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If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.- If you can dream it, you can become it
- Believe it and you can
Lots of inspirational quotes say the same thing, so today we’ll examine what is the truth about this whole seeing/doing, seeing/being thing.
I won’t say bullshit on these, although this time yesterday I would have. And I would have been wrong… and I would have been right.
What?! Yeah.
In Saturday’s class the question came up:
Can you see it? Can you see yourself doing it?
And two people in the class could not see themselves doing certain things.
So when I am looking at all these motivational horse manure, I see that it is best to see if the inverse… OK, OK, what is inverse, right?
Inverse is a thinking method, mental model I learned from Charlie Munger.
About that he says:
Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward
Because it is not enough to think about difficult problems one way. You need to think about them forwards and backward. Inversion often forces you to uncover hidden beliefs about the problem you are trying to solve. ‘Indeed,‘ says Munger, ‘many problems can’t be solved forward.‘
Let’s take a look at some examples. Say you want to improve your life. Thinking forward, you’d think about all of the things you could do make it better.
If you look at the problem by inversion, however, you’d think about all the things you could stop doing. Ideally, you’d avoid those things. I bet you do some of those ‘stupid’ or useless things today.
You could look what advice, what addition to your life would ensure misery. You’d find that many would.
But avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance. In everything.
OK. Just so you know, the main mental model I use in my work is inversion, and the name I use for it is The Anna Karenina Method.
The strait and narrow.
Weeding.
You need to go deep into things, beyond the obvious, beyond the surface to be able to use this mental model.
So back to seeing and doing…
Possibility is an overused word for ‘I can see it possible. And I can see that it can happen. I can see that it would be good.‘
Shorthand. But when it is used without actually looking to see if you can see it, it is now a belief, a mind construct.
What do I mean?
I was participating in Landmark Education for 26 years. Possibility is their currency. Like dollar, like lira, like Deutsche Mark… Currency.
‘Declaring’ a possibility
And people make utterances. ‘Who I am is the possibility of [whatever bombastic thing sounds good for now] for myself and my life’, and … drumroll… nothing. Nothing inside changes.
Why is that?
I say the fundamental requirement for a possibility to be a possibility for a person is to be able to see themselves doing it, being it.
Walk around in it. Know it inside out, like the blueprint of a building.
This is, by the way, the philosophical foundation for vision boards.
- It needs to be something you can see doing, the process.
- It needs to be something that you value.
- And you need to see that it is worth doing the doing to get there.
It cannot just be some having…
When you fantasize about the having, then you are building yourself a desire trap.
So seeing needs to be clarified… Seeing exactly what? Seeing your role in bringing it about.
Yesterday, on the call, I said: there are certain things I can’t see. I can’t see being loved and feeling loved.
What I didn’t say:
- I don’t value it much… and I didn’t say that
- I can imagine aspects of it, like spooning, or having dinner together,
- but for the most part, I want to be alone. I like to be alone. And I like to keep my thoughts on my stuff… So
- another would be a distraction I have carefully removed.
Many people are non-achievers.
They have never gone for anything in earnest, and therefore they have never achieved anything worth mentioning.
We found yesterday that they cannot see themselves doing what it takes. They may imagine themselves having it, fame, fortune, adulation of crowds, but not the path.
I am looking into diversifying my activities. One of the paths I am looking at is interviewing people for a show. Interviewing people who say stuff very different from what I hold true… so I’ll need to create a context to be able to do it, a context something like this: ‘I am on your side. Whatever you do is valuable‘. I need that context to be even able to do it authentically.
And I need to be interested. I need to be intensely curious to ask good questions. I need to allow in what they have to say, so when I broadcast it to many people, they will be sympathetic to the person I interviewed.
The whole idea for me is to cause myself to buzz with pleasure, to get excited, to want to start right away. To want to do it.
I don’t know yet quite the end result… But I already love the process.
I can see that it is worth doing even if the interviews never get published. ZZZZ buzzing of my nerves tell me that.
But I am not looking at it being a tool, or a stepping stone to something to have.
I had the same relationship with languages, with music, with this work of transformation, even cooking.
Because I just love the process.
Some years ago we discovered what was my underneath-it-all context for process. Because we all have that.
Mine is and was: Bringing the Divine to everything.
And I do. What does it mean? I don’t know. I feel it. The buzzing. The excitement.
When you go for the end result, the booby prize, you want to get through the process as fast as you can. You’ll outsource it. Or you’ll skip it. You’ll despise it. You’ll not want to do it.
And you won’t and cannot have the prize because that is the nature of reality: process leads to result.
A shirttail relative of mine in Israel is a sex expert. One day we were sitting in the orange orchard. He was on call, so it was in the garden of the hospital where he worked.
He touched my back, and like a lightning I felt something that shook my whole body.
He said it was an orgasm. He repeated it a few times with the same physical results.
Something out of the blue, something I didn’t work towards. I didn’t build up excitement. I didn’t earn it.
And obviously I hated it.
I went home later that afternoon, and never even answered this dude’s calls.
When you want the results, without enjoying the process that earns it for you, you cannot love yourself, you cannot love your life. You cannot love the result.
Life IS process. If you don’t love it, you don’t love life. You live in misery punctuated with ‘orgasmic’ experiences.
Ugh.
The two dudes in the class that could not see that they could DO what would alter their lives to the better have so far missed falling in love with process. Missed enjoying process.
Not coincidentally, I think, they both have had mothers that did everything for them. So they never had to.
You CAN love any and all process… by the way. Love depends on how you frame it.
Transformation is when you can change your own frame and do. And in a different frame everything looks and feels different.
My frame is ‘bringing the divine to everything’ and it is HEAVENLY.
Their default frame is ‘I have to‘… like a homework. Ugh.
Once you have a frame that can hold all the processes life is, you are a happy person.
You’ll sit on hold, or talk to an inept support person, or work on a difficult task… and you can, at will, bring your version of divine to it.
But you need to be able to see yourself doing it, you need to be able to see that it will work.
If you can’t, it won’t do anything.
Most of the people who paid their DNA adjustment either cannot see themselves doing what would keep the adjustment on or cannot see it would perpetuate the powerful feeling they experienced when I did the adjustment.
And guess what: the adjustment turns off.
Because genes are part of Life. Unless you joyfully use them, unless they are part of the process, your process, they feel that they are not needed, and they turn off…
People who study in higher education institutions need certain capacity genes to turn on, and they do.
When the degree is complete, many of those continue using those genes, and they stay on. But many start doing different things that don’t need any of those genes, and of course the genes turn off.
Life is more enjoyable with those genes on… but Life doesn’t care. You do.
Life is most enjoyable when your responsibility gene is on and your entitlement genes are off.
The original combination is when your child/entitlement genes are on, responsibility gene is off, and foresight gene is off. This combination makes a person hate process and love the idea of having what it would give them. Homework attitude. The no-achiever.
When you listen to the ‘I don’t want to‘ as if it were you speaking, not the ‘IT’ speaking, not the Opponent, not the Dark Side, but you… and therefore you should heed it, your DNA adjustment promptly turns off.
I hear the ‘I don’t want to‘ too. Any time I set out to do something, I hear it. I hear it as noise. I hear it as ‘not me‘.
My body responds with a brief cringing… but it goes away. I sometimes need to sit with it for a few minutes for it to go away. But it always goes… and then I do what I have there to do. All involve some level of pain… merging with a person who is not happy, pushing energy into water or into a person to heal what ails them… all somewhat painful.
I have worked to increase my pain tolerance. I have found that the imagined pain is always way bigger than the actual pain.
So the ‘I don’t want to‘ is always out of proportion to the pain… This makes it easier to ignore.
Ignore, not ignore, it comes up 20-30-40 times a day, attempting to stop me. I am now able to ignore it 90% of the time.
It even comes up when it’s my favorite activity of the day… lol
What I am trying to tell you here, is unless you train yourself to be tougher, to take back your power and drive your own car instead of letting the ‘IT’ drive it… you’ll be a no-achiever, or an underachiever… both under your potential…
We are all born with potential. Hardly any of us make that potential a reality.
My simple Amish Horse Training Method mini course can teach you to ignore what is not you speaking, and honor what you are saying, consciously.
I recommend that you learn the Amish Horse Training Method.
Until Sunday night you can use a 50% off coupon, coupon code AMISH to get it. It is priceless… It is my Christmas gift to you.
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