From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don’t want to miss this.

Welcome to The Complete Alchemy for Life™ Episode Guide, where I give you a comprehensive overview of all the episodes in our podcast. In this episode, I’ll be narrating a catalog of all our episodes, giving you the titles and a brief description of each one. Whether you’re new to the podcast and want to catch up on past episodes, or you’re a long-time listener looking to revisit some of your favorites, this episode is for you. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a journey through the the Alchemy for Life™ complete episode guide.

If this is your first podcast, hello and I hope you enjoy this year’s catalog. Reach out and say high with feedback, like, rate the podcast, and if you have a friend that would benefit from one of these I don’t mind if you forward this to them!

Also, let me know what you want me to tackle in 2023!

*Mentioned in this episode: The Myth and Magic Podcast. Neil is the person that turned me on to the emotional variant of Liminal Spaces when he interviewed me.

You’ve heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now they are getting better for less, and you are getting… shorted.

Let’s take aerial photography. You could possibly (illegally) have a friend of a friend fly a drone, take some pics, and then get a memory stick of images. Or you could have an insured, licensed professional (that literally got clearance from the FAA to fly for you today) and do the “same” thing. This professional also has mad video editing skills and gives you very professional, color-graded results. The professional studied for months, paid and took a test from the FAA, keeps the license current, purchases a half million dollar insurance policy for each commercial flight, and learned the software necessary to provide the files. And to top it all off he has the skill to understand the difference between a simple wide shot and a customer that is trying to showcase their landscaping skills.

So did it take him 15 minutes to fly that, or a bit more time that you never see?

If you buy a microwave do you think about the actual cost? The amount of time it took to create it? I bet you don’t. And yet you probably almost always do for the service you might purchase.

Let’s talk about that.

(part one of a two part)

We recently talked about measuring, and now we’re talking about NOT doing it.

We have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling… and measuring.

“Hi, I’m Mr. Scale! I’m going to disappoint you every day.” 👀 It’s pretty easy to stop measuring when it comes to that particular stat. You just stop stepping on the scale… “until you are ready.” But if you stop measuring then what happens?

Let’s talk about measuring, why you would stop, and what you might want to do next. As always, it’s information and then you can decide. Just ten minutes.

We’ve talked about tension before. We’ve talked about tension vs. something being at rest and what that means for us. But now I want to talk about the tension of disagreement.

Everything is going to be OK. Does that relieve you? It might, especially if it comes from a higher status individual. But it doesn’t really do anything. It’s a perfectly acceptable phrase if you are doing everything you can, or you’re beaten up and need a break. But what if you haven’t really even started working towards a goal?

Try this out. You are single and really want to meet someone. Do you prefer to say:

“Don’t worry, there is a plan, I’ll will meet the right person / I can feel it / I know it’s in my future.”

or

“I’m never going to meet the right person.”

Well of course EVERYONE around you will scold you for saying the second one! They will say that’s self sabotage, and that you are “putting that out into the universe” and that “You’re going to fail if you think that way.”

I disagree.

But then there is nothing to do if you only immerse yourself in those other phrases You’re removing the task, the fight, the struggle, the… tension. Get it?

Try it yourself. I submit to you that if you say “God/The Universe has a plan, everything will be fine” then you will be immersed in fuzzy, protective, useless warmth.

Now try the opposite. “Oh my god this is NEVER going to work!” or “I am never going to meet someone great!”

Those are strong statements that your brain will challenge. Your brain is made to challenge logic, and statements, and weigh statements. If it’s wrong and you WILL meet someone your brain will then say “Well yes, if you keep doing THAT. You have to think of something else… think think think!”

Your brain isn’t challenged and your problem solving ability is blanketed with it’s ok, everything will be OK and something will fall out of the sky if you always give yourself those statements.

OK, why do friends do that? Why do they always just give you these statements?

Because they don’t want to suffer. If they tell you it will all be fine, then you’ll shut up, and then talk about something else, all the while silently suffering without a solution.

If you do the research you will find that the people who accomplished the most didn’t avoid tension. They saw the problems and recognized them head on.

So, try it at least once – look in the mirror, yell up and the ceiling and say “Wow, does this suck!” and see what happens next.

It might just surprise you…

Did you ever have an issue with someone and tell a friend about it? They usually say “Oh well I would just say this.” You roll your eyes , take a deep breath, and attempt to explain that this is pretty complicated, and that you’ve already tried that. You could go back and forth or you could just make a note to not mention it again. yeah, that’s a better option.

They don’t understand because you’ve presented a simple issue and they present a simple fix, without taking a step back.

We all know what taking a step back means, and we even talked about that dang 30,000 foot view recently. But this relates to why we take a step back and examine the whole when it comes to accomplishing things.

And that’s exactly what Alchemy for Life™ is. It’s taking that step back and examining everything.

And, it’s having not only a system in place, but a machine/application/tool to allow us to manage it.

Curious?

Good.

You’ve heard of that phrase—taking the 30,000 foot view, right? But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean to take a step back? Does it mean 30,000 steps back? Considering the big picture? How long do you do this? Do you then zoom back in and if so how long do you have to wait?

It is when you are managing things that you come upon this suggestion—or desire—to take a step back. If you are a creative then that’s most of your reality. The same is true if you are a solopreneur (like me). It can be confusing and daunting as to when, why, how and how long you do this.

So let’s talk about this and help you through it.

If you’re not measuring progress, how do you know how well you are doing in the pursuit of a goal? Don’t you have milestones and stuff like that? The Alchemy for Life system has a huge amount of tracking, and milestones, and even an icon for setbacks, so why am I even asking this?

I’m asking because sometimes it can seem like you’re not making any progress. Sometimes it seems like you’re putting all this effort into reaching a goal and nothing is happening—and you want to give up.

Aha.

Listen now and find out why measuring progress can be misleading, and daunting, and find out what you should be measuring instead.

Here’s something you don’t hear – thoughts do not equal reality.

In an odd way this is a discussion (of the reverse kind) of mindfulness.

Our fight or flight mechanism was designed and evolved to deal with something happening right now. It was designed to deal with reality. If you’re having anxiety about the room filling up with water because it’s currently filling up with water and you need to escape then you’re not having anxiety—you’re fighting or fleeing to escape the danger.

But what about when you have the same feelings when you think about next Tuesday?

Listen in on what it means, what you can do about it.

Did you know you have three voices?

Do you know that one can always be used to override another? Do you know that one of the voices is also a sounding board that can not only help you (preparing for a speech, reviewing a discussion), but also can torment you if overused (that fight you had playing over and over in your head for seemingly ‘no reason’)?

You’re using one of them to read this.

Join me in this fun (and helpful) discussion of experimental psychology. Afterwards you may want to pick up a copy of my new book – Three Voices.

Three Voices – The three languages we use to communicate with ourselves and others.

We all use labels because that’s the base of all languages – complex concepts, descriptions, procedures all contained in a smaller form. Imagine if you had to describe a house every time you wanted to talk about houses. Exhausting. And you’d get dumber. So we create labels for things.

But as we talked about in the Assuming podcast, the use of certain labels (in that case assuming) was a very powerful tool when used against you.

This time we are talking about all labels, but I’m using two as some very prevalent examples. If you use one of these labels, it doesn’t mean you are wrong, or using them incorrectly. I’m just citing these as very popular examples.

Listen now and get smarter, or risk getting dumber, by using labels…