Podcast: Play in new window | Download
When something is not working, there is something you didn’t know
In the movie, The Truman Show, Truman lives in a ‘bucket’ of a world, that is in essence a movie stage. He doesn’t know it… For a long time life works, until it doesn’t.
For a while he doesn’t know why it is not working… and then he finds out that he lives in a bucket of a world. Then his overwhelming desire is to live in a bigger world…
A bigger world where he is allowed to love the woman he loves. This desire gives him courage to go beyond everything he knows…
I have a few very loyal students who haven’t been able to move, who haven’t been able to move beyond their bucket… So why are they loyal? Because their lives are too limiting, because they still HOPE they can get beyond… beyond their big stop. But they haven’t gotten enough courage to move beyond.
What do I mean ‘big stop’?
Using one of my past teachers’ expression, we all live in a bucket, like Truman of The Truman Show… trying to get into a bigger world where we can get more fun, more everything. But the bucket is there for a reason: the brain protects you from experiencing stuff, feelings, that you can’t deal with. Fear, terror, etc. And that is what creates the wall of the bucket.
So when life gets boring, and tedious, and limiting, you are experiencing the restrictive walls of the bucket…
So you hire a therapist, or you sign up to some ‘transformational’ program, like mine. When you participate, what comes up for you clearly is the walls of the bucket…
Fear.
The in instinct is to pull back. To stay comfortable… but that also means staying in the bucket.
And this is where these unmoving, unevolving students are. Pulling back from the walls of the bucket.
And this is what wasn’t working for me. And today I found out what it is I didn’t know.
Let me backtrack a little. Yesterday we had the second Saturday webinar, this one about how personality decides what you can do, and if you want to do more, you need to evolve your personality… get a different one.
So what I found out today is this: your personality, in essence, is a response, a solution, a construct to avoid what you are afraid of and still have a sense that you are winning.
I know, I know, this doesn’t make sense… but it’s true.
You grew up and there were singular instances where it was just too darn frightening… scary… painful… and you didn’t deal well with that. And you decided something about yourself, and you also decided how you can deal with it.
And you created a persona who is ‘cool’, or who is ‘charming’, or who is ‘helpful’, or who will take what she wants without caring about anyone else.
Then you forgot that you created that persona, and now you think you are that.
What you’ve forgotten, completely forgotten is that you made it up to a. justify your inability to deal with fear, b. to make sure that the ‘new you’ never has to deal with fear again.
And here you are 20-30-40-50-60 years later, still finding yourself in the bucket the size of which was determined at age 3.
And it’s frustrating, because you don’t see how you can get beyond.
Now, here is the good news.
Your TLB that allows you to do things that are scary is actually a physical phenomenon, it is not a character defect.
In your prefrontal cortex. One of the functions of the prefrontal cortex is performed by the GABA fibers, that connect the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system, where you process your emotions.
The GABA fibers switch off fear.
The stronger and thicker your GABA fibers are the less things you are afraid of, the more things you can actually face, confront, and do.
The higher your TLB gets.
The average TLB on the planet is 1… on a scale of 1 to 100. A species of wimps.
So what is there to do? How do you strengthen those darn GABA fibers so you can be more, have more, feel more, do more?
The technology to grow the GABA fibers is to acclimate you to ever higher levels of fear and discomfort that you can learn to tolerate.
But unless you know that that is what is there to do, you either won’t do it, or you try to do something quite heroic from your GABA fibers point of view, and you tear them, or weaken them further.
One of the ways many of my students behave that is counter-productive in this regard is that they look at what they want, and look at it like it’s an elephant and they are supposed to eat it for dinner. It’s not going to happen.
You need to break up that elephant to tiny morsels, or even better, pick a corner of the elephant and put it on your plate.
I was born like everyone, low TLB.
And grew it steadily, by doing things that were not easy, that were scary, where I had to push through resistance.
It became a habit. At the present time my TLB is 70%. Lots of things still paralyze me, scare the bejesus out of me. I still tighten up. I still avoid. I still procrastinate… For a few minutes, a few hours… not forever.
If you don’t start, you’ll never grow your GABA fibers stronger.
One of the techniques that I use in the Integrity Workshop is the four daily tasks method.
At night, before you go to bed, you look at what there is to do to forward your life, and break it up to four distinct projects. Those will be the ‘do or die’ projects for the next day.
When you start this process, the projects can be tiny. The essence is: you’ll do them, in a timely manner, and they will strengthen your GABA fibers. Why? Because each project comes at you with flashing warning signs making you not want to do them. EVER.
But you do them, and that strengthens your GABA fibers.
Once you experience no fear and no resistance, you will make your four daily tasks bigger, scarier, but you’ll learn to handle them… and you do this, ever increasing difficulty, and eventually you’ll become someone who can get stuff done, who is not a weakling, a sniveling coward… but someone you can trust to live your life and take you where you want to go.
Easy? Make sure it is! Don’t use force, dial back a little on the scariness or difficulty.
And be consistent. No one can do it for you.
The challenge can be physical, mental, emotional… they all work, GABA doesn’t care.
I am, myself, going to do it in two areas of my life. In reducing my food intake, and in starting to walk again.
These are two areas where I haven’t been able to gain traction… where my TLB is puny. I have other areas too, but these are the least threatening right now.
Get the Sunday call where I discuss this. In addition you can get the 4 videos that gave me this phenomenal insight… that finally allows me to help people who have been hopelessly stuck.
Get my private call about this methodology
