Step 1
Orient your aim to the things you love.
Step 2
Do more of those things you love
Step 3
Share those things with the world
orientation: The AIM practice
If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. - Yogi Berra
You were born… You Live… You’re going to die…
What do you do in that live part. The part in-between?
AMAzING things happen when humans do the things they love.
We become highly motivated and seek more of the things we love.
We see and experience greater health.
We become magnetic and attract others who are doing similar things.
We create a vortex of creative powerful energy around us.
Do what you love. You will love what you do more.
You may ask… how do I do it? Glad you asked. First, do this exercise:
When you’re ready to do this work you can handwrite out your answers, or type them in here. Note, if you type them in be sure to write them out too so you can use them later. When you submit the form it gets passed to us for use later.
My General Life Purpose is to use my (Enter the qualities you love about yourself) to do the (Things you love to do) and to share (The things you love to share).
Write this paragraph out by hand, and put it on a separate piece of paper. Memorize it.
Download a template to print for this here.
This Story will give your entire Being (Body. Mind. Spirit) a point to rally its vital resources toward. It will later become a self-medication tool, and a super-accelerator for health and joy.
Keep the paper by your bed. Don’t share this statement or this paper with anyone — a very important part of the teachings is it’s secrecy.
Grab your phone, and make a voice-memo.
Record this statement when you’re feeling fresh-- After a workout or early in the morning.
First thing when you wake up, repeat the statement and/or play it on your phone. When you go to sleep, do the same. Imagine yourself doing these things and feel that emotional sensation in your body. Enjoy it.
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It will help sink in if you do this for 45 days. Use our 45-day Challenge System to build the practice, or any practice really.
This is the first step in creating a life you love, doing the things you love to do, and sharing them with others. It will bring any person out of suffering and into service, health, and general joy. There are other steps.
If you’re ready for the next step… (inch by inch, everything’s a cinch!).
Let’s make a Character Story using our AIM content.
Character Story Exercise
This Practice is to be done after you have completed the ‘AIM’ exercise.
1) Complete the AIM Exercise, and have your paper with the AIM paragraph written out.
2) Review it.
Here’s why this works.
You get what you expect.
By running thru a story over and over again we begin to believe it’s real. And, as we begin to believe it’s real, our mind begins to anticipate environments, people, and experiences from that story. The brain’s predictive model is based on its memory of the past, real and imagined.
To create the life you love, we ask:
How do we train what to expect?
I’ve dedicated my life to learning how to do this. There are some shortcuts!
The first step is to get your story right. What story do you want to live in?
Shortcut #1: Create a character to live from.
Don’t think of this person living this story as ‘You’. In fact, this may surprise you, but the You today is not the ‘You’ of 10 years ago. Yeah, some similar values and thought patterns exist. However, you’re an entirely new atomic mass. Every cell in your body is completely replaced every 7 years.
Shortcut #2: make a story…
We’re going to write out how our character who does all these things you enjoy from your AIM exercise lives their perfect ideal day.
You will give this character a name, and visualize this person in your mind’s eye as you go thru observing their ideal day.
For convenience, you can use this template. Or, you can simply go for it. Have fun! Anything is possible in this person’s world. They have no worries. They are free to do whatever they want without constraints. This is NOT you. This is a character, someone who can do whatever they want and does it whenever and however they wish.
Your character wakes up….
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What is the environment they wake up in? What is the bed/location? Is it comfortable? What is the sensation of the sheets? The pillows? What do their feet feel like?
How is the light or darkness in the room? What texture is the air? Temperature?
What time is it? Are they with anyone else? Many others? Any pets? Plants?
What does the space they wake look like? How about outside the space? What’s the environment outside of this space like?
What are the first thoughts this person has?
What are the first physical feelings and sensations they have?
What are their very first activities and movements?
When does this person drink water? How does it taste? How about going to the bathroom? How does that feel?
What about any nourishment? Food?
What creative activities does this person do?
Who are they sharing their gifts with in the world?
Do they take ‘breaks’ through the day? If so, what do those look like? How do they feel? Who are they with? Where are they?
Its now Noon…..
What has this person done?
What thoughts have they had?
Feelings in their body?
Emotions?
Now, they go on with their day, its 2, now 3…
What are they doing? Who are they with? What are they wearing? What is their objective? How does their smile feel?
Its now 4, 5, 6…
Are they eating dinner? What’s the dinner? With anyone? Alone? How does the food taste? What is the physical atmosphere? The energetic or social atmosphere? Music in the background?
Now, it 7, 8, 9…
What is this person doing? (remember, they can do anything they want. There are NO limitations.)
It’s now 10….
Is this person winding down for sleep? Are they doing incredible creative acts? What are they doing? What is the environment? Who are they with? What feelings do they have inside?
It’s time for sleep again. This person is going to sleep. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How is their body going to lay down? Who are they with? What feeling do they have in their feet? Head? Hands? Belly?
They go to sleep saying their name. What are their dreams? How are those dreams accessed in their body? What is the imagery of the dreams? How does it nourish them and their goals/objectives in life?
They wake up the next day…. Smiling. ;-)
Now that you have this written down. Re-read it. Anything missing? Any changes you’d like to make? Switch anything up? Take about 5-10 minutes to just sit with this story in your mind’s eye. Or don’t. It’s up to you.
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Grab your phone and make a voice memo. You’re going to be the narrator of This person’s film, of their day-in the life. You open the scene with: This is So and So…. Then you go on to read out your image-strong version of their life. Pause the recording as needed to take a breath. At the end of the recording say the name of this character again and smile to them.
Now, complete/end the recording.
Play this recording every evening before you go to bed, right after your AIM exercise for 45 days. If you don’t have time to play this for whatever reason that’s fine. We can drop this practice in on the next 45 day challenge mode. It should be pretty quick.
Also, if you’re tech savvy, you can import songs/voice memo to iTunes, Sync with your phone, and then set a song ‘Track’ as an alarm to go to sleep with or to wake up with. If not, just do it the old fashioned way or whatever works best for your life. (use earphones for this if you have a partner you sleep with, its private ;-)
If you’re great at memorizing things… you can just memorize it. If you aren’t great at memorizing… try using the memory palace trick (Wikipedia has a great entry on this). Works wonders. Pick a beautiful place you like to spend time in if you do use the Memory Palace.
If you’d rather not memorize it.. just play it back and feel the feelings when you listen to it.
GOOD JOB! This is the first pass. No need to do more at this time.
Shortcut #3: Keep it Secret.
Secrecy has its root in the word ‘Sacred.’ This is a story for you, and you only. It will have 10x the power if you keep it private.
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In a couple weeks. Come back to this exercise (mark it on your calendar), and give it a re-read when you’re fresh and energized, after a workout, sex, or early in the morning. Whatever. Whenever you feel great.
You can DOWNLOAD the template for this Here.
DO: The 45-Day Challenge
This is the master framework for learning any new skill. It involves four simple steps.
Knowing Why you want to establish a new learning, habit or skill.
Defining the one measurable action that will get you there the fastest.
Establishing and committing to a time to do that one measurable activity.
Reviewing your progress alone and in a group every week at a certain time.
There’s a huge amount of clinically proven science behind how and why this is the most effective way to learn. Happy to recommend great books around this. Or, you can just try it and see.
Below are the questions that will help:
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1) What do you wish to accomplish?
2) What is the ONE measurable action that will get you there the fastest?
This establishes the ‘WHAT’ you will be doing.
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Now… the ‘WHY’
1) Why do you want to do this? What will it give you? What will you gain by doing this thing?
2) What will happen if you don’t do this? What is the status-quo? What is the worst-case scenario that can happen if you don’t do this action?
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Give yourself short-term rewards.
1) What will you give yourself as a reward once you do this one thing for 45 days?
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Ready? OK… now, you’re going to open up this link to a spreadsheet and download it or save it as your own.
This is your 45-day tracker. Go ahead and open it. Fill in the questions.
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Now, open up your calendar and enter the exact time you will be doing this one action. Remember its only 45 days.
I suggest you only do it during week-days, but you can be the decider of your frequency.
There is a ‘RULE’ here though. You don’t do MORE than 30 minutes of this one measurable action each day. That’s right, less actually IS more. Do your action. Mark it as done, then move on with whatever is next in your day. Also, only choose One thing.. yep, just one. Again, ALL the SCIENCE proves its much more effective to build habits one-by-one. Only learn one new action at a time.
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Review your progress on this action every week.
Get your calendar out, and now pick a time you will review your progress on this one action every week.
Now, find a group of friends who are doing something similar, note, it doesn’t need to be the same action, but it should be a group of people who are committed to meeting on a regular basis.
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Interestingly, doing this ONE thing, consistently, will radically transform all other areas of your life simultaneously. I get into this in another article, but for now, try it and see!! Everything else in your life becomes easier and more clear.
Drop us a note by filling out this form to join one of our ongoing support video groups that meet every Friday at 9:30.
Establishing a work habit
Humans, like any animal, establish habits. These habits are often not consciously crafted.
when we understand how habits are formed we can use them to our advantage.
You greatly increase your chances of success and decrease the amount of energy required when you establish a place to work and a regular time to do this work.
Habits are basically a series of stimuli and responses. For example, you see a cookie, and if you like cookies, your mouth begins to salivate. This happens because previously you ate a cookie (or a dozen) and found them satisfying (or delicious!).
This is just how the human organism works. In fact, all organisms, all life works like this. It’s the fundamental mechanics of biology.
So, do yourself a favor, and make a commitment to do your work at the same time every day. Do this regardless of how you feel about the work. It’s a commitment. And commitments build power.
Ideally do this work in the same location and environment. You can even wear a certain article of clothing, play a certain soundtrack, and light a certain kind of incense or use a type of fragrance. Whatever you choose, do the same thing over and over again.
If you do this for 45 days, your body will begin to anticipate the work, and even look forward to it.
Habits can serve you when they are consciously crafted.
To help you, here is a 45-day tracker tool and an article on how to most effectively use it.
Learn like a Monkey
Monkey See Monkey DO!
All Hominids (Great Apes and Humans) learn how to do things by observing and experiencing other Hominids do this thing. The more senses we involve in learning, the faster we may assimilate the experience.
Get good at meeting people who do what you want to do.
Its simple. Its effective. Its powerful. And its very fast.
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You may have never done this formally. You may have never realized this is what you’re doing every day, informally. There are some TRICKs.
Trick 1:
Set yourself up with a 45 day challenge.
Trick 2:
Dedicate a work-space and time to accomplish this challenge.
Trick 3:
Focus: Don’t let anything distract you during your focus time.
This framework of tricks applies to any skill you wish to build. There are many reasons why it works. I get into those in other articles. For now, just trust, it works.
Practice meeting with unknown and known people who are doing the things you love to do.
Then, put into practice the things they do. Simple, right?
Here’s a step-by-step How-To Guide:
Write down what you’d like to learn. If it’s an entire occupation, get specific on the niche that occupation operates in. If it’s a specific skill, even better.
Write down 6 people who have done and are doing this thing.
One-by-one, write their names down individually on a sheet of paper or your computer.
Now, for each person, write down a list of questions you’d like to ask them. Ask them how they did what they did. Ask them anything you’d like about what their perspectives are for success? What single action would they say made their successes? Etc…
Go ahead and do that now. The lists will have a strong overlap, but you’ll be surprised at how different people evoke different questions.
Now, take the first person and imagine them in front of you. Ask them your first question. Imagine what their answer would be. Write it down.
Go thru your list and do the same for each person.
Sleep on it for at least a day.
Now, come back to the list within a week or even the next day.
Go and talk to them. One-by-one. Reach out and talk to them. Not all will say yes, but maybe! I’m guessing many of them will, regardless of rank/title. Ask to setup a 1-hour sit-down with them in person and ask for advice. If they say no, ask for 30 minutes. If they say no, ask for 15 minutes.
You can ask to meet even a president of the US. You’d be surprised how eager these people are to help you learn.
Your job is to get the transmission from them. Monkey See… Monkey Do. Take notes. Then listen to those notes over again/re-read and digest them. If you really wanted to assimilate the information use this trick:
Setup calendar reminders to review your notes
1 week after
1 month after
6 months
1 year
This is the fastest way to accelerate learning and increases retention by over 400% (scientifically proven).
Happy Learning, Monkey.
How Focus Works
Focus is not about sustaining attention. Actually, not really…
Focus is about bringing our attention BACK to a certain object or objective.
Nearly every human has some interruption in their attention every 30 seconds. The humans who can ‘Focus’ are the ones who are good at bringing their attention back to the object of focus. That is Focus.
Focus is a skill, and a tool.
Because Focus is a skill, it is learnable.
And, the training takes some time to establish. You’re literally growing new neural circuits when you train a focused act. Its living tissue that forms neural ‘root balls’ of connection in your brain. It takes time to grow a garden ;-)
There’s a saying: ‘A focused mind is a healthy mind.’
Do you want to have a healthy mind? If so, learn to say NO to distractions, and really focus on your work. Turn off your cell phone. Turn off alerts and notification. Ignore others who want your attention. Even ignore feelings of ill-health, headaches, etc. Just focus. Bring back your attention to the objective.
Focus for a minimum of 15 minutes at a time, and a maximum of 30 minutes when learning a new skill.
The easiest way to train saying NO to distractions is:
Understand the WHY, the motivation for learning. Get your AIM right (See this link)
Establish and COMMIT to a certain place (Work Habit) and time to do your work.
DO the work for 45 days (45 day challenge)
GET SUPPORT from a group of like-minded people who meet every week to review. (Link: how to form a support group)
REWARD yourself at the end of it. (45 day challenge)
This habit will eventually become a form of flow, an established meditation that you do and to enjoy immensely.
The 45 Day Challenge works. If you really want to learn a new skill, move some stuck energy in your life, do this challenge.
Business Building: Your Future Staff
Memory is our predictive function of the future. Imagination enables us to live a different story. The likely-hood of this new desired story becoming reality increases when:
We get very clear on the story details.
We imagine ourselves living the story and ‘feel’ what it’s like in our bodies.
We review this story at a frequency that enables us to load it into our memory.
This alone will begin to help us generate a reality very similar to our story. That is, these actions will help us program our expectations.
Businesses are made of people.
Humans are wired to retain relationship stories more than non human-to-human related stories. It’s part of our organism to remember details about people more than environments or circumstances. We can use this to our advantage when crafting our future.
Here’s what to do.
1) Write out the description of your future company and your roll in it.
2) Write out the titles of people who will help you in this company. These are people who know how to do things that you don’t already have an expertise in and/or you don’t enjoy doing the work that they do.
This will look something like:
Me: CEO and Chief Creative Officer of ACME Company
My C-Level Team Members and Advisors (try to limit to 5-8 direct reports)
General Categories are: Finance, Marketing, Sales, Product, Technology, Logistics, Etc.
3) Write their names, write their character profiles.
4) Next, write out a brief email to each one outlining what you’re excited about having them work on, and how you’re grateful for their help in building your company.
Do this for each person and imagine this is you or some future character of you writing these to your staff 1 year from now.
If you’d like to keep going, you can do it for 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20+ years ahead.
Companies go thru changes as they age. They grow, shrink, and grow again. They undergo different management structures, cultures, products, and missions. Each of these shifts generates needs for different people and specialties.
Imagine your company 1 year from now
Imagine your company 2 years from now
Imagine your company 5 years from now
Imagine your company 10 years from now
Write out brief descriptions of each stage. How much are you selling? What are your customer bases? Who are they? where are they? What are they needing? How is your company serving them?
Now, write out your management team titles, names, and characters. Write them each an email as above. Do this for each stage of growth you wish to 1, 2, 5, 10 years.
Come back and review this periodically. And, especially, feel it in your body. This activity will enable you to live in your future more clearly. It will magnetize you to seek these people, values, and experiences.
You are incredible.
Mastering Your Money Voice
Beliefs are multi-layered. Anyone who’s tried to ‘listen to the voice in their head’ has heard all kinds of things. Humans identify their names, their sense of self most with this voice ‘inside the head’. We believe that this ‘voice’ is ‘us.’
However, the voice is actually a program running based on our beliefs. And, our beliefs are changeable.
When we change our beliefs, we can change the story. We change our beliefs by changing the tone and content of the voice is saying.
We also end up changing our entire biochemistry and physiology when we do this effectively. I have other articles about how this works… more on that later.
Many people have heard of affirmations. Affirmations work. Affirmations work best when we are using them effectively.
What is an Affirmation?
An affirmation is the positive and opposite version of an undesired thought.
To use an affirmation effectively, we first need a direction, a goal. A goal works like this:
We have a current situation, and we want it to be different.
A goal is our desired future situation and feeling.
Now that we know what an affirmation is, and what a goal is, we are ready to use affirmations effectively.
Here’s how to use Affirmations Effectively:
We have an uncomfortable emotion often labeled as sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, or something else.
This emotion is at its core, a sensation in the body. The sensation is likely in your chest, belly, head or sides of the torso. This sensation is usually paired with a label (good/bad), a type/emotion (fear, sadness, anger, joy) and a story (when I feel this, this means XYZ about me, them, or this current environment).
This all happens very quickly, and usually unconsciously, or at lease less-consciously.
If we were to observe (Objectively) our selves having this experience, we would see: A) An emotion arise B) Our face and body posture shift. Then if we could see the thought stream coming out of our ears, we’d see something like: ‘Whoa! Sensation! — Do I like this sensation? (Good/Bad). — IF GOOD —> I like this sensation, give me more. — (Mind then makes a story about the Origin of sensation) ‘I must be feeling this way because, XYZ happened, or because I think XYZ is going to happen’ — I want more of this sensation, therefore I will seek this experience of XYZ more’ IF BAD —> Woa, I don’t want this sensation. This sensation must be because of XYZ. I will avoid XYZ in the future.
Fortunately for us, the story part be translated into simple sentences using our language. It can be taken from the intangible Subjective experience of our mind and put into words out on paper or a computer so that we can see it, Objectively.
When the uncomfortable emotion arrises, we listen to what the story is and write it out as single sentence statements.
Here’s where the magic happens. Once we’ve taken the Subjective words and transfered them into the 3-D real world, We pause. We ask ourselves, what would I like to think instead? Often, if this is a negative emotional story, we write out the opposite. We write out the ‘affirmative’ statements/story directly next to the ‘limiting’ statement/story.
Next, we use our very powerful imaginations to wonder what it would feel like if the affirmative statement were true? In our minds eye, we walk thru being a character that would feel that way and think that thought. We can pull our memory banks for experiences in the past when this statement may have been true if that’s helpful. Its very important to get the ‘feeling’ state of if this story were true. It may take time to let the old feeling state pass. Just be patient with the old sensation, it will pass. Eventually we will completely overwrite the old story.
To begin training this we do it at regular intervals, such as at the same time every day. Its like any ‘excercise’ like weight training. However, instead of training physical muscles with weights, we’re training neural muscles. We are actually growing new neural connections, new nerve root-balls when we do this.
In summary, we intentionally go towards uncomfortable feelings by putting ourselves in imagined or real situations that trigger them. We then uncovering the stories taking them from Subjective to Objective. We now evaluate if that’s a story we want to live in, and change it if its not. It’s our ‘story workout.’
Over time, we transform our interpretation of these feelings into what they are, just sensations. And, most often, these sensations resolve themselves into pleasant ones the more we do the practice. Evenutally we begin to rest more in our natural state of joy and non-reactivity to most situations.
For the topic of money, you can put yourself in a situation or imagine yourself working on your finances, or buying a big item, even a small item, or doing something that makes you uncomfortable around money. Use this situation to trigger the emotions in step 1 above and cary on with the rest of the steps.
As we change the stories and allow the sensations, we open up more optimism, and more health.
There are many reasons this works. I won’t go into them in detail here. Later you’ll likely see an article about ‘Symbiology, how human consciousness functions in symbols and how those symbols affect our biology.’
Find a regular time of day (say 9 am, or even better right when you wake up) to practice feeling the sensations in your body, and writing the stories out. Eventually you won’t even need to write the stories out because you’ll know which stories you wish to choose to live from.
Good luck!!
Value Audit Exercise
Summary
The three primary ways you spend your energy here on Earth are:
Where you spend your time
What you think about
Where you spend your money
How you invest these directs your destiny.
Power comes from being Aligned.
To be alined means identifying our values and then spending our physical, mental, and monetary activities doing, thinking about, and investing in actions which get us more of what we enjoy, more of what nourishes us.
Step 1: Identify Your Values
Write your personal values statement.
The fast track to value identification is the AIM exercise. If you haven’t already done it, please circle back and have a go at it now.
Step 2: Audit your Energy Output and Input (Exchange)
Pop open your calendar. How many of your appointments in there are using what you do, to do what you love, and to share it with others? How many of those scheduled activities would you like to be filled with those activities?
Jot down your thoughts, sit in meditation, and begin to observe your thinking as it goes by. How much of this thinking is dedicated to living into your dream life? How much of this thinking is dedicated to fulfilling actions that are meaningful to you, actions that emerge from your AIM exercise?
Look at your bank and credit card transactions. Where are you spending your money? Are these things helping you get more of what you want?
Step 3: Edit your Energy Output and Input (Exchange)
All of these things we do, think about, and invest in are either nourishing us, or making us less healthy.
Locate the areas in your calendar, thoughts, and accounts which you realize are not clearly in alignment with your stated values, with your AIM statement.
Begin to not do these things.
Some helpful ways to avoid doing things:
Write down a ‘limit’ or ‘Don’t do’ list.
Replace and ‘overflow’ your calendar, thoughts, and spending with things that you do want to do.
Review your stated values regularly. This can be daily using our ‘AIM’ practice, or weekly review of the ‘Character’ exercise.
It Takes Time
The tendency for humans to maintain our familiar actions and habits is called ‘Homeostasis’. Homeo (Same) Stasis (Un-Changing). This term is borrowed from Biology where it describes how things like body temperature maintain a constant state to facilitate life.
The process of aligning to our values takes time. Biological systems like us HumAnimals ‘grow’ new internal structures when we are changing. These structures typically take months and years to mature. These are things like neural networks, endocrine chains, endocrine cascades, muscle tissues, skin bone.
Even though it’s the nature of life to remain stable, it is also the nature of life to be flexible and adaptive.
We can use the seemingly opposite concepts of stability and adaptability to our advantage.
Conscious cultivation of our habits leads to greater alignment. This greater alignment leads to more confidence, and a generally healthier individual.
To walk through the Value Audit may take an hour. To implement the changes and cultivate their growth takes longer. Though, not as long as one may think.
Typically habit changes take between 2-6 months for you to see changes in the positive direction. Furthermore these changes have an additive effect.
When we become more aligned, we generate more power. With more power we can invest greater energy into doing things that give us greater alignment. Just imagine what you can do with a whole life-time of conscious cultivation!?
What happens if my values Change?
Surfacing our values, and then truly, actually looking at how we are pursuing them with clarity can be uncomfortable.
The work of Coaching is largely about helping people through these value shifts. Many of my clients have difficulty committing to a limited set of clearly stated values. They worry that they may not be capturing it all, or that they may change, and therefore the AIM statement won’t be true for them anymore. In the beginning it’s necessary to articulate and limit what we value. Our stated values direct our intentional actions. Too many stated values leads to an overwhelming number of actions and confusion.
Part of what we learn, what I teach, are tools to help accelerate and digest value changes with speed, agility, and ease.
Our values originate from our Family, Community, State, Nation, and Educational beliefs. As we change and evolve, so do our values. Sometimes things we used to value are not as valued anymore. Yet, we continue doing the actions that reinforce these old values. We become ‘attached’ and ‘identified’ with these values that are no longer healthy for us.
The process of changing your value or values will occur naturally over time. And, when consciously cultivated you can be more certain about your values, and more aligned with the actions you are taking to reinforce and nourish them.
So called ‘life events’ often ‘force’ a value shift in us. Gently, or not so gently.
Changing where we live
Changing our job
Changing marital or partnership status
Having a child
Loosing a loved one such as parent or relative
Gaining responsibility
Loosing responsibility
Having an unforeseen health challenge
Resolving an unforeseen health challenge
Receiving a lot of money
Loosing a lot of money
These ironically, are also some of the most memorable milestones (fenceposts) in our story of life. These pivotal shifts are so powerful for us that they become quite important to our sense of identity and happiness.
In Summary (AGain ;-)
The three primary ways you spend your energy here on Earth are:
Where you spend your time
What you think about
Where you spend your money.
How you invest these directs your destiny.
The Value Audit Exercise helps you identify these and change them to fit your Values.
You can have a go at it yourself, and, I invite you to setup a meeting with me or one of our coaches to help you walk thru the process step-by-step. Check out our ‘Contact’ page for more details.
Destination Maker
When we set out with clear destinations in mind, we tend to get there faster. This questionnaire will help us get you closer to achieving your goals the fastest. We start by better understanding what areas of growth to focus on.
Relationships as Value expressions
Here’s the Punchline:
We are attracted to people in Business, as Friends, as Lovers, or Partners because we want to LEARN something from them. We want to learn how to express a value within ourselves that is already deep in our souls, but needs some skill, education, inspiration, and/or environment for expression.
A while ago I was challenged in a romantic relationship. I was with a very (very very) physically attractive female partner. She was younger than me, loved to socialize, and play. I was about 10 years older, more introspective, and happy chilling at home for the most part.
Every three weeks or so she would go out with her friends, hit the bars, and come home (or not sometimes). For me, this was clearly a mis-match in our life-styles and values. Yet, I was so attracted to her. I was ‘Dependent.’ The sex was incredible, and I enjoyed supporting her in many ways, while she gave me positivity and optimism.
About two years into our relationship when we were in a rocky part I outlined what ‘value’ I was getting from our relationship. I wrote down the things I value about her.
She was creative, free-spirited, passionate, attractive, social, artistic, sexy, fun, and positive.
I then listed the things I value in myself, and that likely she’d find attractive.
Stable, considerate, financially responsible, intelligent, attractive, supportive, successful, etc.
My theory was (and is) this:
We are attracted to people who express dormant or un-tapped values in ourselves that we haven’t yet fully expressed, yet deep down we yearn to express them.
So, I decided:
“I am going to be ‘less-dependent’ on my partner by actively seeking to develop these value expressions within and through myself. I’m going to cultivate them independent of our relationship.”
I took the combined list of values (hers + mine) and I ranked them (I color coded them).
Red = Under-Developed.
Yellow = Medium Developed.
Green = Highly Developed.
I chose to actively focus on being around other people who expressed the values I was less developed in, yet wanted to be more expressive of.
By consciously spending time with these people (classes, social events, online forums, etc), I began to develop my own expression of these values I was attracted to in my partner. And, well… we broke up 6 months later.
I began to get my value expression met with other people in other non-romantic ways. My ‘Dependency’ was now ‘Less-Dependent.’
My theory still holds true now:
We are attracted to people in Business, as Friends, as Lovers or Partners because we want to LEARN something from them. We want to learn how to express a value within ourselves that is already deep in our souls, but needs some skill, education, inspiration, or environment for expression.
At the macroscopic level all life depends on the interchange of energy and information.
Human Relationships are a special kind of interchange. In business relationships we come together to build a certain product or service, each party bringing unique sets of skills, experiences and values.
In Romantic relationships we similarly bring different skills, experiences and values.
As parents or partners we come together to build a family.
The term ‘Dependency’ or even ‘Co-Dependent’ has been popular in Psychotherapy settings. And, I believe this term is mis-placed.
We are all dependent on each-other. All Being’s lives are dependent and supported by other Being’s lives.
Where this becomes a challenge is when the ’why’ is either un-clear, or out-dated.
For example, after the children are gone, couples need to either find another ‘why’ to stay together, or they won’t have anything to collaborate on and grow together with.
The exercise for you is this:
Write out a relationship you currently have.
List the values you admire about this partner, list those about yourself. (You will likely have overlap). Now, rank order the values (1,2,3 is fine) according to how well developed these value expressions are in each of you.
Identify the 2s and 3s (lower development) and then determine who else has these, how can you begin to bring more of these value expressions into your own life?
For each of these you could further ask:
What value do I want to express?
Where and with whom can I express it?
What information, energy, people, and environment best supports my expression of this value in healthy and fun ways?
The Three C’s That will Save your Conscious A+Ss
Our Words Shape our Lives…
The words that leave our mouths, finger-tips, and those that roll around in our minds telling us silent stories of tomorrow’s yesterday…. they shape what we are to become.
Check out this Inverted Pyramid with the Three C’s In action.
First, we may Complain. This one tiny hole in the dike will cause a cascade of other complaints.
Our mind then innocently looks for the cause of our complaints…. ‘Who’s responsible for my discontent!?’ ‘What’s Wrong!?’
So, we ‘Criticize’. We place Blame, Shame, or Fault on Ourselves, Someone else, or the World, GOD, The Republicans, The Democrats, Our Partner, Family, etc.
Now that we have a culprit… we can make a future story about how terrible our world will be with this kind of person or experience lurking about ready to make our lives miserable at any moment. We ‘Condemn’.
By Condemning the Person, Situation, or Thing we are transferring ‘Power’ away from ourselves, and onto this externality. This makes us into … ready? a VICTIM.
Some people are very good at playing this roll of Victim, yet seeming to have it all together. It can be so subtle.
The way out of this Downward funnel, Spiral, Pyramid, Hole, or whatever image you wish to use… is to take action by choice and scrip the flipt. Or Flip the Script. Turn the triangle right side up.
We begin with Appreciation. We appreciate ourselves, notice nice things about ourselves. We Appreciate others, notice nice things about them, we appreciate Nature, our abundance of natural resources, money, food, warmth, loved ones.
Then we begin to shift appreciation into Praise. Praise is where we take our noticing into an active Verbal State of ‘Saying’ these nice things to ourselves and to others. “Wow, you put a lot of thought into your outfit today, I love how creative and thoughtful you are with the way you dress.” “I’m doing a great job at XYZ lately.”
From Praise we begin to shift into a more optimistic future. We begin to tell ourselves the story about how lucky we are to have such well-dressed artistic friends who inspire us visually. How fortunate we are to have all the people and things we love around us.
Our mind, (the word ‘mind’ is a good a future topic), then begins to propel us into a better future. We expect these nice things more and more. We enter the upward spiral of Optimism.
Success then follows. Our biochemistry becomes more awake and also relaxed. Our mood improves. We begin to look for those things we want to see and appreciate more. We start randomly smiling more. We win the ‘life-lottery’ more often.
PUNCHLINE and ACTION you can take:
Start catching your C’s before they move down the pyramid, and begin your upward trajectory with Appreciation, Praise, and Optimism.
You can practice a little at first, and then gradually increase. Try it with this email. You can even try going down the Pyramid.. then back up. Your mind will magically present Reasons. (TIP, your old body-sensory patterns may be stuck. To MASTER this practice. Keep dropping the negative words and using the positive words even when you don’t ‘feel’ like using them. Here’s a link to a PDF about ‘why’ and ‘how’ this works using my ‘AMPD’ process.)
Downward: I get too many emails. I don’t have time for this. This is too long. Those graphics don’t work for me. Who is this guy anyhow.
Upward: Wow, how nice to get this helpful tool that can craft my future. I never noticed this before. I wonder if I put this into practice just once, if it will stick? This graphic is very helpful for me to remember using this tool. I’m going to practice this every day…. I now have a bright future to look forward to.
Get in touch with me. Hop on my contact form, or send me a note zander@conciousfounders.org
Pass this along to a few friends. They’ll be stoked you took the time to care about them so much.
With Love (and Optimism),
/Zander
PS: I love teaching this material. send me a note with a bit about a person you’d like to refer: What you think their super-power is, their biggest challenge, why they’d benefit from working with me. If its YOU, please include the same in your message to me ;-) zander@consciousfounders.org.