"A" is for Action

Okay, so we are going. This is being live streamed. That's how I'm gonna record it. What I'm doing, by the way, is I'm getting ready to do the book on the magic formula. And that means that I had to break down into about 10 separate big chunks just to create the rough draft that I need to do this. And the core of it, of course, will be the five steps of the magic formula. Yesterday I did an essay about the map or model and I'll be polishing that and expanding that today. I wanted to talk about the A in the magic formula, which is action. Let's see, do I have a virtual filter that would be good for this? There we go. Magic. There we go. Okay, cool. So let's see, what do we need to take a look at here? The A is for action. If you were to take a look at the life writing formula, the thing that helps people become writers, we've built chunks of the magic formula into that six step process. That six step process is you write a sentence a day. You write one to four short stories a month. You finish and submit one story per month. You don't rewrite, accept editorial request. Step five is you read 10 times as much as you write. And step six is you repeat this process 100 times. If you take this six step process apart, you'll see a vast amount of compressed information, perspective, philosophical points, things that Octavia Butler and Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison and other people taught me either directly or within their writing. Although in those cases, I had a chance to sit down with all those people and talk about writing. Personally, I was blessed in that sense. Let's see, with Robert Heinlein, no, we talked about life. I guess maybe we never talked about writing specifically, but I learned about writing from his writing. Okay? I learned what his attitudes about writing were from his writing. Trying to be as totally honest as I can be here. But in terms of daily action, what's the daily action encoded in that pattern? It's you write a sentence a day. What's the weekly action? There isn't really a weekly action, but there is a monthly action. You write one to four short stories a month and you finish. You finish, polish and submit one per month. So what we have there is a definition of the week, of the daily action you need and the monthly action that you need, given that you are moving in the right direction. That's a career thing. If you were talking about sales, marketing, manufacturing, daily increase might be studying your Craft might be working on your craft, it might be researching your marketing, it might be updating your understanding of sales. Any number of different things or possibilities. But you would need to define what is your daily action. How many sales calls do you have to make that day? How many chapters do you need to read? How many pieces of raw material do you need to inspect? How much do you need to produce? You have to define this. And then once you define it, you make the daily amount, your minimum daily amount, small enough that there is no rational reason not to do it. The only reasons not to do it will be emotional reasons. There is no rational reason not to write one sentence a day. There just isn't. But people often will say, yes, I really want to be a writer, yes, I will commit to one sentence a day. And then they don't do it. In that case, they now have a diagnostic. Their lack of success in writing is not about the external world, it's not about their talent. It's not about anything except the fact they don't keep their word to themselves. Simple as that. I mean, yes, there is fear. I'm afraid of rejection, I'm afraid of this, I'm afraid of that. That's all true. But the fact is that professional artists also have those fears. And what's critical is that you know that if you say you're going to do something, you're going to do it. That's so critical in life in general that creating this, what I call atomic goals, something that is so small that you have, you know, it would have taken you 60 second to write one sentence and you didn't do it. But you watched television for three hours. If you look at that, you know that the problem is not out there. The problem is in here. It's in your heart and that's where you want it to be. I mean, the problems are always inside us. They're always external problems. If you are dealing, if you've dealt with oppression or abuse or neglect, then those external problems get larger. But if you take a look at the people who manage to succeed in spite of those externals, they can keep their word to themselves. They will say they're going to do something and they'll do it. This is where it starts. And there are atomic goals, atomic actions, you know, the smallest minimum piece that will actually move you in the right direction for any arena of life physically. You might want to take a look into the five Tibetans. Fantastic short term exercise. If you could do 21 repetitions, you're basically healthy, but you start with just three repetitions. So you do three repetitions of each of them and you're doing joint mobility. You could combine that with joint mobility drills. You find that your hips and your shoulders are not feeling good in response to it because you've neglected them for too long. In all likelihood, I mean, if you have a physical issue that your doctor says no, your joints were not built to do that, then you listen to the doctor. And I would suggest personally going to a physical therapist, showing them the exercises and having them help you create a modified version so that once again, it becomes a matter of did you keep your word to yourself or not to do three of each of these things, which take you two minutes, two minutes a day to be on the path of overall health. Joint mobility. If you can't do that, five minutes of joint mobility. You know you put on a favorite song. Three minutes. You know you do joint drills while the song is playing. Sun salutations. Three sun salutations. That's three minutes. You know you can do that if you will, if you'll force yourself to do it. And what you'll probably find is that you have aversive patterns with your body. Intermittent fasting. Fantastic practice. In many ways. This is something that I'm working with right now. When I'm under stress, it's harder for me to do intermittent fasting because I have so there's so many emotional connections. I love sitting down and eating dinner with my wife at night. So it can be difficult. So what I will do is I won't eat until 6 or 7 o' clock at night. So that is a version of intermittent fasting. It's not as strict as what I would really, really like the most. So that's two different arenas. Your career and your, your physicality. What about your heart? The five minute miracle. Remember, the buy in for all this is the five minute miracle. You're taking five, at least five 60 second breathing breaks during the day. And each one of those breaks, you could visualize the child in your heart. In each one of those breaks, you could get quiet enough to feel your heartbeat, or you could take your pulse to your heartbeat. You could be using each of those 60 second breathing breaks to connect with your heart. The blessing dance that I do with my wife every day, that is a ritual. My morning ritual is a ritual. These things benefit your heart. You want to fill yourself with gratitude. Even if you're just taking five 60 second breathing breaks and you're thinking, thinking about something you're grateful for, you think about what you want to accomplish by the end of the day, how this fits into your long term goals. And then you flood yourself with gratitude. Just for those 60 seconds. I can do that really fast. I can do that in 10 seconds. I have to do a video. This is connected with wanting to finish a book. And I am so grateful for the opportunity to do this. That is just wonderful. Make sure that you do that short term goal, long term goal, positive emotions that do that five times a day and watch the results. I mean it's just, it's astounding. Such a difference. This, like I said, taking action these small things is both, both builds. It actually takes you towards your goal and it helps you to detect the problems that you have that stop you from accomplishing your goals. So there are a lot of different reasons to do it. Reveal your true emotions and your capacity for focus. All you have to do is be sure you never have a 00 to 9 in any of the three categories that you're working on. And you will automatically begin to improve by that 1% per week. Once you understand that and once you move in that direction, you are entering a different world. Within six weeks, you'll enter a different world and you will hearing people's conversations about their lives and about why they are where they are in their lives, whether it's positive or negative, much more clearly. And you will find yourself developing your own philosophy about how things work. But you have to do this once again. Five minutes a day. You can do this in five minutes a day. You can easily write that one sentence. You can easily do three repetitions of sun salutations. You can easily connect with your goals and your sense of gratitude and their daily action. Five minutes a day. If you'll do that for just six weeks, you'll start building that habit. And in six weeks you'll start seeing where you have gaps, breaks in your chain. And you'll be able to say, I'm going to fix this. And then you can look for the resources necessary to do it. The magic formula is one of those sets of resources. This works and it works beautifully. If you make sure that you don't have a break at any one of those five things. Map or model daily actions, gratitude, clear intentions and a sense that this is organic to your nature, who it is that you are, you are in a different realm. And you will be able to not only accomplish your own dreams, but help the people around you accomplish theirs. So that's all I'm going to say. And now I'm going to end this today. And that will enable me to drop this into a dictation program and I will suddenly have a mini chapter. Take care. Bye. Bye.