Success - It's all in the Physics...

I spoke to a life coach this morning, Dr. Liz Zed, recommended to me by my dear friend and colleague Ana Maria Sanchez. I had to admit it - I'm starting a new career (or, several) and it's just possible that I might need some help sorting things out and getting the traction 

I need to make my new life sustainable.

I've experienced a lot of healing and growth since I left high-tech at the end of 2009. So I'm a little more than 2 years into "whatever is next", and, frankly, I feel like a two-year old. 

Which is to say, I feel grand, healthy, and a little out of control, but very determined.

Lately, the realizations and clearing of old patterns has accelerated. I'd say since last May when I first had the opportunity to meet with Dakota elder Chief Golden Light Eagle, and then REALLY accelerated since the Winter Solstice of 2011.

So there I was this morning, talking to a life coach.

What did I learn? Well, it was a meandering conversation, as first "get to know you" conversations often are, but something subtle emerged that I wouldn't have been able to hear not that long ago. 

The nugget is this: Success is all in the physics.

Success isn't about doing a bunch of things you don't really want to do, gutting it out through pain and sweat and frustration. All that stuff feeds the ego - either the "I deserve to be punished" or the "I have to earn it through hard work" or the "I have something to prove" or any number of other mis-wired messages.

Rather, it's about discerning what one really, truly wants, and then setting up the scene so that doing what you want brings you success. All the moving parts are keyed to align with the effort that comes naturally for you, so once you engage the system, it's like the system sings along with you.

Sounds simple, right? Well, the second part is, I think, pretty simple to folks with a mind for mechanics, physics, the dynamics of power, cause and effect, and so on. That's the physics. Sure, you might need some trimming and tuning by folks with domain expertise, but generally speaking, it's a system of pulleys and ropes and levers. 

The life coach said something like, "It's the difference between doing while having uncertainty about whether you're going to succeed or fail, and having a program that you know you can follow, and if you follow it, you'll succeed."

Why wouldn't we all sign up to a program that we can follow, and follow it to success?

Ahhh, the multi-million dollar (literally) question. 

I think it's because we're afraid of really understanding the first part -- understanding what we love, and letting go of what we don't. We have tapes that say "success looks like this..."(see stressed-out working stiff at right), and we're not sure we want that. Or we have tapes that say, "You can't just do the things you love - life is hard!" Or we have tapes that say, "That's a stupid, low-value, low-esteem profession."

All those tapes block us from understanding what we really want. What we really love.  And when we build a process that includes all those tapes, the physics is not working with us at all. In fact, we're setting the physics up to work against what comes naturally to us. And then sheer force of will, willpower, determination, stubbornness, stress, and heart-attacks are required to achieve the goal.

Not very enticing, is it?

Nope. Not for me.

I want the physics to work in my favor. Not boring, or even necessarily easy (no "slacker" goals here), but certainly working with the momentum of my soul, rather than against it.

Thoughts? Comments? Have you set up your Rube-Goldberg success engine to leverage the momentum of your soul?

Feeling As Competently As I Think

Rodin's "The Kiss"

I've set for myself a worthy goal: To have as much awareness, confidence, competence, and refinement in my ability to feel as I have in my ability to think.

I will be working on this goal assiduously for however long it takes.

I've always been confident in my thinking skills and capacity. I love to think. I love to extend my knowledge, build bridges between concepts, and extrapolate into rarified cognitive air.

Thinking about thinking, too. Philosophy. Justice. Art. Compassion. Mysticism and science. Lots and lots of domains of intellectual exploration.

Detail - See the book in his
hand, not being read?

Recently, I realized that feeling - not "thinking about feeling" or "analyzing my feelings" was a treasure trove of growth. It helped me banish some encroaching depression. It helped me increase my cardiovascular capacity. It taps into an (apparently) infinite universe that I've really just begun to understand.

And there's an interesting difference, for me, between thinking and feeling. If I'm doing it right, feeling is effortless. Exertionless, even. And yet its harvest is extraordinary.

The down side is, of course, that I'm really a babe in the woods on this half of my consciousness, compared to the 50 years of intense focus on my thinking machinery. I may have a long road ahead of me.

The good news is that it's an amazingly rich and colorful, sensuous and sensory road. I can see that already.

What a cool journey.  Anybody want to join me?

(Anybody willing to help?)

Exertion vs. Effort

Exertion in the Presence of Disharmony

My life has been a long episode of "trying my hardest to achieve", no matter what the circumstances. Vacation? How do I get the most out of it? Relaxing massage? How do I harvest the optimum relaxation from the experience? Sleep? What kind of active dreaming, subconscious clearing, or astral projection work can be done tonight? 

You name it, I have developed a knack for turning any activity into a exercise in maximum extraction. I have such a habit of constantly "working" on something that there has been an unconscious part of myself that will actively create effort even when there is none. 

I realized this recently when I was driving to Firefly Willows. There was no hurry. The drive takes maybe five minutes. There was almost no traffic. And yet, I realized that there was this great force, this "pressure" that I felt that I was pushing against. I could feel it as if a big, inflated shape was pressing against me as I sat in the car. 

And I had constructed it out of nothing.

Why? 

Because it was something I could push against. I quickly dismissed it…and felt so strange that I lost an aspect of my equilibrium. There was nothing to push forward against, and it felt like I was falling (forward).

It was really odd.

I've struggled with the notions of "just being" and "just receiving" as a way of living because, although they're recommended by many mystical authorities, there is a part of me - the athlete/warrior part - that enjoys exertion. Heavy lifting. The application of force through the vehicle of the self. I'd have called this "making an effort" just a few days ago, but I think I just learned something this morning.

I do like to exert myself. It feels good. I've developed a capacity that I enjoy using, and feel strong when I do. But I noticed that I used the word "exertion" and "exert" as the thing I would miss, not "effort".

The question then had to be asked, "Are exertion and effort the same thing?" 

The dictionary was not helpful. There was something subtle to be felt here, a difference that I could not ignore. Exertion is something I do. Effort is something I do in the presence of...what? Resistance? 

On a Newtonian physics level, there is no exertion without effort, because there has to be something to "push" against. 

And still, I'm sure there's a profound difference. We don't live in a strictly Newtonian world (and certainly our spirits don't…). I know that I'm willing to exert myself. But I'm increasingly suspicious of effort. It seems dark, and heavy. It seems like, on a very deep level, there's something more to be examined. Does God exert him/herself? Or does God apply effort? Possibly the former. I doubt the latter.

Some thoughts:

When I play a sport like basketball, I'm experiencing resistance from the other players. But we have a mutual goal - the exploration and enjoyment of the game. So that's effort, but at another level its cooperative exertion.

When I'm climbing a mountain, I'm exerting myself. The resistance I experience is the force of gravity. maybe that makes it an effort, but it doesn't feel like one, because I welcome the force of gravity as, in essence, I welcome the other basketball players - without them, something would be missing.

So if I don't think of these things as "effort" (and resistance), then what DOES fall into the category of effort? (Is resistance always bad?)

Ugly things. Difficult things. Things like working a job I don't love, or driving in a traffic jam. Things like taking corporate money out of politics and stopping the rape of the environment. Anywhere that the exertion comes up against a darkness. 

So, OK, that's a judgement. Slippery ground for metaphysics, I confess. 

Maybe it's better to say that Effort is Exertion in the presence of Disharmony?

I think it's a continuum. Exertion flows into effort in the presence of an unenlightened player. And that player may well be myself.

I admit I'm still puzzled, because those word evoke very different feelings inside me.  Can you share your perspectives on Exertion vs. Effort?

The (Meta)physics of Doubt

Dissipation or Redirection?

(Note 2: I wanted this post to show up on August, but the draft was dated March, so there it sat, back in among the March posts. I've now re-posted with an August date - sometimes this technology stuff gets a little confusing.)


(Note 1: I drafted this one in March of this year. August, as it turns out, has been less about effort and more about "being". So I figured now would be a good time to turn this one into a post!)

I've been working very hard lately - lots of long hours and exertion. I feel, in general, pretty good about this, in spite of how it sounds. I enjoy what I'm doing, and I am very grateful to be living a part of my life -- this part, right now -- in service to a big dream.

And yet, it's still "hard". I don't always know whether what I'm doing is making a difference. It's challenging to continue to exert yourself and then wonder whether it's worth it.

All the familiar kinds of self-doubt have emerged over the last several weeks.

"I'm not doing the right things."

"Nothing is working."

"I'm wasting time and money."

"I can't possibly pull this off."

Etc., etc., etc.

Now, as usual, I'm not satisfied to just "experience" these doubts and then "process" them and move on. Oh, no. The metaphysicist in me says, "Wait - there must be a message in this. Why am I going through this? What is its purpose?"

And my attention alighted upon Doubt itself. I have never really examined doubt - I had just struggled with it. What is Doubt? How does it work? In essence, I began to ponder the physics of Doubt.

And this morning, as I took a leisurely snooze-in, I think I made a little progress.

I was looking at doubt, and examining its effect. Well, says I, "effect on...what?"

It came to my awareness that doubt was affecting my intention, somewhat like the way friction affects motion. It was using the energy of my intentions, and diluting or decreasing the force of them.

OK, maybe this sounds obvious on the face of it. But I actually saw it as a vector of force that I was allowing to feed on, and that worked counter to, my intentions.

So then, of course, I had to look at Intention (because doubt itself was making me question the validity of my inquiry).

What the heck is Intention? On the one hand, an intention can be this very large, grandiose, "I'm going to execute this vision" kind-of-thing. On the other hand, it can be something as simple and small as, "I'm going to open my eyes now," or "I'm going to pay attention to my breathing."

And somewhere in the middle, "I'm going to get up, put on my running shoes, and go running...in the rain."

And I looked at intention somewhat carefully to see if "intention for the easy/possible" was structurally the same as "intention for the difficult/impossible". Were they really the same thing? I had to conclude that they were. It was really just a question of scale regarding the resources and knowledge needed. "Open my eyes" requires little resource. "Become President" requires a lot. But the actual functional role of "intention" is the same. So, to a (meta)physicist, the same forces, fields, and conditions should govern the operation and understanding of each.

A little deeper on intention, then. If this whole gamut, this whole range, qualified as "intention", what actually is Intention? What is the physics of intention? Intention has been called "focused attention". I think of it as "directed willpower". Note that there is a subtle difference between "directed willpower" and "applied willpower"; applied willpower implies that one is actually taking action. That's a second step, separate from the intention itself. That's the application of resources. But directed willpower implies both "potential energy" and "direction".

Notice also that there is a minimum "quantity" of potential energy that is required, even in the presence of sufficient resource (as in, I didn't go running in the rain, even though I certainly had capable shoes and plenty of rain to run in...).

What makes intention strong enough to "activate"? That is, to cause tangible change in the Universe? Still working on this one. But one thing was clear - doubt was "dissipating" what force existed within the intention.

With these perceptions in hand, I had another look at doubt.

My first impression was that doubt was dissipating my intention. It was "decompressing" it, reducing its voltage, its power, its potential for forward motion. And the odd thing was that the application of doubt was coming from me! So odd to see one part of myself gathering energy, creating the potential, building power, and then another part of myself venting off that energy, dissolving it, adding an "effect" to it that causes it to lose coherence.

I got up and started my day, satisfied that I had uncovered something important about doubt - "Doubt dissipates Intention".

Later, as I began to contemplate writing these insights down, I thought, OK, but is that the ONLY thing doubt is doing? Doubt has to have a purpose - a useful, evolutionarily valuable function, or we wouldn't have it. So what constructive role does it play?

I started to look at Doubt like "attitude adjustment thrusters" - pushing the Intention vector left or right, up or down, in little puffs of exertion. Properly applied, Doubt is a tool for redirection and adjustment. It takes just enough steam from the main thrusters to provide a moment for realignment through examination. And it doesn't require the application of external energy -- handily, it uses the energy that is already present. An excellent safeguard system.

Unfortunately, I suspect many of us don't use Doubt so constructively. We let Doubt establish itself, but somehow don't have the discipline to manage, monitor, and control its application. So it continues to fire, releasing the pressure in the Intention tank, firing wildly, pushing our Ship of Intention up, down, sideways, in a random and unproductive ways. Taking us off course while at the same time sapping us of "directed willpower".

Why is that, do you think? Is it simply a matter of training? Of discipline? I'm still working on it, but if you have ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Sustainability Inside

Earlier this year I wrote about 2011 being the year of authenticity. And in May I wrote about calling myself out - realizing that I had bet on myself.

As we contemplate changing locations for Firefly Willows, and wrestle with all that such a choice brings, I am once again confronted with that "self". When I realized that I had bet on myself, I grounded the anxiety I had been feeling about failure. That helped a lot.

Now, though, I'm wrestling with another aspect of this problem.

I readily admit that during my career (and my life experience outside my career) I would reach a moment of opportunity. And somehow, for some reason, I would take a step that led me away from the opportunity in front of me, and toward some uncertain consequence and future. Either by overt commission or subtle intransigence I have, in some sense, sabotaged myself.

I need to really find out what is happening. I don't think it's deliberate - I don't think it's because I am afraid of success.

I look and reflect and conclude that during those moments, I said something like, "Oh, it's not really worth the effort/pain/discomfort."

So why wasn't it?

I had a flash of insight that reminded me of playing basketball. I'm kinda short for basketball, so when I drive to the basket for a lay-up, I have had a tendency to use speed (get there before the other guys) to ensure that I'm not blocked.

But that doesn't work when they're already there. So I've also adopted another technique - stretching myself so my reach is as high as possible.

My basketball colleagues will tell you that when I drive the lane it's often a comical sight (in a Buster Keaton "Oh My GOD there's going to be an ACCIDENT!!" kind of way).

Definitely NOT me...

I recently figured out why that is. As I approach the basket, I'm moving so fast and I'm so stretched out that I have very little capacity left to tweak my move, adjust my body, or reposition the ball. If I haven't picked my approach perfectly, and moved impeccably, I'm just going to end up in a heap. And even if I HAVE, there are still other players with their own free agency and they can do the unexpected. Which, if I'm too strung out, will result in my ending up in a heap.

Either way, no score.

No score.

I see now that I often am running so fast and am so stretched out that there is no room to adjust to a new inspiration or opportunity. I have no capacity left to respond.

I have discovered that I run myself so close to the edge that anything along the way that is not exactly as I've envisioned it can derail the mission. What's worse is that I run myself this way on missions that are not really in alignment with who I am - my personal mission, so to speak.

So what have I done in the past? Typically, I've overdriven the machine in a way that is not sustainable, eeking out a measure of success through sheer force, and damaging myself in the process.

At some point, I do become exhausted, and my subconscious just forces me away from the table. I either bail out explicitly, or my subconscious unstitches key seams in the underbelly, and I just kind of fall out in an ungainly, inefficient way.

(Thank God I have friends and family that love me...!)

Now, upon reflection, it makes complete sense. I've often been pushing too hard on a particular vision to have anything left to be responsive to the world. And eventually, I get exhausted and have to stop.

How does one fix this kind of problem, and what does the solution look like?

It dawns on my that, first and foremost, I have to be clear about what I sign up for. In particular, I have to be as honest as I can about the following parameters:

• How much sustained effort will this take?
• How much do I really care about it?
• How long can I keep doing it?
• What happens if I have to stop doing it?

Ultimately, this analysis compels me to examine the sustainability of my own actions. And here, I'm talking about things as simple as writing this blog, or hosting a weekly event at Firefly Willows, or starting a new project.

I have lots of instantaneous capacity. The key question is, what is my SUSTAINABLE capacity?

It's obvious when I go running, or play soccer, that my instantaneous capacity and sustainable capacity are not the same. I get winded and have to stop and rest.

In basketball -- and it seems, in life -- I'm not so aware.

Is it odd that I've never actually contemplated a limit before? I think I've always viewed my instantaneous capacity and my sustainable capacity as equivalent when it comes to my "work" life. And as a result, I have been ill-equipped, misaligned, and exhausted at key moments in my life.

That's just plain weird. Who could be so profoundly oblivious to something so obvious? I surprise myself with the depths of my dysfunction sometimes.

Good thing I can laugh about it.