Whether a person is successful or not can be boiled down to this question... successful people say they can handle it, unsuccessful people say they can't. And this is where your word (I can/I can't) will give you everything.

I have read about a man whose doctor told him that he had terminal cancer, and he should go home and take care of his things. The man went home, took care of his things. A week later he died.

Turns out he was healthy. He didn't have terminal cancer, he didn't have any cancer, didn't have any disease. He died because he said: I can't handle it...

Is the world black and white for you?

What you say: I can handle it, or I can't handle it, is still on the surface, and cannot directly be changed without looking at and changing the underlying structure... the invisible.

What you will say to answer the question in the title boils down to a hidden aspect that you haven't questioned, that you haven't ever dealt with because it was never a question: do you see the world in black and white? In a binary way?

Success or failure, win or lose, right or wrong, good or evil, courageous or cowardly.

It is an upbringing issue how you see the world. Some people can see 256 shades of gray between black and white, some people can none.

A case study of adding shades of gray

When I was a teamleader of phoners for Landmark Education, I saw that this black and white stopped my people from picking up the phone. In their mind they pictured the scenario of getting a no (we called people to 'sell' them a seminar) and that was the black. Getting a yes was the white...

Some people, the eternally optimistic only saw white, and they got many yes's, but most people were the other way around. Those were willing to clean the toilets just to avoid getting on the phone.

I needed to go through the following training several times on any given night:

ME: Can you pick up the phone?

Phoner: I guess so... hm. yes.

ME: can you dial a phone number?

Phoner: I think I can... I have done it before...

ME: when someone pick it up, can you say who you are looking for and where you are calling from?

Phoner: I probably can.

ME: when they say yes, so-and-so is speaking... can you ask them if they have a few minutes to talk?

Phoner: yes.

ME: wonderful. then can you ask them...

and so the training went.

At some point I would rehearse the scenario when the person on the other end of the line doesn't want to talk... the worst case scenario in the eyes of the black and white view person.

I managed to get people to make calls, and some of them even learned that each call was lots of steps, and each can be done well or not so well... thus the 256 shades of gray.

How did you get to be the way you are?

Our parents taught us that unless every step is successful, you are a failure, a never do well. A disappointment. Someone to be ashamed of.

It was all about them... never about you. They didn't allow you to be a child learning the ropes of life, they wanted you to be an advertising for them, advertising how good, smart, etc. they are. And they destroyed your natural sense of adventurousness in the process.

Any success requires you to learn new things, to do things you don't know how to do well.

The future that beckons

If you are like most people, you will imagine yourself doing things well, but you won't imagine yourself fumbling, bumbling through trials and errors through the learning process.

The future that beckons into has no path... because the path is full of mis-steps, mistakes, learning experiences, shades of gray, skill building, character building, all fraught with the 'anger' of setbacks, the danger of failures along the way.

You suspect that you will be bad at many steps al...

People share one major feeling: a sense a danger, a sense that pain or death is coming. We call it fear.

Depending on how someone handles fear is how humanity can ultimately belong to two groups.

We could also look at anger as a divider, but let's stick with fear first.

99% of fear is not justifiable... it is not a productive fear.

Productive fear makes you do something to avoid the threat. Unproductive fear perpetuates itself.

The size of the fear and the size of the threat are not in the same dimension... The fear was 'invented' years, decades before the situation. A person invented it when the person was little and defenseless. A baby, or at best a toddler.

The fear is about loss. Loss of belonging, loss of attention, loss of love. At that age that loss means loss of life.

So the child reacts their own way... and all those ways carry over to adulthood... even though the ways the child invented to get what was lost never worked. They never got the person what they wanted, belonging, attention, love, regard.

Most children react to the potential loss of their support with fear. Other children react more like a psychopath.

What is a psychopath in this context?

Someone who will lie, pretend, deceive for gain. It's a strategy. The strategy of vengeance.

None of these are bad people... What they have in common is that they have more attention, more energy on protecting themselves and that they are right than on what makes life enjoyable: producing results. Work.

Some of my story

When I was 18 I wanted to spend time in England. But of course I had no money. I was from a 'communist' country. So I worked as a sort of au pair... worked a little for lodging and food... Ironing, cooking, cleaning. The family had a daughter. Later they had a houseguest (who paid) from Germany, about my age, slightly older.

Once I went to visit my old classmate in London, and on my way back I took the wrong train and I got lost... My 'master' slapped me.

Later they had another houseguest, a died in the wool communist hater colonel who was retiring from some British colony. I experienced a lot of verbal abuse from him.

A few days before my stay would be over they sent me to the store. On the way back I saw police cars in front of the house. They were searching my room... My hosts accused me of stealing a pocket watch. They sent me packing, even though the watch was found in the colonel's car... I didn't steal anything.

I spent decades after that angry, channeling my anger into wanting to steal.

Did I? No, I didn't need anything, I didn't want anything... Instead I became a liar and a gossip... Had I measured my psychopath score then, I would have gotten 70%... High.

It took a caring coach 40 years later to wake me up to the ineffectiveness of the strategy... and another decade to completely rid myself of lying and gossiping.

The fearful is afraid of loss of attention, loss of love, loss of esteem.

Or alternatively they try to earn what they said they didn't get: attention, love, esteem. And to their surprise they won't... they can't.

The angry is actively avenging the wrong they say was done to them.

When I talk about humanity being wretched...

When Thoreau says: the mass of men live in quiet desperation... we are both talking about the behavior. The behavior that is the result of the unexamined and misunderstood first incident. A child's decision about life, about themselves, about people. And a sentence they passed on themselves.

The only thing that would REALLY work to remove the quiet desperation is to remove the 'wrong' from the original incident(s). Some people, have several incidents.

I have removed the wrong from my incidents to a degree... 91%.

When you cry and the crying/sobbing has no content. When you don't know why you are crying, then something deep is clearing out.

But when you know why you are crying, then some past, some meaning, some opinion gets confirmed and your ego will continue giving you 'reason' to cry.

I have a student who uses collages to cause her growth... Unfortunately her collaging has been, recently, of the second sort of crying: she is illustrating her grief over life not being the way she wants it... So she is going deeper and deeper into having a reason to cry.

I watched a mini-series yesterday. It ended with a big surprise. It shook me up.

The sobbing came today. I don't know why I cried. And I don't know if I was crying for the person in the movie, for you, for myself... I don't know.

I have had nothing similar in my life happen... But I felt the regret, the shame, the guilt, the despair, the hopelessness, and the resolution... and these are universal for any misdeed.

When you try to get through completing your past without thoughtless sobbing, you are being guided by Ego.

Ego wants you to pretend that you are doing what you need to do to get back to nothing... the only place from where you can build anything that lasts.

In the Landmark Forum they say: We promise you nothing... and that sounds like there are no guarantees, right?

But on the last day around 8 pm you would find out that the 'nothing' they promised is actually a place, that is not so easy to get to. And unless you get there, your life is a seamless repetition of the past.

Whether you do it in the Landmark Forum, or with me, you need to do that work if you want a different future, different from your past.

I spent the first 60+ years of my life hovering barely above despair.

That is the best you can do, unless you completely get into nothing.

For a long time I didn't completely gone to no thing, or maybe I just didn't stay there. (No thing is the reality where nothing that doesn't belong to reality hangs out there. There are no meanings that belong to reality. No running commentary. Neither opinion. Nor wrong, nor right. No good and no bad. Just what is real. That is the place called no thing.)

For decades I went as far as I could with what I had. I built, then I destroyed it. Again and again.

I like what I am building now.

It is worth going below the foundation. It is worth going deep deep, and see what is there. What is there that I haven't confronted yet.

Surprisingly I am not afraid, I am actually curious. Even though I know that what I'll find will be ugly.

But I have been training myself to be able to stay present with anything ugly... to face the tiger and stay so calm that I can tell each ear-hair apart... hold the tiger's stare with mine, and stay curious, instead of going for 'cheap closure now' and run... (This is what TLB is)

Is there a place really that is 'nothing'? No baggage, nothing to hide, nothing to cover up, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to resent, nothing to regret?

Honestly, I don't know. How could I?

I only know that I have done a lot of digging, faced a lot of ugly about myself, and I feel I am close to having cleared it all.

You may have not even started.

The question is: is it worth doing the work for you...

...or do you prefer the deadness of hiding, covering up, pretending, in the tiny space that has remained to give you an illusion that you have choices?

Is it a harsh question? It is. In the thousands of years humans have been around, we have gathered enough 'karma' for life to look absolutely hopeless... But it isn't.

The reason I put the word karma in quotation marks, because it is not really karma in a sense that it w...

Simon Baker in his role as Nick Fallin in television series "The Guardian".

I wrote this article seven years ago.

Two things about it: I write better today... yay. The second: lots of water has flown down the river... and some nuts we've cracked... and yet, a lot of people are stuck in their misery covering it up.

In the story on Netflix, The Guardian, the lead character finally shows his true colors...

I saw outward signs of it, but didn't see the emotional side. Maybe because they picked the wrong actor for it, that didn't match for me.

The story is about a young lawyer who gets caught using drugs. A lot. Because of his family, instead of sending him to jail, they sentence him to 1500 hours of community service, to work as a lawyer. A lawyer to help children who need the system to help them.

Simon Baker says about his character: 'I thought I could walk a line with Nick, that I could make the character very internal, where he wasn't likable but the audience would still root for him. There was this challenge: I thought I could play this sort of thing where you're hoping he makes the right choices and you feel for him when he makes the wrong choices.'

The signs: he doesn't open up, he doesn't look people in the eye, he keeps incredibly busy... they are signs of a deep seated issue, unresolved.

The duality, the Janus persona:

He liked cocaine, because the person, under the influence, was courageous, joyful, dynamic, and felt acceptable.

The person, without the cocaine, is afraid of intimacy, afraid to open up, afraid of looking people in the eye.

Now, why am I sharing this with you?

Because we all want to get where we want to get to, fearlessness, peace, balance, serenity. We want worldly success and fulfillment, love, without actually doing the work, cracking the tough nut that we've built around our wound.

It's not going to work. It is, maybe in the eyes of others, is going to be beautiful, but you are inside that tough nut. Your essence is trapped there. Your beauty, your humanity, your peace, your love is trapped there. And unless you crack that nut, all that you'll ever achieve is going to be unfulfilling, and will not last.

You won't enjoy it.

So, what's the problem?

Cracking the nut is a very delicate issue. And it needs looking, grieving, feeling your feelings that got trapped, and

few people are willing to feel what is trapped in that nut. I remember being in therapy. I was afraid that if I let go and feel what I never allowed myself to feel, I'd die, or other people would die. For me, it seemed that it was anger. But when I finally let go, underneath the anger I found desire, attention seeking, the willingness to be used so I can feel wanted, useful, deserving to live.

It is not a simple one-step operation, and it requires you to not be alone, to have someone there who helps you to be reborn. It's a rebirth, a return to innocence. Maybe not quite THE rebirth, but a rebirth without which you can't get to THE rebirth, The rebirth that results in you becoming ONE, instead of the duality that is the source of pretense and misery.

The person, the midwife, will have to have gone through their own rebirth, otherwise they will lead you astray, and the nut will close again. (Actually the nut needs to be opened several times. After each insight it tends to close again. But after a while it cracks and stays reasonably open.)

It is almost impossible to find anyone who is suitable...

For example it takes five to seven years to train a Landmark Forum Leader. Sometimes they let a person lead who didn't actually return to innocence... they didn't go deep enough. And there are only around 50 forum leaders, and billions of people.

Reality has everything it has. And what it doesn't have isn't real. It isn't part of reality. It's added.

This is the hardest part of reality: understanding that speaking, the observer, populates reality with things that don't belong, and then turns around and grieves the things it spoke as reality. And the truth.

All suffering comes from this speaking.

In reality there is never anything wrong. Whatever is there is there. And it should be there because it is there.

I know I have, by now, lost 90% of you... you are the ones I probably can't help. You are, currently, not intelligent enough. It may be temporary, and it can be that you've never been intelligent enough.

Either way you can go back and read what I wrote again, and see if then you can understand. If you can SEE it. Parroting is not what I had in mind.

You may be very knowledgeable, you may know a lot of things. You may be able to repeat a lot of pieces of trivia.

But all your knowledge don't compensate for what you you cannot get... because...

Your brain may be like everyone else's, but you live in la-la-land, and you compare reality with that la-la-land. That la-la-land tells you: something is missing. Something that should be there. And it's wrong that it isn't there.

And here you are, you live in wrong. You live in wrong whenever you say something should be that isn't.

And you live your life grieving. You live your life not understanding that you are the cause of all that grieving: you said that thing is missing, you said that thing should be there. That is the root of your misery, not reality.

If you hadn't said that thing was missing, if you hadn't said it should be, then you would be OK. Really.

One of the most important things I teach is this:

remove from reality what you say should be there.

Own it. It belongs to you... not to reality.

And then allow what you say shouldn't be there to be there.

Then and only then you can start being effective in reality. Until then you are a Don Quixote... fighting windmills.

Life that is lived well, life that has joy, life that is lived powerfully, deals with what is, and doesn't deal with what should be or shouldn't be.

And if you fancy something to add to reality, it is your job to add it. Whether it is love, appreciation, attention, magic... it is up to you.

Life, reality has no love, no appreciation, no attention, no magic in it... unless someone added it. So you crying for the bottle, is a waste of your time and effort past age 2-3...

Want the bottle? Get it. Add it. Be it.

When Gandhi said: be the change you want in the world, this is exactly what he meant. Be the change by changing yourself.

The people I observe, the ones that don't get it, are the ones that don't do anything much in life, and definitely don't 'be' what they say is missing.

I said before that they are not intelligent enough. Because it takes intelligence to see that if you want something done, then it is your job. The job of the person who wants it, to add it, to be it.

This is, by the way, what Hillel meant 2400 years ago:

If I am not for me, who is for me?

If I am only for myself, who am I?

And If not now, when?

You want love? love! Be love.

If you want to belong... then by all means BELONG!

If you want to be worthy, be worthy...

All of those are ways of being... not doing. Not trying to be. No. Be that way.

And if you are intelligent AND then you'll stop repeating what you say is missing. Then your job is to accept that it was your fancy... and not something wrong.

If you try not to say what you see, what you think,

I went to architecture school in 1966.

We were told, from the very beginning that we are taught where to find the knowledge, and not knowledge itself.

When you need it: you look it up. Or you know who to ask. Or you know how to figure it out.

I took that to heart.

I didn't even learn the formulas for calculating the size of building elements... Instead I paid attention to how they came to that calculation so when I need the formula I can re-create it.

So when it was test time, it took me a tad longer than for others to come to the result, but to the result I did come correctly.

I knew my street address, I knew my phone number, I knew the date of birth of my parents, and the names of my deceased grandparents. I considered these not something that you can look up.

So I keep my memory banks empty or almost empty.

Memory banks are working memory and to be able to think, you need to have a lot of that working memory... to hold the stuff so you can see everything at a glance. Working memory is like a huge blackboard, the kind you see in memes about Einstein.

I am able to keep seven different things in my working memory, while most of the people I measure can only keep one thing, the one they are looking at. So when they look at something else, they need to drop the first thing.

Can they do logical or intellectual work, aka thinking in their heads? No, not possible.

People, you, have been listening, learning, just in case you may need it some day. You don't.

If you can look in your memory and answer questions then the chances that you can think are around zero. There is no empty and available memory banks for thinking.

There are many stories about 'idiot savants'.

I am using the expression to say: people who find solutions their educated peers can't see.

The first story:

One story is about a rock in the middle of where the road was to be built. The builders, all engineers, tried complicated machinery, but the rock just wouldn't move.

A peasant came by and whispered under his nose the solution... 'dig the hole around the rock and allow the rock to sink.'

The engineers tried it, and by golly it worked and the construction could continue.

The second story

...is also about a rock, pointing to a different aspect of education: entitlement.

Once upon a time, there lived a king in a country. One day the king ordered his men to place a huge rock in the road. They placed the rock. The king hid near the road to see what people would do.

Wealthy merchants and courtiers walked by the rock and did nothing to remove it.

Others complained about it and blamed the king for not serving the country.

Later that day a peasant came by. He had a heavy load on his back. When he saw the rock he stopped and put his load down. Then he started to push the rock. He struggled but eventually managed to move the rock to the side of the road. As he was putting his load back on his shoulders he saw a little bag lying in the dirt where the rock had been.

There was a note next to the bag saying the gold in the bag would belong to one who removed the rock.

And of course there is a third rock story...

...if I am not mistaken from your Bible...

Once upon a time, there was a man who was sleeping at night in his cabin. Suddenly the Savior appeared to him. He said that the man had work to do. He showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. He said that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the unmoving rock, pushing with all his might.

Every night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain.

Information, knowledge, possibility, attitude, skill, capacity... they, all, in one way or another, are information. And they behave like milk. They go sour... useless... bad.

You may want to ask the question before you research, buy information, ask questions: 'am I doing this just in case I'll need it later or am I doing this because I need this to move forward right now.'

The first, just in case learning...

...is probably what you have been doing, wanting to raise your vibration, getting well, finding an activator, getting in shape. And while you are doing it, your life, your relationships, your work are suffering, because what you are doing is not what takes care of your life.

This is one of the key aspects of being strategic in your business, your job, your relationship, your health, your life. It allows you to do less while getting more. Of focusing on only the things that are absolutely necessary.

Just in time learning...

In my 26 years in Landmark Education, a great life experience for me, I noticed that people who came in with the 'just in time' attitude, wanting that little piece of the puzzle that was missing for them, right then and there... never came back to do more courses.

Instead they went out and did what they needed to do to put that little piece of the puzzle to the area. To the area where exactly that piece was needed.

So they left behind the ones that were participating with a 'just in case' attitude, hoping that when the sh!t hits the fan, or when the rubber hits the road, when the skill, the mindset was needed it would be there.

This group's experience was: it wasn't there when it was needed.

Why? Because all of what they learned became mind-knowledge, Tree of Knowledge, not real knowledge.

To turn something into real knowledge, you need to be up to something.

Your life, the size of your life is the size of your projects. If you want a bigger life, a fuller life, a more meaningful life, your main tool is your projects.

And to activate the knowledge, to need the knowledge, you need to need it. How you need it is through projects.

So what is a project?

A project is a process where through many steps you go from A to B. Both the A, the starting point, and B, the result point, are defined, and are preferably in time... They also need to be visible: inner results are not accepted. Feeling better is not an acceptable result for a project. And you may feel better.

The dictionary says: a project is an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim

It can be a big project or a small project...

While doing a project you'll need an awful lot of what I teach... so a project allows you to be a just in time learner... and turn the new knowledge into useful tools... capacity activations into active capacities, and your life worth living... eventually.

So it is a project that is the key to growing...

nothing else can help you grow and become more, become the person you'd like to become.

get the knowledge when it's needed, right now. At the time when acting on it is convenient, timely, and serves a useful purpose: move the project towards its outcome, or get over some obstacle in the project.

Take the actions where the knowledge is needed. Right away. No delay. Even a day's delay means the almost certain disappearance of the usefulness of the knowledge.

I would not have known this without our recent experimenting. Experimenting with capacities.

One person finally had the time to use the capacity after two days... by that time the capacity turned off.

Another person used the capacity partly wrong... It was the detached capacity, and she was imagining being away from the emotions and thoughts,

I am reading a thought provoking book... There it is again, the language distortion.

No, the book is triggering thinking about it, it triggered for me real thinking... not thoughts.

I stayed up three hours later than usual to have the time to think.

All thinking starts with something disturbing... like a feeling, like a 'now what?' for me. I could escape it, but mostly I don't. I make time for myself to think this through.

So it was almost 10 am when I got up this morning... My usual is between 5:30 and 7:30.

By the way, the language issue... thinking vs thinking about, thinking vs having thoughts. You probably have no idea what I am talking about.

Ugh, you would have never caught that... you can't hear the difference between having thoughts and thinking.

In fact, 99% of humanity never thinks... although they have thousands of thoughts every single day. 90% of them are repetitive. Maybe more.

Thinking is hard work, and in a world where work is a dirty four-letter word, of course people don't think.

It is not that you couldn't if you wanted to... Admittedly it would take you a while to learn to think, but you do have the equipment... just not the skill of thinking.

Anyway, the book is about religion. Believing in a personal god that gives a hoot about you, watches, you and has set up rules for you.

Osho talks about religion and religiousness as two different things, and I think he is accurate in that. But in the area of ability and inclination to think there is no difference in them. Neither of them think.

Religion is like having a 'backdrop' that you share with a group of other people. A backdrop that tells you what is right and what is wrong, and what is and what isn't. What thoughts you should have and what thoughts you shouldn't. The video towards the end of this article explains how and why...

In essence religion tells you not to think, not to use your brain for thinking. There is no need... it says.

The book didn't get a lot of reviews, although all of the ones it got were five stars.

People were afraid or unable to say: 'I like it. I was thinking with it. I allowed myself to be taken to places where the book took me. I WAS THINKING.' Not many people who read it wanted to think... it is a thriller after all.

Religion becomes people identity. If you question anything, you question their own validity... So the result: no Self, no autonomy, nobody home.

I also had the question: is it, maybe, religion that keeps people's vibration low? I muscletested and the answer was yes.

Both religiousness and religion.

Religion is a dogma... rendering you unwilling to think, lest you are sacrilegious, and it renders you cowardly. From my vantage point it, most importantly, robs you of what it takes to become all you can become. Religion does that by making you, keeping you have your hand out for alms... And not even think about really working for what you want, creating what you want.

Is it every religion? Yes.

So what is a religion?

A non-religion person says: If it is to be it is up to me.

A religious person says: 'god please help me have that' and stops generating,

A religious person knows ALREADY what to think... it is written, or word of mouth. No need to think.

By the way, I wouldn't give a rat's ass what religion is doing if it allowed you to think, allowed you to grow, allowed you to be free.

It doesn't. It doesn't allow you to do any of the things you need to do to raise your vibration and to grow into who you were meant to be.

I am totally heartbroken when I am telling you that the main difference between the 1000 and the 8 billion is that the 1000 isn't religious.

Oy.

Humans,

It's not communism or socialism that is the enemy of freedom and prosperity. It is authoritarian systems.

Authoritarianism=my way of the highway.

I have lived in socialism. People may be lazy there, but creativity, thinking differently, individuality, ability and productiveness is not penalized... Maybe Russia was different. I lived in Hungary.

At this point Hungary's system is really kleptocracy... stealing power, stealing stuff, stealing rights, stealing freedoms. We are seeing that in the USA happening... I hear that they are copying Hungary, a tiny country in the middle of Europe.

But in authoritarian systems who is calling the shots are the freeloaders. The looters, the moochers, the people who want something for nothing. The enemies of thinking, the enemies of originality, the enemies of production.

I know, there is some overlap, undeniably.

But not enough to kill a society and condemn it to no prosperity.

In the United States the people who are loudest, the people who want to call the shot, no matter which side, are the non-producers.

Producers, unfortunately, are busy producing.

And the utopia of Ayn Rand, where they organize, go on strike, allow the non-producers to destroy themselves is that... a utopia.

People, who are producers, aren't skilled, and aren't even interested in redirecting their attention to politics.

At least I don't think so.

I certainly am not.

And people who have never been producers, that means most people, the eight billion, are fighting for power, and want everything for nothing.

The only thing that produces value is production.

The producers are the people who create the opportunity for production... the worker bees are NOT producers.

Although they produce value, but to be a producer, you need to be the source of the production.

And the moment that producer is removed the companies collapse... you can't maintain production with worker bees... their self-interest isn't production, their self-interest is positional power, positional authority, and getting paid.

But who the system or authoritarianism wants to kill are the producers... the producers on whom all prosperity is based.

An authoritarian system wants people to not think... just repeat the party line.

I just listened to an interview that says more. Orban's process of turning a whole country into an authoritarian regime is what they are copying and what we see here in the United States today.

The trick is to change the laws, the constitution, the legal bodies, etc. and then you can do anything and it's legal.

Human rights? Personal autonomy? None. Going away.

Free speech? Going away.

Anything and anyone who is not pushing the party line is slowly marginalized, or if they are a producer: used, abused, exploited, and if needed: discarded.

Read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and don't pay much attention to the storyline... pay attention to the system, and what it does.

But if you cannot tell the forest for the trees, which is 99% of everyone... get ready to live in a world of 1984. The book.

Now, the question is: can you live and be OK, maybe even fulfilled, no matter what world you live in?

Yes, of course, but not how you are... How you are is a spoiled brat, entitled, and crying for the bottle.

In Sunday's workshop I likened the attitude and the behavior to the behavior of chicks in the next: they have their beaks wide open and they make loud noise to get the worm.

The only difference between most people is the kind of moves they use, noise, wiggle, pretend, lie, beg, talk a lot, to get that worm they want or they need... Work? Producing? No. None of them.

I am tired. The kind of tired that doesn't want to budge from sleeping, or resting. It is not ordinary tired.

I have had it before.

It's between my ears. Mental tiredness... I think.

My hunch is that there is an emotional component that keeps it stuck. So I don't worry about it... Nothing wrong, nothing to fix. I don't even try to fix... Well, I just let it be.

I teach and I consider it a principle:

What you allow to be will allow you to be.

Whether it is fear, or pain, or anger, or disgust, or being fat, or in this case mental tiredness. I allow it to be.

It is like a guest that isn't leaving. If I focus on him, maybe her, then it is a bother, and eventually I'll dig myself into poverty, because I either pay attention to my work, or the guest. So I let the guest be, and they will move out when they are good and ready. Yeah.

And in the meantime I don't worry about them, I don't pay attention to them much. I consider it the weather...

In the morning the sun shines smack in my eyes, so I wear a baseball cap.

In the after noon it's hot, so I take off my shirt.

At night the street lamp lights up my room. I don't see it unless I keep my eyes open... but surprise: I sleep with my eyes close... lol.

So even though I have this uninvited guest, mental tiredness, I can do everything I can normally do... and there you have it: I am free to be whoever I want to be.

You see, when I started this article I KNEW that I can't write an article. So my plan was to let you know that I can't write an article because I am tired.

But that would be 'not allowing the tiredness to be'. It would be using it as justification why I can't do what I said I would do: write an article every day.

So there you have it.

Most of my students are underachievers.

My guess is they under-achieve, meaning their results in life are below what they could be given their abilities and knowledge. They underachieve because they fight or accommodate stuff they don't want... like my tiredness.

They give that thing their attention, their energy, their everything, and very little if any at all to what would produce results.

Life is quite unforgiving. What you give attention grows. And if that is not what you wanted to grow: hey, you are sh!t out of luck buddy.

This week I had a few private sessions. Maybe that's why I am tired... Because some of those calls were like going through mud... left me muddy.

Almost every person I talk to wants to speak more than they want to listen. And they want to explain why they are the way they are, why they feel the way they feel, what it is they can't stand, can't tolerate, can't be with.

The mental tiredness I feel occasionally is their everyday reality... they just have no comparison: they are never free. They have never allowed what bothers them to be... And so it doesn't allow them to be either.

That thing shows up to them as a thorn in their side...

...something that they want to, need to, should, really have to fix. Or hide. Or explain. Do something with.

When I was really little, maybe two years old. It was Easter and I begged my mother to buy me a just born chick with a little basket. She did. We put the basket next to my bed when I went to sleep. The light was off, and I was wide awake. The chick was making noise. I thought: the poor chick is cold while I am under this nice warm blanket. So I took the chick to the bed with me...

Next morning I woke up and found the chic flattened... I rolled over it in my sleep.

I considered myself a killer, a murderer until 1996, where I got this distinction, or principle if you like, in a course. Whatever you allow to be will allow you to be.

I cried.