Can you handle it? Can your spouse handle it?

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Whether a person is successful or not can be boiled down to this question… successful people say they can handle it, unsuccessful people say they can’t. And this is where your word (I can/I can’t) will give you everything.

I have read about a man whose doctor told him that he had terminal cancer, and he should go home and take care of his things. The man went home, took care of his things. A week later he died.

Turns out he was healthy. He didn’t have terminal cancer, he didn’t have any cancer, didn’t have any disease. He died because he said: I can’t handle it…

Is the world black and white for you?

What you say: I can handle it, or I can’t handle it, is still on the surface, and cannot directly be changed without looking at and changing the underlying structure… the invisible.

What you will say to answer the question in the title boils down to a hidden aspect that you haven’t questioned, that you haven’t ever dealt with because it was never a question: do you see the world in black and white? In a binary way?

Success or failure, win or lose, right or wrong, good or evil, courageous or cowardly.

It is an upbringing issue how you see the world. Some people can see 256 shades of gray between black and white, some people can none.

A case study of adding shades of gray

When I was a teamleader of phoners for Landmark Education, I saw that this black and white stopped my people from picking up the phone. In their mind they pictured the scenario of getting a no (we called people to ‘sell’ them a seminar) and that was the black. Getting a yes was the white…

Some people, the eternally optimistic only saw white, and they got many yes’s, but most people were the other way around. Those were willing to clean the toilets just to avoid getting on the phone.

I needed to go through the following training several times on any given night:

ME: Can you pick up the phone?
Phoner: I guess so… hm. yes.
ME: can you dial a phone number?
Phoner: I think I can… I have done it before…
ME: when someone pick it up, can you say who you are looking for and where you are calling from?
Phoner: I probably can.
ME: when they say yes, so-and-so is speaking… can you ask them if they have a few minutes to talk?
Phoner: yes.
ME: wonderful. then can you ask them…

and so the training went.

At some point I would rehearse the scenario when the person on the other end of the line doesn’t want to talk… the worst case scenario in the eyes of the black and white view person.

I managed to get people to make calls, and some of them even learned that each call was lots of steps, and each can be done well or not so well… thus the 256 shades of gray.

How did you get to be the way you are?

Our parents taught us that unless every step is successful, you are a failure, a never do well. A disappointment. Someone to be ashamed of.

It was all about them… never about you. They didn’t allow you to be a child learning the ropes of life, they wanted you to be an advertising for them, advertising how good, smart, etc. they are. And they destroyed your natural sense of adventurousness in the process.

Any success requires you to learn new things, to do things you don’t know how to do well.

The future that beckons

If you are like most people, you will imagine yourself doing things well, but you won’t imagine yourself fumbling, bumbling through trials and errors through the learning process.

The future that beckons into has no path… because the path is full of mis-steps, mistakes, learning experiences, shades of gray, skill building, character building, all fraught with the ‘anger’ of setbacks, the danger of failures along the way.

You suspect that you will be bad at many steps along the way, so you won’t even start, because you can’t handle making mistakes, can’t handle being less than perfect at anything.

I had a first the other day on a coaching call: a brand new student came and her audio was set up wrong, and although she could hear, I could not hear her. She got off the call, and fixed her audio. Then commented on the membership site, acknowledging herself for taking the first obstacle well: learning how to connect to the call.

I have other students that have been coming to the calls and they either can’t be heard or I hear an echo. And even after working on it, they discover what works, they still come back and do it wrong: they never learn.

Being someone who learns is mandatory.

The Bach Energy Chestnut Bud counters this inability or unwillingness to learn… unless you can learn, you’ll be stuck in spite of your many pretenses to the opposite.

You will keep doing the things that you do well (or you think you do well) and you won’t ever go outside of your comfort zone.

Most people who read this post belong to the majority group of people who will never grow, never do well, never amount to anything, and their soul will wither and die.

The Soul wants you to live creatively, take risks, learn new things

The Soul doesn’t care for anything that you do well… it is boring. The Soul hates you for doing it. After years of coloring inside the lines, taking no risks, stagnating, the Soul gives up on you… unless…

There are students who have overcome the inertia of black and white

I have had a few students who turned their situation around, and managed to develop a healthy ability to be with setbacks, confusion, no results. They have developed the ability to deal with no success successfully.

Their vibration is rising, and their sense of self, their sense of well-being is through the roof.

The role of your partner or spouse

Undoing the damage that was done to you as a child is easier if you don’t have a spouse or a partner whose life, self-image, security depends on your ‘success’, on you staying the same, for their own comfort and security.

If you have a life partner who doesn’t want you to change, it is harder to change. Love in our culture means controlling the other. Owning the other. Make them to conform to your ideal.

Just like with your parents, everything you do looks to the ‘other’ as it’s about them.

When you make a mistake: it is about them. When you are successful: it’s about them.

You have no right to be yourself, live your life, to be an individual… unless you

1. stop being a controlling person yourself. unless you stop trying to control your other
2. start transforming the relationship so you can have freedom
3. start training yourself and the other that you can accomplish and become good at small things… small things are nearly imperceptible… and that is the trick.
4. verify your idea what the other person will allow and they will not… your imagination may not be the truth.

In my experience it takes about a year to slowly and effectively become a person who can. It will be the best year of your life… Because it is not about success at all. It is about becoming… that is what the Soul wants you, becoming.

That is the the Soul’s purpose, that is the Soul’s correction: to become someone who can.

Finding what is in your way and tackle it… Little by little… the way the ocean liner is turned around in a tight bay.

Rash big decisions, big movements will just land you on the rocks.

The Ego’s role in your personal evolution

The Ego will want you to take rash big moves… like going for touchdown, going for big win every time. This so you can be justified that you can’t. And they you’ll be justified that you won’t change, won’t do anything new… You are justified to stay the same, wither away, living without joy, without spirit, surviving life.

I have students like this… 🙁

In my experience this trimtabbing/Kaizen method is very difficult to do on your own. It is difficult to do… period.

It is difficult to create small actions that train your ego to let go of control, like I did first with myself and then with the phoners in Landmark Education.

The methodology is to find things that your current conviction says you cannot do… and set out to do it. And expect to do it poorly… because you will. And decide that you can handle the disappointment. And then do the same thing again, until you can do it reasonably well. It may take many times… and it’s normal.

I suggest that if you are serious about turning your oceanliner-like life around, you sign up to ongoing guidance and coaching. We do that work in a private area, called the Social Lair. I rent the space myself, it is not my property. When there is a need I lease a slot for a new client.

You write what you are doing there, preferably daily. And I read it and give you feedback.

Expect that in the beginning you won’t do well even with the hero program… It is one of the things you’ll be lousy at. That is how everyone starts.

It is affordable, even though it gives you personal attention. You can cancel any time.

Trimtab your way to the good life

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven