Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

Keep your wits about you. Don’t be a monkey with a big brain

Keep your wits about you… or what it takes to become a human being instead of a monkey with a big brain

One of the amazing things I learned from The Jungle Book is that humans are really just monkeys, if we look at their behavior. Lots of chatter, no aim, short attention span, have no ability or even need to think independently…

Very interesting findings. Once you put your attention on a behavior, capacity, characteristic, you start to see what it does for you… or conversely, what the lack of it does for you.

The capacity I am now observing is attention. ¹There is a fundamental difference between learning ABOUT attention and TRAINING your attention. I saw that there are courses on Khan Academy about attention, just like we have done the coursera course, learning to learn. Both are about… not the doing of it. Continue reading “Keep your wits about you. Don’t be a monkey with a big brain”

Self-awareness… How to shift your state of being, how to toughen up?

What is the easiest method to shift someone’s state of being?

We already know. Children, when they cry because they hurt themselves, can be brought out of crying by directing their attention to something more interesting, more engaging.

We use it in the Soaring Method.

I use it in almost every coaching conversation I have with people who are stuck in some unproductive state of being, like sadness, despair, maybe even resistance.

State of being, mode of being, beingness… all are outside of what you call self-awareness…

Self-awareness on the level of human is all physical and emotional.

Continue reading “Self-awareness… How to shift your state of being, how to toughen up?”

Where every student of mine is lacking is communication.

One area where every student of mine is lacking is communication.

When suddenly they do something that I consider communication, I cry. Tears of joy. One of my recent articles brought a flurry of communication… but it was a ‘fluke’, an accident, a one time event.

What is communication, really?

The dictionary says: conveying information. Bah humbug.

The purpose of communication is to get what you want, from life, through other people.

Continue reading “Where every student of mine is lacking is communication.”

What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?

I measure 30 things about a person when they ask for their Starting Point Measurements.

They are all very relevant, but when it comes to the quality of your life, to your life satisfaction, your experience of your life… one could almost say, the level of your happiness depends on one thing.

The level of your happiness depends on one thing

The culture claims that to be happy, you have to have possession, you have to have success, you have to have comfort, safety, fulfillment, companionship, whatever, and, to some degree it may matter but not as much as the number, the measure, just one number told me why 99.99% of the people I have ever measured had a low life satisfaction, even though some had money, success, love even talent… seemingly everything you’d ever wanted. Continue reading “What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?”

The risk of living a life without a purpose… no direction

A purpose is not automatic… or if anything can be called automatic, it is always bad… or inappropriate

We, humanity, are more attuned to danger, bad feelings, than we are to good feelings… And it is natural, given our size and defenselessness in the natural world.

In order to get anything done, you cannot rely on your natural inclination, it won’t be helpful. Your natural inclination is to do nothing much, reserve your energies, unless you are hungry, you are horny, or you are in danger. Continue reading “The risk of living a life without a purpose… no direction”

How Can This Simple Exercise Be The Ticket To Happiness?

I wrote this article more than four years ago. I assigned this simple exercise to about a hundred people, and to my dismay, all failed.

I discovered two days ago why… and now I can start teaching it again, and see if it is a lack of capacity, or a lack of intention that causes the failure. Continue reading “How Can This Simple Exercise Be The Ticket To Happiness?”

A great little exercise to cause self-love…

Last night, in bed, I accidentally hugged myself.

Then, unexpectedly, I said to myself: I love you, little one. And then the “fun” began… The emotional dings, the doubt, the questioning, the grief.

Hoho… I said, what’s going on?

The little voice said: why would you love me?

Because I do… I said.

Do you love me, even though the house looks like a mess?

I don’t love your house, I love you. house, no house, mess, no mess… I love you.

oh. But do you love me even though I am getting old?
Continue reading “A great little exercise to cause self-love…”

Identify and overcome your dominant way you avoid

It’s eerie how soul correction that is calculated from your date of birth and zodiac signs, calculated from just your birthday can be so very accurate in their core.

By core I mean your base nature. What you are inclined to do, the attitude you are inclined to have.

My horoscope for the next weeks or so… by Rob Brezsny:
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Pike’s Peak is a 14,115-foot mountain in Colorado. It’s not a simple task to trek to the top. Unless you’re well-trained, you might experience altitude sickness. Wicked thunderstorms are a regular occurrence during the summer. Snow falls year-round. But back in 1929, an adventurer named Bill Williams decided the task of hiking to the summit wasn’t tough enough. He sought a more demanding challenge. Wearing kneepads, he spent 21 days crawling along as he used his nose to push a peanut all the way up. I advise you to avoid making him your role model in the coming weeks, Virgo. Just climb the mountain. Don’t try to push a peanut up there with your nose, too.

As you know, or should know, I don’t teach anything I haven’t tested myself… and mostly on myself. Continue reading

Heaven or hell… same place, same people… the difference:

The opposite of Life is a conversation is you living in a world of objects, being an object. An object. Ugh. I don’t want to be an object. But if you look, you ARE treated as an object, by nearly everyone nearly all the time.

People don’t look at YOU, they look at your body, your clothes, your hair… but not YOU. Continue reading “Heaven or hell… same place, same people… the difference:”

Can you be a creator and yet live in the machine? Yes, if…

Can you be a creator and yet live in the machine? Yes, if you live like life is a conversation

My introduction to this concept, that life is a conversation was in October 1987… The month of the big stock market crash.

I was an architect in the luxury architecture business… custom vacation houses on the tropical islands… and suddenly the clients lost all their money in the crash… and the projects were put on hold.

I had no savings, I had no other income, so this new idea, that I have the power to say, to create a conversation how to hold the “I am probably going to lose this job and my income” with something other than panic and anguish… And I did. I invented stuff, sometimes hourly, and could keep up my sunny disposition.

I did get let go, but whenever this company needed an architect, they called me, per diem, and I survived and was fine… thank to this new way of looking at life.

Did reality change? Yes and no. The largest reality didn’t change. But what was possible for me, definitely changed. Continue reading “Can you be a creator and yet live in the machine? Yes, if…”