Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Let’s first analyze the title… instead of jumping right in… OK?
What is a life of resignation? What do you resign to?
I say, you resign to being an effect. To not being cause. And that hurts.
When you are an effect, your life experience is that things happen to you, are done to you. That you are an object in a world of objects. And that you are powerless. That you have no say in the matter of where your life is going, every day, any day.
I just went through a few hours long heart to heart with myself.
You can fall into resignation at any point, and on any level of vibration.
A week ago my vibration was 990. Last night my vibration was 970. A 20 point drop. Still respectable… and yet.
So I looked what I did that made my vibration drop.
And this is what I found:
I decided that my life didn’t make a difference. I decided that it is time to pack it in now, and disappear like I have never done all the work I did for 35 years.
I looked and decided that I owe only two people something, my two brothers. And the only thing I owe is to say good bye.
I was all about myself, me, and I.
I had no meaning, I had no plan, I had no empowering context.
Even as I am writing I feel a huge pressure in my chest.
So then I changed my mind.
As long as I live I’ll do what I said I would do: dig deep and teach what only I can teach.
And then I looked what the ‘unexamined life’ Thoreau talks about, the unexamined life that is not worth living. The source of the quiet desperation.
And I looked what it takes to set a path instead of being like a ship lost at sea…
I saw that even small and seemingly unimportant to say purpose can transform a life not worth living to a life lived well.
Saying: I will live healthy. Maybe: I’ll do my best for my family. or I’ll grow a little bit every day. Or maybe even: I’ll leave the Earth better that I found it… wherever I live.
Simple sayings… and yet they give direction to your ship at sea. They give meaning.
So let’s get to the ‘meat’ of this issue, if you want more than that…
What is more painful? The discomfort of finding yourself out, warts and all, or the pain of a life of not moving?
Most teachers, most gurus, let you remain the way you are (excellent business strategy, by the way. Your misery remains, and you are hooked for life). And for that you are so grateful that you pay them money and more money. You spend your time with them. Because it is so soothing… (but so are alcohol and drugs!).
After all, spending time with someone who seemingly accepts you, seemingly approves of you, is temporary heaven, right?
In a joke…
…I have half-forgotten, a man beats on his testicles all day with a rock. He has quite a crowd watching. One sympathetic onlooker asks: ‘it’s like hell, right?’ The man answers: ‘No, it’s like heaven when I miss…’
When you follow a teacher or a guru with positive feedback to you… it’s like a respite from your ‘normal’ life in hell… but you must return to hell and live there!
What is more painful? Discomfort of finding yourself out, warts and all, or the pain of a life of not moving?
The answer to the question is obvious. For most of us avoiding the pain or discomfort of being found out is more terrible than living a life that is going nowhere. More terrible than living a life of quiet desperation, a life that doesn’t make a difference.
That is the current state of humanity. That is what Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to in his famous expression: ‘Most people live a life of quiet desperation’
The Reality Gap: the difference between what you want and what you have
Let me say it clearer: People want to live a life that makes a difference. Living a life in quiet desperation is what they have.
The size of the gap between the two, the “reality gap” differs for each person, but each person lives in this gap, in their reality gap… and if you watch, each person chooses the quiet desperation more of less of the time.
99% of humanity chooses quiet desperation, the waiting game, the ‘one day some day I’ll do something that matters’ game. The alternative is ‘living a life that makes a difference.’ It asks of you to take risks, it demands learning new things, being a beginner, clumsy and clueless… and doing anything new is scary.
I have a reality gap too… a big one. I dream of a world where people take on their lives, where people live according to their values, where people grow, expand, courageously.
A proud new humanity, Human BEINGS. The Original Design. The way it was meant to go… not this quiet desperation reality.
But it’s a daunting reality gap… But what if I could just touch 1% and make a difference for them? Turn that 99% quiet desperation to only 98%… would that make a difference?
Hey, that’s 70 MILLION people! 70 million lives! But…
…is there anything I can do to change that 99% to 98%?
I just finished a book, The Confidence Gap, that I loved. It offers great methods for bridging that gap… except for one thing: using those methods is like trying to play quarterback in American football, (or Center in soccer) with a coach’s playbook in your hand: it is hard to play from a book under pressure.
What quarterbacks need to do is to change inside.
So they don’t need the book, don’t need to remember the methods, the formulas, they have one simple switch and they can choose quickly moment to moment.
I am developing that one-switch method in the ‘Fall in love with yourself’ coaching calls, with different people, with different experiences, different attitudes, different backgrounds, different temperaments, different education levels.
The method that switches the attention, the context from where it’s going now: fear, trepidation, comfort to what matters.
I am sure there is a method that works for everyone, and I have a hunch that I have it… The activators make the switch easier, but as I can see, they lack the conscious support of the person… so there is work to do… on the individual level.
There is nothing that can turn off the fear or the desire for comfort… they are going to be permanent, no matter what we do.
The trick is to choose between following those or following what you invent: your values, your vision of a life well lived…
The gap never goes away… the trick is to see it and get back into creating a life that makes a difference
Even me… occasionally, like now, am finding myself in the gap… I am realizing that I don’t know how to ‘sell’ you on coming to the coaching call, so I can work with you, so you can start living a life that makes a difference.
I have tested my selling skills with a friend, just now, and I was unsuccessful. He wasn’t sold, and he won’t come to the call.
He wanted the results, but he didn’t want the process
While I had the ‘sales’ conversation with him, I could feel that he wanted the results, but he didn’t want the process. Because the process of living a life that makes a difference involves taking risks, feeling fear, trepidation, pain, discomfort.
What he doesn’t know is that once I build the switch with you, you are able to experience your fear and discomfort from a distance, see it, observe it, but not identify with it… so it doesn’t really hurt.
He also lives in the hope that he’ll live forever… so there is time
This hope thing is very common. We live like we have time, that some day one day we’ll have what we want, we’ll do what we have to, and it will be all right in the end.
I would do it if I knew how… the skill gap
One of the most common issues is the confidence gap… The gap between your knowledge level, your experience, your skill level. And the task you want to tackle, the results you want.
When you say: I want to be a millionaire, while you barely eke out a meager living, clearly indicates to me, that don’t plan to work towards the skills, the experience, the knowledge that is inherent in earning a million bucks, you hope that the million backs will just show up.
And I understand: I am dyslexic, learning disabled, ADD, all good excuses to never want to learn anything new, and I’ve used them a lot.
But the difference between you and me is that I have and excuse and yet… most of the time I do what is unpleasant, difficult, and distasteful even: I do what it takes.
Let me say that again:
I do what it takes… so I can have what I want.
It is a pain… and I don’t like it.
And at least some of the time I am willing to do what is painful.
Here is what I say to myself: if the difference between living a life that makes a difference, and living a life of quiet desperation is spending a week in utter discomfort. Researching for a needle in the haystack to find out what you want and how you express yourself, by golly, I’ll do it…
I have a favorite saying: I can even squat that long… because squatting is even harder for me than reading on the computer… lol.
Most of the time you don’t really know what you want. Why? Because it is hidden.
So you want things what you see makes other people happy.
But most of those things won’t make you happy… but you don’t KNOW that, but something inside you does… and doesn’t allow you to do what it takes to have that result.
In the ITCH program we buckle down and look for what it is that you really want. What it is that unless you have that you won’t be whole and complete.
And then we conspire how you can get it, or how you can give it to yourself. Or what you can do so that nagging lack lets you live like a ‘normal’ person.
In the ITCH program.
Want to do it? You can.
Get your itch handled once and for allEverything begins the moment you commit to it.
