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OK, the title is lofty, and I am not at all sure I can actually teach the art and science… but I’ll share all I have seen so far.
Do I see all the ways you can turn your life around? No. Muscletest says I see 91%.
As with everything I teach, the Anna Karenina Method is the fastest and most surgical method I know. So I’ll use that.
Let’s suppose you want to turn your life around so that you’ll be experiencing a meaning to your life. That you’ll experience that your life has meaning. Chances are that currently you don’t or only occasionally.
In the Anna Karenina Method there are two phases:
- Phase 1: you see all the ways what you do, what you think, your attitudes, your worldview that will not lead to a life that is meaningful.
The behaviors that are triggered or directed by wanting to, needing to, having to, and should. All the behaviors that are of the ‘more, better and different’ kind. And all the behaviors and attitudes that are a reaction to something wrong, i.e. the fixing attitudes.
Ultimately you’ll find that almost everything you do, almost every attitude you have is of that kind.
You need to be strong to face the disaster area that your life is… but if you can face it, you have a chance to turn it around.
- Phase 2: look within. Look for the spirit that desperately wants to fly… You don’t have to know what would help it fly… Your job will be to remove anything and everything you found, and find your Self underneath. The innocent Self.
The not knowing under all that knowing. The ‘not sure’ underneath the cock-sure. Under the oracle-like knowing. Under knowing everything like it’s a gospel.
Bring ‘It is not knowable, so I don’t know it‘ to it. This will allow you to look if you wish… look and see. If you wish. When you wish to see. Empty your mind of all that knowing.
This phase can take months, and it can take decades. It’s taken me decades.
The emptier you become of ‘knowing’ the more you’ll feel the spirit’s calling. The inner call.
Warning: don’t turn that into ‘knowing’ or you’ll be where you started.
Allow it to become malleable, moving, changing, alive, or you’ll spend the rest of your life protecting it, proving it right… and guess what: you’ll be miserable. As miserable as you are now.
Miserable, like everything, is on a sliding scale…
I am still miserable… 7%. I used to be 100% miserable.
When you are not miserable, you can experience happiness, joy, contentment. For me that is 93%.
Misery is like the cloud cover on the sky. The sky is behind the clouds, but you can only see the clouds. When the cloud cover is only 30%, you say: ‘What a nice weather!‘
I remember when I got to 30%. I remember having entirely good days, nice days, for the first time maybe ever since I left Hungary. Poverty is a bitch… Having no friends is a bitch… So while I was somewhat happy in Hungary, my misery number rose to 100% after I left.
When I look at clients and their journey, I can track their misery.
Here are a few examples:
Client 1. She was miserable 70% of the time. Mostly spending it trying, scrambling, or in her had thinking about it. Today she is miserable 30% of the time. But judging from her emails, the sky is clearing. Fast.
Client 2. He was miserable 70% of the time when he started… and unfortunately he is still miserable 70% of the time. Why? He never touched his attitude to life, to work, to money, to others.
The exercise that removed all those clouds from my sky was this:
Find all the things that you say are supposed to be in one way, even though there has been no AGREEMENT to be so. Agreement means: the other person, society, life, god, the Universe expressly said: I will.
Here are a few examples of agreements that were never made:
- Parents are supposed to love their children. They never agreed to that.
- People are not supposed to kill each other, rape each other, betray each other or their country. They never agreed to that.
- I am supposed to remain pretty… The Universe, Life never agreed to that.
- I am supposed to get everything I desire… ditto.
- My partner, colleague, husband/wife etc. is supposed to put me on a pedestal and hear me out.
- My children/students/employees are supposed to make me look good.
They never promised to do that.
So they are NOT supposed to. And if and when they do, that is a reason for celebration.
You are also not supposed to be smarter, better, prettier, thinner, funnier, easier to deal with than you are. You never agreed to that. So you can stop beating yourself up.
All those ‘supposed to’ are expectations.
There are very few agreements people ever make. And even less agreements they can keep. Often because it takes two people to tango.
Agreements, like promises, are always conditional.
Yet we expect to be loved unconditionally, no matter how shitty we behave, how we don’t keep up our own end of the bargain.
And all the grieving, all the regrets, all the shame don’t make it all right.
One of the most dramatic moment of my life was when I realized that I was the cause that my mother didn’t love me. How could you love a child whose attitude is: ‘you don’t love me!’ And then, in that moment of realization I could have compassion for my mother… I realized that I made her life hellish.
Responsibility
Until you can take responsibility for EVERYTHING you have power over, and even for everything that it causes in the world, your misery level will not get lower.
Until you take responsibility that your ‘supposed to’ says: happiness is jumping of joy, and you can’t feel happiness because you don’t feel that you are miserable.
Responsibility is the linchpin DNA capacity.
Doing all that work of the First Phase of turning your life around will turn the responsibility gene on for you.
I know I can turn the gene on for you, but until and unless you see the enormity of what you are doing, your attitude, your posturing, it will be wasted on you. You can’t even promise to keep it on… Because your word has no power. Yet.
In a world of ‘supposed to-s’ your word has no energy. All that energy is vested in the ‘supposed to-s’.
So what should you do?
If you were miserable enough, with some glimpses that you could be ‘not miserable’ you could start your journey with my challenges. Starting with the Reality Challenge, where you need to catch, observe, and document all your having to, needing to, wanting to, and should.
That is, doing all my challenges, is what the client who managed to reduce her misery score to 30% has been doing for the past seven months. Every day, every day, every day.
The natural progression of the challenges are such: reality, reframing, skill building, attitude, validation, etc.
The two clients I brought up as examples ‘did’ all the challenges. So why was one getting result while the other didn’t?
The major differences between the two clients were all in the area of responsibility, or causing.
The one experimented with different reframes, different skills, and different attitudes, long enough to see that they make a difference in the outcome… and therefore in the quality of her life. She managed to act, at least some of the time, as cause.
The other did not. Did not experiment, didn’t look long enough… Didn’t act as cause… He always had a because… and what caused is not him, but the because. He did not manage to see that in fact his life is in his hands. That he can cause his life. He continued living as an effect.
Do you have enough energy to do the work?
Unless measure 30. Do you have enough energy to do the work? is a yes, you probably need to do some preliminary work, so that measure turns into a yes.
You either need to get back into health, or you need to do activities that give you energy.
And if you are not well, then start using the Big Bundle as soon as tonight. All night. On regular volume.
I can’t help you, and this work can’t help you if you are not well.
So start with getting your health measurements. It is still free if you use the coupon code NoStrings
Please.
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