When I was a kid I read a book about Sam Small, The Flying Yorkshireman. I read it in Hungarian... It was easier to read in Hungarian than in English... Ugh... that Yorkshire accent in writing... impossible to tolerate.

Anyway, this Sam Small could fly. And I decided that I wanted to fly too. I spent all my imagination... what it would be like to fly.

Unfortunately all my fancies were about escaping... I don't know what it is about me: I still have nightmares about escaping, and there is always flying.

Except for a few times when I was infatuated with some boy, I never had 'positive' fantasies...

But when I look at my students and my clients, I can see that I am in the minority: most people have fantasies of what they want to have, what they want to do, who they want to be.

And they keep dreaming about it, hoping to find something that will give them wings. Because all that dreaming isn't strong enough to motivate them to do much of anything for that dream.

If you put all the dreaming of a future people and me and the 'negative' people in a competition, the 'negative' people will always win, hands down.

By 'negative' I mean people who are pushed by what they don't want.

You see, human nature is such that you'll do a whole lot more to avoid losing that you'll ever do for gaining.

Lots of psychologists attest to that, and I can see it on my students.

Some people would NEVER move for what they want...

...what they have is good enough... But when they realize what they are losing, suddenly they want to move.

Of course if you are a 'stupid' positive thinker, you'll never believe that you could lose anything. Positive thinking tells you to turn your face to the sun and they you won't see the shadows. And you won't have any energy to do anything for yourself either.

So what should you do if you find yourself wanting, desiring, and yet not doing anything or anything much for what you want?

Here is the bad news: unless you get more interested in what you don't want... I don't have any hopes for you and you shouldn't either.

You see, the connection between the desire to fly and being lead by your desires is this: you underestimate what it takes to get what you want... and when it turns out that it takes work, you quit.

In the Moneyroots workshops...

...I managed to redirect some participants attention from what they want... aka desire, to what it is costing them... and the light came on.

Whether it stays on or not: that will still remain a question. But as long as a person uses what they don't want, what it cost them to fantasize about what they want... they can achieve nearly anything.

There is one other thing that is also invisible:

You see, when you are staring, in your mind, at what you want: how much of your attention is on what you are doing? Not much... right? I'd say about 1%-2%. So obviously you can't do a good job... you don't have enough attention on what you are doing to do it well.

So even if a 100 years passes, you won't get from A to B... you can't.

Whereas if you are going away from what you don't want, what you don't want is behind you and requires none of your attention... and you can put as much attention into what you are doing as you can... Even 100%... which is what I do. It is what the 1000 superiors do...

The rest... not so much.

Anyway, you can get the recordings of the Moneyroots workshops and start figuring out with its help how to turn your life around, so you stop dreaming about flying... getting what you want, without ever doing any work.

Turn your attention to what matters most

PS: This whole idea of flying...

...came from a bunch of commercials that say: Red B...

I thought I would report on the Moneyroots workshop... given the seemingly no interest... Four people, the same four people paid for both workshops.

That made it very easy for me: I didn't have to repeat anything... I am not good at repeating, my brain isn't good at that. My brain is like the adventurers of the North Pole... may stop to sleep, to refuel, but then it charges on.

Anyway, forgive me when I say it: anyone who didn't sign up is a moron.

Would I have signed up? I know I would have... and in the second workshop it came out clearly and cleanly: I have had real issues with money since I was three... and my mother created an association between having money and a certain behavior...

What were the topics we covered?

This could be an attempt to write a sales letter... let's see if it turns out that way, shall we?

Now, why did I say that? Because I work, I run my business under the flag: exclusion... I want to get rid of people who aren't a good fit to what I teach.

I could also say: the Anna Karenina Principle. Or the strait and narrow.

Get rid of all the wimps. Get rid of all the 'she wants to sell me something so she can make herself rich' type of people. I do not want to have them in my class... Even though I found out yesterday that one of my most steady participants thinks that about business... but not about my business...

But I am getting ahead of myself.

In the first Moneyroots workshop we started out with your most fundamental beliefs as how money is, should be, ought to be...

We found there expectations. Expectations of it being due to you, just because.

All expectations are of the immature mind... childish. And of course it doesn't matter how old you are, underneath of all those wrinkles, gray hair, manliness, you are a little boy or a little girl who is entitled, even though the people in the workshop all had their DNA adjustment... so now it is just a stuck attitude.

I have found that those expectations, entitlement feels right to people... and you won't consider them bad unless we look at what is the tradeoff...

Tradeoff?

Yeah. You have never thought of that... As a child it was an evil parent that punished you. If you were inculcated with Christianity, then it was god, the peeping tom, that you had to fear.

When you made faces, you were told if you do that your face will stay that way...

But no one has ever told you that the way the Universe works, there is never a free lunch, there is never anything that you do that it doesn't have a consequence or a backlash.

So in this regard you have remained ignorant, and so you never seek to change your behavior because you think that it doesn't effect anything, not you, not your life, not others.

So back to expectations, back to entitlement. What is the tradeoff?

The tradeoff is you repel what you want. When you expect you CANNOT be grateful for what you get. It is your due...

But ingratitude, taking things/people for granted is appalling, and repelling. Repulsive. It's an energy that broadcasts itself and repels everything and everyone... Like Scrooge did.

When people learned that that is a 100% consequence, they were more likely to look at their 'innocent', childlike expectations as harmful.

Expectations also prevent you, block you from actually seeing how the world works. In reality you need to work for what you want. It is not coming to you.

And yeah, negotiating for it is also work. Just ask the hard-working negotiators!

Now, I know you don't think that you are one of those man-child types... and yet I say 100% of people carry that attitude to adulthood, except maybe the 1000... they learned the lesson somewhere,

I have been working with my core group... and some of them I have had a difficult time to see why they never put out, why they never do what is theirs to do.

This article to unwrap that issue... and look at behavior differently. The student is judgmental... Has high, impossible standards for others... So let's see what she could do so she could become a productive person, and maybe love herself...

The dysfunctional family

Here are some behaviors that I say come from this kind of upbringing... growing up in a dysfunctional family.

A dullard

A never do well

An argumentative little sh!t

A know it all

Sneaky bastard

A User

A Taker

A weakling trying to look strong by throwing your weight around

An abuser (a thing or people)

A follower, a second-hander

A cowardly little sh!t

A liar, a pretender

Judgmental

Entitled slighted angry black hole

Oh, my judgmental (Virgo) self is coming out to have fun here...

Most of what I wrote up there is judgment. Not what I promise and mostly keep: I assess, I don't judge.

Those statements are probably the things you say to yourself that you are.

They are judgmental descriptions of behavior. Not helpful.

But you see, if any of these is what you call yourself, then you have gone beyond the point where you can interfere and modify the behavior.

You can't modify behavior that you have already judged.

So let's look at the underlying action-type behaviors... the ones that you CAN modify.

But before I go there: A dysfunctional family is an environment where you didn't feel safe to be yourself.

So we could say that a dysfunctional family passed judgments... In a dysfunctional family you had to deal with reactions not with facts, not feedback.

That is, by the way, my opinion for the use of the word 'dysfunction'. I consider the function of the family to provide a safe protected environment where you can grow straight.

If we translate it to plants, for example, a dysfunctional environment would be where the new little sapling has to grow from under a rock, sideways, crooked.

If you are a parent, or want to be a parent, your own personal dysfunction makes the family dysfunctional.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family.

I got lucky: in 1988 someone suggested that I start attending the ACOA meetings, Adult Children of Alcoholics. They have a long list of characteristics to 'be an ACOE', but the most important one is 'I don't know what FUN is'. I didn't.

I started to go. And after four months of twice a week meetings I let go of most of my victim act...

What is this sh!t about fun... WTF?! Everybody knows what fun is! but no. I didn't know, and most of the people who came to those meetings didn't know.

Why?

Because fun is permission. Permission and safety and openness.

And when I looked later, I saw that even to look and see the sky and the clouds, to really see them, is only possible when I have permission, safety, and openness. In the moment. Like right now.

Now, let's go back to the judgmental list above... Can you see that none of those behaviors show that the person has permission, safety, and openness?

Or said in another way: do you see that those behaviors show that the person has no permission, no safety, and therefore they are not open.

They either have to prove something, or protect something, or get something that is not allowed... All compensation.

I still, at age 74, live without much permission, without much safety by the environment, by others. That hasn't changed. That can't change.

But because I know this fact, I can do what Hillel suggested: I can provide myself with it.....

One of the signs of intelligence is for someone to be able to see and actually see the big picture.

To see you need to look. Look and see.

Most never look. Or when they look they are looking for something, which means they narrow their cone of vision... to minuscule width.

Results: most people never see what there is to see.

Today the average intelligence is not high enough for the average intelligence person to even appreciate looking wide and deep... Even the average asks: look for what?

And yet, most of what is worth to see doesn't show up in the looking for something. When you look for something, your eyes work like little projectors... projecting what you are looking for, and looking for a match.

But that is not valuable. That is a 'so what?'

The real seeing happens when you are looking and you don't know what you are looking for, and you don't know what you are looking at. You are waiting for what there is to see to show up.

For a decade I was trying to teach distinction with the color exercise... But what I got back is the looking for.

To learn distinction, you need to look this second way: not know what you are looking for so what is worth seeing will show up.

The 'looking for' way is forceful. And useless, for our purposes, to allow you to see what's there so you know what is the water you swim in, what is the floor you walk on.

Imagine standing on the shore of a lake. Imagine looking at the lake, at the sky, at the birds, and then, unexpectedly something emerges from the calm waters of the lake... A diver, a buried treasure, a dead body, a fish.

If you expect it to come... you are fixating your glance on the water... forcing.

In The Work we are not looking for things to pop up from a lake, we are looking for things that we haven't quite seen, the invisible that robs us of our happiness.

We don't know what it's going to be. But we trust that it's there. It needs to be there because the visible parts are there... The tip of the iceberg is there. The misery.

We may blame something for it, but the cause is invisible...

In yesterday's session of my core group, the group that assists me to drive up and look at the hidden dynamics and invent ways, when seen, to manage it so it stops robbing the participants of happiness.

Without seeing what robs you of happiness you can't manage it.

With the 'looking for' method you catch the visible part, and force it. Nothing changes, you just get busier and ultimately not happier.

Without truly allowing that invisible to become readily visible, even before it fully emerges, you need to learn to look widely and deeply in the allowing way. And then, instead of forcing, trying to fix, or denying, you need to gently manage not it, but yourself.

The core element, the essential element of everyone's machine, the machine that chews up your life, is the idea that there can be anything wrong in the universe.

It is an entirely human idea. An invention. An opinion. And one that is deadly.

The idea that you know what is right and what is wrong is eminently arrogant.

In that you place yourself above your god... who purportedly said: it is good.

If it is good enough for your god, it should be good enough for you. But no, every single student I have ever had, every single one, has been unwilling, UNWILLING to let go of that arrogance, let go of that superiority, let go of that notion that they can tell what is right and what is wrong and that will make it so.

Your whole existence is built on the foundation that there is wrong and there is right, and you know which is which.

When I confront you with the idea, you pretend to change your mind, and you say, ok, it's not wrong,

Below that it's discontent. This is true in any area. Health, wealth, love and fulfillment (aka work).

It seems that most of life can be lived somewhat safely without consciousness. Consciousness is activated with a type of thinking. Thinking things out, deeply. Without that kind of thinking there is no consciousness.

Animals get on quite well without thinking things out, without consciousness. And for millions of years they are still around, more or less.

The big difference between humans and animals is that animals don't have an abundance of choice... every animal lives more or less the same. While humans have big gaps between groups of people... something to aspire to or envy.

Therefore the largest segment of humanity is always and chronically suffers with discontent. When they compare themselves to others, others always seem to have what they want.

How? Why? it is not clear. That is all in the invisible for the casual observer.

In this article I reveal the difference between the folks, the few who are fulfilled, and the many who are not.

Back to thinking, back to consciousness...

Thinking, the kind of thinking that activates consciousness doesn't really exist in the animal kingdom, and surprisingly doesn't really exist in humanity... in spite of the fact that a human could think... except that they don't. Or not very long... and not very well.

The thinking I am talking about is the thinking when you have your premises... the data you start with. You want to do something with the original data: you want to choose. You want to come to a choice. For that you need consideration. You need to process, in your brain, the possible outcomes, the possible consequences, and finally come to a choice. An action you consider to the highest benefit.

Here are a few 'though experiments' for the kind of thinking I am talking about.

If I leave the unwashed dishes in the sink... and there is food on the dishes (premise 1)... and they get wet (premise 2)... mold will grow on the food (premise 2) and the mold will plug up the sink, block the flow, and I won't be able to drain my sink (consequence). I choose not to leave the unwashed dishes in the sink...

If I buy this course... and I just look it over... and I find that a lot is missing from my foundation (premise 1) and unless I learn the missing stuff I won't be able to benefit from the course (premise 2), so I start learning the missing stuff (premise 3)... and then learn the new course, eventually I'll learn what I originally bought and I'll get my money's worth. (consequence). Therefore I choose to brush up on the missing stuff... and then study the course I bought.

Without effective and skillful thinking your life if full of trouble.

The above examples are too hard to think out for most people, and you can see that people almost never think things through to the conclusion, they wing life.

When you climb a mountain... or want to get good at a game (cards, chess, etc.) you cannot see when you start that the mountain climbing and the games have moves that you cannot even consider as part of your thinking... Even if I say to you: there are moves, patterns, that once you learn them you'll start to become masterful... You won't believe me.

You can't think that because you have never experienced it. And you are stuck in gear one or two of your vehicle... and cannot think that there are gears above it... You see other people doing things fast, elegantly, masterfully, but you have no idea what is in between, so you say things like: 'they are talented and I am not'. Add the mournful tone of voice... I heard that exact sentiment on Thursday from one of my students who has never even gone to gear two...

Even people who are talented in some area need to go through th...

I read someone's email this morning and in it the dude says: It is important to bet on the person and not on the deal

Why? Because deals are a dime a dozen

So, he says, it is import to bet on the process no on the result... not on the pot of gold.

And if there is a person going to do the process... hell, you should bet on the person first and only if you deem you should, only then bet on the process.

It is the classic example of not putting the cart in front the horse...

But, alas, knowing what to bet on and in what order requires a little bit of thinking.

Knowing who to bet on requires some awareness, emotional intelligence, and knowing what is real and what is not. Knowing what is relevant and what isn't.

If my visitors, if my readers were more intelligent, if they could tell the process from the goal, I would have hordes of people signing up to my courses.

But alas, they, you, can't think, and cannot take your eyes of the pot of gold... and cringe when someone talks about a process to reach it.

The rules I am stating above apply to anything. So they are principles, true in any and every area of life.

Of course they are violated in as many.

Violated in medicine, in pharmacology, in politics, and of course in business.

Because humanity as a whole behave like a bunch of school children, unaware and don't even know it.

But when can ask any person if they are intelligent they will say yes. Even if they tell themselves they are stupid a lot.

High self awareness is rare.

When I had a publishing company I tested people on their intelligence, not on their specific knowledge of the actual job I needed fulfilled. An intelligent person can be trained... an unintelligent person will bring all their superstitions to the job... instead of looking what it is that needs to be produced. So yeah, intelligence wins.

Hordes of people, books, courses teach the 'Law of attraction' to about a billion people.

The courses are tailored to unintelligent people. They emphasize the results, not the process.

The results keep the 'students' eyes trapped there, and the 'teachers' get away with never saying what there is to say: there is a long process that takes you to have high vibration, to be able to be grateful, and unless you engage with those processes diligently exactly and successfully, you are 'shit out of luck'.

I use energy assisted processes, so I see a lot of these people who believe in the teachings of the 'law of attraction', but want assistance in the processes.

Abracadabra... The Aramaic phrase avra (will create) k'dabra (as I speak), meaning 'I will create as I speak'

Yeah, you can when you get to the vibration of integrity, when you learn to cause your speaking, when you can fully trust yourself because you are trustworthy.

And then you can create with your words... You will create as you speak...

But not until then.

The inane people who invented affirmations... didn't know that you, on the level of intelligence, on the level of integrity, on the level of vibration you don't create anything different than what you have been creating ever since you were three years old.

And they don't tell you because they probably don't know that there is a process to get there.

I tell you. And then you get to the main issue: are you the kind of person who will do, consistently, precisely what the process tells you to do, or are you the person who will do a little bit here and there...

Because, you see, the process can be the best, but not done, not done exactly, not done enough, not done all the way won't get you the result the process can get you.

Your past performance, of course,

One of my students wrote: 'I don’t know yet why I run from it, why is it uncomfortable for me to take responsibility'

This is an excellent question.

Why? Because every person that has ever been confronted, yes, confronted with the possibility to having their responsibility gene activated, has, so far, chosen not to use it, not to benefit from it.

What is responsibility in terms of the world? Blame. Duty. No fun.

What is responsibility in The Work?

It is power. It is magic. In essence it is making things happen. It is causing. Causing yourself, causing your choices, causing your attitude, your words, your actions.

When you cause your power, you cause your word, you have access to declaration. To Commitment. To results that fall outside of the power of people who don't have responsibility.

And yet, everyone has chosen to not take on the power of responsibility.

Why is this?

Psychologists have been saying for some time, that when people given the choice, their eyes are always on avoiding loss... not on gaining anything.

While people think that their desire, their 'love', etc. can lead them to great achievements, the reality is that human nature is more concerned with avoiding pain.

And unless pain of not being responsible is bigger than the pain taking on responsibility seems to bring, they will always choose to avoid responsibility.

But they have never tried it. They just have a bad feeling about it...

And that bad feeling, like the monster that is hiding under the bed, keeps them never trying.

I used to be afraid of driving. My parents convinced me that I had no reflexes, and I'd kill people if I ever drove.

When I finally, at age 30 started to take driving lessons, I found it exhilarating to cause the car to move because I push the gas pedal.

Causing anything is exhilarating. Magical. Better than sex... at least for me.

Until that point, age 30, I didn't have the experience of causing anything... So the contrast was clear, and I was sold.

The same year I started causing. I started to make things happen

I won (with a team) a big money prize on a national competition and I bought my first car.

My eyes opened and I saw that the system, the political system I lived in was not good for anyone.

Of course bad habits are hard to beat... and I had those in spades... but ultimately that first experience causing the car to move was a turning point: after that I was looking for opportunities to cause, and eventually that took me to a life I love and a life that I feel is a perfect match for me.

Every choice, every instance of causing had an element of risk and therefore fear and trepidation with it.

Because I had known real pain...

...having been an abused child, I knew that I could deal with it. In fact, I knew I could deal with anything life can throw at me. Pain, poverty, shame, aloneness, betrayal. Anything.

You see, I think that people who have had an easy life with virtually no pain, no hardship, have never learned that they can deal with anything.

It's the pansy syndrome. The Milquetoast syndrome. It's the limp dick syndrome.

I am deadly afraid of physical pain. But I have had it, and I am still here. So that fear doesn't tell me what to do... if the pain will come, I'll deal with it.

But just look how people reacted to the angry husband slapping the joking comedian, who said something unkind about his wife.

The whole world was upset... For a slap?

I was slapped and more every day until I moved out of my parents home at age 24. NO.BIG.DEAL!

So when my clients are afraid to be responsible, I know that they are too soft, too spoiled, too weak. NOT resilient.

Do you remember the pie chart of all knowledge? The circle, the pie, represents all facts in the universe?

A tiny slice you know and you know that you know it. It is your address, it is your name, it is facts that you can prove.

Another tiny slice is all the things you know that you don't know. For example you know that you don't speak Japanese, unless, of course, you do.

The rest of the pie is the things that you don't know that you don't know. Some of it you think you know, but what you think is just isn't so.

Now I could make an extra slice, 30%, and call it 'your superstitions'... but you they don't really belong to this pie chart... because they are not facts.

But, of course you don't know that. If you did, they wouldn't be superstitions, right?

At this point in 'The Work' we are poking holes in the superstitions, and hope that they can hold. Superstitions have a huge staying power... because if you allowed them to be proven wrong, you would be proven wrong.

And the strongest and mightiest motivator of most humans is the desire to be right. And to stay right.

When you find out about a piece of 'knowledge' you have used as the basis of your life, you don't want to give it up, because then you and your life would be wrong...

Reasonableness would say: 'good. I found out, now I can make corrections.' But the 'Wanting to be right machine', the Racket dares to disagree, and unless you are stronger than the racket, you are doomed to continue the trajectory of life that leads to no happiness, no joy, no fulfillment.

Here is the real bad news for most of humanity: unless you change your mind and fall in love with having been wrong, you are not going to be able to change your life.

Every instance of 'having been wrong' is a possible turning point to the better. It's possible for everyone. Probably to a mighty few.

The way you can pinpoint tiny pieces of facts from the 'you don't know that you don't know' (and the 30% superstitions) and turn them into 'you know that you know' aka knowledge, is by first getting glimpses of it and then cementing it, firming it up.

My entire job is about poking holes in the dkdk... the don't know that you don't know, and allow you to redesign your life given the new knowledge.

Thus far I have poked hundreds of holes into that dkdk... And have taught them. About a 100 of those are included in the 53 invisibles... it's 53 videos, but hundred 'dots' in the dkdk...

This is what happens when people see any of those untruths from my videos or from our conversations:

People groaned. Then maybe they nodded, maybe even looked at each dot for a little while, then went on doing their lives exactly the way they had been doing it. Nothing changed. Not in their thoughts, not in their attitudes, not in their words, not in their actions.

People, you, consider information knowledge... but that is a misunderstanding of reality.

Information is like an insight: it is worth a dime (10 cents) a dozen.

Both information and insight need to be turned into knowledge with work...

Reality, Life, is unforgiving.

Only unconscious competence will make a difference in how you live...

I like to use the quarterback's example (in soccer that is the center, if I remember correctly, point guard in basketball).

If the quarterback is not unconsciously competent, if they need to think about what to do... they are a lousy quarterback and they get killed on the field. Unconscious competence masquerades as instinct.

People's driving with practice becomes unconscious competence... they can do it without thinking.

You have been unconsciously competent at living the life you've been living...

...good, bad,

I just listened to a Frank Zappa song and I loved it.

Most people I know listen to music. What they call music is songs. You listen to them. And you are put in a trance. The songs are  hypnotic in nature. They implant b.s. in your mind about HOW IT SHOULD BE. About the order of nature. Ugh. (aside: movies too)

I don't understand the words in American or British songs, but I do understand them in my mother tongue, and those lyrics, although I haven't heard those songs for 40 years, reverberate in my head.

Given that we are working on digging up, mapping our roots, I now pay attention to the unconscious words... and start seeing that the few stupid, misguiding, corrupting elements of my roots may come from the songs I heard living in Hungary.

If you hear it enough, it will become part of the fabric of 'your reality'... 'your truth'. Your superstitions.

Expectations, beliefs are all superstitions.

A superstition is a belief impossible to justify.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Superstition stops being superstition if you see that it is a superstition...

This is the work we attempt to do. My hunch is: some people won't be willing to see that what they consider true is a superstition.

Why? I think it is because they would need to come to terms with the fact that superstitions guide their life. And that is... a horrible feeling.

And most people avoid anything bad, let alone horrible... So no, most people will rather die that discover that. (TLB?)

And one would believe that it's rare. That humans are reasonable creatures and when they see that a belief is untrue, or unjustified, they would let go of it.

But no... I have found that exactly the opposite is true.

People make up, create a worldview that is a superstition and then, unless they SUDDENLY wake up, unless something forces them to look and see, see clearly  the mess they are living, they will not have a chance.

Unless they come awake and aware and have the courage to renounce the superstition, they will live their entire life living according to a superstition. According to untruth. According to a hodge podge set of 'premises'.

By the way: many of the things psychologists teach, like the book 'Persuasion' are superstitions... so I should not be surprised but I am.

Yesterday in my core group we looked at the core dynamic, the core premise by which they each live their lives and to my utter horror, each live on the premise that a superstition they made up is true.

The child starts out with something like: 'I want more than I am getting' and slowly, over time, observing people, decides what moves work to get more than she is getting. Of course a child is not very astute... so the moves actually don't work... and make both the child and the adult live a resultless, unrewarding life.

Here is another: the child is capable. An adult considers the child's result not sufficiently high for their talent. The child makes up that they are like god, maybe even higher. And then starts to live life out of that 'I am supposed to be responsible for all of it' and, of course, live a life of slavery. Live an unhappy life where they are never enough no matter how capable they are. They may produce 10 times more than any living being, but it's still not enough.

Here is yet another: the child say: things should be the way I want them to be, not the way they are. Why? Because that is how I want them. Then she lives her entire life unhappy with how life is, how people are, maybe even how she is... all along hiding that it is her expectations are what make people, life, herself wrong, not life.

That switcheroo is almost in every case study I have seen.

You've heard it said that, 'Every person is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.' Yet we routinely craft our own facts from the fabric of personal experiences, preferences and prejudices.

A stereotype is nothing more than a pattern we've observed.

This pattern isn't always predictive, but it is a pattern nonetheless and we trust it. We do this in the misbegotten belief that we have correctly interpreted our past experiences and that our preferences and prejudices are, in fact, correct and reliable interpretations of objective reality. We're a funny, funny species, aren't we? (~Roy Williams)

Your 'floor', the floor you've been living on, that solid foundation for all your thinking, all your actions is built of opinions, not facts...

Opinions, of just something that you said... or somebody else said... but not facts.

The mind wants to turn everything into a rule, and it has. All those rules make up your floor.

But why? Why would the mind turn everything to a rule?

Because, in general, there is so much to think about, so much to pay attention to... It is NATURAL for a living being to find shortcuts.

But to live life with shortcuts that you never examine is called cognitive bias: behaving as if they were true is called cognitive bias.

Cognitive biases are unconscious errors in thinking that arise from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.

These biases result from our brain's efforts to simplify the incredibly complex world in which we live.

Confirmation bias, hindsight bias, self-serving bias, anchoring bias, availability bias, the framing effect, and inattentional blindness are some of the most common examples of cognitive bias. Another example is the false consensus effect.

Cognitive biases have direct implications on our safety, our interactions with others, and the way we make judgments and decisions in our daily lives.

Although these biases are unconscious, there are small steps we can take to train our minds to adopt a new pattern of thinking and mitigate the effects of these biases.

Another large group of 'rules' come from religion. Every religion wants to codify behavior. And they use the infallible deity as the authority who says it's a rule.

I am not familiar with many religious dogmas... (hey, I almost forgot about the dogmas!) but I have some second hand experience with Christianity: don't do, don't be, don't don't don't... it's a sin! You'll go to hell!!! And even when you admit you did that, the reparation the deity asks for is praying, shame, regret... not some good constructive action.

When your eyes are always on what not to do, what is harmful, what is bad... you can never get ahead in life.

Suddenly the poster someone gave me a few decades ago makes sense. Henry Ford said: Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. (remember the winding mountain road story I love?)

But it would apply to more people to say:

When all you see are the obstacles, the hard, the difficult, the impossible, the immoral, the painful, you'll never get anywhere... you languish. Take your eyes of those... they are probably not real anyways.

Neither the things you say about yourself, or about the world are actually and factually true.

My students' average truth value in what they say in their heads and what they use to guide their actions is around 1%. So you can be quite reasonable to abandon all the fear and all the trepidation, and all caution and just do what you need to do to get what you want.

In educated society (tongue in cheek!) people who keep their eyes on the obstacles are considered cowardly. And they are...

Notice that what is guiding behavior is what you see...