Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Why did Steve Jobs say: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards? Why couldn’t he connect the dots forward?
Very few people, mainly only chess masters and strategists, have the ability to hold as many as 16 items in their brains so they can connect the dots forward.
Steve Jobs didn’t. Couldn’t. Could not even see that it’s possible.
I can hold seven items… while most people can hold just the one thing that is in the foreground, that is in front of them. They cannot see beyond that one item.
So I have been experimenting and I have news for you:
One of the problems with being able to only hold on thing in your brain is this:
When someone, something presents you with an idea that is new, that could alter your worldview, it becomes the one thing while you are in the conversation. But the moment you leave it, leave the conversation, hang up the phone, log off from the workshop, your DEFAULT worldview replaces what you heard.
Sometimes it even happens while you are still on the call.
One of the SKILLS of a true empath is to feel it. Feel as the thing that was there leaves and is replaced by something, the mood of which is ‘this is bullshit!’.
This is why I fired that long-time client the other day. Because I had the good fortune to catch it.
It wasn’t the first time I caught it in the past 11 years, but this time it clicked with me: If I can’t manage to change his worldview, then we are both wasting our time.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.
This is the first time I actually saw that unless you can hold two ideas in mind… your default ‘idea’ cannot be changed.
You cannot choose without both ideas being present.
In the chocolate or vanilla exercise of Landmark Education, the trump card is when the leader asks the participant: ‘your mother being the way your mother is: choose’
One could say that you can choose one thing. But in 99% of the cases that one thing is in essence two things, that what is, and that what isn’t…. They are both present… or at least should be if you want to choose.
A few decades ago Werner Erhard had a seminar to introduce distinguishing distinction itself. I was there. I was one of the two people who got it. (What people most didn’t get is that one thing is actually two… the thing and what isn’t the thing… If this confuses you, don’t worry… it confused those 398 people too.)
Distinguishing is a function of brain flexibility.
A rigid brain cannot distinguish. A rigid brain cannot let go of one thing with one ‘hand’ and trust that it will be there when the ‘other hand’ returns.
You can make a brain rigid at will.
The only thing you need is a ‘conversation’, inner words, a worldview that makes your self-image an all-or-nothing phenomenon.
We call that the ‘Precious I’, a fixed self-image that needs to be protected.
And it needs to be protected because it is a construct, built from wishful thinking, delusional interpretation of reality, misunderstanding.
That Precious I is not based on reality, and every breeze, every mistake, every criticism threatens it with annihilation.
One of the elements of most Precious I is a statement of entitlement. An ‘I deserve‘ statement.
‘I deserve to be always right. I deserve to get what I want without any work.’
This is the general tune with individual variations.
This is what makes someone attend all my workshops for 11 years and never change his ‘tune’. Also, this is what makes people have already incurable cancer still insisting, that they deserve to be healthy.
I measure how many items (thoughts) you can hold in your brain at any one time, regardless if they are compatible or not.
The secret of connecting the dots is in that number.
13% of all the people I have measured can hold, at peace time, more than one piece of information in their brain at one time.
Any emotion reduces that number by much… Especially performance anxiety… any emotion that is concerns itself with the self-image remaining intact.
I know a person with dementia. Dementia started with his well-deserved retirement. But his self-image of this ultra effective, ultra brilliant person is now threatened and he is having a difficulty using his memory like before.
My students come to my calls with self-image concern, and they are sitting in ‘stupid air’ when I call on them… a clear sign of diminished intelligence.
The bigger the gap between your Precious I and how you really are, the rigider you protect it.
If you listen to me, you hear that I DILIGENTLY reduce the size of my Precious I. I do it consciously and intentionally.
My entire spiritual growth began when I allowed myself to be stupid when I was stupid. I said: stupid people can do anything. They can make money, they can even become millionaires. So, OK, I am stupid.
This was when I was 49 years old. Previously I militantly protected my self-image of ‘smart’ or even ‘brilliant’.
Ugh.
No matter where you want to go, no matter where you want to take your life, you have to start where you are.
Exactly where you are. Not approximately. Exactly.
Even a hint of delusion will render you ineffective in your efforts.
Efforts in learning anything. Efforts in becoming all you can become. And even just to have fun occasionally.
Another turning point for me was when I was told in a course that I was being a ‘recovering victim’.
It was a huge blow to my vanity. A huge blow to my self-image. So huge that I seriously contemplated ending my life then and there.
But an accidentally smart move (I checked myself into a hotel room) allowed me to ponder it.
So I managed to go back to the supposed ‘abuse’. I saw that when I looked at it differently, when I took my emotions out of the picture, when I looked at it in reality, the view showed that it was just what happened. It also showed that I wasn’t an innocent victim. I was in fact a participant.
The viewpoint that ‘I am being attacked, I am being abused, I am a victim‘, is actually politically correct.
Society doesn’t want you to take responsibility for anything
Society doesn’t want you to take responsibility for anything, so yeah, it is politically correct to feel like a victim, to say you are a victim. Me-too, and other movements are all politically correct.
Why doesn’t society want you to take responsibility, you ask? Because powerful individuals are a threat to society, to the power structure, to the powers that be.
And yet, your job is to take what belongs to you, and take responsibility, instead of blaming. Or you’ll never feel good about yourself, never be happy.
Without taking responsibility your brain will never be flexible enough to change your mind.
What does it mean ‘change your mind’?
Your personal reality is 100% defined by your mindset, your worldview, by words. Words are all brain pieces… They act as filter. They create the game-board you play on.
And they have produced the kind of life you have. Everything you have. Your health, your looks, your wealth or lack of it. Your relationships. ALL your emotions.
Unless you can change your mind, your life cannot change.
And to change your mind you need to be able to CHOOSE another mindset. Another worldview.
But to be able to choose you need to be able to SEE both at the same time.
So you need to be able to hold at least two opposing items in your brain.
To make it easier, I have been recommending to do collages… Collages are paper that can hold what your brain can’t.
Case study
One of my students increased her brain’s ability to hold more information pieces at the same time by doing elaborate collages.
She increased the number from 1 to 8. I just measured it…
As a result, she has been able to get a master’s degree, become a registered nurse, and be able to stay in a specialty training where the attrition has been 90%. She is the ‘one man standing’… only because of her brain’s ability to hold opposing ideas without having to drop one.
So what did she do? She put the opposing data, the opposing thoughts in front of her. Most of the time she was mortified… But so what?
People make mind movies of what they want.
And they make vision-boards… Which reliably allow them to see only what they ‘deserve’…
Even in Landmark we were asked to do two collages: a ‘probable almost certain future’ given who we really are. And a future you wish you could have.
Two collages… instead of one collage with two parts. Where the two can be seen together and give you an opportunity to choose.
In one Landmark Course we had to create 150 collages… It was a year long program.
Not one collage that most of my students are so proudly present to me.
Because one of the ‘worldviews’ you have is that doing something once is all you need to do to have a skill, or cause something.
Unless you can replace that ‘worldview’ with one where skills are built with deliberate practice over time, hundreds of repetitions, you’ll never have ANY skills.
One of my teachers say that skills come before worldview change.
Maybe. But in my view: they come at the same time. Like clapping your hands and the sound of clapping.
Your enemy is the ‘politically correct’ view of life. Unless you have the courage to become an outlier, you probably cannot change your life.
And as sad as it makes me, at least now we know.
Today or early tomorrow I am embarking on a fast.
I have never fasted before, not even for a few hours. I never considered myself able to do it. So I viewed myself as a sickly weakling.
This fast will allow me the opportunity to have both the image of a weakling, and a self-possessed person in the same view.
My goal with the fast is multi-layered.
The ‘probable almost certain future’ method
My obvious goal is to cleanse my body, so if I were to live, I would be able to work until I die. My ‘probable almost certain future‘ is that at some point I can’t work, can’t earn a living, and will become homeless and die in the street.
The not so obvious goal is to see myself as someone who can. And although it is not obvious to others, it is becoming more and more obvious to me that I have been avoiding growing for a long time. And it’s not OK with me.
But, as I can see, self-image is a serious impediment, a serious impenetrable barrier to my growth. So I intend to do away with it.
So what should you do now?
If you, like me, don’t like your ‘probable almost certain future’, you will start some activity, like building a skill, where it is inescapable, where you can see clearly what it is that you do, what it is that you think that makes that future probable, and almost certain.
As opposed to really building a skill.
You can start doing it inside my skill-building challenge, the old one. You’ll get handholding to the degree that you stay in communication.
Start building a skill with a projectWithout a project you cannot build a skill.
What is a project? It is, essentially a specific and measurable result in time you commit to… and then build a process to reach it.
The result needs to need the skill. The skill can be ‘spiritual’, or it can be practical.
My fasting project, to succeed, will require of me the skill of allowing. Allowing what I feel, allowing circumstances. I already have that skill 30%. But I want to take it to at least 70%. I want to hang in there doing the fast until hunger naturally returns. It is unlikely if the capacity ‘allowing’ remains weak.
What is your skill, what is your project? Comment below.
