There are really two types of people when it comes to making more money: one group will chase the mirage, the lottery approach, winning, betting on schemes… and the other, the tiny group that sees that making more money is a natural fallout of becoming worth a damn.
I am interested in talking to the second group, the tiny group.
You see, knowing that you should become worth a damn is nice and dandy… but knowing with pinpoint accuracy where you aren’t… what it is that you need to do next to increase your worth a damn factor is crucial.
Life is holographic. Maybe it is the Universe… but who am I to just repeat something I heard… I don’t know about the Universe. But I do know about Life.
Look at health: unless you know, exactly, where and how you leak your Life Force, you’ll do a lot of things, and maybe nothing much will happen.
I had a call with a potential client who has spent a lot of time, and a lot of money talking to alternative health practitioners.
He is doing cleanses, and he is changing his diet by what he thinks may be amiss… but he has NEVER been well. He reminds me of myself. Eerily…
Doing an awful lot… but no accuracy.
This accuracy is what is meant by the strait and narrow. In every area of life. Whether it is becoming worth a damn, getting well, getting rich, getting intimacy and creating a strong partnership with your significant other, increasing your vocabulary, getting enjoyment out of life… Really any and every area.
There is a strait and narrow… the accurate small actions that you do, and the many useless, irrelevant, or harmful actions that you don’t.
My Starting Point Measurements are an excellent tool to find the accurate actions by pinpointing the area where you can gain the most from adjusting what you do and don’t do.
It’s interesting to compare someone who is a coaching client and someone who is not.
Both are interested in increasing their worth a damn factor.
But one will go with pinpoint accuracy, like a laser, the other like a shotgun: pelting all areas with bullets.
One of the difficulties is choosing. It is hard to choose. Every time you choose, you need to unchoose many things.
The other difficulty is being willing to be unclear… instead of forcing clarity where there is none.
Your mettle (your ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way.) is demonstrated best when you cannot have immediate gratification, because it takes time and work to get to clarity.
This is what I call your TLB… Wanting to forego all the discomfort of the middle… jumping from nothing to something.
But life is holographic and this is not how life works… this is how disaster works.
Einstein said (or didn’t say?) astutely: if you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. Especially fairy tales of the animal stories variety.
The Aesop fables teach you how life works, if you are willing to spend the time to internalize the stories.
Not how life SHOULD work, but how it DOES work.
How A is A… not what it SHOULD BE.
My chiropractor used to say that adjusting me is like picking a lock with 18 tumblers. The number of tumblers indicate how many variations, what difficulty level the lock is.
Depending on how many different ways you tried, learned, your “lock” may be different.
One solution will not unlock all locks… the solution needs to be pinpoint accuracy: start with the most locking issue first.
I am posting here two emails from the same person… the person who is not a coaching client…
The emails are brilliant… brilliantly demonstrating the shotgun pelting method…
They also show that you may be educated, well-read, astute in many ways… and yet produce little or no increase in your worth a damn factor.
The issue is whether you try to use the pelting method or the laser… really.
I have started eating small amounts of foods that are not on my list to map how my body responds, how it communicates, as when I ate them in the past, I had no awareness of how my body was communicating to me. Maybe it also had to do with that I always mixed food items and always ate at least one ingredient that was not on my list that made it more difficult to tell any difference.
I’ve noticed that with some foods, my throat started burning lightly and swelling. It was isolated, I watched out for it, so it seemed to be easier to discern.
And another reaction was my right ear clogging up. Not the inner ear like when you have a cold, but the outer ear. Wow, I did not get any of this in the past! And there’s so much more to discern and learn.
I’ve been observing marker feelings, I wasn’t aware of how disproportionate they are. Seeing how I had labeled them as a “given” – I was never able to see them for what they are, they came over me like a tsunami and I tried either to escape them (good luck!), fight them (yea, more good luck) or to hide in my hermit cave, hoping to avoid the mine-field of triggers “out there” and becoming more and more rigid “in there”.
I’ve been observing them in my family members, too. Gives me a different perspective than when I’m being washed away by the tsunami myself.
Another thing I’ve been observing is discerning the gap – between where I am, where I want to go, or where I’d rather like to be. And how I bridge that. How I set up an unrealistic approach (too big steps, too much to start with, wanting to immediately wing an intermediate level, then getting “sore muscles”, overwhelm, burnout. And then quitting.
Hand in hand with that, I’ve been observing the ways I cheat and lie. How I sprinkle icing sugar on top of it to make it look good.
Yesterday I came across a huge, huge pattern I’ve felt really desperate about in the past.
As soon as I make a list with things that are up to be done that day or even in advance for the next day and write it down, everything goes haywire. Self-sabotage kicks in big time. I sleep like crap, wake up like a ghost, feel disoriented, everything takes longer. I don’t drink enough, get sloppy, skip my habits and routines and really set myself up for failure and build up incoherence. I procrastinate, postpone, wait until the last second and then some, then it’s too late to do some things, then I’m already in full self loathing mode and blow the rest of the day and anything I had set out to do and accomplish to dust.
When I don’t plan with writing down and I have the bunch of things randomly in my head, it seems easier to remember, coordinate, and actually do them.
It is more vague and random. I don’t commit in advance. The cheating doesn’t become so obvious, because I didn’t commit to anything.
I get more done, but there are always things I go around, I don’t address, I sneak away from.
This is a huge, huge, huge marker feeling trigger for me. It is completely disproportionate. I’m inflating it like a giant hot air balloon. I go into a complete frenzy and panic attack mode.
In the past I tried to push and force myself through it, that added to resistance and rigidity.
And for every time I quit and failed, I raised the bar, “to make up for the efforts and the time wasted”, setting me up for more failure, more pushing, more resistance, more rigidity, more quitting.
Until now I have felt like falling prey to this pattern. Not see it coming, and it taking fully over, turning me into zombie mode. It’s crushing, it takes long until it wears off and to recover.
To you, you’ve seen it in bright letters across my forehead long time ago.
To me – it’s a big step to see it as I have described it, to share that with you, to address it.
The changing trains analogy is good – I’ve been trying to skip several trains at once.
I have this giant fear that committing to something is a trap. Once I agree, I am trapped and there is no way out and it turns out as a living hell. It’s like a horror movie.
And there are things I do, as a habit, I’ve chosen to do it, I’ve built the habit, I do it and it’s no big deal. I don’t quite see yet what the “demarcation line” is between where I am doing it and where I don’t.
Hm, as I’ve written this out, now I can observe these situations through this frame and start tracking down what is actually happening, look out for the voices and start some testing with tiny tweaks.
The sun is out a bit! I’ll go get some before it’s back to dark in the afternoon.
XO,
M
and an email the next day:
We watched Goethe’s Ur-Faust at the “contemporary” or “young theater” (there is also a “German theater, that is older, more classical), a shortened version with techno music and a naked Mephisto.
I looked at myself through the frame of Faust, who has studied for 10 years and yet knows nothing, is fooling everyone… and then pacts with the devil for a shortcut and how that all leads to much chaos and destruction. Hm, interesting. Better do my work, master and integrate what I learn and stick to what actually works?
With my husband I had a moment where I saw how he was trying to put a new behavior on top of his memes. It’s so much easier to see it in others and for a moment, I could see it clearly. How it doesn’t change anything, how it can’t work. Before it was more of a concept, a construct I could partially grasp the theory of, but seeing it in action and then having highlighted a big bunch of where I have been trying to do exactly that in the past – to how much despair and hopelessness that lead as I thought I was doing “the right thing” but all I did was covering up my shit.
And even over the past weeks and months, when you pointed it out to me, it was foggy, dizzy, I thought I got it but didn’t really. I wrote it down so I can reference it, for myself, as a reminder.It was accompanied by relief – realizing I was using a tool, an approach, that can’t change or solve the issue. Nothing wrong with me. Use a proven tool, learn to apply it, use it deliberately and broadly and observe.
My youngest has changed her diet – she started getting skin issues and quit sugar, dairy, gluten. She started working out daily, 30 minutes on the trampoline. Every evening. Yesterday evening she was beaming – how much her skin has improved! How much better she feels overall. How she had no idea what impact the wrong foods can have on her wellbeing… she said she felt unsure whether to stick as she wasn’t getting results soon, but she kept going and started seeing first results. Less puffiness, she has become slender again. And now the skin has started to clear up.
She’s had some trouble at school – best student, A+, she dedicates time for learning. The others are envious and have started bullying her. She has no boyfriend, she doesn’t go to parties, doesn’t drink.
Learning for school has been her field of expertise. This morning she told me how she realized that all the learning experience from schoolwork, the trust that she has built there, the sticking to it when it’s hard, she doesn’t understand, others mock her – how she actually can transfer that to other areas where she has felt helpless, overwhelmed. Or just took things as “oh well, that’s how it is”.
She said it takes effort and time and it’s not easy, she has to put in work, and now she’s seeing how she can start changing things in other areas, too.
She has started opening up when receiving feedback and to pay closer attention – she has had a bunch of experiences when she actually listened and followed instructions, she got better results than by trial and error and not listening and knowing it better.
What’s interesting – I had a conversation Thursday evening with my husband and used the analogy of how you don’t throw your car on the curb as soon as a lamp starts blinking, like low gas or low oil.
I’ve noticed that a few times how the same or next day you bring up analogies in your articles that I just used, too.
No sunshine today, but no rain, either… so perfect for an afternoon walk!
Oh, and I got fresh lamb leg from NZ at a store here, Christmas special. I asked them to cut it up in slices. It’s so, so good! Much tastier than from the local Turkish butcher, I was salivating and licked up every drip and drop. I now have several meat meals in the freezer.
XO,
M
The issue is whether you try to use the pelting method or the laser… really.
