My article writing teacher says that the way to write a good article is to have three topics and let people know what they are, ahead of time.

This is the same dude who takes three months of vacation every year... maybe he knows something most don't, and therefore it is worth listening to him?

So here are the three topics:

1. work-life balance: how the masses are wrong

2. your straitjacket... a detrimental early decision

3. what you eat... how it makes you ill or keeps you well.

So let's go... and let's see how it goes. You'll let me know, I hope.

Vacation. Work-life balance. Living a good life?

I can, if I go really close to the windows, see the windows of four houses. So I have been really curious about the sleeping habits of the people whose windows I can observe. I don't know anything about them, or not really.

So today I was looking to see what time they get up. It is Sunday, and I have been up now for three and a half hours, working. The people are having breakfast now... I assume a big breakfast. After all it's Sunday.

I learned early on that if you go with the masses, you have a chance to be wrong 90% of the time. I didn't like those chances. If you flip a coin, you have a chance to be right 50% of the time. And if you go against the masses you have a chance to be wrong only about 10% of the time.

So that is what I have been doing. And it is working, I am not often wrong, and yet it works just the same.

So for me every day is vacation... between the times I work. And I get up every day at the same time. For me that it is around 4 am. Even on weekends.

We all make decisions... rules... and then pay the piper.

I made my first decision when I was two.

Then and there I decided that the only way to avoid being left in the street like garbage is if I am completely independent, rely on no one, need no one.

I never thought it was a mistake... until yesterday.

What happened?

I am reading a book about Steve Jobs.

Every teacher of mine tries to emulate him in some way. But I didn't know and didn't care what he did... so what? I thought and that was that.

But finally I bit the bullet and bought a book on the dude. Inside Steve's Brain... hm.

Two things happened.

First off: I realized that not all non-fiction books are the same. What I haven't liked is books that want to teach. But then there are the books that are like a story, and those I like. This one is like that. It teaches without teaching... by not telling the reader what to do. If the reader feels like that is what they want to do, then they don't feel someone told them what to do.

I saw a lot of things about Jobs and what he did that I'd be wanting to do if I had a company like him. I'd like to identify myself and my product the way he did in his advertising. Remember the 'Think Different' one-minute video that made people want to be one of the crazy ones?

At the time it justified my choice to attend Landmark's courses, to have left Hungary, to have left Israel, to come to the land of opportunity. I cried and cry every time I watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ4OP8AFZZI

I had a TV once. A black and white. Another Hungarian dude gave it to me because I had nothing. That TV I left it in an apartment when I moved out back in 1986 or 87... So I never knew that Apple advertised. I never knew that they got where they got not by word of mouth, as I thought, but by advertising.

And that is the second thing that happened.

I thought that you can get to the top of the heap without advertising.

I am not saying I am Apple. I am not saying I am Steve Jobs. What I am saying is that I never moved a finger to get the word out.

The scenic route of getting some teaching, and making it your own.

Making it nurturing, life affirming tree of life knowledge

I want to share a phenomenon, that, hopefully, will get clearer as I am sharing it. At the moment I can only see its visible aspect. I am almost certain it has an invisible aspect as well.

I read about three hours a day. Something that isn't connected to my work: fiction.

But recently I have taken on a 20-day challenge: listen to 20 episodes of a Hungarian psychologist, Dr. Peter Popper, in his Mesterkurzus (master course) series, an hour long each.

Excellent, fascinating, the dude is both a psychologist, a university professor, a clinician, AND a religion expert... whatever that means.

The truth value of the episodes varies between 10% and 50%. I listen to the episodes at 1.5x speed: he talks slowly. He is old... he died soon after the episodes I have watched. He was 77.

OK, so far the background. Now the issue: He brings up things I'd like to incorporate in my teaching, and instead: I can't write. I cannot make myself repeat what he said. So for the first time in ages, for example, yesterday I didn't write an article.

I am starting to see that I have NEVER been able to just repeat what a book or a person said. I always had to digest it first, I had to connect it to what I already had in long term storage. Connect it to stuff that, in the limited perspective of the human mind, was reality, true, and useful.

OK, this seems to be working... I am starting to see something, that connects here: when I look at a person when they hear something new, they can look up, or they can continue looking forward.

When they look up

When they look up, meaning their eyes look up, they are checking in their minds for information that is already there, if they should consider the new thing...

When they keep on looking forward: (very rare, that is what I do) they are looking inward, to where the long term memory storage AND the 'equipment' to evaluate the new for inclusion resides.

Because I don't use the mind (I do use it about 7% of the day) I don't look up... I pretty much have nothing in the mind... whatever I find is in people's minds is anyways crap... connecting to nothing.

One other thing about that: the two hemispheres of the brain. Muscle test says that the theory of left brain and right brain are half-truths: the functions are not hemisphere located, it is a how thing, not a where or what thing...

My mode of hearing and digesting is right hemisphere way to hear and digest.

Left brain:

The mind is a linear slow step by step machine, like an adding machine: all left brain. Memorizing is left brain. Adding, multiplying, etc. are left brain.

It has a narrow cone of vision, it is inflexible, it contains myriads of incongruencies: the mind cannot check for consistency and congruency.

Right brain

Music creation, poetry, higher mathematics, truth, beauty and goodness are right brain. All come from and is processed in the so-called right brain.

Anything that you repeat is coming from the mind, the left brain. No creativity there... no coherence... nothing beautiful or even wholesome. And surprise: not even understanding. A tape-recorder turned on.

99% of what you hear or what you read came from someone's left brain... And you listening to it with the mind as well.

The entire humanity is trapped in the left brain, where none of what is worth living for, none of what makes life beautiful comes from.

But humans, genetically, crave to experience their godlike aspect, crave to experience the sublime, the non-linear, the inspiring, the wordless.

But because all of life, or 99% of life is pedestrian, non-magical,

You've got to define what's enough for you. And that is what you should aim for

Until you do that, you are dealing with too much freedom. To much freedom often leads to unclarity, to confusion, or inaction, where fear, ego, delusion rule.

It is smart to define that and it takes smarts to define the dance floor where you can win.

What is winning?

Winning always needs a game.

A game is an agreement where something is more important than something else.

For example in the game of golf the ball in the little metal cup is more important than outside of it.

If no game is set up then no matter what you produce, even if it is big, it is not a win.

So a game needs to be set up. In many areas the game can be called a context. It makes a result, a move equal success or not. Each move can be successful of not. The ultimate outcome of the game is to have more successful moves than not.

Some people don't set up games, and they are living a roller coaster life... not a good thing. Not good for your overall experience, for your health, for your relationships.

Other people set up games where nothing is a win. They live a life of a loser, because they never defined what is winning.

I have set up my life

I have set up my life so I can live, but not too easily. I am the boss, I can do that. My game has financial, spiritual, intellectual, and love components. I need to win in all to have a winning life.

In my long life I've had games where although I was winning in some areas, I didn't win in love... and I was miserable regardless of all the winnings.

Love is love. Loving the work. Loving the game. Also loving myself. Loving life... Having an echo. Having at least one person who'll weep when I die.

Financially my game is to be able to forget about money, while I am able to pay my bills. The only reason to make more is to make sure that I can forget about the money. Forget about the numbers. Have no pressure from money, not from a lack. And also not from too much... from money that has to be spent, or circulated, or invested... ugh.

Many of my students don't have a good game with money... they are not winning whatever game they set up. When you don't win in your game with money you have a hard time focusing your attention, you have a hard time to care about anything or anyone else.

Many of my students don't have a good game in love either. Same issue... it festers in the mind and gets too much attention instead of doing something constructive about it.

Spiritual or intellectual games? None of my students have any measures by which I could see that they have a game there...

Desire

Many (most) teachers teach to want more. To make your desire high enough to cause you to be motivated to do stuff.

In my experience that is not enough energy. Or if and when that energy gets strong, you'll be all about yourself, and will have a life of hunger and greed. Not a good state.

Also there is a lot of competing desires, desires for mundane, temporal... meaning passing things often trump the main desire.

It is cold outside, cold inside... so the lure of the warm bed often trumps my desire to get up and get stuff done. To get up and make sure I'll be able to fall asleep at night in a timely manner. So occasionally the warm bed wins, and I start a cycle of not being able to fall asleep at night.

So I use hate a lot more effectively to move me forward.

I hate insomnia. I hate depression. And I hate having nights with a sense that I am a loser. And however I want to control that, if and when I don't get up when I set up to get up, I start having loser dreams... Like this past two nights.

I also hate to live a life of insignificance, of not making an echo,

Let's begin where it began...

I have shared one of my experiments in an early stage: healing my stomach damage and my acid reflux...

After many decades of stomach trouble, and about a decade of nasty heartburn independent of what I ate, I realized that unless I do something, it is going to kill me or I'll wish it did.

So I asked Source and Source suggested that maybe I have the dreaded stomach bacteria...

Bacteria? I have a remedy for that.

And I started taking goldenseal tincture I made years ago. For a few days it looked like it worked, then for about ten days it got worse. And then one day muscletest said I didn't need it any more.

By that time I didn't have any heartburn... and I haven't had one since.

And the amazing thing is: I can now eat probably anything. So a few days ago I started to cook Hungarian dishes... although I still eat almost completely vegetarian. I haven't dared adding back meat, lamb, or poultry. I eat dairy, fish, occasional eggs...

Muscletest says: no

So I decided to muscletest

Muscletested the whole 600 food item for myself... again. I ended up with about 40 items that are edible for me. Luckily they include tea.

I learned to muscletest accurately through the Healing Codes people. They called it the truth method... but it was muscletesting. I used to muscletest what fundamental human value I need to ponder next... These later became the 3rd Phase activators: Healthy Beliefs, Purposeful Action: stop actions that lead to nothing, Forgiving, forgiveness… unforgiveness keeps you stuck, Peace, peaceful, peace of mind, stop worrying, Humility aka Eliminate wrongful pride, Self-Control 1 and 2, Goodness, Patience, Kindness, Trust, Love.

Nowadays I muscletest everything.

Muscletesting is a conversation with Source.

Not my body, mind you. The body is always striving to be and remain in ess, evolutionary stable strategy, and allow no growth, no getting better. So no, muscletesting according to what the body wants is a bad idea.

On the other hand, unlike the body, Source has a preference to growing, to better, to increased energy and happiness. So I muscletest to express what Source says.

The art is to take myself, my mind, my ego out of the conversation. I am good at it. I am masterful at allowing Source to talk instead of overtalking...

No battle of wills, arguing, like in many people to people conversations... Like with Bonnie yesterday.

So I muscletested the 600 food items for myself.

In the years I have done this, my food list has changed fundamentally. Now I can eat some fish and seafood, two grains, no aged cheese, and simple vegetables.

I am taking, hourly, an enzyme supplement, Papain. I wear a kitchen timer that rings every hour. For economy I buy the Papain in bulk, and make the big capsules myself, 400 at a time. I started taking it about a year ago. Muscletest says I have no more of the invisible biting mites... the mites that I had almost all life, but there are some on the sheets in my bed, so I continue taking it.

When I stop taking the Papain, I'll muscletest the list again... I am sure it will change.

So why aren't you supposed to eat everything that's edible?

Because just because something is edible, it doesn't mean that your body can deal with it and turn it into nourishment.

Almost everything is toxic to one degree or another. It's the selfish gene's way of preserving what it wants... not to be eaten.

So the food items your ancestors successfully survived eating is the best food to eat.

But what if you are a mutt? And most people in the United States are mutts... a mix of ancestry, therefore a mix of history.

Alex Hormozi is a 1000.

I started to write this post yesterday while I was listening to Alex's video on youtube. And of course it is the next day, and I have no idea what is the one thing I saw yesterday.

So lesson #1... when you have an insight, write it all down, don't count on your memory.

Moreover: don't count on your memory for anything... In fact have no use for your memory.

People whom I found unteachable all do everything in their memory and thus they are unteachable.

Because although the mind is able to store information, it can't do anything else...

...and learning has nothing to do with the mind... all learning happens outside of the mind.

Knowing, knowledge is not a mind thing... and if you store the notes, the words of a song, it won't be a song any more, it will be just a jumble of digits.

Music loses its essence... and by the same token: everything loses its essence in the mind.

I have watched a student do the 67 steps from her mind, and it sounded brilliant. But even just an hour later the magical brilliant essence disappeared and only the digits of information remained, unusable, because nothing that is in the mind is usable.

Humans are going for understanding. Understanding happens in the mind. So understanding makes everything useless.

Unless you can go for seeing, feeling, you are left with nothing. No knowledge, no increased ability, not a thing... except for some bites.

I have another student who can, like a computer, do search function in her mind, and like a computer, bring up data...

...yet no knowledge, no abilities, except things she did outside of her brain... Thank god she did and is doing some... yet she tries to use her mind to learn... so she doesn't. At least not my kind of stuff...

So as a teacher I am left with no one to teach... because you can't teach someone who can only use their mind...

So this is the fundamental difference between a 1000 and an eight billion: what they consider learning. What part of themselves they use to learn.

The mind is in the frontish part of the brain. When I use my brain I move the information to the back of the brain and the evaluation of its veracity, the evaluation of its usefulness happens in the back of my brain, not in the mind. The mind doesn't know, doesn't see, can't evaluate, except to evaluate if the bites match the bites already stored.

When I say something, a student activates their mind... I can feel it... and comes up empty.

And when the mind comes up empty, the student says: I don't understand, or doesn't say anything, but stops listening.

The 'famous' NLP modalities of learning are only regarding how the information comes in, not how its processed.

I am kinesthetic by NLP modality, but my processing is partly through feeling the dynamics of a thing, or the movements of it, and through the visual center... that is in the back of the brain... seeing it moving.

I experience the world through dynamic, movement, spacial relationships especially. And literally nothing as words. Or more precisely I experience words as movement and dynamics.

When I listen to Alex Hormozi, I find the same thing.

Words are merely expressions of what he internally feels... the words are not stored. The words are created on the fly.

Now, this is not the major difference, but a consequence of the major difference: the 1000 loves learning. Because learning is like a dance. It's physical and enjoyable... even though it takes some choreographing, given that most incoming information is not always like music... some people express themselves in ways that are not easy to turn into dance.

So the question for me is this: can an abstract thinker, i.e.

Knowledge is where? It is on the other side of a river... you need a bridge.

A very painful fact OF LIFE triggered today's article. The fact that information doesn't readily translate to an improvement in your life, in your results.

I have called this phenomenon several different names for the past 30 years.

The thing/idea doesn't have legs... I would say. And anything that doesn't have legs cannot move... unless, of course, they are a snake, or a fish, but you get the gist, don't you?

Marketing teachers call it consumption... unless you are a marketer, this makes no sense to you... I bet.

Another way I expressed it is this: there is no bridge between the theory, the idea, the possibility, the dream, and its implementation and realization.

And talking about what's missing as a bridge makes people see that something is missing... and yet nothing happens. Because we don't know how to build a bridge.

We don't know how to build a bridge. Neither you nor your teacher.

But what if it is not a bridge that is missing? What if what is missing is having a project that needs, that can use that new information?

I listened to a marketer's presentation yesterday on a business principle. I paid 50 bucks for the audio, and to me it has potentially a chance to double, triple my income. Because I have a project that needs that information.

I noticed when it came to the questions and answers part of the presentation. People who had a business instantly saw how the information was usable, albeit it is a lot of work to implement. People who didn't have a business, didn't see the value, because thy had no place to implement it.

Maybe they will, in a year or two, when they will have a project. Same information, different level of value.

So maybe that is the definition of a bridge:

unless you have some project to use to implement the information in, you don't have a bridge.

But what is a project?

Most people don't have a project.

When I attempted to help people find their strengths with the skill finder method of the What Color Is Your Parachute, I found something totally puzzling.

You see the skill finder method works through analysis of seven projects the person accomplished successfully, AND enjoyed doing it.

When I did mine, I had so many projects, I could have kept myself busy for a year recounting them. The clients, friends I worked with had maybe one, maybe two. But no one had more than two.

I think that living through projects is the successful person's secret weapon.

So again, let's ask: what is a project?

Mr. Google to the rescue: A project is a set of tasks that must be completed in order to arrive at a particular goal or outcome. Depending on the size and scope of the project, these tasks may be simple or elaborate, but all projects can be broken down into objectives and what needs to be done to achieve them.

The 3 things that make a solid project definition

Goal.

Objectives.

Scope.

another one

What are 5 characteristics of a project?

1. Specific. The project must be specific. ...

2. Measurable. A clearly defined project must be measurable in terms of its benefits and achievements. ...

3. Achievable. A project will only be meaningful if it is achievable. ...

4. Relevant. The project needs to bring relevant benefits to the entity concerned. ...

5. Time bound.

OK, let's summarize: a project has specific, measurable results with a deadline. A project needs to be achievable and relevant to someone...

And now you see why people don't have projects. Every single one of those five elements you deplore...

Specific? No... let's make it vague so I can't fail.

Are you climbing the tree of life or are you stuck?

If you think that learning what is written in a book, said in a video, in a lecture, you never learn.

Those words, those happenings, those pictures are only food for thought, and if you are not capable for independent thought, contemplation, then no your kind of learning, no reading, no books, no videos, no classes can and will help you in anything.

Is it that you can't? Source says: no. You can't. And you won't.

The question is: why?

Hate me as much as you want. Call me a bore. Call me repetitive.

It is because...

It is because you want to be right about your interpretation of what was done to you when you were three. You repeat the incident, you get the same result over and over, to prove that you've been right.

And that is why you can't and won't do any thinking, if you don't. And that is why you are wasting your time reading my articles, coming to my classes, unless and until you are willing to let go of the self-righteous behavior regarding that first incident.

Some of the people I have been working with for a decade haven't... Haven't let go of their original emotionally immature decision they made. When they were three. 30-40-50-60 years ago.

You are both trying to fix it, and trying to prove it, and in that confusion you get off the hook, and you never have to be responsible for anything, including that you did that to yourself.

I have a student who is, right now, doing the work of the 67 steps.

One sentence is repeating, in every step, and repeating in each step several times.

'I have never looked at it that way before'

That is the sentence that separates the learners from the non-learners. Almost.

The learners look at it that other way, with the author, and then see what the author sees. What they had never seen.

The non-learners look at what the author says as the author's view that they don't share. Words they need to learn to be able to repeat.

The difference between the 1000 and the eight billion is that. That 'are you willing to look from the same place the author looks from?' issue.

And, of course, the author can be anyone. It can be Bonnie in the Friday podcast. It can be someone who is on the group call with you. Or it can be me. And it can be the president...

The question is: are you willing and able to look and see from their point of view.

Charlie Munger says that unless you can argue your opponent's view better than they can, you don't have the right to your opinion...

If you are stuck in a ditch, and most people are, this is your way out. Your ONLY way out.

The more you can do it, the more opinions you can look from, the more vantage points, the more out of the ditch you are.

Of course for that you need to overcome your natural or unnatural distrust, reluctance, resistance, and desire to be right. Of course... or you won't do it. that is where the 'able' part comes in.

The students that never move never do. They don't think it is their job to overcome whatever is in their way. They are waiting for Godot, they are waiting for a miracle, they are waiting for an energy or me to do it for them.

Or they can't... Simply can't.

Getting out of the ditch, climbing the tree of life, is a do it yourself thing... No one can do it for you. and no one can carry you and you'd be there. While you climb each step takes giving up something, each step takes arming yourself with something. But YOU are doing it. Maybe with help... Maybe being guided about what you need to give up, or what tool you need for this next step, but ultimately you are doing it.

You may need to suspend a deep belief that if you allow anything or anyone to dominate you,

I originally wrote this article in 2017. Not much has changed since then, but I had new insights. So instead of writing a new article, I am updating this one.

In your starting point measurements, 37 out of the 48 measures depend on your emotional intelligence, and if I want to be quite truthful, even your health number largely depends on your EQ as well. So in a roundabout way, in the Starting Point Measurements I test your emotional intelligence and all the ways it manifests.

I have recently saw that your self-concern that keeps you tethered to, keeps you anchored to your doom is the result of a decision you made when you were around three years old, and at the low emotional intelligence level of a three-year old, the age of the tantrums.

And you never managed to grow up your emotional maturity... unless, by some luck you had unusually intelligent parents, you went to therapy, you participated in some good program. 

And by now, being an adult at least by your years, you now insist that you were right, that they did THAT to you, and now you protect yourself from the same... aka self-concern.

If you find yourself upset by what other people say, or what you hear they say, their behavior, how the world is, anything, chances are the problem is with you. Namely problem with your ability to consider that what they say says more about them than what they seem to say about you.

If you think of yourself all the time, if you think things are personal, then you haven't become an adult emotionally.

Your life is self-righteous suffering, and you are quite insufferable to have around.

One great way to test and then increase emotional intelligence is to brainstorm.

With other people. On someone else's issue. Use your considerable intelligence to throw out ideas without much worrying about being stupid, or smart.

Even expressing an opinion out loud about another's behavior, when I ask you in a class... even that will increase your emotional intelligence.

If you have invested your 'I' in being thought of in a particular way: you won't do it...

Obviously some or all of your ideas will be rejected. That is not the important part. What is important is that you break out of your own concerns about yourself...

But if your self-concern is to be right all the time, to not have to deal with anything unpleasant, to look good, to dominate, to be smart and special, then this is a serious training for you, because you'll be wrong, and look bad, etc.

I listened to a step in the 67 steps, the principle was: Begin with the end in mind... or said in another way: Win wars, not battles.

One of the things Tai uses to illustrate this principle is your income. If you are short by a thousand dollars every month, and your end goal is to raise yourself out of scarcity, you need to look at what is the end goal: an extra thousand dollars a month, or broken down to days, and extra 33 dollars income a day.

Overwhelm is an emotional intelligence issue

Instead of fretting, justifying, worrying, crying, complaining, etc. you state the goal and ask a question: how can I make, reliably, $33 a day, every day. Seven days a week. Extra. Beyond what I am making now.

Now, if I asked you to think this through for yourself, depending on your emotional intelligence, you would probably get stuck, etc.

But I ask you to brainstorm with me. For me.

We can do it in writing, we can do it on a webinar. If you were me, what would you do that makes an extra one thousand dollars a month... say, building up to it, by the end of the next month?

Now, remember that this is an exercise in emotional intelligence. If you start throwing out stuff without first finding out what situation you are dealing with, you just expressed, again, low emotional intelligence.

There are two main ways to live. It is the closest to black or white I have found in nature.

Living things that have their eyes in the front... the predators that go ahead and discover, that live through risk. And prey animals, that are hunted and killed for food.

Of course humans want to be very smart, so they added the categories: philanthropist and supporter, but in this b/w categorization philanthropists and supporters are also prey animals.

So what? you could ask, but there is something important to know here:

If you don't live according to your design, your experience of yourself and your life is below what it could be.

Not a full human life.

Humans are designed to hunt, go for, risk for food.

If you don't, you live, but not according to your design, and your life is lived out in a tiny box, and is not very different from the life of a cow, or a bunny rabbit.

Although I love watching nature videos, this article will not be about brave animals that defend themselves, and predators feeding on beautiful antelope (weep,weep). It is going to be about people. Huh?

lol.

And it is not going to be about bad people who prey on little boys or little girls, or big girls, or even entire groups of people.

No, this article is going to be about choice. Shrinking or expanding. Living or surviving.

What we have and what we choose.

I remember when I discovered that the world is suffering from courage deficiency.

Courage is the willingness to choose an action that has a large chance to turn out bad for you. Take a risk that can lead you to gaining something, or lead you to losing something, maybe even losing your life.

I looked up the dictionary definition of courage and I dare to disagree.

The dictionary pits fear against courage. They talk about fear... but I think constant jabbering about hell, about punishment, about fear is what creates a humanity that is cowardly... directing people's attention to fear away from what is the benefit of courage and the cost of being meek.

Was that intentional? I think so.

I don't know much about anything, but I think religion's main purpose has been to make people cowardly, behave like prey animals.

Why would they want that? To keep humanity at bay, so the few will be predators and the many will be sheep.

You see, unless the definition of courage emphasizes what is on the other side of courage: a life lived well, a life you love and live fully and powerfully, no one will volunteer to be courageous.

If I look at choosing between fear and courage, I will likely choose fear.

But the real choice is between feeling like a person I can love, and feeling like a person I detest.

And that choice is a real choice... It has a strong propeller type energy and a strong jet engine energy... And as far as MY nature is, I will always choose by the strong jet-engine energy: what I don't want. I don't want a pedestrian hum-drum boring insignificant life. So I choose courage.

Setting up courage as choosing between two weak energies is manufactured... and you stupidly believed it. You've been thinking what you are told.

In my experience what people want, the much touted desire is a weak energy. But fear is a stronger energy than desire... So people choose what is stronger. They choose fear and with it a life they are not proud of. And a cowardly humanity.

And the result is an eight billion people strong humanity, people who are not proud of who they are. People who don't live life fully.

Religion has been a big weapon to lower humans. Another weapon has been positive thinking, or teaching that you want to avoid anything negative, unpleasant, frightening, ugly, etc.

You can live your life through quotes: No matter who you are... this is true for you.

The first quote is from Landmark Education:

'It is not the past, not even the present that gives you your mood. It is the future you live into'

So let's begin the article guided by quotes.

'The story of our lives consists of setting and pulling up anchors. For both the time will come.' ~ Dr Peter Popper, psychologist

In my experience we humans are reluctant to do either: setting or pulling up anchors.

Tai Lopez says that

'a mistake is an experiment gone too long'.

At the beginning of an experiment we drop anchors... If not then it is not an experiment. Dropping anchors takes some commitment. Commitment comes from within. When an experiment comes from without it is not a commitment, and it will fizzle out.

Do you need to pick up an anchor from the normal to do an experiment?

No, an experiment can be done inside (nested) what is already going on.

However the experiment turns out, one can decide to lift the anchor and drop it on the continuation of the result, aka change.

In my work I am experiencing human reluctance. Often people are reluctant to leave misery.

Here is the quote: the antidote:

'The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.'

~ Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) mythologist, author of 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces'

The devil known is better than the devil or even angel that you don't.

This idea is worth pondering about. Given that we don't know can be vast... our imagination cannot help here. Only self-trust can.

Self-trust, meaning: I trust myself to go through hardship and stay alive.

Interestingly there is no way you can go from bad to good.

The hope of my students is that I can take them to the Promised Land, to a life they love and live it powerfully, without them having to wade through abject misery, loss, or hardship.

If you look at the hero's journey, a model that all good lives follow, the hero has to pick up anchor, wade through bad stuff, before he can land on the good stuff.

'If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.'

~ Dolly Parton entertainer

It is true in micro and in macro. As above so it below.

Here are a few examples:

The principle in a quote that applies:

'Most of my major disappointments have turned out to be blessings in disguise.

So whenever anything bad does happen to me, I kind of sit back and feel -- well, if I gave this enough time, it'll turn out that this was good, so I shouldn't worry about it too much.' ~ William Gaines (1922-1992) publisher, 'Mad' magazine

1. I learned from Source that I'll die through my stomach. So I shifted my attention to my stomach that was giving grief... heartburn and pain. Even headache.

I started on a regimen of natural antibiotic.

For a day or two the pain and the heartburn ceased, but after that they came back with a vengeance.

The bad was really bad for a few days.

Now the bad moments are really just moments... and I am in Promised Land territory with my stomach...

2. My readership numbers seem to be dropping. Even died in the wool fans don't read my emails, don't read my articles, don't buy my stuff.

Yesterday I finally saw what it is that I do that may have caused it... People want entertainment more than teaching and I have been doing heavy-duty teaching lately.

Seeing that, I am pulling up the anchor...

I am going through hell. Feeling absolutely inadequate to the job. Diminished. I trust myself with whatever is coming... that I can handle it.

I haven't got anywhere near the Promised Land yet...