I just read an article on our mindset, collective mindset, where you wait until something goes really wrong and then you seek out help. It’s here in pdf form… for your convenience. incremental-medicine
This is the mindset that will move you out of trouble and towards a successful life in every area of your life, health, wealth, love, and happiness.
But this is not how you live. You live your life campaigning.
Anything that doesn’t require drama, heroism, anything that is not over the top is ignored, poo-pooed, looked down upon. In every area of life. By you, and by “them”. You dream of being a billionaire while your bills aren’t paid. You dream of a private jet while your credit cards are maxed out. You dream of being a rock star while you haven’t been able to play one song well.
You don’t know, or you ignore the cause of your misery, and then you need rescuing. Read the rest of the article
Like with any diet, both the what and the how are crucially important.
I’ll show you later in this article, that even if you eat the right things, if you eat wrongly, the how, you won’t feel good… you won’t get well. You won’t be present to life.
And so it is with your Netflix diet as well.
Here is how I watch Netflix…
I watch only stuff that will teach me the skills by pointing me to the capacities I could distinguish and then practice. I even take notes!
Whenever I see something noteworthy, I stop and contemplate it for minutes… long minutes. I consider Netflix my mentor… Read the rest of the article
I have one student who actually is doing the work the way the work was meant to be done.
It sounds meager… but it is all I ever wanted… really.
If you have one student who actually does what you teach, you can tell if what you teach works or not. Or tweak what you teach to accommodate the difficulties they experience. And watch if the changes you made will make the results match what you intended to accomplish.
What do the rest of the people do? I mean the students in the same program? I am not sure. Apple polishing? Feeble attempts to fake me?
Humans live this fake, apple polishing lives, thinking that life should respond to their feeble attempts, to their intention, to their desire, or whatever the heck they were taught should change reality to what they want reality to be.
This, humanity, humans, include the millions of writers who dish out advice… Read the rest of the article
If you are like me at any point you think that what you know is how it is. And that makes you stuck.
Here is what happened that woke me up from this seductive illusion that what I know is so.
I have been fascinated with nut butters. OK… nothing fancy in that…
I bought a machine to make nut butters, and it was a tedious job: 90% of the time was scraping the wall of the bowl… or the machine would run as if it were empty. Read the rest of the article
Still worried. 🙁 Here’s my mitzvah for the day if you want to use it.
(I made slight edits for flow.)
DILETTANTE OR MASTER? 9/29/18
(I’m not used to doing audio blogs. If no one’s listening, it’s hard for the words to come. It’s hard to be silently brilliant but it’s also hard to be brilliant when no one’s listening)
Yesterday I went out to my daily walk. Two doors down from where I live, there is a park where people bring their dogs. I see a dude with two dogs and at some point, the dogs start towards me. One of them–a big one–jumps on me. I lost my balance. I think I tripped on my own leg and started to fall. To break my fall (because I was falling smack towards the curb), I held out my hand which is a no-no for me because I pretty much would rather die than not be able to work.
I broke my hand. I cut my arm and have this huge bruise on my forehead–but no concussion. I will look funny for a couple of weeks but my head is okay. I had some major nausea afterwards (which indicates that it wasn’t that easy on my head).
I couldn’t fall asleep till 4 am or whatever it was. It was so painful. I decided twenty years of not taking headache medication was enough. I took some headache medication for my arm. I then I had the good idea to use a piece of wood to stabilize my arm. I didn’t go to a doctor. The owner of the dogs offered but I don’t have insurance. Going to the emergency room is out of my budget (I don’t know how much it costs but anything is beyond my budget).
So I’m here–it’s the next day. I’m already drinking my second cup of coffee. I am having lots of insights about not having use of my left arm for typing, making coffee, wearing any clothes, going to the bathroom…all very interesting.
One of the insights is “how you do anything is how you do everything.” That is pretty much about your attitude.
My attitude is I am 100% responsible for everything that happens to me. I won’t press charges against the dog owner–he may be legally responsible but that is not my problem, that’s his. It’s my life and I’m going to take care of it.
That is my relationship to life, that I am responsible for all of it–which means it is my job to be well, no matter what happens to me.
On the surface, I may not be well. I am in pain. I don’t have use of my left arm blah blah blah. Yet, I pretty much can do anything I need to do. Maybe not anything that I want to do–for example, I can’t touch type because you need two hands for that.
This morning, I used an Italian espresso machine. In order to use it, you need to look and see what part of your biology can replace another hand. Are you going to use your face, your chin, your thighs, your knees…what are you going to do?! How are you going to make life seamless, even though something is taken from you?
The interesting thing is the more skills you have in someth Read the rest of the article –>
