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!

 

 

As the years went by I lost everything

   As I was growing up from newborn to two years old to four to six to ten, the feeling of personal warmth and security was leaving me.

I was becoming an individual.

Psychologists call this individuation. It became extreme at age 18 and I took my first drink. (I know young people often experiment with drinking and drugs at earlier ages now, but I was old school.)

My belief today is weird: I believe that if you can understand how to recover from addiction into what 12-step people call “good sobriety” (a very low risk for drinking or drugging again) you can understand how to enjoy life, even if you are not an addict.

I came upon this belief after noticing that my own recovery, after years of meetings and endless hours being mentored by my sponsor, had a major transference into my created profession of life coaching. Spiritual progress applied to everything.

The spiraling up beyond individuation is what I mean by spiritual progress. (Others might mean other things.) When the vicious circle you are in becomes a spiral, you are trucking. The creative genius Vladimir Nabokov said “a spiral is a spiritualized circle.” And personal growth is a matter of liberating the vicious circle, so one can spiral up.

What is that vicious circle? It is the mistake of taking the game of life too seriously, taking the behavior of others personally and circling around and around between worry and resentment.

Babies don’t do that.

There is an oceanic sense one has as a baby. Like feeling that you are a wave in a huge, thriving, pulsating ocean of life. No name, no separation, no individuation yet.

No separation means I cry and you come feed me. The two things are as connected as my hand and my fingers. I cry, you come change me. I don’t know yet that there’s any real difference between you and me, or between me and anything else. I don’t yet feel the disconnect. It’s awfully warm and secure on this fine planet!

Like a wave upon the ocean. The wave doesn’t know it’s a separate wave, or a good wave for surfing, or a bad wave. It feels like it’s just an expression of the ocean. Which it is! A gesticulation! It is only we, we labelers, who call it a wave. And by labeling it, we make it separate. We try to separate it from the ocean, not seeing it's just an expression, just a wave, like I am waving to you right now.

But trying to take the wave from the ocean and putting it in a sand castle on the shore?

You can see what happens to it.

So as a baby I was the ocean itself until I grew older and my parents kept insisting that I was a wave. And not only a wave, but a unique individual wave like no other. A wave with a name. The name was so important. It made my separation final and “the truth” about my life.

My first drink took me back to the ocean.

Back home.

Like the drunken character played by Robert Shaw sings in the movie Jaws, “Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went right to my head.”

When I was a little boy, after I was taught that I was separate, I was then taught that some things were mine, and some things were not. I began to learn the difference between being and having. Being used to be blissful and more than enough but now having became the thing. All the rage. (In both senses of that word.) I saw a toy in a store window and I had to have it. I learned the importance of the word mine.

If you want to torment a child (and why would you want to do that, really? Maybe just briefly to understand this idea).....point to something the child is holding, a stuffed animal maybe, and say the word “Mine!” Watch the alarm run through the child’s body as the child pulls the animal away and shouts back, “Mine!”

And so the fear begins. Security fades away. Nothing is secure anymore. Who can you trust? Your parents promise they will love you forever and then they divorce and one of them moves away! Even Santa Claus turns out to be unreal.

Can you blame a boy for wanting to get drunk? Fortunately, there’s a better way back home.

 

Take this monkey away from me

I knew I needed to quit drinking. I needed to get the monkey off my back. It was complicating my life and making it miserable.

It really was like having a live monkey on my back, all that day-in, day-out craving for the next drink. Most people couldn’t see me and my monkey but we were everywhere I went.

But they could see what the monkey was doing to me. The way I looked. The curiously large number of problems I had. The debts piling up. The lies and embarrassing behavior. Serious monkey.

Fast forward through thirty some years of sobriety and I’m sitting in a meeting. I’m listening to a young man talk about how he used the program to clear the resentments from his mind and give himself a chance at a whole new life. Even though he has no desire to drink or use drugs today, he comes to meetings, like I do, to learn how to live.

“The monkey’s off my back,” he said, “but the circus is still in town.”

Boy can I relate to that. All the things I used to think I had to drink over are still in town. Life was still a circus.

But slow me down.

So what?

Is it such a bad thing, this circus? I’m not a child any more. I’m not afraid of the clowns anymore. Because of spiritual progress (not perfection…not yet, anyway) I now see the circus (life on earth) as it was intended to be seen. Pure entertainment. The clowns (other people) weren’t sent here to scare me or make me angry.

They are here for my amusement. I never dreamed I could see life this way. Thank you L!

Each day I seek though prayer and meditation to maintain my appreciation for the greatest show on earth. To enjoy life. Enjoy, not just tolerate.

Not just cope. It’s not just that demoralizing goal of going into therapy to “learn coping skills.”

No, there’s laughter in these meetings.

I don’t go see my favorite comedian so I can cope with his jokes. Or so that I can accept him.

Those used to be the high bar for me. The best I could hope for: coping and acceptance. But now I see that the bar was actually low.

I mean, everybody’s laughing.

 

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.

 

A crazy good experience

     In our society (more than that, in almost all of civilization, back to the Greeks and their Olympics) we admire great athletes and great artists and entertainers. We spend billions on sports and entertainment. Athletes, artists and entertainers inspire us and make us cheer and shout and cry.

     What do these people, these wonderful, highly-skilled, magical people have in common? Gifts? Innate talents? Genetic advantages?

     No.

     They have coaches.  

     They do not go it alone. They do not allow their efforts and achievements to be formed in isolation. They (constantly) ask for help. They are open to being coached.

     A number of people have recently been circulating a wonderful YouTube video about the life coach Tom Brady had in college.  

     What? Tom Brady needed a life coach?  

     Wasn't he the super-talented University of Michigan quarterback whose character and drive and talent would always be enough?

     And exactly what is a life coach anyway?

     I won't do definitions, I'll just point to somebody . . .my own life coach, Steve Hardison. He's been coaching me for twenty years now,  and he coached me last week for two amazing hours. Those two hours have subtly and profoundly altered the course of my life.

     Wouldn't he run out of things to fix in me?

     It's not about fixing. It's more about opening me up to the possibility of a fuller, more creative dance with the universe. (And a stronger career, which always comes along with it.)

     Hardison is known in coaching circles, and business circles, and personal growth circles and any circle you can think of as "The ultimate coach." When he spoke to a seminar I was putting on with Rich Litvin in London, I introduced him as someone who coaches way beyond the normal concept of coaching. I said, with all my heart, that to call him a mere life coach is like calling The Beatles a garage band.     

In that audience in London was Michael Serwa, a formidable, highly successful coach, author and TV show host. Serwa saw something in Hardison he had never seen before. He was so drawn to Steve's presence that he recently paid $5,000 to come to spend two hours with him at Steve's home office in Mesa, Arizona.

     Why would anyone spend $5,000 to talk to someone for two hours?

     "It was worth a lot more than that," said Serwa. "It wasn't just what I learned, which was a lot, but being in his presence, observing his love of self, love of life and love of his work was as experience that will stay with me for a lifetime."

      Hardison used to see people left and right and not charge them anything. He still does tremendous amounts of under-the-radar pro bono work for all kinds of people.

      But when a professional person has an interest in finding out what it's like to be with Steve, he wants them to have skin in the game. It's not for the money. It's for the commitment of the person. And it also helps manage the veritable flood of requests he gets to meet with him.

     I haven't helped much (to stop the flood). Most of my books talk about Hardison and the impact he's had on my life, my career, my marriage (and I'm just getting started). People read those books and read about my coach. They want to meet him.

     One thing I have observed about excellent coaches is that they love being coached. They have learning mindsets instead of fixed mindsets, and they are always looking to be coached to higher ground. They know coaching works miracles.

     Just last week my good friend and excellent coach Gary Mahler sent his own $5,000 check down to Hardison for a two hour visit.

     "It was the best five grand I have ever spent," said Gary. "I experienced a fundamental shift in me after that visit. When I flew home and walked in the door my wife knew and saw right away that something was different. The old Gary died. Right in that room with Hardison. The scarcity mindset is gone. I am creating and reinventing things that were previously not possible."

      Well, wow. But what does he do, exactly, when you are with him?

     

     "He sees through the stories I tell myself," said Gary Mahler.  

      Mahler and Serwa (and I, me, myself, too, I also experience this) now have a new place to come from. And it's not a feel-good elevation of mood that wears off. It's a clearing that's now and forevermore clear for takeoff.

      Why did these already-successful people need a life coach? They didn't. Nobody needs someone like Hardison.  

      It's a want.

     And it has to be a big, big want for it to be what it truly can be. That's why he's called "the ultimate." And why he was the role model for that hot new phrase, "crazy good."

 

How to access magic, mystery and mischief

Briggs Whiteford is an artist.

Although she has very devoted customers who own her work, her art has been largely hidden away from the world for awhile, but no longer.

You have a chance to come see it now. (More on that in a second.)

Briggs' work brings back a distant memory I have of my brother Dave wearing a tee-shirt (all the time) that said ART SAVES LIVES.

His point was that art saves us from the busy-busy, judgmental, critical, revved-up, worried left-brain thinking that vacuums up our soul and spirit..... but only all day long.

Art lifts us out of that cul-de-sac of overly personalized thought and gives us the gift of expansion and inner freedom and space.

Briggs is a woman who finds art in life and then brings that life into her art.

Listen to her:

"I come from the deep, Deep South, the low country, hot and moist, Spanish moss dripping off live oak trees, lazy dogs draped across dirt roads, catfish on strings caught at the demand shrimp boats leaving the dock before sunrise.  I come from ballroom classes, and finishing schools where I was taught how to cross my ankles coyly in a pretty ruffled dress, the perfect hair, yes, taught to be picked like a flower and worn on a man’s arm."

Wow. Now I am hoping she writes a novel one day because her words are so infused with the magic and mystery of an artist unafraid to observe (drink in!) life.

She continues, "I come from debutante balls and country clubs where dance cards are filled by a committee, bands play behind greenery so they can’t look upon society’s elite.  I come from Catholic pews, the kind of family togetherness that suffocates, shrimp and grits, South Carolina peaches, Frogmore stew, lightening bug magic on steamy summer frog-singing mating-call nights that give life to my art, make it possible to sit by a river painting the low country fisherman, creek talking, Lord praising, heart swelling, connecting souls with mud, ocean, sky and birds, joyous in our work together."

Now we can see her work.  In person.  Live. The name of the show is Magic Mystery Mischief.

Opening reception Saturday Feb 22 4:30-7:30.

Cosentinos Nursery, 25019 Pacific Coast Highway  Malibu, CALIFORNIA

Contact info:

www.Briggswhiteford.com     [email protected]  

 

Briggs Whiteford

When you come to Malibu (please be there) to see Briggs' inspiring work, you may recall the words of the great dancer/teacher Martha Graham:

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...."

Coming to Malibu on February 22 will be another way of keeping your own channels open. Inspiration does that.

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:  

   The coaching school of the future...is a school of NO FEAR:

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

Click here for the Advanced Client Systems website

 

 

Hey, where's the class on How to Live?

Brian Johnson (with Alexandra and little Emerson pictured above) is a philosopher and giver of joy to many thousands of his readers, viewers and subscribers.

Brian was featured in the fantastic and highly-recommended movie, Finding Joe, a documentary about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey we all (consciously or unconsciously) take in this life.

He is the author of one of my favorite books, A Philosopher's Notes, and you can find out more about his colorful life and many offerings (some at no charge) at www.entheos.com.

As Brian says, "Isn't it a bit odd that we went from science to math to history but somehow missed the class on how to live?"

We could always just wring our hands and curse the educational system. But Brian has a better solution. Why not just provide that missing piece? Why not create email messages and cool YouTube dramatizations of the best philosophy and positive psychology in the world for everyone to learn and use? He has done that. His work is mind-blowingly thorough and easy to grasp.

In my wealth warrior inner circle members listen as I interview a new dynamic hot thinker each month on the subject of wealth and creativity... it costs a membership fee to be in that group, so I don't share the webinars. Or at least I usually don't.

But this once, I am going to. Because this one was so extraordinary and inspiring and game-changing and life-changing for people in the group that they are sending it all around the world and the internet ... so here it is for you:   Loving What You Do with Steve Chandler and Brian Johnson

....and here is a recent message from Brian and En*Theos:

ENJOY| by Brian Johnson

"This is the manner of noble souls: they do not want to have anything for nothing; least of all, life. Whoever is of the mob wants to live for nothing; we others, however, to whom life gave itself, we always think about what we might best give in return... One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy."  

                          ~ Friedrich Nietzsche from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

 I absolutely love that.

Imagine a life in which we seek to GIVE joy.

A life in which we enter relationships to GIVE joy. A life in which we work to GIVE joy.

Can you even imagine how much we would ENjoy that?!!? Stunning... To giving full expression to the highest within us!!

~ Brian Johnson
www.entheos.com

 

IF THIS MAN CAN STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING. . .

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching,
or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
                                      ~ Emily Dickinson  

 

I've had the pleasure of helping Jonathan Keyser edit his upcoming book on how he converted from a self-centered, egotistical life of seeking business success, to a life of selfless service.

The book inspired me to search for a quote that best described Jonathan's heart and soul. That's the quote you see up there from Emily Dickinson.

It sure doesn't look like a quote that has anything to do with business.

Which is why it is perfect, because Jonathan and his team of like-minded, service-obsessed commercial real estate consultants do not do business in a normal way.

For example, let's take a look at their operating principles that the team co-authored for itself. And before you allow yourself to be pleasantly stunned by these, what's even more impressive to me is how his team continuously imprints these by reading them aloud at meetings and reporting back to each other about how they are being lived out there in the real world:

1. We SERVE our clients, partners, and each other fully, selflessly and completely and only involve ourselves in projects, activities and conversations that can truly add value to another individual. We are known by one word….SERVICE…and we live the statement: “It is not about me.”

2. We outwork our competition and win as a result. We work relentlessly, tirelessly, and passionately towards our cause and do not allow ourselves to be distracted, discouraged, or deterred from our mission by ANYTHING, no matter how enticing it may appear.

3. We encourage bold action and are not afraid of making a mistake. We never punish mistakes, but rather embrace them because to fear mistakes makes a person timid, and keeps them out of bold, fearless, massive action which is precisely where value is created.

4. We always do our best, and produce more than our clients request or expect every single time. We provide the highest quality service, materials, and deliverables to our clients and partners, and nothing is ever done half-ass. Everything is done to the very best of our potential.

5. We expect to win every single time. Period. We do this because we think and act as we truly are…the best in the business. No one delivers greater service or quality representation than our team. We are the BEST and we honor ourselves by being and doing our best.

6. We are one team, and each person plays an integral role. Together we are more successful than we would be on our own, and we honor the importance of everyone’s contribution. We each serve a critical team function, and no team member is superior to another.

7. We give first, fully and exuberantly, knowing that if we focus on giving and truly seeking opportunities to help others in real, tangible ways, then we experience true joy and fulfillment in our own lives, and as a side benefit, experience resounding success as well.

8. We always follow through with the commitments we make…always. People can rely on us because we do what we say we will do, and when we see that we cannot, we quickly clean it up. We are our word, and as a result, what we speak into existence actually occurs for us.

9. We have fun with what we do, and with the members of the team. This is a mission we are thrilled to be a part of, and we won’t take on a client unless it will be fun for everyone. Nothing is worth sacrificing our happiness over, and so we are lighthearted and playful in all we do.

10. We invest in our own self-improvement, always striving for greater awareness of ourselves and our creator, for we know that as we align with our true identity and remain focused on our purpose that the power within us will manifest and create our highest potential.

11. We are a family, and always protect and serve each other. In love, we hold each other accountable through authentic, honest, and kind discussion. We are a tight knit brotherhood, and we love and care for each member of the team at all times because they are family.

12. We are 100% coachable. We do not resist feedback, we are never defensive, and we look deep within ourselves to find where feedback could be even partially true. We find great value in the perspective of others and are fully committed to the consensus of the team.

13. We are 100% present in all that we do. We commit all of our mental energy to what we’re creating and do not allow ourselves to be distracted by Anything (technology, other people, or our own thoughts). We are fully present, and thus maximize every action and interaction.

14. We are disruptive, we embrace change, and we are forward thinking in all that we do. We continuously explore and integrate new tools and innovations, to maximize personal responsiveness & efficiency, and provide best-in-class service to each and every client.

15. We are strong, healthy and fit. We value and respect our bodies with regular exercise and proper nutrition, knowing it increases productivity, confidence and well being. We care for ourselves, and as a result, discipline flows into every aspect of our lives.

Jonathan Keyser has not created some kind of blue sky ideal future scene for his team and him to live toward. I know the man (he and I share the same transformational unstoppable coach). Keyser's principles are a description of how he lives NOW. He's performed this way for quite some time, in fact, and is now devoted to teaching his team, and even beyond his team..... (when his book comes out) the entire world the profitable results of living for service.

I received a quote from Brian Johnson this week that made me think of Jonathan and the company they call Keyser:

“A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.”
                                                                   ~ Carlos Castaneda

The Business Jounal had a great little article on Keyser that you will want to read, here.