Firedance 2-4-23

Not, yeah, not during this, but I seem to actually have a list of things that do this, then do this and do this. Eventually we'll probably have engineers doing all of that and that'll be fun. But right now this is just really fun for me to have a. A weekly opportunity to talk to people about our process and there is just a lot to be talked about today. So there's going to be a lot of very specific application and building a picture of what it is that's happening in our lives. So I'm really happy to have Tananarive on here because she had some really pointed things to say about the past week and I would rather she represent her own perspective on these things. But as for the rest of you, when you hear how busy this week has been, I hope you'll understand how important you are to us, how important this time is and you'll make the most use of it by asking questions. Hopefully we're all, at the very least. Well, I'll say that in 90 seconds we'll get started, so I'll save some of that. Hey Steve, is that Maggie?

It is.

Hi.

Hi. How are you, sweetheart?

I'm okay. I wanted to tell you that I can't be here next Saturday.

Okay.

So I will. I'm on the Norwest Con Concom.

Oh.

So it's getting close and there's a meeting and I feel I should be there in person and it happens at.

Exactly the same time as this morning. Well, I will be seeing you at norwest Con and I look forward to that very much. Yeah, be great. Boy, it's been years. Yeah, it's kind of hard to kind of wrap my mind around what's happened in the last three years and that we actually came to a plague. That's like, wow. So that's what that's like. Actually it's a pretty mild plague, all things considered. You look back at human history, but that's because we have viral vaccine. Yes, that's true. It is true. Okay. Ah, countdown. All right, it is 12 o' clock Pacific and it's time for the Life Writing Fire Dance show. Basically, what. My name is Stephen Barnes, the creator of Life Writing and Fire Dance and a number of other technologies of human personal mental development. I have been using them myself, on myself so much in the past five years and especially during the pandemic, that what is going on right now is life changing. Which is why we had to change it from a Friday broadcast to a Saturday broadcast because literally I'm working the first job I've had in. In over 20 years, and it's an amazing, insane opportunity. But before we get into that, what I'd like for you to do is to unmute yourselves. Everybody unmute yourselves and say howdy to each other.

Hello, everybody. Happy Saturday. Hi, team. How are you?

That is great. All right, so we're gonna. What I want to do is to wake everybody up, because, you know, I need to wake up, too. This has been an incredible, intense week, the first week of this process. You will find out more about it. My good lady wife is going to talk about that. But the first thing I want to do is to give us a chance to wake ourselves up. So stand up if you can. If not, figure out how much of this you can do in a seated position. And we're going to start with our fingers. By the time you finish with this, you're going to be totally awake. Start with your fingers. Move from there to your wrists. And make sure to breathe smoothly and deeply as you do this. I did not want to get out of bed this morning, but the subject today is going to be on motivation. Okay, Elbow. And by the time we get finished today, you will understand exactly how I motivate myself to do these things. Inhale, exhale, inhale, all the way down. Down here. Diaphragm spanning, shoulders.

Neck.

Now you're going to go side, forward, side, and across. Don't roll back, And always stay within what is comfortable. Reverse it. Okay, shoulders again. All the way back, all the way up, all the way forward. Down, back.

Up.

Okay, reverse it. All the way forward, all the way up, all the way back, all the way down. Okay, Now hips right, front, left, back. Oh, I can hear that popping and cracking. Reverse it. Always stay within what is comfortable and never hold your breath. Okay. The whole trunk. Inhale, inhale, and exhale where you can feel the expansions and contractions. Reverse it. Oh. Oh, that's nice. All right, in about the knees. Reverse it. All right, shake it out. Good, good, good, good. Who feels more awake now than they did a couple minutes ago? Raise your hands. Good, good, good, good. Okay, so the most important thing is to understand what the overall picture is. I like to move back and forth and then specifics. The overall picture is that 10 years ago, when my life shattered, when we had to move away from Los Angeles to take care of a family emergency, and it just destroyed my plans for my career. I mean, just literally trashed them completely. I felt no hope. You know, it was. I was in that emotional position where it felt like well, it was the dark night of the soul. If you take a look at the hero's journey, it was a dark night of the soul. I felt that nothing I had, nothing I could do would be enough for me to be able to have a happy life. That's how it felt. So that was my reality. And what got me out of this was the process that I now call fire dance, which is a combination of incantations, which are affirmations done with physical movement, visualizing, mentors, emotional flooding, and. And the ancient discipline of Tai Chi chuan. Combining these things together created a kind of magic. One of the pieces of it is the acronym that I call magic. What you're going to notice is that there are a lot of acronyms and models and things like this. And remember, all of them are trying to discuss a single mountain that I learned about because I had a certain level of expertise in. In multiple areas. And I started noticing that the interstitials, the things that they did not have names for, the things that reading between the lines, were the same in relationships and in martial arts and in writing. And when I started asking myself the question, what's the core of this? Once again, there were no words for these things. But it was possible to develop exercises that I could have my students do that would teach them. And now we had a common language. So what I did in connecting these things together was to create a very specific thing that I used. And one of the things I noticed is that when you do things in this way, luck seems to change. It is bizarre. And that's probably just because you're doing a ton of things that are. You know, it's like a mushroom spreading out mycelial roots. And so another mushroom pops up over here. It's not magic, but you can't see it, and you can't think about it consciously. You can't hold it in your logic. Things happen. So maybe it's nothing more than that. I don't want to tell you what kind of a view you should have on the universe in that sense, but what I did notice is that the more powerful I was and the more consistent I was with these processes, the luckier I seemed to get. And it was very strange. So that every one of these models, I'm talking about the hero's journey or the chakras or the three gates or the three centers or this or that idea, whatever it is, it's just a different way of trying to talk about the same thing that you can learn for yourself, if you will do These processes, it is strange and it is wonderful. It relates to taking control in the first hour of your day, which really start calling it our diamond hour because it will have many facets. It starts with five minutes a day. If you will just commit to taking five 60 second breathing breaks during the day. In other words, every three hours. If you can do that as a minimum, I can get you on this path. Just all you have to do is 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. Start there. If you start there, then you can build things on top of it. You can expand out, you can put the five Tibetans in there. You can take the first one of the day and expand it out into fire dance. Lots of different things, but that's the buy in. If you can't do that, help me help you do that. Because that's the beginning. This is not conceptual, this is experiential. What I'm hoping to do is to build a community of people who I'm actually coaching every week and sharing what it is that I'm learning to be honest. And tonight Reeve is going to speak to this. One whole chunk of our lives has ended. We literally are stepping into the next entire cycle of our lives. Our careers, our parenthood, our marriage, our physicality. It's going to take everything we have, but it is so worth it. I cannot even tell you. This is when I look at another model, the little boy inside me and the old man on my deathbed, the angel ancient child idea. The little kid inside me is so happy. Is so happy. Literally everything I've been trying to do in the past 40 years, in my career and in my life is coming to fruition now. I don't know what's going to happen next. I mean, maybe I'll find out that I don't have what it takes to do it. But I can promise you this. Life might beat me, but I will not beat me. The philosophy of the martial arts school that I have mastery and Steve Muhammad's principle is the concept of defeat does not exist in my fighting science. I will find a way or make one. So, yes, you're going to see us giving everything we have to this next phase in our lives. You will also get to see for yourselves what, what's working and what isn't working. You know, we're. We plan to. To. To communicate with you in real time. The, the consequences of these behaviors, the actions, the results, how we adjust to them. And we will be as honest as we possibly can. Tanari, would you do me a Great favor and speak up here because you have so much to say today. No sound.

Oh really?

Yep.

Oh, it's good now. Okay.

It's good.

Yes. Here. And what a great week. I, I don't know how many people are here from my list, but I did see a couple of names I didn't recognize. So if you are from my list, it's not a realist.com welcome. But even if you're not, if you're fire dance and tai chi students, I see a lot of familiar faces too. So I'll just reiterate very briefly what I said in my newsletter, which is that we did have an amazing week. It's not hyperbole. I haven't had a full time job in more than 10 years. And Steve, I don't know how long you said more than 20 years, if ever. Really? When did you ever have a full time job? So you know, we had a very full lifestyle here at home and a schedule. We would have a 10:30am meeting. That seems so luxurious now, doesn't it, Steve? Our first obligation wasn't until 10:30 in the morning. Then Jason would have a noon meeting. And then we have a philosophy where we try to get our work done as quickly as possible. Done by one through by two, free by three, whatever at the door by.

Four, alive by five.

And it seemed like we had a pretty full life already, right? Like we already felt very busy. But then this great prospect, an opportunity to work in a six week writer's room. And even though it doesn't start until 11 because we live so far away, we basically have to leave by 9:30 in the morning. Which means that by 9:30 in the morning we figured we're going to be pretty tired at the end of the day. So you don't want to push your workout and your important morning rituals until later. So that just means we've been getting up earlier, like 7:30. It might not be early for some of you, but it's early for us. 7:30, working out by 8:30, which is not when I usually like to work out. But, but, and, and also relying on those practices for, for censoring ourselves that Steve is preaching about here every Saturday. Right. So the morning ritual, meditation, tai chi, walking. I don't walk in the mornings, but I. Working out. Yoga. We've done yoga together before work.

I love doing yoga with you, sweetie.

I love it too. And the real when the Rubber Meets the Road is when we are talking to one of our other staff writers for the show. And believe me, we can't wait until we can tell you what show this is and who our showrunner is. Some of you're not going to guess probably, but. Yeah, you're not going to guess, but it's. It's a really. It's a prestige genre show, and we're more than excited to be a part of it. We literally sit next to each other. Like, I have Steve on one side and the showrunner on the other, and it's heaven for me every day. Just.

Showrunner is so brilliant.

Yeah.

They are so specific in terms of understanding the structure of drama as necessary for a television series where there is. There's a. There's an assembly line. And in learning how to submerge my ego in the process and be part of the group is going to be one of the most delicious challenges of my entire life.

Yeah. Because we're part of a team. Yeah. This isn't. I mean, it's not our show. It's not anything adapted from our works. It's established ip. So we're coming in really just to help the team succeed, which means everything from taking those Covid tests every morning. Right. And now we're doing them at home. So we could just say we took the COVID test, but we're not doing that because. Because there's so much at risk. There's like, the whole, like, if the room has to shut down, if everybody gets sick, that slows the schedule, that slows our pace. It really is a team mentality. It's a team mentality in terms of pitching ideas, not just, like, trying to sound good and sound brilliant for the showrunner, which, of course, we both want to do. Like yesterday, the second in command says, oh, I love that pitch about something I said. And I was like, but it's not about that. It's about making everyone in the room look good. It's about, like, supporting someone who might have pitched something and didn't get a lot of response, but you kind of like it. So you're like, well, what if. Yeah, that's. That's a good idea.

But.

And also, what if we did this? Like this. Yes. And approach, which is what the showrunner coach this on. That's how you operate in this room. It's not. No. It's not shutting people down. It's. Yes and Right. But anyway, that. The point I wanted to make and what I said in my newsletter today is that we were talking to one of the other staff writers who's considerably younger than we are, almost young enough to be my son.

Both of us combined.

Yeah. And he basically said, and this is his third room, although the other two resume. This is his first in person room. A lot of Hollywood is still zoom. And he said that at the end of the day he just wants to go home and sleep. And I could relate to that on one level. And he's within walking distance, so how lucky is that? But we don't have that luxury. We have an hour and a half typically ride home. And just like we had to shift the time of this, I had to shift the time of my UCLA classes from 12:30 in the afternoon, which will be in the middle of our writer's room.

Shift the time for a meeting with Jason. Yeah, it's like this is no time to forget that our primary job is the family.

True, but, but. So I'm teaching at UCLA at 6 o' clock now in the evenings, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I'm basically going from the writer's room back to work twice a week, not every day. But Thursday I was really getting my groove because Tuesday I was trash. Tuesday I was running late. My WI fi was shaky, so I couldn't start my class in the car. And I had to postpone it 15 minutes, which I hate to do. Thursday I was in my group, we were on time. I had office hours at 5:30, I was ready. I gave, I mean, modestly speaking, what I think is brilliant advice to two of my students who were working on a movie. I mean, it's like right off the top of my head and then it's like, oh, classes in a minute, guys. Gotta go right to the class without feeling burned out, without feeling like, oh my God, what have I done? And not feel like I'm cheating my students, which if I came home at the end of the day and I had spent all of my energy in the room and I was just mumbling through my class, then I'm cheating my students. Or if I'm so tired I can't even process this question my students have about their film and I have to put them off, then I'm cheating my students. So I am seeing the results of the practices that we've had every day when I already thought I was busy. But then it's like, okay, what if you double that? Triple that busyness? Can, can you still maintain your energy? Can you still function? I'm not nodding off in the room. I don't even feel sleepy in the room. We are literally doing this. We have adjusted. The first day was rough, but we really adjusted quickly. Wouldn't you say, honey, you know, I.

Would say that I've been watching you, and I was been watching you relax more and more.

I have been relaxing.

And one of the things that you did that was really important and is that you found a position to come from. So your identity in that room. Your identity in that room is to assist the showrunner. I am the showrunner's assistant, whether we officially have that title or not. And he tried to give us that. That official designation, but the. The company, you know, felt. I think they felt like our credits were too out of date. I mean, It's. The last 20, 30 years of my career have been very difficult, but we were blessed that we were able to get across that threshold. So now we have a chance to show who it is that we are. But Tananari literally is stepping into the job that she wants, even though they're not. They're not giving her that designation. She's there to make our showrunner look good. She's there to take stress off of him, to help him.

I have to give credit to one of our former podcast guests, actually. Before this is over, I'll put up the link. If you're curious about what happens in a writer's room, her name is Nicole Levy, and she wrote a book called the Writer's Room Survival Guide. And we've been listening to the audio of that. So that by the time our showrunner basically met with us to give us the impressions of what they want out of the room, this was like, oh, we've heard this already. We've heard the. Yes. And we've heard the, you know, all of. I mean, not all of it, but so much of it was in this book. And I'll stop after this. But I was particularly proud of a moment when it was almost the end of the day. I knew that the showrunner had wanted to have the entire second episode.

Beat.

Beat, Beat it. What do you say? Beat out. Beat it out.

Beat it out.

I don't know beats like, you know what happens? This happens. This happens. This happens. Like, they wanted to know, like, from beginning to end, what is this episode? And because there are so many bright and enthusiastic people in that room. And the showrunner also could go off on tangents if they were asked a question that wasn't directly about the beats. You know, we were kind of like, loosey goosey, and we're getting to the end of the time. And I knew they wanted to have that done. Like, if we had left the day without having that done, they would have Felt like we didn't accomplish what we wanted for the day. So I was that person keeping notes, keeping track of, like, where we were. And if we were wandering away from the conversation about the beats, I would prompt. I would prompt, and then they would get back in the room. We get that. And I'm like, I can do that. As a teacher, I'm used to that. I know how to do that. So I'm trying to take every skill I have that is not about just writing, but also, you know, being a teacher and being just a human. To try to make sure that this. This room stays on track without seeming like I'm doing that, because I have less experience than almost anybody in the room. So I don't want to seem like I'm doing that, but I am actually doing that.

Well, honey, I. I cannot tell you how. How wonderful it is to be stepping into this challenge with a partner like you. You know, you are absolutely the product as advertised. You know, you wake up in the morning and you are seeing the beauty in the day.

Yes.

You're celebrating it. And the attitude about this is, we know this is hard, but this is exactly what we've been working for. This is exactly what we want, what we need, what will give us the opportunity to find out who we are and, you know, to serve the people. Other people in that room.

Yeah.

There to serve ourselves and our egos. It's not a shark tank. It's a pod of dolphins.

It is. It's. And very smart, very thoughtful dolphins. But I have to also shout out this guy above me, here's a story. Because day one or day two, Steve made a couple of suggestions that, like, turn into actual beats in the script. And that's not easy to do. It's not easy to actually have your idea incorporated. And one of them is really big and is going to have really big impact. It's almost like the end of an episode. So it's like there's a buildup to it. And I just love seeing the showrunner and his second light up at Steve's ideas. And because I've been doing that for 23 years, when we have a little room at home, we have a mini room at home.

But to see the whiteboard behind us that's often filled with story stuff.

So to see him take that, just endless energy, endless capacity for, what if this happened? What if this happened? What if this happened? And be able to apply it in the room. Learning how to modulate, when to speak, when not to speak, like, make sure everyone else Has a chance, you know, all that. But it's just such a joy to be with my baby and see him.

Shine, you know, the flaws that I see, I have to try to create structures to keep my flaws from. From hurting situation. You know, I'm a very verbally aggressive, conversationally aggressive person. And in terms of writing, working with Niven and Pornell, you're in a room with Jerry Pornell. You had better be conversationally aggressive or you weren't going to get heard. Larry is much more laid back. But I learned to jump in there with Jerry so that in a writing room can be the wrong approach. What's needed there is. I literally. If I have an idea, I will literally be sure that if there are. There are six of us writers in that room. So I make sure that at least four people or four statements have been made before I say anything again. Waiting for six might not be. Might not be appropriate because not everybody wants to talk. And so in that case, what will happen is the other conversationally aggressive people will run with things. So I don't. I just want to make sure I'm not running over people, but finding the moments. And then there's also the thing of if you. If you hear something that triggers a thought that you think is important to the process, you. You want to let other people talk, but at the same time, you want to hold on to that idea that you had. But that can throw you in the situation of waiting to talk rather than listening to what's being said in the room. So it's like that balance right there. So another one of these, you know, how do I do this? How do I learn to do this? All I know is that if I can learn to do this, if I can integrate this next set of skills, if I can listen to what the showrunner is saying, the specificity of his language about the structure of writing, and if I can learn that language. One of the things I said to in honors is we need to print out the transcripts, the notes from the room, and then highlight every phrase or word that is unique vocabulary to this specific particular discipline and start building up a glossary.

Yeah, we literally don't know the language of television.

Well, to a huge degree, when you know the language of a discipline, you understand about half of that discipline. Just understanding what the language means. You know, if you knew what every pipe and every wrench that a plumber had was called and why it was and how it was used, you'd actually be a better plumber, you know, without even any Practice, you say, oh, I can use this for this. I can use this for this. There is specific language, and this is where in, like, the magic formula, you know, trying to apply everything that we know. It's like, okay, how do we do this without hurting our family, without hurting our bodies? How do we take care of our bodies? That's rest and proper food. And yesterday I messed that up. I was celebrating the end of the week. I had a little bit too much to eat too late in the day. I had some acid reflux. Last night, we interrupted my sleep patterns. So it's like, oh, learn, learn, learn. I noticed that we weren't doing our blessing dance often as we need to do our blessing dance every single day. It is the way that Tananarive and I connect with each other. It's how we protect our love. It's how we protect our marriage. I've been doing my meditating. I've been able to figure out my sleep patterns. We actually got our exercise done pretty good this week, even though we had to do it earlier than I like doing it. But we were skipping out on the blessing dance, and we weren't connecting with Jason as efficiently and effectively. I came home, and the first thing I said after he had not seen me, you know, for all night, all day, I asked him about business, things that he had to do, and he did not like that. You know, it's like I was turning him into a cog in the machine called the Dew Barnes household, rather than. Than just loving him for who he is and my son and connecting with him on an emotional level. And he challenged me on that. And that was appropriate, 100% appropriate. It's critical to understand what your values are, that this thing that I'm doing, I am going to connect with other aspects of my life and might as well be time to bring in a very special specific question, because I asked Tananariv, I said, of all the different things, because we're talking about how do we create our morning ritual fire dance, and the other things that then empowers our days, which will empower our weeks, which will let us do the best we can in this circumstance so that we can see if we can rise to this next level and function there without damaging anything that we already have. So, Tanara, you made a specific request of me, and would you please repeat that for the group?

Well, I think the thing struggle people struggle with a lot is this question of discipline. Even the word discipline, nobody likes that word. It just sounds mean and boring. So the thing that struck me was seeing the results. Right. But before you get tested, it's an act of faith when you're doing all of these things. It's an act of faith that you're going to feel more energy that you're going to. Your joints are going to feel better. It doesn't happen the first day you start doing Tai chi. You know, your back pain doesn't magically go away every time you do yoga. So, yeah, I'd like you to talk about that question of what is discipline and how to reframe it.

Okay, great. So the first thing I want to do is to take a look at the term discipline, which basically, you know, when you talk about chop wood, carry water, because this is if you look at. And once again, we're moving, we're jumping from model to model. In the Hero's Journey, there is a section called the Road of Trials. That's just the gap between where you are and where you want to be. The stuff you have to do every day. And in terms of this group fire dance is about having a morning ritual that takes care of all the basic things that you need in terms of exercise and wellness and focus and planning and so forth. So we created all the 20 minute ritual, 10 to 20 minute ritual, that takes care of all of that at the same time and does it really powerfully. But trying to drill down and to unpack that the discipline, most people say, okay, in order to chop wood, carry water, in order to do the writing or the reading or the traveling or the, the exercise of this, that and the other, it requires a massive amount of discipline. You have to roll that rock up the mountain every day. And then tomorrow we have to roll that mount that rock up the mountain again. And to a certain degree, mastery is directly related to your tolerance for boredom and doing the same thing over and over again. To what degree can you find something new to do in the thing so you don't get bored? But there is that sense of gut grinding work. And so what I like to say about this. Yeah, we've got this. Okay, so this is the board that contains kind of the basics of what we're doing. You know, head, heart, body, you know, is it, you know, this is three centers and is it true? Is it kind, is it useful, Is it effective? So looking at these two things we're going to. In other more models, we're going to try to get into the question of discipline. And the first thing I'll say is something controversial. I will say this. I don't have Discipline. What I have is this. I have hunger. I have hunger. H U N G E R. And this is just an acronym. I just came up with it to try to help you understand what I mean in the broadest sense. I define myself as the kind of person who does certain things. Things. If I don't do those things, I begin to lose myself. And it is painful. It actually feels like a kind of death. That if the most important things to me are my family, that I define myself as a kind of person who connects with his family every day. I literally cannot go a day without connecting with my family and friends. I define myself as a martial artist. I carry my, my. The black belt that I earned with me. Well, I used to carry it almost everywhere I go. Not because to remind myself of what it cost me to get here. As somebody said once, I said, I don't have a black belt. I am one. If I don't take care of my body, if I don't take care of my mind, then I lose that piece of my identity. It feels like death in terms of my career. I am a writer. I'm not. I'm an author. But an author is someone who has written. A writer is someone who writes. So any day that I do not write, I have lost a little piece of my identity that adds up. If I go more than a couple days without writing, it starts to really hurt. Something is wrong with my life. The difference between discipline and hunger is you don't have to try to be hungry. That, that you don't have to. You don't have to exert will to eat that sushi, that piece of chocolate. What you want is to find a way to connect so much deliciousness to being a particular kind of person. And the kind of person that you're trying to be, that you're committed to being is the person who can do the things that will take you to, to the destiny. So it's like once you say to yourself, I want X. Then you find someone who started about where you started, who got X. Then you look at the price they paid for X is there's always a price and the price is always paid in advance. And you say, am I or am I not willing to pay this price? If you decide you're not willing to pay the price, that's okay, you know, do something else. Because you, you're. You're a grown adult. You have the right to say, yes, I'm going to invest myself in this way, or no, I'm not going to invest myself in this way. But I don't want you doing and lying about it and saying, I couldn't do it. There was no way to do it. Society kept me from doing it. Life kept me from doing it. As long as anybody else has started where you're starting and gotten to where you want to go, I want you to have the belief you can do it too. You can do it too. But you do have to understand the price they paid. And part of that price might be learning the vocabulary of this very specific discipline so that you can have the specificity to talk to other people who are in that discipline, and they know what you mean and you know what they mean. It might be going through human resources, as we did yesterday, talking about harassment on the workplace, to understand the definition of harassment that is being used within this organization so that you can function in this organization as a healthy cell or a healthy organ. It might be, how do I have to change my schedule so that I can get up earlier than I ordinarily get up, but get all the rest I need? We've started going to bed a half hour earlier. We just start our morning ritual or.

Evening ritual a half hour earlier, 45 minutes earlier.

45 minutes earlier. Yeah, it's probably true. So it's. It's. Who is the person who can do the thing? Now? You imagine that person, and you imagine how delicious it would be to step into that person's life. And H U N G E R is an acronym that can help you to understand in. Let's see, Let me see for just a second. Yeah. What do I want that to be? Let me see, let me see, Let me see, let me see. Okay, so let's say, and this is not an official part of the fire dance program is something I came up today just to kind of try to cluster what we're talking about here. So if hunger, which is the feeling that I use, I want to attach that to anything that I need to do. The H in hunger would be happiness. How will I be happier if I do this than if I don't do this? How will I be happy? Because what. What your body mind wants to know is, how is this moving away from pain toward pleasure? How is it moving away from pain toward pleasure? So you have to believe that your efforts to do the thing will bring you more pleasure than if you sit still. If you believe that. That all other things being equal, you will be tempted and motivated to move in that direction. You won't. Doesn't require a lot of motivation. Remember on the animal Level. We're set up for that. The you might well be. Urgency. Urgency. What you don't want is the sense of manana. I can do this tomorrow. You know, it might be pleasurable, but it doesn't matter. I can do it tomorrow. That is another way that we cheat ourselves of our lives. So you have to ask yourself the question, why do I need to do this now? Why do I need to do this now? Why can I not wait until tomorrow? And that might be, I have used manana to cheat myself out of everything in my life. Once you take responsibility for where you are in life, you can then change things. If you think I'm not responsible for my life, the world did this to me. I am limited by prejudice. I am limited by this. I'm limited by that. You know, you can make an excellent case for all those things. I empathize completely. But the truth is that you can stand. You can stand on the beach and scream at the tide not to come in and your shoes will get wet. What you have to do is take a step back. It's not fair. Life is not equitable to all of us. There are challenges that come from disabilities, race, religious identification, sexual identification, gender. These things are all true. I do not deny that in the slightest. But what I'm saying is that if you are going to live the life that you want and your family is going to be safe and your community is going to be strong, it's going to be up to you. It's going to be up to you. And what I'm trying to do is to be someone who every week will tell you the truth about one man's journey, one family's journey through these things. And hopefully there will be some things that are useful. So ask yourself, why do you need to do this today?

Why.

Give yourself as many reasons as possible. Inevitably, the people who say they don't have the motivation do something. I ask them why you want to do it. Your reasons will be weak. If I were to ask them, how much fun would it be to stay home and not do it. They will light up. It'd be a ton of fun. I'll be able to do this. I'll be able to do this. I'll be doing in right there, you know, their future until the pleasure that you feel if you do the thing outweighs the pleasure you would have if you don't do the thing. You're not going to move. Because once again, we're motor set to do as little as possible to move away from pain. To our pleasure. We're lazy. If we weren't lazy, nobody would have ever invented the wheel or the wheelbarrow. We would say, it's great. It's so much fun to carry these rocks around, you know, we wouldn't have invented spears and knives. Isn't it fun to beat something with a stick? We're looking for ways to make things easier. And the problem, the only problem with that is when we have the wrong values about what it is we're trying to do. If n, if U is urgency, if H is happiness in terms of increasing joy, then let's say that the end in hunger is no pain. No pain. That you can see how doing the thing will reduce your pain. Now we're starting to go for it. Because the next step after that is to imagine how not doing the thing will increase your pain. If you can see how not doing the thing will cause you more pain than avoiding doing the thing once again, you will automatically move. It will tap into. We're tapping into once. Your hunger to be a particular kind of person, your hunger to accomplish this thing. The pain of not doing. And with me, what is that pain? It's death. Because I identify myself as a writer. So this is an opportunity to grow as a writer. If I don't do this, then I'm literally sacrificing my future. Not only that, but the money I go I will get from this is providing security for me and security for my family. We've been through tough times. Everybody has. You know, if there's. Is there anybody on this call who has never been through a rough time, raise your hands. I want to see this. Because you make. You make sasquatch look downright common, that we've all been through the rough times. I don't want to go back there. I never want to go back there. So no pain. And the G in hunger could be growth. We are happy when we feel like we are growing. How does doing this thing help you grow? How does it make you more of who you are, more of the part of yourself that is already totally. There's a part of you that knows exactly how to do this. There's a part of you. It is always going to be a process of some kind. You know, you do this, you do this, you do this. And the hero's journey tells you what. What you're going to need to go through one cycle of the process. It's going to cost you a certain amount, and the price is paid in advance. Okay, are you willing to pay it or not? Well, if I identify myself with this person, then I'm going to pay it. I'm going to find be as clever as possible so that I pay the smallest price possible. But there are times when it's going to take everything. Right now it's taking everything. It's taking all of our time, all of our energy. But remember that success at this is defined as bringing my family with me. So I cannot leave my son behind. I cannot allow this to hurt my relationship with this fabulous woman who has given me her hand. That this is about all of us moving forward together or it's not worth doing. So it's chance for all of us to grow. Security and fun. Can I imagine how much fun we're going to have? Let's, let's go to Maui this weekend. He said, having made no plans. Yes, let's just do it. Why? Because we put in the work to grow to the point. I'm telling you, there is so much money in Hollywood, it's scary. The difficulty is positioning yourself to get it. Getting in the right position where you know the right people have the right knowledge and the right vocabulary at the right time with the right connections and the right credits, getting the timing to be able to slip through that, to see this river of thousand dollar bills and is running path when it happens. And Napoleon Hill talks about this in Think and Grow Rich. That money, when it comes, is not connected to the, to how much work you do. It's not connected to how hard you work. Who, who works hard here? Who has worked hard and gotten zippo from it. Yeah, that's right. It's not about working hard. It's not even about working smart, although that's definitely in the right direction. It's also about working wise. Smart intelligence is problem solving. Wisdom is knowing which problems to solve. So if I say I want this kind of life and on my deathbed, I would be happy to have lived this kind of life. And this is the kind of person who can have this life. And these are the kind of resources they have and the kinds of allies they have. And I would like to be that kind of person. In order to be that kind of person, I have to do these kinds of things every day. If you act like an idiot every day, you're an idiot. If you act like somebody who's successful and wise and compassionate and living life with fun and contribution, you turn into that person. So you literally, by the behaviors you do every day, can determine who you're going to be. And if you've decided who you need to be to get the life that you want. Then you divide it into small enough pieces that you can then do those every day, starting with just five minutes of breathing. What does five minutes of breathing do? It interrupts the pattern of stress that leads to strain. When you interrupt that pattern, you get to say, who am I and what do I want? Because you have the pattern, the momentum. Objects in motion remain in motion, and they have a certain amount of inertia. They have a certain amount, and it requires energy to change that. Once you're starting to get something moving in the right direction, it takes just a push, a fingertip, sometimes to keep it moving in that direction. But for instance, sometimes you have to change yourself from having gone in the wrong direction. There are people who work very, very hard, but they literally have a belief that money is evil. So what you know is they either have to destroy their own success or become something they think is evil. They think that success requires a lack of integrity, requires hurting people. So either become someone who doesn't mind hurting people, or they deny themselves success. And then look at successful people and say, well, they must be bad people. The notion that power must corrupt will turn you into someone who is aversive to power. You have to look at the person who can do the thing to live the life. Ask yourself, what does this person believe? What are their values? And you get that by studying them. And you look at that and you say, is this in alignment with who it is that I am and I'm committed to being the world? If it is, then you commit to doing it. And if you commit to doing it, you do it. Then, of course, it's like the behavioral modification thing we did last week. You wait to fail, you're gonna fail. You find out when you fail what went wrong. How did I stop myself? Okay, I need to change this. What resources am I gonna need? Let's try it again. So we have happiness, urgency, no, pain, growth. And the E is energy. How can doing this thing give you energy? Because energy is the coin of the realm. If you can see how doing this thing, changing this habit, will increase your energy in life once again, you're going to be pulled towards it. And if you can look at. If you start using the twin power of pain and pleasure with everything you want to do, how will it feel good to do it? How will it hurt to not do it? If you find that you are not motivated, you're not tapping into that hunger place is not enough to get you going, then you might have determined that you're one of the people who's motivated more by pain avoiding pain than gaining pleasure. You're safety oriented. There's nothing wrong with that. So what you would need to do is increase the pain you feel of not doing it. If I don't discipline my child in this way, I'm going to have the pain of being a failed parent. If I don't take care of my health and watch my exercise and my diet, I'm going to die just like my uncle did. You need to identify with the pain if you're willing. If you've got a path in front of you that will take you to pleasure and joy and safety, then you can literally let yourself think about how horrible it's going to be if you don't do it, don't do this. If you don't see a way out first, see your way out. See a path that can take you to where you want to go. Then you can nuke yourself with pain and have a vision of pleasure. And once again, your hunger will move you forward. And the last one is the reward. What is all the stuff you're gonna have? I mean, just the money. You know what I'm talking about. I mean, there's nothing wrong. Is it gonna be money? Is it gonna be sex? Is it gonna be freedom? Is it gonna be, what's it gonna be? What is it that you want in your life that this thing is going to increase? And like I said, when it comes to careers, the coin is just generally money. But it might be contribution. But remember, you don't want money. You want the things that you think money will give you. So money is only good for two things, either decreasing pain or increasing pleasure. If it doesn't do either one of those things specifically and you can't see how it's going to do it, why do you want it? So if I have more money that I don't have to worry about the bills, if there's a health problem, I can pay for my insurance. I can do this. I can do this related to pain and in terms of pleasure, then I can do all these things that are going to be fun. Because it's going to be work. Remember, it's going to be chop wood, carry water. And you're going to need to identify with these things every day. Just like the people who could accomplish the things that you're trying to accomplish do. I guarantee you that every day they wake up and they can see why they need to do today this thing. Who are they? What are they? What Is the path. In our case, we use combining Tai Chi with affirmations with visualization. So, you know, like I said, every. Every week. One of the things I want to do is to show. Is to. Is to work over this, like the first couple movements in the Tai Chi form and discuss different aspects. Right now. Now we're going to take a look at what I do with my morning ritual. So kick off my sandals. So my morning ritual goes from. It uses the magic formula. It goes over that. So it's map and model as if action. What is my daily action? I will visualize the people who do certain things that produce the daily behaviors, and those are my role models. I fill myself with gratitude. I make sure I have a clear intention as related to if I do these things every day and I model these people, then I'll get to this destination. My destination is x. And you make that as clear as possible. This is what I want to do. I would lose X number of weight. I'm going to make X, y amount of money, et cetera, et cetera. I want to help a thousand people. You know, I want a thousand people in the fire dance program because that would really enable me to help enough people to help change the world. That gets me going. I love that idea. Okay. And the c is conviction that taking these actions will increase my pleasure and decrease my pain, confidence, and courage, that taking these actions will have an effect. So I space those things out during my morning ritual during fire dance. So, for instance, I might start with that old favorite. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Then I go from there. God's wealth is circulating in my life. His wealth flows to me, avalanches of abundance. All my needs, desires, dreams and goals are met instantly by infinite intelligence. Because I am one with God and God is everything. The word God works for me might be nature for you, might be a completely different affirmation for you. And I might go, I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy mind. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body and mind. So I will go through that, and I'll go from there to my gratitude for the people who love me and trust me, Jason and Nikki and my beautiful, brilliant wife and my sister. And then I'll go from there to my mentors, Larry Niven and Jerry and Steve Muhammad and Dawn Callan and this, that, and the other. And each one of these people has certain characteristics that If I had those characteristics locked down, the things I need to do to get. Get where I want to go would be easy. If I had, if they were doing it, be easy. So there's sometimes a gap between me and my role models. I need them to tell me what do I need to do differently. If they were sitting on my shoulders reminding me what I need to be and who I need to be and where I need to go, what would they say to me, all that stuff is important. And I will close out going through the form. Going through the form. Going through the form I will close out with. All the energy I need is within me now. Okay? And there I will bring in a model that I got from Brendon Burchard, his high performance 6. All the clarity I need is within me now. All the energy I need is within me now. All the urgency I need is within me now. Now. All the productivity I need is within me now. All the influence I need is within me now. All the courage I need is within me now. So what I'm looking for is what are the qualities I need to do, the things that my role models would do so I can reach that destination? If I'm doing Tai chi at the same time that I'm talking my way through these things and I say these things out loud while I'm moving, then I am inculcating. I am, I am incubating these ideas, these thoughts, these images into myself at the deepest level. And all I need to do, if I need more power is to sink more deeply into the form to make it more physically intense. Or I could increase the volume of my voice to make it more auditorially intense. I can make sure that my body language and my face is more dynamic. It's like, yes, this is who I am. So if I know it takes a certain amount of energy for me to do the things that we need to do this week, then I have to protect my energy. And how do I do that? We talked about that last week. How am I exercising? How am I eating? How am I resting? How focused am I on what I'm going to be able to do with this energy? Okay? I need to be, you know, if I model the qualities of people can succeed at this, and I model the qualities of people who can do all these different things and also protect my family. You know what? The best father I can be, the best husband I could be, the best brother I can be, the best teacher I can be, the best writer I can be in that room, the best support for the showrunner who's giving us a wonderful opportunity. A wonderful opportunity. This is, you know, the little boy inside me is happy with this. The old man inside me is happy, is happy with this. When I've got agreement on all those levels that this is something I should do and can do and must do, I don't have to worry about discipline anymore. As long as I'm clear on those things, I'm going to take action today. Why? Because that's what every mentor inside me says to do. So. Oh, okay. And I am hungry to be the kind of person who has their approval. I simply chose. I took that. That lost little boy inside me who did not have his father and desperately wanted the approval of a strong, good man and chose role models who I could then attach that need for approval to. If I do what this person says, I'm going to become someone that I want to be. I love the idea of being that person. If I'm not that person, I feel like I'm dying. When you connect your survival, your emotions, your future to the things you have to do day after day after day, you are removing the barriers between yourself and your excellence. You are simply chopping wood, carrying water. This is just who I am, what you're seeing every day. This is just who I am. I wake up every morning, I do these things. I drive out there, and we have fun. We are in the room, room, and we're intense and we're focused, and we have fun with each other and we contribute as much as possible. We learn everything we can. And, wow, this is just so wonderful. It's fun. Once again, it's that sense of, we're going to the ice cream parlor. When you can connect that sense of joy, the thing you have to do because you can see. I mean, if your baby had been constipated for a week, you would be happy to change a diaper because you knew what that crappy diaper meant.

Yay.

My baby is healthy.

Yes.

My baby is healthy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's not discipline. It's joy. It's hunger to have a healthy child, the same thing that hunger to have a healthy life, that hunger to take that part inside you, that child that started this journey and say, your dreams mean something to me. Daddy is working every day to bring your dreams into existence. To look at my. My son, who I held up to the sky when I first met him and said, you know, behold the only thing greater than yourself. Yes, Roots, you know, and promised to God that I would deliver him safely to his adulthood. That's my identity. That's who I am. That's who I decided to be.

So.

That'S the reason why we are begging you to let us guide you on this process, to let us mentor you for this piece of it in the Firedance Tai Chi.com program. I'm going to say something that is crazy to my partners, but I'm trying to find a way to let you know how serious this is to me. If you will sign up for The Firedance Tai Chi.com program by the end of this weekend, if you try it for 30 days and if you don't like it, you tell me. We won't just cancel your subscription. I will personally, out of my own wallet, refund your money. This is not. This is between you and me. This has nothing to do with the company. Company keeps the money. I will personally send you the money. Why? Because I'm trying to find some way to let you know that what I found, what we're doing here, is real. It's real. If you will work, if you will bring your energy to it, this will work for you. Or I will give you the money back out of my own pocket. I believe in it that much. I believe in you that much. I am not joking even a little bit. My goal this year is 1000 people in this program, each of whom is committed to helping to change the world. Because I believe that with a thousand people in this program, we can plant a seed that does change the world. That is who I am. That's what I'm committed to. And because that's my commitment, and I can say, well, how does working in this program, you know, doing this, doing the television gig, how does it help me with that part of the goal? Well, it helps. It's proof of concept. I can actually talk to you every week about how we're using these things to deal with stress, to deal with focus, to connect to each other, to have the opportunity of a lifetime. We're having so much fun. Tanari and I are just, like, dancing every day, every morning, every night. It's like, oh, my God, this is really happening. We're really doing this. I'm going to shut up for a second. T. How do you feel about what? What's going on with us right now?

Well, like you said, it's just so much fun. I really feel like it's something we would do for free. Don't tell our agents. Except for the commute. That part is tough, but. So I need to be paid to drive there. But to be in the room I would do for free, and I really do. It feels like a new start. It feels like landing just where we belong. It feels like an extension of, of who we are. It's all that stuff. It's great.

It's wonderful. We had a question here. All the lessons are pre recorded. Yes, I just started. Lisa said I just started lesson one this week and already I'm wondering what happens after week 52. If there will be ongoing stuff, communication, sharing. We're going to continue this broadcast. The reason why by the time we've done week 52, all the basic tools will be in place. All basic perspectives will be in place. Imagine an invisible elephant and every lesson is taking one sticker and putting it on the side of the elephant. By the time we put on 52 stickers, you'll be able to kind of see the shape of the elephant. It will be time for us to deepen and the senior students will be able to do breakout rooms and explain how they used it in connection with their careers or their relationships or whatever. It is my commitment to share. I love sharing my journey. I love sharing this process. I love helping people. When I help people professionally. As my life coach thing, I don't do personal coaching anymore except for $1,000 an hour. I don't want to charge people thousand dollars an hour. I want to create a structure like this where we can share with each other at a very, very low price that everybody who's willing to ask questions, I then can answer them on the air so that we can workshop things together. And so I'm. If I'm helping you, I'm helping 100 of the people at the same time because we take these broadcasts and we put them on YouTube and we put them on Facebook and I am open to answering. You can ask any questions you want about any part of this process. There is nothing you can ask that being insulting. There might be some things I decide not to answer, but they're no stupid questions. So. Firedance tai chi.com and now I would like to open to any questions. Who's got a question for us today? T Would you curate this so we can. We can look at applying these principles to your lives? What is going on with you? All right, so I might. I'll look at the. This is really great. The community will continue further. Absolutely. My intention is to help you get the dreams that you want. All the lessons are pre recorded. Yes, but I answer questions. Any question you have about anything that you're learning. Answer now. This is the live portal to me. The lessons are pre recorded. You do the pre recorded lessons, then you bring your observations, your questions, your requests here and I get to see what else you need in order to thrive. So you might need, you know, people to ask for. Could you explain this movement? Can you explain that movement? Can you explain this? What if I had this problem? I've got a problem no one's ever had before. What do I do? There's nobody I can roll. Whatever you've got, bring it. And I will show you how these principles work and our intention. Kathy will say, I've fallen behind two. My body is fighting me. What you have to do is to make what you're asking yourself small enough that your body isn't fighting you. Because what ultimately is fighting you is your self image and your preconceptions that I should be able to do this, it means this. If I do that. No, just do the work. Now. If there's a movement that would hurt you to do it, then you don't do that movement. You might even visualize that movement. You make a micro version of that movement. Because if you will do that every day, slowly over time, your body will give you more and more and more. Because a lot of what stops us is our bodies, is fear. To de. Inhibit the fear while we're listening to our bodies and saying, okay, we never go above a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of pain. So let me just do this very small, very small while I'm breathing, I'm staying with it. The pain and fear that you have stored in your body will try to keep you in a particular box because it knows that if you break out of that box, you're into the unfamiliar. Who am I if I'm not this version of myself? And what you need to do is to have enough belief that transformation can be a thing of joy and power for you. If you can do that, you'll take the risk. And you can start with just the five minutes a day. Remember, if you can take 60 second breathing break once every three hours, we can start with that. And everybody has that much time and energy. There's no way that anyone needs to avoid doing that. I would love to hear the reasons. And if you give me reasons for that, then you'd have to explain how you could be on an hour long broadcast with me, but you don't have five minutes for yourself. I mean, please.

There'S an observation, not a question from Lisa in chat.

Yes, Lisa, would you please offer Your observation. Unmute yourself.

And muted myself.

Hi there.

I don't know, whatever reason, video is not working today. At first, I noticed that when I was doing the breathing, I wasn't necessarily getting in five separate sessions.

Yes.

I thought, well, I'm doing three, and it's better than zero.

Absolutely.

I wasn't always watching the clock. Once I started watching the clock and looking when I started, when I ended, I was doing the breathing more like I do Reiki. When I'm doing Reiki on someone, I'm working on that area until the energy shifts. So when it stopped pulling that energy, it's full. So I move on to another spot. I was breathing and doing affirmations the same way I wasn't watching the clock. So sometimes I was doing two minutes at a time, sometimes five minutes at a time, sometimes eight minutes at a time of affirmations. So getting the five minutes in, it just wasn't necessarily split up the way I originally thought it was going to be.

Okay, so here's the thing. Whereas the program is to do it five different times for some very specific neurological reasons, it sounds like you're kicking butt. You're a grown woman. You have to modify. Everybody who's doing this is going to do it a little bit differently. What I can do is I can tell you these are the safety rails. If you will do this, you will absolutely get there, or I'm willing to take that commitment. If you go outside those lines, if you're keeping most of it, you're still probably going to be okay, because this is extremely powerful stuff. Stuff. So I will recommend the thing. It's like the, you know, write a sentence a day, write one to four short stories a month. The things that we teach for writing will work on people who don't want to write short stories, but we recommend you write short stories. Those are the safety rails. So if I say five times a day, there's a bunch of different reasons for that. We can go deep into that sometime. But you're doing it maybe three times a day for more time, and you're bringing Reiki in there, and you're, you're, you're. You're looking at your chakras and you're cleaning them out. Sweetheart, you're an angel. You're. You're great. I mean, share your thoughts. If you write an essay about that, please post it into the forum, because I totally support people taking control and taking responsibility for themselves. I will encourage you to do that five times a day.

Okay?

Okay.

All right. Great. Who Else has one.

All right. Maurice Barnes has a comment.

Yes, Maurice.

Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my comment. You know, are. You answered the question I had originally that posted to everyone and by yourself is when you're motivated, you're positive, and you let everyone else speak. And, you know, they.

So I let four people speak.

You come in and you slay them with knowledge, understanding, direction, and real solutions. And all of a sudden you walk down the street and you step into a big old steaming pile of toxicity which had been allowed. And we talked. When you talked about the hunger, you answered my question. Because I said to myself in a previous thing, was writing on the national level for seven years, and then I went to work for a foreign government I can't identify with, and there were issues. And I said, I shouldn't be that hungry. I shouldn't be that hungry. I don't need to eat in this particular case. And I've been beating myself up over it and everything else, but I made the wise decision, even though financially it was cool and everything else, but spiritually and ethically and even working and moving within the city, I am. And I would have been the. I. I would have just been a negative person and been used. And I said, I'm not that hungry. The.

The use of money is either to avoid pain or gain pleasure. If you end up spending your money to help you forget how you earned it, that's sort of a net loss, don't you think?

Yeah, definitely. Even with, you know, you there, it was just a toxic environment.

But I. I did want to say something concerning the. The, you know, being very positive. Then you step into a big pile of steaming negativity. In Koichi Tohei's book, the Power of Ki, Ki is the Japanese word for chi and prana and pneuma and orende and concepts like that from different cultures. And it's a reification of all of our life energy, okay? Our intent, our emotions, our physical movement. And one of the things that Koichi Tohei says is that we want our ki, that energy, to be flowing outward. And imagine that you are a stream. That stream, if it's powerful enough, can empty itself into a cesspool. And nothing in the cesspool gets into the stream, but it requires that you keep your key going outwards. So anytime you're in a toxic situation, that you make sure that you are radiating energy so that none of what's going on out here backs up into your soul, backs up into your spirit. You are in control.

Yeah, that's. That's important because with the, like the, you know, with what happened with a young man in Memphis, Tennessee, and I've been writing an essay to be published. It's those people. If you can understand the analogy of wanting to work in a shady part of the cotton field.

Yeah.

And yes, you working in a shady part of the cotton field, it's easier and you want to stay in there. So you start to do shady things. Oh, stay in the shady part of the cotton field.

Preach. Would you please those Especially if you talk to me and I say, yeah, that's, that's on point. Please write up your essays. Write an essay about that. Put it in, in, in the forum so that we can talk and we can share these ideas and we can share these perspectives. I have one person's perspective on this, and I've been on this road genuinely for a long time. But there are other perspectives. And if we're all talking about the mountain for different perspectives, we'll get a better view of what the mountain is. I was asked.

And the. Lastly, on a humorful, humorous note, my little sister is working on the Velma series as a design apprentice. I actually like the series, them looking at it and understanding the dark things they're doing. But I said to her, you're literally, you know, ruining my childhood. You weren't there when Scooby Doo was there when Funky Phantom, Hong Kong Phooey and when they did the Captain Caveman thing. Most recently, I say, you people are sick.

But I love it.

It's twisted and I love it.

That's true. Look what they're doing to Archie.

Please watch. Velma and wife was one of her mentors at ucla.

Okay, thank you, Maurice.

Thank you.

We had a lady who's saying, let's see, asking about publishing a book list. You know something, we will do some of that. You know what? I'm. I'm racing ahead to be sure that I get all 52 lessons in place. Once I've got that, then I'll be able to go back and deepen things. But, you know, please, please forgive us. We're working as fast as we can considering all the stuff that we have going on. We will stay ahead of things, but I do need to get the, the form in there, and then I'll be able to go back and put in more processes and more ideas and more books and so forth, you know, and hopefully you'll. You'll stay with us and if you have questions about things, you can ask him here and then you can. Or you can ask them on the forum. And I'll be happy to, you know, to let you know what books you should go to and what other sources of information you have. You know, if you want to learn more about the five Tibetans or different books of Tai Chi theory or neuro linguistic program, Ericksonian hypnosis or transcultural shamanism, or any of the other things that these ideas come from so that we can kind of get a better, better shape of the, of the elephant. Kathy Fall.

Hi, Steve. I actually put a question in chat and just so you know, the. My name is from Senegal, so it's foul. Unfortunately, it's the influence of colonialism. Yes, what a shock. At any rate, I teach a lot about the mind as a muscle, especially critical thinking and problem solving. And I really love what you said about working smart versus working wise. So thoughts about exercises for the mind to try and make it, get it to a point. Like you're going to exercise your body for wellness, but for clarity, for critical thinking, for problem solving.

Look, I think I say that getting your body to do the thing you want it to do every day is going to teach you everything you need to know about yourself and the universe. That, that saying, this is this physical thing I'm going to do at the same time that I'm doing these chants the same time that I'm visualizing. And then I, I go out into my life and I do these things that you can start there and look at it as a problem. Look at it as trying to solve a Rubik's Cube with your body, with your heart, with your mind. You become the ultimate test. All those other books and philosophies and so forth, as far as I'm concerned, are useful to the degree that they can help you change your behaviors, to help you move away from pain toward pleasure. So you start taking a look at all these different philosophies, whether it's, you know, I had an argument with somebody about Nietzsche, you know, who says, you know, that, that, that the will to power is more important than survival. You know, all I can, all I could do to say to that is laugh. You know, you could take the most powerful person in the world, stick their head in a bucket of water and say, would you trade your throne for your next breath of air? And they'll say, yeah, because survival trumps everything. So how, you know, you can look into your epistemology? How do you know what you know? I say that it's possible to chase that philosophical rabbit down a billion invisible burrows or you can Say, let's start with existence is existing, life is living human life then becomes a matter of socialization. And how are we going to build our families? And how are we going to be in our communities? And how shall we live together? And at every one of those levels, there's a new series of questions to answer. So asking yourself, who am I and what is true? And forcing yourself to put the answers to that into your daily behaviors. I am this person. What do I need to be to remove the obstructions to seeing that this is reality based on physics or basic animal biology or whatever it is you're going to take as your foundation? And then you. You think through that stuff. I think that life itself is the ultimate exam and that creating a life of joy and contribution is the ultimate goal. So does that answer your question, sweetheart?

Yeah, it's. I ended up in conversations with people where they're not really processing. I mean, what you said, who am I and what is true as a way to start training yourself to use that. That's what's training the mind. Because I think too many people like that second question, what is true? How do I know that's true? Because I don't think they ask that next question. Yes, right. So that they're not really. So, yes, I'm just. I'm adding to my collection of things to tell my students about how to train their mind.

Just Krishnamurti, he was no longer training people unless they had a physical discipline. Why? Because they will chase their ideas around in their heads until those ideas drop over dead from exhaustion. Okay, get out of your head into your body. If you cannot test an idea, if you not find a way to test the idea in the way your physical body interacts with the world on an animal level and then the way we interact with the world on a human level, and then you've got a foundation where you can start asking some interesting questions about interacting with the world on a spiritual level. If those things are all connected with each other, then we are given a physical body in order to experience the physical world, learn things about it, listen to what everybody's saying related to that. So what people want to do is ignore their physical existence and have really clever ideas. I say, nonsense. Take care of the animal drives, then the human drives. And if you've got that root now, I will listen to you about the spiritual and philosophical and intellectual realm. But if you don't, then what do I see? You may be smart, but you have been solving the wrong problems. Because the real problem to solve is how can I live a life of joy and service? Now a person might say, well, I don't accept that as the meaning of life. In which case, basically, you have to let them walk their own way because they. I can guarantee you they will come back to you later on and say, I know the secret of the universe, but my life sucks. In which case I would say that you don't know anything. You don't know anything. You tricked yourself into thinking that you knew. Start with the basic things that. That are beyond gender and race and income. Get the most basic things that have to do with survival and love and. And connection and then build on top of that. I think that if you do that, then you know, either you know the truth and you're living a great. Living a great life, or you're living a lie, but you're still living a great life. There's really no downside.

Absolutely. And I do talk about movement, and I also have walked away, Steve, because it's very tiresome. But for those I can help. I want as many tools as possible for them.

Absolutely.

That I can provide.

So you bet. And you know, help yourself. Be able to exemplify what it is you want them to be. They might follow somebody who is congruent. Might. You got a chance. But incongruent, not a chance. Absolutely. Okay, Chris Marble's got to go walk in the sun. Chris, you know, we'll see you next time, and I hope you're going to join the program. Www.life firedancetaichi.com if you join by the end of the weekend and you don't like it in 30 minutes, I will. In 30 days, I will personally refund your money with absolutely no, you know, no hard feelings. I just. I want you to give me a chance. Give this a chance. We're giving everything that we can to you guys. We'll answer any questions. We'll help you with any goals, but start with five minutes a day. If you can give me five minutes a day, I honestly believe that I can give you the life or you can give yourself the life that you deserve. Tananarive. Do you have any final comments, questions, or requests?

Not really. I'm just really glad that. Hold on. Let me try to put myself in the spotlight. Oh, there we go. Okay.

You're a lot cuter than me.

Okay.

There.

Yeah. I'm just glad everybody was able to come. I think this was our biggest group ever.

Yeah.

And we appreciate you. I love hearing you share special condolences to those of you who have suffered profound losses recently. But I'm glad that you've been able to find inspiration here that is very, very meaningful to, to both of us. So.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Just sending best wishes out to you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

We will see you next week. And I like to close this with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Unmute and say goodbye to each other.

Goodbye to each other.

Goodbye now. Bye.

Bye.

Take care. Love you guys. Thanks for the great comments. Bye Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Trying to find a.