How the notes you take, the stories you tell, put blinders on you and prevent you from growing…
As a coach, I will send you back to the same book, the same video a number of times. My intention is that you watch it…
But some students won’t watch it again, they go to their notes, and read them instead. In their mind they say: I have done that… I know! And they kill their chance to see how much they have grown, and their chance to allow their consciousness to see something different.
This is the same mechanism that your stories remain the same. You say the same thing at age 50 as what you said at age six. If the stories you tell remain the same, then be sure: you have remained the same.
Telling what happened the same way is the most important way fixed mindset manifests.
Fixed mindset violates the adage: you can’t step in the same river twice…
The well translated (from Greek) quote is ““No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
If you think that the river is the same, or if you think you are the same, you have a fixed mindset. And even if you have changed, you won’t know… you will not allow what you consciously see become different.
What do I mean?
The seed level on which I base my coaching is that the basis of your existence is what you see. It gives you the second part of the “occurrence”, what you perceive happens, and your actions will be in a perfect correlation, in a perfect dance with what you see: the occurrence.
So my job, as a “change agent”, a coach, is to use what I have available to myself, as tools to change what you see, the occurrence.
The “thing” you look at can be life, events, other people, and yourself.
I am rarely able to change the reality part of occurrence
(occurrence=reality+what you say about it), but more often than not, that has already happened, so I can only change the “what you say about it” part, that is, depending on the level of your fixed mindset, can change a little bit or a lot.
When occurrence thus changes, your further actions and what you say about life, yourself, can change.
That is the whole secret of growth, that is the whole secret of coaching, that is the whole secret of self-actualization.
I bring the new angle of looking, I bring the speaking.
Your job is to come around and look from the new angle, to allow YOUR speaking to change.
It sounds easy, but there are obstacles, sticky hinges…
Occurrence is like a door than swings on sticky hinges. The stickier the hinges the less willing the door will be to swing, and the more likely it will automatically return to its original position when you are not looking.
So what makes the hinges sticky?
We’ll look at it through the starting point measurements. I could list here all the measurements, but to make the point crystal clear, I’ll include only the measurements that clearly related to the fixed mindset
- 5. do you have attachments? Attachments can be so irritating, or so “leash-like” that you have no mind to spare for change. this is true to all attachment-like phenomena: placed on you by a malicious person, your soul fragments you denied, your base belief about yourself, or the “anchor to doom” around which you circle the drain. I talk about these somewhere else.The attachments keep you fixed in a belief and in fear. The anchor to doom is the thing you fear you’ll end up with, alone, abandoned, poor, homeless, despised, dead, etc.
- 8. your relationship to feedback and instruction: Of course, if your attitude to input is that it’s judgment, right/wrong, an attack, you won’t allow feedback and instruction to move you and move the door… This is a very significant reason most people cannot and will not grow.Hearing feedback as judgment is a clear sign of fixed mindset.
- 11. To what degree you think of yourself: This is the inverse humility number. If you have yourself in the center of the filter through with you look at events, things to do, reality, you can see that your view cannot change, because consciousness is fixed, anchored, and the view of life cannot change. This is the most important number that determines to what degree your door can open or not.Having a fixed vantage point: it is all about me, or related to me, is sign of fixed mindset
12. % of fixed mindset:
- This is a combo number, and in my experience isn’t an accurate representation of your willingness you change your mind.
- 17. how enslaved are you to memes? (what percentage of your life is run by memes?) Memes act as the opposite of grease… the higher this number the more sticky, rusted hinges will behave. Being enslaved to memes, memes are unexamined fixed statements about life…
- 20. How teachable/how coachable are you? The higher this number is the more you are willing to allow your consciousness to go where the coach is taking it.When this number is low, you have a fixed mindset: you will be unwilling to even consider alternative meanings…
As you can see, it is quite predictable how effective coaching and guidance can be for you.
What is the bottom line?
The more tethered your consciousness is to where it’s at, the less you can change what you see and the less willing you’ll be to say something different about what you see.
The Playground program is entirely dedicated to altering “occurrence”.
We cannot change what happened, but when seen as a separate action, we can change what we say about it.
How successful you’ll be in that program depends on your fixed mindset that keeps what you react to the same.
This is ultimately the most important indicator of your life satisfaction: to what degree you have control over your life.
The degree of flexibility you have about what you say about things.
Positive thinking is a bastardized version of this: it is not about positive or negative: you cannot reduce life to two colors and be happy and effective in life.
The more colors you have in your palette, the more ways you can see, interpret, explain, the more creativity you have available for yourself in seeing things that are real, the more power you have over your life.
At this point you probably have one, maybe two ways… The job is to have many.
Reality: collective hunch at best. This means: we don’t know what things mean.
Will Durant historian said: unless you are able to see 500 years before and 500 years after, you have no idea what it means that this happened or that happened.
I have a 70 year perspective on the happenings in my life. My interpretation of the events in my life have gone through hundreds of re-evaluation, although in the beginning, just like you, I had very rusted hinges on the door to change.
The swinging of the door, frequently, removes the rust. And you can become all you can be.
You hope you can become all you can be without changing your mind about things that you have a strong opinion.
Dream on… it is not possible.
Unless what you see changes, you cannot change, and your life cannot change.
The person who you are now cannot and will not do well, will not accomplish what you desire, no matter how real it looks in your imagination.
In fact, that imagination is what keeps you stuck…
