Podcast: Play in new window | Download
One of the things that make life humdrum, feel long, and colorless is sameness. Boring-ness… if that is a word.
It is easy to be boring, in this world where you are cooped up in your house, and the seeming variety of where to have dinner is replaced with takeout, or gasp… cooking.
But as is with everything, the world is neither boring, nor interesting: it is you, who is boring, and it is you who can see colors and fun where others can’t.
But don’t be mistaken: it takes some work.
Work?! Oh no… not work!
Yeah. work. Your choice is this: be bored, or have a fun life.
One of my favorite Jewish jokes is about the guy who goes to his rabbi for advice. He says: Rabbi, how can I have a long life?
The rabbi thinks a little and says: It is quite simple. Here is what you do: from now on, get up in the morning, have breakfast, kiss your wife, and go to work. After work go home, kiss your wife, watch TV and go to bed. Do this every day.
Or guys ask: Rabbi, will this make me live a long life?
The rabbi answers: I don’t know. But I know for sure, it will feel long.
But, unbeknownst to us, we have been following this rabbi’s advice, and life seems boring, colorless, and not interesting, not exciting, nothing to look forward to.
Yeah, I get it.
So the other day, when I presented the imaginary scenario of the Armageddon: the incurable virus with 100% fatality rate, in the 3-wishes workshop, we looked what we would wish for then. In the 3 wishes exercise you get to wish… three times… how is that for redundancy, eh? lol.
Anyway, wishing for a gun, a vaccine, a community, a skill that makes us desirable for a group of survivors were the stars.
And among the useful skill what I liked most is being fun.
Why fun? Because the future is going to be decided, for you, and for people around you, not by how much money you make, not by how famous you become, but how much fun you can have while the world, maybe, is falling apart around you.
Yeah, fun. Being fun. Maybe occasionally funny too.
One of the most visible signs that you are running a victim racket is that you don’t see the humor in the situation. You are serious, dramatic, and NO FUN.
I am, people say, fun by nature. But occasionally I get serious, and then I am no fun.
When I published my Mentertainment magazine for strip-club goers, I remember the readers complaining that I was no fun at all.
What was I doing that was no fun? I was winging, and moaning, and complaining about whatever… I never ran out of things to complain about. And my attitude was: it’s wrong. They are wrong. It should be different, it shouldn’t be the way it is.
If you have done my Freedom Course first session, 1 we spend a lot of time on the fundamental machine-like pattern every single human has, the racket.
So if you have done that course, you’ll recognize that I was running a racket in those editorial articles in the magazine.
And maybe, to some degree, even in this blog… occasionally.
You have a racket. Yes, you do… it is like an opinion, it is like a butt hole… everybody has one.
The racket has to visible, above the ground components, the rest is in the invisible.
The two components of a racket are
- Complaint… recurring, you have been complaining the same way about everything… It’s either a should or a shouldn’t type of complaint… and underneath is the firm belief that the world, people, you are wrong in some way. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
- The second component is also predictable: you always have the same attitude about the world, about the complaint, about the wrong you see. In sophisticated language it is called: a fixed way of being…
Ugh, right?
There are many things in the invisible, but if you can, you can tweak what’s visible, and get out of the racket.
If you can’t see it, ask people around you and they will be more than willing to tell you, unless they are afraid of you. Then they will lie… especially if they are Canadians… ugh… lol. Or alternatively, they are from California. Double ugh. lol.
OK, once you see your ‘fixed way of being’ you are almost home free.
One of my students has a Eeyore way of being. Eeyore is the donkey in Winnie the Pooh… Always sad. Always droopy. Discouraged, self-deprecating, self-hating.
What he cannot see is this: his base nature is fun… like mine. The moment I remind him of that, he starts laughing. Raucously. Don’t know the word? Don’t worry, I still remember when I learned it… just google it.
So in the exercise in the 3-wishes Armageddon version, I suggested that he takes on the beingness of FUN. That would make him welcome in any group. Not in a pollyanna way, but really… BE FUN. See the funny in the situation. Express it so others can see it too, or at least see the funny in what you say… and laugh.
Both my coaches (I have two… in business the most dangerous number is one! lol) have lost their sense of humor.
I have been meaning to write to Ben 2 to remind him that he used to make me chuckle, and he hasn’t done that in months now… So it is time to shift gears, again, and go back to being FUN…
He is promoting another guy right now, and I bought the promotion. One of the pieces in it is a pdf on how to be somewhat funny. I realized that Ben must have read that pdf: I recognize his specific ways to be funny… OK, I remember his specific and weird ways to be funny.
And he hasn’t been funny…
I invented, for myself, to be encouraging in that same Armageddon workshop. Reading that pdf I realized that I can be fun and funny: there is nothing more encouraging than that…
The ‘you are not stupid’ or ‘you are perfect’ ‘encouraging’ statements don’t do, haven’t done the trick, while funny, if nothing else, can lighten the mood, so the person comes out of their racket and at least takes a breath.
No breathing inside the racket… only panting.
The other students invented more ‘serious’ ways of being… all designed to fix what’s wrong with them. What!!!????
Yeah… often the medicine perpetuates the sickness… That is what Western Medicine shines at… But it is based on the ‘human condition’ where the same is happening.
Obviously looking twice (aka respect), being a gogetter, humility and consistency can be seriously uplifting and a great contribution to any group… but if it is a fix, then you are still in your racket, you are still making something wrong, someone wrong. YOURSELF.
The art of inventing something that is not a fix is quite elusive. Most people never get the hang of it, because they refuse to let go of the wrong they try to fix.
This is why I throw in the ITCH workshop for free to everyone who buys the Freedom Course… even if you just buy the first session of the Freedom Course.
The ITCH workshop sells, every day for $99… but until the end of the week you can get it free as a bonus if you buy the Freedom Course first session. I’ll give you access after the live workshop.
The next Freedom Course workshop is on Monday, January 11 at 6 pm EST… and the one after that is on Sunday January 31 at 2 pm EST.
Let’s see if you are smart enough to see that you don’t have to be boring, and a sniveling twerp… if you are. You can rise above it all and start calling the shot… especially about your attitude: that is entirely up to you.
Oh, you don’t know that you are boring, and a twerp? Just ask someone who knows you… unless, of course, you are in Canada… I could not pass this one up… lol. I do have some delightful Canadian clients.
Get your racket and start becoming fun- that I am going to repeat and repeat, because without it you can’t continue your education with me, you can’t be taken to ‘heaven’.
- Ben Settle
yeah, crazy is much better
I always notice wry jokes in your articles. At least I hope they were jokes… I think I’ve circled from crazy to sane back to crazy over the years. Crazy is more fun to hang out with. I’ll always have to hang out with myself, so I guess I’ll try to like her. (Poor Eeyore and all. We all secretly wish he’d go away.)