Firedance: The "Diamond Hour"

Wow. A lot going on.

Always.

Yes. And so we will get started in just a moment. I'm going to say hello over here on Facebook. So we will get started. Just a moment. I'm going to say hello over here on Facebook. The feedback was starting to kick in. No feedback. Welcome to Fire Dance. My name is Stephen Barnes, and I know you guys, you know, and I love you guys, and I'm so glad to see you back here. And let's unmute ourselves and everybody say hi. Just get your energy up, because you got to get your energy up. Everybody.

Hello, everybody.

Hello, everybody. Hello.

And make sure even your names.

Yay.

Make sure to talk to each other in the, in the, in the chat room. Support each other. We have some people who can use some support today. I mean, we always do, you know, so the more you share, this is. This is not about Steve Barnes lecturing you, although I will do that, or even answering your questions. It's about building a community. And the community here mirrors the community in your own mind, in your own heart. It's about, well, what happens when you're surrounded by people who are. Who want you to succeed, who can help you, and they don't have to be ahead of you on the path. I've had friends who couldn't keep up with me at all in terms of things physically or intellectually, but they loved me. They loved me. I'd known them since, you know, my best buddy, Lee Taylor, I'd known him since kindergarten. And it didn't matter what was happening in his life, in my life. We loved each other. It was as simple as that. And I want you to know that. Where you have to keep upgrading your relationships and your associations, there's no need for you to leave old people behind. You can expand your circle. Love is a perfectly good connection as long as it's healthy love. And if it's unhealthy, love, and you have to support a family member, some like this, who is toxic, and you choose to support them, then you need your positive associations to help raise your energy so that when you deal with them, you can deal with them in a healthful way. As you know, I'm always asking the question, what are the most important basics? And if I were to look at what the most important basics are in my life, one of them is looking at the camera right now. My beautiful, wonderful, brilliant wife, Tananarive Due said, Tananarive, would you step in and say some things just to celebrate life? And just where are you? What's going on, buddy?

Yeah, absolutely. If you got my newsletter this morning, you know that Steve and I had a great lunch with the executive we lost, and I was so heartbroken over that. And a big meeting with all of our reps, two lawyers, a manager, two agents. The kind of meetings where things happen and we're just holding up a united front and trying to. Including the director, just to power our way through, to figure out a way to make it work even if he no longer has a department. How do we keep working with him? How does he stay on the project? And I felt much better after that. And even a small thing like frustration, editing a promo for the podcast, I'm always, like, one hair away from being thrown off of the tech because I'm not super tech savvy. So they make small changes. I'm like, ah. And I. I was having trouble with an app I use for captioning, and then I realized that I could caption the same place I edit the podcast. I don't need two apps. So actually, an obstacle turned into a streamlining. So this is all just to say even when times are grim and that, you know, honestly, that does not apply necessarily in a time of deep grief, you know, it's like, that is what it is. It's a deep, deep emotion that is just a tribute to how much we loved people. You know, there's not necessarily a rainbow rating around that corner except time and healing. But often when we come up against obstacles, we don't realize there are hidden opportunities, or if we just keep on that path, even if we can't see through that fog, just around the bend is something that we need and will help us grow and might bring us joy. And that's all I'm going to say.

Oh, well, I love you, baby, and I'm so glad for the times that you're able to be here. You know, it is possible. I'm not sure, but it is possible that in two weeks you're going to have to run this. I don't know where I'm exactly. I'm going to be. My. My schedul is up in the air a little bit. Once I know a little bit more. Hopefully in two weeks. Actually, no, in two weeks, I'll be able to run it, but in three weeks, I'll be flying back from the Philippines, and so it is possible that I'll be in the air and I won't have access to anything but partnership. Finding the right partner in life is so incredibly important. Incredibly important. And I want to make sure that there is no doubt in my mind, and no doubt any of your minds how critically important Tananarive is in. In this life. If. If, and you know it, we will talk about these things. It'll be her option. Whether or not she wants to step in and do this. We'll figure it out some kind of way. But every week I try to ask, what's the most important thing I can give you? And this week was special in the sense that my son Jason, may very well have had the best academic week of his life, that his college class, which was a confrontational thing, is now turning into a joy thing. And, yeah, I primed that pump by bribing him to find something that he was happy about in class. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, I will bribe, I will blackmail, I'll do anything. But once he found that and started looking for the positives, he started finding them. And he. Out of a class of over 20 people, his was one of two projects that were chosen to go into production.

I mean, he wrote a script. It's a PSA script, you know, and was not thrilled with this assignment. It was two parts, the first draft and the second draft, and not thrilled at all. But he did write it, and he did it. And the fact that it was chosen. Oh, we're still over the moon. Because. Especially because it's writing. You know, I mean, not to put too fine a line on it, but yes, I love the fact that he's getting that reinforcement for something he wrote.

Absolutely. So asking myself, you know, we're looking at these basic pieces of the puzzle. There is the five minute miracle, which is the basic buy in. If you're doing the five minute miracle, then in terms of the magic formula, which is, you know, a map or model. Let me. My limited ability to. To do graphics still kind of cracks me up. It's. It's fun. It's fun. So we have a map or model. Action. Daily action. You feel gratitude. You have to have intent. And the action needs to be. And the goal needs to be in congruence with your character, with your deep self. You have to feel that just doing these things, these actions on a daily basis are bringing you joy. You're not violating yourself. You're creating the world that you want to see. As long as you don't have a zero in any of these categories, you're making forward progress. So if all you did was. Did the five minute miracle, you know, breathe. Take 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing once every hour, at least five times a day. As long as you're doing that, you don't have a zero. And if you go through map or model. So, okay, let's say that your goal is to decrease stress. It's going to be great for that. If you start bringing gratitude in while you're doing your breathing, fantastic. Just make sure you have at least a one in each of these five categories. And I'm going to keep hammering that over and over again. But there is that question. If, if what we're doing here is we're aiming at improving by 1% per week, what is the. If there was one thing to focus on, what would it be? And I went back to some earlier thoughts that have to do with the fact that the first hour of your day sets the tone for the rest of the day. In the same way that people set, you know, New Year's resolutions, they're trying to start off their year strong or on Sundays they, they go over their, their plans and their goals and what they're going to do and they're. So you're trying to, you know, beginning of the week, you try to set the week off right? The first hour of the day. If I were to say to you that the first hour of the day sets the tone for the rest of the day, and you looked at what you did in the first hour of the day, how many of you are doom scrolling, how many of you are answering your email, which Brendan Burchard says email is a great organizing factor for other people's agendas. That's what other people want you to do. If that stuff has been sitting in an email box for 12 hours, it'll wait another hour before you answer it. But what is critical is that you set yourself up to have the best day possible. And if five minute miracle is where we begin and then you expand that into a morning ritual of 10 to 20 minutes where you're moving and going through the steps of the magic formula in terms of affirmations, individualization, and thinking about your role models and flooding yourself with gratitude, what next? What next is to look at that first hour. If you were to look. In other words, if I have three basic arenas of my life that I have to focus on to be sure that everything is okay. And this is so critical. People, please listen to me, listen to me carefully. I had a conversation with someone recently who does not anchor their sense of reality in their, in their body, their relationships and their finances. And they live in a, what they think is a very spiritual place. And they're lost and they Followed a guru who did not encourage people to anchor things in this reality so that a lot of people who followed this person got hurt. And I found myself thinking back over the conversation and thinking to myself, did I do anything wrong? Did I? Because no, but no, I didn't. They're people who invest themselves so deeply in a path that the sunk cost fallacy kicks in. By the time they realize that a relationship or a relationship with a teacher or a political orientation or a set of attitudes are wrong and damaging sometimes they've invested so much of their life in it that they literally cannot admit that anything is wrong because it would invalidate their lives. I remember Charles Johnson made the comment that a writing instructor of his, they were talking about non dualistic thought, Buddhism, Taoism, non dualistic thought. And his writing mentor, Charles Johnson, is a very accomplished philosopher, a PhD in philosophy and brilliant writer and brilliant martial artist. And this mentor said to him, if non dualism is true, my entire life has been a lie. And Chuck thought to himself, yes, you can't say that out loud, but that's what he was thinking. And there are people who are so invested for so long in doing things that hurt them that to realize they have been doing the wrong thing would cost them more than they can afford to pay. And they will slide all the way to death defending the thing that hurt them, the person who hurt them, the attitudes that hurt them. Dear God, please anchor what you're doing in, you know, how does this work for my body? You know, how does this work for my relationships and my relationship with myself? How does it work for my finances, my money? Any real flaw in your plans is going to show up in one of those three arenas. If it doesn't show up in one of those three arenas, it's not that much of a flaw, is it? I have people tell me, it's like, you know, steve, well, you focus on your, know, body, emotions and mind. What if you're wrong? I said, well, in that case, I'm just going to be healthy, loved and rich. It's like, how bad is that going to be? I mean, seriously, if I'm healthy and dynamic and I have a loving family and I love them and I love life and I got tons of enough money in the bank that every Christmas I can give thousands of dollars away. By the way, I love doing that. I love doing that. Talk about being able to say to the world, thank you, thank you. And not only that, but I'll tell you a secret. It's not really a secret. It's not all my money. Once I started doing it, other people started saying, how can I co. How can I help? So they will send me money and I give it away as fast as I can get it. It's like I'm Santa Claus every year. To have more energy than you need, to have enough love to care about other people genuinely, to have enough money that you're able to create the dream. You know, I've got problems, but I got first world problems and I got, you know, when you look at it, all of us on this call are among the wealthiest human beings that have ever lived on this planet. We have more options, more communication, more a wider variety of food and entertainment and communication than kings and queens did just one century ago. It's ridiculous how wealthy we are. To have gratitude for that does not mean that there is not oppression, that there are not problems, any of those things. It simply means that gratitude for what you already have is the fuel of faith for what you can create in the future. If you are not grateful for what you already have, how are you going to have any faith that the future is going to be better? You have to feel gratitude. You have to find within yourself. That sense of life has given me many things. It will give me more things at any rate. So this is why gratitude is part of the magic formula. But in just. If I have just one hour, what can I do? If I was taking control of one hour of my day, that first hour I could work out. There are kettlebell workouts that don't last more than 15 minutes that will totally toast your entire body. Try doing 15. 15 minutes of hand to hand kettlebell swings using Tabata protocol or Pavel Satsulin's Axe protocol. Your entire body is a mess. Combine that with some sun salutations and five Tibetans and you've literally got a complete exercise system that takes less than 20 minutes a day. I mean, it's ridiculous. Once if you get really smart about what you're doing, it's ridiculous. You can center yourself emotionally so that you're feeling gratitude and you know, just like, wow, another day of life. Thank you. And you can focus on what your goals are. In other words, your long term goal is to be happy. That's it. You know, some people say, I don't know what my goal is. Yes, you do. It's me. Happy. Move away from pain toward pleasure. Meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. So every planaria, every worm knows to move away from pain. Human beings need to embrace joy and evolved Human beings need to also be committed to service. And one of the things that we have been playing with here is the thought, what if you set as a goal that you are rewarded in direct proportion to the amount of service that you give the world? If you also take joy in service, then you open the door to the possibility, what would a life look like where the happier you were, the better you got paid? What would that world be if you took joy and service? When considered that whether you're writing books or you're a lawyer or this or that, every dime you get comes from other people perceiving that you've been of service to them, that you've provided a product or service that they need more than they need the money. So it is possible to look at it that way. I mean, when I look at writing a Star wars novel, you know, they offer me a lot of money for that, and the money is enough to get me to stop and say, you know, do a Scooby take. You know, really? Okay, well, let me take a look at this. Could I have fun doing it? So I asked them a very important question, and I will say this. I haven't said this publicly, but I will. You know, I think that it's getting time that I'll be able to. I can say this a little bit, and that is that the question I had for them was, can I give Mace Windu? They wanted me to do a Mace Windu novel. I said, can I give Mace a relationship? And they said, yes. So I said, oh, really? Really? You're really going to let me do this? All right. So now I know that I can serve an underserved community in that sense, that there are people who are watching this and they want to see a hero in a particular way, of a particular ethnicity. But I also have to serve the Star wars fans in general. Can I write a really good Star wars story? You know, I think that I've been a fan of Star wars since the first movie came out. I've seen all of them the day that they opened, except the first one. You know, it took me a couple weeks to get to it, but after that first day, every one of them. So I'm enough of a Star wars fan that I know I'm going to protect those values. I know what Star wars wars is about. Can I write a Steve Barnes novel? Sit in the Star wars universe? Well, what are the things that I like? There are certain things that represent the thematics that I like to do and the rhythms and the pacings and so forth that I like to do, my perspective on life and so forth. And I said, I see how I can do this. Now there was another question to me being married to a world class novelist. Can I write a book that Tananari would be proud of, that she would look at and think, my baby done good. So Tananari say something about some of the process that we went through there and these stories on me.

You want my baby done good? First of all, the only other Star wars novel I've read is the one he wrote before. Listen to the audio for that. So I was. Well, you know, I kept thinking as I was reading over his travel, I never could have written this because his level of immersion both in Star wars culture, but also the Barnesian aspect of it all, it gave him many opportunities to discuss his philosophies about warrior ethics and life and love. I mean, it was really basically the perfect playing ground for the Barnesian approach to telling the story of a warrior. And yeah, it was. It's just been fun watching you. I'm as proud as I am of the work you did and how quickly you did it and having to work over the holidays, which sucked. I'm especially proud of how you kept your anxiety and stress at a low boil as, as long as you did. You know, there were a few times it boiled the medium or a couple times, maybe not a few, but mostly you were just doing the work like exactly what you preached. You reached the point where you have faith and, and your process. And I think the additional faith that I would tell you if what I was reading was a disaster. And also me understanding that your first drafts, like what your first drafts look like as opposed to your, your later drafts. So I also have the faith, you know, that you see this, like, I don't have to flag everything because you see, you know what you have to do. So yeah, it was, it was a great process.

Well, she's being nice. And let me tell you one thing specifically. There was a particular character who I wanted to do something with. And the character was named after my grand niece. And Tananari asked me, do you really want this character named after your grandniece to do this particular thing? Do you want her mom to be reading that to her? And I thought to myself, no, I don't. You're right about that. Furthermore, I had made a mistake. I hadn't considered that by creating this dynamic character. I was asking the little girls who are reading this book to identify with this character. And I had responsibilities to those little girls. And to the parents of those little girls and to the women those little girls are going to be, to give them building blocks on which to build their character for the future. I mean, I know how much reading meant to me. I know how desperate I was to find images that represented me, that spoke to me. And I know how grateful I was when people did it right and how much it hurt when people did it wrong. And Tananarive kept me honest. She gave me that perspective. Now, what I will say is that I would have eventually given this book to some woman that I know who I trust to look at to get that point of view. But having that built into my home.

Wow.

But at any rate, circling back around, in one hour, I could write one page of a book. In one hour, I actually could write a thousand words of rough draft. I could dictate a thousand words of rough draft. Actually, in, let's say, in 20 minutes in flow state, if I know what the scene is going to be, I could dictate 2,000 words. And then I could alternate days, you know, dictate it one day, polish it the next, dictate one day, polish the next one hour of time. Then I could center myself. I could be familiar with what my goals are going to be. I could know how today fits into those overall goals. I could work out, I could produce enough text that in a year I'd have a book. And that's just in a single hour, if I get focused enough. Now, what I want to say is, if you were to say I want to improve my first hour of the day by 1% every week, I am wondering right now whether or not that might not be the most powerful thing we could work on together. And I would love to get feedback from you because it is. It is your reactions as a community to the things I'm saying that determine for me how do I enter into this matrix? How do I show you in the most useful way? And so, thoughts, any comments, questions or requests about that notion of what if we focused on improving your first hour of the day by 1% per week? What would happen? Jaime Rodriguez.

Hi, everybody. That is exactly the sort of thing that's been on my mind all week. I've got that first hour of the day down and have for a good long time. And I think it is required for my very survival. And I will even double down on it. And because there are days where the stuff that's happening in that day, an hour for my morning ritual and everything else, is not enough, and I might even have to do. Just like with the five minute miracle, I might have to take regular breaks during the day to repeat my morning ritual.

Well, you know, the Pomodoro notion is that you work hard for 50, for 30 minutes or 25 minutes and take five minutes off, or you work hard for 50 minutes and take 10 minutes off that. The idea is that you do take regular breaks. What you do during those breaks, infinite flexibility on that. So let me ask you a question. In your breaks, what are you doing for yourself physically or in your morning?

Well, the morning ritual is usually I wake up first thing, glass of water, pee, and then a cup of coffee. And as I drink the cup of coffee, I set up an app called Insights Timer and I do anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour of prayer and meditation. Reflect. It is tai chi and other exercise. Sometimes yoga, sometimes Tibetans.

Okay. How many Tibetans are you up to?

I'm doing three consistently.

Nothing. That's per. That's perfect. Don't you dare apologize for that. Okay, good.

And then it's time to make breakfast.

Okay.

Actually eat something. And generally, by the time I finished eating breakfast, I am acutely aware of whatever the chores are that need to be done, and I'll do those. And by the time I'm done doing some progress on that kind of life organizing stuff, it's time for my AA meeting. And I do an hour AA meeting, and then after that, the day is mine to do what I want.

Okay, so let me ask you a question. What would a 1% improvement on that program be?

Well, and that's one of the things in terms of raising my hand just now as I try to apply this stuff to my physical world, my heart and my head, finances, career, what I'm finding, because I get some of those things done in that work in the morning, too, before the noon thing. It's the balance between the body, the heart and the head. Or the finance.

Where do you feel like you're most out of balance?

Boy, I'm still navigating that. I don't feel totally out of balance, but the immediate demands of one. Let me set up a scenario. Two weeks ago, I got a nudge from a neighbor that there was going to be a chamber music concert here in my town on Thursday this week. So I called my honey up and asked him if he wanted to go, and he said yes. And so I bought tickets. Usually he buys tickets for me. It is a big deal for me to buy something for him. Right. And so this was a 1% improvement in our relationship.

Okay, so it was a 1% emotional. But I'm going to go back to the same question. I need you to zero. In which arena are you most out of balance?

I'm going to have to look at that deeper because I think I have. I've broken away from crisis management most of my life, but as I look at what's been happening the last two or three weeks as I apply this stuff, it's been still a crisis management pattern of whatever is important in front of me.

Okay, well, I need you to look into that more deeply and come back to me later on when you have. In other words, you're going to be most out of balance either in your body, your emotions or your finances. You know, one of those areas is going to pop out, man.

Here's a couple more pieces though, that go in just for this week. On Tuesday, I celebrated 36 years of sobriety.

Yes.

On Monday, a neighbor child who grew up with my daughter as one of her childhood playmates, where their family and our family were a larger extended family. The 30 year old boy died on Monday, which is devastating. On Wednesday, I had an appointment with my own physician to talk about my health issues. Out of the six things I had on notes to go talk to my physician about, we only got to the first two because they're only allowed 15 minutes per patient. So what she told me is I have to make another appointment next week to try to get two more of the six, and then another appointment a week later to get the last two talks.

I'm going to. I'm. Look, I'm going to hazard, Jaime, that it's your physical and that if you were to totally transform your body physically, you would find that everything else has transformed as well, you know. But it's a guess. It's. I want to.

But part of that in terms of the great joys and great successes, I've lost five pounds since the last time we talked about this stuff. So that's moving in the right direction.

In how long a period of time?

Two weeks.

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So. So, because that's kind of like right on track, it indicates that you, you know, that you are definitely, no question about it, moving in that right direction. And give them a hand, everybody. I mean, like, that's, that's wonderful. So just. I think you're on the right track. So if you were to look at how can I improve that first hour of the day, I think. Seems to me that you would have some answers. You can improve the Intensity of physical work. You could improve the depth and clarity of your planning. You know, you could input. You could have 20 minutes of input by finding a YouTube video of somebody who is a good mentor and listening to them every day. So the possibilities present themselves. Okay, that's. That. That's good. Thank you very much. Okay.

It was. It was the whole business of trying to balance the three and get.

Yeah. So maybe improving 1% of balance. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, one of my core goals for a very long time was improve an amplitude and congruence of body, mind, and spirit. That's all about balance. And then increasing the power behind that balance. So that's a perfectly good goal. That works. That works. So let's see who else? And let's see. Tananarive. We're gonna. We're gonna go to you in a minute, but Patricia J. Hawkins. Is Patricia J. Hawkins there? Hello.

Let me see video. Rather let me see if video doesn't take me down. Hang on.

There you go. So let me ask you a question. If we were to focus on improving the first hour of your day, what do you think would result from having greater mastery of the first hour of your day?

I would like to have a visual spatial sense of what I want to accomplish during the day. I mean, so I'm. I'm starting from. Yeah, a visual spatial. Yeah, a goal.

Well, let me ask you a question. If you work backwards from a goal of being happy and you chose a goal, a physical goal, like maybe walking a 10k or something like that, and an emotional goal, you know, maybe it represents a trip to someplace that would really make you happy. You know, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, who knows? And then an intellectual goal, a picture of your bank account, you know, or a car, something like this. And cut pictures out that represent. That represent the end state of something that's going to make you happy. So joy is the goal. These are the vehicles to the goal. Now you back away. What is it I can do today that would take one step in that direction? Would that make sense?

Yes. Yes, it would. And that's honestly a brilliant response to my goal. You answered it in kind.

Yeah, yeah. You got a big space on your wall right up there. You could put the pictures right up there. So you always remember everything that you do.

Getting my art up there.

Yes, you're an artist. Draw pictures of these things. Something that represents the body that you want, the emotional state that you want, the joy that you want and the money that you want. Then everything you do Every day, just make sure that you're doing one thing that moves, you know, taking one step towards each of those things, and you have just succeeded that day. Everything after that is play. But if you do that, then you could. You could do that in your first hour to spend 20 minutes thinking about the context of your life. My goal is to be happy, to be joyful, and of service. Let me do these things. And today I can make one phone call to find a new client. Today I can walk around the block and stretch. You know, today I can tell someone who I love that I love them, or I can make plans to do. In other words, that you find just one thing you can do. It doesn't have to be more than one, but if you focused on that, I suspect that you'd find it easy to make that 1% improvement and that that 1% improvement would propagate through your life for greater joy and service.

I want to say I got here 10 minutes late because I was coming back from an art class with somebody who I'm hoping can be a mentor. She's 10 years younger than me, but they say, you know, well, yeah, find a younger mentor.

Yeah.

Yes.

It was very. It was very useful.

It was a great, Fantastic. Yeah, so that's. That's a good thing. So, yeah, I. I feel like we're going in the right direction here. At the very least, it's something we can focus on for a while and we'll. We'll just see. But thank you very much. I would like. Tananarive had some things that she wanted to say, and I would like to open the floor to her.

Thanks.

Thank you. From. I don't know if you're aware, especially those of you who are on our life writing course may already know this, but we do invite participants to submit short stories to us for feedback. And we got a short story from Shakeja who happens to be here today. And I wanted to talk about the story, which is called blackberries. And in a way, I. I've already given her a link to the Google Doc, where I have some more specific comments. But I think it's helpful for the group, especially since so many of you are writers, to hear the feedback. So that's what I'd like to do, if that's okay.

It's more than okay. This is what we do.

This story of blackberries is right up my alley because I am very much all about coming of age and loss of innocence stories, which is what this one is and what this story does, right, is that It. It has all these touchstones of childhood, like a child's eye view at the opening, things we stop noticing as we're adults, like the bugs that are making a path across the sidewalk, the little rivalries between children. Just all these details about childhood and an implication of innocence. Except that these blackberries keep falling before they've ripened. And when they do that, they stink. And by the time I read the end of the story. And that's kind of where it begins, and the story is called Blackberries. So I figured out, oh, this is a great visual symbol for a child whose maturation journey is interrupted by something inappropriate and a realization. And what I would like to Caja to do. I should put you up here on screen. Where are you?

I've got her up on the screen.

Oh, okay. She's. She. But she's not pinned. Okay, let me try to.

Oh, I did pin it.

Let me. Let me spotlight for everyone. And I'm going to spotlight myself, too, so we can both talk to each other. Is the difference between the spotlight and painting, which I always confuse. Oh, yeah. Sort. Okay. So I feel like Shakeja, first of all, I feel like I get what you were doing with this story, which is always great. It's really a beautiful portrait of what you're trying to convey, that journey from innocence to loss of innocence. And I feel like you're 75 to even maybe 80% there. I think in your next draft, you'll want to probably create more of a scene with this young girl and her father so we have more to compare against. By the time we get to that devastating ending, we'll see that the image of parental authority that he exudes at the beginning of the story is so far from the actual truth. And this child, who seems very safe at the beginning of the story, feels very unsafe by the end of the story. And just so you all know, it basically has to do with. I mean, part of it is he has a drug addiction we didn't know about to the very end. So that's very scary. But the. The gist of it and why the story was originally called Trail of Pennies was because there was a predator in the neighborhood who used change and a trail I make. Kids who don't have a lot of money would pick up the. The change and follow a trail. And he's calling her name, trying to call her into the garage, and, you know, nothing good is going to happen. She actually tells her dad. And the first disappointing thing from her dad is, how much did you get? And you should have gotten that last quarter. The reason she didn't get that last quarter was because she was scared and ran away. She's reporting this to the father. So the father has this initially disappointing reaction, but then he says, I'll talk to him. You know, I'll kind of. I'll fix it kind of thing. And as they're walking to the store, they pass the guy, and her father looks away and does absolutely nothing. And that is to me. I also want you to expand that last paragraph. So those lush visuals you have from childhood at the beginning, how can you juxtapose those with her disappointment at watching her father look away and pretend this didn't happen right in front of her? And then it's just the choices of when is it enough exposition? When do I need to balance that with some dialogue? Either with the father bother at the beginning a little bit more, maybe with the friends she decides not to go to the store with. I find that dialogue exchanges really help anchor the reader. And the story is a little bit exposition heavy in terms of those scenes with other people. So just find sort of a way to balance, like, when are we in conversation and in a moment with other people? And how does the exposition that lead us to that next conversation or hint toward the. The central for this story? I won't call it so much a conflict as a central tragedy of your story, but like I said, 75 to 80% there. I love the choices that you made. The reminiscences feel very genuine, very anchoring in childhood, and it makes that. That disappointing moment with the father at the end really devastating. Did you have any questions for me?

Thank you.

So I'm still trying to calm down. I'm so excited.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Like, I'm just. Okay, I'm going to try to calm down, and it's going to take a minute for all of this wonderful energy to come down. I'm just. I'm happy. I. I'm trying.

Okay, slow down. Slow your breathing down. No, no, see that? Let's slow it up. Belly breathing, hands on hands on your belly. Take it all the way down. Make it part of your being. You just got a real gift.

Oh, my God.

Yes, I know.

So you honor that gift by letting it become a part of you.

I am. It just. I'm very. Oh, my God. I feel like I want to cry. This is like, so.

Nothing wrong with tears.

It's really a wonderful point in time. I'm trying to get my left brain to kick in, but my Right. Brain is still kind of taking over. But I can say what my reservations were in the beginning. It wasn't the hero's journey, so I was trying to work in that structure, but this is the story that kept coming out.

You know, the thing to remember, though, I don't mean to interrupt you, but the thing to remember about the hero's journey is that it's a guideline. And I really feel like this story is a beat on the hero's journey. I mean, you could call it a dark night of the soul story.

Oh, I like that.

You know? Yeah.

The hero's journey is. Is the simple pattern. Okay. It matches what happens in life. But once you understand that pattern instinctively, it becomes another character in the story. And you can take it apart. You can use, as if you were using a kaleidoscope and literally deconstruct it. You can focus on one point, you can collapse points, you can expand them, you can stay in the space between two points. You can do all those different things. But because it is a way of looking at life and anything you do in a story has to relate to life in some way. People will not recognize it. But what we can do is look at a story that's nothing more than somebody knocking on a door and they can hear people having fun on the other side of the door. Shirley Jackson did a fabulous story there. And the entire rest of the arc of her journey is suggested. You know who this woman is?

Yeah. And I'm actually, I'm just really glad you brought that up as a concern because there are other life running students here, and we say it in the course, but it, it bears repeating. It is a guide. And you can fit a beat of the hero's journey to almost any story. I wrote a story, a science fiction story about a woman in her 60s who realized that she'd had a daughter created in an artificial womb that she knew nothing about. And the whole journey of this story was for her to get over her bitterness toward the government that did this to her. To have the. Not just the courage, but the openness of heart to open that door and welcome that child into her life because she was afraid the government was just going to use this child as a way to control her. And she wanted nothing to do with it. But the whole story is leading up to her reconnecting with her humanity and opening the door. And what happens next, nobody knows. But it's just that is, the heroine accepts the challenge is what I would call that point on the hero's journey.

It doesn't have to be an external challenge. They actually don't even have to take action. But your views of what human beings are will be demonstrated by the way that character acts in response to the external challenges or the internal challenges. Your sense of the ethical structure of the universe, what is true about the world, will be shown in the way the universe responds to her actions.

Oh, someone was also asking in chat Life writing class. Yes, we have a 52 week digital download life writing premium course where you take it at your own pace. And in fact I'm going to put the URL in the chat and next.

In next Saturday, we're going to be teaching our first screenwriting workshop of the year Live. You can find out about that. It's screenwriting webinar.

I just put both of those URLs in there. So I'm really, really glad, Shakeja, that you didn't try to bind yourself too closely to following all these steps of the hero's journey. Like when I read that story, it to that reads as a reminiscence of the moment someone lost respect for their father. My grandmother had a similar moment that I wrote a story about. But I remedied the thing. Like I rewrote history so that he did step up and he did do the thing my grandmother wanted him to do. In your story, this character does not. And that's where it's like, oh, you know, she thought she was in a sort of a semi safe child space. She's realized that now that she and you didn't even have to go in her head. It's just the unfolding of the events. We can see that this is just a devastating moment for her. So I want to congratulate you on it. You, you, you emailed it to me, so you know where to email me if you have other questions.

And also you understand the perfection of what you did there. A story is about a moment in which somebody's life changes. Yeah, it's about a moment. It's not about, not necessarily an entire event. You can write stories that are entire events, but quite often such stories are trivial. They're just heroic stories. Biter bit stories, you know, stories that are going to appear in pulp magazines with clear cut beginnings, middles and ends. That's where you start. But as you get more sophisticated, you will find that the moment at which you learn something or you admit something or you do something that changes things. And your job as an artist is to understand yourself enough to have a philosophy about how did this happen? How did we become what we are. How is the world what it is? And then you understand story enough to take something that you believe and you put it into a matrix of fiction such that you never directly state your premise, but you lead your reader through an experience so that on the other, when they finish that story, they understand something about how you see the world. Because you created characters in a situation that express something that you. You believe in, or at least you believed in for the period of time wrote that story. Good science fiction storytellers like Robert Sheckley will. Will come from lots of different directions. You know, he. I don't. I think he had a really fractured view of what reality was. And every story seemed to have almost come from a different position. Most of us aren't like that. Most of us are trying to work through something in our lives. Why are people. Why do we hurt each other? Why don't fathers protect their daughters? Why is it so hard to heal whatever it is that is your concern? The obstacle is the offering, the thing that comes back to you over and over again, wondering, why can't I get past this? Or why can't they get past this? Or why don't people wake up? Or why can't we just love each other? Why? Why, why, why?

Why?

That energy is what you want to develop the skill. Skill to put into a story without being dogmatic.

And one. One other thing I just want to mention one last thing that I thought was really masterful about how you wrote this story, the unfolding of the story, is that because it's such a. An insidious notion, the coins and the trail of coins leading someone to a garage, you feel like that's the biggest awful moment in the story when she realizes she's being lured and that this person means her harm. But it's not that. It's not that. It's what happens when she tells her father exactly. And what her father doesn't say and what her father doesn't do. That's the. Ooh. Part of the story. So I just want to give you kudos for that. You really. You know, it's hard sometimes to express your actual vision in. In like eight pages. Maybe if this were double space, it'd be longer than eight pages. But this is a very short, short story, and you really arced it nicely. So just look at my notes in the Google Doc and I would love to see your revision as well.

And we would. I have no problem with the notion that we analyze. If we analyzed one story every week, that'd Be fine by me.

Come on, step up.

And if people were willing to let our, our audience read their story. See, no. So next time you want to do this and when he wants to do this, if you would be willing to let people read the story and advance, I could, you know, we could send links to a go, a dynamic Google document. Just give them the ability to view, not edit.

And maybe you want to do that with your next draft also.

Yeah. And that way, that way you can see everybody can, can benefit. Because the truth is that, that we chose the Hero's Journey not because it's the best story structure, but because it's the universal story structure that also applies to life. That you can also apply the steps of the hero's journey to any process that you want to learn about. So therefore, once you get that and you start seeing the steps of the Hero's journey in the movies that you watch and the books that you've read, it's it. Learning is a process of connecting something new to something you already know. And we already understand the process of the Hero's journey because we have learned so often. Now you're raising your hand.

Yeah.

You've got a question?

I do.

I just have a couple of quick questions. 1. So I'm not sending this out yet, so I'm going to. You want me to revise it first?

Yes.

When you get somebody and this is a rule, the set six step process. Write a sentence a day, finish one to four short stories a month, polish and send them out. Don't rewrite. Accept editorial requests, read 10 times as much as you write and Repeat this process 100 times. When editorial requests, don't rewrite. Accepted editorial request. For all practical purposes, that would also be if a mentor suggests it, it okay. You, because of your commitment to personal development, you have caught the attention of a world class writer. See that? She saw herself in you. It's as simple as that.

So.

So this is a time to. To follow her advice. If I were you, I would follow her advice because I would have done anything to have had that kind of analysis of one of my works at your stage of development.

And I'll add to that also, you know, all writers should have beta readers. So before I mean the thing about don't revise except to editorial request to me means when the story is finished. A story is not finished to me or at least certainly when I earlier when I end my writing career until I have given it to readers I trust for their feedback and I've written a final draft Draft.

Okay?

Now, that final draft may never feel finished to you, but once you have a final draft and you start sending it out, I think the advice Steve is talking about is don't keep fussing with it. And, you know, until you have some feedback at a different level, like. Like an editor says, oh, if you did this one thing at the ending, I'll buy it. Well, hell, yeah. Then you do that feedback. That's what you're looking for, right?

This is next level for me.

Yeah. Well, you know, and that's the whole thing that. That by dividing the gap between where you are and where you want to be into steps of levels. Let me take you divide it up so that it's. You can take one little step every day, one bigger step every week, one larger step every month, et cetera, et cetera. When you break it down like that, you break it down fine enough, you can get a wheelchair up a ramp. You know that. And for most of us, all we need is steps. For some of us, we can climb up the rocks, okay? But it takes a genius to jump up to the side of a cliff. You know, very few people can do that. And most of those got their skills someplace else. In other words, they started. They spent 20 years in newspapers, then they decided to write a novel, and, my God, they wrote a novel. And it's wonderful. Oh, my God, how talented. You're not looking at all the work they did that was. That was supportive of their goal. So what we're doing here in. In the chat section and in the lecture section is we're sharing our skills together. And so if you feel like you've gotten a gift, I'm. All we ask is that in chat, somebody will ask for some help or some advice and just open your heart and give them what you got. And this is how we build a community where we can come from wherever we are and help each other. Writers are perfect for us. Obviously, black horror and science fiction writers are perfect for what we're doing. But the fact is that any writer would benefit. The fact is that any human being. Because what we're really talking about is how do you take your heart and put it out into the world in a way that benefits you and benefits the world? And how do we move all the other stuff out of there? And the notion. And I would ask you this now, what do you think the effect of constantly working to improve the first hour of your day would be for you? Is that a. Is that something I should focus on? Is that something you think would be.

Valuable for you for sure. I feel like I have to. Like it's. For me, it's a matter of balance to take time. For me first.

Yes.

Like that's. That's a must in my life.

Yes.

If I give everything away to everybody.

Else, the world will suck you dry.

And throw the husk away in a day.

That's right. That's right. Remember that. It's not like the world is not evil. The world is not evil. The world is predatory. World is a meat eater. And you are meat. So you have to have. You better have teeth to protect yourself. Teeth and claws. Don't pretend to be harmless when it comes to the world or the world will eat you. On the other hand, if we, you know, I'm. I'm not a shark. I'm a dolphin. Dolphins kill sharks. But. But we need a pod. We need a tribe.

Okay.

I did not have a tribe of warriors to protect me, so I became my own tribe of wars. That's what the martial arts stuff was about. I wasn't trying to be Billy Badass. I just wanted to feel safe in the world so I could be the goofball that I am. It's. It's really. It's as. It's as simple as that. I wanted. I'm a nut, you know, I. I like comic books and I like anime and I like weird movies and I make strange jokes and I dress and T shirts and jeans, white socks and tennis shoes every damn day. This is who I am. And the world will try to file off or cut off your sharp edges to make you fit what it wants you to be. Women have a special amount of pressures upon them from the world. Men have a different set of pressures upon them. Black and white, gay and straight. The world is going to try to tell you who you are. And if you're not very careful, it will try to get you to be something that is not to your advantage. You have the responsibility to own yourself. You have the responsibility to stand up straight in the world and say, this is who I am. And when you write, I want you to write from courage. I want you to go into the. The painful places and express it so that some other little girl out there will read that and say, God, I'm not alone. I thought I was the only one that happened to. You have the right to both your love and your fear. They are what's going to power your work. And if you could look directly at Tananarive, do and absorb what she's saying, you're going to Be a successful writer because you've got guts. I mean that.

I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing because it feels so good.

Thank you.

You're so welcome.

Thank you.

You're so welcome. And it is such a joy to see you here.

And congratulations on that story. Thank you.

Okay, so let's. Let me kind of open things up a little bit. We've talked about a lot of stuff here today, and I like to open things and give people and. Oh, there's Jesse Hayes. Yeah. I might have a question for you, Jesse. Not. Not online. I might be talking to you fairly soon. Who has a comment, question, or request for us about any. My nerdy dolphin trivia is stuck on how they play with puffer fish to get stoned. I have the best chats. Comments, question, request. Somebody raise your hand. Let's. Let's get into it. Who has an issue? And once again, volunteer or you will be voluntold. Nobody's raising their hand. Okay, Stephanie, Unmute yourself.

I didn't actually come today prepared with an issue.

You don't have to be prepared. Just. Just tell us how your life is going and tell us, tell us what you do for the first hour of your day.

First hour of my day. Coffee is essential. So I get my caffeine intake, vitamins, and then I just take some quiet time to slowly ease into my day. Yeah. Kind of think about what my day looks like before I get started.

And.

I think a 1% improvement, if that's where we're going.

Yeah.

This kind of work would be to take more intentional time for physical activity.

Okay, great. Because if that's the thing that you're not. That you're not doing, that means that there would be a tremendous amount of potential growth there. Just, you know, we. You could aim at and say, I'm going to double my energy. Now, that's a subjective thing. How do you really measure that? But you know what I'm talking about. I want to double my energy. What would it take to double my energy? Let me look at the quality of the food I eat, the quality of my breathing, the quality of my exercise, the quality of my sleep, the quality of how clear I am on what I want to do with the energy if I get it. Because one of the things that is true that a lot of people feel like if I just had more energy, people would just demand more of me, and I just can't. So you have to believe that having more energy would give you greater joy and diminish pain. So if that is true, then you can become an explorer, you can become a scientist. Let me look at how I can get more energy, how can I use my body better, how can I use my emotions better, how can I use. And then once I got the energy, how do I get more efficient and effective about using it? So the idea is you generate as much energy as possible, but you use as little of it as you can to get as much as you can for the smallest price. Maximum bang for minimum buck. Big energy, real efficiency in how you use it. Does that make sense?

Makes a lot of sense. I like that. It resonates.

Excellent. Well, it's good to see you here and Stephanie, you've got a great name. Means crown. And I'll see you. You know, just keep us posted with how you're doing. Okay.

All right, thanks.

All right, so who next would rather volunteer before I pull their butts up? Okay, Jesse, let's pull your you up. What do you do first hour of the day, Jesse?

Oh, well, that could be all sorts of things. But, but let me, let me jump in and thank you for your advice. The last, I think a couple weeks ago was the last time I was to, able, able to jump in here because I was saying that everything has been going really well, but the one space that I felt I was, I was missing was just really being consistent with my workout routine.

And what's your workout?

Well, you, you, it was, it was, it was inconsistent as I said before, you know, and you had, you'd suggested, you know, just giving myself such a low bar that I couldn't not do it. You know, the one sentence a day premise for the workout. Right.

Yeah. So what was, what's your one, what's your little bit?

You said, you said like do two Tibetans or whatever. But I ended up getting an app that, that gives me every day, gives me like an 11 minute routine, calisthenics and varying, varying things. I've been doing like, you know, like home walking oriented ones, but it's still like, you know, various, various different things. And so I've been doing that successfully. You know, why don't you put, could.

You put the name of the app or a link to the app in chat just in case.

Yeah.

Interested?

I will. It's called Better Me and I love the name that in there. And, and so, yeah, so I'm thinking, you know, probably continue through that this week with that and then looking to try and up my time a little bit and, and you know, I've been able to commit to the 11 minutes, you know, can I push that to 15 or 20, you know, and, and see how that can go. So it sounds great.

I love it.

It was an obvious but, but successful, successful tactic. And want to, definitely want to say thank you.

So let me ask you, first of all, congratulations. That's terrific. If you identify your weakness, weak zone, as long as you keep the others steady, identify your weak zone, work there. That's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. Find the thing that you don't want to do.

Yeah.

Okay. Eat the frog first. Okay. So do you think that if we focus on that first hour that it might be. I'm looking for the ways to get the maximum bang for the buck. When people show up here, they're giving me 90 minutes of their lives. They can never get, get back. So I want to be sure to deliver. So if we started focusing more and more on that first hour, what do you think would happen?

Well, so for me, that first hour sort of, sort of has to shift a little bit. I, my wife and I for the next few months divide our time between where I live in Philadelphia. So I essentially function as a single parent at the moment. And so that first part of the day is getting my boys to school.

Understood.

They both go to two different schools, so there's always, that's the initial scramble. But I am self employed, have a flexible schedule. So I found that around 10 or 11 was what ended up being my first time to kind of like step away from answering emails, that kind of thing. Give myself that time to get into that.

It is totally, it makes total sense to me that, you know, as long as you get that time anywhere in the day. Yeah, that's hugely better than what most people do. If you could do it in the first hour, that's fantastic. But, but understanding that life gets in the way is one of the things that you have to, you know, you have to understand in the adult world. So let's say it was the first five minutes of the day. What happens then? Can you take the first five minutes of the day.

For the workout, you're saying?

Not for the workout. To take care of yourself the first five minutes of the day, you might breathe, you might look over your goals, you might do one sun salutation, boom, out the door.

Generally my wife wakes me up with a call when we're not in the same place and we have a little conversation.

Making a heart space connection.

Yep. And if it's early enough, I might get a couple of pages of Reading in. Just to kind of get myself in a good space.

What kind of reading?

Just whatever I'm reading at the moment, which is. I'm actually reading Never Whistle. Never Whistle at Night Right Now.

Novel. The.

The Indigenous Dark Fiction Collection. You guys interviewed the editor?

Yeah, Shane was on our podcast.

Okay.

Yeah. So I've been reading that. It's great. Short stories are great because they're sort of. I can sort of maybe knock one out right. First thing in the morning or something like that. And it just gets my. My brain going and in a fun space for the day. And then I'm sort of like multitasking in my head after that, you know?

Okay. So I would ask, can you. Do you think you could do one sin salutation, one Three Tibetans, something like that? Because what I'm hearing is heart and head. I want to make sure you're anchored in your body.

Yeah.

You know, just like you've been in dream time for eight hours. So get into your body. Can you do that? Yeah. Yeah. Report back to me how it works. All right, fantastic. And I'll probably will be in touch and something that I don't want to talk about in front of the folks. All right, Other comments, questions or requests? I just. I love dealing with these things.

Folks, someone is asking what a Tibetan is.

Oh, the five Tibetans are a. Is that KS Hernandez? I'm going to pin KS Hernandez. Hi, K. S. I was kind of looking at you. Can you. Can you put your camera on? Yes. No. Okay. The five Tibetans are a series of exercises. Oh, my. Mic and camera unavailable. No problem. Chaos. Love you. The five Tibetans are a series of exercises. They're sort of halfway between yoga and calisthenics, and there are five of them. And you start with doing three repetitions of each of the five. Then very slowly you increase until you get up to 21 repetitions, and you stop there. If you can do 21 repetitions of all five of these exercises, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and you're actually in pretty good shape. I mean, it's actually kind of a whole body exercise system in a box. And you can go over to YouTube and just look up. Right. The five Tibetans, the five Tibetan rites, they all came from a book called the Eye of Revelation written by a guy named Peter Kelder back in, like, 1938. There is no other known source of these. They have been practiced by millions of people for decades, at the very least, possibly centuries. But nobody can find where they came from. We're not entirely Certain where they came from. But what I can say is that they're pretty safe and they work. And in terms of bang for your buck, not bad. Especially if you allow yourself to modify them, if you have a joint issue or anything like that. But they're very simple movements and they work your whole body in the Five Tibetans. I like it. So let's see. I just had this urge to put. Angelique Davis. Angelique, are you there?

I am.

I'm at the hair salon, so I don't want to come on camera.

That's totally okay. That's totally okay. How are you today, darling?

I'm great, thank you.

And what do you think would happen if you began to refine your first hour of the day?

I actually do already. I've been doing. If you're familiar with the Miracle Morning, I've been doing that for over five years. And tell me.

No, no, no, no, no, no. There are many different morning programs. I have not heard of that one specifically. Please give us a 60 second core dump on what it is.

Yeah, there's a book called the Miracle Morning. It's written by Hal Elrod. And basically each morning you do a routine called the Lifesavers, the sa. Silence, which could be meditation, prayer, whatever it is, but silence. The A is for affirmations. So saying affirmations to yourself each day. The V is for taking time to visualize each day what you want to manifest in your life or. And then the E is for exercise, so doing some form of movement. The R is for reading. So just a little bit of self development and then the final essence prescribing, which is journaling. You can do them in five minutes or you can do them in an hour, depending, you know, on the day and how you do that. So I've been doing that for five years and thank you. I've been doing the Five Tibetans now as my exercise each day.

What you're saying. That's great.

Thanks for introducing me.

That's great. If you would put the. The name of that book into chat.

Will do.

If you. If you can do that. This is exactly what we want, is to share these resources. I am not jealous at all. I want you guys to go out and work with other teachers, read other things, bring it home to us and then we can workshop. If I will, you know, take a look at that book myself and see if there's something in there that I can adapt. I'll steal from anybody I give credit. But the fact is there is wonderful wisdom out there and I'M so glad I called on you.

Well, thank you. It's great to be here.

Well, it was your smile. I liked your smile.

Thank you.

And the five Tibetans have been great. I've just been doing them for a couple of weeks, but I can already really feel a difference, so thank you.

Fantastic. How many Tibetans are you doing?

7 a day so far.

Okay.

All right.

You didn't even have to do that many at this point, so be careful. Don't add more than about two per week. Be. Be. Be careful. I want you to. They are.

Okay.

They're. They're a ritual. They are a sacred time you're taking with yourself to connect mind and body and breath together and be very. You know, take all the time that you need to advance to 21. There's no hurry whatsoever. The. The huge gap is between doing nothing and doing anything. When you. Once you step into your body at all, that's the huge gap. After that, it's multiple. But. But you're not in the zero with the magic formula. As long as you're not in the zero space, you're okay. You're taking steps, you know, it's just fine. Have fun with it.

Have fun.

Make it a game.

Yeah. I started with, like, the three to five, and I. I have been exercising pretty consistently and working with a trainer for a couple years, and I do meditation regularly, but I felt like once I got to six or seven, then it was. I noticed it wasn't a meditative practice.

Well, I love that, and thank you so much for sharing. All right.

Thank you.

That's good, man. I love you people. Just bring Stephen Bauer.

Hey, Steve.

Hey, brother. How are you doing today, buddy?

I'm sick. I think I just took the test. I've got Covid.

Okay.

Other things are happening very negatively in my life right now, but I enjoy the. I should get back to the time in the morning. I used to do time in the evening because in the morning, I would wake up, get up, shave, drive for half an hour to get to work, and then do an hour and a half of physical stuff.

Okay, so are you doing your breathing? Are you doing your breathing?

My breathing. Doing my breathing. Six days a week, I do one set of 100 reps of my exercises. And the exercise that wrestlers use called hundreds, where you basically don't stop until you get to 100, you can rest for, like, if I get to 75 and I'm. I'm physically exhausted and I can't do anymore, then I'm allowed to rest for 25 seconds. But as soon as that 25 seconds is done, I get back on the whatever. Whatever was doing until I finish 100 reps. Well.

Well, you're. That sounds terrific. You're in a hole right now because of COVID Please take care of yourself. If anyone has any suggestions or you want to. You know, a number of us here have had Covid.

Rest is essential. So, I mean, as long as you're not using too much energy to sit here and take part in this. But you can probably feel it like Covid wants you to rest. That's the main thing. And when you fight that, it just says oh, really? And digs in. And also, Manuka honey, if you have a cough. I don't hear a cough, but I developed a cough and the doctor suggested Manuka honey, which I will spell. If you get it in a health food store. There are medicinal versions of it that are kind of pricey, like $30 for a bottle. But if you do get a cough, I highly suggest the Manuka honey.

Cool. I've already done. We have some really nice local honeysuckle. And so basically a. Taught you out of that to.

Is there anything we can do for.

You to be here? Just being here is, you know, that's. I'm using that as helping the heart and the head.

Yes.

On. On connecting with community, so.

Well, you are so welcome. You are absolutely welcome. Please keep us posted. You're not alone. I have several different ways that people can reach out to me. And we care about you and we want you to heal and thrive. So you take this time. Do what your body is telling you to do, which is it needs rest. And thank you so much for being here and trusting us to take care of you.

Well, cool.

All right. All right. And keep us posted, please. This is. That that disease is no joke. And I just, you know, nothing. Nothing but love for you, buddy.

Okay, thanks. All this is round four for me, so it's.

It's not.

It's nothing new.

No. But, yeah, it's. Take care of yourself. Okay. Let's see who else would like to raise their hand or risk getting called on. Anna o'. Connell. How are you?

I'm good. Well, I'm mostly good. Two weeks ago, I was. Two weeks ago, like right now, I was helping to run etc. The funeral for a friend of mine who had died very suddenly, consequent to a COVID infection. Her. She had a heart attack and died at like 64. What? In her sleep? To the degree that anybody can tell anything because she appeared to be peaceful when her husband discovered her dead when he woke up.

Up.

And last night I sat in her seat at a play next to her husband because they had, they had season tickets and our patrons of this particular theater group. And yeah, and then the week before that there was other stuff going on. An emergency with another friend who is back in the hospital again after 30 hours at the rehab step down facility from a previous hospitalization. So. So you're being happy and secure. But I have friends who need help and I have been helping them.

So this is one of the reasons why it's critical for us to take care of ourselves because we have people that we love who need our support. So you, if you are of support to the people in your community, it is critical that you take care of your own health, that you expand your own heart and that you get. You keep your mind as sharp as possible so that you can. Not just for yourself, but so that you can help others. So in order to help others, then you have to care about yourself more deeply. How can we support you in being as joyful, healthy and energetic as possible, at least partially so that you can be of support to the people that you love.

Love. That's why I'm here instead of at another event. Because this is supportive of me being a part of these meetings, getting the encouragement to keep up with the good things I'm doing. Yesterday my, my primary care, I had an annual physical with my primary care doctor and he said, you're doing everything right, keep doing that. So I'm happy about that. I just want everybody else to. And the one thing I would say to Steven, who was just talking, please don't push yourself very hard. 3 out of 4 of my friends who have had Covid who pushed to keep doing their usual stuff, develop long Covid. So be careful, please be kind to yourself, please.

Absolutely. And in the chat, if you guys will just remind each other to love yourselves and each other yourself, to take care of yourself, to know that you are precious. You matter not because of what you do, but because of who you are. You are precious. If you will just embrace that and take care of yourselves. You know, I can't tell you. I wish I could reach through this screen and give you a hug and let you know how precious I think you are and how much I. How much gratitude I have for the fact that you will take your time to be here. And I want to find ways to deepen my ability to serve you.

You.

And you know, Anna, you're a beautiful.

I think team is. Thank you.

I try. And, and I mean, other good things have happened. One of my sons bought his first house with his new last November wife.

We need to meet people.

Okay.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Well, that's wonderful, Anna.

Yeah, it is.

So what you need to do is what do you think you could do if you refined that first hour of your day in terms of your health, your, Your gratitude and love for life and your, Your problem solving capacity? Making money.

Me?

What could you do?

The best thing I could probably do is to not read the news.

There you go.

During the first hour of the day.

That's right.

Do the.

So after I have done well, I usually get up, get, get clean. Well, get up, take meds, get clean, eat, because. And then take the other meds that have to be taken with food.

You get your energy going out before you step into the mud. You know, it's like, you know, there. So it's, there's a muddy pool there, but if water is flowing out of the hose, the mud doesn't get to back up into the hose. So in that sense, get your energy, find it, store it, live within it, extend it outwards before you go out into your day, you know, because people need you.

That's part of the waking up part of my day, usually. But it would be better not to do that with news, but to do it with inspirational or pleasant things.

Yes. So what you could do is start looking for sources of positive things on the, you know, YouTube and the Internet. There are tons of positive things out there for the first hour of your day. You are inoculating yourself against the garbage you're going to hear for the other, you know, other 23 hours. Well, you know, whatever. You know what I'm saying.

Usually sleep at least six hours a day.

Yes, absolutely.

So it's a.

23 hours is not. That's not right for that. For the next 12 hours, let's say you need, you need to protect yourself at least partially, because some of your friends are going to be in pain. And drowning swimmers can drag down the lifeguard. They don't mean to be toxic pain. They're panicked. So you have to be strong enough to serve them without them hurting you. You do not help your friends by letting them infect you with their pain. You hear their pain, you accept them where they are. But what they want to know on the deepest level is that there is still life on the other side of this pain. And so you have to, to make sure they know that you see them, that you feel Them, you're there for them, but you're also the light on the shore that they're swimming toward.

Yeah. And. And I have deeply internalized the put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. I try to live with that.

Excellent.

And I remind the people who seem to need it. So.

Fantastic.

And my ethos is I can't, like, give advice and push people to do things if I'm not doing it too.

Absolutely.

Otherwise, I'm a phony and manipulative.

Yes, I have to do it, too. My office is right next to my son's office. You know, where he goes and he plays. He gets to see me interacting with my life. He knows, for instance, that I'm planning to go to the Philippines, that I'm trying to navigate the bureaucracy to get my passport in time. Oh, if I don't get it in time, he will watch and see how I respond to that. How do I respond to being thwarted of a lifetime ambition? How do I set myself up to accomplish things? Our gift to the world is who we are. Not our egos, not our image, not what we say, but what we are, which is more primary even than what we do. How we show the world is what we do. But on another level, we. We vibrate and we resonate to each other's vibrations. And if you are that person, they will feel that. And I think that you have an essential sweetness that makes people seek you out. So drowning swimmers are going to seek you out. And so you have to know how to swim or you have to keep your feet on the dock and throw them life preservers. You don't get down in the water and drown with them. If you are a strong swimmer, then you can get down in the water. Otherwise, stand on the dock, throw them a life preserver.

Right.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Yeah, I just. These are lovely people here, aren't they? You really are. Okay, so we are basically at the end of our time today. To recap, you start with the five minute miracle. 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. You move from there to a morning ritual where you visualize and do affirmations and think about your role model and flood yourself with positive emotions. While you are in motion. You have to be moving. You're not just sitting. You're. You're. You know, unless you're sick, unless you're too sick to get out of bed, in which case you focus on your breathing while you do it. But if, you know, you can walk, you can dance, you can do kettlebells, I use tai chi or yoga sometime, but usually Tai chi. Then expand that into the first hour of the day, which I used to call the diamond hour. It's, you know, people called the golden hour, but I couldn't get a website for that because somebody had already gotten it. So I called it the diamond hour. Being honest here, 60 seconds, 60 minutes, rather, that belong to you out of every 24 hours, don't you deserve one of those hours to be yours? And if you can make it the first hour. But as Jesse said, sometimes life gets in the way. You take the time you can. You do what you can, and you take pleasure in having done what you can. Because if you blame yourself for doing what you can, what motivation do you have to keep trying? But if you can take a single step and take joy from it, that little kid inside you says, okay, I couldn't take two steps, mom, but, but is it okay if I took one? And if you say, good boy, good girl, you're encouraging that part of you to believe that the efforts that we can take are enough. Getting back into the notes on the Star wars book, I can't spend hours on it. It's too scary. Even after all this time, I still get scared going through notes from editors. You know, what if she says it's garbage? What if this, what if that. That voice never completely goes away? So the first day, I might just take a look at the notes on the first page, kind of distance myself from it. Oh, okay, that's interesting. And then I might go do the low hanging fruit. I'll probably do the low hanging fruit today or tomorrow. Just go through and correct the things that are easy to correct. If I do that, the next time I come to it, things that look like they were hard will start looking easy. And life is like that, too. I would like to thank everybody here and I would like you to unmute yourselves and say goodbye and say, just kind of wish yourselves, you know, the best possible week to come and congratulations for the last week and give love so that you have room in your heart to accept love. Unmute yourselves. Let's go.

Thank you.

Thank you for next week.

Be happy.

Fantastic.

Enjoy us.

See you next week, people. Have a wonderful week. Thank you so much. And the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity with each, every one of you. Namaste.

Namaste.

Take care. See you next week.