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Everyone wants to understand BEFORE they take a step onto the path to success. But putting one foot in front of the other, with awareness is what allows you to get to where you want to get to.
Some people are crazy smart. They see everything laid out like a street map where I see nothing… or I see, maybe, one step, and therefore I am filled with fear and trepidation. I can’t see beyond that one step.
I am sure you can relate to this and relate to the ‘inner voice’ the mind saying: you are never going to make it.
And sometimes you find someone whose entire processing style is less intimidating, someone who doesn’t profess to see everything, although they may, and will take you step by tiny step.
Because step by step doesn’t necessarily take understanding, which is elusive, really, it takes putting one foot in front of the other.
The understanding will come with hindsight… Meaning: you can connect the dots looking backwards
And although I am not crazy smart, I am willing to do the walking without having to see the whole picture. And mostly I don’t see the whole picture. And I am OK with that.
But without trusting enough to at least take a few steps you’ll never see, you’ll never understand, because, as Steve Jobs said: some dots can only be connected in hindsight.
Sometimes the steps don’t make any sense. Actually, scratch that. Most of the time they don’t make any sense.
Oftentimes the steps take you, seemingly or for real, to a bad place… but that bad place is from where you can get to where you would like to get to: there is not direct path.
In my workshops I draw the winding river, where from one section of the river you cannot see the destination, where you don’t know what danger is lurking beyond the bend, and if you are sissy, if you are ‘faint of heart’, you will not go beyond the bend, and miss out.
I have come to learn that the biggest and most determining difference between those who succeed and those who fail is their TLB.
Let’s consider success when you get to where you wanted to get to.
And let’s consider failure if and when you didn’t… mostly because you didn’t take the risky looking steps, like putting one foot in front of the other, when you don’t know what awaits you beyond the corner, beyond the bend in the river. You’d need to be willing to meander.
The words that describe the person who did, are stout, but I prefer to refer to them: they can take a beating and still be OK.
Today’s humanity is, collectively, sissy.
- Can’t go without a meal when that would be necessary.
- Can’t go without sleep when it’s necessary.
- Can’t take a shower when there is only cold water
- Can’t take the necessary and maybe blind steps to get out of the ditch where they can’t see much of anything.
The Anna Karenina principle… again! Really? Baaah!
Instead they stay put, or alternatively become a ‘seeker’ who doesn’t leave the ditch, but tries hundreds of programs, suggestions to the point where it would actually need an action that they can’t see leads exactly and instantly to the result that is, maybe hundreds of steps away.
It is not that they are stupid, and they might be. It is that they dream of hop and skip and jump… they live in lala land where there are no corners to turn, there are no rivers to cross, where the goal is always in sight and it is close and it is easy.
They are the serial failures… dreaming of becoming serial entrepreneurs. Big successes… but either refusing to take the step that is in front of them, or jumping into empty pools… never looking, ending up on the trash pile.
I dream about clients and students who will just take the steps I suggest, but dreaming is just dreaming.
All my students are low TLB, and it takes extraordinary patience and sometimes threats to dislodge them.
But what can you do if your TLB is 1, and the likelihood that you’ll succeed in life, that you’ll get closer to your potential, is not likely to happen?
The one thing that makes the most difference is strengthening your TLB coupled with constant and never flagging awareness.
You see, awareness is wonderful, but without something to be aware of, it is just nice… but won’t get you anywhere.
And TLB is nice, but without the awareness, you’ll be the guy who jumps into empty pools, or alternatively the guy who gives up, because it’s the ‘wrong path’ never realizing that it was the right path, for them.
If my life were about my own success, I would lead big courses, and not give a hoot who is succeeding and who isn’t… like Werner or Harv.
Landmark Education is only responsible for the orderly delivery of the courses, and I bet that is the responsibility Harv is willing to assume.
They are about their own success. I did my job. If you didn’t do yours, it is on you.
I am different because my ‘job’ is not about my success, it is about finding a way to move any homo sapiens up the ladder of evolution.
I am complaining, and I am not. I took that ‘job’ on willingly, in fact I begged for it, I performed miracles for it, I performed brain surgery on myself for it… so I am complaining just a little big, like grumbling.
But I do draw the line because I have to… somewhere.
Where is that?
There are four measures I pay attention to: your vibration, your effective IQ when I measure it, your cell hydration, and measure #37, the most determining of all: are you able to let go of your self-concern.
What is this self-concern?
TLB is being over-concerned about yourself, your safety, your social standing, of others opinion of you, of your identity remaining intact.
If you measured ‘no’ on #37: can you, are you able to, can you let go of your self-concern for something important to you, like growth, like success, like love, then I can’t and won’t work with you.
If it’s a maybe or a yes, I will… I still can’t guarantee your success.
So what will make you successful in my programs and it where they lead you in life: success. Living life powerfully, living a life you love?
Interestingly it takes no big dramatic actions. No. What will make you successful is taking the small, innocuous, ‘innocent’ steps I ask you to take, consistently, regularly, and without much resistance.
With awareness. So you can see what you are doing, who you are being while you are doing it, and then see the results.
If you are not bringing awareness to it, then all bets are off.
In Landmark Education there was one step they asked you to take consistently, maybe two.
But the one that nearly 100% or the people missed, or did without bringing awareness to it was: in every Landmark Education program you were asked to bring guests. Having enrollment conversations. Successful or not… If you brought awareness and consistency to it, like I did, you slowly and gradually changed into a winner in life. It is like a machine: produces predictable results every time.
What no one explains is this: as you are doing what ‘the enrollment conversation’ is, you do a ‘move’ that Steve Jobs would call ‘connecting the dots looking backwards’. Every time you connect the dots, you become more empowered… You do it hundreds of time, and ‘watch out world! Here I come!’ happens.
My hunch is: the leaders don’t know that this is what is going on in the invisible. They never looked backwards and connected the dots… 🙁
If you ‘did’ the Landmark Education Forum, and were only there to get something, you probably got mind candy. Worthless.
I discovered for myself, really early on, that the meat of the programs wasn’t the knowledge, but the exercises you were asked to perform… in the class and in your life.
So I did the exercises. All of them. I was unstoppable.
I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the toolbox. Most of those 26 years I slept 3-5 hours a night, many nights I didn’t sleep at all, I was poor and sick, and those circumstances are not favorable for being really sharp.
But I brought high TLB, determination (willpower) and consistency to my ‘Landmark Education Game’.
There was no way I was going back to being so miserable, only death looked like a solution to it. No way. I was going to make it or die trying.
I didn’t have a dream. To have a dream
- you need to be idle…
- You need to make where you are wrong. I didn’t do that.
- I made where i was the ‘launching pad’ for the next step, little or big.
I put 100% power in every action. Even into doing the dishes… however infrequently I got to it… lol. Or the laundry: even more infrequently.
But most importantly, I kept up taking tiny steps and staying awake, staying aware, vigilant. Occasionally I did things for too darn long… but not often.
I’ve acknowledged every little win for what it was, making myself vulnerable in that acknowledgment.
It is my secret weapon. And when it was possible, I’ve been doing it publicly. My coach called it yesterday “falling into your sword’ vulnerability, when you look bad and yet come out ahead.
I watched people’s facial expression (on zoom) as they were listening to me, and what I saw there was disgust. lol.
Yeah, that is what you want to see. Disgust. If you don’t… you know that ‘looking good’ has won the day, and you didn’t.
I think being willing to look bad is a secret weapon. How is that for counterintuitive? lol.
OK, too much talk, but needed to be said.
If you want to join me on this journey where the steps won’t ever make sense, you can. If you qualify, after you paid, I’ll let you know. If you didn’t… I’ll let you know too.
The program is called the 27 layers of Mastery, aka the Freedom Courses.
The first leg of that program is the More Money Workshop. Why do we start with money?
How you do anything is how you do everything… so whatever I’ll teach you about being with money will apply to your whole life, including your relationships, your health, your career.
And in addition to that: if you haven’t taken care of your survival level (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) then you are surely not available to work on the higher needs, fulfillment, self-actualization, and spirituality.
That’s why.
Want to do it? Here is the link… Make sure you send me a picture of yourself.
Go to step 2
