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Sara was 90 year olds when she gave birth to Yitzhak… if the bible is any indication of what life was some 4000 years ago…
Some 50 years ago I met a group of Danish students, back in Hungary, on a train. We struck up a conversation. At some point they exclaimed: “You’ll never retire. You’ll be working way past your 70’s!”
I was still an architecture student, and I must have been excited about that… Being an architecture student and being a working architect are worlds apart. One is exciting, the other is not… That’s probably why I am not an architect any more. It was drudgery.
I am equally if not more excited about my current profession… and yes, I am 73 today, and I am still working… no retirement in mind.
The biggest compliment I got today was from a student who has some comparison to base on what she says, she spent five years in Landmark Education, a transformational teaching company. I quote:
“Dear Sophie,
I wish you a very happy birthday.
Please know you are loved and appreciated around the world, today and always.
Thank you for making a difference for me – and bringing fun, play and ease to transformation…I can hear your laugh as I type this.
Have an amazing day.
Lia”
I have been asked and I have asked myself a ton of times what I would like to have on my tombstone other than the hyphen between my year of birth and year of death… And this email actually gives me exactly that: bringing fun, play and ease to transformation.
This is probably my biggest accomplishment. I was about 43 when someone said about me that I was fun. I was surprised. Before that I was heavy and significant… This happened in my sixth year doing transformational work.
Transformation is when you manage to get a different glance at something, and because of the difference in vantage point, the thing seems to change.
So I went from tragic, abused victim, to fun, play and ease.
That is what is possible… when nothing else changes but how you look at things.
Dramatic, isn’t it?
I watch people trying to change things, but the vantage point, the how of the looker doesn’t change, and therefore nothing can change. The problem isn’t with the thing, the problem is with the how of the looker.
Once that how becomes flexible, once that how goes from rigid to flexible, once that how goes from survival and scarcity to fun, play and ease, life changes rapidly.
I remember back in 1987 driving South on the Garden State Parkway. I had been in the United States two years at that point. But during that drive I noticed the trees and the sky for the first time.
Even today I can tell to what degree I am locked into rigidity by seeing if I take note of the sky or not.
When you manage to release yourself from the one fixed vantage point of seeing life, you can suddenly see the sky. Instead of being a plodding thing… doing what you have to do… being concerned about yourself.
Survival. Dutiful. Resistant. Barely breathing.
Your vantage point, that fixed vantage point was born in an incident when you were about 3 years old.
It’s words… ‘I am nothing’ or ‘I don’t matter’ or ‘I am not safe’ or ‘nobody loves me’ or ‘other people are better than me’
These are just examples, everybody said something like this. That saying created a machine, that has double function:
- 1. Perpetuate the validity of that statement
- 2. Try to fix the ‘reality’ that that statement and attitude creates.
Until and unless you can see that that statement was either not true, or not all-or-nothing, you’ll live in survival.
Citizen Kane, based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, wildly successful newspaper mogul, lived his whole life to ‘fix’ his heartache of losing his childhood and Rosebud.
Despite his financial success he lived in scarcity, he lived in survival… the original incident never reframed, never looked at through a different lens.
In the ITCH workshop we worked diligently on digging out your original statement: don’t discount the difficulty. It is really hard, because there is a string of statements at the end of which is the original one.
And in the live session, if needed sessions I’ll add to it this month we’ll work on looking at it (in communication) in different ways, through different lenses. The goal is not to rid yourself of the machine: you can’t. The goal is that you learn to do that moving your eyes around with skill, so you can unstuck yourself at will.
I have watched thousands of people get freed up in transformational programs, but by next day, next week, next month, they were only remembering the transformation.
Yesterday’s transformation is today’s arrogance.
The job of a transformational teacher, I say, it to make you learn and use the methods of transformation, so you’ll never need the teacher again, not for that issue.
Most services, courses, products are designed to create a repeat customer… Doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, pharmaceutical companies, transformational teachers, coaches… wives, husbands… lol.
My goal is to have people who can credit what they learned with me as the source of why they are happy, and successful in the world.
This has been my goal all along.
Of course human culture, the lack of understanding how to learn, has been working against me and my goal.
If you are on the side of instant, and quick, and understanding means I learned it… please don’t apply to this course.
I only want people who will be willing to practice and practice and practice until they can do it in their sleep. Automatically. Without thinking.
Is that you? If so, you are welcome to sign up.
Get your ITCH courseUse BIRTHDAY coupon code to get a discount until tonight, September 4.
