Some people who blog like me measure their success by how many people open their articles, how many ‘read’ them, how many ‘clap’ for them.
For me those are not the numbers I am interested to know.
I want to know how many people actually BENEFIT from what I write, from what I teach, from what I create. and I want to increase that number.
It’s a harder number to know, because
1. People lie
People lie to themselves, and then they lie to me… they (I just learned this expression) virtue-signal… they want to look good, they want to look important to me, they want to get the praise, the applause, whatever.
They are NEEDY.
2. People think that all they have to do is buy the darned thing… .
…or maybe listen to me on a webinar, on a private call, read the article, made a collage or a vision board, and wish really hard for what they want.
And I can’t blame them even though what they think is stupid. In fact, moronic.
Every ‘guru’ type wants you to believe that… every ‘guru’ type wants to whip you into a frenzy of believing it… of wanting it really really hard… it makes you a ‘desire trap’ person who will buy every goddamn stuff they sell you.
I try to scare this type away from my site… I want NOTHING to do with them, I don’t want them to buy anything: they are more trouble than it’s worth. I am not in the ‘re-educating business, nor in the dopamine addicts anonymous business.
I want only people who will use and build a life from what I sell.
Had I implemented this years ago, only one person in the current Playground would be a client/student. One. The rest: they still haven’t learned how to ‘consume’ and make my material useful. They still think that what sticks to them is sufficient to change their lives.
This COVID craziness may make all the difference I wanted to make a difference in that.
Two clients who never before learned much of anything, have seemingly buckled up…
The rest still doesn’t know that they actually need to do work if they want the results they CLAIM they want.
In the Starting Point Measurements I measure two very important and connected numbers.
Your desire number and your ambition number.
- Your desire number shows how much you think you can just GET without investing any hard work.
- The ambition number shows how much work you are willing to invest into what you say you want.
If the desire number is higher, you won’t do work… Not much, not intense, not hard work. You’ll come to webinars, but you won’t do much with what you hear.
Let me compare two people who actually have been hoping to using this COVID time to turn their lives around. Both now own the 67 step program… both are Memories soul correction, same age, similar familial obligations…
Person A: desire number: 20 ambition number: 10
Person B: desire number: 10 ambition number: 30
- Person A: comes to every webinar, but doesn’t do any work outside that
- Person B: buckled down on the 67 steps. I quoted from her work the other day… It must have taken her 3-4 hours to produce a document ad detailed and might add, as well done, as that.
Your deserving score
One of the numbers I can measure is your ‘deserving’ number… As Charlie Munger famously said: To get what you want, you need to deserve what you want. I like to replace the word “deserve” with the word ‘earn’
To get what you want you need to earn what you want.
Person A’s ‘deserving’ number is 3 (on the scale of 1-10)
Person B’s is 7.
So the number shows where you rank on this scale… to what degree you are willing to earn, doing work to earn what you want.
Why wouldn’t you want to work towards what you want, is a really good question.
One answer is that you don’t really want what you say you want.
Yesterday, in the Playground, I asked the group to show with raise of hand, how many of them would think that their lives would be better if they got what they have been chasing, begging for, extorting all their lives, the ITCH.
No hand went up. Because the ITCH is a made up want… and not chasing it would… gasp… allow you time and energy to do something useful with your life… Ugh, you say… lol.
Your ITCH makes you needy for dopamine rush… and uses your life for something that, as it turns out, even you know isn’t worth having or going for. And yet, you give up your life to chase it.
Yesterday we had a Playground session where Person A brought up a question, or was it after the session? asking what one needs to do to reduce the ‘about-me’ score, the neediness score that robs someone of their power.
To clarify, in our conversations we call ‘power’ the speed and effectiveness of one’s actions, the speed and effectiveness of making things happen… not the power over another. Not the way the media uses it.
You are powerful if and when you can make things happen… and if you can make things happen faster, then you are even more powerful.
Most people, when asked, have no idea what it would be like to be powerful. Never looked at that, so therefore never increased their power.
Lots of things can and do rob a person of their power… most importantly your about-me score, your ITCH, your inability to direct your attention, and your weakness at handling adversity and tough things, in another word your TLB score.
I measure these in the Starting Point Measurements, what I haven’t measured… yet, is the overall score, for fear of an uprising… lol.
But humanity’s overall score would be, on a scale of 1-100, it is a 7%… And their level of personal power is 1%. Horrible, isn’t it?
I have been pondering this question, and found that until you actually strengthen some capacities, base capacities, you won’t be able to directly influence the ‘about-me’ and neediness score… and increase your personal power.
I found that the most ultimately missing capacity is the capacity to control your attention.
That ability makes you pay attention when it’s necessary, withdraw your attention from b.s. and drama, and act in life as if your attention were your slave, instead of you the slave.
Most people are like dogs where the tail wags the dogs. Not a good life.
So as long as you are that dog wagged by the tail, you can’t even hope to be powerful in life… after all you aren’t a person yet, you are a puppet.
I am not saying that to insult you, I am saying that to wake you up to the true state of you…
I participated, back in 1996, in a 6-month long, and very expensive eye behavioral training. I was already accomplished, business owner, two master’s degrees, six languages… I obviously wasn’t a newbie in this attention business… my attention number was already 50%… It is 91% now.
I would still allow my mind wonder when I was reading, or opinionate about thing when I was either reading or listening.
Today I don’t do that, or I do it a whole lot less… a minuscule amount.
What’s the difference? you say… and here is one number that depends on your ability to control your attention: how much of what you read/hear gets through to you.
That number shows that you don’t hear/get most of the things that are being said/written.
The average number among the people I have measured in their starting point measurements, is 7%. That means: 93% of everything is wasted on you. You would have to read or listen to something 30 times to achieve a reasonable score of learning.
And, interestingly, you miss the most important, the most crucial parts of everything… and remember that parts that you have already knew…
So your chances to earn what you want are not high… they can’t be, can they? Even if you substitute work for ability, which I have been doing all my life, I outwork them… you still won’t be able to ‘earn’ much of what you w ant.
So the question is: how do you train yourself to control your attention?
I have recommended people that they read, but not for comprehension, but for managing their attention.
Interestingly, in the Kabbalah Centre they recommend that you scan The Zohar (a book written in Aramaic), not for comprehension, but to download the energy of the text.
Now, that is b.s. and yet the practice is the same: you need to keep your attention on the word and then the next… and interestingly enough, people do better if they practice ‘scanning’ the Zohar long enough.
You need to notice that your attention left the text, and pull it back… and keep it on the text. That’s the practice.
The more you do it, the more power you’ll have…in everything. In work, in growth, in learning, everything.
How much should you practice this? I say: minimum half an hour a day… for the rest of your life.
Eventually you’ll be able to read AND practice your attention… and you’ll love it. I guarantee it.
Passion, love, enjoyment grows with the amount of time you invest, not the other way around.
- Warren Buffet got more and more passionate about making money, the more books he read.
- I got more and more enjoyment out of playing the violin, and I got better at it.
It is the same with everything… The more you do it, the more enjoyable it becomes.
Expecting passion to come before the work, is like expecting to travel with the cart put before the horses…
Use these extraordinary times to grow yourself… don’t remain a slacker for the rest of your life.
Times are not going to be good for slackers… I guarantee it.
So what should you do?
I recommend that you get your Starting Point Measurements, and after that pick one of my study programs, depending on the amount of time and focus of interest you have. My favorite is the 67 steps.
Go to step 2
it takes humility but it is worth it, Sandra. I had to do the same thing… took quite some time.
I’m currently looking at the lying and find more all the time – ugh! It starts out with lying to myself, that’s why I haven’t noticed it. This will be hard, but hopefully I can release some blockages that way.