Podcast: Play in new window | Download
… and by “right” attitude I mean the attitude that gets you what you wanted from life through coaching or learning from a teacher.
Most people don’t.
Why? My guess is an attitude issue… but the attitude issue is caused by something deeper.
I’ll get back to this…What’s underneath the attitude…
But for now let’s see what programs, teachers, coaches do or not do to weed out people who would not be the right match.
I did a training program twice when I was in Landmark Education. The introduction leaders program. Seven months bootcamp. Intense. Hard.
On your application to be considered, they asked for proof that you take correction and direction well. To be at least somewhat certain that they don’t waste their energy on you.
I use the Starting Point Measurements the same way… to gain some certainty. Because unless you are trainable, unless you do what you are asked to do, exactly, when you are asked to do it… you are a deadbeat. Arrogant deadbeat at that.
I assume that we are all afraid of being mislead, misguided, lied to. The fear is well-founded: most people don’t know what they are talking about, most people are wrong, and some even lie so they can make money off you.
So what? I say… OK, don’t run just yet.
Your fear is based on a meme that life is static. That there are mistakes and there are good steps. That whatever you build will last. That things will be the same as they were when you last looked…
This is the mouse vs. human comparison again.
A meme suggests that things are fixed…
The other day I looked out my window and i saw a dead deer. I went downstairs and turned out that the dead deer was actually just sleeping. The noise I made in the fallen leaves alerted it and its companion and they left in a hurry.
Only to return in a few minutes… They are not human, and they didn’t suspect that I would be still standing there… and I wasn’t. They looked and listened keenly before they return to their favorite sleeping spot, but they returned.
YOU would not.
OK… so what does this have to do with being coached?
Let’s see what you would be doing if you were an animal, not possessed by memes:
When you are coached, or taught, or lead, guided. you keep your ears and eyes open, but you do what you are told… and you experience what you experience. You consider it an experiment. Temporary.
Hm… temporary, eh?
The only thing that is constant in reality is change. So considering things temporary makes a lot of sense, and actually allows you to escape some really harmful memes.
This morning I signed up to a 2-hour webinar, and allowed it to take me wherever it wanted to take me. I even resisted muscletesting. I just went, and trusted myself.
I know trusting yourself is alien to many of you… you’ve been stupid before, you can trust yourself to be stupid again. Me too.
Trusting myself means, to me, that I trust myself to recognize my stupid action, and to be able to be with the feeling of having done stupid. That is what I need to trust myself with…
The alternative is being stuck and carrying “stupid” for a lifetime. Ugh… not attractive.
After the two hour webinar was over, I discussed it with my Sunday rant talking partner and could see where the presenter in the webinar was wrong, but I could also see stuff I had never seen before, and without going down into the rabbit hole, willingly this morning, maybe I would have never seen it.
And the things I saw were important. I saw them because I didn’t resist.
I saw that you can see the whole paradigm you are in, and the lower paradigms, but you can see any of the higher paradigms.
And when you try to make alterations in your own paradigm, more often than not, you are completely wrong.
OK, let me explain:
Most everybody knows that mindset is a crucial element of accomplishment. And nobody actually knows how to change mindset.
Every self-respecting course that promises results must start with a big chunk of mindset stuff…
And in spite of all that, the number of people who can benefit from any course is minute…
Why? Because unless the mindset stuff works, nothing works.
The person you are, the person you are when you buy the course, cannot, will not do the things in the course, or will do them according to their own rules… And the results are not forthcoming… Or said in another way: the results are different from what was promised, the results is you remaining the same.
This is true for everybody’s course or program. My programs are no exception.
Because even though what I teach you, what I ask you to become the person who can, most people refuse to do what I teach, refuse to do what I ask them to do.
I am going to be real straight with you here… At this time I only know of one person who is actually doing the work I assigned people (everyone) to do. OK, if we count his wife who is not a client, then two people.
The rest? I think they don’t see it as something they have to do. I see it as something either below them, or something that you do once, twice, and then you are done.
Much like understanding… ok, I understand, now I have it, I am done.
Who you are, the person who is going to attempt to produce results, didn’t change. And therefore nothing will change.
Except for the person (couple) who are doing the work.
Humility is scary. When I ask you to guess at your humility, you guess at least a five on the scale of one to ten.
But most people are below three… And even at eight you are not willing to do what you are asked to do. You’ll pick and choose what you’ll do… and like with any system, unless you do the system, you did nothing.
I’m OK. I can tell you that you are going to remain the same. You’ll do what you’ll do with it.
I have found that the sharper the pain of being less than you can be, the more you are willing to do, until you run out of ambition.
Desire, I have found, is not helpful. Desire, in cahoots with the memes, tells you that you can imagine yourself at the top of the mountain, and it shall be so.
Desire doesn’t know about physics, laws of physics, reality, process… none of it. Desire is your stupid magical thinking.
OK I promised to talk more about what’s underneath the attitude, what’s the invisible.
Yesterday I ran a session of the Playground. We were looking at the birth of your identity, how you put together who you are, publicly.
You look at the most prominent, most visible, most obvious characteristics others would see readily.
Then we look what you are trying to fix with that.
What?! you yell. I am the way I am, I am not trying to fix anything. But you are. It is not conscious.
For most people, their life experience is that they are not OK. They are not OK the way they are, and therefore they need to be different. They invent ways of being, cheerful, helpful, thoughtful, smart, dutiful, but of course none of these ways of being fix that they feel that they are not OK the way they are.
That is the life of a human: trying to fix something that was never wrong. I have it, you have it, everyone I know has it.
For some people all those fixing ways come from an early ‘incident’… a life experience, where you were not treated the way you felt would have been good for you: you were treated less than important, less than wanted, less than loved, less than OK… and also, maybe, less than another child, less than dirt.
I was about 10 years old when I fell from a tree, and hurt myself badly. I knew my mother didn’t care: she never showed signs that she did. When I had a sore throat, she made me toast… that scratched my throat and hurt when it went down… lol.
So when she showed up and took me to have checked out, I was dumbfounded… WTF…
She was alerted by my tennis coach… so social expecations dictated that she pretended that she cared.
So yesterday in the Playground we looked what was the most painful thing we never got from our parents and from people around us.
It is done individually, so the Playground is like having an one-on-one session with me, that is why I have so few people in a group, so I have enough time for each and every participant.
I diligently muscletested their suggestions, and then delivered the sentence they didn’t expect to hear… so much so, that two people cried when they heard it.
Hearing that you are wanted, exactly the way you are, is a bittersweet experience. No matter how old you are, you still think that you are not wanted the way you are, that you should be different, but how?
When you learn to give it to yourself, what you need to be OK, and to feel wanted, and to feel like you don’t need to change, you become someone who can learn anything, who can grow, because it is fun… and because you don’t have to.
Most people go into a coaching program to fix how they are, because they feel they need to be fixed to be who they want to be.
But when you can give yourself what you need to get to feel that you are OK… you are really free to learn, free to grow, because that is what is natural for a person who is OK.
It is not a short process. But without it nothing will work… so it’s worth it.
Are you an exception? No you aren’t. You are reading this article to get pointers how you can fix what is wrong with you.
But guess what: There is nothing wrong with you.
Sounds hokey, maybe even stupid.
If it sounds hokey or stupid… then maybe you are too stuck for even my marathon programs to work for you.
When I first ran the Playground, back in 1988-1990, two whole years, weekly, it produced a 100% result, even though the process, the issues we dealt with, the depth of the inquiry was about 10% of what it is now. And there was no coaching. None.
But since then the world became more complicated, and the world’s vibration dropped about 70 points… It is harder now.
We live in a world of people with low vibration… we live with them, talk to them, eat with them, manage them or are managed by them.
It is hard to maintain a higher vantage point, it is harder to stay the course.
And the world doesn’t approve of you… Maybe some aspects, but not all of you. And that creates a little box inside you can move around, and live… and Freedom, and Joy, and Grace, and Ease are outside of that little box.
The Playground is to break that box open and free you up so you can become ALL you can become… because it’s fun.
Are you suitable to be in the Playground? Very few are.
There are several ways to test is… One way is the Starting Point Measurements. Another way is to buy something that needs you maintaining interest. If you do, you pass…
Go to step 2
what is absolutely amazing to me, and probably normal to you, is that you think nothing of mindset, nothing of “who” you are to think that with a losing track record you can just buy a program from a guru and do what they can do.
The who is the issue. The totally hidden dimension…
That is where you lost me. You never understood that everything I teach is about the who. Not about the what.
And your who didn’t change because who can only be grown consciously.
I am going to look how or where I am either not communicating it, or I am talking to people who can’t hear it.
But that is what is missing.
Thank you for ruthlessly rubbing it in.
I want to attempt to answer your question. Let’s see…for me,
I think what you call process bears further examination.
You mentioned that desire doesn’t know about, among other things, process. Now, to be honest, you have been talking about process for a while and I nod in agreement, only not seeing where I totally ignore the advice.
OK, as an example, I have been poking around at learning to make money by developing marketing campaigns for small, local businesses. So, as usual, I am drawn to the seductive marketing of the gurus who say I can do it; they are SURE I can do it.
But here’s what I see as a problem: somehow I thought I can get to the top of Mt. Everest without having walked up a modest hill yet.
See, again, for me, the results of process seem so plainly slow and barely detectable. Hopefully someone else can relate.
Alright, so you take the impatient (Low TLB) part of me and then add to it the stupid (Low humility) part that thinks I am somehow smart enough to go fast because I am going to model what a guru can do.
And then to make matters worse, I take a foolish leap to buy what the gurus are selling which after not being able to go fast puts me deeper in the ‘well of desire’ so to speak and boom! here I am.
I am afraid I didn’t answer the question: where did I lose you?
Well, assuming that there is trust there for the teacher, I don’t think I have had trust for the process, any process, for that matter. Somehow or another, a long time ago, I got it in my head that I can take what someone else knows how to do and make it better, tweak for my very own shortcut.
This making me smarter or at least worthy of praise or a pat on the back. Yeah, yeah, I know-UGH.
Ok, I still don’t think I’ve answered your question. Maybe I don’t know.
So, let’s say I sit down and cancel (integrity exercise) all of the grandiose intentions, statements, and desires I made from wanting to be at the top quickly. Now I’m sitting here with a sort of a blank slate- just me and the process. Well, I’d have to say I think I get lost at how to enjoy, appreciate, or honor the process when the reward is not guaranteed nor is it permanent. Dammit! I don’t know if this was useful, but thanks for asking the question.