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Mercilessly pruning, mercilessly weeding… this is the counter-intuitive path to plenty.
Everyone thinks, and it is natural to think that, that if they could add this and that to their lives, then they could be happy, healthy and wise…
Whether it is a sharper brain, whether it is a supportive family, whether it is more education, more money, more people to love them… it is easy to think that your life would be better.
And the surprising truth is that it is not so…
Even when what someone wants more of is spiritual capacities… being able to focus more, have better memory, being more astute, more disciplined…
But why? Because Life likes simplicity. Life is complex and simple at the same time.
Famous Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his novel, Anna Karenina the following sentence:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
The difference between happy and unhappy families is how many things they deal with, day in and day out…
Happy families are simple. Successful businesses are simple. Happy people deal only with a handful of stuff…
So if that is true: the most important job of a coach, a guide, a teacher is help you identify what it is you need to prune, weed, let go… and then help you do that.
In one of my experimental programs (I pretty much only do experimental programs) I only have 4 people, myself included. We are working on this principle… that focusing on just a few actions can and does take us to happy-land, success-land, where we want to end up at.
Why does reducing complexity, reducing the number of things to deal with, pruning work so well?
What you hold onto is what holds onto you. What you can let go of, lets go of you. What you allow to be allows you to be… this is the principle underneath the method.
Whaaaat? Yeah, an expected reaction, but don’t worry, I’ll explain. If you hold onto a personality trait, an opinion, an emotional reaction, it cripples you. This can be wide range… really anything.
- It can be physical… clutter, stuff, and what you are holding onto is that you want it all, but the all is all junk. You are afraid to say your one thing… and you live on crumbs, emotionally, spiritually.
- Or you hold onto an idea: Democrats are the devil.
- Or you hold onto a self-image: I am right.
- Or you hold onto the emotional reaction of any setback, any ‘measuring less than’, any confrontation where you can lose.
One of the emotional reactions you could hold onto is grieving over facts… like the person who read my email this morning and was feeling self-pity for not being smart enough… Judging from the reaction, this is not a new feeling… in fact she probably reacts to most things like this…
This is the Gentian, a Bach Flower feeling I mentioned above… Resignation.
The Bach Flowers system is an excellent diagnostic tool, to identify the stuck and unnecessary emotional reactions you have to life… to people… to failure… The happiest person has none of them… these are some of the emotional habits and baggages we want to prune and get rid of in this method.
I have Gentian as my linchpin emotion and Gentian tells me to quit. My ambition takes me to want to do the things, all the time I am not smart enough to do. I don’t know about you… but that is how I am. I get bored by easy… Really.
For most of my life I got discouraged easily… but in the last decade or two I have learned to work with that discouragement energy…
Gentian ‘says’ that if I am not smart enough that means I am never going to succeed. It masquerades as the Universe, as the Almighty, and tells me to quit, and to weep. Today, instead of wallowing in self-pity, instead I do one of the things I am able to do: go around the obstacle, go through the obstacle, go under the obstacle, but go beyond and not give up.
If your habitual way of being is finding excuses why you are not accomplishing what’s on your path… that is one habit you want to mercilessly prune. It doesn’t serve you.
What number is that? 7. Whether the 7 is the sum total of your soul correction number or just a digit in it… you probably have Gentian in your Bach Profile… an excellent diagnostic tool… oops, I am repeating myself.
What there is to weed out is the significance of the ‘pronouncement’ of Gentian, the never and the forever.
What do you need to do to weed out or stop paying attention the Gentian voice in your head, to weed out the Gentian discouragement?
Like with any habit, weeding out could not be successful without catching the underlying dynamic, the trigger and the reward.
The reward is the same as the payoff in the racket method… It is what makes the bad habit stick… You are getting something…
Get justified. Get off the hook. Get to be right. Get to dominate? Get to win by not winning?
The trigger won’t go away… so your focus should be about changing the payoff… or you won’t be able to eliminate the ‘bad behavior’… that fails you in your life.
What did I do that my life is not such a roller coaster today, going from high to very low rapidly and often?
I invented a new persona… This new persona: I don’t look at everything as if it meant something about me and my future.
Not being able to do something doesn’t mean anything far fetching about my future, although the Gentian habit is to think it is so. I am a loser, I am never going to be able to… blah blah blah
The distinction that set me free of Gentian and discouragement is ‘outcome independence’.
My life is the outcome, and if I remain dependent, everything will look like either the winning goal or the losing goal… Result: roller coaster.
Instead I pay attention to what i am doing and pay attention to put all my efforts, all my power there… If it was the wrong action, we’ll see soon enough. But for now I am not worrying… I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
But if and when I look at the scoreboard instead of looking at the thing i am doing, I am immediately setting myself up to behave like a Gentian… and get depressed. Don’t be mistaken, It still does happen, but not as often as it used to.
One question that is asked often: how do you decide what to prune and what to strengthen? look how much it contributes. You can ask your questions on an Office Hour, or you can email them me… I will have Office Hours this Wednesday (May 25) at 4 pm my time.
Often you need a second set of eyes to see what sucks the life out of you that you could get rid of.
Your soul correction numbers are a good clue.
A general rule of thumb: what you need to get rid of is rarely visible to you. You consider yourself like that… it is an important component of who you consider yourself to be…
Arrogance, discouraged, cowardly, good (ugh), smart, fearful, impatient, intolerant, and many more examples.
Another good clue comes from the Bach profile… The muscletesting, for example for your Bach profile is like a sonar… it looks for the echo. We send a certain vibration, the vibration of one of the Bach Energies, and listen for the echo… some of those energies come back amplified…
For example, testing on myself. My main Bach energy is Gentian, a flower that droops from the hint of even the smallest touch, disappointment, discouragement.
When I send the energy, it comes back definitely feeling like weeping… hell yeah, it hit home… lol.
Summary:
Just like with a garden, the fastest way to get a healthy patch of flowers or vegetables is to week diligently, mercilessly, and deeply.
90% of what you do conflicts with what you ultimately want: a life lived successfully. 90% of what you do will take you away from it. Life plays out in three areas of life: health, wealth, and relationships… and unless you look at them all, you won’t live a successful life.
So your most important action is removing actions, removing as much of what you do as you can…
That is what is called the strait and narrow, the Anna Karenina Method.
So what can you buy that would help you with that?
I don’t have anything right now that specifically will do that for you. But you could get your Bach profile… and then come to the Office Hours on Wednesday and we can discuss what I found there… And maybe even some strategy.
Get your Bach profile specialIf you can’t come, please ask your questions ahead of time, in email.
