FIREDANCE 12-23-23

Computer. Okay, great. My name is Stephen Barnes. Welcome to Fire Dance. And my beautiful and brilliant wife, Tananarive due will be appearing on on camera as soon as she is ready to do so. And what we do here is everything we talk about here is an outgrowth of what it is that. Hello, there's my wifey. How you doing, sweetheart?

Hello.

My mic wasn't on. My camera was crooked. But here, it's still crooked.

Here I am.

Hello, everybody. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, with your sparkling light bulbs. Yes, yes. I am the tree.

You are the tree. Be the tree. Be the tree. What we're talking about in some ways is the fact that we're moving forward into another phase of our own lives. And we need to look at everything that we're doing that helped us get here. It's helping to keep us healthy. That's helping to keep our hearts safe. And is creating abundance in our lives sufficient abundance? I would like for each of you to have sufficient abundance that you could give away thousands of dollars every Christmas without it hurting you at all, without you ever wondering, God, I wonder if somebody's trying to con me. I'm positive that some of the people who requested money were conning me.

I'm sure there's somebody.

There was somebody, absolutely. I don't care. It's not about them. If they needed to con me, then they needed that money. They. There's something that is wrong in their lives if they would con me when there are people who are desperate and hurting. So my soul is clear, no matter what. I want you to feel that way. And the question of what we can do when we help you and you tell us that something helped you, that helps to reinforce our use of these things in our own lives. We just had a. We just had Linda Addison on our podcast. And I guess it's going to go up to Sunday.

If you're on my mailing list, it's an honoreevillist.com you got an early link for Sunday's podcast.

She's been through a number of our programs, and what it looks like is the top three programs that we do are Fire Dance, which is the complete package. It's. It's basically the complete body mind package, Firedance, Tai chi dot com. And then there's Life Writing Premium, which is our complete package for writers, because that's specifically what we are, is we're writers. And that's lifewritingpremium.com. and then there's the soulmate process. And Linda has been through several of our. Of our courses and she was willing to share with us what, what it has meant to her and that she is dating now and she's coming at that from a different position emotionally. And what. She was part of the test group for the soulmate process when we were testing the technologies and trying to teach about it. And that version didn't even have the 90 day love feast. And so at the beginning of the year, we're going to add that because looking at the love feast and the impact that's had on our marriage and then the second one, the one that we're in right now, is about loving yourself, loving the child within yourself. And as of a conversation today, this morning with Tononari, what we want to do is to drill down on the 90 day love feast for couples, but also look at what happens within you. So that means loving the child within you. That means loving the adult self within you. And that's going to be, I mean, quite frankly, the easiest way to measure that is like survival stuff, money, health. And then the third would be your elder self, your ultimate goals and desires for the world. Who do you want to be when you grow up? You know, what is. What in your life is worth the dedication of your life? What would you be willing to have on your gravestone? What are your true values? To be able to live your life in alignment with the passions of the child and the values of the elder. Then the adult part of us just needs to chop wood, carry water, just needs to every day do the things that you need to do. You get up, you get yourself together, you do the things you need to do and then you celebrate, you have fun, you love the people that you love. It's, it's. I want something as simple as possible. So one of the things I wanted to look at before I go on at all to nonreave. Is there anything you wanted to say, sweetheart?

Oh, because I co pinned my, my image here.

So.

No, I'm just saying hello to the group. This is a very big group. Have you noticed we have 30 people here already or well, close to 30 because we have 30 counted in that number. But yeah, we had a really good talk about that and feeling very good about where we are together at the end of the year and also where we are with this group at the end of the year. So thank you all for being a part of our weekends and yeah, I guess that's about it for now.

Okay, well, one of. I wanted to. Let me see if I can get this up on the screen. I mean, this I'm going to kill that and bring this in. Oh, darn it. Okay. The screen sharing. You know, we're going to be working on this stuff. There are some things I want to get better at in terms of making presentations to you. So I'm aware that there's a little. We're a little loosey goosey about some of these things, but there we go. All right. So now all I have to do is to share my screen and we are good. So share screen and. Huh.

You have to make sure that tab is up on your browser or it doesn't show up.

Okay, it's up on the browser. What I want to do is to. There it is. Okay. I just missed it. Okay. So what I'm seeing is that the things that we talk about most, we talk about the magic formula because that's the basic pattern that was extracted from a book that's 100 years old on the science of getting rich is what it was called. But really you can apply it to anything. And it is. You need a map or model of what to do. And that map or model, I think it should come outside from outside you. It, it should be as old as possible that still responds to modern psychological or economic or whatever theory. A is for action. The daily actions that we take, you have to take one step. The idea of taking one step towards your goal every day. G is for gratitude, which is basically emotional control. Being able to feel grateful for the things that are already in your life gives you faith that good things can happen in the future. If you're not grateful for what's happened in the past, why in the world would you believe anything positive, positive can happen in the future? I is for intention, goal. And in general I say that, you know, you work backwards from a goal of being happy, being joyful, because that's what everybody wants. Step out of pain towards joy. Everything else is a way of approaching that. And I think that you should have goals in all three major areas. Body, heart and mind. You know, could be physical fitness, relationship and money. I mean you really could do that. Set yourself up to increase by 1% per week. And then the C is conviction, courage, maybe even character. The degree to which your actions feel like things that you can, you can accomplish this goal and you should take these actions that this is in. In character for you. That if you don't feel that the things that you're trying to accomplish are. Are natural aspects of your character, they express who you are. There are a few things in human psychology that are as powerful as our need to match our own self image, which is one of the reasons why it's so critical for us to be kind to our children. We're programming them with what we say to them and you program yourself with what you say to yourself. So when you look at your goals of being happy and healthy in all three of these arenas, what version of yourself are you looking for? What version of you could do this? Commit to being that person? Now that's kind of. There's other stuff too. And one could say that everything else we've got here clusters in one or another of these five areas. The three centers, body, heart, mind, tell you the areas in which you need to have goals. The structure of what it is to be human. The three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? Evolve us towards being better citizens, better members of our community, as well as ultimately opening our spirituality because it's in many ways is a simplified version of Buddhism's Eightfold path. The five minute miracle. Number four is the buy in for this program. If you can get can discipline yourself and motivate yourself to spend five minutes a day breathing, then on top of that you can absolutely change your life. If you haven't figured out how to motivate yourself to do that, focus all your attention right there. As soon as you do, I'm there for you and this community is here for you. But you need to get across that line. Cost Nothing. Go to YouTube, look up diaphragmatic breathing. Do 60 seconds of deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing once every hour, at least five times a day. Number five is the morning ritual that is fire dance. You know, our core program in that sense. It is to move and think and perform affirmations and to visualize all at the same time that for 10 to 20 minutes a day, you're spending that time to focus on you and you're moving and thinking and feeling like the person who can accomplish your dreams. Then all you have to do is to find ways to regain that feeling during the day. Then there are things like the blessing dance and the love feast which are pretty much connected. Those are about loving the other, but they're also forms of a daily ritual that you can apply to yourself. You can apply to the different aspects of yourself and you can relate to your outside relationships. The ancient child is another part of that. It is about getting healthy internal relationships between the different aspects of your personality. 1% is a nice conceptual thing for those of us who are perfectionists. As we've said many times, perfectionism is procrastination masquerading is quality control. So just aiming at 1% of change per week brings it down to a manageable amount. Then there's life writing, which was the first technology came up with. And there's just concepts of mastery and the concept of behavioral modification. But you'll notice that down there, I will change the order of these things because life changes. And I'm not absolutely certain this is not. This is. We're working on this together as you tell me what's working for you. We experiment with these things. I'm trying to be a scientist in that sense. I have a hypothesis that the magic formula is how you can create luck in your life, how you can increase synchronicity in your life, just by being sure that you have an actual model for what you're doing. You're taking daily action. You're controlling your emotions. You have clear intentions, and you believe right down to your core that you can and should take these actions. That's the hypothesis. Fire dance is our experiment for testing that hypothesis. Unmute yourselves. And everybody say hi to everybody else. Let's get moving a little bit. Hi, everybody.

Hello, everybody.

What's up? What's up? Merry New Year.

That's great. That's just great. And so what we wanted to do was to take. Just kind of lay down that foundation, like I said. You know, Fire dance, life writing in the soulmate process are kind of. I think that they kind of COVID that area. We have body there, career there, and emotions there. We don't specialize in career unless you're a writer. But the principles of fire dance, the principles of the magic formula, will relate to anything that you want to do for your profession. So we might do something that specializes in that going forward. But what's really important to us is that you be healthy and happy and on a path where you'll be able to put everything you've got into it without hurting yourself or without hurting other people. Which is why the balance of the three gates and the three centers can't. If you can have a healthy body, healthy relationships with others and yourself, and are making plenty of money doing something that you love doing, it's kind of hard to imagine how you're going too far off track. You know, it's like, if that's not the meaning of life, most people would still settle for it. It's okay. It's a good foundation, I think. So the most important thing that we wanted to do in tonight, we talked about what we would like to cover today. Would you like to introduce the subject of the day.

I hope I remember it correctly. I'm a little distracted getting ready for Christmas. Nikki's coming over, by the way, my stepdaughter and his daughter. But it has to do with. If I'm remembering correctly, of course, life mastery.

We're gonna. Specifically, sweetheart, about Christmas.

Christmas.

And about giving yourself a good.

Oh, my gosh, yes, of course. We talked about many, many things in that. In that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that. That often comes up, and I noticed this in social media very early on. If I wanted to get a lot of engagement on a tweet, I would talk about holiday depression. You know, a tweet urging people to hang in there would get way more engagement than just a generic happy holidays, yay, happy, happy tweet. So that is real. And, you know, I have a theory which I've discussed in this group about. About why it happens, that we become very fixated, understandably, and the grand show of joy that our parents put on for us or where they disappointed us. But we're fixed in that childhood space, especially when it comes to holiday time, so that every loss we've suffered since, it feels retriggered when we confront the holidays. Sometimes not for everybody, but I know that for me, having lost a grandmother on Christmas Day and a grandmother I was close to, I want to say, I mean, it's sad whenever a grandparent dies, but especially if it's a grandmother you were close to. If not for Jason, you know, and having to put on that show of joy, they would have been tough that first Christmas right after, especially tough. And it has been, and Steve has struggled with it, too. So part of the way we apply the principles of life writing, which is making yourself the hero or heroine of your own story and fire dance, working toward balance and centeredness is to parent and bring joy to that inner child in higher increments during this time of year when we know that's something that we're craving, our inner children wanna, you know, Dang, why I wish we did believe in Santa Claus still. What a world that would be. And, man, wouldn't it be great if we could sit around that tree with our grandparents and our parents or a lost sibling or a lost partner or. There are just so many ways that we compare where we are now to where we were then. And God bless those of us who are in a better place. But even if we're in a better place, the holidays can trigger memories of the worst place we were in. So that's why, that's why it's very important this time of year to look inward to how you give yourself a good holiday feeling. And part of that joy, I'm finally working around to it.

Steve, it's okay, sweetheart. Is life is messy, and so are we.

You know, I started with Twitter. You're like, where is she going with this? But, you know, Steve has this holiday fun he runs on Facebook. And I don't know if there's one of you here. Someone gave me a contribution on Venmo, which, and I don't know who this person was, but I, I, I said, listen, I don't know who you are. I can't accept this money except to give it to others. Maybe it's a part of Steve's fundraiser. So yesterday I went and I found people to give a hundred dollars to, you know, which is such a beautiful feeling. And I know everyone can't afford that, and I wouldn't have been able to afford that if it had not been run on a contribution. So I'll say that right out front. But I also noticed that when you go on social media, say, if you still do go to Twitter, the hashtag is mutual aid, you know, or Venmo or, you know, the name, they will hashtag the ways that they accept money and you sift through. I looked for people that were following me already, so at least there was some connection. But honestly, by the end, I had run out of those people, and I was giving money to outright strangers whose stories and photographs were compelling to me. And I just hoped, as Steve said, you know, that it's going to where it's supposed to be going. But even if it isn't, that's another kind of desperation, and it's such a good feeling. So even if it's just $10, a lot of these people would be so grateful for $10. If you set aside 50 DOL and then found people who are running GoFundMes, and believe me, tons of people are running GoFundMes. $10 does not feel like a lot of money, but people getting that notification that someone gave a damn to contribute toward their cause, clearly they gave what they could. It's a big, big difference. It might not make a big difference in the balance, but for some people, $10 is the difference between eating and not eating. So just remember that no matter how small the amount, especially if you're feeling that pinch, that grief, that holiday spirit is a lie feeling. It's not a lie if we make it so. That's all I want to say about that.

And that's beautiful, sweetheart. Remember, if mastery says there's three things, there's teaching, there's doing, and there's learning, look at it the same way in terms of what Christmas was. Christmas. I think that holidays which exist in all cultures that I know of, exist to create a cultural rhythm that if you remove the religious significance from Christmas, it's about giving and parents sacrifice so they can give a moment of joy to their children. The parents get to experience the joy of stepping back into a space that they felt joyful in when they were kids. They get the pleasure of giving to their families. So they're on that road of mastery. Particular emotional thing. Remember the 90 Day Love Feast? The love feast is about giving to your partner without expecting anything in return. And what I got for that was a total rise in my own sense of power in my life because I realized that all that stopped me from giving was fear that I wouldn't get in return. And as soon as I knew that I could trust myself to take care of myself, that I could give to this amazing woman that I love without any concern whatsoever for what I got in return. And what that did was it opened up a whole new space in our relationship. So Lisa asked, is it too late to contribute to the Fire Dance Life Writing Group fund? No, it is not. Stephen at no. Yeah. S.E. barnes sebarnesol.com Let me actually put in a direct link that you can use. And we've got two more days to give to people before Christmas.

But I mean, you know, before Christmas. Hungry after Christmas too. But also I want to point out, you know, some of you may be shy about speaking out in front of the group, but if you would like a contribution, I don't think we have much left currently, but we may get more. We may get more. So DM one of us if, if, if a few dollars would make a huge difference to you.

That's right. Absolutely. We will figure it out. If you're an emergency, let us know and we will figure it out. So we put in there the PayPal link there and I would estimate that 120% of what we get in goes back out as a minimum. We'd like it to be more than that. Some years it's more, some years it's less. It's never less than 120% because this is. Although we're giving to other people, it's also our way of giving to ourselves. We get the joy of giving and it is a real joy. And what Tonnery was saying was, you find a GoFundMe and send $10 to somebody that you don't know just as a love offering. When we take our attention off ourselves. People have noted that if you say, I want to be happy, and you go directly after happiness to do the things that make you happy, you'll often end up running out of gas. Candy tastes good until you've eaten a whole box of it, at which point you start feeling sick. Happiness is a byproduct of right action, of right work, right speech, right thought. So if you say you want happiness as a goal, if you're intelligent and all of you are, of course, so you wouldn't be listening to us, you will notice that the happiest times in your life have been the times when you were giving to other people. You know, many of them, not all of them. It's also great to have things given to you, make no mistake. But the pursuit of happiness becomes an indirect pursuit. You simply notice, oh, I'm happy when I write. So instead of saying, your goal of being happy turns into a goal. I want to spend as much time in my life writing as possible. I want to be a professional writer. That way I can spend, you know, I don't have to split my time between work and writing. You know, I want to be happy in my body. I want to be happy in my relationships. Let me give to my wife. My happiness came indirectly from giving to her my health, you know, physically. And my vibrancy physically comes from exhausting myself, from suffering, from setting out to gain a skill, that in the process of gaining that skill, I am becoming or maintaining the person that I need to be in order to live my life and live my life with a certain amount of joy and service, the direct pursuit becomes the indirect. In much the same way that in the soulmate course, you prepare yourself for finding the right person. Rather than seeking the right person directly, you become a person who that person would want. And you associate in arenas where that person will hear about you or you will encounter that person, you're not searching for it directly. It's stochastic. You're being who it is that you are, and you're being the person you need to be to get the things that you really want in life. And then if you're doing it along the lines of the magic formula, if you've got a map, if you're taking action, if you're maintaining positive emotions, if you have clarity on what you want and you believe that you can and should do these things, first of all, you win because success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. So if you set yourself up so that your ultimate goal is to be happy and you've learned how to manage your emotions along the path, it's not just a matter of whether or not you do get the goal. It's a matter of who did you become along the way? Who were you helping along the way? Hopefully, you're going to define, and I don't believe in that selfishness is a bad thing. I don't believe in altruism the way most people talk about it. To me, selfishness is not a problem. The problem is how do you define your sense of self? Does it stop at your skin? Does it stop with you and your wife or husband or partner? How about you and your family, your community, you and your tribe, you and your nation? How about you and your species? How about you and every living thing? Everyone is going to draw the lines differently in terms of what they say is myself. And if I encourage you to look at yourself as if you were a mushroom, that you apparently are separate creatures, but if you look under the ground, you'll see that all of those mushroom stalks are actually part of the same organism, the same mycelial web. I'm encouraging you to look at human beings that way that other people, across lines of race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, occupation, political lines, these are our brothers and sisters. These are other human beings to the degree that you can see how you could be them if you'd been born into a different life. That anger is fear, and it's a maladaption to fear. And we all feel fear. The only question is, what do you do with your fear? The degree to which you can see yourself and others, if you love yourself, will lead to you automatically loving others. And fortunately, as long as we have these models to look at, giving love to others and feeling that they are connected to you is ultimately doing good things for yourself. To give yourself away is how you keep yourself in life. The only things we keep, in essence are the things that we have given away to the social web that sustained and created us. I don't have a tremendous. I have the same fear of death that anybody has. But I don't have a lot of attachment to being Steve because I see myself as an interference pattern of my physicality and the things that I have learned and the interaction that I've had there was just these interference patterns that happen. And this guy named Steve Barnes is here for a little while, just a little while, and then those patterns will cross and they'll be gone. So the degree to which I try to hold on to is the degree to which I miss life itself. If you trigger your survival drive first, then it is safe for you to give yourself away to the world without feeling like you're going to be taken advantage of. So we look at these different things. We ask you first to take care of yourself, love yourself, understand that you have the right to be happy. And with that thought, let's think about three things that we can do to be happy for Christmas. One, whether the emotion is created by motion, focus and language. If we have childlike aspects of ourselves. And there are ways in which Christmas time is a delight for children because we choreograph the whole thing to make children happy, do something for another child or the child within you. Deliberately look for the things that used to make you happy when you were a kid and do one of them. The movies you used to watch. Go out to the movies, sit there and eat caramel corn and have a great time. You know, if you see a kid there, buy that kid some popcorn. Do something for a kid and for the kid within you, do that and reconnect with life. Give presents if you can afford them. Do something that. I think that in many ways, if there is evil in the world, evil is anything that hurts children. And so that means that good would be anything that helps children. Help a child smile. Find something will make the child within you smile for just, you know, we got 72 hours until the end of Christmas. How about making a commitment that you're going to every hour. When you do your breathing, you're going to remember it's Christmas and just, you know, your facial expression, your body, say something, sing a song, dance around the house. Give yourself the gift of being silly and happy and giving to other people just for the sheer joy of it. Just to connect with the flow of life. Mastery and life connect. Now, he had Anna o' Connell saying, please ask the parent before offering anything to a kid in public places. She is absolutely 100% correct. And I get a little too enthusiastic at times. Thank you very much, Anna, for reeling me back in. That's great. So with that as a framework of, you know, and then you want this time to be so happy that when New Year's comes in another week, you are ready to enter 2024 being totally alive, totally aware and committed to making 2024 the best year you have ever had. That's what I want for all of you. Healthy, happy, prosperous. Health, love, money and time to enjoy them. So let's open this up to comments, questions. I like to do dump on you. That doesn't sound quite right. I like to do a mental. No, that's still wrong. I like to give you a. A body of. Of information in, in frameworks. And now let's run life through them and see how life has been. Mary?

Well, I had to go to the. Can you hear me? I had to go to the grocery store the other day and I dreaded it because, you know, it's like almost Christmas. But what I decided to do was I would walk up to people and I would say, merry Christmas. And I said, and Happy New Year. And I would say, may 2024 be the best year you have ever experienced in your life, and may each subsequent year be better than the one before.

Beautiful.

And people, some people were like, okay, she's a crazy chick. Other people were like, oh my God, I needed that. Can I give you a hug? Oh, thank you. And same to you. Oh, my God, I've never had anybody tell me that. And I felt so good. One guy did. I don't know if he was.

Non.

Verbal, but he kept looking at me and I was like, okay. I said, okay. And he went. And then he turned around, he gave me a plastic paper Aldi bag. So I think he appreciated it, but it was just a little interesting.

I recently came across the concept that wealthy people take asymmetrical risks. In other words, they will invest in something where they can see that 50% of the time you lose your money, but 50% of the time you get back three times what you put in. Anytime they can find that kind of asymmetrical risk, that's what they double down on. Being nice to people is an asymmetrical risk. Giving people love is an asymmetrical risk that your chances of getting back something negative are outweighed by the smiles and the joy and the hug. To realize that people, you don't. You never know who's hanging on by your fingernails. You never know who is considering ending it, who is saying, thinking that the pain of life is more than the joy. And no one cares for a smile. A hug, a kind word, a gentle turn of phrase. You can save someone's life, convince them that there are people who care in the world, convince them there's something worth living for. You can actually be part of the solution for a world that is often wounded, tired, frustrated, confused. Be the light in the darkness. If you can be the light for someone else, guess what you get that Light, too. You get that light, too. Be the light for someone else, and you get the light, too. Zita.

Hello. I.

To say thank you to you and to Tananari, also to Chiquija and Tom and everyone else in the comments last week for being the light in my life, really. I came on just to recap with a question about kind of being scared about what I was writing. And I really felt like you could probably hear from my voice breaking. I was drowning in emotions and kind of fear and loneliness and partly because I was actually alone in Scotland in the middle of a storm and it's nighttime. But in general, like, that zoom call last week was like a lifeboat, and I just couldn't believe it came along at the right time. So thank you all for making me feel brave and helping me get back to my writing. I. Yeah, I really appreciated that kind of injection of hope.

Fantastic. You know, we not only want you to write, we want you to have fun writing.

That makes our day, too.

Ross Merker just said, I'm falling in love with that accent. Hey, now.

It is a great accent.

Fire dance. The hookup hater. That's so wonderful. Any light that you're feeling, go share it with somebody else. You share it with three people, I guarantee you'll end the day with a smile.

Thank you.

Okay, great. Who else is raising their hand? Who else would like to talk about anything? Comments, questions, or requests? Can I go more deeply into any subject? Is there something you would like to talk about? Something that you're working on in your life? Some results, Lisa.

There we go.

Hey, everybody.

Hello.

It works.

Video. All right.

How you doing, honey?

If I. If I leave it on the whole time, it literally, like, flickers back and forth between super and posing, like, Steve's face over my face. And it's like the strobe light effect. And I'm like, okay, this is weird. I don't know why my computer is being that way, but whatever.

So it sounds like the beginning of a horror movie.

So, yeah. So that is why you only see me when I talk. Some of you may remember that back in September, I got to reconnect with my brother for the first time in, like, three years. And it has been absolutely fantastic to spend the last three months with him, visiting, seeing him often and talking often. And for the first time in four years, we are spending Christmas Day together. And we were both super excited about it, and it is just the two of us. He has been. It's been wonderful to see him healing from getting out of a horrible relationship he was in for years. And it's now just the two of us, and we're like, we don't have to worry. We don't have the stress. And a lot of that, I feel at least, you know, has been, you know, related to this group. I've been able to. To reconnect and to do things and do the ritual and share stuff, and it's been so wonderful every week. I say it over and over. This group is life chang and life saving, and it really is.

I. You make it so. To the degree, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, to the degree that this works. It works because we're talking a common language and I look at you and listen to you, and I know I'm not crazy. And you look at me, at least.

Not for that reason.

And if we're crazy, we're a particular tribe of crazy. Right?

And it's a good crazy.

It's a good crazy.

It's a good crazy. Definitely.

It's a good crazy. We are delighted that you're here. We're happy whenever we see you. Keep sharing that light. This is the time of year that people need you to share your love. Absolutely every moment. This is it. Don't be afraid. Merry Christmas. Absolutely understand what you mean by that. You know they're Jewish or that let your energy go before you so that they can remember for a moment what it felt like to look at people who love them.

Yes.

Okay. You'll change the world.

I was thinking earlier when you said do something, that you enjoyed it, that brought you joy as a child for someone else. And what my brother doesn't know yet is one of his Christmas gifts is a Lego set. We used to love doing Legos together when we were a kid, so I bought him Legos.

Yes.

So great.

And I can't wait for him that bottle of wine. If we open it, if we put it together together that day, that we put it together together and get.

Get that bottle of wine, break out those gummies, whatever it is, and remember what it was like to be kids on Christmas morning.

Yes.

Just you. You still have that within you. Just. Just bring it. Look at that smile. Look at it.

Look at Liz.

Yes.

Yes.

This is it. This is the stuff right here.

Yes.

Every time you step on a piece, you get. You take a drink.

Every time you go, you step on a Lego, you get a mixed drink.

There you go.

You know.

You know, a lot of us could really turn this into a game very easily.

Very easily. Well, thank you, Lisa. Let Me go on to the next.

Thank you.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Merry Christmas. And Becky. Hey, Becky.

Okay, I'm unmuted now. I get up every morning just excited about what I'm learning from all the books that I'm reading and how I am actually reaching out through the congestive heart failure groups and influencing people in positive ways and getting feedback from people of thanks. Thanks for sharing what's working with you and has improved. Improve your heart health, great ideas and stuff like that. I think I overstepped a little bit today. Yesterday, I criticized somebody's post where they're showing a picture of really unhealthy birthday celebration food in the congestive heart failure group. And I didn't specifically criticize them, but the choice of the food choices. And I got some blowback on that.

Yeah.

Which I actually expected when I did it.

Well, you know, you're going to have to calibrate that and decide how much you want to lead by using negative. Using negative. It's not negative reinforcement. Using negatives as opposed to positives. It's an art form. It's not a science. There's no formula in general, you know, look at the reactions. You might get a fear reaction from people, but on some level, they might be saying, thank God somebody said it it. Or, you know, and you could save somebody's life, you know, or you could turn somebody off. You're going to turn some people off. As you're having more and more of a positive effect in the world. People who are attached to the negative behaviors will often defend those negative behaviors until they're ready to change. So you have to both listen to the way people are reacting and be compassionate. Make sure that it is true. Kind of if it is true and kind, it will be useful. If it is true but unkind, it won't be useful. They will reject it. So you have to find the right way to say these things. But the only way you know how to do that is by trying and seeing the results and making adjustments or committing more deeply to your path. You know, for you, you have transformed your life. I can guarantee you that there are people who will want to walk your path. That is 100% certain. There'll be other people who will not. So you're just looking for your tribe, honey.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I learn more new things every day. I came across an author recently named Joan Borishenko, and I'm reading this one's called Pocket Full of Miracles. It's prayers, meditations, and affirmations to nurture your Spirit every day of the year. And this one right here is called the Power of the Mind to Heal. And she talks about some types of meditation, by the way, she does believe in your breathing technique, not necessarily at the beginning of the hour, but you know, the, the, the technique of the belly breathing. And she actually describes the health benefits of doing that, lowering your blood pressure and all these other actual genuine physical health benefits to doing that particular type of breathing and meditating into the breath as you do it on the inhale and the exhale. And I recognize that this meditation I came up with years ago called Release and Receive is actually very, very similar, very much the same kind of thing. It wasn't so much focused on the belly rising as just on focusing on the breathing and having a mental image of releasing all the stress and receiving the blessings. If you believe in God from God, and if you don't believe in God from whatever, you know, higher power or whatever. And so you receive on the inhale and you release on the exhale. And you imagine all the things that are bothering you going away from you in this warmth water that you're standing in up to your hips. It's. It's like a magical ocean that's not full of waves and danger and sharks and the sun is beating down on you and it's not giving you skin cancer. It's just blessing you.

Well, that's. That was different.

And so you're receiving the blessings and you're. You're releasing this, the garbage that's in your hands. You open your hands and release and you say release in your mind or out loud. And you exhale and you inhale on Receive and you close your hands and you imagine the sun, the blessings, coming down and warming you and healing you and restoring you. It is a breathing meditation.

It really is. The. The Five Minute Miracle is designed to maximize just those 300 seconds, you know, scattered by doing it, scattering it through the day. It's a specific thing, but what you're saying is 100% valid. And as once you've got. If you were to do that, you transform your life. It's powerful all by itself. No question about that. I'm simply combining the breathing, the effects of proper breathing with something called synaptic facilitation. The fact that if you have a limited amount of time to do something, you will accomplish more if you divide that up into pieces and do it during the day than if you do it all in one chunk. It's just a trick. It's a neurological trick. But what you're talking about is how to go deeper into the practice. And everything you just said sounds to me like something wise. And I hope that you're using it, and I hope you'll report back, and I hope you will share with other people so that they can benefit been. Remember, you're out to save lives.

Yeah, yeah.

No question about it. Just when you remember that today I'm going to save somebody's life, you know, just say that to yourself, today I'm going to save somebody's life and go out there and do it. Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you.

And thank you. Thank you and the group for everything. I'm really been appreciating the. The stories that everybody else has. Even though I don't type in the comments like some people do, I. I just send out good feelings and blessings and love to all the different people in the group who share every. Every one of them.

And those of you who do not share, who are lurking in the background, we love you. You are welcome here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

People who are part of our programs for paying us every month, be part of the program. We love you. Those who are not, who are doing something else, taking care of yourself, we love you. This is just a space in which I can be the goofball that I am. And I could be as emotional as I am and as dumb as I am and as brilliant as I am and just be me. Don't we. We all need a space where we can feel like we can just be ourselves and we're safe. And I want that for each and every person here. I hope you can feel this is a safe place to be the goofball that you genuinely are or the wounded heart that you genuinely are, or the powerhouse that you genuinely are. Whatever you are, as long as you're here to support other people, you are welcome. Thank you, Becky. Jim. Thank you. Hello, Dude.

So first I want to start off with a comment about kind of segues from what Becky was talking about. And it was in traffic probably Wednesday or Thursday this week. I was heading into Seattle in the rain on i5, and that's always miserable. And it was dark and going along, listening to music, podcast, I think.

But.

What happens that happens there on every trip like that, somebody pulled in front of me, slammed on their brakes. So it's like, oh, so not only are you cutting me off, I have to react. And rather than get angry, I started like, okay, do.

Do it.

Do some. Do some breathing. And I realized I already was good. I was already in. I'd Already. It had already become a habit. I don't know when I started it, but it's like, this is why I'm not already giving myself a sore throat yelling explicatives at this person that is neither going to hear or care what I'm, what I'm thinking or saying. Just. And I was able to. Not really. I mean, I was annoyed, but it was no longer a, like, anger reaction where I'd spend the rest of the trip, like, just.

Do you realize, do you realize as soon as you say I was annoyed, it's a thousand times better than being enraged?

Yeah.

You know, it's like what Tony Robbins refers to as transformational vocabulary. The words that you use to describe your internal states will affect your internal states. Annoyance. I was peeved. I was miffed. Can you see that you could take the same emotion and put a different label on it and it becomes a different experience? So what, first of all, what you're doing when you, if you were to set your, your phone, your iPhone to go off every three hours and you did 60 seconds of deep diaphragmatic breathing, sometimes when it goes off, you're going to be pissed off and you're not going to want to do it. But if you force yourself to do it, you've just made a neural connection. You have just taught yourself that the mood that you're in is connected to the way you breathe. So the unconscious competence, after you've been doing it for six weeks, unconscious competence starts kicking in. And your, your body mind automatically scans because you want to be happy, we want to be joyful. You're going to start noticing when your posture, your facial expression, the words that you use, your breathing are shifting out of the happy zone, you're going to start noticing it and you will automatically begin the reintegrative process. And this is what is starting to happen with you. And this is why I say start with the breathing. If you start with the breathing, I can help you. I can. You're coachable at that point because not only are you doing the breathing, but you also know how to motivate yourself to practice the breathing. If you. Learning how to motivate yourself to do something is as important as understanding the technical aspects of the thing. Maybe more important, if you have the. If you know technically how to drive, but you're afraid to get in a car, then for all practical purposes, you don't know how to drive. The. If you study martial arts and you have, you know, you're beautiful at all these different techniques, but you're afraid to fight. You're going to be useless if somebody attacks you because the fear. You never learned how to operate yourself. You thought you knew it because you knew the physical aspects of things. So you are willing to respect and love yourself enough to step in the space of doing the thing to experiment. How does this work? Does this work? Let me try the experiment that automatically puts you in the 5%. Nothing but respect for you for what you just said. That's exactly, exactly what the other people in this group need. Because what you're doing is you're convincing yourself whether or not it works. And they get to hear from you whether or not it works that way, people can say, is this for me? Is this not for me? All I can do is give you the most honest reportage of the way this path seems to be and give you ways to test it for yourself. You are the kind of man who needs to be shown. You're the kind of guy who is. Who feels doubt and that makes you smart. I am profoundly grateful that you decided to trust me for a few minutes. I can't tell you how much that means to me. And it means that we're both on the right path together and that for a little while we can make this kind of exchange and it'll be good. Then you'll go on your own path and maybe from time to time I'll wave at you or maybe you'll stick around for a while. It doesn't matter because you're learning how to put your hands on your. On your wheel. Breathing is where it starts. Breathing is where it starts. Because if you don't get breath for 60 sec. For, if you don't get breath for 30 seconds, I guarantee you everything else in the world disappears until you get that next breath. So you're dealing with the core of something that is critical. How do I deal with my fear, my doubt, my pain, my anxiety, my rage, my anger? You've just learned a way to do it. You actually have one of the keys to the kingdom. And good for you. Good on you, buddy.

Clarifying question that. Yes, you mentioned it last week. Something about a transition, like the transition from childhood to adulthood. The. There's important stuff that happens kind of at adolescence.

You know, I don't know what it was I said, but let's, let's. Let me, Let me try to access that.

Can I add. It came out of the. The questions coming out of an observation that I had from my homework for last week was to go and look in the mirror and Ask my inner child what he wanted. Right before I even got there, an answer came up that kind of felt in my gut like, oh, and it was emotional, but when I thought about it, it didn't feel like it came from my child. It felt like it came from an adolescent of me.

Okay.

I got a different answer when I did the mirror.

Okay.

And so I'm kind of curious as to whether they're both a form of my child.

Yes. Okay, look, all of them. These are, these are models. They don't exist. I can't cut you open and find a child. You know, it's not like rings, I.

Guess my question is, what model is like, where does the.

It's like, okay, so let me, let me, Let me try to, Let me try to answer that question for you. The child is pure potential, pure love. Okay? And it's the. How. It's the home of instinct. Just, just a few basic instincts, you know, to, to move away from pain, to not be dropped to. To suckle, you know, food, you know, the, the. The proto emotions and the proto drives are there in the child, and it begins to explore the world. But the child is to be protected. The adult's job is to protect a child. And when you are, when you have the resources and emotional balance that a child would be safe in your care, it is reasonable to say you are now an adult. An adult should be capable of taking care of a child. If you don't have a physical child, you should be capable of creating enough safety that the kid inside you gets to play. So you got your basics. Handle adolescents. Children will also model the adults in their lives shamelessly. You know, every. Every kid's dad is the strongest. Their dog is the smartest, Their mommy's the prettiest. Adolescence is the period where you start questioning that baby ducks follow the mama duck, okay? But adolescent ducks begin to need to swim in opposite. In different directions. So the adolescent will naturally and healthfully reject what the parents. That's the period of rejecting the models that you've been given as you take greater responsibility for yourself in others, actually get out into the work world. And you start finding out what is true and what is not true about mating, about your body, about work. You will start reexamining the things that your parents taught you and sort through them and say, oh, this was right, this was wrong. This is right. It's that thing about, you know, when I was a teenager, my dad was an idiot. When I was in my 20s, it was amazing how much smarter he'd Become that process of moving from total dependence, to feeling what the world is and making your own decisions, to breaking away from the gravitational well of safety of family, to taking orbit, to taking off for your own life. There are lots of different ways to look at it, but you know, adolescence is the time when you're starting to try the things that are going to lead to you being an adult. You know, you're starting to feel sexual attraction. You're starting to want the power. You know, what is money? You know, what is that freedom? What is that? What would it be to live alone? Oh, my parents don't look as young as they did when I was six, seven years old. Oh, this aging thing is real. Oh, there is death in the world and that changes what we think about life. You might have lost a grandparent by then, or a great uncle. Oh, someone I love is not here anymore. We start stepping into reality. It changes us. If you're balanced properly, you grow from there to realizing my parents protected me when I was a child. If you were healthy enough to have that situation, if that was true for you, let me turn around and give that gift to the children that will follow. Maybe you have your own children, maybe you don't, but one thing is right. We want to make the world safer for children, whether we choose to have them or not. Does that touch on the things you were looking at?

Yeah, a bit. I guess it raises another question though.

Go for it.

So what happens to the adolescent that is called upon to be an adult before they're done being a child?

You get someone who needs therapy. You know, children, it's even worse. Children who are called on to be adults can become feral children or stunted children. And it can be a terrible thing. They can become dangerous because there was no adult to protect them. So they actually develop a sense that there is no safety in the world. There's nobody to give. So it's, it's the law of the jungle. Adolescents who are called upon, it depends on how old they are, it depends on how mature they are. But it can have a touch of that feeling like you had your childhood stripped away from you. The adult part of us and the child part of us. The child is the creative self, the adult self is the protective self. The adolescent wants as many of the adult responsibilities as possible by paying as few of the adult prices as possible. So it would kind of depend on where they were. If they step up, you can have a 12 year old who suddenly becomes the man of the family and he goes into the coal Mines and he feeds his family and he gets it. It's okay because he loved his dad. His dad died in the mines and now it's his job. Then you also have the 14 or 15 year old who is simply neglected by his parents. Just becomes a latchkey kid and he can start looking for answers about what, how the world works from other members of his cadre. The idea of this, you get gang members out of this, you have children, in essence, learning about adulthood from other children. So instead of creating a home within which children would be safe in bonding, you just go out and have sex and make babies and take pride in that. Instead of building a career that where you are exchanging goods and services with your community in exchange for money, you just get money any way you can, whether you're doing something positive or not. Instead of being healthy, you develop a big muscular body, but you've got diabetes. The. I think that adolescents who are pushed into adulthood too soon, if they're. If too soon is the important word there, can fall into looking for simple answers to complex questions. And the results of this can be very unhappy. And I think that it would be good for you to come up with your own ideas about what happens when children are forced into adulthood or refuse to become adults. When adolescents are pushed too soon into adulthood, you know, they're experimenting with sex and have babies and all of a sudden, you know, they got a. They've got a whole different set of realities to understand that will deepen your theory of what it is that human beings are. Whatever it is you come up with is is. I'd love to hear what you have to say. Come up with a short statement about what you think happens based upon your observations and view of humanity and share it with the group. Would you do that?

Yeah, I'll try.

Excellent. Thanks a lot, Jim.

Take a while.

It's okay. We got time. We'll be here. All right. Zinnia. Zinnia.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi. I got in late last time. I'd been invited somewhere and so I got here for your last five minutes. But I wanted to revisit my definition of myself the last full time I was here. There's two strong ideas I have going on right now, but one is that I describe myself as a disruptor. What I. What I felt I need to do is to say no to qualify that. Because for me, it sounds like I'm saying I'm the kind of person who's looking to kick indoors to enforce where really what I'm saying is that whenever I appear in however form I may appear by the reactions that I get, I now can say, oh, I was a disruptor. And an example of that would be say, walking into a kitchen where a mother is washing meat with dish washing liquid. And someone like me walking in saying, that's not, you know, the very thing that happened to your face just now. Like, how did you get to, to so. And speaking on that, right. So there's backlash. So that's the sort of disrupting. I'm, you know, I'm sort of the kid in the, the, the kid in the, the story. The King's New Clothes.

Yes.

You know, like, I'm just saying I'm not, you know, I'm just speaking on the matter and I'm not showing up as an authoritarian nor as someone to punish, but someone who just may vocalize. Right. That's one way in which I may show up as a disruptor, I'd like to say. And perhaps in other cases. Well, only, you know, we, we are used to that, but we are used to it in a different frame. We're used to it in a male's body or someone in a lab coat, you know, not, you know, you're too tall, you're too short, you're too. That's the other ways in which I may present as a disruptor. So that's one idea. The next is that I've been sort of binging, binge watching Netflix and Black mirror is a UK series and there's two that stands out over the last 24 hours that I've watched them and one is titled USS Callister and the other is Demon 79. Now the thing about this series, I'm reminded of the Twilight Zone, which I loved growing up and what I found myself, I was laughing that, that I thought, oh, the writers, like whoever's writing these things are clever because there's this level of sophistication that's coming through. And USS Callister shows us a nerd going wrong. Right? A nerd going rogue. And in Demon 79, I especially found it thrilling because we, we see a, a bright eyed, bushy tail migrant in England, an East Indian who is visited by a demon and told that she had to save the world. And the way in which she had to save the world is to behave. I wrote here how to do that which doesn't come naturally, right? So she was told that she had to kill three people, like murder three people. Now this is a, a mousey little girl of a sales girl. And we watch her in this evolution of Having to muscle up and believe this demon and how to, you know, do this task to save the world, she has to become a monster. Certainly it ends with our finding, you know, she found. She finds her stride by the third kill. But of course something interrupts that. But just watching the evolution of this.

So let me ask you a question. This cluster of things, the observation about being a disruptor and then your description of this woman who must change herself and must kill in order to save the world. I would suspect that there is a thematic connection between these things for you and that there is a question that you have that is related to them. And I would like you to cut to that question.

It's more about the difficulty of practicing things that you're not. It's counter who you are.

How can we be the things that we define ourselves as not being?

How difficult it is to do and be. And stepping into the space of the new thing. Yes, a good new thing.

Well, let me dance around that just a little bit before I do that to Nonari. Was there something you wanted to say, sweetheart?

Not really. Just listening. Just listening.

So let's go back to the first thing you said about the thing in the kitchen. If you want to change behaviors in somebody, I could look at a three part process for there you get rapport with them, you break their pattern and you connect the new behavior to their own highest good. So for instance, if somebody is washing meat with dishwashing detergent and they know you love and respect them, or you start with a hug, some sort of connection. Now you can say, oh, there might be a better way to do that, you know, because you know, this, this accomplishes these great things, you know, washes away dirt and this and. But it leaves a residue. You can accomplish the same thing with this over here. You know, I didn't know that myself, you know, so now you're not. That person isn't feeling like you're putting them down. That person is feeling like you're sharing something with them that will raise their chances of what they want to do, which is to share love with the people that they, that they care about. To share food, which symbolizes love, support, survival. But how do you. You also mentioned that there are aspects of being powerful in the world that people will criticize you for. You're not tall enough, you're not short enough, you're not this enough, you're not, you're too black, you're too this, you're too that, whatever those things are. How do you be the person you need to be in the world in order to have the effect that you want. In the magic formula, that would be the c. That would be the character. How can you have confidence that you can and should do this, that it will have a positive outcome, that this is in alignment with who you are? If you see yourself as being the kind of person who never disrupts and you recognize that a disruptor is what is necessary here, I'm going to suspect from this that you believe that being a disruptor is what you need to be because the system needs to be disrupted. But you're not sure that you can do this and get the approval of your tribe. What's going to happen now? Is that accurate? That what you see is necessary is not what you see yourself as being? Is that true?

There's a. There's a piece that's. That's working for me, but I'm rejecting the notion in my head a disruptor is someone who wants to bring the heat. Right. But. But what you've said that stands out for me is that in order to, to do it properly, it's about connecting first. Right?

Connecting first, then disrupt and then you show them how the new behavior will get them what they want. So the disruptor is one critical part of the process. That is one hat you need to put on. The other two hats are the connector and the evolver.

Right. So you've corrected that it's okay to be a disruptor. Like that's.

It's a. It's an important part of the process.

Yes.

You know, but it's it. People don't care what you know until they know that you care. If you're going to tell someone that they are wrong, first, have. Have enough connection with them that you know that you're not saying that they as a spirit are wrong. You're saying this particular behavior may be non optimal. This. You know, you've been much better than me at many things. You've taught me a whole lot of things. Let me share something with you that might be of use. Remember that their ego. You don't want them to feel bad and wrong because if you make them feel that way or if they. If what you say triggers that they will then fight. And what you want is the correction of the behavior. If you correct the behavior without them even knowing that you. That you help them do it, that's even better because has nothing to do with you. You simply want them to do the healthier thing, the better thing. So first rapport, respect them, love them, see them, respect them. Love them, see them, hugs, smiles, you know, give two compliments for every, every criticism, whatever. Once you breathe in rhythm with them, you know, model their body language, mirror their body language back to them. You have a half dozen different ways to build rapport with them on a physical level, on emotional level, on intellectual level. Once you have the rapport, then disrupt the behavior. The best way to disrupt the behavior is to get them to change something physically. Make them laugh, you know, make them dance, make them move differently, hold their faces differently, or use different language. What are our emotions created by what we look at, what we focus on, how we use our bodies and the language we use. So you change one or all of those three things to disrupt their behavior. If you made her laugh now, you got the rapport. You made her laugh. Now while you're laughing, you could say, there's another way I figured out to do this. If you do that, remember that the, the intent of the communication is some positive result. In order to do that, you have to attach a negative to something they're doing currently. In order to get them to accept that, they have to believe you love them. If they don't believe you love them, you might be disrupting their behavior and doing something negative. So you always love them. Come from a place of love and connection in a way that they understand. Okay, you calibrate that to their understanding, you disrupt their current behavior in some way, and you be sure that you have an idea about the more positive thing that they could do.

In short. In short, tell them 10 good things before having any one negative thing.

Well, yeah, at least two. At least two. You know, and the thing is that I think that, that this is one of the reasons to be kind and sweet to people all the time. Because there are times when you don't have the time to create the rapport. You have to, you have to base it on rapport you've already built up. If they already. So it's like you want to be the person who they're going to believe has their best interests at heart. If you're doing this with a stranger, then you have to first build rapport, then interrupt the behavior, and then connect the new behavior to their own values, their own intentions. People watch, watch social media and people arguing on Facebook. Political arguments. They never start with respect, you're an idiot, you're a racist, you're a bad person this way, bad person that way. In other words, the door was closed. And then they'll say, geez, these people won't listen to the logic. Nobody does we listen to emotion? We are emotional beings. You. You know, we. We make our decisions emotionally and then justify them with logic. What you're doing is if you learn how to do this with yourself, the fact. The best way to learn how to do this is learn how to do it with yourself. To love yourself five times a day, you're disrupting the spiral of physiological stress with breathing. And then you're remembering what your higher goals are. Now, what. What are my higher goals? What I'm living for. What version of myself could do this? What do I need to be to be that person? Let me be this. Let it be. Let me be that person right now, okay? And if you remind yourself of that five times a day, you're going to find yourself generalizing that to other people. You want to change somebody's mind. Do I have rapport? Did I break their behavior? Am I connecting the new behavior to something that they want that is in alignment with their values? Not my values, their values. And what do they ultimately want? They want to move away from pain toward pleasure. Even before you learn anything else about somebody, you know that every living thing wants to move away from pain toward pleasure. So all human beings will respond to that. Not everybody will respond to service because not everyone has dealt with enough fear in their life that they can feel that expansion out to other people. Everyone wants to. Wants to stop hurting. Everyone wants to be happy. So first love and connection. Then be the disruptor. Then point the way to a better path.

Okay.

I am so grateful.

You're so welcome. You know, this is. I love doing this. This is my way of creating a world that will be better for my children because I want the world to be better for your children. It's as simple as that. And I want you. The child inside you is as important as any kid that came out of your womb. Never, ever, ever forget that you need love, too. Okay. All right. Excellent, excellent, excellent. We have 12 more minutes. We have time to talk to a couple people or if there's something you'd like me to talk about or just. What can we go over? What can we do? Elizabeth. Evie King. You haven't been here for a long time. Unmute yourself. Unmute yourself. Sweetheart.

Hi.

Hi there.

How you doing?

Good, good. Busy and. Good, busy.

Had a lot of story sales and.

Oh, really?

Commission right now that I have to get back to.

Is that one of your paintings in the background?

It is.

That's great. You do murals and stuff?

Yeah, I do murals.

You're one of these people who is kind of volcanically creative and it spews into a dozen different arenas. Thank you. So is there anything we can do for you today? Any comments or requests about anything? I. I just always like coming when I can and listening to you all.

And getting the great energies.

You know, I've met, I've met so.

Many incredible people that have turned into, you know, creative connections.

Great. Yeah, use that in the in chat. You guys exchange contact information. That's not a joke. Yeah, I need to go into my.

Chat and do that now.

So.

Yeah, because just wonderful things.

I mean, I started a sort of.

A poetry collective with Linda Addison, who.

I met through you guys.

So it's just you, you give so much to so many and I do appreciate that.

Well, you're very welcome, sweetheart. And if there's ever anything we can do for you, you know, make sure to come back. Other than that, just live a great life. Keep giving to the world.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome. You're welcome. So let's take a look. And you know, it could be that people are getting ready to go to Christmas and they don't really have anything they need to say. Hey, anybody else who have not? Paul Jackson, PhD.

Hey, afternoon, Steve. How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you doing, buddy?

I'm doing okay. So I just realized my wife and I have started this kind of tradition. Last year we were house sitting some cats and this year we're doing the same thing. So my wife is really wonderful in that when she picks a house first to sit, it's always like, no problem. The cats, they can do themselves. Oftentimes the. The owners have like automated food dispensaries and such. And so it's really just taking a look at the house. And so the house we're in this year, it's a split level, five bedroom, three bathroom house. This listed about 800K. And we're in South Seattle, really close to Rotary Beach. And so the gentleman who was just on earlier talking about Seattle. Yeah, Seattle's an interesting place. And actually earlier this morning I. We live in Tacoma and so there was a shooting death that happened and they just finished a lawsuit trial with the three officers that were involved and all three were acquitted. They found not guilty.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

Yeah.

Very depressing.

Yeah.

So the mayor of Seattle is online. So every Saturday morning there's a group of Pierce County African Americans called the Black Collective. And they have met every Saturday for like the last 50 plus years. I think they've only missed maybe two meetings. In those 50 plus years of Saturdays.

Wow.

Yeah.

They met this morning and we had. The mayor was on there. I think the police chief was on there also. And we also have another senator that was online for the meeting. And very informative, but very kind of depressing in the sense that all three of the officers were found not guilty. But there are some things that were allowed in the testimony that would have probably changed the verdict.

You're depression is fear with no one to fight and nowhere to run.

Exactly.

So what you need to do to get out of depression is to find something positive you can do with that fear. Right? And so what can you do to make the world a better place for yourself and your family? Identify that. Even if it's only learning how to center yourself so you can be. You can share joy with them at Christmas. Nothing more than that will help. Because what I can promise you is that the officers who did the bad thing, these people were not at peace with themselves. These people were operating from fear rather than love. Right? So to the degree that you can bring love into your life, and that is combined with an absolute commitment to protect yourself, Remember, first, survival, right? Then love. Awaken your warrior self. Then waken your child self. What you need to do, because, you know, you said depression is flood yourself with Christmas love. Flood yourself with joy. Make you know you're going to make three children smile before Christmas. You know you're going to give something of yourself away. You're going to make the world a better place. Be the change you want to see. Be strong first. Then open your heart. Okay? And what I'd love for you to do is to report back to me. Tell me about the three children you made. Smile. Take that as homework. Okay.

Including myself.

That's right. That's exactly right. So if you and your wife are two of those children, that's fine by me. But make sure that there's another child, someone you don't know, someone outside yourself. Make someone's day. Okay, you do that. Okay, we'll do that.

All right.

You take care.

You too, sir.

You bet. All right, Didis.

Okay. Tied into the creativity area, my background is in architecture and city planning. My college career overlapped that with Guerdell Yankovic. And because of Proposition 13, I went into it. On the other hand, after moving to Spokane, which it enabled me to do, I got back into the community action type thing by being a citizen input for city and county plans and that type of stuff. Your general plan type thing. One of the things that we were promoting was the Idea of New Urbanism where you have housing above commercial. Well, there is now in Spokane a development that has that type of thing. And in that development is something called Spark Central. This is an idea. SparkCentral allows kids to come in for different aspects for different. Like Lego games. Oh, what writing? Basically all kinds of community, community oriented stuff. So I realized after attending one of the. Oh, what is it? It was the drop in and write. It's a weekly type thing that, where they have about an hour and a half, they put out a prompt and you write to the prompt. And I've been realizing that because of that I've been developing what, flash fiction basically skills. And that's something where. Okay, by community service, it's provided me an opportunity 20 years later to trained other skills. And Spark Central exists because the organization decided, the developer of this New Urbanism area decided that they wanted to give back to the community. So there's a certain number of buildings or a certain number of spaces in that area that are basically given to that organization, which is a nonprofit.

Okay, so that's the situation as it exists right now. Is there a question or request that you have in connection with making the situation better in some way or taking greater opportunity or being of more service? How can I help you?

Well, I would see it as something that could be expanded to other community centers, something where you could have transportation between the areas if they don't have the resources in all the locations.

I would suggest. Is that a goal? Would you like to actually facilitate that in 2024?

It's one that I had started thinking about several weeks ago.

Okay, so here's what you might do then. Then you might a proposal. You know, one page, no more than one page of how this would look and maybe principles about what's going on and how this is working. Then what you want to do is network with people in other cities, people who have the facilities and the resources and the temperament to be interested in this. And you brainstorm with this. You, you become the grandfather. You create the bible for how to do this effectively. And you find other people who would like to try this program or similar programs. If you had such a goal, you could run that goal through the magic formula pretty easily. You could find somebody who's been successful at, you know, this is a model of something. Then you find a model of people who've been successful at growing such models in other places. You know, then you take action. What. How many phone calls do you need to make every day or every week in order to move in that direction, you be sure that this is something that touches your heart in a way that you feel positive about it so that you will take those actions every day. You know, you keep clarifying the models and so forth, and you get really clear. By the end of 2024, I would like to have five different pilot programs going in five different cities across the country. And, you know, that's pretty clear. Okay. And I would like to be serving at least 500 people or something. You know, whatever. Whatever is for you. And then you ask yourself, who would you have to be in order to make this happen? Who is that guy? Who's the guy that can make this happen and have fun in the process? Who is he? And you get a clear sense. What about his physical energy? What about his heart? What about his. His mind? Would you like to be that guy? Then study people who are like that guy? Start becoming that guy. The world is looking for people who are willing to become that guy. The world is looking for that guy. If you can keep this in your heart continuously over the next year, you're that guy. So I ask you, Dennis, you want to be that guy?

It ties into what I've had printed on my checks for a number of years. Imagine the future and make it so.

There you go. So this become. This could easily become something that you work on in. In this group where every week you come with your issues and what you're dealing with, and let us help you workshop and find people to help you with that. This is this. You can use the group for that to brainstorm how you apply the magic formula to a goal of starting five such things across the country, or whatever your goal is. But that's the first thing, is to write out what you want. Okay?

Okay.

Does that help?

Yep.

All righty. All right. It is now 1:30, and it is time for us to unmute. Everybody unmute and wish each other Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

Happy Holidays.

Happy Holidays, everybody. Happy holidays.

Happy dance.

Say your next.

See you next Saturday.

Have a wonderful.

Absolutely.

Take care.

I'm so glad to see you. And as always, the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Have a wonderful holidays, and I'll see you next Saturday. Bye.

Love to all.

Peace.