I am getting a lot of requests to teach people how to become people who live a life worth living, who excel in all four areas, all four pillars of the good life.
My answer is almost always: Sorry I can’t help you.
But why?
Today I got lucky and got my answer in a pristine form.
My University classmate, Panni called me. We talk once a month. She is, of course an architect: we were classmates in architecture school, a five year study.
And she is a mother and a grandmother.
She managed, in 60 seconds, tell me the 15 things she had had to attend to in the past week: ear operation of grandson, broken leg, son moving, etc. etc. etc. In addition to being the cook, the cleaner, and the grocery shopper…
A whirlwind of activities, all urgent, all not about or not for a life worth living. All just to stay alive. She had no say in the matter whether she would do it or not.
The contrast was inescapable: I did as many things, but they were all strengthening one of the pillars of life, one way or another.
The ethnic or social groups in the world, the individuals who accomplished great things were all living a version of a hermit: they could devote a disproportionate part of their day to accomplishment, study, growing.
Maybe not everyone in the groups or communities… maybe not the women… but the men, definitely.
Women always had to do most of the menial tasks, sustaining life, feeding the family, etc. They didn’t have much time for study or pursuing their own projects.
The people who come to me are living their lives in communities that are fully assimilated into the consumer, yolo life of the 21st century.
Your life, your quality of life will be 100% defined by the people who you live with.
You will be allowed growth that they permit you, and not a minute more.
Bucket of crabs. Kitchen coop.
Please don’t kid yourself.
You cannot live an ordinary life filled to the brim with ordinary things, if you want to be extraordinary. There is just no way.
If you looked at what happens to the communities that previously gave the most extraordinary thinkers, you would see that the moment they mix in, the moment they assimilate, their extraordinariness cannot find an outlet, because there is just no time.
I am reading the book “Misbehaving” by Richard Thaler, a book that is giving me a lot of joy and enjoyment. He, Richard Thaler is a Nobel Prize laureate… and the book and how I read it, will be the topic of an article, that, I think, will be ground breaking. For you.
He spent a substantial part of his career in Ithaca New York, where there is nothing to do, no one to connect with, and what you can do is do your work… do your extraordinary work.
I feel the same way about Syracuse, NY, by the way. Nothing to do, no one to connect with, an unmatched opportunity to live a life of enough isolation to create something extraordinary.
Of course ordinary people live ordinary lives in Syracuse NY or in Ithaca NY… but people who aspire to become extraordinary will thrive here.
If you want to live an ordinary life, you can do it better, but you cannot become an extraordinary person… there is a cognitive dissonance between the two.
The extraordinary person, the ugly duckling who is ugly because he isn’t a duckling, he is a swan, gets pecked to death, or gets pecked until he toes the line.
That is the rule of the bucket of crabs or the chicken coop.
So be careful of what you wish: if you are not willing to organize your life around it, you will not really have any chance.
This is true on lower aspirations as well.
Let’s say you want to start a business that sustains you.
There is a lot more to business than reading a book, or taking a course. There is a lot more even than hiring a coach.
I have had students who didn’t read a book, didn’t take a course, and didn’t hire a coach… and didn’t align their lives with creating a business that will support their lives.
You have to do what is consistent with what you want to accomplish.
And more than anything: you need to integrate your child persona that doesn’t want to, that is lazy, belligerent, lying, etc. so they won’t take you off-track when you least expect it.
In everything: diet, relationships, money, fulfillment.
Because, unless you integrate them, unless you grow them into adults, they will disrupt your life, and destroy everything you thought you built.
Did anyone say it is going to be simple? They lied.
Did anyone say it is going to be easy? Talk is cheap. If they said it was going to be easy, that is a sure sign that they have never done it themselves.
PS: I have a lot of examples of people who live in this illusion that they are extraordinary… but their lives show that they are not. This is regardless of the occupation of the person…
If you want to know who you are (right now), look at your life, look at your activities. Not your mood, as David Hawkins suggests or Abraham/Hicks suggests… but your life. Your work, your relationships, your health, your fulfillment.
They are a good indication of who you are (right now): your vibration, the number of capacities you have available to you, etc. etc. etc.
Your starting point measurements.
Oh, and pretending to do extraordinary work adds insult to injury… because now your integrity is getting even lower… taking the whole group of numbers lower…
Please. You can’t lie yourself to heaven… what a sentence, eh?
