This article is a stream of consciousness… Beware, it is like poetry… you have to feel it, you can’t explain it.
Cultural memes, media bias, tell us that change is fast and dramatic.
So when you consider your own change, that is what you are planning for, or that is what you resist. Even if not-changing means staying at a place where you don’t like. But of the two bad things: dramatic change or staying miserable, staying miserable is still more attractive, because at least you know that place.
But cultural memes, media bias, are lies.
Actually, all memes are lies. It was, maybe, someone’s truth, but it is not THE TRUTH.
Only physical laws are THE TRUTH…
So how is change really?
I will show a recent email exchange with a brand new student, and then I’ll elaborate. The student is a musician, and a music teacher. It seems that no one can make a full time income being a full time musician. Even if they are as good as her.
Hi Sophie
Today I listened twice to step one of the 67 steps. I can see that I’m flimsy and inconsistent. I would not bet on myself. Although I want to change I don’t believe it’s possible for me, or it’s too hard/too scary. What do I need to do/what can I do to shift that perspective?
one thing comes to mind. I can look at, when I’m teaching, how my pupils’ perspective of themselves changes entirely. of what they are capable of learning. and their perspective seems to have little correlation with the talent/potential that I can see they have.
I am like them in my narrow viewpoint. so what I see for myself is really a tiny fraction of what’s possible to see.
I need to learn to see
I need to learn to see, and for that I need to learn to be with what is, so I can keep looking. Keep suggesting to myself that what I see isn’t complete. not complete at all.
That means sitting with discomfort, with what seems wrong, and sitting with my own reactions to it. Until I can see more. Until that might raise my deserving factor. And until that might give me more backbone.
But it won’t be without a constant fear. I do practice the Amish horse training exercise, making myself sit and accept mind racing mind while not mentally running away or trying to change it. While I attempt to listen to what’s in my head and try to repeat it to myself so I really hear it.
I realize I’m pretty much nowhere at the moment.
Thanks
and my answer
Hi S. Nice start.
About developing the ability to trust more. The ability to see wider when it comes to what you can do. my hunch is that the capacity you need to strengthen is self-trust. Self-trust which only responds to proof.
Proof may be plenty, but if it is not acknowledged, it doesn’t work as proof.
- So whenever you are able to be with discomfort AND act is proof.
- Whenever you consider that you can become bigger than you are, even for a moment. that is proof.
- Whenever you consider that what your pupils go through is available to you. even just considering becomes proof.
The essence of self-trust is that you can see it. eventually you can see the whole action performed. But it is built little by little, from little, tiny proofs.
The nature of change is that it’s like trimtabbing. tiny changes, that seem unthreatening and irrelevant at the time and yet these little changes are the building blocks of a whole big change.
OK, now let me now talk to YOU!
I am doing the 67 step coaching, because it works… It works on one condition: that each step causes the student to DO something differently, a little bit differently. Or SEE the world differently. A little bit differently.
Your actions will be THE result of seeing things differently. First action, then seeing things differently. Self-strengthening cycle.
But apart from some dramatic circumstances, like someone dying, or a tragedy, seeing differently is a process, that needs to be managed.
Without actions consistent with what you see, the seeing remains an insight. and insights are a dime a dozen.
Upsight is a word I coined that is the result of first having an insight, then taking an action, and seeing a different reality as a result of the action. That action tends to become a new starting point.
Tends to… I said, because unacknowledged upsights disappear.
This is why I have started to ask my students to run a success journal. Daily… and post them for me to see.
I am more aware than you, and I saw it before you, that some of the successes are trend-making and I can ‘smell’ the future…
a trend is a somewhat predictable future, given the past actions. you create a series of past actions in your success journal, that promises to go someplace useful
Of course in my success journal the results are still fragile, but I keep on acknowledging them, and write Yaay! after the description of the success in MY success journal. The Yaay injects energy into the success.
I won’t share my newest tiny success, because I am afraid of jinxing it. I have done that before.
Refer to the book Mind Parasites to understand what jinxing is… So I tread lightly… lol.
Anyway,
Insights acted on — turned into upsights — upsights documented as successes — and successes given some energy will eventually become a river of proof that you can…
Successful students do this. Stagnant students don’t. They miss a step… any of the four steps.
They may have the insight, they may act on it, but then do something else, and the gains are lost… The giant ship that you are will not turn around in the tight bay…
I was roasting a big pepper yesterday in a pan.
The big pepper was jumping and popping, but it never actually turned… The energy didn’t have a direction… It had enough strength that it could turn it, but the pepper could not or did not want to turn… I am personalizing that poor pepper… lol
If you consider yourself the pepper: it is YOUR JOB to turn yourself. It is your job to not be satisfied with the popping. Not be satisfied with an insight.
The 67 steps, together with my feedback (together they are called 67 step coaching) exposes you, the pepper, to the heat on all sides. But it is still your job to turn. To turn through the actions you take from the insights.
My experience is that most people cannot see this, don’t want to see this, won’t see this. They like the popping and the insights, and the sounds of victory… the pretty words, the attention they get from me, but they don’t see that it is really their action that matters…
The only thing that will ever move you anywhere is action…
Conscious action, acknowledged action, action that causes you to see the world differently. To see yourself differently.
So you can move out of the narrow confines of the meme you call yourself. To move you to where you are nothing defined, nothing fixed, but a human being.
The fixed person with character traits etc. is your lower self, even if the words are pretty.
The Self is pure potentiality.
The spirit only wants that there be flying…
For that you need to lose your fixed character… Scary, eh?
