If you are on this site, you will find yourself, more or less, in this article. And it may change your life.
A student writes
Hi Sophie, I think I take trivial and superficial things too seriously. How can I let go of these immaterial incidents or people and focus on important things that truly matter to me?
Know thyself is what is one of the 147 maxims (a short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct. Not the same as a principle, but there are many overlaps… Most of these maxims are virtues. My favorites are “Know what you have learned” and “Be/Know yourself”, because they are maybe the most important. Do yourself a favor, and read them, and ponder.) inscribed in Delphi… 1
In fact, it is a principle.
A principle is something to live by, something to get guidance from.
When we talk about principle driven life, any of those 147, and countless other principles will do your life justice.
When I look at people, when I observe them, their lives have no rhyme, no purpose…
Can someone you consider your equal be your teacher? Your coach?
This question has been coming up for me with some students. And one-by-one I let them go.
When I coach someone, and they answer: good idea! I know they have no respect for me.
What is respect? Respect is seeing me for who I am. By myself, and in our relationship.
To bring fresh humility to the conversation… In the moment. Not from your memory, and not in comparison with your precious I.
If I have accomplished something: you can see it.
The dictionary definition is just one side of the coin: “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”
I don’t care what you feel. But if you cannot see that there is a path towards which you aspire, and I am further along that road and may have insights you cannot yet have… then you have no respect for me.
I have some students that “humor me”… “there is nothing to see… now tell me what YOU see!” is their attitude.
When you see nothing, you are SURE that there is nothing there…
…and that renders you not humble, not teachable, not coachable.
And our relationship will end then and there…
As I have said countless time before: what gives you your actions, your attitude is what you see!
There may be more to respect… I’ll go and examine that at another time.
Saying “good idea!” indicates that you could have come up with the same thing… that someone needs nothing beyond what you know and what you have, to say what they said, to suggest what they suggested.
This, in the normal course of events, tells me: it is time to cut the connection: there is nothing more I can do here: there is no willingness to be humble on the part of the student.
You could say: I have to earn their respect… but if I haven’t thus far, chances are I never will.
It all boils down to humility.
Humility is an indicator of how willing you are to learn. How willing you are to accept guidance and feedback.
It doesn’t mean that you are inferior, and it doesn’t mean that the teacher is superior. You can learn from everyone, sometimes what not to do, if you are humble. But if you don’t bring humility to a teacher/student relationship, then you’ll learn NOTHING.
Unless you can see, unless you know that the more you think of yourself the less you are able to learn. Unless you see that you cannot grow, you cannot learn, if you already know, you are stuck.
The number that tells the truth about you is the inverse of the humility number: how much you think of yourself. The students, ex students, soon to be ex students: that number is above 90%.
Unless you find a way to get off your high horse, you are stuck in your imaginary high… and no learning is possible.
On another note, I had the good fortune to listen in to two of my accountability members weekly call.
This was the first time I ever heard two of my students converse. And it was the best opportunity for me to learn what questions haven’t been answered, what questions and issues my students are struggling with.
They listened to each other respectfully, hoping and receiving a different view and therefore a different answer than they could get on their own.
Really, earnestly engaged with the issues that between where they are and where they’d rather be.
One real obstacle to move forward is high desire, whether it is coupled with desire trap or not.
What we call desire in this work is the “thing” you want, that you may even need to happen, but there is no pathway to actually get it. It always comes coupled with a sense of urgency, impatience… 2
Margoczi uses thirst in the desert. Two men are walking in the desert. One uses walking to get to the oasis, hopefully. The other man is trapped in desire. His imagination goes to a pitcher of perfectly cooled beer, the glass sweating, and the beer going down smooth. He can taste it, he can revel in it, he may even burp.
The first man is in ambition mode: walking, steadily towards the oasis. The second man is already happy… his imagination, his mind has told him: no need to do anything. He lies down in the sand… and will die.
There is also an equivalent to the desire trap in the fear trap
In the fear trap where one is energized by the fear, pushes the energy to his limbs, so he can live. The other will engage with the fear in his mind, and will do nothing… and will die. Some people bounce between the two traps: the desire trap and the fear trap, and never amount to much… while their life force is used up with desire and fear… no activity, no results.
I would have never been able to see this dynamic between the fear trap and the desire trap without these accountability students allowing me to listen to the call (through a recording. I wasn’t on the call… that would have changed the dynamic.)
Bouncing off ideas from someone who is in the same game as you is a brilliant way to get more clarity.
You will hear their opinions, their experiences, what they are struggling with.
No Junior Sophie, no Junior guru… just brothers in arms sharing: two sets of eyes and brains can see more.
But if you’ll hear what I say with the same ears, then you are not a student… and you’ll not benefit from our interaction.
So what can you say, instead of saying: that’s a good idea? or “good point!” or “I guess what you suggest is better!”
Because when you say your superiority suggested remarks, you are sure that you see more, better, and superior to what anyone, ANYONE can see…
And what you miss is what the coaching is. You miss the essence of the coaching. You take the conversation to the mundane, two-bit, linear, and unseeing level of your own.
There are plenty of coaches on your level. The closer someone’s vibration (the lower their eye level is, spiritually) to yours, the more of what they say you’ll be able to get in its fullness.
When you listen to me, you get between 1%-maybe 10%. When you listen to them, you can get as much as 50%. So you don’t have to work, and they will like you more too… They will think you are a god among mere mortals.
And that is what you want, don’t you?
So what is really the difference between coaching and coaching?
I endeavor to hand the power over to you. This became evident in the conversation of my two students. They looked exactly the way I taught them to look, and they saw what I saw. And they informed me that the whole inner reality is not yet visible. So I went to work, and looked where they pointed to… so I can see what we haven’t seen before.
I have shared it with them, and they could see that in fact it matches their experience.
The art is to know where the experience is coming from: the dynamic. The hidden reality.
You cannot coach on the level you cannot see… and you don’t benefit from my coaching if you cannot follow me to the rabbit hole.
If you are someone who is stuck on the level of the ground, we are not a good match: you won’t get the invisible, and you won’t get that you don’t get it.
As I have written before, the book I am reading now is the Metaskills.
The author is a designer, and looks at life through a designer’s glasses.
The article “You live in a world of your own design” is one of the favorite articles on my site. People want to design their lives.
The popularity of the program, Mind Movies builds on that desire to design… but the requirements for design are not there, not there for 99.99% of humanity… What is there is something else, something that doesn’t allow for design.
If we didn’t have words, we would have no emotions. All emotions come from words… some are yours, some are not…
The Amish Horse Training Method is to be able to hear all the words that create emotions… and hear them in a way, that gives you a choice to honor them or not, depending of the source of the words, the relevance of the words…
The Amish Horse Training Method returns you to the driving seat of your life…
Not surprisingly, for most students the first step towards mastery is mastering their attention. Unless you can control your attention, you are a putz… and are controlled by someone or something, but not you. And for you to be you, you need to call the shot.
The luckier students admit that they have a difficult time sticking with a book… because they can’t pay attention to it, they can’t understand, or they can’t remember what they read. Or the do a narrative, argue with the book, agree, disagree… but have no idea what they actually read. They remember the arguing. Continue reading “Master your emotions by mastering the Amish Horse Training Method”
What was in The Secret movie and The Secret book is plain bullshit. Plain and simple.
What we call ordinary is ugly. Being stopped by fear. Being stopped by doubts. Being stopped by laziness. Being stopped by anything.
You get a great idea, or an invitation, and you see that pursuing would take you to a place you’d like to be… but.
That but, that pesky but, is what is between you and becoming a person. And you know it. So you struggle with the shame, and regret… but that is just more of the same.
The only thing that conquers that “but” is action.
