I never met my grandfather. Which means people can teach you, “give you advice” with their life.
Both my grandfathers died in the Holocaust.
My maternal grandfather was a lawyer. He was hardheaded. He violated every rule, he beat my grandmother, he was the “head” of the family.
When my mother, then 24 years old, found a way to avoid being taken to concentration camp, and told him, he said that she was stupid, and that she could just go herself. She did and she lived.
I had a teacher who actually was in the same cattle car with my grandfather. When you entered the concentration camp, you came in in one column, and then they separated the crowd to two columns: one went to the barracks, the other went to the gas chambers.
My grandfather, with his 3-year old grandson on his arm, was sent directly to the gas chambers.
He taught me, with his life, that to be hard, hard-headed, inflexible, being right without looking is a violation of life, and you pay dearly for it.
Rocks break, blades of grass are appropriate and bending.
I needed a grandfather, but not like him. Someone who could have loved me, listen to me, even when I didn’t know what I was talking about.
My grandfather wasn’t the only person who guided me this way: teaching what not to do, how not to be.
When I came to this country I was poor and I needed a mentor. I found one, and he helped me a lot. But the biggest gift he ever gave me what not what he intended to give me, but this:
Every time I had an idea of doing something, a business idea, for example, I asked what he suggested. Then I did exactly the opposite.
He could be trusted to always make the wrong decisions, just like I can be trusted to not know which way it’s left or which way is East… The difference between him and me was that he didn’t know himself and I do. So I don’t go with my “instinct”, I actually stop and consider my dyslexia, and factor it in.
You probably have been listening to the wrong advice all your life, and it’s been costing you a pretty penny, so to say.
When you get an advice or a suggestion, consider the person’s track record first, and also consider their own success rate with their own advice.
People are busy disseminating the information that made the miserable, and the more miserable they are the more they insist on advising you.
Beware, and look before you leap… Please.
My newest activator is called: “There is nothing to fix…”
The idea for it came this morning, during a conversation with my chiropractor’s son who is entering his senior year in high school.
He loves high school because, without any effort, he is in the top 10 of his class.
Being so easily on the top of your class is dangerous: you’ll never learn how to do the stuff that’s hard, you never learn to go deep where you won’t compete with anyone, only yourself.
I suggested to him that he starts acquiring the habit of doing just that, competing with himself instead of others… where he can win all too easy.
Everything I said triggered a “justifying self” move from him… so obviously what he heard is that I sad that he is not ok, that he is faulty, flawed, wrong, or a version of that.
Then I started to pay attention to others, and lo and behold, that is the general way of hearing any suggestion for people… all people.
This way of hearing won’t allow you to hear what you need to hear most.
All happiness comes from being an advancing, expanding human being, being in growth mode and staying in growth mode. But if you think that how you are is wrong, you’ll go into “fixing mode” or “argument mode” and you will be miserable and shrinking.
This new activator, “There is nothing to fix…” attempts to address that directly, and make a difference in that, so you can actually hear what people are saying, and not go into “what’s wrong with me” mode.
Pre-requisite: you must have the harmonize your self activator to buy this new activator.
Steph, my experience has been that the feeling of “oh, something wrong with me…” is already there before the other person can even utter a word… it’s energetic. This is why I was asking to create an energy that is a match for the automatic emotional response. It doesn’t come from the mind, the mind is too slow… it only catches us later. Could come from the subconscious… but we don’t know a lot about it… the location is a match though.
Anyway, I’d be really happy if I could do a wide range test of this new activator, and maybe even tweak it… so the emotion doesn’t start the cascade of things, resistance, justifying, anger, fear, all the chemical and muscle responses that make life a freaking roller coaster, and make people retreat to an un-challenging life, where they stop growing to avoid the symptoms.
Very true; it’s hard to give advice without putting the person on the defensive, just as it’s hard to hear advice without thinking there’s something wrong with oneself – but learning to do both of these things can be very rewarding indeed.
Tears of recognition coming up when I read this…you are hitting the bullseye closer, closer…..