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I now have a mobile app. I am the most diligent ‘customer’ of it: I’ve now listened to my podcasts twice and I am still learning from them.
One of the things I learn is that things come back again and again… either on a higher level, if you are growing, or on the same level as you were last time… because you didn’t learn your lesson.
Yesterday’s transformation is today’s arrogance…
it reflects that people think they have changed, that they have arrived, and they can’t see, don’t even look, if they are accurate… or not.
One of my favorite analogies is the dude who climbs on the highest board above the pool, and demonstrates a fantastic corkscrew dive… into the empty pool.
Splat…
I see it on many of my students… that is why I decided to write this article.
What is the typical behavior, typical attitude of people who don’t manage to keep The Sight (or any other capacity) alive more than a few minutes?
There are two ways to reach anything, whether it’s a straight line or meandering like my style.
Way 1: Go for the results: you put your nose to the grindstone, forget about everything else, and charge ahead.
I call this method ‘outcome focused’. The focus on finding, not on looking. They focus on winning the battle, not on winning the war.
They can’t keep a capacity on, because all capacities are about poking the box, using Seth Godin’s expression, not about finding. It’s about looking. It’s about poking. It’s about learning to swim further away from your tiny island than the day before… until you can reach other islands, other worlds… and be more than just a tiny island dweller.
They also have only pyrrhic victories, if they have victories. A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has also taken a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.
They win an argument but they lose the affinity or the love.
They put in their two cents worth, but no one wants to be friends with them any more.
It’s all about them and about their victories, damn the Russians… or the torpedoes, or the other.
We could say that these people have tunnel vision, and nothing outside of the tunnel is even reaching their consciousness.
They don’t live. Living is wide cone. They seem hyper focused, even if they are scattered, they only see things in a narrow cone of vision.
There is a subset of this way. This subset has people who are hellbent on proving that they are right, but to no one particular. To themselves, maybe? Prove that they were wronged. Prove that they are victims. Prove that they have been right all along.
Although to the outsider that doesn’t look like a worthy goal, to the people who are part of this subset, this is the only goal they have…
If they allowed, for example, The Sight capacity to stay on, they would have to see that there is no such thing as a victim (in reality), that it’s a meaning they gave, and losing that by seeing that feels like their lives have been a pile of poop thus far, and it has.
So they forcefully turn off The Sight. Not seeing is their safe haven.
Way 2, the process way: you see the goal towards which you intend to move, but you keep your wits about you, keep your attention to what you are doing, maintain what you have accomplished in life, relationships, knowledge, good habits, health,how you got to where you are, and who you have around that are effected by your activities.
Your about-me score stays low… there is room in your view for other activities, other people, gratitude, appreciation, respect, etc.
You have routines, processes, that have proven you that you get the results, so you can pull your attention back to what you are doing, instead of what you want to achieve.
Ryan Holiday uses the analogy of the writer. Results people focus on publishing. Process people focus on writing.
I could add another analogy: sales. OK, maybe it is not an analogy, it’s an area where this phenomenon is clearly obvious.
When you are selling, if you are a results person, you would be to push for the sale. If you were going the process person way, you would work to understand where your prospect is at, walk with them for a while, and if they are ready, gently take them in the direction of buying or not buying.
The result focused salesman loves gimmicks, tricks, shortcuts, closing techniques, but hates to spend time getting to know their prospects… and they are amateurs… not professionals.
A professional is professional by virtue of having true and tried methods, a process, and they develop it in every area of their lives, if they are professional as a person.
I have people with professional degrees who are not professional in their lives, their lives is helter skelter, and when they have a new project, they jump in feet first, and forget about everything else.
Here is another symptom of the results person: aiming too high all at once. Not a staircase, no, superman, bounding tall buildings in one leap… NOT..
All things start out small… If you have an ‘ITCH’ to start out big… you are, most likely a serial failure… because you are out of sync with Life.
When I was an architecture student, 50 plus years ago, you could tell who is going to be like that in free drawing classes. They focused on a detail and forgot about the rest of the picture, about the WHOLE picture.
Can someone move from results person to process person?
Of course… but only if they can see and tame the little talking voice inside. First you need to hear it, then you need to let it be, and not act on it.
Is it hard? You betcha… it is hard.
Will my students do it? Muscletest predicts: no.
As long as the goodies, being right, not having to EVER produce, care, be all you can be, are too strong for most people.
Not surprisingly in the face of the seductive siren voice, even the highest TLB melts, and goes back to 1.
The problem is: Results people don’t know that their way is not a good way. Their cone of vision is occupied with what they want: the result, and can’t see that life is a whole lot easier if the result is just a dot on the horizon.
In today’s workshop I’ll diligently watch out for results/process person, your about-me score, your arrogance, your cone of vision, so you’ll see why what you are doing is working or not working, and to help you choose a next step. If this doesn’t make much sense, read yesterday’s article…
I am re-activating The Sight capacity for everyone, check again at 4 pm when the course starts, re-activate it again… and see where it goes.
There is a saying: don’t try to teach pigs to sing… it won’t work and it annoys the pigs.
We’ll see if my students are pigs or just haven’t gotten to where they need to be.
If you want to be part of this workshop, there is still time. It’s at 4 pm New York time.
Go to step 2
