Summary: to have a sense of self, to have a strong self, you need to be self-directed in your journey… which also means having a journey. The size of your life is the size of your project, and most people have small projects, mostly for otter people. You’ll learn how to start building a life and how to be directed by Self by using some basic principles.
We begin, today, the process of building up and protecting the Self from the world, never mind that you have no idea what self is: it will be clear after a few articles, don’t be impatient. It is not a simple task: after all no one has done it before… REALLY!
You’ll need to walk with me through this discovery process, without using your mind to understand: the mind is not able to understand this: this is new! And a new type of process: I am not giving you the results of years worth of thinking: I am doing this with you: live.
Like with most things, you’ll see more if you stop staring at the thing you want to examine and start looking around it, walking around it, asking questions that are not about the thing, but things that are similar. Or looking at the space around the thing: the shape of the space says a lot about the “thing” you want to examine… like clouds: the shape of the sky between them belies of the shape of the clouds.
I am talking about real thinking, I am talking about real looking… not what you have been doing… not what you have been taught.
Watch me how I do it. So it with me. If your vibration is high enough, you may catch a glimpse or two of a methodology that is at the core of me raising my vibration… Once you learn “inquiry” you can do the same.
Who are you?
Like with everything, who you are is not who you want to be, not who you would like to be, not even who you have declared yourself to be, and also not who other people say you are.
You are who you are given by your actions. Your beliefs don’t decide who you are, your feelings don’t decide who you are, your intentions don’t decide who you are, they don’t even decide what you do! Your thoughts: ditto. Irrelevant.
So you can relax, and start looking… you’ll find out… but before you do, you need to look at the bigger picture.
The bigger picture
I’ll look at companies because it is easier to see that thinking, etc. don’t determine who they are, only their actions.
Companies are entities, much like a human. I have been doing business with quite a few companies, and you probably won’t be surprise when I share with you that I pay attention. Not just how they treat me, but how they do business… I notice things. Just like with people on coaching calls… I know, you hate that…
When you watch long enough, without spending time watching, you do it ‘by the way’, you start noticing things, over time. You start to get the discrepancies between their strategy, between their plan and reality, their actions.
You start to feel what motivates the company, and what motivates the employees… almost on every level of the company.
Maybe even if you are not an empath… but I can’t be sure about that.
Case study: Amazon.com
As you know I am an Amazon seller… I sell physical products and kindle ebooks on Amazon.com
I talk to their support, I watch how they treat my customers, how they treat me, how they treat complaints. I make sure I talk to many people, and stop myself from jumping into conclusions prematurely. I make conditional judgments, but, like a good detective, I don’t close the case until I have enough evidence.
By the way, some of my articles are also research: I research my readers… I watch like a hawk for your response on my site and on others… I intend to keep the people that can grow, and alienate the ones that can’t. I am really clear how I want to run MY company. As a company I have a strong sense of Self.
Amazon.com has grown beyond the size that it can have integrity. Integrity is being true to your self… And it intends to grow more, without changing its internal structure, without changing the internal guidance to include new employees that are unable or unwilling to follow principles, and are corrupt, or stupid, or sheeplike…
This is most companies’ weakest link… employees. If 99% of humanity is sheep, you need to create a company that even sheep can run it with integrity. If 98% of humanity is immoral, and unable or unwilling to adhere to the spirit of a company that employs it, then you need to create a company that accommodates that: i.e. lots of supervision by people who are the 1%.
So you see, Self gets a little hazy when a company grows.
Amazon planned to be a huge company, billions and billions of dollars, billions and billions of customers huge. In the process they are losing sight of what the original company was about.
Planning and greed is killing the Self
Greed is for the destination, planning is for the path… neither of them helps you have a Self… and without a Self you are vulnerable, and have no Sense of Self… no sense of life, no meaning, no joy, nothing worth living for. Just “business…”
What do I recommend, if I don’t recommend planning?
I am at odds with most motivational, self-improvement authorities in that I don’t recommend setting goals, and I don’t recommend much planning.
What DO I recommend?
I recommend that you set a direction.
When you set a direction, you are always on the right track. And you can’t be anywhere else, because there you are! This way you take the typical “I am not doing the right thing! I am not succeeding!” bit out of the journey, which makes most people miserable and eventually quit in self-disgust, feeling like a failure.
Use the direction the way one would use the sun:
Go west my boy, go west
One of my directions is this: “There is no way I am going to be anything less than magnificent”
Now, it does sound like a destination, but it isn’t… There is no such THING magnificent. Most of these high-falutin 1 , high-minded words, loving, kind, considerate, honest, diligent, smart, successful, etc. are directions. There is no destination called loving… you be loving by following the direction of loving… like you follow the direction west… and just like you can’t arrive west, you can’t arrive to any of these. On a planet there is no west, there is always more west to go, swim, sail, etc.
How do you stay on track?
You true yourself to the direction every now and then. Don’t get anal about it.
The other thing you need to do is refuel, rest, etc. It is not a 24/7 trekking west… there is no place to get!
I also recommend that you set up an early warning signal
I said that you will only true yourself once in a while. Why? Because there is another “truing” system that few people use: you need to know what should stay behind you. Like your shadow.
We each have a shadow… a way of being that is counter to the direction we want to go.
- If your shadow is lazy, then it will hinder you in accomplishing anything.
- If your shadow is cheating, or resisting, or being spiteful, or being judgmental, or being whorish, or being cowardly… you get the drift… then that shadow needs to be behind you.
You need to know YOUR shadow. You can’t lose it, but you can manage so that it is behind you.
Your Soul Correction often pinpoints your shadow very accurately… if it doesn’t, it is MY FAULT… I am not precise… I don’t have enough data, or a strong enough connection.
Your Shadow is as important to live a meaningful life as your Direction. Knowing what to keep behind you.
We’ve been working on the Shadow (we call it Stick there) in the Carrot and Stick webinar series… and people don’t seem very keen to recognize their shadow… we are trained to look towards the light… but that is the way to lose sight of our shadow, and when you lose sight of it, it gets ahead of you…
This article is a little disorganized, and I thank you for getting to the end. In subsequent articles I will make things clearer… at this point I am writing as “stream of consciousness”… and then it’s hard to organize.
The article is pointing you to the right direction… in the direction of a meaningful life… just like your life should, articles have a tendency to have a direction.
What if you make a wrong step?
One more thing: the enemy of a meaningful life is your tendency to make life wrong. Or make yourself wrong.
This is where coaching and the remedies are invaluable. Coaching brings clarity, and the remedies soften the blow of whatever happens, whatever bad thing you do or experience.
You’ll never continue your trek west if you are bruised all the time. So get your remedy and let’s trek.
- meaning pompous,arrogant,self-important..
(US, informal) Self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical; tending to show off or hold oneself in unduly high regard.
It’s only a matter of time before some highfalutin developer builds a huge hotel and ruins the scenery.
The logic behind specific goals is so they can be measured. Effective in business; not so much for individuals. Or at least those like me who focus too much on the how. I can see how I would be better served by direction setting; it goes back to ur article on Xmas Eve.
It also allows more freedom in how you go about it.
btw – you should create a mobile app for all of your content. Check out the app by Anthony Meindl .
Let’s explore it. I might just be delusional. How I do human is how I do everything: one or two steps removed.
I had to smile…yes, I make life itself wrong. I have tried to wish it away. Not very effective. Somehow my Self is hidden in the shadows. I do find ease when I stop thinking and just allow what is there to be expressed. I have to lower myself and admit that I am human, which I am rather loathe to do.
You won’t like what I have to say, but “admitting that you are human” points to the fact that you are delusional: which may be your shadow.