iMindShift with Steve Chandler

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.

 

RETURN TO ME

  This is a picture of my wife Kathy in a restaurant in Chicago where we held a recent two day seminar-workshop meeting of the Coaching School.

     Kathy is a writer (and a blogger) with a great sense of humor, especially when it comes to making me look hilariously inept as a human. The problem is that she is unerringly accurate. You who may have admired me in the past can experience a fun mind-shifted reversal on that opinion by reading her blog here:  www.girlsinwhitedresses.blogspot.com

    She calls her blog In My Humble (but always correct) Opinion.

   (Her other stuff is fun and funny too. How did I get stuck with the happiest writer alive?)

 Chicago is cloudy and windy and we were on a boat today doing one of the "architecture tours" up and down the Chicago river and out onto Lake Michigan, taking in the skyscrapers and hearing all the stories about the Fire and the rebuilding of Chicago. I knew this tour existed because of the movie The Breakup wherein Vince Vaughan played a tour guide on one of these very boats.

    Notice how movies affect our travel.

    The movie Return to Me was filmed in Chicago in 1999 and Kathy has seen it many times. It's a heartbreakingly romantic film starring David Duchovney and Minnie Driver. Minnie has literally just received a heart transplant, and I won't give away the rest except for the fact that most of it is filmed in a charming little restaurant, where, of course we went to eat. It's called the Twin Anchors. Turns out Sinatra used to eat there. He would always order their famous ribs (which I ordered) and the story was that he would say to the waitress, "Ribs... and keep 'em comin'!" This little story was on the menu and I was tempted to say the same thing but I did not, and I was glad because one huge serving was more than enough.

     Kathy took notes for a future blog as I ate my ribs.

  Speaking of blogs. Tom Wolfe, in an essay about Marshall McLuhan years ago described a "digital civilization, in which all of humanity will be wired up and online so that geographic locations and national boundaries, or so it’s predicted, will become irrelevant."

     And in a way this has happened. Because we went to the Lincoln Park zoo (which I had already seen in movies,) and this zoo, like the whole Chicago scene, was extremely familiar from digital sources, like movies and TV.

     But just how "real" is a movie? Or a live streaming video cam on my computer just now? Or Skype? I often work with clients now on Skype, and they may be in London, England, but they are LIVE to me on my screen in the office! Am I actually seeing and experiencing them in London itself?

    If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there, does it make a sound?  I have always wondered about the IQ of people who ask that question and then get that faraway metaphysical look in their eyes as if pondering a deep zen koan. Of course it does NOT make a sound if there is no one there, because "sound" is a vibration's interaction with a human or animal's ear. With no receptor ear to capture the vibration and translate it into "sound" in one's brain, there is no sound. Is that so hard to understand?

    But here's where it gets interesting for me. My experience of you, on voicemail is a result of my ears hearing a vibration made originally by your voice. Your voice vibration was "captured" by the voicemail receiver and now I play it and it sounds exactly like you sound when you are "really" there.

    If we get more technical, it's not the "real" you I hear even when you are live at the other end of the phone. It's an electronic transmission of your vibration made at the point of origin.

    Welcome to a digital civilization in which my travel reports are more about the movies about Chicago than they are about Chicago itself. (Although most of that is because I am such a poor descriptive writer.)

   Take enough LSD and a movie can be experienced as more real than reality. (Certain films, like Alligator People or The Exorcist, are films you never want to see while on acid.)

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     JOHN GROBERG IS BRILLIANT

   Have you ever considered doing yoga, because you've read that many great pro football players and actors and dancers and triathletes do it? And then you realize that it is going to take a lot of time to go to your lesson and come back? And your fulfilled day doesn't have the space in it for yoga?

   There is an exciting solution.

   My friend John Groberg has solved the problem.

   You MUST check out his exciting new system called SPIRAL UP YOGA (http://spiralupyoga.com/) that only takes five minutes a day to do. Here are his own words:

    There comes a point in everyone’s journey of personal growth when they realize that creating and maintaining a self-care practice is an essential foundation for continual growth, health, well-being and creative inspiration. It is also a source of resilience, strength, perspective and peace of mind during particularly challenging times when things aren’t going the way you might prefer.  

     By “Self Care” I mean more than just an exercise program. I mean a daily, sustainable practice that feeds and nourishes body, mind and soul. Practices that only include one or two of the three elements are good, but not complete- and are usually not sustainable in the long run because if either the body, the mind or the soul is neglected enough, the whole system of You becomes unstable- like a three legged stool with one or more weak legs. 

    GO HERE NOW: http://spiralupyoga.com/

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   NOTICE to ANY COACH reading this blog.....I have just finished recording the best audio recording ever done on how coaches can create clients, and because I am a huge advocate of coaches getting clients and thereby influencing the world away from its drift toward infantilism, impotence and mental victimization, I will send you this hot program if you email me and ask me for it: [email protected]

 

Joy through strength

 

Hank Uhlaender (pictured above) sent me an email yesterday:

    "The latest Club Fearless audio program reminded me of Jack & Elaine LaLanne, Jack is 96 years old and still lift weights with his wife Elaine every morning... amazing! 

     Jack has a great track record, have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_lalane

     p.s. Jack had just turned 95 when he autographed a poster for me, he even spelled my last name correctly!"

     Hank is totally devoted to helping people get fit and strong and healthy. Visit him here: Hank Uhlaender:  http://hanksfitness.com/

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     For those who live in ARIZONA     

    Or those who would like to fly in, I am doing a two-hour talk on "100 Ways to Create Wealth" for a $50 donation to the Food Bank you can see and hear me November 17th. Email my friend Jeff Jones at www.100Ways.EventBrite.com to get more information and claim your seat.

 
 
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     My good friend Monica Chaney, the best Mom’s Coach on the planet, is launching the Four Burners Cafe on January 1st, 2011. 

    Are you a mom? I know what it's like. No, really. For many years I had sole custody of four children and made a wild, vain attempt to raise them well. I really could have used Monica back then to help me with my mothering and fathering.

    The Four Burners Cafe is an online community for Moms who want to fully express all of their creative passions, create amazing lives, and break free from worry, fear, and guilt FOREVER. Whether you are an expectant mom, working mom, stay-at-home mom, or even a grandmother, you will benefit from this powerful, supportive community. You’ll get coaching directly from Monica in the Cafe Forum, a monthly webinar with Monica that is guaranteed to change your life, plus daily words of wisdom, gourmet podcasts sprinkled throughout the year, and visits from some of the most life-changing teachers alive today. Your first month’s membership is absolutely FREE. You can cancel at any time so there is no risk. Visit  http://fourburnerscafe.com  or  http://themomauthority.com/cafe. 

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     Now back to Jack LaLanne and fitness.

     Today, health rules, for the most part. One of my heroes was Paul Bragg who pioneered the health food movement in the United States and inspired Jack LaLanne. 

     Bragg lived to be 95, dying from a surfboarding accident while frolicking like a 20-year-old in rough ocean waters. He claimed we could all live to 120 if we exercised and ate right, and it looked like he was headed there despite having been a very sick child. (He prayed that if they could cure him he would devote his life to health. They did...and he did.) Today many people who are way past 60 but don't look it---people like Clint Eastwood----attribute their eating and exercise programs to Paul Bragg.

     Although I grew up in Michigan, I moved to Arizona after high school and have pretty much remained there. (I've lived briefly, since then, in California, Germany, North Carolina, and northern Michigan, but Arizona is my home.) Neil Young's lyric applies: "All my changes were there." Young's album, "Prairie Wind," is a good album and many say it's as good as it is because he was facing death when he wrote it. He had a serious brain disorder and didn't know if he would survive so he went to Nashville to record his last album, in case he didn't.
   
     This calls to mind the Samurai concept of "Dying before you go into battle" so you will battle with full and fearless abandon. Or like in the Kevin Costner baseball movie, "For Love of the Game", wherein his Detroit Tigers pitcher character learns again to pitch well by learning to "clear the mechanism" on the mound before pitching. In other words, to go to the state that the Samurai warriors call "no mind."
  
     Alan Watts said we should not fear death because we were there before we were born and it caused us no problem back then. I love the Watts book The Wisdom of Insecurity. To Watts, death is a part of life, the tails to the heads of life on an ever-tossing coin.
      
     All my changes occurred for me after I suffered the living death of active alcoholism. Alcoholism is a form of ongoing and relative (but not absolute) suicide. After that recovery, through the 12-Step method, I encountered other expanding levels of recovery and indeed even personal and accelerated evolution toward the spirit that knows no death. And I've devoted my life to helping others do the same. All my books and all my seminars and consulting are part of showing others what has happened for me.

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"Would you get your dog up every day, give him a cup of coffee,
a donut, and a cigarette?  Hell, no. You'd kill the damn dog."

~Jack LaLanne

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"I can't afford to die.  It'll wreck my image."

~ Jack LaLanne