+1 #667: EXPECT the Occasional Darkness

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one we talked about the fact that although the light will always shine when you flip the switch, there will almost certainly be some dust and cobwebs to clean up if your life room has been dark for a long time. Again, it is what it is. Let's capitalize the lessons learned and get to work compounding future gains one little incremental optimization at a time. Today we're going to talk about one more little caveat. We need to expect that the lights will go out again. And then again and again and well, again and again and again. The naivete that we've somehow made it through all the darkness to a state of perpetual awesome such that we'll never need to worry about the lights going out again is perhaps the most pernicious lie we tell ourselves. Well, that and the idea that we should have already arrived at that state of bliss, preferably X years ago, right? So I'm reminded of a recent chat I had with Barry Michaels. Barry and Phil Stutz wrote the Tools in Coming Alive Together. Barry and I were chatting about the class he and Phil will be teaching with us called the tools 101. It'll be in the same 10 big ideas style that I've used over the years for our existing batch of 101s. Now we were brainstorming the ideas to include in the class, and of course we'll have the five primary tools from that book, etc. When Barry said that, he definitely needed to include the fact that we need to expect things to be challenging, that the lights will go out again and again and again. Rather than being surprised by that fact of life and then shaming ourselves into thinking that something's wrong with us, we'd be much wiser to sprinkle some mindful common humanity and kindness on ourselves. Self Compassion 101 style. Check out that +1 and then get back to work turning around the glitch. Fact is, that's basically the entire point of all our work together. To get better and better at preventing and then quickly responding to those light glitches such that we can let the divine Entheos light flow through us more and more consistently and more and more brightly. That's today's plus one. Expect the lights to go out and when they do, smile. Pull that thread through your head, stand up nice and tall, Clark Kenta Superman Transformation style, and use your favorite tool to flip it back on repeat forever.