Firedance 6-10-23

And welcome to Fire Dance Tai Chi. This, this is. My name is Stephen Barnes. I'm a New York Times best selling author. I am a grandmaster in the martial arts. And most importantly, I am a husband and father. And this year will be the 25th anniversary of my marriage to this beautiful, wonderful, brilliant woman who is all over the New York Times Book Review and just. Oh my God. I mean, it's like she is so powerful and so beautif people that it's all like. It's like one of the reasons I try to keep my energy up so I can keep up with her. It's like. And occasionally, I was just thinking today.

Hey, everybody. I was muted.

Hi there, sweetheart. How are you, darling?

Hey, look at me. I. I made my. I added my video right under yours. That's what happens when you make me.

A co right here.

I was here last week, but I was quiet. I was helping to let people in. But this week is good. I'm back at home and I was a little down last week, but mostly just grateful that I still have my 88 year old father. That's really where it all begins.

And there was a little conflict between us for which I take total responsibility. That was all on me.

I think it was part of the separation strain.

That's a real thing. Absolutely. I miss you horribly. You know, it's. My life doesn't work. I like my life as it is and it doesn't work without you.

Well, ditto. Back at you, darling. So I'm glad to be back and good to see faces and new people. Welcome to new people. Welcome to the same old people. By old people, I mean, you know, regular people. And I will, I will unspotlight both of us and let you go on, hon. I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you. And as for that, you know, relationship conflict stuff I was talking about, I had this idea that marriage is sometimes like two mated wolves eating out of the same dish. You know, there's going to be a little snapping and snarling, but a lot of those howls are howls of joy, if you understand what I mean. It's just, it's just life. We're just here, we're just raising our family and living our lives and supporting each other. And I absolutely adore her. And I. One of my commitments is to be the man who is worthy of a woman like this, you know, and it's, it calls for me to look into myself frequently. So before we go further, you know, because I would love for you guys to unmute yourselves and say hi to each other. Hello. Howdy.

Greetings, Greetings.

Greetings, greetings. Salutations. Good morning. Salutations. Absolutely. Happy Saturday. Let's take five really, really deep breaths before we get started, because that's the whole thing. The. The core of this system is at least five times a day, but preferably every hour, top of every hour, you're going to do 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. So put your hands on your tummies, and when you inhale, your tummy will expand. Your chest doesn't necessarily move that much, but you start down here with your abdominal. With your diaphragm. Let me see if I can do this with the focus staying right. So diaphragm here.

I'm tucking my tailbone under.

So inhale, Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. And feel your chi ball expand. Inhale, Exhale. Inhale. Relax your shoulders. Exhale. Relax your face. Inhale, Exhale. Two more. Inhale, exhale. And now the first move in the Tai Chi form. Right. Inhale, Exhale. Same thing, same process that breathing every day. I see people on Facebook who are talking about how stress is just killing them. And the core recommendation is always the same. Breathe. Start with your physiology. Your physiology trumps your psychology every time. Physiology does not care what you believe. You cut yourself, you're going to bleed. If you breathe as if you are relaxed and powerful, that's how you will feel. Simple as that. The five minute miracle, which is doing 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing once every hour, at least five times a day, but preferably at the top of every hour, will change your life. That is the doorway into this process. If you're not doing that, you may not understand some of the things I'm saying, you may not believe it, because some of the things that I'm talking about here are contrary or so contrary to the way most people operate that I understand skepticism. I don't want you to believe me. I want you to experiment and believe your results. So if you will do that, then I can help. So before we go on, we have any comments, questions, or requests from anybody about any aspect of this process and what we're doing, and then we'll go from there to who's got some Results? Who improved 1% in the last week in submarina. Just. Just, you know, find something, because I'm coming to the conclusion that you can improve 1% per week if you spend one hour a week working on yourself. Okay? You want to move faster than that. Spend an Hour a day. Okay. But for every hour you spend working on yourself, I think it's reasonable to think you can improve by 1%. And I think that if you can find a way to see that, then it gives you a real sense of what do I need to do if I want to move more rapidly, and I want to have that minimum configuration. So does anybody have any comments, questions, results, anything, raise your hand? We ain't going forward until somebody raises their hand. Somebody has got to speak up. That means everybody is just, like, perfectly happy today. Everything. Oh, wait a minute. I saw a hand. Tom. Tom Barkley.

Okay. I'm hoping that this mic works the way it's supposed to.

Yeah, it sounds. Sounds fine so far.

Okay, good. I'm a great example of how not to do it. I'm having a bad time in a lot of respects right now, and the distraction and the stress tend to make me forget.

Okay, so you set. You set your alarm. So you know that you're supposed to. Or you've been suggested that you set the alarm on your phone. So what happens? How do you stop yourself from doing that? You're running a racket on yourself. If you can figure out how you do it, how you get that result, you know, so something. There's a part of you that's very clever, and it's. It's. It's. Yeah, it's very clever because you've been working at this for a while. It ain't something stupid, because you would have figured it out if it was stupid. Okay, so how are you running a racket on yourself? Tell you. Tell us how you do it.

Putting my attention outside myself.

Ah. What kind of things do you shift your attention to?

Finding work, tracking money.

And so you tell yourself that finding work, which might take hours or days or weeks, is more important than spending one minute breathing. Right.

And when I think of that, I go back and do a minute of breathing.

Right. So start. I think that for you, your best bet would be to set an hourly alarm. Okay. And that we set an hourly alarm. You might very well be able to get to that minimum of five times a day. If you're supposed to do it 12 to 18 times, you know, to 16 times a day, you might be able to do it five times a day, and that's perfect. But it's just the effort and you showing up here and telling us the truth about it, that is fantastic. That's beautiful. You are. That is a win for you. Progress is relative to the baseline. Don't compare yourself to somebody Else, that is another way that the ego pulls a racket on you. Ego. Like I said, in order for you to transform to a higher level, your ego has to die every time. The hero's journey is about ego death. And that's in the dark night of the soul. I can't survive. And the good news and bad news are the same thing. You won't. The part of you that wants to survive is different from the part of you that has been with you continuously since childhood, that has observed everything that has happened in your life. There's a part of you that has over and over again survived these transformations. And that part of you will be on the other side of this one as well. You are not your grief. You're not your pain, you're not your experiences. You're not your emotions. You're not your thoughts. You are the space in which these things are happening. Okay? Being able to separate yourself from the results and what you're experiencing moment to moment is one of the greatest gifts that meditation brings. The observation of thoughts means that you know you are not your thoughts. The observation of emotions means that you know you're not your emotions. The question, well, then, who are you? Is a critical one. You don't have to answer that. All you have to do, as far as I'm concerned, is be happy, healthy, and of service. You know, to feel love and joy within you and to serve others. Whatever techniques it takes you to get there, however long it takes you to get there, it is a valid path. So set your alarm once every hour. As soon as the alarm goes off, reset it, then do your breathing and get on with your day. It is the most efficient. The Pomodoro technique is spending 25 minutes of focused time followed by 5 minute break. And you do that all day long. And it is hugely impactful and hugely efficient and effective in terms of optimizing performance. So what you're trying to do is optimize performance and things like finding a job and improving this, that and the other. Great. So do it the way the pros do it. Focus really, really hard. Then take a break. Really, really hard and take a break. And during that break, breathe. Okay? Don't let yourself. Don't convince yourself that you don't have time to breathe. It's a little bit like not, you know, driving cross country and I don't have time to stop and get gas or check my tires.

It's less a matter of telling myself I can't. It's just, it's. And this is another Good reason to set the alarm. It's that I forget. It's that I get so focused on the other things.

Yeah.

That. That I concentrate there instead of on what really is probably going to do me more good. And then when I. When that comes back to mind, I stop. I breathe. I do.

So don't. Don't trust memory. Don't trust memory. There's a part of you that is fighting that. And so once you admit that, you stop relying on the thing that you already know is unreliable. And you use technology. You know, if you're at your desk all day, set an hourglass. Get an egg timer. Set an egg timer. When it goes off, ding. Start it over again. Do your breathing.

Actually, that is where I'm going. When we finish this session, I'm going to Fantastic Family Dollar store for an egg, for a kitchen timer and another fan.

Works perfect. Works perfect. Heck. And if you didn't have the money for it, Tom, I buy it for you. You know, I really want you to win. You've been working at this for a long time. That. That thing you do, that you'll get in the game, you're in the game, you'll be able to turn around and help other people. It's as simple as that. So I want each one of you guys to help at least five other people. That's all there is. To help buy their people. Huh?

There is something that we don't necessarily look at.

What's that?

You. You're a better fighter than most people are. You're a better fighter against things that drag against the outer influences that drag at you. And I keep getting hit by things that are outside of my control.

So here's the thing that's important for you to understand, Tom. Yes, I am. Because I did thousands of hours of stuff like this. Simple as that. I went to teacher after teacher after teacher. I did not start this way. It took me 23 years to earn my first black belt because I was dealing with so much fear and distraction and false self image. But I knew that if I did not find a way through that, I would never be the man that I wanted to be. So no matter how much it hurt, I kept getting back up. That's the only real advantage that I see myself as having. That I won't quit, that I'll get back up again and again and again and again and again. Nauseating. I have an absurd amount of emotional endurance in that sense because it was motivated by fear. I had no safety net. I believe that if I could not succeed I would die. But I also believe that if I succeeded too much, I would be killed. How in the hell do you negotiate that? That was what I had to solve. So, yes, I am a better fighter, but it was not natural. I found the best fighter I could find and I said, teach me sifu and then I put myself in that cauldron. So all I'm asking you to do is to allow me to to fill your cup. And your first step, get that timer. Breathe simple as that. You can do this, Tom. I believe it. I don't think there's anybody here who doesn't believe you can do this. Okay. So, you know, if you need to find an accountability partner, go in, chat and ask if anybody would like to exchange email addresses with you and that you remind yourselves every day and just send an email back and forth every day for the next few weeks. Did you breathe simple as that. Get the help that you need. This is how you start. This is how we move forward. Okay?

Okay.

Okay. Tom, good to see you. And the microphone sounds great. Anybody else before we go on? Because there are a couple different things that I like to do. I like to introduce new ideas, but I also like to deepen our understanding of old ideas. Okay, so if there aren't any other questions and tananarive you keep track of anybody who's raising their hand. I want to talk about how I improve myself by 1% a day this week. I mean, I'm willing to own that because that's like big ups, like I got 1% a day. And of course there's some subjectivity involved in this. Of course there is. But I like to own myself, my life. It also says maybe I've got more work that I need to do in order to close the gap between where I want to be and where I am. I in terms of body. I'm going to Manila. Plan is going to Manila in February. And I have physical concerns being able to do this week long martial arts workshop at peak efficiency. There's emotional stuff, fear involved, traveling to some place I've never been to do martial arts in the Orient. What if they want to kick my butt? I mean, it's like who do I need to be in order to have a wonderful experience with that? Well, one of the things that I wanted to do was to use a particular exercise implement called the club bell, which creates a tremendous amount of doms, delayed onset muscle soreness. So trying to figure out if I can do this, then I'm handling both what's called general physical Preparation and specific physical preparation. GPP and spp. General physical preparation or just overall characteristics like flexibility and strength and muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, stuff like that. Specific physical preparation. You know, that's just general fitness. Specific physical preparation. If you're going to run a marathon, you not only want general physical preparedness to be healthy overall, but you want a lot of specific cardiovascular endurance for your whole body so you can process the fatigue toxins and specific balances of strength and flexibility and relaxation and legs and so forth. So there is the specific physical preparation that comes from running. In other words, you have to do the activity to get that physical preparation, or you have to do activities that are very close to it. The club bells cover arcs of movement that are very similar to the arcs of movement used in the Filipino martial arts. So it's loading those arcs in very specific ways, which puts stress on joints and tendons and ligaments and muscles and cardiovascular system and muscular nerves in. In ways that are close enough that it provides a bridge between GPP and skill. Okay, so, but I get. I got hit by. I did it, you know, last week, and the next morning I woke up and felt like I had been hit by a truck that then backed up over me a couple of times. It was awful. I was walking like a little old man. You know, my son was scared for me. He'd never seen me like that. I could barely get up the seat steps. It's like, all your kids get off my lawn. You know, it's like, oh, I understand. It's like when that hits you, you understand why people move that way as they get older. There is stuff that's happening in their body. It doesn't. It doesn't feel good to stand up straight. Doesn't feel good to just stride and swing your arms and legs in a healthy way. So my thought was, either I have to give this up or I have to get clever. I have to get really clever here. And here is something that I can give you that is an evolution on the five minute miracle. What I did was I took a look at the five Tibetans, and if you look at the five Tibetans, they are five simple exercises. You start with doing three repetitions of each of them, and you move up to 21 repetitions. And that's. You start, you stop there. It's a daily ritual that you do. And I asked myself a question. See, there are some exercises, especially if you're building up endurance, where the duration of the exercise is important. You have to keep doing it and doing it, doing it, doing it, for instance, there's some benefits that only come from doing something for between 12 and 15 minutes. It forces you to go into second wind, which is called the neuroimmuno endocrine response and is a different subject altogether. But there is a neurological adaptation that happens at certain periods of time. But there are other exercises which are, you're not doing it for fitness as much as you're doing it for skill. And if you do it for skill, your body changes in some interesting ways. It overlaps nicely, that produces health, that overlaps nicely with fitness. But it's really about the skill. It's with an awful lot of exercise. A lot of strength stuff is not about building larger muscles. It's about recruiting the maximum number of muscle fibers that you already have. And in the process of doing that, your body will also. The sarcoplasmic reticulum, is that correct? It swells. You build up more fluid in the muscles, increasing the cross section, increasing your leverage, making the muscles bigger and stronger. But your mind, in the first six weeks, when you're doing work in the gym, your strength will often increase rapidly because you are getting better at recruiting muscle fibers. After that, your body starts rebuilding and getting bigger or leaner. So I looked at the five Tibetans and I said, 21 repetitions. I wonder if it matters whether I do them all at the same time. I wonder what would happen if I distributed the Tibetans through the day. So I came up with something as a genuine framework. If I'm doing the five minute miracle in general, what I'll say is, you know, 9 o', clock, 12 o', clock, 3 o', clock, 6 o', clock, 9 o', clock. It's a little fluid in there. But I said, what if I do this when I wake up in the morning, say, 9 o'? Clock? Joint mobility, that's just, you know, working through the joints in the body, right? You know, from fingers to toes. 12 o', clock, I do a set of Tibetans, but I only do 7. 3 o', clock, 7 Tibetans, 6 o', clock, 7 Tibetans', 9 o'. Clock. Joint mobility again. Now, the time it takes to do this is less than 15 minutes a day. It's, you know, for the whole thing, it doesn't take very much time. But because of a principle called synaptic facilitation, greasing the groove, if you wanted to learn how to do 20 chin ups and you could do five chin ups, right now, the best thing you could do is put a chin up bar on some, some passageway that you pass multiple times a day and every time you go past it, you do three chin ups. If you can do five, only do three. But you do that multiple times during the day and what happens is you are teaching your body the technique of a chin up. So I said to myself, well, if 21 repetitions, you know, I was experimenting with doing all 21 exercise reps of one of the exercises spread out during the day. What if there is a benefit to the cascade of exercises? First spinning, then it's leg raising, then it's the back bend, then it's a table maker and then it's an upward dog, downward dog. What if there's something about that sequence? What if there's something about the sequence? So if there's something about the sequence to the degree that you are teaching your body movement along a. Is that the longitudinal axis, then what is said Pavel, the guy who brought kettlebells to the United States said the ideal number of reps for a strength increasing exercise is five. Because after five repetitions the average person's attention starts to wane. On the other hand, it is also true that the human mind can handle seven plus or minus two pieces of information at a given time, which is why you don't try to teach over nine things to people at a time. But even a person with limited mental capacity can usually handle at least five. So I say, let me try seven, let me try seven. Seven is divisible into 21. Neatly, that's three reps. And what happened when I did that? It was joint mobility. Then it was seven repetitions, seven repetitions, seven repetitions. And then just before bed, joint mobility. There's a little bit of flexibility in that system. Truth is I generally do the joint mobility and the Tibetan first thing in the morning. And I do Tibetans enjoyment mobility last thing before I go to bed. But that's kind of helped. What happened was I did that when I trashed myself last week. It took three days before I started feeling human again. When I was with you here on Saturday, I definitely was in that I've been hit by a truck space. But I kept my energy up for you. I wasn't going to put my pain on you guys this time. I did the exercises. Yes. Tom Bart said you're using Scott Sonnen joint mobility. Absolutely. If you go to YouTube and look up do put in Sonnen joint mobility, you would find a full, a full free course in joint mobility. Which is basically if you know that you've got a lot of the benefits that there are in Tai Chi. Tai chi is. It's a patterns joint mobility drill. In some senses. I did that. And when I went to sleep that night, my body felt a little tight, but I slept fairly comfortably. I said, let me see how I feel when I wake up in the morning. I woke up in the morning and I felt a little stiff, maybe a little stiffer than I usually do in the morning. And by the time I did my drills, I felt okay. All right, now I know the Dalai D Muscle soreness takes an extra. You know, it takes two days before it really hits you hard. Woke up that next morning, this morning actually, and I felt fine. And then I did my Tibetans. And then I did a kettlebell workout with Tananarif. Short, intense eight minutes of Tabata. You know, there's an interval. There's a kettlebell DVD called Cannibal Intervals for Women at a site called TacticalAthlete.com that uses the randomizer feature on your DVD player to create a new workout every single time. And it's wonderful stuff. It's. It is a fantastic workout dvd. There are workouts as short as four minutes that will kill you if you get the right balance of weight. And then I did Tibetans again after that. So I've done it twice already today for 14 reps. And I feel great. I mean, it feels great. I'm looking at this and I'm saying, wait a minute. Because if we are taking this seriously, then we're looking. If you're taking that break, then there's that question. Looking at it from the point of view of the Pomodoros, where you're supposed to take a five minute break. Okay, so what can you do in five minutes? What I just found out is I can do a stupendous amount in five minutes. It's like, whoa, Anything. I can work on almost anything that doesn't require me to specifically cross the second wind barrier, the neuroimmuno endocrine response thing, that requires 12 to 15 minutes of steady state activity. And that's non negotiable. There's certain benefits that only come if you do that. But you can work on strike in five minutes. Strength, flexibility, balance. I could do my whole magic formula in terms of envisioning my goals and role models and so forth and so on. So I'm looking at this. Imagine an X and a Y axis where there is. You're. You're looking to expand one of your five minute miracles up to 20 minutes, maybe ultimately an hour, depending on how much time I Give myself one minute per day, per year of age to take care of my mind and body. So every, every year I get one more minute. So I got plenty of time to do this. I just get, try to get slider and smarter about how to do it every year. So if this is true, I want to put this out there so you guys can experiment with it. And before I go on, can I. That gave me, you know, a great feeling of, hey, you know, I'm really making some progress this week. This is great because I can use, if this is right, I can use this to get all the way to Manila and beyond. I've just learned something about my life in my body and the things I can use. So before I go onward, any comments, questions or requests about anything, about body or anything that I just said or applying the 1%, anything like that? I mean, if what I'm saying to you is perfectly crystal clear and you comply, great. I see. Kathy, of course. Thank you, Kathy. I always trust you.

It's a quick question. Even though I write very quickly for notes. You are a challenge for me. Even me. I can keep up with just about anyone. But you're the man. Steve, you made a connection between the Kettlebell Intervals with a website or something else and I didn't catch that.

Okay. Www.tacticalathlete.com It's a husband and wife team. This guy is a security guy for the Department of Energy and he does some hardcore kettlebell stuff. And his wife is also kettlebell trainer and she has a video called Kettlebell Intervals or Kettle Interval Training for Women. I believe if I'm not wrong, they might be going out of business or they might have discontinued it, but they're selling off the remaining stock for like $5 a DVD. I mean, it's dirt cheap and it's fantastic. I bought five, I got five copies myself because I know we're going to wear out the one we've got. So I, I highly recommend it. Tacticalathlete.com okay.

Thank you.

You bet. And I'm sorry, I do talk, talk rapidly when I'm in visual mode. I slow down when I'm in kinesthetic mode. And so anybody needs me to slow down, just ask me. You know, I'm sorry, I do that. So any other comments, questions or requests? Because otherwise I'm going to go to HART and then I'm going to go to Head and just in terms of how I'm using these technologies and these ideas and perspectives and actions so that, you know, my, my goal is I need To. I need to improve 1% a day in order to get where it is. And I'm going. But if I improve 1% a week, I'll still get there. It's just a game that I play with myself. I like it. Hi, Shamika. You got a question for me?

No, just enjoying the motivation and inspiration and just being a part of the group today.

Fantastic. We need you here, you know, come on. Come on back. You know, because this is a community. This doesn't work because Steve Barnes is so terrific. I go to other people who are terrific. I get stuff from them. I integrated myself. And the way that I know that I've integrated it is if I can teach it spontaneously, if I can teach it spontaneously and manifest it in my life, then I've got it. But everything I know, I got from someone else. Everything. I make connections within myself by experimenting. But I know some fantastic men and women, you know, and I just, just adore them. It's like, you know, thank you. And my attitude was, of course, teach me sifu. That was me. If there aren't any other comments, questions or requests, let's go on to the heart space. Okay, Heart space. My. My. My wife and my. My son, you know, primarily, my darling daughter is down in San Diego. She's living her best life, you know, traveling the world and leaving her. Her puppy with me. She better leave that dog with me. I love that dog. But in terms with Tananarive, I want to move our relationship to next level. This woman is amazing. She is amazing. I love her with all my heart. I knew when I met her that I had to be the best version of myself or I would not be worthy of her. As simple as that. And I have been able to identify some things that I can heal within myself that will make me a better man and a better husband. I have talked to her about these things, and I'm not going to put those things on the table. There's some stuff that's private, but this is my stuff. This is my stuff. My wounds that relate to my childhood, that relate to foolish habits that I developed in terms of finances. Long ago, I thought that I was smart enough that my finances would always grow from year to year. And it was true. Until I hit a disaster, at which point things did not work out the way I thought. And that created some. You know, it's like trying to build a Lego structure with the Legos balancing bad on each other as long as you can keep spinning the plate. And I'm mixing metaphors here. I'M sorry. As long as you can keep spinning the plate, all is well. But when it comes to actually taking life stress, because real life stress happens, that disaster, that thing you don't want to happen, it's on the way, and you need to be ready for it. If my commitment is to be a warrior for my family, and that is exactly what my commitment is, then I have to be ready for anything, and I have to take responsibility for everything. My actions and my emotions are my responsibility. The results of my responsibility, I have to be. I have to simultaneously hold that there is a limit to how much we can do and how much we can control. But look, is there any way that my behaviors could have made this situation better? If there are, then why did I not behave in that way? The answer is usually lack of strategy or lack of emotion. Something went wrong in my emotions. I was being controlled by fear instead of love. I was letting my little boy run the game rather than being an adult. I will take responsibility for my end of it, because if I don't, there's nobody else, literally. In my journal, one of the journal's questions is, why should I do this? And usually the answer is, because there's no one else, or because this is my commitment or because I said, this is the kind of man I am to my wife when I asked her to marry me, and I will not break that promise this side of the grave if I possibly can. This is who I am. This is my life. So there is. There is that. You know, I asked her forgiveness. I asked her understanding, and we're good on that, I hope. Are we good, T? Okay?

We are indeed good, sir. We are extremely good.

Yay. Okay. And then with my son, he's testing for his drive, his learner's permit, and he had some issues with it. And I have been so proud of him because he dealt with the emotions beautifully. No, he did not explode. He did not shut down. He dealt with it like a young man. And I just said. I just said to him, I am so proud of you that if I could have arranged for you to fail so you'd have this experience, I would have, you know, and it's like, how can I. How can I show you how proud I am? I owe you something. So I let him think all day about what did I owe him to show him that? And he finally kind of. He wanted me to order some cookies for him. Okay, fine. Small price. You know, I love that boy so much. I have a heart.

That was a good one, honey. I'm a little mad I didn't think of that one first.

I'll order you cookies. Yeah, I owe you all the cookies you want, sweetheart. So on an emotional level, I'm taking responsibility, which allows the little boy inside me to feel safe. If he feels safe, then the career challenges that are about to happen are safe too. Because my writing comes from the little boy inside me, I have to find a way to engage that child self. My adult self has to look at the patterns and the finances and the contracts, but it's the little boy who plays my adult self in that way. Its job is to sweep the broken glass out of the playground and shoo the mountain lions away and stand at the gate with a sword saying, you shall not pass to anyone who would hurt my kid. But then once that's all done, my kid's job is to play. And Tananarive has a little girl that's just as alive as my little boy. So they play together. And when we could find other people who like to play and handle their adult stuff, we can welcome that into their circle, you know, so the in terms of transactional analysis, you have a child self and a parent self and an adult self. And ideally you have all three of those aspects of yourself interacting. So there are times when it's just Tananariam and I, our children are playing, and that could be an awful lot of fun. There are times when she needs parenting. She needs me to nurture her and to hold her while she cries. There are times when I need her to hold me while I'm crying. Then there's our adult selves. We're doing business together, we're looking at the finances, we're making plans, adult plans. So those three aspects, it also. All these models are just ways of looking at something that is really beyond labels, but with your kind indulgence. Say, if you act as if these models have some reality, they're useful. They're useful lies in the sense of it being, is it true, Is it kind, Is it useful? You can't cut open a human body and find a chakra in there. But it is a useful psychological construct in order to convey meaning in an arena in which it can be fantastically difficult to communicate certain things that are difficult to put into words. So on that emotional level, connect with my heart, how are things going with my body? I feel good about that. I'm going to be able to go to Manila and have the adventure of a lifetime. You know, it's a little mini version of Enter the Dragons. I'm Jim Kelly. I'm going to go there. I'm going to have a great time.

Bull.

Mr. Hand Man. Anyway, in terms of my family, how are my wife and son doing? Am I keeping my word? Am I being that guy? Because my dad. The biggest lack in my life was my father not being there. And the biggest thing I never learned from my father was understanding fear. If I. If my father had just said to me, everyone feels alone and afraid, Steve, you're not the only one, I would have known I wasn't a coward. I would have known it was okay. And I would have said, oh, okay, everybody feels fear. Let me learn how to deal with my fear. I thought there was something broken about me. Dear God. I went to decades of therapy and shamanism and hypnosis and this and this, trying to deal with something that my father could have set me free of in one hour. That is why I take the position I would die and burn in hell before I would abandon my children. It is. They have got me for a lifetime. And I know I'm annoying at times. I would have to be. I could not. I could not be easy to live with. But I do love them with my whole heart and I'm going to do the best I can. So my 1% in terms of my heart space feels good. I was able to see a deeper truth. I was able to make commitments. I was able to help this, that and the other, you know, Fine. Good. Okay, so let's go on to. Is there. Do you have any questions, comments or requests about any of that before we go to head? Because like I said, I had a good week in terms of my 1%. And I want to share this stuff with you so you can see how these techniques that I've been talking about, how am I actually using, using them? And all this stuff relates to the morning ritual. And all that we're talking about is of course brought to you by Fire Dance www.firedancetaichi.com which is all about creating your own daily ritual. Create it correctly and all you have to worry about is doing your daily stuff and the results take care of itself. Built.

Yeah, just. You're talking about gratitude and family. This morning I was waking up and realizing, well, I have an adult daughter. She's in her 40s now, and at this point in people's lives, they usually go completely separate from their parents and such. She still wants me to be an active part of her life and, well, for that I am definitely grateful.

That means you did a good job, ladies. Does that not mean that he did a good job as a daddy. There you go. See that nodding? You did the work. You are a member in good standing of International League of Dads.

We're not even related by blood, technically, just by marriage. I'm married into the family, but family of all intents and purposes. She's my daughter, not my sister.

She is your daughter, Period. My son is my son. Are you kidding me? He's my boy. Just period, you know? It's so. Good job. Fantastic.

Thank you.

You bet. And helping her see how you are navigating this period in your life is helping her understand how she can navigate as she moves through life. There are many different gifts that you still have to give her. Okay. Okay, Great.

Mary, a father is different than a sperm donor. So even if she's not your biological child, she's your daughter.

Yeah.

In our case, he was active in her life, too, but great. She got lucky when she was engaged to get married. Well, she had to break that off for other reasons, but when she was engaged, she asked me to be the one to walk her down the aisle.

That tells you what you need to know. It's as simple as that. All right, so let's go to the head, because there's lots of stuff going on. I won this award this week. This is. Let's see. I'm going to take off the blur, because I'm Blur.

That for sure.

Okay. The 1. The analog science Fiction Best Short Story of the of the Year award. We're nominated for other awards. The Locust thing, we've. This has been a really good year in terms of contracts, awards, and we got paid. I got paid on the Star wars book, so it's definitely happening. So starting Monday, I get to tell the Adventure of Mace Windu. Now, I haven't gotten the notes back from Lucasfilm yet, but they promised that I could do some things in this book. And hopefully they will not renege on that promise. And if they do, it's going to be a terrific book. It's going to be a terrific book no matter what, because I'm not going to put my name on anything that I don't respect. But they may be giving me a chance to do something remarkable. And if they do that, you know, Stevie, little Stevie Inside Me, is going to be very, very happy. So understanding how to organize my time and energy so that I can do all this at the same time that there are other things happening, too, other other projects that are coming. And if the Writer's Guild strike ends, then a Bunch of stuff could get dumped on us at one time, and we'll have to do that. So I have to ask myself, how can I handle all this work with efficiency and effectiveness? So I got a new desk that has a whiteboard at the top of it. And I've got it sitting right over here to my side. And I can go over here and I can draw on the whiteboard. And then I can, you know, literally look here and look there and type over here and look at. And I did this. I did Kathy like this. I actually drew a. An enneagram on the whiteboard right here. Plotted the steps of the hero's journey around it. Plotted the aspects of this story that I'm working on with Larry Niven around there. And I take a look at the way the lines connect. You know, how does the rejection of the challenge because this guy is retiring? You know, this is. This is not the Star wars book. This is something I'm working with. Larry Nevitt. How does his retirement relate to the gathering of allies and powers? Well, especially powers. He feels used up. He feels that he doesn't have any more to give and he's getting tired. He doesn't even know if he's got a good relationship with his estranged daughter, who he became estranged to because he told her her husband was a rotter. And no uncertain terms, she didn't believe him. He guy turned out to be rotten. And now they've got a very touchy relationship that he's hoping to move into. It's looking at that that helped me brainstorm what might this be? And then it also connects to the leap of faith. If he's retiring because he feels that he has nothing left, as well as them pushing him out and he's feeling old and used up, then he has to have faith that there's something inside him that has not yet been expressed. And this story, I've got him in a situation where the regret he has that there are certain things he's never been able to do with his career and with his daughter, that this is the opportunity of a lifetime, that he has been preparing his entire life for this. And I'm going to make him a variation on the Columbo model where people underestimate him because of. He seems to be kind of slow and stupid. Columbo does. Is like in. In what is it? Poker Face. She seems to be a ditz. Okay. In. I forget what. What the, the. The. The. The television. The. The. What was the mystery show that the guy that played Jed.

Barnaby Jones.

Barnaby Jones. People underestimated Barnaby Jones because he was old. People underestimated Cannon because he was fat. And they're gonna underestimate this guy because he's an old black man and they're polite about it. And I will never state specifically that that's what he. That's how he's using it. But when he's interviewing these extremely powerful people trying to find out what in the hell is really going on, they're figuring he's almost out the door. They're being a little condescending. And he is using that because his, his. The truth is that his instinct and his capacity for analysis is genius level. And he's gonna see, he's gonna save this city because of who it is that he is. And I can see that. So by looking at the internal lines, I get to brainstorm even when there's nobody else here. You know, I get to. It's. It's real. It's really kind of fun. I look at the. The emotional lines inside the overall story structure. So I get the linear structure and I get the non linear meaning at the same time by using the Enneagram kit, which we talked about last week. So that's the mental thing in terms of that. So by Monday, I have to be ready to go on that. I'm pretty ready. The only question I'm asking myself is, do I want to set myself a schedule of doing 10 pages a day or 5 pages a day and do a done by 1 or a through by 2 or 3? By 3? 3. I will make up my mind about that today, what I want to aim at, but I want to make sure that I feel relaxed about it. If I do 10 pages on the Star wars novel, then I could do. Could I do five pages on the Nibbin, or do I want to do five pages and five pages and do that every other day? Or maybe five pages Monday, Wednesday, Friday with five pages on Nibbin, and then 10 pages Tuesday, Thursday. I mean, I don't know. I can. I can juggle that around. But the point is that this is going to be a marathon. It's not a sprint. You know, I'm going to have to do this day after day, week after week, month after month, while other stuff is happening. So I have to be sure that I can pull this off. And so all of that is connected. So before we go on, any comments, questions or requests about anything that we've covered so far today or anything that I've offered you over the last weeks, Seriously. Because if not, then I will move on to what I promised you, which is a discussion of the most precious thing that I own, which is also worthless.

Looks clear.

As Vin Diesel said in pitch Black, looks clear. All right. All right, so let me show you something. I got this at the side of my desk, and I will. If I can't get it to. Okay, I'm going to have to take off the blur again. You see, my messy office? I'm blur. See this? It's a leaf. Gosh, I wonder what that leaf could be. Ten years ago, maybe. Maybe a little more. I was at a science fiction convention, and a gentleman of East Asian extraction from India came up to me, and he said, you know, from your writings and your teachings, you I get the feeling that you're a Buddhist. And I kind of chuckled and I said, well, you know, I respect the Buddha and I respect the teachings. That is not my path. But I have had Buddhists and Buddhist scholars quote me in their work, suggesting that I'm a fellow traveler and I am happy. That's fine by me. There's only one truth. There are many paths to it. And I've had a lot of contact with a lot of different approaches to this. So total respect. So he said, well, I was in India last year or earlier this year, and I visited the village where the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and received his enlightenment. And every year, when leaves fall off the tree, they allow travelers to gather up leaves. And I was allowed to take several of them. And what I've been doing is looking for people who I thought would value them. And I said I would be honored. And I took the leaf, and I had it pressed between the leaves of a book, and I put it into this frame. And what is true? I don't know if this story is true. Even if it's true, I don't know if they were right and even if they're right, what does it mean? And I talked to a friend of mine, Dr. Charles Johnson, who was a noted Buddhist scholar. He's very, very serious at his training. And I said, what would you do with this? What do you think about this? And he said something really interesting to me. He said I would either burn it or keep it and let it remind me every time I look at it to wake up. I've decided to do that. It doesn't matter whether or not it's really that tree and whether or not the legend in that village is correct or whether or not the guy who gave it to me was telling the truth, it doesn't matter at all. And even if all of that is true, the leaf has no significance other than the significance that I give it. If I choose to represent this as a great gift from a kind man that fell from the same tree under which the Buddha received his enlightenment, it is simultaneously worthless, means nothing at all, and is as precious as the stars. And if every time I look at it, I remind myself to wake up, Steve. Wake up, Steve. That I create the value and it becomes the most precious thing I have because it reminds me to be awake, if I do that, I win. No matter what. I don't need to ask myself any questions at all. I choose to give it significance. Just as I choose my wife to be the center of my universe. Twin stars that revolve around each other. I choose my son. I choose my daughter. On no objective level are they more important than a grain of sand on the beach. But they're my grains of sand. They're my grains of sand. I choose to love. I choose to care, because that is the nature of my being. And we express the nature of our being in our actions, in our choices, in our perspectives. This is not something that changed this week, but it is simply by reminding myself to awaken, I improve myself the moment I do that. I don't know how to be more honest than what I'm being with you guys. I really don't. I hope that by expressing that and being as honest as I can be, it is of use to you. And I believe that all of you are holding your time and energy precious, such that you would not come here if you weren't getting something of value. But also understand that you are bringing something of value simply by committing to wake up, be awake to life, be awake to the power of the three Gates. Before I go with what might be my biggest win for the week, any comments, questions or requests from any of you about anything, this is your time. I'm here to give to you, here to share with you. What can I do for you? Anybody? Because if not, I will go on. You know, as you probably noticed by now, I could keep talking on any subject that I care about at any length at all. You know, I got. I wish. I wish I had you guys for a weekend and we could do tai chi and yoga and move and meditate chan and work out on our journals and just, you know.

But instead you're squeezing the weekend into this one, this one session.

That's right. That's exactly what I'm doing, you know, because none of us know how much life we have left. None of us know whether or not we'll ever be together again. So I give you everything I've got every time. No withholds. And while I would love for you to go over there and sign up for fire dance. Fire dance. I make my money writing the money that I make off of the stuff that I. The courses that I sell. That's sushi money to me. It's fun.

But sushi is expensive.

Sushi is expensive. That's right. So, any comments, questions or requests? Because if not, I'll tell you about the biggest win I had this week. Fire dance. That's right.

I think it looks clear.

All right. Looks clear. I think I want to watch Pitch Black again today. All right. This is a tough one. It relates to an old school friend of mine who has become a hardcore right wing MAGA supporter. Military, retired now, has some health challenges, I think. But just is every time he sends me these text messages, it is just so filled with hate and vituperation. Just, you know, California is a hellscape and the liberals are demonic and on and on and on. And I argued with him about some things for a while, but then I found out that he was not being honest. That he said at one point he was killing, that all of the. The bad groups are leftists. I said, wait a minute. No, they're. There are right wing terror organizations. No, they're not. They're not. I said, the FBI thinks there are. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. I said. I pointed out to him on their website where they said that Nazis were right wing terror organizations. He would not admit that. It sat there right in black and white for over two years. He would not admit it until finally he talked to an ex FBI agent who said the FBI has been infiltrated by leftists. So the FBI. But you know, that's arguably the why. The what is that the FBI thinks that Nazis are right wing terror organizations. He can have all the answers he wants for why they say that, including corruption, everything else. But he denied that they said it. Which means that none of his. None of the. The. The following logical chain can be trusted. Because he won't admit something that is true, even if it's in black and white. Which means I also cannot trust him with any of his subjective judgments. Now, I've had wonderful friends who are Republicans and conservatives. My mentors were conservative Republicans. But they could discuss these things honestly. They could discuss differences. And there were some real differences. But you know, this as Far as I'm concerned, the American eagle needs both wings. I have no problem. So I feel that right now the right aspect of that is dealing with a lot of fear that is connected with future shock. The world is changing so rapidly that they can't keep up emotionally and it triggers fear. But I also realize that he's feeling a tremendous amount of venom and was trying to dump that venom into my life. Not going to do that. I got family, I got, you know, miles to go before I sleep. I'm not going to do that now. Koichi Toha, in his book Ki Aikido and Ki or something like that, the title of it is Ki Kai. He talks about the fact that when your Ki, your spirit, your energy is flowing outwards. It's like a stream running into a cesspool. The cesspool is filthy, but it will not back up into the stream as long as the energy of the stream is projecting. So it's another reason for your energy to expand constantly because there is negativity in the world, world. So I decided that first of all my energy was going to be, was going to expand. And secondly, I tried introducing the three gates to him and you know, is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? And his attitude was that you suspend all of that in war. And he obviously believes that we're in a culture war. So I realized, ah, I cannot trust him to be honest because in his opinion, honesty is a casualty of war as his kindness, you know, and that makes it unuseful to have a conversation with him. But I also saw something else. He's desperate. The amount of anger he was projecting suggested a massive amount of fear. Massive fear. And I said to myself, what is it that makes people fearful? It's almost always related to one of three things. Personal survival, literal death and health. Genetic survival, their children, their family and social survival, their tribe. And I thought to myself, I think that my friend who will just call soldier, is dealing with a serious health challenge that he has not said anything to me about. He is dealing with mortality. He is afraid that he's at the end of his road as a soldier. And he went into being a soldier because he had a bad relationship with his mom and an absent father. And he chose Republicans over Democrats because he grew up in the south before Johnson's civil rights legislation, when it was the Democrats that were calling him the N word and it was Republicans who were nice to his family. And he made his choice then and did not make an adjustment when things flipped. It's not that that model is correct. But I could see that. I could see that. I could say, oh, my God. I can see how a delicate human soul gets frozen in a political position, is filled with so much fear that he wants to go to war so he has a chance, chance to express violence towards other human beings. And that the process of doing that wounded him in spirit and in body. And now what he wants desperately is to make a connection with an old friend. And what he's asking is, can I still see his humanity? Can I still love him? Can I still cherish him? And let me tell you people, if I cannot extend myself to an old friend, no matter how much trouble he's in, how can I claim to love strangers? How can I give my love to people I've never met and never held and never laughed with in person if I would turn my back on someone I've known most of my life who might really need me? So I decided that I'm not going to let go. I decided that I'm going to see if I could help him, and I'm not going to try to change his political orientation. I have never tried to change someone's political orientation. What I try to do is to make. Is to help people heal and feel healthy and loving, because a healthy, loving person is not of any trouble to other people, regardless of their political orientation. I don't care. So what I did was I said to him in no uncertain terms that your constant criticism, your constant insult, I said, are you 12? Why are you still playing the schoolyard stuff with me? Why is the only thing you can talk about anger and pain and fear? Is there nothing else in your life? I love you, but I will not put up with your bullshit. You come correct to me. Talking to me is a privilege, not a right. And I hope you feel the same way about yourself. But I am here for you, but I will not put up with this. You come correct if you want to deal with me. And I sat back and I said, if I'm right about this, he needs my friendship. He needs someone who cares about him. And since he grew up without his father, in a contentious relationship with his mother, he could well be desperate for some man in his world to be able to say, I love you, I see you, I care about you, but grow up. And so I waited. You know, we had that contact. And I said, you know, I'm not going to deal with this. And I did a couple things. So the persuasion framework that I've taught to you is, first, if you want to Help someone. The first thing you have to do is establish rapport. I establish rapport of him by saying, I love you, by acknowledging our friendship, by acknowledging his humanity. I care about you, but I will not put up with this. Therefore modeling healthy adult manhood in that sense, God knows he knows things I do not know. But he paid a terrible price to help keep our country safe. He was doing something he thought was the right thing to do and was wounded horribly. Emotionally, he is haunted by the ghosts of the men he killed. They stand around his bed at night asking him to explain why he killed them. He is dealing with that, and that told me he's dealing with mortality. So last night he sent me another text message. I had stopped responding to his text messages. I would only respond to him via email. Email. It was easier for me to consider my thoughts, but also I wasn't going to, you know, he does an action. I'm not going to react immediately. I'm going to react on my time, not his. You know, you do not. You do not fight on somebody else's rhythm. They'll beat you. You establish your own rhythm. Last night he sent me a text message saying that the city he lives in was voted the most beautiful city in the state. And I responded to him as fast as I saw. I said, that's wonderful. You must feel so happy about where you are. It's so nice to be able to wake up and feel joyful about where you're living. I said to myself, he's testing me. He wants to know if he responds to me from the three gates, will I drag up the past? Will I spit on him? Will I hurt him? And so it was love that wonderful gave him joy. And he responded with the following note. Where is it? I'll actually read it to you. He said, I said, I said, if you are living in the most beautiful spot in your state, good on you. Okay. He responded, thank you. I always thought so. And then he responded, on the 19th of this month, I have my first spinal surgery in my neck. There is a two to three month recovery time. Other than that, we're doing great and still living the dream. Spinal surgery is no joke. That's mortality. So I basically, I said yes. He wanted to know, is there anybody in the world who sees him, who remembers him? He feels like a twisted, broken, corrupted thing because of what he did for our country, because of what he experienced in racism in the south, because of having that contentious relationship with his mother and an absent father. I see him and all I'm going To give him is love. And I responded to his text message because I am training him. If you respond to me with love and honesty, I will respond to you in the channel that you like, which is text message. Otherwise it's going to be email and I'm going to rub your nose in it. This. I don't know what will happen next week, how he'll respond next, but we have established a pattern. If he can respond to me with what is really happening in his life, I will respond exactly as he wants. I will give him love. I will give him advice. I would do anything for him. He's my friend. He's my buddy. We grew up together as children. He didn't. All any of us want is to be loving and happy and healthy and feel like we've made a contribution to the world. That's all any of us want. To age with dignity and die at peace. And I will help my friends die at peace if that's what I can give him. I am being true to my path, and that is a victory because I was able to. To be both strong and gentle to someone who needed it. Those are my wins for the week. The persuasion framework is you establish rapport. Can you see how I did that? Not if you can see how I established rapport by loving him. I broke his pattern by insisting. If you want to talk to me, you come correct. And also, I will not talk to you over the. Over the medium that you want. If you're being unpleasant, I will respond to you in the medium that you don't like, email. And then I connect the desired behavior to his own highest values. You served the country I love. You are still a good human being despite the things that you did. I get you. I can help you die at peace. I love you, my friend. How often do men say to each other or hear from each other, I love you? I'm gonna be that guy. I'm going to be the one who has so much love in my life that it overfills. And I can offer him my love regardless of whatever he did. And I think he did some terrible things I did. I think he did some things that were asymmetrical warfare things, cruel things that he can't. He doesn't believe he can get through the three gates because of what he did. And my attitude is, yes, you can, my brother. Yes, you can. And I will help you every step of the way. So I think I cried enough for today. Oh, man, this is great. This is great. Realize how I basically just walked through Every one of my chakras, every one of my major centers, from survival to sexuality and passion to physical to my heart space to communication, to intellect and strategy and tactics and learning to my spirit. The spiritual self is. What is the disposition of our bodies and our egos after dissolution, after death? What does it mean in the larger context? I believe that the intersection of race and gender is the knot that we need to untie to heal our country. It's one of the reasons I'm so happy to see a blend of black and white, male and female, here. Ra we are the world here together. And if we can love each other and care for each other and see each other, can we not heal this country? And after very specific ugliness has completed itself, which I think we are in the process of getting through into the last third of a very specific ugly phase, will we not need to forgive each other and ourselves and move forward? Is the path to that not being able to forgive and love the people right around us? And is the path for that, not our ability to forgive ourselves for not being perfect? There are no perfect people here unless it's perfect. Unless it's not an adjective, but a verb. I believe I am a verb. I believe that all of you are in process and that we can do this together. So I would love to hear comments, questions, requests from people as we move towards the last 16 minutes we have here together. Come on, folks, lay it on me.

I just want to say thank you for.

For.

Sharing your offering, and I'm grateful to be able here to be able to be here to receive the gift that you bring. And thank you for holding this space where we can come in and just reconnect and reset. So thank you.

You are incredibly welcome. If you feel that there's something that is of value here, invite a couple of your friends, you know, get them on the list. Stephenbarnslist.com I asked for that more than I asked for anything else. If there's something real that is happening here, it's not for me to say. It's for you to tell me by being in this space and trying. The things that I say, breathing, tasking me, asking me hard questions. If there's something real here, if my path has given me a perspective that is of use, then it should grow. But if it does not grow, if one of you shows up, I will be here to serve you. Because that's just the way it is. It isn't about numbers. It's not about numbers. It's about depth. Okay? And you Are very welcome and thank you so much for coming. Shemeika, you honor us with your presence and your energy and your beauty. You're a cutie pie. Who else? Mary.

I just want to thank you for your authenticity, your transparency, your ability to let us see your heart. Because so many people, including me, will put on a mask and say, yeah, I'm cool, everything's good. And you come and you lay it all out and you're teaching me how to be more vulnerable by saying, this is who I am, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I will accept and this is what I won't accept. Because if I accept what you're giving me and it hurts me, I'm not being a good person to me.

To you? That's right. Your first responsibility, every one of you, your first responsibility is to protect yourselves, is to feel safe in the world. To let that wolf inside you come up and say, you know that sense. I spent my life thinking that I had to back myself into a corner alone and be prepared to bite the world. And when I met Tananarive, I saw that it was possible that I was looking at somebody who could be the mate of that wolf inside me. I have at the side of my desk, this is lobo. Lobo, he is the wolf of my heart. And what Tananari told me is that she was lobo, she was the mate for that wolf, that we could walk together even if sometimes we snap at each other when we're eating out of the same dish. And it's the greatest gift I could possibly have in my life to find someone who I know I can be myself with, who I could be open with. But the primary responsibility, you cannot safely open your heart unless you know you are safe. And that's your primary responsibility. First I be safe. As one of my teachers said to me. Don't trust people, Steve. Instead, rely upon them to do what they perceive as being in their best interest. It's up to you to be clear enough to determine what that is. Tananarif is the real deal. She really is who she seems like. She really is that brilliant and wonderful and open hearted. And I can trust her if I can trust myself. Love is the greatest gift. But the only thing that trumps love is survival. Teaching people that they have to be in touch with the animal survival part of themselves. All you have to do, no matter how depressed you are, no matter how confused you are, just try holding your breath until you die. Can't do it. It's not possible to do it because your body wants to live. Get in touch with that wiring inside yourself, the survival wiring, and know that you can either survive or die with honor. But you will not allow people to hurt you or shame you or turn you into someone that you are not. Will you, Lobo?

No.

No, Lobo won't. Lobo won't. It's my little Lobo. Then you can open your heart. Then you can find somebody who can go hunting with you, who you can snuggle with, who you can play with, you know, who will go see Fast and the Furious movies with me, you know, But I watched Ted lasso with her. You give the gift. Strength gives you the gift of gentleness. When you are at peace with your fear, it's not that the fear evaporates. It's that you're not afraid of your fear. I am not afraid of my fear. That's the only difference. It's just part of what my wiring is to help me stay alive. But who I really want to be most of the time is this guy. This is who I want to be. But remember, he has teeth and glass. I have spent over 50 years in my life learning how to kill people. Make no mistake about that. But what was that all about? Being able to be this guy with all my heart. At any moment, with anyone. You have to be free to be who you are. Because it's all you've got. The mask isn't you. And will crack under pressure. Find the people who will love you for who you are. And you do that first by loving yourself for who you are, forgiving yourself for not being perfect. None of us are perfect. None of us are. We're all doing the best we can with the resources we have. I'm offering you resources that other men and women gave me. That's all. And I was willing to empty my cup and take it and take it. And it was not easy. This. This work is not easy, but it is joyful and it is genuine. It's real. Thank you, Mary. Anybody else? We got like seven more minutes. What can I to did it from Dennis Dickens. Dennis, you want to speak up? Got to see Jim Wright at the Mizcon the other day. And yeah, he complimented you on several things including being one of the deadliest people he knew. Of course, he was carrying around his 30 some odd pound camera at the time. Well, let's put it this way. I've reached the point in my life where I don't play games anymore at all. Period. I'm going to be a loving Understanding, flexible human being. Doing everything I possibly can to help you and be kind to you. But make no mistake. Make no mistake about who I am under it that every animal on this planet has the right to survive and has a world of either concealing itself, running or fighting. Human beings are the greatest predators on the planet. That's why the rest of the planet is in trouble. If we don't wake up to how dangerous we are. That means each and every one of you is a deadly killer. But we're all being pleasant to each other. We're being nice to each other. We're playing men and women play games with each other. Of you pretend to be weaker than you really are. I'll pretend to be stronger than I really am. And together we. We play this game. It's fun to play that polarity. I'm sure that gay people played versions of that. Or maybe it's equal even Steven. I don't. You know, it's. Everybody's going to find their own way to find that aliveness that they're looking for. But strength to protect yourself or the knowledge that no matter what you do, you're still going to die. So it's important to live your life on your terms, honorably. So it's a little kid inside you. You are walking a path between the child that you were and the old person. You're going to be on your deathbed, beyond all fear. You can't intimidate that person. They're going to die in 10 breaths anyway. What are you going to do? The conversation between the child you were and the old person you're going to be has all the wisdom you need to navigate all the territory of your life. Create symbols of them in your meditation and just let them talk. And you'll learn everything you need to learn to do your life. Just stay out of it. Get the adult part of you, the all the ego. Just stay out of it and listen to the old person and the young person talk. I promise. Your only job is to find a way to navigate the path they lay out for you. You are just walking between birth and death with the greatest level of integrity you can. Living a life of joy and service. That's it. It's pretty simple really. Kathy, my sweetie. How you doing, sis?

I'm working on it, is how I'm doing. Steve. Just two things. One, sometimes when you reach out to us and say, hey, how can I help? Can somebody share something? Do you have something to say? And you get silence. It's because we get so much out of this. And we are just waiting for you to talk. We've got our pens at the ready. We've got our pads. It's not because we don't want to say something to you, Steve. We're just happy to be here. And I want to say that I really appreciate you reaching out on facebook and life writing and all of that and handing us a leap and telling us that we look like your tribe and please come to a space that you were going to open for us.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

You got that right. You are my tribe. You understand that. When I talk about that existential loneliness, that clarity that I'm going to die, this is why love is so important to me. It's why tananarive is so important to me, why my children are so important to me, why finding a tribe of people I can empty myself out to. I'm trying the best I can to empty everything I have used to. I mean, to be frank, I think I'm one of the most successful human beings who's ever walked the planet by my standards. And I would like everybody else to feel that way about themselves. The particular formula of I wanted this much health and aliveness and this much love and this much career success. I got it all. Literally all of it. So the best thing I can do now is to help others because otherwise I am betraying the trust of the men and women and my mother, for God's sake, who started me on this path. I will not betray that trust. It's all I've got. It's all of God. I'm so grateful that people find it to be useful. I mean, I think I'm a pretty interesting guy, but I think the same.

You are very interesting, darling. Very, very interesting, even for me. We've been married for almost 25 years. You're never boring.

Well, neither are you, sweetheart. She just picked article in the New York New York times or New York review of books, whatever it is. You know that You. You understand being married, I have a lot of ego in my writing and being married to dananarive due is a sobering and sometimes ego deflating experience.

In fairness, it's library journal. We're not. We're not quite up to the New York times yet with this new one.

It's okay. She keeps me on my toes. You know, it's. This is. The mutual admiration society is. Is so much fun. It's so much fun. I. I hope everybody has the opportunity to feel that level of love for themselves and their families and their Communities, their tribe. I have several different tribes that I love. There's tribes of writers and science fiction people. There's black folks, there's people interested in self improvement, there's the martial arts community. And where those, where those things overlap, oh my God. It's like, yeah, it's a beautiful world out there. And I want each and every one of you to have a chance to experience that every day of your lives. So let's see. Extremely interesting. You did not make an understatement. No, I, I am proud of the results. I am grateful for the results that I've gotten in life. And because I constantly give thanks to the men and women who went before me, I am honoring them by acknowledging my karate instructor promoted me to grandmaster within his art form 10th degree black belt. And my ego looks at that and I don't feel that I'm that guy. Sometimes I move like I'm that guy, but I don't feel that I'm that guy. But I don't have any right to tell him he's wrong any more than I would have the right to promote myself to black belt. At some point you trust your mentors. And what he is saying to me is not that I'm the baddest guy in his school, because I am not. He had the fighters in my school at one times. 7 out of 10 of the top 10 competitors in the California, Nevada, Arizona, tri state area were all this one guy, stoops. This was a badass school. This was serious school. And I think he is saying that the officers within the military can't necessarily beat the enlisted men, but they represent the values of the commander in chief, that I represent his values, that he is proud of. The man that I became when I walked into his school and said, I would like to learn karate. And he said, we would like to teach you karate. And I said, I don't know how to fight. And this was, I'd already taken second place in the national Korean Karate championships and comparison this school. I knew nothing. I said, I, I don't know how to fight. And he looked at me and he said, that's all right, we do. And he gave unto me the knowledge of how to be a warrior in the world. And a warrior is someone whose word is good, who stands for their community, who raises their own children, who knows what they would die for, and therefore knows what they will live for. And that is available to all of us. And that is one deadly human being. And that's a human being who can play with his fluffy animals. Thank you so much for being here today. I hope you have a wonderful week. I love all of you. You know, if you're not signed up for Fire Dance and you would like to and the finances are getting in your way, send a note to me. We can make, we can make adjustments, but go to fire. Fire dance tai chi dot com. And aside from that, just 1% every hour you spend with me will get you in with, with each other. It's not about me. It's about the community we create. We'll get you 1% improvement in your life. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. This is Steve Barnes thanking you for being here. Unmute yourselves. Say goodbye.

Bye, everybody. See you all next week.

Wonderful week.

Love you, Steve.

Love you, love you, love you. I love each and every one of you. I really, really honestly do. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Bye. And Lobo loves you. Say bye, Lobo.

I must.