FIREDANCE July 29th. The Three Gates and self-defense

Any process that will be genuinely transformative, that will change your life, will kill your ego. Your ego thinks it's you. It doesn't want to die. This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to change that. One of the secrets to changing is putting yourself in a situation where you don't have any choice but to go forward. And you will go through those. You know, Elizabeth Kubler Ross's stages of death, you know, denial, everything, every time. If we remembered clearly how much it hurt to get through those passages, maybe we wouldn't try. Or if we're not ready to change, if we can forget how much pain it took to get there, then when the pain starts happening, we can tell ourselves, oh my God, I can't do this. Rather than telling ourselves, oh, I've been here before, I've done this before. I've been frightened by these things before. I'll get through this. This is just chop wood, carry water.

Or.

The fear might loom so large that you don't even try. I can't do that. I can't leave my job. I can't leave this relations. I can't lose this weight. I can't change my life. The ego is sitting back there saying, damn straight you can't. Not without killing me. But your soul, the part of you that is deeper than that, can reply, we must. This is the path of our lives. We must take these actions. We must continue to move forward. We must expand, we must grow. One of the things that I feel is a secret to life is to have the things that you must do in order to progress, to survive in alignment with the things that you must do, to progress in alignment, hopefully with things that bring you joy. Writers, dancers, you know, people in the arts of any kind, we love what we do, but it is hard and it is painful. And I, I have so much respect for the people who can continue to face that pain, you know, and sometimes there's a song called what I Did for Love in the the play A Chorus Line where the dancers are noticing art. One of the dancers has been injured. Hold on a second. I'm going to let Tinanarive.

In.

I'm going to make her co host. Make Tinanarib do co host. Great T. Your co host. They're all trying out for the. For. For the chorus line. And the irony of the play is that we get to know these people as individuals deeply. But then the survivors, the ones who perform are all doing the exact same movements, like cogs in a machine. That's. That's the only reason they're on the stage. But even that level of performance is something they love so much that when one of them is injured and taken away and they're talking about the fact that they deal with this, that there's this thing that they love that they know they can only do for a few years, they're not going to be able to do this for very long, and that an injury could happen at any time that cuts their career, and yet there's nothing else they would rather do with their lives. You know, I knew that I would rather fail as a writer than succeed at anything else. I put my honor, my survival at, you know, on the table. And I said, this is who I'm committed to being. When people do that, it's very difficult to stop them. It's very difficult to stop somebody who is willing to die before they quit. Every. Every warrior knows that, and so does every mother. This is why I would rather fight a black belt than a woman protecting her child. Because she has 100% clarity that she would die before she let anything happen to that child. And once you have that clarity, questions of what does the law say or do? Will I get hurt? All that stuff is out the window. The other person is worrying about that stuff. Your only concern is, let me die and take you with me so that my child will survive. That is all there is. I mean, really, that's all. That switch right there. Flip that switch and you become a very different person. And to a huge degree, that's the secret of the martial arts. It's not the punching and kicking, although that's useful and interesting. It's removing all of the obstructions between you and your survival drive. Once you have done that, it's about 80% of what the martial arts can teach you. The rest of it, technique and fitness and skills and strategies. All fun stuff. I love that stuff. But the real question is, do you have permission to sell your life dearly? Do you? Do you have permission to look at someone and say, let's die together? I will not let you treat me this way. This is it. No rules, no games, no play, no hierarchical nonsense. This is life and death. You made it that way when you came at me. Is this what you want? If it is, let's do it. That there's so much power in that position, if you take a look at that and apply it to things like writing, you know, or working or anything else, you find the thing in life where. Where you're prepared to commit completely. Because what are you selling in life other than your time and energy. You know, if every time you got a paycheck you had to cut a joint off one of your fingers, you'd understand pretty clearly what the cost of your money is that you're selling your life for the money that you get back for the time you spend with people, the energy that you spend. It's critical to be serious about that so that you don't look up and say, I wasted my time, you know, every day of your life. I don't want you to spend your time. I want you to invest it. I want you to invest your time in coming closer to being the person that you truly want to be. Anyway, I don't know why I went off on that. You triggered a whole bunch of stuff.

I come in with questions in my head that I don't verbalize, and you hit them.

Excellent.

Well, that's what I'm here for anyway, so let's kind of get started here. It's. It's so wonderful to see you. And let's. Let's unmute. Everybody just greet. Greet each other.

I mean, hello, everybody.

Hello, everybody.

Hello.

Fantastic. And there's. There's my wife. Wait, are you. You masked up over there?

Hey, I'm at a nursing home.

Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. That makes sense. And I trust things are going well, Sweetheart.

Yes, well enough.

I may be in and out, interested and whatnot.

I'm so pleased that you. This is my good lady wife, Tananarive do. We're celebrating her 25th anniversary. And I love her so much. It's. I. I can't even. There's no way to even begin to quantify it. I'm actually flying out to see her on Monday. We're going to celebrate our 25th anniversary. I'll also get to see my father in law and my spiritual father, Steve Muhammad, the martial arts master who made me and a new friend I'm meeting out there. And it's just Jason will be here by himself for three days, which is maybe the longest time we've left him totally by himself. But four days. Yeah, four days. That's true. So this is. This is for all of us. It's an expansion and it's a deepening. And I am so grateful that we're able to do this and not interrupt our time with you because you guys are so precious to me. I love you so much that all week I think about what I can give to you, about what I can do for you. I wake up in the morning I on Saturday morning, especially thinking, who can I be? What can I do? How can I be more honest, more open, clearer, kinder? If I can do that with you, then I am that way all the time. I believe that the three gates, is it true? Is it kind, is it useful? Can take you all the way home. Whereas it's more difficult to do if you're dealing with in a war zone or the mugger or someone who's very antagonistic. It can be difficult, you know, do you owe a mugger telling him that you've got a $20 bill in your shoe? You know, I say no, you know, and is. It is unfortunate then that you have to lie. But that's just kind of. That's practicality in that sense. In the same thing is true in war. So one of the reasons that we say, you know, war loses the dog, you know, that that war loses hellish behavior, you know, cry havoc and loose the dogs of war, is because it is a disruption of ordinary social rules. And so people who cannot embrace the three gates are often people who are living in a war zone or believe that they are and understand that that's the world from their perspective. And you get to make some decisions about whether or not you would like to share that perspective. That we start out in life moving away from pain, but hopefully by the time we become adults, the basic things we need to do to deal with pain in our lives, ideally, what I call an awake, aware adult human being. By the time you become an adult, you have your basic everyday behaviors set up so that they produce money, so that they take care of your body, so they take care of the basics in your relationship. You've got that kind of automatic. And then you get to ask questions having dealt with fear, because that's the automatic stuff. You then get to ask, what makes me happy, what makes me joyful, what allows me to express love? And once you step into that and you fill yourself with joy, the next question is, how can I be of service? The meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. And the people who cannot embrace that are people who are still running away from fear. They are not bad people. Most anger and bad behavior is fear. And if you can help them deal with fear, they can then relax and kind of look around and realize that all their life, sometimes they've been afraid without being able to admit that they were afraid, without ever having really dealt with their fear. And then they can ask, what makes me happy? And if you have a world of people who are not afraid of their fear. It's not that fear goes away, it's that you develop a different relationship with it. Fear is natural. The problem is when you are not aware of or in denial about the fact, you're afraid because then you're angry without understanding where it comes from, and you blame the outside world for how you're feeling. And it's not that there are not things in the outside world that need to change. It's not that you do not want to take action, but panic and fear and anxiety are not necessary. What's necessary is that you pay attention. Fear, panic, anxiety are the ways your body, mind gives you a clue that something needs to be paid attention to. But once you've paid attention to it, once you've noticed it, once you've noticed, it's like you feel a flash of fear and it's that there's a dog. But then you notice, well, the dog is behind a fence and he's on a chain. So you've noticed the dog, but you've also noticed that there's nothing to be worried about with the dog. If the dog is loose, then you take action. You go in the other direction, or you pick up a trash can lid, or you pick up a stick, or you say nice dog, or whatever it is that you need to do so that you are dealing with it. But just the panic part, the part where your senses are clouded because there's so much violent emotion, whereas we're all wired up with that, it's not necessary. And the masters in different disciplines look at somebody who's coming at them with a knife, and you better believe they're paying attention. And there is fear, but there is not panic. The fear is motivating action and keeping your attention so that you can have clarity, so that you can do the best you can at that moment. Can you talk your way out of this? Can you run? Can you create a barrier between you and the other person? You know, whatever it is that you're thinking about, whatever it is, you have to accomplish whatever obstacles you're facing in life. Once the fear has gotten your attention, it is reasonable to ask, how can I center myself and calm myself in the midst of this? Which is one of the reasons why the most basic principle that we do in finance is you breathe at least five times a day. And ideally, if anxiety is something that is really hitting you hard, then just at the top of every hour you breathe, you do 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. Just set your timer top of every hour. Breathe for 60 seconds. Rewire the way your body reacts to the perception of stress so that it does not become strained. And from that position, all the storm is still there. But you're in the eye of the storm. You're in the center of the cyclone. And from there you can say, there are, you know, there is a fire. People are panicking. Let me see. Which way is the door? Which way is the door? Ah, there is the door. And if you can stay calm in that, you can lead a hundred people to safety through the fire. Because somebody in that room was calm enough to ask, what's really happening? What do we need to do? Rather than the, you know, very natural human thing, which is run in a circle with your hair on fire and say, that's natural. But the children are not safe unless someone is an awake, aware adult and says, there's a fire. What needs to be done? The world burns if no one can be calm. So it is not lack of empathy with people. It is not caring. It is not being cold. It is not being distant. It is recognizing that there is pain and there is struggle in life and that we need to be calm to deal with it, even if we need to be passionate to make our connection with the people that we love. So that's kind of opening salvo here because what we're really about is celebrating people's changes. If there are three major arenas in life, one of them is the body, physical health and fitness. One of them is the mind, learning and career making money. And one of them is emotions, our love for ourselves, our connection to our families. And with. I always do this, and I always chuckle about it because my business partners hate the fact that I'll laugh at myself for doing an ad. It's like. But when I talk about this stuff, anybody who knows me knows I will answer any questions that you have from here. I don't hold anything back.

But.

But I also like to. I will tell you that I've got my new product on basically ethical seduction for incels that the idea of how do we align ourselves so as to be radiating that we are healthy, happy animals and that somebody would have a good time with us. I mean, it's not that complicated, but so many people miss that. So if you go to incelcure.com that's the URL incelcure.com and you'll see the new course. And I'm so pleased with it. I'm so happy about it. I will be talking about it because I realized, you know, we did the soulmate course. Tananarive and I did the soulmate course together. But I realized that finding my soulmate was 100% based on the fact that I lost any fear that I couldn't get laid anytime I wanted to. Literally, I had to do that. I had to figure that out. Well, how does this work? What's going on? And it shouldn't be that difficult, but it is for so many of us because we don't love ourselves. We don't understand the mating game. We don't understand guys especially, can have men and women have different issues around. Around this stuff. So I'll just focus on. On the guy stuff here. Guys, frankly, don't understand that women like sex too. I mean, it's amazing how few guys understand that there is this natural human appetite, like eating waffles. Now, they may not like your flavor of waffles. They may like blueberry waffles instead of buckwheat. But all you have to do is find the people who like blueberry waffles and make sure you make a good blueberry waffle and radiate to the world who you are. Every bird in the forest finds a partner, but you have to be a healthy bird, and you have to be able to satisfy what the instincts of the other birds say. This would make a good mate. And you have to sing your song so that people know that you're there. So that course is absolutely about applying the three gates and the hero's journey to the question of how do I get someone to want to take a test drive with me? Because in a sense, that's kind of what sex says before you're ready for the big show, actually getting married and having kids, which the average human being in the course of human history has done. But before you get there, those test drives can be a lot of fun. You know, just. Just to be blunt about that. So anyway, that's. That's my ad for that incelcure.com. so before I go on, I would love to hear if anybody has a story about having improved themselves by 1%, because that's the whole thing. I want everybody to focus on improving themselves by just 1% per week. And the theory is, operating theory is if you will spend one hour per week working on yourself, sharpening your axe, you will improve yourself by 1%. Other words, you can improve yourself by 1% for every hour that you work on yourself every week. So the fire dance broadcasts are designed to be one of those hours. But for God's sake, if there's a lot of stuff happening in your life. Put an hour in every day, you know, watching YouTube videos with mentors and people who you admire, People who are going to lift you up, that you're going to feel, you know, when you turn it off, you feel better than you did when you put it on. How many people do you know who doom scroll? The first thing they do every day is go on the Internet and find something to be depressed about. Who knows, people, people like that. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes those people are in the mirror, by the way, just like looking at things that involve people who you do not know can tear you down. They can also lift you up. You can find somebody who says just the perfect thing at the perfect moment so that it counteracts something negative. Maybe you need somebody to believe in you. Maybe you need somebody to say that something is possible. Maybe you need somebody to say that it's okay to love yourself or it's okay to even believe that it's possible for tomorrow to be better than yesterday. You know, the only thing. For those of you who might be joining us for the first time, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Steven Barnes. I'm a martial artist and novelist and television writer and ecstatic husband and father and, you know, teacher and life coach. And I just love talking about the technologies that I use to create the life that I have right now, which is stunning. I mean, I just, I am so happy. And the only thing I can do to move myself forward is to try to empty myself out. The thing that was disappointing, one of the few things that's been disappointing about succeeding is that before I was a success, if I talked about success principles, people would kind of, you know, they would kind of say, oh yeah, right, Steve, you know, but you're not all that successful. You know, how do you, what do you have to say? But then after I was successful, their attitude was, well, you were just lucky, Steve. You don't know anything. It's like the rest of us aren't lucky, you know, so, you know, what do you have? What do you, you know, what do you know? And now that, quite frankly, to be honest with you, I accomplished everything I set out to do when I was a kid. I wanted to be a martial arts master, I wanted to master writing, and I wanted to have master relationships. I think that if one says that being ecstatically married for 25 years and raising a family isn't mastering relationships, I don't know what that would be. And there are obviously levels beyond levels beyond levels. If you look at somebody who does just a little bit every week to improve. Before long, they're in a different territory. They do not look like the person you used to know. And it isn't that they transformed magically. If they did, they just took another step toward the mountain every day, you know, they. They stumbled, they hit the brambles. They got tired and frustrated, but they kept going. And so now people are accusing me of having been privileged. And so I think that that's. That's the fear thing. That's their ego, saying, I have to believe that I did the best anybody could do, not. It's not enough to do the best they could do with the resources they had. And I've been confused sometimes, you know, about. I don't know what privileges they think I had. Are they saying they think I was just smarter than them? It's rarely that. It's very rarely that. So it's like, you know, okay, so you're just saying I'm smarter than you, and that's. So I was able to do these things. Well, no, no, I'm not saying that, Steve. It's frustrating because all I want to do is. You know, every day, you see people who are in pain and fear and their disappointment. It's like, I don't want to be like the. Like the therapist. There was a story. The two. Two psychologists work in the same building, and they're traveling in an elevator. And there's one. One of them is young, and the other one is older, and the older guy is just kind of humming, and he looks great, and he looks like, you know, this is. At the end of the day, they're coming down the elevator, and the younger guy is a shambles. He is a mess. He's just like. And he's looking at the old guy. I don't understand you. You know, all day, we listen to these stories of heartbreak and loss and infidelity and crushed dreams and lost businesses and disobedient children and depression. And how do you listen to all that and not have it affect you? And the old guy says, who listens? I don't want to be like that. I want to be able to take that in and have something useful to say. So with all of that framework, who's got a story of having improved by 1%? Dubois. Love to hear from you, sweetheart.

Oh, my God. Yes. I'm really excited.

Yeah.

Because I. I paid attention to what you said to me last week, and I actually tried that. I actually tried that. Get it done before one thing.

Yeah, Done by one.

Done by One. Now I'm going to tell you my, my, my. I'm not going to say downfall. What I can drift into and habitually is that if I don't do things precisely, I stopped doing them at all. How so? However, so I did four straight days of getting it done before one and I was absolutely. And now, mind you, I've written 20 sentences this week.

All you have to do is write one. If you, if you set it up so they're just writing one sentence is your win, then the rest of it is play.

Oh gosh, it just, it was just pouring out of me on two separate stories. But the thing is that one, one, I did that and then I did not do the next couple of days by one.

So all you have to do is figure out why you.

That's what I've been doing. So I sat down and I journaled. Why, why did this happen? Oh, because you didn't get enough sleep last night because you stayed up too late and you didn't do your nightly routine the way you should, the way, you know, that works for you. So you didn't get enough rest. So you were all thrown off kilter because you, you got up so late.

And blah, blah, blah. Okay, here's something, here's something for you, Deborah, when you, when your energy is not abundant or it is not functioning in the way that you want it to, like being a human laser, everything working together. Look into the last 72 hours. Yeah, it's always going to be something. You didn't get enough rest, you didn't eat properly, you didn't exercise, somebody upset you, something. Just keep your journal. Look back over the last 72 hours. You will start seeing the patterns that stop you from operating at your highest level. Absolutely guaranteed.

Well, I tell, I tell you one thing that Done by One, I, I really understand where Jason's coming from because once I got that stuff done by one, it was like, oh, okay, now I can do my genealogy research and I can play this game. And so let me all without guilt.

So first of all, fantastic and thank you for sharing. For the rest of the group, Done by One is just. You take. You know, the Pareto principle says that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. You find the 20 activities in the course of a day that get you 80% of the results of the results and you do those before 1 o' clock and you make sure that it's in all three basic areas. That means you need a little bit of working out. You need to make connection emotionally and you need to get your work done. So it could be done by one or through by two or three, by three or out the door by four, whatever it is. But you set it up so that you. You do the most important things first and then you. You move heaven and earth to be sure that you're doing that. And thank you for sharing. Divorce Prune.

Hi, Steven. Thank. Yeah, thanks for the invitation. I have.

Where did you get the invitation?

I think it was bouncing. Well, I got it through Facebook and I don't remember whether I got linked with you first or with David Gerald's five o' clock Sunday things first.

David, David. David Gerald was the first person who befriended me when I came in the science fiction field.

Not surprising.

Yeah, he is.

You are both wonderful, lovely people.

David is great. I'm glad his life is working.

Yeah, I got to hang out with him and I. I just got to sit and hang with you a little bit at Oricon maybe 10 years ago. Sit and listen. Talking about boxing again. Yeah.

What can I do for you?

Anyway, you were asking what we've done for little improvements.

That's right, 1%. Just aim at 1% improvement per week. Well, tell me about it.

Well, I did a massive reassessment. My wife died two years ago, cancer. And I knew that my life could go in 15 different directions. Some of them would be downhill. We had enjoyed ballroom dancing together and beautiful. And when we got the terminal diagnosis, she said, what do you want me to do with my time? She was talking about, I've got to do this accounting. I got to set these things up. I got to get all the databases so you don't have. And I stopped her right there. I said, no, come back and dance with me.

There you go.

Well, we. I took a week off our private lesson the day after she went into hospice and she died a week later. I took that lesson off and the week after that I was back on the floor.

Tell me that clarity, both your love of her and the clarity about needing to continue on with life.

Yeah.

I would like to know what values and beliefs you had that got you right back out there.

How did you. Okay. Well, number one, our dance instructor and is one of our acquired daughters. You know, people you just find in your life.

Yes.

The other acquired daughter is a gal that my wife mentored through art school while my wife was getting her doctorate in philosophy of visual art. So there's a lot of life story behind that. My background is a Preacher's kid. I'm now a preacher in my own right. My dad did it. Well, my dad did it with four years in seminary. I did it with 25 bucks to California. But I do weddings, I do counseling. I did career counseling, work, et cetera. In college, I was a telephone crisis lane volunteer for three years, one shift a week. So I, you know, I've got a lot of tools. And in the five years before Deb died, I counseled four people through losing their spouse.

Yes.

So a lot of this was taking my own advice.

Excellent.

And I was glad to find out that it works for me as well as for other people.

But it was one of the best breakthroughs I ever had in my life. And I talk about it in the Insult Cure book. There's an expression that from time to time, life gives you a cubic inch of opportunity, Rabbit, or it's gone forever. I was alone. My first marriage had blown up. I'd lost everything, and I'd lost my sense of who I was. This is about 30 years ago.

I remember you writing through that period.

Yes. And I asked myself an important question. I got myself out of my funk by asking myself an important question. What would I say to my own student? What would I say to a client who came to me with this set of problems? And that gave me the emotional distance I needed to get out of my needy, wounded, abandoned child and start saying, I need. I need to deal with this. My son needs a father. My daughter. Except my daughter before my son was born. My daughter needs her father to be an adult here because this is a dangerous situation for the family. So stepping out of my. Stepping out of my sad sack, the fact that life has so many incredibly painful things that happen to us and that love can have a cost like that. And then ask myself, why am I in love with life anyway, with all of this? Why is life wonderful? Why?

What?

The trees are there, but there's space between the trees. Let me find the space between the emotional obstacles. And I had to shrink ego down to the size that I could get between the trees. So that perspective, the fact that you had helped other people, gave you the perspective, the tools you needed. And then you found the perspective to be able to step out of your pain and. And look at the situation as a problem to be solved, as. As a situation to be dealt with. My guess is that you knew that if you continued to dance, that dance was a metaphor for you, for life, in a way that you and your.

Oh, yeah, it's. You know, I told Deb And I've. I've told Laura, the dance instructor, as well. You know, whatever is going on, I know that's where I can go. The music starts. She steps into my frame. And for the next 20 minutes, nothing hurts.

There you go. And by the way, first of all, total admiration for what you did. And total empathy.

It's.

What.

For what you went through, which is, you know, the cost of love.

Yeah.

Well, it's.

It's like I tell people. It hurts because you did it right.

That's right. If it didn't hurt, you didn't do it right.

And what I needed to do, what I knew I needed to do. You know, Deb and I saw this coming. Five years off. We had plenty of time to. To say goodbye, to make our peace, et cetera. So it's not like something got ripped away suddenly from me. We had plenty of time to deal with it. And she. You know, she died in hospice in our family room. And I was there with poetry and music and whatever else she needed, and it was just.

Did it right.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm gonna guess something about you, Prune. You're gonna have a good death.

I expect so.

Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna do it, right. Good man.

The only thing I've gotten it. This is the germ of a story. I. I do not yet have the skills to write because there's so many other things to do besides my writing.

Well, if you would like. Yeah, go. If you would like to use this frame as. As a motivation to write.

Oh, I. I've been using you as a motivation to write for years.

Okay.

It's just that I. I have so many other things I want to get good at that I haven't yet chosen to put the time into the writing.

But.

Yeah, as long as it's your choice. But when you decide to do that, I would love to see a story of yours and to analyze it in the group.

Yes, I. Yes. This. This is where I'm coming. Now that Madam Ursula is no longer with us.

Okay. Is there anything else we can do for you today? Well, move on to the next question.

Okay. I was just saying, besides getting back to dance, what I've done is to develop habits. I get up in the morning. Sometimes I take myself out for breakfast. Sometimes I get it here. But then I go down to the park where Deb and I walked so often, and I'll walk a mile and a half, two miles. I'll do some calisthenics in between, slowly moving those up. I come back and now that my favorite dance partner and dear friend is a musician, I've been moved to get my clarinet and soprano sax back into shape. So I'll stop in the painting studio.

Allow me to ask you a question.

Yeah.

One of the things in it. Prun.

Prune.

Prune. It is prune. Okay.

I take long showers.

One of the things that is in the book for incels.

For incels. Yeah.

Is the idea that a lot of the rules of male female relationship are non verbal and that social dancing is a beautiful way to learn that, you know, whether it's swing dancing or salsa or tango or whatever, that learning how to hold the frame with a stranger.

Yes.

Interact and give them all of your attention. Move together is a beautiful metaphor for relationships and for the. For people who don't understand much. I thought I said much better than me trying to give you a list of rules. Find a dance class.

Yes. I highly, I highly recommend it. It was a wonderful way to get closer with my wife and now I'm getting some good friends and I've got this one. I don't know where the relationship is going to go, but it's. It's absolutely incredible.

I'm so happy for you. Proven you're a man.

It's just, you know, there, there are these times where we'll get out and do something else together and simply we will get into these modes where we drop the egos, kick them under the table and you, you know as well as anybody where you can get with that.

That's right.

I don't know how to describe it, but it's fantastic.

You don't need to describe it. I think we've all had those moments.

Yeah.

Just think about the moments where we were present but our, our image of ourself was not present. It was just happening. We were just doing something and then all of a sudden we noticed, wow, where did that hour go? Where did that two hours go? Whatever.

Yeah.

So I need to move on to Tom.

Yes.

But thank you so much. Prude Tom. How are you doing, buddy?

Oh, getting along the usual stumbles and fumbles.

Of course.

The, the week has been kind of intense and I worked really hard at getting a particular job and luckily I found a good recruiter, someone I could talk to and who could talk back to me. And we worked on getting me placed with a company that didn't really want to pay what I'm worth, but it would be a lot. It would have been a longer term job. And it was stuff that I had done, challenging stuff that I had done three or four times before for other companies, so I was feeling pretty good about it and put in a couple of hours rewriting my materials, answering questions, you know, doing what needed to be done to sell myself. It was marketing. Marketing stuff that I've seen you and Tananarive do and other people who are successful at selling. Selling themselves. Got the call on Thursday that the HR guy at the company refused to look at my materials any further than he had or to meet with me because I hadn't been steadily employed for the last two years. And that was his. That was his yardstick. Now, the fact is he's hired the wrong person for this particular set of jobs twice. And he. I'm thinking this through. He's terrified of making a third strike in the company that he's in.

Yeah.

The recruiter could not have been more supportive. She was just a gem. Much younger than me, obviously married, two children and boisterous, happy kids. And I'd hear them in the background when we talked, and that was really kind of nice. And I feel like I made a friend, at least a professional friend there. And she was near to tears when she was telling me that things hadn't worked out and that I'd been cut off cold for reasons beyond my control. Well. And that she had gone back a second time and tried to sell me again because she believed in me. Now, how often do you get to hear that?

Not often enough. But I'm hearing something else, Tom. I'm hearing that you are handling this in an extremely mature, adult fashion. You were actually able, without thinking less of yourself, to see it from the recruiters point, from. From the HR guy's point of view. You understand how rare that is because you can do that. Well, let's just say that's an entirely different level of the game in terms of getting hired. That's just gonna be a numbers game. You're gonna have to go to certain number of interviews, and then you'll get the job, you know, but. But to be able to maintain, you know, to the art of success is to be able to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. So since you didn't take it personally, since you saw this as a strategic move on his part to try to save his job, your part, try to get a job, and you have an ally there. Dark night of the soul. We were just talking earlier about if you can see the dark night of the soul coming, one of the things you do is you make sure you've got a damn good set of all allies. It sounds to me like you, your team, you know, that sounds to me like your recruiter is a gym, that, that she is an ally, that, that you need to lift her up. You need to make sure that she knows how appreciative you are and make yourself invaluable to her in the sense of, of being exactly the kind of person where she will want to wake up in the morning thinking, how do I get toma job? Because Tom appreciates. Tom understands. Tom is a mature adult man. There ain't that many mature adults around, male or female. So what you did this week, I would say that that was more than 1% improvement, Tom. You handled your mud.

And made a coffee cup out of it.

That's right. That's right. Now you're talking. Now you're talking. You made a coffee cup out of it. There is an, there is an irreducible amount of mud we're gonna get in life. Let's all make coffee cups.

Boy, I could have a whole cupboard full, couldn't I?

Absolutely.

I made it a point to tell her. The first words out of my mouth were, you did everything right. Don't feel like you failed. We had this to deal with. And I told her my sense was, something's wrong at the client company, so just a number been saved from another disaster and you.

And I told her that you did a great job. Thank you for bringing this to us so we can support you, praise you. Everybody unmute yourselves and cheer. Tom.

Way to go, Tom.

Thank you very much.

Well struck.

Great job. From my heart, Tom.

And the other, the other good news is I sketched, I started two more short stories for, you know what your five page.

So well, wonderful. I can't wait to take a look. You know, I, I expect you to be a little bit, you know, to, to learn from the, from the review, the interrogation you got last time, the analysis you got last time and just step on that pain and raise yourself up. We're going to get you published, buddy.

We came close. Oh, that was the other thing. I, I, I got, I made this, I submitted that story, got rejected. I am now an official writer.

Writer. As soon as you, as soon as you write, you're, you're my kind of writer. As soon as you finish when you submit, you are now on the path to being an author. The path to being an author is to, you know, write, finish what you write, polish it as much as possible, submit it, move on to the next story, constantly be reassessing where you are and repeat this Process a hundred times. So as long as you're in that mix, you will not be able to get to story 25 without selling. Nobody has, I think maybe 26. Oh.

If I may, if I prune. I just wanted to say my wife and I started ballroom dancing.

Yes.

And we had to stop because her lungs wouldn't support it. And she was also having vision problems at the same time. And cardiopulmonary failure is, is what got her. But what you describe is very much what we tried to do. And when I lost her, I thought about, okay, how am I going to get myself out of the house? I did something very similar to what you did. She had talked about how if I would just go back to making music.

Yes.

For people and with people, that I would make new acquaintances. And I wound up joining. I thought about, okay, I don't, I'm clumsy. I don't play piano at all well, what can I play? And I thought, well, the ukulele only has four strings. Then I found out that there is a bass ukulele that is modified with heavier floppy string, rubbery strings and a bass pickup. I thought, ah, I read the clef and I know how bass lines work. So that's what I joined a Hawaiian music group.

Tom. All human beings, that core path of what humans want include being a valued member of a tribe.

Right.

You know, to find a tribe of like minded people and to be of value to that tribe. And when you can do that, frankly, there will be women in that tribe who will find you attractive and that you might find attractive. At the very least, they're going to be friends, how far things go.

And I found a ballroom dancing school not too terribly far from where I'm living right now.

Very good. Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent. Well, that's great. Is there anybody else who wants to, you know, before I go into my inevitable. Yes, Jaime.

Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's not quite as dramatic as losing spouses or things, but the process of doing the five minute miracle and a morning ritual and the Tai chi has helped me become really aware of some of my obstacle patterns.

Give us an example.

Well, I'm easily distracted and when I try to do a task and focus on it, I see another task that needs to be done and I start it and then I see another task. It's almost like that adhd. Oh, look, shiny squirrel thing. And what happened this week, and it's that 1% progress thing as a consequence of becoming aware of it. I noticed it as it was happening and I was able to stay focused and actually finish what I was doing. And the best example of it happened this morning. I was listening to a 15 minute long guided meditation, but I didn't notice the time when I hit the play button on it. And my 9am first alarm to do the breathing happened right in the middle of the guided meditation. And ordinarily, as part of that distraction thing, I've noticed I can be really emotionally reactive if I get interrupted. Like if I spill the salt or I catch my belt loop on the doorknob or, or it's like there's this frustration and tension and anger that comes out instantly. I can go from fat, dumb, happy, blissful to raging in a split second. And I think it's connected to that distractibility. And today when the alarm went off and I was blissed out in the middle of this guided meditation, great. And I did not go to that emotional reaction. I recognized it. I continued what I was doing because I was already breathing while I was doing the meditation. So it's not like I had to change anything.

Exactly.

But the 1% progress is I'm not having that extreme emotional reaction to minor mouse turd inconveniences. I'm not pole vaulting over mouse turds.

Here's something for you to look at there. Anger is fear, right? Anger is a mask over fear. So what's the reason you get angry is because you're afraid. So it's not that you go from being fat happy, it is that and then suddenly there is fear. The fear was there, but you weren't in touch with it. You learn to meditate and get in touch. You will start noticing pockets of fear come bubbling up. You'll remember events, things, frustrations. So for coming up and allowing you to process them. And as you process them, there'll be less fear in your body mind to be triggered into anger. When the fear is properly integrated with love, it simply is energy. Newborn babies have that blend of fear and love that just manifests as energy. It's you know, earth below, heaven above. No one in the world like me. They're just screaming because life primal. So as you, you're working on your weight, you know, there's some things you're working on there. Yeah. Fact that you have been burying emotions, right. You want the techniques that will make it possible for you to process those emotions safely. And as things come up, be sure to keep a journal of this stuff so you can look back over it in a year from now or six months and look at your progress. Look at what you were saying was going on earlier, because oftentimes, as we change and grow, grow, we simply think, oh, that's just 24 hours. We stop giving ourselves credit. We stop celebrating for the beautiful things that we've done in our lives. Everybody on here is someone who's actually committed to changing themselves, actually committed to being honest and healthy. That means they have run into the real crap inside us, the real stuff that's there. When you get in touch with that, you also get in touch with the real beauty, the real boy. So fantastic, Jaime. Great stuff, buddy. Thanks, Karen. But by the way, before you speak, Karen, your hand is up. Prune. Did you. Was your hand still up for a reason? Okay. So, Karen, how are you, sweetheart? One of my oldest and dearest friends. Oh, you're muted. Unmute yourself. Unmute yourself. Karen. Karen. I can't hear you.

I got it.

There you go.

There you go.

Yay.

So what's up, sweetheart?

Well, a couple of things. About a month ago, I said to myself, I wonder what would happen if I took Steve Barnes seriously and actually tried this breathing thing every hour. You know, particularly when I'm at work and I'm stressed. And I set my little timer over here. If it goes off, it's about two in a few minutes, and actually breathe. So I got myself a little reminder to breathe. And I've been doing this for a month now. And I went, you guys have to understand that I've. I've had COPD for about. About 40 years because my parents were heavy smokers. I was not. And I just did a breathing test with my doctor, and he said. He looked at me and he said, you no longer have copd. You have severe asthma, but you do not have copd. He says, your oxygen levels are good, your energy is good, and you are doing remarkably.

That makes me very happy, sweetheart. It makes me so happy. I love you, Karen. You have always been a good, decent, loving, giving human being.

Well, you'll like the next result of this process. I was doing my breathing about a week ago, and I woke up on a Wednesday, and I said, look, I have a body. I'm in a body. What is this body? And I go in the mirror and I look and I go, wow, you're not 20 anymore. You have some work to do every day, darling. Oh, my gosh. So, you know, I've been making my doctor's appointments, and I've been talking to people, and I've been walking. I've been going up the stairs at work, two floors to go to the Bathroom. Because I live so much in my heart.

Yes.

And so much in my head. You guys are going to think it's completely nuts, but it's kind of like I forgot that I have this body that is working with me.

Nuts, Sweetheart. It's one of the technical term for that, for an aspect of that is sensory motor amnesia. The Hawaiian huna say that the body is like a black bag where we store our unprocessed emotions.

Okay.

Connect those two things, and you'll see that an awful lot of people store painful emotions in their bodies and then forget about it so I don't have to deal with this. Okay. Sensory motor amnesia is just the. If you don't use it, you lose it. So learning. It's like I was dealing not too long ago with a gentleman who is not expected to live a lot longer now. He was in the tai chi class, and I could see nobody had to tell me that he was in severe trouble. He was literally forgetting how to operate his body. He couldn't figure out how to make his fingers wiggle, how to make his wrist wiggle. It was like. Is like the connections were shutting down. So it's like every day, at the very least, just. Just get in touch with you, do your breathing and do joint mobility just. Just to get into your body and then figure out what it is that you want. You know, there are allies. You. I would always be there for you if there's anything that I can do. But you have other allies as well. And the important thing is you have the right. You give so much joy to the world, Karen. You have the right to that joy yourself. Oh, you're a genuine. You're a real Christian. Oh, really? You actually make it work. You actually care. You actually put yourself out there, and you always have. You and Chris are good human beings, and you deserve joy. If there's anything I can do to support you, you have only to ask.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me be here and love and appreciate everyone's stories. So now, you know, the journey that I'm on, it's like, you know, okay, I'm getting my lungs in the right spot. Gosh, what else have I got going on here?

That's right. Well, you got three things. You've got your, you know, your body, you've got your career, you've got your relationships. And in general, you will make the most progress by working on the part of you that is weakest.

Yes.

You know, we get a lot of. You get a lot of encouragement for working on our strengths. But that can lead to being hugely imbalanced. Like one of those houses, like the psycho house at the Universal City Tour looks great from one direction. Go around behind it and there's nothing there. There are an awful lot of people like that. They're really good at making money, or they're really good at being a mom or dad, or they're really great in the gym. But at being a human being. If you don't have all three of those things to a certain minimum, you're not even in the game, not the real game. That's one of the things that in modern civilization, we've lost that a little bit. We were cut off from the necessity to engage physically, mentally, physically with the world. And so we go and hide in the arenas that we feel most comfortable. So, anyway, thank you so much for sharing, Karen.

Love you. Love you all. Thank you for letting me be here.

So if there's anybody else who has one, then this is your chance. Otherwise, I'll go into what I planned to talk about today. That's the whole thing. I always have a plan to talk about something, but if you distract me, you get me off on a path. Like if Kathy is sitting over there kind of saying herself, I might say this. I wonder how Steve would deal with that. Or if Mary is thinking, I bet he can't answer this, or whatever, I am totally open for it. So if there's anybody else who wants to put their hand up, go ahead and do that or raise your hand. Otherwise. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about the three gates. Now, the three gates are drawn from multiple cultures. You can find aspects of them in Greek, in Native American, in Islamic culture, the Sufis, kind of where I got it. And in Buddhism, it's the notion that there are three things that you should ask yourself before you act or before you speak. Is it, Is it true, is it kind, and is it useful? Now, the beautiful thing about this is that people will ask, is it even possible? You know, what happens if you set those three things as a standard? Does that mean you're always going to be honest, you're always going to be kind, and you're always going to do things that are efficient and effective? No, it means that that's what you're committed to. And if you don't think that rest is useful, then you would not understand why I love cartoons so much. When I get finished with my done by one, my through by two, it's like business done over here. I'm going downstairs, Laptop computer put on the cartoons, you know, or I might watch a giant shark movie, you know, but I'm gonna have fun because I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform. So rust is useful. But the first one, this, you know, is it true? People have kind of said, well Steve, you're martial artist. How do you, how do you justify, rectify, how do you align the idea of being kind with the notion of the need for, or the right to self defense? I think that's a hell of a good question. And it's a question that every warrior has to ask themselves. The question in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is having a conversation with Krishna about whether or not he can ride down and kill his cousins, who he loves, he played with as a boy. And Krishna basically says that you do it because honor and duty command it, that this is what you do, that your part is to take part, to commit these actions that are necessary for the preservation of life. It is not yours to question these things. It is yours to do your, your duty, even though the duty is terrible. And the same thing is true in a self defense context. The necessity to potentially hurt another human being is terrible. The idea of developing that agency within yourself is a terrible thing. Which is one of the reasons why it's so important to be kind to each other, to be decent to each other, to be understanding, to avoid, if it is at all humanly possible, the situation where you cry havoc and loose the dogs of war. There is a part of me, and I'm going to say this, and I hope you're not going to take it wrong, there's a part of me that really, really, really wants to hurt somebody. There's a part of me that really, really remembers every slight, every pain, every insult, every damage ever done to someone that I loved, every time anybody ever discounted me or mine and would like to hurt them badly. And that wolf part of my personality is not, is not quite the same as little Lobo, my little pet wolf. This is the pet lobo is the pet version of that other wolf, the part of me that likes it. So the question of what rules do you set for yourself to stay safe enough that you're not afraid so that you can be loving but actually keep you safe. What are the standards? What do you do? So I can tell you a very specific story. This took place about 30 years ago again, where my daughter's best friend had a father who was an alcoholic, who knew that I was into the martial arts and he fancied himself street fighter or something. And he was always pushing at me. And one day he called the police on my dog, who'd been barking, and came over and was basically bragging about it and acted like he wanted to box. I was just kind of like, excuse me. And I tried to diffuse the situation. I said, I realize that he's building up to something. So he said his back was hurting, and so I said, why don't you come over and use my hot tub? He said, oh, that's very nice of you. So in about an hour, he comes over in a swimsuit, carrying a towel. And in the towel is a gun, a little automatic. And I said. He asked me to hold it for him. I said, why are you carrying a gun? And he said, well, he's having some stress with his boss, and he's worried about his boss, and he and his boss are having a lot of problems, and his boss is really ugly, and his boss looks just like me. And I said, this is getting out of control. This is dangerous. So I talked to one of my teachers, Harley Swift Deer Reagan, who taught me Native American shamanic practices as well as judo and jiu jitsu. And I told him what was going on. I said, you know, I don't know how to deal with this situation. I don't want to hurt little. Let's call her Becky, the name of the little girl that was Nicky's friend. I don't want to hurt Becky's daddy. And Swift said to me, don't you understand that's why he's going to hurt you? Don't you understand that that's what he's counting on. He's counting on the fact that you don't want to hurt Becky's father. And that's why he's going to hurt you, Steve. And I said, oh, crap, what do I do? What do I do? So I went home, and I started thinking about this. It was like, how do I deal with this? I don't want to hurt Becky's daddy. I really don't want to hurt Becky's daddy. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't wrap my mind around this. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute. He's trying to hurt Nicky's daddy. And the instant I thought that, everything shifted inside me. Literally, it was like a switch was turned on. It's like, oh, wait a minute. He's trying to hurt Nicky's dad. He's trying to make my daughter an orphan. He's trying to make my wife a widow. Wait a minute. Everything Shifted. Suddenly, I had clarity because I. Kindness to me and him. I'm thinking, oh, God, you know, what am I going to do? But the question of my daughter, who was more important than me? Kindness. There's no universe in which it would be kind to let my daughter lose her dad, given the fact there is no universe in which that is a kindness. I then get to ask, well, what's the best way to cope with this? I remembered another one of my teachers who actually passed away just a couple months ago, Dr. John Latourrette in Medford, Oregon, who was a wild man, crazy man, had PhD in sports psychology. And he's just one of these human wolves that you. That you meet who just. You do not want to mess with them under any circumstance. Fastest human being, just insane, insanely quick. And it liked to hurt people. And he told me that he was sitting in his office in Medford. Once in his office, door closed, and he heard somebody come into the outer office, big truck driver type. And he said, I want to talk to the doc. He had people come in trying to challenge him from time to time. So this was nothing new. And so he sat in his office and he looked at the door, and he reached into his desk and he pulled out a gun, and he put the gun on top of his desk. And he imagined the guy walking through the door, and he imagined him all angry and threatening, and he imagined himself taking the gun and putting a bullet right between the guy's eyes and watching the guy's brain splash against the wall and just all that mess dripping down. He just kind of sat there smiling. And then he put the gun back into the drawer, closed the drawer and went out and talked to him. And the guy was instantly calm and as mild as cream. I said, that's what I'm going to do. So I sat in my living room, and I imagined Becky's father attacking me. And I imagined myself absolutely taking him apart. I mean, in enjoying the process. I mean, breaking him into pieces.

It was.

It was vicious. And the part of me that enjoyed that viciousness was smiling. Like I just got totally into that space. Then I kind of smiled. I stood up and I went to Nikki and I hugged her and I kissed her on the forehead. And I went and I kissed my wife. And then I walked across the street over to their house, and I knocked on the door, and his wife answered the door. And I said, hello, Is your husband home? Bill? Is Bill home? She said, yes, he's in the back on the computer. I said, may I speak with him, please? And she said, sure. She walked me back to Bill's office, and Bill was on the computer. He looked up, kind of surprised. I said, hi, Bill. I just, you know, just talked with him for a few minutes, just very, very pleasantly, very, very straightforwardly. And then I said, well, you know, Bill, I just wanted to come over and say hi. Nothing special, so I'll leave you to it now. And I walked out of the room. He walked me to the front door, I walked across the street, and Bill never bothered me again. And I found out from his wife that right after I left, he turned to her and said, you know, that Steve Barnes is really a nice guy. It was true that I always had the right to defend myself and the obligation to be a father to my daughter. It was kind of me to gain the clarity on who I was and who I was not and to bring that to Bill energetically. War in one hand, peace on the other. We can be friends, Bill. I can be a wonderful neighbor to you. I like you, but I'm not going to put up with this anymore at all. Period. Can you deal with that, or do we have to do something right here, right now? If I had said that, there could have been a fight, but because I was energetically prepared to do whatever was useful, the interaction was purely kind. And the truth of it is that neither he nor I wanted anything other than to be loving human beings. Whatever it was that motivated him to be acting with anger had nothing to do with me, had something to do with his past. But I was not going to let him put it off on me anymore. But I had to be honest about it. There was no way to fake that. And the same thing. I've used the same technique with other people under the circumstances, but the point being that I don't believe that there is any conflict between being a good, decent, honest, loving human being and being safe and successful in the world. When nations have to go to war, we understand that some of these principles are suspended, which is one of the reasons is why it's so critical for our diplomats to be courteous to each other, the diplomats, you know, that courtesy, that formalized courtesy, is so critical to helping prevent nations from killing each other en masse. Mikhail Gorbachev was asked what was the moment at which the Cold War ended? And he often gave kind of surface answers about that. But somebody nailed him down and got him in the right mood, in the right place to get an answer. That was not the standard answer. And he said it was Ronald Reagan that we were sitting in negotiations and they saw us as the evil empire and we saw them as the capitalist pigs. And we're arguing with each other. And suddenly Reagan stood up and walked away from the table. And I was like, what? Where is he going? Then he turned around with a smile and came back and said, let's start over again. I'm Ron. May I call you Mikhail? And the instant they started dealing with each other as human beings, and if you remember Sting's song, if the Russians love their children too, we don't have anything to fear. The instant we see ourselves as human beings, not male or female or black and white or Russian, American or gay and straight, but people, human spirits trying to make it through life, moving away from pain toward pleasure, being the best people we know how to be loving as much as we know how to love. Whatever potential for peace there is can exist. And if there must be war, it can be fought as ethically and cleanly as possible with as much concern for healing as killing. We have the right to feel safe in the world and defend ourselves. But I do not believe that being honest and kind and paying attention to what is actually efficient and effective is anything other than the best safety rails for our souls that we can possibly have. It is hard, but I believe it is worth it right now. So any more comments, questions or requests about anything? Doesn't have to be that you've got something going, you know, you got your 1% or your 5%. We heard some great shares this week, but any comments, questions or requests about any of this. The five minute miracle, the morning ritual, fire dance, life writing, anything that I can address that you wanted to share or ask. And it might have to do something with writing or the techniques of doing these things. This is your time and you can't embarrass me with a question. The worst that will happen, I say, oh, I don't think I'm going to answer that. But frankly, people really don't ask me questions that I'm not willing to answer because I'm a fool. So what you got for me? Let's see. Michael Dobkins. Yeah. Unmute yourself. Hello, Michael.

Hi.

How you doing? Could be better. What's going on?

I'm kind of a month away from making a transition and I have no idea where I'm going to end up. I am looking for work. I will have to be out of where I'm living and kind of feeling trapped and not making progress.

Okay, so the specifics of what's going on in your life are Unknown to me. And what's going to happen after a particular point are unknown even to you. So the only thing you can do is sharpen your axe. You don't know the tree that's coming.

Correct.

So the first. First thing I would. I would beg you to do is to integrate the breathing at minimum of five times a day. And if you. If you are dealing with stress and just do it every hour for 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. Do you know what diaphragmatic breathing is, my friend? Yes. Okay, good. You know your belly is going out when you inhale in, when you exhale, 60 seconds of that per hour, Deep, slow, centering yourself. Take a little mini vacation. Doesn't take more than 15 minutes a day. But if you will do that, that will start you. Okay. And if you will do that, if you can commit to that, never doing it less than five times a day, once every three hours, but trying to aim at it every day, if you will do that for the next week, come back next week, tell me your results, and you will have given me a platform on which I can help you further. All right.

Thank you.

If you will do that, I swear. I swear I will take time to talk you.

Thanks.

You're so welcome. And you're so welcome here. And these are good people, Michael. And we're all committed to kind of sharing on this mysterious path. If you look at the hero's journey, which tells us the road between any two places in our life, there are 10 discrete steps to that journey. The hero is confronted with a challenge. Initially, they will reject that challenge because of fear and uncertainty. Okay. But either they will choose to accept it, or life will force them to accept it. That's kind of where you are. You got to make moves. So there's going to be a road of trials, which is going to be the behaviors, the actions that you're going to have to do to get from where you are to the next level, that place of safety. Along the road of trials, you will meet allies and gain power. So asking yourself, who are the people who could help you? The mastermind principle, and think and grow rich is the only known way to compensate for a lack of internal resources. In other words, you might not be smart enough to handle the situation, but there are smart people out there who might like you as a friend, you know, who you can join together to brainstorm, and if you can define the resources that you will need and in this case, what you need, since you don't know exactly what's going to happen. What you need is to be the smartest, most balanced, clearest version of yourself. You can be confident in the belief that you deserve joy and that you're capable of producing safety for yourself. That from that position where there's a little place inside you that kind of says, bring it, you know, you have survived countless things in the past. You know those things caused fear and that there were many of them where you were able to deal with it anyway. And part of it is that part of you that believes that you deserve joy, you deserve survival, and has teeth, that has teeth, that is willing to absolutely do the best you can do or die trying. That if you're at peace with that and you calm yourself and you say, I'm looking for what resources? And for instance, a place where every week you can go and talk honestly about what you're experiencing, where people will not judge you for it and will support you. Might be the kind of resources that you want. That might be us, it might be some other group. But be sure that you understand that resources are part of it. Okay? Once you get there, the next step is that you have your confrontational evil and are defeated. So it is absolutely common and the movement between one level and next that you're going to do the best you can and smash up, get ready for it. Something's going to go wrong. The way through that you're going to experience depression. That's the dark night of the soul, where it feels like nothing you're doing is going to work. Natural part of the process. The way through the dark night of the soul is called the leap of faith. And the leap of faith is always faith in one of three things. Faith in yourself, faith in your companions, or faith in a higher power or the workings of the universe, however you want to put that. So knowing that you're going to crash and burn and feel depressed, and that the way through it is to have faith in something different from yourself, different from your ego. The ego that took the beating allows you to start asking right now, well, when I hit depression, who would help lift me out of it? What can I do that will get me moving? Because it's a natural part of the process. If you take those steps properly, the next step is you confront evil again and you're victorious. And the last step is the student becomes a teacher, where you then get to turn around and teach somebody else what you just learned about the path of life. If you know ahead of time that you're going to be facing those challenges, it's Much easier you've got, you know, what are the resources you're going to need? You're going to need them. What are they exactly? If you can deal with that, life gets a little simpler. And so breathe. That's one of the things that will help you. It's a resource that will help you breathe, my friend. And then next week, maybe we'll work on helping you develop a morning ritual so that every day when you get out of bed, you're setting yourself up for the best possible day imaginable. That's what fire dance Tai chi is about. Like I said, you know, it's @firedance tai chi.com. yes, it is. But you come to these meetings, I will give you everything that I possibly can just because I love you. Thank you.

And can I take a moment to express some gratitude? Because a lot of what you're describing, you know, the dark time of the soul I've just gone through and just the act of saying, yeah, I'm going to be on the zoom call that especially you, but also everyone else on this call. When people talk about what's going on in their lives and their struggles and how they're confronting it, witnessing that and drinking it in, changes the kind of energy.

Yes.

That I'm bringing to my own life. Yes. I think I've typed this a couple times in previous meetings, but now that the spotlight was unexpectedly on me, I want everyone to hear what I'm saying that I, you know, I, I sometimes I will say, oh, God, it's 11:55. Do I really. And I will come. And people may be getting discouraged or like today we just had this incredible thing of people facing some things that are bigger than what I'm facing and coming at it with a plume and style and conviction and positivism, which is one of my big struggles. It. It changes my energy for a couple days after, I just sit here and soak it in. So thank you so much, and I'll. I'll leave it at that.

Well, you know the magic formula, you know, to have a map or model of the territory, to take constant action, and then gratitude. Gratitude is the antidote for fear. It is the antidote for anger. The more gratitude you feel, the easier it is to be able to feel like there's a context for what's happening in your life. So gratitude. So one of the things when. Start with the breathing, but while you're breathing, why not think of something you're grateful for? Why not deliberately think of something that is beautiful in your life? Deliberately Think of your first kiss or the last time you hugged your grandkids or a sunny day, or petting a cat or anything else. Anything that triggers a positive feeling. For 60 seconds, flood yourself with those positive emotions. Just feel it. It will give you strength. I promise you, my friend.

I'm setting the timer right now.

That's what I love. That's what I love. Who's next? Or am I going to embarrass somebody? Okay, let's try Michelle Hodges. Hello?

Michelle.

You there? Oh, Michelle's not there. How about Mary L.

No. So let's see, my 1%. I have been working on spirituality and getting in touch with who I really am, not who the world says I am or who my ego says I am or any of that. And one thing I did, I got a children's Bible and even illustrated Bible, and I read that Bible every night until I finished the 800 and some pages. And I've been thinking about what I enjoy, what I don't want to do, what I do want to do, who God has created me to be. I'm an encourager. It's like, okay, well, how do I make money being an encourager? And I've started writing, like, posts on. On Facebook to, like, one is, you don't see with your eyes. You see through your eyes. If you change your mind, you'll change what you see.

Amen.

And so I'm working on that because I said, okay, well, I have close to 5,000 Facebook friends. I can give some encouragement to people every day. There's so much negativity out there. It's like, be, better be.

Here's a suggestion for you. Anything that you know that a younger version of you would have wanted to. To know is legitimate to sell to someone who was like you. So that means that on Facebook, you could create a Facebook group, or you could encourage your 5,000 friends to come to, let's say, a free zoom meeting, like I do here. And you could talk to them and start getting a sense for what that is. And if people go and they're liking it and you're helping them, maybe you start charging for them. Maybe you charge them, you know, $5 a month to come to the meetings.

Oh, like a Patreon type of thing.

Yeah, that's right. There are lots of models. But the most important thing is what is the value that you are offering? There is no shame in charging money in exchange of value. That. That if you're clear that let's. If you're creating something that, like I said, A younger version of you or someone who has not lived your life would know, then you know perfectly. Other people have things that you'd be willing to pay for. Don't pretend that you don't. You do. All you have to do is be honest about what your life experience has been. And then you find the things in your life where you can honestly say, I used to have this problem, I found the solution, and now I'm at this new position. You become the ally in somebody else's story. You are, you are the wise woman who they met along the path of their life that helped them, just like there have been wise women and wise men who helped you. When you see yourself as the wise person in somebody else's story, then your emphasis is not on poor little me. I don't have anything to offer. The emphasis on, I have my battle scars. I have walked this road. Road. I've seen this territory. Let me guide you. And so you can avoid some of the thorns. And you, then you chart. You can charge a reasonable amount to do that. But first get the results. First find the things that you can help people through, get them to, and help them for free and get them to give you quotes about how useful you were. Once you have those quotes, once you have genuinely provided value for people and you've got those quotes, you have social proof and now you've got a product or service.

You know, it's funny, I, I've helped and talked to people and people start calling me the oracle.

Yeah.

And it's like, you're the oracle.

I'm like, get them, get them to write that down and give them, and give you, give you permission to use their names. That is how people know that you are somebody who is for real. There's so much fraud in the world. There's so many people who lie about this stuff. There's so many people try to pretend that they've been places they haven't been and they can help people do things they can't. So the people who actually are committed to helping and capable of helping have the responsibility to stand up in the marketplace and say, here I am. If this aspect of my life that I have dealt with is interesting to you, come and I will speak to you of it. You give them, you give them the most basic teachings for free, and then they pay to get closer to you. So you pay. You give away your, all your wisdom on your page or in the free zooms, but if they want more interaction time with you, they pay more. And as you get better and better and better, you get to be more and more exclusive about that. But you also get better at giving stuff away for free. So it's all, well, I've got a real sliding scale on my stuff. If either I'm going to give it away for free or I'm going to have a product that we try to keep the lowest price possible. But if you're going to pay me for my time, you're going to pay between 250 and $1,000 an hour for me. So it's even, because I know that most people can't afford that. I really try to do as much as I can on these free calls because you guys are more similar to who I was. I was not somebody who could afford a thousand dollars an hour. So by helping you, I'm helping a younger version of myself. And I'm being. I'm being true to my teachers in that sense. But all you have to do is identify how can you help somebody with their body, how can you help somebody with their mind? How can you help somebody with their heart? If you've ever helped people with those things, you have a product or service you can offer. Okay.

Well, look, thank you for calling on me.

You bet. People get shy. It's okay. And speaking of shy. Hello, Kathy.

Hello, Steve.

Yeah, so you're gonna be my last one today because it's just about time to quit. What's up?

Yeah, you're gonna call on me at time, Steve. That's what you're gonna do.

That's what I'm gonna do.

That's what you're gonna do. So I'm going to. We've had so many inspiring stories. I'm just going to say that I usually put a little note inside of my notebook in case you call on me because you have that habit. And I'm going to say that even though I teach and I'm a teacher and I speak publicly, I do stutter. I have a very special type of stuttering in terms of not being able to get words out. So I might say my name is. And it doesn't come out, even though obviously I know my name, which means calling on me creates stress and stress causes me to stutter. And yet I've chosen as a career, Steve, to speak because I found that I had something to say and I had something to give. And if I'm going to do that, I'm going to have to figure out how to speak, even when I'm nervous. And so that's what I'll leave us with for this Saturday.

Thank you for the time.

You got it. Fantastic Share that's all for today. I'm gonna I've got a bunch of stuff to do. I gotta go to the post office. I have to do some work on my Star wars novel. Have to work out. I have to hang out with my son. But being with you is a joy and a privilege. If there's ever whatever it is I can do for you just let us let me know. I'll be there for you if I can. If you know somebody who is struggling with finding their way into the dating scene in incel anyone like that check out incelcure.com I'll put in the chat and think about pasting passing. Yeah Internet post office at the time. Absolutely. Somebody sent me a book to sign. You know my other hat is a science fiction writer. They sent me a book to sign. They wanted my autograph. They sent me a self addressed envelope so I'll do that. But if you know any incels or people qualify in that sense please let them know about incelcure.com it is definitely about ethical seduction for incels passing all three gates. And I thought about it for years and I'm nervous about it because I've already been attacked which is okay because I'm not interested in politics. I'm interested in philosophy. I'm interested in what is true. So have a wonderful wonderful weekend. Remember to breathe and I would like to close the session with the Sanskrit expression that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Unmute yourselves and say goodbye.

Namaste.

Namaste everyone.

Thank you all in a couple of weeks. Bye bye bye bye.

I got to be elsewhere the next two. Bye.

Love you all.

Love every one of you.

Love you guys so much. I just.