I am getting a lot of requests to teach people how to become people who live a life worth living, who excel in all four areas, all four pillars of the good life.
My answer is almost always: Sorry I can’t help you.
But why?
Today I got lucky and got my answer in a pristine form.
My University classmate, Panni called me. We talk once a month. She is, of course an architect: we were classmates in architecture school, a five year study.
This is probably the most shocking sentence in the whole 67 step program.
I literally don’t know anyone who lives that way.
People try to succeed, try a diet, try this and try that… while their plane crashes in every area.
So what is the difference between who are like that, who are on their way to become that kind of person, and others who never ever land their plane on the landing strip?
Everything you ever wanted is available to you, if…
… if you are willing to look at see what is so about you and your life.
The truth. Naked. Ugly. Often shameful.
Here is a correspondence I had with a client today:
She said: “I’m interested in changing my context since it’s part of what keeps me stuck.”
“… answering the questions: what am I doing? Why am I doing it?
Unless you have done the work of identifying what you have been doing, and why you have been doing it, no way you can shift the context. You cannot catch what you can’t see. And you cannot change what you can’t catch.”
To the degree you are able and willing to do that, to the same degree you can change your life. ((
One type of memes that you honor as the truth are called a seemings. It is that way… but if you can change the saying: “It seems to me that…” then it becomes a seeming.
Why turn something into a seeming?
Saying “It seems to me” starts turning on the capacity of responsibility.
Responsibility, the way the capacity sees it, is a privilege. It is a way to look at the world where your power is intact, and you have access to it. Access means: you can feel it, you can use it. Power for what? Power to be well, power to change something, move something, create something.
When you say “It seems to me” you suddenly take responsibility, to start the process, by saying th
For decades one of my sore spots was that people refused to serve me, even though I paid them.
I remember saying to myself: my money is not good enough for you? and wept.
I had no idea how I “accomplished” that… in 20/20 hindsight it is still a little spotty.
What wasn’t clear to me, never even occurred to me, how my attitude effected the service provider. My “To what degree you think of yourself:” starting point measure was, at the time, 70%. From my behavior I would have guessed it was higher.
Mainly I overrode what they said. I argued, I knew better, I acted with contempt…
What I didn’t know then is that being a service provider needs to be a win, or no service.
Oh no! This video software that used to work doesn’t work any more. I cried out… This can happen to anyone. Technology changes so rapidly, keeping pace with it is both expensive and time consuming.
Sometimes there is an upgrade. Nowadays upgrades cost money… or the software developer simply abandoned you… and you are stranded with a software that doesn’t work any more.
I have been teaching what I teach for seven years. Teach people a world view that has been tested and true, and includes the invisible. This world view is sharply different from the accepted norms… but it works, instead of just being a nice theory like what psychologists and philosophers teach. Or even Landmark Educati
Both are context words. Neither talks about the stuff that is inside the context… inside the wrapper. The wrapper tells you how to look at the content.
It has nothing to do with the stuff, or the quantity of it. It can be great, it can be plenty… the context, scarcity or abundance will tell you what to feel, what to think, what to do.
Why? Because context is decisive.
You can have plenty inside the context of scarcity, and feel that you don’t have enough. Enough time, enough stuff, enough happiness, enough whatever…
…or the opposite, you can have little, but inside the context of abundance, you have what you have, and what you have is enough.
One of the signs of the overwhelming inauthenticity ((My definition of authenticity is that there is nothing in the unsaid that isn’t consistent with what is visible… Authenticity is one of those big words that no one knows what it really means… so they go by feeling. The simplest way to define authenticity is that there is no pretense, no façade, no game playing. The person is the same through and through, whether he/she is seen or not.
Most people smile a lot in their pictures, but I can feel their anxiety, their fear, their inner trembling.
One more thing that I haven’t said before, but given that we are working with memes: if you obey memes, if you repeat memes, if you try to fit in with memes, y
Yesterday I used the free community van to get to two stores I cannot get to easily on my own.
Note: in the illustrations I am not taking sides. I am illustrating that there is confusion and disagreement in what is race, what is racist, what is racism, and what it does is it makes people rigid, lie about what they think, and vote for Trump… ugh.
The driver of the van, PhD in sociology, asked if it bothered me if he continued to listen to NPR radio ((National Public Radio)) . It was a public debate in Trump and if he was a racist.
I listened for at least half an hour, and observed that no one bothered to define what they meant by
I am getting a lot of requests to teach people how to become people who live a life worth living, who excel in all four areas, all four pillars of the good life.
Make your plane go where you want it to go…
Everything you ever wanted is available to you, if…
One type of memes that you honor as the truth are called a seemings. It is that way… but if you can change the saying: “It seems to me that…” then it becomes a seeming.
For decades one of my sore spots was that people refused to serve me, even though I paid them.
Oh no! This video software that used to work doesn’t work any more. I cried out… This can happen to anyone. Technology changes so rapidly, keeping pace with it is both expensive and time consuming.
Both are context words. Neither talks about the stuff that is inside the context… inside the wrapper. The wrapper tells you how to look at the content.
One of the signs of the overwhelming inauthenticity ((My definition of authenticity is that there is nothing in the unsaid that isn’t consistent with what is visible… Authenticity is one of those big words that no one knows what it really means… so they go by feeling. The simplest way to define authenticity is that there is no pretense, no façade, no game playing. The person is the same through and through, whether he/she is seen or not.
Yesterday I used the free community van to get to two stores I cannot get to easily on my own.