Sometimes I bring guests on-board to provide trainings and other resources – and sometimes that brings up questions. In this short video, I answer a few of the common questions I had from a recent joint webinar, such as
Why are you bringing this guest on and who is he? and
How are business concepts like marketing and finances applicable to my science lab?
BUSTED: Three Productivity Myths
It’s creative leaps and insights that create true success, not the number of hours at your desk. In fact, carving the powder on this untracked slope is a vital part of my success secret. If you want to achieve greatness (and sure you do, right?), it’s about creating those key creative and productive breakthroughs that will carve out your success.
So…are you ready to bust out?
When did the feminine become BAD and WRONG??
Connection. Listening. Healing. Creativity. Intuition. Tuning into feelings.
These are some of the strongest feminine traits – yet where are they taught in our schools or upbringings?
They’re NOT… they are instead swept under the rug – and for many people – once under the rug, run over with a steamroller for good measure.
For any subject, such as the masculine OR the feminine, there are both positive traits and negative traits.
There are negative feminine traits too, such as manipulation, image conscioussness, being catty, tearing others down…
Sadly, what I have seen SO MANY women (and some men, too) is throw out ALL of the feminine – good and bad – in the name of “equality”. And in the process, it’s not like these people who’ve thrown all that out move over to adopting the positive masculine traits such as strength, focus, defending loved ones… what often remains is a generic, watered down being.
I can say that because I was one of those!
Yes, even after going through several major surgeries to get my body more into alignment with my beingness, it didn’t solve this problem for me. The problem was that I – like MANY people in our world – associated femininity with being weak. I associated it with many of the negative traits, and few of the positives.
AND, despite my body changes, I continued for years to work in an academic culture that readily dismisses ALL of the feminine traits and embraces the masculine (though often not the positive masculine)…
After I quit doing that, I then proceeded as a business owner to find mentors that also dismiss the feminine. They are linear, logical, and emphasize a “just do it” attitude. Which is fine, but leaves little place for feeling, experiencing, creativity, healing, and intuition.
Just marching on doesn’t heal!
If what you need is healing of mind/body/soul, then “just doing it” isn’t going to heal you! It’s just going to add more momentum to the crap that you already are dealing with.
I was one of those “generic, watered down beings” because, inside, my POINT OF POWER is in the feminine. Yet I was afraid of it, I had made it “bad” and “wrong” because there are so few role models for how to do it right.
There are a few, mostly in movies. The latest was in the 3rd Hobbit movie, where Galadriel takes on Sauron. (I won’t give any more spoilers than that…) In her love there is great power and healing.
I meet so many people, mostly women but sometimes men, who have a place of power in the feminine, yet have learned to hide it away, as if ashamed of it.
They end up generally miserable, not even knowing why. The WHY is that they are disconnected from their CORE, and nobody who is disconnected from the core is operating WITHOUT flow, joy, peace, or true happiness. (Yes, I have experienced PLENTY of that kind of disconnection in my own life…)
Our culture isn’t supportive of expression of the feminine, except as a “pretty little plaything” for men. That’s total BS.
The feminine is SO necessary right now in our world. I believe it is the imbalance of feminine and masculine that has led to MANY of the problems we face – ranging from environmental challenges to economic disparities.
We as a species NEED healing. We need nurturing. We need connection. We have been led too much by the blind momentum of “doing stuff” in the mode of the masculine, without stopping to ask “WHY” are we doing it? Is it good for us? (Clearly, judging by a lot of the wars and crap going on, it is not that good for us).
Bringing more of the feminine in – by reconnecting with it for those of us who have that as our centerpoint – can be both powerful and healing for us and those around us.
There is NOTHING wrong with either the feminine or the masculine. Expressed by a person or a society in a balance, they can be very positive. However, when things get out of equilibrium – and one totally pushes out the other – the result is a system that is unhealthy.
We have had many centuries of the masculine pushing out the feminine in the name of “progress”, and we have a system out of balance as a result.
Is it time for those of us who have our point of power in the feminine to start connecting with that and bringing our gifts to the world?
Many parents freak out about taking kids for “dangerous” activities like whitewater, mountain biking, and climbing.
So instead, they keep their kids inside, safely ensconced with butt planted on chair in front of the tv or computer or books.
Meanwhile, the kids learn to be afraid. Afraid of adventure and the outdoors. “It’s scary out there!” It might be cold, it might be wet, it might even (*gasp*) cause some scrapes and bruises.
All the while, the effects of the sedentary lifestyle accumulate, like grains of sand pouring through an hourglass. They pile up, larger and larger, until ultimately the body can’t handle it anymore and it rebels.
Diabetes, cancer, early heart disease… And more.
Those are the dangers of Not Doing.
Given that vastly far more people die from heart disease and cancer than from all outdoor activities (times ten), I’ll choose the so-called risks of the outdoors for my kids, thanks very much.
And they get to feel the gentle play of the sunshine as they float down beautiful rivers – rather than the fake world of video games that is almost like sensory deprivation in comparison.
I’m grateful to all you parents who do take your kids outside for adventures! You are doing them a huge favor.
Which one are you voting for this electoral season?
If you listen to the ads and the speeches, one guy is going to ruin us all by taking away our rights and freedoms, especially concerning commerce. The other guy is going to ruin us all by taking away our rights and freedoms, especially concerning our bodies and the environment.
I’ve been drawn into a few debates with friends on Facebook about this stuff.
One friend, who happens to be from the left side of the fence, kept going on and on (and on) about how terrible everything that we do is – how, because of our consumption, we’re exploiting workers all over the globe. She went on about how poverty is caused by rich people skimming off the top. Then she went on to express that the USA is headed down, towards the scrap heap of history. She got angry at me when I said that poverty comes from a belief system. She told me I was blaming the poor for their suffering.
There are some powerful underlying ideas behind her anger.
She’s looking for political solutions to our problems. She’s looking for someone to fix what’s “broken.” She’s looking for someone on whom to vent her anger about all the bad and wrong that’s happening in the world.
Is politics ever a long-lasting solution to anything?
Are things truly “broken?”
Is there really a boogeyman (such as rich folks) to whom we can pin all the blame for the “bad” going on in the world?
On the first question: Think about all the countries where a dictatorship was overthrown in a coup, in the name of democracy — only to be replaced by another flavor of dictatorship. Maybe people in those instances aren’t ready for the freedom of democracy. They may want freedom in principle, but they’re not fully ready for it, deep down where their beliefs lie. This enables a dictator to come in and grab power, before people finally make that core shift in their beliefs – which can take decades.
Think about the former USSR states, especially Russia. While they ostensibly have free democratic systems, there’s a ton and a half of corruption. There’s really only one party at this point. The large corporations are in bed with politicians, and vice-versa. If you think the US is bad, it pales in comparison to the corruption in Russia.
Where does all that corruption come from?
It comes from a populace that is cynical to its core. The populace doesn’t believe that any politician can act out of anything but self interest (nor any person, for that matter). So, the population tolerates it, because it believes that’s just how people are.
Notice the word “tolerates it.” In the US, we still have enough people who don’t tolerate that kind of stuff, that we’ve managed to avoid sinking to that level of greed and corruption – so far.
Yet our tolerance is slowly creeping forward, allowing more and more of the greed and corruption. That tolerance comes from expectancy. In other words, if you expect a certain behavior from someone, you’re far more likely to tolerate it.
For example, I see parents on the playground frequently tolerating aggressive behaviors from boys, but much less so from girls. Why do parents tolerate that from boys more than girls?
Because they expect it. “Boys will be boys.”
So, does the choice between the one guy and the other guy running for office really matter?
It may matter, just a tiny little bit. There are some differences in the policies that they would implement. Those may have some effect on people’s lives.
But what matters far more are our expectations, both individually and collectively.
If we take the cynical view that things are broken, headed completely on the wrong path, and that there’s no fixing it because of greedy, self-interested politicians and/or businessmen and/or investors, then that’s what we’re going to get.
You get what you expect, because you tolerate what you expect.
The real person you need to vote for this upcoming election season is yourself. Voting for yourself doesn’t involve going to the booth and punching a ballot.
It involves taking responsibility for your own beliefs. It means taking your power back. It means not tolerating gloom-and-doom, world-is-ending thinking. (you get what you expect, and you expect what you tolerate!)
It’s funny – if you listen to the left or the right, they each have “boogeymen” that they loudly decry as the coming doom of all. For the left it’s trampling of human rights, environmental rights, and animal rights in the name of economics. For the right it’s trampling of economic rights in the name of human rights.
If you add up all the noise from both sides, then everything is broken and unfixable. You might as well give up. You might as well just put your head down, and tolerate the coming of the end of the USA, and for that matter, the end of the world.
If you choose to vote for yourself, you won’t buy into any of this nonsense! You won’t buy into the gloom and doom thinking, that tolerates the idea of a sinking nation, or a sinking world.
There are problems to solve. Plenty of them. But they won’t get solved by any politician, until the populace truly believes that a solution is necessary and viable.
The politician is just the vehicle. It’s the beliefs of the populace that are the driver. Where do you think the guilty and/or cynical handwringing is going to take the car? Off the road.
It’s not the politicians you have to worry about, it’s yourself. Your worry should be what you tolerate for yourself and for the world around you. Your worry should be what you expect of yourself, and of the world.
Your worry should be: do I have some not-so-obvious belief systems that are preventing me from lowering my tolerance, and raising my expectations?
While my friend told me I was blaming poor people for their poverty, this is what I was really saying: I’ve met at least 7 people over the past two years who went from abject poverty to millionaire status. How did they do that? At some point, they decided to stop tolerating their own poverty. They got fed up with it. So they adjusted their beliefs, and figured out how to make it work.
One of them now drives a Rolls Royce and has 60 surfboards. Is that excessive? If you think so, who are you to judge? He eventually decided that living in a trailer home without any running hot water wasn’t tolerable. It took him 5 years of intensive study and hard work to make his first million, and he’s done it many times since then.
Should he be giving that money to the poor instead? That thinking is a trap. See, if he hadn’t had the motivation to rise above his own poverty, the motivation to work his butt off so that he could drive the fancy car, he would still be broke and living in a trailer home (or dead from an OD). That wouldn’t be helping the poor any more than his driving a Rolls is. And, in fact, it’s quite likely that at some point he has contributed to causes like helping those in poverty (I haven’t asked, but most millionares I’ve met do make substantial contributions like that).
Is it easy to raise your standards like the now-millionare did? Hell no. But do you think that a political decree is going to lift someone out of poverty if their belief systems are all screwed up? Well, if you do, then you may still believe in the tooth fairy as well.
I don’t “blame” poor people. What I blame is an educational system that doesn’t teach people to examine their beliefs, and to understand the impact that those beliefs have on their reality.
Instead, we’re taught to be just docile pawns in the game. We’re taught to believe that we have no real control over our lives except for the occasional foray to the voting booth to select one guy or the other.
What my argument with my liberal friend on Facebook was really about is this fundamental difference in world view. She buys into the cynical notion of lots of greedy people causing all sorts of wrong and bad around the globe. She expects that as a result, we’re headed down the tubes. Because she expects it, she tolerates it. And we know where that tolerance leads to….
Having gone through a cycle of thinking much like that myself, and seeing my life go substantially downhill in the process, I eventually decided to no longer tolerate it. I’m here to enjoy life on this planet, not to suffer in a cycle of cynical misery and doom. You are here to enjoy life too. But you can only enjoy it if you raise your standards, and stop tolerating the mental junk from yourself.
Reducing your tolerance for the mental junk will have the massive side benefit of changing our politics as well. The negative attack ads will only stop when we, the people, stop tolerating them. The corruption will only stop when we stop tolerating it. Change yourself first if you want a change in the politics.
This electoral season, vote for yourself. Work on your own beliefs for what’s possible for you, and for what you tolerate and expect from the world. Use your creativity to come up with new solutions to the problems you see around you, rather than just expecting some politician to swoop in and fix it (they won’t).
Voting for yourself is much more work than going to the voting booth. However, it is far more rewarding. Voting for a politician won’t bring you any happiness or success. Voting for yourself can bring you both, and more.
Perhaps the most stark contrast between Europe and the US is the issue of quality vs quantity.
I recently returned from a 2 week sojurn in Europe, and was shocked the first time I went into a US grocery store. Shocked at the quantity of it all, and yet, amongst all that quantity, the difficulty of locating reasonably-priced quality foodstuff – like good meats and cheeses.
I’m not here to lambast the American way of life. There are many things I love about it. But one thing that I really hate about it is that we have gone down a path that’s not good for us. It doesn’t help us enjoy life, it’s not good for our environment, it’s not good for our kids: a focus on quantity rather than quality.
Everything is bigger in the US. From stores to streets to cars to houses.
Those things are perhaps ok being bigger (except for Humvee’s, which are just simply gross).
But there’s a more subtle and insidious “biggerness” that has crept into the American psyche, and that is the “biggerness” of our work.
I know way too many people that think working all the time is expected/good/normal.
It’s not.
Europeans don’t work all the time. They take vacations. They often take time off in the middle of the day.
Yes, perhaps their economies aren’t quite as “good” as the US one. But what does that really mean, after all?
Is the US economy really all that good, either? It’s not. It’s been languishing ever since 2008, and it will likely languish more.
It’s because we’ve lost sight of what’s important. Work is important, but “super sizing” our work is killing us… as individuals and as a society.
Two weeks off (max) at most jobs. That means 50 weeks per year devoted to work. Work becomes the whole identity. This is ridiculous! Work should not be one’s sole identity.
But a lot of people sacrifice family relationships, hobbies, and friends in the name of this supersized work.
It’s time to rethink what we’re doing with our careers. It’s time to understand that – just like good food – there’s a “right amount” – and if you go well beyond that amount into excess, it ends up being a negative thing rather than a positive thing.
Careers are not a place for excess. We need to “right-size” our careers to a more sustainable level – one that consumes some portion of our lives – but certainly not all of it.