What is the path to getting what you want?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You get what you want by playing according to the rules of reality.

But what are the rules of reality?

You may have a delusion or two regarding those rules.

We are born young and little… and the rules for the young and the little of any species are different than the rules for adults. But we humans didn’t get that the rules change… So we live as if the rules for infants and toddlers were still the rules for us, no matter how old we are. In our self-image, in our sense of self we are still young and little… About three years old, when the rules were changed on us.

Before that age whatever we did was considered cute. Whatever we wanted we got. Fast. Often without asking for it.

This state is when a sense of self develops in a child: I am what I have. A child develops senses until about age 25, including the moral self, if ever. But unfortunately this sense, that I am what I have refuses to change.

So the child, before age three, solely defines themselves by what they have in terms of what they get, how fast, how readily. Food, attention, nurturing. The bottle is a shorthand what it is for a child to have a sense of self. No bottle… the experience is NOT hunger, it is a fear of death. Being nothing. Or worthless. No attention? Crying for the bottle is a fear of loss of self, fear of death.

For whatever reason today’s eight billion (it is not a number, it is a qualifier) remain that three-year old in many ways: their sense of self is invested in what they have, and also in how they get it, how they got to having it.

This article is about refusing to get to having through work, through effort, through providing value for what people want. For what YOU want. About perpetuating the ‘crying for the bottle’ self.

The nature of reality, the rules of reality don’t agree that you are a child and therefore you should get everything. If you live as if it should be that, you are delusional.

And although you hear that the path to what you want is through work, through production, you don’t hear it.

If I told you that the eight billion is delusional, you would think that I am talking about others. But I am talking about you. And to a degree, even about the 1000.

The 1000. The Superiors. They are, to some degree, still delusional.

What is a delusion?

an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

Idiosyncratic means: a mode of behavior or way of thought peculiar to an individual.

When we look at 3-year olds we find two versions of this delusion. Two versions that are across the board.

The entitlement gene that served a purpose before age 3 but will be a hindrance thereafter fails to turn off.

The delusion is regarding how things happen. Or how to make things happen.

What the two views share is this: there is no participation required, no work, no effort, none of that adult stuff.

• The first delusion says that it will happen because it is their due. Much like: the sun will rise in the morning… because it is supposed to. So if you succumb to doing, then you admit that you are nothing.
• The second delusion says that it will happen because they want it to happen. The wanting is doing all the heavy lifting.

You see that not only is doing unnecessary, but it needs to be resisted altogether. And the whole idea is despised, looked down upon. and not believed to be the way to get what you want.

The sense of self is invested in having. In getting what you want automatically.

Someone who is productive like myself doesn’t understand why someone with one of these delusions doesn’t get things done.

The challenge is that in spite of all contradictions, despite of maybe even people heading to their ruin, their fundamental belief doesn’t change.

They may go along, do some work and see results. They like it. But it doesn’t effect that their sense of self doesn’t change to being… it is still invested in having. So the fact that production, work produced having doesn’t serve for them as proof. It serves for them as an exception. A fluke.

It is relatively doable to entice them to do something for what they want. And if the guide doesn’t become delusional themselves, then they can continue enticing them, and they can become people who do, but left alone, left to their own devices, they will naturally go back to their non-doer state, consistent with their delusion. The delusion is that they are what they GET without any effort.

For a decade I had the privilege of observing strippers. They made money hand over fist, and then quickly gave it away. Why? Because their sense of self was only unmarred if they didn’t have to do anything for that money. 

Moses was ordered to walk around in the desert so all the delusional generation dies out. So he doesn’t accidentally bring idol worshipers, slavery-lovers to Canaan.

If you were born into the entitled generation, especially in an entitled country, you have one or both of these delusions.

In the Face the Tiger workshop we’ll address your fundamental delusion that is underneath all your attitudes, behavior, beingness that don’t allow you to be happy, productive. Don’t allow you to be a person in a world of persons… Instead they keep you an object in a world of objects.

Let’s face your Tiger… so you can beat it 

If you buy he workshop before August 29 midnight EDT, use coupon code TIGGER for 50% off. If you buy between August 30 and September 4 midnight, use coupon code TIGGER2 for a 25% discount.

And if you miss both deadlines… the price is so low, you’ll still get more than what you pay for.

The workshop has a recorded part and a live workshop. Online, of course.

If it is necessary and you live in an area outside of most participants, I’ll find a way to give you the one-on-one you miss…

PS: Erich Fromm wrote extensively about the phenomenon of identifying self with having… instead of being. So I didn’t INVENT it… we both observed it, him as a psychiatrist, me as a whatever I am…

I have gotten his book… I can see that this has been a missing piece.

PPS: I can turn off the entitlement genes… but it will still take a lot of work to accept that you are not what you have, you are who you BE.