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The secret of happy producers… NOT what time they get up in the morning, or how many books they read…
My students, like popcorn, are starting to pop at the same time. It is hard to say what made each pop… especially if your vocabulary (the number of distinction) is not keeping up with the richness of the invisible reality.
What do I mean?
I have been intrigued with the idea of helping people to be intrinsically motivated, ever since I read and re-read Deci’s book: Why we do what we do.
Without words one can be the best at something, but will never be able to teach it…
Without words one can achieve something, temporarily, like a level of vibration. A level of growth, a windfall. But if the words, the process wasn’t distinguished, the results will probably disappear without a chance of ever coming back.
I have one talent that I am proud of.
One talent that makes me a maven of sorts. And that talent is distinguishing. Telling things apart. Seeing the difference.
Distinguishing often starts with noticing a missing. A gap. Or noticing that there is a jump. A discontinuity where there should be none of that. In reality there are distinct points. Water turns into ice at a point. Or water turns into vapor (gas). But even those points need the water to get to…
So noticing a GAP, a discontinuity, a missing is the starting point for me. Then comes the willingness to dig for what will fill the gap. All without knowing what it is I am looking for. The faith that I’ll know when you see it.
Yesterday I read a scifi novel (The Breakthrough Effect). It had a huge jump. I can see that I am in that ‘gap’ business… Gurdieff, Colin Wilson in Super Consciousness… same gap… same ‘no idea how you got from where you are to there’… a huge gap.
In some way process is wordless…
like the color in the color exercise. You don’t know what it is, you don’t name it, but you know where it’s missing. You only know what gap it will, hopefully, fill.
In the ‘color exercise’ the moment you label the color you are just looking for a certain color… and no distinguishing happens, you gained nothing. You will RE-COGNIZE the color because you named it. The TALENT is to look for what you FEEL is missing, not what KNOW is missing.
Wordless takes the mind out of the process
The ‘Why we do what we do’ isn’t a good book, but it points to a missing distinction: from where your motivation comes from.
Most of my students are extrinsically motivated. They are motivated by some prize, money, health, praise. They are seriously under-achieving in life. Not fulfilled by their activities. Not fulfilled even by their results.
Something is missing. You know it. I know it. And my job is to find it for you, so you can be fulfilled, happy, joyful, self-loving like you want to be.
The hunt began with the Deci book. Then the hunt had a huge turning point with the video where the dude supposedly learned to play the ukulele in 20 days, and performed 20 or so songs with the four chords he learned in a TED talk. Impressive, seductive, and it gave me an idea:
I created a 20-day skill learning challenge…
…and started to research a way to teach learning… My students are all weak at that. And it lead me to the Learning how to learn Coursera course.
That course had distinctions I had no idea about… focused mode, diffuse mode, process mode, goal mode… wowzie…
These had been all obvious to me. But what is obvious in unconscious competence cannot be taught… it is unconscious. I never had to learn it… But my students will have to learn it.
So I referred my students to that course. In fact, I made it mandatory for my students in the Playground to do that course… and to participate in the Learning challenge.
Some did, others didn’t… I haven’t had the energy to follow up, to MAKE THEM want to do it.
The results were extraordinarily telling.
The ones that did what I asked for: they are moving up both on the vibrational scale and on the ability to see the distinctions of the Playground course…
Depending on the dedication they put to the coursera course and the skill learning… more energy on the skill learning… better results in life and in the Playground.
What the heck is the reason? what is correlation here and what is causation?
Here is another question that I am now thinking to ask: What measure in my Starting Point Measurement shows clearest that someone is going to pop, will be willing to pop? After writing this whole article, and pondering a few more hours even before i push the ‘publish’ button, I have come to the conclusion that it is the ‘inspirable/inspired’ measure.
When you are not inspired, your whole life is about you, and nothing else.
Your ‘about-me’ score is sky high, and you are limping through life. Other common characteristics: you have a tendency to try to prove your superiority, which exists only in your imagination.
You also, probably, have a sky high desire number. Inspiration is the last thing on your mind.
This is where scientists and economists are very shaky… wobbly… and more often than not mistaken… around correlation or causation.
So more data is needed… but
‘when you are committed, providence moves too…
Full quote:
‘Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!’~ William Hutchison Murray
so one of the students had an opportunity to ‘play’ with adults… to sing with a group of professional musicians, with no stakes… for fun. And play with his voice, take risks, and enjoy the process. And the result was a shift, like water turning into vapor. A 100 point jump in vibration, and a sudden ‘finding your Self‘ experience: ‘I am good for something… I am not totally worthless‘ experience.
Now, I hadn’t known that this ‘I am worthless‘ experience is there… he had never articulated it. But, as I learned from him, who went through this experience with his eyes open
When you are in goal mode
When you are in goal mode, when getting something done is the goal, instead of doing it, you always feel that you are worthless. You feel that you are not there yet. That you are not enough. Because the only moment that counts, in goal mode, is the goal and the prize that comes with it.
Wretched…
You read a novel in that goal mode… And don’t enjoy it. Children who, on a road trip ask every minute, Are we there yet? are in goal mode and don’t enjoy the journey.
I am never in ‘no life’ mode… I consider every minute of every day my life.
In goal mode you consider your life only the peak experiences…
the rest: not your life. You are on the way to get to your life. Get to wherever you should be getting, and everything else shows up as a ‘not there yet‘ and an obstacle. The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Looking at the learning challenges people took on, the more process oriented the project was, and the more they were willing to surrender to the process. And the higher their vibration grew. And their satisfaction with it.
OK, if by now you are lost… let me summarize what we have seen so far:
Switching from goal mode to process mode
Switching from goal mode to process mode, is a huge part of, if not all of the secret of going from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation… the kind of life where you can be joyful, engaged, and fulfilled.
The results come on their own accord, so you can stop focusing on them. You can take your eyes off the prize. Breathe, relax, and do what you do…
Did you start feeling that pain in your shoulders go away? That was the tension goal mode creates. Goal mode blocks creativity, blocks your access to the divine, blocks your access to your Self, blocks Life.
Students who can’t distinguish their mode, goal or process, aren’t been able to raise their vibration, their results, their life experience, even if they seemingly do the assignments.
The other distinction is in fact in the eyes… wide cone of vision or narrow cone of vision. Looking to include instead of excluding.
You cannot be present if and when you have a narrow cone of vision.
If you tried right now focusing narrowly on what you are reading, including the letters… you’ll be, as long as your cone of vision is narrow, taken out of the present moment… and if you wanted, for example, check if your cone of vision is narrow or not, you would have to take your focus off the reading…
While, if you manage to read with a wide cone of vision, you are not ‘stolen away’ from the present moment: you can see the weather, you can feel your feelings, you can maybe even ponder, somewhat, what you are reading… without having to move your focus.
Most of the things we do, are boring if you do them with a narrow cone of vision…
while the few activities that aren’t boring are highly addictive, like computer games or scrolling through gossip.
When something shows up for you as boring, try widening your cone of vision… It is a mechanical movement. The wider your cone of vision the more diffuse brain state you are in: the only brain state where you can connect the dots, see previously undiscovered connections. Answers pop up, it is joyful.
So this is where we are right now. In the FULFILLMENT challenge we’ll set you up to do a project in process mode… instead of what you have been doing, goal mode.
FULFILLMENT challenge is the newest name for the challenge… It aptly describes what’s possible.
While we are gearing up to the challenge, what you may want to do is contemplate what project you’d find worth your time to use in this challenge.
It can be to learn a new skill. It can be to set up something you have been thinking of setting up. In any area of life.
There is only one unusual requirement: it needs to lead to a much larger outcome, down the line, than the project’s measurable result itself.
You need to have a much bigger WHY than just the immediate outcome.
A bigger context.
If you don’t know how to do that, this course will help you…
Context to the rescue
