Firedance: The Next Level

Recording in progress and welcome to Fire Dance, the next level we're doing this on. This is June 3rd. By the end of this month, we will be halfway through the year. Who finds that alarming? This year, Last year passed slowly. This year is passing too quickly. It's like, whoa, what's going on? How. How is this happening? We'll look at that. Anyway, my name is Stephen Barnes, and welcome back to Firedance. I am the creator of the Life writing and Fire Dance and other technologies. And the entire point of this always is to work together to improve our lives in balance according through the three gates. Being honest and kind and useful and balancing and useful means balance between the three centers. Our bodies, our emotions, our minds. And I would say that health and fitness and emotion and relationships with ourselves and with our families. And in terms of intellect, money, I mean, you know, it's like, you know, money. Money is just hunting and gathering. It's problem solving, it's dealing. In the adult world, nothing in the adult world works like money in the arenas in which money works, you know, so it's like people are so afraid of looking directly at that they will say, you know, they will complain about not being able to help their families or not being able to travel or not being able to leave a bad job, or they don't like their house, they don't like their roommates. All of those things are problems that money solves. But they're afraid to look directly at the money. And I think that, you know, money is nothing more than an abstraction of value. You know, you. You grow bananas, and if you want a wheelbarrow, you need to find somebody who'll trade you a wheelbarrow for your bananas. Unless you can find somebody who'll give you money for the bananas, and then you can give that money to the guy with the wheelbarrows. There's nothing. I. It is possible to get money by hurting people, but I look at it as a measure of the service my community sees me giving, a measure of the value that my community sees in me. And so I have to increase my value and educate them as to my value and provide value to them. Then at that point, I can say, I will stand here and I will give you more value if you will exchange some of your time and energy for mine. And the way you do that is money. So I don't have any negative feelings about that. But I can promise you that I used to, and I probably have some stuff down there. I mean, unless you came from a wealthy family, that was also A happy, healthy, honest family. You probably have some negative attitudes about money. You probably do. I remember when I wrote the California Voodoo Game with Larry Niven and the contract. We got a quarter million dollars for that book. And my hand was shaking when I signed that contract. That contract, what I was going to get, half of that money was more money than. Than my ego believed I was worth. I didn't sign it with confidence saying, yeah, that's me. It was this. It was. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I deserve this. I don't know if I'm good enough for this. And I will tell you the honest truth. I don't think the book that I wrote was the best book. I think that I. That I inhibited myself, that my pretender voices came up, that my imposter syndrome kicked in, that my sense of what money meant somehow interfered with my ability to really go deep in my heart and deliver the kind of wonderful journey that I believe we were able to do with the first Dream park book. I take responsibility for that. And I have grown as a person. Every time, you know, I fail, I try to look at what did I do? What could I have done better? I don't always get it, but I always try. So one of the things that Tananarive is busy on her end taking care of her dad and taking care of things. So she is providing some services for us here, but she's not going to be interacting with us a lot today. So please give thanks and I would like you to unmute yourselves and say, hi, Tananarive, and then just hi to each other. Hi, Tianna Reeve.

Hi.

And everybody else, Hi, Tina.

Hello, everyone.

Hi, Tanarive.

Hi, everyone.

There you go. Thank you so much. So I wanted to. I like to start this, you know, we will get into other things, but like, let's start with just a quick breathing exercise. We can do it seated. So what I want you to do is to put your hands on your tummy. Put your, you know, put your hands on your tummy just below the V of your ribs. And when you inhale, you feel your. Your tummy expanding like you're. You're inhaling and expanding a balloon. So inhale. When you exhale, you shrink it. You. You contract your abdominal muscles and shrink it. Inhale, expand, exhale, Contract. Relax your shoulders. Head held by a string from above. Inhale, expand. Exhale, Contract. Inhale, expand, Exhale. Contract. Two more times. Inhale, expand, Exhale. Contract. Last time. Inhale, expand. Exhale. Contract. That exercise is the core of what we're doing. If you will start with that, I can help you if you can start with that. Just five times a day minimum, but preferably at the top of every hour, just all day long, stop and take just 60 seconds to own yourself, to own your life, to own the air. But I promise you, is is that if you took Bill Gates or Elon Musk and stuffed their head in a bucket of water, and I'm sure that some of you would like to do just that, that within seconds they would give everything they owned for another breath of air. The air that you just got for free. Remember what's the most important thing, people, and try not to stress out about things that are less important than the most important thing. You decide what the most important things in your life are. The rest of it is just details. For me, that's my health, my fitness, the love of my family, being able to write and feel like I'm constantly getting better at that. You know, my career, my body, my emotions. That's the matrix of my life and that's the three centers. And then to that I have to apply the three gates with every action. I have to ask, is it true? How do I know that it's true? What do I use to test truth? What I use is if the basic principles can be used to both improve my body, improve the quality of my loving relationships and make me money, it can't be too inaccurate. That's the way I'm looking at it. My map of reality has to be pretty good and my map of myself has to be pretty good. But to the degree of that, it is not good for one of those three areas. I'm going to take the position that I'm thinking that something is untrue that is true, that is untrue. I have made a mistake. Is it loving? Is it kind? In other words, I believe that the ultimate truth in life is love connection. That that anything I do that is not kind is a response to a delusion, an illusion on somebody's part. If I have to defend myself against a mugger, I still have the responsibility to be as kind as possible. Now, does that mean kind to him at the expense of my own body? I think not. And anybody who knows my background knows that that can't possibly be what I mean. But I remember once when someone was trying to fight me, was trying to push me into a conflict, and was very clearly wanting to hurt me, and I was not, because he was the father of my daughter's. Best friend. I could not motivate myself to want to respond to this, to want to hurt him. It was not until I thought to myself, wait a minute, I don't want to hurt this little girl's father. He is trying to hurt Nicky's father. I could not get myself into the right frame of mind to protect myself for wanting to be a good, loving, decent person. But as soon as I thought, he's trying to hurt Nicky's father, something shifted inside me. It became a matter of kindness to my daughter and then kindness to my wife. And all of a sudden, the situation changed. So with that mugger, I have the responsibility of kindness to my family. I have the responsibility to get home. Even if I can't believe in myself and recognize that I deserve kindness, I think about who am I most responsible for. But ultimately, letting a mugger hurt you isn't good for anybody, including the mugger, because they are on the wrong path of life if it is true that being kind, honest and useful is the best path. So in that sense, it might not be a bad way to teach him, to introduce him to the ground, if you know what I mean, to educate him by introducing pain to his nervous system. You got to work your way through this stuff so that you know that you have permission to do the things you need to do in life in order to function in life. Well, in terms of utility, I believe that what is true is ultimately what is useful. I also believe that the ultimate reality is love. So that means that kindness is in alignment with truth. Which means that when people say things like, you know, brutal honesty, no, no, no, they're enjoying the brutality. They're using the honesty as an excuse to hurt somebody, to beat somebody, because they were mad at that person, they were upset with that person. So I'm going to say something nasty that person to get a pain response to them. Because on some level, I don't want them to feel good. I don't just want them to change. I don't just want their behavior to change. I want them to feel the painful communication from me. Or I want. I want that sense. So in my mind, being true, being honest and being kind is useful. That we know you can prove mathematically that over time, you can game it out. Over time, the people who are honest and kind with each other will, as a community, outperform the people who have knives at each other's throats. That it often seems that people who are nasty and dishonest get everything in life. They get the porn star wife and they get to be president and they get to be. I mean, is that what you wanted? Are those your values? Unless those are your values, why do you covet their results? That's the fool's gold. What is real? What do people say that they want on their deathbed? It's never. I wish I'd spent more time at the office. It might be. I wish I had expressed myself more. I wish I had helped more people. I wish I kissed more babies. I wish I told my wife that I love her more often. I wish I told my son that I loved him more often. I wish I had explored my body. I thought I had forever to get into shape. And I thought that I could smoke these cigarettes and I'll quit down the road someplace. And now I have emphysema and dying. I believe that the three positions of is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? Have a philosophical tensegrity that they connect to each other and that all you have to do is ask yourself, how does being more honest increase my utility? How does being kinder increase my utility? How does thinking about the efficiency of my actions help me be more honest? How does it worry about the efficiency of my actions increase my ability to be kind and loving to the world? So I say that each of these three supports the other. Each two of them supports the third. It's a position. It is a philosophy. And that's not a philosophy, it's a hypothesis. My life is an experiment to test this because that tensegrity between the three only really occurred to me a few weeks ago. I said, could it be that each of them actually supports the other? We'll find out. The notion of utility touches on that 1%. How do you increase your utility? You look at being better at these things by 1% a week. That's your minimum. Just like writing a sentence a day is a minimum. With writing aiming at finding a way to be better, at least just 1% per week is your minimum there. And all you have to do is ask yourself, you know, you go through the three centers. What can I do today to get a little bit more efficient and effective with my body? What can I do today to be a little bit kinder? What can I do today to increase the quality of the goods and services or the quality of my ability to communicate that quality to an appropriate audience? How can I get better at finding the audience that wants what it is that I have communicating with them? How do I get better at asking for the sale or whatever? And speaking of that, this message is Brought to you by firedance tai chi dot com. You know, just join us at www.financet.com and get a little closer to what this process is. See, that's what you do. It's like, how do I, how do I do that? In alignment with being honest and kind, but at the same time looking to be more useful. I can do that because I honestly believe that the course is the best thing I've ever done. So I can look at you and say, I would want my own child to take this course. And I will also give you all of the value that's in the course that I possibly can during this time that we have together. I'm not holding anything back. You can ask me anything, anything. And I'm not saying, oh, that's, that's only for the special group over here. No, no, no. Ask me anything. I will give it to you because I think that that is the kindest thing to do. Okay. So these things all fit together in terms of the 1%. I thought I would share something with you this week and I think that we, we can share. How do. How do we improve by 1%? So the, you know that I'm getting ready to go to Manila. I'm beyond testing myself to see if I can do it. I now know that I can. All I'd have to do is to make sure to get extra sleep for the week before I go. And I'm now at the level that I need to be. How do I maintain that? How do I get even above the level? Because what I love to do is just show up there and just play. Just have fun all day long and have people say, who was that masked man? That would be fun. So one of the things I wanted to. I'm doing is playing with Scott Sonden's club Bells. You know, they're like kettlebells, only in club, club form, club swinging. And he has a chorus called King of Clubs that I think is the best club bell thing that he did. And the last time I was in the kind of really gnarly shape I wanted to be in the, you know, for this, I was using club bells and I was using king of Clubs. In the last few years, when I've tried to approach that again, I've noticed myself getting too sore and I think maybe I have a lower tolerance for soreness. I value feeling good. I've lost some of that competitive athlete, I'll suffer for my art, you know, thing. Now it's just a matter of, oh, I'm just want to have fun. Oh, Kathy F said, will you be masked? No, sweetheart, I was joking. So I kept getting sore. So I said, well, let me, you know, I stop it and I go to kettle bells, which do not make me really sore. They are wonderful for fitness. They're more for general what gpp, general physical preparation, what, what the club bells do. Because club bells are using arcs of movement that are closer to the arcs of movement of the martial arts, the dynamic sphere of movement. As anybody who studied aikido has probably heard. It's. It's specific physical preparation that is not only fitness in terms of qualities like, like cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance and contractile strength and this and this and this. But I'm specifically working the arcs of movement that I would use for deflection or striking. Okay, so it's the whole package. It is general physical preparation, specific physical preparation. I can use it for working on my breathing, all sorts of other stuff. So I'm really kind of interested. Can I sneak back up on it? So last week I did, using my lightest club bell, which is 15 pounds, I did the 20 minute routine. The thing that's beautiful about the routine is it's five exercises. And then when you can do those with a particular weight of club bell in 20 minutes just to follow along, you then move up to the next level of complexity. You don't raise the weight, you raise the neurological complexity of the movement, which makes it a mental exercise as well as a physical one. And when in their four levels, when you get to the fourth level, then you can raise the weight, but you drop back down to the basic level of simplicity. Scott is really, really smart and this is going to tie in with something else that I was talking, I'm going to be talking about in a few minutes. So a week ago I did it and I also, by the way, I added some more yoga. I've now gotten to the point in my life where I need to do yoga every day. Okay. It's like I used to only be able, need to do it three times a week. Now I need to do it every day. Okay, I've got one more trick after that which is a little bit more yoga and another set of each of the exercises depending on which form that I'm doing. And hopefully I'll learn some additional tricks by the time I've used up that trick. But right now everything is still working just fine. So last week I did it, did yoga afterwards, woke up the next day maybe a little stiff, but no more than usual warmed up. You Know, I'm just fine. So today is Saturday. Thursday I tried it again at the next level of complexity. And the next morning I woke up and it felt like a truck had hit me. It was like, holy crap, my back. You know, it's the delayed onset muscle soreness, doms, the spinal erectors, the tendons and muscles, my spine were screaming at me. I was moving like a little old man. I mean, it was like my son was alarmed. I'm like walking up the stairs, you know, all you kids get off my lawn. And actually, that kicked in. That kicked in later on Thursday. It was hurt. But it was Thursday, it was Friday morning when I realized I was. This was just awful. All right, so does this mean I can't do this? But then I started asking myself some questions. Why was there such a difference between last week and Thursday? There's something, some big difference about the two levels of complexity of the movement. And I realized that there was possibly an answer there. That on the basic level, one of the movements was just swinging. So say swinging right over and over again. And then you do, you do those. And then the second set, you swing just to the left. But the second level of that exercise, you swing to the right and then swing to the left. And I thought to myself, you know something? If my balance isn't perfect, my spine get out of alignment that way because I have to go right and then center myself and then go left and then center myself. But, but it's a dynamic movement, so I don't have the time to pause. I have to center myself in motion. I have to go right, center, left, center, right, center. Otherwise, if my spine is just a little bit this way when I swing in the opposite direction, this is a problem. All the tendons and muscles in my body trying to correct for the imbalance would experience strain. My, my Golgi tendon organs would lock up. I would have pain. The pain is my body saying, don't do that shit and Bob's your uncle. So it's like, this makes sense. How can I use this realization to help myself? Because if I can, that's more than a 1% improvement. So I thought to myself, five Tibetans. The problem with the five Tibetans. Five Tibetans do an awful lot. And I do them every day. One of the. There are two things that they lack. One is there's no pulling, no breakeation. But that's true of Tai chi or yoga, the way it's ordinarily practiced. There's no effective pulling there. But also there's no twisting. It doesn't. There's no spinal twist. You have to add a spinal twist. And the spinal twist in yoga is, you know, you have to balance yourself, you know, head held as if by a string from above. Make sure that you're twisting without throwing your back out, without asking your spine to move in a way that it was not designed to do. You're probably not going. You know, ordinarily, if you make a mistake there, some stretching will take care of it. If you make a bad mistake, you might need some deep tissue muscle massage. A really bad mistake, you might need a chiropractor to pop something back in because you literally wanted the vertebrae misaligned, okay? So I said, I don't think any vertebra misaligned. I think I strained the. The fascia. Okay? So if the five Tibetans. I'd also been messing around with the idea of doing one Tibetan in each of the five minute miracle breaks. But I had wondered about that. I'd wondered, well, what if it's the series that does it, you know, and I'm missing the series. But on the other hand, I'm also getting the. The synaptic facilitation aspect of focusing on something once every three hours, which is really, really important. And I'm combining it with the five minute miracle and so forth. So I thought, but. But what if it's literally the cascade of motions that the cascade of motions themselves is doing something important? And all things considered, each of the Tibetans could be looked at as an alignment of the spine. The first one is just spinning, but you can't spin without getting dizzy unless you're balanced properly. So you could use the dizziness as a way of saying, ah, my spine is out of alignment. And then each of the other ones also does some stuff with the spine too. So I said, three divides into 21. 21 repetitions very nicely. 7 repetitions times 3 gives you 21 repetitions. There is the possibility that it is not the cumulative fatigue of the movements. So I don't necessarily have to do all 21 repetitions at the same time. What if I divided it into three sets of seven repetitions? What would happen if I did that? And that's what I did yesterday. I did seven of each of the Tibetans. And then a couple hours later, I did seven of each of the Tibetans, you know, just on my breathing break. And then a few hours later, just actually most, before I went to bed, I did seven of each of them. Now, I often find out that if I try to do, you know, just before bed. I don't necessarily have the Energy to do 21 repetitions of the last Tibetan. So as long as I was doing at least three to five, I was cool with it. But I didn't want to say there could be some magic about doing 21 repetitions of them over the course of the day. So what I did was I did set. I did three sets of seven repetitions. And then I did my joint mobility, which I always do before I go to bed. I laid down in bed, and I noticed that if I laid on my stomach, which is where I usually sleep, and if I, if I breathe too deeply, then I could feel pain in my back. But if I, if I twisted my legs to one side or the other, so there was a slight spinal twist, which is a slight realignment all by itself. That. That didn't happen. So I was going with my body saying, well, what do I need to do to feel comfortable while I'm sleeping? And when I woke up this morning, I felt fine. It was like, whoa. I mean, it was a little bit of stiffness, but I often get that just from any workout, you know, and it takes me some time to warm my body up. And if I check inside my body right now, I can feel a little discomfort. I mean, on a scale of, of 0 to 9, it's a 2. You know, it's, it's. It's totally under the level of anything to be concerned with. So my suspicion that I'm putting out there right now is that if you do a small number of all five of the Tibetans and you do that space during the day, that you can get a really positive effect because my spine seems to have realigned itself and the muscles have relaxed and the tendons are no longer giving me crap. Very interesting. And that if I'm right about this, is way more than a 1% this week. That was a 5% increase in a single day. So psych. Oh, boy. So any comments, questions, requests, stories about what you've done, you know, to increase your own self by 1% this week, or questions about anything? Michelle seems to have her hand up. Michelle, why don't you unmute yourself, sweetheart, and share. Oh, I can't hear you. Microphone.

It took me a second. So I took your advice last week and before you had even written, it was interesting that you wrote that blog journal to us this week because it was after I had decided to do the 1%. So the 1% for me this week was I found a job that I Absolutely want. It's like my dream job. It is. I'm perfect. Like, they wrote the description of the job for me, but my resume sucks.

Horrible.

That's been my biggest hangout my entire life was because my first response to anything is, oh, I'm horrible. I'm old, I'm ugly. Why would you want to hire me? So I've always had a really hard time working on my resume, but obviously this job was going to require getting past all my fear, getting past all of that, as well as dealing with the humbleness. Right. You know, how do you put this down and put all your qualifications down? Especially since, as you know, working for yourself is different than working for a company. It's easier when you can work for a company and you can list all the things you did for the company, but working for yourself is. Is kind of a little different. So I. I did. I braved that, and my boyfriend helped me, and we wrote a whole new resume out on LinkedIn. And I was brave and actually looked really impressive. And I had a few people look it over. Some of it I'm worried about because I did a lot of projects in the last two and a half years in the virtual reality world. As you know, I worked at Larry Niven's World and all of that.

Yes.

And I was really worried that people were going to come back to me and go, oh, that's not possible. A lot of the stuff that I do is cutting edge. And a lot of people look at that and go, no, that's not possible. And it's like, yes, I did all of these things, and I was very honest about it. So it was a really kind of. I was afraid to put some of that out there, but I thought, if I really want this job, I have to do this. So I was brave and I overcame my fear, and that was really the hardest thing. And I put it all out there and I did this thing and I did the application. I sent the application and then I went. And it's interesting because you said, if you're going to do something, just go all the way. Go all the way. And I said, okay, I'm looking at LinkedIn and 15 other people have applied for this job. And I really, really want this job. I mean, like, I have never wanted a job so bad. And it makes 110,000 a year.

Yes.

It means moving to San Jose, but I can. I can move. I mean, I've moved a thousand miles in the last six months. I can move another thousand miles back. I'm not grounded anywhere at this point. My kids are all grown. I don't have anything tying me necessarily in one place. So it's not a big deal. I can still have my home here in Colorado Springs and find some little one studio place there cheap and live there for however long. I have this job. So I said, okay, I'm going to do it. And I did it. And I said, well, how am I going to get noticed? There's 15 other people and I'm sure some of them may be far more qualified or have more corporate experience than I do.

I do.

I don't have a lot of corporate experience. So I went into LinkedIn. I found the CEO of the company. She happened to have had a couple of things back about how these were lists of jobs that she was trying to make sure got filled. So I tagged her in it saying, this is the job I was interested in. I wrote on my own Facebook, anybody. I mean, on my own LinkedIn, anybody who I've worked with or friends with or associate who can say anything about what I did, please post it here and tag Peggy. So they did. So she went out of her way to call the guy who's in charge of hiring for this job and said, you have to interview her. And so I have an interview on Tuesday.

Michelle, that's as close to perfect as I've ever heard. You step way out of your comfort zone, way out of your comfort zone, and you do exactly like that. You figure you're going to do that a hundred times, that it doesn't matter how many times you have to ask. Put the. Put the number of times you are prepared to step out like that, big enough that you know that the odds are in your favor. You figure if you figure you can do that and get up a hundred times to do it, I guarantee you you're going to get the job you want.

Right?

You're going to get.

I'm hoping I get it. Like, of course you do this job. Because this is like my dream job.

Set it up. There are other dream jobs. There are other dream jobs, too.

Well, actually, no, Steve, that's not necessarily true because what am I doing? Because I'm so cutting edge. Yeah, this is doing prototyping for an ar.

You know what I'm saying, sweetheart?

So it's so cutting edge.

It's hard to find a job to do this if you set yourself up. So this is the only job that make you happy. If you don't get it, it'll crush you. But if you know that you can make Yourself happy in this job. Or create this. Or create this. Or create this. Now, you're the kind of person that would be idiotic not to hire because you're not desperate at all. You're saying, look at me. And if you don't, you know, if you don't need me, God, you know, I wish you all the success in the world.

Yeah, no, I got that. And that's kind of what I wrote in my resume. I mean, when I finished my resume, I looked at it and said, you know what? You guys would be. With everything that I've done in the VR industry, you guys would be fools not to hire me because I could. I could totally change your company if.

All I want you to do is stand in a place of power and recognize you can create joy in your life, period. Yeah, Period. No matter what any individual person says, you're going to be happy and healthy and successful. No matter what any one person says. It's a numbers game, Michelle. These people might be the ones who are smart enough to see you, but if they don't, that's on them. Next. Next. Next. Until. And just if you will do that, I can guarantee you, you will succeed and this community will be there for you every step of the way. Right, guys? Right. Thumbs up.

Thank you.

Fantastic. Okay. Ross Merker.

Unmute.

Yes, hello.

There I am.

There you are.

Yeah.

What's your 1%, buddy?

I spent Saturday in the ER with my low spine. I got the wonderful chance to recalibrate my baseline in the spaces toward my 1%. And I shuddered to think where I would have been had I not already been making progress prior to my back putting me back in the hospital again on the weekend. So it is a setback, but it is not set back as far as it could have been.

Well, let me ask you a question, Russ. Can you identify anything in particular that triggered the problem?

Yes.

Do you mind sharing it?

I was not careful standing up from a seat that was too low, and I tweaked something.

Okay. So, you know, there are two things that you. That you know there. One is that you want to stand. Sit. Stand up more carefully. Two, you want to strengthen your body so that something like that won't hurt you.

Right?

So you use the pain to motivate yourself. The pain. Says, pay attention. Says, pay attention. When you pay attention, you can let go of the pain and the fear. But until you. Right now, you have a chance to learn something. You paid the price for it. You might as well get the pony. Yeah, the pony will be what Is there to learn here? How can you grow? How can you make yourself better? Because that allows you to use the fear or the pain to drive you towards getting that 1%. You had already done your 1% because of the rituals that you have in place. It's obvious to anybody who's been reading your posts, it's obvious that your mind is shifting. So because of that, you were able to roll with it. But now what you do is you use even the pain to motivate yourself to look more deeply, to ask more questions, like I did with hurting my back. I started asking myself different questions. And as a result of that, I may have discovered something really, really useful. But, you know, take care of yourself, buddy. And, you know, keep us posted.

Yes, sir. Will do.

Thank you. Tom.

Hi there. This is.

Really. Yeah, your sound is raising up. Your Internet connection or something is a little funky. Tom. I don't know. Try turning off your video and seeing whether or not that allows the audio to be better.

Okay, let's try that.

Okay.

Is this any better?

It sounds a little bit better.

Boy. Okay, I. I'll take this up with you offline. I don't want you to have to struggle to hear me right now.

You're okay. I'll let you know.

But.

But let's. Let's try it. Okay.

Question about the morning ritual.

Yeah.

You start with meditation and breathing. Then you do yoga, then you do Tai Chi. I think, no, no, no.

I wake up the cake. My. My morning routine is not what the formal thing we're calling the morning ritual. I wake up, I play with my dream space a little bit. I sit up and I do meditation. I get up and I do joint mobility. And then I do the first. I was doing the first Tibetan. Now I'm going to try doing seven of each of them. Then I do my morning ritual, which is the Tai Chi use, you know, chanting affirmations about the magic formula, you know, and flooding myself with emotions. So the morning ritual formally is while in movement, you are chanting affirmations that bring in the magic formula, map, action, gratitude, intention and conviction. And you know that. That's. That's what it. That's what that is. The morning ritual is specifically moving while doing the chanting affirmations and flooding yourself with positive emotions. I do other stuff as well. But the important thing to lock in in terms of the morning morning ritual is you are moving while chanting affirmations about the magic formula. Okay.

Yes, that's it. I was kind of getting lost in the rest of your program there.

Yeah. I mean, and I, I want to. The important thing you could do, you could do the morning ritual while you're walking, running, rebounding, anything. But it is specifically that that is the most important thing. Now, if you want to add other things and, and customize it and so forth, that's great. I have some very specific, fairly high level intentions that I'm doing. So I'm juggling a lot of. I'm juggling a lot of stuff, but juggling three scarves. The beginning point of juggling is you are simply moving, walking on the beach, walking the park while chanting. And my chance will go from all I need is within me now. No, no, no, that's. That's the last one I'll start with. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. I'll go from there to giving gratitude for having a healthy mind and body. From there to being grateful for the people who love me and trust me. And I go through my son, my daughter, my wife, my sister. Then I'm grateful for my mentors and friends, Steve Muhammad and Larry Niven and Tim Piering and Bks Iyengar and Chin Man Ching and Danny Amasanto and William Shakespeare and Don Callan and Octavia Butler. You know, I will visualize each of these people while I am doing my Tai chi. And then I will go to all I need is within me now, which is I'll go through another set of rubrics, specifically Brendon Bouchard's. I'll go through all the clarity I need is within me now. All the energy I need is within me now. All of the urgency I need is within me now. All of the productivity I need is within me now. All of the influence I need is within me now. And all of the courage I need is within me now. So that right there would be the structure, the formal structure of my morning ritual. Okay. And if you just do that and then deepen your connection to that, what I can do is, I can promise you that that will be fantastic. You can add other things to it. But in terms of this program, start with the breathing. You know, doing, doing, doing the breathing every hour. And then as soon as you've got that nailed in, start taking one of those breathing sessions and turn it into a moving affirmation session. And that's, that's the first and second level of this. What I'm doing is considerably more advanced. Don't even worry about that. Just focus on that. So that's a very, very good question, Tom. Does that help.

I think, yeah, it's. It's much more clear to me.

I am.

I am appalled to realize that things I used to do. When I was out of my initial martial arts training and first moved away to finish college, I stopped doing a job that required me to be on air at 6am I. I didn't get up through the. The kata and the stretching and the breathing exercise. Look, man really went off track, you.

Know, that happened to me. I just got finished with the first draft of my book on ethical seduction for incels. And one of the stories that I tell in that book was about having the chance, about losing myself. After my first marriage dissolved, I was shattered. I could not. I didn't even know who I was. That. That certain cocky steveness, you know, Steve knows who he is. I lost that. I couldn't even fake it. But what I did was I didn't know who I was, but I knew what I was attracted to. So I figured is if I could make a listing of exactly what I wanted in a woman and then find the woman who came the closest to that, whether she was married or not, sit her down and ask her what she's looking for in a man. If I had done my job right, what she would say she wanted is what I wanted to be. Because what I would want to be is the kind of man who can attract a woman like that. And I used that technique and it worked like crazy. Because when she. When she told me what it was that she was looking for in a man, I realized, oh, my God, you know, I'm not that far. She was. This was what I thought was the perfect woman. Okay. I said, I'm not that far from that. She wanted somebody who had less body fat than I had. She could afford that. She was a professional dancer. And I realized I'd stopped running. And she wanted someone who was on more of a spiritual path because she was almost a priestess in her. In her spiritual tradition. And I realized, oh my God, I'd stop meditating. The stress of losing my marriage had thrown me completely off the track in terms of my practices. And as soon as I started my practices. Now, that particular relationship, that didn't go anywhere, but that's okay. You don't need some particular person any more than you need some particular job. What you need is to be happy. What you need is to be productive and contributed. So that relationship with, you know, died. She saw much faster than I did that there was nowhere for that relationship to go. But when I made my changes within myself and I Stopped. I got out of the self pity and I got out of the fear and I got into a sense of power about who I was. That was when I started changing enough to actually meet my soulmate. That was the process of things. Nicole Beaton. Did you have your hand up, sweetheart? Yes. Unmute yourself.

Hi. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, I can. But you could tilt your thing down so we can see your beautiful face a little bit more clearly. Yes.

There she is outside today. So I'm a little sweaty.

Yeah, sweaty ladies.

Yeah.

So, related to your discussion about the. All the ex I have is within me now. I was able to see a glimmer of growth yesterday. We talk a lot about 1% and just 1%, sweetheart.

That'll do it.

I'm coming from subterranean levels for my growth right now. But so I've been doing this since I think October, November, and I'm probably a solid C student in terms of the five minute miracle. Consistently about a C, sometimes better. But it's beginning to work. And yesterday was really a first big glimmer for me.

Talk to us about it, please.

We. We were on the road, heading somewhere. My husband was driving. I was a passenger, thank goodness. And circumstances were building up in me and I got an early warning that a meltdown was coming. Um, I could just. I could feel it starting to roil inside me. I had that early awareness that I've not really had before, which was awesome. But the magic happened when I stopped and started to breathe. And I'm like, whoa, we're spinning out. We're spinning out of control here. And I stopped and started to breathe and I remembered. And I don't know if it was something you wrote or last week's fire dance or even an old mastery video, but I came across maybe three days ago the clue about physicalizing all the X's within me now. And I didn't have my notes to know with clarity and influence and productivity, so I just started making up words. So I used all the kindness that I need is within me now. All the truth I need is within me now. All the tools and techniques that I need are within me now. And I. I don't know how many breaths I did that for, but I was buckled into a passenger seat. So I just did a lot of like, hey, we're here, we're in our body. It wasn't even formal, like somatic tapping, just wiggling a lot to kind of work some of this static energy, that static that happens in your brain just kind of letting it get out of me. And. And it recovered me. And I've been able to recover from other meltdowns, but I'd gotten way further down the road before. It was harder to recover. And it just would shit all over the rest of my day because I'd used so much energy in recovering that I had. I could survive it myself, but I couldn't stay in community with my family. I couldn't keep doing the things that I'd wanted to do that day. I would lose the day to it, whether it was, you know, exhaustion or like, I've spent all my spoons or whatever, but I was able to stay present. That was like at 1:00 o', clock, 1:30 yesterday afternoon. And I was able to stay present gently. Thank goodness. I got a lot of help getting through the day, but I didn't lose the day. And Nicole, I was realizing it. I was journaling. And that's when I wrote to you last night about it.

Who else here is noticing. Who else here is noticing that the quality of these shares is getting better from week to week? Who's noticing that the people are using this? You're sharing with each other, you're networking with each other. This is great. Let me tell you. The road that you're on, first position of the road, subterranean is what you said is where you were. You're not subterranean anymore. Subterranean is your day, is something happens, triggers you. Your whole day is shot. The next step after that is something triggers you and you realize you were triggered. You realize that you did not have to ruin your day, but your day is ruined. The next step after that is you start saying to yourself, maybe I can stop myself being so triggered. Maybe I can find some resources. And you begin the search for resources. You find something. Let's say you find something like this five minute miracle, okay? The next step after that is you start doing the five minute miracle, you know, and this, you're doing it during times when you're not triggered. So you notice that you. You breathe and you feel more relaxed. You start noticing, oh, my shoulders are relaxed, my face is relaxed. This is the way my voice is. This is the way the world looks when I'm relaxed, when I'm breathing in this nice reintegrative way. Okay? Now this is where a lot of people start the, the sequence. And what we're doing is, I think, frankly, better than what most people are doing. You know, we always do that. So not patting myself on the back, all this stuff is stuff I got from other people. The first step is to recognize after you have been upset that you got upset, the next step is to realize while you are upset, that you are upset. So you sort of observing the upset. The next step is to do something reintegrative, to break the cycle while you are upset. That's, you know, you shift your physiology. You shift what you're. What you're thinking about, or you shift your language. The step before that is to recognize before you get upset. Oh, my breathing starting to shift. My body is feeling tight. I'm seeing colors at the edge of my vision. You know, it's. It's like something bad is about to happen. And you do you interrupt the pattern before it happens, what we're going to get you to. And one of the reasons why it's important to come to these meetings is to remind yourself how far you've come. Because once you have integrated a lesson, it's like a game of Tetris. As soon as you've integrated it, that level disappears. It goes to unconscious competence, and you stop even thinking about it. You know, by the time you're a black belt, you forget what it felt like to be a white belt in terms of I don't even know where my feet are supposed to go. You forget how much you know. And you might say to oh, God, I know nothing. You know so much. But you've just got an unconscious competence. So the next step, the step we want you to get at, and you say you're a C student. Well, I'm giving you an A today, sweetheart. Your teacher just gave you an A. You are teacher's pet today. You, you integrate a program that stops you that on level unconscious competence, you will notice. The unconscious part of you will start to notice when you're getting out of alignment, and you will automatically just breathe differently and shift your language differently and shift your focus differently, and you won't even notice it. One day you'll just set up and say, you know, I haven't been depressed in months. And people will say, what's different about you, Nicole? You just seem to be happier. You won't even notice it because your attention is going to be on, well, let me get a little bit better at this. Because if you do this right, the five minute miracle and the morning ritual, all you have to do is focus on the routine and the results will take care of themselves. That's all you have to focus on. And fantastic. God, we're having a great day today. Adam Crafter.

Hey, everyone.

Hey there. So.

What I wanted to share is a form of indirect success.

Right here.

Yes.

Go ahead.

No problem.

So have you been in those offices.

And use those computers? What is that about?

Okay, hold on. Adam, somebody's got their microphone on. D, would you. Would you. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

No, no problem. D. We love having you here. We love to talk to you. In just a minute. Okay, Adam, go ahead.

So my indirect success that surprised me after it happened is good news, bad news. Everybody in my family, group of four fell ill except for me. And after the fact, I am totally willing to chalk it up to more breathing, more often, lower stress, doing my best to have better sleep. Was it stressful to take care of three other sick people at the same time? No, not really. I just felt. I tried to lean into compassion instead of annoyance, and it worked out for me.

Now, that's really good, because once you get. If the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service, then we have to ask ourselves, how can we best be of service if somebody is sick and you take care of them and resent them for it, on a psychic level, on an emotional level, if that's not really helpful. So if you. If you. You know, when I first had. When I. My daughter, Nikki, but I have to change a diaper, that's a nasty bit of business. On the other hand, all I had to do is think to myself. Instead of thinking, oh, this is nasty poop, I'm thinking, I've got a healthy baby here. That food went all the way through her nervous system, all the way through her digestive system, came out as beautiful poop. You know, think about how I would feel if it did not go through her system, if she was constipated. So once you let go of the resistance to something that you need to do, like serve your family, you can start looking for the joy involved. I am healthy. I can serve them. This is a way for me to show love to my family. This is a way for me. They're going to remember that dad did this for them when they weren't feeling good. You know, they're going to tell their grandchildren about how wonderful dad was, you know, whatever it is that you do. So that the thing that you have to do anyway, if you've got to do it, you might as well enjoy it. You know, if you've got to do it, you might as well learn from it. You might as well grow from it. Either avoid it or find a way to enjoy it. Is the way I'm looking at it. So good for you. That is. That represents A. I don't know whether or not you were already that way, but I think that because of the. Your high energy level, you know, fatigue. If fatigue makes cowards of us all, that energy makes heroes of us all. Simple as that. Raise your energy level. Be a hero. You served your family like a hero. Proud of you. This is good. This is good. So listen, this is. This is great. I want to go into kind of today's lesson, but when you look at the quality of the sharing, look at this, for God's sake. This is exactly what I'm asking for from you people to practice these things. If there's something wrong, if I'm not teaching something, tell me what you need from me. Help each other, support each other, share, and we will all grow together. This is fantastic. Did a naked man just walk behind Nicole? I can't wait to pull that to play that tape back. Anyway, so listen, I've talked about the 8020 rule, the Pareto principle. You know that 80% of the results you get come from 20% of the activities that you spend. 80% of your time from. 20% with 20% of your friends. 80% of your. Of the money that you Earn comes from 20% of your. Of your clients or customers. 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. This is why I'm constantly. If I've got 200 major things, patterns that I could teach you guys, 80% of the results is coming from just 40 of those. Okay? And then if I look at the. At the 20% of those, I can cut it down even further. I'm going to keep cutting it down until I'm looking at the five or six things that consistently are giving you the best results. So the 8020 rule is really cool. But I came across something in this book, the Art of Practice, that had to do with mastery, and it had to do with the. There's a book called Mastery. It was written by a guy who was the men's columnist for. For Black. For No, Men's. The fitness columnist for Esquire magazine. Men's fitness columns for Esquire magazine. And he was a. An aikido instructor in Redwood City, California. And he taught that this book, Mastery, suggested that most people never become masters, never become really good at anything because they can't handle the fallow periods where it feels like nothing is getting better. Okay, that makes sense to me. You know, and I asked the definition of mastery of my. Of my teacher, and I came up with a hybrid definition that mastery is a verb, not a Noun. I've said this many times. A verb, not a noun. It's a vector, not a position. And that once you have internalized the basics of your craft, you are on the path of mastery as much as anyone else who's ever been on that path. There's just that there's some people who are horizons distant from you. And each of you has probably mastered something where you are. Horizons, distance from me. I've got some stuff where I'm. Horizons distant from you. And by sharing our perspective, we get to say, well, this is what the territory looks like where I am. What does the territory look like where you are? And we can share each other's insights. But that's what mastery is. But the question of how you get there is really interesting to me. And how do you become a master? It isn't just the 10,000 hours of practice. 10,000 hours of practice seems to be the average. But you can spend 10,000 hours of practice and get nowhere. We've all known people who did a lot of work but never improved anything. So I came across this thing called the 90 that I'm calling the 9010 rule in this book, the Art of Practice. And it kind of opened my eyes to something. And I ran it through the three gates, and it seems to be true. And this is what the guy said. He was not talking. He did not use the word master. He used the word natural. See, he was born into a circus family, and his family kept looking for different. What circus families do is they take their kids and they expose them to a bunch of different tricks and trainings and different things. You know, tightrope walking and working with animals and, you know, ladder tricks and clown tricks and this. And they just find. What is it? Does the kid have any talent in here? Is there anything that they can do in there? So they look for the thing that the kid wants to do that they could conceivably provide the kid with a role model for, you know, somebody else that we know. Oh, yeah, Uncle Joey knows how to do that. Knows how to throw knives or whatever. That also fits in with a circus. In other words, would be remunerative, would support them, you know. Yeah, you can be part of the family business. If you do this, you're naturally inclined to do this. We know where we can find you a role model. And it'll make money. Great. Get behind the kid. The kid can spend eight hours a day practicing it, doing the thing that they love, becoming an expert, becoming part of the family tradition. Really great. And family's Been doing this for generations. He was really good at art, but not good at any of the circus stuff. He wanted to be a juggler. He was terrible at it. One day he took a class, one of those drawing on the right side of the brain courses. And in that class the teacher looked at his work and said he already knew what it was that they were teaching. He didn't need this class. And, and he thought to himself, wait a minute. I did this naturally. This class is teaching people how to do what I did naturally. That means that being a natural in this particular context means thinking about something a different way, proceeding with your practice in a different way. It isn't talent per se, it's a perspective. It is in neuro linguistic programming terms, belief systems, mental syntax, use of physiology. He had a different mental syntax about how he went about drawing. And he wondered, could he apply that? Were these people who were much better than him at circus skills thinking about it differently? And he asked him a bunch of questions and they gave him the standard answers. Oh, you have to love what you do and work at it hard. And they all said that.

But.

But that wasn't the difference. It really wasn't the difference. He could feel that. So instead of asking them questions, he began to observe them. And one of the things that he saw ties in with things that I've been teaching and things that I've done myself. And it's the thing that I want to talk about here, the 9010 rule. And it is this, that the amateurs, the failures, the losers or whatever will try to get perfect at something. They're practicing piano and they will try to get perfect at a piece of music before they move on to the next perfect next piece. The trouble with that is that the first 80 to 90% of progress, learning something comes rapidly after that for various reasons that we don't necessarily need to go into today. It slows down a lot. And fact you are proceeding asymptotically toward perfection. You cannot get there. You know, the first. You might. It might take a week to get 80% of the way there and another week to get the next 10% of the way there and another week to get the next five percent and another week to get the next two and a half percent and another week to get the next one and a quarter percent. You see where this is going. If you're. If your mind is set on, I have to get this perfectly before I move on, you'll never get there. And an awful lot of very talented people, very smart people will Go into a discipline, they're really good at first. Then they slow down and get frustrated. They move to a completely different discipline. If you've ever seen anybody do that, maybe somebody who you see in the mirror every morning, raise your hand, jumping from discipline to discipline, feeding off the. If this, this is. I'm great at this. And then it's, oh, God, this is work. I'm great at this. This is work. I also have a suspicion that people do this with relationships, that relationships are a lot of fun at first, and then they get to be worked. So how about bailing out and finding another relationship? But this is true with diets and exercise and careers and learning languages and everything else. Certain aspects come really rapidly. But then it gets hard. Okay, here's the thing. This is where the rubber meets the road. Right here, where I said I sat up and did a Scooby take. What? He said that the naturals, the people who became masters, what they did was they worked at something until they were 90% of the way there, just 90% of the way there. Then they would move to a more advanced version of the same skill and start over again until they were 90% of the way there. When they did that, they'd go back and test themselves on the first skill and find that they were 100%. Because as long as you're practicing a more advanced version of the same thing, you are automatically working on the same skills. But it's exciting. You have that newness. You have that sense of, I can't do this, I'm learning, I'm exploring. And that. That kid energy part of you, rather than I already know this. Let me try to get this just a little bit better. I know this. Let me get this. Oh, God, this is so boring. But I'm just going to keep practicing. It's so boring. No, they just move to a slightly more difficult thing until they get 90% there. And then a slightly more difficult version of that trick, and then a slightly more difficult version of that trick. And they look back after a couple of years and they are masters. And the people tried to get to 100%. They never drop a thing. They try to get to the point where they never drop one. They're still stuck at the low level because to them, progress was perfection as a noun or as an adjective, as opposed to perfection as a verb. I looked at that and I asked myself, where could I see evidence of this in my own life, in my writing? The thing that I probably have the highest level overall of ability to, relative to Where I started and relative to the rest of the world. And I recognize that every book I've ever written, and to a degree, the stories as well, not as much. Every time I thought about a book, I almost. I didn't deliberately do this, but unconsciously I chose a more complex book. I chose a more complex subject, more complex structure, something that I could not do. I said, this scares me. I can't do this. But I believe in my growth pattern sufficiently to believe that by the time I get. In other words, if it's going to take me a year to write this book, I believe that within a year I can get good enough to write this book. So I'm going to go in with faith. And that faith is part of what, you know, it's like I'm. I'm in danger. So all of my spidey sense is tingling, and that danger keeps my attention. I don't take this for granted. There's no such thing as just kind of. Well, I'm just kind of typing today. No, no, no. It's always, can I get better at this? I need to get better, because otherwise I'm not going to be good enough by the time I get there. Every book I've ever done, every story to a degree, certainly every television script. I always. Even when I was working on Baywatch, it doesn't matter if I'm writing it. I'm going to try to find how can I get better doing this? How can I do the best job that I can? And I realized that was the truth, that what he does, what the masters do from his point of view. And I'm willing to adapt this into what we're doing because my version is just slightly different. You wait until you get 90% of the way to perfection, and then you choose another skill that incorporates everything before but is 10% beyond your reach. You get to 90%, you switch to a new thing that is 110% of who you are or 10% out of your reach. 90, 10, 90 10. And you do that in each of the areas of your life. And I think that what starts happening is you start understanding how to motivate yourself. You understanding what it feels like to push yourself, what it looks like to push yourself. You start getting more faith in your ability to push yourself. You are on a different path now. If you do this with a few things like, you know, can I get, you know, just 1% better a week? Remember that? Just, you know, just 1% better. You start looking for that in. In things that you can Measure objectively. I'm to push 1% more weight. Okay, I'm going to move, run 1% faster. I'm going to. I'm going to move. I'm going to run. I'm going to walk with 1% greater smoothness. I'm going to be 1% more loving and open. I'm going to feel 1% more integrated with my emotions so that both love and fear are moving me toward the thing that I'm. Whatever it is that you're doing, you start noticing what it feels like to be in the space of growth. There's a little bit of uncomfortable discomfort and there's a little bit of joy. There's a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of pride. You stay in that. So from the time you wake up in the morning, you start saying, what can I. What can I do today that will help me grow? How can I contribute a little bit more? How can I be a little bit happier? How can I be a little bit stronger? How can I eat a little bit better? 90% of the way there, good enough. What's 10%? Push. And you keep yourself in that growth. Now, you might find that it's 80, 20. You might find that it's 95.5, whatever it is. But what you're looking for is to just like I was looking, you know, to if when I was doing the Club Bells, if I'm swinging to this side and that side, my spine was slightly out of alignment, so I misaligned and I straightened. Train some things. The same thing is going to be true psychically, psychologically, emotionally. You want to stay in the balanced place where it's not too much this, not too much this. You stay in the sweetheart zone. What is your growth zone? Not too little challenge. Not too much, not too little fear. Not too much, not too little love, not too much. It's like, you know, you don't, you know, cotton candy tastes great, but you can't live on it. So what is the balance between the different things that you need to stay in the growth zone so that in terms of your emotions, your heart, your business and your physicality, you are constantly in a place of using a higher and higher percentage of what you have. And you can continue to do that until you're on your deathbed. If your attention is on getting better at using what you got, you, you can win every single day. If you're always trying to win by totally an external measure, they're going to be. You can't just keep lifting more weight every day. And eventually your body is going to reach its limit. So at that point you might have to find, well, what is the highest percentage of who I am today that I can lift? Doing that will give you everything you need. I always tell my son is if you're doing the best you can, that's good enough for dad. All I need to know is, are you genuinely doing the best you can? Because if you're genuinely doing the best you can, you're going to be as strong or as smart or as rich or as loving, whatever, as you're capable of being. The external standards are useful, but there are times when you have to let them go. And quite frankly, I've entered the period in my life where I can't just keep getting faster and faster and stronger and stronger, but I can do, I can get smoother, I can be more connected, I can be more conscious. And like I said, if all of that is dependent upon the breathing. Because we've discovered that breathing is not just a matter of being strong, like the Valsalva effect when you're lifting a weight or a punch when you're tensing your body and turning yourself into one solid mass. But you can also use your breathing to measure whether you are to develop mental focus and to measure whether or not you are emotionally balanced. So by using a physical or a body mind thing like breathing, you can take it to your body, your emotions, your mind, and you could be working on your breathing from the. From two years old until your last breath on your DeathBed. So the 9010 rule of don't try to be perfect. Don't you know it's baked into the. Into life writing. When we say write a sentence a day, write at least write one to four short stories a month. Finish and submit them. Don't rewrite. Accept editorial request. That's what we're talking about, that you can, you can polish a story as long as you want to. As long as you are submitting, you're finishing one to four stories a month and submitting them. So if you want to work on a story for six years, I don't care, but you better be submitting something every month. Something. You can work on one story for five years, but there are other stories that you're dashing off in a day, that's fine. Once you're finished with that story, once you've polished it and have submitted it, don't keep rewriting it, move on to the next story. You will learn more by writing the next story than you would by rewriting the last story. And view through this lens, if you're next door, you're trying something a little different. You're always trying something a little different. You got that story. 90% of what perfection might be. That's, you know, that last 10%, you'll proceed asymptotically. You'll never get there, at least partially, because the more you rewrite stories, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the clearer your perception gets, which means that smaller and smaller and smaller flaws start popping up in your story. You can't get there. And that is the difference between being smart and being wise. To understand that perfection is a verb, not an adjective. You're never going to get to perfection as a place, but the process of perfection is a beautiful thing. What do you think of that? You know, this is. This. It's just. This has just occurred to me this week in terms of get to 90%, then look for the thing that is a more advanced version of the same thing. A more advanced dance move, slightly more advanced piece of music, a slightly more advanced martial arts technique, slightly more advanced meditation technique. You keep going for that because it keeps the excitement going. And in the process of that, those basic things automatically get better. What concept? And it does seem to match what I've seen of the people who are the best of the best of the best. So comments, questions, requests, thoughts on that or anything else that we've been talking about. Yes, Nicole.

Grandma 101 is calling, so I gotta go back in the pool with my little tiny granddaughter, so I'm gonna run.

You take care. Thank you for coming and thanks for sharing. Bye bye. See you next week. Okay, other folks, any. Any comments, questions or requests about what I just said or anything else. Eleanor, Earl.

Hi there.

Hi there.

Forgive me. I'll come on camera. I just want to say hello. This is my very first time joining you guys. I am a part of your wife's newsletter. I received it and she mentioned that this was happening today. And so that's why I decided to join. And I have. Wow. Found this conversation to be amazing. It's been really helpful in the last part also of what you just shared. Let me come on camera here. Forgive me.

I'd love to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your smile with me. It matters. It really matters. I love seeing people. People while they're talking. So go ahead, you guys.

I apologize for that was transitioning.

No, just. Just be happy.

Cool beans. So, yeah, this is just really very interesting and. And timely because there have been a lot of transitions in life, both geographically speaking and. And career wise etc and always reaching for the. The best of myself and Whitley and saying, okay, how can I be my very best in these various areas in which I find myself working? And I like this 90% concept here. This. I think it's pretty cool, isn't it? It is. It's real straightforward and it's something that I think would make a lot of sense.

And why don't you try it? You know, try it. And would you please get back to us and let us know how it worked for you and how you used it so that we can learn and share and grow together.

For sure. Yes.

Love to see you again.

Most definitely.

I love it.

And we know each other through Mike Sargent.

Mike, How's Mike doing?

Mike is great. Mike is great. You guys were kind enough to be a part of an online film festival for me when I was director of the film and television program at a university.

Well, please give him my love if you speak to him. Okay, I will.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Eleanor. Okay, Ross. And then Kathy and then Michelle.

A little while ago I got exposed to a new concept from the professor around. There is almost no problem that can survive sitting alone with it in a room with a pad of paper and a pen for 24 hours. And might be a good starting point for some folks, I think.

Yeah, just write on that piece of paper. Write down everything you can think of about the problem. Make sure you also write down. You really need to clarify what it is you're trying to accomplish. One of the ideas is that it doesn't matter how you do something, it's not as important. Important is why you want to do it. If you have enough reason to want to do it, you'll find the answer. But asking yourself the question over and over again, how do I solve this? What is the solution? How do I get where I'm going? Just sit in a room with a pad of paper and write down everything you're thinking about it until you have an answer. And you tell yourself, I'm going to stay here until I have an answer. A way to get at least 1% improvement on this problem, you know, and actually it's your, you know, you probably can't sit down for more than an hour without getting 1% improvement. You can probably solve the whole damn thing in a day. At least come up with a plan that'll get you moving. But we can, you know, everything we talk about is the kinds of things that you can use there. So great. Russ.

Hey, Steve, just one thing, and I have a question. What you were talking about reminds me of something I've been doing on my journey towards a new job. I'm calling them stretch roles and they are roles that I believe are, as you describe it, about 10% outside of my reach in terms of when people look at my resume, whether they think that my skills are transferable to that something that Michelle was saying earlier. So I've actually been creating really detailed cover letters that are, I'm, I have defined as stretch cover letters are 10% cover letters, if you will, talking about what the role requires and what I've done, which matches to what the role requires. And so I have quite a few of those. My question for you, you were talking about 90% of a skill and then 10% of a skill and then a new Skill that's just 10% outside.

It has to be a progression on the old skill where my question was. Yes, okay. Yeah. It has to be a progression on what you're doing. Otherwise it's like I can get to brown belt in this, in this martial art, different martial art. What you do is you get to a, you know, you, you would start looking at the more advanced version of techniques within what you already know.

Right.

That's what you do. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you.

You betcha. Okay. Michelle and then Lisa.

So one of the things I always teach my clients is there's no such thing as perfection. If you believe in God or whatever spirit you believe in, there is no such thing as perfection. Nothing is perfect in life. God didn't make anything perfect. So we can't ever reach perfection. And the harder we try to reach perfection, the more we diminish our own self esteem because we never can get to that goal. We can never get to that point. Point. And if other people aren't perfect and you expect perfection out of them, then you're going to be disappointed in them. So perfectionism should not be the goal that we should for. It's doing the best we can and then go on and learn something new.

I think that's beautiful and perfectly said. Thank you.

And, and I have to say that in conjunction with everything that I do is so cutting edge that I'm doing things that no one else in the world has ever done. I'm writing the book and stuff that has never been done. So for me, it's, it's okay. I don't have anyone to learn from, but everyone's learning from me. So every day I am learning to Stretch so that other people can learn from me.

You don't have anybody to learn from in the very specific thing that you're doing. But the aspects of what you're doing, they're always going to be people who are better.

Right, Exactly. I mean, that's why I'm pulling from here. I mean, that's why I'm learning from here. Right. That's why I'm learning martial arts.

Yeah. I can't. I can't teach you anything about what you're doing, but I can teach you how to be good.

Right, Right. Exactly. And that's why I'm learning from here. So it's always. But I'm always stretching. I'm always going to the next level to find what it is that can be done because I want to learn. I want to learn things that have never been learned before.

That's a beautiful goal. That's an inspiring goal. And let us know your progress every week, would you, please?

Yeah, I will.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa.

Hey, everybody. I just have to. I have a two pronged thing I need to say. One, Steve, I don't know how you do it every week. You always have relevant, meaningful content. And I get in late now because I work every Saturday. And what I tuned in today was we're talking about, you know, the balance and spinal injury and, you know, strain and stuff. And I've been having a hard time walking for literally the last three days. And I'm like, oh, well, thank you for that. I'm living off of lidocaine patches and ice packs and I have no idea what I did to myself, but that balance is always in my head going. And when Ross mentioned, you know, what did he do that put himself there? Every week that I'm here, it's always something that is meaningful. I learned from, that's relevant. And I so truly appreciate it and so truly appreciate being part of this tribe that I just feel that it needs to be said as often as it could be because it really matters. It really, truly makes a difference.

I. I can't tell you how much that means to me. No matter where I am, I try to make sure I can do this, where I'm on the road or whatever. And the only reason is because. Because people like you say things like that. It's that feeling that I am earning my air.

Oh, definitely.

You know, that. And that means the world to me. You guys mean the world.

This has been something that has been gradually diminishing so much in my life that I didn't know how much I desperately missed it and needed it until I came here. So thank you from the bottom of my heart and the top of my soul and everything in between, because it really makes such a difference. Because I think it's kept me here. I think it's kept me here on this plane.

I take that seriously. I take the responsibility seriously. Breathe. Keep coming. Keep sharing. Absolutely anything from you but your growth in your life and your courage.

Thank you for that. And I'm. My computer is usually weird, so I'm just going to try something to see if I actually get video. But forgive me if I don't because it's retardified.

No problem.

And then the other thing I was wondering is, could you please just tell me what. Hey, look, there I am. How about that? Hey, everybody, can you please list what the five Tibetans are? I kind of feel like I always miss it.

Look, what you want to do is go to. Go to YouTube, type in five Tibetans, five rituals. You'll find that they are. You know, one of them is spinning in a circle, one doing leg lifts in a particular way. One of them is kneeling and leaning back and forth. One of them is doing a table maker where you're sitting and then raising your. Raising your hips off the ground. And one of them is an upward, downward dog. And you just start with doing no more than three of each of them.

Okay.

And then build up to 21. But what we're experimenting with is what happens if you build your way up to seven, but do that three times a day, that still totals 21.

Sure.

And that title and that. And because we want to train ourselves to breathe properly during the day, specifically by having multiple breathing breaks. I have a suspicion that there are a lot of ways to skin this cat. And that if you were to do one of each of them five times a day, that probably wouldn't be too much. In other words, if you do them carefully and thoughtfully, spacing it out, that might be an easier way to get up to Your total of 21 repetitions a day than trying to do them all. And also you have to kind of move inside your body body. Visualize your skeleton moving up and down. You start feeling the impingements. You know, where am I imbalanced? Where do I have strain? Where have I hurt myself? Where is this? Where is that? But by doing a small number of them, you should be able to stay underneath the pain threshold. We have to do it once, only have to do it twice. See what I'm saying? That's. That sounds easy. So the fear diminishes. And without fear, you're able to observe your body, your body, mind as it is a little bit more closely. So it's both practical and on an emotional, perceptual level, you are being kind to yourself. So it is true that what you want is to increase the connection between your body and mind. You do that by testing yourself in a way where you get certain kinds of external results. But by anchoring this to your breathing, you also get to use that when you are writing, when you are having an argument, when you are driving on the freeway, what you're looking. What is the minimum thing that you can focus on that gets you the maximum results? I think it is the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? And the three centers, the body, the heart, and the mind. You find external ways to measure your progress on an internal path. You take it all down to just, do I breathe? Did I breathe? Today? You get upset, Ask yourself, did I breathe? If you breathe properly, but you were still upset. Did I pass the three gates? If something isn't going right in your body, in your life, am I balanced between the three sinners? Did I breathe? Am I balanced? Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useless? Useful? Over and over and over again until that gets unconscious competence and your behavior just starts shifting, as does your. Your body's relationship to things. Anyway, thank you very much, Lisa.

Thank you.

You bet. Kathy, is your hand still up? Nope. Okay. Is there anybody else? Well, what I'd like to do is I'd like to remind you again that this whole thing is sponsored by and is connected to the fire dance Tai Chi. Www.fire dance taii.com Fire Dance. Fire Dance. That's right. God got started that that's gonna happen.

Randomly from now on.

Put on your pants and do fire dance. I don't know. Fire dance.

You know how easily we could turn this into a drinking game?

Oh, no, please don't. So the important thing, most important thing, Breathe. Okay. Balance between the three gates and the three centers. Work your way into a morning ritual where you are, are connecting with yourself on every level. Do that every day. Focus on the integrity of the actions. In other words, it's like, you know, one of the things you need to accomplish to accomplish your goal is the willingness to do whatever it takes. Well, God, you know, that could be stealing, killing. No, no, no. You formulate your goals so that they have to be done in a way that is in alignment with the three gates in the three centers. How can I double my income in a way that benefits my family and my community and keeps me on the road to peace? How can I increase my fitness without losing time that I need in my work or with my family? How can I be a better father and husband without taking time away from my work or what I need to do with my body? And the truth is that if you tell yourself that all three parts matter often enough, eventually you simply won't come up with a plan that does not include the concept of balance. You wouldn't even think of earning money in a way that hurt people. When I wake up in the morning, I think about what I want to do for you guys. What I'm thinking is not how do I get, how do I make more sales? I will talk about sales because I ain't shy about money. But my thing is, who can I help today? There's somebody on here who needs me. There's some truth that I have not. I have not touched. There's some aspect when I get into a problem with someone, I ask myself, what can I learn? What could I have done differently? If I had to beat snot out of a mugger? I would ask myself afterwards, how could I have prevented that from happening? How could I have seen what was happening earlier? How could I have talked my way out of it? How could I have kept my ego up of it? How could I have stopped myself from having to hurt another human being? But trust me, you come at me, I'm going to respond right then, right there. The animal part of me is going to respond. But I will ask myself later, how could I have been better? According to the three gates and the three centers, you live your life so that the daily rituals, all you have to do is get your rituals right and the results come. Then you can. Folks, that's the dog. You know, dog, the dog and the cat. The dog is a thing you can directly control. Comes when you're called. The cat waits until you're busy doing something else and curls up on your lap. Most of the results you want in life are the cat, the love that you want, the customers that you want, you know, the things you can't totally control. But there are things that you can do every day that maximize your chance of the cat coming and sitting in your lap. The cat being joy and love and happiness. I am so grateful that you shared this time with me today. Go to firedance tai chi.com Please join the community if you possibly can. We love you. We love these times together. Those of you who are on Tananarive's list, she can communicate with you if you'd like to be on my list. Stephenbarnslist.com so you can get direct notification every time. I hope you're going to have a wonderful week. Go out, improve by just 1%. Just make a commitment. Just change by 1% this week. Find one thing that you can improve by 1%. I promise if you do that, they will help get you the leverage you need to accomplish anything else that you want. I'm gonna work on a book with Larry Niven and then I'm gonna work with my son and his driving test and I'm gonna take care of myself and I'm gonna have fun. I'm probably gonna go see across the Spider verse or the boogeyman or watch the last episode of Ted Lasso before I see you next. Oh, actually, I'm going to wait to do all those things until my wife gets back. She's going to be back on Monday. I have missed her very much. It's caused a lot of stress, but it's worthwhile. She's doing an honorable and good thing. She's taking care of the man who used to take care of her. That is a beautiful thing in life. The last thing I'd like to say is what I always say, that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. See you next week. Unmute yourselves. Everybody. Say goodbye.

Bye.

Dine on great people.

Bye. Thank you.

Thank you.