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

You need to be astute to know when to pursue a goal and when to quit

My site gets a lot of hits… people looking to find out how they too could become astute…

Astute people are happier, wealthier, more popular than others.

Of course they are looking for a quick fix to what the opposite of astute is: blindness, unawareness, cluelessness, being a bumbling idiot, or not being able tell their elbow from their ass.

I am not talking down at anyone… I was looking at myself to come up with those opposites.

We are clueless some of the time, most of us: most of the time.
Continue reading “You need to be astute to know when to pursue a goal and when to quit”

When you’re suddenly in turmoil inside and say: Opportunity

I am in turmoil, right now. Inside. Have been for a few days… Since Sunday night…

Some people use milder language. They say they are out of sorts… Same thing.

What happens when you go from a relative cease-fire, stand-still, contentment, to a state of ‘what is going on? Why do I feel so bad?’ Continue reading “When you’re suddenly in turmoil inside and say: Opportunity”

How to use Charlie Munger quotes to get insight

“The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor.”
~ Charles T. Munger

Let’s reverse engineer this quote.

You could look at it straight… and see nothing.

You look at it in reverse, and a whole world opens up.
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Goals, path, intentionality, agenda, forcefulness, and Zen

I had an interesting insight this morning. I woke up with the wicked vertigo back… I moved my neck the wrong way in exercise class… And I didn’t experience the despair, and the urgent desire to fix it. Or will it away. I observed it, and the secondary symptoms that go with it.

I live a goal-less life.

I don’t get frustrated, I don’t get excited, I don’t push, I don’t force, I don’t rush. I don’t do things for a reason either.

I do what I do. Some are creative. Some are response. Some are maintenance of stuff. I read, I cook, I try to move my body, I reflect a lot. I notice the birds. I notice the trees. It’s very Zen.
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Can you become astute? And if you can… how?

This article deals with what it is that you need to become astute, or even just to become a candidate for me to activate astute as a DNA capacity for you…

One of the invaluable benefits I gained from the 67 steps is the idea to consider getting tired in the noonish hours a signal that it is time to lie down and read.

This midday break disrupts the societal pull to do the useful, the purposeful, the goal-oriented stuff… that makes us dull, dutiful, and lopsided… boring.

I have a timer that turns on the light in my bedroom at 5:30 am and then turns it off at 7 am. I wake up and get up during that time. Why such range? Why don’t I use a sound alarm that scares the light out of me?
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Self-image: unless you see yourself doing it… you won’t do it.

Sounds simple, right? self-image means: how you see yourself… but nothing internal is as simple and as straight as that?

The way scientists, medical practitioners, diet-cults, pharmaceutical companies work is called linear reductionism… ¹ and it is a cognitive bias.

A cognitive bias refers to a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.

Illogical, inaccurate, leading you and everyone who is run by a cognitive bias to stupidity.

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Continue reading “Self-image: unless you see yourself doing it… you won’t do it.”

Dyslexia – the good news and the bad news…

UPDATE: I have some underachiever friends and students. I suspect that they may have dyslexia. It just occurred to me… after two excruciatingly difficult conversations in a row… where the partners in the conversation felt stuck, dense, and their level of comprehension is low.

Both are men, both are making a living in their own business, both shy away from learning anything new.

It is one of the worst things for me when I try to teach someone something that they need, and they nod and yes me to death, only to do the opposite or nothing.

Every human wants to make a difference, wants to matter, more than anything, and this flies in the face of that…

But maybe they are dyslexic. Hm.

Continue reading “Dyslexia – the good news and the bad news…”

Republished: The Juice Exercise: what gives you “juice” in life?

I have been coaching people for many years now. The goal was always to take people on a journey to become their best Self.

Now, the task is easier when someone knows who they are. When someone has a Self.

Most people don’t. They have a persona for each group they interact with, the family persona, the student persona, the friend, the gossiper, the entertainer, the this and the that.

Those personas (roles you play) are not you. They were created by a perceived demand in the circumstances, a perceived demand in the environment.

They leave you empty, they leave you being jerked by the shoulds, and have to’s and the wants… like a puppet on a string.

You sense that you have no control, you sense that you are not you… a vague sense.

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Knowledge is power… but not all knowledge

People want to become the person they are in their dreams…

They are not that way… obviously.

Becoming that person is like being a Michelangelo at the stone quarry looking at a block of marble and seeing if the sculpture they see with their mind’s eye fits it.

If it doesn’t fit, you need a bigger block of marble.

But no matter how big a block you choose, it will take two kinds of work to get to the David of your imagination: the work of awareness and the work of chiseling.

Chiseling is the easy part… honestly. I bet you thought that was the hard part. Continue reading “Knowledge is power… but not all knowledge”

Updated: A man of understanding never thinks, he simply looks at the fact. The very look reveals

This article was written around my darkest hour…
It is still valid… but I have added some new insights to it… and I am adding a new distinction: the third brain… The brain that sees accurately through pattern recognition…

I have been looking at Osho. And I just ran out of new things to read, I opened the Mustard Seed talks at exactly this place.

All those that have come before me with the lofty goal to return Man to innocence and mindlessness, have failed. I believe that Jesus, if he ever lived, committed suicide by cop.

And I am more and more convinced that so did Osho. Suicide by cop… or a version of it.

Why would men so much ahead of their brethren with such a lofty ideal want to die? I’ll answer that after you read this quote from the Mustard Seed, Osho’s collected talks on Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas… the doubting Thomas from the New Testament.

The mind is drunk. It cannot see the present, that which is before you. The mind is filled with dreams, desires. You don’t have a presence. That’s why Jesus is missed, Buddha is missed, Krishna is missed, and then for centuries you weep and cry, then for centuries you feel guilty. For centuries you think, pray, imagine, and when Jesus is there you miss. Jesus can be met only if you attain to a presence of mind, such a presence that has no past, that has no future. Only such a presence can look into the present, and then the present is eternal. But eternity is in depth, it is not a linear movement, it is not horizontal – it is vertical.
Continue reading “Updated: A man of understanding never thinks, he simply looks at the fact. The very look reveals”