FIREDANCE show 12-30-22

Yeah. God, that was. I had to take care of a phone call there. I got a call from Larry Niven.

Oh, cool.

I would be seeing next week, working on a book together. So life is. Life is good. I mean, at this moment, right now, literally everything is working and I just. I just want to bring as many of you guys along with me as I possibly can. So just, you know, make sure today especially ask questions. Let me help you. You know, let me personalize this for you. Let me be your coach, please. You know, that's. That's why I do this every week because, oh, there's my. There's my good lady wife. My wifey. And then I will make her co host and then I can ignore make co host. So Tananarim do is now co host. So we'll get started in, in a couple minutes. And I'm just so. I'm just so grateful right now, man. And I'm so grateful to see your faces, you know, I mean that. And Kurt, how you doing, Kurt? I'm well.

How are you doing, Steve?

You know, I'm doing fine. We haven't spoken in a while, but it's always. I always enjoy seeing you, buddy.

You know, I get to see you more than you really get to see me, so that's good.

I understand.

Yeah.

But I'm happy.

I hope you had a very, very wonderful Christmas celebration.

Yeah, I really did. And I probably want to talk about that just a little bit, but we'll. Oh, there's Tananarive. So, yeah, you got your co host things. I'm on it. Fantastic. So I just. I just want to be able to focus on the people. I want to focus on seeing how much positive I can do today. Sonia is here. Anytime Sonia is here. I'm happy. And let's see Tom Barkley. How you doing, Tom? Doing all right. How about you? Well, obviously you've been telling us. And Megan Lancaster. Great. We're having a good, good group. Hello, Sonia. How are you, dear? I am awake and present. Awake and present. Good things, good things, good things. So let's. We get started in one minute. And it's just last. Last of the year. It's been kind of an amazing year. And I want to talk about. Want to talk about that some. But okay, it is now 12, so we're going to get started, you know, right on time, preferably. So let's everybody unmute themselves, please, and just kind of say hi and happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Fantastic. So, you know, I'm doing this Thing where I'm sending out the links. And as long as we don't get trolls, I will do that. I mean, I can handle trolls, but what I want is to be able to be as present and to be as to contribute as much as I possibly can. So we're going to try to see whether or not if a single link that works for multiple weeks will work for you guys. If so, then that's what I'll do. So you don't have to hunt for the email. You just click on the link you've already got. So, welcome to the last fire dance show of the year. What we're talking about here is, you know, fire dance is just the idea of bringing all the basic aspects of your being together in one place at one time for a few minutes a day so you can kind of check on it. It's a little bit, it's a little bit like putting your car up on a rack or a little bit like driving along a very specific track that, you know, so you could feel whether or not you've got vibration in the system or, or whatever. By using tai chi and doing affirmations and visualizations and role models, you are tapping into. There are about a dozen different technologies that are woven together into this. And if you will take it seriously and try it for six weeks, you'll see for yourself whether or not I'm real about this. The idea is to have something small that you do every day that if, that, you know, if I could do this every day for a year, I'd be at a completely different place in my life. Everything will be working like gangbusters. Then what happens is that most people, even most successful people only check on their goals like once a year. You know, the, the people who I think are really smoking or checking on it every month or sometimes every week. The idea of connecting with your goals every day. And if you're doing the five minute miracle, then you can probably start creating a metaphor, a visual metaphor for, let's say, let's borrow from Tad. There was a guy named Tad James, bless his heart, he's gone now. But he combined neuro linguistic programming and Hawaiian and huna magic. And he had this thing called timeline. And it was goal setting, but it was also therapy. I went through his program at the therapeutic level. But the real treasure there was what it did for goal setting where basically, let's say I wanted to earn a black belt. So I would visualize the end state, which is my teacher handing me a black belt. Then I would ask Myself, what are the intermediate steps? I have to attend class three times a week. I'm going to need to work on my fitness. I'm going to work on these emotional things, fear and this and this. And it's probably the average student takes four years to get there. So I can see myself four years out doing these things every week. What are the things I need to do every day? What is it I need to do right now? So if at the end, if every day, I can see what it is I'm doing and I'm right on track, I don't really need to think about it very much. I need to get up and run. I need to go through my forms, and then tomorrow I'll need to go to the school. If you do those things, then you know that by the end of four years, you're probably going to be a black belt. At the very least, a year from now, you'll be enough further down the road that you'll have a more concise view of what's necessary. So the idea is to not be one of those people who wakes up at the end of several years and says, oh, my God, what happened to my life, my time? It's to be able to say every day, am I on track? Am I not on track? And when you do that, once you get the basic stuff out of the way, you get to ask yourself, well, how can I have fun doing this? What is the most fun I can have doing this? How can I entertain myself doing this? And once you have that and you're feeling happy and kind of filled with energy, you get to start asking the next question, how can I serve my community? Because that's kind of what happens once you've healed yourself and once you're happy, you start looking for people to share that joy with. That's natural human tendency. So first take care of the fear and the pain. And then once you're out of fear and pain, you. You're into that growth zone. So that's what I want everybody to have, because this is our last meeting together in 2022. And what I really want for everybody, for all of you, for the whole world, you know, that sense of success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal, to have a worthy goal. Something that if you were to accomplish this, you would feel more complete. You would feel like it's a deeper expression of. Of who you are. But also, life doesn't promise us tomorrow. We don't know whether or not we will live long enough to achieve something in particular. So it's important for us to have fun along the way too. It's important for us to help people along the way. So given that context then, this being the last meeting of the year, we want to open up that space for next year when we meet every week like this. I would like very much to be able to help you. If there are things that you're, that you're working with, if you're doing the morning ritual, if every day you are doing Tai chi or frankly you are walking or dancing or rebounding at the same time that you're doing these other things, then if you tell me what, how you're doing, I can take a look at that. Well, the timeline idea is here I am, there's the goal. Between me and the goal are a number of benchmarks I have to move through in order to deal with those benchmarks. I need to deal with negative emotions, I need to deal with hierarchies of value. I need to look at priorities. I need to look at lots of different things. Clarity. If I am clear, if I know what I'm doing and where I'm going, and I have my emotions in the right place and I know what I need to do today to reach those short term, medium term, long term goals, then all I have to do then is enjoy my day. And I think that it's a little bit like knowing structure of a story. The ideal situation is to simply sit down and write your story. That's when it's better. It's just flowing. You can hear the people, you can see the situation, you can can feel the emotions and you're just having fun. That's being a pantser. But when you hit a wall, it's nice to have a set of tools. Journey, plotting, characterization, whatever it is. And now I will use those tools. It's a little bit like what we want is to drive down a country road and enjoy the sun on our face and the wind in our hair. But if the car breaks down, it's good to have a toolkit. So that's our thing. What we want is to just move through life, moving away from pain and toward pleasure and being of service. You know, the idea from the Dalai Lama, the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. But when things break down, that's when it's useful to be able to shift it to the other part of your mind and say, let me take this apart and put it back together again and see what's going on here. So given those notions that the best life from the position that we're speaking is a life of joy and service lived almost in a Zen like state where you're simply, every day you wake up, chop wood, carry water, you just do what you do. You just do what you do. That's kind of what is best. And you're just kind of enjoying it. And somehow things happen. And if you can do good work, working with people that you love, oh my God. See, this is, this is what's up for me. And to Honor you in 2023, we have an opportunity that's going to be happening in January. If you know there was good Lord willing and the river don't rise, what's going to happen is that in January we're going to get to undo a couple of decades of damage to our careers that had to do with. You take care of family, you do what is necessary. So both of us kind of stepped away from the Hollywood game in order to take care of family issues. It's just what you have to do. And no matter how hard it is, it's simple. Simple does not mean easy. If I know that my daughter or my son are more important than, than Hollywood, then no matter what I have to do to take care of them, I do it. And it hurts. It hurt me a lot. I felt that pain. In fact, there was a point where I was literally curled on the floor crying my eyes out because I could not see how my life was going to work anymore. I couldn't see it. The entire plan I had created for my life when I was a kid, which I had followed and had been working just great, got blown completely out of the water. Luckily, what we are deep inside us is more than what we think we are. What had been damaged was my ego. And it had been messed up. But who I really was was bigger than that. And what I want all of you to know is that that's the way I hold you. That's the way I see you. All of you are bigger than the problems of your life. And what we want to do here together is to share our dreams, our thoughts, and hopefully our resources. Whatever problem you have in your life, it is a useful belief that I may not know how to solve my problems, but there's somebody out there who does. And if I can clearly formulate the problem and ask enough people who have, who demonstrate that they're on the other side of that problem, they will say something to me that I did not think of myself. Every time I see somebody saying, well, I've got all these problems But I'll figure it out. I think to myself, I hope part of figuring it out is finding people who know things you don't know, because the instructions on how to get out of the box are written on the outside of the box. That's one of the reasons why we go to role models like, have you lost weight being in this situation? Have you straightened out your finances starting in this situation? Have you found love when you were functioning as an incel, just had no idea how to cross that line, how to attract love, how to make money, how to do this, how to do that. The person who is on the other side of it will have answers for you that you did not think, think of. And you can spend a lifetime trying to solve these problems as opposed to finding people who have already solved them and asking what they did. You ask enough people, you'll find the answer you're looking for. So before I go into this more, more deeply, I would like to start with a qigong exercise. And there are lots of qigong exercises, but, you know, quite frankly, we've done the Constant Bear. But I think that another one that I really, really like is I was thinking about doing the Tai Chi ruler. But. So, yeah, let's say that we're going to do two exercises. One is the Tai Chi ruler. Now, the. The usefulness of the stick here.

Is.

To create a line here and with the chest, shoulders, and with the hips. So any kind of ruler will do it. So what I'm doing here, I'm going to put my right foot forward and I'm going to exhale as I roll out. And what I have to do is I have to try to align this, this feet, so I have to square these things. And so it's very, very easy. It's very easy to feel out of balance. Exhale, inhale, exhale. And you can just imagine this. Or you can get up and do it. Inhale, exhale, inhale. Now my mind, my eyes, my breath and my movement all have to go at the same time. Now I can reverse that. I can go exhale, out, inhale in at the top. Exhale, inhale. And I'm trying to. I can feel my hips getting out of alignment, my shoulders getting out of alignment. This is a very, very useful tool. It's a little bit like a planchette in. Oh, God. What do you call those? What do you call those? The board games with the, with the letters. Oh, Ouija board. It's a little bit like a planchette with a Ouija board. So there's that, but the other feeling that you want while you're doing it is the same feeling that you get when you're doing the Qi ball exercise. And we can do the Qi ball exercise sitting here together. So just rub your hands together. I can see you. Rub your hands together, shake out your fingers, and get your hands close enough together that you can feel the warmth, that the right hand can feel the warmth from the left, the left can feel the warmth from the right. There's probably some tingling from shaking it out. And the more you relax, the further apart your hands can get and still keep a feeling of a ball of warm air. So this is an exercise of relaxation and focus. The more you relax while remaining focused, the further apart your hands can get. And you're still feeling. I lost it for a second. Okay. Yeah, there it is. You're still feeling the warm air. You stay right on the edge of that. Just hold that for a minute. That feeling is what you're looking for in the Tai Chi form. That feeling of floating in air, of being very relaxed, very focused, casually focused, almost dreaming. That's nice. Great. So who felt that? Who felt that? Great, great, great, great. Yeah. That's wonderful. And you can do that. Living in the space between. Ross Merker says he has such a nice turn of phrase. Hello, Gwen. Seeing you and Eric Harvey, it's good to see you. When we were out in Atlanta, Eric volunteered to be my friend out there, and we had some good times, and I really, really appreciate him. So Melina Crawford said, let's see, let's see. The deeper I breathe, the bigger the ball becomes. Yes, yes. You're noticing it. You're feeling it. Once you start feeling that, once you start feeling that, then. Remember we talked about the five minute miracle? That's the minimum. Buy in. Five times a day, maybe once every three hours, you stop and. And do 60 seconds of qigong. You know, you could, you know, do. Take 60 seconds of Constant Bear. You do 60 seconds of Tai chi. You just get up and walk around. You just breathe. You breathe deeply with relaxation. Because I can't touch your hands. What I can do is give you different exercises that will lead you to the feeling. And if you will do those exercises, then when you're doing Tai chi, you can feel, oh, there's. I'm. I'm too tense. Let me relax more. Let me feel like my hands are rising on a column of smoke or floating in water. You'll be in the bathtub, and you'll experiment with letting an arm relax. Until it floats. Oh, that's it. Okay. Tananari said I like to do QI ball before I begin my tai chi. Absolutely. Absolutely. These things all fit together. If all you have is that five minutes a day, 60 seconds at a time. Great. Fantastic. When you get that locked in, then you take the first one of those sessions and begin to expand it outwards. So, Jaime.

Yes. Hi.

Hi.

Talking about the five minute miracle and morning ritual. Yeah, I learned those from you at the beginning of the pandemic and have been doing them for a couple of years or more now. I've got the alarm still set on my phone to go off every three hours to remind me, but I've noticed in the last two weeks that. And I don't know if it's just the randomness of life that I will get into doing some task, whether it's writing or laundry or helping somebody else being of service. And that alarm goes off, and instead of having fun with it, it's that negative stuff that I need to deal with that. Oh, crap. And do I finish what I'm doing and then take my minute, or do I need to just. Excuse me.

Stop.

Take my.

It would depend on what you're doing, buddy. You know, if I.

Well, here's the thing is, when I started out, the five minute miracle was the whole deal. And then over the course of a few years, the morning ritual gets things added to it so that it's longer and longer and can be anywhere from a low of 15 minutes on a really busy day to a high of a full hour if I'm doing everything that I've added that I enjoy doing. And then every fifth, you know, every three hours, I try to take at least the one minute of breathing. And if I've got the time, I'll try to do another five or another 10 or another 15 minutes of things every three hours. And it's that if I'm changing the tire on the car and the alarm goes off, it's that emotional meltdown.

Okay, so having focus. Let me. Let me stop you. You're changing the tire on your car, the alarm goes off. That just reminds you to breathe while you're doing it. While you're changing the tire on your car. You know, if you don't, you know, it's just like, you check your breathing. Oh, I'm up in my shoulders. I'm tense because I'm here on the side of the road and it's cold. Let me relax. Let me. I'm changing a diaper. I'm playing with the puppy. You know, my, my wife needs my attention. I will listen to what she's saying. And I will also breathe deeply. Because that deep breathing, it doesn't matter whether you're being mugged or you're. You're doing weights, you know, or you're taking a walk. Breathing is always involved. So you're just being conscious of a resourceful form of breathing. You do that. And the beautiful thing is it's perfect when life intrudes. Life is what happens while you're making other plans. Okay, so it's perfect if you're engaged in something stressful and you are reminded to breathe. Where's the downside here? That's a win, man. You know, it's almost a waste if it goes off when you're already sitting down with your eyes closed. You're already relaxing. So, you know, if it goes off in a movie, if it goes off in the middle of a business meeting, you're in the elevator, you're walking down the street. Breathe for 60 seconds. This is like just, just how should I be breathing right now? For attention, for focus, for relaxation, for strength. Whatever it is, there is going to be an appropriate and inappropriate form of breathing at that moment. You look for the optimally appropriate ones. Now, there are breathing patterns that give you tremendous physical power, but we're generally talking about breathing patterns that help you to relax. Because if you stay relaxed in the midst of stress, you see options. When you see options, you can choose a good option. If your values are clear, you do that, it reduces the amount of stress. So you I. The reason why the five minute miracle is more powerful than doing it all five minutes at one time is exactly because of what you just said, because it will happen in the middle of the other stuff that you're doing. Okay, now, one question I would have for you is, is what is in terms of your morning ritual? What is your physical practice that you're doing in along with the ritual?

Mostly the qigong exercises and then the tai chi form. I've also added a couple of mobility things as far as getting the joints loosened up.

Yeah, that's all good. Good stuff. Okay. Did that answer your question?

Yeah, it did. You know, it was the business of. For a good long year and a half, it was all fun. And somehow in the last few weeks, when that alarm goes off, I start having this tense reaction to it instead of the. And I just needed the reminder. Oh, yeah, you don't have to do all of these things. Just breathe.

That's right.

In the situation it's like, well, not.

Only that, but there is another thing that can factor in here. It's all fun until it starts really working. At the point where it starts really working, you expand your definition of self to do new things, go deeper into things. So now you're hitting the hard dirt. You know, before, you might have been hitting the dirt that was easy to dig, but the gold you're looking for is underneath solid ground. So just get used to the idea that some days it's going to be easy and kind of fluffy. Other days it's, you're going to be. You're going to need emotional dynamite. You're going to, you know, how am I going to dig through this? How am I going to beat through this? And either one is okay, man. It's just chop wood, carry water. Some days are tough, some days are easy, you know, and. But keep track and see which days are the most satisfying at the end of your day. Was it the easy days that were most satisfying or was it the tough days that were most satisfying? And that will be different for different people. I'm not telling you what to feel about that, but I am saying that this is one of the reasons why keeping a journal, I love my journal is so good because I get to actually look back over the week, look forward to tomorrow, write the things down, and then at the end of the day, I can say, well, what did I do? And it doesn't take me more than a couple minutes. You know, like, I don't spend all day doing this stuff. I spend my day working, taking care of my family, or chilling out and watching anime. I mean, watch movies. I literally will sit in front. Like, I just. I was talking about how I just got off the phone with my mentor, Larry Niven, and I'm going to get together with him next week, next Wednesday probably. And I need to bring him new writing. So I have discovered, and this is trying to figure out how am I going to get everything done in 2023. So I'm always looking for ways to become more efficient and effective. And so I noticed that Google Docs has a dictation program. So I said, let me try it. Let me see how the dictation program works. I had no idea how I'm going to relate to dictation, but I know that I can talk all day about almost anything. So it's like, it makes sense to me. Oh, maybe there's a connection here. So I tried the document and I was using Pomodoro timer, you know. So Basically Pomodoro timer, 25 minutes. Where's 25 minutes? There it is. 25 minutes of hard work, focus, doing nothing other than the work, followed by at least a five minute break and then another pomodoro. So what I found out was that if I put one pomodoro of dictation, I can produce 3,000 words. That all I have to do is visualize what. In other words, I might, you know, I might break down a plot onto something like this scan card. You know, each one of these cards is a different plot aspect. I can plan out a whole script or a whole book like that. You know, this is basically happens. So I take one of those plot and break them down into, well, what is this chapter about? Or what is this section about? And then, well, what are the things that need to happen that I want to write about today? I said, well, he walks in the room, he sees her, he asks her where she's been. She is lying to him. He turns around and does this. She stabs him in the back. Whatever it is. If I can visualize a scene, it used to be I visualize it and I type it, okay, that works just fine. But with the dictation program, I visualize it and I just talk my way through it. I literally just describe what I see in my head. Okay, it's just, you know, I talk through the, you know. He walked in the room, he noticed that the drapes had been changed. She was sitting there. He thought about how many times he'd seen her sitting in that room in that place. And those other times had been happy times, but this one, there was something he needed to say. And he knew she was going to lie to him. He already knew that. Was that his fault? Was it something he was doing? I just talked my way through it exactly the same. And then what I found is that those 3,000 words, if I take two pomodoros, maybe three pomodoros, I can polish it all. I can literally polish, you know, add the, dictate the punctuation and so forth. So that in two hours, one hour of dictation and 90 minutes of polishing, I can create 3,000 words. And I can do it reliably without feeling stressed out about it. So it's like, well, that will give me some different options next year. You know, if I do that, then I could. On Mondays, let's say I'm working six days a week. If I was going to work six days a week because basic writing is fun for me. Then on Monday and Thursday I can dictate, and Tuesday and Wednesday I can do nothing but polish. And if I do that Thursday, then in a half hour a day I can get my basic writing for the week done in just a half hour a day. If I have more time than that. If I have, in other words, if I have to run out, catch a plane, something like this, and I still can get that half hour in usually. But if I've got more time than that, then after I get my basics done and sort of get it all done by one, the done by one idea, then in the afternoon after I get my basics done, I'm through for the day and I could literally camp out in front of the television with my laptop and correct the text and kind of what Tananarif calls texturize it, just kind of play with it. And it works out very well because what you're looking for is what is the least stressful way to accomplish the things that must be done. Because the things that must be done, you can't avoid them. So either you're going to go gut your way through it or you're going to have fun doing it. I like having fun, frankly. What are the comments, questions or requests we have today? This is a good time for that because we want to, we want to wrap up what we've been talking about this year and get everybody set for next year. Anybody? Megan Lancaster. Hello, Maggie, Unmute yourself.

Hello.

I just did.

Am I unmuted now? Can you hear me now?

Yes, I. Yes.

Okay. Yes. I have a question. I haven't been here for the, you know, so I watch you do Constant Bear, but it's not something I have formally been shown. And it looks very much like the body only movement of silk reeling. But I'm not sure there isn't something else going on there that I'm missing just by watching and not having it.

Well, silk reeling within the Tai Chi form Cloud Hands is the silk reeling.

Constant Bear is something I don't know.

Oh, okay. So, yeah. So Constant Bear, according to Chin Mancheng, who's arguably the greatest Tai Chi master of the 20th century, is 80% of Tai Chi. I don't know if that's true, but he's better than me by quite a bit. So I'm. I'm willing to kind of suspend judgment. So, So here we are. And what you're noticing is that I turn and I sink and I turn and I sink. And is there a feeling that I'm pulling silk from? Yeah, there is kind of that feeling where I'm being very gentle. And it's like a spider, spider web. I'm being gentle enough. No jerking, no hesitation. I don't want to break the silk. So it's. You're teasing that silk out. You're using this. You're using that idea of pulling a thread of silk and then winding it around yourself and then pulling and then whining. It's that feeling of maybe making a cocoon for yourself in which you can nurture something. Yes.

Clarification. What you just showed me was Constant Bear, but with a hand act, because.

I was just putting my hands up.

You're holding your hands out?

Yeah, yeah, I'm just putting my hands out. I could do it without my hands. I could do it with one hand out like this. The hip movement and the breathing is important.

Right. And that's why I'm trying to get the clarification. The hip movement and the breathing. Is that what you mean when you say. When you talked about constant bear, were.

You just showing me that that was constant bear? Yes. Now, absolutely. You know, and you can. And you can change the hand movement. There are little things you can do with the body that are different, but the idea is you bring your mind, your eyes, your breath, and your movement all together at the same time. That's the most important thing it could be. I could do raise my arm, bring it in, raise the other arm, bring it in. It'll be the same thing, just doing it a little differently. And if you do several different types of qigong and you do the Tai chi form and you walk consciously, and every one of them, you're saying, how do the same principles apply here? How is this a different version of the same thing? That's what you're looking for. And each of them will teach you something just a little bit different. But all of them are that sense of gathering energy, weaving. Sometimes it's unwinding, but usually it's winding it together. Okay, does that help? Okay, good. All right, so let me see what we're getting in here in chat. Yeah. The marionette string supported hands from the start of Fire Dance. And what I do with Constant Bear. Absolutely. That's great. Okay, Tim, work. Thanks, Ross. No embarrassment. Pomodoro. So someone could drive to work a mail right at the same time with the Google dictation program. Yeah. So Eric said, sounds like someone could drive to work or the mall or whatever. And write at the same time. Absolutely. I mean, there definitely been times when I have driven using a small digital recorder or a small you know, pearl tape recorder. Remember those things? The mini cassettes? Using a headset while I was driving, and I would just talk. And if you're the kind of person who can talk things out, remember, it's much easier to rewrite than it is to write. You put anything on the page, and it's easier to mess with it than it is to stare at that blank page. So if you find that you can talk easily, all you have to do is you could start by saying, well, actually, let me show you how the is problem process can work. How many writers do we have here who writes? Okay, great. So somebody give me a story area, but unmute yourself. Give me a story. Let's have a little fun. Anybody? Tom Barkley. Okay, unmute yourself. Have you got something for us?

A car is driving on a lonely road in an aerial shot. Okay.

A car is driving on an aerial road. So the next question is, are they. Are they going someplace? Is the place they get to where something's gonna happen? Is something stop from getting to the place? Does what happens happen in the car?

No.

So nothing changes for the people. Ross says there are no people in the car. Nothing happens to the people until they get to the place. However, one of the things we know is that in order to care about people, we have to know them. So it seems reasonable that there's going to be some. That there could be a mild conflict of some kind in the car.

Oh, yeah, there's tension in the car. Some of the people in the car don't want to be in the car.

Thank you. So I know that right now then the first thing I need to do is to act out the car. So we, you know, we've driven with kids or we've been kids with parents. Are we there yet? Why do we have to go grandma's again. Oh, she smells funny. Whatever it is that they do, talk your way through it and just, just imagine, role play the different things. Have fun with it. Get into that kid place inside you that kind of says, let's put on a show. Because it's all silliness. It doesn't have to mean anything. One of the worst things you can do for writing is to think that your first draft has to be good. No, your first draft needs to suck. The first draft needs to suck. You need to absolutely give yourself permission to write garbage in your first draft. The only reason that I have written, I've published over 3 million words. Heading up to 4 million words is because my first drafts have the right to suck. It's Just get it out there. Just get it out there. Now, Tananari, who is an exceptional writer, tends to write a page. Well, actually, T. Would you describe your process? Because we had this conversation many times.

Well, on a good day, if I'm up to quota, I'll write two pages a day, polishing pretty much as I go. It's not literally paragraph by paragraph. I'll try to. I'll kind of ride the energy, you know, maybe a couple paragraphs or a dialogue exchange. But at a certain point, I will stop and pretty obsessively go back to the beginning of what I wrote. Get rid of all the widows. I can't stand widows. When there's one or two words, especially just one word at the end of a paragraph, I will rewrite that sentence. I will rearrange the paragraph so I don't have any widows. That's how I condense my sentences, but.

Also.

Make sure I'm not repeating words. Jump on a thesaurus. Is there a better word I could use for this emotion here or this motion here? Yeah, I polish as I go.

Yep, she polishes as she goes. And frankly, I'm experimenting with that too. Because what I generally will do is I will write out basic stuff about a story, and then I will create an outline of that story. Maybe no more than a page. Then I will pitch that to friends and say, well, does this sound like a good story? If it does, I will expand that out to 3 pages, 5 pages, 10 pages, 20 pages even. I will take those 20 pages and put them into final draft. Not final draft. Writer Duet, which is our online script writing software. It's free. You know, it's out there. You can write, I think, three scripts for free. But it's worth. It's worth buying it. Then I will write a script based on what I did there. And the nice thing about scripts is that it's just dialogue and bare descriptions. That means in six weeks, two months, I can write an entire book in script form if the story works roughly. And that script might be 200 pages long. If the story works, then I transfer this. I translate the script into text, then I polish the text. So I've done that many, many times. But I'm looking to raise my game in the next year. So I'm going to try some new things. And one of the things I want to try is that notion of just going into a page and then polishing it from the beginning. So If I dictate 3,000 words, as I have on a novel, I've Got right now, my polishing days, I go back to word one and polish it and read it over and visualize it and texturize it and add senses. And only when I've got the first three pages as close to perfect as I can will I start. When I've got that first page as perfect as I can, then the next time I'm polishing, I'll start on page two. When that works, I might start on page three or page four. So I wait until I'm going to go over it and over and over it. Then only after I've got a block of text, which might be 2,000 words, 3,000 words, completely done, will I go back and dictate some more. So I have dictation days, I have initial polish days and then I have deeper polish days. And it's just kind of learning what that rhythm is and that's what you have to do. But to tie this into fire dance, when I'm doing my morning ritual, which like I said, is the only practice I do every day, most days I also do the five Tibetans. I mean, I've been doing that reliably. I haven't always done 21 reps of each of them, but I'm trying to go there. And then the more often than not, I get to put in my full exercise routines of one kind or another. But if I don't get my full exercise routines, at least I have my Tai Chi and the Tibetan, so I'm in good basic shape. Okay? And then if I can't do the Tibetans, at least I got my Tai Chi, which enables me to work on my joint mobility and my health, my focus, my relaxed focus. And it's also moving my martial arts along because it is specifically developing a relaxed, focused relationship with physical movement. And that movement, because of the way Tai Chi is formed, is applicable to martial arts practice. Especially if I look at Filipino martial arts and Indonesian martial arts, they flow in there very, very well. So when I'm doing Tai Chi, let's say that I've got, you know, this next period coming up here, I might have to leave the house at 9 in the morning or 10 in the morning. And I might not have three hours in the morning to do everything. So if I, if all I have time to do is Tai Chi and Tibetans for this six week period where we're having this wonderful career opportunity, but we have to, but it's going to require us to be, to leave the house at certain times. I'm being artfully vague here. I can't wait to tell you what it's all about. I really can't. It's. It's all I can promise you is it's terrific. And I get. We get to do. It's. If this happens, it's just a fantastic career opportunity working on a project that I'd work on for free with. With someone who I love. I mean, literally, the person who is bringing us into this has become one of our dearest friends, and they want. They want us to work with them on this project. It's difficult for me to even say how much this means to me, to be able to be able to help my family at the same time that I'm having fun, at the same time that I'm helping a friend fulfill their dreams, too. So I want to, you know those things. And also you understand that when this happens, I get to learn new skills that I will immediately be able to turn around and teach you guys. So it's like there's. There's literally no downside here. And I just. I just. When I do my. My work in the morning, I start with, every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. And I could. I could customize that, you know, every day and everywhere, I'm getting stronger and stronger. I'm getting more and more creative or I'm getting, you know, whatever it is, and I say it, and I carry myself with power. And I listen for the voices in my head that try to tell me, no, you're not. No, you're not. This isn't working. This is stupid. Why are you doing this? This is ridiculous. I've got those voices. Anybody here who's had. Whose heard those voices in their head when they're trying to do affirmations? Yeah, the rest of you guys are lying. It's there. It's there. And it's better to do something consciously and know that part of your mind is watching to see what comes crawling out from under the flat rock in your head. That when I am moving my body at the same time that I'm filling myself with gratitude, it's like, oh, my God, life is so wonderful. Look, on Friday. It's about to be a new year. I'm talking to my friends here. I wanted to be sure that I could help at least one person today. And look at you. There are 18 of you here. And thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm having an opportunity to give back. When I got off the phone with Larry Niven, do you know that There is no way for me to pay that man back for what he gave me. There is no way other than be good to him and to write with him and to pass on to other people what he gave me. And Steve Muhammad, my karate instructor, who gave me everything I was looking for when I walked in his school and said, please teach me, sir. The only way I can pay him back is by teaching other people. That's it. So you guys are helping me repay the people who help me. Dawn Callan, fantastic woman, who was the greatest woman self defense instructor I've ever known and a dear friend. And she gave me. She gave me access to the feminine warrior. I know what part of myself that is. I know I must protect and revere the feminine energy within me to be worthy of the gift that my teachers gave me. That all of that strength, all that martial discipline, all that stuff. It's the metaphor of the European knight who had the armor and the fiery steed and the sword and the lance and all these lethal skills. But it was supposed to be, at your service, milady. Those lethal skills either protect what is soft or they are worthless. And both men and women have both parts of that dynamic. Even if we play social games to specialize over here, specialize over there, make no mistake, you have both. Everyone has both. And when you align them properly, magic happens. And this is the men and the women who taught me this. There is no way for me to repay them except by passing it on. Last week we had you do a eulogy looking back over your life from the end of your life. Your child story, which is the fairy tale you tell yourself about how you grew up to be the person you are today. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who didn't have a father. He was raised by his mother and his sister, who loved him very much. But they could not teach him how to be a man. So he sought that. And he decided that he did not know how to be a man. So he would simply set out to be a human being and figured the rest of it would take care of itself. Or something like that. That's a version of the story that I tell myself about me. There are other ones, but having it in very simple terms, useful. But it's how did you grow up to be who you are right now? And if you're not happy with who you are, make sure that you cut yourself some slack. Make sure that you remember that at every moment of your life you have done the best you could with the resources you have. If you could have done any better, you would have. And if you would not scream at your little girl or your little boy for falling down the first time they try to walk, then you need to be gentle with yourself about the areas in which you have not reached everything that you wanted to reach, not done everything that you wanted to do. You've done the best you could. The Adult Story the third part is your commitment to protect that child. I swear that for the rest of my life I will do all in my power for all of my behaviors, every word I say, every action I take to pass the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? And I will strive to be as courageous about speaking and acting. In truth, I will be as open hearted as possible in terms of being kind and loving to everyone. But I will also seek to become more efficient and effective every day. Whatever. But it's your commitment to yourself. You understand? So does anyone have anyone who did that exercise or a comparable one, or has their goals for 2023, would like to workshop them, would like to mention them, would like to talk about them here? Because this, I think we can make a declaration that this is a safe space. No one's going to get attacked in this space. Not on my watch. You are safe here. Talk about if you will share. If you'll do us the honor of sharing your dreams with us, I'll make sure nobody lands on them. Okay. This is a place for people who are willing to help heal the world. That means we have to help each other and we have to heal ourselves.

So that is not about my goal, but a. This might be a weird question.

No, it's okay.

Many, many years ago, I was having trouble remembering some song lyrics to Proud Mary. I'm not that into lyrics. I'm like one of those people who's like, la la la. I don't know remember lyrics. And you really helped me remember the lyrics by reminding me, you know, this is telling a story that you know. And by remembering that it was a story, I had no problem remembering the lyrics. So when I'm thinking about Tai Chi, you know, there are instances where I feel the story like, you know, hold the baby and don't drop the baby. And you know, and I can, I can basically guide myself by remembering. And I'm wondering if you tell yourself any story through the poses in Tai Chi or sections of Tai Chi, or if there is some kind of an overarching framework that can help me better remember one.

Okay, the overarching framework, Good question, Excellent question. Is whatever you need. Now you can continue going back to the basic instructions. Breathe. Head held as if by a string from above. You could look at it in terms of qigong. Mind, eyes, breath, movement. You could do it in terms of what the martial applications are. You know, what is this? What is this movement? This might be an arm break. This is a kick, this is an evasion. Now I'm sinking, now I'm rising.

Yeah, when you're doing it with Jason, you tend to use it in the martial.

Exactly. Here you just broke somebody's own here. Remember this is a hip throw, you know, so it's like, so we're doing this, it's like, you know, Oh, arm break, bang. You were doing. Some things are kind of obvious, you know, let's see the, this seven star. This hand is right at the middle of my center line. So that anything that comes at me has to come on this side or on that side. It simplifies my choices. This is warding back. So somebody comes at me with something like this, I could deflect it here, deflect it again here, I could pull it there. And if I pull it in, bang, there goes an elbow. Oh no, did I add an elbow to that? Hahaha. Now Jason's laughing, so he's, he's seeing different possibilities. I'll also show him sometimes, okay, these movements here are very fluid. If I had a stick, the same ideas present themselves differently. If I can show him, you know, what is your entry into it? Is it thinking of it as a moving yoga? Is it thinking of it as meditation? Is it joint mobility, Is it aerobic? Is it strengthening the lower body? Is it gaining sensitivity? Whatever it is that you need, because you take a look at the dynamic sphere of what you need to accomplish what it is you're trying to do in your life. You need energy, you need focus, you need resilience, you need to be able to deal with fear. You need whatever it is that you need. You can practice the form for that. I can get aerobics out of it just by going faster or sinking lower. I can make it more martial just by emphasizing certain things. You know, I could do it, I could pop and lock it. I could do it purely, purely smooth every day. Art is self expression, craft is learning the moves. But what you're looking for is who am I? You put yourself into it and every time you practice a different exercise, you're learning a little something different about yourself. And then you put that into your practice and then you take that into your life. So if I'm. I'm visualizing role models at the same time that I'm moving. It's complicated. It's complicated. You know, I'm having to split my attention. But what was it that Jaime just. Was just talking about? The fact that he. His thing goes off, his alarm goes off while he's changing a tire. You have to maintain calm at the same time that you're under pressure. So we're deliberately creating complexity. We are deliberately accepting stress so that we can center ourselves under stress and we can practice in a totally safe context the skills that we will need in a complex and potentially challenging process. Context. Okay. So we are deliberately creating a laboratory in which we can test and develop the capacities that will help us to accomplish what we need to accomplish in life. Okay.

Sounds good.

You bet. Oh. Nicole said body participates safely to competitive athletic events. Yeah. Choose them. Okay. Social grandma 101. What's grandma 101?

So I'm a grandma. My oldest daughter had her girl on September 29th. And, I mean, part of the challenges that I'm dealing with is I'm realizing that my own childhood was less than ideal.

Yes.

Right.

So how I learned how to parent is not how she wants to parent.

Got it.

Which I can respect whether my parenting was great or not. So grandma 101 is sort of just my campaign to keep. She's devoted to gentle parenting techniques. So it's just. It's my opportunity to check on her. The baby's three months old. It's very difficult to build a relationship with a baby, But I can keep building a relationship with my daughter, who's gone through a pretty significant rite of passage.

Yes.

And continue to be her mother, to be her mentor. I don't know. But, like, continue to be involved as the sort of grandma that improves their lives, that I serve their lives. How can I be of service within the context of my new role as grandma? So, you know, so I'm. If I have only time and attention for a teeny bit, I'll watch a TikTok on gentle parenting. I started following people who generate content about gentle parenting. I've started with my dogs. I practice the phrasing that you use when something doesn't happen. Ideally, what is the first word that come up comes out of my head. I want to practice those words being better or more congruent with my current goals.

Right.

Here's a way that we can help you immediately under stress. This is a way we can help you immediately. Okay. Using these specific sets of tools. So if I Wanted to learn how to be a better grandparent. And I had not had good parents or grandparents, then there are a couple things that I would do. First of all, I would find people who had been tremendous grandparents. I would look for men, and me personally, I would look for men and women who were still married, still loved each other like crazy, and were fantastic, ecstatic grandparents and parents. And I would find out, I would study enough of them because they will have things in common about the way they see it, about the way they see the process. And I would say, well, this is under stress. When you're tired and it's stressed, how do you deal with that? And they'll probably just gonna laugh and say, that's life. You know, you just. You just have to just. Sometimes you just have to do stuff. So you ask yourself, under stress, what do I tend to say to myself? Then you find out, what do they say to themselves under stress? What do I focus on? What do they focus on under stress? How do I breathe? And you observe them. How are they breathing? They may not breathe ideally, but you'll probably notice that under stress they don't get all up in their chest, their faces don't get tight. They're kind of chill about it. It in all likelihood, by this point in their lives, they've been to the. They've been to the circus. They know the monkeys. It's just another day at the circus. It's okay. They're not going to take it personally. So their bodies are probably not going to react with threat, and they're probably going to breathe smoothly. So you can literally practice, if you anchor all this stuff to your fear response, that you want this child, this newborn child, to have the most magnificent life, to grow up as a beautiful spirit. You want your daughter to know that you love her. Maybe you haven't been able to be perfect, but you absolutely gave it everything that you have. And you will continue and you're willing to grow and learn. You want to be part of her life, you want to support her. And every possible way that means that you're going to be as strong and as centered as you can be, as loving and as strong. You're going to be a mommy lion, you know, and you're. You raised a mommy lion, and this is the cub. And you go, you go all the way down and you realize that any, any anger you have, any fear that you have, that's all about your love. It's all about your hopes and dreams. It's all about what we want for our Children and our grandchildren. So you practice coming from love and power, especially when things upset you. You look for the things that upset you, and you notice how am I behaving? How am I breathing? When you're doing your tai chi, when you're doing your morning ritual.

You.

You deliberately create stress by accepting the confusion. I'm trying to learn a new move. I'm trying to integrate this. At the same time, I'm trying to visualize this. I'm trying to do this. What voices come up in your head? Where does the tension start in your body? What feels heavy where it should feel light, what feels solid when it should feel plastic or liquid? You start developing your own sense, your own language for the state you're in when you are in a resourceful state. When you are a resourceful state. Just practice it. It's like right now. How do you sit when you're feeling like you are absolutely in your power? How do you sit when you're feeling like you're in your power? You can handle anything. And how is your face? What's the expression on your face when you're feeling like, yeah, I got it. I'm it. I can do this. When you're feeling. When your daughter is happy with you and the baby is gurgling and all is right with the world, what is that response? Yes, that smile right there. That's. Yeah, that's right. See? And if you know that that's what you're like when you're open and you're powerful and you're centered, all you have to do is deliberately go there. So you're doing your tai chi, and you're deliberately feeling centered and powerful and loving, strong, fluid. And I hit this option. Oh, I just float around it. Yeah, there that is. I really like the. The feeling of water flowing through a stream, and sometimes it hits the rocks and flows around it. There is. There's this sadness. There is a crying child. There is an argument. There's someone who's doing something unreasonable, but you love them and you're just gonna flow with it. I have a family member who I have committed. There is a lot of conflict, a lot of times with this person. Tonon Reeb knows exactly who I'm talking about. And I have simply made a commitment. I will never win an argument with this person again. I'm not going to argue with them. It is my job to uplift them. It is my job when this person is around me. I want them to feel loved, respected, supported. And what happens when you do that to Somebody is, they love you back. It's very, very hard to not love someone who gives you love without asking for anything in return. Now, what you do have to do is protect yourself. You have to know your boundaries. And we had a comment here about boundaries. Let's see. Okay, so what if we don't know how to set boundaries until we are so strung out that we don't pass the three gates and we set the boundaries? Then you notice the times that you didn't set your boundaries, and you make sure that that's one of your goals. So I need to, you know, between the eulogy, which is this is what this person accomplished in their life, their child story, that's your self image. That's the story you tell about how you created your life. And you could say in your eulogy that this person mastered boundaries. You know, during their life they had problems with boundaries, but by the end of their life, they were teaching others how to maintain healthful, beautiful boundaries. They mastered it. Okay. And then as your adult story, you could say from, you know, like, personally, I say you, the choice is you can either have a shell or a spine. Either one works. I prefer the spine because that I prefer to expose myself to the elements. I did not ask for an easy life. I asked for an authentic one. I want to really feel what there is to be felt. I'm going to give everything I have to my children, my friends, my students, my writing, my mentors. I want to be as totally present as I can be. I want to feel anything. And when I'm on my deathbed, I want to be wide awake and see it coming. This is what I want. And that means I need to know my center so I can be as flexible as possible while still protecting myself. You don't open your heart until you first access that warrior part of you that would fight for your survival. Because if you open your heart without having that survival thing open, you will attract people, predators. They'll come sniffing around. They will smell your power. They will smell your kindness, and they will take advantage of it.

No.

Your family needs you to be strong. Your family needs you to protect yourself. And even the abusers, on some level, are hoping that you can show them a way out of the trap they're in. They didn't want to be abusers. They wanted to be happy. They made the mistake of thinking that abusing other people was their way to be happy, but it doesn't. It kills their relationships. So they're trapped in a maze that has no cheese and they don't know their way out. So no matter how you slice it, your job is to be strong enough to be safe and then open your heart to be loving and then decide what do I want to do with my life? How can I? How can I serve so safe then joyful, then and then of service. Everything you do in life to make money, you're going to have to serve somebody somewhere. You're going to make somebody else's life happy somewhere. But remember to start with the absolute 100% acceptance of your right to be safe. Then open your heart in that order. Questions? Comments Requests? Just very, very briefly, those of you who are not already in the fire Dance program, please go to Firedance Tai Chi.com Sign up the first five people who are new signups who do their goal sheet. Like a one page goal sheet. I'll personally review it. I'll personally review it and work with you. I want so much for you to have the resources www.firedancetaichi.com for those of you who've already been in the program, guess what? I'll look at five of yours too. So I really want you to send it to email it to me by midnight on the first email it to me. You're a one page sheet of what it is you want to accomplish so we can work together to help you create a morning ritual that anchors these things into your life. Www.firedancetaichi.com Anything I can do to support you, I'll do my damnedest to do. Anything I can do to help. You are precious to me and I want you to be precious to yourselves. I want you to get that you're important. You are irreplaceable. I want you to get that you're made of the same stuff as the stars. In all the history of the universe, there's never been anything or anyone quite like you. That if you will find your uniqueness and find a way to give it to the world in a way that we can see the value. Maybe you make us laugh, maybe you make us cry. Maybe you make us think. Maybe you support our dreams. But working together like this, we can create impact. You impact yourself. You impact your family, your communities, the world itself. Last comments, questions or requests from anybody about anything that we have covered.

This is Clarissa. I just wanted to say that I had to jump off on a call that I couldn't swat off. But I wanted to say before the new year came, thank you so much for doing this. It has meant everything. I quote you so much that I I hear your Words around my space. I just. One of the VPs. I work at a college. One of the VPs from my college sent me a text message of her wearing her edit, her creative child's hat because she's. I told her about the editor's hat and the child's hat, so she sent me a picture of her. So I. I've been. I've been like repeating you so much that I see it in my space. And I just wanted to thank you and say happy New Year.

Thank you. And we're going to unmute in just a minute. Let everybody wish each other a happy new year. But I just want to say to you that my goal is a thousand people in this program because a thousand people can change the world. We can literally change the world. We can literally make. Each of you can then change a thousand people with your writing, with your behavior, the way you walk, the way you carry yourself, the children that you raise, the truth that you speak. This is the only way the world does change. One at a time. And if I can share with you the steps that I'm taking to have built a fantastic relationship with one of the world's great women, a career that makes me so happy every day. I cannot wait to get up and work in a body that still allows me to do all the things I enjoyed doing when I was younger. I can't do them in the exact same way, but I can walk into a class full of kids and beat them all up, which is so much fun. I mean, it really does entertain me. I want joy for each and every one of you. Thank you for letting me be a part of your lives. Make sure to tell if you're enjoying this. Tell your friends about it. Bring a couple people next time and let us help you build a morning ritual that will make 2023 the best year of your lives. So unmute yourselves and say Happy New Year. And then let's get into to our weekend.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Happy Happy New Year.

Thank you so much everyone.

Have all the happy days.

Every day we're getting.

And Tom and Kurt and Gwen and Linda and Sonia and Janice and Dennis and Eric and Ross and Clarissa and Nicole and Melina and Suzanne and iPad. This is going to get big enough that I won't be able to be dealing with you guys as individuals as much. We will find when that happens, we will find ways to give you OGs special access so that we can continue this because this is very precious to me. Take care, people. I love you all. Be kind to each other. Have a wonderful, wonderful new year. See you next year.

It's going to be wonderful to everyone.