Embracing Adulthood
BREATHE!
“Whenever you’re feeling lost or alone, just remember to breathe. Inhale hope, exhale despair.” – Unknown
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Creativity isn't suddenly coming up with the "right" answer. It is tapping into a stream of possibilities, and through mental or practical experimentation, sorting for the best. This process can be unconscious, so that you aren't even aware a part of your mind is working on a problem until you get an "Ah-Hah!"
Some people are so afraid of looking bad that they won't try unless they know they can be perfect. Which of course they can never be, so until they change their perspective, they won't try. This is LEARNED helplessness. Someone knocked the curiosity and creativity out of them, at some earlier portion of their lives.
If you have a clear vision for your life, and you study the people who have achieved that life, or mastered the major components of that life, you will see the roles, values, beliefs, actions and attitudes that they used to get there. PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THESE WHEN THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM THOSE OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T REACH THEIR DREAMS. The people who "quit." Compare them to your own. Start experimenting. Success leaves clues.
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So today my son Jason is 21. When I first met my boy, he was about two weeks old. I literally took him out into the yard, held him up to the night sky, and did the Roots thing: "Behold! The only thing greater than yourself!"
And I made a promise to God that I would deliver him safely to his adulthood. That horizon is now visible.
He wants to think of himself as a man, as an adult. And in some ways he is. But his father's definition of "adult" is someone who takes responsibility for his emotions, actions, and results. Is self-supporting. An "awake, aware adult" is on the path of growth, of slowly answering the question "who am I?" and "what is true?" using feedback from the material world in the arenas of health, love, and money. Objective lessons there will teach you things that will help guide you in the less visible aspects of life. Objective to guide the subjective.
Check your goals--Live your day--check your goals. That pattern, constantly refined daily, is a damned fine support function for your executive function. Get it OUT of your head, and down on paper or on a virtual document. Then, you don't have to remember a hundred different things, you just have to remember ONE thing: to check that list at least twice a day, modifying it as new things occur.
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Another piece of this basic system is to know WHAT you want, and WHY you want it. Only then do you try to figure out HOW to do it. And there is a truth here: if your WHAT and WHY are clear, the "How" becomes easy. You have the motivation to overbalance your fear of being wrong, your emotional inertia, and will have ideas. Most will be wrong. But if you keep remembering your "what", and have a powerful "why", you'll keep mindstorming (generating ideas), "brainstorming" (generating ideas with a mastermind ground) performing practical experiments or (less reliably) mental experiments, modeling the successful people until you can imagine what THEY might have done in that circumstance, until you find an answer that works. Frankly, I love clarifying the what and why, researching massively, and going to bed at night asking my unconscious mind to bring me a solution by morning.
Works like a charm, people.
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Jason's job to enter the adult world is to create a clear vision of what he wants, find models and maps, take action, and keep experimenting until he finds a way to make 1% progress every week. It is his father's belief that "any goal you can keep in your mind and heart over time is one you have the capacity to realize." And ALL of the people I model have similar beliefs. Harlan Ellison, for instance, believed that "success is to bring into existence, in adult terms, your childhood dreams." That means that you have to be prepared to adjust and compromise. But you never give up your dreams.
I will drill him with certain basics, and until he leaves my home he'll have to hear them every day. I have to drill them deeply enough that he'll remember my voice for the rest of his life. The human mind can juggle seven "plus or minus" two pieces of information at a time. So let me try to keep it to five:
Create a dream for your life. The general outline is: Escape Suffering, Embrace Joy, and Be of Service.
More specifically: "Health, Love, Money, and time to enjoy them." the Three Centers
The MAGIC formula: seek models, take constant action, live in a state of gratitude, clarify your goals, and constantly inquire into "who am I?" and "what is true?"
Love himself. 100%. Right down to the core. If he follows the question "who am I? deeply enough, it will lead him to love. If you are not in a state of loving gratitude, you haven't finished the journey.
Seek incremental progress, weekly. If you need to move faster, just jack up your intensity on MAGIC.
Every day check your goals, execute, and check again at night, using the RPM system (How<--What<--Why
Follow the Three Gates: constantly asking "Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful?"
Learn to tease out the critical success patterns from models, but also notice where and when they went "off the road" if they are badly flawed. By choosing three models and overlying their patterns, you will start seeing the success recipes…but also the patterns that lead to imbalance. It is common for high performing people to be imbalanced, so pay special attention to those who have it all together, and head in THAT direction.
Breathe. Create a Morning Ritual of thought, emotion, and action to prime himself and program for the day ahead.
Connect all his actions to BOTH survival and spirit.
What are the most important elements? Maybe
Three Centers
Three Gates
RPM
The Meaning of Life
I'll keep thinking about this. But this is "end game." As I said, Nicki, my darling daughter, is "cooked". She's out in the world, and daily performing the practical experiments needed to formulate her own theories about how it all works. She is comparing her experience with the theories and examples I gave her. She is her own "chef". I can suggest recipes or invite her to dinner, but I don't run her kitchen.
Jason is still eating at my table. So there are compromises I will make about the menu, but he MUST consume certain things while under my roof. When that becomes sufficiently uncomfortable, he'll find a way to make a living and leave. I would prefer that this happens because he is drawn by a dream, rather than running from a problem (I'd HATE for my kids to think I'm their problem!).
This may sound like a lot, but really, this is a quantifiable amount of material for me to communicate. Then it must be integrated at the level of "unconscious competence" so that he has a bias to action on the one hand, and a commitment to peace and centering on the other.
This is the year. The window for this communication is closing. He'll meet the right girl, she'll fire up circuits he never knew he had, and suddenly he will see his future, with her. And the better integrated he is, the better integrated a potential partner can be. I know the kind of woman he wants, and he KNOWS he has to "level up" to attract and keep her. If you are attracted to those above your level, either up your game or drop your standards.
One of his favorite animes is something called "Solo Leveling", about superhero demon fighters who have to grow and evolve in order to survive and win.
I suspect I know why he likes it. Go Jason! Eat the world, kid. The banquet awaits.
Namaste
Steve
