Listen and be inspired.
Saturday 31 August 2013
Thursday 29 August 2013
How to Iterate to Awesomeness
OK, this 5 minute video is about business start-up, but it is also good advice about life in general. Take that first step and iterate to awesomeness.
Tuesday 27 August 2013
The God Debate
Dr Michael Shermer
"It's unfortunate that the creator of the universe wrote more than one holy book ".
"The only difference between me and believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods".
Saturday 24 August 2013
Levels of Consciousness
By Steve Pavlina
In the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, there’s a hierarchy of levels of human consciousness. It’s an interesting paradigm. If you read the book, it’s also fairly easy to figure out where you fall on this hierarchy based on your current life situation.
From low to high, the levels of consciousness are: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.
While we can pop in and out of different levels at various times, usually there’s a predominant “normal” state for us. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re at least at the level of courage because if you were at a lower level, you’d likely have no conscious interest in personal growth.
I’ll go over these levels in order, mostly focusing on the ones between courage and reason, since that’s the range where you’re most likely to land. The labels are Hawkins’. The descriptions of each level are based on Hawkins’ descriptions but blended with my own thoughts. Hawkins defines this as a logarithmic scale, so there are far fewer people at the higher levels than at the lower ones. An increase from one level to another will result in enormous change in your life.
Shame – Just a step above death. You’re probably contemplating suicide at this level. Either that or you’re a serial killer. Think of this as self-directed hatred.
Guilt – A step above shame, but you still may be having thoughts of suicide. You think of yourself as a sinner, unable to forgive yourself for past transgressions.
Apathy – Feeling hopeless or victimized. The state of learned helplessness. Many homeless people are stuck here.
Grief – A state of perpetual sadness and loss. You might drop down here after losing a loved one. Depression. Still higher than apathy, since you’re beginning to escape the numbness.
Fear – Seeing the world as dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia. Usually you’ll need help to rise above this level, or you’ll remain trapped for a long time, such as in an abusive relationship.
Desire – Not to be confused with setting and achieving goals, this is the level of addiction, craving, and lust — for money, approval, power, fame, etc. Consumerism. Materialism. This is the level of smoking and drinking and doing drugs.
Anger – the level of frustration, often from not having your desires met at the lower level. This level can spur you to action at higher levels, or it can keep you stuck in hatred. In an abusive relationship, you’ll often see an anger person coupled with a fear person.
Pride – The first level where you start to feel good, but it’s a false feeling. It’s dependent on external circumstances (money, prestige, etc), so it’s vulnerable. Pride can lead to nationalism, racism, and religious wars. Think Nazis. A state of irrational denial and defensiveness. Religious fundamentalism is also stuck at this level. You become so closely enmeshed in your beliefs that you see an attack on your beliefs as an attack on you.
Courage – This is where you start to see life as challenging and exciting instead of overwhelming. You begin to have an inkling of interest in personal growth, although at this level you’ll probably call it something else like skill-building, career advancement, education, etc. You start to see your future as an improvement upon your past, rather than a continuation of the same.
Neutrality – This level is epitomized by the phrase, “live and let live.” It’s flexible, relaxed, and unattached. Whatever happens, you roll with the punches. You don’t have anything to prove. You feel safe and get along well with other people. A lot of self-employed people are at this level. A very comfortable place. The level of complacency and laziness. You’re taking care of your needs, but you don’t push yourself too hard.
Willingness – Now that you’re basically safe and comfortable, you start using your energy more effectively. Just getting by isn’t good enough anymore. You begin caring about doing a good job — perhaps even your best. You think about time management and productivity and getting organized, things that weren’t so important to you at the level of neutrality. Think of this level as the development of willpower and self-discipline. These people are the “troopers” of society; they get things done well and don’t complain much. If you’re in school, then you’re a really good student; you take your studies seriously and put in the time to do a good job. This is the point where your consciousness becomes more organized and disciplined.
Acceptance – Now a powerful shift happens, and you awaken to the possibilities of living proactively. At the level of willingness you’ve become competent, and now you want to put your abilities to good use. This is the level of setting and achieving goals. I don’t like the label “acceptance” that Hawkins uses here, but it basically means that you begin accepting responsibility for your role in the world. If something isn’t right about your life (your career, your health, your relationship), you define your desired outcome and change it. You start to see the big picture of your life more clearly. This level drives many people to switch careers, start a new business, or change their diets.
Reason – At this level you transcend the emotional aspects of the lower levels and begin to think clearly and rationally. Hawkins defines this as the level of medicine and science. The way I see it, when you reach this level, you become capable of using your reasoning abilities to their fullest extent. You now have the discipline and the proactivity to fully exploit your natural abilities. You’ve reached the point where you say, “Wow. I can do all this stuff, and I know I must put it to good use. So what’s the best use of my talents?” You take a look around the world and start making meaningful contributions. At the very high end, this is the level of Einstein and Freud. It’s probably obvious that most people never reach this level in their entire lives.
Love – I don’t like Hawkins’ label “love” here because this isn’t the emotion of love. It’s unconditional love, a permanent understanding of your connectedness with all that exists. Think compassion. At the level of reason, you live in service to your head. But that eventually becomes a dead end where you fall into the trap of over-intellectualizing. You see that you need a bigger context than just thinking for its own sake. At the level of love, you now place your head and all your other talents and abilities in service to your heart (not your emotions, but your greater sense of right and wrong — your conscience). I see this as the level of awakening to your true purpose. Your motives at this level are pure and uncorrupted by the desires of the ego. This is the level of lifetime service to humanity. Think Gandhi or Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At this level you also begin to be guided by a force greater than yourself. It’s a feeling of letting go. Your intuition becomes extremely strong. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by 1 in 250 people during their entire lifetimes.
Joy – A state of pervasive, unshakable happiness. Eckhart Tolle describes this state in The Power of Now. The level of saints and advanced spiritual teachers. Just being around people at this level makes you feel incredible. At this level life is fully guided by synchronicity and intuition. There’s no more need to set goals and make detailed plans — the expansion of your consciousness allows you to operate at a much higher level. A near-death experience can temporarily bump you to this level.
Peace – Total transcendence. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by one person in 10 million.
Enlightenment – The highest level of human consciousness, where humanity blends with divinity. Extremely rare. The level of Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. Even just thinking about people at this level can raise your consciousness.
I think you’ll find this model worthy of reflection. Not only people but also objects, events, and whole societies can be ranked at these levels. Within your own life, you’ll see that some parts of your life are at different levels than others, but you should be able to identify your current overall level. You might be at the level of neutrality overall but still be addicted to smoking (level of desire). The lower levels you find within yourself will serve as a drag that holds the rest of you back. But you’ll also find higher levels in your life. You may be at the level of acceptance and read a book at the level of reason and feel really inspired. Think about the strongest influences in your life right now. Which ones raise your consciousness? Which ones lower it?
One thing I like about these levels of consciousness is that I can trace back over my own life and see how I’ve been moving through them. I remember being stuck at the level of guilt for a long time – as a child I was indoctrinated into a belief system where I was a helpless sinner, being judged according to the standards of someone at the level of love or higher. From there I graduated to the state of apathy, feeling numb to the whole thing. By high school I had reached the level of pride — I was a straight-A student, captain of the Academic Decathlon team, showered with accolades and awards, but I became dependent on them. I hit the level of Courage in my late teens, but the courage was very unfocused, and I overdid it and got myself into all sorts of trouble. I then spent about a year in neutrality and moved through willingness and acceptance during my 20s with a lot of conscious effort. At present I’m at the level of reason and getting closer and closer to completing the leap to love. I experience the state of love more and more often, and it’s guiding many of my decisions already, but it hasn’t yet stuck as my natural state. I’ve also experienced the state of joy for days at a time, but never with any permanence yet. That state is a pervasive feeling of natural euphoria, as if I’m exploding on the inside with positive energy. It literally forces me to smile. I’ve been in that state for most of this morning, probably because I haven’t eaten anything yet today (I find it easier to hit that state of consciousness when I eat lightly or not at all).
We’ll naturally fluctuate between multiple states throughout the course of any given week, so you’ll probably see a range of 3-4 levels where you spend most of your time. One way to figure out your “natural” state is to think about how you perform under pressure. If you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice because that’s what’s inside. What comes out of you when you get squeezed by external events? Do you become paranoid and shut down (fear)? Do you start yelling at people (anger)? Do you become defensive (pride)? What happens to me under pressure is that I become hyper-analytical, but recently I just had a pressure situation where I handled it mostly by intuition, which was a big change for me. This tells me I’m getting close to the unconditional love state because in that state, intuition can be effectively accessed even under pressure.
Everything in your environment will have an effect on your level of consciousness. TV. Movies. Books. Web sites. People. Places. Objects. Food. If you’re at the level of reason, watching TV news (which is predominantly at the levels of fear and desire) will temporarily lower your consciousness. If you’re at the level of guilt, TV news will actually raise it up.
Progressing from one level to the next requires an enormous amount of energy. I wrote about this previously when discussing quantum leaps. Without conscious effort or the help of others, you’ll likely just stay at your current level until some outside force comes into your life.
Notice the natural progression of levels, and consider what happens when you try to short-cut the process. If you try to reach the level of reason before mastering self-discipline (willingness) and goal-setting (acceptance), you’ll be too disorganized and unfocused to use your mind to its full extent. If you try to push yourself to the level of love before you’ve mastered reason, you’ll suffer from gullibility and may end up in a cult.
Going up even one level can be extremely hard; most people don’t do so in their entire lives. A change in just one level can radically alter everything in your life. This is why people below the level of courage aren’t likely to progress without external help. Courage is required to work on this consciously; it comes down to repeatedly betting your whole reality for the chance to become more conscious and aware. But whenever you reach that next level, you realize clearly that it was a good bet. For example, when you hit the level of courage, all your past fears and false pride seem silly to you now. When you reach the level of acceptance (setting and achieving goals), you look back on the level of willingness and see you were like a mouse running on a treadmill — you were a good runner, but you didn’t pick a direction.
I think the most important work we can do as human beings is to raise our individual level of consciousness. When we do this, we spread higher levels of consciousness to everyone around us. Imagine what an incredible world this would be if we could at least get everyone to the level of acceptance. According to Hawkins 85% of the people on earth live below the level of courage.
When you temporarily experience the higher levels, you can see where you must go next. You have one of those moments of clarity where you understand that things have to change. But when you sink into the lower levels, that memory becomes clouded.
We have to keep consciously taking ourselves back to the sources that can help us complete the next leap. Each step requires different solutions. I recall when making the shift from neutrality to willingness, I listened to time management tapes almost every day. I immersed myself in sources created by people at the level of willingness until I eventually shifted. But a book on time management will be of little use to someone who’s at the level of pride; they’ll reject the very notion with a lot of defensiveness. And time management is meaningless to someone at the level of peace. But you can’t hit the higher levels if you haven’t mastered the basics first. Jesus was a carpenter. Gandhi was a lawyer. Buddha was a prince. We all have to start somewhere.
Look at this hierarchy with an open mind and see if it leads you to new insights that may help you take the next leap in your own life. No levels are any more right or wrong than others. Try not to get your ego wrapped up in the idea of being at any particular level, unless you’re currently at the level of pride of course
www.stevepavlina.com
In the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, there’s a hierarchy of levels of human consciousness. It’s an interesting paradigm. If you read the book, it’s also fairly easy to figure out where you fall on this hierarchy based on your current life situation.
From low to high, the levels of consciousness are: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.
While we can pop in and out of different levels at various times, usually there’s a predominant “normal” state for us. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re at least at the level of courage because if you were at a lower level, you’d likely have no conscious interest in personal growth.
I’ll go over these levels in order, mostly focusing on the ones between courage and reason, since that’s the range where you’re most likely to land. The labels are Hawkins’. The descriptions of each level are based on Hawkins’ descriptions but blended with my own thoughts. Hawkins defines this as a logarithmic scale, so there are far fewer people at the higher levels than at the lower ones. An increase from one level to another will result in enormous change in your life.
Shame – Just a step above death. You’re probably contemplating suicide at this level. Either that or you’re a serial killer. Think of this as self-directed hatred.
Guilt – A step above shame, but you still may be having thoughts of suicide. You think of yourself as a sinner, unable to forgive yourself for past transgressions.
Apathy – Feeling hopeless or victimized. The state of learned helplessness. Many homeless people are stuck here.
Grief – A state of perpetual sadness and loss. You might drop down here after losing a loved one. Depression. Still higher than apathy, since you’re beginning to escape the numbness.
Fear – Seeing the world as dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia. Usually you’ll need help to rise above this level, or you’ll remain trapped for a long time, such as in an abusive relationship.
Desire – Not to be confused with setting and achieving goals, this is the level of addiction, craving, and lust — for money, approval, power, fame, etc. Consumerism. Materialism. This is the level of smoking and drinking and doing drugs.
Anger – the level of frustration, often from not having your desires met at the lower level. This level can spur you to action at higher levels, or it can keep you stuck in hatred. In an abusive relationship, you’ll often see an anger person coupled with a fear person.
Pride – The first level where you start to feel good, but it’s a false feeling. It’s dependent on external circumstances (money, prestige, etc), so it’s vulnerable. Pride can lead to nationalism, racism, and religious wars. Think Nazis. A state of irrational denial and defensiveness. Religious fundamentalism is also stuck at this level. You become so closely enmeshed in your beliefs that you see an attack on your beliefs as an attack on you.
Courage – This is where you start to see life as challenging and exciting instead of overwhelming. You begin to have an inkling of interest in personal growth, although at this level you’ll probably call it something else like skill-building, career advancement, education, etc. You start to see your future as an improvement upon your past, rather than a continuation of the same.
Neutrality – This level is epitomized by the phrase, “live and let live.” It’s flexible, relaxed, and unattached. Whatever happens, you roll with the punches. You don’t have anything to prove. You feel safe and get along well with other people. A lot of self-employed people are at this level. A very comfortable place. The level of complacency and laziness. You’re taking care of your needs, but you don’t push yourself too hard.
Willingness – Now that you’re basically safe and comfortable, you start using your energy more effectively. Just getting by isn’t good enough anymore. You begin caring about doing a good job — perhaps even your best. You think about time management and productivity and getting organized, things that weren’t so important to you at the level of neutrality. Think of this level as the development of willpower and self-discipline. These people are the “troopers” of society; they get things done well and don’t complain much. If you’re in school, then you’re a really good student; you take your studies seriously and put in the time to do a good job. This is the point where your consciousness becomes more organized and disciplined.
Acceptance – Now a powerful shift happens, and you awaken to the possibilities of living proactively. At the level of willingness you’ve become competent, and now you want to put your abilities to good use. This is the level of setting and achieving goals. I don’t like the label “acceptance” that Hawkins uses here, but it basically means that you begin accepting responsibility for your role in the world. If something isn’t right about your life (your career, your health, your relationship), you define your desired outcome and change it. You start to see the big picture of your life more clearly. This level drives many people to switch careers, start a new business, or change their diets.
Reason – At this level you transcend the emotional aspects of the lower levels and begin to think clearly and rationally. Hawkins defines this as the level of medicine and science. The way I see it, when you reach this level, you become capable of using your reasoning abilities to their fullest extent. You now have the discipline and the proactivity to fully exploit your natural abilities. You’ve reached the point where you say, “Wow. I can do all this stuff, and I know I must put it to good use. So what’s the best use of my talents?” You take a look around the world and start making meaningful contributions. At the very high end, this is the level of Einstein and Freud. It’s probably obvious that most people never reach this level in their entire lives.
Love – I don’t like Hawkins’ label “love” here because this isn’t the emotion of love. It’s unconditional love, a permanent understanding of your connectedness with all that exists. Think compassion. At the level of reason, you live in service to your head. But that eventually becomes a dead end where you fall into the trap of over-intellectualizing. You see that you need a bigger context than just thinking for its own sake. At the level of love, you now place your head and all your other talents and abilities in service to your heart (not your emotions, but your greater sense of right and wrong — your conscience). I see this as the level of awakening to your true purpose. Your motives at this level are pure and uncorrupted by the desires of the ego. This is the level of lifetime service to humanity. Think Gandhi or Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At this level you also begin to be guided by a force greater than yourself. It’s a feeling of letting go. Your intuition becomes extremely strong. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by 1 in 250 people during their entire lifetimes.
Joy – A state of pervasive, unshakable happiness. Eckhart Tolle describes this state in The Power of Now. The level of saints and advanced spiritual teachers. Just being around people at this level makes you feel incredible. At this level life is fully guided by synchronicity and intuition. There’s no more need to set goals and make detailed plans — the expansion of your consciousness allows you to operate at a much higher level. A near-death experience can temporarily bump you to this level.
Peace – Total transcendence. Hawkins claims this level is reached only by one person in 10 million.
Enlightenment – The highest level of human consciousness, where humanity blends with divinity. Extremely rare. The level of Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. Even just thinking about people at this level can raise your consciousness.
I think you’ll find this model worthy of reflection. Not only people but also objects, events, and whole societies can be ranked at these levels. Within your own life, you’ll see that some parts of your life are at different levels than others, but you should be able to identify your current overall level. You might be at the level of neutrality overall but still be addicted to smoking (level of desire). The lower levels you find within yourself will serve as a drag that holds the rest of you back. But you’ll also find higher levels in your life. You may be at the level of acceptance and read a book at the level of reason and feel really inspired. Think about the strongest influences in your life right now. Which ones raise your consciousness? Which ones lower it?
One thing I like about these levels of consciousness is that I can trace back over my own life and see how I’ve been moving through them. I remember being stuck at the level of guilt for a long time – as a child I was indoctrinated into a belief system where I was a helpless sinner, being judged according to the standards of someone at the level of love or higher. From there I graduated to the state of apathy, feeling numb to the whole thing. By high school I had reached the level of pride — I was a straight-A student, captain of the Academic Decathlon team, showered with accolades and awards, but I became dependent on them. I hit the level of Courage in my late teens, but the courage was very unfocused, and I overdid it and got myself into all sorts of trouble. I then spent about a year in neutrality and moved through willingness and acceptance during my 20s with a lot of conscious effort. At present I’m at the level of reason and getting closer and closer to completing the leap to love. I experience the state of love more and more often, and it’s guiding many of my decisions already, but it hasn’t yet stuck as my natural state. I’ve also experienced the state of joy for days at a time, but never with any permanence yet. That state is a pervasive feeling of natural euphoria, as if I’m exploding on the inside with positive energy. It literally forces me to smile. I’ve been in that state for most of this morning, probably because I haven’t eaten anything yet today (I find it easier to hit that state of consciousness when I eat lightly or not at all).
We’ll naturally fluctuate between multiple states throughout the course of any given week, so you’ll probably see a range of 3-4 levels where you spend most of your time. One way to figure out your “natural” state is to think about how you perform under pressure. If you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice because that’s what’s inside. What comes out of you when you get squeezed by external events? Do you become paranoid and shut down (fear)? Do you start yelling at people (anger)? Do you become defensive (pride)? What happens to me under pressure is that I become hyper-analytical, but recently I just had a pressure situation where I handled it mostly by intuition, which was a big change for me. This tells me I’m getting close to the unconditional love state because in that state, intuition can be effectively accessed even under pressure.
Everything in your environment will have an effect on your level of consciousness. TV. Movies. Books. Web sites. People. Places. Objects. Food. If you’re at the level of reason, watching TV news (which is predominantly at the levels of fear and desire) will temporarily lower your consciousness. If you’re at the level of guilt, TV news will actually raise it up.
Progressing from one level to the next requires an enormous amount of energy. I wrote about this previously when discussing quantum leaps. Without conscious effort or the help of others, you’ll likely just stay at your current level until some outside force comes into your life.
Notice the natural progression of levels, and consider what happens when you try to short-cut the process. If you try to reach the level of reason before mastering self-discipline (willingness) and goal-setting (acceptance), you’ll be too disorganized and unfocused to use your mind to its full extent. If you try to push yourself to the level of love before you’ve mastered reason, you’ll suffer from gullibility and may end up in a cult.
Going up even one level can be extremely hard; most people don’t do so in their entire lives. A change in just one level can radically alter everything in your life. This is why people below the level of courage aren’t likely to progress without external help. Courage is required to work on this consciously; it comes down to repeatedly betting your whole reality for the chance to become more conscious and aware. But whenever you reach that next level, you realize clearly that it was a good bet. For example, when you hit the level of courage, all your past fears and false pride seem silly to you now. When you reach the level of acceptance (setting and achieving goals), you look back on the level of willingness and see you were like a mouse running on a treadmill — you were a good runner, but you didn’t pick a direction.
I think the most important work we can do as human beings is to raise our individual level of consciousness. When we do this, we spread higher levels of consciousness to everyone around us. Imagine what an incredible world this would be if we could at least get everyone to the level of acceptance. According to Hawkins 85% of the people on earth live below the level of courage.
When you temporarily experience the higher levels, you can see where you must go next. You have one of those moments of clarity where you understand that things have to change. But when you sink into the lower levels, that memory becomes clouded.
We have to keep consciously taking ourselves back to the sources that can help us complete the next leap. Each step requires different solutions. I recall when making the shift from neutrality to willingness, I listened to time management tapes almost every day. I immersed myself in sources created by people at the level of willingness until I eventually shifted. But a book on time management will be of little use to someone who’s at the level of pride; they’ll reject the very notion with a lot of defensiveness. And time management is meaningless to someone at the level of peace. But you can’t hit the higher levels if you haven’t mastered the basics first. Jesus was a carpenter. Gandhi was a lawyer. Buddha was a prince. We all have to start somewhere.
Look at this hierarchy with an open mind and see if it leads you to new insights that may help you take the next leap in your own life. No levels are any more right or wrong than others. Try not to get your ego wrapped up in the idea of being at any particular level, unless you’re currently at the level of pride of course
www.stevepavlina.com
Thursday 22 August 2013
Making a Quantum Leap
By Steve Pavlina
Since 1992, I’ve been pursuing personal growth with a passion. I’ve attended seminars, listened to audio programs, and read hundreds of books in this field. I’ve easily spent many thousands of dollars and invested thousands of hours on such pursuits. And one thing I can tell you from all of this effort is that personal growth is very, very hard.
Many books, audio programs, and self-help gurus promote the quick fix mentality. Read this book and all your time management problems will vanish. Attend this seminar and you’ll be the next self-made millionaire. This kind of marketing is unfortunate because most people who buy these products will achieve only modest results with them. Then disappointment and disillusionment set in. Some people feel they must be defective if they can’t meet such unrealistic expectations. Maybe I have a genetic predisposition to being lazy. Others conclude the whole personal development field itself is just a sham. [Insert guru name here] is only in it for the money — none of his/her ideas really work.
I’ll say it again. Personal growth is very, very hard. If you think you can read one book or article on time management and instantly erase procrastination and disorder from your life forever, that’s an extremely unrealistic expectation. While a single book can potentially lead you to a big change, most won’t. When you experience a big change in your life, it’s probably the result of a long chain of events, of which reading a particular book was only a small but perhaps critical part.
Personal growth experiences often occur in the form of a quantum leap — a strong and radical shift from one mindset to another. There may be a number of small steps leading up to that leap, but at some point there is a big change, and it happens in an instant. You go to work and suddenly realize you’re going to quit your job; even before you tell your boss, you know you’re certain and that there’s no going back. You decide to ask your boyfriend or girlfriend to marry you after you’ve been together for years. You decide you’re done smoking, and you quit for life. These decisions can happen in a mere second – a moment of clarity suddenly hits you, and you know what you have to do. A quantum leap occurs, and from that moment on, you’re never the same again. Some of these leaps appear more gradual than others, but virtually all of them can be traced back to a moment of decision. At some point you made a decision to change. And even before you manifest this change in your physical reality, you immediately know you’re not the same anymore.
It’s rare that reading a single book will produce a quantum leap. Quantum leaps require a large amount of consistent input and energy. When you decide to quit your job or break off your relationship or move to a new city, it may be the result of months or years of dissatisfaction. It may also occur after lots of time spent thinking positively about what life will be like after the shift. Both positive and negative factors can help generate a quantum leap.
Most of the time when people pursue personal growth, they simply don’t invest enough time and energy in a consistent direction to achieve a quantum leap. Maybe you’ve read a book on getting organized, and while you were reading it, the positive energy you experienced moved you closer to making a leap. You felt fairly certain at the time that this was going to work. But then you finished the book (or got sidetracked and didn’t finish it), and the impact of the book gradually faded. You never reached the quantum leap that allowed you to break through to a new level of order in your life. Over a period of days or weeks, your old pattern reasserted itself. Sound familiar?
But it wasn’t the book or the ideas themselves that failed you. The problem was that you didn’t invest enough sustained energy in the same direction to achieve the quantum leap. You never reached the point of no return. Reading a single book was only a small, short-term nudge, albeit in the right direction.
In order for a rocket launched from earth to reach outer space, the rocket must exert a sufficient amount of sustained force to overcome the earth’s gravity. If the rocket’s engines cut out prematurely, the rocket will crash back to earth. Just as it can take a massive amount of sustained force to put a rocket into orbit, recognize that there are certain areas of your life where you may need a large force to knock you into a higher state. Small efforts over a long period of time may do absolutely nothing for you. You can read one time management book a year and be no better at your managing your time.
So what does work? How do you achieve a quantum leap? You need to exert some effort in a particular direction where you want to grow, and you need to consistently sustain it until you achieve a quantum leap. If you stop short, you’ll likely fall right back to where you started. So first of all, if you’re going to target a new quantum leap, you need to commit to sustaining that effort until you hit the leap.
This is why I say personal growth is very hard. Effecting a quantum leap is tough work. It requires a strong force of sustained effort, and you can’t let up until you hit the leap. If you get sidetracked for too long, you have to start over again.
But the bright side is that after you make the leap, you can rest for a bit. You’ve reached a higher state, and you’re going to stay there by default, just as a satellite in orbit will remain in orbit. Sure the orbit may slowly decay, but if that happens it will be over a long period of time, and only a minimal investment of energy is needed to adjust course and sustain your new orbit indefinitely. Quitting smoking may be very difficult. But if you’ve been a nonsmoker for years, it doesn’t take nearly as much effort to remain a nonsmoker; you may need to make some adjustments along the way, but they’ll be minor required to the initial energy required to quit.
Suppose you want to lose weight. You read a book on weight loss and get motivated to lose weight. You join a gym and start working out. After a few weeks, you’ve lost five pounds. But you get busy with work and gradually stop going to the gym. Crash! You gain all the weight back plus a couple more pounds. A few months later you try again. You get inspired and buy some new exercise equipment. Again you use it for several weeks and lose some weight, and again something takes you away from this habit and you gain all the weight back. The next year you join a weight loss organization, adopt their diet plan, and start going to weekly meetings. But after a dozen sessions, you drift again and gain back all the weight you lost. You’ve invested a lot of time, money, and energy into this goal, but it wasn’t enough to hit a quantum leap.
So how would you pursue such a goal as a quantum leaper?
The exact manner of pursuing this goal is up to you of course. But here are some ideas that will help you achieve a quantum leap:
- Immerse yourself in your goal. Get clear on your exact goal, and write it down in your own words. Post your goal somewhere you’ll see it every day; I often use the text of my goals as screen savers or write them on my marker board.
- Educate yourself on what it will take to achieve your goal. And I mean really educate yourself to the point where you become an expert. Keep pouring knowledge into your head until you succeed — continuously. Don’t just read one book on the subject. Read 10. Then read 10 more. Then 10 more. Listen to audio programs. Talk to experts. Never let up on your self-education.
- Alter your environment to support the achievement of your goal. This subject was already explored in a previous entry.
- Consciously change the people you spend the most time with such that your goal is supported by those around you. For details read this entry.
One reason people fail to achieve a quantum leap is that they make only a meager effort in these four areas. They don’t get really clear about what they want and keep their goals in their face every day. They invest only a few hours in education instead of several hundred. They maintain an environment that fails to reinforce their new identity. And they continue to cling to people who hold them back. Year after year they remain stuck in unfulfilling careers, unhealthy bodies, stagnant relationships, and incongruent belief systems.
In my own life, I’ve experienced many of these leaps:
- employee -> independent contractor -> retail game developer -> shareware game developer -> game publisher -> speaker/writer (in progress)
- SAD (Standard American Diet) -> vegetarian -> vegan (with some branches going into raw foodism, alkalarian diets, whole foods, and macrobiotics)
- single -> dating -> living together -> engaged -> married -> father of one -> father of two
- Catholicism -> atheism -> agnosticism -> various new agey stuff -> ? -> Buddhism -> ? -> Bajoran wormhole aliens -> ? -> objectivism -> ? -> ? (the ?s are belief systems that can’t really be labeled)
- None of these shifts happened by accident; each leap was a consciously chosen step… well… all except “father of two” — whoops!
If I’d never experienced any of these quantum leaps, I’d be an employed Catholic bachelor who eats the standard American diet. And that’s not necessarily any “better” or “worse” than my current situation (OK, the diet part is a lot better). I don’t think in terms of trying to reach some kind of final destination though. What’s important to me is experiencing the path itself: having been single AND married AND a father, having experienced lots of different belief systems, having worked in a business AND having owned one. In some areas there’s a logical progression; for example, I keep shifting careers to those that give me more and more freedom and which increase my ability to contribute. But in other areas, I find the most growth by experiencing a lot of different perspectives in no particular order, such as in my spiritual growth pursuits.
Yes it’s a lot of hard work to achieve a quantum leap in any of these areas, but I think the alternative of stagnation is worse. You can pursue the quick fix methodology and fall flat on your face over and over. Or you can accept that the change you want is going to be hard and that it may take years to achieve, but it will be worth it. And best of all, once you’ve gone through a few quantum leaps, you may learn to enjoy the process of building up to the next one. It’s deeply satisfying to look back on your previous state of being and see how much you’ve grown.
Tuesday 20 August 2013
Saturday 17 August 2013
The Tree of All Knowledge
By James Kyle
ADAM: I’ve got something really amazing to tell you. I was sitting under the tree of knowledge of good and evil ... and an apple fell on my head. (Holds up apple)
EVE: Well, that is amazing.
ADAM: Wait, wait, I haven't finished yet. You see it made me think about why things always fall down and never up. (Drops apple from one hand to another) It made me realise that matter must attract matter and this resulting force, let’s call it gravity, not only explains why the apple falls towards the earth but also, and you’ll be really impressed by this, explains why the moon orbits the earth. And that’s not all, because I then realised my new theory of gravity was merely a description of what is - it said nothing about the mechanism that brings this about. So it got me thinking that to really explain all this we would need to hypothesise a massive subatomic particle with zero electric charge whose existence would underpin the origin of mass in the universe. Let’s call it the Higgs boson particle. And this particle would explain the difference between the massless photon, which mediates electromagnetism, and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. What do you think?
EVE: It looks really tasty.
ADAM: What?
EVE: The apple looks delicious. (Reaches out for apple)
ADAM: (Holding apple away from Eve) Wait a minute - what planet are you on? It’s an apple.
EVE: So?
ADAM: He has forbidden us from eating the fruit of the apple tree. Remember?
EVE: Oh yeah – I keep forgetting he made us agree to that silly rule.
ADAM: Forgetting! It’s the only rule there is: don’t eat the fruit of the big tree that stands right in the middle of the garden. How can you forget the one rule we have to remember?
EVE: Because it’s a silly rule – and arbitrary. Why not a rule that says: don’t brush your teeth on a Tuesday.
ADAM: Tuesday?
EVE: Yeah, Tuesday, remember we agreed it would be the day after Monday.
ADAM: Oh right.
EVE: See, it’s easy to forget stuff.
ADAM: Fine, but not eating the apples is important. OK?
EVE: OK, I got it.
ADAM: I have to admit, I do wonder what he does with all those apples.
EVE: All those nice cider apples?
ADAM: Ah. OK. .... anyway, what about my idea of gravity?
EVE: That you’ve realised that things fall down?
ADAM: Yeah.
EVE: I suppose it may be of some significance.
ADAM: (brightly) Yeah?
EVE: It just might help a bit.
ADAM: (puzzled) Help?
EVE: Yes, when you finally get round to building a swing for the kids. But obviously right now obsessing about falling apples is higher on your priority list.
ADAM: I am not obsessing. I am … theorising.
EVE: And why do you want to theorise?
ADAM: To advance our understanding of our world of course. I am sure that at the heart of our universe there is a deep truth that underpins our existence and the structure of the world around us.
EVE: OK, but why theorise – why not just ask him?
ADAM: Oh, he’s not talking to me at the moment.
EVE: Why’s that?
ADAM: I was discussing my latest thoughts on quantum mechanics with him and how it is obvious that probability is inherent in the fundamental structure of the universe – and he just stormed off saying “I do not play dice”. That was 10 days ago and I haven’t seen him since.
EVE: So that was why he didn’t show up for Sunday lunch.
ADAM: I guess so. I hope it’s not as bad as the time I brought up the big bang theory.
EVE: Oh god, yeah, I remember that, we didn’t see him for weeks.
ADAM: Actually this time I think he’s just a bit embarrassed.
EVE: Why?
ADAM: Because I think the truth is he’s always playing dice and doesn’t want to admit it.
EVE: Oh - a bit of a gambling problem?
ADAM: Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.
EVE: So there you go - there’s your deep truth.
ADAM: What’s that?
EVE: The universe’s creator is a gambling addict who has a fondness for more than the odd glass of cider.
ADAM: Eh, right.
EVE: Good – and now we’ve sorted that out– when do you start on the swing?
ADAM: I’ve got something really amazing to tell you. I was sitting under the tree of knowledge of good and evil ... and an apple fell on my head. (Holds up apple)
EVE: Well, that is amazing.
ADAM: Wait, wait, I haven't finished yet. You see it made me think about why things always fall down and never up. (Drops apple from one hand to another) It made me realise that matter must attract matter and this resulting force, let’s call it gravity, not only explains why the apple falls towards the earth but also, and you’ll be really impressed by this, explains why the moon orbits the earth. And that’s not all, because I then realised my new theory of gravity was merely a description of what is - it said nothing about the mechanism that brings this about. So it got me thinking that to really explain all this we would need to hypothesise a massive subatomic particle with zero electric charge whose existence would underpin the origin of mass in the universe. Let’s call it the Higgs boson particle. And this particle would explain the difference between the massless photon, which mediates electromagnetism, and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. What do you think?
EVE: It looks really tasty.
ADAM: What?
EVE: The apple looks delicious. (Reaches out for apple)
ADAM: (Holding apple away from Eve) Wait a minute - what planet are you on? It’s an apple.
EVE: So?
ADAM: He has forbidden us from eating the fruit of the apple tree. Remember?
EVE: Oh yeah – I keep forgetting he made us agree to that silly rule.
ADAM: Forgetting! It’s the only rule there is: don’t eat the fruit of the big tree that stands right in the middle of the garden. How can you forget the one rule we have to remember?
EVE: Because it’s a silly rule – and arbitrary. Why not a rule that says: don’t brush your teeth on a Tuesday.
ADAM: Tuesday?
EVE: Yeah, Tuesday, remember we agreed it would be the day after Monday.
ADAM: Oh right.
EVE: See, it’s easy to forget stuff.
ADAM: Fine, but not eating the apples is important. OK?
EVE: OK, I got it.
ADAM: I have to admit, I do wonder what he does with all those apples.
EVE: All those nice cider apples?
ADAM: Ah. OK. .... anyway, what about my idea of gravity?
EVE: That you’ve realised that things fall down?
ADAM: Yeah.
EVE: I suppose it may be of some significance.
ADAM: (brightly) Yeah?
EVE: It just might help a bit.
ADAM: (puzzled) Help?
EVE: Yes, when you finally get round to building a swing for the kids. But obviously right now obsessing about falling apples is higher on your priority list.
ADAM: I am not obsessing. I am … theorising.
EVE: And why do you want to theorise?
ADAM: To advance our understanding of our world of course. I am sure that at the heart of our universe there is a deep truth that underpins our existence and the structure of the world around us.
EVE: OK, but why theorise – why not just ask him?
ADAM: Oh, he’s not talking to me at the moment.
EVE: Why’s that?
ADAM: I was discussing my latest thoughts on quantum mechanics with him and how it is obvious that probability is inherent in the fundamental structure of the universe – and he just stormed off saying “I do not play dice”. That was 10 days ago and I haven’t seen him since.
EVE: So that was why he didn’t show up for Sunday lunch.
ADAM: I guess so. I hope it’s not as bad as the time I brought up the big bang theory.
EVE: Oh god, yeah, I remember that, we didn’t see him for weeks.
ADAM: Actually this time I think he’s just a bit embarrassed.
EVE: Why?
ADAM: Because I think the truth is he’s always playing dice and doesn’t want to admit it.
EVE: Oh - a bit of a gambling problem?
ADAM: Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.
EVE: So there you go - there’s your deep truth.
ADAM: What’s that?
EVE: The universe’s creator is a gambling addict who has a fondness for more than the odd glass of cider.
ADAM: Eh, right.
EVE: Good – and now we’ve sorted that out– when do you start on the swing?
Thursday 15 August 2013
How to Work a Crowd
Not comfortable in a room full of strangers? If so you might want to watch this informative 5 minute video delightfully presented.
Tuesday 13 August 2013
Studying the Brain in Love
Helen Fisher: "I and my colleagues Art Aron and Lucy Brown and others, have put 37 people who are madly in love into a functional MRI brain scanner. 17 who were happily in love, 15 who had just been dumped, and we're just starting our third experiment: studying people who report that they're still in love after 10 to 25 years of marriage"
Watch this fascinating 16 minute video to find out about the reality of romantic love
Saturday 10 August 2013
Committing to clear intentions
By James Kyle
I have learned many different life skills from attending various seminars, such as Insight, over the years. For me, certainly one of the most key concepts was learning when to make things important.
One aspect of this is having clear intentions. As Steve Pavlina says:
Hold your breath and put your head underwater. Notice that a clear intention begins to form within a matter of seconds.
Now take a nice big bite of a habanero pepper and begin chewing it. Again, notice that a clear intention forms within seconds.
When you are sick, notice that you gain clarity in your health intentions. When you lose your job, notice that your financial intentions become clearer.
If you want to bring more clarity to your intentions, get off the sidelines of life, and get onto the field. The field is scarier. The sidelines are safer.
Without clear intentions you will not have clear objectives and the path to achieving your goals will lose focus. So make it a priority to have clear intentions. Do you want to increase your income? Have a clear intention to do so. Do you want to have a more meaningful life? Have a clear intention to do so. Do you want to improve your relationship? Have a clear intention to do so.
In terms of relationships, as well as making intentions important, another lesson I learned was how crucial it was to make keeping commitments important. Breaking commitments sabotages relationships through destroying trust. So even if it was a promise to your partner to walk the dog, if you find you "can't be bothered", think again. Constant breaking of little agreements erodes trust with the consequence that those in relationship with you start to question the value of the relationship. Make it important because it is important.
Finally for those that live in the UK you might like to know that the first Insight seminar for several years is happening in London later in the year. Details can be found here.
I have learned many different life skills from attending various seminars, such as Insight, over the years. For me, certainly one of the most key concepts was learning when to make things important.
One aspect of this is having clear intentions. As Steve Pavlina says:
Hold your breath and put your head underwater. Notice that a clear intention begins to form within a matter of seconds.
Now take a nice big bite of a habanero pepper and begin chewing it. Again, notice that a clear intention forms within seconds.
When you are sick, notice that you gain clarity in your health intentions. When you lose your job, notice that your financial intentions become clearer.
If you want to bring more clarity to your intentions, get off the sidelines of life, and get onto the field. The field is scarier. The sidelines are safer.
Without clear intentions you will not have clear objectives and the path to achieving your goals will lose focus. So make it a priority to have clear intentions. Do you want to increase your income? Have a clear intention to do so. Do you want to have a more meaningful life? Have a clear intention to do so. Do you want to improve your relationship? Have a clear intention to do so.
In terms of relationships, as well as making intentions important, another lesson I learned was how crucial it was to make keeping commitments important. Breaking commitments sabotages relationships through destroying trust. So even if it was a promise to your partner to walk the dog, if you find you "can't be bothered", think again. Constant breaking of little agreements erodes trust with the consequence that those in relationship with you start to question the value of the relationship. Make it important because it is important.
As I was preparing this post, in a very timely comment on a previous post, Malcolm Ross on LinkedIn drew my attention to "Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance" by Dr Jason Selk. Looking at the reviews on Amazon it is certainly one to add to the reading list. With a bearing on the ideas in this post, notable extracts from the reader's comments include the fact that the book discusses "Relentless Solution Focus" and also contains a very apropos Jack Nicklaus quote: "I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in focus picture of it in my head."
Finally for those that live in the UK you might like to know that the first Insight seminar for several years is happening in London later in the year. Details can be found here.
Thursday 8 August 2013
Getting things done using the Pomodoro Technique
Tuesday 6 August 2013
Listening to Shame
Commenting on this post, Shame about the Guilt Trip, Áinne Burke on LinkedIn drew my attention to the video below.
Brené Brown: "There's a huge difference between shame and guilt. And here's what you need to know. Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders. And here's what you even need to know more. Guilt, inversely correlated with those things. The ability to hold something we've done or failed to do up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive. It's uncomfortable, but it's adaptive".
Watch this 20 minute video for this, and more fascinating insights.
Saturday 3 August 2013
The Dying: Not Just Patients, But Teachers
There is a useful thought experiment that we should all perform every now and again called the rocking chair test. The idea is to think of yourself, much older than you are now, sitting in your rocking chair on the porch reflecting on your life and considering what you could have done better and what are your regrets. The idea, of course, is to determine to take the necessary action steps now so that you don't have these regrets later in life.
The video clip below of Danielle Zeder really brings this into focus. As she says, 'When people hear I enjoy Hospice nursing, they say "Oh my God, how can you do that, it's so depressing!" Actually, it is the complete opposite. People faced with their own mortality are usually the most insightful life teachers. Who better to absorb life's valuable lessons from than those who are facing the end of their own journey?'
This video is about five minutes long.
Thursday 1 August 2013
Communication breakdown
By James Kyle
I recently shared this quote in this post: "The work we do on ourselves, whether it's psychological, or spiritual, is not meant to get rid of the waves in the ocean of life, but for us to learn how to surf". Ken Wilber
And while I am getting better at this metaphorical surfing, I still find myself falling off all too often. Recently I have had a few occasions where life has reminded me once more how disempowering judgment is and how damaging this can be to relationships. The trick is of course is not to exacerbate the situation by going into self judgment about this, but simply learn the lesson, and move on.
Communication breakdown
Mood and tongue dissent
Frameworks contrive against each other
Meaning is lost in understanding
Meaning is found in differences
Communication breakdown
Hurt and wounds multiply
Words are barbed and hooked
Senses are confused by offerings
Mismatched by actions in deed
Communication breakdown
Withdrawal becomes attack
No words become communication
Blame is now the victor
Intimacy is now the cost
Communication break
I recently shared this quote in this post: "The work we do on ourselves, whether it's psychological, or spiritual, is not meant to get rid of the waves in the ocean of life, but for us to learn how to surf". Ken Wilber
And while I am getting better at this metaphorical surfing, I still find myself falling off all too often. Recently I have had a few occasions where life has reminded me once more how disempowering judgment is and how damaging this can be to relationships. The trick is of course is not to exacerbate the situation by going into self judgment about this, but simply learn the lesson, and move on.
Communication breakdown
Mood and tongue dissent
Frameworks contrive against each other
Meaning is lost in understanding
Meaning is found in differences
Communication breakdown
Hurt and wounds multiply
Words are barbed and hooked
Senses are confused by offerings
Mismatched by actions in deed
Communication breakdown
Withdrawal becomes attack
No words become communication
Blame is now the victor
Intimacy is now the cost
Communication break
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