All posts by Sophie

You can be joyous, you can love, you can be loved, you can be grateful… what is life for you?


What’s the Truth About You?

At first I was surprised. Very few people want to find out what’s the truth about them. It was stunning to me, given what I know about life: Unless you know what you are up against you will shoot in the dark when you want to change direction, or results.

But then I looked again.

People don’t want to do the work. And they especially don’t want to do the work if it means they have to look at their own ugliness.

Don’t be mistaken: we are all ugly inside. Ever since Adam and Eve put on the fig leaves as costume, human being are trying to cover up, hide, and pretend that their shadow side doesn’t exist.

You learn, real fast, if you live in a country where people wear clothes, that being a girl or being a boy is not a physical thing, it’s a behavior thing. It’s not that you have a different equipment, it is that you are supposed to play with dolls if you are a girl, and you are not allowed to cry if you are a boy.

No one talks about your privates, as if they were a dirty secret, something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something wrong.

And those “privates” become much more interesting than dolls or toy soldiers: anything that is not allowed becomes more interesting than what is allowed.

So, if you didn’t start earlier, you start building a whole life of secret fascination with your own privates, other children’s privates, other people’s privates. And depending on your inclination to be obedient and fearful or proper… you will feel horrible about yourself, a fraud, a fake, a bad person.

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What’s important to you? Do your actions mirror that?


Just look at your actions. Words are cheap. Only what you do counts, only what you do testifies about what is important to you.

It seems that being right, looking good, avoid domination of anyone or anything, including your own word, hoping, expecting the impossible… etc, etc, has been really important to you.
Where you are is where you are supposed to be, given all your actions.
Do all actions count? Talking, thinking, watching videos?

Only to a certain degree.

One of the people who have inspired me for many years is Werner Erhard, the founder of the est training.

What did he do?
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Become Who You Were Meant To Be


Become who you were meant to be

Really nice and really loaded title, would you agree? It means that you are not who you were meant to be. You are someone else, and that flies in the face of determinists.

Determinists say that your life is scripted, and you have no choice about it. You choose what you have in store for you. You have no free will.

But the truth is that human beings do have free will.

So what is this “who you were meant to be” stuff? Determinist or free will stuff… good question.

Every choice is somewhat pre-determined by the past, by the family you were born into.

The past gets into the choice by the mind storing everything that happened to you and placing it in your future as something to avoid, or something to repeat.

When you get hurt, or laughed at, or feel ashamed about, you vow never to do that again. That places it square into your future, and it sits there, blocking your view, preventing exercising your free will, it sits there like a golem, it sits there as the only choice there is.

There is a favorite example I learned in a born again Christian magazine I picked up at a train station some 15-20 years ago. It has made a profound difference in my life. It has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with explaining why our life looks the way it does, why we are the way we are.

Here is the story

Imagine driving on a mountain road that bends around the mountain climbing higher and higher. On one side the mountain, on the other side the abyss… the ravine, the depth.

It’s a beautiful morning, your radio blasts your favorite music, and you love your life.

As you go around yet another bend, you see, horrified, a car crash on the road. The road is narrow, and you need to choose how to avoid your certain death.

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Anger, Resentment, Disappointment: How To Liberate Yourself?


A few years ago, (maybe 3?) I went over the list of people I was angry at, or disappointed by. I made an all-out attempt to liberate myself from the bondage anger or disappointment creates.

Anger, resentment, disappointment: all symptoms of ego/mind, all symptoms of thinking of the future and feeling threatened. Look at how the Indonesian Mimic Octopus makes sure that they don’t fall prey to having any reason for anger, etc. But humans are not as intelligent: they willingly put themselves in that position… Don’t forget to read the rest of the article once you are done watching the video

I knew, in theory, that no one can do anything to you. That it is not what they do that makes you miserable, it is what you say about it. That it’s always your ego that is bruised.

But there is a difference between theory and practice. You know it, and I know it.

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You got bigger problems than I can solve, and you best move on

My estimate is that this global epidemic came just at the right time to show you that you have been swimming naked.

About 99% of humanity.

My students are not exceptions to this. The only difference, as far as I can see, is they took heed from me… on a Talk to me webinar a week ago, and some of them at least are using this time to double up on becoming worth a damn and be able to become more in spite of the trouble the world is in. Thank you for that, guys.

You have no skills, you are depending on bosses, depending on someone else provide you with a livelihood. Continue reading You got bigger problems than I can solve, and you best move on

The role of the size of your visual field in the quality of your life

Tunnel Vision

One of the barriers to a successful life is your tendency to look at the world with a tightly narrowed cone of vision.

You only see a tiny sliver of what-is, and you make your decisions from that.

It’s like doing grocery shopping in a pitch dark grocery store you are not familiar with, having access only to a pen-light… you would have to look at everything and it would take you hours what would only take me minutes.

But worse than that: what you actually see at the light of the pen-light, you now drag it into your man-cave… your mind, and start chewing on it… or denying it… either way: You stopped looking. Continue reading The role of the size of your visual field in the quality of your life

Are you attracting or are you repelling? That is the question…

Why is it that most people, you,  who believe in the Law of Attraction actually practice how to repel people and repel what you want?

99% of all people believe in the law of attraction… or some version of it…

People write to me all the time, asking me for something. They want something for nothing. Obviously they are adherents of the Law of Attraction: the law seems to be saying to the: you can attract to yourself things you want by just wanting them. Ask and it is given… or something of that sort. Or if you really desire it… blah blah blah.

I have a few secrets for you: the world doesn’t operate that way. In fact, the world operates closer to what Charlie Munger says: If you want to get what you want, you need to deserve what you want. Continue reading Are you attracting or are you repelling? That is the question…

Your direction is more important than your speed…

Direction is more important that speed. You may be going nowhere fast!

…In everything.

There is a very educational tale in the 67 steps –> that few consider life altering. I do.

An airplane makes an emergency landing in the jungle. The plane carried a group of engineers to a meeting.

The engineers developed a superior way to cut the branches and trees at a precise 45 degrees, and they were cutting a path with good speed.

A non-engineer passenger, in the meantime, climbed a tall tree and looked around He saw habitation from there… the path cut by the efficient engineers ran in the wrong direction… Continue reading Your direction is more important than your speed…