like a chef who has a huge pantry, great recipes, and then he claims that he is a master chef… I would love to see him produce results with YOU, with a pantry of two ingredients… lol

What no one talks about, not in ads, not anywhere, is what to do with people who have no fire.

I call that intrinsic fire ‘Ambition’ and I measure it in the Starting Point Measurements.

Now, thanks to Edward Deci’s book that I am re-reading now, I know how it was dampened. I also know what ‘they’ could have done to not let it go out.

But the question: how do you stoke that inner fire, that ambition, to a level where it can make a difference? The answer to that question  I haven’t seen anywhere, anyone documenting it, anyone claiming they can do it, and that they have proof.

I have known, at least through their voice, or through their videos, a whole many of coaches.

Coaches, if they are good, if they have their fire, suffer.

Good coaches, if they could transplant their fire into you, they would… But it is like trying to wake the dead.

I have, arbitrarily, set the boundary between dead wood, and wood that has some sap still remaining, at 10%.

But whether someone will rekindle that fire or not depends on another factor:  how controlling the people in your life are, and their own desire number.

From their point of view, their desire will be fulfilled by your actions… you are the one who will dig out the potato from the fire… so to say. Not themselves. That is the nature of desire: desire is the hallmark of looters, moochers, and second-handers.

• Desire is for an outcome… the end result. Desire is for having. For Getting.
• Ambition is for the doing, the producing, the process, the joy of discovery, victory over matter. Outcome independent.

These two forces, ambition and desire are your energy source. The healthier is when your ambition number is higher, much higher than your desire number. They work at cross-purposes.

I have some artists in my circle of students and ex-students. They probably will argue, so I measured Van Gogh’s ambition number. It is 7%. Unless your ambition fires you to also conquer yourself and make a life and a living, you are going to be wretched, like Van Gogh. Sorry to break it to you. In a society more honest than ours, you would be dead… If Van Gogh’s brother didn’t provide him with a living, he would have never created art… so, on one major level, Van Gogh was a moocher, and so are you.

The more you do activities from ambition, the brighter that flame becomes.

The more you dream of your desired outcome, the lower your ambition becomes. Its effect is dampening. Why? because it takes you out of the intrinsic, and put you into the extrinsic.

The horizontal plane of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

• If you do something for the result, the intrinsic motivation dies.
• If your family is only interested in the result (money?) then your intrinsic motivation dies, because ‘love’ is now dependent on your result.

So unless your family starts loving you for yourself, unless they start supporting your ambition, you’ll be burned by desire.

So what’s wrong with desire?

Desire is a trap. It projects into your mind’s eye the finished product, the result, the way it will feel, and blinds you, turns you against the process.

In the best case you’ll get your desire, but your days will be horrible, the price you pay is your life. Your everyday.

I am working with one person who is teetering around 10% ambition… it goes up and it comes back.

For men it is all about sex, it is all about love. If your wife has a very high desire number, then you have your job cut out for you… they won’t even know about ambition.

So what can you do?

My client is repeating, like an affirmation, his commitment to process, but like all affirmations, it is not working.

I have noticed that scientists publish papers while they are not married, and stop publishing papers once they get married.

Publishing papers is hard work, and a reflection of work done… One could say, a married man doesn’t strive for much… unless their marriage is bad… But I don’t wish that on anyone.

The effect comes from the controlling nature of women, the controlling nature of marriage.

So what can you do? Is it all lost?

Maybe.

What I learned from the book, Mind Parasites, does also belong here.

The mind parasite, that we can call civilization, or society, or the chicken coop, won’t notice what you are up to unless you put it on a loudspeaker.

I have been telling my students and also myself not to talk about our projects… People will kill it.

I learned that if you tread lightly you can avoid detection. I learned that if you don’t talk about it, neither the evil eye, nor the mind parasites will wake up and take you off your path.

Example: In 2003 I was in a bad, controlling relationship. I had a regular gathering of my Wisdom Course group at our home. My boy friend piled all our books on the dining table to make it impossible for me to work on that table, to do our collages.

Other people are more subtle at their attempts to fail you… I was lucky.

So I set out to get well, set out to get physically well too, and to make some money to be able to move. I said nothing about it to anyone. Mum was the word.

I walked uphill every day. I did my breathing exercises. I found two modalities that shook my brain up. I made some money. And at the end of July of that year I was out of there.

People are not on your side. People are on their own side.

It’s not that they are bad people, it is that humanity is not evolved to  human being level yet, where they can be on your side and on their own side at the same time.  They live in ‘or-ness’ whereas human being lives in ‘and-ness’. You or me versus you and me. or-ness versus and-ness.

So don’t blame your spouse… Just be smarter than you have been.

And having a non-controlling support person, like a coach, is priceless. Just watch your word how you explain it to your spouse.

Lying, I say, where it is to protect your autonomy and authenticity, is probably mandatory.

Not just good: it is mandatory.

Now, what does a good coach do? Good question. In addition to supporting you in your ambition… Support is good, but what if you need your ambition, your motivation increased to get anything worthwhile to get done?

This is the work we do in the Integrity Workshop.

What does it have to do with integrity? On the surface: nothing. But if you look that in integrity the two parts of you: the one who is the source of your ambition, curiosity, the soul, and the source of your greed and your desire, the ego get closer and closer…

The exercises we do in the Integrity Workshop that starts this Saturday, March 27, are all designed to return you to your full childlike state, where you love yourself, where you get stuff done, and feel good about yourself and your life.

It probably will be a long course, because we need to attend to all facets of integrity, or the ones unattended will sink your ship.

You pay monthly, so your commitment will be tested every time a payment is due. It is by design. I want you to bring conscious awareness to your participation.

I don’t want anyone to be at the sessions who say: I am here because I want my money’s worth, or I am here because I have to.

One session per month, on the last Saturday of the month, and plenty of homework in between… I am designing a community area on the site, so you can share and support each other. Where you can make your promises and deliver the goods.

Sign up to the Integrity Workshop

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven