Homeostasis, growth, coaching, teaching… push or pull?

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I had massive brain damage back in 1998, and many of my brain processing centers went dark… Pushing me out of homeostasis.

Looking back, having that brain damage is what helps me to do the work I do now. Because of that brain damage I experienced isolated parts of my intellect not being there, even though previously they were there, and of course were taken for granted. I just saw what I saw, did what I did. No big deal.

Reading and re-reading the novel, Flowers for Algernon was of tremendous help to know what was going on really.

If you only watched the movie, Charlie, you don’t, you didn’t think what there was to think, that capacities can disappear, but the memory of them is still there, the name of them is still there, so the only valid identification of a capacity is possible only through losing it.

Your normal brain

One of the issues ‘normal brain’ people have is this: even if they have an awareness, they don’t know what they are aware of. The identification of what they see is missing… and when something is not identified or not identified correctly, astutely, accurately, then it is, ahem, useless for the person.

And that is the challenge for most people, and that is why they can’t grow. Won’t grow. Stay stuck, one way or the other.

I read an email this morning with this truism: ‘It’s the start that stops most people‘

It is a truism, because it is not true, or it’s only true on the surface.

Something visible misinterpreted… The fact is that most people won’t start because they say: it’s too hard, or I can’t do it.

Your relationship to reality is tenuous at best

When I look at people, I find that their relationship to reality is tenuous at best, and that tenuous relationship is at the root of them not starting or not continuing whatever they wanted to do, hoped to do, wished to do to get ahead.

If you got stuck in magical thinking, age 3, where there are jumps, going from liquid to gas, going from weakling to hero, you won’t start because you won’t do anything that is not like that jump you want… The idea that there are no jumps in reality doesn’t compute for you.

I’ve used Freecell, a solitaire on the computer, to tease out what there is to see about learning something to the level of mastery… the only level it is worth targeting when you start something. Anything less than mastery is not going to give you the flow-state, the joy, the ‘I love doing what I do!‘ feeling everyone says you should have.

‘Do what you love‘, they cry, and they don’t say that it takes mastery to love to do it as your work, as opposed to as a hobby, or as a fun activity.

It has taken me about nine years to get to mastery with Freecell, and as you’ll see, mastery takes not only time, but conscious identification of the moves…

To grow yourself or to grow a skill, you need awareness and astuteness.

Awareness coupled with astuteness is rare, very rare. This is why mastery is so rare.

People you see, even people who win, win big, win publicly, are mediocre at their trade at best. And even to get to that mediocre level, it took them years of continuous practicing.

And when they write their memoir, they misidentify a lot of what they did.

Your level of mastery, your level of astuteness corresponds to the number of distinctions you have, accurately.

I call that your accurate vocabulary in my starting point measurements… because distinctions are words. It’s not that you are not familiar with the words, you don’t really have them as accurate distinctions.

DISTiNGUISHING

The only way to learn a word, a distinction accurately is to identify as many words, as many distinctions as not that. Definitions are not the same as distinctions. Definition tries to tell you what something is by describing, Distinction tries to tell you what something is by pointing out what it isn’t.

So when in Landmark Education the Forum Leader yells, shouts, that ‘you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground‘ what he or she means is that you don’t have enough distinctions to know WTF you are doing.

And you don’t.

Teaching vs Coaching

It is one thing to be a teacher. Almost anyone can become a teacher. To be a teacher you need to know something enough to be able to talk or write about it. Voila, you are a teacher.

But to be a coach, you need to master the science of correcting the misconceptions of your client, so your most important attribute is not speaking, but listening, Listening keenly. And, of course, having more distinctions more accurately than your client.

The reason most programs, even coaching programs have puny results is this: people listen from a set of distinctions. From a certain worldview. From a certain vocabulary.

Unless it’s accurate, they won’t hear the teacher accurately. They will hear what they have always heard, or they will hear things to do what and how they have always done.

And ultimately nothing changes for them.

Only real coaching leads to changes in the foundation, on the core level.

And, just like everything else, it is a slow, painstaking process, fraught with ditches and boulders, and wrong turns by the client (or the coach) every step of the way.

Immersion

A few months ago I cranked up the intensity of my coaching program. I didn’t know what I was doing, because, drumroll: I didn’t know the difference between being a teacher and being a coach… yet.

I had seen that immersion, being exposed to something more of the time, had made a difference, but I didn’t really see how or why.

Some of those added sessions I have canceled because of their format: the Office Hours. They were more lecture-like: teaching. Ineffective. Attendees asked questions, and me provided some answers. Interesting, fun, but ultimately not transformative at all. the ego loved it, but the spirit hated it.

In their place added three coaching sessions that have a focus, a particular vantage point to drive up the misconceptions, the misidentified issues, the sticky points, the wrong beliefs, the reasons people spin their wheels and yet nothing happens.

I now have coaching calls Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, every week.

Is it enough? Yes, if you come to all the calls I can almost guarantee breakthroughs. Can’t guarantee it if you don’t.

Teaching does not change people. Teaching adds, whereas the way to become a new, improved version of yourself, is through taking away.

The Anna Karenina Method, the Michelangelo Method… whatever you want to call it, rids people of their misconceptions, their wrong beliefs, their illusions and delusions, and it changes people through that.

You want to be happy. You want to be effective. You want to be a producer and produce results that create abundance for you. You want relationships that are nurturing, allowing your spirit to fly.

All available through continuous and diligent and accurate chipping away what won’t produce that.

But left to your own devices you won’t see what to chip away.

My role, as a coach, is to use my extensive vocabulary of distinctions to help you know what is harmful, what works against who and how you want to be, what you want to accomplish… not through my articles, but through my coaching in live sessions.

Articles are teaching… fun, interesting, but make no difference. Why? Because my pearls fall into your morass…

I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that 100% of the successful people in the world use the chip away method to grow and reach success.

Said in ordinary language they pay attention to the stick, while they have a picture of what success looks like… But they take the steps away from the stick and every step moves them somewhat closer to success… that is their methodology.

How many people’s brain works that way naturally? Muscletest (Source) says: 10% of humanity.

Most memes, most inspiring articles on the internet, nearly all the books say: find your why, your pie in the sky, your goal, your purpose, your carrot… And therefore they are useless.

Why are the articles like that? Because they are written to the 90%. 90% of humanity is attracted to the additive method of growing. The ‘desire’ people.

Only a small percentage of all the teaching talks to the 10%. The books and articles that Help identifying what needs to be removed. Big and small.

Desire people, the 90% are hard to coach, because there is a 3-year old in them who thinks that they can go from zero to 100 mile an hour, without first building a vehicle.

Anything that takes more than two steps is not attractive to them.

This is why I added the measurement: are you a should or a shouldn’t person? to my Starting Point Measurements. (At 3 years old you either said should or you said shouldn’t, by the way. I said: shouldn’t. I said: I shouldn’t be stupid. Should people said: I should, they should, it should.)

I am not saying a should person cannot succeed, because I don’t know that for sure. Muscletest says yes… but there are some strong requirements. One of that is that you do have a strong strong strong vision, so strong that you are willing to die trying. ¹

If I had to illustrate the two types: should is a pull, and shouldn’t is a push.

A propeller plane is pulled, a jet engine pushes.

If you have both, then you are lucky.

Most people have a weak push and a weak pull.

Not enough Life Force, not enough of anything…

Interestingly, your health plays a very important role here.

If you are comfortable, if you are weak, if your cells are dehydrated, if you eat junk, comfort food, smoke dope, you are also unmotivated. Neither push nor pull.

Neither a strong vision, nor a strong hate for what you don’t want… you can take it or leave it. Coast.

I have been attempting to take people of what helps them being comfortable and dead inside.

I suggest that they do what I do for myself: the nature of the human body is to enter homeostasis and want to stay there… Read footnote ²

But to grow, you need to weaken the homeostasis. You need to sleep less, you need a rocket in your butt or growth won’t happen.

Growth upsets the homeostasis!

But if you are not well enough, it can’t happen… FFFFF, right?

When, for example, your cells are dehydrated, you are sluggish, and ahem… quite stupid. Because you are in survival, whether you can identify it or not. Sluggish won’t cut it.

I need to, somehow, put you on edge… or you won’t be able to get out of the homeostasis… If I had to give you a graphical representation of homeostasis, it would be a square: it doesn’t like to move.

Newton’s first law of motion describes inertia aka homeostasis. According to this law, a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force.

Homeostasis makes the body very hard to move… And an unwell body, no matter what is the cause, interestingly, is in homeostasis.

Survival doesn’t mean health. Survival only thinks of the next moment… nothing further… survival means no change.

A cancer patient’s body will tell them to do more of what caused, what feeds the cancer… that is homeostasis.

An unsuccessful person’s body will tell them to do more of what caused them to be unsuccessful.

I muscletest people’s organs, their health, and if they ask for it, I tell them what conclusion I draw and muscletest from their numbers. Many won’t ask… The body tells them that not knowing is better than having to change.

If homeostasis is ruling you, asking for your health assessment report is useless.

Only if you have a strong desire to be well, energetic, and have a future, a future so strong that you are willing to override homeostasis.

It is not easy, and it is not pleasant. But it is mandatory for a future different and better from how it is now.

The health measurements is in a special right now, till Tuesday midnight. I throw in the ten dollar ‘your eating style’ assessment for free.

My best students have subscribed to the assessment monthly, because otherwise homeostasis takes over and you don’t even notice it. So it helps you to get at least once a month a wakeup call. We all need to be knocked conscious frequently, so we don’t continue for too long on a wrong path.

But if you are not willing to find out what illness I found brewing in your body, then please don’t bother.

Knowledge is not power. Only knowledge acted on is power. Implementation is the game of powerful people.

OK, here is the button to buy.

Go to step 2PS: Remember the principle: how you do anything is how you do everything: if you are la-di-da about your health, you are la-di-da about everything… And that renders you a non-winner, and not an ideal client for me.

Homeostasis is winning.

1. this vision is best illustrated by the three stone cutters story. When asked there stone cutters that seemingly do the exactly same thing, a traveler got three totally different answers. The first: I am cutting stones, it’s a job. The second: I cut stones and I feed my family. The Third: I am building a cathedral

   Ben, one of my coaches is like that. A man with a dream the size of Mount Everest. And his push is almost as strong. Going away from how things are taught, how things are done in the world of mediocrity.

   You need that strong vision to pull you through years of tedious practice, the ten thousand dark hours and you also need a strong push to stay on the right track. A strong enough hate to stay the course.

   My other coach, Troy, is mostly a shouldn’t person with a strong vision.

2. the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.

   In the Selfish Gene theory, homeostasis is the result of an evolutionary stable strategy, but not winning, not growth, not evolution