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25 Aug

Grit, Persistence, and Luck

An Excerpt from Someday Is Today by Matthew Dicks

Understanding how someone accomplished something can make an enormous difference in the life of a creator. By learning about the lives of people in a variety of creative fields, we can eliminate misconceptions and demystify the creative process. By learning about how the makers of things made their things, we can oftentimes see a path for ourselves.

It’s good to know how hard it was for those who came before us. I think that we often see the creators of good and great things as somehow special — imbued with talent and power beyond our reach. Artists who ascended the mountaintop with grace and ease.

Sometimes this is true, but more often, it’s simply dogged determination, a refusal to quit, a relentless drive to succeed, and dumb luck.

Knowing this can make our journeys easier.

Painter Frida Kahlo was in a serious bus accident at the age of eighteen. Confined to bed for three months following the accident, Kahlo began to paint as a means of passing the time. Her mother provided her with a specially made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints. She had a mirror placed above the easel so that she could see herself. Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence as her body healed.

She said, “I paint myself because I am often alone, and I am the subject I know best.” She later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period created a desire “to begin again, painting things just as I saw them with my own eyes and nothing more.” Kahlo’s moment of realization took place while recuperating in a hospital bed.

Zumba inventor Alberto “Beto” Pérez was a struggling fitness instructor and dancer who forgot to bring his regular music to an aerobics class one day. He happened to have cassette tapes of Latin dance music — salsa and merengue — and taught his class using them instead. In the improvised dance steps of that aerobics class, Zumba was born. Sometimes it takes an unexpected obstacle (and the combination of two different talents) to make something special.

Samuel Whittemore, age seventy-eight, was working in his fields on April 19, 1775, when he spotted a brigade of British soldiers sent to assist the retreat of forces from Lexington and Concord. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the soldiers from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one. He then drew his dueling pistols, killed a second soldier, and mortally wounded a third. By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, the British had reached his position behind the wall.

Whittemore drew his sword and attacked. He was subsequently shot in the face, bayoneted numerous times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found by colonial forces, still trying to load his musket to resume the fight. Whittemore was taken to a doctor in the nearby town of Medford, Massachusetts, who declared that the man had no hope of surviving his wounds.

Whittemore promptly recovered from his injuries and lived another eighteen years, dying of natural causes at the age of ninety-six. He lived long enough to see the Constitution signed and the United States become a nation.

A monument stands in Whittemore Park at the northeast corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Mystic Street in Arlington, Massachusetts. It reads:

Near this spot, Samuel Whittemore, then 80 years old, killed three British soldiers, April 19, 1775. He was shot, bayoneted, beaten and left for dead, but recovered and lived to be 98 years of age.

Sadly, they got his age wrong. More egregiously, they did not use an Oxford comma. Still, not bad for a man who would’ve qualified for Social Security sixteen years before the confrontation took place.

Whittemore was not exactly a creator in the traditional sense, but it’s a lesson in never giving up. Never thinking it’s too late. Never losing hope that you, too, can leave a mark. Grandma Moses would’ve been a more apt and obvious example of this, but I love the story of Samuel Whittemore and try to tell it whenever possible.

But how about this one: Estelle Getty, born on the Lower East Side in 1923, wanted to be an actress from an early age but never thought she was good enough to succeed onstage. Instead, she found a job as a secretary after high school, got married, and raised two children.

At age fifty-one, after her kids were grown, she decided to study acting. She considered quitting many times but loved the dream too much to turn her back on it. Eventually she met local playwright Harvey Fierstein and asked him to write a part for her in his next play.

He agreed, writing a role for her in Torch Song Trilogy. It ended up on Broadway.

Estelle Getty was well into her fifties when she was finally able to quit her day job and support herself as a working actress. Torch Song Trilogy toured America for four years. When the play made it to Los Angeles, she was seen by producers who were getting ready to launch a television pilot featuring four retired women living together.

At the age of sixty-two, Getty was cast as Sophia Petrillo in NBC’s The Golden Girls. Three years later, in 1988, at the age of sixty-five, Estelle Getty won an Emmy for her role on the show.

Estelle Getty never gave up on her dream, even when she didn’t believe herself capable of making that dream come true. She didn’t give up when most actresses her age were being written out of television and film. It took her a lifetime to make her dreams come true, which is how long it sometimes takes.

Peter Roget was a British doctor, lecturer, and inventor who suffered from lifelong depression and retired at the age of sixty-one. In addition to his more traditional professions, Roget was also an obsessive list maker from the age of eight, explaining that making lists helped him cope with his depression. Following his retirement, Roget spent all his time making lists of words and organizing them into categories by meaning.

His catalog of lists was published for the first time in 1852 when he was seventy-three years old. It was titled Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. It’s better known today as Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Peter Roget found a use for his lifelong passion late in life and, in doing so, created something that still exists today. Something that I have used more than once while writing this book.

There are many paths to and timetables for success.

I was lucky to have been awakened to the power of the written word by Mr. Compopiano back in the fall of 1988.

I was lucky to find a way of writing novels while bored in Boca Raton on a Wednesday night in February 2005.

I got lucky when my friends convinced me to say yes to my own question and take a stage in New York City and tell a story about my life in July 2011.

None of the success that spiraled from these moments could have ever been predicted.

The path to success is rarely straightforward. Many of us need to get lucky along the way. Sometimes that luck comes in the form of a misplaced cassette tape. Other times you’re lucky enough to be spotted onstage by an up-and-coming television producer. Sometimes it comes in the form of a spouse, plucking a partially written manuscript from the trash can, dusting off the cigarette ash, and reading what would one day become a bestseller.

Sometimes your misfortune can lead to your success, as it did for Kahlo in the form of a near-fatal bus accident. When the world handed her lemons, she made legendary lemonade.

Knowing that the paths of most creators are not linear, nor are they simple, can be enormously reassuring on those days when all seems lost and the horizon seems impossibly far away.

You’re not special.

You’re not a unicorn.

Neither blessed nor cursed.

You’re just another creative soul, journeying on a long and windy path to making something good and maybe great. There is no telling how long it will take you and how many bayonets to the chest you will have to suffer along the way.

But cheer up. You’re walking in the footsteps of greatness. Just keep walking.

 

# # #

Matthew Dicks is the author of Someday Is Today and nine other books. A bestselling novelist, nationally recognized storyteller, and award-winning elementary schoolteacher, he teaches storytelling and communications at universities, corporate workplaces, and community organizations. Dicks has won multiple Moth GrandSLAM story competitions and, together with his wife, created the organization Speak Up to help others share their stories. Visit him online at http://www.MatthewDicks.com.

Excerpted from the book from Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. Copyright ©2022 by Matthew Dicks. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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08 Nov

A Simple Scientific Analysis to Reveal Your Profound Fundamental Reality

Axiom 1: A thing can only know itself directly

Any simple example can make this clear. Let’s say a storage drive. It can only “know” what is stored within it. It cannot know anything outside of itself directly. The only way the drive can know anything outside of itself is when information about that thing reaches the drive and gets stored within it, and the only thing the drive can know about the outside thing is that information stored within it — nothing more nothing less. (The word “know” has been used for a non-living thing only symbolically and represents what information that thing has access to).

Same thing holds true for a processor. It can only know and process information that gets inside it. In order for anything outside to get processed, it has to get inside the processor and that is all the processor can know and process.

In fact, it holds true for any random example. For instance, take a self-driving car. The car only knows what is within it. An outside object is known by the car only when information about that object enters the car’s systems through its various sensors. That information is what the car knows and not the object directly.

So, to generalize: X can only know X directly. If X knows anything about Y which is outside X, it is only because some information about Y has entered X, and that is all what X knows about Y. X cannot know Y directly unless Y itself enters into X.

This can be applied to absolutely anything in this universe (and beyond). And it makes complete sense as it cannot be any other way.

Corollary 1: You only know yourself directly

Now apply this to yourself and what you know. Seeing is one way of knowing. What does the eye see? Does it see the objects outside directly? Do the objects enter the eye directly? Not quite. The eye only sees light that reflects off these objects, enters the eye, gets absorbed at the retina and becomes internal to the eye. Same thing applies to hearing, touching, tasting and smelling (the only other ways you know something). Information (air waves, etc.) travels to the respective sense organs (ears, etc.) and gets absorbed, and the sense organ only knows that which is within it.

Even the brain (or the central nervous system) only knows itself and the activities within it. Some of this activity is caused by information that reaches the brain through the peripheral nervous system. For example, the light that gets absorbed at the retina is converted into neuro-signals that travel to the brain through the optic nerves, reach the vision center and stir certain neural activity there. Same thing applies to all other sense perceptions (sound, touch, taste and smell). Respective neuro-signals get generated at the different sense organs, travel to the respective centers in the brain and stir different neural activities. The brain also has some of its own internal neural activity (known as thoughts, etc.). And that’s all the brain ever knows — itself and the activities within it.

But does that explain what you actually know or experience? If the buck stopped at the brain and that is all what you knew, you would have known yourself as a slushy gray matter with neurons firing left, right and center. But that’s not the case. Your experience is something very different, something very vivid — a world full of sights, sounds and sensations, with some part of it more tangible (sense perceptions) and some less tangible (thoughts, etc.).

This entity which is knowing such a vivid world within itself is called consciousness, and this consciousness is what you actually are. That is because you only ever know what is within consciousness and never anything outside of consciousness directly. And since you can only know what is within yourself directly, you must be the consciousness itself, knowing a vivid world within yourself. You, the consciousness, are neither the brain nor even a part or product of the brain but something completely different, which will become clearer with the next axiom.

Axiom 2: The whole cannot be known by parts

If something is made up of parts, each part just knows itself directly (as per axiom 1), independent of other parts. There is no way for this conglomeration of parts to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual parts.

Consider the example of a distributed system consisting of many computers. Each computer that is a part of the distributed system only knows what is within itself directly. Computers may exchange information with each other over the network but at any given point in time each computer only knows what is within itself directly. There is no way for the whole distributed system to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual computers. Whenever information is accessed from the distributed system it only comes from one or more of its individual computers that have that information.

Same thing applies to everything made up of parts. And guess what? Everything in this universe is made up of parts because the universe is nothing but a conglomeration of smaller and smaller particles (quarks, leptons, bosons, strings, etc.) coming together to form larger and larger structures and systems. So, even when we said that the eye knows itself directly, it only meant that the individual cells that make up the eye know themselves directly. Each cell functions independently by processing information that reaches it and passing it on to the next set of cells. That’s why the eye doesn’t really “see” anything. It’s just a distributed system of cells processing light, converting it into neuro-signals and passing those on to the brain, with no way for the eye to really “see” the sum total of information being processed by all its individual cells. In fact, even the cells are further made up of smaller parts and so no.

Corollary 2: You are partless consciousness

The above axiom is also true of the brain as it’s also nothing but a conglomeration of cells. It’s not possible for the brain to directly know the sum total of all the information and activity within its parts simultaneously as a coherent world of sights, sounds and sensations. Even a part of the brain cannot do that as every part will itself be made up of smaller parts. This is very powerful reasoning why you can neither be the brain nor a part of it. Moreover, you cannot be a product of the brain either, as anything made up of parts can only produce something that is also made up of parts, with a part of the source producing a part of the product. If a product of the brain will also be made up of parts, it will have the same issue of not being able to directly know the sum total of what is known by all its individual parts.

Since you, the consciousness, know a vivid world within yourself as a whole, you cannot be made up of parts. Hence, you are partless consciousness which is neither a part nor a product of the brain (or any other part of the body or the whole body for that matter), You, the partless consciousness, are an entity completely different from the brain and the body.

Axiom 3: Partless implies Infinite

So far the analysis was of objects that are part of the world we know and hence easier to understand. But this axiom is going to be very subtle because we have never encountered any object in this world that is partless as they are all made up of smaller and smaller parts and particles. We have no experience of what a partless entity could be like. Some subtle thinking can reveal it though.

If an entity is partless, it must also be formless. Because a form needs different parts to come together in a certain way to build that form. Even the most nondescript form (like a spherical object) has different sides to it (this side, opposite side, inside, outside, etc.). Anything which has sides must have parts too as only different parts can make up the different sides. When something is in contact with one side of an entity, it can only be in contact with a part of the entity and not with the other parts which make up the other sides. Hence, an entity that is partless will also be formless.

If an entity is formless, it has to be limitless or infinite in every dimension. Because if it’s limited in even one dimension, that will result in a boundary, and boundaries define a form. For example, an infinite line is limitless only in one dimension but limited in other dimensions and hence still possess the form of a line. Similarly, an infinite plane is limitless in two dimensions but limited in the third dimension and hence still possess the form of a plane. Hence, anything which is limited in even one dimension will possess a form imposed by that dimension. Hence, an entity that is formless will also be limitless or infinite in every dimension.

Corollary 3: You are Infinite Consciousness, the One and only Reality, and the whole universe is only an appearance within you

As implied by the above axiom, you, the partless consciousness, are also formless and limitless in every possible dimension. Which means nothing else exists outside of you. Because if anything else exists outside of you, it implies a limit where you end and the other entity begins. This means that the whole universe (and anything else) must all be within you. Moreover, since you are partless whereas the universe is made up of parts, it cannot be real and must only be a false appearance within you, as nothing real made up of parts can exist within a partless entity. Hence, you are the one and only Infinite Reality that actually exists. It’s important to note that you are also unchanging as change is only possible from one finite to another finite on at least one dimension whereas you are Infinite in every possible dimension.

Important question: If you are Infinite Consciousness, the One and only Reality, and the whole universe is an appearance within you, then why do you seem to know only a part of it and that too channeled through a brain and a set of sense organs housed within a body?

Here’s an explanation: Since you are Consciousness, your very nature is to know yourself. But since you are Infinite you cannot know yourself directly in entirety, because anything that is known in entirety is limited to that knowing and hence finite. Hence you, the Infinite Reality, cannot know yourself as you actually are but only as you are not i.e. as false finite things. Since there are infinite possibilities of the type of false finite things that can appear within the Infinite, every possible imaginable and unimaginable finite thing is actually appearing within you. One set of such false finite appearances are dream-like virtual reality simulations. Within each simulation, there is an appearance of a brain and a set of sense organs and other organs housed within a body that represents a living being, through which a world teeming with other beings and things seems be known or experienced. You, the Infinite Consciousness, are knowing each simulation individually as all of them are appearing within you. If you would have known multiple simulations together, it would have become a hodge-podge, with too many overlapping sights, sounds and sensations, which would have not made any sense. Hence the best way to know these simulations is to know them individually and separate from each other. All these simulations are still interconnected as they are all appearing within you, the Infinite Consciousness, and hence they share common objects and events. Each of these dream-like simulations have such a structure that you tend to feel identified with a fake body-mind complex appearing within that simulation (just like it happens during a dream), but you are never actually identified and always remain unattached from the simulation. Nothing of the simulation can ever affect or harm you in any way as it’s not real.

Finally, since Infinite Consciousness cannot be known directly in entirety as it actually is, it can never be available for direct investigation making it impossible to describe its actual nature. But this much is very clear from the above analysis that you are none other than the Infinite Partless Consciousness, the One and only Unchanging Reality that actually exists!

(This article was cross-posted from happinessjourney.net/post/667314451407568896/a-simple-scientific-analysis-to-reveal-your)

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05 Feb

Living Insightfully

An excerpt from Radical Intuition by Kim Chestney

Throughout the ages, the most extraordinary human beings — from Einstein, DaVinci, and Joan of Arc to Steve Jobs, Oprah, and Stephen Hawking — have attested to one common factor as the secret to their life success: Intuition.

 

In her new book Radical Intuition: A Revolutionary Guide to Using Your Inner Power, author Kim Chestney reveals an all new understanding of intuition and how to use it to live an extraordinary life. We hope you will enjoy this excerpt from the book.

 

# # #

 

To live intuitively means honoring our inner voice over the voice of the world. Once we realize that we can trust our self above all others, we live our lives differently. We make our choices differently; we aspire differently; we understand one another differently; we experience the world in a whole new way. When we follow our intuition, we participate in something that touches the depth of our being — something more profound than we know.

 

We become extraordinary by making intuition an ordinary part of life, by relying on it so much that it becomes second nature. With every step of the way guided by higher insight, we are more aligned with our own success, happiness, and personal growth. As more and more people around the world do this, we begin to normalize intuition. Any and all of us can use our intuition to improve all aspects of our lives.

 

Intuition should be a normal part of life because learning to use your intuition is no different than learning to use your intellect. Intelligence and intuition are two sides of the same coin; when they work together, they create an extraordinary mind. We go to school to get smarter, so why shouldn’t we go to school to become more intuitive? Now that we are learning more about the way intuition works, we can embrace new opportunities to rebalance the two complementary aspects of our cognitive nature.

 

This revolutionary union of once-seeming opposites — bringing the thinking mind and the intuiting mind together — is a reflection of the fusion that will define life in the years ahead. With this togetherness, we become wiser and more insightful as a collective people.

 

With intuition in the mix, we move deeper into the experience of life and the connected awareness that unites us all. When we create a culture of intuition, we create a culture of unity, of inclusivity, of the interconnected human experience.

 

Beyond Mindfulness into Insightfulness

In recent years, the practices of mindfulness, presence, and meditation have become the cornerstones of our culture and personal development. The power of being still has become a crucial counterpoint to the busy world we live in today. In the stillness, we find our peace, but it is in the stillness, too, that we find our power.

 

To be mindful is to be aware. It is an awareness of life, an awakening from our unconscious habits, thoughts, and actions. Living consciously, we embody a new sense of presence in all we do — with an ability to fully embrace each moment. In the ever-present now, we escape the traps of the mind — habitual judgment, relentless thinking, fear. We move out of the constant flow of thought into the quiet space between those thoughts — the stillness. But the stillness is not empty; extraordinary things await there.

 

In the silence of your quieted mind, in the space between thoughts, the voice of intuition arrives. The stillness speaks. Only in the place of no-mind can you hear your intuition. The thinking mind is a bully; only when it settles down can your inner wisdom get through to gently touch you. Whether in meditation, in the shower, or during a walk in the woods, insight draws close when the critical mind is far away.

 

Radical Insight

Here, in the mindful place of peace, you can receive your greatest power — the extraordinary insight of higher awareness. First, we become mindful; then, we become insightful. Presence is the gateway to insight; insight leads us to the truth. All wisdom and creativity emerge from the still, quiet gap between your thoughts.

 

This is why stillness, the silence of meditation, is not the final destination for those of us who are still at work in the world. We are not ready to retreat to the mountaintops; we still have work to do. We have a world to change. We have a life to live and a spirit to evolve. We can be, but we still have to do.

 

This is not an either-or situation. Like yin and yang, our fulfillment comes with the union of complementary forces — the balance of existence and experience, of awareness and actualization. The completeness of our human condition requires us to be both mindful and insightful, to be aware and to become more aware. Insight brings the gift of more awareness.

 

In the refuge of stillness, intuition is your guide. The practices of meditation and conscious living enable you to move into the calm center of your being. Then what? Out of the tranquility, your inner voice calls you to what’s next: the next thought that will change the way you understand your life; the next idea that will improve it; the next action you can take to further elevate your consciousness. Real illumination comes from both contemplative stillness and inspired action — the two complementary paths to enlightenment.

 

# # #

 

Kim Chestney is the author of Radical Intuition. A globally recognized innovation leader and the founder of Intuition Lab, her work has been featured or supported by leading-edge organizations including SXSW Interactive, Carnegie Mellon University, Comcast, and Hewlett-Packard. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Visit her online at http://www.KimChestney.com.

 

Excerpted from the book Radical Intuition. Copyright ©2020 by Kim Chestney. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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01 Jul

eGod — when God gets eGo’d

“God alone is real, the world is false; and the individual being is none other than God.”

“God misunderstood is the world; the world properly understood is God.”

“It’s not that there is one god or many gods, there is only God.”

The term God is widely misunderstood to be referring to a supernatural anthropomorphic being in the heavens. Instead it refers to the one and only Reality that actually exists — the ultimate formless partless unchanging infinite Reality which is the ground of all existence, the most fundamental substratum of this universe, the underlying basis and the very essence of everything, the highest Truth beyond which there is nothing more to be known. The various gods represented in different religions are symbolisms pointing to the same Reality. It is what we all are seeking — knowingly or unknowingly — either through externally-focused science or through internally-focused spirituality or just through life itself. The universe with all its living and non-living constituents is nothing but a virtual reality manifesting within God alone. Hence the universe can very well be termed eGod (as adding the prefix “e” to something “real” refers to its “virtual” incarnation e.g. e + mail = email, e + commerce = ecommerce, and the likes).

Why does God manifest as eGod?

It’s because God gets eGo’d. This is not a play on words. It’s the truth. The reason why God manifests as eGod is because of a false individual ego i.e. a wrong identification with a body-mind complex. This ego segregates the world into “I” and “not I”, “mine” and “not mine”, “I like” and “I dislike”, “I want” and “I don’t want”, etc. making the one undivided Reality manifest as a world of multiplicity. It’s very much like a dream. The whole dream world is none other than the mind itself but since we assume a false identification with a particular body in the dream, the dream world seems to be divided into multiplicity. The same thing happens in a virtual reality simulation. It’s uncanny how quickly we take ourselves to be a fake body within a simulation and start behaving as if that is what we actually are!

eGod is a collection of countless such dream-like simulations manifesting within God with each simulation representing an individual being with a false ego and a private little world. In other words, God is the “hardware” — the real stuff — and eGod is a bunch of “software” simulations — virtual fluff. The intricate nature of each simulation is such that it’s able to superimpose a false ego on God and also feel very real (just like a dream feels real while we are in the dream). The moment one drops this false ego and knows oneself to be none other than the ultimate Reality, the whole world collapses (not literally but in understanding) into oneness. That is when one starts seeing everything as a virtual manifestation of God alone. It’s like a mind dreaming while also knowing that it’s its own dream.

But don’t mistake this simulation to be a dream of your mind. What you call as “your mind” is just a part of a dream-like simulation manifesting within the underlying Reality. And since the Reality is infinite, the dream-like simulations within it are infinitely more sophisticated, complex and long-lasting than the dreams of our infinitesimally small minds. Moreover, these countless simulations share common objects/events and are so inter-connected that it all seems to be one coherent universe. It’s somewhat like a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) in which the players have a separate simulation going on on their respective computers and they see the game only from their individual perspective but at the same time show up in each other’s simulations as well as share common objects/events giving rise to the feeling that it’s one coherent virtual reality. The key difference is that in a MMORPG each player is a separate individual where as in eGod, God alone is assuming different identities and playing with Itself!

Each individual simulation turns off and back on every time that individual goes into deep dreamless sleep and comes out of it. The whole eGod virtual reality also shuts down after a while and restarts again later. This cycle of eGod or the universe manifesting and unmanifesting in God is beginningless and endless. Each eGod instance could be different from the previous one and it won’t be a surprise if multiple eGods (i.e. multiple universes) manifest within God simultaneously with each eGod being a separate MMORPG-like virtual reality having it’s own collection of individual simulations.

But why should an eGod be manifesting within God at all?

It’s due to the very nature of God which is existence-consciousness-bliss. The nature of consciousness is to experience, so it tries to experience the one and only Reality that actually exists which is itself. But the Reality is infinite and not experienceable in entirety. When there is an attempt to experience the inexperienceable, an illusion is generated in the form of countless dream-like simulations called eGod. For better clarity, take the case of the eyes as an illustration. The nature of the eyes is to see but when they try to see the sky which is so vast that it cannot be seen by them in entirety, an illusion is generated and the sky looks like a hemispherical dome (which it is not).

Hence, eGod manifests within God due to the very nature of the infinite Reality trying to experience itself. The existence-consciousness-bliss nature of God manifests in all the living and non-living constituents of eGod with varying degrees. The consciousness nature manifests more prominently as countless experiencers, the existence nature manifests more prominently as the various experienced objects, and the bliss nature manifests more prominently as the corresponding experiences. Since existence-consciousness-bliss is one inseparable Reality and not three separate things, the experiencers along with their respective experienced objects and the corresponding experiences are also inseparable. And since infinite consciousness also implies infinite intelligence, these simulations are of very high quality with lot of systematism, complexity and inter-connectedness. All of it is so flawless and intricate that it feels very real.

Please note that God doesn’t do this deliberately. It’s the very nature of God. Just like it’s the nature of fire to burn, water to wet, sun to illumine, etc. Fire cannot be said to be doing anything specifically when it burns something. It burns as that’s its very nature of being hot (there is no such thing as a cold fire). Similarly, God cannot be said to be doing anything specifically. It’s the very nature of God to manifest as eGod.

It’s also important to note that eGod is not a problem in itself. The actual problem begins only when it gets eGo’d. With ego, eGod is full of conflicts; without ego, it’s full of harmony and peace!

Why and how to drop this false ego?

This understanding of the Reality is not just for intellectual entertainment. It is to help us realize that we are actually one infinite undivided Reality and that we are only mistaking ourselves to be little creatures of flesh and blood. All problems in life sprout from this misunderstanding as we keep worrying about the survival and safety of something we are not. It’s ok to continue to play our role in this virtual simulation but there is no point worrying about anything as none of it is actually real. This feels quite liberating as it takes away a huge burden off our shoulders. And it’s only possible when we drop the false ego by knowing that we are not this body-mind complex we mistake ourselves to be. We are the one and only formless partless unchanging infinite Reality which cannot be touched or affected by a virtual simulation in any way. Since there is nothing else apart from the Reality there is no conflict of any sorts — just peace and harmony. This realization does not solve all the artificial problems of life, it dissolves them! It’s like we don’t have to solve each and every petty problem in a dream. We just have to know it’s a dream and all the problems lose their grip on us.

In order to drop the false ego, one should systematically learn about the Reality and sincerely contemplate upon it to be convinced. There will be many doubts that have to be resolved through proper reasoning and inquiry into one’s own experience. After intellectual conviction, one can start assimilating it in the mind by living life accordingly. Even though it might take time for it to stabilize, the practice gets validated and starts benefiting every step of the way by dissolving more and more problems of life and bringing more and more peace and joy as one progresses. The final realization will only come by God’s grace though as it’s God’s nature that gives rise to eGod and the false ego. The puny little mind cannot overcome God’s natural power. But the practice will surely prepare the mind to receive and recognize the grace when it comes. The best place to start is to explore the teachings of Advaita (Nondual) Vedanta which is the highest and deepest exposition of the Reality. My recent articles are also on this subject. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions (npabuwal gmail).

Once the realization dawns, life could be like watching a movie. You can enjoy the movie through its good parts and whenever it gets ugly, like if you get too scared or sad, you can simply remind yourself that you are falsely identifying with a character in the movie and you are actually unscathed. You can just relax by sinking back into your real nature of being God, smile, and then jump back in when ready. Moreover, your life will be full of love for everyone as you will know you are not just one of the characters in the movie but the whole movie along with all its characters is within God — the real you — and you alone are manifesting as everything. That’s why love, grace, compassion, kindness, mercy, and all the wonderful qualities come very naturally to God as there is nothing apart from God. And remember, this realization is also at the level of the mind and part of the simulation itself. As God, you were, are and will always be free!

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

“We are not human beings trying to have a spiritual experience. We are a spiritual Being having human experiences”

“Whether you know or not, whether you agree or not, you are none other than God.”

(This article was cross-posted from happinessjourney.net/post/622649780649312256/egod-when-god-gets-egod)

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30 Jan

A Bigger Yes

We are the luckiest.An excerpt from We Are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen

Before Laura McKowen got sober, she had a long, successful career in public relations in the Mad Men-esque drinking culture of the advertising industry, where “liquid lunches were frequent and drinking at your desk in the late afternoon was perfectly normal.” In the five years since she stopped drinking, she has become one of the foremost voices in the modern recovery movement.

In her new memoir We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (New World Library, January 7, 2020), McKowen flips the script on how we talk about addiction and encourages readers not to ask, “Is this bad enough that I have to change?” but rather, “Is this good enough for me to stay the same?”

We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

# # #

For so long, all I could see was what I would be losing by giving up drinking — love being only one representation of many. Despite all the aphorisms and positive thinking and stories I’d heard from other sober people promising me otherwise, all I could feel was the loss. Augusten Burroughs, in his book This Is How, said that what worked for him in getting sober was to find something he loved more than drinking. I understood that intellectually, and it sounded awfully catchy and inspiring, but it just didn’t feel true for me.

Being in that room with Seane, feeling whatever had been sparking up in me — even in the midst of all the emotional angst and discomfort — I started to get it. For the first time, I could imagine chasing something bigger.

# # #

Here’s what is true, for you and for me: the grief and the sadness are real. When you give up something you’ve relied on as heavily as I relied on alcohol, even when that something is actively destroying your life, it is a true loss. You can’t deny that, and more importantly, you don’t have to.

I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling so heartbroken. How could I actively miss a thing that had nearly cost me everything, including Alma?

There was nothing wrong with me, though. Alcohol had been my friend. It had carried me through a lot of pain I might have otherwise not been able to withstand. It had softened experiences that needed to be softened. It had been there for me always, without question. My drinking — and whatever it is you do to feel better — was born of a natural impulse to soothe, to connect, to feel love. And although alcohol hadn’t actually delivered those things, it was absolutely yoked to them in my mind. In my heart and body, too. It was just what I knew.

So of course I was terrified without it. Of course I missed it. The absence of it was terrible. And necessary. Maybe it’s helpful to linger there for a minute, in the terrible and the necessary. To start to see them as the same. Maybe in this way, pain is not such a problem.

When I saw Seane up there, doing what she did, I realized it wasn’t in spite of her pain that she was doing these things but because of it. She knew exactly what it took to walk through the fire. That is what I recognized in her. That was why I believed her.

Because that strength was in me, too.

I had always quashed my pain and cut it off before it could burn all the way through. I drank it away or ate it away or disappeared into another person or work. Being there over those four days, without contact with Jon or Alma or the comforts of home, had given me a taste of what it was like to just let it burn. I felt it. I felt it all over my body. And although it was excruciating most of the time, there were a few moments when I surrendered the fight and simply allowed everything to wash over me. In those moments, I found that right alongside the sharp intensity and unease, there was some small part of me willing to stay, another voice softly saying, I am willing to be here.

Behind all those nos and never-agains is a much bigger yes. It might not seem clear now, but it will be clear soon. Listen to the voice. Listen to your body. This is in you already.

There is a life that is calling you forward, begging you to meet its eye, to glimpse its vision for you. You can get only so far by running away from what you do not want. Eventually you will have to turn toward what you do. You will have to run toward a bigger yes.

# # #

 

Laura McKowen is the author of We Are the Luckiest. She is a former public relations executive who has become recognized as a fresh voice in the recovery movement. Beloved for her soulful and irreverent writing, she leads sold-out yoga-based retreats and other courses that teach people how to say yes to a bigger life. Visit her online at http://www.lauramckowen.com.

Excerpted from the book We Are the Luckiest. Copyright ©2020 by Laura McKowen. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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28 Jan

What I Am (and You Are Too!)

I feel I am a conscious entity in which a simulation, constituting of gross and subtle objects/things, is appearing. The gross (aka physical) objects include a body and a world entering through the sense organs, in the form of gross sights, sounds and sensations. The subtle objects include thoughts and emotions (that are also just thoughts loaded with feelings) in the form of subtle sights, sounds and sensations. These objects are appearing directly in me, otherwise I would not have been able to know/experience them. It’s important to note that even though I experience a body and a world directly, I do not experience a so-called mind (which is actually a composite term used for the mind-intellect-memory-ego combo) directly. The mind-composite is only implied by the type of thoughts that appear in me. To clarify, I do not experience any specific object that I can point to and say that is the mind or the intellect or the memory or the ego. The mind is implied due to some of the thoughts being reactionary and habitual, the intellect is implied due to some of the thoughts being intelligent and analytical, the memory is implied due to some of the thoughts being of past remembrances, and the ego is implied due to some of the thoughts containing an “I” or “my” identity. I only experience these thoughts directly, along with the corresponding parts of the brain that feel active or affected during those thoughts, and never the mind-composite directly.

I further feel that the simulation that is appearing in me is just that – an appearance. I am actually untouched and unaffected by it. Even though I experience certain sensations that can be labeled as pleasant or unpleasant, they are just gross objects appearing in me but they do not affect me. Certain sensations are felt in the body like the feelings of hunger, thirst, itch, ache, etc.. And what we call mental feelings are also nothing but physical sensations felt in the brain tissues. E.g. the feeling of stress is just some brain tissues getting overly strained due to lot of thinking and the feeling of anger is just some brain tissues getting overly heated. So all mental feelings are nothing but physical sensations of brain tissues which are also sometimes accompanied with certain bodily sensations like palpitations, sweating, shallow/rapid breathing, etc. All these sensations just appear in me as gross objects and I am untouched by them. I am just a witness of them. I am like a screen that is unaffected by the movie playing on it, irrespective of how pleasant or unpleasant the movie might be.

When the objective appearances vanish and the simulation stops in deep absorption, I experience my real nature as pure existence-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda). I do not feel any limitation of time, space, object, etc. in that state. This makes me believe that I am actually unlimited and formless but the simulation imposes an artificial feeling of being contained within a body form with all corresponding limitations. Other people also report similar simulatory experiences, but these simulations are not completely independent. They seem to share common gross objects and events which leads to the conclusion there is just one underlying reality. You, I and others are actually that one reality and not separate entities.

So, even though I am one infinite partless reality, I somehow seem to experience countless parallel simulations simultaneously as separate individuals – each forming a different viewpoint of one big simulation called the universe. It seems like the universe is one gigantic stream of events flowing constantly from one moment to another, and that I know everything that is to be known in this universe from different viewpoints. The individual simulations seem to represent different cross-sections of the universe as experienced from the viewpoints of different individuals. Or maybe there are only these individual simulations and the feeling of one universe is only incidental as these simulations seem to be interconnected sharing common gross objects and events. In either case, I am one reality of the nature of existence-consciousness-bliss with an uncanny ability of generating and focusing at countless simulations and experiencing them simultaneously and separately.

But why should I be doing this? Why can I not just remain as pure existence-consciousness-bliss without generating and experiencing these simulations within me?

Here’s the best explanation I have found:

Take the case of the eyes as an illustration. Their nature is to see. Now consider the sky. It’s so vast it cannot be seen in entirety by these tiny eyes. But when you turn your head upwards, the eyes try to see that which cannot be seen in entirety. The result is an error and the sky looks like a hemispherical dome (which it is not) to the eyes. In the same way, the nature of consciousness is to experience, so it tries to experience the one and only reality that actually exists which is itself. But the reality is infinite and not experiencable in entirety. When there is an attempt to experience the inexperiencable, an error is generated in the form of countless interconnected simulations – each with an experiencer, various experienced objects and their corresponding experiences. The consciousness aspect of the reality appears more prominently as the experiencers, the existence aspect appears more prominently as the experienced objects, and the bliss aspect appears more prominently as the corresponding experiences. So all these countless simulations are just an error produced by the very nature of the infinite reality trying to experience itself. These simulations manifest the infinite reality in a finite way so the consciousness of the experiencers, the existence of the experienced objects, and the bliss in the experiences are all finite, of varying degrees and transient instead of being infinite and permanent. Moreover, since infinite consciousness also implies infinite intelligence, these simulations are of very high quality following various types of laws both at micro and macro cosmic levels with lot of systematism and interconnectedness. They are so flawless and well-structured that they appear to be very real. But it’s important to note that these simulations are absolutely harmless as they are not actually real and are just appearances in the one unblemished reality that I am (and everyone is)!

Another question that might arise is that once this understanding of being the one infinite reality dawns upon a particular individual, what makes him/her continue to experience the simulation and act through a body?

The answer is quite simple. The appearance of experience and action is just part of the simulation and going on of its own accord. The infinite reality is not actually doing anything deliberately. The simulations simply appear in it by its very nature and keep going, irrespective of whether the understanding of being the one underlying reality has dawned upon a particular individual or not. The only difference it would make is that the actions of an individual after this understanding has dawned would appear to be in accordance with that understanding.

Note: You can replace all the occurrences of words “I” & “me” with “you” and “my” with “your” in the above article and it will still be true! I am just trying to take a step back from the apparent simulation and revel in the underlying reality which you, I and everyone actually is. I would highly encourage you to try it too. Its extremely liberating!

(This article was cross-posted from happinessjourney.net/post/190519907835/what-i-am-and-you-are-too)

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19 Nov

Authenticity

BOOKcover-LiveTrue-hiResCHAPTER 21: Authenticity

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.

—Albert Camus

 

This above all:

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

—Shakespeare

 

Who are you really, if not who you really are? That may sound like some kind of Zen koan, which is a paradox, or a puzzle for Zen Buddhist monks to meditate on to gain enlightenment. Perhaps we won’t reach enlightenment by contemplating that question, but we can certainly find out who we are by knowing who we’re not. If we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” we will automatically answer with our name, or what it is we do for a living, our role, or our persona, such as “I’m a mother,” “I’m a doctor,” “I’m an actor,” “I’m a carpenter,” or even, “I’m an addict.” We may be any one of those things, or a combination of them. But unless we know who we are other than just our “identity,” or what we do, we might not know whether we’re

being true to ourselves, or authentic in whatever identity we’ve taken on. Maybe somewhere in your role as a mother, you’re conflicted about having given up a career to be a parent, or maybe torn about working and leaving your children at home or daycare. Or, maybe if you were/are an addict, you were once on top of the world but lost confidence in yourself at one point in your life, and couldn’t handle failure so you numbed yourself with drugs or alcohol. Or maybe you became a doctor because it was expected of you to be one since you come from generations of physicians, as I spoke about in the previous chapter on honesty. Who we are might not be what we wanted, or intended to be at all, but we’ve been that person for so long, who would we be otherwise? Some people just fall into being who they are, or inherit being who they are, or are told to be who they are. Others knew who they wanted to be when

they spoke their first words. But whether you announced your identity at your first dance recital, or you smiled compliantly when your father announced at your Bar Mitzvah that you were going to be a lawyer just like him, somewhere on the “Who am I?” train, you woke up and realized that you got on the wrong one, became inauthentic to yourself, and don’t know how that happened. There’s a great song by The Talking Heads, called “Once in a Lifetime,” which really sums it up:

 

And you may find yourself

Living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself

In another part of the world

And you may find yourself

Behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house

With a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, well

How did I get here?

 

It’s very conceivable that you can wake up one day and ask yourself, “How did I get here?” A good way to avoid that from happening is to ask yourself, “Who am I?” long before

you end up somewhere you really don’t want to be, or flummoxed by how the hell you let yourself get there. Mindfulness helps us not forget who we are. It keeps us present and aware, and if, or when we might feel an impulse to be inauthentic, it reminds us immediately that falseness of any kind feels wrong with every fiber of our being. When we’re mindful, we have heightened awareness, and with heightened awareness, it’s hard to be dishonest with ourselves. It’s like having an inner lie detector, as I’ve spoken of, or truth barometer that goes off inside us, and makes it almost impossible not to pay attention to it. Even if someone is suggesting what we should do, or who we should be, as I mentioned, we get a signal loud and clear that no one can decide who we are, and only we can determine our authenticity.  But whether you decided who your authentic self was long ago, somewhere on the life path you can either forget it, doubt it, turn away from it, give it away, or even make a decision that you dislike or hate who you really are, and deny ever being that person. It’s like an identity swap, only instead of taking on a role that isn’t you because you felt you had to, you gave your authentic self away gladly, and after living so long as someone you’re not, you’re now desperately looking for who you are, like a mother trying to find the baby she gave up for adoption. The good news is you can always find that person you once were, and when

you become reunited with your authentic self, it can be the greatest and most freeing day of your life. it’s not easy living a life trapped in inauthenticity, and it takes work to pretend to be someone we’re not. It can also be very painful to be seen, liked, or even loved for a false self, and terrifying that if, or when you’re found out that you’ve lived dishonestly, not only can you be met with tremendous anger and resentment, but you can also be blamed or accused for harming others in some type of way, be it emotionally or psychologically.

Ora Nadrich is founder and president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking and author of Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity. A certified life coach and mindfulness teacher, she specializes in transformational thinking, self-discovery, and mentoring new coaches as they develop their careers. Learn more at theiftt.org and OraNadrich.com.

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21 Oct

“You Are What You Read”

An excerpt by Jodie Jackson from her book, “You Are What You Read”.

In the early stages of my research into the psychological impact of the news, I went to a constructive journalism workshop. At the beginning, the course director asked all the journalists in attendance why they had decided on their chosen career.

My scepticism about the creators of the news was suspended as I heard the participants’ answers: to make the world a better place, to hold power to account, to inspire, to educate, to give a voice to the voiceless, to expose wrongdoing, to stimulate debate, to challenge the status quo. I was in admiration of their intentions.

I later found that these journalists’ answers were incredibly common through research that showed that the journalists interviewed shared a common characteristic: the desire to contribute to the improvement of the human condition and make the world a better place. They then went on to say that they achieved this by reporting suffering as a way to counteract ignorance and stimulate empathy. This strategy can be very effective. But while it’s true that the news of others’ suffering can conjure empathetic concern and can lead to altruistic behaviour, which may reduce that suffering, it can also lead to personal distress. And those who experience such distress will not be concerned with the needs of others. Instead they will seek to reduce their own suffering by withdrawing or avoiding the news.

The initial buzz that had been created by these noble and inspired answers was quickly dulled as I began researching how people feel when they watch or read the news. Their dispirited answers included comments like depressed, paranoid, hopeless, insignificant and scared about our future.

The news is supposed to empower people by enlightening them with information that they otherwise may not have known. It should also help them zoom out of their personal lives and allow them to feel connected to the world around them. But it seems that when some people lift their head above their personal horizon, they immediately want to retreat to the safety of their own surroundings. They may even decide to put their head in the sand and ignore the wider world for the sake of their sanity; deciding to remain unaware of the daily disasters and instead choose the more comforting thought that ‘ignorance is bliss’.

People that avoid the news are often judged because of the enormous social pressure to be well informed. If you don’t know the detail of global policies, domestic issues and the latest corruption, you are often tarnished with the disapproving titles of ill-educated, naïve, lazy, self-involved or shallow. However, having spoken to some wildly intelligent, caring, benevolent and creative individuals who have chosen not to expose themselves to the news regularly, I can say that this is not always the case.

Although it is common for journalists to want to believe the stories they tell make the world a better place, it is more difficult to digest the idea that the news they are creating can actually cause harm. But it is time we publicly acknowledge that good intentions can have unintended consequences, and the stories we are told about in the news do not always have the positive impact that was intended by their writers.

We know that the news predominantly reports the problems of the world, from systemic social issues of poverty and inequality to individual petty crime, with very little to comfort the reader. We accept that these are the types of stories we expect to hear from the news. This expectation has become so entrenched in the news industry that a television news programme can have ‘more images of violence, suffering and death in a half hour than most people would normally view in a lifetime’.

So what effect does all this bad news have on us?

It is important that we ask this because the subtle potency of the news appears largely unquestioned by the very consumers who are affected by its content. Instead of questioning it, many routinely defend its position. But with the average American spending seventy minutes a day absorbing news content, it is important that we ask what are the psychological effects that the news has on us. It is time we, the consumers, turn the investigative lens on the news industry to expose the effects of the negativity bias on our mental health, the health of our democracy and our society. Once people begin to ask questions, it may be that people do not so quickly defend the incessant negativity of the news.

 

Jodie Jackson is an author, researcher and campaigner. She holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of East London (UK) where she investigated the psychological impact of the news. As she discovered evidence of the beneficial effects of solutions-focused news on our wellbeing, she grew convinced of the need to spread consumer awareness. She is a regular speaker at media conferences and universities. Her new book is You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change the World(Unbound, September 3, 2019). See more at www.jodiejackson.com, and find her on twitter at @jacksonjodie21

 

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15 Oct

AVOIDING YOUR BEST WORK LEADS TO CREATIVE CONSTIPATION

The following is a modified excerpt from Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done.

***

There’s a big difference between what your best work and all the other work you do. Doing your best work is fulfilling while you’re doing it and also creates a bridges the gap between the life you live today and the life your soul yearns to be in. And your best work isn’t just about work you get paid for — it could be playing in your hobby band, raising your kids, being the church secretary, or community volunteer projects.

Your best work is always going to be challenging because it’s the work that matters to you. And because it matters to you, you’re going to be thrashing — that is flailing, having mini identity crises, “researching”, and all the other kinds of meta-work that doesn’t actually push the work forward — along the way. Best work is starting to look suspiciously like hard work, and our natural reaction is to avoid doing hard work and to instead find something easier to do.

When it comes to your best work, not doing it comes with two major costs: (1) you won’t be able to thrive, and (2) you’ll be stricken with creative constipation. Since I’ve already discussed the link between thriving and your best work, let’s talk about creative constipation, or the pain of not doing your best work.

Creative constipation is exactly what it sounds like. We take in ideas and inspiration that get converted into aspirations, goals, and projects, and at a certain point, if we’re not pushing them out in the form of finished projects, they start to back up on us.

And like physical constipation, at a certain point, we get toxic. We don’t want to take in any more ideas. We don’t want to do any more projects. We don’t want to set any more goals or plans. We’re full and fed up.

That inner toxicity becomes the broth that flavors all our stories about ourselves and the world; our head trash gets more pronounced and intense, and what we see in the world goes from bright to dark. Creative constipation leads to behaviors in which we lash out at the world—and sometimes even more intensely at ourselves. We become resentful of others—even people we love—who are doing their best work.

Our ability to feel positive emotional peaks is diminished at the same time that our ability to feel negative emotional troughs is amplified. You’ve no doubt encountered the tortured, depressed soul who’s creatively constipated—and you may have been there yourself.

There’s a reason that nearly every spiritual tradition links creativity and destruction: the same energy that fuels creation also fuels destruction. The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God creates and destroys; “beating swords into plowshares” works equally in reverse. The Hindu god Shiva is seen as

a destroyer who makes way for creativity. Creativity and destruction are seen as a continual loop in the Taoist concept of yin and yang.

Spiritual insights such as these also show up in our everyday lives. Think about how often you’ve engaged in retail therapy—and thus destroyed your time and resources—because you’re unsatisfied about something in your life. Think about how often you’ve indulged in emotional eating because you’re not creating the change you want to see in your life. Think about how many people blow up their lives in a midlife crisis because the career and life they’ve made haven’t satisfied their deep needs.

Now think about the people you know or have read about who are doing their best work. Notice how they’re healthier, happier, (usually) more financially comfortable, and in good relationships with others? Doing their best work creates meaning for them at the same time that it cocreates who they want to be in the world. And these folks know that doing their work in the world is the wheel of change, meaning, and growth, more so than merely being stuck in their heads.

So at both deep and practical levels, we can choose to channel our energy to do our best work and thrive, or we can choose to leave it unharnessed to gradually destroy ourselves, our relationships, our resources, and the world around us.

Better to do the hard work of creation than the hard work of repairing the destruction we’ve wrought.

 

Charlie Gilkey is an author, entrepreneur, philosopher, Army veteran, and renowned productivity expert. Founder of Productive Flourishing, Gilkey helps professional creatives, leaders, and changemakers take meaningful action on work that matters. His new book is Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done. Learn more at productiveflourishing.com.

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31 Oct

How to Have a Daring Conversation

An excerpt from Step into Your Moxie by Alexia Vernon

The word moxie has become synonymous with vigor, verve, pep, courage, nerve, aggressiveness, skill, and know-how, and the new book Step into Your Moxie: Amplify Your Voice, Visibility, and Influence in the World by speaking and leadership coach Alexia Vernon presents a soul-stirring call to action for women to speak up for themselves and the ideas and issues that matter most to them. We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

 

# # #

The key to having a daring conversation is giving yourself enough time to properly prepare for one — but not so much time that you never have it, or that by the time you have it, the person you are speaking with either has no idea what you are talking about or the situation that was such a big deal to us didn’t even register on her Richter scale. While time is subjective, and the ten to twenty minutes of sensation I feel before I speak may feel like twenty eternities in purgatory for someone who is brand-new to speaking, when it comes to a daring conversation, as a rule it’s best to have it within a week of deciding your organs could finally unstick themselves if you said something. And before you do, here is how you can set up yourself, and the other parties involved, for success.

 

The words that we use, from moment to moment, in a conversation where conflict could transpire (or has transpired) often determine whether things go difficult or daring. I recommend using the following words as often as possible:

Yes. My favorite agreement word. Ever. It makes someone instantly feel seen and heard. You can say “yes” after someone shares an idea, an opinion, or a feeling, but do refrain from saying “yes and” and then redirecting the conversation back to you. “Yes and” works great in comedy, but “yes” as a complete sentence usually works better in daring conversations.

Thank you. You can say “thank you” to someone for sharing where she is coming from, for being vulnerable, for telling you the truth, for helping you understand her perspective, or for acknowledging wrongdoing or committing to better behavior in the future.

What I want for us is… These words work great for communicating what you want from the conversation. Try not to use them to linguistically wrestle for power over someone but rather to propose something that the other person, no matter his or her perspective, likely wants too.

Tell me more. This phrase works whenever people are dropping into vulnerability and you want them to know you really want to hear what’s going on, even if it’s uncomfortable. Or, on the flip side, this short phrase is effective when you want to nudge people beyond surface talk so they can go to the source of what’s truly going on.

I’m sorry. This is a very appropriate response when you have truly done something wrong, you want to take responsibility for it, and even more important, you want to communicate what you will do differently moving forward. Sometimes you may be sorry for the way someone is feeling, or the way you unintentionally made her or him feel — even if you haven’t done anything super sorry-
worthy. Be clear on what you are sorry for, and state that. (Again, please don’t think I’m giving you a hall pass for giving your power away. The kind of “I’m sorry” I’m recommending here is different from the “I’m sorry” you use when you feel insecure or actually want someone else to apologize to you. “I’m sorry” must not be a quid pro quo.)

What do you need (from me) in order to move forward? When you brainstorm creative ways to play nicely together in the future, the ultimate expression of compassionate (and super vulnerable) power is to ask what someone else would like to see from you now and in the future. This question alone can resurrect a relationship from collapse, if and when safety has been created in a conversation and everyone is fully committed to a mutually beneficial outcome.

 

Words and Phrases That Keep Conversations Difficult

On the flip side, I recommend avoiding, at all costs, the following words and phrases, regardless of how entitled you feel to use them or how hooked into them you have been in the past. Why? Because they build a wall between you and the other party — and they are a direct flight back from the land of daring to the land of difficult:

A lot of yous (especially when the conversation is past-oriented). The word you often lands as an accusation and can trigger defensive and blaming behavior. Instead, strive to use the word we. Collective language, whether it’s about what’s happened in the past or what you are committing to in the future, keeps conversations daring.

That’s not what I… It’s easy to go all antagonized attack dog when someone misuses or misinterprets what you have said. Should this happen, calmly (and silently) note the misunderstanding to yourself. Somebody is not receiving the message you are intending to send. Instead of pulling out the claws and taking a bite, take a breath, and then use appropriate words and phrases from the preceding section to explain yourself again. The more uncomplicated you make your second attempt, the more likely it is that your message will be interpreted correctly.

That’s not my problem/responsibility (or that’s your problem/responsibility). Though this is an ugly cousin of the last phrase, I’m calling this one out separately. Because no matter whose problem or responsibility something is (or isn’t), stating this (even if you are entitled to), is like lighting a match by a gas line outside your house and wondering why you burned your entire neighborhood down.

[Something conciliatory] but… No more buts in high-stakes conversations! As we explored in chapter 4, a but negates everything that has come before it. And when you have one foot in a difficult conversation and the other in a daring one, this word can pull you back into the former faster than a preschooler can get her entire family sick during cold and flu season. (I may be wearing a face mask as I write this chapter. Trust the analogy. It’s as tight as my mask.)

[So-and-so] said… Please avoid gossip and triangulation. Leave third and fourth parties out. All that matters is what’s transpiring right now, between you and the other person or parties before you. If you need to address somebody else’s role in a situation, set up a separate time and a separate daring conversation for that.

 

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Alexia Vernon is the author of Step into Your Moxie. Branded a “Moxie Maven” by President Obama’s White House Office of Public Engagement, she is a sought-after speaking and leadership coach who delivers transformational keynotes and corporate trainings for Fortune 500 companies and other professional groups and organizations, including the United Nations and TEDx. Visit her online at www.alexiavernon.com.

 

Excerpted from the book Step into Your Moxie: Amplify Your Voice, Visibility, and Influence in the World. Copyright ©2018 by Alexia Vernon. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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