Imagining, the desire trap is an Epicurean way of living. You imagine what you want, enjoy the pleasures from it, and never invest in a future where you could actually have, in reality, what you wanted.
I just finished Step 10 of the 67 steps… this is my tenth, maybe eleventh round through the 67 audios. It’s given me, so far 26 months of being light on my feet… instead of flat footed. ((
the dictionary says: unprepared and unable to react quickly; “the new product caught their competitors flat-footed”.
I didn’t find the meaning I was really looking for. For me flat footed means: cannot turn around on the balls of their feet… stuck. Light footed=able to change. Flat footed=stuck in one position seeing the same thing. And that is the meaning I intend to say. If you know a better way to express that, please contact me.))
I have changed a lot in these 26 months. I changed, but more importantly, what I see, what I CAN see has changed.
My coaching program cost about $700 a year, so thus far I would have paid about $1500 for my education. Honestly, I have made that money back every month in the past six months.
I have paid, many times before, a lot more money for three day programs… And then I was alone, no guidance, and eventually I dropped the ball. Every time.
There is something to be said about a system of tiny changes, tiny corrections… Inch by inch you get ahead, but not necessarily in big spurts.
There are, maybe, only three types of people depending on how they relate to growth:
- 1. Type one is going to jump into things, without preparation, without looking, and fail.
- 2. Type two is going to do all in their heads: they will imagine the results, and never do anything constructive.
- 3. Type three is going to resist… refuse any support, because they believe they already know… And if they’ll do anything, it will be a fix-it type action… the result of which may be the next bigger problem.
One could safely say that all three type are doomed to failure, unless they change.
There are a few people, really very few, who are outside of the three types, at least seemingly. But are they happy? Fulfilled? Healthy? I am not seeing that anywhere.
I have elements of all three types in my behavior… I jump, I go into my head, and I resist… I used to be a jumping jack… I used to go into deep depression…
What the 67 steps program has done for me is this daily adjustment. I now rarely, if ever, hang out in one type of behavior long enough to wreak lasting damage on my health, on my happiness, on my money, on my fulfillment. Long enough… which means: I still experience stuck states, but not for very long.
HOW do I do the 67 steps differently from my students that my results are different?
I do a step a day… and even when I forget a day, it is still six steps a day. I walk and listen. I cook and listen. I lie down and listen. I make sure I listen.
That is a secret of mine. Another secret is that I am not trying to learn what the audios say. I just listen. “We” go every day to a different country, a different area, a different scenery.
The most diligent student of mine does a step every four days. Most students do the steps, listen to them, even more sporadically.
Result: No continuity. The energy of the previous step wears off by the next day… in four days it’s not even a vague memory. ((I had a student who, for about a year, did exactly what I did, listened to one step a day. The audios are, on average, 30 minutes long. He was raising his vibration, and things were well. But I asked a question that knocked him off his stride… and he stopped doing the steps.))
The secret of the electric bulb staying lit, or at least look lit is the result of the frequency of the electrical current. The current cycles through changes… variable current.
If the frequency were smaller (the frequency is how many times the electricity covers a cycle in a second) you would see the alternation of light and dark… maddening strobe light.
The same is the fact with film, celluloid film… but, I think it is even the same principle with videos. If the frequency of the separate frames were smaller, we would see chunky movements…
Newton’s law (about moving objects staying moving…) says that if and when the object already stopped, it takes a lot of energy to make it move again.
This is definitely the case about re-starting your growth engine every four days…
Because of the different frequency (energy infusion) my results and your results will be very different.
One of the reasons we learned physics in school is to understand physical laws.
This is not a principle. This is not a good idea. This is not even a spiritual law. This is a physical law, and anyone who ignores physical laws is going to fail. All real winners make sure that they don’t violate physical laws… including some billionaires whose book list include books on physics.
So if you ignore the laws of physics, and still hope that regardless you’ll make it to the peak… then please, by all means dream on. That is where you’ll have your only success… in your dreams.
I have had some students who experienced success at one time or another. And then the success was gone, and it was replaced with despair, and fumbling.
Their accidental success didn’t come from obeying physical laws, or alternately, they violated the laws of physics while they were successful, that is why they failed.
In the 67 steps you can catch up on the knowledge you missed, and start to build a life on healthy foundation.
Especially the first 10 steps. If I had to start it again, I would do the first ten steps ten times, 1 through 10, and then again 1 through 10. I would not do 11-67 until then.
Why? Because they are foundational.
I remember two years ago, every single step was brand new, and it was hard for me to see how I could live my life somewhat successfully, until I learned those ways.
But if I want to be honest, I have never been really successful. And I still am not.
I am getting closer, but I am definitely not there.
I may never get there…
Most people who fancy themselves successful, got there suddenly through some unethical, questionable move.
((
You can remain unsuccessful, or so-so successful, even with unethical moves.
What is ethical is not exactly clear: ethics is not an exact science.
But when I look at my own path, I have had a lot of “improved” products.
I remember when I came to this country, I was up in arms against the labels on products, that said “improved”. To me that meant that it is not good.
I was convinced that you can get things right, so right, that you don’t have to improved them… or you can’t improve them.
I am sure I wasn’t alone. We want to be sure, we only want the best, we don’t want to be part of any experimentation.
But, obviously this is not possible, given the amount of stuff, 99%, that we don’t know, and we don’t even know that we don’t know.
So was I engaging in unethical practices, was I a liar? Your opinion will come from your world view… Unfortunately.))
- Milton Trager was a good technician, but someone suggested that he teaches… but you cannot teach what cannot be taught.
- Other people gave lip service to a “we”, but ultimately they used people… and wanted world dominance. That creates wretchedness… and I have a hard time saying that a wretched person is successful…
So I am proud to say I am not successful yet. Why am I proud? Because it means that I haven’t settled, I haven’t lied, I haven’t decided to deceive others.
I am still growing. And I love it.
There is a meme that success is not a destination…
Well, in the case of many, it’s been a destination… successful and wretched. They stopped moving.
Now, getting back to the three types of people:
- 1. Type one is going to jump into things, without preparation, without looking, and fail.
- 2. Type two is going to do all in their heads: they will imagine the results, and never do anything constructive.
- 3. Type three is going to resist… refuse any support, because they believe they already know… And if they’ll do anything, it will be a fix-it type action… the result of which may be the next bigger problem.
- You can see that type one can stop jumping, without looking… and take course correction daily.
- You see that type two will have a real hard time coming out of their heads…
- And type three may move out of resistance, a few minutes every day, if they have daily exposure to guidance.
Behavior is closely related, closely correlated to what you see. In fact they are indivisible, like the front of the hand and the back of the hand.
The technical term for this seeing is called “Opening for action”.
For the most part, none of us knows how we are looking. ((In my exploratory, diagnostic webinars we see it, then we promptly discount it… Yeah, this is how stupid the mind is!)) It is not something that we even consider as anything important, anything relevant, and yet, as with all invisible stuff, it holds tremendous power for change, for growth, and for abundance.
I noticed this morning that I have been stuck. Symptoms of stuckedness. Dishes were piled up in the sink. This morning I removed them from the sink.
This looks insignificant, but it isn’t. For me to do something different, I had to see something different.
It started yesterday. For some unfortunate circumstance, I could not go shopping on Wednesday, and unless I did something different, I was going to be without food for a week.
I sat with that for a whole hour. Because I kept on seeing that I can’t. My schedule didn’t allow it. Then I asked myself: am I important to me? Yes. Am I more important than my schedule? Yes. I felt the fear… but I did cancel my appointment, and went to the grocery store instead.
I bought what I needed, and still had two hours to wait for the bus taking me home.
I read my kindle, and then I started to push the shopping cart towards the bus stop… and found a SuperCut… had my hair cut, read some more, got home, and …life seems to be changing.
Now was that all?
No. On Wednesday one of my students asked about sleep schedule. The Daylight savings switch messes with our internal clock, and by the time you find your rhythm, it is time to switch back.
So I explained to my student how the circadian rhythm works, and what he needs to do to find a good time to go to sleep, so he can get up early.
And then I decided to do the same.
I have been up for two hours now. Second morning in a row… Instead of getting up at 7:30, I got up at 5:30. Without an alarm clock.
I won’t explain here how it works, you have the replay of the webinar… I explain it there.
Instead I want to bring your attention to a shift in where I was looking.
I had been looking at sleeping as a victim of the daylight savings time, even though it stole hours from me every day. Because no matter what time I get up, no matter what time I go to bed, after 4 pm I don’t feel like working… So I am going to waste time, unless I go to bed early… But unless I go to bed much earlier, I won’t be able to sleep… And it’s a catch 22… baaah, baaah.
So my eyes were on “I can’t”, and that was that.
Until my integrity didn’t let me stay there.
There is this famous story about Gandhi.
A woman brought her son to Gandhi and asked him to tell the son to stop eating sugar. Gandhi said: “come back in two weeks.”
The woman and the son came back two weeks later, and Gandhi said to the boy: “Stop eating sugar. It’s not good for you.”
The mother asked Gandhi why he could not tell the same to the kid two weeks earlier.
Gandhi famously answered: “Two weeks ago i was eating sugar. I needed time to stop eating it myself…”
Of course this is a made-up story, but points to integrity, which is the price you pay for self-love and for loving your life.
So the moment I explained my student how to do it, I had a choice between no integrity and wretchedness, or loving myself and loving my life.
I chose loving…
That choice gently switched my eyes, and then again, and again.
So what am I saying?
Your behavior is stuck if what you see is stuck.
Even a gentle looking around will start to unstuck your view, and your life…
The problem is that you don’t even know your eyes are stuck. And what you don’t know, you cannot change.
I have found that coaching, frequent guidance, whether it’s paid or free, can unstuck your view.
Often just reading an article can do that. Although most of what I see other people publishing shows that the “author’s” eyes are stuck too.
What the eyes are stuck on is an attitude, a world view, or a view of the world.
Mostly scarcity.
- Having to,
- needing to,
- having to, and
- should are scarcity states.
“I am” is mostly a stuck scarcity state.
“I know” is a scarcity state
“I can’t” is a scarcity state
You’ll either learn these scarcity states, or you’ll think they are reality. And then you’ll stay stuck.
I have had students who refused to move their glance so that they can see something different.
They are not students any more.
Willingness, it seems, is one of the most important ingredients for a happy, fulfilling life. Not lip-service willingness, but real willingness.
Most people aren’t willing. Willingness is a between 1 and 100 scale.
The purpose of the Starting Point Measurements is to move you away from your stuck state… but it seems that willingness is missing. A lot.
My hunch is that the Delusional Self, the one that is engaging in fantasies, is doing the seeing… not the real self. And the Delusional Self can have anything in the imagination they can think of…
Except thinking about flying isn’t. Thinking about having money, love, joy… isn’t.
They, money, love, joy, will come from getting out of the imagination and into life… where you have to do something. And then you’ll find this knowledge really helpful.
Like I did. I first learned about it earnestly back in 1996 from an eye doctor. It changed my life.
Read the original article: Stoic vs. Epicurean… Will you get unstuck from the desire trap.