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Canadian wildfires are painting the sky yellow. This is a good time to think about needs… are they real or are they made up?
Is clean air a need or a nice to have?
A need is real… It’s not just a feeling. Not just a thought. Without the need fulfilled, life itself is dimmed… or extinguished.
Beyond the survival needs, a need is something that you find on your way to some accomplishment. The need suddenly pops up and becomes evident in a way that you can clearly see that without providing that need you can’t go on living or you can’t accomplish what you are in the process of doing.
Clean air. Clean food. Stimulation. Information. Safety. Reproduction.
These are survival needs… But to clean a room, there is a need to something akin a broom… or the room will never get clean. But a roomba isn’t needed… it is a nice to have.
But instead of being conscious about what we need, we aren’t.
You don’t breath because you know that you need to breath… It is unconscious. You don’t eat because you need to eat… you eat because you feel hungry, or because there is food in front of you, or because you have a craving induced by a picture of some food, or someone else eating.
We got stuck at age 2-3 consciousness-wise… (I muscletested that… I am surprised too… )
We are children who can’t think of, can’t see what we actually need. So we go by feelings.
But all feelings can be manipulated and they are.
What and who are the manipulators? Words. Pictures. Other people. Commerce. The urges. Uh, it tasted good, I want more of it. Uh, that sounds, looks, smells interesting, I want to check it out.
Humans who can’t tell the difference
Humans who can’t tell the difference between wants and needs are trapped. All eight billion of them. The people who call all wants needs. Their urges pull them, make them dance, always towards some want… and hardly ever towards any real need.
To be able to see what is needed, one needs to be reasonably off the hook from the urges, especially the synthetic urges that were created by others. By thoughts. By the ITCH.
By the urges that make people eat food that is toxic for their bodies. So toxic that their liver needs to be cleansed almost daily.
By the fixing urge… The talking urge… the sex urge… the being right urge… the arguing urge… the domination urge… the avoidance urge… the bragging urge… the whining urge… and more and more and more
No conscious awareness
One of the possible results the Reality Challenge could produce is to bring into conscious awareness all the urges that pull you out of purposefulness, intentionality, productivity, and certainty.
You sit down to do something on the computer, but the urges tell you that you should be doing something else. Do whatever… You end up doing neither really… because to put all power in the action, the certain way, is only possible if nothing alters your power, nothing divides it.
You can’t do even decent job, let alone excellent job at anything you only do half assed.
Half assed literally means half-assed. You don’t sit firmly, solidly, because the urges make you sit like it’s temporary, just for a little bit until you can do that other thing.
And you go through your 24 hours a day half-assed, and your repeat it every day, until you die.
Half assed.
Because the urge says: you should be doing something else. Or, in some severe cases of ineffectiveness, you should be doing everything all at once.
And you don’t even know it, because by now it’s a habit.
Many people, I notice, do only one thing full-assed. Complain, beat themselves up, or lick their wounds.
The things they probably do 100% for a minute or three, and be done with it. They do that for hours.
That is, also, caused by a feeling, a feeling of wrongness.
The interesting thing is that these same people cannot distinguish the subtle nudges of guidance that are also feeling… because they are subtle. Too subtle for the ITCH-possessed person to notice.
Why I say ‘possessed’?
Because that is what you are. Not self-possessed, but ITCH possessed.
The ITCH, the not-need-need hooks you, and diverts you towards the un-needed, the unnecessary, the unimportant, so what you are facing, now facing half-assed only.
I can observe this with my students on calls… One moment I have their attention, the next they are halfway turned away… don’t even hear when I talk to them.
I have observed that on videos of the course I am taking: the leader starts out with earnest desire to deliver what I, the student, need to know. Halfway I feel them being pulled away by some feeling… they become vague, fuzzy, and non-instructional.
You would probably not even notice, because you yourself are only there on half ass… not fully.
One of the urges is to speak.
One of the urges is to speak. To say something. I witness it on Reddit… I think that is the essence of Reddit: you get to say something, and feed that ITCH.
Didn’t I mean scratch it?
No. You cannot scratch the ITCH, you can only feed it. The more you do what it wants, the stronger it gets.
I have an ITCH that was dormant for a long time, but now being in this group of 800 participants and some eight coaches… One coach for 100 people? Really? Ugh.
Did you see how I got pulled out? lol.
Back on track: the ITCH that got awakened by this course is the ‘I need others to see that I am the way I am because…’
So I am noticing explaining, justifying, why I do the course the way I do it. I blame it on being autistic, somewhat, that I want things to be the way I want them to be.
Now that I said it, it is mighty funny, ridiculous, and you guessed it: it pulls me out of my INTENTION to actually produce the results of the course: create great courses, fill them with paying people, and feel good about myself… or something like that.
Now that I see that it’s an ITCH and not a real need, I’ll spend some time with it, as if it were a 2-year old throwing a tantrum. Calm it down, get it a cookie, and get back to work.
I may have to do it daily for a while, but that is the thing to do with an ITCH…
Instead of feeding it, you need to calm it down so it lets you do life, lets you be the boss, lets you drive your life.
Although we won’t directly deal with the ITCH in the What’s Missing workshop, it will come up. It better come up.
Because what’s missing for most people in the areas of life that are not working is being able to put enough power into their actions there, so it can matter. So the action can be effective.
Instead, I predict, you are pulled out of the effective action by the ITCH…
Whether it’s relationship, or work, or your health, money, or even enjoying life, you are never fully there…
Here is an example I saw yesterday.
It was an office hour. Every single attendee asked questions that should only come up in about a month or two.
People, you, can’t be where you are… your mind is not where you are, it is asking questions, worrying about the past or the future…
The coaching that works is ‘start where you are’.
Do today’s work today… don’t worry about tomorrow’s work. (Almost verbatim saying what Wallace D. Wattles said in his seminal book ‘The Science of Getting Rich‘. If you are not getting rich, this is the most likely mistake you make! Take my word for it)
This also means: you cannot be really preparing for what’s coming, because that way you are not doing what is today’s work.
For my sick, or exhausted students: that is rest and recreation. Calm down. Your only job is to be sick.
Back some 40 years ago, Werner Erhard wrote an excellent message to his staff: Do what you need to do today, and what there is to do with everything else: HAVE IT.
I literally haven’t met anyone who is doing that. Who made sense of what it means ‘HAVE IT’.
So what does the eight billion do?
instead of having it, they, all the eight billion of them, turn away from what they are doing, partially, so they do what they are doing only half assed… while they worry, think about, want to do, or whatever the f… they are doing with what they are not doing.
Yeah… I wonder if humans are intelligent enough to rein in themselves… It isn’t going in the right direction.
So now you know.
Now that you know: should you still come to the workshop? If you trust yourself that knowing about something is enough for you to eliminate it, then please don’t come.
But if you are like everyone else: knowing about something doesn’t make a whit of a difference, then yes, come. And come many times… so we can look at many areas of your life, so you can start getting better.
Register in the What’s missing workshopsThe current schedule:
FRI, JUN 9, 2023, 05:00 PM – 08:00 PM EDT
WED, JUN 14, 2023, 12:00 PM – 03:00 PM EDT
SUN, JUN 18, 2023, 05:00 PM – 08:00 PM EDT
SAT, JUN 24, 2023, 07:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
You can come to one session, or many for the one payment… You can cancel your registration of each session, but then you’ll have to pay again to participate in another session.
You can bring or send friends and family to the call, as long as you let them know how to participate. I really appreciate any and all referrals.
PS: I could have had the title for this article asking: why you never amount to much… and what you can do about it. But judging from your unwillingness, or inability to face the tiger, the look in the mirror and see yourself and you life, I opted on a neutral title…
As long as your TLB is so puny, as long as you think you are made of sugar and will dissolve, nothing much can help you. You need to toughen up. Really.
