You – Own it.

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Josh

The character “Taylor” (played by John P. Whitecloud – who was awesome!) in the movie Poltergeist 2 tells “Steve” (Craig T. Nelson), when Steve is losing his mind because his family has been overrun by evil spirits…AGAIN…that he must take responsibility…

Taylor – You understand me, no matter how much you want to feel sorry for yourself. That is the path you have chosen to take, whether you know it or not. YOU should assume full responsibility.
Steve – RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT!
Taylor – Responsibility for EVERYTHING. Everything in your world.

"God is in, His holy tem-PUL!"

I think he’s right.

Community is great. I think it’s wonderful to have a group of like-minded individuals around, to support you when needed.

But not at the expense of your self, your individuality, your soul.

The biggest part of being an individual is taking responsibility for yourself as an individual.

And this is something our culture does not (and many communities do not) teach.

Beyond that, is the extent to which you must take responsibility for yourself. And in this, too, Taylor is right – you must take responsibility for everything in your world.

There is no “your world” without “you the individual.” Your perception of your world = you.

I don’t mean this in a hard way. It shouldn’t be hard. It should be very easy. In fact, it should be easier still because your community supports you in this process.

If you live in a community like that.

I think our culture likes to tell people what to do a lot. “Prescriptions,” instead of education. Which is strange, since we live in a predominantly Christian society (at least, predominantly led by people who call themselves “Christian” – and I am not, just in case you were wondering). What I mean is, Jesus said something about teaching people to fish instead of giving them fish. In our culture, we like to tell people to catch their own fish, and tell them that they have to make their own fishing rods, and lines, and hooks. But we don’t show them how to do those things. We just tell them that they need to.

I encounter this effort to escape responsibility all the time – in myself and in others – and it’s extremely frustrating.

One of the funniest places to see it, for me, is in culture itself. We currently have a ton of excuses for why people aren’t self-responsible…number one among them is…

“ENTITLEMENT”

they need the extra space on the sides of the car...they're fat

…which, simply put, means, “feeling that one does not need to be self-responsible.”

Uh? What? So, when we have a problem, we approach it by making another name for it? That…doesn’t sound like it will have any effect.

Yeah, people complain all the time about their kids, their peers, their grandkids, their neighbors, having a bizarre sense of entitlement…

…and there it ends.

Instead of saying “you are not entitled to this,” they argue about it. They have debates. They talk about it on talk shows. Anything rather than facing their beliefs about the issue and doing something about it.

Beyond that, whose responsibility are your feelings/opinions? They’re yours. What are your estimations of other people as acting with false entitlement giving you?

Is it helping you to avoid pointing the finger back where it belongs?

When you tell someone else that they’re wrong, bad, not good, dumb, conceited, egotistical, silly, lazy, or anything else, do you take responsibility for the fact that it is you who thinks this about the other person? It is not they who think it. You don’t know what they think. You can’t. Even when they tell you what they think, you only have a vague notion of what those words mean to them as an individual.

And when you do own it, do you then hold that feeling inside from then on? Push it down? Debate about it with yourself?

Or do you play with those beliefs? Do you experiment, play, with the other person, to see whether your ideas match reality or not?

There’s a big difference between judgment and play.

One, judgment, says that you know “how it is.” You’re already certain, based on your (I’m sure vast) experience, what a person is thinking, who they are; or, what a situation is, and what the “right” response is.

The other, play, says that you might have an idea of what’s happening, but that you want to explore the possibilities – in a way that involves empathy, compassion, humor, lightheartedness…

Another place people often try to avoid responsibility for themselves and their world is in religion and politics. OH NO! THE TWO “TABOO” SUBJECTS WE SHOULD NEVER SPEAK ABOUT!

"I went down to the crossroads..."

Why is it that we should never speak about them?

Well, what happens when you speak about something?

No…not that you argue. I mean, the arguing leads to something else.

It means that you will be forced to confront your views of the world. By saying them out loud, in the presence of another person, you will be forced to look at what you believe. You will be forced to confront…

Yourself

Still other places I’ve noticed people hiding from themselves in are – jobs/careers, illnesses (ADD, ADHD? – it’s not my fault I can’t control myself, I have an illness), relationships…etc.

Can’t we all just play along?

What does all of this have to do with training?

I can provide a good answer from the response I just posted on Aaron Schwenzfeier’s Blog:

For me, the future of “training” is educating people about how their bodies work. Then they can become, as they should be, the boss of themselves…self-responsible.

How does a human body work, in general? What are the mechanisms at work? Chek doesn’t teach his people that…probably because he’s afraid that, if he did, they wouldn’t need him anymore.

That’s really sad, though. True coaching isn’t about telling people what to do all the time. It’s about being an artist. It’s about accumulating the time in the field, researching your field, seeing what works and what doesn’t, so that you can effectively help the individuals you work with in a faster and faster manner…

Coaching is an art.

More education. Less admonishment, less prescription, less arguing about “what’s right for everyone” (it doesn’t exist…every one individual is different), less “guru-ism.”

My goal here, has not been to prescribe an action to you, or to condemn anyone for behaving in any way. I hope you don’t take it that way. I’m just trying to describe the new state of behavior I’m trying to foster in myself.

If you want to do that too, let’s play.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Nonviolent Communication

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Josh

Why do people do things? Why have you done the things you’ve done in your life?

When you look for an answer to this question, you’re usually given so many answers that the question becomes meaningless. People do things for reasons involving need, desire, utility, or common sense, or pragmatic sense, or individual history, philosophical leanings/beliefs.

Or they do things for reasons other than those.

Or sometimes, they do things for a combination of those reasons.

Or the do things “for no reason at all.”

NLP says that people always have a good outcome in mind for themselves when they do things, and I believe this is true. They believe that they will get something valuable from their actions.

But what is at the base of “why people do things” is something much simpler. Marshall Rosenberg’s book “Nonviolent Communication,” reveals that we almost always do things based on (in our culture, often un-felt, unrecognized, or unappreciated) needs.

Look back over your life, and consider the following.

All of this time, you had your own agenda. It was separate from that of those around you.

And it was always the same – to get your needs met.

Did you know that that was true? (I didn’t, until I read the book).

If you did/do know that already – do you express your needs as your needs. Or do you express your needs as other people’s problems (‘that person doesn’t know how to drive!’ – really, is ‘I need to feel safer than I do right now’)? Do you express your needs as complaints (‘my boss never appreciates me,’ – really, is ‘I need to feel more appreciation for my efforts at work’)? Grievances (‘my parents never supported me,’ – is, ‘I need to feel supported/loved/cared-for’)? Perceived wrongs, etc.?

Do you know that your feelings are expressions of, and signposts pointing toward, your needs?

Rosenberg gives a simple formula for beginning to explore this concept. The next time you begin to blame someone else for your situation (problem, issue, etc.), say to yourself “I feel x, because I y.”

Usually, the “because” is an unexpressed or unrecognized need that you have.

To boot, toward the middle of the book, a subject heading called “Don’t Do Anything That Isn’t Play!” appears!

Marshall emphasizes that we should “make choices that are motivated purely by our desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, duty, or obligation.”

Being fit is also about being able to express yourself, authentically, in a way that other people can understand, relate to, and respond to.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who reads. I’ll be reading it again, myself, very soon.

Exuberance, intention, and success

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Josh

There are a lot of factors to success. There’s luck (right place/right time), environmental factors (having the tools at the right time), community factors (having support), biological factors (having some biological advantages that others might not), etc.

However, chief among the factors necessary to be successful at something (and by that, I don’t mean monetarily successful, I mean achieving a very high level of proficiency at that thing – which can come with or without money), are exuberance, and intention.

Exuberance is a state of passionate excitement. In the parlance of our times – you’re stoked. You can’t wait to do the thing. You’re happy about it. You love it. Even when it gets hard, you feel challenged by the problems, not defeated by them. They seem to give you even more energy. That’s exuberance. Without it, people will stop trying very quickly. If you’ve ever been around athletes or coaches for a while, you’ve probably heard the phrase “You’ve got to want it.” That’s where the next part comes in.

Intention, the “wanting it,” seems to be at the base of all success, or effort aimed at success, and the subtleties of intention are numerous. First, you must have the general intention to do the thing. That’s “self-directed activity” in a nutshell. But secondly, you have your own unique intention toward the thing, once you’ve started doing it. The term is used a lot in massage therapy, where we say that the most important thing is to focus your intention to heal the person. Well, that’s a very basic level of intention. I intend to heal you. But how? And why? I intend to heal you because – there could be any number of different reasons that will resonate differently with individuals. I intend to heal you in this way – that comes from your life history, your understanding of “healing” and what it means to heal someone.

A lot of the success books and courses out there prescribe step-by-step rules or guidelines for achieving success. And some ofthem are very helpful. A lot of them make you go through activities to help you to “know yourself” better. And those things can be helpful too.

But I’ve never seen a self-help or success book or course that targets your exuberance, and stokes that flame, or that helps you to understand how central your intention is to the success you find (or don’t find) in your life, and how to focus that intention into a tool to get you where you want to be.

And I’m not really sure that a book or course can do those things.

The Problem with Self-Help

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Josh

All self-help books have one thing in common – they tell you what to do.

For the most part, they don’t tell you how to listen to yourself better, or to follow your own inner instincts and inner voice. (Though there are exceptions, like Eckhart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now“). Mostly, they don’t tell you how to do those things because no one can tell you how to do those things. You just have to do them. Meanwhile, to make matters worse, our society presents obstacles to becoming who we are. It’s crazy.

You have pressure to go to school (a good school), get a job (a good job), have a career (that pays well), start a family (that is happy), have a retirement plan (yeah, right), pay attention to professional sports your favorite TV show play on the office sport league or whatever other distractions are out there.

Anything, as long as you don’t just do what you want to do, and become who you are.

This is the reason that there is no shortage of self-help books out there. More and more are produced every year, in every imaginable category – Exercise, Diet, Psychology, Relationships, Career, Spirituality – the list is incredible. These books continue to roll out and be printed because they’re attempting to fill a void that can never be filled. It’s an empty hole in our psyche. No one can ever supply you with your own feeling of yourself. No one but you can give you self-satisfaction. Only you can do that.

Step 1 – Start following your own intuition more. When you get a hunch or a feeling, take it immediately. See where it leads you. Start simply feeling the way your body feels more frequently. Take stock of your body, right now. Feel your feet (can you feel each one of your toes individually? with practice you will be able to), your legs, your pelvis and torso (front and back), your arms and hands, your shoulders, your neck and head. How do you feel? Where are the areas of tightness? Focus on them…tell them “relax” in a gentle way.

You can go deeper with this experiencing of your body, and feel your own internal organs. If you don’t know where they are go here for a nice chart. Imagine the place where your organs are and just feel them, one at a time. How do they feel? Let them relax. Smile at them, internally, without moving your face. Smile at yourself internally.

Step 2 – Follow your own inclinations more. The other big problem with self-help literature (and a big reason it continues to flourish) is that it presents “steps” and “goals” that you need to set up for yourself and aim at. While it can be helpful to set up goals, it can also be an obstacle to really experiencing what you need to experience in order to grow as a human being. You become locked into someone else’s plan, and miss little lessons that you as an individual might need for your development.

Instead of setting some definite goal for yourself, set a simple, all-encompassing goal, like: “I want to pursue the things I’m interested in, and always push myself a little further.” Doing this will help you to find your personal boundaries. It will help you to become more creative, to be more open to new and different things. You will be happier, following the course that is you, instead of following some pre-determined “plan” that was really laid out by the author of the self-help book.

Instead of creating “goals” and building your plan to get there, you can select what you want and need right now, in this moment, and begin to do it as much as you possibly can. Constantly seek to expand the ways and amount you do those things. Become obsessed with expressing who you are, in everything that you do. Feel yourself more and more deeply, more and more frequently. The next time you find yourself in a situation where you’re bored or frustrated, feel your body. Where is the frustration? What are you doing there? Who is making you be there, and what happens if you leave, or do something that really interests you or reflects who you are in that moment? What if you’re honest?

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be disciplined, or kind, or contribute to society or your community. I’m not saying that you won’t need to work hard, or to practice. I’m talking about being true to who you really are in all of those things, instead of becoming a cookie-cutter “success story” from another book. Because, once you find that success, however great it may be, you’ll still be in the same place – a place you didn’t choose to be in, that doesn’t reflect you or who you are, and you’ll be looking for the next self-help book to get you out of there.