Last night I spent a few hours (3, to be exact.) listening to Jim Rohn, famed self-development coach. Funny, entertaining, brilliant.
He said all the right words. He made sense to a lot of people.
But I bet if we scratch the numbers, he made just as little results as everyone who is trying to cause individual human evolution.
I’ll tell you in a little bit why… but first let me tell you what he says:
He says that if you don’t have what you want, you have to change. Change yourself. Into someone who does. 1
And then he shows you all the ways you are not someone who will… how you point fingers to everything and everyone, except yourself. How you don’t plan. How you this and how you that. Instead of that and this.
So, you may say, OK. I have to change myself.
And then, maybe, if you are serious about what you want, you make a list of all the things that you want to change.
So what will you pick? You’ll pick to change what’s wrong with you, right?
And you’ll work to change what’s wrong with you into what you see is right about other people who have what you want.
But… but you are working on what’s above the surface of the water. You’ll fix, or try to fix what you can see.
And let’s suppose that you change all the things you have on your list… and you’ll be mighty dismayed, because life will NOT change.
And chances are, that you will not change, only things changed.
You’ll change surface things. But who you are, WHO you are won’t change. Not a bit. Because who you are is not a sum total of all the things you can see about yourself… who you are is below the surface of the water.
Movies like the very funny Trading Places, very strategically manufactured by the Dark Side to support your belief, that all you need to change is a change in circumstances, and then it is instant. You’ll become a tycoon, because… why is that?
Eddy Murphy suddenly redirects his petty scheming ability to large scheming… Yeah, so elegant, isn’t it? It is so simple, you could do it too… if you were allowed to be in the position.
But fact of the matter is: nothing in the visible plays any role in anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjDbJQKDXCY
You watch two people working. Same job, same clothing, same education, same color of the skin, same gender, same everything. Same hours. And one makes $20 an hour and the other $10. Same work, same hours.
Everything is the same on the surface. But there MUST BE a difference.
The difference is in the invisible. And it is invisible. One does a good thorough job and the other does a so-so job. The difference can only be seen in the results. And the results show more than twice the value in the $20 worker’s product. But the why is only visible if you have the eyes to see. If you are looking in the right direction at the right thing the right way.
What Jim Rohn didn’t say, at least not in the talks I listened to, is that the things to change are in the invisible. They are invisible to you.
My hunch is: HE DIDN’T KNOW IT.
Sounds like a big bunch of b.s., doesn’t it? You can’t see it, because it is invisible, and yet you can change it? Bah humbug.
Now, the intelligent question would be, the question you are not thinking to ask is this: Why cannot I see it? Why is it invisible?
And that question, the one you don’t think to ask, takes us to the crux of the matter.
The rules that direct your behavior, your mood, you attitude are invisible to you. They are governed by memes, and memes are invisible. They are there and they are invisible.
What else is invisible? The air you breathe. So the memes are like air. Tasteless, colorless, smell-less. You can only see its effects. 2
Behavior, mood, attitude are effects. If you change the memes, all three will change. Automatically. Still remain invisible. Will always be invisible.
So what I am working on is making the invisible visible, and I am running into difficulties: you don’t see the point.
And unless you see the point I am left with “magically changing the memes”… which I cannot do.
Motivational speakers change your behavior, mood, attitude for a couple of hours, maybe even a couple of days, but in the end nothing remains changed. Because unless you see what doesn’t work, unless you see what’s there, the change won’t take. Because it can only take when YOU do the change, consciously, deliberately, because of what you saw. 4 for 26 in Landmark Education… I won’t be surprised.
But occasionally there are things you cannot unsee. When some 14 years ago I saw that I considered being a winner desirable but not me… won’t go into details now, that I can’t unsee. And I have been a “who are you: I am a winner” all these 14 years.
As I am writing this, I think I just got a glimpse of what meme caused me to neglect my environment, and how it was seen, for the first time, as a meme, and not the truth.
I was an unwanted, unwelcome child. And all my life I thought that being wanted, being deserving of life is innate. You either have it or you don’t.
Lately we’ve been talking about the difference between deserving and “being deserving” as something you all struggle with. Deserving meaning you earned it. And the teacher got the teaching: oh… I can earn it… duh. And now I am earning it. Instead of hoping that the world will change its mind about me being deserving or undeserving… The undeserving still makes my chest heavy, and makes me unable to breathe… Very powerful meme.[/efn_note]
There are entire organizations based on the flash in the pan changes.
Landmark Education is such an organization.
Those famed forum leaders need to have long “clearing conversations” before they are allowed to stand in front of participants, before they can alter who they are sufficiently so they can perform the magic act.
I have worked with these people as a leader’s assistant, and often in the breaks they needed to have yet another conversation to return them into the beingness of a leader.
Because there are still two people there, two “who”, one is the default, the other one is created for the purposes of delivering a course.
But why, Sophie? Because “you can’t catch what you can’t see” is a principle… and catching the invisible is near impossible, unless you keep your eyes on the behavior, the mood, the attitude: the effect.
Really.
So while you are staring into nothing, you keep on seeing nothing. If you stare into the invisible, you keep on seeing nothing.
But if you stare at the part of reality where the results show up, the effects, with some ability to see, you can see what was invisible. 5
The invisible that shapes you is some words, by the way. WORDS. The kind of words that create reality. You may even repeat them in your head like a mantra. You may consider them success secrets… except that they aren’t. They are your “failure to get what you want” principles. The backbone of who you are who can’t…
My 10% reality that instructs
The past few days have been really generous to me: Two people ranted in comments and emails, expressing displeasure at me. My methods. My ideas. My lack of ability to teach, to explain. Really angry. One went so far as to calling me nasty names. Urging me to hang it up.
And then came a coaching call with my marketing client.
And then, this morning, another coaching client who suddenly is angry, focuses in on injustice, and attacks, and the nasty stuff I didn’t even know was daily there before he became a client.
The Mind Parasites… Stuff books are written about, movies are made of… Science-fiction-sounding. Sounding like tall tales.
But they, the mind parasites, are real, just not exactly the way they are featured in the books and the movies. But they are real, and the moment you least expect it, they jump on you and your life turns into shit.
These WORDS, the memes, are like the gremlins… fuzzy, cute… except when you believe them. When you feed them at night… that is a gremlin thing… WORDS aren’t really gremlins… don’t go into panic, please. Gremlins are imaginary… but the WORDS are real. And create and maintain your reality… and who you are.
So, what am I saying?
What I am saying is that you spend all your time in the visible, the part of reality that makes no difference. Or not much. And you treat the invisible part that is the 90% of reality as if it didn’t exist.
Even if you are some Kabbalah student, or some “law of attraction” student, or some “theta healing” student, or some other magician cult student.
Because no matter what aspect of magician cult you are, you are still trying to change what you see, not what you don’t see.
Am I confusing you?
Instead of looking to see the cause, you need to get a clue from the effect.
In weather matters, wind, rain, lightning are all effects and very visible. Climate change: effect. Diabetes: effect. Crazy behavior: effect. Forgetting to do something: effect. Doing the most important thing: effect. Getting angry: effect.
We live in the world of effects. The cause of everything is in the 90% invisible.
So you need to keep your eyes on the instruments of the effect world. To show you what way the causes “lean”.
Doing it alone is near impossible to see anything. On yourself. Because YOU are immersed in the invisible.
So people who can, like magicians, effect the world of effects through getting insights into the invisible, work with feedback, work with guidance from others who are not part of the same exact invisible themselves. 6
I am reading Sam Walton’s book “Everything Store” for the second time.
I first read it about a year ago.
I have penetrated the invisible a whole lot more since then, so I see a whole lot more in the book.
Sam Walton’s secret was paying attention to the effects, really moment by moment, and getting nudges from his wife, and his associates. And his competition. And … ultimately his secret of success was that he operated Walmart as if it were a mercury thermostat, or thermometer.
YOU would futz with the instrument, change the mercury, change the design of the instrument.
He changed the temperature. The cause. That was his unique, almost superhuman contribution to Walmart’s success.
The question is ALWAYS: Where is he looking? for guidance, for ideas, for what to do, how to do it.
or Where are YOU looking?
Humans are, supposedly, smarter than deer. Or mice.
But only as a potential. As an actuality: I have my doubts.
You look in your memory, in the past, in what you want, but not at reality.
Reality is the world of effects. Your clues are there, and you are not looking.
When, the other day, I went to investigate the dead deer before I reported it to Animal Control, the reality of the noise I made in the fallen leaves informed the deer that something or someone was coming. So it ran.
That was smart.
YOU would have kept on sleeping, because your alarm hasn’t gone off yet.
And this is how you are “running” your life… and it is not working. Is it? I doubt it.
People whose lives work aren’t here reading my articles, they are too busy having fun with their lives.
-
Here are some more… are they helpful? Sound helpful but ARE they helpful? I don’t think so. - A student of mine has been getting sick, feeling weak. And so is his family. A few weeks ago the landlord declared the apartment mold-free… but there must be mold, because they are getting sick. The mold is NOT visible, but it is there, in the air. And you can see the effects.
- The notion that you can jinx yourself is based on this: unless there is real lasting change, reality, your reality will go back to where it belongs, to the reality that is consistent with who you are.
So instead of what it looks like, jinxing, it is just “normal” and natural return to how it was.
I have been taking care of my environment, which is not my normal way of being. I suspect that I saw some meme and I changed it. It wasn’t conscious. But something about me changed. There are a ton more signs that it is so. If I go back how I have always been, it won’t be because I jinxed myself by sharing it, by “bragging”, it will be because i didn’t really change… the same meme can come back and take hold again. We shall see. I have seen flash in the pan results 3
flash in the pan results=a thing or person whose sudden but brief success is not repeated or repeatable.A flash in the pan result cannot be sustained because what is honored as its cause is not the cause at all.
This happens in “science”, in health, in business. In fact, as a marketer, I see more of these than my fair share… lol. And because you cannot see the cause of the “flash”, you often buy into it. Magical thinking, religion, cults are all based on this inability to see the cause accurately.
- If you paid attention to physics in high school, you saw a few experiments to prove this point. The experiment with iron shavings and the magnet is such an experiment: the invisible made visible. Magnetic attraction is invisible, but its effect is visible.
- This is why I do coaching, by the way. For the feedback.
