FIREDANCE 3-11-23

But because I've been so busy.

Over.

The last six weeks, it's been hard for me to do some of. Oh, okay. Because I'm streaming on Facebook. I need to. Weeks, it's been hard for me to do. To mute it over here.

Okay.

Because mute. Great. Anyway, so I think that the content from today, we will see. Ideally, the content today I can use as one of the class sessions for the fire dance course, but that will depend upon specificity. I have to be sure that this is honestly useful. And so the more questions you have about the process and. And what it is that we're doing, the easier it is for me to be to answer those things and be certain that the answers are of real value. If they're really valuable to you, then I may conclude that they will also be valuable to the students. But that's the most important thing, that it's not even the money people spend. It ain't that much money, $37 a month. But the time and the energy and the faith that you're extending to me that I take seriously, I could give you the money back, but I can't give you back your time and your energy. So I feel a really deep obligation to be very sure that if you trust me, if you say to yourself, steve seems to be telling us the truth about his perspective, and I would kind of like some of the results that he seems to be getting and his students seem to be getting. Let me trust him for six weeks. Anybody who says that to me, I have a sacred obligation to them, and I will break my back to be sure that if you trust me, what you're really doing is learning to trust your own instinct. Because trusting your own. Learning to trust your own instinct is a beautiful thing. When you can get in touch with that little voice inside you that says, do this or don't do this, and it works out, you start trusting yourself more. If you trust yourself, if you go. If you get into a relationship or you go on a path following a voice inside you and it doesn't work out, you trust your instincts less. But if you start to do something and the voice inside you says, don't do this, and you did it anyway, you will trust yourself less as a human being, and that is a painful thing. So I want you to challenge me. I want you to push me. I want you to ask me the hardest questions that you can, and if I cannot answer them, I do not deserve your trust. It's as simple as that. I expect you to be adults about this. Not trusting Children. God, I love kids. But adults have to take another. Another step along the process. So let's get started, shall we? In Tananari, please keep letting people in. We have all these wonderful people here today. Some names I have not seen before. And I would like to start this by saying welcome to Fire Dance. My name is Stephen Barnes. I am the creator of the Fire Dance technologies, the Life writing technologies. I'm a writer, novelist, television writer, martial artist, and most importantly, husband and father. There is nothing more important to me than my family. I adore my family. I love being a dad. I love being married to this challenging woman in my life. She makes me a better man. There's this expression that from time to time, life gives you a cubic inch of opportunity, and if you grab it, you've got it. And if you let it go by, it's gone forever. Well, I can promise you that I can identify about 12 different moments in my life where there was an instinct that this was a turning point. Maybe not even 12. I mean, I could probably boil it down to about six that were really massive, you know, but let's say. Let's say 12, and Tananari was definitely one of them. My good lady wife, are you ready to show yourself on camera, sweetheart? Are you still laying back?

I think I just got ready, so let me turn my camera on one second. There it is. Hello, everybody. So, yeah, let me go ahead and pin your image and pin my image so that we're both. No, spotlight. That's what I want. Spotlight, not pinning. And there we go.

Yeah, great.

Yes.

Really good. Really good. So would everybody unmute yourselves and just say hi. Just say hi to each other. Just like pretend in a room together. Hope you're having good weather. Absolutely. I hope the week has been great. I hope that you're actually testing these things. You know, what we're. What we're doing is there is a hypothesis that organizing your mind and energy in a particular way can make you more efficient and effective so that you can achieve your life goals. And I personally think that. I agree with the Dalai Lama that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. So increasing your capacity to be joyful, increasing your capacity to serve others strikes me as being a very valid path in life. So the idea that a morning ritual of action, thought and emotion brings together everything you are, for a short period of time, just 10 to 20 minutes every morning, and that if you do that, you will improve the results you get for the rest of the day. So that's the Hypothesis. I have tested it in my own life and with hundreds of students to one way or another for years. At this point, I get paid a lot of money to do this and it is my joy to give this to you during these broadcasts for free. And I also invite you to join the fire dance program www.firedancetaichi.com so I can take you deeper in there. But the fact is, all I really want is for you to thrive. So I will give you and teach you anything I can. Ask me anything you want. During this period of time, there is nothing I will not address. In fact, I cannot think of a single question anybody has ever asked that I felt like they should not have asked. There have been a couple questions I decided not to answer. Some specificity about my finances, for instance. You know, there are things that I don't go into too deeply, but I will give you the broad idea about anything that you want. So please understand. For this time to work for you, we have to share. So what I like to start with is the idea is that the morning ritual uses the Wu style 108 Tai Chi Tuan form, which is a multi joint pattern of movement, thought and focus and breathing that brings us all together at one time. The energy system inside Tai Chi is called Qigong. And the qigong exercises can be extracted from the Tai Chi and practice separately. You can practice them to help you go to sleep. Sleep. You know that that flow state thing that works, let's say when people talk about being having writer's block. Writer's block is a confusion of two different states of mind. The flow state where you are entering into flow and gushing ideas, and the editor mode where you are evaluating the quality of your output. Those are not the same things and you must keep them separate. If you have writer's block. If you are blocked in any way, and being blocked means unable to take any of the steps that lead you to having a successful career. Whether it's writing, finishing, submitting, researching, editing, accepting rejection, putting the story back out, whatever it is. Once you have defined the steps to being the person you want to be, and you should break them down. So it's about five steps. If that's not sufficient specificity, you take a step and you break that down into five sub steps so that you can see what the process is between where you are and where you want to be in life. For me, there were three things that I wanted. I wanted martial arts mastery, I wanted a writing career, and I wanted a family to love. So the questions for Me is who do I have to be to be the kind of person who can have those three things simultaneously? It's going to cost you. I mean, they're going to be a bunch of things that you're not going to be able to do because you're going to be putting your attention into the things that you decided were most important. But if you choose those things properly, it's okay. You know, it's like, it's okay. I would be willing to settle for just those three things, because if I had to, I can't think of three other things that I should have. Ideally, I would like to have more things. I'd like to grow more spiritual. I would like to do this, I'd like to do that. But the root of all those things, as far as I can determine, is found in those three things. Those three things contain the root of growth in other arenas. In other words, my spirituality can be measured in the way I treat other human beings, especially the human beings who are closest to me. If I think that I'm spiritual, but I am not loving, I cannot accept stress. You know, I try to control people, I hurt people, any of those things. You can forget how much supposed spirituality I have that if I am not caring for God's creatures, if I am not in the flow of whatever the life energy of the universe is, however I define those things, things, those things should manifest in the way I make money. Am I providing legal, positive goods and services to my community so that they can then reward me with money? Do I have enough respect for myself to be sure that I am rewarded for the effort that I do, the efforts that I take? So whatever I say that you should have at least one goal, at least each of those three major areas. Something with your body, something with your finances, your mind, and something with your heart, your emotions. For me, that's relationships with others, especially an intimate relationship. It's my writing career, you know, money and personal satisfaction. And it's my martial arts, which requires my body be healthy and so forth and so on. You know, I have passed the point in my life where I'm going to. I'm going to tournaments or looking to prove myself with fighting and so forth. But I still want to get better in certain ways. I still want to get better at teaching in certain ways. So in all three of these arenas, I want to be a better husband and father. I want to be a better teacher, I want to be a better writer, a better martial artist. And all those things are saying are in service to what we were talking about the last couple weeks, the golden man, you know, do I, when I visualize the very best version of myself, who is the martial arts master, the wonderful father, the ecstatic husband, the dynamite, world class writer. If I can visualize that guy, then I can imagine, well, what is it that that guy does every day? How does he feel, how does he think, how does he walk? And I try to step into that. And what I have found is that the more I do that, the better my results get. That is my hypothesis. It is now a theory. You know, the scientific method says you observe a phenomenon, you postulate something that would explain the phenomenon. You formulate an experiment to test your hypothesis, perform the experiment. If you get the result you thought you'd get, you write it up. You, and you, you promote it. You tell other people about it. You let them perform the same experiment. So we have this thing called the fire dance theory. And each and every one of you is a scientist who is experimenting with aspects of it and reporting back to me what you're getting. So the more you report back to me, the easier it is for me to help you. So before I go into little Chi Gong to get us warmed up today, any comments, questions or requests about anything that we have covered up until this point, you know, just. Just how can I serve you? You know, just. If I. If I want. Oh, yes. Jaime. Yeah.

Hi, everybody. Gosh, I'm so glad to be here this week. I missed you so much last week.

We missed you too, buddy.

I've been in this sort of life situation for about a month that just ended this week. That is sort of a miniature dark night of the soul that required me to be, for my own daily practice, doing the minimum just to get by.

Yes.

And that has finally opened up. And what I'm noticing in that is facing and pushing through my level of discomfort, for example, never letting the pain go beyond three.

Yes. Right.

And being.

Hold on for just a second, because I want to be. I want to honor what you just said. Your pain should never go above a 3. On a scale of 1 to 10, what you aim for is a level of elegance in action that is a 7 or above. If your pain stays below a 3 and your excellence, your form, in other words, stays above a 7, then you can push your intensity up above a 6. So what you're looking for is to. Whatever the rules are, the guardians in physical activities, the kinesthetic template, the. The. The form of the movement are your safety rails. They keep you from tearing your body apart. So if your form is good, then you can take a lot of intensity. But. And there will be analogs to that in intellectual and emotional activities as well. However. Please, Jaime, go ahead.

So you're already partially. This business of, oh, having that amping up intensity for separate experience already helps. What I'm finding is the, you know, if I'm just doing regular practice and I'm keeping the pain level at three, that's fine. When I go through a dark night of the soul, there's no backing off at 3. You just have to endure through whatever is happening, because that's the point of a dark night of the soul. And then once it's over, and now I'm at the stage of getting back into my own regular practice, those two different levels of being under some control of the intensity versus just surviving the intensity and getting back into my practice. I did a breathing yoga exercise this morning to try to increase things, and I hit that wall that, like, wiped me out. And I sat there trying to think, okay, I don't want to experience this as unpleasantness, because then it's going to discourage me from showing up and pushing through again. But I need to keep improving in this area. So that's the sort of dilemma that I'm in that I'm. I would appreciate help with.

Okay, so your situation is fairly clear, and you actually seem to understand where you are. So how can I help you? Specifically.

I think it's the difference between confidence, which is based on a belief, versus clarity, which is based on understanding.

Okay, so what you need is faith, which is based on a sense that you are a child of the universe and you deserve to be here. Okay, so at some level, sometimes we don't have clarity. Sometimes we don't know what we're supposed to do, and then what we have to have. The. The hero's journey tells us that the way through the dark night of the soul is faith. Okay. And it is faith in one of three things. Yes, that's right. Faith in yourself, that there lies within you somewhere the capacity to do the thing. And that if you can hold in your mind and heart over time a belief that you can do this, you can accomplish it. You can find a way to make it happen. That. That belief, or at the very worst, that if you give it everything you've got and you don't get it, you're still going to be fine. You will learn all sorts of different things, and you will have been true to yourself. You know, the outside universe. You know, I could get hit by A meteor tomorrow. There is no way I can guarantee any level of external success. What I can do is do everything I can to be myself every day. To be true to what my mother wanted for me, my father, my mentors, what my son needs from me, my daughter, my wife, and what that little boy inside me who started the journey of life wanted when he looked out at the world and wondered, is there a place for me? So that's the me thing, then it's your companions, which is mentors and allies in this group. I bet you that if you could call, clearly phrase any desire, anything that you needed, we could brainstorm with you and help you find a way to do it, you know, and then looks at the universe that, that we, you know, you're. In one way, you're a lily of the field. You know, they. They toil not, neither do they spit. But what we're saying is that they actually are toiling. They're converting, you know, soil and air into materials and so forth. So they're doing photosynthesis. They're giving to bees. They're giving, you know, when they die, their bodies go into the soil and help to continue the cycle of life. We're part of the cycle of life, just like any flower. So to believe that if you do the best you can, if you give the best you can at this moment, to believe that just maybe you're enough, just, you are that bitch. I mean, just maybe you are. If. If you can live in the question, have fun with it, and set it up so that every day you win, if you simply do the things you say you're going to do, the outside results are totally different. All you have to do is do your minimums. Do the minimums and you win that day. You win. Doesn't matter what the rest of the world says.

Great.

You understand me?

I do. And just getting here today feels like sliding safe into home plate.

There you go. Absolutely. You know, we will be here every Saturday for you. I promise that I'm going to do that every Saturday this year. We will see how it goes. I love this. But what I can promise is we'll do it every, every Saturday this year. You know, unless I'm sick out of my mind, you know, I will. I will be here with you. And we will create a safe space for you to be able to. To take the chances that will enable you to find out who you really are so that you can have that joy and service. Okay.

Thanks.

My pleasure. T. Tish.

There we go.

Hey.

Hey there.

There you Go.

Hey there.

Welcome as can be.

Thank you.

And so I've jumped in and out of your programs from the Enneagrams. Remember when we did those with your buddy? And then the warrior and then the fire dance. And I.

So.

And. And I'm.

I've tried a lot of different ways to communicate this thing, and I suddenly realized that what's necessary is verbal, written, visual, and anchoring it in the physical body and then being with you. Live.

Yeah.

As live as I possibly can. I think I finally figured this out. So this is.

Oh, Zoom.

Sorry.

Zoom's changed everything a few years ago.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So my question is. And it isn't a philosophical one, it's that I actually do pay you guys every month for something.

I've got.

Clickbank shows me that I pay you. And. And is. So is that because I know I get these. These emails from you a lot. So is that this fire dance program.

Or is that the fire dance program is specific for. It's the tai chi program. Because you're probably in the life writing program. If you're not writing, then kind of what I would suggest you do is to. I am writing program and get over on the fire dance, because we're going to give you a lot of the same. In other words, it's. Fire dance is not about writing, but it's a perfect program for writers because it was created by a writer to deal with the issues I have in my life. So whether or not you're interested in writing, fire dance will do it. So what we're doing is fire dance is the beginning point. Then we will have versions of it about parenting. We're so close to having that together. We actually.

Okay, I'm past that. I'm a GG now.

I understand.

One for writing, one for different things. But basis is a morning ritual, a daily ritual to take charge of your life one day at a time. If you can give me a couple hours a week, the theory is I can change your life, or you can change your life with a couple hours. And so that's the thing. So I suggest the fire dance program because we're teaching Tai chi and we're talking to you and I'm sharing with you, and we're visiting every week through the program. And then on Saturday, you can ask any questions that you want to help you in. My space here in my office is big enough that I can actually demonstrate Tai chi in my space and I can clarify stuff for you.

Okay, so do I cancel the other one? Well, look, I just need the technicality.

Passing the checks, whether or not you should give him more money. But if I were you and money was at all a problem, an issue, I would cancel life writing and do the fire dance. You could always do both. But that's what I don't.

I don't. I barely have done the. You get money from me. That is like a gift, basically. And I should let you know, I am friends with Brian and Scott. Like I used to work with Scott and I've known them for years, so fuller. So I've been to their Christmas parties and all that.

So what I'm talking about when I say. When I speak of who he is.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I've known him since 2007. So. Yeah, yeah, no, just. They are just sweet guys and.

And I have not.

I.

So I'm also on the east coast, so Saturdays sometimes. So that's my other question is, is this recorded that I can go back?

Yes, they are all recorded. I have not posted those recordings as faithfully as I should because like the last six weeks it's been all I could do to just kind of keep going forward.

That's life.

Sometimes you're out of balance. Yeah. You know, and then you have to, you know. So now I'm doing a course correction, but absolutely. I want you to have access to everything. But, you know, and that's. These talks are free and then we post them. But a couple of them. Because I think that we covered some stuff that was really fascinating. I will take that and put it as part of the lecture, you know, the paid lecture. But that will also be accompanied by teaching the Tai Chi form.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And then one, one final question. Right behind your head, I basically recognize what you've got up there. The first word on the top on the left is that syntax. Like, what is that word?

Syntax?

Belief system.

Okay.

That is.

Yeah. In neuro linguistic programming, you. The modeling is. You find a role model and you look for three things. The way they use their minds, the way they. The way they use their emotions, the way they use their body. Their minds are mental syntax. Their emotions are equate to belief systems. And the body is the use of physiology. To the degree that you. That is their recipe for getting their results. To the degree that you understand someone's recipe for getting their results. And you can replicate that. You can bake the same cake. It took them 20 years to learn how to make in an afternoon. So that's the thing. When I'm in that room with Brian, I. I was not just doing all I could to support the project. I was also watching him. How do you do this? And I'm going to be honest, I extracted some really interesting things. That is one interesting human being. Right?

He's a doll. Yeah. But his brain is, like, so big. So if you just said body, because under physicality, on the bottom one behind your head, I wrote body. Is that the word?

Yes.

I picked the right word.

All right, good.

Physiology, Body. I also connected with the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it effective?

Exactly. I recognize the gates, so I recognized all that. So that's how I knew what was.

Supposed to go there.

I love having models that enable me to look at the same thing from multiple perspectives. Because the dao that can be named is not the true dao. The thing itself is beyond language, but we can dance around it. And I can. If you will let me move your body. You will learn things in relationship to gravity and energy and emotions and so forth that are very useful to communicate. Some of these things that can't quite be put into words. Other than that, all I can do is show up and be authentic.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

And you are awesome. Thank you.

To the best of my ability. I swear to God, to the best of my ability, you know, I'm still working at it. All right, so, Kathy Fall.

Hi, Steve.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

The email you sent out, which I think was titled Behavior is Thought, no, Behavior is True, There was something in there that I sort of been in my readings, Buddhist readings and trainings, has been a struggle for me for a long time. And you talked about the Buddhist monk who takes abuse, Verbal abuse.

No, he did not take the verbal abuse.

Yeah, I understand. As a gift. He refused to accept by not engaging.

In it.

And to pay attention to behaviors and not words. But I am very sensitive to energies, and I find aggressive language has aggressive energy behind it. So those are actions for me. And because of who I am, not engaging is not always an option because I am followed. In other words, thinking about it metaphorically, someone who attempts to assault and I walk away will keep coming. They will keep tracking me. They will keep following. They will do what they can to keep going. They will have to be stopped in some way. I have to find a method to disengage them from me. Rather than me engaging with them, I need to disengage them from me. So it is. It is a long. And I don't know if you were going to talk about it today, so if you were, I'm going To.

Here's. Here's what I do, sweetheart. I put those things out and I wait for somebody like you to say that. It would be useful for me to talk about it.

I'm here. It would be useful for me to talk about that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so being a martial artist for most of my life, from all my life at this point, I have put. Put maybe thousands of hours into thinking about under what circumstances would I be willing to hit somebody. Under what circumstances would I be willing to use this technique. And in a real situation, the truth is that any physical confrontation can become lethal. That therefore the. The principle in the martial arts is the most powerful position. Martial arts is I'm ready to die, and I'm ready to take you with me, okay? And so what you never do is you don't fight over anything you're not willing to die for. So let's take that in general, then. Actions without words can kill you. Words without actions are harmless on this level, on the other hand, we were all children, all dependent upon adults, all easy to scare because we didn't even understand where our resources came from. So there is within us a small. And if you had any insecurity in your childhood, a child that is afraid of words and tones and body language and facial expressions, even if the person never takes a step towards us because it triggers our memory of helplessness. Even after the stronger you are, you get to the point where their words cannot harm you. But let's say you have a following, and you know that people are looking at what you say and looking and they are reacting. And you have to create a safe space for your tribe. So you need to have a way to form that tribe in as healthy way as possible. You are mother. You are den mother for your tribe, let's say. And that means mommy lion. Mommy lion will keep guard so that the cubs can play safely. That means that you are accurate. If you are saying this person's going to keep coming after me, I have to deal with this, you know. So for me on my Facebook page, for instance, I have over 5,000 followers and, you know, 5,000 friends and on and on. So I know that there are people who will come after me. Some of them, let's say, are racists or sexists, okay? And what they want is a chance to spread their poison on my page to my fans. They cannot. So I have developed some ways of determining whether or not a person can be trusted with my tribe. So I don't know the exact content of what you're doing, what I do know is that you need to think back over all these things and start deciding what were the earliest clues that this person was going to go off the rails. They will usually, if you look back over 10, 15, 20 times that things went wrong, you'll notice that you got clues before it got there. This person said things, they were snide in a particular way. They ignored the things that you said. They, they were making jokes about unpleasant things. And you saw how, how the beginning of this developed and developed and developed until it became a full blown monster. The point is to kill the monster while it's small. It, you kill it while it's a lizard. You don't wait for Godzilla to start stomping Tokyo. And it's your space. And you err on the side of caution in terms of protecting your people. You can delete people, you can block people, but part of what you're doing is you think this stuff through because your, your fans, your tribes are watching you and they're saying to themselves, how is she going to deal with this guy, with this woman? I'm dealing with somebody just like that at work. I'm dealing with someone just like that in my life. What can I do? One of the things that I do is I insist that people follow the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind, is it useful? And because I can point to great philosophers who have supported those things, that gives me the leverage I need to say I don't believe that that line of discourse is, is a positive thing in this context. You know, perhaps. And if you cannot, if you cannot adhere to the three gates, perhaps you'd like to find another context. I don't have to insult them. I try very hard to never insult people. But there are times that it is unavoidable. If you don't, if you don't think I understand that you, you're not factoring in those, that lifetime of martial arts training.

No, I know you do.

Go ahead. Please.

Let me just say that the scared little girl that I protect, just like your scared little boy, I've lived long enough that that's not necessarily the factor. I'm at the, I won't put up with it anymore. I'm at the block and delete stage. And I have purged people in my immediate vicinity. I also have a community that, that I have to deal with that in terms of protecting them. I've been using TNK in all my trainings, all my teachings, whenever I teach. As a matter of fact, it's the first thing that I open my classes to. And the. In necessary. Is it necessary? I talk about communication a lot. Not only is it necessary to say, is it necessary for you to say it?

Absolutely. And as you say it right now.

Right now at this moment, one of.

The lessons I talked about, I never know exactly what I'm going to talk about this. But one of the things I said, we're going to talk about the three biggest lessons I learned in that room. And one of them is that thing about, is it useful? It's useful if it comes from the right person at the right time. So what you need is. It seems to me that what you need is to know it is not just your right, but your responsibility to protect your people.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No, it was. It was really the phrasing of it around the words themselves. You know, for adults, they shouldn't hurt you anymore. And that's what I was responding to, because the aggression behind the words are painful. But more importantly, I don't believe I'm required to put up with it.

You're absolutely required to keep your space safe.

Exactly.

And that's all.

That was the argument.

My guess is there are hurt people who come to you.

Yes.

And they need a lot of them. So bring out the mommy tiger. So I ask you, of all of the women, and I'm going to go with women just for. Just for this, just for the sake of this question, who you know and admire, which one would be the one who would absolutely handle this shit perfectly. Who is that?

It's probably CIS from history who would say, live free or die.

There you go. So what I want you to do is start bringing her into your morning ritual when you say when, you do the mentor part, you know, and for me, it would be like, I am so grateful for whoever that Maya Angelou, you know, whatever. Whatever it is, you know, Harriet Tubman. I am so grateful. See that powerful woman standing there with her pistol saying, you shall not pass. Okay. I would see that. I would feel that, and I would let her guide me. I would move like, how would Harriet Tubman do tai chi? What is she thinking about? I'm taking care of my body so I can kill somebody if they mess with me. Freeing my people. You do not.

It was mostly that, like, come with us. We're going to be free, but we're not going to leave you here to tell massa where we're going.

That's right.

Come with or drop where you're standing.

There you go. There you go. And Kathy that part of you will save lives. That part of you. There are women and. And men who have. Who cannot touch that part of themselves, who were terrified to touch that part of themselves, who were told that they would be hurt if they ever touched that part of themselves. But if you will stand up there and not let some. Somebody change you with their venom, they will try to hit at you. They will try to curse at you. They will try to change you. You be you. Part of who you are is strong enough to deal with all of that without changing who you are, without changing who you are at all. You figure you have paid a price to be who you are in life. This is who you are. It's forward or drop where you stand.

Absolutely. Thank you, Steve.

You got it. I will be here for you. Yeah, I love. I love that. Phyllis Baldwin. Unmute yourself.

Hello. Good afternoon. This is my first time here. I have not seen any of your other programs. I just. I was doing something this morning. I had a writer's workshop this morning and I'm cleaning up and I see this email. I signed up for something last year and never really got a chance to take advantage of it. I think it was about attracting the right partner.

Yes.

But I never. I never did it. So I see this email and I said, what is this? And I drop into this and you're talking about tai chi and defending yourself. And I heard something about writing and something about a fire dance. I don't know.

Fire dance is a way of bringing your body, your mind and your emotions together in terms of relationships. Let's relate it directly to that. What our process, the soulmate process, simply put, is you design your perfect partner. You design what? You just write a list. What exactly do you want? If you knew that God was going to produce that, what would it be exactly? And I'm talking about who they are physically, where they are in terms of their finances, and who they are in terms of their emotional health. Do not compromise. This is not about what do you think you can afford or what do you think is out there. What you do is you design that. Then you ask yourself the question that people don't ask. And that question is, what kind of person does that man or woman want? What is the equal of that man or woman that is in my heart? Because the equal of the person who you decide that you think this is what my heart yearns for. This is what I would love. This would fill my passions. This would fill my heart. This would be the friend to walk beside me, the person who can Partner with that person. That's who you really wanted to be when you started out life. That's who you really want to be, that you don't necessarily admit to yourself because you don't feel like you can have it. Once you see who you really want to be, then all you have to do is figure out what would it take to get there. You know, is this something I would want to be? You know, you took it. Is that that strong, beautiful woman, someone who I would want to be, someone I would want my children to admire, to grow up to be? If it's something that is honorable and something that is healthy, then you can say, and what are the daily steps that I would take to be a person like that? And you begin to close. You just every day you take one step in that direction. Now, let me back up for a second. Where you have to start with is loving yourself. You start by loving yourself. That is the first step we have to take is to love ourselves. Because if there's a big gap between you and the person that you'd need to be in order to get the person. Person that you want, and it's not about it finding an individual, it's not going to be the individual. It is to be a member of the tribe that is vibrating at that frequency. Okay, if. If you love yourself and you see the gap between where you are and what you need to be, you'll be able to laugh. It's like you. You know, you have done the best you could with the re. With the resource you had your entire life. All you're doing now is gaining some clarity. So if you don't love yourself and you look at that gap and say, oh, God, I'm bad, I'm wrong. I'll never have it. But if you love yourself, it's like looking at a child who is trying to learn how to walk and they fall down. You have faith that that child is going to learn how to walk. So the child falls down and looks at you to find out how it's supposed to feel about having fallen down. And if you say, good baby, good baby, the kid will laugh. We'll understand. We understand at that point in our lives that the steps we take, we sometimes stumble. So what, you get back up, brush yourself off, keep trying. If you love yourself, you forgive yourself for not being perfect. You see your beauty and you say, my God, how did I survive all that life threw at me and still have a heart as open and wonderful and warm as this? And you, you kiss your own wounds you love your own scars. They're part of who you are. And in the process of doing that, what will happen is you will be so focused on being and doing what you need to be and do every day to live a life of joy and service that you won't notice that you do or do not have a partner. But you will simultaneously be radiating the energy of that will attract a person who is on the same level. You are traveling towards the same mountain at the same pace with equal wounds, advantages and disadvantages. And because you love yourself, you will love them. If you do not love the kinds of people who are being attracted to you right now, that just shows you the work that you need to do. It's as simple as that. To either love yourself more, you know, either raise your game or lower your standards. We don't want you to lower your standards and raise your game.

What I've been doing is there was a time when I did make a laundry list abcdefg and I forgot to add one important ingredient, which was the person's age. And I got everything that I wanted, but he was too young, 10, 15 years younger. And he was behaving in a way that a more mature person, you know, would have was out of character for the person that I wanted. And I said, what are you doing in my life? And it hit me that I got everything that I asked for, but I forgot to mention aids. So what I doing now is just giving thanks for the perfect person for me. Not the perfect human being, but the perfect balance for me. Attracting the right person with the right values, the right sensitivities, the interests. And I don't make the list anymore. I say in divine order, and I'm leaving it up to the universe to make that match for me. And I'm continuing to be open and receptive that when he comes, you'll see me and I'll see him, and we will recognize our qualities.

The luckiest people in the world. Sorry, the luckiest people in the world are the ones who can just Zen their way to what they want. They just. They just trust the universe. Those are the luckiest ones. The rest of us have to make plans. So if that works for you, God bless you. Share your secret with the rest of us. Let us know how it works. But I'm not wrong with making another list and being. Just being clear. There's this thing in our brains called the reticular activating mechanism. And what it does is that, you know, if you buy a new dress, suddenly start seeing other People wearing that dress. You get a new car. Suddenly start seeing that car, car everywhere. If you have clarity on what you want in life, you will start seeing the things that will help you get that thing so that I can help you with. Other than that, it's just. If connecting to the divine is your way, then blessings in your path. And I wish you all the luck in the world.

Okay, we'll see how that works out.

We'll see how it works. I'd love to have you in the program, but what I really want is for you to be happy.

Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not complaining now. I'm eternally grateful. Where I am in my life and what is happening, wonderful things are happening.

That's beautiful. I mean, that's 80% of it.

Yes, yes. And it's not about somebody coming in to complete me.

Right. Well, that's the other thing is that you have to.

You know what I mean? That I'm. That I'm empty and that I have to have this person to come and fit into this puzzle piece. No, no, no. This is going to be a balance.

See, I would look at that as you're a lioness and you want a lion. If the other way is, if you want a lion, you got to be a lioness. And so you use that you love yourself enough to ask yourself the hard questions, how am I not manifesting my full power and beauty in the world? So that's, you know, that question assumes that you got it. You just have to learn how to let it shine.

Realize. Yeah. How to make it happen. But this other issue that just came up of somebody being aggressive and assertive. I have a homeless woman trying to set up housekeeping in my car, and it's been going on for three months. And I've been reading. I read Louise Hay's book years ago, and I got it again. And I'm looking at forgiveness and, you know, not wanting to kill people. But she left boundaries.

You do have to set boundaries. You may decide to include her within your circle, but if you don't want her in your circle, then you're going to have to take actions.

I have.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Phyllis.

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be.

My very great pleasure. Phyllis, before we go to. Onto the next one, Tananarive, do you have anything you'd like to add about what we've been talking about? Is my baby there?

Sorry about that. My phone was ringing at the same time you were calling Me, Let me try to find my face so I can have the spotlight. Here I am. So, no, I'm just happy to see the new faces and some old faces. By old, I mean, you've been here before. None of us, we're not old here. We're just experienced and wise.

But yeah, I'm just, I'm 21. Four times. Well, no, I mean, three times.

Something like that. Oh, well, not four times. Heck no. Although there would be nothing wrong with that either. There would be nothing wrong with that. I mean, look, that would be pretty amazing actually, considering everything. Just in case there are people here from my list. I. Yeah, no math. No math here. I, I also kind of mirrored Steve's email on things that we learned in this great experience with, with Brian in the room. And, you know, the importance of mastermind groups and being able to shrug off rejection. Super, super important. I mean, all writers have to do that. But it's, it's a like warp drive in the writer's room because you're rejected over and over and over and over and over all day long. And then maybe one idea or two, if you're lucky, like two ideas might get through all day. So to be able to take the rejection, let go of the path that your suggestion would have taken the project in, realize that's not the same project, and start seeing the project everyone else is talking about. It was interesting to learn how to pivot that way. And also, and I'm sure Steve would love to jump in on this, the important importance of having that morning routine to keep our physical and emotional energy high was so, so critical. Like, I probably would have forgotten to call my dad entirely these past six weeks, except that I had it programmed in my mornings. You know that for this period of time, I'm calling somebody, it's my dad, my aunt.

No matter how busy you are, one hour out of your day belongs to you. And if you don't have an hour, make sure you've got that 10 to 20 minutes for the ritual. And if you don't have that, then you have your five minute miracle. You, you know, you breathe for 60 seconds once every three hours, and everyone has that much time. If you don't believe you have that much time, I respectfully suggest that you're not being honest with yourself, that that's where it starts by, by demanding five minutes out of every day be yours. Then you leverage that to 10 to 20 minutes for a full fire dance, and then that to a diamond hour, 60 minutes where you are giving yourself positive Input. You're taking care of all your minimum stuff. Writing that, you know, minimum, one line, doing some, you know, five Tibetans, you know, whatever you're doing, whatever that minimum is that keeps you going.

I don't know if this is related, but Clarissa's hand is up, so I kind of wanted to see what Clarissa wanted to ask about.

Clarissa.

Unmute. Oh, hold on.

The hard stuff. I thought there was no math. Okay. I really just had, like, kind of a update from when we did goals. Remember how we submitted goals to Tananarive Insty? So I missed last Saturday because I was finally 40 minutes, 40 meters under the ocean. I finally went scuba diving.

Wow.

Incredible again.

Yeah, I went. I started. I got certified before COVID But then one of the things that kind of. I lost it. I lost it, and I got it back last week in Nassau, Bahamas. So I wasn't here because of that.

Well, I can't think of a better reason.

Beautiful.

Bring that energy. Think about what you learned about yourself. You know, the process of getting there, the process of doing it. Share that with us. You can tell us what was the single most important thing that came out of it.

I love that question because I remember sitting on the boat and we were going out to the dive to the. To the reef, and I was sitting there with. There were a few younger, much younger than me, snorkelers, and then there were some other divers. And I grew up in a family full of people who were scared of the water and who could not swim. And just in that. Listening to what you were saying earlier, Steve, and, you know, Nana Rita said this before, too, where she said that, I know that I can learn how to do a new thing. Whatever the new thing is, whether it's moving from journalism to podcasting to writing, speech, being a script writer, whatever the new thing is, I can learn the new thing and develop mastery in it. You say that here all the time.

That's right.

So I started thinking about, like, I'm not the worst diver on this boat. You know, I'm not the best, but I've. I've. You know, I've managed to go from a family scared of the movie Jaws to membership in this new space where, like, you know, my stripes mean something on this boat, right? So. And it was beautiful. It was a great dive, and I was not afraid. It was funny to me that I was talking to somebody the week before and, like, kind of real estate is new to me, and. And I made a comment to him, and he said, wow, you. You. You're you're not afraid to dive with sharks, but you're scared to close a real estate deal. And I thought about that, and I was like, okay, yet another area where I need some membership. You know, I need to work on my membership in this new year, because if it's new, fear is the opener for me. Right, so go back to that. Yes.

What does that mean? Fear is the opener for me. Somebody put that in chat. Because I want Clarissa to dive a little deeper into that.

What does that mean to me? My. My immediate. The. What centers in my mind if for a new endeavor. For me, fear is what's showing up first, you know, fear of. Because I know in the. In the. In the areas that I circulate in the most, I have expertise. So when I am no longer the expert, fear shows up. That's how I respond to it, you know?

Okay, so fear happens when you do not have enough knowledge to claim expertise.

Right.

Okay, so fear is a signal that you need to learn.

Yes. It's a sick. That's a great way of putting it. And it's also something I need to watch out for, because what happens for me is paralysis. I won't take action.

Okay, so you react to fear sometimes with paralysis?

Yeah.

How do you get yourself out of paralysis? Because you have accomplished many things. So fear, you know, you.

You.

You see a task that you have not mastered, you have fear. Fear leads to paralysis. What gets you through the paralysis?

Well, it's something that you've been talking about. I think it was. I believe it was. It's kind of like Kathy's conversation with you. You know, there are a couple of things. I immerse myself in places like this where a different thing is being spoken over me, you know, so in, for example, the real estate example, I'm in a room with people who have normalized this. They do real estate deals all day. It may be a new. New thing for me, but they're talking about it just like they're. They're talking about lunch, you know, so.

So let me try this one tool that you use to get the challenge creates fear, which creates paralysis. And the way that Clarissa gets through paralysis is to put herself in the presence of people who have mastered the thing and vibrate at their frequency.

Yes. So I am borrowing from you and Tananarive when I come in here.

We're here for you. That's perfect. Great role models, Tanana Reeve. Were you about to say something, sweetheart?

I just say, great.

Yes, it is great. It is great. Because think about It. The life writing process, the fire dance process specifically, is about mentors and about creating mastermind groups. And part of mastermind groups is the sort of the tuning fork effect. My energy has to be at a particular level in order to do these workshops. In terms of you absorbing what's happening in this workshop, you actually begin to vibrate at my frequency. So I have to be very intentional about this, you know, to bring you my best every week so that you. Because one of these days I may be calling you and saying, listen, I'm a little bit down. Would you, you know, give me a little bit of energy? I do that to people sometimes. But. But people who are experts in different fields vibrate, they. They're like tuning forks. They're different. Being in the presence of a masterful writer or martial artist or salesperson or teacher, you will start picking up their stuff. This is one of the reasons why, you know, you have to be very careful with your associations, because the wrong associations will drag you down. The right associations will lift you straight up. And all I ask from you is that as you make these associations, understand that you have the responsibility of turning around and. And offering your energy to others as others offered theirs to you. That's all I'm doing here. I'm thinking about Steve Muhammad and Larry Niven and Octavia Butler and all the people who believed in me and gave. Let me have the honor of being in their presence so that I could figure out what. How do you think? How do you feel? How do you do this? If there is any way more powerful. And then when you're doing that, first of all, you're going to do it unconsciously. Unconscious are. This is what we're evolved to do. It's how children learn. But you can consciously think yourself, what are their belief systems about this thing about real estate? What do they believe about real estate? How do they feel about it? What are the actions that they take between the feelings, strategies, and actions? That's their recipe. So you not only can be around them and just sort of groove to them and vibrate with them, but you can consciously. You can get good at this. You can, you know, actually watch. I watch. I was. Oh, God, am I going to say this out loud? Yes, I'm going to say it out loud. I was trained in aura perception. And whether it's what I call a complex equivalent, whether my brain is creating a model of visuals that I can use to understand a bunch of complex data, or whether there's an actual phenomena there that's off the Table. We're not even going to. Going to discuss that right now. I'm perfectly aware of the conversations, but I see them. I want to see into the matrix of their energy. How do they breathe? Literally just breathing with them. You're talking to somebody. Match their breathing, match their body language, Start using their own verbal predicates. They talk about, you know, do they talk about seeing something, feeling it or hearing it? Start matching that stuff. Match their breathing, match their posture, match this, and you will begin to interact with the universe the way they do. You will start seeing the world the way they do. And literally, in. In a day with somebody who can. Who has mastered something that you do not understand, you can. If you do this properly, you can pick up enough to just rock at yourself. It's just. It's absolutely. But. But your answer was perfect.

Ah, well, I just wanted to say thank you because I love the way you had us do goals with exactly the way that you just. Just did that. Like, it's not just like a dreamy, floaty list, like, you know, like a. What do you call it? New Year's resolution. You were, like, putting up. Put numbers to it. You did these timelines and actionable, you know, and so it was a couple of things. I wanted to connect with a sorority sister who lives in the Bahamas. Bahamas, and that those relationships have been difficult for me as well as get back into diving. And both of those things worked out beautifully. And I'm just grateful. I thank you for creating this community where I get to absorb. But I did have a question for Tanana Reeve about something that she just said, and you were talking about in the writers room where you might give out eight ideas, and it's not until the eighth one that somebody runs with it or it's even heard. So, like, for me, I'm a meritocracy person. You know, I have been in the past. Like, you know, I feel good when you tell me, good job. You know, we're gonna run with Clarissa's idea, and that's a good day for me. But when you, you know, when you're adulting in, like, a place like the writer's room, you have to have a new system of success, right? It can't just be, oh, Tananarive gave us an idea, and we think it's amazing, and that's a good day. So if it's. If you're in a space where eight ideas may be shot down but you. You're needing, but you're. But you're valuable to the room. How are you developing a new system of success or a system of success in a room where that is the normal to just like there's. It's a high stakes room. Everybody can't be brilliant and everybody can't want a pat on the back. I love pats on the back. So.

T, you're muted.

What was interesting is how much even the number two, a very, very talented man named Jim Gray, was also so receptive to praise, even from lower level staff writers who have no say. Like, oh, you like that idea. You know, that kind of puppy dog energy. So that doesn't always go away. And that was one of the things I found the most endearing about him and also gave me permission to be like, sort of like stunned if like there was one day, I had made a pitch the day before, pretty impassioned pitch. And crickets. Like you, you don't so. And to go back to the beginning, like in the beginning I was lucky if I was talking about the right topic, like in the beginning. So here's what a loss feels like. Crickets is not a loss. Crickets is just basically, it didn't really hit for anybody. Nobody's going to say anything about it. A loss is when Brian, the showrunner has to say, oh, we just talked about that in the last scene. A loss is when you're actually not just not contributing to the momentum in the room, but you're pulling the momentum backward while someone explains to you that we just talked about this. So. So that's right. So that's where that's what a bad. That's like no one would say it. And he was super sweet about it every single time, super patient every single time. So I was just excited. If I wasn't getting that, you know, like my setting. If I get cricket, then okay, crickets work.

But if, if I.

If I'm actually stopping momentum, that's terrible. And the best days are when something that didn't land, maybe the previous day, the number two brings up, or showrunner brings up the next day, says, I want to go like this happened last week. I want to go back to Tananarive's pitch about rage. That's like the first thing he said. And I was like, huh? What?

I said something.

I had a pitch. Anyway.

Yeah.

So it's not just the right idea. It's the right idea at the right time, coming from the right person. And in that sense, you have to define victory for yourself. Victory for me is being present, is being supportive of other people. If I come up with an idea. I wait for the right time and I say it. When somebody else. Somebody else says something. And then I can say yes and add that. It's like you don't. Otherwise the ship will go in a circle. You know, it's the.

The.

The showrunner has decided what port we're heading to. It's our job to rig the sails to help them get there. You know, it is not our job to decide that we should have another destination. Just not our job. You know, if we're good at this part of the job, maybe one day we'll be in the captain's chair. Right now, seamen first class is good enough for me.

I love hearing the two of you talk about this because that's exactly what I hear. Like, how much humility. And because you're big. They're big people sitting at this table, I can tell, like, really successful, you know, and monsters in the.

Everybody at that table, for all practical purposes, everybody at that table was an expert.

Yeah. So thank you so much.

You're welcome. Great. And I am going down to San Diego to see my beautiful daughter today. I'm going to take her to go see Creed. It's her birthday is coming up, so I have to close this this early. If there's a final comment, question or anything from anybody, please, this is the time to ask the question. Because otherwise, what I need to do is to get on the road. I've already seen Creed. Loved it, but I just, you know, Nikki doesn't go to movies by herself. So it's just my. And I love it. I'll drive two hours to see my daughter anytime. Just. So listen, if you have any comments, questions, or requests, please let me know. Otherwise, please, you know, do your morning ritual. Get into the fire dance program. That. Www.firedancetaichi.com. let's see. Okay. Yeah. Www.firedancetaichI.com and join the program. If you're in it for a month and you don't like it, happily refund your money. Just delighted to refund your money. Be here next Saturday. Every week we're here, bring your notions, your ideas, your thoughts, your experiences here. Share it with the group. Share on Facebook, share on kajabi on the site and any final words. Tananarif.

Nope, Just everybody have a great weekend.

Take care, everybody. We're going to go hit the road.

Take care.

Thank you all.

Namaste. Say goodbye.

Thank you all for being here.

Bye, everybody. Have a good time, you guys.

Bye.

Bye.

Safe travels, everyone.

Wow.

Indeed.