I have been toying, playing with the idea of teaching the Effortless Abundance Course…
What has been blocking me is the kinds of people who want it.
You see effortless is a lie… although efforting, per se, 1 is unnecessary.
Efforting is a concept. But doing things, learning things, unlearning things, is sometimes hard work. And for most people, who are attracted to the Effortless Abundance idea, work is a dirty word.
Now, I don’t mind if it is a dirty word for you, if you have done your work already: have skills, have knowledge, have a direction, have something of value to offer to the marketplace.
But that is rare.
Most people have jobs that they were trained to do “on the job”, so they don’t even know what skills they have, and what other ways they can be used. Also the skills necessary to do the job are only developed to the degree that they get paid.
Most people are stingy. With their energy, with their brilliance, if any.
I remember when I first learned of the idea that skills are portable. That skills are like a pencil: you can write summons or novels with it: the pencil doesn’t care.
But the hand that writes is directed by the brain. And if your brain is empty, sparsely inhabited by what it takes to write a novel, what it takes to know how things work, what it takes to have some value to offer, then it doesn’t matter what the pencil can do if the brain cannot make it do.
The biggest challenge for most people is to read. Read enough to activate those seldom used brain circuits.
The required reading for someone who wants to make money effortlessly is at least one book a week. That activity, consistently, provides the brain with enough exercise to make you a value provider.
Most people have a few books’ worth in their brains and then they recycle that little bit, but a little bit cannot provide big value.
What people who effortlessly make money do when you don’t see them is surprising for most of you: they read. Reading is like getting raw ingredients, and tuning the machine that does the processing.
You don’t want to read? You won’t make money, unless the vehicle is provided by someone else. And you won’t make a lot of money that way.
One of the main characteristics of effortless abundance is to be able to see things from many different perspectives. Inventiveness. Asking good questions… and many.
My experience with most people is: they have an inflexible way of looking at things.
Here is a personal example: As you know I have two degrees: architecture and structural engineering.
In essence the two elements of buildings: the use of the building (and the looks) and the underlying engineering issues: beams, columns, foundation, etc.
For the first seven years of my career I worked in the structural aspect of building, even though in architecture school I excelled at the first aspect: design. But life wasn’t kind to me… Or I wasn’t assertive enough… who knows.
Anyway, when I finally moved back into architecture proper, I found that the engineer part of my brain was rigid, and lost its creativity, forgot to look at anything other than the engineering problems.
I wasn’t really an architect any more… And it took me years to limber up my brain enough that what came out of my “pencil” was imaginative, graceful, innovative, or beautiful.
I became a two-bit pencil pusher… and I wasn’t even aware of it.
People often ask why I quite the profession. What they don’t know is this: architecture is not a creative pursuit for 95% of its professionals, and I wasn’t really one of those. I could have… but I wasn’t.
I left to pursue something where I can be in the top 5%, the ones who get to be creative.
If you want to make money effortlessly, you have to be in the 5%… one way or another.
What I did first was published a magazine. I wasn’t in the top 5% of the magazine publishers… but I had an angle… and in that angle I was definitely top 5%… And I made money.
Then I switched again, and I had an angle again… definitely top 5% again.
And in this “thing” I am doing now… I may compete for first page in google… but I don’t really have to compete.
I can just do what I do, do it consistently, do it as if no one were watching, and the money is coming in….
On one condition: I can’t forget that making money works on business principles.
Making money is always selling. You forget to sell… you won’t make money.
In the occasional episodes when the money dried up: ultimately that was the cause: I forgot that I need to be always selling.
If you have nothing to sell… if you don’t know how to sell… if you are not liked by the people who you are trying to sell… if you are selling commodity where hundreds of others can do what you are selling… You won’t have effortless abundance… or any abundance for that matter.
Sometimes I wish i could be a shyster selling you b.s. like Christie Marie Sheldon, and the many others… Natalie Ledwell, Bill Harris.
But then I would hate myself, a would have sold my soul for money… and I would hate my life.
So I won’t do that…
So what am I going to do?
I have no idea.
One germ of an idea is to open up a Pre-K type of group, where people have a chance to get into the game of being trained.
Most of the people who hoped to get business coaching from me belong to a Pre-K… business coaching is high school…
It is hard to see on oneself.
Even though I had a business, for example, back in 2004, I could only mine the benefit from it to a tiny degree… muscletest says 5%. All the business coaches I talked to said I was sitting on a gold mine. Some, really famous coaches, explained how to make ten times more… But I wasn’t able to hear them: I didn’t have the brain connections, the basics, so their coaching was wasted on me.
When I look at my business now, I have just got out of Kindergarten… hopefully.
Am I into making more money? Honestly, I have no unfulfilled desires for money… but the idea of becoming a business maven excites me. I’ll figure out what to do with the money when it comes.
OK… back to the Effortless Abundance course:
One of the main barriers to doing business and doing it well is the amount of time you are in Child or Parent ego state. I am using the terminology from Transactional Analysis… before I can truly integrate a new concept, I have to use it the way the originators of the idea did… So these are “ego states”… and they may remain that.
What is the problem with either? The child is capricious, the child is under the thumb of a parent, and the child is all about itself.
A child cannot take feedback without thinking it’s about them, not what they are doing.
And we know all too well: as children we muck up things, we make mistakes, we misunderstand, etc… but if we hear that the feedback is about us, we will never grow into a capable adult.
And that is the big challenge for many of my small business owners… they do business as children.
What’s wrong with Parent? Parent is judgmental. Parent feels unduly superior… because a parent exists only in the context of children… so what gives a parent anything is that they can dominate children… ugh. Otherwise they can be worthless… in the company of adults, or as adults.
I coach people who are parents in their lives… parents to their actual children, or parents to their clients, but who, as adults, are not worth a damn.
I coach people who are children… every glance, every word reminds them that they can be punished, dethroned, diminished, killed… that they live at the mercy of others. So they either keep the business small… or they play and get reminded that they are children.
OK… all of these are ego states.
All these people could shake off their parent and their child and start doing business in adult state… and have serious fun doing it.
In the Playground we’ll attempt to remove the justification and the habit for both child and parent.
Five people have registered in the workshop. That is how many people are ready to tackle their lives.
That says something about where humanity is at…
And that puts doubt into my heart that if I had an Effortless Abundance workshop, I would not have anyone in it.
Because what people want is someone with a magic wand… They don’t want to do the inner work, and they don’t want to do the outer work.
They want someone to write checks for them. For nothing.
They hope that they can have fun with unearned money… but alas, no such thing. Your soul won’t let you enjoy it.
Find out how far you are from abundance… all your numbers… Your starting point measurements.
- per se, NOT per say…!
adverb
1.
by, of, for, or in itself; intrinsically:
This candidate is not a pacifist per se, but he is in favor of peaceful solutions when practicable.
Synonyms: innately, inherently, indigenously, fundamentally
