Explained: That is the name of one of my favorite shows on Netflix.

We all walk around with some approximate knowledge of things… we know absolutely nothing exactly, deeply. At best we remember what we read, heard, but that is second hand knowledge. In a world where PhD’s have 7-10% truth value, second hand knowledge is virtually worthless. Even if you had the ability to repeat word for word what they said, your knowledge would be still just 7-10% truth value… sound dismal, doesn’t it?

So we are bumbling idiots in a world that is too big and too complicated, and unpredictable, and fuzzy for our taste… and we bang ourselves up, repeatedly, for no other reason than that we didn’t know.

I have conversations with people. Some are paid, some are not… both kinds serve something I need: feedback.

I need to know how much of what I said gets through, unchanged, to the other person.

Most of my students are average intelligence or slightly above. And I have one student who is above average… and yet is an underachiever.

My interactions with him have lead to the biggest breakthrough I have had in the past 10 years… the biggest and potentially the biggest bang for the buck result for people… to change them from bumbling idiots to, comparatively, geniuses. Comparatively.

Let me explain: Your native intelligence is X… your brain, an inherited feature, can do certain things.

Depending on your education, and depending on your Starting Point Measurements, you can express all of the X in life, and shine. Or express a fragment of it, and be an underachiever.

It is human nature to fancy yourself smarter than you are. When asked, every person says that they are better than average in intelligence, in looks, in performance. Obviously this cannot be true, and it isn’t.

• I have students who are underachievers.
• I have students who perform at their native intelligence, but want more.
• and I have students who perform way way way above their native intelligence.

This last is the result of the amount of time they have spent with me… being trained.

Through my interactions with my one above average student I have learned what prevents people from fully expressing their intelligence, in life, in their work, and their enjoyment of their life.

Because don’t be mistaken: if Life wants you to be all you can be, and it does, then being an underachiever surely leads to a life of unhappiness.

There is no possible happiness on the first four levels of Maslow hierarchy of needs.

Maslow said, 100% truth value statement:

 

What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. This term refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially.

Which means that all that talk about the pursuit of happiness in the United States constitution means that you have the right to grow yourself, to become all you can be.

So how do you do that?

With all things being equal, your job is to build a knowledge base, a network of knowledge, preferably when you are young and in mandatory school… and then, on that network build the skills and the knowledge that it takes to do what you are uniquely qualified to do in life, and do it well.

Again from Maslow:

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself

Being at peace with oneself is the ultimate way to express what happiness is. No peace with oneself… no happiness.

How I teach this is like this: You have two selves living in you. One self is your actual self, the one that is expressed in the world. The other is your potential self… who, lacking better tools, tries to move the other self, nudge it, and ultimately disappointed, and maybe even hateful towards the other self.

You know about these selves and their relationship through your self-talk…

The better the relationship of these two selves, the more harmony there is, the more you love yourself, and the more you love your life. And when you love your life… you are happy.

Nothing outside, nothing possessed, no success, no wealth can make you happy… happy is an internal affair, between you and you.

And we call it integrity.

The highest level of integrity I have measured from visitors of this site was 10%. 90% unhappy… that is what that means.

 The normal is worse.

You start experience happiness above 30%, and it may be everywhere, or in your work, of in your health…

My integrity measure is 70%. I am at peace with myself most of the day, every day… but then, from time to time, I do something that destroys my peace, my health, my business, and then I am utterly unhappy for a few days, maybe even a week. It’s a personal style…

How I get out of the valley of the shadow of death, the unhappy week, is working my a** off… and having breakthroughs for my clients and students… for humanity. I guess the gap between the two selves result in bigger motivation in time of unhappiness… for me.

For you too, but you don’t heed the call.

As Tony Robbins says: when you succeed, you celebrate, when you fail you ponder.

OK… all that said, let’ me explain the breakthrough I had during this past week of unhappiness:

For a breakthrough you need to be able to connect the dots, sometimes in areas far in time or in space. See the sameness, see the principle, and connect them.

I had already seen, that when someone has a high about-me score, they will translate/transcribe what they here to their own language. It is an unconscious behavior.

I noticed that mostly with private clients.

Then when I broke my wrist and I “wrote” my articles with my voice (podcasts) on of my students volunteered to transcribe them for me.

Once I received, I checked them for accuracy, and pecking out the corrections on the keyboard with one hand… emphasizing the mismatch further in my mind.

This particular student rewrote my words with his, maybe better English, maybe easier words, but not what I said. Not by far.

My vocabulary is designed to cause insight, transformation, clarity, not to be smooth and easy to follow. Easy is a codeword for “causing nothing”.

This went on for a while… unchanged.

Then I asked another student to do some trial runs of a presentation on the Feelings book… and noticed the same thing: the words of the book were rewritten by the student.

Margoczi, the author, is an engineer. He calls things precisely… I will say not word can be changed in that book, if you want to retain its impact, which is tremendous. Tremendous contribution to our self-knowledge.

Then I gave precise instructions to my two accountability students to follow on reducing the tyranny of the high about-me score.

One of those two students followed the instructions, the other followed it for about a minute, and then switched back to his normal talking and praising himself mode.

And yet that minute was so potent, that his numbers changed dramatically.

Holy cow…

So what were the instructions?

Take your eyes of yourself, and acknowledge the source of your results.

I have been living like that for some 20 years, maybe more, so I knew what I did is not what I need to acknowledge… it is a given, and doesn’t belong to this acknowledgment.

Here is an example: I have high cell-hydration, so I am coherent, calm and collected.

What or who am I going to acknowledge so I can get a mindset benefit and power from the acknowledgement?

I could say: I acknowledge myself for charging my water. I acknowledge myself for drinking that water… It is a typical Meh moment… Of course… of course you had to do all that.

But what and who are you acknowledge that takes you out of your self-importance?

Of course, for most of you, this question is going bring up a blank page: nothing and no one.

But who could you acknowledged? What could you acknowledge? What needed to be there that you can even have energized water?

You could acknowledge Source for giving us the Energizer energy.
You could acknowledge me, Sophie, for sharing it with you
You could also acknowledge me for giving of my time to check your water, whether the water is good to energize, whether it is fully energized… for charging you nothing.

Most people with a very high about-me score live in absolute scarcity, and would abhor giving credit to anyone other than themselves…

But if you can force the words out of your mouth, and actually acknowledge the source of the power, you’ll start on your way to lowering your about-me score, and allowing knowledge to get through to you.

And this is the second part of this about-me score breakthrough:

As long as your about-me score is high, new knowledge cannot reach you. You cannot see wide and deep, you cannot connect the dots. And without that you cannot self-actualize… and cannot be happy.

Hundreds of thousands of people bought the 67 steps program. A handful of people benefited. About 1%.

Why? because the “normal” way of hearing the steps is to translate the words to your own words, and then the words lose their power.

If you are monitored, guided by a coach, like in my Reclaim coaching, you are warned every time you do that, so it is not just your better self, but me as well are trying to push you towards hearing what is being said.

Same with my courses.

The reason the Playground is a year long is because it takes time to correct your misunderstanding, misrepresentation, your high about-me score. ((This picture shows what happens when you have a high about-me score. You see yourself, as in a mirror, and only in the corners you see some background… hardly any.

Or as in the cat picture… none. so you rely on your feelings about your intelligence, etc. and not on reality… All of those evaluative scores are the results of comparison… I compare you to 100%, you can compare yourself to people you know…))

I have many students. Two of them are able to acknowledge me, the rest can’t and won’t.

Not surprisingly they are my “star” students, and their about-me score is low.

Back in April I had a free workshop with four participants.

In the end I recommended that they all take on a new self: becoming a value recognizer.

All four failed. Miserably.

One since has lowered his about-me score and is seeing value where he used to see none. If everything has value, some value, he can now see 20% of all value. In his activity, in himself, in his children, in his wife, in his work, in his work with me, in his activities, in me. 20% And he now has the power to acknowledge the value he sees, without feeling that he is slighting himself.

The other student, a woman, started years earlier, and is way ahead of the pack. She has been studying with me for five and a half years. She is a lot happier now than when she started, a lot more accomplished, and, of course, she is more than ready to acknowledge the source of it.

She sees 30% of all the value that can be seen. ((This is an oldie but goody… the Validation movie

))

Seeing value is both the cause and the result of the work we did…

She has taken herself almost completely out of her view of life… and that is the ultimate source of her new life.

So how did she actually do it?

Simple, really.

• She looked to acknowledge the source of her power, every step of the way.
• She learned that context is decisive… And then she practiced that, and thus acknowledge its source, and acknowledge it as source.
• She got in touch when it was hard… and we constructed a new context inside which everything changed… Without that she would have quit her massage school, and would not have a thriving business today.
• She used me the best way she could: as a force to push her back on the strait and narrow… so she can keep growing, and become fully self-actualized.

Simple, really. Easy? No. Your ego, your scarcity thinking, your high about-me will not allow you to do any of the things she did, or not consistently.

You’ll remain unhappy and unfulfilled. Guaranteed…

If you are looking for something to start with, make it a daily practice to acknowledge something or someone… NOT YOURSELF!

And here is a delightful exercise:

ask people in your life what they want to be acknowledge for. Be willing to be surprised. When they tell you, say back the exact words and phrases they said… And you’ll make their day.

If you want to test this before you immerse, email me your answer to this question: what do you want to be acknowledged for? I’ll make sure to acknowledge you for that.

And watch your experience as you read my answer.

PS: here is a TEDx talk on acknowledgment

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