The biggest problem we have in life is ourselves. You’d think it’s others, but it is really you.
We’ve met your enemy and it’s us. Get out of your own way! You are your worst enemy!
The sayings abound, because ultimately until you change, nothing will change. But how to change?
You know yourself as someone who doesn’t get things done, who quit, who hates hard things, who would rather eat ice cream in bed watching soap operas while judging others, and everything. Ugh.
Changing yourself feels a daunting task… bordering impossible. And especially difficult because you have no idea how to do it.
Transformation… but the word is overused, and used incorrectly. When you search for pictures for transformation, all you get is pictures of people who have lost weight…
But transformation is not that.
Transformation is a magical way when suddenly you are guided by a different picture than before. You see different, so you act different.
But even below the layer of seeing, you see yourself… and the person who is seeing is the person who will do whatever they will do.
We endeavor to change who you are as a person… So what you see will be different, so that what you do will be different. New. Unfamiliar. A winner?
Turns out that we are pretty undefined, except what others say about us, except what we say about ourselves.
And that is where you see an opportunity to cause yourself to change.
- You could do affirmations, but they don’t work unless by some miracle, you start to behave consistent with the affirmation. Muscle test says that the probability of that is about 1%.
Half of all the articles, half of all the pictures advocate to say positive thing about yourself… To lie about yourself. - You could hire a hypnotherapist, spend mucho dollars, and yet your behavior may not change. Chances that this approach is successful and lasting is 10%.
Seeing yourself doing life differently is only effective if you have done life differently before, if you have all the tools, all the capacities, all the know-how already… which is possible, but unlikely. - I have done both… but the most effective and the most consistent method is what I am going to teach you in this article.
I have gone from miserable to never miserable through this process…
Coming up 20 years ago I did a program with Peak Potentials.
When I am in for inch I am in for a mile… so after the weekend I started to do the assigned homework. All of it.
It changed me and changed my life.
It was a set of exercises and I didn’t know what was the most potent. But 20 years hindsight is good enough, and having done some experiments I can tell you that the most potent exercise was where at the end of the day you need to list five accomplishments for the day.
The Peak Potentials program was all about money, and due to maybe that focus, my finances started to improve.
I had been financially disabled and needed support, but the exercises rebuilt my confidence in myself as a person, and six months after the program I could move out from my abusive boy friend’s house and start to make a living again.
So what was the exercise?
It was part of the 90 day wealth conditioning.
But really what it conditions is who you are for yourself, and who you are for your life. I have no interest in wealth, but I did do all the exercises for 90 days. I got my self out of the rut I had been since my botched surgery in 1998…
And after the 90 days I did just one exercise, the one I say makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE: Acknowledge your successes: List at least 5 successes you enjoyed today.
At the end of every day you are asked to list five things that you have done, five things you accomplished that day.
Big things and small things.
Washing the dishes. Making my bed in the morning. Meditating. Big and small… anything that would go on a to do list and would be checked off.
I am told checking things off your to-do list is a great feeling.
But writing down at the end of the day that you did that thing does something that alters who you are for yourself. How you see yourself. And that who will wake up next day ready to go for it.
Yesterday I got up in spite of not wanting to. I acknowledged it in an article… and today getting up was already easy. Because I set a track record of who I am. Track record as someone who does what I said I would do, someone who does the difficult things and makes them look easy.
See the new identity? I am someone who does the difficult things and makes difficult things look easy.
Mind you, this wasn’t the first time I learned this… but my track record was broken… so I needed to re-establish it.
You can’t just make stuff up. This is not positive thinking b.s. You need to create a track record of ACTUALLY being that kind of a person.
Another process that I learned a few years later does the same thing with a twist…
I am talking about my four daily tasks process, where you set out to do four things in a day, four things that forward your life.
That process is less forgiving… and can take you further. Because like Babe Ruth, you point over the fence and then you do what you said you would do.
You get those four things done. But it’s not enough… just getting those things done won’t change you.
The CRUCIAL thing is…
…that at the end of the day you sit down and do ‘powerful debriefing’ where you acknowledge what you said and what you did… Cementing being the kind of person who does what s/he says.
Promised I would write a blog post and I did that.
I said I would do 30 pushups and I did 23.
I said I would call my mother and I didn’t call her. I’ll call her tomorrow.
Most people don’t do the powerful debriefing, and most people hate themselves. Most people don’t trust themselves. Most people are afraid to say what they will do because they have a track record of being full of crap. Most people say something and don’t do what they said they would do, and either lie about it, or say nothing… Resulting in incompletion… a tremendous track record attracting more of that.
And even if and when they actually get something done, or accomplish something, the self-image of being full of crap doesn’t change… who will wake up in the morning is that person…
This process, either of the two, can change that, done consistently, and done with integrity.
At the beginning you’ll acknowledge yourself for doing things that feel like ‘of course I did that!‘ but you have to start where you are.
When I started, back 20 years ago, I put on my accomplishment list: I made myself lunch… I took out the garbage… stuff that is only an accomplishment if and when you say so.
In reality there is no accomplishment.
In reality you do things, but accomplishment is a human interpretation that you’ll either say or not. I recommend that you say it.
In the work people do with me the ONLY thing that matters is what they do, and out of all those, the only thing that matters is what they acknowledge.
What??! Yeah.
Anything that you did but didn’t acknowledge never happened.
Why? Because acknowledging it creates a context, a context that is necessary for you to grow from it, to get from A to B in life.
Without acknowledgment it was an object in the world of objects that did whatever they did. Nothing noteworthy.
But the moment you acknowledge what you did, a fundamental and profound change happens: you become a person who did that… WHO accomplished something.
The more you acknowledge what you did, the more of a person you become.
In essence you become a cause.
The only difference between the 1000 and the eight billion is that the 1000 lives like a cause. Looks at life as something to cause… to doing things as causing things.
And although it looks innocent, the acknowledgment list for the day practices that muscle, that causing muscle.
In my work we use the word responsibility.
And this innocent habit activates responsibility, the gene. In essence if done through many years, the habit can turn responsibility on permanently.
When you contrast the numbers, 1000, and eighty million thousand, you see that the number of people who are doing this is minuscule compared: most people don’t do it, or don’t do it long enough for it to create a lasting change.
The trick is to start small…
…like the dude with the bull calf he bought. He could easily pick it up on put it on his shoulder. And as the calf grew, the dude grew. So when the calf became a full grown bull, the dude didn’t even notice… They grew together.
In the beginning your list will be like mine 20 years ago: I got up in the morning. Did my exercises. I made myself a cup of tea. etc.
It grows with your ability to take on bigger and bigger things.
It is a lot like spinning plates.
When you drop a plate, like I dropped getting up when I wake up, you definitely put more focus and MORE CELEBRATION around it.
You don’t wait for someone else to acknowledge you. But if you do, my Hero program is great for that: you can list the things you did, and I’ll acknowledge for having done them.
But you want to become independent of anyone else’s willingness to acknowledge you.
One aspect of this process of becoming cause is to give up rules.
As long as you have rules, you’ll never become responsible. The rules will be responsible, and you’ll remain an object in a world of objects, moved by rules.
So one of your victories will be demolishing a rule, and taking on being the cause instead. One rule after the other.
Eating styles, your food list, your cell hydration are rule examples I hear about.
If you have them as rules, they keep you away from being a person.
Instead learn to be the person who chooses to eat that way, eat that stuff, drink that stuff.
Remember the distinction: choosing? Choice is selecting freely after consideration.
If you ask yourself why you did what you did, and there is a ‘because’ in your answer, especially if after the because it says: I had to, I needed to, I wanted to, or I should… you are not choosing, and you are working against being a person, working against moving up in the world, mastering responsibility.
I adjusted a bunch of people’s DNA a few months ago.
When we tracked what happened that they turned off responsibility, ultimately we found them using ‘because’ instead of ‘being the cause’.
- Want to terminate a relationship? Be the cause. Terminate it because you terminate it. No reason.
- Want to start doing something new? Be the cause. Start doing it because you are starting it. No reason.
- Missing one of my classes? Be the cause. You missed it because you missed it. No reason.
It is simple. But it is counter-cultural. The numbers don’t lie. Eight billion vs. one thousand.
But you can do it… even if it will make sense only in 20/20 hindsight.
Another important issue is that you may start but not continue… What is the difference between people who do it and people who start and then quit?
The answer will surprise you (probably).
The difference between those who continue and those who quit is context. Context for doing the process. The context inside which they do or don’t do the process..
Creating context is an advanced process. Keeping a context alive is a very advanced process.
The shelf life of an empowering/created context is a few day max. After that all context devolves to the default context… The having to, needing to, wanting to, and the should, I am not the cause context.
So keeping a context alive and do its job of empowering you is something you design for and learn to keep alive.
Is it easy? Hell no. Do you already have the ‘framework’ for that? Hell no. Do you know how to do it? Hell no, you don’t know how to do it… even if you have learned it… Proof is that you are not doing it.
In the Create a context workshop we do three things
1. dig up and reveal all the way you are not a person now…
2. work on developing context so it becomes second nature to you
3. learn and practice the methodology of keeping an empowering context alive.
The course will go as long as it is needed. Likely in the end, in phase 3, it will be more like a hub, a huddle, to help you stay empowered, to keep the context alive.
The result: Who you are for yourself will change: you’ll start loving yourself. What you can accomplish will double, triple, or go from nothing to something.
At present, if you are current client, what you’ll notice that when we talk you are excited, and that lasts for a day or two. And then you’ll feel imposed upon… until we talk again.
That is what I call a roller coaster life…
Until you learn to keep the context alive, you’ll NEVER be able to live a life of smooth sailing.
Happiness is the experience you have when life is like smooth sailing…
So in this course you learn how to set it up, how to keep it up, and in the followup hero program you get to practice it and get supported daily.
Daily is the operative world… If you only do it weekly, you are still on a roller coaster.
That is the offer.
Take this opportunity for a live you loveRead the original article: We met the enemy and it’s us… we get in our own way