Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I am still in the middle of the Avatar series on Netflix. And although some of it is cringe worthy, especially Sokka who alternates between forcefully, compulsively trying to be funny and be forcefully and compulsively dominating, and forcefully and… you get the gist.
What I am trying to say is that good series have consistent characters and you can learn an awful lot about life through them. About people. About yourself. About good and bad. Life.
You are learning through living about life? Even the ancients knew that was not possible… you are too close, you have a vested interest and your view is skewed… so no, the ancients didn’t have Netflix but they did have storytelling, fables, etc. and their job was the same thing: to learn about life.
Stories, parables, fairy tales… yeah. Well constructed, for the purposes of teaching.
Joseph Campbell talked about the arc of the stories… and that is all good and fine… but the juice for the listener is through the characters, through the trials and tribulations… how the hero takes it, what the hero goes through, emotionally, is where the real benefit lies…
Because humans tend to think that the right emotion and the right motivation will just come to them… because… because…. ahem?
Yeah, it doesn’t just come to you, you have to go through the trial, and that, if your story is noteworthy, will blast the blockages you have, and you come out on the other end as someone who can and someone who will.
In a course I am both learning and mentoring to my clients, The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza, there is a difficult task: you need to pick one person, a real person, who is the one who both needs and wants what you have to offer.
Just one? Yeah…
Mine is a dude who hasn’t done anything with his life… EVER… but really really wants to.
He has been, faithfully, buying nearly everything I have for sale… and yet… NOTHING.
Not a step in any direction. Completely and totally unmoving.
So why did I pick someone who won’t learn, won’t move, won’t benefit from my programs as the person to address in my articles and my designing courses?
Really good question.
You see, if I stuck with people who are easy to move, I myself would never grow. My skills would never grow. My methodology would be stagnant… And I would be one of those ‘guru types’ that secretly say: ‘do as I say not as I do’.
Yeah, most guru types operate that way, whether it is in software, marketing, sales, public relations, politics, spirituality, or book writing…
You see, the secret is to root for the unsucceeding student, and do whatever I can… even if it takes a lot of work and a lot of growth, learning, maybe even money spent, to dislodge the unmoving student.
It’s my secret weapon that sometimes backfires.
Yeah, all weapons may backfire…
As a totally normal human, I like results. Outcome.
To be effective in what I am doing, this unusual work, I need to be outcome independent… which doesn’t mean I don’t or won’t produce result… it only means that I look at the process instead as a way to measure myself, not the result.
And, like a recovering alcoholic, I occasionally tend to fall off the wagon, and complain, and swear that I am going to do something else… and other hysterical, emotional, reactive moves… and then, for some reason, I manage to straighten myself out, and apologize.
Nerve wrecking for students… I think. But I am lucky and I have faithful students who have room for me to act crazy occasionally.
Why are students so forgiving, you ask?
I think because they know I work myself way over what is reasonable, and they know how committed I am to what they are up to, whether they have shown results or not. Because I honor their commitment.
So when I work hard to unstuck the stuck, to dislodge the haplessly flatfooted, I develop better technologies for everyone… you, who is ready and willing and able to grow, and everyone in between.
I am holding the last demonstration of the feelings that will lead to Inner Authority.
The course itself is open for registration, and the coupon code is good till midnight tonight EST, coupon code INNER
The course starts in about two weeks, and it will be every other Sunday.
It is open ended: I don’t know how many sessions we need to get the work done.
My hunch: six… but we shall see… said the blind man… and says I.
Sign up to the Inner Authority
