The Only Two People You Need To Please
About every ten years (apparently) I go back to the most foundational success teachings of my youth. My mom got be started in this, God bless her. She trained me on THINK AND GROW RICH, THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING, PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS, THE GOLDEN KEY, ACRES OF DIAMONDS, THE STRANGEST SECRET and on and on. She played them on LPs until I was SICK of hearing them. But you know what? I had my own ideas about success, and they were badly flawed because I was being protected by HER. She was the one who had to clip dandelion greens off our law to have vegetables. SHE was the one who tried raising chinchillas and parakeets and making paper dolls and selling encyclopedias trying to fill in the bills…and the one who screamed in her nightmares that her bills were chasing her in the form of the Frankenstein monster and the Wolfman.
The teachings helped her build a castle, but it was built atop a cess pool of fear and oppression, and the things that crawled up from the basement to devil her dreams were enough to destroy her happiness…but not enough to stop a single divorced woman from raising two children.
Without her burdens, and having access earlier in my life, my application took me further. And what I want is for my children to be free to choose the lives that please them.
In my 20's, I dove into self-improvement materials by people like Dennis Waitley, Jim Rohn, and Brian Tracey. Later, Tony Robbins appeared bringing a genius for synthesizing, a pro athlete's physicality, and vast charisma with him, and was possibly better than any of them…and if I think he could have used the Three Gates a little earlier in his career, so be it.
As said, I find myself going back, and because of Youtube, I can actually find a lot of the materials I gorged on in my 20's, that kept me going when 99% of those who started writing or the martial arts bailed. We survivors were and are a tough breed…but maybe it isn't toughness. Its clarity that we HAD to succeed. I've talked with many, and the most consistent motivator is that we felt that the martial arts, or writing, were simply their identity. This is who they were, so they had to do the THINGS that kept them on that path.
It was very simple. Tananarive is like that about writing. I used to feel more like one of those Frankenstein monsters in my Mom's nightmares, stitched together out of pieces of other people, and jolted to life with my willpower and fear of death and meaninglessness.
Then about twenty years ago, I started emerging from a cocoon. Maybe 21: I wouldn't be surprised if Jason was an important dividing line. I know Nicki was: she taught me to love without reservation. Jason…connected me with my male energy in a way I'd never understood.
And last year in Manila I had another major threshold we'll discuss another time. And I've been dealing with the implications of that epiphany ever since.
All of this to say that I found another of those early courses, and I"ll be listening to about an hour of this 9-HOUR course by Brian Tracy every day. Connecting with that younger Steve who wanted to survive and be loved and succeed so terribly much. I bleed for him sometime. But he tells me that's bullshit, that life has been and continues to be a grand adventure.
And baby Steve? Who thought himself hideous, and wondered why no one wanted to be his Daddy? That little kid loves me to death. I haven't succeeded at everything, but I've NEVER quit. And tell him every day I love him. And SHOW him by constantly seeking to bring his dreams into reality. And, by the way, bringing him the best playmates in the world: Larry Niven and Tananarive Due. That little boy gives the best hugs, and his eyes shine with love.
And by the way…the old man on my deathbed, closer now, approves of me too. I'm on the path, and guiding others.
The path of Mastery is constant learning, constant doing, and constant sharing. That's my dharma. Why? It might at one time have been a matter of stitching values together from a hundred men and women I loved and admired.
Now its just who I am. And that's cool AF.
Namaste
Steve
