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This dog story illustrates something profound and new in this article: motive power.
This story is about two dogs.
The female is Missy. The other a male, Jojo.
Missy is a medium-sized… I am not good at dog breeds. She is friendly, reserved and weighs 15 pounds.
Now, Jojo, the male, is a real character. He’s a dachshund. Jet-Black/yellow in color, and weighs just 7 pounds.
Guess who’s the boss in this relationship?
Well, it ain’t Missy.
Jojo is only 7 pounds, but his small stature doesn’t inhibit him in any way.
He strides right up to the biggest dogs ( including Pit Bulls ) and extends a friendly greeting.
And he’s eager to play.
You see, Jojo doesn’t view himself as a “small-dog.” He’s not a victim of “small-dog syndrome”.
He views himself on an equal level to even the biggest dogs.
So, just remember whatever your size, the important thing is the confidence you project and your willingness to mix it up and enter the fray.
Your stature isn’t important – your attitude is.
Are you a Missy or a Jojo?
Let’s look at that shall we? Let’s see how that effects your whole life, including how you learn and what you’ll do with it.
Watch out for the attitude…
Why do drill sergeants lead bootcamps in the army?
Werner Erhard has a ‘famous’ quote on action:
‘It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel or what you think, and certainly it has no interest in what you want and don’t want. Take a look at life as it is lived and see for yourself that the world only moves for you when you act.’
T. Harv Eker has another famous quote on action: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. – Confucius
And there is even a third quote, from Xunzi, who I suspect, may be the same dude who wrote the Art of War, but who am I to guess, lol? Here is what he said 2300 years ago: Not hearing is not as good as hearing, hearing is not as good as seeing, seeing is not as good as knowing, knowing is not as good as acting; learning continues until it is put into action.
True learning continues until it is put into action.
Now, what am I jabbering about? I am jabbering about that most anything only makes a difference through doing. Knowing about it, maybe even teaching it is just mind candy.
But isn’t that what most schools do? Teach your mind, claiming that it will make you do?
I have been working with my trusty (lol) core group on an experiment of actually learning to do something that can impact their lives forever.
It’s not going well.
I have, thus far, spent 4.5 hours, and I guess some of the group will eventually get it.
One of the side-effects of doing this is that I discovered that the capacity to connect the dots is completely missing in some students, and weak in others.
- I am going to go out on a limb and say:
It is impossible to teach ‘doing’ without someone’s ability to connect the dots, to see the connection between seemingly unconnected things.
It’s an intellectual capacity. Source says: I can’t open it, I can’t activate it, it is not a separate DNA capacity.
Its availability depends on the size of the person’s cone of vision, which depends on their will and surprisingly on their worldview.
The worldview
If you have a worldview that things come to you and that is your job to get them, then the cone of vision doesn’t need to be wide, you don’t need to be alert, you don’t need to be curious and go for it, because in your worldview it is not how the world works.
You could say that every baby comes with that worldview, but that is not true: some babies are more proactive, and go for the nipple, or whatever delivers the food…
If you watch dogs with too many puppies, some puppies become the runt of the litter, because they don’t have enough Life Force in them to compete with other puppies.
And if the mother/owner coddles the runt, it never learns.
The worldview that someone will put the nipple in your mouth is the same worldview that prevents some people from ever going for it, and from ever getting the connection between them going for it and results. They are the putzes we all know, and somehow they will make everyone want to give them a nipple, so to say.
The worldview of ‘should‘ expects people, the world, society, government to give you what you want, to deliver to you what you want. 70% of humanity has a should worldview.
Another worldview is: if it is to be it is up to me. If you want it, go get it. 10% of humanity.
And yet another worldview I call shouldn’t. This group uses the natural dislike, disgust, hate, to propel them, the jet engines. Unless they are skillfully directed, they never find anything worth finding. They are weak at knowing what they want, but very clear about what they don’t… the shouldn’t.
Can the error made in infancy corrected 40 years later?
Source says (muscletesting) that yes, it can be corrected.
I suggested to my students who have a ‘should’ persuasion to collage. Collage not what they want, but what they don’t want. What appalls them, what they hate, what makes them angry.
I want to strengthen their shouldn’t muscle, the muscle that pushes, the muscle that is too weak.
Positive thinking, the movement
Positive thinking, the movement, has made shouldn’t people, the engines of society, unpopular. And positive thinking defanged, declawed its adherents.
If I wanted a sheeple society, a bunch of sheep I can herd wherever, I would teach them positive thinking.
In the book I mentioned in yesterday’s article, the Buddhist who wanted to create nine Buddhas, rails against negativity, and rails against the Old Testament God for it being angry, and vengeful, and fierce, and whatever else that God is depicted as… and says the Jesus is much better, because Jesus teaches people to be sheep. Turn your other cheek… ugh.
And then Buddhism takes it a mile further.
The should energy… in extreme
But what about Islam? Islam is a should religion as well. It says: you need to convert the dogs (infidels) to the only true religion… or kill them. Ugh ugh…
Watch the individual. He/she doesn’t grow, he/she kills… not a good religion either. I has energy, but the energy goes against people, not against ideas, or concepts, like poverty, of slavery, or stupidity, or even death. It actually likes death. What a horrible reality it creates.
The shouldn’t energy
The energy that focuses one to shake off, lose, get rid of what is not supportive of what they want, the energy that matches the energy of the ‘Anna Karenina Principle’, the strait and narrow, is what seems to be a better motive power than any of the pulling energies.
- In the formula for transformation we have the elements of shouldn’t featured prominently.
- In the ‘formula’ for distinction we focus on the ‘shoudn’t’… everything that the distinction isn’t defines what it is…
The engine that makes ‘possibility’ drive actions, worldview, is a shouldn’t energy, even though on the surface it sounds like a should aka positive energy.
I have made a life, successfully, by declaring myself back some 22 years ago: ‘There is no way I am going to be anything less than magnificent’.
I, luckily, didn’t use the Landmark Education formula for declaring a possibility for myself and my life… The possibility of magnificence.
Instead I declared AGAINST any form of non-magnificence.
My motive power is fueled by shouldn’t.
Should people change their should more often that they change their underwear. Why? Because should has no energy. Shoulds are interchangeable, because they say one thing and one thing only: not this… but without energy nothing happens.
- For action to happen, energy is needed.
- For anything to happen, action needs to happen.
What gets you to take an action? what is your Motive Power?
I have been experimenting lately. It is winter, my house is kept at a chilly 52 degrees Fahrenheit, 11-12 Celsius. And my bed: niiiiice warm. So my mind says: stay.
I have been looking what it is I could say to make myself get up. And I’ve realized that to get up all you need to do is get up. None of the words I can think of will make me get up. What will get me up is getting up.
Hoping that my words will make me want to get up, feel motivated to get up, feel inspired to get up is bogus… What gets you into action is starting it.
- But should people wait for ‘Godot’, wait for inspiration, wait for everything. Wait for the nipple.
- Shouldn’t people, like me, don’t need to feel like working, they just work.
I am not saying that it is that easy, because some work, some actions are associated with strong dislike, so the shouldn’t can work against me in certain situation. But overall the shouldn’t of idleness, the shouldn’t of utter failure, the shouldn’t of homelessness, ignoniminy (public shame, disgrace), poverty, sickness wins out: they are stronger shouldn’t than the dislike of any individual action.
So eventually I do the things I don’t like to do, and stop doing the things that feel good but take me to hell… like eating bread, or eating chocolate, or sleeping in.
Source says I can help people to change into shouldn’t people, people who get things done. In my initial approach I see ‘positive thinking’ as the number one enemy.
I’ll report on my adventure… stay tuned.
PS:
- Werner Erhard is a should person.
- T. Harv Eker is a shouldn’t person.
- Xunzi was a should person.
What are you? A should or a shouldn’t person?
PPS:
one of my clients is a pothead…
Smoking pot, using soothing substances take the wind out of your sail. You can even use your spouse, or your family as a soothing agent. So even natural shouldn’t people can become impotent after they marry. Marry a should person and become a eunuch… spiritually.
This pothead clients needs to kick her soothing marriage and her soothing pot habit, and she can become a dynamo… she is a born shouldn’t person.
Can you see that I have my job cut out with you? lol.
In the Starting Point Measurements I muscletest if you are should person or a shouldn’t person. But what are you going to do with that knowledge? If you are a should person, you’ll sweet talk yourself into doing nothing. And if you are a shouldn’t person, you’ll think that you’ve got it made, but I dare to differ.
Without having an enemy, an Opponent, a precise knowledge how and what prevents you from using your energy to propel you forward instead of in a circle, you are really screwed.
I have a student who is a pure shouldn’t person. He has been using all this shouldn’t to stay stuck… not a happy state.
Lately I have been able to redirect that energy into something constructive, but only with this newfound knowledge will I be able to completely and permanently put a fire in his ass… make him a rocket… if you will.
The Freedom Courses
In the Freedom Courses, three sessions, I teach the fundamentals that get you unstuck, or at least have the promise to get you unstuck. They reveal the main distinctions of slavery, of the human condition, and start you on the right path…
Of course there is more work to do later, but without the distinctions of the Freedom Courses, there is nothing I can really give you that can really change your life for the better.
Your results, obviously, depend on how well you connect the dots, how much of what you learn you implement, and, of course, whether you are a should or shouldn’t powered person now.
But either way: if you ever wanted to set yourself on a growth path, where what your life is is not fully and completely predictable, you can’t have a better choice than do the Freedom Courses.
You can repeat each level as many times as I offer it. Repetition is the mother of all learning. Conscious practice is the mother of mastery. Mastery of living.
All sessions are on Sunday afternoons. 2 pm my time. I am in New York. So that is 11 am in California, 7 pm in England, 8 pm in the Europe. And very very very early am in Australia and New Zealand.
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