iMindShift with Steve Chandler

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.

* * * * * * *

 

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Challenge is everything

 
 

      I'd like to talk a little bit about Elvis and what he meant to me in my life.  

      It was really quite amazing and I don't expect younger people (which probably means everyone reading this) to really understand the impact Elvis had on society when he came out; but it was really huge.  It was really an amazing, shocking thing.  Especially to people like me, living in suburbia.  You've probably seen movies of suburbia in the 50's-in the Eisenhower years--and what was happening was people were really quite repressed.  People were all watching the same TV shows.  It was like cookie cutter houses in suburbia; and America was threatening to be a pretty dull place in many respects.  Especially where the arts and music and creativity were concerned.  

    The hit songs on the radio were the only source of music for most people. They were very bland and people were singing pop songs in very bland ways.  There wasn't much creativity going on in the world of music and entertainment in those years.  And all of a sudden, out of Nashville (actually out of Tupelo, Mississippi) comes this wild young man, this wild boy who was unlike anybody else. He wasn't like some rock stars of today trying to be deliberately outrageous or trying to shock or to bite the head off a chicken or something.  He was actually just obviously doing something that even he didn't know what he was doing.  I mean he was singing so much from the spirit and the heart; and when you see those early clips of him in black and white on TV and in the live performances in black and white, you can get a feeling for what he was doing.

    Now the thing you have to remember is that nobody was doing that. Not in the mainstream. So in later years when my kids saw videos of Elvis they were sort of impressed, like "yeah, wow, he's cool" and all that, but they couldn't quite get the impact he had.  Because after Elvis so many people did Elvis.  I mean he just sort of showed them the way to really express yourself in rock and roll.  So when Mick Jagger came along and Aerosmith and all kinds of people followed, they were expressives too-they were creative too-and Michael Jackson-they would dance and sing really to the fullest....but they all acknowledged Elvis as having given them the idea.

     Prior to Elvis singers would just stand like a military person at attention, they would square up their shoulders and only their mouths would move.  They would sing a sweet saccharine-bland melody to an orchestra.  I mean it was really night and day from what Elvis did.  

     So here I am sitting in the suburbs myself, kind of secretly realizing I didn't fit in.  So I was watching the way people were growing up.  I was watching the way people were going from childhood to college, to becoming businessmen and all that and I knew it wasn't going to work for me.  I didn't feel right.  It felt off kilter-----it felt like I didn't have what it took and I had a lot of fantasy life. I was an outsider. 

    I would read all kinds of books about the Knights of the Round Table and there were things that I loved, but they didn't seem to really make any sense given the world I was living in.  Plastic suburban conformity. It didn't look like I could ever follow any of that.  How do I become Lancelot or Prince Valiant or King Arthur in this age where everybody was wearing a grey flannel suit and carrying a briefcase and marching off to work, retiring with a gold watch.  I mean, it just looked like a nightmare.  

    And then, all of a sudden, this wonderful young boy-this man-this 20 (19) year old appears on the TV and he's not like anyone else in the whole world and he connects when he sings---Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog--- in such a way that I'm sitting there looking over my shoulder, like is anybody watching me watch this??  And later, after he had come out, all of a sudden, parents are upset, grown-ups are upset, the world is upset-they shouldn't film him, they shouldn't allow him, there's something really wrong here, let's not let him back on TV unless we have the camera shoot him from the waist up.  And there was outrage.  So that confirmed for me and a lot of other people who loved Elvis, that we really had a hero now because there's nothing better than to rebel against the existing generation in some way.  So he was that.

     Now, also, Elvis was an amazing singer.  If you listen back to his first five or six albums and you listen to the range and the power in his voice and the two full octaves he sang from, no two songs sounded the same.  So other rock singers had a very limited vocal range so you would hear one record and you would always recognize who that was.  But Elvis was so different on each song.  He just had the widest, wildest range.  He would come from a different place in each song and it was just remarkable.  

      It was stunning.  And nobody could really quite explain what it was.  How unexpected he always was.  He represented to a lot of people..... like me ...... liberation; freedom of the spirit; fearlessness. He was absolutely fearless.  He had no desire to win the approval of anybody.  There was no attempt to win people over.  That was just the way he did it and he followed his heart and he sang the way he wanted and he got up and felt the music and moved to the music while he was singing, even though no one else was doing that.  And he didn't do it for effect; he did it simply because he was moved to do it.  So there was no real approval-seeking in what he was doing.  It was simply pure, free, wild, energetic expression and love of the music being expressed. He was totally surprised at how popular he was. People would scream and he was shocked.

     It was such a lesson---such a really liberating lesson in fearless creativity that anyone could do it, that is what was beautiful, that is what was powerful, and if you really followed your heart everything would work out in your favor which happened for Elvis.

     Or so we thought.  

     But there's the second lesson in Elvis' life (at least that I've gotten).  The first lesson was follow your heart into fearless creativity and be devoted to your work and your music-whatever your music is.  

     The second lesson though, was be careful about "comfort."  Be careful about what is hidden inside of comforts, approval-seeking, fitting in, blending in with the wallpaper because there is real danger there.  And pleasure seeking, more pleasure, more comfort-and that was the second lesson in Elvis' life.  

     After he had done a number of albums which were an incredible sensation throughout the world, he went into the Army.  Now, he didn't have to go into the regular Army because he could have done some kind of entertainment thing which they offered him.  They offered him a tour--if he would tour the bases and sing to the soldiers that would fulfill his military obligation but he refused that. He said "I want to be a soldier like anyone else.  I want to go in and do what they do and I don't want some special deal.  I'm just a poor boy from Mississippi and I don't need any special treatment." Even though his bank account told him that he was the King of the World.

     So, he goes in, serves his time in the Army but while he's in there he is prescribed certain drugs.  Now I was in the Army for four years.  I'm very familiar with how often we were prescribed drugs back in the day when I was there.  If you had guard duty or if you had something that required you to be alert for long stretches of time without sleep, they would prescribe Ritalin or amphetamines-all kinds of things that would keep you alert.  So Elvis, first on guard duty, would be prescribed these drugs; and he got really hooked. That was the start of his downfall. Because of that kind of addiction to drugs and pills.  

 

     He had so many people around him, because of all of his money, who were trying to win his favor, that they would do anything he wanted. So if he felt a little nervous they would go out and get some drugs and he'd take those drugs.  If he would get tired, they would get some more drugs and pretty soon he had every drug in the world at his disposal.  And anything he wanted (like a baby in a crib) people would rush (oh the baby's crying) and they would bring him food and bring him anything.  And they would isolate him from the world, so he lost that connection to his fans and to his audiences that he loved so much.  

     Once he was isolated from that, he almost lived life in reverse.  He went from really being out in the world, connecting, causing a stir, interacting with fans in huge, powerful ways to reverting back into a womb-like, crib-like existence in his later years. Those years were filled with comfort, but no challenge.  

     And because of that his whole life crashed down around him.  

     He was addicted to drugs, he gained a tremendous amount of weight, he was terrified, paranoid, and would stay up for nights at a time imagining all kinds of conspiracies against him.  I mean it was really---anyone on drugs or alcohol knows what that life was like.  I wish I didn't know what that life was like, but I do.  

 

     So, here's Elvis in nothing but a nightmare, trying to break out of that nightmare.  A few times in his later years-in his late 30's and early 40's-he broke out.  He would start to tour again, he would make a good album, he would get out in front of crowds again and he was trying so hard to break out of that fatal comfort zone---the nightmare of comfort---the horrible nightmare of passivity where we go when we're not vibrant and active and interacting with the world. This is like a living retirement!  This is like being handed your retirement in your late 20's--here you are, here's your retirement. Welcome to the nightmare of no challenge. 

    This second lesson ---where comfort leads, where pleasure leads---I'm not talking about happiness or joy, I'm talking about cheap pleasure, pleasure-seeking, comfort-seeking, the avoidance of discomfort, the avoidance of challenge.  It leads to absolute hell and nightmare.  And that's the second lesson in Elvis' life that I think was so powerful.  

      It is to watch the decline and see how far down he went and see how pitiful it looked.  All the bad movies he made.  I mean some of his early movies were really good and enjoyable and you could feel his vitality. In the movies even though he wasn't an accomplished actor, you could feel the raw energy and the passion he had that he brought to each role; and then as the movies went on he was just phoning it in; he barely knew the script and used the same character in each one.  He had gained weight and the songs were really bad and his voice had closed to just a tiny portion of the range that it once was and he had very little breath in him. Horrible to listen to. 

     It was an illustration for all of us about where life can go.   

     It has a lot to do with my lines with the whole owner-victim distinction and it has a lot to do with not seeking approval which was the first half of his life and then the weird collapse, kind of sad and pathetic approval seeking life which was the last part of his life.  And then there were all of the people around him seeking his approval and wanting him to be dependent on them for the drugs and the isolation and all that stuff.

     So it was an amazing life. He was larger than life. He lived in front of all of us and he died at the age of only 44, but he was amazing.  I still love talking about Elvis.  I love singing his songs.  I've got my guitar at the ready at all times and I love singing his songs and remembering how much he moved me.  He woke my whole life up, and how many people do that? Not many.  

     Let me do a final disclaimer before all the PC police launch their attacks on me as they love to do....I do realize and get it that there were African-American singers who came before Elvis and influenced Elvis tremendously...he himself was always the first to acknowledge that...people like Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton and many others. I get it and he got it. I love those singers too, and discovered them much later.

    Especially Jackie Wilson.

 

 

James Agee on UNDERACHIEVEMENT

Novelist James Agee wrote, "I believe that every human being is potentially capable, within his 'limits,' of fully 'realizing' his potentialities; that this, his being cheated and choked of it, is infinitely the ghastliest, commonest, and most inclusive of all the crimes of which the human world can accuse itself...."

This is a photo of author Clarence Bass whose RIPPED books are classics worth reading again and again, and in this photo he is 70, realizing his potentialities.   

A book called Biomarkers rounded up all the evidence that strength-training in people aged 84-96 increases their strength 50 percent in 3 months and their health radically. 

For me motivation is a really exciting subject and especially because in my life I had spent so many years absolutely not motivated.  

In fact, even in childhood I really sort of took the opposite approach.  When everyone else around me seemed motivated and able to get things done and up and running and finishing their tasks, I was the opposite.  And after a while, I concluded about myself that I was missing something that other people had.  Some kind of inner drive. I thought they had some kind of sense of purpose about life that I just didn't get.  So, therefore, I would either have to fake it in order to survive-in order to be accepted in society and civilization, or just find some way out. 

Well, for me the worst thing that happened, that could have happened-did happen--and that was as I got into my teenage years and then off to college and that period of life, I really took a kind of way out (without really knowing I did) and got deeply involved in alcohol addiction and rampant use of drugs and really I'm very lucky to be alive.  There was a time in my life when friends,  family,  and even medical experts were saying there would be no way I would live past the age of 35;  and so I've gone well past that now and I was very fortunate to be able to recover from that addiction.

Addiction was an artificial form of all the things I thought I was lacking.  They call alcohol "false courage" because it is. When I thought I was lacking courage, I would have a few drinks and I could do things I couldn't do when I wasn't drinking; and then in college we were passing around amphetamines to get ready for our exams and things like that, so I got involved in that, and it was a false form of motivation.

Later in the Army you had to stand guard late at night and so the Army doctors would give you Ritalin to stay awake and then later I was in language school in the military and doctors would regularly give Ritalin because the study load was so heavy that we would study late into the night when we were studying our languages.  

These artificial forms of motivation, courage and purpose (or whatever that is) are really destructive and damaging and actually take you (as everybody who has had any involvement in them will tell you) will take you in the opposite direction. Cause once you feel a little bit of a lift or a surge, you then pay for it five or six times over with detox, hangovers-just the worst nightmarish stuff you could ever have to go through.  It's just really horrific.  There's no real payoff to any of that.  

So I was fortunate to recover from all that and go through a program of recovery that started everything all over again.  It allowed me to go back over my life and eliminate the guilt, eliminate the shame, take away all the things that I had made up about myself.  That whole belief system about myself that was so negative. Now I could just start all over.

Then I met a person who became my coach who has been coaching me for 15 years who really showed me the way and that's Steve Hardison (www.theultimatecoach.net) and I'm really grateful to him. He showed me that this little thing that everybody has called "creativity"------the ability to CREATE-----was really, actually the biggest thing we've got.

It's so funny because children.....when they are born and come into life.... really tap into this thing called creation and the ability to create and they do it so joyfully, and they love it, and they spend the whole day looking for ways to make up games and make up plays and play things out. You can turn children loose anywhere.  They can play in a poor part of town among the rubbish and in an abandoned lot.  I remember when we were kids we loved the abandoned lot or a house that was under construction.  We would go play there.  And just use everything around us and turn it into something fun.

What happens with adults is that capacity-that creative muscle or creative light or spirit inside of us-starts to get dim and we start to put it away and start to operate not off of creativity but off of fear.  Now I'm afraid I won't get a job. I'm afraid my spouse won't approve of me, and I'm afraid of my employer, and I'm afraid I won't raise my kids right.  

So this creative surge and drive that we had when we were kids, gets replaced with fear-------not for every single person, but for most people I've ever met; and then it becomes rather tragic.  

People send me emails and say "Boy, I don't know how to motivate myself."  Well, if you were a child you would, but we lose it.  We lose that whole thing.  So the exciting thing for me is that it can come back even stronger than it was in childhood.  It doesn't have to be a mystery either.  It doesn't have to be something where "I don't know how to do it…I'm all confused about it….I need help with it…"  It can be something that I can access any time, any moment, and I know I can.  

Well, when I really got this-when I could really see it-I took it out and I field tested and experimented with it and it really did prove to be true.  That we ourselves are responsible for our own energy levels and our own excitement and our own enthusiasm and we can create it.  

It doesn't come from outside of ourselves, and that's the real big mystery. That's the real big switch that gets thrown. That's the massive turnaround that happens in a person's life, when they finally see how the biological computer (the brain) really works, and it really works from the inside out-not from the outside in.  

Yet, everybody's confused about it and I get e-mails like "I want to find something that inspires me.  I want to find something that excites me.  I want to find something outside of me that calls to me."  And so they are still confused about where it comes from.

Well, once I started to really see this, I wrote a book called 100 ways to Motivate Yourself, which I wrote after really practicing all these ways and meeting people who had ways to (in adulthood) get fired up again-- turn the energy switch on any time they liked and really get enthusiastic and not find their purpose, but create their purpose.  Develop it.  Create it.  Design it.  Make it up and use it for as long as it's fun and then create an even better one when the one you're using isn't as much fun as it used to be.  So this was something that became an obsession with me.  

I mean, in my mind everybody's got this wrong!  

Everybody's looking outside of themselves for something that's in there;  and it's like watching somebody in your household just walking around saying "anyone seen my glasses?  I can't leave the house until I find my glasses" and you see the glasses are on top of their head.  And you are laughing and chuckling and they still walk around "I have to find my glasses.  I don't know where I put them."  Well, the same is true with calling, purpose, all these things that people think are outside of themselves. They are on the inside and I can turn them on myself. 

That's why I started Club Fearless.

Do I need your love?

 

This is a black and white photo of Byron Katie whose book I Need Your Love Is That True? popped into my mind the moment someone sent me this distressing news story about a woman caught in a chimney.

The Los Angeles Times reported that a woman's decomposing body was found wedged inside her boyfriend's chimney after she tried to sneak into his Bakersfield house. The body of the 49 year old woman, a doctor who had an "on-again, off-again" relationship with the man, was stuck in the chimney for three days before being discovered by woman who was house-sitting, the Bakersfield Police Department said.

The woman had come to her boyfriend's home Wednesday night, but the boyfriend wouldn't let her in. "To avoid a confrontation," police said, "he wouldn't let her in." So she used a shovel and tried unsuccessfully to force her way in through a back door. She then climbed the roof and slid down the chimney. But her boyfriend had already left the house. She was found stuck three days later about 2 feet above the interior fireplace opening. In concluding that she died of asphyxiation, the Bakersfield coroner's office deemed the death an accident.

She needed his love! Was that true?

* * * * * * * *

I don't need Kathy's love, but it's a wonderful gift every day when I awake to find it there once again. She certainly doesn't need my love either, but we love each other a lot.

This whole delusionary matter of confusing needs with wants causes real tragedies across this planet of ours.

Kathy has a blog that I love reading......it's called IN MY HUMBLE (BUT ALWAYS CORRECT) OPINION (http://girlsinwhitedresses.blogspot.com/) ... she and I were enjoying watching the Tony Robbins reality TV series BREAKTHROUGH and were sad that it was abruptly canceled.

I have to say, though, I love Tony Robbins.  I'm not sad that I'm not Tony Robbins, because I do things a little differently.  You've noticed that.  You've criticized me for it.  You've vilified me.  You've hung me out to dry and I don't mind that. 

I speak slowly.  I don't get all psyched up and pumped up.  I don't transfer my energy to you.  I don't get you psyched up and pumped up.  I don't live with passion------at least not in my audio recordings. 

So, let's get that straight.  I do this deliberately.  I speak slowly.  I slow everything down.  I want you to be able to hear me at a level that you are not all pumped up and excited, so that my message goes in there (into the subconscious part of your system-into every cell in your body) and it becomes an operating principle instead of just information.  Something you know.  It becomes a place to come from.  So, to do that, I want to slow everything down.  I want to slow your mind down.  I don't want you racing out ahead of what I am talking about into your own future.  This future racing around that we do is really the problem as far as success is concerned and if people would simply slow down and focus on the beautiful details and practice them slowly, wonderful things would happen.

Now let's take this idea of attraction first.  When it comes to making a difference, one of the first things I want to eliminate from my mind is this thing called attraction.  I want to attract into my life things.  I want to find a way to attract wealth.  I want to find a way to attract a spouse.  I want to find a way to attract customers to my website.  I want to find a way to attract clients into my world.  Let's drop that.  Notice how it does not work.  I would only drop it because it does not work.  That would be the only reason I would drop that.

I've worked with people for over 20 years (well, let's be honest here-I've been saying that for 10 years). I've worked with people for over 30 years and I have never seen attraction work.  The only reason I would drop it from my repertoire (my vocabulary) especially from inside that part of my mind that carries these morbid, toxic beliefs around with me is because it keeps me from succeeding.  I want to drop it from that part of my life.  This thing called attraction--attracting a partner, attracting customers, attracting money, attracting wealth, attracting good contacts.  All that stuff-- I want to drop it.  Only because it doesn't work.   Have I repeated that enough times?  Because repetition (annoying as it is) has you get it.  Also, speaking slowly (annoying as that is) has you actually get it.  So you might end up not liking me, but getting it.  So that would be OK with me.  I mean that would be perfect for me.  I'm not here to attract admirers.  I'm really here to have these principles get inside people who are into Club Fearless.  People who are fearless enough to join a club called Fearless.  I want these principles in a person like that.  I admire a person like that.

So, getting back to this thing called attraction.  What can I replace it with?  I mean, I might want a spouse or a partner.  I might want customers or clients.  I might want wealth coming into my life.  So if I'm not going to be utilizing the law of attraction, if I'm not going to simply sit quietly and simply picture these things coming into my world, then what can I do otherwise?

What I recommend that people do is that they actually make a difference all day, every day by using creation.  By substituting creation for where they once had attraction as their operating system.  Creation.  Creation.  So, rather than attracting a partner, I want to create a relationship and by creating I become active.  I join clubs, I join Church groups, I do this, I do that, I take trips.  I remember once years ago I joined a group of single parents with full custody of their kids and they met other single parents and it was really fun.  But I created that, I produced it, I did it and so I made my life different than it was and it's called making a difference.  Making a difference has you be creative throughout the day instead of sitting back wondering how to attract.

Here's the main problem with attraction as an operating principle.  Attraction immediately assumes that there are things people, money, whatever, outside of you out there somewhere that need to come into your world for you to be happy.  Now that's what attraction is all about.  The whole theme of attraction….the whole DNA (the principle of attraction) is that you are not enough.  You don't have inside of you the resources to make you happy.  You need to have it come to you from the outside.  You need to have it come in, in the form of a beautiful partner, in the form of more clients, in the form of more money, in the form of more hits on the website.  It must come to you from the outside for you to be happy.

There's a real problem with that because it has me walking around deficient as a human (at least in where I'm coming from) I'm not enough.  I am trying to attract what would complete me, and my whole day is about that.

"Hi, this is Not Enough.  I just thought I would leave you a message and hope you would call me.  I'm trying to attract you.  So, ask for 'Not Enough' when you call.  That's my name-because I'm not enough".

You see where that would lead.  It leads to low self esteem.  It leads to becoming someone that other people don't want to be around.  We love around being around people who have enough.  Who love their lives, who are in love with life because they've got everything they would ever need to be happy.  We love being around people like that and we are (dare I say it - I shouldn't even say this) we are attracted to people like that

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SEPT. 4, 2010......My daughter Jessica sent me happy father's day wishes today because today is Father's Day in New Zealand where she lives and runs a cool bar and grille called Baby G's (http://www.babygslounge.co.nz/) .....I would like everyone reading this to fly to New Zealand and go to her bar and have a drink and ask for Jessica and tell her her father sent you. In fact, have a few drinks.

A little dog named Jim

How did we name Jim?

Our vet asked us that same question a few months ago and I said we named him after James Joyce, and the vet raised his eyebrows and started talking about Ulysses and Molly Bloom, which surprised me as I was only joking, trying to cover up the fact that he was named after James T. Kirk of Star Trek. A movie we had just seen.

We had kicked around way too many names for him. In fact, he had a name already when we got him as a puppy. His name was Latte. We couldn't handle that name. My daughter Mar, who managed a coffee house, gave him that name.

It was cute, but too cute for a rugged little Jack Russell blend with a fantastic vertical leap. So we searched for names and I thought of the star ship Enterprise, and thought of Scotty, Spock and Mr. Sulu and those were also too cute. I wasn't telling Kathy that I was mentally doing this, but from the kitchen I suddenly said to her, because I was totally inspired, "Jim." The captain of the starship!

She then said, "Jimmy!" And the dog looked up at her and began wagging his tail. "Jimmy!" she said again and again. And so it was.

* * * * * * *

Flying into New York one time I read from Esquire magazine a little piece called "What I've Learned," an interview with William Shatner. Shatner said, "You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture." And he also said (and I underlined this one with my pen as the bumpy landing was happening,) "We meet aliens every day who have something to give us. They come in the form of people with different opinions."

William Shatner realized that he had become kind of a joke in the public eye after his time as Captain Kirk on Star Trek had ended. He didn't have a lot of acting talent, and his public personality was awkward and clumsy. He didn't know how to go on talk shows and sound smart.

But he decided, after a long while, to stop reacting to that situation. He looked at the situation, and crafted a brilliant response. He would just go with it.  If the public thought he was kind of a buffoon and a has-been, then that was fine with him, he would be that for them. He was soon playing a buffoon and a has-been called Denny Crane in Boston Legal. He was brilliant at it. He was funny. He won Emmys! He was no longer a has been! Esquire magazine sought him out for interviews. And look! In his interview he was smart!

* * * * * * *

"I am actually a paranoid in reverse.
I suspect that people are secretly plotting
to make me happy."

~J. D. Salinger

* * * * * * *

At CLUB FEARLESS we are secretly plotting to make club members happy by sending them (soon) my new book Time Warrior and my best audio program ever: CHOOSING.

* * * * * * *

I am falling asleep while Jim is plotting to make me happy.

Extraordinary people

In 2005, Michele Hermansen began a journey that consumed her mind and soul and would leave her changed for life. In her job as her company's vice president of national sales, Michele traveled the US with many Fortune 500 executives.

She maintained a strict, almost obsessive control of her life and emotions until African villagers helped her burst from the armor with which she had surrounded herself. Michele was drawn to Tanzania to help members of a small village to improve day-to-day life. Unexpexcted Journeys (www.mhermansen.com) is the candid account of a life changed.

It is the story of the incredible potential that exists within each of us. In Unexpected Journeys, Michele's passion is expressed through her photojournalism. Each photo tells an emotional story that needs few words.

She sent me her book last week and it is stunning and moving. Michele is a club fearless member and therefore knows how to immediately convert, as she said in her note accompanying the book, "a dream into a project."

Fearless people are not out there dreaming. They are working on projects.

* * * * * *

George Simon is 86. He has had two major heart surgeries in his life and just about every doctor he ever went to told him that if he kept racing he would die. Needless to say, he didn't listen to any of them. He's having the time of his life.

"I don't want to just live longer," he said. "I want to live longer for the right reasons." So he runs every morning, writes his life stories for an adult-school class at the Reseda One Generation Senior Center every  week, visits friends as often as he can, and meets with his track group every Sunday at UCLA. "As long as the passion still flickers and you have the ability to stoke the embers," he said. "There is always the chance to bring back a roaring flame."

That reminded me that the first working title for the book Reinventing Yourself was Set Your Life On Fire.

* * * * * * *

From Julie Blake:

Club Fearless has helped me stop trading my aliveness for survival – it has been a catalyst that has helped me choose being fully present and ALIVE instead of living a life worrying about what others may think of me. This kind of fearlessness is the ultimate freedom and this is what Club Fearless has to offer.

As Steve Chandler says “There is a fearless state that is simple joy - the joy of love, the relaxation that is fearlessness… Being fearless is absolute, relaxed, inner peace, relaxation, connection to the universe, happiness, deep happiness---not surface pleasure. And there's no thought of fear. There's no feeling of fear whatsoever. There's no idea of fear.”

I am deeply grateful to Steve Chandler for creating Club Fearless and for teaching me how to take graceful action from a place of love, creation and fun! Join the Club… www.ClubFearless.net transform fear into love and your life into freedom.

Julie Blake
The Solopreneur Coach
www.GotCourage.com

* * * * * * *

My Fifth Coaching Prosperity School (I can't believe this will be the fifth one...I'd only planned to do one.......but they have been VERY successful in teaching coaches the art of client acquisition and practice-building)..... it starts August 20/21 in Phoenix and has been sold out for a long time but now has an opening because of someone who was unable to attend. If you are interested in that experience, please email me immediately. It will be filled in the next 48 hours and I've had a number of candidates apply already. [email protected]. The fee is $9,000 and if you are not prepared to make that back the first two weeks you are in the program (it's a six month program) do NOT apply. I want only committed people in this school who will be role models for the other coaches.

Money is the root of all good

Artists and novelists make bold statements to wake people up. The statements might not even be literally or spiritually true, but their fierce poetry wakes people up to what they've been believing. And what they have been believing has kept them from their own joy, freedom and energetic self-reliance.
   

In Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand has one of her heroic characters say, "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which people deal with one another, then people become the tools of other people. Blood, whips and guns-or dollars. Take your choice-there is no other-and your time is running out."

 "Then, suddenly, I knew not how or where or when,
my brain felt the impact of another mind, and I awoke to language,
to knowledge of love, to the usual concepts of nature, of good and evil!
I was actually lifted from nothingness to human life."

~Helen Keller

Life changes when I awaken to my WORDS about money.

I can own money
or be a victim of it.
I can create money
or react to those who have it.

Helen Keller was lost and confused and asleep while awake. Then she got it, and language flowed in. The little girl felt such joy.

If we are to create anything, it begins in language.

This language has kept people subservient to other people for thousands of years: "Money is the root of all evil."

* * * * * * *

In The Woman Who Attracted Money I wanted to create a heroine who learned the joy of producing money and finding a productive career versus her previous vague longings around attracting abundance. Does anyone know what abundance is? Has anyone ever seen it? Outside the campgrounds at Woodstock? (My favorite moment in Woodstock was Alvin Lee playing "I'm Goin’ Home." I've watched that cut about 100 times, and played it at least 500 times. Just to wake myself up from sloppy passivity and dreams of abundance.)

There was a recent review by Readers Choice of The Woman Who Attracted Money that said, "Robert Chance is ironically named because he is not a fan of chance or any form of chaos in life. He is a just the facts kind of guy who prefers all things to remain simple. On the wall of his office is an autographed Charles Mingus album, below which Chance has written a quote from Mingus: "making the simple awesomely simple, that's creativity."

"Like Chance and Mingus, Chandler himself takes these words to heart. His prose is often both simple and complex at the same time, in the classic hard boiled noir style. Also, in the mode of writers like Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, Chandler finds room to roam within genre conventions to provide plenty of nuances to his characters and setting."

"Chance is an ex-cop, turned life coach, turned private eye for the first time, to solve the apparent suicide of a client and friend. This is a refreshing new "daytime job" for a detective, and since Chandler himself is a business coach this novel is another successful example of how "writing what you know" is often a better solution than coming up with some kind of convoluted new twist.

"Madison Kerr, Chance's sidekick, growing love interest and the source of the novel's title, is the perfect partner for Chance. Their dialog has the classic ring of Hollywood couples from the Golden Age of cinema, when men and women bantered intelligently back and forth rather than just hurling obscenities around three times a minute. She is his coaching client and a businesswoman, but also an expert computer hacker, another coup for Chandler since that doubles as a nice nuance to her character and a useful tool as the two of them work together to solve the murder at hand."

"The mystery itself is presented confidently, with a few surprises along the way and an ending I did not guess, but as with the best classic mysteries, it is the original characters, superb dialogue and brisk, fast paced prose that keep this novel constantly entertaining, thought provoking and hard to put down.

"If you are an avid reader of the mystery genre, looking for something new to read, I would rate this as: Highly Recommended/Must Read."

* * * * * * * *

A little thing called I'm going home:

My novel A Crime of Genius features some controversial explorations of defense against home invasions and kidnapping (I live in the kidnapping capitol of America here in Arizona).  And if life is beginning to feel like David and Goliath, then this here is a step in the right direction:

My poverty is not complete

 "My poverty is not complete: it lacks me."

~Antonio Porchia (1886-1968)

* * * * * * *

Who is Robert Chance?

   * * * * * * *

(Or as the French poet Charles Peguy said, "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.")

* * * * * * *

“May your days be infinite music
and your nights eternal rest.”

~Madison Kerr

* * * * * * *

Money, Music and Wild Magic:

www.geniuscatalyst.com/fearless.php

* * * * * *

 
 
 "Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration,
if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning."

~Igor Stravinsky

* * * * * *

FOR THOSE THAT NEVER SING

I moved into coaching reluctantly.  I would give talks and the clients would ask me to stay an extra day after the talk and "coach" various individuals.

If I hadn't been coached myself by the ultimate coach I would be totally blind to what coaching could do.  Now I was just partially blind.

I knew one thing about coaching.  It would be two people talking.  Two people instead of one.  It would break the isolation.  That sense of isolation makes a person feels trapped in their own ego.  "People say we got it made," sang John Lennon.  "Don't they know we're so afraid?"  His song was called "Isolation."

Lennon's lyrics were often bold and brutal.  Especially after he left McCartney and did his primal scream therapy emerging with this musical vow that I myself vow as well, "No short haired yellow bellied son of tricky dick is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me with just a pocketful of hope."  Never !  No way ever is that going to happen while I'm here.

Alas for those that never sing!  That's what Oliver Wendell Holmes said.  "Alas for those that never sing, but die with their music in them." 

When a guy like me dies with his music still in him it's a shock to the pathologist when he opens me up and the music is released.  All the attendants in the autopsy room back away from the body they have now dubbed "Pink Floyd."

* * * * * * *

By the way, my book that so many people are upset by or loving (they write to me), you probably won't want because it is "motivational" in nature sort of, a meditation on personal cowardice (mostly mine, but my clients' best hits too) and it's called FEARLESS.

But I simply can't write pure Tolle or meditational bliss right now or maybe never because I have way too many clients turning to blubber and feathers with their spirituality and meditation and not living as Rumi did in both worlds ecstatically......

I think of the irrigation you did, when I try to remember you at your most alive...it was the landscape architecture rather than the duller bliss of meditation or dream....so I'm still an advocate for jumping into the world and creating something that takes you out of your comfort zone (I remember the tee shirts Kathy made at the party at your house .... I Left My Comfort Zone!)

But tell me if you agree about the irrigation?  Nabokov says this in Speak Memory: "It is certainly not then---not in dreams---but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits."

ps- This new book I'm writing is going to be a lark of reflections on the absurdities of my bio and how everything "tragic" was a greater blessing than any of the "good news" I ever received. Or rather it was hilariously equal. It will be done in madcap format because I believe a serious linear bio is just not supportable....it would be as if Bill Clinton wrote a book called Giving.  Alexander King is my role model for this...one's true life as purely comic material with dashes of inspiration in there like my friendship with you (as if any of my readers will ever be able to imagine having anything as good as that...they will hate their friends after reading about me and you.)

* * * * * * *

Who is Robert Chance?

Feel the fear and do it anyway?

 

 

Monkey Phobia Woman Savaged By Macaques

Sky News ^ | 6/18/10 | Staff 

A British woman who went to a Thai nature resort to conquer her fear of monkeys has been savaged by a pack of macaques. 

Dee Darwell, 56, lost consciousness after the monkeys surrounded her and sank their teeth into her arms and body. Many of the primates remained hanging from her limbs as she lay collapsed with blood spurting from a "deep, deep hole" in her arm. 

She was eventually rescued by Thai boatmen and was taken to Bangkok Phuket Hospital. The horrific attack happened on Monkey Island near to the popular holiday island of Phuket in southern Thailand.

“I thought I was heading for safety under this rock in the shade, only to cool down,” Mrs. Darwell, from Peterborough, said. “I laid the towel down and there were no monkeys in sight. “The next thing I noticed, this monkey walked up next to me and I thought, oh dear, and I began to stand up to move away. Then, the monkey took my wrist and pounced on my right arm, sinking his teeth in and hung off it. He wouldn't let go; he was locked on. I was absolutely petrified.”

Thai fishermen ran to the rescue after spotting more monkeys joining the assault and began prying them off. Mrs. Darwell said she had agreed to go on the Siam Sea Canoe tour with a friend to confront her fear of monkeys. 

Her phobia had been triggered by her father bringing up a chimpanzee which she described as “positively evil.” She said: “I thought, this is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged by these monkeys - then I went into shock.”

**************************

Here's something that helped me understand the nature of fearlessness. There is a fearless state that is simple joy-the joy of love, the relaxation that is fearlessness.  

To understand it better, let's look at the concept of darkness.  Darkness isn't anything.  Darkness is merely the absence of light, and when I bring light into the room there is no more darkness. 

I didn't have to overcome the darkness, I didn't have to remove the darkness.  Darkness is nothing at all. It's the absence of light.  

Well, fear is the same thing.  Fear is the absence of love.  So I don't have to overcome the fear, battle the fear, be brave, and feel the fear and do it anyway.  If enough love comes in, there is no more fear. Fear wasn't anything to begin with but the absence of love.  

It's interesting that most people that I talk to or coach or work with or associate with have confusion about the word "fearless." They think fearless means "brave" or "courageous" or "bold" or something like that; but it's really important to see that it's nothing like that. 

In fact it's not even similar to that. 

Being fearless is absolute, relaxed, inner peace, relaxation, connection to the universe, happiness, deep happiness---not surface pleasure. And there's no thought of fear. There's no feeling of fear whatsoever. There's no idea of fear.

The feeling is like "why would I be afraid of that?" That's a fearless state. 

There's so many things we do throughout the day in a fearless way that we don't even notice the fearlessness, but anything we feel real love about---when we are really loving a person, or we're really loving an event or something---playing a song on the piano, or jogging, or running, or playing volleyball, or something we're really loving that we do. 

A lot of us have aspects of work that we just love and so we're caught up in the present moment flow of it and there's no fear at that time until we starting thinking of the future or other things. 

So that's the fearless state we are talking about and there's a reason that we formed a club called Club Fearless. We didn't call it Club Brave. We didn't call it Club Courage or Club Bold-we called it Club Fearless because there's a huge difference between fearless and brave.

Now when I am being brave, when I am using courage, there's profound fear inside of me while I am doing that. 

So there's a battle going on inside of me. 

I'm afraid to do this, but I'm doing it anyway. 

I'm afraid of monkeys, but I'm going to go be with them anyway. Feel the fear and do it anyway!

I remember when I first started giving speeches years and years ago. I had a huge fear of public speaking. I had a huge fear up in front of an audience. I mean it was my lifelong fear. I had it all of my life and I would get in front of an audience and it would feel like an elephant was standing on my chest and something was constricting my throat. My knees were weak. I couldn't get my breath. Total fear--and I pushed on and I was brave anyway and I walked out and there were a hundred people waiting for me to talk. 

My voice was shaky, my hands were shaking and my knees were weak and I spoke anyway. Now that's courage-that's being brave-that's being bold and that's forging ahead in the face of fear. That's being afraid and doing it anyway. So that's one thing, completely different than being fearless.

So now, these days I talk to groups. I talked to a group the other night where there were three hundred people in the audience. I remember walking up on the stage and I felt nothing but love, I felt nothing but excitement and I was fearless. I wasn't afraid because that had left me. That left me years ago. And so there is a possibility in everything in being fearless. If there were no possibility, there would be no Club Fearless, I would not have written a book called Fearless, I would not get people's hopes up. I would not get my own hopes up. 

But in the past few years I have been able to see there really is something called Fearless and it really is different than being brave.

There was a way, through the right coaching, that could have released my fear of speaking without my going through all that.

Who are you, exactly?

"You have to be able to risk your identity
  for a bigger future than the present you are living."

~Fernando Flores

That's it, right there.

Right in the quote by Fernando Flores. That's what has to happen for an individual to go from pretty okay to absolutely great....at whatever.....LOSE that freaking identity because it's your worst enemy.

Be who you need to be in the moment.

This ego, this personality, this identity has finished being made up for most people in junior high school. Therefore it's just full of fear, worry and anxious hope.

Here is the problem with hope. Hope is a pitiable longing ... a longing for external resources while ignoring the internal resources already there.

Another quote from Flores that I've always loved is: "Hope is the raw material of losers."

What exactly am I hoping for and why?

Someone to watch over me? Some change of fortune?

My ego seeks and pursues things and then it hopes and fears. So my ego identity is made up of hopes and fears. And worries and imaginary threats.

This is why I can spend days without making a single creative move...not one single inspired communication...not even a chance for a beautiful gesture.

Hope and fear. Interchangeable. Unsustainable.

I started a club with the idea that maybe we could live a life without wishes, hopes, fears and all that...but a life where we would support each other in CREATING. By being in action. Favoring movement.
One day someone called the club fearless.

Here's what my friend Ken Wilber says about this ego of ours that we use for an identity:

"If we are going to insist on identifying with just the little self in here, then others are going to bruise it, insult it, injure it.  The ego, then, is kept in existence by a collection of emotional insults; it carries its personal bruises as the fabric of its very existence.  It actively collects hurts and insults, even while resenting them, because without its bruises it would be, literally, nothing."