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I have been working on the project of doubling my income by adding a new revenue source.
This article is my private process. I wrote it to document how I got myself over the hump. To clarify some things. To get unstuck. And to be able to do it again and again.
At some spots it’s sketchy… it is my process and it has fulfilled its purpose: I have gained the clarity from doing it, the clarity that will help me to get to over the next hump when I want to or need to do it again… because that is how life works.
If life is smooth sailing, then you are not growing.
Then you are not challenging yourself. Then you are most likely going down on a greased chute.
OK… here is what I had to go through to get me unstuck. Most of you consider this too much work to get the whole project done… let alone work to just get unstuck… this is why you never accomplish much. You are stingy… and you are delusional.
I call your approach the lottery approach, or the media bias approach.
You were taught that anything you can see in your mind’s eyes can be jumped to… and then when you try, you fall flat on your face.
You have a big big big issue… so it will be worth your time to read this article, even if some of it will go, first, way over your head…
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I haven’t done anything that actually increased of could increase my income. I am doing a lot of foundational work, hanging out really long in phase one of the project: formulation. Formulation is part of the 5-phase project management, Formulation, Concentration, Momentum, Stability, and there is a fifth I don’t know what it is… oh, found it: Breakthrough. Not my favorite model. Why? Because it is all in the visible.
The 7 stage model on the other hand penetrates the invisible… where breakthroughs come from. It allows you to zoom in on what you need to learn to handle… stinginess, or distractability, or fear of failure, or inability to predict… etc.
In another model for projects, the 7-phases,
1. Listen / Express
2. Remember / Forget
3. Strengthen and Build Support / Fail (projects fail before they succeed)
4. Predict and Tune / Succeed
5. Enhance / Flood
6. Distinguish / Understand and Explain
7. Enroll / Lose
I am past the stage listen/express, past Remember/Forget, probably in the middle of Strengthen/Fail…
The challenge in this phase where I am at is failure. Fear of failure. Unwillingness to fail. Force. Unless I am willing to fail, I’ll be stuck in this stage.
Fear of failure can manifest in many different ways… one of them is procrastination, another of them is getting all confused… a defense mechanism. Here is how it is for me:
One of the things that seem to paralyze me is anything complex, that feels too big… more complex than writing an article.
It feels like an uncatchable ball.
One of my students is dealing with an issue now, that after reading a ton about a German philosopher’s work, and even things the philosopher wrote… and being stumped at the time when he is supposed to write an assay about him for his school work.
So, as usual, as is my habit, I am going to turn this into an opportunity to both help him (maybe) and help me.
So as I was trying to get through the impenetrable forest of ‘what should I write about’ and ‘what are the parts I should say’ I caught myself of looking at ‘getting through’ as an agenda.
The moment you have an agenda everything that is in front of you becomes a virtual obstacle, and isn’t being looked at with friendly eyes.
So I told myself to calm down, getting through is not the goal. Getting through is easy.
I took some calming breaths, and said: ok… look at the trees.
Resistance galore… very interesting.
Let me rephrase that: what is it that you know? Make an inventory of what you know.
Big things, little things… inventory it.
1. I know that without integrity nothing works… including writing a book or creating a course.
The part of integrity that most people get tripped by is the part where unless the context is empowering, there is no integrity.
The context: getting through it is not empowering to me.
What is empowering is personal. Doing things in order to is not empowering to me.
What else is not empowering to me? Saying it’s important. or ‘I promised’ or ‘someone needs it’ or even ‘it’s my job’
Not empowering. Maybe neutral, but not empowering.
So what would be empowering to me?
I suddenly recall T. Harv Eker, as he says: I am a multi millionaire. But it’s not the millions that excite me, it is who I needed to become, so I coul make those millions.
Now, that excites me too. Who I need to become to be able to create a course where I talk for an hour, no feedback, or where I write a book, no feedback.
It is a becoming issue. Becoming all I can become. I don’t know if it is going to be easy, or hard, or horrible even… I only know that becoming ‘someone who can‘ is inspiring to me. I am willing to do the work. I am scared and excited, and maybe a little resistant, but I am willing to do the work.
OK, so that is the context: I am doing this to become someone who can. Now I am empowered.
Empowered doesn’t mean any specific thing. It is not the magic bullet that makes everything easy, or fast, or help me get through what is tough. It is not about the getting through, or what it buys me.
Empowered is a moment to moment thing, that works in the moment of doing…
If you want empowerment so you can get through, you are back to the agenda… the horizontal plane.
Empowerment will help me be present to the work I am doing, maybe even enjoy the pain, enjoy the process. Feel the growth, feel the becoming.
Schwarzenegger said: ‘the pain is better than sex‘. Yeah, that is an empowering context too. I like it.
The pain of becoming is better than sex. love it. This is it…
OK, integrity issue handled… What else do I know?
2. I turn to Rob Brezsny’s horoscope for inspiration.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Stage magicians may seem to make a wine glass hover in mid-air, or transform salt into diamonds, or make doves materialize and fly out of their hands. It’s all fake, of course — tricks performed by skilled illusionists. But here’s a twist on the old story: I suspect that for a few weeks, you will have the power to generate effects that may, to the uninitiated, have a resemblance to magic tricks — except that your magic will be real, not fake. And you will have worked very hard to accomplish what looks easy and natural. And the marvels you generate will, unlike the illusionists’, be authentic and useful.
He says that I will make something difficult look easy. And that it will be useful.
I like that as a context, it is inspiring.
So what do I know that makes things look magical and easy?
That is easy. The ‘trick’ is that everything has its roots in the invisible. But the invisible is… invisible. So most things that you have a difficulty achieving have roots in the invisible that unless the root changes, will not happen.
And when I say everything, I mean everything. big, small, enormous… important, unimportant… everything.
So my whole coaching method, my whole teaching method deals with the invisible.
But before YOU can make any changes in the invisible, you need to see what’s there.
And what’s there, of course, is invisible, until in a conversation you and I dig it up.
I saw a video yesterday of a guy harvesting earth worms in his yard. He stuck a spade into the earth and started to gently wiggle it. Gently. And the worms started to come to the surface.
Yeah, this is the gentle method to access the invisible.
Depending on your level of resistance, quite predictable from your soul correction, and other numbers in your Starting Point Measurement, this may take a lot of calls.
I am not very resistant by nature. And my TLB is high: I can take the pain of bad news with the best of them! Pain to me is like pain is for Schwarzenegger: a sign that I am growing.
Your low TLB signals everything I need to know about you. It’s not ability, it’s willingness. How much you are willing to take on to have what you want.
We are all born with TLB 1… And society isn’t going to train you. Had you been born in Sparta… yeah. That society would have trained your TLB. Monks (not Hindu, mind you!) are trained to have high TLB… grit your teeth and do it, or go without, or take it…
Without growing your TLB you will not grow… you cannot.
Every spiritual practice I teach you does two things: 1. it grows your TLB, 2. it brings your awareness to something you have no awareness of
Every spiritual practice has an unpleasant part. A part is… ugh… Not just once, but always.
My Reading Course, my Sleeping Course, my ‘Fall in love with yourself’ workshop, my money workshop, even my articles have an ‘ugh’ part, that unless you take in the ‘ugh’, you won’t grow.
And, of course, only few students will.
You have been trained by your parents, by your teachers, by your peers, to be a wimp. To value comfort more than anything.
In the book, Brave New World, people take Soma… And even John, the naturally born man, kills himself to avoid the discomfort of being.
Watch sheep… or cows… meek, easy to lead, that is you.
I have been observing. In my family my mother was TLB 1, my father TLB 30. My brothers are both TLB 1. I was the sandwich… middle child. I didn’t have anything coming to me other than beatings, or ‘don’t bother me’.
I chose to become a high achiever, whether anyone noticed it or not. And they didn’t notice it. Which is good… You can make a child want to stop producing if you notice their accomplishments… because now they have to, need to, should do even better.
Wanting to, having to, needing to, and should rob you of the pleasure of the pain.
I bet no one noticed Schwarzenegger… because he never stopped.
I once had a boy friend, whose father was a famous philosopher, a Hegel expert. He had three sons. My boy friend was the oldest of the three.
The other day I looked up the family. The middle boy who got no attention became famous on his own right. I muscletested, and his TLB is 8.
I have one student whose TLB is higher than 1. It’s 8. And he is growing like a weed. And if he can maintain it over the summer, there is no telling how high he can go. My other philosophy student friend is TLB 5.
Thinking is hard. Painful. If your job is to think, you used it to raise your TLB.
TLB is part of the invisible. Twitchy Little Bastard score… or your Toughness, your toughness score.
Spiritual practices look innocent… because you are working on the invisible.
What is visible is growing out of the invisible.
And it looks magical. Easy and natural. I am smiling. It feels good to be able to cause that.
Bottom line: dealing with the fear of failure and turn it on its ear takes TLB. Low TLB? Fear will win out.
3. What else do I know?
- Inventory is very important.
- Knowing yourself is very important.
- Coming from your strengths, building on your strengths is mandatory
- You need to learn to spin many plates, reliably, or you won’t amount to much. Adding a new plate upsets your rhythm, and it will take some time to accommodate the new one without dropping plates. You are going from one ess to a new ess… not easy, and most people will not do it.
- But unless you start eliminating the leaks, none of that will matter.
From this point on all I need to do is look at my recent articles.
I am still at the topic of shoring up your weaknesses, building skills or strengthening existing skills to the level where one can be really good at it.
I also know that if you want to be profitable in the project you’ll do, you need to be the only one, and then monopolize on that.
So how do you become the ‘only choice’?
You use the edge method, or you use the trend stacking method.
I’ll am in love with the trend stacking method.
You find three or more trends, and combine them. Two? You won’t be good enough to be on top. You’ll still be ‘also ran’.
- In my project I am choosing to combine
1. being an influencer… and if I am already one, increase my circle of influence. My method will be serial publishing of books, mainly on Kindle. - 2. trend I’ll exploit: online education
- 3. a list of trends I could exploit:
–sleep
–self-love
–people wanting to succeed as entrepreneurs
–self-publishing
–desire for privacy
–everyone has a mobile phone not further than 3 feet from them
You can check if something is a trend with free online tools.
PS: I have nothing to sell you, by the way. I mean I have some 100 items, courses, audios, coaching to sell… but I don’t know who you are. And I am not very willing to sell anything to someone who won’t use it, can’t use it.
Without integrity nothing works… and your integrity is pitifully low.
My workshop series: Fall in Love with yourself is all about raising your integrity…
It’s almost free. It’s a series… so the earlier you start the further you can go.
Increasing your integrity… it will take some toughness, no doubt about that. Like all my spiritual practices… The method I teach in this workshop is a spiritual practice.
What is a spiritual practice? It is a practice that alters the invisible… as long as you are doing it.
Here is a bonus: nothing is permanent.
You drop a practice, you lose the results.
This is why being able to spin several plates without dropping any is mandatory if you want lasting results.
I can spin 14 plates… and have been able to do it for about 40 years.
How many can you spin?
