Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

Sometimes it’s hard to see past the trouble in front of you

I heard this sentence in a Netflix film… and wrote it down quickly. ¹

Anything that threatens your well-being, anything that threatens your reputation, anything that threatens your self-image shows up as trouble, and fixates your view, in an ever narrowing way on the threat. And you stare at it, and see it with the exclusion of everything else.

The challenge is to just look, and allow the urge to do something, to run, to say something, to explain, justify, fix, to just be there…

When you can do that, when you can just look, you are able to bring conscious awareness to what you see.
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One reason you have no peace inside… And how you could…

I just discovered that the version of the Freecell game is “forgiving”, i.e. you can go back more than one step… “start over again” without a penalty point.

This makes the game an even better modeling tool than it used to be.

I always suspected that the first step really decides the rest of the journey… but being a Quickstart… jumping-without-thinking-type-of-person, this would not have really mattered.

But now, all morning, I have been testing.

I noticed that I get a tightening of the stomach from the idea and the practice of looking before I leap. It’s fear.

When I manage to include the fear, and actually look, systematically, the success rate is 100%.

What could be the reason? After all I can’t see, consciously, and hold any more in memory than three steps ahead… so why would it be that the success rate is so dramatically different?

What would explain this, and my experience that “something” moves my hand?

I am starting to formulate a new theory.
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The difference between you being worth a damn and your product being worth a damn

I just hit the publish button, and heard that my computer was speaking.

A British marketer’s page was open, and his sales video was playing.

I put on my headset and listened, not to the words, but to the emotions, the intangibles underneath.

I heard that he was shy about asking for the sale. I heard that even thought he saw that his software was very good, the moment when money came up, he had the very common misunderstanding: that people pay for HIS value, not for the software’s value.

One of my students, whose dominant belief is that she is worthless, has a hard time asking for money for her work. She fell victim to the same thinking error.

You can be an evil beaver, a child molester, a kitten killer… and have brilliant products that are worth a bundle.

YOUR value has nothing to do with your product’s value.

As long as you confuse the two, you’ll be in trouble.
Continue reading “The difference between you being worth a damn and your product being worth a damn”

Your worth a damn factor. Knowledge? Is yours worth a damn?

Everything you know is in the way of you being able to act powerfully

That wasn’t the exact expression… I said: “Everything you know is in your way of being creative…”

I said this to the first person I coached in the United States. It was 1986, and she volunteered to be my ride to and from Landmark Education… of course at the time it was called Werner Erhard and Associates.

She worked as a sales person in her parents’ Janitorial supply company, selling toilet paper and such. She had an aspiration to become an artist. Continue reading “Your worth a damn factor. Knowledge? Is yours worth a damn?”

What you are doing now is not working. You deserve better…

What kind of deserving is in that title?

Systemic? Extrinsic? Intrinsic?

Systemic would be: you are on my site, you are reading this, therefore you must be a good person… also deserving?
Extrinsic would be: you have provided me with a lot of value, but what you are doing isn’t getting you the results, the rewards you deserve…
Intrinsic would be: you are a human… deserving a chance at a great life. Of course you need to earn it. Let me show you how to stop what you are doing and teach you a way that is going to work…

Of course I mean the third one. Intrinsically…

I don’t know you. But I know life… And I know that life is more unforgiving than I am.

Because, guess what, you have what you have deserved.

Don’t kill the messenger.

Now, if you want more, better, different than what you have, you need to deserve it. ¹
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As important as a yes… is a no. Actually, you’ll be left with the authentic yes

I own a business… This blog is part of it.

I am on hundreds of marketers’ mailing list, and I get hundreds of emails about new software, new tricks and strategies to increase traffic, visibility, and ultimately revenue.

I buy some of them. I use 20% of what I buy.

And then I get the whales. That promise to train me to become a super marketer, a money magnet.

It’s that time of the year, there are three such offers going on at the same time.

Tons of stuff. If I put them into boxes… they would fill many.

The allure is tremendous. I can barely breathe…

And then I do the unexpected… I ask a relevant question. I act as my own coach…

I ask: Do I want my life to be about marketing? Do I want to become a marketer?
Continue reading “As important as a yes… is a no. Actually, you’ll be left with the authentic yes”

Can you be selfish and generous at the same time?

I am reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. The genes that use humans as vehicles, and are only interested in procreation, and not in the life experience of the vehicle.

But, as I have said before, there are 160 intangible capacities, mostly dormant, in the human DNA. The ones that we are going to look at in this article are the capacities (genes) of generosity (altruism) and trust.

Trust and generosity seem to be at odds with the selfishness of the genes… but they don’t have to be.

The crucial decider… is that a word?, is whether the gene of envy is turned on, or not.

Envy is at odds with trust and generosity, because envy means: desire to receive for the self alone… i.e. wanting the other to lose more than wanting to win. Considering the other losing as a win for you. Considering the other’s misfortune, suffering, pain, as a win for you.

According to Kabbalah, that is the only evil there is. I see it clearly.
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I was looking at trust, the intangible capacity to trust… and its role in becoming a winner

In the past four months that I have been able to turn on individual capacities for people, I have received no request to turn on trust.

Why is that?

After all people, rightly, asked me for self-trust. But self-trust won’t be enough.

So what can be the current worldview with regards to trust, that trust doesn’t come up as number one to turn on.

Because, whether you know it or not, without trust there is no winning. Without trust there is no flow. Without trust there is no fulfillment.

When I measured some winners in life, for whom it took years to hone their skills with which they won, money, recognition, admiration… trust was there, fully open.

As you probably already know, I use playing Freecell as my laboratory. It is much the way Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene author used the computer simulation “Prisoner’s Dilemma”… very enlightening for me.

So, what I saw today, and it’s only 6:45 am, lol, that without trust you can only play for keeps, or without trust you can’t open your eyes wide, and take steps that will only pay off 20-30 steps down the line. Continue reading “I was looking at trust, the intangible capacity to trust… and its role in becoming a winner”

Never really say no? What does it do to you and your life?

You can’t say yes until you said no.

Saying no feels rude. Any type of no. Setting your boundaries, hanging up the phone, saying you are busy…

Even when no one knows you have a hard time saying no.

How do I know? I just observed myself.

The price of being polite, agreeable, and accommodating

I was on a webinar where they showed how to use a graphics software and it was really good and really enjoyable. Then they started to pitch a bonus… I don’t care about the offer. Continue reading “Never really say no? What does it do to you and your life?”

Is a five year old running your life? Running it to the ground?

The knee jerk reaction is, universally, to want to fix what doesn’t work, what doesn’t please us.

“It’s wrong and it needs to be fixed.” you say…

This fixing thing has brought you more misery with every attempt to fix it. The more fixing you do the more unbearable life becomes, and the further the life you wanted to live has moved.

It’s not a mirage, it’s how it is. Not only seem that way. You get deeper into the bind all your fixings caused you.

But yet, every time you see something that doesn’t work as well as you’d like it, you have a new opportunity to fix it and go deeper into misery, or bring conscious awareness to it to see what you can see in the light of conscious awareness.

I will bring my example here. I’ll make it a business example, please indulge me.
Continue reading “Is a five year old running your life? Running it to the ground?”