Date with Destiny (DWD) #7

There are seven types of beliefs that affect who we are.
1. The first of these is global beliefs. This category can include our thoughts on how the world is, what life is about, how much time do we have, how we view other people, money, love, and the metaphors we give to life.
2. Identity. This is a more personal category focused on who we are as an individual. What we are and what we are not, who we see as role models in life and how we view what our life is all about. For some people love is defined by their love for their children – this can be a way for them to have unconditional love rather than the other type of ‘scary loving’ where they love another person – a love that comes with uncertainty.
3. Your primary question. What do you focus on most often in life and what question do you ask most often based on that focus?
4. Values. Simply put: ‘Life is a dance between your deepest desires and your deepest fears’.
5. Rules. This is where you act as a judge and jury on yourself about what what is good and bad and what guides you. Imagine a life where your rules guide you towards feeling alive, worthy and significant, certain and towards love. Rules that make you grow.
During DWD 2008 in Florida, Tony Robbins gave an example of the Fijian people and their culture. When they drop plates in a restaurant there is no great drama – more often than not there is laughter. There is also laughter and smiles when they lose at a game of volleyball. Tony said they explained this outlook on life as: “F**k it up, it’s fun.”
There was also the example of a mother from Ireland who was ‘shut down’ like her daughter, but then she started to realise that there was no need to be ‘perfect’ and she could enjoy life by not being 100% perfect. This is the woman mentioned in an earlier part of this DWD series who took part in the clothes-folding exercise.
6. Vehicles and virtual villains. Take a look at the vehicles you use to meet your needs. These can range from money and religion to your physical body, career relationships and even problems. The virtual villains you create may be your boss or co-workers, maybe your family or time or a certain class of people, or even the past/present and future.
7. Situation specific rules. This category is where you can have your own ‘fly rules’ where it is okay to violate your rules in a specific situation to reach a certain reward or punishment. I take one example of this to be in the way that Tony Robbins occasionally uses bad language. It is something he deploys at certain moments to break someone’s pattern and take in a new message.

Emotions: The fuel of choice
What are the emotions you regularly experience each week? Be honest about them. They could be positive emotions such as excitement, ecstasy, determination, joy, optimism, love, passion or they could be challenging/negative emotions such as frustration, fearfulness, stress, anger or nervousness.
Emotions are the fuel of choice in your life and the filters of your ‘state’.

A key thought:
‘Who loves us is the one who influences us the most.’

When you were young, who gave you the most love (your mother or father)?
What did you have to be to get that love, and what could you not be?

And ultimately:
‘What makes us crazy or unhappy is not being ourselves’.

You driving force
To discover your driving force, consider the six human needs (Certainty, variety, significance, connection, love, growth & contribution) and decide, honestly, which two are at the top for you. This is important to know as a person who places significance as one of their top needs will interact very differently with other people than someone who has connection/love as their top need.

Attending DWD I did this. My top two needs were certainty and significance.
I then looked at these and assessed what had been the cost to me in my life by having these as my top driving needs.

I found it had:
Prevented me from making deep connections with others.
Had closed me off from my real self.
Had prevented me from being free and fun-loving.
Had stopped me experiencing many new activities and meeting new people.

So now the question was ‘What do my top needs need to be in order for me to be everything I want to be?’

My answer is: Love / variety / connection.

Distinctions from this Day:

What I’ve believed has been holding me back. I’ve conditioned myself to believe I was one way and could not be another way.
I shouldn’t be afraid to be the true me.

Lessons from Date with Destiny (DWD) #6

Your model of the world is shaped by three forces in your life.
Those forces are: Motive, Meaning and Commanding Emotions.

Where you live: Commanding Emotions are the ‘fuel of choice’ and can be either empowering or disempowering. These emotions filter and feed to your Rulebook/Map, which is the guiding force of your life – the place where you create meaning.

The Rulebook/Map: Meaning is created from these seven factors:
1. Global belief system;
2. Identity
3. Primary Question
4. Values – deepest desires/greatest fears
5. Rules – the source of heaven/hell within
6. Vehicles/virtual villains
7. Situation specific beliefs.

All of the above then lead to you taking action to reach your target, which is found in the six human needs.

The Target: Motive is found in the six human needs are; certainty, variety, significance, connection, love and ‘growth & contribution’
Whenever you think, do or pursue something that meets three of these six need you’ll become addicted to it.
It is important to understand which of the needs you value most, and seeing how these impact your life – particularly looking at which of these needs shows up at times of stress, fear and difficulty. In the following exercise I have listed ways that I find the six human needs are met in my life, both positively and negatively. This is an exercise you can try for yourself.

1. How does certainty show up in my life?
In positive ways: When I complete a job; When I do something I’m good at; When I put faith in myself.
In negative ways: When I become controlling; When I try to justify anger or frustration; When I eat unhealthy foods.

2. How does uncertainty show up in my life?
In positive ways: When I travel; When I watch a new movie; When I change jobs or try some new pursuit.
In negative ways: When I argue; When I am being negative.

3. How does significance show up in my life?

In positive ways: When I accomplish something at work or in sport; Career progression; When I help others.
In negative ways: When I am angry or moody; When I make myself scarce by not being available.

4. How does connection show up in my life?

In positive ways: When sharing experiences, and time, with close friends; Joining a sports club or other group; Being outdoors and experiencing nature; communicating a request in a fun and friendly manner.
In negative ways: Getting others to follow orders/requests in a blunt fashion; Picking arguments.

The needs of Growth and Contribution make a person feel truly alive.

Quote: ‘The quality of my life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty I can comfortable live with.’

Quote: ‘All my passion is found in the realm of uncertainty.’

The needs of love and significance are polar opposites.
The needs of certainty and uncertainty are polar opposites.

Lessons from DWD (Date With Destiny) #5

Mastery and not needing perfection

There are different levels of mastery.

1. Cognitive Mastery – When you have intellectual understanding of something. But that doesn’t mean you apply what you know.
(Example: Someone says: ‘Why not change your physiology’ and you think: ‘I’ll f**king change your physiology.’)

2. Emotional Mastery.

3. Physical Mastery – Where it is ‘in’ your body and you just ‘go there’.
(Example: You have total confidence to tie your shoelace. It’s not something you even have to think about, it is so automatic.)

And perfection…. what about that?

The lowest standard is perfection because it is the most impossible to meet. So you are basically saying your aiming for something you acknowledge is impossible.

Tony Robbins was on stage with the DWD participant who had earlier taken part in an exercise to fold items of clothing from a laundry basket. She had strict rules about needing to achieve perfection in areas of her life, and this was highlighted as a hinderance to her enjoying life.

TR asked her this: What if you failed to fail, and failed to be perfect both simultaneously?
She replied: I’d just get on with it and be happy – every day. That would be lovely.

TR wondered how she would it feel if , instead of persuing the old unachievable goal of being perfect (and beating herself up for failing to reach that), she could tell herself ‘I’m good enough’. Or if she was folding the laundry basket clothes and took the attitude that ‘I’m doing good enough.’

Perfection kills life.

Here’s a story….

TR was going to check out a hotel in Maui as a future seminar venue. The first thing to go wrong with the trip was the discovery that there were no first class seats on the plane. Being particularly tall, and having recently sustained a sporting injury, he preferred extra legroom and comfort if he was travelling any distance on a commercial airline.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen this time. So, he was pissed off, but he decided he was going to do it anyway – and enjoy it. Once aboard the plane he started looking around for something to make him joyous and that’s when he made contact with an old woman on the airplane. For fun they did a mini ‘Mexican Wave’ to inject a bit of joy to the cabin. Soon he was so into talking with the woman and listening to her that he forgot his own pain . . . for the whole five hours of the flight!

Afterwards he admitted that he felt so stupid that he had allowed his old rules to keep him from feeling happy.

The message:
If rules are keeping you from being happy – get rid of the rules!

TR also said he enjoyed seeing the rules of others, such as his wife whose flying rules included putting in ear plugs and wearing an eye mask.
‘Learn to enjoy the different personalities.’

If a rule doesn’t serve – get rid of it.

When you enjoy the outdoors, do you gravitate towards places that have been specifically set aside for enjoyment, such as parks with manicured grass and benches and seating – or do you look for spots of wilderness, where nature is left to do its own thing?

I thought of this question as I sat on a small hillock that overlooks a quiet nature reserve/park which I visit frequently. Opposite me at some distance is the manicured side of the park, with neatly trimmed bushes, cut grass and asthetically placed rocks and boulders. It is all very pretty, but it’s not the side I ever go to relax and sit down and ponder on the day and life in general.
Instead I head for the places of wilderness where nature is untroubled by the hands of landscape gardeners and alike. Surrounded by bushes and trees that grow hither and dither, where creatures, insects and birds reside happily, and where the sound of the wind or breeze moving through the trees creates a soothing resonance, I am happiest.

In a spot like this, away from mankind’s tamed environment, I can blend in with nature and become a part of the bigger picture. It is also a way of detaching from the everyday hustle and bustle of life – stepping out of the ordered world and being in amongst untrammeled nature.

Elsewhere I will seek out rocks, or weathered planks of wood that have been set up as makeshift benches on which to sit and watch the ocean and the clouds. And these unofficial seating spots, tucked away in hidden places, are always my choice rather than the plastic wood-imitation benches that have been cemented into place in the more accessible spots used by the public.

In tucked away areas where nature is most at home – so am I. For in these places my mind can most readily dream and wander freely. That is why I always seek out such places.

How would you live your life if there was a television on your head that was broadcasting your every thought?

Would you shift your consciousness and dump all the negative and hurtful stuff as soon as it surfaces and make a continuous effort only to focus on the good in others, and the world, and on what you can do to spread more goodness and light?

I came across this idea while reading a short interview with Jerry Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione, in the Fall 2010 issue of Superconciousness Magazine. I have written previously about Jerry and Diane, and in particular the Jerry’s ‘Smile that lights up the world’.
The idea of imagining a television broadcasting your thoughts is discussed here, in this short extract from the magazine interview

SC: I loved your description of your friend Hugh Prather’s idea about having a television on our heads that broadcast every thought. How would that change the way we interact?

DC: There’s this illusion that our thoughts are private. I believe that we don’t have private thoughts. We may have thoughts that somebody else can’t hear at the moment, but I don’t think that they’re private.

JJ: If we truly believed that we do not have private thoughts and that, ultimately, everything is known, wouldn’t we take responsibility for what’s in our mind, and be very motivated to let go of it? Right now we’re not motivated to let go of it because in the case of anger, we have so many other people supporting it. If everyone took responsibility for the anger that they had and found that it was hurting them, eating them up alive, then they’d begin to do something about it. The world would be very different.

Something to think about.

This short video appeared on TV in the USA and has since attracted more than five million views on YouTube.

It’s the true story of a crow and a kitten who, despite the apparent unlikeliness, became friends. The crow looking after the young, stray kitten – feeding it and warning it about the dangers of the road etc, and the two getting along and playing games with one another.

For me it shows the personalities that exist within animals and birds, and also their intelligence and love.
And beyond that, it also shows anyone can be friends with anyone else if they are only willing to do so.

Enjoy the next seven minutes as you watch this clip – and see what feelings and thoughts it sparks in you.

This is a short blog post, but don’t let that fool you. Because there is a lesson here that I believe is worth a thousand words and more.

Do you have a business card? Most of us have a business card of some sort or another. But what about a personal business card, an imaginary one that we carry inside our heads, just above our eyes so it is always right there to remind us. A card that is actually more real to us than the physical ones that we carry around.

I have a young friend who has a bright, sunny personality that lights up her face and spirit and lights up those around her.

However, in a quiet moment she told me of the challenges she faces looking for employment during a severe downturn in her career sector. But despite this, she said – and these are her exact words:
“I have to say that even (though the) situation is not really perfect I am in good mood (it is my business card: ”Always smile and good mood”).

Imagine if that were the motto you adopted for your personal, internal business card. How would that shape your interactions with the word?

Here’s something to think about – real life happens a bit slower than your mind works.

While your mind is trying to compute everything that is going on all around, and to project what ‘might’ happen in the near future, the actual events in real time are happening at a slower pace.

Allow your mind to match up and appreciate the moment, to see the small adventures of a smile and a love, and to embrace them.

Live in anticipation always – an anticipation of great and good things.

So what if you end up, for whatever reason, feeling overwhelmed? Or in pain?

Drink some water – always. A dehydrated body is a body in pain and that physical pain can manifest into feelings of overwhelm.

Now pain. Pain is a part of life – suffering is a choice.
All of us live with the primary emotion of fear because we can’t control all the events of our life all the time.
The key is to control the meaning that you give to things that happen to your life. It is the MEANING that you give to something that happens that determines how it will affect you.

A problem arises . . . how about finding the gift within the problem.

Here is a story that highlights a how the rules we may have set up in the blueprint of our lives can determine unconsciously the meaning we give to things.

A father is at his study desk at home and finds all his papers and books have been neatly arranged, but he is at a loss where to find things so he can start his work.
He asks his young daughter how this has happened and she replies that she did it to make his life easier because everything was messy and mixed up.

Well, the father takes one of the books and places it on the left of the desk where he normally has it. The daughter shakes her head “No, now you are messing it up again.” She puts the book back on the pile on the right side. So the father takes three pens from the container on the left and lines them up across the top of his desk where he always has them for immediate use. Again, the daughter gathers up the pens and puts them back in the container. “No, you’re muddling it up again. This is how it should be,” she says.

The rule in the father’s blueprint is that his work desk has to be ‘just so’ in a cluttered state for him to feel comfortable and able to work. The daughter’s blueprint rule is that things are muddled up unless everything is neat and tidy exactly as she has placed them.

Many of us have so many ways to get frustrated, and only ONE way to feel good. If one thing is out of place in our life then we get pissed off.
Here is something to think about: flip things around and find MANY ways to feel good instead.

Put excitement and adventure back into your life every single day. Make it something that you live and breathe, something that you would instantly notice if it went missing (and you’d want to recapture immediately).

When you’ve been to the moon and back what else is there in life that can excite you or motivate you?

That’s a good question. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did just that in July 1969, reaching a life-defining pinnacle. In the aftermath Aldrin in particular battled with depression and alcoholism back on Earth. But he eventually found his way back to a fulfilling life and became a public figure, an ambassador for space exploration.

His passion for adventure is not diminished as it once was in the immediate years after his date with destiny on the moon. Read his autobiography, or visit his website at www.buzzaldrin.com to get an idea of the life he now lives.

Today, Aldrin has a life of passionate adventure with worldwide business travel, scuba diving and mountain skiing, and also as the author of a number of books and advocate for continued manned space exploration.

So what can you do instead of going back to the moon (or the previous soaring summit of your life)?

1. Find the adventure in a smile.

2. Find the adventure in a love – whoever or whatever that love may be.

3. Find the adventure in a laugh.

Children can teach us a lot. Have you ever seen a child who will laugh at almost nothing? I mean really laugh hysterically at nothing?

Train yourself to be once more like a free-spirited child; to be able to laugh at almost nothing and to feel good about doing so.