iMindShift with Steve Chandler

What Kind of Fool Am I?

Last year at the Reinventing Yourself Weekend I was happy one of the evenings to go up in front of the room and sing some songs. I'm not a professional singer but I love to sing especially when it borders on being "entertaining."

I can make a fool of myself quite easily. In fact, one of the songs I'm going to sing this weekend at the Weekend is a medley people like called "Serial Fool" ... a mix of songs that all sing about being a fool.

Reinventing Yourself Weekend tends to bring that out in everyone...that impulse to be okay with being foolish and imperfect. So I am urging you to come experience the Weekend this year: find more info here: Reinventing Yourself Weekend 2017

Also my new book will come out that weekend and will be given to all of you. It's called Right Now, and here's a little preview from it...speaking of being okay with being perceived as a fool:

Not long ago I listened to a webinar wherein one of my favorite authors and teachers Dr. George Pransky talked about his early days of going into organizations to teach them his psychological principles that led to greater performance, productivity and morale.

There were many times when he was at a loss for what to say to his audience. Learning about the nature of thought and about the importance of their employees’ state of mind seemed off-subject. The group wasn’t getting how his teaching related to performance and their team’s productivity. Telling the story, Pransky laughed and said, “We were in over our heads!” But that didn’t stop him. He hung in there until they got it. They needed those breakthroughs right now. They didn’t have the luxury of waiting until he was fully prepared to connect with them.

He also didn’t see anything wrong with being in over his head. The opportunity to make a difference was right now, not in some overly-prepared, guaranteed-outcome future. (That future we’re all looking for.)

My friend Fred Knipe who is a genius songwriter and a wildly entertaining comedian created a comic persona named Dr. Ludiker. The humor of Ludiker is in how unqualified (and unprepared) he is to give advice. Yet he gives it freely and buoyantly even though the advice is all bizarre and hilariously incorrect. Audiences love this character. I think they are almost shocked at his character’s childish arrogance in delivering wisdom based on nothing. They love someone being that unprepared and still pressing on with wild unjustified confidence. Always in over his head! They laugh long into the night when Fred performs. His act is in great demand.

Dr. Ludiker is like the Charles Dickens character Pickwick, who, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, “… goes through life with that godlike gullibility which is the key to all adventures.  The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything.  It is he that gets the most out of life….  His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of.”

AGAIN:  Reinventing Yourself Weekend 2017    SEE YOU THERE!

 

 

Let’s Give Everyone a Fresh Chance

Sometimes I like to assign movies for my clients to watch. One of them is Finding Dory. The little fish character voiced by Ellen DeGeneres has short term memory loss and much of the humor comes from her forgetting who the other characters are.

Hi, I'm Dory!

She might have a long scene with a character and see the same character two minutes later and have no idea who she’s talking to. Then cheerfully she says, “Oh hello! My name is Dory!” How exciting to find a new relationship! And for Dory, they’re all showing up as new.

What if I can try being Dory? When I arrive at a gathering and I see someone there who I have had judgmental thoughts about, this time I approach them as Dory. I am happy and cheerful. I am open and empty and so glad to run into them. There is no story about them that I have to filter their words through.

When I show up empty, I am right here right now in the present moment. Like falling out of thought and like falling in love.  Because only in the here and now can I fall in love, because falling in love is an experience of pleasant surprise, or, as G.K. Chesterton said about his spiritual awakening, it’s like receiving “absurd good news.”

And I can fall in love with anything. I recently learned to fall in love with taking the garbage out. I noticed that I dreaded it every week, and when it came time to do it I slogged through it as a means to an end. It never occurred to me that I could make it an end in itself.

So I slowed it down and treated it like a sacred Zen practice. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t wait until garbage day. I’d even say to Kathy in a voice that sounded like elation, “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“Tomorrow is garbage day!” 

She began to worry about me.  She started looking online for what she could find about the first stages of dementia.

Stories (elaborate webs of thought) make it hard for me to give something (like taking the garbage out) or someone (who had said something critical) a second chance. Someone criticizes me and I’m caught up into thinking they’ve done something deliberately hurtful. I try my best to forgive them, but built into the idea of forgiveness is the conviction that I am the person who was right and they are the person who was wrong. When I forgive them it feels like it’s big of me to do that! And that from now on they’ll never be on the same moral or ethical level as I am. It is from a superior level that I throw my pennies of forgiveness down to them. A magnificent being generously tossing coins into a human gene pool of inferiority.

Dory would be kinder than that. Dory wouldn’t remember what that other person had done or said.

In my experience of recovery from alcohol and drugs I have noticed that some people (who knew me when) never quite trusted or understood that my whole life had changed. I was “that drunk” to them every time they saw me, no matter that decades of sobriety had passed. I have friends and acquaintances in recovery who are never given a second chance by certain family members because the old stories are stronger than their capacity to forget.

I don’t actually regret any of that. It shows me the power of a story. It shows me that stories can prevent a relationship from ever really happening. They can become stories about what men are like. They can be stories about what women really want. These kinds of stories can hypnotize almost everyone alive today.

When I have a story about your political party, or your country, or your profession, who you really are doesn’t stand a chance. Whole countries have stories about other countries and will fight to the death to live out the story.

My clients enjoy Finding Dory. They see the love behind giving someone a new start.  Maybe the saying “Forgive and forget” can be shortened, in the interest of time management, to simply “Forget.” If you did that it would give the people in your world a fresh chance.

I wished for death often (...this might be how my addiction started...)

The betrayal is astonishing. The jaw drops. Are you kidding me?

  I have to take twice as much of this stuff to feel anything close to what I felt when I first took it?

  And that's not the worst of it. (I'm talking about taking the painkiller I took while downing the tequila sunrises I downed.) The worst of it is that now that I do have to take twice as much, the hangover, or the crash, is far worse. So bad that life looks horrible now.

  Life looks frightening. Some satanic guy with a violin bow is dragging his bow across the strings of a stand-up bass violin. No, not a cello, not a cello, not at all.

  What is that music that is waking my hungover body up? Isn’t that the theme from The Exorcist?

  Why would a human being feel this horrible on this bright (all too bright) morning? The sun coming in through the window is an interrogator's lamp. Why? Because of a little liquid pleasure I borrowed from the future? What's wrong with hitting the future up? Especially when the present is such a crashing bore?

  But now, in this hungover sun, why would God have me, or anyone, even a serial killer, feel this way? Is He messing with me?

  Well, just this once I need to drink in the morning, even though I know what that makes me. It makes me a cliché. So what. I'll make myself a Bloody Mary with a very healthy celery stalk in it. Time to drink and ponder.

  Hey, maybe that celery is getting me off on the right foot. It just might turn this whole thing around, because it’s a definite move toward health.

  Despite being mainly water, celery provides a fair amount of dietary fiber! The potential health benefits of celery are starting to cheer me up as I keep drinking and chewing on the stalk. Oh, it's mainly water, I know, but so am I! I start to smile. I bet I look sneaky right now. I grab my book on raw vegetables from the kitchen shelf and see that celery can lower blood pressure, and, wait a minute, reduce the risk of cancer!

  Another sip of the drink and my mind turns sick in its thinking. If I never get cancer, I'll never get those painkillers I've heard they give out so freely when they know you're terminal. That's sad. Sad on many levels. Sad that I'm even thinking about this.

* * * * * * * *

Back then, when I was lost inside the vicious circle I describe above, I had no idea what recovery would bring me. I had no hint of the joy and freedom on the other side of recovery, or the LOVE of life, this life, that would be mine.......here is something written by David Ignatow that expresses it for me:

I wished for death often but now that I am at its door I have changed my mind about the world.

It should go on; it is beautiful, even as a dream, filled with water and seed, plants and animals, others like myself, ships and buildings and messages filling the air -- a beauty, if ever I have seen one.

In the next world, should I remember this one, I will praise it above everything.

–David Ignatow

 

One drink is too many for me but a hundred is not enough

(These are some notes I've been making for my Death Wish project
http://deathwish.stevechandler.com)

The problem in my life starts when I think I have to add something to this present moment to make it better.

Addition is seductive. It’s a lot like addiction. The words look a lot alike. Look too quickly and you'll mistake one for the other.

How much addiction comes from the lure of addition? The myth that tells you…whispers to you…that you have to add something to your life to make it a happier experience.

Let me add this strong drink to the chemistry in my brain and body. Now let me add more drinks. (One is too many, a hundred is not enough.)

It’s simple addition! And it leads to misery.

What if I were brave enough to turn my addicted life around? What if I were strong enough to experiment with subtraction? Subtraction! People fear it. What would be left? Just me?

Adding muddies the water. . .subtracting makes it crystal clear

 Some people have what they call food addiction. Carb addiction. Addiction to bread and sweets. Emotional eating, they call it. But what if I subtracted flour and sugar from my diet? (Versus the addition of a dangerous amphetamine diet pill that races my heart and speeds up the already-circular thinking in my brain...and soon turns into an addiction.)

What if I subtracted my drug, my alcohol? What if I were brave enough? Subtraction leads to freedom. It takes these chains from my heart and sets me free.

Addition: addiction.

For the word addition to become the word addiction, I just have to throw a “c” in there. You know “c.” It stands for cocaine, or cannabis, or cognac, or cookies, or catastrophe, or chronic alcoholism.

I’m not enough. I have to add something to me…something from the outside world.

Byron Katie talks about being addicted to love and approval. There are clinics for sex addiction and romantic love addiction.

Yes I have a happy marriage but I myself am not happy so maybe if I just added this one adventurous romantic love relationship to my life.

I read the tabloids to keep up with what addiction can do to people. Famous people in celebrity rehab. All of them. Adding like crazy. Look at Oprah’s five beautiful homes!

Ben Affleck has a good marriage to Jennifer Garner (I’m putting my groceries on the conveyor belt slowly now so I can read all of this) and he decides to add to that a romantic relationship with their nanny. In the following weeks and months I read all about custody, betrayal, heartbreak, financial penalties, bitterness…..in other words a major life hangover. So much for adding.

The famous beat generation author and drug addict William Burroughs killed his wife playing a William Tell game at a drugged-up, drunken party. He was the author of the books Naked Lunch and Junkie. He was actually a brilliant man, and never so brilliant as he was in his later years when he was clean and sober and said that there wasn't anything, any feeling, any high, that you could get on drugs and alcohol that you couldn’t get without drugs and alcohol.

And that’s because that treasure of good feelings is already in you. The drug (and I always include alcohol as a drug) just breaks down the barriers. It releases what’s already there. It took me awhile, some years clean and sober to find out that he was right. But you can go faster than that. Through meditation and working with others and an ongoing spiritual practice you can find out faster than I did that you can have an even happier life than you did at your best drunken moment.

I used to believe I had to add drugs and alcohol to my system to feel the things I wanted to feel. If I wanted to feel more relaxed or more courageous or more confident in a crowd of people, it was never going to happen unless I added something to my system. I did get (most of the time, at the beginning, until it turned really dark and desperate) the feelings I wanted. But they were all-too temporary.

But as Burroughs found out, the drug itself doesn’t directly produce the feeling. It just removes the barriers in the brain to the treasure that’s already there. And there are other ways to remove those barriers, thank God and the people who will help you.

 

How to reinvent yourself

When I reinvent myself in the most exciting and beneficial way, I don't change from an inferior personality into a superior one. I change from a noun to a verb.

I reinvent from static fascination with my past and its patterns into joyful action. My world changes from trying to improve myself to learning to leave myself behind.

A really good reinvention in my own life (with the help of my own business/life coach) had me converting from being a money-fearing loser (noun) into making a difference, creating and joyfully serving others as the natural outpouring of God-given energy and self-expression. A series of verbs.

These ten ideas tell how I did it and how my clients are doing it in terms of the verbs they can be instead of the nouns they misunderstand themselves to be.

 

1. Stop winning friends and influencing people.

This entire orientation to life and society and community (winning people over) is a hangover from childhood when the grownups had all the power and all the money. They needed  to be charmed and manipulated for us to get what we wanted. We learned to do that. It became second nature.

But carrying that into adulthood leads to mediocrity and misery.

We want to switch from trying to make an impression to  trying to make a difference.

 

2. Change your relationship to life.

If you see life as something outside of you, pushing in on you, then you will reveal that by saying things like, "That's life!" when things go wrong, or, "Life is difficult" when you feel the need to sound disconsolate and wise.

But when you reconsider your relationship to life and change "life" from being outside pressing in to being inside as a source of energy, everything gets fun again (as it was when you were young and just knew intuitively that life bloomed and blossomed from the inside out.)

 

 3. Use the language of intention.

People whose repeated self-told stories cast themselves as victims continuously use the language of obligation. There are so many things they "should" do and "have to" do.

Reinvented people convert to the language of intention. They do things because they intend to...because they want to.... because they choose to. This is more powerful because it is closer to the truth. It is not a sugary affirmation. It is truth that will set you free. Once you see that you are choosing to go to work today, you'll never have to lie to yourself and your children again by saying, "Sorry but I have to go to work." Those kinds of lies take a toll. They drive self-esteem and love-of-life out of existence. When you reinvent yourself, you start by changing your relationship to the very truth that will set you free.

 

4. Give up your personality.

This false persona (the Greek word for mask) is something that went through its final edit in junior high school. It is not real. It is not you.

To truly reinvent from noun to verb, you need to replace personality with purpose. Then you can be whoever you need to be based on what you are creating right now.

 

 5. Learn to be the problem.

One way to get centered in the locus of true power is to say, when a problem arises, "If there's a problem, I'm the problem." Now you can do something about it! Because if you're the problem,  you're the solution. This is not about self-blame and guilt. It's about always becoming the solution.

 

 6. Convert the "How to" into the "Want to."

People think that they aren't doing things that would benefit their lives because they don't know how to. They are deceiving themselves. The real bottleneck is that they don't (yet) want to.

The "how to" is everywhere. You can look it up. If you know "how to" use Google, you can find out how to do anything. The "how to" is never what's really missing.

Yet we say it is. Then once we say it is, that story becomes "the truth" and we are stuck.

 

 7. Change your definition of optimism.

Optimism is courageous and tough-minded.  

Pessimism is a weak little tantrum.  

Optimism fearlessly opens the mind to possible solutions.  

Pessimism is the attitude that closes the mind.

Once you see the vital usefulness of optimism you will bring it to every party...to every so-called "problem."

 

 8. Convert reacting to creating.

You can use your marvelous bio-computer (your brain) two ways: one way is to react to things...the other (more powerful way) is to create things.

At any moment, in any situation, you can step back and breathe and notice. Just witness: are you using your brain for creating right now, or are you using it for reacting?

When you shift (up) from reacting to creating, you are now using more of your brain...higher levels of full capacity brain power...imagination, innovation and creativity are now yours to access....energy is improved.  

 

 9. Stop deciding---start choosing.

People who are not yet reinvented waste so much life and heart and nerve power trying to decide things. Most all of this time and frustrated effort comes to nothing. In this class we will eliminate all of that trying to decide time and replace it with the practice of simply CHOOSING.

 

 10. Learn to rise up.

The linear left brain life of trudging along the horizontal line from birth to death doing "one damn thing after another" is hardly fulfilling. Hardly joyful. Hardly even productive.

We want to rise up. Leave the past behind (for it is truly non existent)...rise up in this precious present opportune moment. We want to go vertical. You can fly like an eagle, ever upward, or you can be a worm (horizontal, linear, birth to death).

For this we use the metaphor and visual teaching tool known as The Ladder. Where are you on your ladder right now? High up there with spirit and humor and creativity? Or down low with fear and resentment? We shall learn to rise up.

* * * * * * *

 

IF YOU ARE A COACH:  

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   The new coaching prosperity school (Advanced Client Systems) is 85% full.... if you want to sign up before it fills, email me ASAP.

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Choosing works better than anything

You don't have to make all the difficult  decisions you think you have to make.

You can choose instead.

Choosing is bolder and cleaner.

You can do it in a nanosecond.

Decisions are messy and filled with second-guessing and self-doubt.

So many of my coaching clients come to me inside the agony of Trying to Decide something. They don't know how to decide. Would I please decide for them?

Live for them? Love for them? Breathe for them?

My life changed completely when I learned to live at the level of choice. It became fun.

Let me tell you where I first saw this most clearly.

I was giving a seminar and I had brought in my good friend, Lindsay Brady. People knew Lindsay because of his great book  on hypnotherapy.

Not only is Lindsay is a hypnotherapist but he is also  a very profound philosopher who understands the interplay  between the brain and the mind better than just about anyone  in the world.

As he was talking to my group, one of the younger people  in the group raised his hand. Lindsay had just done a really  great presentation on how the mind works and he had done a  demonstration and this young man raised his hand and said, "I am so confused; I don't know what to do with my future. I have a feeling that you could really help me. I really have a sense that you know how I can make my decision.  I don't know what to do. I don't know how to decide. I've got this opportunity and that…"

...and he explained a few options he had and a few places  he could go career-wise and things he could do, but he didn't  know how to make the right decision! He didn't know what to do.

At least that's what he was telling Lindsay at the time.

Remember there's a real red flag here--I don't know how to decide,  I don't know what to do, I don't know who to call. Listen for those. Listen for them in yourself. When you tell yourself "I don't know how to, I don't know what to, I don't know who to, notice that you're not telling yourself the truth and you are keeping yourself stuck.

So, this person tried to tell Lindsay that he didn't know how to decide,  he didn't know what to do.

"What should I do?" he said.

Lindsay stared at him for a second and then he said, one word.

He said "choose."

Now that was very profound because the room grew silent, and the person  who was asking Lindsay just stared at him like a deer in the headlights  and then he got a big smile on his face because he could really see it-- That's it!  That's what I haven't done!

What I've seen in my own life and in the lives of my clients, is that people aren't choosing and so they are stuck. They are wavering between not knowing what to do and not knowing  who to call and not knowing how to do something.

And it's simply not choosing.

I was working with a very brilliant woman who had a tremendous business and wonderful employees and a great service she was presenting to the world. But the business itself was losing a little money every month and she didn't know how or why and she hired me to coach her and she said, "I know how to do what I do, but I don't know how to run a business."

Fortunately I had received this distinction called choosing by that time, so I was able to say, "No that's not really true. It's not that you don't know how to run a business. You have not chosen to run your business. That's all there is and by the way that's good news."

See it's not a way to shame someone--this is not a way to shame someone  into thinking, "Oh look what I do, I trap myself, I keep myself stuck by  lying to myself and pretending I'm impotent and powerless."

That's not what this is about.

This is about freedom. This is about finding the freedom in choosing. Because it's action instead of agony.

Even if you make the "wrong" choice, you are better off  because there's so much to learn from that.

Then she said, "I have not chosen to acquire and use the knowledge necessary to run my own business well. I've chosen not to. I've chosen out. I've opted out." And when she saw that, she said "Oh, yeah. You are right. I've never wanted to do that. I've always hoped someone else could do that for me."

Well, that's a possibility… if you've found the right person, but what she could now see was there wasn't this lack of knowledge she thought she had, because that's where people go wrong.  They walk around and they say to themselves, "I don't know how to  do this, I don't know how to do that" and it's infantile.

Nathaniel Branden, the great psychologist, once said, "Suffering  is the easiest thing human beings do." It's the easiest place to go.  Suffering. I am suffering from my lack of knowledge. I'm really suffering.  I don't know what to do.

I get e-mails all the time saying, "I need you to coach me. I don't know  what to do. I need you to coach me, I don't know how to get clients, I need  you to coach me, I don't know how to succeed, I don't know how to be happy, don't know how to do this, I don't know how to make my business work," and that, by the way, is never, ever true.

This person is simply not choosing something.

And if I do end up working with them, we move out of the I don't know how, we move out of this false knowledge problem and we move into the freedom and the power of choosing.

When he was young and lost in career indecision Lindsay Brady found his career by going through an entire Yellow Pages book and circling the professions and services that struck a chord with him.

When he got to the H's he saw "Hypnotherapy" and being curious, he circled it. After looking into it he learned self-hypnosis to cure himself of various fears and weak habits. He was so successful at that he went to school and took up the profession and never looked back.

Notice that there was no decision necessary, he just CHOSE!

He had also circled beekeeper and airplane pilot, and after securing his profession as a hypnotherapist, he mastered those other two hobbies as well. By choosing to.

I can coach you in this choosing stuff too. How much would it cost you for that?  For at least 20 hours of work with me?  Ninety-nine dollars if you do it this way:

CHOICES for a More Powerful YOU includes the following downloadable mp3 audio programs by Steve Chandler:

Are You a DOER or a FEELER?
We all have a choice to be a “Doer” or a “Feeler.” Steve shows how the mind, body and spirit are intertwined and how we can move beyond feelings-inspired resistance and build more DOING into our lives.

Choosing
“I don’t know what to do” and “I don’t know how to do it” are common complaint-themes in people’s lives. Transform the “I don’t know” lie by choosing. Yes, it really is that simple. Learn how to use the power of choosing to move out of stagnation and into action.

Expectation vs. Agreement
Creating agreements works wonders. Up-vibe your personal and professional relationships by learning to create agreements instead of expecting others to do things (and then being disappointed when they don’t).

Information vs. Transformation
Break free from “information addiction” by applying, testing and experimenting with what you’ve learned. Step out of your comfort zone and into transformation. Steve shares his own experiences of transformation-based learning.

Is It a Dream or a Project?
Steve shows how we can get what we want by cultivating a mindset of choosing. Move beyond wishing and dreaming and have your life’s adventure be one of choosing and converting dreams into projects.

Purpose vs. Personality
Everything looks frightening when you’re living from your personality rather than from purpose. Make friends with purpose and take it with you throughout the day. To live from purpose, wake up to what you’re up to and practice it.

SERVING vs. PLEASING People
People often confuse serving people with pleasing people. Steve shows how the Owner mindset is serving and the Victim mindset is pleasing. This program gives clarity on what serving is and does and how you can benefit from making it a life practice.

TESTING vs. TRUSTING
TESTING vs. TRUSTING is a distinction which can truly strengthen your day! The active path of testing and testing and testing throughout your day can become your path to mastery of any activity you wish to master.

The How To vs. The Want To
Coming from a place of “Want To” means the “How To” is never a problem, because the best “How To” is to have more “Want To” than you’ve ever had before.

The Owner / Victim Choice
Based on the bestselling book, Reinventing Yourself. Owners have an awareness of their own freedom of choice and they love to make and keep agreements. They own their own spirit and energy and have a sense of personal responsibility and self-control. Victims are victims of circumstance who navigate their days based on their shifting feelings.

Who You Know vs. What You Do
It’s who you know – that’s how you succeed in life. Wrong! It’s really all about what you do and how you serve. Put your creative energy into your work first and foremost, rather than into networking and collecting “friends.”

Why Should I Reinvent Myself?
Reinventing yourself can be a fun thing to do and people who get really good at it can see that it serves them every time they do it. Embrace reinventing yourself as a way of being and experience the fun and the joy that it can bring you.

GO HERE TO ORDER FOR $99:

http://www.stevechandler.com/choices.html