I have been ‘playing’ this self-improvement, self-development game for 35 years. It germinated and grew into a full ‘tree’ in me, while in others it remained stunted, or maybe even died.
What was the difference between those others and myself?
The main difference was, I thought, is that I saw going up incredibly inspiring, while others focused on protecting their egos. We call it precious I in my work.
I had a precious I too, but I could see that what it had given me is grief, so I was willing to think and do things that offended or scared my precious I, because what I saw was available was inspiring enough for me to do so.
Inspiring is the code word for pull.
The future you aspire to needs to be inspiring. Whether it is inside or outside, it needs to be inspiring.
Landmark Education education leaves it to the participants to find what would be inspiring to them, and thus they have a 1% result, success rate. I don’t care how many people love your courses, if their lives, inner and outer, doesn’t change for the better.
And watching thousands of people over the years, even 1% felt a little more than what I was in reality.
When I started my participation, back in 1985, I was at a low point in my life, seriously contemplating ending my life. It’s my go-to solution to everything hopeless.
My life was hopeless. I was hopeless. There was no future for which it was worth to live.
It took me 20 years to raise my vibration to 170.
Your vibration is very telling of who you are inside.
What pulled me up to that level is a series of future selves I saw I could fulfill.
For me it was never about money, never about fame, never about notoriety, never even about being liked. It was all about who I could be that comes naturally to me, that I feel fully express who I am.
We don’t have a fully evolved Self, maybe ever. We have so many fake selves that fight the bad fight, that most people are really clueless who they could be.
I fought being less than…
I fought being worthless…
I fought being a sex object only…
I fought being a smart Alec
I fought being independent…
I fought being unhelpable… if that is a word
I fought being a gossip to put myself over others
I could write a whole page or two of fake selves I had to transform, so they are not active in my new beingness…
I am fighting vengeful nowadays…
Vengeful is a cowardly way of being. Instead of confronting the offender, communicating, fully expression what there is to express, or alternatively owning up to my part on the events, the vengeful person chooses to conspire to destroy or harm the offender.
In a way gossip and suicide, judgmentalness, blaming belong to the same sphere of cowardly ways of being.
The only reason I am willing to fight against these behaviors and beings because what I am inspired by is a future that is joyful, that is full of peace, and grace, and power.
I am inspired by is a future that is joyful, that is full of peace, and grace, ease and power
So little by little I work on removing what doesn’t belong there. The Anna Karenina principle, the Michelangelo method, the strait and narrow.
And I don’t get offended by the fact that I have behaviors and attitudes that are not great, not honorable, not ‘godly’… I consider it par for the course.
So, for the past ten years or so, my most important challenge has been to cause my students and clients to reduce the size of their precious I and to embrace who they have been being.
But something was really amiss: there was no future self… and I was at my wits end.
People were inventing for themselves attitudes that would not inspire anyone: I will be studious, a learning machine, diligent, curious.
No poetry… Not inspiring… no pull
In my experience a future-statement that has no poetry in it does not inspire… and inspiration is the secret sauce.
So in yesterday ‘What are your strengths?’ workshop I took a different approach: I started with people’s accomplishments, incidents where they did something that they enjoyed doing and produced results with.
Much like the stories in the skill-finder section of the book ‘What color is your parachute’
We struggled through the stories, because, not surprisingly, people 1. don’t know what an accomplishment is, 2. don’t know what they did to accomplish the result they accomplished.
But eventually every person had at least one story in which they had a sense of what they did.
And then came the last question that I had never asked: What was the empowering context of all that activity inside the project that made it enjoyable. You can have a successful project, a successful result without enjoying the process… we have all had countless experiences, I know I have.
And, of course it took my muscletesting while connected to Source to sort it out, but every person ended up with an innate empowering context, that made their eyes sparkle… even though their precious I was grumbling and resisting.
The empowering contexts, the empowering innate attitudes were as varied as people are: there is no cookie cutter attitude that is innate in everyone.
I’ll list them here for you. My recommendation is that you don’t borrow an attitude because it sounds good: find your own.
- Life Force is strong in me. To awaken Life force, I say: Life Force come out and play
- I feel creative. I can feel creative doing anything creatively
- I looked at it as exciting, as an adventure… I can always be doing things as an adventure/exciting
- I am useful/I am making something happen here
- I was amused… And I can always be amused doing even mundane things… The amusement is from me, not from the thing I do
- I am doing good/I am in my power
The art is to master awakening that attitude regardless of the circumstances.
My empowering context is and has been for 32 years: I am the only one who can do this. If I don’t do it it will never happen.
Many mornings I don’t want to get up. Last August, when I was very ill, that is what gets me over the hump. If I don’t do it, it will never happen.
Of course you need to have a big healthy ego to think that the world would lose out if you didn’t give it what only you can do… and I have it. This is where ego is really useful: it is a power source. A tremendous power source.
One other thing that became obvious from yesterday’s workshop is this: all accomplishments happened after the person had a vision of the finished project, product, or whatever.
If you look, most of your life you life without a vision, you just do this and do that without rhyme and reason… even though you have the capacity to have and formulate a vision.
It’s very interesting to note, that almost everything that is useful, that is successful, that is productive about you and your life is like air you breathe in: unconsidered and unnoticed.
Your vision, your attitude, your skills…
You don’t consider them, because they are invisible to you. So you don’t hone them, don’t make them stronger, you don’t make them show up in other areas of your life…
You don’t know yourself.
The next What’s the Truth About You workshop in next Saturday, June 6 at 4 pm.
You can buy one session or three for the price of two.
This workshop is still experimental… that is why it is so inexpensive. If and when I am satisfied with the results, I’ll raise the price to double…
This is my methodology I borrowed from the game industry: I envision, create, and test, tweak my courses until they do what I intend for them to do. What I intend for them to do is mostly way beyond what the participants can even envision for themselves. But I am going for the sky…
What’s the truth about you?
PS: Yesterday’s workshop is posted in the paid part of my subscriber only site. Here is the link:
