Osho: The art of walking the tightrope

tightropeIn this series of Osho talks he examines stories from different ancient cultures. This is an excellent companion to what I teach. Enjoy!

ONCE, WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER
IN ALL BROTHERLINESS,
PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM.
BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM,
‘TELL US, DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?’

HE WAS SURPRISED AT THE QUESTION,
AND REPLIED, ‘HOW SHOULD I KNOW?’

BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY..
THERE WERE TWO FRIENDS OF THE KING,
AND BOTH WERE PROVED GUILTY OF A CRIME.

SINCE HE LOVED THEM THE KING WANTED TO SHOW THEM MERCY,
BUT HE COULD NOT

The most accurate predictor of success is…

I am quite unflappable…

But enough is enough… and I am a little flapped… lol.

I can feel the corners of my mouth pointing downward, and I am pouting a little.

I screwed up… I did all the things I tell you not to do… lol…

I alternate between laughing out loud and pouting. Actually quite funny. Not dead.

The funniest part of this story (oops, I haven’t even told you what happened… in a little bit, ok?) the funniest part that this happened right after I watched, for the third time, the episode in the 67 steps where you are warned to double secure yourself against mistakes and the cost.

I was nodding… I heard it from “I already know” and the next thing I know I crashed my windows setup… and bam… all my files are gone.

Luckily I didn’t have

How dead are you? If your life is not a roller coaster, then you are not alive.

how-dead-are-youWhat you are, instead alive, is a walking dead, resigned, and settled for the little that, it seems, life has to offer. To you. You see others, seemingly happy, seemingly alive, and you feel regret, shame, and envy.

Your heart, where rain forests and colorful birds, and life used to live, is devastated. The lush rain forests gone, the birds gone, life: gone.

Your ups and downs are tiny, not like a roller coaster. They are about money, or noise, or that you are fat, or skinny, or that you are aging. Irrelevant circumstances.

Maybe it is about someone being sick, maybe dying… but that is also a circumstance.

Learning lessons the hard way… or the easy way… Part 2

thought experimentThe brilliance in the movie, “It’s a wonderful life” is that the angel creates a thought experiment what the world would be like if our hero hadn’t been born.

Thought experiments are uniquely human: animals don’t do thought experiments.

The minimum intelligence required to create a thought experiment is 70… and I am not talking about IQ measured intelligence, I am talking about overall intelligence.

The average intelligence in the world is 50… But all my site’s visitors qualify.

So let’s look at

Why you should not trust your doctor, your nutritionist, your muscle testing…

mental representation of a glass half fullMental Representation… an incredibly useful distinction and an incredibly rare capacity

I loved the book ‘Peak, the new science of expertise’, until almost the very end. Then I got angry.

Somewhere around 90% of the book I noticed that he uses an expression, a phrase, that means something to him, the author, but meant nothing to me.

Now I know how you feel when you read my articles…

The expression he used was “Mental Representation“.

What if you have something blocking you from growing? The Seven Boulders principle

BoulderSome ten years ago I learned a valuable way of looking at making life meaningful, or living a meaningful life. The teacher suggested that we pick a horizon, a direction, and then look what’s blocking the way of getting there.

Since then I saw that even seeing the horizon is blocked… Blocked by seven boulders, lined up one behind the other, blocking your view, blocking your movement.

So, in my coaching practice, when I ask people to set a direction, and they can’t see any, I am inclined to suggest that they choose the direction: living a meaningful live, or a fulfilled life… without specifying what it is.

Knowledge, Strategy, Execution, is that enough for success?

michael-jordan-mental-representationI lead a workshop on Sunday. I had knowledge, I had strategy. I executed it. It was sloppy. What was missing?

I didn’t know. But “god” works in mysterious ways, the book I am reading has an answer that shows me what has been missing for me on Sunday and all my life.

The book, Peak, the new science of expertise, calls it Mental Representation.

Mental Representation is being able to see the finished product in your mind’s eye, and also see the process getting there, so you can anticipate missteps, and can correct, given that you

Sometimes all you need is a tiny nudge… and you can go from unhappy to happy.

christmas-carol-25As you may know, I am doing my second round of the 67 steps. In step 13 Tai says something like this: if you are not happy, don’t throw everything away. It is possible that the unhappiness is due to a mismatch of your current lifestyle with your social needs…

Huh?

So I went back in my memory to different stages of my business, or the different businesses I had. And lo and behold, I found something totally freaky: I was happiest when I had at least one person cooperating with me in my business. Even if the cooperation was minor, and we didn’t interact much. Just knowing

Do you feel banged up? By life, by people? Listen up!

STOP GETTING IN YOUR OWN WAYWhen Tai asks you, what is in the way of you growing, and starting to live the good life, most people have a ready answer. An answer they are sure is true. And an answer that they had seen a million times.

What no one seems to consider, that the saying “how you do anything is how you do everything” is more of a reason than you would consider.

One of them shows up an awful lot on my site: assuming to know. That is a how… falsely certain.

Falsely certain about what?

You are sure yo

Making choices: are you a rank amateur?

Risk-Management-2This may be the most important article you read this year, this decade… because this article may inspire you to become a professional at living, instead of remaining a rank amateur… aka bumbling idiot.

Risk Management

You have two options. You need to choose. You need to choose the option that has the lower cost to your reproductive success if it turns out to be wrong.

Now, I suspect, that almost none of us think about cost in terms of reproductive success, but according to evolutionary psychology, you are a mere vehicle to your genes, your genes are only inte