Podcast: Play in new window | Download
It takes exactly as much energy to live a shitty life, a mundane life, as to live a good life.
It’s true, it is different energy, more purposeful, but energy is energy.
The only difference is: a shitty life is on automatic. The good life is not.
You can have anything, but you can’t have everything.
I have been hearing that for some time, but today I really got what it means. Many things are incompatible.
My student can’t stick with anything as long as he drinks alcohol. So pretty much he can’t have anything you need to stick with…
Or me: I can have health, safety, if I don’t eat stuff that is toxic.
Yesterday I ordered a bag of sugar free candy. I ate four of them. Today I have nausea, I am dizzy, I can barely hold my head on my neck. It wants to roll off. Muscletest says it’s the Stevia.
When taken by mouth: Certain chemicals in stevia are likely safe when used as a food sweetener. Side effects might include bloating, nausea, dizziness, and numbness.
Central nervous system killer.
So I threw the rest of the candy out.
You can have anything but not everything.
Yesterday one of my teachers sent out an email. In it he shares that he never changed the diaper of his now almost two years old son. Or cooked anything.
He has a division of labor established: his wife does all those tasks, while he makes the money.
If I were married I would choose to make the money too… although I like to cook for myself.
The division of labor is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organization so that participants may specialize (specialization).
Specialization makes you more effective and more efficient in life.
But people insist on doing everything… and they are both ineffective inefficient.
You either focus on one thing and produce results there, or think you can focus on everything, and produce mundane results, results like ‘so what?’
A woman I know has a need to be superwoman. But she misunderstands superwoman… I say. She runs around like a chicken with her head off, doing this and doing that, and produces hardly any results, but definitely no results that you would want to write home about.
Mom and Dad. I just want you to be proud of me. So I let you know that today I answered some emails, made breakfast and lunch and dinner, and yelled at my husband. I hope you are proud of me.
Or she would write to me:
Sophie. Today I tried to catch the shoulds. Then I tried to connect. And then I almost got to the training site to activate my kindness. Then I thought about pondering about what the heck distinction is… was distracted… so I didn’t do it, and I still don’t know
Or alternatively she would write to me:
Today I started out with the organizing principle of ‘narrate things looking from the side’, like in the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Then I switched to the Organizing Principle of ‘I am a work in progress’. Later in the day I had a thought that the Organizing Principle of ‘I am Stupid’ would be better.
But if you can read between the lines, you can find ‘I hate my husband for what he did to me. I am never going to give him like before, because I don’t want him to feel that it was OK‘.
That is underneath every action she takes… so that is her Organizing Principle… for life.
That is her Self.
Both puny and ugly.
But like you, she has a choice.
The moment she gets that you can have anything but you can’t have everything, she can choose.
She may choose to stop wanting to become a high achiever, a person who is the captain of her ship… and just be the bitter woman with a scorn. Or she may choose to say ‘he did what he did, what do I care?’ and start producing some foundation for the high achiever.
We shall see.
It seems H has passed her RN exam. Was it predictable? A year or two ago it wasn’t. She was as interested in that as she was in pretending that she was smart and special.
Only when she could embrace that she was ‘ordinary’ then she could put more of her time, more of her effort into studying.
It wasn’t easy. Many decades were wasted on being smart and special before… but she did it.
Most of you, if not all of you still think that you can have everything. That you can become, part time, whatever your dream is.
You can’t.
I remember the whole class laughing at me when I shared that I had 100 pieces of underwear so I only had to laundry three-four times a year.
They laughed because they didn’t know that I was putting all my eggs in one basket and watched it, grew it, treasured it.
Behold, the fool says, ‘Put not all thine eggs in the one basket’ – which is but a matter of saying, ‘Scatter your money and your attention’; but the wise man says, ‘Pull all your eggs in the one basket and – WATCH THAT BASKET.’~Mark Twain
Most of you don’t have a basket. You haven’t even looked for one, let alone find and decide on ONE.
Or if you have one, you didn’t choose it, it chose you, like the scorned woman in the above story.
What you are scorned about is your ‘husband’. You may be scorned because you don’t get enough attention. Enough validation. Or that you don’t have anything to be proud of, so you are not important. Or that the world doesn’t serve up rewards to you on a silver platter…
Ultimately that what you are scorned about is what is your Organizing Principle, your basket… unless you picked something else, and started, in earnest to be true to that instead.
True to it for no reason? lol
Nobody has time for that… Right?
Next Wednesday I’ll have a workshop where I’ll map out the path of getting out of this mundane prison where most of what you do is not your choice: it was chosen for you like slavery, indenture, indentured servitude.
Most of you, if you have an Organizing Principle, like indentured servitude. Paying off that initial hurt… and allowing that hurt to choose the life you live for you.
Does your present Organizing Principle make you happy? Fulfilled? Proud of who you are?
If not, it is time to re-evaluate your prison and choose to not live in it any more.
Next Wednesday we’ll attempt to create a path for you to leave the prison behind and choose a life for yourself, a life you love.
Mapping out doesn’t mean that we’ll get out of prison… only the how and the path… the steps.
So if you think that coming to a class like that will take you all the way to The Promised Land, please don’t come. You don’t understand how reality work, and I don’t have patience for you and for your delusions.
And that is many of you who read it…
But if you have had enough… if you are willing to work for what you want… the one thing, then you are welcome to come.
Prisonbreak, the path to trustWhy is Trust the main issue?
When you want everything, you don’t trust. You hope… It takes trust to put all your eggs in one basket and trust that it’s the right basket. A lot of trust. Trust that it will give you everything you need… Health, Wealth, Love, and Fulfillment.
A life you love and you live powerfully.
PS: in nature animals want to eat, drink water, procreate, and be safe…
If you go only for the same, then you live on the level of animal…
