For years I’ve seen that humans, humanity, are stuck in a place where happiness is impossible, accomplishment is not predictable, and health is touch and go.
I’ve had big hopes, selfish hopes, that I will be the one to unstuck you.
Lots of other people have this hope… and the hopes remain hopes, because you have a vested interest to keep what keeps you stuck in place? If we knew what keeps you stuck, maybe we could unstuck you.
This article is an attempt to identify that one thing. The linchpin issue.
A fixed worldview, a fixed self-view, a fixed view of the people around you. That is what is the hallmark of the Tree of Knowledge.
- Religion “knows” what is good and what is evil. And teaches you. As if there were any good and evil, without someone calling it.
- Politics, judges, teachers… everyone knows what is right and what is wrong… but what if there is no right and no wrong intrinsically, what if we simply made up right and wrong… with our lowest of the low capacity, the capacity to judge and generalize.
You cannot be low minded in one area of life and high minded in another.
Your life responds to the lowest minded of you.
What is high-minded, and what is low minded?
The mind starts to raise its vantage point, from where it looks, from where it judges, from where it assesses things, phenomenon, people, behaviors.
There are three basic levels, all three has ranges within them.
- 1. The first level is systemic judgment judging by systemic “value”.The systemic value is highly political, highly personal.It has two prongs, like in a court room: guilty or not guilty.Black or white. Never any mixing of those colors. No gray.
Sin or virtue. Good or bad.
The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil is systemic. If you have ever been religious, you are probably still thinking about the world in those terms.
- 2. The second level, the extrinsic level, is where things, people, activities, suddenly gain some richness… useful is the most frequent extension to the right and wrong.That is the first foray, that is the entry point for most people to this second level.This level is called extrinsic.Here the mind may say: it is bad but it is useful.
Most people begrudgingly do things because it is useful, like working, but they are solidly rooted in the systemic level. Work is bad but one needs to make a living… eh?
Boss is bad, but one needs to be nice to them, no?
The full blown extrinsic valuation mindset judges everything on its worldly usefulness, including esthetics, taste, etc… after all even pretty is useful on some level.
This whole level is about what can be bought and put a price tag on.
This level makes allowances to good and bad on the basis of their personal needs.
- I am a liar but I have to be…
- I have a reason!
- I am a thief but how otherwise am I going to get anything?
- Operative words: getting, taking. and useful
Why? Because this is the home area of worldly stuff.
- 3.
The third and highest level is called intrinsic.While the systemic level is good or bad, the level of or-ness, and the extrinsic level is the level of usefulness, physicality, getting, taking, want and need, the third level is seeing beyond those judgments and needs.Intrinsic is the level of beauty for no reason, goodness for no reason, growth for no reason, generosity for no reason.- The intrinsic values, looked at from the systemic level, are good and bad.
- The intrinsic values, looked at from the extrinsic level, are useful or useless.
- The intrinsic values, looked at from the intrinsic level just are. Not good, not useful, just what they are.
We were all born a baby with systemic value system. Good, bad, tasty, not tasty, comfortable, not comfortable. Survival was life or death.
Very narrow cone of vision.
We had no capacity for any complexity: dealing with complexity, ambiguity is a brain function that doesn’t develop until later.
The extrinsic level with its many facets is too complex for a young child. Making allowances, seeing the good in the bad, is beyond the brain’s ability in this stage.
We see in the Marshmallow Experiment, that adding just one extra aspect to the two-pronged approach beats most children, aged 4-5 in that experiment.
The experiment was to test children’s ability to delay gratification. It is a complex brain calculation to be able to see that waiting to eat the marshmallow will earn you a second one.
It is not just about the marshmallow… it is being able to see “deal”… that you can earn something. That you can compare things… like waiting plus another marshmallow, or not waiting and eating the marshmallow now.
This is the famous TLB I stole from Ray Williams, Twitchy Little Bastard.
The TLB score indicates an awful lot about the child: can the child make calculations of value in his head? Will the child see higher value? Will the child choose higher value at the expense of some discomfort?
Most children who didn’t wait for the second marshmallow, their lives evaluated later, lived a sub-standard life. The ones that waited became the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Bill Gates of the world.
Most children, I said, didn’t wait to eat the marshmallow.
- Inside the prevailing fixed mindset view of abilities and talents, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
- But inside the emerging growth mindset view of abilities and talents, your slogans are true: you can be anything you are willing to invest your energies in.
The question is: what will make a TLB 1 want to invest their energies?
It is unpleasant to expend energies, especially for something that will either happen or not, but either way not in the near future.
I first learned about the three levels of looking at the world 20 years ago.
I had a magazine publishing company at the time, and I had employees.
I was the firing queen.
I saw that people weren’t pulling their weight. I saw that the value they provided was less than the value of their salary.
I did not think they could change, get better, or grow.
I had a fixed mindset about abilities.
I had a growth mindset about my own: I was a learning machine. I didn’t much care about pain, effort, discomfort, or being considered stupid or smart. I did what it took to learn something new, to practice, to innovate, to make things better.
It was neither good nor bad. Only the direction to go: striving for more.
But I did have a fixed mindset about other people. I gave up on them. I fired them if they didn’t perform.
I acted on the extrinsic values: after all that is what I hired them for, to do something for my company, so the company can make money.
I had high TLB, so I judged from the extrinsic level.
People in the fixed mindset AND low TLB, are anchored in the systemic values.
- They judged me, the boss.
- They judged themselves: I am good, can’t you see it? Or “I am worthless”
- They judged the world systemically
This systemic judgment prevents them from growing, because it is a fixed system, with no access to growth.
Today I am a coach, a teacher.
The only thing that changed is that I put myself on the practice of growth mindset: giving people a chance to grow or hang themselves. This changed my vibration, and put me in the high mindset.
Changing people’s vantage point has been the exact same thing as asking people to learn something new.
If you are stuck in your vantage point, you are stuck as a human.
My specialty is to teach through many different ways to change your vantage point.
In every coaching call I cycle through them, until one approach works and at least temporarily shows the client the world, and especially the level above.
Because it is all about the levels of value.
If you are stuck in your level, you won’t be able to see any higher vantage point. Not when I speak, not when you read, not when watching a video.
YOUR EYES ARE STUCK.
I haven’t given up, but mainly because pursuing the “North Star”, my intention to take people to where they can be taken, is a growth vehicle for me.
I haven’t admitted that I can’t. That I cannot move you if you have a vested interest in being stuck in the lowest level of mind.
Because it is a brain function to be able to see the world in color, to allow ambivalence, and complexity to enter your view, I emphasize health and especially hydration with my students.
Because it is a brain function to grow your cone of vision, because it is a brain function to see the benefit down the line, I want my students to have their cells hydrated.
When your cells are hydrated at least 30%, your brain can spare some energy to look, to widen your cone of vision, to include some complexity in your view.
The students that don’t do well, their cells are dehydrated. Locked into the binary view of good or bad.
Yesterday I announced a new experimental coaching program, where I plan to activate your courage to get into growth mindset.
I already see that I have made a mistake.
So here is the correction:
You will NOT be accepted unless you first get your hydration up to 30% and keep it there.
When your brain is in survival, it won’t have courage. It can’t. Courage is a luxury for a brain that is in survival.
If you already have a water energizing system set up, let me check if it is accurate. I first measure your body’s hydration. If it is 10% or less, I’ll then test what about your system that is not working.
1. you don’t drink the water you made
2. your audio is not working, or not working long enough
3. your water cannot be hydrated
4. your setup cannot confer the vibrational energy to the water.
I don’t charge for this… after all it is in my interest that your cells get hydrated and your brain becomes free to learn stuff.
The people who have already applied: I’ll make this part of their curriculum, but won’t take any new students unless their hydration is already at 30%.
So, before you apply, get your hydration checked. Please.
You may find out that you’ve been stupid in life because of your low cell hydration… that you weren’t born stupid and you don’t have to remain stupid.
Wouldn’t it be great?
PS: I just got a comment on a month old article from a former student… and it’s brilliant. Go, read the article, and read Amy’s comment about changing just one small thing.
I will test it and see if 1. fixed mindset people are willing to do it (it will make you wrong!) 2. if it actually unstuck you.
My hunch is that the brain’s coherence is still the main factor. Amy’s cell hydration is 40%.
PPS: I’d like to explain the Rumi quote on two of the pictures:
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Systemic values (your convictions) are like the weeds that occupy the land. They are established, so nothing can be planted and thrive, until you spend a lot of energy on removing the weeds.
When the land is empty, your seeds have a chance to become plants. New ideas, learning is the same way.
