PL is a highly active "learner of life." He will be introduced shortly in this blog and you can follow his growth path. The following are a myriad of observations from me related to some of the things he shared recently with me, about his thoughts and practices. As the "PL series" progresses, you may have a number of things you would like to do/learn in your life, for a much greater life!
OBSERVATIONS - PL
12/26/16
PL:
After review of the spreadsheet formatted items you sent and one initial reading of the email to which they were attached:
A few random notes, scrawled relatively quickly, just thoughts, possible discussion point or not, and not corrective in most cases...just thoughts and observations. Of course, the links are only meant to be part of a possible menu to also partake of (or not). Since there are quite a few things that might be of interest, I recommend listing them or at least printing out this page and circling the links. (Then you would either enter the link words or go back to the article by using the search engine and the title of the article.)
THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING
Yes, indeed, we naturally will “suffer” when we fear loss, as the emotional chemical system will seek to “cure” the problem (kick oneself into gear with a motivating negative feeling). The problem with attachment is not our liking of whatever the object is, but our fearing its loss, when there is no real actual loss at any meaningful level. (In a developed nation, we are far beyond survival and therefore there is nothing legitimately to fear.)
NO FAULT - A KEY ESSENTIAL TRUTH
Of course, it is good to keep in mind that we are all only at the awareness (“informed”) level that our path allowed for. (See Your Path Is Your Only Path Attainable.) There is, of course, absolutely “no fault” if one can only operate at the level of awareness that one has attained. [What does make the difference in one’s “growth curve” is an intervention that is significant enough to kick up the awareness/growth path, such as “hitting bottom” emotionally or in some way, an intervention with “wise” men, and/or some drive to be “better” to get self approval. Though the latter can be a big “why” and a driver, it is dangerous, since it is driven from a “deficit” need based on fear - and fear is a destructive emotion if held onto past a short term emergency event or conjured up from some “loss” perception).
ACCEPTING, NOT “SURRENDERING” PER SE
Accepting reality is, as you’ve noted, the only viable alternative. It is not “giving up” at all. It is just a recognition of the factual inability to change anything that has already occurred. Werner Erhard (a man worth studying, look at his website) had a pithy saying, which i think should be programmed in for instant access, and which engages your higher brain for better clearer functioning: “What’s so? So what? Now what?”. If one operates in that manner, one will be thinking straight and action/results oriented. An objective description of what has occurred helps separate out “the story”, so that we are left with only “reality” - see What Happened - The Objective Description Of What Actually Occurred - practicing this builds one’s ability to see reality and to have it be just fine..
Obviously, if one accepts reality, drops expecting things to be otherwise, and recognizes that there is very, very little to fear, one will have removed many of the negatives that impede people being happy. But not that one must have in place the four components of happiness, which of course are brought about a number of ways (from the site), discussed below.
HAPPINESS AS “THE PURPOSE”
Deep, unconditional happiness consists of an underlying current of
2. Having the confidence that I can, and
to produce happiness no matter what
the outcome.
3. Considering life (and its pieces, the
world) to have the right stuff available
for me to be able to use for my
the immensity of it. ("Gratitude" is
only a part of it')
If a man accomplishes great things and is a champion in certain parts of his life but he doesn’t fully assure those four things, he will not have “succeeded” in life and will not have become a “life champion”.
PERFECTION IS THE ENEMY FOR ONE REASON
Perfection by itself is positive and good. But if one sets up the expectation of perfection, which is virtually impossible to ever arrive at, one sets oneself up for an imagined “loss” - a loss in this case is arriving at a position that is short of what one “had setup as given to have”. That, as you’ll recall, was the dilemma of the guy in the story in The Unhappiness Gap. (Also Perfection - The Path To Hell.)
Spending the time to try to reach perfection also violates the rule of spending the next unit of time on what produces the highest return. As one gets past about the 80% level, the returns on improving toward perfection become rather small compared to what else we could do elsewhere. See The Marginal Returns Principle and also the The 80% Approach - “Good Enough”. If you follow those, you will never be too busy, in fact, you’ll have a lot of time for optional high value activities and wants.
ONE THING DISPLACES ANOTHER
If one goes past the point of “good marginal returns” for one’s effort, one is spending time where one could have done something else of far more benefit. So, we ask, is it worth being a champion of “good abs” and 7% or less body fat. It could be, but I do wonder. Any extreme is worth questioning. Even the Buddha, after trying the extremes, decided that he had better marginal returns if he went “the middle way”. (The middle way is not the mediocre way, but the optimized overall balance, where we do not seek perfection nor greatness but the highest total value we can achieve in life.)
Of course, we do not consider any change lightly, so we must clearly think out the tradeoffs. (Since two things do not fit in the same space at the same time, we must “trade” one thing for another. Life is a series of tradeoffs - and good decision making from clear thinking. Some people “fear” the “loss” of the thing given up, but, ironically, it is the best way to achieve the greatest value and the least loss!)
THE “FORGOTTEN” REJUVENATION STRATEGY
The outside the box thinker Dan Sullivan insisted that all of us successful overachievers in his coaching workshops take as many “Free Days” as possible, and then told us unbelieving “pedal to metal” drivers that it would increase our creativity AND at the same time have us achieve more value in the time remaining than if we stayed with trying our hardest in our old always-tense “go for it” drive to work hard.
For the upcoming quarter and year, schedule in “free days” (no files taken along to “casually” review) ahead of time at least every quarter. (The Quarterly Plan)
ONCE ONE HAS FILLED HIS “DEFICIT NEEDS” THEN…
Once one fills up his deficit needs, then one enjoys the “finer elements” of life, such as wisdom gathering and new insights, out of attraction not drive. (See The Self Actualized Person.) “Deficit needs look like this: “I’m short of this and this and this” and “feeling fear of falling short and not being safe enough and not able to create all the results I want in life”. If one still needs approval, one is still trying to fill a deficit of “not enough” self esteem, confidence, achievement and such.
Those who are not in deficit no longer “need” others to give anything to them, as they are truly “self sufficient” no matter what occurs. (However, they gladly accept and appreciate anything given to them - they just don’t “need” it.) At that stage they are no longer doing things to gain status, in the form of “being approved of” nor having to be seen as the alpha male or alpha female.
And what becomes rewarding is the “next game”, at the higher level, of being an inspiration to others, of being an empowerer, and one who contributes to his fellow man. The old “survivor game” will have disappeared and at that point one will “see” the next game, one of true magnificence of self expression and feeling good “about it all”.
AS YOU FREE UP TIME…
The time one frees up by using the basic strategies in Life Value Productivity should first, as you know, go to the highest impact things you can do. Gaining skill and ability at handling life is certainly one of the highest impact things you can do, but at some point you will look at things more from a Leverage Mindset, where you don’t need to know more per se, but where you use others (ethically) to gain more results from the same effort, where you 10X to100+X your ability to create the results you want.
AT A RELAXED PACE
People who are effective are in no hurry, as they are effective by choosing just a few things that deliver much more value than the hurry-scurry of busyness, where one, by definition, is stuck in doing lots of low value activities.
But the key thing to remember is that you are not “short of” the grand vision you have for who you aim to be. You are instead in a magnificent process of building a higher and higher level of life, with lots of discoveries and “fun failing” along the way as one spends more time on the frontiers of his knowledge where he does not yet know what he is doing yet. (Some people call this “opportunities for learning” and even glorify making lots of mistakes or “failing forward”. I recommend that you make as few mistakes as possible, through great preparation. And you must make mistakes if you are growing. However, making mistakes is simply an objective feedback of not knowing yet what to do! It is an indication you need to learn something, of course. Appropriately, as a life champion, you will utilize that feedback to create something even more workable!) See At First You’re Always Incompetent… (but hopefully not for long!).
APPORTION THIS OUT…
Since you are a man who is oriented toward immediate action and resolution, you will inevitably be vulnerable to putting too much into gear at one time. You’ll most likely be reminded of something else you could do, understand, learn, etc., but inevitably time demands that you do thing one at a time. Or as Einstein put it, roughly, “Time is so that not everything happens at the same time.”
As a wise person would do, follow The Practice Of Pacing, noting in particular the section about “not having to arrive” (compulsively, and never enjoying anything short of that). On that page, you might also link into “Pausing, Planning, And Pacing” as a life strategy. Indeed, the key strategy for growth in life is to first arrive at “sufficient” knowing in each key life area - and then to grow, out of joy and desire, but not need.
As you think of things to do, it might be best to note those things down and then dump them into the “task inbox” for processing later to the projects and lists in your task management software. I believe, now that I see the full effect of this practice (and wish I had done this years earlier), that this is a necessary process: 9/26: Simple No Holes Task Management - A Must!
And some others along the same lines:
(Businesses often have Outlook, but I never seemed to, when I was busy, seemed to get around to mastering its “high usability” and found it did not help me keep track of things in a workable way.)
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