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So I watched this Walter Presents French cop series on Amazon Prime.
In one episode they have a serial killer. The killer must be part of a traveling circus, because every killing happened while the circus was in town.
So they go to the circus ground… and question the owner. And while they do that the son of the owner shows up, stammering his proud confession that he did it.
When they do a search the cops find that the boy, now a man, was kidnapped and made the owner’s son… but he was a disappointment to the circus…
So the cops contact his birth mother and arrange a phone call between mother and son. The birth mother says: ‘I found you after 20 years. I love you no matter what you have done.‘
And the ‘boy’ stops stammering…
Before you consider yourself a winner or a loser… before you rush into conclusion… Please consider that life is not a simple calculus… Because there is a lot more to life than 2+2 equals 4…
But yet a lot of my students consider themselves losers… a disappointment. So let’s see what you haven’t considered…
A successful life, a winning life is built on projects.
Let me say that again:
Every successful life is built on projects. If you don’t have projects, or you are not good at doing projects you cannot be a winner, you cannot have a successful life.
You are a wannabe. A floating beach ball on the open see, flown hither and tither by the wind.
No success is possible.
So learning to run a project, is fundamental if you want a life you love and a life you live powerfully.
Every project has five stages. Any project. Work, fun, life, eating, sports, serial killing. Any project.
Now, I have found this, that a project has stages, very useful. Most importantly calming. Because it prevented me from prematurely deciding if I was a winner or a loser… Before I found that out, unless I knew exactly what to do, how to do it, or understood everything perfectly, I could not trust myself, and felt like a complete loser… and quit. Quit the project.
Like you, I had always thought that life worked on the basis of and an unwritten agreement ‘I give you one, and I get one back from you‘
What I found out is that life cheats… or maybe life doesn’t work that way. Life never agreed to work on that basis. I give you one and you give me one.
Now, I could complain. and I could despair. and I could be a quitter like most people. but I am not… Instead, I grit my teeth. I think this is why they call that stick-to-it-iveness grit… lol.
Gritting your teeth and doing it for no immediate reward.
So when I learned about the five phases of a project, back in 1987 or 1988, it was like someone turned on the light… and suddenly I could see clearly. Oh, this is how it works? OK… fffffffff….. grrr.
So here are the five phases or five stages of a project.
Most of you have never seen all five, and most of you will never see all five… but that doesn’t change the fact, that all projects have five stages.
Stage 1: Formulation
What? Formulation? most say. This is something most people skimp on. Most people leave it out: they jump into the middle of anything with two feet… and never succeed.
In formulation you look, first and foremost, what it is that you want to accomplish. You go into as much detail as you can… most of you will get stuck right there. How do I know? 90% of the people that come to me answer to my question ‘What would you like to accomplish?‘ with silence and stammering. They don’t know, they didn’t think about it. And then, maybe, they say something really ingenious, like ‘I want to be happy!‘ or ‘I am tired of feeling bad about myself!‘
Not enough.
To what end? The why…
Almost any project has to have a ‘to what end?‘ aspect. For example, the person who is tired of feeling bad about herself, could add: so that I can make a difference in the world, write best selling books, become a fun person who does business and be healthy and happy, blah blah blah.
One of the best little exercises that i have ever done to get to the ‘to what end?‘ is to start with what you can think of, like ‘I want to lose some weight‘… it is a good start, and you can take it to a spectacular ‘to what end?‘
You just have to ask: ‘what are you building with that?‘
Then look. Let’s say, your answer to that question is: ‘I am building a more appealing look for myself‘
And then keep on asking that question: ‘What are you building with that?‘
If it were me, I would say: so my local friends are more willing to think of me as an authority… And you see, there is a pain point there… my local friends do NOT think of me as an authority… they think of me the way they think of themselves, loser, old, decrepit, fat, slovenly, stupid… whatever they think of me… Definitely not an authority. lol… not funny at all.
So what am I building with that, you ask? Great question! I am building something important to me: being able to watch people’s faces as i am sharing my imminent wisdom, maybe save a few lives, maybe have more friends, maybe make a difference?
All really nice, and currently totally impossible. To my local ‘friends’ I am nobody.
OK, so what am I building with that? Hm, I am building a seamless life… No difference between the me online and and the me offline… private and public. Between work and leisure. Authority, respected 360 degrees.
And what am I building with that, you ask?
I think that I would be a lot happier, and I would have a lot more people to play with, experiment with, fulfill on my destiny: find a way to take some humans all the way to the ‘Promised Land’…
More life in my years. And a whole lot more FUN. Yeah… Fun is important to me.
And what am I building with that?
I am building the possibility of a life worth living and a way for people to live it powerfully, however old they happen to be. Fulfill thus on my destiny and my promise to Source…
Sorry, the very last is a little pompous… by design, don’t be squeamish, you can laugh it off… lol. (This is what in the Structure for fulfillment is called possibility)
Did you notice that I am still at stage one? In formulation? Hell yeah.
A sloppily done or missed stage one will always result in a botched attempt at a project.
They say ‘plan your work and work your plan‘ and it works for most people.
I don’t plan my work… I wing it. But I know where I am going, and I stop frequently to re-orient myself.
This is one of the reasons I hated to be an architect, by the way. I don’t like to plan… I can, but I hate it.
But usually planning, at least the rudimentary steps, is part of phase one. You need to be flexible, and be willing to change the plan when reality doesn’t seem to say ‘hell yeah’ to your plan.
Be willing to change the plan when reality doesn’t seem to say ‘hell yeah’ to your plan.
I have a student whose life is a series of botched up projects. He skimped on phase 1… and found out the hard way that no project, like no house, can stand without a solid foundation.
I won’t go into this much detail about the other four, so here they are
Phase 2: Concentration
Phase 3: Momentum
Phase 4: Stability
Some people talk about a fifth phase: Breakthrough… It is a land I haven’t been in… so I don’t have a lot to say about it.
One of the aspects that these phases have is how many units of effort you need to put in to get the results you get.
- In formulation you do work that produces zero results, other than words on paper… 1–>0
- In concentration you need to put in 100 units of effort to maybe get back 1 unit of result… lots of work, hardly any results as far as, for example, money goes. 100–>1
- In momentum… 1—>1
- In stability you suddenly can put in one unit of effort and get back 1—>10-20, maybe even 100 results.
- In breakthrough, I would think, you can just clean up… lol. I have never been there.
Depending on your personality, depending on your Bach Profile, depending on the self-knowledge, you’ll be stuck in different stages… hopefully not because you refuse to do the very first one…
Knowledge is power
When you know where you’d be stuck, ahead of time, you can do the work on yourself, I repeat, on YOURSELF, to pull the plug on the cause… so you can finally do a winning project… something you can be proud of.
I have been coaching entrepreneurs, in their projects for 30-plus years. I can be very helpful it guiding you through the maze of the phases of a project.
Left to your own devices, I don’t know… I have never known a successful person who didn’t have a mentor or a coach… A coach who will catch you when you are doing something stupid, or wake you up when you fall asleep at the wheel.
If you want to work with me, you need to jump through hoops.
The first hoop is getting your starting point measurements done.
And if you feel like a loser… why don’t you watch these two videos… and change your mind about it.
Get the structure for fulfillment videosA great preparation for the projects… for a winning life.
