The undertow is an apt analogy to what is going on in humans… why they do or don’t do things. It’s invisible. So you can’t fix it… And it’s not wrong… and yet it destroys, and kills lives.
Yesterday I bought an ebook for the third time.
The same ebook. Why would I buy it again? Because I’ve never actually read it.
Now, that ebook cost twice as much as what I charge for a 3-hour workshop. And my hand was quite hesitant when I clicked the buy button… I was spending my weekly food allowance on a measly ebook. For the third time.
But if I eventually read it (lol) I may profit from it that much or more a week… so it is worth it.
But why on earth did I buy it three times?
It took me three times buying and spending a month’s worth of grocery budget to make me accept that I don’t know everything! Imagine me embarrassedly laughing as I am writing this.
Yeah, I always think that I already know everything I need to know… and of course this is never true.
I just muscletested, and the ebook has a measly 10% truth value. But it has guided one of my marketing teachers to seven figures! And even if it has just one sentence that is valuable to me! One sentence that helps me see what I am doing wrong, it will give me something. Something I can change to increase my income! That is all I need.
Is it worth to shell out a week’s food budget for just one idea? Definitely. If the idea can make a bigger difference than that. And only if the difference is lasting.
Lasting? Yeah.
Lasting?! That is an arresting idea. Rare too.
Do people even think about the idea that it is in their power to keep a difference permanent? or do people, like all my students think of the world that the way things work, the way growth works is a one and done phenomenon?
The myth of one-and-done
You can never grow yourself, your income, your influence, your love, your knowledge if what makes it grow isn’t kept up.
Imagine that you and your life is a machine.
You discover that using premium unleaded gas (fuel), instead of the cheapie kind, improves your performance as a machine. So you give yourself the premium unleaded for a week, and then you stop.
If your worldview about machines is the same as your worldview about yourself and your life, you would stop using the premium fuel, or the activity that makes you more effective… while you would expect the results to remain the same.
But the result won’t remain the same… you won’t run at a higher level. It will fall back or below what it was before the ‘improvement’.
You don’t sustain any good change, while bad changes stick like glue. Instead of sustaining what you way you wanted, you find another performance enhancer and do it for a week. Like a moron.
Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
Your life, as a result, is like a garment where the stitching is always removed… and the garment doesn’t cover you…
Your life is made of tattered pieces never amounting to a garment, never protecting you from the elements… because you live life as a series of campaigns that fizzle out.
Why would you do such moronic things, you ask.
I think it is due to a lack of foresight… You can’t see that temporary means that in the near future it disappears…
In fact you don’t even look to see what the consequences will be. The word, the concept of consequences is missing from your worldview.
To look ahead and see how things will look if you do something, how they will look if you do something else, or you stop doing something.
I have a t-shirt that says: If at first you don’t succeed, try doing what Sophie told you to do the first time.
With my clients a better T-shirt would read: If the benefits of doing what Sophie told you to do, maybe you should continue doing it.
But it is not just my clients.
- I remember in my Landmark Education days, I saw people doing the same…
- I hear marketers realize, after years of stagnating, that the excitement of doing something new took them off a method that worked well… so they stopped doing it.
You may ask why I haven’t fallen victim to that behavior in my personal growth… and why in the area of marketing I have…
In the area of causing my own evolution I haven’t.
Ever since that fateful October night back in 1985, when I first heard the Rainer Maria Rilke poem, I’ve known what I was doing (helping the spirit fly!), and in that I became unstoppable and never stopping.
I may have started doing new things, but never stopped doing the basic: listen to the spirit within and do ITS bidding… instead of pursuing the whim of the moment.
A whim is a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained.
People, likely you, listen to your whims… and zig-zag both horizontally and vertically through life… No rhyme, no reason, no organizing principle, unless you want to call ‘inconsistent puppet on a string’ an organizing principle.
Here is the ‘seamless life’ that most people live: they are the same everywhere, inattentive, not present, reluctant or belligerent, argumentative, etc. Every area of life. The thread holding their life together is something you would want to weed out.
I don’t think they say proudly: The organizing principle of MY life is that I lie about everything… I don’t think so.
This reminds me of one of the newer Borowitz reports: Trump Furious at Herschel Walker: ‘Only a Loser Pays His Bills’. ‘I have never paid a bill in my life, and I can’t support someone who has,’ the former President said.
In the upcoming three Saturday workshops we’ll deal with this issue from slightly different angles.
The goal is to create an organizing principle that is so spot on
An organizing principle that has the power to transform every area of your life… so the thread connecting the parts will be empowering, life affirming, enriching, instead of the opposite.
The organizing principle for life is made of words.
I have been working with my core group, and I have to admit that it’s not easy to find the spot-on words, the words that get to the heart of the matter.
The heart of the matter is getting to the core, the essence of your behavior that holds your life together. A thread underneath a behavior, a thread as thin as a silk thread… and yet it has the power to hold your life together, or as it is now, to prevent you from growing, prevent you from loving yourself, prevent you from loving your life.
So you may need to give me more than just one chances to get to it.
If the thread I find is not the right one, you’ll not be able to implement it, because it won’t feel natural. You’ll know.
But eventually, with Source’s help, we’ll hit on just the right one, and if you are willing to sustain it, your life, the real life you’ve been waiting for, can begin.
When I go deep and endeavor to find the common thread for everyone, with no one left out, I find WORTHLESS.
Or more accurately: Worthless, unless…
And the only thing people differ in is what they put after the word: unless.
Worthless unless very smart, unless special, unless eager, unless safe. Worthless unless you can justify yourself, unless smarter than anyone else.
The variations are endless, but unless you know what horrible muck your beautiful lotus flower grew out of, you’ll always try to fix. Fix the muck.
But it’s unfixable. Why? Because it is not wrong. It is just a fact of life that people who live as an object in a world of objects will see you as an object, and as a child you were worthless. (This is also called the parental disapproval syndrome)
And as an object, you are quite worthless, quite replaceable, a commodity. Not more valuable than a fork, or a spoon, or a toothpick.
You cannot fix how people look at you… because it is not wrong.
It is just a filter, where people cannot see your value… because the filter doesn’t allow them to see it.
But if you can lift yourself up you’ll see that looking from higher paradigms, you are valuable, and maybe infinitely valuable.
But you have to give that to yourself, and not just in words, but really. In how you see yourself. And what you do!
The stronger, the more powerful your word, the more you can see what you say as real.
You strengthen your word with integrity. Real integrity, not lip service.
So tomorrow, in the Integrity mini workshop we’ll deal with the aspects of integrity that are ignored and don’t allow you to love yourself and to love your life.
It’s a small workshop, maximum seven participants, so we have time and attention to ferret out what is there. We’ll go as deep as we can.
If you think you already know, like I did with the marketing ebook I paid for but never actually read and implemented, you deserve what you have.
Life is cruel. And so am I.
Your attitude to life is arrogant. You are sure there is nothing that you don’t know… Like me…
But I have learned that looking from a different angle everything looks different.
And if I have enough humility, and enough will, eventually I’ll see the nail in my foot from an angle, where I can make that thorn not the essence of my life…
Whatever that original worthlessness meant to you, and it was you who made it up, it acts as a nail in your foot, a nail that attaches your foot to the floor board, so all you can do is dance around it.
When we can see that nail from different angles, one vantage point will give us the view from where you are not really nailed to the floor, where the self-concern disappears and you can actually start moving, start growing, start having life as an adventure.
My nail has allowed for me a life where I can’t go outwardly, but I can grow inwardly. So outwardly I am shrinking myself, so I cannot be discarded… become nearly invisible.
Whenever I have violated that rule of mine, I was discarded… so I have proof positive… lol… not really funny, but useful to see.
But inwardly, it seems, people don’t see what is happening, so I am free to grow.
And that has been my dance around my own foot.
I was able to see my nail, just now, only because I am now looking at it from a completely new angle… an angle I had never looked from before.
And I promise you’ll have the same experience… you’ll get a new view of your life, of yourself, of the nail in your foot.
And once you see it, you can move. Forward, upward. As long as the organizing principle we’ll create from that view is kept alive for you.
This is where consistency and foresight will be invaluable…
OK, here is the link to the workshop…
Let’s find the nail in your foot
