FIREDANCE: Cultivating instinct

Off of you guys, but.

And that's an awfully big bounce in some cases.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's a big bounce. Let me see if I can get here so I can say hi to people.

Ah.

Oh, there it is. There you are. Okay, so I need to comment, But also need to turn off the sound. There we go. All right. We are in business. Just about. Yeah. So very briefly, it doesn't have to be brief, but if you have any comments, questions, or concerns that we can handle that you don't want recorded and you don't want on the Internet. You know, actually, darn it, I already started streaming it to Facebook, so that's the recording. So I can't say that I'm sorry. If you want to put into chat question, I can answer it without attribution to a particular person. I'd be happy to do that. I do respect your privacy, but I also love it when you just get in there and jazz and we can just have fun. As you guys know, all I'm really doing is sorting through about 20 different models of what it is to be a human being in high performance in different arenas. And I made a list of them today and it was like, holy crap. No wonder I keep trying to. To focus it down to just a few, you know, just a few. And things like the. The 1% and the 5 minute miracle and morning ritual are conceptual means to an end. They're not necessarily frameworks themselves. The magic formula is a framework. Life writing is a framework, you know, and what I noticed is that at a certain point, let me turn off the sound here because we might as well. Might as well kind of. Kind of get going. Where is. Okay. Ah, there it is. Good. Well, welcome to Fire Dance and I am your host, Stephen Barnes. Tananari will be signing in at some point. She is definitely here. Oh, there she is.

There is she.

There's my baby. There's my baby girl. So I'm going to give her co host status so that I can just focus on you guys. Make co host. Make co host. And now I don't have to worry about it. Anyway, my name is Stephen Barnes, the creator of the Life writing technology and Fire Dance and other stuff. And all we're doing here is we're focusing on how can we move towards our goals at a rate of at least 1% per week, and those goals should be balanced so that we're working on our bodies and we're working on our emotions.

Excuse me.

And we're working on our. Our careers. I mean that there are lots of different ways of looking at this stuff. And when Tananarive comes online, you know, if she comes online, then she is welcome to. To speak here.

I'm just not camera ready.

Okay. Hey, thank you for being here, sweetheart.

And my audio is acting weird, but thank you. I'm glad to be here. I will show myself soon.

Okay, so I guess the first thing I want to do is everybody unmute yourselves and say hi to the group. So hold on for a second. You're going to do like a 1, 2, 3, and then just unmute yourselves and say hi so we can get the energy in the room. Because you have to shift the energy in order to create change. That's why in a lot of transformational workshops, you see people jumping up and down and cheering and so forth. It's, you know, you can't teach an old dog new tricks because the old dog is tired. But if you. It's as simple as that dog just wants to lay there. If you just use your energy. Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another. So many things in life are about somebody feeling that you have that energy. That's what people are looking for. So learning how to turn it on and off on command enables you to address any project that you've got anything to do in a frame of mind that is positive in. If you are trying to change a habit pattern, there's actually God, there's a pattern for changing. Is it changing beliefs, changing behaviors? You observe a phen. A behavior you want to change. You formulate a new behavior that will accomplish the goal that you intend to do. You raise your energy level, practice the new behavior, fail successfully and start over again. Another framework got 21. So what people miss is they don't identify the behaviors they want to change and they don't. They don't perceive a failure as an opportunity to learn something. Oh, what did I learn from that happening? And in this sense, a hugely important difference is they don't raise their energy before they try the new behavior. They try to break a bad habit in their previous energetic pattern. Raise your energy level. So everybody on mute, say, hi. Get your energy up there. Let's. Let's have a wonderful day.

Happy Saturday, everybody.

Happy Saturday.

Happy to be Saturday.

Nice to see you all.

Fantastic. Now that's it.

Click the wrong button.

You know, there's nothing about me that is particularly special. I do believe that the path that I'm on is somewhat special and it gets talked about in a lot of different ways. By a lot of different people, a lot of different traditions. All I'm doing is putting my spin on this. But for those of you who find me to be an effective teacher for you, I will do all that I can and always have to be as honest and direct I can be about my journey, both the positive and negative things, so that you can make your own decision about whether or not this is working for you. But at this point, like I said, I was gonna just for the sake of fun. So, you know, I'm not bluffing. I wrote this list of the different technologies that I talk about from time to time. So let's just get in. There's. There's magic, the magic formula. There's the five minute miracle. There's fire dance in morning ritual. There's the 1%. There's three gates, three sinners. The love Feast. Ancient Child Modeling. Smart Goals, golden man, high performance. 6. Musashi Miyamoto, you know, book of five rings and principles of, of success there. The Eightfold path, the four noble truths. Think and grow rich. The five Tibetans. Sun salutations, Qigong. Extend Learning to Extend Key. I mean, oh my God, I'm looking at this stuff and it's like, how do I sort through all this? Because all this stuff makes sense to me because I can see how they all relate to a path of growth which in my mind was how do I succeed in the martial arts, how do I succeed in my writing? And how do I find love, a real loving family? How can I be healthy, in other words, in all those levels? And all these things are things that connect with me. But what I need to do is to slow down and simplify what I'm doing and give you the minimum that is necessary to move forward and get that 1%. And I think, I think that the minimum is the magic formula. I look at it from a number of different ways and it does contain everything that you need. The formulation of it is clear, it's quantifiable, some subjectivity, but it's asking you to look at, at to create a number for your proficiency in each of the five arenas. And the story of how it got created is great. I mean, it's like, it's a lot of fun and so it's powerful. I could see myself giving an hour long speech someplace and being able to give people some real value in a very short period of time, focusing on that. And it's something that I can talk to you about and if you will do this. In other words, if you're willing the buy in for this workshop, for what we're doing here on Saturdays, is stopping every hour to take 60 seconds of breathing, deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing that breaks the physiological, emotional, attitudinal and attentional patterns that can lead you down the drain. Just do that. If you'll just do that. Fantastic. So what I want is for the basics. If you'll do any of these basics, you're going to get the effect and you're going to change. And I believe in, I don't believe in faith in terms of this because there are a lot of frauds out there. We know that. There are a lot of people who lie about this. I know that perfectly well. And I appreciate your trust. So what I Science in the Scientific method, which is something else I could put on the list, is you observe a phenomenon, you postulate, oh my God, a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon. You formulate an experiment to test your hypothesis. You perform the experiment. If you get the right result, you correlate the results. If you get good results, you publish a theory and allow or hypothesis. You publish your hypothesis and the way to perform the experiment and you let other people try it. And if they start getting the same results, it becomes a theory. You know, you theory is a hypothesis with muscle in that sense. So the hypothesis, hypothesis, and it's a theory at this point because I've been teaching this stuff for 30 years to thousands of different people. And I'm pretty sure that the secrets for living a good life are everywhere. You can find them everywhere in every culture. But every culture has a different emphasis because I've walked between cultures in some interesting ways. I like to pull from lots of different places. So stuff comes from martial arts and yoga and various forms of psychology and various forms of this and that and this. Trying to boil it all down. So if you'll do the breathing and that breathing itself is a daily ritual. I mean, I like you to take one of them and expand it out into a morning ritual. But in that morning ritual, what you're doing is affirmations, visualizations and emotional flooding that relate to the magic formula. Somebody asked a question here and I'm going to. Where was that question? Oh, chat. There it is. Okay, got it. And it says, stephen, reference your question this week on the eight Cuts diagram. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, thank you very much, Steve B. I didn't realize, I didn't realize until I read it about the fourth time that it was a. It was not a diagram of all movement options. It was a diagram of very Specific pattern, like an infinity pattern. And for that, it was just great. There's reference to a sword fighting thing that was published that I posted on Facebook. So if the morning ritual enables you to take a conceptual thing and anchor it into your body, where you actually are now working with, because what. One of the things you're trying to do is, you know, if you have a goal, you want to ask yourself, who is the person who could accomplish this goal? What version of me? Then you ask yourself, would you want to be that person? You know, is that person in alignment with your goals and your values? Is that person honest? And, you know, I think it is really important to have a set of values that's outside your own ego. So things like the Eightfold Path and the Three Gates, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, whatever it is, look for patterns that have worked for people for generations. I think I really like the three gates. It's only three things, really simple. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? The number of human problems that would be reduced if everybody followed a set of rules like that is vast. Find a set of rules that means something to you that you said, if you exemplified this, you would be the kind of person that you want to be. And then make sure that your goals are in alignment with that, such that you can go all out. You can do that. You know, that attitude of I'll do whatever it takes to reach my goal, that goal of I'll do whatever it takes should be backed up with the kind of 100% focus, monomaniacal focus that you'd have. Somebody took your head and stuck it in a bottle of water, in a bucket of water. You know, you're going to fight for that next breath. When you're prepared to fight for your dreams in your life like that, it's very hard to stop you. But it's also possible for people done a lot of unethical things, a lot of damaging things. This is why the ethics are there. So I, you know, the, the three gates, Very, very important to me. Find something for yourself. Okay, so looking at the magic formula, then, if all these other frameworks in some ways are tools that can be used within the magic formula, that also makes sense. I mean, I can. I can say, all right, you know, what is life writing? That life writing using the hero's journey is a description of the path of action as we move forward. Okay, you know, what about. What about the chakras? The chakras are a model of the energetic and physical and psychological aspects of a Human being. So therefore I would put that in the gratitude. Possibly I could put it in intention because my goal is to be a balanced human being. The three centers would also go there. So it's like looking to where can all these things go increasing. How about rapid planning system, that Tony Robbins thing. I'm teaching my son Jason right now, which is basically a way to look at executive function well, see if magic map or model it could fit right into map. This is how you look at a goal and you break it down, you build it back up again. Okay, so I looked at this and all 20 of the different separate areas fit into one of those five kind of neatly. So you know, with your, with your permission, you know, I want to focus there just a little bit because it does seem to be so. Does seem to be very powerful.

So can I ask you a quick question? There was a question in chat about how this would apply to maybe 9 or 10 year olds.

Okay. A 9 or 10 year old first of all teaching a magic. Great. So if they want to do their homework or they want to get. Let's say that the goal was to get straight A's, you know, I don't know the goal was to get straight A's academically. Then you need a map of when to do your homework and how to study and how to behave in class so you don't get, you know, so that you are in a good learning place. The daily actions would be going to school and doing your homework and studying your emotional set. Gratitude G. It's teaching them to be happy. Maybe every time they do their homework, they get a celebration. Every time they do their homework, you cheer for them, you do a little dance with them or something like that. Because you want to anchor positive emotions to the actions, the clear intention. We want straight A's. Can we agree on that? You take that intention, you put it on a banner, you put it up on their wall so that every day they know this is what it is that they're trying to do. Okay? And the confidence and courage, the confidence that they can do it. You Talk with a 9 or 10 year old and you find something they're already good at, something that they're proud of themselves in some area in which they feel confident it's going to be something, you know, riding a skateboard or you know, whatever, you know, playing this video game, doing this, doing that. And you get that, you get them to have that feeling in themselves, that feeling of confidence. And then you teach them to connect that feeling of confidence with a Different arena. And Neuro linguistic programming does some things called collapsing anchors that can work there too. But there are other tools. So that would be one way of applying it to one kind of goal for a kid. And you would express everything in simple, in the simplest language possible. The better you understand something, the simpler the language you can use to explain it. And the better you know the kid, the easier it is to find arenas where they already feel confident, they already have clarity. They already know how to motivate themselves. And teaching a kid how to motivate themselves to do what you want them to do is a matter of connecting a goal you want them to have to to something they want to do. The if they have to do it for their reasons, if they're only doing it to avoid pain, like a punishment, they'll do it as long as you're watching. And then they'll snap right back to the old behavior. You have to. You have to connect it to something they want. They want to be this kind of person. They have a role model. They have a hero or heroine, an accomplishment, a goal, something. You have to connect it to what they want. It's their life. You're just their steward for a little while. You get maybe 18 years to shape their behavior, and then they're going to have a lot of life beyond there. So if you're doing it by trying to shove them into a model, into a cookie cutter, the instant your back is turned, they'll spring right back to their old behavior, or they will reject you, or they will have to rebel against you. They have to. I mean, it's. It's naturally programmed. So understanding that they're going to go through those steps, if you can connect what you want them to do to what they want, it's going to be much easier to build a lasting habit pattern. Okay, hold on. Okay, so. Oh, wow. Tanatari, what I did. I hadn't made you a co host yet.

Oh. Oh, you wonder why I was slacking on the job, huh?

No.

Anyway, so given I always have. No, I don't want to go there yet. Tanada Reef. Talk about what happened yesterday so that I'll know how far to go.

If you mean what happens when you take back your power, that's right. All right, set it up for them. So, okay, we had a come to Jesus moment, as the kids call it, with our reps, our whole team of reps, a lawyer, a manager, two agents, all telling us about basically this crappy deal from a major audio producer. It had been in the works for more than a year. It was getting smaller and smaller and smaller all the time. And finally it had set up. Been set up like this Kafkian maze where you try to hunt down your money in 12 different steps. And we were like, no freaking. Thank you. They were advising us not to do it. Everything they described was worse than the previous thing. It's like, no, this is insulting, actually. So we said no thinking, which I wish I had said to you, Steve, is that. That's good, because we're taking our power back here. And the minute we do this, we're going to see an indication that we did the right thing and there was something better waiting in its place. It's kind of what happened. You know, I talked about this in our course, the Soulmate process. I backed away from someone I had been seeing briefly before I met Steve. I threw my line in the sand, and I met Steve literally the next week. So I kind of felt like that would happen. And sure enough, yesterday we had what's called a general. And a general is just a meeting with people you don't know. They don't know you, but they've either read something of you or they've heard about you, and they just want to have a meeting to get to know your vibe. Sometimes specifically, they're interested in a project. Most times they're not. Wouldn't you agree, Steve? Most times they're not saying, hey, we love this. We'd like to make it. If only. It's just, hi, how are you? Let's talk for 30 minutes to an hour. And I came so close to when they canceled that meeting because we were on deadline to turn in a pilot, which we turned in. I swear, I almost wrote to you, maybe we should put this meeting off. But I didn't, because my philosophy is you never know which general it's going to be. And that's the setup for the story. Honey, you can go on.

Okay. So then we had this general meeting, and usually it's just people getting to know each other, you know, and then there's, you know, if the. If the two circles of interest overlap, maybe something will come of it down the road.

The thing we had just turned down was the biggest thing we had ever gotten out of a general up to this point.

That's probably true, isn't it?

Yeah. That was the one thing that. And then it had fallen apart.

Yeah. Not only had it fallen apart, but it was. They. They said it would come together. It could come together within, like, a few weeks. And a year later, it hadn't come together again. So I knew that this. That this was wrong. Even if these people were ethical and honest, they were not clear. They did not understand what it was that it took to get this done. They did not have the power. They did not have the juice that we had hoped. So these people get this guy. It was a guy gets on the zoom with us and first of all, his company. Never heard the name of this company, but I knew the work they'd done and the work they'd done was. Was respectable. Very.

Then also, they're an animation company, so that's another thing. Neither of us had any particular interest in animation. Right. But.

Okay, I'm glad you feel comfortable saying that much.

Yeah.

And they were very interested in a specific project of ours and with an eye to making an animated film of it.

Feature film.

Animated feature film. And Tananaru and I kind of looked at each other, you know, and we were. We were using chat while we're having this so that we can talk without him knowing anything about it. And it was like neither of us had ever thought about the possibility of this particular project being done in this particular way. And we both got it. We both saw immediately what the potential was.

Why he saw the potential.

Yeah. And why he saw the potentially talking about different projects with an eye to them make to making a film or an eye to them making money to make. They had an eye to making a film that would make money. You know, these things are not.

It's not like.

Yeah. Conflict with each other. You know, they're a film company, so they're looking for projects that will make. That will enable them to keep feeding the machine. Now there are. If that is the bottom line with any company, which it is, will this make money for the company? You then have human beings within the company with different hopes, dreams, needs, values, preferences, strategies, philosophies. So that one thing that you. That a lot. John Cassavetes used to go back and forth between being a movie just to make money and making. Taking that money and making little movies that were intensely personal. And movie studios do this all the time. They have the big prestige pictures and, you know, they're big. They're big blockbusters to make money. And they have the little prestige pictures where they're doing something that touches their heart. They win, you know, wards or they speak of a social issue or express something that is in their hearts. These are human beings. When you find people who have worked their way up in a. In a hierarchy, invariably they have cut some pieces of themselves. Off in that process, they have sacrificed. They've given up some of their dreams. Hopefully they've kept their ethics, but they've had to compromise. If you can understand that these are human beings you're talking to who would love to be able to express themselves, who would love to be able to be proud of what they do, to go home and say, sweetheart, we did something important today. I saw some footage today. This was great. We are working with some people who really want to change the world. Imagine if that person has a disabled child and you bring them a project about a disabled child stepping through the looking glass and having a wonderful adventure and exploring courage and so forth. They're going to want two things. They're going to want to make that movie so that it can make money in the general audience, but they're also going to want to do it in such a way that it will uplift their own child. And as long as you remember that these are human beings and they always are.

A couple of them, not human beings.

Well, a couple of them might have been AI. I'm not sure. So that's what you're looking for. And let's just say that we came out of this meeting feeling like it was one of the very best meetings we had ever had. If this happens, then we're going to be able to take what happened here and look at what happened with this other deal that we've got that looks very powerful, very promising. Things are just motoring on. I think it's going to happen next year and we're going to be able to ask ourselves what was in common between these two guys? What was in common about the situation we went into, you know, independent studios that have their own funding, people who are not afraid of. Who have an intention to kind of create a positive effect in the world, who maybe have, you know, disruptors, people.

Who want to disrupt the system, even.

Yeah, if we can identify that, then that's part of something really important here. Developing of intuition which would connect to the three centers. Because the belly brain is the home of intuition, of instinct. Actually. That's instinct. The belly brain is instinct. The heart center is power. In some ways, I may have this wrong, and I apologize. I do. But the head center is intuition. What was the feeling we had when we talked to these guys? If this happens, what are they?

Huh? I'm sorry, I just want to interrupt and I don't know if this flows with you, honey, but I consider it a ping in the universe that's even separate from if it works. Out with this guy. So what he told us is he sent the work onto their committee. Their committee's going to meet, they like it, they're going to pass it up. I mean, we may well get past all those, but if we don't, I still see that meeting as being highly significant, especially the timing of it right after we had turned something down. To have that level of interest even from such a high caliber company and for the specific reasons he discussed it reminds us of who we actually are. And I think it's important to always know that when you're working anywhere. But that's right, because people will try to screw you over at every turn.

And people will make promises that they cannot keep. People will buy or option projects and then sit on it for years. And you watch yourself getting gray and.

Nothing happens like a place like Universal. Just for context, which we also turned down that they wanted the project that we're working on with another company. And we were like, they seem too big. They have 200 projects in development at least in the same time.

That's right.

So you're not going to get attention from anybody.

So Dennis Dickens asks, is this serendipity? I would call it, yes. It's also synchronicity. And the magic formula seems to increase luck. I don't know how to put it any other way. You remember when the first time that we applied that in connection with danger word, we suddenly got phone calls with people offering us thousands of dollars that we needed to complete it. We'd already done the work. We put our we. It's like we'd put fishing lines in a dozen different fishing holes. We maybe we became more sensitive to the tugs or maybe we just started finding better fishing holes or better.

We had just had the meeting where we were like, okay, if we don't get the money we need, how can we eat this thing out? How can we ask to work for free? What grants can we apply for? We had that yay team moment and then boom, the donors came in as.

Soon as we didn't need the help we got. So that's one of the things. You have to set it up so that with the resources you already have, you can see a way to make it happen and you start moving in that direction. So you have a map of a way to do it with the resources you have right now. You know, at the very least, it's like, what is a step to getting there? Okay, maybe it's finished. You know, you want to be a best selling writer. You have no idea how to do it. But you do have the resources to, to write a short story. And when you write a short story, you then are going to have knowledge that you can leverage into writing the novella. Okay, that, that you. The five steps of the magic formula, map or model daily action. The action is action you can control. You can't blame anybody else if you don't do it. You know, with writing it's a sentence a day, with taking care of your physical body, it might be doing one sun salutation with your emotions and healing your emotions might just be the five minute miracle taking five minutes a day. The basic steps need to be small enough that you can't blame anything outside yourself for not doing it. This is critical. The number of people who will say I can't make money or I can't find a partner or I can't lose weight or whatever because of some external circumstance. When you take. Jason asked me, my son Jason asked me, how can I tell if my friends are going to succeed? I said, look at the magic formula. Do they have a map or model of what it is that they're trying to do? Are they taking daily action? Do they keep themselves in a positive frame of mind or are they always complaining about things outside themselves? Do they have a clear goal? And by clear quantifiable goal, I mean write it down. Write it down, brothers and sisters. Can you write down your goal? And remember, goals are dreams with deadlines. When are you going to have it? What is it going to be? Quantify. Quantifiable. And the last step, do they really have courage and the conviction that they should do this? Remember? Yeah. Think and Grow Rich, I think is a fantastic book. It's probably the single best book on this subject that's ever been done. If you don't see that doing these things, taking these daily actions are going to bring you peace, move you away from pain, increase joy in your life. Nobody can guarantee the goal on the other side. I mean, you might get struck by lightning the day before you step on the plane to go to Barbados or whatever it is you're doing. So it's best to do the things that you're doing in a way that's bringing you joy along the way, in a way that is relieving pain along the way, in a way that is serving your own heart or your family along the way. While you're going for that million dollars or that losing 100 pounds or that publishing that best selling book or whatever the path to doing it, you need to feel that every day's work is worthwhile just because you're being who you are. The satisfaction is being who you are.

Can I interject something really quickly? Anytime I am floating, floating, floating from seeing one of my oldest and best friends, Lucina Fisher, who directed our short film, by the way, Danger Word, which, if you haven't seen it, it's@dangerwordfilm.com on YouTube. But in any case, we started out as reporters at the Miami Herald, and long way around, both of us ended up in Hollywood this past week because she has since become a documentary filmmaker. Her first documentary to make it to Netflix is called the Dads. It's actually getting Oscar grooming, and it's 11 minutes long. Do not miss it. It's about a group of dads of trans kids who go on a little fishing expedition with the father of Matthew Shepard. And it is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Those dads are superstars. They should make a whole series around this. And they're talking about it. They're giving her the talk, honey, like someone said, we are going to find the money to make this movie. And I'm like, wait till the chat clears, Lucina. But. But what was beautiful about it is that she. We're of a similar age. We're not typical Hollywood age, okay? She's been walking her path of excellence. The key to documentary filmmaking is to see the beauty in life around you and figure out how to turn it into a narrative. And she's been quietly doing that with these little small projects working her way. She's met a lot of people as a reporter. She's met a lot of people as a People magazine reporter, she's met a lot of people. So when CAA had their meeting with her, they were like, oh, my God, you know this person? You know that person. They're treating her like she's a freaking unicorn. And all she's been doing is walking her path of excellence. And all that happened is that eventually that path of excellence crossed the interests of other people with a wider platform and more money. And that's kind of how the walk works. And I hope that's relevant to what you were saying.

Oh, it's hugely relevant. If you remember, when my agent I was a long time ago, I said to one of my agents, I don't know what's going to happen to me in Hollywood, but I do know that when I leave, I want to have my sense of honor intact. And he looked at me and he said, you'll be the only one. And the implications of that horrified me. And I knew instantly that I had to find a new agent. Somebody who wouldn't react that way. Someone who was Will, who could walk at my side. Not somebody who's saying, well, I'm not going to be ethical. I'm going to get mine. You know, if you do, that's fine, but I get tired. I've had. Over the course of my life, I've had a lot of people consider me to be naive for caring about ethics, for loving people, for not for wanting to come from a position of love and connection. You're naive, Steve. You know, you can't survive and do that, Steve. You can't succeed and do that, Steve. So as. As I've had more success, these people, some of them actually began to reject me. I think that I was too much of a unicorn for them. That my whole thing is that you can succeed in life and you can get all the goodies you want. It might take you a little longer to do it, but I'd rather be George Bailey than Potter. It's as simple as that. The world is made up of people who understand that George Bailey won that game and other people who believe that Potter won. And I have to line up with the people who see that. Giving to others, taking care of your family. George Bailey never missed a meal. He had a roof over his head. He raised a beautiful family. He had the love of a beautiful woman. He was a benefit to his community. But remember, he took care of himself first. You have to take a look at that. It wasn't just that he gave himself away. He gave away his ego, dreams, but he kept his values. He kept his values. The only thing that's going to matter on your deathbed. Were you the person that you set out to be? Is this who you really wanted to be? The people who think Potter won are walking a different path. And I wish them well. I wish them well, but that's poison. And I realized how poisonous it was when I realized I have a friend, and he is a good man in many ways. And we went to the movies together, and he got into an argument with the guy at the film, and he wanted to fight him right there in the movie theater. My friend. And I said to him, my friend is white. And I said to him, if I was the way you were, I'd be dead. I could not behave the way you just did without going to prison or dying. And he admitted that that was true. Now, I think that when people criticize your behavior on some level, they're saying, you should have my values. You know you should behave more like me. They're criticizing you when you're behaving other than the way they behave generally. So when this guy started criticizing my insistence that the three gates of being honest and kind and useful are powerful supports for living a righteous life, and he just would attack me and attack me, attack me. I realized on one level, oh my.

God.

He'D want me to be more like him. Even though he agrees that if I were, I'd be dead. What in the hell is that? Because I know he loves me. I know that. So trying to make sense of that, I have to think about what my friend Charles Johnson said, that he's a Buddhist scholar and a Daoist scholar, martial artist, a fantastic literate writer, PhD in philosophy, just a great man. He's actually the man who co authors my book the Eighth Path with me. And I told him about this. I said that I'm starting to get some odd reactions that when I was less successful, people listened to my talking about ethics and planning and positive mood and I think they kind of tolerated me. So, oh yeah, Steve's that way. And that's one of the reasons why he's never going to go anywhere. I think that that was kind of where they were. But the more I started achieving, the more I think my way of being challenged their notions of what was possible. They had to then think to themselves, I'm successful. Or you know, they're. I'm talking as if I were one of them. I'm successful and I had to do some bad things along the way, but that's just what you have to do. Or you can think I'm not successful because I have been a good human being and in order to get rich, you have to hurt people. You have to lie and cheat and steal and hurt and you run into that all the time. But if, if they believe that I'm working very hard to be an ethical person, trying to be honest, I'm doing everything I can to be kind. I'm doing everything I can to fit within the three gates. I actually care about them. That doesn't mean that I can always live them perfectly because I'm not perfect. But I care when I transgress and I can see myself transgressing. What Charles Johnson said to me was what he said to his, what his teacher said to him. His teacher said, charles, and this is a teacher who's a writing mentor, not a philosophy mentor. His teaching mentor, his writing mentor said, if non dualistic thought is true, and that is the core of Many Asian flossies. Non dualistic thought. If non dualistic thought is true, my life has been a lie. And Charles thought to himself, that's right, you can't say that to somebody. But that is exactly what he was thinking. Viewed that way, then I'm frightening people right now. And you will frighten people as you find an ethical structure that touches your heart, a way of being that is in alignment with your values on the deepest level. But also you strive for external success. You strive for the internal success of peace of mind and then the external success, frankly, of money and love. If people have based their life on believing that these things are not possible to have while being ethical and honest, or if you're born in a hole, you could never get out of it, or whatever it is that they believe, their ego has protected them by saying, you did these things because you needed to survive, or because you did these things, you will never succeed. But you have the advantage of being a righteous human being if your actions say to them, no, you can have it all. You could be a good and decent human being. And you can also have health and success and love that beautiful Mexican toast. You know, health, love, money and time to enjoy them. Let's move towards that 1% a week. And to facilitate that, I would like to open up and have people talk about that 1% this week. Let's workshop this stuff. We've talked about a lot of stuff here, but the only way of making it real is if you challenge me or ask me how to apply this in a particular way. Jaime, Stephen.

Hi, everybody.

Hey there.

So you had a conversation in one of your little morning chats this week there on Facebook.

Morning magic.

Yeah.

That got me to thinking about this magic formula. I first encountered it when I started the life writing course about four years ago and. And then I jumped into fire dance a couple years ago when that started.

Hold on for just a moment. Fire dance Tai Chi. Www.firedancetaichi.com Anyway, go ahead.

When I first encountered the idea of the magic thing, and it was a shock to me to. To learn at the time that each step of that five point process is multiplicative.

So.

And at the beginning of the journey four years ago, I did have a couple of zeros in a couple of those categories.

Right.

But I've been working on it for four years now.

Great.

And it dawned on me the other day and I wrote it out there in the comments. Because of all of the stuff from both life writing and fire dance and my own 12 step recovery, I'm at least at a 3 or 4 as far as the map. And then.

Great. All right, so let me ask you a question.

Let me get all the way through this. So under A for action, I've got my five minute miracle. I've got my morning ritual. I'm doing Tibetans. There's a whole bunch, you know, the. The one sentence a day. There's all of these different things that are in the action. So I'm at least at a three or four under action minimum. Right. Gratitude has been a way of life since I got sober 35 years ago. So gratitude, I'm at least at a 4, if not all the way up to 9 on some days.

You see, you generally seem pretty joyful.

Yeah. So. And then under the intention and confidence.

Or conviction, you know, let's call it the conviction confidence. In other words, it's when Tananarive and I have a challenge, you know.

Right.

We look at each other and say, we are that bitch.

You.

You feel like you are the guy who can do it.

I. I already know that because of my commitment to this stuff on a daily basis and a weekly basis, I'm probably really at a 2 or a 3 in both of those as well. And the thing that I've been experiencing, if you want just 1% of improvement a week, I would have to keep it at a one all the way across the board.

Interesting.

But by having higher numbers. Holy crap. That multiplicative effect makes the change happen so fast. And so it's like too fast and I need to take a step back. It's like you teased me about putting the gas on the pedal, and it's like I need to get my lead foot off of the pedal so that the changes aren't happening faster than I can process.

Yeah. If the changes are happening. Let me, Let me. Let me stop you for a second. If the changes are happening too fast, there's a part of your personality that will feel like you're killing it, and it will absolutely do all it can to sabotage you. So you have to. You have to stay within something that is ecologically sound. Yeah. So I just want to individual have to make that decision for themselves.

I just wanted to bring that up for everybody else here who's on this journey to both. You know, I don't think I'm alone in experiencing that. I think it's actually kind of fun now that I can start playing with those numbers instead of just trying to have a one.

Yeah. Look at it. If you get a better, clearer map, you Know you looking at more people and studying it. If you're taking more action, if you're feeling more gratitude, that right there means you win any day that you're feeling good. At the end of the day. You won that day, man.

Which has been happening a lot of days in a row.

There you go.

Thank you. Thank you.

You clarify your goal, Smart goal. You make sure that it's specific, meaningful, as if now realistic and time bound. And in terms of confidence, you walk like you are that bitch you are.

Oh, yeah.

You know, you are the one who can do this.

And.

And your joy is in simply being who it is that you are every day.

And part of the fun is watching it, having this ripple effect out in the other people I interact with in my life.

So I will tell you, honey, it never. I. I cannot remember specifically thinking this, but if you take a look at all those numbers and you get the average of them, that if I were to say that that's the number of percentage points per week that you're improving, I would find it difficult to falsify that. I don't know if I believe it, but it's really interesting. And I'm gonna have to think about that and see if I can test it. Cool you, buddy.

Thanks.

Right, Ross.

Yes, sir. Kind of runs right alongside of what Jaime was talking about as far as numbers and forward momentum, slim impetus. We talked last week about how I didn't have Internet connection, and I talked to my therapist yesterday about connections and specifically drastically feeling a lack of connection. And that a lot of that was echoing from my 7 to 10 year old inner child self. And it occurred to me that these numbers were kind of pushing water in a faster way to crack through the rock surrounding that young man and making this stuff available to him. And I know I'm going to mangle your name. I'm sorry. Yeah, Chicasia. When she brought up how do we deliver this stuff to a 9 or 10 year old, it occurred to me that that's exactly what I've been doing this week because I had the time, because I didn't have the Internet connection to distract myself with and to solidify it at that foundational level and make it that much more real when I go to my version of it myself.

Well, good, Ross, you know, you've been doing tremendous work for years now. And as long as you can forgive yourself and understand that you have been doing heroic work and not. Not compare yourself to some perfection that's supposed to be, I have no doubt at all that you're going to get there. You're just going to wake up one morning and realize you're in a different place. And you're going to have so much pride in yourself. And when you look at how you got there, you're going to have something very special to offer the world and be able to reach people that I cannot reach. You're going to have your voices. Your voice is unique, and I'm very proud of you. Okay, thank you.

Some of this is seasonal, too, because it's so dark going internal. It's like, okay, this is the right time to do that and build the roots and come forward and spring with better.

That's right. That's right.

So, yeah.

Okay.

Thank you. Michael Dobkins, Santa.

Santa, I. I've been here in the vintage toy warehouse going through the naughty and nice list. I've gone through it once, gone through it twice. And, you know, the elves are saying some very good things about this Star wars novel. And there's one note, take it or leave it. It needs more short people. But anyway, it's, you know, dropping the Persona for a bit here this week has been a struggle for me. The whole year has been a struggle for me. And I've been coming here and the positivity and. And there, you know, the. Not just what you're saying, but what I'm hearing from other people has been very, very valuable to me. So I want to express some, you know, my gratitude for that. I don't know whether I'm gonna have a roof over my head in the next day or so. It keeps kicking the thing ahead one night, you know, over and over again. And there have been all sorts of other challenging things this week and. But I don't want to give a lot of energy to it describing each and specific one. But one of the things that I'd like to offer because I love, obviously the. The holiday, if anyone here on in this group who has given me so much has, you know, children of an age or grandchildren of an age or nieces or nephews that might get a kick out of zoom call with Santa where they can give their list or, you know, say I've been a really good boy or girl this year or whatever and all that stuff, I will give you my email down in the thing and we can set up a Zoom call tonight because I'm not sure what my. I may be able to have one more night here with the Internet access, but I've been okay, Michael. I've been receiving a lot of generosity and I'D like to do something for somebody else. And this is one thing that I can offer.

I've got something for you. You, me, your.

You.

Send me your PayPal address. It's the Christmas giveaway time again. We've got. We've got a little fund of money to give gifts to people, and you're on my night. You're on my nice list. Be sure to Send me your PayPal address.

Yeah, I. I have to tell you, you know, so the. When I hit points of synchronicity, I said, oh, I'm kind of on the right track. And usually it's like, you know, maybe three or four at most, six things. There have been a couple times where I have, you know, I've done that thing where people say I freaked out, where it's like in the course of. Within an hour, this person is talking about something, this person discusses a concept that I just discovered and all that stuff. And it's like 30 or 40 things, and it's like, whoa. And, you know, not getting into the energy of describing the negative stuff. I, I am truly, truly grateful. I. I wish I could say thank you to each specific one and say, you did this or you said that, but right now, I don't want to hijack the whole thing.

Kind of does.

That's wonderful.

Just send me your PayPal address.

This is not do.

And the rest of you guys, too, especially on Facebook or email. We have a little fund of money that we can share with people. We can do that a little bit. And if you have extra money and you would like to contribute to that fund, I'm glad to facilitate it. You send it to my PayPal address, sebarnesol.com and I promise you that the average is like 130% of everything that people send into us goes back out to needy people. We don't keep a penny. And it's just, it's just we. We've had the blessing of being able to do this for four years now for. And it's, It's. It's the high. It's one of the, it's the highlight of my year. I love, I love doing this is the reason you get abundance so that you can share abundant health and energy, abundant love, abundant finances.

So. And don't forget, you know, if you want a free Santa visit for, you know, your child or if you're an adult who never got that with when they were a child, happy to be Santa for you. For, you know, make sure to put.

Your email address in chat.

We'll do. So anyway, I'm done. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

Becky.

Hi.

Hello, Beck.

I found this book. See if I can get it to focus. It's going to be reversed, unfortunately, something. It's called Strong. Strong Heart, Strong Mind. It's by Joseph C. Piscatella and Marwan Saba, M.D. joseph actually did what I have been doing the last two and a half years. He turned his heart health around through diet, exercise, changing his mindset. And he's written a book with this other guy about how to do that to get healthier physically and mentally as well, prevent dementia. My mom died from dementia. And so when I found this title, it caught my eye. I have finally found the guy I'd like to have mentor me in helping other people to follow that health path. He went from doing that for himself to becoming a motivational speaker. I'm not interested in necessarily making any money doing it. And I don't want to travel like he did. I don't want to go to the level he's gone to. But I would like to, at least locally here in Portland, talk to groups of people who are interested in improving their health. What I find in the congestive heart failure groups is people just want to talk about the drugs and the mechanical devices that doctors want to put in them. And they never bring up what they're doing themselves to improve their health. And when I see pictures of them, they're all obese, right? All of them. Being overweight and this should warn anybody else that's in the group is a big warning sign that you could have heart problems, strokes, cancer, all kinds of things. Being overweight is a big factor and a poor diet, eating a lot of ice cream and cake and candy and pie and pizza and cheese, and that's poison. I don't eat any of that anymore. And I feel amazing. I weigh 124 pounds now. I was weighing 170 pounds when I had the heart attack. I was borderline diabetic. I didn't know it. My triglycerides, which are connected to the amount of sugar that you have in your system, was really high. And that's a warning signal for heart problems. My cholesterol was high. I was, because of COVID staying home, staying up late, binge watching shows, sitting in a chair. I was inactive and I was eating junk food late at night, at 3 o' clock in the morning, eating junk food after the heart attack, threw all the junk food away in the trash can. As soon as I got home from the hospital and changed immediately. To me, the first letter of my perception is commitment. You have to commit to the change. And a lot of people, they want to change, but they can't change. They don't change. They go, oh, this ice cream seems too good. I gotta have my ice cream and my pie.

One of the things to look at, if you wanted to change your behavior, you would have to have, first of all, to have real empathy with yourself so that you're not beating yourself up about it. You would need to connect. You need to interrupt your pattern. Find some way to, you know, you're going to the refrigerator to get the ice cream, you do something to stop yourself, or they throw some cold water your face so that now you have to make a decision. Right? Then you would want to ask yourself questions that are empowering to you. Who am I? Who is the version of me I'm committed to being? That person will drink some water instead of having the ice cream, will have some cottage cheese or some yogurt instead of the ice cream. That person would make themselves do a dozen push ups before they have the ice cream. Whatever it is that you do that will enable you to interrupt your pattern and begin moving in the right direction without beating yourself up.

Loving the first thing is you don't buy the ice cream at the store and you don't bring it home. Put it in the refrigerator.

There you go.

I stay out of the aisles where the junk food is as much as possible to avoid even thinking about it. And if I have to be in that area for some reason, I try not to look at it and not to think about it so that I'm not feeding the temptation. And if the temptation does squeak, its little voice, oh, would you like to.

Have some of that?

I say, shut up. You had a heart attack and it shuts up.

That's.

It was a definite wake up call. Well, you know, it was. It was a baseball bat. It was a baseball bat up the side of my head. You know, it totally woke me up. And my husband likes to talk about.

How glad you got there.

I see it as the best thing that ever happened to me. People are shocked when I say that.

Great.

That's a total wake up call. Change my path.

Is there anything we can do for you today?

So I have the good news of making improvement, that I actually did reach out to him on Facebook. I haven't heard back from him yet, Joseph Piscatella, and let him know that he is my role model. And I'd like to learn how to Help other people.

Try to find.

And I hope that you hear back.

Send him a letter through his publisher and also see if you can find his website and send him a direct email if possible. You know, just. Just consider this to be like you're playing a game. You're going to find a way to get to him.

Mm.

Yeah.

I sent him a message through his Facebook page through Messenger.

That's the first step. Try two more.

Yeah.

You know, like I said. Okay. Letter by his publisher and find if he's got. If you can find an email, a direct email address. Use that. You know, rule of three, you don't know how often he checks Facebook. Okay.

Right, right. Okay.

That's great.

I will.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

You bet. Okay, so who else is here? And be in volunteer or be voluntold Shikasia. We had a conversation. Yes, I'm here.

I'm here. I was playing in the chat, but I'm. I'm here.

Hi.

Hi. We had a conversation last week or the week before where you were going to do something. I. I seem to remember. Was there something that you were going to report back to us with?

I think I finished reporting. I mean, I feel like I'm always growing, but I feel like. I feel like we kind of concluded a portion of things. For me personally, growth is every day. And I feel like, fantastic. I'm still continuing to grow. I'm getting to learn the Elder now. The Ancient One.

Tell me a little bit about her.

I don't feel like I've reached a point of understanding all of her values. Part of the meditation. In the meditation, you say that my job is to fulfill my adult responsibilities. And I know you say it for everybody, but it's personal for me, so I use I statements. So is understanding how to align myself between the. The inner child and the Ancient One. So I'm working on listening to the conversation between the two and understanding those values that the Ancient One possessed. I can see her environment and the distinction between the practice and what comes to me is that my Ancient One won't stay down. She sits up. Yeah.

Interesting.

She's not. She still has all of this energy.

Okay.

And so I'm not getting those last few most valuable things.

No, that's not necessarily true. Listen. Listen to me, okay?

There are.

There are people who can sit up and then they just die in their sleep.

That's true.

You know, so. So if that's. You're.

You're.

You're acting with integrity, you know, I can. I can tell that about You. You're actually. You're actually doing the work. So if your unconscious mind. Basically what your unconscious mind is saying is, I'm gonna be me right up to the last minute, up to the last day. I'm gonna be sitting up, I'm gonna be feisty. I'm gonna be giving them hell. I'm reminding the people I love to love themselves and take care of themselves. And one morning, I'm just gonna wake up and be dead. You know, there is nothing wrong with that. You know, it's. It's. If that is how you want to go out, wonderful. Because the point is to. Is to talk to the child before any of life's damage ever happened, while the child is filled with love and life and potential. You know, it's just a human stem cell. You could be anything. Okay? And then the Elder has been through the puppet show, knows the strings, understands the whole sex and love game, understands the whole fitness body game, understands the whole game of making money while keeping your integrity. Integrity. Understands it all. Okay. Has seen every conceivable clown. They, you know, they. They know the circus. That part then talks to the younger part saying, you have these ambitions, these hopes and dreams, this potential. This, my child, is how you walk the world with integrity. This is how you do it. The adult then just listens to the dreams that the child has and the wisdom the elder has and just walks that path. Path every day, which is what you're doing. You're doing a good job. I. If I were you, I would trust that the part of you that's sitting up, that's. There's no problem with that at all.

Yeah. She sits up and holds the inner child.

Yes. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And I am. I think I'm learning alchemy. I think the word that I'm looking for is alchemize. But I don't have.

Open that. Open that up just a little bit. Spit. Give us 30 seconds of explanation of what you mean by that.

So I am. I'm discovering. So part of it is a language. Discovery. That's the word that keeps coming to me, is that there's an alchemization.

And for me, your terms, please.

Oh, well, when I think of alchemy, I think of all of these things coming together and transformation. It is a transformation. It's almost a sink. Synchronous. I just left a academic zoom, so I probably had some extra polysyllabic words floating around in my head. So for me, things are being synchronized.

Yeah. Did you read the Alchemist?

I Did I love the book? Yes.

I just read it recently and I can understand why. It's one of the best selling books in history. If alchemy is a transmution, transmutation of base metals into gold, the spiritual meaning of that is to. Is to spin flesh into spirit. You know that, that transformation. So that is alchemy. It is magic. And I feel like you're route in perfect.

I feel like that's happening and I feel like I'm beginning to feel myself move into a certain process. Like for me, what you, what you and Tananarif have with this, with these courses is. It's a whole restructuring of a thought of thinking of processes. So you come away from life as you knew it in order to do this. Even at one sentence per day.

Even at one sentence per day. That's all it takes. Yeah, but you're in the game.

But the, but the program is so robust. Like, I'm at work cleaning up at the end of the day, and I'm listening to something from the course or I'm listening to the podcast. There are all kinds of other valuable things that you all bring in. And so it means that there's a whole nother way of thinking. So, yeah, the body and the spirit are doing something different.

Good. You continue to represent, my dear. You're making, you're making me proud. You're making me proud. You're. You are a good student.

That means a lot. Thank you.

You know, look, I this path, people will criticize you for daring to think that you. They will think you think you're something special. What you're really saying is we all have this something special inside us, but some of us are pretending to be normal. What I'm saying to people, stop pretending to be normal. That will put you at risk. So you have to have your survival drive engaged so that you've got. You got a little bit of that. That I'm the baddest son of a bitch in the valley.

But I also, also think that we should think that we're something special. I think that that's kind of important and part of this process and I was learning it before in another program, but I'm getting more grounded. Like I can feel myself in my body in a way that I couldn't before. So for me, that's, that's meaningful too.

Fantastic. Continue to refine this process, journal it, and then one of these days, you and I are going to sit down and have a long conversation. All right. Fair trade coffee.

Fair trade coffee.

You got It. You got it. All right, so who else would like to talk with us a little bit? Is there anybody here who has never talked with me before? I would love to have a first time conversation with somebody. I think that we have engaged with everybody at some point in the past. Zinnia.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, Steven.

And everyone else, hi, how are you?

I am fine. I'm. I'm grateful for having been here and the reception that. So in terms of finding one's niche, I can say that I came to understand something profound from having been here those two times that, that I may have been putting pressure on people whom will not understand me. They, you know, can you change? Can you change be the thing I need? Can you change be the thing I need? So you know, it, it humbles me because I get to see that I simply needed to find the place in which there was a fit, not trying to make the place where I found myself so fit. To me, in the back of my head there is this. If you want to go dancing, you call your friends who like to go dancing. And if you want to play tennis, you go call your friends who want to do that, right? You want to sing, you call your friends who want to, you know, instead of trying to get this one person to do these five things with you and they just don't have the capacity. And that's a hard place to get to, to like, face, right?

So the first thing you have to do is fit inside yourself. You know that however it is you conceptualize the different aspects of your being, they all need to fit so that you know that you don't need to cut pieces of yourself off to make other people happy. Nor do you have to try to change other people that you are a tribe of one if need be. And the instant you realize that, you'll start attracting the other people who are really part of the. Your tribe.

And I'm happy to hear that. And while I, while you're saying that, I'm thinking you don't know the West Indian experience, but I'm being facetious when I say that it's the experience of children should be seen and not heard. Better yet, we're born in sin and shaped in iniquity. All things that I battle and stand to battle and show people that, well.

If you, if you pay attention to something like the Three Gates, the first one asks, is it true? So taking a look at all the beliefs that you were given as a child and asking yourself, is it true? Is a start because you might be believing or reacting to things that. Another level. You say you know something that's not true at all. It was just given to me in childhood by people who probably meant well, but, you know, were messed up themselves.

Steven. I am the disruptor within that group. And so there are things coming at me as I'm trying to educate or to say, no, no, you know, those.

So be sure to start with the adult part of you. That is a warrior who will protect your heart. Start with that. Then open your heart. First, be safe. Then open your heart. If you have trouble getting feeling that you're safe, visualize that child inside you and be the mother of that child. Moms don't play be a mommy tiger to protect that little girl that wants to give herself to the world and be nice and sweet and dance and heal everybody. But some of those people, drowning swimmers will drop, will drag down the lifeguard. People will attack you without hating you. They don't know you. You're a projection of what's in their minds. So first, take care of yourself. Then open your heart. And one of the things that will happen is people don't even know that it's okay for them to protect themselves. People don't even know that it's possible to be that way. When you're that way. You are showing them how to survive in the world. You're showing them how to be happy in the world. So first, be happy with integrity. And then, you know, feel safe. Then be happy. Then share with the world. That's the order. Safe, then love, then share. Okay? You have the right to feel safe in the world. Truth is, you have the responsibility. Only an adult can protect the children.

Thank you.

Okay. All right. Holly. Hi.

Hello, Holly.

Oh, unmute yourself.

Okay.

There we go.

Hi. How are you? I'm Holly and I've been on before. Yes, we did talk a couple of weeks ago. And I just wanted to say that I've been using a lot of the. Or just the. The life writing mastery techniques. The breathing. It sometimes hasn't been every hour, but it's been quite frequently throughout the day.

Excellent. As long as you. Five times a day gets you out of the zeros.

Yes. And I have been writing not a sentence every day, but sometimes a page or two every few days. Every couple, three days. I've had quite a few ideas that have been flowing.

Fourth.

So I wanted to say, you know, and I've been moving in the morning, you know, get up and I will start to. I do yoga. So, you know, wonderful.

Yoga is fantastic.

First thing in the Morning.

Yeah.

So I also wanted to say that I'll be getting married next Sunday.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Everybody. I'd like for everybody to cheer, wish her.

Love.

Thank you.

A lifetime of happiness. Absolutely.

Lifetime of happiness and more and more.

And I am really getting back into that space of loving him because I decided that I wanted to have a wedding, and that was my fault. But, you know, the process of having a wedding, the process of having and everything that goes with that, creates a huge amount of tension, creates a huge amount of discord between you and your partner. So that's why I was really doing the breathing. Sometimes I just had to breathe. And, you know, people. You know, you invite people, and then you have issues with, you know, the church and the church people.

And may I suggest.

May I suggest there's been a craziness going on?

Let me tell you.

I'd like to suggest just a tiny little reframe, say, between now and next Sunday. How do I have the perfect wedding and have fun in the process?

Yes. That's what I want to have, is fun.

You just.

So that's the whole thing. When you ask your brain a different question, it will start coming up with different answers. So it's not just having a perfect wedding. It's having a perfect wedding and having fun in the process.

And I definitely want to have process fun.

Yes.

From here on out. So there you go. And blessings to you, sweetheart.

Thank you very much.

I totally believe, you know, tonight, or even I totally believe in love. It's been 25 years for us, and I promise you that we. Let me give you a little gift. I don't know. Have you. Have you experienced the blessing dance?

No.

No. Okay.

Tananarive, are you there? Okay, she's not there, so I. I will tell you what it is. The blessing dance was given to me by one of my teachers. Sufi teacher, Taoist priest, martial arts master, and clinical psychologist. My only regret there is I didn't start working with him years ago because I only got to work with him for about 10 months, and then he had a stroke, broke. But he taught us something that's used in Sufi communities, and it's called the blessing Dance. The way tononarib and I do it is this. We face each other, and we do this every day. We face each other and we bow. You know, usually it's often like this little warrior sense of protecting the sacred space of our hearts. Then I place my hand over her heart. She places her hand over my heart.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

And I put My hand over hers. And she puts her hand over mine. And we look at each other's eyes. And we breathe together. 10 breaths. Just breathe together. 10 breaths. And then after 10 breaths, we sing the following to each other. You are my beloved. I open my heart to you. Then we breathe together. Another five breaths. And then we hug for five breaths.

Wow.

And then we bow. And then we get into our day. Every single day we recommit to our marriage. Every single day we sink into each other's eyes. And I just think to myself, this is the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world. This is woman has everything that I need. And if it. What I. What will happen is that other things in the world when I'm doing this right, all the rest of it will drop away. And it's just us. For just, just this moment. It's just us. And we do that six days a week.

That is beautiful. I am going to do that with him for sure.

And blessings to you and anything we can do to support you ever. Come here. And thank you so much for sharing with us.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Before I go on, I wanted to show you something. Show you guys something. I'm going to share screen. This is the COVID of the Star wars book. I have to turn in in 22 days.

Oh my goodness.

Lit.

Oh my gosh.

That's Sam Jackson. Absolutely. Mace Windu. And it's amazing.

It's beautiful.

And basically he is completing a mission that another Jedi, Qui Gon Jinn. Liam Neeson from the first Star wars movie, died before he could complete it. And in the process of doing this, he will free a planet and fall in love.

It looks like you have wings behind you too. And that hand coming forward is awesome. Oh, so much to say about this.

It does. This is, this is great. I. I'm very, very happy and my heart is very full and I love sharing these things. We've got 12 more minutes together. Is there anything I can do for you guys today? We're having some artists over to the house, some writers. We're having a little writers celebrity lawn. We, you know, we, we do that. We just, we love sharing this space. Steve B. Hey there, Steve B. That's you. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor, yes. Old movie with Chevy Chase in it. Dan Aykroyd. Okay. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. So finished two of my papers, got.

One more that I'm working on doing.

A few more sentences than one a day.

So I'm pretty happy about that.

Fantastic. You doing anything to engage with your body. Taking a walk or gardening or anything.

Mostly just heavy chores around the neighborhood, in the house.

Yeah. You might want to think about something. It doesn't have to take more than 60 seconds, like one sun salutation, one set of five Tibetans, you know, just do five of each of them. Something to. To push the rest of the world away and to work and to take care of your vehicle, your body vehicle, just for the sake of. It doesn't have to be much, just a little something. Just a little something every day. Engage with that part of who it is that you are. Take care of that. Okay.

Yeah.

Well, six days a week I do some sort of exercise for so long. But yeah, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a lot. It just has to be. You have to be focused. You have to really put your mind there and do that and, you know, it's good to see and you. All right, so is there anything we could do for you today? I don't think there's anything I. I.

Need from you or the group other than what you guys have kept on doing.

The, the.

I appreciate all the positivism that comes out in the discussion.

And I ride that wave fantastic. Surf, surf that way. Contribute to it as a surfer. You can. You're contributing by being here and take care and, you know, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's and all that good stuff and. Tom Barkley. Hi.

I just wanted to pass on something kind of nice that came along.

Let's hear it.

Got a belated Thanksgiving card from. From a very successful writer friend who I've known for a. For many decades. We met here in St. Louis. Anyway, she sent me a Thanksgiving card, wishing me a good year and stuff like that. And she said, and please keep writing. You're awfully talented. Now, this person who is award winning, she's a mystery writer and she's got us. She's got a shelf full. She has. She has some qualifications, but the fact is we've just been friends for close to 40 years. Still, it was awfully nice to hear. It was unsolicited.

Let me ask you a question, Tom. Have you ever written a mystery story? Mystery short story?

The. What you had coached, what you reviewed here in the group is more or less a mystery.

Okay. Okay.

And other. Other things that I've done have been mysteries.

Good.

A story that you read for me a long time ago where I was trying to make a black man the central character, the protagonist of the story. That didn't work very well. That was a mystery.

So, yes. Good. So is there a part of you that would enjoy publishing a mystery short story?

That's what I'm trying. I'm sending coached around now.

Good. And just, you know, get on to the next one. So if. If you. If you will commit to that process, we can coach you.

Okay. Well, I don't like. I don't like using up this group's time because so much of what you're working on and the group is working on is spiritual development. I should sign up for.

Look, if you sign up for life, right. This is. I done properly. Anything that you do in life is spiritual work. Anything that is done to the limit of your ability with genuine intent, Real heart is transforming the world. So these meetings are. Because Tanarive and I spend so much time in the space of our lives. These meetings would be best for black horror science fiction writers with. Who are married. Right. But the fact is that it's also good for writers or for artists or for people, you know, who, you know, you would not be taking away from what it is that we're doing to discuss your process as you create stories that speak your heart and will communicate genuine emotions to others and also enable you to have fun that is not separate from what we're doing here. Tom, you. You need not fear. I control the horizontal and the vertical here. You couldn't waste my time. Okay. I. I would like for you to have that fun. If it's something that your heart says, you know, I'd really like to do this. It's. You know, don't. You would be of benefit to the group. Can you imagine how this group will cheer you when you come on and say you published your story that we helped support you to create? Do you realize how that helps everyone believe that they can create their dreams and encourages people to bring that process in here? What you're saying over there in chat, what we say here, this is the work. Right here. This is the work. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks for sharing that, Tom. Anybody else? Okay, so let's go back over what we're kind of talking about here. If the magic formula is the closest we can get to a simple framework that is also powerful and organizes the other things where you can just look every day and you ask myself, do I know what I'm doing? Have I got a model of someone who has accomplished what I'm trying to accomplish, starting from where I started? Do. Am I taking daily action? Am I keeping my emotions high? You know, just. Just keeping my Enthusiasm, you know, like, why might have my son to tell him every time he walks through a doorway, strut, you know, just kind of, just kind of remind himself of who it is that he is every time he walks through a doorway. Every time you go through that transition, that's a Brendan Burchard thing. How clear are your goals, you know, and how much confidence it is. Is this action in alignment with my self image? Because there are few powers in the world that are greater than our urge to be in alignment with our own self image. So to visualize yourself, you know, the golden man, the best of who it is that you are. You know, I used to do that when I was running. I would imagine somebody who was a better runner than me right out in front. I would just try to model the way they ran, you know, to be able to. To really quickly check over those five things. Mapper, model action, emotion, gratitude, clarity of intention and conviction. And then at night, make sure, did I get a zero in any one of those? And then to play with the possibility that the average of all five is the same as the percent that you can expect to increase that week. What an interesting notion that it flooded flitted through me earlier, I remember now, but I pay attention, I pay extra attention when it comes back to me from my students. You know, it's like, what. What is your experience been? I like it. Was it. Was that Jaime, was that you, Jaime? Oh, you rascal, you. So, so we. We moving towards the end of the year. You know, we did the 90 day love feast, which is another thing on the list. And then we're playing with that, taking care of the child part of ourselves, falling in love with ourselves. You know, the love feast is primarily about your partner. Then we tried another 90 day one where you're falling in love with your own heart. And I think that in 2023, I think that the first quarter of the year I want to spend 90 days focusing on our adult selves, specifically career money, hunting and gathering and feeling good about that and actually serving that part of ourselves. Because quite frankly, money enables an awful lot of other things. And there's probably nothing that people have negative mixed feelings with more than money. I mean, they're also mixed feelings about our bodies. Of course, you know, the Hawaiian huna say that our bodies are like black bags where we store our unprocessed emotions. So there's a lot of that. And we also have mixed feelings about relationships, loving ourselves and loving another person. But frankly, when you've got money, you can take A week off from work to think about this stuff, work on this stuff. And when you've got money, you get to do what Tanarive and I are doing, which is starting tomorrow, we're going to be sending Christmas gifts to dozens of people just because we can, because we love it, you know, $50 or $100, we can. We can do that. And people join in with that. People help us. People send us money that they trust us to send it back out again. I. I am so appreciative to every person who has done that, who believes in this work, who believes that at Christmas time, letting people know that there are people who are generous of spirit, who care about them, who want them to be well, who want them to thrive, you can make a real difference. Find somebody to help this holiday season. Find someone who is hurting. Smile a little bit more. Just one of the things that are beautiful about holidays is it's a cultural agreement that maybe, maybe we'll be a little bit more kind to each other just for a little while. And that helps to set up a rhythm of life within a culture, that there are these times when you can count on people just being a little warmer, a little sweeter, a little more polite, a little more giving and caring. The meaning of living is giving. The only things you keep in life are the things that you give away. So that's today. Please unmute yourselves and say goodbye to everybody.

What a great day. Thank you, everyone.

I love you guys completely. Take care. I will see you, everybody, next Saturday. Bye. Bye.

Bye, everybody.

Bye.