firedance 1-20-23

We're here too. Oh, I've got to turn off Facebook because otherwise I'm gonna get double sound.

Yeah, you need to turn off your face.

I turned it off. I did it. You know, you are my producer as well as my co host. I am very obedient. Ah, this is great. So we'll get started in a couple minutes. But it's always fun to see people, you know, warm them up, get ready for a good show. Let's make sure that during this period of time, we should have our energy as high as. We should believe in ourselves as much as possible. You know, the rest of the day could be crap. So let's make sure that we have a little time where we are present and alive and positive and supporting each other. Because you just never know. If you charge your battery up, then you've got something just in case the world is going to crap for you for a while. You can remember a period of time when things were going great. So that's one of the things that we can do here together. And it's certainly what we're trying to build into our morning rituals. Fire dance.

Ah.

Two more minutes and we'll go. There's. There's someone named Cardell. He looks like a serious man. Are you a serious man?

I'll try to be. Don't always make it.

Yeah, I understand. You know, life. I take life very seriously, but I don't take myself seriously. It keeps me sane. Audrey Latimer. It's a lovely lady named Audrey Latimer. Hi, Audrey. Greetings, everyone. I'm in Seattle. How's it going? I love it. You know, we're going great. Seattle is a wonderful city. I have many good friends up there. My favorite science fiction convention of the year is in Seattle.

I got it.

Yeah. So you got that. If you can focus on that, then I can focus on the people. Got my vitamin slushy. Wow, wow, wow. This is all so cool. Let's love this. I'll tell you. Tananariv and I had tried to create a teaching situation three, you know, three and a half years ago, just before COVID Covid just blew it up. So part of what I tried to do, since I was trying to figure out how can I replace that, how can I substitute for the live situation? And the technology is finally here. You know, it's the, you know, zoom. And then I can use tai chi, and we can use, you know, other. Oh, my God, Larry's here.

Larry?

Yes, Larry Nimmin. Let him in. Wow. It is important for People to know that one of the most important and beloved people in my entire life, other than my good lady wife on here and that person is Larry Niven. Don't want him to know that I said wonderful things about him. Larry can't know what a wonderful guy he is.

Shh.

Don't. Don't let the secret out.

He might have heard us talking about him.

Larry might have heard us talking about. Oh, God, now he knows how much I love him. This is not gonna work. So admit, Scott, admit. People, let's get started. Steve Barnes here. This is Firedance. Thank you so much for being here. I am the creator of Fire Dance and Life writing and, and sundry other technologies. And this that we're doing every week is to spend a little time exploring what happens when you bring your body, your mind, your emotions all together at the same time. My good lady wife, Tananarive Du is present and she is my co host and she'll be letting people in and we're going to be discussing all sorts of interesting things. And there's Larry. And who's that? Is that Tim behind you, Larry? Tim Griffin is with me. Yes. Great. Fantastic. Tim is Larry's nephew and they are both students as well. But more than that, he is one of the great teachers of my life. I would not be who I am today without Larry. It's not that I wouldn't be successful. It's not that I wouldn't be happy, But I could not have done what I did in the way that I did it without Larry. And I love him so much. I'm so happy to see him here because that means that I get to give to the people who've given to me. And I can't think of anything in the world that is better than that. So the first thing I want to do is I would like you to unmute your microphones and just say hi to each other. Hi, everybody from Alaska. Hello.

Hey.

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.

Welcome to Find it in Decades.

Hello, everybody. There's Megan and Linda and Dennis and Cardell and Kathy and Audrey and Mary and Scott and Lisa and Larry and Megan and Bill and Sonia and MT Fierce. MT Fierce. I like that. And Tom and Clarissa and oh my God, we've got a great group here today. So let's just kind of get into it. You know, I always have plans for what I'm going to do, but I always am willing to interrupt those plans if the right thing happens. What I look forward to is feedback. So when I ask you guys for feedback, for questions When I say comments, questions, or requests, I mean that I love it. I love bouncing off of you. I love being in a space where you say something to me and challenge me on something that I have said. As you know what we're doing, the fire dance is a combination of a couple different things. It's affirmation and positive emotion and visualizing your mentors. And also moving within the Tai Chi Chuan form, which is very deliberately chosen because it is an extraordinary exemplar of the physiological manifestation of Taoist philosophy, the idea of the balance of Yin and Yang, of different qualities. So therefore, as you move through it physically, you get to tap into some of the other aspects. And there are things there, there are wisdoms encoded within that form that are very difficult to put into words. But if you will do it, you'll get it. So before I go into anything else, I'd like to start with the. With a little bit of chi Sao. Yeah, not chi sao, Chi gong. Chi sao is a. Is a Wing Chun martial arts exercise. Qigong, on the other hand, is the energy system that operates inside Tai Chi. So what you do is you get the energy in qigong and then you find that same energy when you're practicing the movements. And some of you may have questions about the movements. That'll be great. I'm delighted to answer them. But right now, what I'd like you to do first, let's try this. Let's see what the equivalent of this sitting down is. Sometimes I stand up, sometimes I sit down. Let's. Let's stay seated. Right, now what I want you to do is to rub your hands together. Rub your hands together until your palms get hot. Yeah, Good. Then you shake your fingers out. Okay, Now I want you to put your hands close enough together that you can feel the warmth. The left hand is feeling the warmth from the right hand. The right hand is feeling the warmth from the left hand. It's like you're trying to hold a ball of warm air. And the more relaxed you get, relax your shoulders, relax your face. You should be able to feel a tingle in your palms. You should be able to feel that warmth as your hands relax and you warm them up. The hand gets warmer, the more relaxed you are, but it also gets more sensitive to warmth. So you are both projecting more warmth and feeling more of it. And you start getting that sense of a tingling ball of warm air. This is very nice, relaxed, focused place. Slow your breathing down. Close your eyes. Let your hands spread as far as they can while still maintaining that Sense of tingling and warm air between them. Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. Make sure to breathe deep. Breathe down in your belly. When you inhale, your belly expands. When you exhale, it contracts. Just stay with me for five slow, deep breaths. One, Two, Three, Four. Relax. Five. All right, now you can open your eyes. That feeling of relaxed focus, you can bring it. It's a flow state. It's a flow place. You can take that feeling into other activities. Tai chi, there's nothing metaphysical about it, unless that's what you want it to be. I'm not going to get between you and your metaphysics by any means, but just psychologically and physiologically, there's all the foundation you could want for why this is a positive practice. To learn how to relax deeply physically is one of the most important things you can do. It helps keep you in the center of the storm. We all have stresses in life that is non negotiable. What we can do, especially if we need to serve the people around us, the people we love, is to step into a space where we're in the center of the storm. Yes, there is stress out there, but I'm going to be as calm as possible. I'm going to be as observant as possible. I'm going to observe my emotions rather than being controlled by them. I will observe my thoughts rather than being controlled by them. One of the advanced aspects of meditation is the notion that we are not the voices in our heads, we are the ones listening to the voices. We are not our emotions, we are experiencing our emotions. And by creating just a little bit of wiggle room between ourselves, our impressions, our emotions, our thoughts, or even our history, we begin to go down the tunnel of asking the question, who am I? And what is true? And those are the two questions that are the best questions in the world. Who am I? No matter what it is that I'm doing, there is some aspect of my personality that is perfect to do this right. And so it's like, who am I when it comes to writing? Who am I when it comes to martial arts? Who am I when it comes to being a father, being a husband? They're like different hats that I put on. But. But the question, the inquiry about who is the person who does these things? Is a very valuable inquiry. It takes you home, it stops you from getting too invested in the things that you do and reminds you that you're the axe. You're the one who does. You're the implement that does. Your body is an implement, your Actions are expressions of that. But who are you? Everything that you do has a perfect amount of focus and relaxation to be able to do it at your very highest levels. And every activity has a different amount of what I call focus. There's something that I call idea. Get a good idea is the metaphor, instinctive designation of energy and attention. For every activity, there is a perfect amount of energy and attention. Too much and you're burning up energy that you don't need to burn up. Too little and you're not going to hit takeoff speed. So if you know what is necessary to do a thing, what you want to do is to do the minimum necessary to accomplish it with excellence. You don't want to waste any energy. You might need that energy later on in the day. You might then need that energy tomorrow. And in some cases, you don't want to have too much energy. Because if you're, say you're trying to attract a stray cat that's out in the middle of the street, you don't want it to get hit by a car. You need to have attention towards the cat. But you might not be wanting to jump around and be too energetic because that might scare the cat. So that's too much energy. What you want is for that kitty to get in on the street. So understanding that what you want is to be able to instinctively do the things that you would do if you thought about it for a month. That's what you want. What is the perfect activity? We have all had the experience of walking away from a situation saying, oh, why didn't I do this? Why didn't I say this? Mastery is about slowly getting to the point where your deepest wisdom is driving your spontaneous action. And to a certain degree, that means we have to practice a lot. We have to go out in the world, and we have to make a lot of mistakes. There's literally no way to avoid making errors. So be smart. Simply don't make the same error twice. So before I go on, because the most important thing is always the people who show up here. Does anyone have any comments, questions or requests about anything before we go on? So if you do, raise your hand and unmute yourself and let's hear. I don't see any hands up. Let's see. Let me go over to the chat and see if there was anything instinctive. Designated life writing, exercise of writing your eulogy, child story and adult story is a remarkable tool for realizing who I am. Absolutely. It's extremely powerful stuff. Okay, Lynn Dickens says, my hands are still cold. Sweetheart, that probably means that you have some issues with your circulation. And so as you. As you learn how to relax more and move with greater purpose, one of the things that you want is that sense of increasing circulation. Warm hands are a good indication of that. So learning how to relax until your hands start tingling with warmth, meaning that the circulation is increasing, is a very positive thing and probably will have some health benefits for you in a lot of ways. What you're looking for are external measurements of internal states, conscious things you can do that affect the unconscious, the dog and the cat. The dog are the things that you can do consciously and deliberately. The cat is the response you want. So if what I want is to be a New York Times best seller, I can't directly influence that. What I can do is do the very best writing I can do every day. And what that means is I have to write every day. I have to research every day. I want to build a circle of writers who can help support me, that kind of thing. Those things I can control. So if you walk the dog, you get to play with the kitty, because the kitty is the spontaneous things that happen. Dogs come when you call. Cats wait until you're busy doing something else, then come and curl up on your lap. So a lot of success is like that. Relationships are like that. Love is like that. The results that you want are often not under your direct control, but stochastically. You can set yourself up so that you have a better and better and better chance of hitting that. And that's what it is that we want. What is the daily activity now? I am always blown away when people send me notes. And we have one today from one of. One of the students. And I thought that I would read this because it opens the door to understanding some things about the body, mind connection. You know, like I said, the fire dance is a combination of the magic formula. You know, map times, action times, gratitude times, intention times, conviction or courage equals results. And movement in the tai chi of incantations, saying your affirmations while you're moving, of visualizing your mentors, of flooding yourself with positive emotions every day. Those things, the nexus of your body, your mind, and your emotions all the same time, is what we're up to. So asking what happens when you do that? I've got something for you. This was a note that was sent to me by Lionel Rojas today. And it kind of overwhelmed me. I read it to my wife, and I was crying, so I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try not to cry when I read this. But it was. Honey, Am I telling the truth, sweetheart? Definitely.

We're crying.

Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much weeping, actually.

Yeah, I'm a big softie. Well, let's see if I can get through this without crying. Good morning, Stephen. I'm going to try and keep this brief. I finished my morning ritual earlier and I'm feeling a lot of gratitude in general and for you in particular. A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with a rare bone disorder. When the doctor informed me of my condition, I fell into depression and despair. I stopped doing my morning ritual, five minute miracle and abandoned my other daily practices. Soon I began to develop aches and pains all over my body, which I attributed to the disease. I decided my life was over and began to overeat and lay around in bed watching TV every day. Then one day when I was laying around, I heard a big voice in my head say one word, Move. I ignored it at first, but then the next day I heard it again. Move. When I worked out before, I had these little voices in my head telling me to stop exercising and go watch tv. But now that I was actually doing that, there was a big voice telling me to move. I had no idea what to make of that. I remembered you saying how those little voices are liars. So I asked myself, if those little voices telling me to stop are liars, then who the hell is this big voice? That's when it hit me. The big voice was me. The real me. I'm not the guy who lays in bed all day eating chocolate and watching tv. I'm the guy who gets up to do my morning ritual at 3am when the whole city is sleeping. I'm the dude who fasts 18 hours a day and does yoga before bed. I move well. I resumed my daily routine and almost immediately my aches and pains went away. I realize now that it wasn't the disease making me feel like crap. It was my abandonment of everything that defined who I was. I went to see a spot specialist and there is a very effective treatment that suppresses the disease. And he recommended that I continue to exercise, lose some weight, eat better, etc. Which is what I was already doing. I now have a strong understanding of the mind, body, spirit connection. I am so grateful I found you, Steven, because I would have never come to this point if I hadn't taken your advice and started these daily practices years ago. Thank you so much for sharing all you do with us. And what I answered was, I am beyond honored. This is the culmination of a lifetime dream to create something Worthy of my wonderful teachers of changing the world by training 10,000 fire dance students, each of whom commits to sharing with a hundred others, or a hundred thousand who will share with ten or a thousand, each of whom will commit to sharing with a thousand, but by hook or crook, facilitate the awakening of 1 million Awake, Aware adult human beings. That's who I am. You know, it's a grandiose dream. It's. It's something that I want, something that I love. And when I have a chance to affect another human life, sincerely, there is no honor in life. I mean, when I held my son up to the stars and promised God that I would deliver him safely to his adulthood, that's what that was. To have responsibility for another human being. To be willing to be strong enough and clear enough and honest enough to genuinely say, if you like the results I've got here, this is the path, you know, to be able to say that to my son, to be able to honestly look him in the face and say, I am being as honest with you as I can about myself, strengths, my weaknesses, what I have and have not accomplished in life. Take what is useful and discard the rest. I can't be more than I am, but what I can do is be as honest as I can be about everything that it took for me to get here and everything I'm going through. Right now, my son is having the opportunity to watch me and his mom step into the greatest opportunity that we've ever had. There's some things that are about to happen that are absolutely stupendous. I'm getting a chance to get my Hollywood career back together. 20 years ago, 20 years ago, I was told I was too old. 20 years ago, I was told I was too old. But I'm getting that chance. We worked and networked and refined our skills and gathered allies and resisted the fear and dealt with the pandemic. And every day trying to raise our family, trying to raise our game until we could get into the position and the brass ring would come around again. And now it's there. And I'm looking at this, and I realize that there are ways in which there is a knot between the three different aspects of my life. My family, my career, my body. In terms of my body, I want to go to Manila in 2020. My martial. My beloved martial arts sensei, Steve Muhammad, wants me to represent the black Karate Federation and travel around the country teaching. And it terrifies me. Anybody who knows me knows it took me 23 years to get my ear, my first black belt because I was dealing with so much fear. So some of that old fear, the pretender voices in my head saying, you're not enough. You can't do that, rose up. But they don't know. I've got an ally. My ally is my teacher, the best karate man I've ever known. And if he looks at me and says, you can do this, I have no right to tell him that he's wrong. I can't. I gotta step up. It's like, okay, if you're sure. In terms of parenting, Jason just turned 19. He is creating his own business. He. I caught him picking up a book and reading it spontaneously for fun for the first time I've ever seen him do that. In terms of my wife, T and I are going to be doing this together. We're going to be driving to work every day, working together, even though we'll be working, doing separate things, driving back. We need to work out in the morning together. We need to make sure we connect. We need to make sure to do our blessing dance every day. Because stress in life, they pay you for how much stress you can take without cracking. So it behooves you to learn how to take stress as healthily as possible. In fact, if you will breathe, you'll do the five minute miracle. That's kind of the buy in. That's the one thing that I want for everybody here. You don't have to pay me a dime. It doesn't take any time, really. But just set the alarm on your phone for once every three hours at the minimum. You can do it every hour and just spend 60 seconds doing deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. If you want to do that while you're doing qigong exercise, well, gee, I couldn't stop you, could I? That would be being a little bit creative, sort of understanding. Ah, maybe I do that one, you know, one minute. Let me load in some additional energy work. Let me load in some visualization. Let me load in an idea about where I want to go in the next 12 months, the next six months, three months. You know, where I want to go this week, what I want to accomplish today. You can load all that in in 60 seconds while you're breathing. Most people create goals once a year, you know, they're doing the New Year's resolutions. What do you think would happen if you checked yourself every day? If every day you asked, well, where am I on the map? Am I going where I need to go? Am I heading in the right direction? I need to go in, I'm there. Well, if you're there, then all you need to do is do that work. What do I need to do in order to get ready for next week? Because now that's the career thing. What I need to do is to make sure that all my work is up to date. So it's fun. I'm so glad that Larry popped on because, you know, buddy, you know, our project, that's what I have to really work on today and tomorrow, so I make sure that everything is ready for you. And then during the week, you know, I don't know. We don't know exactly what time the writers room will be over, but we'll work it out. You and I'll get together for dinner instead of for lunch. So, you know, I'm almost. I've almost got that chunk where you can dive back into it again and everything is working well. But I've got other things I'm trying to write, too. I'm doing one on helping hapless guys, incels and voluntary celibates understand the mating game. Understand how to present themselves in such a way as to be attractive to the kinds of women that are attractive to them. That's one of the biggest things that I did in life. You know, I tried trying to understand growing up raised by my mother and my sister, without a father there. I had to actually ask some questions, how do I grow up to be a man? And one of the answers I came up with is, I want the respect. I want to be respected by the kinds of men I respect, and I want to be desired by the kinds of women I desire. Who do I have to be to have those things? And if you choose the men who you respect carefully and the women you desire carefully, and you listen to what they say and respect their hearts, and if these are help that just following your hungers, your hunger to be part of a tribe, or your hunger to be sexually satisfied or find romance, whatever, you can actually use your hungers to drive your own actions so that you are the person who can do the things that will take you to where you want to go. Everything that I'm talking about here is a different version of the same thing. There is this mountain to climb called life. And you take a few steps every day and you check to be sure that you're going in the right direction. Is that really what you want to do with your life? Is that really where you want to go? You get to surround yourself with people. Hopefully the people who are going to the same mountain at the same time rate are fun folks. I found wonderful friends, you know, people who I just. I have so much fun with them. You have any idea how great it is to have a genius, a wild man genius like Larry Niven as a buddy? Are you kidding me? The little kid I was would have been turning handsprings to think that that was even a possibility. You have to understand that to. To have people in my life who I respect and love, to have won the love of a woman as beautiful and brilliant as Tananari, do you think that's not transformative? You think that every day I don't ask myself, who do I need to be to live up to this? Who do I need to be to walk at her side? It's very simple, folks. A lioness wants a lion. It's so simple. Once you get that, once you understand what it is that creates attraction, what it is that raises your chances of success in any particular way, then it's just, well, let me live every day of my life. Chop wood, carry water. Let me just do the things that I need to do today, and I'll do it again tomorrow, and I'll do it again the day after that. And is there some resistance to boredom and that? Yeah. Yeah, there is. You have to find ways to motivate yourself to do the things that your ego will say. This is boring. Go do something else. You know, to a certain degree, it's a little bit. It's a little bit like going to bed with a different woman every weekend rather than falling in love and actually building a life. Yeah, there's a certain amount of. Yeah. Thrills. You know, the first few times you're with somebody. But the real stuff that you're looking for is deeper than that. It's deeper than that. It's that idea of, what are we actually building together? Where are we actually going together? What can we be together? So the morning ritual that I created is simply bringing your heart, your mind, your body all together at the same place at the same time. So that for a short period of time every day, you get to kind of see. When I think about the path that's in front of me, when I think about the actions that I want to take, when I tell myself that I am the person who can do the things, what happens inside me? Do I embrace my excellence? Do I embrace my potential? Or is there a voice inside me that says, oh, you can't do that. You're not enough for that. You're not good enough for that. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the voices in your head saying, you're not enough. Come on, raise your hand. Yeah, yeah. This is what happens to us. Those voices. Like I said, one of the most important things you can learn in some of the deep mystery schools is that you are not the voices in your head. You are the one listening to the voices. So if we're not the voices in our head, there are meditative disciplines that say, okay, so the voice in your head and the words and the concepts. Meditating is like sitting on a mountainside, and there's a stream going by underneath you. And you simply watch the thoughts float by. You observe the voices without connecting to them. Neuro linguistic program says, well, you could change the tonalities of the voice. You know, the voice says, you're not good enough. Turn that voice into Mickey Mouse. You're not good enough. In the same information stops having emotional impact. You could put calliope music behind the voices. Those voices can say anything they want to in your head, but you know that they're. It's. It's a clown car. You start taking it as a sense of humor. Oh, those. You know that voice over there? That's my mom who said I'd never accomplish anything. That's my first boss who fired me without cause. That's my first girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other who trashed me, who dumped me, who cheated on me, who berated me, who abused me, whatever. Those voices go deep. Any voice in your head from a person who had control of your life, in other words, who fed you, who paid for the roof over your head, who was engaged with sex in sex with you, who controlled your income, those kinds of core power things, Anyone who has that kind of power over you, especially before the age of puberty, those voices go deep. And it can take dynamite to get them out of your head. But if you keep asking the question, who am I? And you recognize that you're not the voices, when somebody says, you know, if you're doing your morning ritual, you're doing your tai chi, you know, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, all the love that I need is within me now or every day, in every way, I'm becoming a better and better writer every day, in every way. I'm becoming a better and better father every day, in every way. The voices in my head that say, no, you're not. This is crap. Why are you lying to yourself? You can't get any better than this. It's all downhill from here, Steve. Those voices are definitely there. But here's the trick. If I believe that the Tai chi is a powerful tool. You can go to the. You can look up tai chi health benefits or qigong health benefits, and you will see a list of health benefits that is so long I cannot put them on the website because it would sound like fraud. I mean, that we're talking recovering from. From camp, from. From chemotherapy. We're talking Parkinson's disease. We're talking, you know, just general flexibility and energy and insomnia and on. On and on and on. That the. The governmental institutions and experimental protocols as well as centuries of practical experience have said, effective. This is. It's science. And you, like I said, don't believe me. Look it up and go to the. Go to the various health institutes that are saying, oh, yes, this is. This is very, very good for. For arthritis, and it's good for this and it's good for that. It's amazing if I believe that tai chi has those benefits. And those benefits will make me a better writer. How? By teaching me how to go into a deeper flow state while I'm concentrating at the same time. Oh, okay. How about being a dad? Okay. Being able to relax under stress, being able to be high energy, focus that attention. Any of those things. Somebody's got their. Yeah, okay, good. Mute that. If I know that the tai chi is making me a better person in the arena that I'm trying to get better, then the voice saying, you can't do it is in direct conflict with the fact that I'm doing it right now. It's like driving to San Diego and the voice you had saying, you're not driving to San Diego. You look around and say, yeah, kind of am. One of the things you're looking for is to expose the false voices in your head. One of the things you're looking for is to give yourself no excuse for not being excellent. To boil it down to the smallest number of things that ultimately becomes one of did I keep my word to myself or not? I mean, just a couple days ago, I had a student who wants to be a writer, who knows a lot of writers, and for years has been talking about writing a story, cannot finish it. I don't want to give gender or anything to indicate identity, but this person knows a lot of writers, and this person uses every excuse they can for why they've never finished a story. Now, what I say to this person is, write at least one sentence a day. This is what I say to all our writing students. Write at least one sentence a day. Anybody can write one sentence a day. You tell Me, you don't have time to write one sentence a day. In the time it took you to say. Say that you could have written one sentence. In other words, you are lying to yourself. And you want to take the basic things that you have to do in life and make them so simple that there is no excuse not to do it. None. When you do that, you're forced for maybe the very first time, to look at not what the world has done is doing out there, but to a certain degree, what has it done to you? To what degree has it. Has it convinced you that you are something less than beautiful and wonderful and powerful and deserving of joy? Yeah, you're going to have to work your butt off. So what Chop would carry water? That's just life. But you have the right to be joyful. You have the right to experience your own power. You have the right to passion, growth, and success under your terms. If you. And this is where modeling comes in. If I say you have the right to success, you have the right to success. If you're willing to pay the price for it. Now, what's the price for it? That's where you study. That's where you model. You find people who have accomplished what you're trying to accomplish, starting roughly where you were, roughly where you are. I like looking at people who succeeded even though they started from worse than where I am. Where I am. There was people who were homeless, slept in their cars, and built an empire. You know, there are people like that, you know, and they are fascinating to watch. They. They simply think and act and do and feel differently than most of us. And when you say that somebody feels differently, because that's the thing. If this person, this. The student. Let's call the student Leslie. If Leslie knew that all they had to do was a sentence a day, and Leslie did not do that, then what is stopping Leslie is the emotions. It's not knowing how to do it. It's not. Not having the time to do it. It's not. Not having the resources to do it. Something was scary for some reason. This thing that Leslie said over and over and over again, I want this. This is important. I admire the people who can do this but cannot do this. It's easy to see something is stopping you. What is it? What are you afraid of? Because it's usually going to be fear. So you can take a look at people who have accomplished things. One of the first things I wanted to do when I met Larry was find out how. How do you do what you do? How do you be. How can you be what you are? Here's this fun, brilliant, incredibly accomplished human being, and I'm watching him. So how does he think about writing when he sits down to write? Larry went into flow state faster than anybody I'd ever seen. Okay, so he's got mastery of flow state office full of books. Oh, he's an encyclopedic reader. Okay, what does he think about writing? Writing is fun. You know, it's on and on and on. It's picking those things up. So if somebody is not writing, then you can say, well, why aren't you writing? Maybe it's. I'm blocked. I don't believe I have anything good to say. So you have to separate the flow state where you're writing from the editor state where you are judging your writing. You have to get past that first draft. You have to get past that first draft. So then you have to say, well, what are your beliefs? There might be beliefs like, I can't do it. Beliefs like, if I do it, people will laugh at me. If I do it, I'll get rejected and so forth and so on. Well, I'm not going to say you're wrong. You might fail. They might laugh at you. They might reject. In fact, they will this absolute guarantee you're going to get rejected. And some people are not going to like what you did. So what you got to ask yourself, can you survive that? Could I survive being rejected? You know, can I survive somebody not liking me? Well, you know something? No matter who you are, what you do, and how good a person you are, remember they nailed Jesus to a cross? You know, he seemed to have been a model, an archetype of a really evolved, positive human being or more than that. And, you know, look what happened to him. Look what happened to Gandhi. Look what happened to Martin Luther King. Guess what? There are going to be problems. Some of those problems will be severe. But if you think about the fact, you know, anytime you ask yourself whether or not you should try to be the best you can be, you should to try to hold these dreams, hold these goals, think about these things. If you were going to model me, one of my thoughts is a very important question. How long are you going to be dead? Armed with the answer to that. Give yourself permission to go out and have the best life possible. To love as much as possible, to give as much as possible, to laugh as much as possible, to help a child who doesn't know their way, to get your feet firmly enough on the path that you can turn around to other people and say, this way, follow me. The world needs people who are aware of the fact that life does not last forever. Get on with it. Let's enjoy our lives today, now. And what I'm. The reason I do this every week is because others helped me. Others helped me. I. I cannot tell you how important it is to give thanks to the people who helped us and to turn around and help others. That means that we have responsibilities to be happy. And the Dalai Lama said that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. Who is willing to live their life with taking that meaning? To be joyful. End of service. Who's willing to do that? Because anybody who raises their hand and is willing to be joyful and of service is of my tribe. So I see some hands. I think Larry raised his hand.

Yes.

Okay.

Great, great, great. That's. Tom raised his hand. Okay. Leo raised his hand. See, this is.

This is.

This is good. And I want, by the way, I want some questions. I'm going to open up to questions again. And the person who asked the best question today is going to get a free coaching call from me. Just like either one or maybe three. We'll see how it goes. I see several new faces here who joined the program today will also get coaching calls from me. I want you, you know, I try to answer you. You send me questions on Facebook or through email or on the. On the Kajabi site. I always answer them. I love teaching. This is my jam. This is why I live. Jaime raised his hand. Did you have a question or were you just saying yes. You want to commit to being. Living a life of joy and service?

Join service, sir?

Absolutely. Great. Anybody else have a question? Any question right now? And don't be afraid to challenge me. This works when you, you know, the part of you that's saying, oh, God, this is bullshit. Let that out. Yes. Mo Barnes.

Hey. Hey. Stephen Barnes. No relation other than plantational West African, I'm sure.

There you go.

I have a question and I've shared it with you in direct messages. And you know, when I had my twin boys, special needs are 18 now. Coming in, I had one rebellious, trying to find his way. Had some violent attacks by him, emotional disorders and everything else. And, you know, it's a question of. He's like, yeah, I'm 18 now. You know, I'm gonna be on my own and everything else. Let me pack my bag and all this other stuff. And, you know, he has. He has a blessed life. But it doesn't matter. That he has a blessed life from anyone else. But when we deal with children who are brilliant. He was on his way to a scholarship for military academy and he derailed himself. And I'm a proponent of medical marijuana at a certain level. Not a proponent for children what a minor developing. But within his high school in metro Atlanta the gang activity kids sharing edibles, vape pens. And the latest incident is when I seized his vape pen because it was messing with his other medication. And I hey, we listen to Stevie Wonder, Edmund Sondle, everything else. I try to bring him to a state of peace, but he rejects me in many different ways. So I wanted to just ask first of you, Stephen Barnes. You've already given me suggestion suggestion. Give me maybe two if that's not too much. And for Larry Niven, when I was rolling Dungeons and Dragons, Atari system, reading Ringworld, kids calling me strange in the black community because I had ringworld Ringworld engineers and I bought the role playing game Ring World with all the characters and stuff. And I see a lot of celebrities are now going back to tabletop role playing games. And I'm wondering, Steven and Larry, since Wizards of the coast just announced that they're doing an open gaming license for the products because they realize there's so many content creators out there. Larry Niven, I'm asking you specifically, is that something that you may think about if you have the time can write one sentence a day on an adventure? And Steven, you know, like disposable money right now with my kids, my only nerd thing is I can spend 50 bucks a month and I spend it on YouTube, guys. So Stephen, if you can answer my.

Question, let's let Larry give give an answer because that's a lovely, lovely tribute to my mentor. I'm on no. I have considered. Working with games and the answer is no. I prefer to tell you how a story ends. I don't want you to decide that.

There you go with role playing games. You decide how the story ends. The characters themselves through dice rolls, randomness, luck, skill levels they built up. I remember as a game we used to play called Bushido which is a feudal Japanese role playing game was excellent. And I had this is in high school and I was a first level ninja. Don't you know I wrote three critical successes in row and I killed Takai. I knocked Ms. Out Amoy and another samurai in that character class. And then finally I was killed. Fire. Fireball. They said this must stop. I said, you know guys, this is unfair. So you do get a chance to end it within the whole thing. I'm not asking where Louis Wu is right now, whether some rag with DNA and pack protection.

This is a conversation that could obviously go on for hours.

I'm going to stop it.

I definitely suggest that you reach out.

I'm going to go meet.

But let me. Let me address what you need to do. First of all, you want to ask a couple questions. Why do people use drugs of various kinds? I'm not putting that down. But people use them the same way you use meditation, other things in order to adjust your mind to the range where you feel most comfortable. Sometimes that means speeding yourself up. Sometimes that means slowing yourself down. Sometimes that means detaching a little bit from your thoughts. And, you know, pot is in that. I mean, it's. Is it. I think it's safest to consider it about the same level as beer in terms of what it does. And a young developing mind should. Ideally not. The real problem with drugs is that our pain should motivate us to take action. You want pain? The diseases that numb us to pain stop us from being able to prevent injury. Okay, so it is non optimal to take a substance. If that substance numbs you to the existential pain of life, that might have motivated you to take action. Learn and so forth and so on. So we can make a guess that he's dealing with fear. And at his age, what is he afraid of? Well, it sounds a little bit like he might have been afraid of stepping into his own future. You said that he had earned a scholarship to an institution that would have given him a career and set him out on a life path. He's simultaneously right now having that sense of, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I want to do that. Because he's going through that period where he's starting to really define himself. But what do we know about what human beings are and what they want? The hypnotist, Milton Erickson, who was the first man to demonstrate hypnosis at the level of a medical procedure, could get. I've talked about him. Could get miraculous results. You'd go to him for chewing your fingernails. And he just talked to you for an hour. And six weeks later you report that. Yeah, you'd stop chewing your fingernails. I don't know why. But also, I've stopped smoking, and my daughter is losing weight and my dad has stopped cheating on Mom. It's bizarre just what he could do. And I asked the guy that I have a master hypnotist certificate in Erickson hypnosis. And I asked my teacher, how did he do that? And what he said was very interesting. He said that Milton Erickson had this model of what human beings want. What human beings want to be able to stop the pain in their lives, to be able to mature, to understand their environments, to gain mastery over their bodies, their minds, their finances, to be able to satisfy their sexual urges with integrity, to be able to fall in love, open their hearts, share the loves, build tribe around each other. To be able to have children, raise those children according to their own values, to be able to create goods and services that they can exchange legally with the their communities, to be rewarded, to gain a sense of what life is, a philosophy of life. And to share that philosophy, to become one of the wise people in their village, to age with dignity and diet, peace. If all Milt Erickson ever did was get somebody on that path, was to show them if that is true. In Maslow's hierarchy of human needs as well as the yogic chakras, 6000 years of yogic psychology all suggest the same approximate thing, that we want to mature from being children to people who are capable of raising children. Even if you don't want children, you want to be able to. You want. If a child was in your care, you have the security, the sanity, the resources, whatever, to raise a child. That's one of the things that people find attractive, even if they're on birth control. You've been snipped. You don't want to have any kids. Kids. You will find that men and women are attracted to each other for the same basic primate, mammalian things that have to do with. Are you healthy? Can you hunt and gather? Can you protect a nest? Can you build a nest? Really? Okay, let's boogie. Your son, Mo, that's all he wants to. To a certain degree, you are the most important human being in his life. To the degree that he looks at you and he sees you addressing these things with joy and power. If he believes that he can become you, that he can walk that path and not do what you did exactly, but to create a life that is satisfying to him under his terms, in his way, he will do that. In fact, we are incapable of not moving away from pain toward pleasure.

But you know what? I have to. Stephen, that's beautiful, man. I loved it. It touched my heart. And everything else dealing with youth, social media here in Atlanta, the YSL trial, the RICO indictment yesterday, they actually a person passed Percocet during. During a hearing to the judge there. But the question the thing that I'm dealing with and bringing to my kids to a sense of shanti, shanti, shanti peace is the pornographic pursuit of the now.

Yeah. And the now is okay if you're doing the right things in the now. So if he's doing the wrong things in the now, then I will tell you on a broad scale something called the persuasion framework. It is how to influence people. So first of all, you need to be congruent. To me, my first step in trying to help somebody else is asking myself, where do their problems reflect in me, especially if it's my child. You know, it's like, what if what this child is doing is a version of something I do? That's right. You heal that first.

Okay.

Persuasion. So that that way you can become an honest guide for them. But the persuasion framework is specifically, it's seven steps, I think, and there are three steps that are the most important. And so what I'd like you to do is to consider how you could use this tactic. And I think you do. I think you do win today. I think you and I are going to have a talk where I can go more deeply into this.

I love it, man. I love it.

Yeah, we will do that. I love that. I'll be in touch with you on Facebook and we'll figure it out. Okay. But the persuasion framework works this way. The first step is you have to develop rapport with them. They have to believe you care. People don't care what you know until they know that you care. So he has to believe that you are hearing him and that you get where he's coming from. If he believes that you love him, he is more likely to open up and tell you what he's afraid of. That's what you're looking for.

What is he afraid of? That's right. I never thought of that. I'd never done. The loss of his mom and everything in transition.

There you go. He's afraid that he cannot go down that path that I just described. That he can't be self supporting honorably. That he's never going to find a woman to love who will love him in the way that.

Oh, wow. Yeah. We need to have a private conversation.

Yeah. So lasting love, as Tananarive said that Tananarive and I are not just married. We are mated. There is no back door, there's no side door. I'm not looking for an escape hatch. No matter what, she is the one. And I think everyone wants that in their lives. So in other words, he's Afraid he can't be happy. He's afraid he can't be healthy. He's afraid he won't be loved. Some way his behavior relates to that stuff. So to the deeper. Let me. Let me. Let me finish this because I want to go through all this. We will have a private.

Time. I apologize.

No, it's okay. Because you love your son. And you. You have that. You're a member in good standing of the international League of Dads. You do not want to let your son down. You know I would. My son knows I would die before I would fail him. Period. No question, no equivocation. Happily, if that's what it took to get him cleanly to the other side, blow my brains out. Now I'm done.

Oh, man. It's. I. I think I told you when my son had attacked me physically and, you know, I'm Ishanry artist first dawn from college and everything, I had the. When he put me in a chokehold, I could have pushed back, but his head would have hit the corner of the trouble countertop. And I chose to let him choke me and say, okay, son, you win, you win, you win, you win. And it was a horrible situation.

It is a horrible situation. And first of all, forgive yourself for not being able to handle it in some elevated, perfect, you know, theoretically perfect way. You did the best you could with the resource you have. And what you're doing right now is you're getting more resources. This community will support you.

Thank you.

Bring your pain here. No one will mock you. No one will blame you. Not on my watch. Because here we are about walking together.

You understand that you're yojimbo bodyguard?

Absolutely. So the first step is to achieve rapport with him, which you've done by being there every day. Understand? Anger is fear. Anger is fear.

The dharma of the dharma of suffering. Fitch, not Han. He talked in the program, he talks.

About the second step, after you've got rapport, is to break his pattern. Interrupt his pattern. Now, there are many ways you can do that. You can make him laugh. You could tie his performance to something he wants to. Because if he spent all day on the Internet, you could tie, you know, that up to take it off.

You know, he's been on one hour of Xbox a day since he was released from the.

So if you interrupt, you have a way to do that. You have to find a way to interrupt the pattern. It's. The idea is that, you know, it's like two guys in a fight. What they're really going to do is they're going to talk to each other and then they're going to posture and then the voices get louder. And then eventually somebody, you know, they start sticking the jaw out in that predator thing. And then eventually one of them throws a punch. If you can get to them while they're just talking to each other and make them laugh, fight's over.

Well, why is the father. I'm gonna switch back to writing real quick. The father son aspect from Judeo, Christian culture and everything else. Rebellion. The prodigal son.

The rebellion is.

But it's. But it's involved around tradition. You know.

Let'S look at where that tradition came from. The rebellion against the father or rebellion against the parents is nothing more than the adolescent needing to break away from the old patterns. Then later on they will reintegrate the stuff that they actually found useful. So rebellion is necessary for the growth of human society. We didn't. We take it personally. But the truth is that's their job. They're not you. When they're tiny little kids, like little baby ducklings waddling after mommy and daddy duck. Kids think you're God they look up to. It's like, oh my God, and you are you. Goods and services, food and shelter out of nothing. They have no idea how money works.

Yes, but. And that's it. And that children ascribe a relationship to God sometimes as the relationship to their parents.

Yes, there's a book factor. In order for them to be independent, they must reject you. But they're also watching what you do. So the behavior.

Oh, wow.

The behaviors that you exhibit in integrity with your values. If you can show him that you are walking your path with honor and joy.

There you go.

He will eventually have to head in that direction. He cannot help if you interrupt his pattern some way. He is looking for a way to feel good. All motivations of animals and human beings are move away from pain toward pleasure. So the third, if the first step is rapport and the second step is interrupting his pattern some way, and you interrupt his pattern by changing the way he uses his body, change the language, or change what he is focused on. Any one of those three will. Will change his pattern. And you can go more deeply into that by doing fire dance. By actually doing Tai Chi, you're literally using your body, your emotions, and your mind all at the same time. The more deeply you go into that and the more deeply you understand that, the easier it is to see it in other people and to figure out a way to be clever. Like, I know a girl named Linda Stonerock, who saw a couple guys fighting, and she was begging them to stop, and they wouldn't stop. So she stuck her finger down her throat and vomited right in front of them. Vomited right on their shoes. That stopped the fight. I remember that. It's like, well done, Linda. So, but the third one, once you have rapport, if he trusts you and you interrupt the pattern, you connect the desired behavior to his own highest goals. And you know what those goals are, even if he doesn't, because they're the exact same things that Milton Erickson said. He simply wants to grow up and be an adult. And it's like, what is it? And what you. What. What kids will do if they form their own little tribes of heathens, which, of course, they always. They mistake sex for love. They. They. They mistake money for service. They mistake feeling good because they took a drug or drank whatever, for actually having a healthy, dynamic body and nervous system.

And, you know, Stephen and I really. I want to get off of me real quick, but it reminds my kids, school bus is coming. It reminds me I'm a blues musician, too. I've opened for Taj Mahal, Bobby Rush and others.

Fantastic.

And. But one of the things to do is see, you know, black guy playing harmonica and everything. And I break into Hank Williams Jr. My favorite song, Vocifers is family tradition. And the hook on the song is, why do you drink? Why do you. Why do you. Why do you roll smoke? Why do you live out them things that you wrote? And. But the answer, when you have a good crowd going here in Georgia, at least, is when it goes, why do you drink? To get drunk. Why do you roll smoke? To get high? Why do you live out them things that you wrote? To get laid.

Yeah.

And he's like, it's a family tradition. Leave me alone. And that's one of the most honest country songs that I perform that I really, truly love.

Best thing you can do for your son is to be the healthiest human being you can be and to love him with all your heart.

All right, man. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

If any of you. If you cannot see the massive number of lessons in that, in other words, one of the things in your morning ritual, you should be saying, every day, in every way, I'm a better and better father. Every day, in every way, I'm a better and better man. Every day, in every way, I understand fear better and better. That your affirmations should be specifically around becoming the man you need to be to keep the space open for your son to Become the. The man he was meant to be. Do that. So just. Just know that you are his lifeline. And if you understand that his behavior is a manifestation of fear. Violence usually stems from anger. Anger comes from fear. Cut the root of fear, the rest of it dissolves. So you be an avatar of love. But also, I might be a good idea for you to pick your cotter back up. Dude, there is nothing a young man respects more than an older man who can still deal with it.

I'm old and fat and treacherous. That's the only thing I have working.

For me right now.

I will throw red pepper in your face when you think I'm making dinner. Then I will attack.

And you also want to be strong because part of what you're saying is if you do what I say, you will be as I am. Okay?

So the thing that's crazy about it, I'm getting all these pictures from my frat brothers. Phi Beta Sigma, Go Ma Blue, Phi Morehouse College alum, and everything of when I was pledging and stuff. I was a Marine Corps Navy ROTC scholarship winner. And Victor has my. My son has my exact same build, man. I was muscle, dude. I was sending perfect weight muscle.

So let's say this. So one of the things you need to do is to start heading back that way. I'm old.

It hurts.

No, no.

How old are you?

How old are you?

Dude, listen.

How old are you?

Hey, listen. All my friends are. All my friends are bald or their hair is gray.

No, no, no, no, no. When they go for a wall, when.

They work all day.

How old are you?

No, I'll be. I'm 55. I'll be 56 in August.

Okay, youngster, I don't want to hear it. Okay, so we will talk later. We got to move on.

Well, I got one quick question. I asked it to you. You didn't respond. Because you responded earlier. That family guy thing I sent you 1983, you could use a non de plume and write the realistic sitcom 80s.

I couldn't do it. You couldn't do it because I couldn't do it. You know what?

My girl said I'm good too. My girl said we're sci fi. She said I'm good. Nah.

Absolutely couldn't do it.

Take care.

Take care.

Take care.

Thank you. I'm going.

Okay, so I will answer more questions, but I wanted to. I wanted to be very, very clear that what we're doing here is all dependent upon you taking actions @firedance tai chi.com. the first person who signs up for finance tai chi.com before midnight tonight. First new person, personal coaching call. And that best question, Mo gets one. It's possible that I might have time for more than one, but I can guarantee that I'll do. You know, I'll do at least two. You know, one for somebody who's already in the program, one for somebody who's new. Do you have. Are there other comments and questions or requests? Because I want to make very, very certain that I'm serving you that. Yes, Cardell, and then Megan. So you're. You're. Unmute your mic. Okay. There you go.

Hi, Stephen. Yesterday, I had a friend ask me in a coffee shop, and we were talking, and he told me about a good friend of his who had died recently. And he. He said, you know, this guy, he had a nice Mercedes, he had a nice place to live. And when he died, though, you know, only a few people knew about it. And now that he's gone, he said, well, what is this guy's? What was he about? What did it mean? You know, who will remember him? And he said, it doesn't. What is the meaning? He was asking me about the meaning of, like, what did it all mean? You're here, you're gone in 80, 85 years, and then. And then you're gone. That's it, you know? And I. I told them that only thing I could think of telling this was to find your purpose, but it seemed to ring hollow because, yeah, you do that. And then what? You know, okay.

There is no subject that's deeper than that. That's pure existentialism, that sense of what life is and what we are and what we can be. So I'm not going to give you a. I'm not going to give you a facile answer, but I will address that as directly as I possibly can, that the meaning of life is simpler than people want to look at. It's to live. However, you then get to ask the question, how shall we live? And since life ends, that question is probably, how shall we live in the shadow of death? How shall we live when we know that the game ends? What does that mean? That's a lifetime of work there. But what I can say is what the Dalai Lama said about the meaning of life is to be joyful. End of service cuts pretty close to the bone. We be as joyful as possible now because we know that we don't have forever to play this game, and we serve other people so that more people will come to our funeral. If that's the way you want to look at it, you serve more people so that there's something left of you after you're gone. You serve other people because the only things you keep are what you give away.

Can our funeral director be Mel Brooks?

Probably so. Mute yourself, Mo. So that question, we live, we die. How shall we be in the course of our life? What I do know is that life is best when it is joyful, when we're not just out of pain to the zero point, but we're actually pursuing joy. But it is also even better when we begin to empathize with those around us to the point that serving them is serving ourselves. When we do that, our attention is off ourselves. Any day that you're worried about death is a day that you're not in the moment right now. Because death ain't here. Yesterday's gone, tomorrow hasn't come. Why are you robbing yourself of the only thing you have, time in your life in order to worry about something that ain't here? Staying? Finding the right way to be in the moment, such that your moments create wonderful hours, and your hours create wonderful days, and your days create wonderful weeks, and your weeks create wonderful months and years. Anytime somebody is talking about death, that's a moment when they're saying, I haven't accomplished enough, I'm not enjoying enough. I've been putting it off. I thought that I. Maybe I'll have some possessions. No, when I die, the possessions don't matter. What your friend kind of said was that nobody knew it. Your friend is afraid of not being loved, remembered. And I think that we all have some of that. We want to have an effect, a positive effect on the people and things around us. So get busy living. Or as Morgan Freeman said, get busy dying. You're dying when you take your attention off the moment, in the moment, have joy and have your joy in an alignment with what the world needs. So you are still serving the people around you. There are children who need, who are crying. There are people who are losing hope. Be a beacon of hope and light and love and joy. And be so consumed by that fire that you don't even know, you know, one day you'll wake up and be dead. Yeah, that's true. Happens to everybody. Get over it. It's just, you know, given that that's the case, how do I live? Today? I'm going to be. You know, every human being feels alone and afraid. The only question is, what do you do with your loneliness and your fear? What I do with my loneliness is I Surround myself with family and friends I teach. I make sure that I give myself away. I have people. I get hugs every day. I hug my son every day. I kiss my wife every day. I tell my daughter I love her every day if I possibly can. I love my friends so much. And then what do I do with my fear? Well, you know, 50 years of martial arts training and meditation, and the antidote for fear is love and faith. So as you dig into that question, who am I and what is true? The question of the end of life has to be dealt with. And you're going to have to deal with in a way that makes sense to you, that fits with your deepest sense of what the world is, your religious or spiritual traditions or positions. Okay? And it's work in progress. We all are. What I can tell you is that if I was in a plane and the engine went out and we're crashing, I'd be screaming like everybody else, because it's like. Doesn't sound like a fun way to go. But I have made peace with the fact that I ain't gonna be here forever. You know, that's one advantage of losing your parents fairly young. You get to work through that stuff. Okay, Cardell.

All right.

It's good to see you, man. Maggie, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Hello, sweetheart.

Hi, Steve. I don't actually have a question. I came across a really interesting thing for life writing and writers, and I wanted to share it with people. I know. I see Jaime still here, and I don't know how many of the other people here are in life writing or are writers, but this was so exciting to me when I saw it. I don't know, you might just think, oh, well, of course. Well, I do that every time.

But.

So last night I had. I saw a little story on Sarah Pauley and her new movie, Women Talking. And if you have not heard about this movie, I'm seeing some nodding. Yeah, it's coming out. Kind of come out really soon. It's a story about. Some of you may have heard of the ghost. Ghost rapes in a Mennonite community in Peru. This is kind of based off of that, the story, but it's an ensemble thing. But I thought this could actually be an interesting technique for any. Possibly any kind of writing. Not being a writer, I'm not sure, okay, I can write that. It's not my. My thing. So for all the writers there, this is. This was interesting to me. Before finalizing her script for her ensemble cast, Sarah Polley wrote drafts from each Individual character's point of view, as though that individual was the main character. And it just, it kind of struck me because of some other things I've heard you talk to people about, about writing. There was a big conversation.

No, that's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's just saying the truth. Every. Every human being is the hero in their own story. Abused children become supporting characters in their own story. Somebody else is. They've had their power taken from them. So I want everybody to know you are the hero in the adventure of your lifetime. If you're writing, then writing, every one of those characters is seeing that story for the position of them being the hero. Every one of them. And when you do that, look, nobody's gonna do that with all of dozens of different characters. But when you have that philosophy, you have that position, you realize that every character has their own hopes and dreams and needs. But you also get to realize that every human being you encounter has their own hopes and dreams and needs. Every single one of you is the hero in your story. I'm a supporting character. You know, it's like, I'm happy to be hired. I'm happy to be here. You know, I'm just a spear carrier. The background of your story. You be the hero of your story. You know, let me be the person that whispers in your ear, you know, you can do it or whatever, you know, get up, Rock. You can fight him, you know, Mickey is a supporting character, but Mickey's own story was about a bantamweight who became a great. A great, A great trainer who descended in skills until one day he met a man who had the potential to be champion. The two of them form family together. You can, can't you tell? Can't you write Rocky's story from Mickey's point of view? How about Adrian's point of view? How about Paulie's point of view? When you see really well written characters in a book or in a movie, in all likelihood, that character, that actor, created their own backstory. They wrote everything that they'd been doing up to the moment that the movie starts. That's how they can act with real power. But if you remember that about people, you treat people more gently. If you are writing a story, you. You never write trivial characters. You don't write two dimensional characters. You always remember these characters want to live and love and grow. And, you know, there are no small roles, only small actors. I think that it relates that that is what they're. What they're referring to there. And that is an excellent Excellent, excellent art offer. Thank you, Maggie. I can always trust you. Who else has got something for us today before we let go for the weekend and remember, you know, just join us, please. Please join us. We are on this journey together. We meet every week. Oh, one thing I wanted to say is that we're going into six weeks of. I'll get to you if nobody else has anything to say.

Mo, I'm from Jersey, you know.

Yeah, I understand. It's okay about it. So we might meet on Saturday for the next six weeks. I will be in touch with you, you join Stephen Barnes list. I'll make sure that I talk about it on Facebook or whatever because I want to make sure to keep going with you. But we might be working at this dream job for the next six weeks. I cannot wait until I can tell you what it is. All I can tell you is it makes me.

I mean, we already, we already told them in the podcast coming up on Sunday.

I didn't say exactly, we didn't say exactly what it is.

We said what kind of job it is. We are going to be working in our first full time television writers room starting next week. Hopefully. Knock on wood. So that's the news.

That's the news. That's all the. Jaime. Yeah.

You know, I first signed up for life writing a little over a year ago and started doing the magic five Minute Miracle and was working on at the time doing the Tibetans. And then I don't know why, sometime over this last summer I stopped doing the Tibetans completely. But when you, when you did, you mentioned them during the fire dance lecture this week. I decided to just start them back up again. Oh, my God. I got so out of shape just in a few months.

It's painful. It's frightening. Do you realize just a second. Specifically, Jaime, one of the reasons people don't exercise as they get older is that it's frightening. It makes you get in touch with how your body changes with age. If you're just laying on the couch watching television, television, eating, eating popcorn, you feel the same as you did when you were 14. But if you exercise, you start getting. So it takes courage to exercise. Well, go ahead, honey.

Well, it's both. To not beat myself up for not being where I was a year and a half ago. But to start out doing just five reps of each one and start there and slowly build. But also the resistance that comes up.

Oh, my God.

The last four, two, three days since starting it back up again, I'm doing it, but I'm having To combat my own resistance pretty severely.

One of the things you might think about, Jaime, is I've loaded the five Tibetans into my five minute miracle. I literally will do Tibetan number one at nine in the morning, Tibetan number two at 12, Tibetan number three, etc. Etc. I see no reason that that's any less efficient or effective. You don't get the advantage of the residual muscle fatigue, so it's not going to be as good for endurance. However, if you're doing. If you're doing it as a skill, I want to learn how to do this. It's not a workout. It is a skill. The fresher you are, the faster you learn. And it is a skill that if you could do 21 reps of each of those, you're in pretty good shape.

Right.

How would you feel if you could do 20, if you could knock off each one of those things, how would you feel about yourself?

I'd be. I'd be feeling pretty awesome.

That's right. And you deserve to. So Tai Chi and the five Tibetans. And I'm experimenting. I'm experimenting with very brief workouts that will have a deep effect. And I always. I always test them in myself first. I will test things for at least six weeks, generally before I mention them to people, unless I get really excited, which case I will offer a warning and say, I'm kind of playing with this thing over here. So does that answer your question, Jaime?

Well, yeah. I love the idea of doing a different Tibetan for each of the breaks.

It'll force you to take your breaks. Force you take your breaks. That will have a positive spiral effect because you won't be feeling as much stress. You'll be, you know, you're fresher. You're still getting the same effects physically. And actually, if you can. If you can break it up, if you can go from, you know, ordinary life to focus or their life focus, Ordinary life focus. If every time you practice flipping that switch, you are taking control of your unconscious mind, and this is gonna have. You want to create that connection between your will and your unconscious mind. Because, you know, ultimately, if you work on your breathing enough, you'll start breathing differently when you're asleep. And that's what you want to get down to, unconscious competence.

Well, and I'm also writing more than I've written in six months, just in the last week.

I'd love you to write a little post about that so I can see what's going on with you.

Okay.

Okay, thanks. We're running out of time. We've only got a couple more minutes, but that's great.

I love it.

I love hearing about it. Is there anything else I can give any of you? Okay, I will get back to you, Mo, but I want to make sure that there's nobody else first. Jaime, take your hand. Is there anybody else? Any of. Any of the ladies we've heard from? Megan, Is there. Is there anybody else? I love when I have a nice balance between anybody. Okay, Mo.

All right, these are three quick things. Okay? Yes, yes or nos. First of all, what you said about characters.

Yes.

And everything else I had the benefit of when I was a student at Morehouse, of working under W. Lamar Alford and Andre de Shields. And they did a whole thing with us that the story of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, was told by from the perspective of two soldiers who lived through Julius Caesar and looked through Anthony and Cleopatra. And HBO developed that concept into Rome on hbo. Second one for.

Was there. Was there a question in there?

No, that was just a quick response to what you were saying. If you want to give a response, I'd love a response, but no, I don't.

You know, I'm. I'm glad, you know, there's nothing really to say, but if you got a question, you know, especially. But you know, make it quick.

Okay, I got two questions. Here are two definite questions for Sensei Niven ring world. Is there a chance in a think type of situation that there would be the equivalent of the Nisi, like the Japanese humanisi on like a ring world era? And how would that be something that would be possible? How? Louis Wu and all the characters gave a generational thing. And the last question.

Give him a chance to answer that real quick.

If he's willing.

If he's willing, yeah. Larry, would there be first generation non ringworld inhabitants, you know, a colony of off worlders? It's okay by me, but I won't write it.

There you go.

Okay, so your last question, Mo, goes.

Back to something I asked you a while ago, Gattaca. You are able. You pass all the physical requirements. We've got to leave everything behind. And you have to look at flat earthers, and you're looking down at earth and you're going forward, but there is an underground network to try to bring them people out of. Could you as a character leave everything behind to go off world?

Okay. So that character would have to have nothing behind. That's as important as what he saw, Ed. That's all. I could not do that because I have obligations to my family.

There you go.

It's it's okay. You know, it. It. I have different kinds. I can't even push my meditation, or at least I could not until about a year ago, push my meditation as far as I wanted to because I was beginning to disassemble my ego cocoon. You know, that's. There's a point at which you are in control and there's another point at which you are not and other things happening.

Is the path to peace making difficult decisions?

Well, I would say. Yeah, I would say so, you know, because the path of peace is resolving dualities, you know, as well as dissolving illusions that enlightenment could be considered what remains. When all illusion is dispelled to a degree, we hold on to those illusions because many of them are comforting. So we have to give up our life preservers. We have to give up our comforting lives. We have to be willing to let the world show us the truth, even if it hurts.

And it was the American Buddhist, I can't remember his name, who said that. And life is an illusion.

Yeah.

And yet.

And yet. That's right.

You know, and I really. I enjoyed so much this for everyone. You've given me some great healing.

You got it.

I see all of you here and it's beautiful to see. I never in my life, I never thought I'd see Larry Niven Green. I mean, I'm talking about a black nerd kid, skinny and grew big reading science fiction and everything. And I. And thank you so much, sir, for being on and just answering my questions. Dude, it was awesome.

So everybody unmute yourselves, unmute yourselves and say goodbye and happy weekend.

And happy weekend, everybody.

Happy weekend.

Bye, everybody.

Got an honest job.

Thank you. Anything I can do to help you guys, just let me know. I've had so much fun here today. Make sure you know you'll know when to join me next week. Come with your questions. Let me know how I can help you.

I need a million and a half dollars. Can you help me, please, sir, I.

Can certainly help you show how to earn it.

No, I'm joking.

And if you haven't, and if you haven't joined the Fire Dance Tai Chi program with the rest of us who are Steve's Tai Chi students. Don't forget to check out www.firedance tai chi.com.

Take care. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Love you guys. This is just the most fun for me. Thank you. Bye bye.

Peace. Bye.