Imagine this scenario: You look up your bank balance, see the number. And suddenly dread grabs your chest and you are off to panic-land.
You see that unless you start generating an income before the end of the month, you’ll be on the dole… at the mercy of others, at the mercy of social services… You’ve run out of money, and you have run out of time.
What do you do now?
If you are ‘normal’, you flail, beat yourself up, try this and try that… or maybe crawl under the cover and hide.
Or send out some s.o.s. emails… Save Our Souls! hoping to be rescued.
I have been in this or similar situation a few times in my life.
What got me out of this downward spiral was courage.
What is really courage?
In the simplest terms: courage is a choice.
Yeah Sophie, but what is choice? That is a good question.
Choice is selecting. YOU selecting, not a reason, not a preference, not an obligation, even a moral obligation.
No. You.
You know it is a choice if and when you can choose a thing or not choose it. And You are free to choose a thing or not choose it.
Then is when you know that your choosing will be the crucial thing that tips the balance.
- If your preference chooses, you didn’t choose… you took backseat to your preference.
- If moral obligation, duty, or should is there, then you didn’t choose… again you took backseat… you are not the one choosing.
- When you choose because… that ‘because‘ reveals that in fact you didn’t choose, your reason chose…
So you see, in the case of courage, you have to be able to take whatever the choice is, even if it is death.
But what do you do with fear?
You take the fear with you.
I have been saying for decades that humanity has courage deficiency, and that is true. But what is underneath is the unwillingness to take the driver’s seat… responsibility. The willingness to be the one who chooses.
Saying ‘I choose’ or ‘I chose’ doesn’t mean you chose… The likelihood that you do not choose, that you have NEVER ever chosen anything is about 100%.
If you pay attention, if you are aware and HONEST, you’ll see that there has always been a because… And you have virtually never been THE cause… or even AT CAUSE of anything.
You have always been the effect, the victim, the rider-on, the passenger, and never the cause.
The issue with this is that the human DNA has, by design, the gene for being the cause…
So what was first, the chicken or the egg? Cowardice or being an effect?
Courage has been ‘nurtured’ out of people, and bred out of people.
It is nearly impossible to find people who can demonstrate courage… choosing to do the dangerous or dangerous-feeling thing…
Why? Because it is so rare.
There are 72 of the 1000 who live in the United States.
The real question is: can you develop courage? Can you develop the ability to truly choose?
The answer is yes.
Exactly the same way you can develop the ability to do the triple Axel… Or speed reading… or becoming a chess master.
I have been given the ability to turn on capacities for people…
But when someone turns on a capacity for you, that is just the starting point. You may be athletic… that is the parallel with the activated gene. Can you do the triple Axel? Of course not! It will take years and daily practice learn to do it and not trip.
The same thing is true about choosing, courage, or any of the capacities.
Alex Hormozi, one of the 1000, shares that he hired a trainer to help him manage, direct his attention, direct his awareness, so he sees more, wider, and maintains control over his attention.
This is what made him a 1000… And obviously he is still practicing, because it is one of the most crucial capacities to help you see what there is to see, so you can act on things that are real, and act on them successfully.
If you take it for granted, the capacity tends to turn off.
Fear is just one of those things that wants to make decisions for you
When you have mastered the capacity of choice, fear is just one of those things that wants to make decisions for you… Like a parent, a boss, a partner, a coach, your next door neighbor, your politicians.
When you have mastered the capacity of choice, you make the choices you make, because that is the choice you are making. It’s an informed choice. It is informed by all the things you see, and also the fear that tells you that the outcome is not certain.
That is all fear says: the outcome is not certain.
It is still going to be up to you to stay alert and do what is yours to do. AFTER choosing.
In life, in reality, everything is uncertain. So fear is constant. But if you always, or even just mostly allow the fear to choose, your life is smaller and smaller, and less and less interesting…
You are dead before you are put into the ground.
Unless it is you who is choosing, your life will become smaller and smaller…
…and eventually you’ll feel like you live in a cupboard under the stairs like Harry Potter.
But there is no Hogwarts for you.
You’ll live out your days in that cupboard, under the stairs.
The fear, by the way, won’t always show up as fear.
It will show up feeling justified, it will show up perfectly reasonable, it will show up in disguises.
For many it will show up as: ‘I am working and they are enjoying the rewards! Darn!‘
Or ‘I don’t have enough myself, how am I expected to give?‘
Maybe: ‘If I don’t make a sale in the next 24 hours, I am finished!‘
All kinds of attitudes that are based on some scarcity…
But there is no scarcity in reality.
In reality everything that is there is there… And the only missing is just words… They are made up… in the mind… The human mind.
Or in a trained dog or cat… that is circling the empty dish… expecting the food to show up magically.
Getting out of the mind and into reality is the remedy…
People’s buying habits have changed, and occasionally my income drops to the point where it is untenable.
If I allow the fear to make decisions, it will look at the world and only see what isn’t there, what should be there, what’s missing. And tell me that it’s over, it’s time to pack it in, and die.
How do I know? It happens every time my income drops. Every darn time.
So what does a person do who has a strong relationship to reality and would rather look there than in the cave of their mind?
That person, maybe, would look around and look if there are things that are not used but may have value for someone else? And offer those for sale. Expensive courses, expensive books, and other good things. That is the kinds of valuables I have.
Go outside of the tiny cupboard under the steps, and see what is and what isn’t. Clearly.
What I am saying here is that reality mostly have more options, more riches than what you see in your mind’s eyes.
Fear, scarcity mindset, thinking that anything is wrong with how things are will make your cone of vision narrow, which is as potent as if I locked you up in that small cupboard under the stairs.
With fear, scarcity, wrong covering up your visual field, you can’t see anything other than those… and it always seems that it is the end of the world.
Chicken Little suffered from narrow cone of vision due to panic. Due to fear.
I have been teaching a method of ‘rebooting’
…I call ‘the hitting bottom method’, but maybe I should start calling it the rebooting method… what do you think?
When you reboot a computer you flush out most of what is stored in random access memory, so the computer doesn’t have to carry it over.
What YOUR random access memory stores is all that fear, all those scary narrow cone of vision ideas that keep you panicked, flailing, and not seeing reality.
The job is simple but not easy.
You need to stop resisting that what you fear…
It can be poverty. An illness or death. It can be the loss of a business or a relationship. Facing eviction. It can also be looking ridiculous and being laughed at.
When you stop resisting something, then in effect you embrace it. You say to it: you are OK. It is what it is. A is A.
Resisting feels like an action, but it is an action that makes everything worse.
The misery that feels like a straitjacket grows tighter and tighter with every effort to fight it off.
The remedy is: let it be. Calm down, and get sober eyed.
No emotion, just be. and when you can just be, then you can look around. And see your options. Consider them.
If a thought comes: this should be different, or this shouldn’t be the way it is… or the idea of blaming anyone including yourself comes, gently, GENTLY let it go.
There is nothing wrong, and no one to blame.
Eventually you may even see a possibility, but it’s not guaranteed.
Any action taken from scarcity, or need, or fear is ineffective.
Even the smartest person is stupid when all they can see is the trouble they are in.
So declare ‘I am rebooting‘ and sit with it until your eye muscles relax and you can see the whole playing field.
Reality is much less forbidding than your imagination, than the cave of your mind.
So allow reality to get through, and your brain to come back online (thus the name rebooting) so you can use your intelligence again.
Can you do it on your own?
I would say it is to late to dig a well when you are thirsty.
Is that true? Yes and no.
If someone can lend you some water… while you are digging, no, it’s not true.
If you find yourself in a bind, in a ditch, at the bottom of a hole…
…you can book an emergency rebooting session with me where I’ll help you get to ‘rebooting’ and maybe even learn the moves. You may need to reboot every day until you get out of the hole.
I am offering a rebooting type session for anyone who needs it… for a limited time.
I am even cutting my rate… appreciating that you may be spending your last dime with me.
The call is 30-60 minutes long… I will record it.
I will own the recording. I’ll send you a copy of it to use.
You’ll get a copy of it. I promise anonymity: I won’t say your name… won’t show your face, so no one will know who you are.
I offer only rebooting type of calls at this cut rate… If you want a regular consultation: Your rate is $150 for 30 minutes, and $250 for an hour long call.
Health, money, relationships are the most frequent topics people deal with… But you may surprise me.
Book a rebooting call with me.If you are not sure if you should book a call or not, ask me…
Read the original article: Rebooting your brain, rebooting your life