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Change yourself, change your life. When you change everything changes.
That is the principle… But how do you change yourself?
And if you manage to do that: is that change permanent? Does it go as deep as your DNA? or is it temporary?
Great questions, disappointing answers. You CAN change yourself, and the new you will be temporary… unless the change is so profound that it causes epigenetic shift… which is rare, but possible.
Why change? Because how you are creates a predictable future, and for most of us: that is very ugly, tragic, and lacks what we really wanted our life to give us: joy, satisfaction, self-love.
If that is a good reason for you, then keep reading. If not… don’t bother…
This article is going to be, hopefully, the first in a series of articles that explore change.
Or more precisely: changing at will.
Lots of things change, and occasionally people change their behaviors, because they must.
Even wild animals do that… but only for outside pressure.
- The scorpion that can’t even hold back his nature till they cross the river
- The dog when nervous will poop on the floor
- The tiger, after tens of years behaving love a loving pussycat, will maul its trainer and owner.
This dude says: Personality is not permanent… Benjamin Hardy… but some things are permanent, because they are encoded in your DNA. If you hope for permanent change in your personality and THUS, in your behavior, then you are barking up the moon.
Which, if I want to express in simple words what I was saying there: you can change your behavior, you can change your attitude, but it will always take work to keep it that way, and the moment you don’t invest that work, things will go back to default… how you have always been.
Example: I have always wanted to sleep just a little more… getting up when I woke up was always jarring to me. So when I lived at home, my father had to come to my room and rouse me at least twice, but mostly three times.
I did manage to get up when I woke up for many of my 73 years, but it was always deliberate, and not instinctual. Instinctually I am a slow waker upper.
I am also a grazer by nature. I can eat all day without thinking. I can also apply discipline, and not eat anything between meals… probably. Only I have never done that. I have worked in companies where there was no cafeteria, so I could not eat constantly, but my eyes would be always rowing in search of putting something in my mouth.
My most embarrassing story was from my school years. I wasn’t wearing my glasses for vanity. After a break I saw something on my seat, I reached for it because it looked like a crumb. It turned out to be a thumbtack… I was lifting it towards my mouth when I finally saw it what it was.
So no. People, the leopard doesn’t change its spots… and yet change is possible, albeit it is temporary… day after day after day.
I am reading this book, Change or Die by Alan Deutschman, because I heard two people rave about it. Both are fat, by the way. No, change that very fat… and struggling to work it off. Not a good advertising, but I want to see what they are raving about.
Supposedly they ‘lost’ hundreds of pounds… one is ‘losing it’ for the second time. I am trying not laugh uproariously at the funniness of it all… but ultimately it is not funny.
Although it is not hundreds or pounds in my case, but the same 20-30-40 pounds, when I laugh at them I shame myself… and maybe that is not going to empower me. So I don’t.
I am a Virgo… supposedly disciplined, but I am also a ‘Forget Thyself’, utterly and profoundly undisciplined by DNA.
And my body does well only with certain foods in certain combinations, but most importantly, when it is allowed time to digest what it has consumed… and grazing goes against that.
So for me to drop weight is the hardest thing to do: even harder than getting up when I wake up. I can do both, I have done it, but I don’t like it, it doesn’t feel natural, and I have always fallen back to default.
So this morning when I woke up at 4:30, I didn’t get up. Not even to go to the bathroom. Instead I decided to use that time, however long it will be, to ponder about what it takes to change behavior.
Reading that book, in fact reading any non-fiction, is very slow-going for me. So I got as far as a millimeter in… saying something like: to change you need to be in an environment where someone believes that you can do it.
F.u.c.k.! NOOOOO.
Maybe, but I don’t like it. Even though once, a grand total of once, I took an action that someone believed I could, and the action was against my grain… But I have done a lot of things in my life that were against my grain, and the ‘belief’ didn’t come from the outside. The belief came from me.
So I say, my first ingredient necessary for change is your own belief that you can do it.
Now, if you are like some of my students, you’ll sit down and you’ll imagine yourself doing it… whatever the changed behavior is going to be. And that will be it.
The MIND will be happy, and no change will happen, I can almost guarantee it.
This is why Psycho Cybernetics doesn’t work as well as its promoters say it would.
In that you sit, imagine, and supposedly do. Bah humbug.
So, good question: why can some people do it and it works, and others can do it till the cows come home, and it won’t change their behavior?
Two reasons: nothing changes your behavior. YOU change your behavior. I hear F.U.C.K. again.
The people who can use Psycho Cybernetics, the theater of your mind are people who
1. have strong will
2. have a track record of having done that.
Your will is as strong as it is, it is fixed in your DNA… but setting, building a track record is entirely in your hands.
Start where you are, and do consistent little steps day in and day out.
BUILD a track record, so you can eventually get to big changes.
My recommendation to my core group has been this:
Set yourself three projects every day. Do it the night before. In the morning look at them and decide when you are going to do them.
Make them two tiny projects, and one bigger projects.
Don’t make any of it difficult. We are building a habit here, not solve Global Warming!
Do all three within the set time, and at the end of the day do a powerful debriefing.
A powerful debriefing is very simple: I said I would do X. I did Y.
If Y is less than X, say when you’ll do the remaining part of X… Make it one of next day’s projects.
Learn from your experience as you go: so you get more and more success experiences, where X and Y are the same.
Do this from now on preferably forever… Make it the habit of a producer, someone you can be proud do be.
Now, before you rush off doing this, let’s make sure that we speak the same language.
A project a result that is measurable, and is in time. I don’t want to call it a goal… because a goal is just the end result, and has tripped billions of people. No, a project is clearly a process: it has steps, preferably many.
And lastly, a project has a deadline. A by when. It will be finished, complete, completed by noon.
Your projects, for the purposes of building a track record, have to be, need to be complete-able before the end of the day.
- So becoming the President of the United States will not be a good project… because it cannot be completed by the end of the day. Also: it is not up to you.
- Becoming the next Google… ditto. But creating a business plan for it… is a good project.
- Losing 20 lbs… ditto. But eating only the food you prepare and only as much as you said for breakfast… it’s good.
- Meditating for 20 minutes… this is not a good project: it doesn’t have steps, and it’s not a result that is measurable.
- Setting up your water energizing system is only a good project if you have OK’d your setup… by me.
So you see, most people already fail at this step: they don’t know how to set up projects, win at it, and build a track record.
This is a skill, requiring several capacities. This is one of the reasons higher education opens up DNA capacities: unless you can set projects, do them on time, etc. you won’t finish your education.
It is possible to go to university for six-seven years and come out with NO new capacities. Only successful setting and completing projects (assignments) will do that for you.
And if you are somewhat willing to do what you HAVE-TO do… you need to build your track record with projects that you don’t have to do, you choose to do.
So projects that are part of your job are not suitable for our purposes: they, instead, build a track record of a ‘have-to’ person, full of resentment, and belligerence.
Now, you don’t have to make your projects significant. I prefer that you don’t.
Here is how I did it with a big project: I created it as a series of sub-projects.
As I have intimated: I have packed on 20 lbs of flab. My chiseled jaw line is now soft and I don’t like it. I haven’t exercised since the beginning of the pandemic, and I am feeling the pain of it. Reaching to get something on high actually hurts. So stretching is how I am going to start getting back to shape… again. I won’t start with the muscles…
Yesterday I went to the grocery store to get a gift card for my neighbor who helped me the other day, and I was hobbling. Hadn’t been so many masked strangers in the store, I would have sat on the floor and wept. Yeah… it is getting really ridiculously bad. lol. Not a happy laughter, I can tell you that.
Anyway, I decided on a stretching machine, one I have used in a gym and liked. that was project, by the way. To decide on which machine to order.
Project two: where to order… I tried ebay, and the seller didn’t ship for five days, so I canceled the transaction. I ordered it on Amazon, with delivery to the second floor.
Project three: the delivery man left the heavy and bulky package on the doorstep downstairs. Getting it to my apartment was the next project.
Project four: unpacking the darn thing
Project five-eight: every step in the assembly book was a project.
Now I am at the last but one step: and I am stuck. I need a tool. So I ordered it. It will come tomorrow. Ordering it was project nine.
Project 10: it can be as few as two minutes (I hope), putting two e-rings on the pedals/foot rests.
Project 11: tighten all the screws. fasten the exercise board on the front.
The machine arrived last Saturday, so exactly a week ago. And the machine will be safe to use on Monday.
I don’t anticipate having to create a project, a repeating project to actually use it, but if I notice using it as a clothes hanger, I will. This, staying young and flexible is important to me.
As you see, dropping the 20 extra pounds will be also a many project project… It will be, mostly, an elimination project… Source tells me it is only milk that has to go. Sigh. Big Sigh. Oh well.
Now, what can help you to increase the inner resources… because you’ll need them to be more.
What I didn’t say is this: the machine needs two people to assemble it, and even that way it is tricky.
So what did I do? I could have hired someone to do it, two people, pay through the nose, or… drumroll… put myself in SOARING and be superhuman for a few minutes a day.
I chose soaring… cheaper, and I don’t have to clean up the space…
It was obvious that I was soaring… little grandma me putting together a machine that is about as heavy as myself… yeah, you need to be in the soaring state for that. No kidding.
I also got myself a haircut to celebrate how great I am… that is part of soaring. Because soaring is caused by YOU, and the WHO you are…
When the WHO changes, everything changes.
I listened to a long drawn out full of hype sales presentation on the seven day prayer miracle of Archangel Michael. The woman presenter (voiceover artist) said that prayer puts you in Theta state… muscletest says: 10% chance for that.
Only when the WHO changes can you enter the Theta state… wow, this is new to me too.
The next step in this change series is about the WHO…
In the meantime you can learn moves that have the chance to put you into Theta mode and soaring.
Go to step 2If you were in the Soaring class last Saturday and you are not practicing your new name, the one that changes the WHO, you are ahem stupid?
