Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Is it self-sabotage if you never intended to succeed? Only to HAVE?
Asked in another way: can you sabotage your success if you just dream about success, as a destination, but never about the path, the work, the effort to get there.
Or can you sabotage your dreams?
In the Starting Point Measurements I muscletest your ambition.
What I call ambition is when you see that getting to the top of the mountain will take climbing, and you say: OK, then I’ll climb. No big deal.
And I muscletest your desire.
Desire is building a picture in your imagination, in your mind, or on paper, like a vision board and wanting it. Maybe fervently wanting it. Maybe experiencing pain that you don’t have it. God knows, maybe even hating that you don’t have it.
But the cost of attaining that picture never enters your mind.
- Ambition, the number, could also say to what degree you live in reality.
- And desire, the number, could mean to what degree you live in your mind.
Your work ethic, your habits, your words also give that number away. but you can sell yourself as a mirage to someone who can’t see how you live.
Often a client’s original numbers paint a picture that hide the truth: they are not challenged… life doesn’t challenge them, so they appear more ambitious and less desirous.
But when they find out that the mountain is taller than the hill they thought they needed to climb, climb so that they can be all they can become, the numbers correct themselves.
Here are two examples:
- initial measures: ambition 30%, desire 30%. Today the same numbers are 1%/91%.
- another example: original 10/30. Today: 1/91
Turns out both clients had (and still have) an easy life. Not much is required of them, and they made a comfortable living. They both knew that they were capable, knowledgeable, smart people.
Then came reality when they started to work with me: they weren’t ‘getting’ the distinctions. It suddenly wasn’t enough to know about stuff… they had to be consistent, persistent, and cause real change. They didn’t.
So what did they do? They moved their whole being into their minds, where they were still OK… And abandoned reality.
All the ‘work‘ you do in the mind won’t get you anywhere near to what you desire… only to the mirage of it. The idea of it.
Whatever you want in reality will need you to do work, sometimes hard work, physical, intellectual, emotional.
To do what it takes, as long as it takes.
And the question is: are you really sabotaging yourself if you never INTENDED to do what it takes to get what you want?
So let’s see if you can sabotage your intending?
Weird question, but I think it is a good one.
Depending on your soul correction you have a particular move to sabotage everything.
It is the move of the machine… the racket machine.
The racket is a machine that makes sure you do everything to get to the same exact conclusion every time.
This machine wants you to end up with a particular payoff… a result of sorts.
- If your payoff is being right about being worthless, the moves of the machine will make sure you do.
- If your payoff is to not be a match to what is needed of you, then you’ll take on ten times more than anyone is capable of handling to make sure you end up right.
- Here is another one: if your payoff is to be right that you can only trust yourself, then you’ll have an army of people who disappoint you… and you’ll make sure of it.
You’ll make yourself literally stupid. Naively fall for everything… and never look twice: like a blind person without a white stick. You see, I was right… is the payoff. Never mind that you are alone, hurting, and literally never accomplish anything.
When I was a babe in the woods, innocent and a beginner in this work of becoming all you can become, I did things differently from you, from the people who I am trying to teach.
I went to classes, yes. I did a lot of things there, including the homework. But I didn’t care about learning anything other than what I decided to learn.
I had one intention and one intention only: to learn the real meaning of difficult words, like generosity, authenticity. One at a time.
I wasn’t in any hurry so I was happy with what I was getting, and didn’t think I should get more, should have gotten more.
I didn’t think that life SHOULD turn around for me just because I was doing things.
And as expected, it didn’t.
I don’t know who told people that the nature of life is to turn around for you because you did something once, twice. Or because you saw something.
It isn’t the nature of life.
The nature of life is more like this:
There is this wall between where you are and where you’d like to be. A wall made of porridge. And you need to eat yourself through it.
And you don’t know how thick the wall is… but it is clear that it is very thick.
- Your willingness to eat porridge for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner is your ambition.
- Your desire will rebel, resist, and make you hate the porridge. It will flash up picture of gourmet meals… accidentally that is all you’ll see around you: not porridge… lol.
You’ll ‘hire‘ your family to tell you to stop eating porridge. Your husband will suddenly have house guests, and you’ll need to entertain… so you can’t eat your porridge.
Yeah, this is a more apt picture than what you were told: ask and you’ll be given.
I have clients who heard: You need to increase my TLB, your mental toughness. So they took two, three, four cold showers. And, of course, nothing changed.
Because whatever change you need is on the other side of yet another wall built of porridge. Taking a bite or two won’t take you to the other side.
If you are in a hurry, you’ll never persist.
After all what is the mind for? You can move there and have a good life. There. In the mind.
In reality you are still the same…
If you asked me what I’d suggest that you do, I’d say that you are best to pick one thing that is quick win. At least that is what my teachers recommend that a course creator should do. To strengthen trust.
And by quick I mean: months not years.
For me the most frustrating thing in my participation was the vocabulary.
The words. So I went for the words. I had six languages beyond English that I studied, so words were my favorite buddies to play with. PLAY WITH.
If it is not play, or playful, you’ll get bored or tired with it.
Play is a context. It makes what is inside the context enjoyable, and fun. Why? Because context is decisive.
For me everything is play… and when it isn’t, then I just set the context to make it play. Games are what play is. The essence of a game is that something is better than something else.
For example in
- golf the ball in the little cup is better than outside of it. In
- Freecell no cards is better than any cards. In
- wordplay seeing more and different and unusual is better than not seeing any.
So I played with the word of my choice.
Or today I play how much I keep my attention on the energy when I heal. Or I play how closely I can catch that it’s time to drink water before the hourly chime goes off. I’ve got it down to less than a minute…
- So for the person who resists resisting… make that your game… catch it and release it. Release the secondary resistance. The first is not a problem. The faster you catch and release the more you win in the game you set up.
- For the person whose machine wants to play the superwoman: play how fast you can catch it and not make it wrong… instead laugh and say ‘I got you!‘
- And the person whose machine thinks that making people, things wrong will make her feel safe… she can play making things not wrong. Not OK, but not wrong. It is what it is… is her new game.
Now, if you now think that playing a game ten minutes a day, because it’s a homework, and all you need to do is get through it… you are in the wrong program. And I’d rather than you don’t fool yourself.
Your machine probably says: you don’t need anything, you are already perfect. And if that is you, why are you here? You can’t improve perfect.
There needs to be a gap for any achievement, any fulfillment, any play or game.
If you have no gap, you can’t play. And you can’t experience a fulfilled life either.
It is, interestingly the same for someone whose machine plays to prove that he is nothing. Not important. He has no gap either… unless he manages to create one.
And that last sentence is important:
there is no gap in reality. All gaps are created with words.
Some gaps are bridgeable. Other gaps are not.
If you want a good life, create bridgeable gaps, and tone down, break the pie-in-the-sky gaps to manageable chunks… like I teach in the aqueduct method.
And it may be useful to revisit the article about the different feelings of failure… so you get some clarity about your gap… and the size and nature of it.
Ultimately your misery, your quiet desperation comes from a lack of clarity.
I don’t blame you: language causing it 90%. The manipulators of language…
I think in every language of the world… but of course I don’t know. I have seen it in English and I have seen it in Hungarian lately.
Result: misery, arguments, combativeness… and no clarity.
It is not an accident that your low clarity on the meanings of words and your level of high desire, your level of dissatisfaction line up nicely…
And those of you who are arrogant enough to think that you got language licked, because you are a talker, and the words come easily: you are the worst in this regard, because you are not even curious.
You are cocksure. The sign of a loser. sorry to bust your chops.
So get curious… and stay curious.
It took me years to see all aspects of the words I wanted to fully know.
The hardest was dignity and loyalty for me. Why? I don’t know. I still don’t have a handle on those words. So I am still reading novels partially to get a glimpse of dignity and loyalty, and not cringe… Which kind of signals to me that the authors I read don’t know WTF those words really mean.
Now, you see, if you paid attention, if you have eyes to see (do you?) that I don’t do this as projects. I added discovery of the real meaning of words as part of my context, part of my life. Part of my life as much as breathing. It is not a doing. Never.
Doing would not be play. Doing would be, judging from my stomach protesting, something imposed on me. And I don’t like that. So I play… and breathe.
If you’d like to have a conversation about what would be a good way for you to use play to grow… I am, maybe, available…
Most of you who have been participating with me: you already know because I have already advised you… if you have eyes to see, ears to hear.
You probably didn’t… ugh.
Anyway, if you want to talk, here is the link to buy some of my wisdom one-on-one.
1-on-1 coaching packages
