Where are you in self-realization? Have you realized all the treasures you were given at birth?
I have been getting lots of critical and ugly emails and comments.
I am contemplating if I should get upset, then I watch Brene Brown’s talk on video, and shrug.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Depending on where you are in self-realization, you are going to love and cherish, or be so what about the video…
What is the truth about you? Why aren’t you as intelligent as you were born to be, as rich, famous, appreciated, happy, as you could be given by your inborn characteristics?
Let’s being the inquiry with intelligence.
What intelligence measures is your current, manifestable, measurable, testable abilities… let’s say: all of them. Including your social, emotional, physical, spatial, spiritual intelligences. A comprehensive number. It is, actually telling us what you can do, learn, understand, use, without adding, learning, practicing anything more. Right now.
It’s one number. A number that by itself it doesn’t say much, unless you compare it with your number with the number of others.
This number, surprisingly, will include all the measures I measure in your Starting Point Measurements. Attitudes to life, health, work, knowledge, others, yourself, all I can measure.
We could say that the number says your potential value for yourself, for others, for society.
We can see that the biggest difference between people with the same number is what they do with what they have. Ugh, you say?
Say it again. Ugh.
Most people never do much with what they have. They remain an unfulfilled potential.
Someone with much less going for them initially, have far surpassed you because of their “I am doing it” attitude.
I was a lot like that. Not 100%, 50%.
I was born with less than my older brother. I was sickly, I was sullen, I was abused, I was called stupid, but I had a 50% “I am doing it” attitude, while my brother didn’t.
His IQ was 130, mine was 100. I had holes in my brain, I was dyslexic, I was near sighted, I had blinding headaches, and I was an insomniac, had horrible stomach ache, chronic systemic infections, a hole in my heart… you name it I had it.
But…
- I studied music, music theory, reading music, singing, playing the violin and classical guitar.
- I took ballet classes
- I took tennis classes
- I climbed trees
- I joined the swimming team and ran down the steep steps every dawn for practice
- I joined the gymnastic team
- I joined the ping-pong team
- I did guitar and singing gigs
- I learned English, went and worked as a maid in England to practice with native speakers
- I learned and performed on stage as a mime, learned to dance on stage
- I participated and persisted a few rounds in a national talent show
- I sang in a choir
- I competed in singing competitions
- I competed in mathematics
- I competed in physics
- and on and on and on
.
- I didn’t care if I became the best at it.
- I didn’t care if it went anywhere
- I didn’t care if it made any money
I just wanted to be the best I could be.
In the meantime I was anywhere from a straight A to a B student, depending on the year.
At age 16 I realized that talent, smarts weren’t enough, and I learned to learn. Not memorize, god knows, I still cannot… but learn nevertheless.
OK, I am sharing this to illustrate what it took for me to take my intelligence from 100 to to 135, while my older brother went from 130 to 120.
The human body is extremely responsive to challenge, and extremely willing to change, to get better, to be molded into a higher functioning machine.
Most everyone stops challenging themselves once they get married, many never challenged themselves. I have students who report that their MOTHER told them to not stretch themselves, they are OK the way they are. So they didn’t.
I literally only know one person who has been challenging himself, on and off, a few people who aren’t my students. James Altucher does that. Obviously there are more, but I only know him well enough.
Robert and Lance, my one time teachers do some of that, by maintaining an accountability practice, daily.
Some of my students do that, in earnest, most don’t.
Somehow you think that you can be happy and not grow. That you can be happy and stagnate. That you have done your work, now you can rest on your laurels… or your a*s, if you prefer that language.
Your happiness is impossible if your desires and your actions are not in sync. If you desire one thing, but do nothing to bring your results about, if you hope that the universe, people, know that you have already deserved it.
No such thing. You need to deserve what you want DAILY!
Bummer, eh?
