Podcast: Play in new window | Download
If it is all a process, then every single person needs to create a transformational ladder for themselves.
A transformational ladder is a process with milestones… Step zero, step 1 result 1, step 2 result 2,…. end result.
The map of ascension… Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There are as many transformational ladders as many processes.
None of them is a straight line when looked back at, and yet, in the planning: all seem to be a straight line.
You do this and then you do that and in the end you’ll be a millionaire… That is how it looks on paper…
If it were that simple and that easy we would all be millionaires… and it would be boring.
Just look at school… same ladder, different end results. Some become professionals, others become taxi drivers… Not that there is anything wrong with being a taxi driver… but I bet most people would like to be higher on the food chain.
In this article I’ll look what makes transformational ladders produce different results to different people… and how you can become someone for whom it is a useful blueprint.
Another really important thing about the ladder: why do I call it a transformational ladder?
Because the most important thing of any process is to make you a bigger, better person.
It is not the result that you achieve, but who you need to become to achieve that result: that is what matters most in life. And that is what is called transformation: the who you are becoming.
- For most people it would be becoming a cause… we all start out as effects.
- For most people it is becoming a producer instead of a moocher or a looter, and entitled child. We all start out as that.
Our results and transformation will depend on the speed with which we are willing to grow out of the ‘who’ we were when we were a child.
Not surprisingly a whole 99% of humanity never grew out of entitlement of the child. And these are the same people who never become cause in life.
I read today’s Monday Morning Memo about playing the game as broken field running, where the only thing that remains from the original ‘play’, the original plan is the obstacles and the goal line.
The expression ‘broken field running‘ is from American football… where the person who has the ball takes it to the goal line, or whatever it is called in football, despite all the defense players’ efforts of the other team.
But unless you have a ‘transformational ladder’, let’s call it that for now, you won’t ever get to that broken field running phase. You are stuck on some low rang of the ladder, or in entitlement.
When I look at my students, clients, what is the most missing is this vision.
They may have some end result in mind, but it is not clear, not clearly defined…
And they have a delusional starting point.
They look in their minds to see where they are at… and not in reality.
In the clarity process that I learned from Tom Beal, your most important elements for success are
- where you are at and
- where you would like to be.
They are the players in the game of life that will tell you what your one thing is…
- The one thing that will make everything else not necessary or much easier.
- The one thing that can 10x your life.
Yesterday in an ad hoc webinar we dabbled in the one thing for a while…
If we look again at American football, the player running with the ball has a one thing… or he will have his attention divided, and lose the ball.
When I am looking at myself through that metaphor, or analogy, or whatever you call this, I see that what is my organizing principle, my one thing is avoiding boredom. Avoiding tedium.
Really? Really.
Now, I don’t say it that way even to myself. I find a wording that is a whole lot more exciting, titillating, and empowering.
I say what I learned 35 years ago in Landmark Education:
Creativity = living at risk. Living creatively? Then yeah! move towards the fear!
So as the ball runner of my life I always choose moving towards the fear. I may not call it excitement, but that is just semantics: I am excited. Turned on. Energized.
The well-trodden path doesn’t excite me. Doing what other people did to win, doesn’t excite me.
I’ll walk or run my own path… and score a touchdown or not…
Now, some people, mistakenly, keep their eyes on winning… and won’t do, can’t do what it takes, much of the time.
Why? Because winning is out there… it is either mistakenly expected as a done deal, or looks to far… and doesn’t ‘inform’ the actions in the present.
Depending on what makes you err on the side of inaction, you need to create a ‘transformational ladder’ that will be your one thing, to pull you into action and keep you into action.
One of my clients has this delusion that everything he does WILL produce winning.
His is the same delusion as some football coaches have: Every play is a touchdown play if everyone on the team does their assignment properly.
Many business people have discovered that the above statement just isn’t true.
He is a single child and his parents treated him like a miracle. It seemed obvious, so he decided that he is special, and that is that… He is entertaining, talented, and a ‘goal-scorer’ by birth.
So far he has no future envisioned… he is going for the cheap winning moments… and to his dismay, they are less and less. The only place where they are plenty is computer games… but you don’t make a life playing computer games… He plays so he doesn’t have a life.
Unless he learns to put his starting point to the place it actually is, in reality, he will never have a life… he can’t even plan for a life, because the starting point is inaccurate.
If you live in Oklahoma but you think you are in New York, no amount of planning will get you to Seattle.
Your one-thing will be off. Your steps will be off. And you won’t score a touchdown…
Another client also has a delusion about where he is at…
I think that that is the biggest issue of all: people look into their feelings, into their opinion about where they are at, and act as if that were true.
So if we shifted gears and looked at what it is that I have to teach people to do… more than anything, it is this. Without this, getting the accurate starting point, nothing can happen. Not anything.
And that is to find out what is the truth about them…
I have attempted to do that step with a group some time ago.
It was ineffective. Why? Because instead of them seeing it, I told them what I saw. And I stopped there.
Do I know how to redirect people’s attention to reality?
I don’t. Can I do it? Source says, through muscletesting: yes.
Do I know what I need to learn to do? No.
So, like in the macro, it is in the micro, I myself need to build a transformational ladder, for myself…
Starting point:
- My clients have no idea how to look in reality. And they don’t want to.
- They hope that they can skip this step and be taken to a dream life, where they love themselves and they love their lives.
- Where they have an occupation that they love, and they are good at it.
- They are making a living that they are proud of.
But, of course, they cannot get to it without first dispelling their own delusions, their own myths, and locate themselves, squarely in reality.
A lot like the ragtag team in The Matrix.
You take the blue pill and you can go back and live the delusion where you won’t ever do anything effective, because it is based on an untruth.
Or you take the red pill, and find out the bad news about yourself.
I have done that. I have taken the red pill.
It is ominous… but it is not as bad as I expected it to be.
My process wasn’t in a program. It was a lot longer than yours has to be.
I started it in 1977 in delusion… and I ended in reality in 2007. That is 30 freaking years!
And even after that it took me another nine years to believe that with what I had I could be successful and happy.
I definitely prefer to see the world, life, as broken field running… and call it adventure.
Expecting the world to be simple, walk in the park when it isn’t, is going to be the death of you.
But, of course, the most important sign of intelligence is to be able to change your opinion and your strategy for life as life changes.
I am in a position from where I can observe a lot of people and see and feel their feelings and their behavior.
I see a lot of flailing.
Flailing is the sign of expecting life to be one way, finding it isn’t.
The numbers don’t lie.
And unless you decide to become a broken field runner… you are dead in the water.
In Saturday’s and also in Sunday’s webinar we spent some hard time looking at the idea of empowering the coach to empower you.
Instead of expecting the coach to work with no input, and to do your work for you.
What do you need, as an ingredient, to empower the person who you pay to empower you?
- The first missing ingredient is respect. Why is it impossible for most people to provide respect? Because for that they would need to see themselves as a person, not an object.
- The second missing ingredient is getting out of the mind.
In the mind everything is either wrong or right. Either good or bad.
The mind is entirely and totally on the systemic level of judgment, and as long as you look in the mind for how to be and what to do, you are stuck on the lowest level of being, on the lowest level of seeing value.
Why is this a problem?
In the mind the coach is an automaton that either does or doesn’t do what they are supposed to do. Bad bad bad.
And you are an automaton too… bad bad bad or maybe good good good.
No shades of gray, no levels, no details… only judgment.
So if you look at your coach through the mind, you cannot see a person.
- A person is an intrinsic level concept… two levels removed from systemic.
- Empowerment is an intrinsic level concept… two levels removed from systemic.
You need to work your way out of the mind, out of the systemic, if you ever want to have a bigger life than right/wrong, good/bad.
Most won’t.
Why? Lack of intellectual ability.
I still don’t know how to get you out of the mind, but…
…an exercise I have given to my core group the other day may give you your first successful attempt, if you do it.
That is: to tell a dramatic story that happened to you, and massage it as long as it takes to take it to tragicomedy, comedy, farce… so it loses its significance and trueness.
You cannot do it in the mind.
The longer you engage with this exercise, the more time you spend in reality.
Ultimately this was the goal of the whole Playground program… and it missed the mark, completely.
Was it my fault? Probably. Can I do it better next time?
If there will be a next time: probably.
Would I bet on myself? Source says yes… Do I say yes? Not yet.
You can join the conversation by listening to the recording of yesterday’s webinar.
It’s $20. Why do I charge for it?
If you think I should just hand out my time, and everything, because you want it or need it, you are a moocher… and I don’t want to work with a moocher.
Moochers are SJW, or at the minimum moved by the idea that they are entitled. That somehow they should just get what they want.
Ugh.
Of course I have moocher clients, but my clients are less and less convinced that they have anything due to them.
If they can’t change, I’ll ‘fire them’ as a client.
The exercise to get out of the prison of the mind and retell things that happened is where they are still stuck, more or less.
You probably never thought that those stories can be told differently, can be seen differently.
Once you do… maybe.
But the webinar recording is $20.
Get the recording of this webinarIt is exclusively delivered in my mobile app… which means you need to be able to be signed up there. There is a functional but not pretty desktop version with all the content at https://app.learnistic.com
But you can’t and won’t find my app there, unless you are registered on a mobile device.
You can wait until after you buy, or check out if you are intelligent enough to sign up.
Here is the link to may almost-daily podcast
Follow the instructions on your mobile…
That means: if you opened the link on your desktop, scan the image (QR code) with your mobile and it will take you where you need to go.
PS: I just had an insight.
The picture illustrating mindfulness.
Interestingly mindfulness is the exact opposite of what the name suggests.
Mindfulness is a state where you are not talking incessantly, not commenting, not naming, not inventing meanings for what is in reality…
The inner talking, commenting, interpretation, labeling is what you do in the mind…
Reality is where things are just are, without all that feverish mind-activity.
So the insight suggests that I ask you to do mindfulness training and practice if that is available.
One that seems the fastest and the easiest is this seven minute practice.
If you use the Big Bundle at the same time, then I guarantee that you’ll get the hang of it faster.
For our purposes this program can teach two things
–for those of you that have never been outside of the mind, about 30% of humanity, this can take you outside for the first time. Note that I am saying that it can. Your willingness is crucial. You cannot be forced. But you can go willingly. You don’t have to stay, but just take a glimpse… If all goes well, you’ll see something that makes it worth for you to live there… outside of the mind.
–for those of you who have been inside and outside but want to be able to live in reality, grow, accomplish, and start having a life worth living… you’ll develop the ability to tell the difference where you are, and be able to move back to reality when you catch yourself in the mind.
The second method requires you to give more time. It is the Holosync brain training.
The good thing about it is that the free sample has enough oomph to take you there if, and only if your headset is good enough, i.e. it can transmit very deep sounds well.
If not… it loses much of its effectiveness.
If you want to try this second option, or add this second option, email me for the sample.
