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

What’s the difference between homo sapiens and human being?

Surprisingly the difference between homo sapiens and human being is in one and only one thing… and it is not a yes/no issue, nor a succeed or fail issue, it is a question of degrees.

How someone answers and then executes the answer to this question will depend on one and one one thing. Here is the question: Life itself is empty and meaning-free… What are you going to fill it with?

So you want to get a great life. You want to make a difference. You want to matter. You want to feel good about yourself. Some of you want to become Expanding Human Beings. Some of you want to become producers. Some of you want to become loving.

There is just a little problem with what you want. There is something there… and there is something missing.

Easy peasy you say… so let’s see.
Continue reading “What’s the difference between homo sapiens and human being?”

Soaring together… a dream I have had all my life

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I am having second thoughts about sharing this information, because of what famous French novelist Stendhal said about love… and the fragility of love…

I made a dietary mistake on Monday. You know, the kind your voices not discounted. The voices that scream in your head: ‘you only live once‘… or maybe the way Madame de Pompadour said, lover of the French king Louis XV ‘Après moi, le deluge!‘ After me the flood… sloppy translation but you can get the gist… f*** it, I want to do what I want to do even if it destroys the earth… or my health. Continue reading “Soaring together… a dream I have had all my life”

Who are you? Are you The Dude, or are you your name?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I just read an article in the Monday Morning Memo and I cringed. It hit me what b.s. is being propagated as wisdom.

As you have seen, if you have been with me for more than a week, you would know that I knock the idea of beliefs being important to your success in life. And after reading Roy Williams article, I am also going to start knocking the notion that the why is what’s important. Continue reading “Who are you? Are you The Dude, or are you your name?”

4 daily tasks… a revolutionary tool to happiness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

4 daily tasks: not what you need to do. instead what you see you can do for a future you decided to have.

In my case the future: being able to pick up and move countries without loss of productivity, loss of health, loss of income, loss of standard of living. Having an apartment, food, transportation, internet connection, mobile phone… the important things.

The four daily tasks are really a very useful tool.

An aside: what is a task? Anything that you can do in one sitting, not long enough even to have to get up to go to the bathroom. Even writing an article is a project that is made up of several tasks… idea, outlining, writing, editing, title, publishing. It may include even researching… Continue reading “4 daily tasks… a revolutionary tool to happiness”

How I got myself unstuck on a project to double my income…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I have been working on the project of doubling my income by adding a new revenue source.

This article is my private process. I wrote it to document how I got myself over the hump. To clarify some things. To get unstuck. And to be able to do it again and again.

At some spots it’s sketchy… it is my process and it has fulfilled its purpose: I have gained the clarity from doing it, the clarity that will help me to get to over the next hump when I want to or need to do it again… because that is how life works.

If life is smooth sailing, then you are not growing.

Then you are not challenging yourself. Then you are most likely going down on a greased chute. Continue reading “How I got myself unstuck on a project to double my income…”

Taking you from smart to intelligent…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Taking you from smart to intelligent…

OK, my intention is to teach you to become intelligent… Lots of people will teach you stuff that is going to help you to regurgitate stuff, look good and smart to others, but is otherwise useless… for life.

So I am really only interested in making you intelligent. And so that you know: intelligence is 70% physical, and only 30% mental. You don’t learn it through mental means: you learn it through being in intimate touch with your physical self, and I am not talking about muscles, and athleticity, I am talking about everything physical, including all the senses, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching.

OK, after this preamble, we can start… Continue reading “Taking you from smart to intelligent…”

Stone Soup: the fairy tale. Case studies galore

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Capacities, distinctions, intelligence, and success in life: there is a strong correlation. The Stone Soup fairy tale is an excellent teaching story.

Let’s start with debunking the current worldview, that intelligence is inborn. We are all born tabula raza… a blank slate.

Your intelligence depends on the number of large chunks, neural connections permanently formed in your brain firing together automatically. Those chunks are created in learning. Not learning about… no, actual learning a skill to unconscious competence. Driving a vehicle is unconscious competence for most. Reading and comprehending? not so much. Continue reading “Stone Soup: the fairy tale. Case studies galore”

On coaching: what it is, what it isn’t… It’s a bridge

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Good coaching is a bridge… Bad coaching is not.

We all have some area where we don’t already have a bridge, a path, to where we want to be

What bridge? What is a bridge?

The bridge is what happens between an idea and its fulfillment, materialization. What happens between a problem and its solution.

Most bridges are connectors between words and actions. Or future words and the process that will make it work. Or teaching and what we actually make of it.

Or maybe our words and the feelings we want to feel, mostly about ourselves…

Words and feelings. Words and doing. Doing and something built in reality. Different ‘modalities’. Continue reading “On coaching: what it is, what it isn’t… It’s a bridge”

Do you have enough? Energy, knowledge, attention, love?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

How do you set the price of your product or program? Or help. Or work. That was the question yesterday in my coaching program.

I know you are probably not a product creator, or a coach. But yet you do have a product or a program… if you work for a salary, if you have friends, a spouse, children.

No matter where you are in life, no matter what you do, money comes to you from other people… or love… or support.

The question here is: what are they paying for? What are they reciprocating?

Depending on your about-me score, you’ll have a different answer… Continue reading “Do you have enough? Energy, knowledge, attention, love?”

Big audacious actions or tiny steps?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Back in the fall of 1987 I was in a camp in mountainous Kingston NY. I was participating in a highly physical course, called the 6-day course, challenging both your body and your fear and what you should do with it. It also added the method of tiny steps that is the secret I want to share in this article.

One of the challenges was to cross a valley on a cable stretched, just with your arm’s strength… (Of course I don’t know what it is called, so the pictures are all about zip-lines… oops… what are they called, do you know?)

The first half of the climb was easy… your weight created a slope in the cable… the second part was wicked… you had to, hand over hand, pull your weight over.

It was a lot like mountain climbing: you put one foot in front of the other, and you don’t quit. Small feats take you there. Continue reading “Big audacious actions or tiny steps?”