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

Just hang in there! Your reactiveness is destructive!

Whether you know it or not: you are reactive… It is part of the human condition.

Reactiveness: Hastiness coupled with easy resignation is the death of any dream.

Although you can kill a dream in many different ways… whether it is a dream for a superb business that allows you the time to work on the business and not in the business… whether it is a dream for self-expression, fulfillment, and making a difference, whether it is for fame and fortune, whether it is for health, vitality and mobility in your later years… you can kill it in many many many ways.

And god knows we do everything in our power to kill our dreams. Continue reading “Just hang in there! Your reactiveness is destructive!”

Stone Soup: the fairy tale. Case studies galore

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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”

Getting along without giving up who you are…

Getting along, working along, creating side by side is very hard… often hopeless. This article points to the right way that you can learn to get along… and have harmonious relationships.

Some of my students are working on distinguishing conflict… Telling conflict apart from everything that looks like, and maybe even feels like a conflict.

For decades I pondered why the Greek sages said ‘Know Thyself‘. What difference does it make if I know myself or not.

And I wasn’t alone. Approximately 99% of humanity knows themselves to a maximum of 1%, which is as if they don’t know themselves at all.

In my Starting Point Measurements I measure this as ‘self-awareness.’

So in the absence of knowing your self, you make up a self… and that I call your ‘precious I’. Who you should be… not who you are. Continue reading “Getting along without giving up who you are…”

Can you tell when you are lied-to, when someone is fibbing?

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Are you being lied-to?

I get guidance. I ‘obey’ guidance.

Guidance is not a full blown sentence, just a nudge. And often it is so that what I am supposed to see is down many days, many weeks, and I need to trust. I am supposed to do what the guidance says I am to do. Do it in spite of the fact that I have significant price to pay. It is mostly paying with the quality of my sleep, or having unendurable pain, or losing a lot of money.

I am not complaining. I signed up for this, after all.

Here is the newest.

I don’t know how many millions watched the show I was asked to watch by the guidance. How many millions watched and came up with any learning… Probably very few. Continue reading “Can you tell when you are lied-to, when someone is fibbing?”

Life should be different? you should be different?

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If you live like life should be different…

Two basic components of my teaching: 1. we live in a pretend world, how the world should be, and 2. we’re pissed that the pretense isn’t real.

I watch what articles, what emails get read. And I have noticed that when the title isn’t saying what it should say about you: smart, clever, good, blah blah blah, you don’t want to read the article. Or the email.

Or if you are a client: If I say something about you that I shouldn’t say… you cry ‘bloody murder’, or you may even quit.

What I said didn’t fit the pretend world you live in…

If you prefer new to old and tried, if you prefer going wide than going deep, if you prefer many friends to having one close friend, then… Continue reading “Life should be different? you should be different?”

The constructive use of the proverbial hammer…

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The proverbial hammer? The law of the instrument, law of the hammer, Abraham Maslow’s hammer is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, ‘I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.’ This article intends to point you to new tools through highlighting the cost of having only what you have.

Every Tuesday I start my day with reading Rob Brezsny’s email. And every Tuesday it’s been putting me in a foul mood for the past 6 months, not before.

Why? Because every campaigner is like the man who has a hammer and sees everything as a nail. And keep banging away with it on everything.

But the world is not all nails, and the particular hammer Rob Brezsny has… Continue reading “The constructive use of the proverbial hammer…”

Concerted effort? Phalanx? On what, for what? And why?

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There is ‘knowledge’… what you hear, what you read, even what you see… and then there is knowledge that is the result of what you do and observe.

Mind you, all knowledge depends on observation and actually accurately identifying what worked and what didn’t.

Because there are thousands of things that you can see at any one time, and it is hard to know what is operative and what isn’t, most people never distinguish accurately the operative factors, and therefore need a coach who looks from the sideways view where there are less factors to contend with.

What do I mean? Continue reading “Concerted effort? Phalanx? On what, for what? And why?”

Magic Bullet… How To Make a Miracle

You wave your magic wand, and bada bing bada bang, a little magic dust, and you have a miracle.

Or you take a little pill, and you wake up beautiful, slim, sexy, and rich.
Or you pray that God gives you a miracle
Or you meditate
Or you buy that get-rich-quick scheme that promises overnight money with no work at all
Or you play it over and over in the theater of your mind… You feel it… you appreciate everything… still…

But all these don’t cause a miracle.

No matter how skillfully you wave the wand, or how fancy (and expensive) the little pill is, how passionately you pray… etc. etc. etc.

No. none of them work.
Continue reading “Magic Bullet… How To Make a Miracle”

What tools can get you unstuck? Try distinctions

In case you’re stuck – distinctions can come to rescue you, to liberate you, to save the day, save your sanity, save your money, save your life.

You can get stuck, seemingly, in many different ways. You get stuck and things remain the same, your past, your opinions, your truth, your reality… meaning: your occurrence.

Occurrence is a combination of what happens, what truly IS, observable by others, even a Martian, plus your commentary, your meaning, your interpretation.

My Playground program is about taking you from that stuck view of your life, your world, to being able to see what is actually real in your view, and what isn’t. Continue reading “What tools can get you unstuck? Try distinctions”

Your vocabulary is predictive of your success

If what we need is a larger vocabulary so we don’t fall into the trap of the mind where everything is the same as everything else, that it makes a lot of sense to start, as soon as you can, building a larger vocabulary.

With every new word a large chunk of the invisible reveals itself… priceless.

Here is the first word:

Jaunty. 1. könnyed and 2. vidám in Hungarian, I have to admit that in the past 37 years since I left Hungary, I haven’t seen anyone being jaunty… Maybe I saw people obnoxiously loud and too much smiling… but jaunty?

Jaunty is having or expressing a lively, cheerful, and self-confident manner, cheerful, cheery, happy, merry, jolly, joyful, gleeful, glad. It is not the the jolliness of pretense. And it is not the drunken glibness of the party. It is beautiful and it is natural. And I am, occasionally that, but haven’t had a word for it.

When I look at people’s reaction to it, they cheer up and smile with you… Continue reading “Your vocabulary is predictive of your success”