Entering the Arena

Hi. Hello there. Steve Barnes here with Life Writing Live, as opposed to the Life Writing podcast, as opposed to the other things that we do. Just wanted to have an opportunity to talk with you. There's a lot of really interesting things that are happening. I was just waking up this morning and thinking about that My back, which last Saturday had been hurting me, is now on the edge of feeling fine. I mean, basically what happens is that it gets worse and worse. Then there's a point at which chaos begins in associated limbs or positions as your body seeks to rebalance itself. Then I find that I'm sleeping more probably as my body attempts to rebuild itself. And then I wake up and everything is feeling fine. And I can, I can feel that. And then during the day, it'll stop feeling fine for a few moments. But overall, that trend line is there. So there is that. So physically in. I guess I wanted to talk about the different programs that I'm working on right now to try to prepare myself for this. One of them is the 10830 program, which is doing 108 sun salutations every day for 30 days. Days. I'm attempting to work my way up to. To that. It's a similar energy output to what it takes to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. So it's a really, really, I looking. Looking at it as a really good test for myself, a way to give myself a goal that is transformative or will be transformative in nature. So Jeff Barnes asked if I'm drinking enough water. That's always a good question. I've got my, my morning vitamin slush there. And here is the jug of water that I freeze every night and try to drink every day. Nice cold water. So thank you very much, Jeff. I appreciate, I appreciate that thought and it's a good thought. And I really try to really try to take care of stuff like that. It's, you know, the thing, the idea is, you know, while connecting with my sense of self and just doing what feels natural to me, it really, there really is another element that is constantly monitoring and analyzing. Oh, no, you don't need to shut up, Jeff. It's okay, buddy. So that's, you know, in terms of the physicality. So today, working back into the Sun Salutations app, you know, basically I was doing at least one morning and night, no matter what, but I have some catching back up to do. So I started it doing three. This, I'm doing five sets. I did three this morning, and then I will do four and then five and then six and Then if it all feels good, seven, then tomorrow I'll probably start back at six and try to work up. Hello, Sarah. How are you, sweetie? Good to see you. It's good to be seen. Tananarive is out of town. She's in Atlanta taking care of her dad. And Jason is still at the embarkation center or the. Whatever you call it, customs, you know, coming, coming through, I'm sure coming through from Mexico. Glad that certain things are legal in the United States now, just in case he made the mistake of thinking he could smuggle something back. Hopefully he would not do such a thing, but one never knows. He is a teenager and teenage boys do test those limits. The most important thing. So, you know, my family situation. Jason has been having an adventure. Tananarive is taking care of her family and I'm having some opportunity to think. And this is a really important time to think because yesterday we found out that another deal that we'd been working on, I mean, the thing in Hollywood is everything takes so long to happen that you, even though they want you to be exclusive to any project that you're working on with them, the fact is that you can't do that. You will starve. You need to have multiple projects going on, which means that, you know, you never know which when it's going to come through. You know when the contracts are going to finish coming through, the payments are going to finish coming through, when the executives will have time to talk to you. So you end up juggling projects and you don't know which projects they're going to be because you don't know what order they're going to come in. And so you have to prioritize it. So I know that I can produce five pages a day, five days a week. Tananarive can do three pages a day, five days a week. We really only want to work four days a week, but we're prepared to go to six if necessary. Except that that just leaves us with one day to depressurize before you start the cycle over again. And that might be a little much. So looking and not knowing what's going to be coming at us. Exactly. Means we have to integrate ways to process that stress. As I've said many times, it is not stress that kills you. It is not stress that hurts you. It's an amount of stress that your body and mind cannot adapt to healthily. That leads to strain. That's the problem. So the trick is to, not necessarily to avoid stress, but to avoid more stress than you can healthfully cope with, you can helpfully adapt to that. Your system, your psyche, your circle of advisors and resources can help you. Because if you can, if you can adapt, then you get stronger. That stress, that's, you know, the Nietzsche thing, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. If you can adapt to it healthily, if you cannot adapt to it healthily, it breaks you down, cripples you and kills you. So our whole thing is that we want to be operating at this new level because there are these new opportunities, right? And if we do that, it's going to require us to be under stress. Because the only way you find out what works is by being in the arena. I mean, you can model people to get a really good idea, but no matter how good a map is, if you're driving to a particular destination, say Disneyland, no map, no advice, no imagining, is the same as actually driving the road. You will learn things driving the road that you cannot learn from modeling people. But still the map or the model is critical. So what I know is that I'm going to be taking it in order to get to that next level, which is exactly what we're aiming at right now in terms of television series, movies, so forth. I mean, you know, the book level already done that, writing for a television series, done that, a little tiny bit of, of movie stuff, including a Chuck, Chuck Connors ninja film that came out many years ago. Oh God. But in terms of doing what I really want to do and really need, need to do, that's, that's satisfying the deepest part of my consciousness. This is going to require growth and it's going to require stress coping mechanisms. I've got excellent stress coping mechanisms. The five minute miracle and the daily ritual are absolute no brainers. As is making sure I get enough sleep. And exercising is like. The exercise takes the stress out of your head into your body where you can feel it. So if you do that, then when you wake up in the morning, if your body feels rested, your body, your body mind is probably grown to be able to deal with the current stress level as well. If you don't exercise, the stress stays in your emotions and in your mind and it can just chew you up and you can numb yourself to it and not even feel it and fill it. It causes a breakdown of some kind of. So all of those things are the things that I'm thinking about right now is how can I be as balanced and as positive and as productive, as supportive to my good lady wife Tananari, who is absolutely doing the best she Can. And if I get frustrated with her, I need to remember that that frustration is my own fear. And the fear is probably that fear of not being able to reach the goals that I have. It is like, you know, running out of time to, to finish this, this game, to get to that next level. That series of thoughts about who I am and who we are and what the family is. Clarity there is very, very important. And I would say that your family, you know, that your, your own ego and your own psyche is your first line of defense. What are your habit patterns? What are your values? What are your beliefs? What are your positive and negative emotional anchors? It says, Jesse Ville says, here in Finland, we say sleeping is like putting money in the bank. I 100% agree with you. I also believe that every hour you go to sleep before midnight is worth two hours. After my first wife's mom said that, I kind of agree with that. And Dennis Dickens says, may you plow through the storm like a well crafted sailing vessel with a well trained crew that is ready for anything. Bless you. Thank you. That is such a lovely way to put it. It really is. I mean, we. I have a destination. There are things that I'm trying to accomplish that are very important to me that connect with what the little boy inside me wants. And that little boy is the source of my creativity. That, that sort of inner family. The whole parts party phenomenon from Ericksonian model hypnosis deals with, with naming the different parts of your personality as if they're different people. So it's like, you know, love, meet anxiety. You know, ambition, meet caution. And you, you work it out internally so that you can properly address the issues in your life. And you have to be willing to accept challenge. That does not necessarily feel fair always. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in my life that did not feel fair. I had to postpone what I wanted to accomplish in my writing career for 30 years. I had to look and ask myself, can I when will the culture be ready for the kinds of stories I want to tell? And looking at the curve of change, it said 30 years. So the question of how in the hell did I manage to keep my heart alive for a generation and a half for 30 years, knowing that that was the cost that I was going to pay and not become embittered by it. To be aware, to know that you're not necessarily surrounded by friends, but to not be embittered by it. This is, this is critical because I have no interest if I become embittered by the challenges in my Life, then the bastards win. The people who are trying to hurt me win. The people who said that I could not win, I don't want them to win. There is definitely a part of me that says if their victory is at my cost, now I'm going to win. So I could say I don't mind them winning, but they're going to have to change the conditions for victory. What they really want is to be happy. And for some reason, various reasons, they felt that limiting my options would make them happy. So they need to change that because, you know, I ain't going to go there. But I don't need for other people to be unhappy, to be happy. I don't need for other people to lose, to win. If they choose to stand in my way, then, yeah, they're going to lose. But what I'd rather do is be friends with them. And I've been able to make friends of many people who were opposing me. It's just part of that path. So trying to figure out, yes, right, illegitimate, non carborundum. You know, it's fake Latin, but it really, it really works in terms of, you know, don't let the bastards drag you down. There really are people who feel that they cannot win unless you lose the zero sum game. I think that that is seriously flawed logic. I don't see the world that way. And yeah, I just talking here, it's just kind of wanting to do a core dump at the end of the week. One of the things I thought is that one of the aspects of becoming successful in life is something I'd never anticipated. I always thought that as I got more successful, I'd be able to help more people with directly. And by the way, Dennis Taylor says, how do you do that? Why don't you say specifically what it is that, that you're referring to and I will answer you, Dennis. So how do I do what, what I did not expect? You know, when, when I was younger I would say these principles lead to success. And because I'd studied them and I'd observe and people would say, well, if you're so success. If you, if you're so. If that stuff is so good, why aren't you? As I became more successful, I thought that, well, now I can answer people those questions. And the challenge changed to the more successful I became, the more people wanted to attribute it to luck or some sort of innate advantages that I had. How do I make friends of enemies? You make friends of enemies. You cannot always do it, of course, if, you know, if you don't have time to find out what's going on with them. I'll. I promise I'll get right back to this, but I wanted to finish this thought that there are people who. Who are afraid to change, who are afraid to believe in themselves. Maybe they've tried before, maybe they've tried many times and they're exhausted. They don't want to care. They don't want it to try something. Powdered vitamin slushy with lemonade in miniature ice cubes. I love it. There are people been so beaten down that to hold their heads up triggers fear they're going to be hurt again, they're going to be betrayed again. So I think that a number of the people who attack the things that I'm saying here are in that category. They're literally afraid to believe. They're literally afraid to put themselves out there. And they figure I must be lying, I must be full of shit. You know, I must be conning. I'm not. I'm not being realistic, you know, I've heard that my whole life, but I did. I honestly did not expect that that would. That would be a factor after I'd actually proven that the things I'm talking about work, they were. They're basically. Their attitude is, well, you would have made it any. Steve. So they're also caught with it. Well, if I just say. If I were to say I agree with you, I would have just made it anyway because I'm smarter than you. If I were to say that, can you imagine how people would react? I mean, seriously, I can't say that I'm doing it because I've just got this innate coolness about me. And I can't say I made it because there are patterns of behavior, there are recipes that reliably create certain results. In other words, it doesn't matter what I say, it doesn't matter who I am, they're going to reject anything. But unlike snakes, I think that these people are sleepers and they're hurt. So I don't take offense at it. They don't know who I am. They are assuming that I'm someone who is trying to hurt them or someone who is not aware that my advice was hurt them. I have empathy for that, so I don't reject them. Do you find, Jeff Barnes asked, do you find that people come out of the woodwork to tell you why things won't work and those who believe in you stay. Stay quiet? No, some of the people who believe in me will speak. I mean, I hear it all the time I get, I get emails and messages and posts every day from people who are doing the things I say, the majority of them, but about 10% are people who've been badly hurt, you know, who did not grow up in a home where they were supported, loved, cared for. And they don't even know what that feels like. I think they don't know what it feels like to have that kind of hope. So what I have to do is to just be myself and continue to speak as truthfully as I possibly can. Now, the thing about making friends of enemies, to understand that all human beings are motivated by the urge to move away from pain toward pleasure. So anyone who is attacking you is actually defending themselves. You know, anger is a mask over fear. Just take a couple of basic notions like moving away from pain toward pleasure, or anger is a mask over fear. And the person who is your enemy, you get to ask yourself, what are they afraid of? If you can address their fear, you, that energy can be released. So the first step that you have to take to make an enemy, make turn an enemy into a friend. If you choose to do this is you have to understand them. You have to have rapport with them. You have to understand them enough to relieve, to release your anger at them, which means that you have no fear of them. In other words, if a little kid is screaming at you and you know that little kid can't hurt you, there's no anger. And it's just like, oh, poor little kid is afraid. Your poor little kid is angry. But when somebody is an adult or your boss or your next door neighbor or an ex or something like that, and they have anger towards you, that can be a real threat. So you, you need to be able to move to feel within yourself that you are safe enough that you can afford to look at them and not take it personally. They don't know you, they know their, their image of you. So by understanding, if you can understand them, then you can understand where the anger comes from, where the fear is. You might then make a decision. You might say, it's not worth it for me to try to deal with this. But if it is worth it, then you start with that rapport. No matter what they throw at you, you keep your balance. Remember, they assuming that you are not actually standing in their way, that they're hallucinating, that then all they need to do is believe that they can get the things they need to get without hurting you to offer them a multiplicity of choices. They will not accept those choices from you. Unless you have rapport with them. So that is. That can be difficult. It can be difficult, and this will be a matter of your own skill. I mean, even with enemies, you'll probably notice that there are times when you come closer together and times when you're further apart. So you're going to choose if you have that rapport with them, you'll be able to be sensitive to that. And if your commitment is for them to be happy in life, for them to be joyful in life, let that be in your heart. So that if they could read your mind, they'd know they could relax. Now, they can't, of course, course. But I think that it is best to treat people as if they can. That you can't. You can't play with this. You can't pretend. If you genuinely love someone and you genuinely are giving to them, it's very difficult for them to stay angry with you, especially if you don't need anything from them. So you have to make sure that you don't need anything from them. If they're at your job, you have to be. The more confident you are that you could find another job if necessary. The less fearful you're going to be about the job that you're in, the more confident you are that you could have another relationship, another friend, that you don't need to interact with these people, the easier it is. So that's the first step is building rapport with them. And that is an entire discipline in itself. The second thing, if we're looking at the three most important things to break their pattern. Now, you can break their pattern of behavior, of engagement by making. By affecting their body, affecting where they're focusing their attention, or affecting the language that is being used. One of the one great one is making them laugh. If you can make somebody laugh, you shift their. You're breaking their pattern. They're trying to. They're trying to get to the point where they're angry enough at you to take a step, swing. If you can make them laugh, you break that pattern and they have to start over again. And during the moment when that pattern is broken, you have a chance to insert something new. Okay, now what might you insert there? Good question. The third of the three most important things. Remember, the first thing is to get rapport with them, which means to understand them and to love them. The second thing is to break their pattern. So you're going to break either the way they're using their body, body where their attention is, or their language. When on my pages, I insist on courtesy, that's breaking people's patterns. They're used to going to people's threads and cursing each other out and cursing at the mind and then they fight back and forth. I don't play that. And so if you're going to be on one of my threads, you're going to be polite. And if you're going to be polite, then we have an opportunity to discuss the issues. We can find out is there means of commonality? Because the third thing is to connect the the new behavior to their highest good, their behavior to their highest good. What do they want? In other words, they want to make money or they want to find love, or they want to be healthy or they want to something. If you have the rapport, figure out what it is that they want and you break their behavior, you can then show them how the new behavior, being polite to you, for instance, will get them what they want. They will not change for you. You don't matter to them. They don't even know who you are. You don't even exist in their world. They have their concerns. And if you will address their concerns and figure out where they want to go and show them how the new behavior will get them what they want, now you have a chance to change them so that they are no longer in a damaging place towards you. And possibly if they do the new behavior and they start getting the results that they want and you are not judgmental of them, they have a chance to realize that they have behaved in a non optimal fashion. And from that position, sometimes you will actually get apology and a request to shake your hand, you know, metaphorically, if not literally. And there is possibly it could be a possibility of friendship if the two of you are heading in the same direction at the same pace, with the same basic energy, you might decide to travel that road together. That's what friendships and relationships are as people traveling in the same direction at the same time. And you know, with Tananarive, I saw that her person, her, her being, her energy was something that made my heart open. I looked at her and I thought, oh my God, I could travel the path of life with this woman. So I did all in my power to give her the chance to make an informed decision about whether or not I was someone that she wanted to be with to a certain degree. That's all there is of this soulmate process that we're going to be talking about on, on July 30th. And what I wanted to say to people who are interested in applying these ideas to the question of finding the love of your life. Please, please, please don't miss the 66% discount that you can get at soulmate. Deal.com soulmate deal. Do I would love it for you to ask questions that I can then answer. I am. I. I want nothing more than to empty myself out in the time that I have left on this planet. And to be of service. I mean, the Dalai Lama said this purpose of joy of life is to seek joy and be of service. It's all I'm trying to do. So you take care. And please join us on starting July 30th at soulmatedeal. Com. Take care, everybody, and thanks for spending a few minutes with me. Bye. Bye.