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What factors decide the quality of your life the experience?
Lots of sites talk about the quality of life… but essentially it can be boiled down to an experience. Emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual well-being. All feelings. All experience.
On the other hand we live in a culture that focuses on possession, on selling you something. So it says that owning stuff is what gives quality to your life. Luxury, riches…
So you take that ‘meme’ like the gospel. And dream about stuff you can own. Stuff you can pay for. Stuff you can’t take with you.
People look at reading as the price they pay to be able to buy more stuff. Speed reading, get one nugget, PhotoReading… task to get through to the prize.
Sex? rush to the orgasm.
When we look at how you eat
When we look at how you eat, we see it clearer than anywhere else… because it is more visible there.
You eat to put stuff in your stomach. To soothe the unquenchable thirst. Food unchewed. Untasted. Unenjoyed.
Relationships: you have them so you can say what you want to say. When they talk, you check out. You are both dutiful and exploitative.
I had a ‘friend’ for a couple of years. If the other is not interested in you, then they are not a friend. They are an object, treating you as an object. I didn’t enjoy being an object.
When I ask clients what it is they want to accomplish, what it is they want to gain from participating with me, they have vague things to say. ‘I want to feel good. I want to love myself.‘
They think that those feelings are something they can buy. Directly. With some currency.
Life, unfortunately, works on a different dynamic.
In life you get what you bring… Life gives you more of what you give it.
Unless it is calculated. In order to… Trying to dupe life.
Although even when you fake it, you get a little bit of what you faked back… But not all.
- Unless you bring your happiness to things… things won’t make you happy.
- Same with enjoyment.
- Excitement.
- Love.
- Curiosity.
- Reverence.
- Dignity.
- Freedom.
But beware of the ‘in order to’.
That ‘in order to’ is the faking. That ‘in order to’ is coming from the culture that wants you to jump to the end… happiness, orgasm, riches, without investing YOURSELF.
The idea of investing your Self is today quite alien to people. Investing your Self as in investing your happiness, your enjoyment, your care, or any of it.
That is why you are here…
That is why you are here… because you lack those that are only attainable if you invest it, if you BRING IT with yourself… to life.
So in the Bring Purpose to Life, the challenge, we learn to bring the purpose… but before we can bring it, we need to invent it.
The purpose is ALWAYS something akin to enjoyment… not some stuff. Not some end result. Enjoyment doesn’t come at the end of the process, it is part of the process.
But if you can’t foresee it
But if you can’t foresee it, if you can’t generate it even as an idea, you won’t be able to bring it to life, you won’t be able to bring it to the process.
I have tried the ‘Chew Your Food’ process both ways. When chewed in order to be done with it, or even in order to sooth my hunger, it was no fun, no enjoyment.
When I brought enjoyment to the chewing, it was enjoyable and I enjoyed it. I was looking forward to do it again. My life was better for it. I was happier for it.
Similarly to some of my students have shared, I subtly changed what I eat. I now prepare my food differently: I bring more love to the preparation than before. I feel the expression of self-love: if I am going to enjoy this, it better be excellent… tasty… enjoyable. And it is up to me.
And I have enjoyment making the food, chewing the food, and having no discomfort after having eaten the food.
The Drink your Food challenge is an excellent preparation for the current challenge…
While you chew, you enjoy. Maybe not the chewing, but the flavors. The texture. For much longer time than when you to chew-chew-swallow, like I see youtube chefs do.
I am going to offend a lot of you here… but if you are not doing my challenges, you are stupid. No, not just stupid, you are a moron. Frozen into a mindset that keeps you unhappy. Keeps you fat, or sick, or having to pretend… Miserable.
And your reaction is the same as it was when you were three years old: ‘it’s not fair, there is something wrong with me that needs to be fixed, or the third: I am good, it can’t happen to me.‘
Entitled.
But guess what? When you are entitled, even what you expect to come to you will be just ordinary, nothing to appreciate, nothing to be thankful for. But more importantly: nothing to ENJOY.
I watch people not enjoying their day off. I watch people not enjoying their challenges. Not enjoying anything.
They may say: ‘I appreciate…‘ even fake tears, but entitlement prevents them from really enjoying it.
Appreciate is almost synonymous with enjoyment.
I just made a noodle kugel for myself… It is dry. I need to re-calibrate myself, so I can enjoy it. I expected it to be moist… and it isn’t. So I am BRINGING MY ENJOYMENT to eating it.
And lo and behold, as I am chewing it thoroughly so I can drink it, it releases its flavor in all its homey glory. Yeah, that is what I am talking about!
Sidenote: my mother never made any typically Jewish dish. Never. She, I guess, blamed being Jewish for her life. And holding onto that blame made her miserable, not loving, not generous, not kind, not a good mother. Not a pleasant person. The perfect model for me to avoid being. And of course, whatever you want to avoid you become… I just hope not 100%.
You may want to decide that you want to be a Mensch… an excellent human… Kind, personable, available, a person who enjoys life.
Enjoy whatever life has to offer.
Ultimately this is what I attempt to train you in the 5-day challenges… The Drink your Food challenge, and the Bring Purpose to Life challenge.
Obviously only some of you will allow me to train you, even among the people who sign up.
Why? Entitlement. Your entitlement to get what you want without investing yourself is overwhelming.
You may be able to see, that the baby gene, that made you scream for the bottle is in action.
And while it was appropriate when you were a suckling baby, it isn’t any more. Humans are happiest when they earn what they want, when they give themselves over to what they want.
You can get a flavor of what’s missing… what it is that YOU need to provide for life to become joyful, in the Lifeskills workshop.
Get a glimpse through the Lifeskills workshop
PS: It seems that the state you live in happiest is called ‘flow’. Except with what I teach in here, in the Lifeskills workshop, and in the challenges, it is not accidental, it is flow by design… The famous flow only legends talk about out in the wild.
