As a rule, I don’t have many marker feelings in a day.
A marker feeling is a feeling associated with a set of words… like “you are stupid” and then you feel bad.
Or “you are making a mistake” and you feel fear.
This morning I wanted to work on my presentation on tomorrow’s webinar: the remarkable system of getting to a life worth living… or whatever i called it in the email…
So, as it is totally normal, not a single cell of mine wants to do that work. It’s normal.
Doing something new, doing something public, upsets the ess… it’s not comfortable… it is not what I normally do day in and day out.
Now, if the work were to write an article… none of this would happen. But the webinar format is different… I cannot pause and think between sentences like when I write an article. It has to flow… and there is a fear… A fear of mucking it up. A fear of losing some subscribers. A fear of losing face. A fear of looking bad.
Normal. Not pleasant.
So, as it is also normal, I suddenly want to buy something, something to divert my attention and energies from what I said I would do.
This also awakens a fear… so I have a conversation with myself, that is design to alleviate THAT fear…
can I afford to buy something I am not going to use? yes
does buying something i am not going to use going to permanently damage my precious I?
not necessarily. If I was ready… I’ll use it.
And hear I am, the fear is not going anywhere.
So I bring in the second strategy and attack the “thing” head on… A total mess.
I am not exactly sure what it is I want to say.
I know what pieces I want to teach and to what end… but yet, I don’t know what to say.
So I am going to do the third strategy: I am going to write an article to get clarity, to get words, to get myself into a rhythm that can take me to a good slide show, and a good webinar. Hopefully… lol.
Sidenote: I could have gone through this in my head and just write the article. But this morning’s Rob Brezsny horoscope said that I could get more vulnerable… so I am sharing myself, warts and all.
So about some missing pieces to become worth a damn so you can get to living a life worth living…
All the popular programs teach you to dream big, take bold, massive action, set big goals, celebrate your wins, blah blah blah.
Something must be missing there, because most people, even myself included, have a definitely big aversion to any of those big, audacious actions, goals, celebration… whatever.
I think that how humans operate best is this: You have a big context… a big vision… a big “goal”… something that is bigger than you but includes you.
And then you set small manageable steps, tiny goals, short deadlines, and create a life inside that big context.
What this method does is instantly transforms your aimless, meaningless life into a life that moves you ever so slowly towards a life that fully expresses the meaning you set.
Some 20 years ago I had a coach assigned to me by Landmark Education. She was special. She contributed to me one thing that without it I would not be where I am.
Her context, her big vision, her big “goal” was “fully expressed greatness.”
Now, if you look at that phrase, it has a dynamic quality. It’s like a thermometer. It’s like my Starting Point Measurements. It changes with the weather, it changes with what you do.
It allows you to measure to what degree you express the potential: greatness.
At the time I expressed the potential: greatness between zero and 30, on a scale of 1-100.
I was at 30, when I did something beyond what was comfortable, like ask for help. That was the peak of my expression. But I could see that there is a lot more from that came from: all the way up to 100. I just didn’t have access to it… yet.
Today the greatness, occasionally, is expressed by my behavior to 70%. I still have ways to go… And I am OK with that. I have room to grow.
To show this principle of looking at things, of wording things, of wording context, wording vision, wording a big goal… let me draw you two diagrams.
I learned it 30 years ago from Werner Erhard. But I really learned it while I was being coached by the “fully expressed greatness” lady. Who allowed me to expand the meaning of Werner’s teaching to things intrinsic.
When I send off their Starting Point Measurements to people, 90% react with despair, or they react with animosity.
And 10% says: I see. I am in “C”… there is a lot of room to grow. Can you help me with that? Of this 10% come all my students.
OK, this is what I wanted to teach you, originally.
But as soon as I put my reticular activator on this topic, almost every article I read, every email, every conversation, was adding complexity to this simple shift in how you look at where you are.
I won’t attempt to add all this complexity…
I’ll just add here two things that I may never have another chance to say:
1. Most people I observe are idle. They have no bridge, they have no path between where they are and where they would like to be.
So when you look for them on the above two diagrams, they are stuck in A.
What is the problem with that?
One of Newton’s laws (physics!) in my words is that an object in movement will stay in movement unless something stops it. Or said in another way, an object that isn’t moving, will not get into movement unless something starts moving it.
So for you to move from A to B, you need to start moving. What direction? It doesn’t even matter.
For example, if my goal were to do daily live youtube or facebook talks, doing this talk tomorrow is a great action that can be considered something that puts me into movement.
What I’ll do after that? I don’t know. I don’t have to know. Something of the same vein… The important thing is to be in movement, so I can say: Hey, I am there!
The unemployed engineer who is waiting to find a job… doing things that don’t make him move towards employability.
He may be a good engineer, but he is stationary. He could start learning programming, or selling, or communication, or planning, or design… anything that can move him out of stationery… and add tangible or intangible to his resume.
Little goals, little actions in the beginning… but as you get into movement you can take on more… so you can say: I am at 10% of what I can achieve. Yaay.
One of the stumbling block for people is that they can’t focus on the book they are reading. They get hijacked by the voices that are starting to comment on every word.
Without reading, without what reading provides, you are always going to be in the low regions of any activity, any skill, any profession, any goal. Really.
I have turned quite a few people into readers without increasing their intelligence, without increasing their curiosity.
How? Using this method.
When they start, I expressly forbid them to go for understanding. The job here is to be able to read the words on the page without worrying about understanding, worrying about getting what the words say. And when the attention goes away and you notice, gently bring it back to the words.
It takes time, it takes daily practice. If you skipped this step, you are still running the risk of not being able to get much of what you read or what you hear. Your attention will be undisciplined, and on the scale of fully expressed greatness, or fully hearing what you hear, you’ll be in the low teens…
If you pay for what you read or what you hear, you’ll waste a lot of money. And your projects that need you to know what you wanted to learn are going to be stuck… Not the ticket for a life worth living.
So the other benefit from being able to say: “I am in C” is that you will start where you are…
2. The second example is a little tricky.
A friend of mine recently quit his job. He started to trade stocks online for a living.
His wife was sick at the time, too sick to worry about what he was doing. But now she feels better and she is “hired by the voices” telling him that he can’t do what he is doing.
He worked on developing the skill, learning what he needed to do for about a year now. He traded on paper, he saved up money, and he quit when his wife got deadly ill. He created a bigger than himself context: I need to be a caregiver, so I have to work from home.
He was already in movement, he had about 40% of the knowledge that to have a fully developed stock trading business… what he didn’t count on is the forces that want to stop him.
The Dark Side dressed in the disguise of his wife, and probably his other relatives too.
But because he built up the self-confidence over a whole year of diligent activity, the Dark Side has a harder time to stop him, than it has with most of you.
And then he has me… I see that he reads my articles every day, and we also talk once a week.
He’ll make it. He built up to it, and he isn’t buying into the “you can’t do that” voice, whoever it sounds like.
He started at 40%, he is at 45%. So he has grown his knowledge. Slowly but surely he’ll win at this. I have confidence in him, because he is doing the work.
OK, this is the essence of what I am going to teach on your webinar. Want to be there? I’ll probably go beyond… I normally do. Remember,
It is hard to be silently brilliant. Lots of thoughts occur when you open your mouth
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Oh, one more thing… I wrote an article four years ago… worth reading, connectedIf fear rules you….
Read the original article: Bridging to the hard, the unknown, the scary… how to inch your way to your dreams