…Whether for myself, or for a client, whether in health, wealth, relationships, or spirituality…
The method has been asking a different question.
A different question unstucks your fixed view of the world, the fixed view that gives you what you are struggling with.
If you consider that everything you have now, is the result of what you know/what you see, then if you want to make any change, big or small, you have to turn your eyes away from what you know, and look around.
This is, by the way, why walking is so useful for high achievers: when you go outside your eyes naturally look at more than just what your mind is focusing on… and you have a chance to unstuck your view.
People, even myself, have been saying: the answer is not within… and yet, we, I, find myself looking into what I already know, instead of doing something that makes me look where I haven’t looked, or not recently.
This is what happened today.
My machine, your machine, the machine likes you to stay stuck… And to deal with life exactly the same way, whether the circumstance is the same or not.
So I have been kind of stuck… and I knew it.
So this morning I started to ask the question: if I didn’t know what I know, what would I see?
Facebook has been nagging me to place an ad to promote one of my pages, but I have been brushing it aside.
So when I decided to look at life with fresh eyes, I said: $3 a day? No biggie… And placed a promotion ad. That took me to an are of my computer I had not seen in six years. And a bunch of videos I had no ideas what they were from a long long time ago.
So I double clicked on one, and it took me to one of the most successful internet marketer’s video… And I started to listen to it. And it started to move me out of my fixed position.
I feel I will have to listen to the advice of the video again… I was still listening from “I already know this”… but I have a feeling that what I know to do is not what I have been doing… ugh. Don’t you hate that when you find that out?
I don’t think I am alone with this… But I hardly know anyone who realizes this and consciously and intentionally attempts to look where they aren’t doing what they know to do. Who cause themselves to get unstuck.
Pay attention that I said “consciously and intentionally”
I have people come to my site and read my posts. I have people come to my webinars. There is no “consciously and intentionally” there…
What causes anyone to become conscious and intentional is the question. The question that disrupt the status quo, the question that causes a “state change”.
Most of us, most of the time, are in “business as usual” coasting mode.
But even if you are on the right track, when the train comes, you’ll be crushed.
And it seems that the train is coming with some regularity.
So learning how to unstuck yourself is learning a life skill…
Obviously, if you are so unaware, if you are so deep in the bull’s ear that you don’t notice that the train is coming, no life skill will help…
This is why Tai says that the number one skill that predicts whether you’ll be alive or dead, rich or poor, happy or unhappy, is awareness. Coming out of the bull’s ear, of Plato’s Cave, or your mind with some regularity, and voluntarily.
If you only come out when someone forces you, then you lack another crucial capacity that may even be more important than awareness, and that is initiative.
The opposite of initiative is maybe the “homework mentality”… where you do as little as you can, and only what you must.
I can promise you: you’ll be dead meat, if you aren’t already.
When I disrupted my “I already know and what I know isn’t working”, I actually moved myself towards taking the initiative.
Although I had no idea what I should do, doing anything that moves me out of my comfort zone, will take me to some place where what I see is different than what I can see from my comfort zone. And if one move wasn’t enough, make another move. At some point you’ll be able to see a direction, a move, a future… and then you’ll be unstuck.
The traditional way to illustrate stuck is putting them into a well.
What makes it a good way to illustrate it is that in a well you can only see what is IN the well.
But if you can do something that moves you a little higher in the well, after a certain numbers of moving up, eventually your eye level will be above the top of the well, and you’ll be able to see where the heck you want to go. Not until then…
Imagining a direction is actually harmful: it puts you into the desire trap.
What is a desire trap? A desire trap is a visualization. In visualization what you see is so real for the mind that it will give you the good feelings as if the picture were real.
And that puts a definite damper on your ambition: why work towards something if I can just close my eyes and have it, here and now.
But, of course, your private heaven won’t translate into real heaven, and your family won’t be able to partake in it.
So you are now doubly screwed: you have no ambition because it is used up by the desire trap, and you don’t have anything.
So, if you love yourself, even just a little bit, don’t go there.
Instead just do the next little thing, even if it is totally and wholly unrelated to what you want in life.
Ask the question: if I didn’t know what I know, what question would I ask? Where can I look for questions that change my vantage point?
And do what the new vantage point suggests. Watch a video, listen to an audio, ask for a coaching session, do something constructive.
And do this zigzagging until you get out of your well.
I am still up to my neck in the well, but I already see a direction.
Why? Because I do this frequently… because I notice when I am stuck. But you are not me, so you are either better or worse off… but regardless, the technique works.
By the way, the book Ask and you’ll succeed, works on these exact principles. It has 999 questions…
Warning: it is not enough to just read the questions: you need to look for an answer… depending on how stuck you are, this may take a few questions and lookings… Don’t give up.
