FIREDANCE: The Next Level

Hello.

Just getting ready here. Taking it over to Facebook. Make a comment. Just getting ready. Taking it over to book. Take a comment and need to kill the sound there and okay, admit all we're doing great. Make Tananarive the co host. Hello, Orion.

Hello.

Hi, Mary.

Hello. I was not going to let Zoom beat me today.

You must not. You know, these AI are watching to see, you know, whether or not we're paying attention. So we have to make sure that they understand that they're just part of the family. Let's be polite when they come to eat at the table.

You know, don't throw food.

I work remotely, so I spend my whole week on Zoom. This is like par for the course for me.

Great.

Fantastic. I'm telling you that I have a real hunger to teach and the pandemic just killed me because I just, I could not get together with people. So I have the, you know, I'm going to put. I'm putting all my attention into this because it enables me to reach the most people and still have my life. Because things are getting really, really busy right now, but I can commit to 90 minutes on Saturdays at this time. I mean, I was just asked if I would go and speak at a library in a couple months, and it's Saturday at 1 o'.

Clock.

Can't do it. Might be able to do it by two, depending on things. But the only reason I'd be going there to speak is to make contact with people. And I have people right here, so I don't need to go there to do that. And I've made a promise to you that I'm going to be here within the limits of what I can possibly do. I'm going to be here for you every week. And I figure the longer I keep that, the more you understand that I am sincere about wanting to help as much as possible, and it'll enable us to have better, deeper conversations. I have to earn your trust, people. I don't expect you to just trust me. There are lots of people out there who talk smack. You know, anybody can say that they're trying to help people. So I expect you to keep a healthy, you know, skepticism. You know, if you will start with the breathing, you'll be able to test to prove for yourself whether or not that aspect of what I'm saying is real. And if it is, then I'm hoping you'll take one more step and the first couple of steps you can do on your own, you know, and then come here and everything. That's just great. And I will try to lay a path for people that is as easy and does not require anything but an investment of a few minutes a day. That's kind of my commitment. So at any rate, one of the things I like to do is to open things up a little bit before. Before the lesson formally begins or the conversation formally begins, so that if there are any conversations, comments, questions, requests that you have, you can ask. Now, if you don't mind them being recorded, then that's great, because that allows any answers I give you to help a larger number of people. But if there's something that you feel is too personal, then this might be an opportunity for you to say it, because it's nothing but, you know, but family here at this moment. So before we, you know, get going, is there anything that you know and you can really ask? Anything? That's one of the. One of the things. There are no rules on what you can or can't ask. I might decide that a question is something I don't want to answer, but there's nothing you could say to offend me, and there's no such thing as a stupid question. So before we kind of get started, any comments, questions, or requests about anything that you know, any of this material?

Well, my question is, is, do you all know each other? Because, Steven, you and I have talked at some length over messenger, but this is my first session. If you all know each other, then I should probably say hi and introduce myself.

You absolutely should.

My name's Doug Harrington. I live in Houston, Texas. Like Stephen, I'm a writer, but I don't do fun writing. I do technical writing. But, hey, it pays the bills, right? Yeah. And I am still in my infancy in the program. I was a week late getting started. So this week I did lesson one. Tomorrow I'm going to move on to lesson two, which is going to consistently put me one week behind.

But no, there is no one week behind. This is asynchronous. You start when you start. Other people will start after you. So get that out of your head. There's no way to do this wrong. If you do it, you take all the time you need. You go as deep with the breathing or the visualizations or any of the other exercises as you need. In the time that you need, we will meet you where you are. One of the first things you have to learn is those voices telling you you're doing it wrong somehow are not your friends.

Well, I made progress this week that I'm pretty pleased about. But I would like to do Better.

Excellent. Well, I tell you what. Would you mind saying exactly that during the broadcast so that any answers I give you can help more people?

By all means.

This is a perfect conversation. This is the kind of conversation I want where you dig into the material, question anything that I've said or anything I've asked you to do. Why am I doing this? What do you mean by this? This doesn't feel right. This, this, this, this, or I took this and I did this with it and it had this positive effect, or this happened, or this, whatever it is that's going on with you, positive or negative, is all grist for the mill. We're all. I'm trying to describe a process that cannot quite be put into words. You can't put it into words any more than I could describe a sandwich closely enough to nourish your body. You have to eat it. I can point in the direction of it, and then as you work with it, you tell me what you're experiencing in your life, and I can say that. Not that, not that. Okay, that. More of that. I can do that. And you will have. And then you will be able to have the references from the behaviors, not the concepts from your behaviors, and the results of the behaviors that allow me to guide you and coach you from a distance.

Fair enough. I'm going to say two sentences that are irrelevant to Fire Dance, but go for it. Since you and I have been talking a little more and I enjoyed your novel Dream park so much, like so long ago, I haven't had as much time on my new job to read as I might like, But I'm almost finished the first volume, Dream Park. Loving it.

So I was my first novel.

I'm mixing and matching it up. Sometimes I read my Kindle and then I switch over to audiobook. Slowly but surely, I'm making my way through. And I made it to a really exciting part of the book near the end of the novel last night, but I was too tired, so. So after we hang up, I'm going to have to finish the book, but.

I hope you continue to enjoy it. That was, like I said, my first novel. It was my chance to do a novel with Larry Niven, you know, at the height of his powers. And you better believe I did everything in my power to bring my A game. I was so excited. I was so nervous. I was so scared. But I was also so optimistic, you know, And I was cocky enough to believe I could do it. But I also knew that I had to bring everything I had every day that I'm. You know, Larry. Larry was still a mystery to me at that time. All I knew was that I really wanted to make him happy. If I figured if I could learn to make him happy in our interactions and in my writing, that I would be traveling the right path. And that's what I wanted from my role models, is what is the path that you walk that would also be healthy for me to walk? Not all paths are healthy for all people, but if you study enough people who are walking your path, I mean, if I talk to Larry and Jerry and Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein and Robert Silverberg and all these different people, what they described about the path of the writer began to feel consistent. I began to see, oh, okay. These same things pop up. Let me stay on this path. Okay. Yeah. So Dream park was my chance to see, can I do this? You know, can I? And I think it holds up well.

I think it's 40 years old now. It still holds up very well. Except I think instead of Dungeons and Dragons and role playing, which I know you were sort of modeling the. The concept back in 1980 or 82 or whatever it was now, I think you could replace it with, like, the online. Online video games.

So online multiplayer, but multiplayer, Yeah, I mean, I think so, maybe. However, I think that the notion of drag, of Dungeon Masters, where somebody creates it and then invites people into the playground, someone is going to have to create it. I mean, I might shift. I might have shifted. Shifted that. So that the responsibility between the game masters and the lore masters and the players or whatever we called it, was distributed differently. But what we needed was a situation where there was competition and a little bit of antagonism, because that helps to create the drama. So we would have to have done something. But I agree with you. I think that Dungeons and Dragons, that there. It was an attempt to do something without any technology, just with paper.

Right. And so I was hooked on that as well, you know, as a teenager.

So. Yeah. Hold on for a second. Maurice Barnes is here. Hello, everyone.

How are you?

I came. I came in late.

Yeah, no, no, you're not late. You're not late. We haven't started yet. We'll start. Okay.

So in high school, you know, I graduated in 85 in high school. So from like 81 to what have you, I did a lot of RPG games. And it amazed me that I came across a box of stuff that I played. RuneQuest D&D, Gamma Quest Traveler 2000. And one of the things in these game systems is that there was a Heavy mathematical component to it on the dice side, how many dice you rolled for damage. And even when you're playing with people, you know they were in a rolling 26 sided dice and counting it all up, there was a connection. And even now, 30 years, a little bit over 30 years talking to my high school friends from Seton Hall Prep who are in a professional career, there was an adventure that we didn't finish that included some critical hits and everything else. And they said, mo, we want you to do this. We're going to get online, we're going to. We're going to do this. We have to find out. What happened to one of my friends was the game system was called Bushido by Fantasy Games Unlimited. So you had very specific. You had a roller cast system. Then the character generation in it was really part of it. And figuring out what you can do, what you can't do. Zanshin and then looking about Zanshin and what that really was and how it was in a game. And it was a situation where my friends decided to bully me and I wrote critical hits including a beheading and a block and one of the characters being blinded. And we kind of left the game from there and did another game called Privates and Privateers. Captains of a pirate fleet. And the whole game they had. We didn't play it anymore because it was a question of it's my ship when they conquer the ship instead of sharing. That's all I have to say.

That's okay. Thank you very much. We're gonna get started. Hold on for a second. Start the recording. Oh, there's record. The buttons appear and disappear.

Change Sammy's paper.

All right, so welcome to the lot to Fire Dance. The next level today is May 13, so May 13. God, it's hard to believe that in a month and a half we'll be halfway through this year. I'm definitely feeling like this year because all the stuff that's going on, I've had to stay in flow state in order to cope with all this different stuff. It feels like the year is passing quick. So what I have to do is I have to slow myself down psychologically. So I don't. Hey, I don't want that sense of my. Of my time rushing past. So I need to do more unique things. When you do unique things, your brain can't store them in an old box. And what happens that creates that sense of collapsing time is you're doing the same stuff all the time. So it's very easy for your brain to just categorize it as something you've already done. It's like a vacation. Seems like it lasts forever until the last day. And as soon as you get home, then the entire vacation collapses into one category. Vacation, that's our. That's the way our brains work. So it's really important to give yourself lots of unique things. So one of the things you can do to slow time down is when we're here together on Saturdays, make sure to ask questions. Make sure to engage with the process. Don't just observe it, you know, be it. Do it and learn something new. Learn something that your brain cannot easily categorize. And time starts slowing down. Welcome to the broadcast. My wife, Tananarib Dhu is already here. T, why don't you, you know, why don't you catch up?

Okay, there I am. Hi, everybody. Good to see you. We were on the picket lines yesterday, and it was. I mean, I hate to use the word fun because it's such serious business, but it really was that kind of reframe that Steve was talking about. Because if you read my newsletter this week, you know, I had a tough week emotionally. And going on the picket line reminded me of that time we went wild water rafting after 9, 11 and just knocked me out of my usual routine and was very, very healing.

So.

Yes. And don't be fooled by the smiles you might see in those photographs from people on the picket lines because especially if they're newer to the wga, some of those people may never get jobs again for years. It's a tough, tough union to stay in. It's a tough, tough union to get in. Yeah, we're going to be happy to see each other. So we're smiling, but it's a. It's a serious business.

Yeah. There are ways in which writing in Hollywood, the apex of general writing work on the planet, There are ways in which that is true. It's not, you know, I'm not saying that across the board, but the competition to get in the writer's guild is stupendous.

It's unreal.

It's unreal. And even the people in there, a big chunk of those people don't get any work. They barely get work. For those who are above a certain level, if they have one movie credit, for instance, then there are, you know, then I think for those people, average incomes or something might be something like 250k. But most of the people in there, their incomes are. Are. That's for people who are actually working within a given year, if they get one or two scripts. They're lucky. And that means that their income is about $60,000, $70,000. But a huge proportion of people in the guild get nothing. They, you know, they. They don't work. So it's very difficult to compare it to other. Other professions where there is a clear ladder into the profession and there is some security in a weekly paycheck. That's difficult. And you have to remember that. It's not like there's a Hollywood in every city. No, you know, there's one Hollywood for the entire country, you know, and that all the writers in the country who want to work in television, film, or the majority of them are living here, competing with each other here. It's not entirely true, but it's true enough to kind of try to put some things in perspective. Anyway, if there's anybody who is new here today, well, first of all, let's unmute ourselves and say hi.

Hello, everybody.

Howdy.

Howdy.

Howdy, Howdy. Howdy. Great. Is there anybody?

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

Hey.

Thank you.

Amazing.

Hey, Karen. Jennifer Hart. Hey, Maggie. Megan Lancaster. I see old and new friends here. Is there anybody who's here for the first time? Raise your hands if you're here for the first time?

That would be me.

Okay. So, Doug, a quick introduction of yourself. Sure.

My name's Doug Harrington. I live in Houston, Texas. Originally a Canadian, but I moved to Texas a long time ago, so I think it can be called the Texan now. I have been happily married to my wife for approaching 13 years now. In terms of career, I. I am a technical writer, and I just joined a massive company called Deloitte. I don't know how many of you have heard of it, but. So I have been going through incredible amounts of onboarding, security clearances and stuff. But yesterday I had a great day because after weeks, I actually did some work. So, weekend off on a good note.

Well, this is good. This is good. Welcome. Welcome, Doug. You know, in order to be part of this community, all I want you doing is making sure that you're breathing at least five times a day for 60 seconds. Come on Saturdays, you know, and breathing.

Consciously, you know, breathe the rest of the time, too.

Today?

Absolutely.

If you can't just be drunk, what kind of spiritual aspirant are you? So you had some questions concerning the program, and if you have questions, this would be a good time, you know, for you to ask. You know, ask one, and then we'll take some questions from other people, and then I'll get into the afternoon's lesson, okay?

Well, this week was my first full week engaging in the program and I'm not unhappy. I think I made some really good progress. I have been doing really well, practicing my breathing, not always on an hourly basis because sometimes I forget to set the timer, but regularly. And in fact, one night this week I was really stressed about something and I found myself doing deep breathing exercises while trying to fall asleep. And I wasn't even doing it consciously, it just came naturally.

Yeah, you'll start finding out that as you go into this after about six weeks, you'll start noticing that even when you're not trying to breathe deep and abdominally, you're doing it anyway. Sometimes it takes longer than six weeks. It depends on how much stress you have locked in your body and how long you've been breathing badly and how much that has become part of your unconscious identity. But once you start changing that, you will find that your relationship to stress is very different, I guess.

Comment and see. I'd like to to hear your feedback you mentioned in the first onboarding video. Lesson one to try and aim for 20 minute sessions for the first two movements. Day one, I thought I was being stretched on the rack. My arms were killing me, my legs were killing me, and I only made it 10 minutes. And then I realized on day two, I tend to eat too quickly, breathe too quickly, everything. I'm just in a constant hurry. So when I tried it again, each time I lowered my arms, I would give myself about 30 seconds just to let them rest and then do it again. So slow the whole thing down.

Yes.

And I haven't tried 20 minutes yet, but consistently I've gotten it up to 15. So that's progress.

Look, here's the way I, here's the way I look at, look at it. For me personally, I give myself one minute to per day, per year of age. That belongs to me, not the world, not the, you know, it could be yoga, meditation, you know, all these different things. It's my diamond hour, you know, and more so if the minimum is five minutes, if you can get five minutes, I can get you started on the path. A the sweet spot might well be 20 minutes. It could be that the greatest return on investment comes there and that you can still get better stuff if you keep going for another, you know, 40 minutes, 50 minutes. But in terms of how much benefit, you know, the cost benefit ratio sweet spot might be 20. The sweet spot maybe for setting up your day, you know, is as much time as you can possibly get, you know, just because it's up to you to decide where does my. How much energy do I need? What kind of emotions do I need? What do I need to do to put myself in the position so I can do all the things I need to do today, today and have fun in the process so I can work hard all week and party on the weekend, whatever it is that you. That you do there. But it starts with that five minutes. If you're not taking at least five minutes, then you know that there's something wrong and it has nothing to do with the outside world. It has to do with something going on in your inner world. And so that. That allows you then to start working on that.

I could probably talk a long time, but I'll keep my questions to two concise ones.

Okay.

How important is it to do it first thing in the morning? Because I think I told you that I don't sleep well typically, and that's something I hope to improve as well. So when I wake up in the morning, I should feel rested, but I don't. I feel exhausted. I come down, I drink two mugs of coffee, watch an hour of the news, and then, unfortunately, what will happen by that time? My work day has started.

Yeah. Okay. So for you especially, I would say, you know what, you do not watch the news before you center yourself and connect to your heart. You do that. Remember, news is about what's going wrong in the environment. It's so that people can survive. We're programmed to survive more than we're programmed to thrive and be happy. The first trick is, if there's a tiger in the woods, you better know about it. So the news knows that they're going to get more, more ratings if they talk to you about the stuff that's wrong. There's nothing corrupt about it. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you don't center yourself and connect to your heart, have a sense of who you are in the universe, and you're saying it takes you some time to wake up, it's going to be difficult. So what I would strongly suggest is begin to listen to something positive for your first hour. You know, find a motivational speaker or somebody who you like who is in alignment with the way you believe. Go to YouTube, there's a ton of stuff, and spend your first chunk of the day getting your head right and your heart right before you start letting in the awful stuff that's happening in the world. Especially since, as you said, by the time you're finished with that, you often end up not having the time. So you need to put. You need. You need to change your priorities there. First take care of yourself, then take care of the world.

Okay, so I gather then that trying. Well, as Yoda says, do or do not, there is no try.

And if you can only do five minutes, then five minutes is what you can do. It's going to take time. You're going to have to leverage yourself into this because your pattern is going another way. Do not think you can just stop and do this instantly. And Jennifer was nodding her head. She knows something about this. I've known her for a long time. I would love to hear what she says. And then we'll go to you. Mo, you had your hand up. Okay, so, Jennifer, you were nodding your head. I kind of wanted to hear what was going through your mind.

Well, it's true. You can't just dive into this and expect to be able to do all.

Of it every day.

It just doesn't work. At least for me. That's my.

It doesn't work for anybody.

I tried doing a minute every hour, and with my work and the way it flows, I just, it was more stressful than not. So I backed it off to doing it five times a day.

Okay. There's nothing wrong with that is the minimum.

Yes. And then I will try to add in beyond that once I have this in my, my sense memory.

Perfect. You know, and then, you know, try to come here, you know, and, and, and share with us and share what you're experiencing in support of the people and let yourself be supported. You will move through this stuff as fast as is healthy for your body and mind. Okay.

Right. I used to feel obligated to move through it at the same pace. Others were going this or any other thing I took on. And, you know, with age, that's a.

Guaranteed way to fail.

Well, with age comes wisdom.

Right.

I now know.

Absolutely. If you pay attention, wisdom is noticing the cycles. It's noticing the patterns. So often, you know, you have to go through an entire year before you get wisdom about seasons. By the time you've gone through a year, five or six times. The fact that winter follows summer is not a surprise. You start saying, oh, you know, there are these things called seasons. Really smart people notice that faster, but they always notice things faster in different arenas. There's lots of different ways to be fat, to be smart. You know, it's like a person who's smart in one arena might not be smart in this one. Very few people have all the tools. Most of us need other people. Yeah, okay. All right. So. Okay, Doug, I gave you a couple questions. Let me move on to Mo. And then I think there's some. There's somebody else too. Okay. Yes, if we can.

Okay. In regards to working in the morning, you know, for about six and a half years, I wrote for a national online magazine and print magazine and rollingout.com and so I had to do a lot of aggregated articles. And a lot of it went from doing very positive stuff to finding the algorithm that the editor, the publisher called the nosy factor. But there was a time that I started writing about the worst things of human beings. And the worst happens every morning. You can find just tragedy everywhere. And I develop. And I didn't know it until some writers sued at the New York Times over post traumatic stress syndrome from constantly having to write crime articles. Malika Robinson, the young girl who was killed in Florida, was just to end for me. I couldn't wake up in the morning anymore and write another story about black pain or how we were doing wrong. And like you're saying, it's setting yourself up for the right thing in the morning, but then you have to dive into toxicity. My articles, I've written over 3, 000 articles. It was like markrate.com you can find all the, you know, links and everything else. And I looked at how my progression change from positivity to getting the hits and how I angered Paul Mooney and was aggregated on Roland Martin for a totally true story. So, I mean, depending on what you're writing and how I was making my. My living doing that, it's just as Steve has said, and the concentration is focusing on. On what you're doing because it was the. Talk about the coffee.

Okay, well, let's look at this. An aikido instructor named Koichi Tohai wrote a book called Ki the Way of Aikido or something like that. And in this book he talks about how in Aikido, they use a term called ki, and it has to do with an aggregation of human energies, intent, physicality. In Qigong, we talk about moving, focusing, breath, eyes, mind and movement. Okay. In Aikido, it's that same thing, only you have to interact with a partner so as to create a blend which allows you then to match and lead their energy into, you know, throw or a lock or whatever. And one of the things he said, using this as a metaphor, the outgoing energy is that in interactions with the world, your energy is a lot like a stream emptying into a sewer. If the stream has power, if the water is running rapidly, Then that water will run into the sewer or into a cesspool and the cesspool won't back up into the stream. That should be you. If you have to interact with a toxic world, first connect with your energy. And you know, with every breath, with every movement, with every thought, you are projecting your energy outwards so that if you have to deal with this stuff, it's not backing up into you, you're changing it. It's not changing you, you know that it's getting into you. When if it's getting into you, if it's depressing you feeling, then what you know is your energy is not sufficiently flowing outwards. That's all it is, you know, in, in that sense, from that position. So this is why it's critical to. And the subject I want to, I want to deal with today is self love. Because if you love yourself, then other things will flow from that, including your urge to protect yourself. And when you understand that protecting yourself means being able to move through the world with power and integrity to accomplish those things that are in alignment with your values. Take care of yourself and your dreams, take care of your family, take care of your community, your job, you know, whatever that is. But it all starts with you. And when you love yourself and ground yourself, and we talked about these first five minutes, not the first five minutes of the day, but five minutes taken throughout the day will give you a chance to ground yourself. You can start with breathing, but then you can visualize everything about yourself in 60 seconds. You can remind yourself, you get in touch with your survival drive, that part of you that would just bare its teeth if somebody came after one of your kids, your own heart, your sense of loving the little boy, the little girl that you were, and then moving outwards from there to your family. That sense of love and then that sense of your mind, your head, your occupation, what you're doing in the world to hunt and gather, that sense of chop wood, carry water. These are the things I must do, I must understand, I must strategize. I have to create goods and services that I exchange with my community. That's how we get money and on and on. But it starts with survival and emotions and love and then strategy. Or you can go from love to survival to strategy, but what you don't do is stay in your head about it. If you're thinking, I don't know why this, I don't know why that. This is confusing, that's confusing, forget all that stuff. If you're not moving your body, you start by moving your body. If you're not moving your body, what's happened is you are storing all of your negative emotions there. And if you're storing your negative emotions there, that's becoming toxic for you. It just hurts more if you release them. So you could start with your heart. You could start by connecting every morning with loving yourself. Every single morning. I think about the little boy that started this journey. And I asked him, are you doing okay, Stevie? Are you happy, Stevie? And just, I want to see that he's happy. That's where I get my energy from. And then I go from there. And to. What do I have to do today? Well, I have to take care of somebody. I have to take care of my son, I have to take care of my wife. I have to take care of my household. In the same way that sick, depressed people get out of bed to feed their cats, they often can't do it for themselves, but they can do it for another living thing that they love. So you use whatever it takes to get you going. And then once you're moving, you're doing that five minutes spread through the day. Once you've got that locked in, you take the first of those and you expand them out into your morning ritual. And if you can only do, take that first one, instead of doing one minute, you're doing two minutes. Okay, great. You're doing two minutes. You're still anchoring it, you're still starting. And you might start with walking in a circle with an affirmation like, all the love I need is within me Now. I move through the steps of the magic formula, which means I have a map or model. I'll get to that in a couple of minutes. Before I go tononariv, you look like you might have something you wanted to add.

How can you always tell?

I can always tell.

Well, I also just wanted to echo what you were saying about how we store stress in our bodies. I'm definitely one of those people. And we also fool ourselves into not taking advantage of the tools that we've been using to try to pull ourselves out of the funk. I won't go into details, and it had nothing to do with Steve, but because of something my friend was going through that I went out to support, I ended up in a very sort of grief struck place that manifested first as a migraine. Right. And. And at last I was fighting it for two or three days and I. I don't get them that often. And I off I wondered, am I, have I come down with something? I'm a hypochondriac. So I tested myself for Covid three days in a row. And then I realized, oh, this is emotional. And I was going through. I was walking, I. And the affirmation every day and everywhere I'm getting better and better felt too hollow, because it didn't feel that way at all. It felt like I was getting worse and worse every day. So instead, I changed my affirmation to address what I thought my core issue was, was that I had lost some joy in life. And I had. I was forgetting how beautiful life is because I was experiencing someone else's pain with them and triggering my own fears. So life is beautiful had become my new mantra this week. And I had to say it even sometimes when I wasn't feeling it. And that's the key to a lot of these. The breathing. You're not going to feel an instant like, oh, okay, everything's better. It's not like if you've seen ordinary people. It's not like the Judd Hirsch mother moment of insight when it's like, everything, oh, this is what happened. Okay, now I get it. But if you have faith that those are the tools that will help you come back to your joy. For me, it was writing. Even when it felt perfunctory. It's like typing, but it's part of the process. Walking, it's part of the process. Yoga. I know this is something I should be doing right now, so I'll do it. And slowly. And for me, because it wasn't a personal loss, it was a much faster recovery. But grief is grief. It's an emotion, and if you touch it, you're swimming in it. It feels kind of the same whether it's your grief, somebody else's grief, grief over loss of a pet, grief over the loss of a parent, grief over the loss of a celebrity you've never met. That feeling of grief is a very familiar place in the human spirit. To pull ourselves out of it, we have to remember to continue the practices and especially the community that will help us walk back toward our joy. And that's all I wanted to say.

Well, that's a lot. That's an awful lot there. If I was going to unpack what you just said, if I looked at that in terms of the magic formula, then you had a sense of what you could do in order to move through your grief, your map, which you gained by watching people or experiencing your own life in the past. So that you got your map, you had your models, you took action, even though you didn't know what you wanted to do exactly. You might not have been doing something complex. You weren't doing tai chi, but you were walking. You never stopped exercising. And if you choose your exercises properly, those exercises are things that healthy people can do. It's like you look at somebody moving, that's an explosion of joy. That's somebody who's engaged with life. I like to move like that. So when you're moving like that, you're starting, you're processing, you're running the aquarium filter on the fish tank of your soul. Put that. And then gratitude, your sense of grief, anything you'd be sorry that you lost is something you should be happy about having. So grief viewed properly can be a doorway to understanding your bliss. That I'm afraid of losing these things. I empathize with somebody who has lost them. So I feel grief. That means that the things that you have right now, if you're worried about your family, then that means that you can take pleasure in the fact that your family is healthy and that we love you and that we're here every day and we can celebrate those things. If you're in fear, I'm afraid of you. Run into somebody who you used to know, and they're broken down and they're on a walker and they've got a pacemaker, and it's clear they're not long for this world. You can care for them and love them, but you can also use that motivation to help you make better decisions in your behavior patterns. I'm going to enjoy life every day. I'm going to eat better, I'm going to move better. I'm going to radiate energy so I can enjoy every day that I get, because I don't know how many days that's going to be. So you've got their mapper model. Actions, gratitude, clear intention. You had to be able to say that you wanted joy. So many people don't even understand that they have the right to say they want to be happy, that happiness itself can be a goal. Now, you approach happiness indirectly. You approach happiness often through service, through becoming, through progressive realization of some worthy goal. But it's actually possible to look at the question of happiness and say, I want to be happy. Well, what do I need to do to be happy every day? I need to, you know, maybe I shift it from a I want to be happy to I want to do happy. In other words, what you do is you notice the next time you're very happy or the next time you're in the Presence of somebody who's happy, you find out what are they doing. I can promise you that if you look at one person when they are happy or unhappy, they will breathe differently, their posture is different, they use language differently, their facial expressions are different, their vocal tonalities are different. And if to the degree that they can shift those other things, they can take the pressure off themselves, it gives them a chance to connect to something that really brings them joy. A memory of something that happened to them wonderfully in childhood. In the same. We all know that depression can make you think about bad things that happened in the past and you feel depressed. How many of you have thought about something bad in the past and gotten depressed about it? Raise your hand. Okay, great. What you don't understand is you can do the exact same thing with positive emotions. You can actually get a catalog of positive moments in your life. And during your morning ritual, you deliberately, deliberately think about those things. I anchor myself every day to things that make me happy every day. I give thanks for my son and daughter, for my. I say this all the time. My beautiful, brilliant wife, Tananarive, who everyone in my life knows, if I do not understand that I found the perfect woman for me. I'm God's greatest idiot. For my sister who taught me to read. I wish all good things for her, for my mentor. So I will deliberately remember the day that Larry Niven said, yes, you can work with me, deliver the day that Tananarive and I fell in love. Remember the time when my master handed me a black belt. Remember. Whatever it is, those memories contain positive anchors that you can actually touch. In the same way that if I wanted to, I could remember the first little girl I asked if she'd kissed me, and she slapped me instead. Back in elevation, back in kindergarten, I could. I could remember being in third grade and forgetting my lines in the Christmas play and standing up on stage, just totally humiliated in front of an audience of parents. Oh, yeah, I could go there. But why would you go there? If you loved yourself, if your child. If someone who you loved with all your heart was feeling bad, wouldn't you understand that you want them to feel good? If they feel good, then they will. You know, they might feel good about doing their homework. They might feel good about eating their vegetables before they have their ice cream. They might feel good about, you know, somebody insults them at school, and instead of reacting, they just realize, oh, this. This kid probably doesn't have a happy home. They're probably. They're trying to take out on me Something that they're feeling negative within themselves. Because you love yourself enough to take care of yourself. And as soon as you do that, you start understanding. When I love myself and take care of myself, I am peaceful to the people around me. Do you start seeing that people are not peaceful to people around them, cannot have that connection? Or it's at least a working hypothesis. You can see it for yourself, you can test it for yourself. So loving yourself enough to want the best for yourself leads to asking yourself how to do these things. And what we've given you is a way that can start with just five minutes. And then by the time you've taken that first section of time, the first one in the morning, and expanded that to maybe another five minutes, you're starting to be able to program yourself. And I probably my morning ritual, I mean, I start when I wake up and then I sit up and meditate. And one of the things that's interesting about meditation, somebody pointed out a research to me recently and I need to go deeply into it. But I did take a look at the research and between 30 and 70% of people would rather give themselves an electric shock than be alone with their thoughts. That literally, they did an experiment where they asked people to just sit quietly with their thoughts for 20, for 15, 20 minutes, or they could push a button and give themselves to electric shock and they get the money. And about 30% of women and about 60 something percent of men would rather push the button and get the electric shock than be alone with their thoughts and feelings. So you.

Steve, that is.

Go ahead.

Sorry. That is a beautiful example. And I wanted to bring your attention to something. Popping off in chat. Doug had asked a great question that we were actually talking about last night. Why do you think we consciously or unconsciously seek out negative emotions or memories rather than positive ones? And Kathy talking about how it's survival programming. And that does mimic the conversation we had last night where I was sort of observing myself through the week, retreating from my tools, right? Like, oh, if I play music which brings me great joy on my keyboard, that might trigger a headache. And I've been nursing this migraine. I'm not going to play music. I'm not going to listen to classic jazz, even if I had it as soft volume, I'm not going to call my therapist. It crossed my mind many times, maybe I should call my therapist. And every single time I was like, but do I really want to be bothered? Or she's expensive. You know, it's like I talked myself out of moving toward positivity and was starting to cloak myself in a negativity. Almost as if the joy is the lie, right? Like the rose colored glasses have been peeled off and now the world is gray as the world really is. And we try to stay in that gray world.

That's right.

Toxic positivity of the other world.

So look, what happens here's here. What happens is we mistake our egos for our being. Everything that happens to us in life gives us a little definition of what life is. You know, there are two questions. Who am I? And what is true? Everything that happens gives you a chance to learn something about either the way the world is or about the way we are. And if you keep getting negative, if you keep getting negative experiences, you're trying to make sense of the world. And if the sense you make of the world is the world is a terrible, corrupt, painful place, then smiling or thinking about happy time, but it feels like you're being fake. That's not life. That's, you know, that's being a Pollyanna. You have to be tough, you know, the positive sensation. If I think positively about life, I'm just setting myself up for grief. Why am I doing that? I'm making a mockery of all the pain there is in the world. How can I be happy if there is while there's a single child who is miserable in the world? God, I love those people. They're people with open hearts who are not connected to their survival drives. And I've said this over and over again, you could take the most depressed person in the world, suicidal person, and if I grabbed their head and stuck it in a bucket of water, they would fight for their lives. Because their core programming, underneath their identity, underneath who they think they are, underneath their ego, is survive. This is why all, almost all world spiritual disciplines will modify your breathing one way or the other. You know, you slow the breathing down to the point where it's below about three breaths per minute and the carbon dioxide level in your blood rises. And all of a sudden the alarm starts going off in the back of your head saying, I must breathe. And whether your tax bill is due or your kids were rude to you, or you think your husband's cheating, or any of the doctors, negative diagnosis doesn't matter at the moment. When the carbon dioxide rises to a certain level, the programming, the animal programming, I must survive kicks in. And that's what you're looking for. That's the spark that, finding that and you're in touch with the thing that has nothing to do with Your ego, feeling of what's been disappointing or what you haven't been able to do, or your past or anything else. It is, I must survive in this moment. On top of that, once you're anchored into that, you can do that by controlling your breathing, you open your heart. Because if from this position, this perspective, the meaning of life is to live. It's just, you know, the meaning of life is the same as the definition of life in that sense. But then you move, you know, there was you. You breathe, you reproduce, you take in food, you excrete and so forth and so on, just that basic stuff. But once you've got that, then the next question is, how shall we live?

Ah.

And that's a very different question. How shall we live in order to what? Well, all living things are seeking to escape pain and gain pleasure. But as you just said, Tinanari, we can get caught up if the primary goal is to move away from pain toward pleasure. Why would people go to a funeral deliberately when they know they're going to go into deep grief, but they know they're going to cry and wail and they're supporting the family? Why? Because these rituals overall lead to greater joy in life. We need these social rituals. They help us to place our lives in perspective so we don't have to bear our grief as individuals. We can bear it as a community. So you can feel that people care about us. So we will deliberately step into grief sometimes in order to have greater overall joy in our lives. Because loneliness is a terrible, draining thing. In the same way that some people will hurt themselves in the gym, they will discipline themselves to get up at an ungodly hour in the morning and they'll go to the gym and it doesn't feel good. And God, you know, I would like. I'd rather stay in bed just like everybody else. But I know that if I do that, I will have less joy overall in my life. Just like going to work. I don't want to go to work. Very few people want to go to work. The number of people want to go to work are the same percentage of people who, if they won the lottery tomorrow, would still be at that job next year. Not very many of those people, most of us go to work to avoid pain because if you're not working, you can't pay your bills and your family suffers and you can't eat. Hold on for a second. Oh, okay. Yeah, I see what you're doing over in chat. That's. That's great. We do most of what we do most automatically to avoid pain. Whether or not we can live our lives with joy is a higher level. It's a higher level. The animal stuff says avoid the pain. As a human being, we can start saying, I want pleasure, I want pleasure long term. And then as you feel safer, the natural thing is to begin to expand your sense of ego so you begin to include other people. My skin doesn't stop with me. My skin includes my kids and my wife and the students on my path. You know, you guys are part of me. That's why I'm here every week. You know, I want it. I feel what you're feeling. If you will share it with me and I can take that and I will bear some of that and then I'll show you how I deal with that, that alchemy that I use. But understanding that the news is going to. If there are a thousand houses in a town and one of them is on fire, what's going to be on the news? It's as simple as that. It's not that the world is burning, but that could be the impression that we get because we mistake a 24 hour news cycle for the thought that the entire world is falling apart. No, it's not. But there have always been people who said the sky is falling. There have always been people who do that. You have to control your own sense of joy. And you can start that with loving yourself. Let's take a look at some of the most basic tools that we offer you within this path, specifically for dealing with loving yourself more so that you'll love yourself enough to do the things, to walk the path, to reach the things that make you happy so that you can live your life in a way that is in alignment with your own values. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. And to a certain degree, as long as we feel that we are progressing, we're happy. When we feel that we are stagnant, we're unhappy. If we feel that we're going backwards, we panic. So if you are just. If you're doing nothing more than breathing five times a day for 60 seconds a pop, that's five minutes. But you get to feel like you're making progress because you are. If you expand that to 10 minutes with five minutes in the morning, you're making even more progress. Get that up to 20 minutes and now you're one in a million. Very few people will spend that much time on themselves, for themselves. Okay, repeat about progress. Progress. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Success is the progressive Realization of a worthy goal. You choose a goal that is in alignment with your values. If I, for instance, if I make money by helping people, I want to make a million dollars on my coaching business. And I can only do that by helping more and more and more people. So that's in alignment with my values. It's in alignment with my goals. I get to take care of my family, I get to take care of myself. I get to help my community. And if I'm offering a product or service that has a reasonable cost to it, then there's no downside here. So if I do anything on a day that moves that goal one step forward, I feel good. Especially I can define if I do one thing in a day that moves me towards my goal, I am making progress. If I do one thing that is making me more the person I need to be such that I'm aiming at can I improve myself by 1% a week? I can improve myself by 1% a week. With an hour of conscious thought about that thing every day, you can get your fitness, you know, by 1% a week. Hour of exercise, it's not, you know, that's a rough statement, you know, in quantifying it exactly is difficult, but I think as a general thing it's great. You just aim at improving 1% a week. You can do that with an hour of work a day. You're not getting an hour of work a day. The truth is in a lot of arenas, if you're putting in an hour a day, you're going to move faster than 1% a week. You really will, you know, so you can probably get to 1% a week with 20 minutes a day, you know, probably not sure. And you know, we're, we're not going to be dogmatic about that. But that notion that the first five minutes, if you haven't been doing that, just changing to five minutes a day, you're probably improving by 5% a week from where you were. It's, you know, that will slow down. You'll need to put in more, more time. So. But all this will be dependent on loving yourself. How do you get yourself, how do you jump start yourself? How do you get that first five minutes? You have to love yourself enough to feel that you're worth it. If you let your grief about the ways that you did not perform in the past reduce your self image so you love yourself less, how do you motivate yourself to get out of that? How do you do that?

So.

If we can see how you can start there actually Before I give you any specific techniques for this, let me answer some questions. Tom.

Exercises I'm still because coordinated, I keep things in reverse.

Okay, so you're breaking up. You're breaking up, Tom. However, I see what you're saying, that because you feel uncoordinated and you know this, that and the other, you're doing things in the wrong position and it's probably frustrating you. And that frustration leads to stress. The stress tricks you into fear and it actually interferes with your ability to. To want to practice.

Well, I just stick with lesson on, lesson one until I get everything lined up and move in the right way. I think.

Okay, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want. Because your sound is going in and out. I don't want you to get frustrated. Write that down. But I'm going to hallucinate. Write it down in the chat. I'm going to hallucinate that I know what it is that you want. And what I'm going to say to you is just follow the legs, follow the footwork. Don't worry about the upper body. And then when you have specific questions, ask me, you know, people ask me. I'll create a special video just for you. I mean, it's easy to do. So just follow the footwork and breathe. So for instance, let me get out of the my choose my virtual background. None. Okay, so you're not my office with my whiteboard back there covered with cards that. For the script that we're working on. Okay, so if we were going to take a look at the first few movements in the, in the form. So let's say it's rising hands, Shift my weight to the right shoulder forward, seven star say, oh, that's complicated because look, there's all this and there's this and there's this. So forget about that stuff. Let's just take a look at the lower body. Lower body is the rising hands. Bend my knees a little bit, step forward my left, push forward, turn to the right foot comes out just that focused on your breathing, staying calm, working whole body stuff is fine. You combine that with joint mobility. So you're working the joints in the right way and you say, steve, would you zoom with me? Give me a couple minutes. Can we get on Facebook and ask some things so forth. But if you do the lower body and breathe and you're working posture and you're conscious of what you're doing, do the qigong exercises, you're getting everything. You're getting everything. It doesn't feel like you're making progress because you're doing internal reorganization, you know, so you figured that your. Your nervous system is over here and your tension was over here and your emotions are over here. So we're getting all that stuff in the same place of time. This is. This is serious work. There's no way that this is going to happen quickly. If it could happen quickly. That means that the issue of becoming a human being who really owns themselves is some trivial, simple issue. Any idiot can do it. No, this is hard. This is real work. So just start where you are. Notice the emotional stuff that comes up. What were you saying to yourself about it? Were you saying, this is difficult or were you saying, there's something wrong with me? Which one were you saying? Yeah, you can write that in chat in Tanana review. Notice what's coming up in chat, and we will answer you that you, Tom, have been a good student for a long time. I care about your progress. So that means that you and I have a relationship. Anybody who's on this path and genuinely on this path, I have a relationship with. I care about you. So just keep doing it. Work the work, the footwork. Notice the frustration. That stuff comes up. Because that same frustration will have stopped you in other areas of your life. You got to let that go. It's like Kathy, no, okay, okay. So I had to let go of all that. When I learned tai chi and later kung fu, not only coordination, but retention, especially with others around me who could see it. Do it without any issue. That wasn't me. I had to slow down the process and value progress over perfection. All there is is the path. That's literally all there is. There is no destination. There is just being here now, what you're doing now. And if you do that, you're getting all of it. You're getting all of it. That what matters to me was not being California or national karate champion. That was not my path. That wasn't going to be, you know, although it did take second place at the nationals back in 1972. It wasn't going to be me to do that because I wasn't enough of an athlete. What I had to do was be satisfied with actually owning myself. Actually owning myself. You know, if I was who I was now but had the athleticism that a teenager has, that would have been a completely different situation. But those athletes were working on different things. They had their own path. I had my path. I had to forgive myself for not being some savant. And it took a lot of work. Let's see. Oh, you were saying? Tom says I was saying a lot of oops myself. I wasn't being especially cruel. Great. Fantastic. So here we go. Steve. Okay, Mobarn says, Steve, I need real help in motion. Mo, can you. Would you. Would you unmute yourself?

Yes, sir.

Would you mind me reading this aloud?

No, no, I wouldn't. I shared with you the background on.

Yes, I understand everything. I need real motion and advice on recapturing romance. I'm doing real work to save my relationship with my kids and my lady love. Save your relationship with yourself. First. It has to come from a loving heart. If you. If you understand that, then it's easier for you to see what's happening without judgment. And it may be the two of you can't be together, but if you can be together, it's going to come from love. So the thing that you can do to help yourself just also happens to be the thing you can best do to save to help the relationship. If you can't help the relationship, one thing that would damn the relationship is if you needed it. If you thought to yourself that I'll never be happy without her. If I don't have her, I'm not worthy of love. If you can't walk away, then you're going to try to control her and you will just tear yourself to pieces. So starting with loving yourself, then you have love that you can offer her, whether she wants to stay with you. Because all she wants to do is. She wants to know what does she need to do to be happy in her life. For a long time she thought that that was being with you. Now she's not feeling that. It could very well be that. She just needs to see that it is possible to be happy. Does you know, you might look around and realize she doesn't know any happy people. She doesn't know any people who are happy in their relationships. Maybe she doesn't know people who are happy with themselves. If you become a joyful person centered in yourself, you'll automatically become more attractive. Automatically.

Thank you.

Or if you have to let her go, you'll be able to let her go with love and wish her well. Sincerely wish her well and your kids will see an example of an adult man who handles his own stuff, who does not hold a woman responsible for his emotions the way a woman should not hold a man responsible. Now that's a tricky one because we do want to be able to look at our sweethearts and say, you make me happy. The danger is when we look at them and say, you make me sad and you're responsible for how I feel. It's dangerous. That's a tricky area, and language doesn't quite get it. But you have to be responsible for your pale emotions at the same time that you give her the right to help make you happy. I know that if I think Tananarive is making me unhappy, I have fallen off the path. But at the same time, I have to be vulnerable enough to be able to honestly let her know how happy she makes me. You get the paradox.

Yes.

I tell her she's responsible for my happiness. I am not taking responsible for response my own emotions. And it's easy. How many of us have been manipulated by somebody who wanted us to be responsible for their emotions? There you go. That's right. So while letting them make you happy, take responsibility for your own happiness. And once again, this is something that needs to be experienced because it's difficult to put it into words. But this is where you start. So starting by loving yourself, you start, loving myself makes me want to protect myself. Or protecting myself leads to me feeling safe, which makes me ask the next question. How can I experience the most love? It can work either way. You can start by loving yourself, go to security, and then go from security, you know, up to how do I do it? The strategy. Or you can start from security, you know, I will. I will rip the throat out of anybody who messes with me or my family to love. Now that we're safe, how can we be happy? And then how can I make the world happy? I feel so much joy and there's so much pain in the world. How much of that pain can I alleviate? Because I feel their pain. I feel where they're coming from. I want them to be as happy as I am. I want the human family to have this experience of joy that I'm having. And it starts expanding hours, but it spans outwards from your heart, okay? So that's where you have to start. So if you will start with taking five minutes a day, 60 seconds at a time, you know, or better still, because you're in, let's start by saying one minute every hour. Okay? The minimum is five times a day. But let's start by saying one minute every hour. Because then all you have to do is look, it's the top of the hour, time to breathe. And so you're breathing. And one of those, preferably early in the day before you watch the news, maybe before you've had breakfast, you center your breathing, you pull it down, and you Do a micro version of a full morning ritual. While you're breathing. Breathe the way you would if you were feeling empowered. Move. Maybe you're breathing while you walk. Walk the way you would if you feel empowered. Maybe you visualize someone or something that makes you happy. And you allow yourself to be slightly, in a little bit of a dream space, there is that happy boy I used to be. Let him talk to me while I'm breathing. What does he have to say to me? There is the old man. I'm going to be on my deathbed. And he is connected, content with his life. His life has been good and he. He did the things he needed to do, and he is satisfied with that. What might he have to tell me? Maybe you step out of it altogether and allow the little boy inside you to have a conversation with the old man. You're going to be on your deathbed and you just sit back and listen as they share wisdom and enthusiasm. You find your own way. And in your journal, you know what are five memories from your past that make you happy? Deliberately play that song every day. Deliberately choose to be happy. Because your kids are looking at you and they're saying, is it possible to be happy in the world? Is it possible to be successful in the world? Is love worth it? And you have to, by your example, show them, yes, it is. And this is how you do it. You grow up, you take responsibility for your own emotions. You do things every day that create the life that you need. And the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions to a huge degree. The quality of your life is the quality of your emotions. So deliberately trigger your positive emotions every day. Every day you move and you create emotion one of three different ways. The way you move your body, what you focus on, and the language you use to represent your thoughts. So that means that for just that first little time in the morning, you are moving your body in a resourceful way. Maybe you're walking, maybe you're doing tai chi, maybe you're doing qigong. Maybe you're just sitting and breathing and you're putting your mind on something brings you happiness. Maybe you follow your breathing down to the plate. The spark inside yourself, where you're surrounded, survival lies. You get in touch with that survival spark. And with every breath, you fan it. You fan your survival. You fan your survival. Or maybe you look at the language and that's your affirmations. All the love I need is within me now. All the love I need is within me now. And you feel the part of Yourself that feels that to be true for just 60 seconds, you hold that part of yourself as sacred. There are other things, too. We will go to them. But does that help?

Yeah. Yes. Yes, it does, Steve. And, you know, at first, when, you know, you were talking, I was thinking about Herman hesitated. Siddhartha, when the student was learning sitar and the master said, if the string is too tight, it will break. If it was too loose, it will not play. And the middle path is that path. Then I thought to something while you were saying everything is. When I was at Morehouse College and I was supposed to graduate in class of 89, my mother died. Excuse me. In 88, my mother died. And 22 years later, I came back to go to Morehouse. And one of the things that I listened to as a song was back in the high life again. All the doors that were closed to me will be. Will open once again. And I used to listen to that, like, constantly. People are like, what is this black guy doing listening, you know, to this and everything else? But it inspired me. And I like the Beatles. Oh, come on, man. I was listening to Dark side of the Moon the other night.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer. You know, don't tell me I can't listen to what I want.

Yeah, but here's another thing.

Thank you for bringing this up. Music is a fantastic way. How many of you have songs that every time you hear that song, that makes you happy?

Oh, hey, I'm a blues musician. I play harp.

Why not deliberately create a playlist of your happy songs? And when you're moving in the morning, you play that. Why not create the soundtrack of your life? And every day when you wake up, turn it on and just, you know, move to it. Don't stop believing. I don't know what it is, just, you know, but it's something. Every time you hear it, it makes you happy. Dance to the music. Slide the family stone. You know, there you're doing your joint mobility drills for three minutes, listening to a song that makes you want to boogie and puts a smile on your face. You put a big smile on your face, you move. You are deliberately trying to get into the river called joy. And sometimes it takes some hiking to get there. You know, everybody has that. It's like, you know, when I'm doing tai chi or doing yoga, I'm doing these things. I said to Tananri the other day, I am dowsing for energy in my body. I'm dowsing for energy in my mind, in my heart. I'm looking for the spark of joy. In the darkest night, there's at least a single star. And I'll put all my attention on that one star until that star is all I can see. I'm not faking this because if I do that, then I can do the behaviors that actually change me in the direction that I want to go. This isn't being a fraud. It is no more than a person who is depressed is being a fraud to be unhappy. No. Things that happened to us 30 years ago, 40 years ago, can loom hugely so that we can't see the joy around us. This is real. But the flip side of that is the person who can see that single star in the midst of a dark, a midnight sky.

John Beyond. Goodbye, Yellow brick Road.

That's right. So let's. Let's see any more comments, questions, or requests before we. Before we move on with another thing that you can do to get in touch with that love inside. Because I want you all to love yourselves and to love your families and love your life. So any comments, questions, or requests about any of this stuff? Because, you know, ultimately what we're giving you is some insight into what happens if you're walking this path, if you take this responsibility. Says the footwork is challenging for me. Doug says my knees literally wobble as they did this morning. I think I have. The position I'm using is incorrect. Or I simply out of shape and have to be patient, strengthen the muscles. Well, I think it's going to be some element of both. You know, you simplify the movements, you make them shorter, you make them less stressful so that you can take a certain amount of pleasure in it. And then you make a tiny little adjustment. Every day you. You look more carefully at the images. You ask your teacher questions, you know, and. And we will move through these things together. Most of this stuff is I'm shifting my weight to the front. Okay, Now I'm shifting my weight to the side. Now I'm turning my hips. It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. The addition of the hands makes it seem complicated. So that's why I say focus on the footwork. Add the hands as it feels good. Comments, questions, Requests? Okay, now we talked about looking at the. Okay, so let's take a look at the magic formula and the morning ritual. When it comes to self love, the first thing you need is a map or model. So who do you know who loves themselves? Who do you know that is genuinely happy and joyful? Who. What leader or teacher appealed to you? When they speak about These things. I suggest that you start your day with at least 20 minutes of listening to somebody who is positive. There are thousands, countless of thousands of videos on YouTube from every spiritual or emotional tradition or therapeutic condition you can imagine. When you find, I like Brendan Burchard always brings the joy. You know, he is just all about joy. Every time he walks through a doorway, he uses walking through the doorway to trigger a sense of joy. Okay, so somebody like that, start with him. If you want to forget, start with me. My videos are out there, whatever it is. But starting your day with the news or starting your day with all the things that are wrong with the world will convince you that that's all there is. That's simply not true. That as we speak now, in most homes, people are loving their families and playing with their pets and just trying to get through life and trying to move with a certain amount of integrity. And once you understand that every flaw in you was you were doing the best you could. At every moment, you were doing the best you could with what you had. And if you could forgive yourself for that, it gets very easy to forgive other people. People. You'll see other people behaving badly and you'll say, you know, that person is angry. God, I wonder what they're afraid of. You know, that person is doing some self destructive behavior. I wonder why they don't see any options. That person is this, I wonder what's going on. But in every case, you understand that they're just children looking for love. They're just trying to move away from pain towards joy. And we get caught up. And one of the most important things we can do is find communities, people who will break that pattern and encourage us to be the best we can be. So this is why we do this every Saturday. It's also quite frankly why we encourage you to join the Tai Chi program. Www.firedancetai chi.com so that I can advise you. I can take, we can take the breathing and the movement and the affirmations and the visualization. We can all put it into a single practice. That you would then say, I'm having problems with this bang. I can fix it. I'm having problems with this bang. I can fix it because I've been down this road. So I know what you're going to go through already. So that's that. So any other comments, questions, anything? Hands up, Anything? All right, just keep going. Okay, good. So I have one. Yes, Mo.

Yeah, I, I saw your Facebook post regarding chat, GPT and AI. I think when it when it was I was getting into this like a year and a half ago when it was coming out and it was coming out. And if you have Bing, you can do the AI creation. If you're already on Microsoft Online and Bing, they have the AI, the art AI thing. I forgot what it's called. But you can describe something and it will create it for you. That image for you as well as now, you know, if you look at the current what's on the wire now they're bragging about creating a complete AI novel with prompts over 22 minutes or so.

Yeah.

You know, and when you brought it up, I was like, wow, this is exactly what I'm, you know, what I was seeing and hearing and even looking at one of the outlets I work for how their going to start using aggregation and AI to write articles.

Well, here's what I would suggest for anybody. I don't know if you were about to say that this is creating a certain amount of nervousness.

Oh, heck yeah.

Okay. So don't be in the bottom 20% of your field. The problems like that are always going to hit the people in the bottom 20% the hardest. Don't be there.

Can I just ask one more quick thing? With the we're seeing rebranding of shows like from the early 90s and 80s such as night Court, which was I found entertaining and looking at what writers are talking about residual wise and everything else. Do you think it's in your opinion or the opinion of anybody else else? Is it the studio like saying okay, we're waiting for it to get to this particular level like Blazing Saddles. One of the reasons it's not being produced or like everyone says, oh, it looks Blazing Saddles again is because of the deal that Mel Brooks had with the studio and one of the things he did before he so he couldn't lose the rights is create Black Bart which starred Louis Gossett Jr. As Bart. And he came up and it's really, really hard to find on the Internet now. But that's one of the reasons that Brooks is. You're no longer seeing Saddles.

What's your question?

Do you think that the studios are manipulating this knowing they can go and pass content past contracts and not pay anybody and are going to move to a more AI model since they can type in Give me a modern Gilligan's Island.

Yeah.

With Donald Trump as the million.

I get it, I get it. Yeah, they're going to try, you know, and it could very well be that, you know, that the there will be AI shows that. Matter of fact, I find that to be almost inevitable. But there will also be shows that say no AI and we get to the re and the. The audience gets to decide what they want. So like I said, focus on being, not being in the bottom.

You know, just so in case people are not familiar with chat GPT. I got one of the apps on my phone where you can ask it to do things, and I asked it to write a country music song about a grieving widow. I'm just going to read you a little bit of the country music song. She sits alone on her front porch swing Watching the sun go down Thinking about the love she used to have and how he's not around. She's a lonely widow living all alone Nothing but memories to call her own. She's got an empty bed and an empty heart and the pain of losing him tears her apart.

Don't think it ain't coming.

Dolly Parton hit. Dolly Parton hit songwriters are already in.

Trouble, but your way out of it is love yourself. Deal with your stress. Use your fear to make you better, you know, and just, you know, start there, Start there. And just remember that, you know, the top 20% are always working. The middle can have some problems. The bottom 20% are always struggling. Stay out of the bottom. All it takes to do that is you put in your hour, you know, few, few hours a week of being sure you're getting better at your craft every week. Just take a few steps of getting better every week. Okay. You know, I, I don't worry about it too much because I have too much stuff to do, you know, at the point where I don't have enough stuff to do, I'll worry about it then. But right now I'm getting better and better. I'm keeping my eye on it and I put. Give my support to organizations that are putting even more time and energy into it. Okay, so any other comments, questions or requests? Anybody else? Nope. Okay, good. So another thing that I like to do, and you can do this every morning if, if my schedule is to wake up, like to plan the dream time a little bit, visualize some things, ask, you know, what I want to teach and so forth, sit up and meditate, center myself. My meditation in the morning is going to be one of three things. It's the same way I put myself to sleep at night. I'm either going to listen to my heartbeat, I'm going to follow my breathing all the way down to my tailbone, or I'm going to visualize Some simple geometric structure made of light, maybe a triangle, maybe a circle. Triangles tend to be more wake up because they're artificial structures. Circles tend to be a little softer. So it's a little easier to go to sleep at night if I visualize a circle. But I'll actually move between those things and see which one seems to offer kind of a tunnel to lead to sleep. So I'll do breathing in my heart space, thinking about my heart space until my mind starts to wander, and then I'll switch it to my breathing until my mind starts to wander. Then I'll switch it to visualization until my mind starts to wander. And then I'll follow that pattern over again. The heart space, you know, the following. The breathing is great for survival because all you have to do is slow the breathing down to the point where you're starting to feel that carbon dioxide kick. Oh, God, I need more air. But if you focus on your heartbeat, you're focusing on love in many ways. You're entraining yourself to the sense of peace that you experience in the womb. Hearing your mother's heartbeat in the womb, it's also culturally, as the center is connected to love. So just feeling your heartbeat and envisioning the things that you love in life, and then take that in to see maybe the child that you were, maybe the fetus that you were in the womb, the embryo that you were, whatever is the youngest, most innocent part of you that you can feel protective toward. Have that the heartbeat of that child or that fetus or that embryo beating in concert with your own heartbeat. You can take your heartbeat by taking it at your throat or taking it at your pulse point, or sitting so quietly that you can feel your pulse in your body, like right now. Let me see where I can. Let me see how long it takes me to feel my pulse. I'm going to hold my hands like this, Okay. But the backs of my hands are resting and resting against my desk. So I can feel my pulse in the veins of the back of my hands. Usually I can feel it where the fingers are touching. I can't feel it right there right now. Probably some tension. Okay. If I relax my face enough, I can feel my pulse in here. So I find my pulse in my body and I visualize my heartbeat and I associate it with safety and love. Love Visualize being pregnant with myself, with having my own life beating within my chest. The outside things that I love, I love because I feel a certain way in relationship to them, but it's how I feel within myself. That enables me to relate to the world with love. So if I sit for 15 minutes breathing in heartbeat, my mind will wander, and I just bring it back. My mind wanders again. I just bring it back. This is where I'm going to be. Then I move from there. And when I'm doing my movement, meditation, actually, I'll start with doing. I'll start by doing joint mobility. And there I'm just focusing on breathing. And I go from joint mobility to the first of the five Tibetans, which is twirling. And there, once again, I'm just working on posture and breathing. But during Tai Chi, it's very interesting to slow down at times, especially when you're just learning it, that you can feel your heartbeat in your hands. You move slowly enough and softly enough, and, you know, let's say that you can't get up and do Tai Chi. So you visualize it moving with the breathing. You feel your pulse, right? And you visualize yourself doing it, and you see what comes up for you emotionally. What are you saying? Are you giving yourself joy for caring enough about yourself to spend this time? Are you beating yourself up because your body isn't doing what you want it to do? Are you being gentle with yourself? Are you being loving? And this is where you tie it back to the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? Are you being kind to yourself? And if you love yourself, don't you want to be kind? Is it true that you're doing the best you can do? And if you're doing the best you can do, why would you ask yourself to do more? The rest is just time. Is it useful to beat yourself up for not being different than who you are when you're actually taking steps to move in that direction, even if it's only a tiny step a day? Is that useful? I suggest to you that being kind to ourselves, being loving to ourselves, is the truth, that the core of who we are, we're all just children looking for love. We've all done the best we could with what we had. And we need to feel positive about our blessings in life in order to have the strength to take the actions to move forward. So when I begin my Tai Chi, I will start with an affirmation that says, every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. I don't necessarily start specifically with I love myself, although I sure would if that was an issue. I would start with I love myself. I love myself. And I would talk about, you know, I'm giving kind, nurturing honest person. I give everything that I can to my family every day. I've done the best I could. I would say whatever it took to move me to that position of feeling love and self respect. Then I give gratitude for all my blessings, you know, my people who love me for having a strong, healthy body, having a strong, healthy mind, for having Internet access, for God's sake, anybody who thinks themselves I don't have anything to be grateful for. If you can see, would you be sorry if you lost your eyes? Then it is legitimate for you to be happy that you have them. It's totally legitimate to give thanks for what you have. Because giving thanks what you have creates a space in which you can legitimately ask for more. The universe has been kind to me. I've made mistakes and so have we all. I've let myself down and so have we all. But every day of my life, I've done the best I could with the resource I had. And now I've got new resources. I have this new movement pattern, I have these new techniques, I have these new perspectives. I have a new community, whatever it is, so that you are taking action. And I give thanks for the people who have guided me. Why? Because these were wise people. Why did they guide me? They must have seen something inside me. They must have seen something inside me that made them want to give to me. You know, if there are these people who love me, they must see something lovable about me. By looking at what I am grateful for, I am increasing my sense that I do worthy of love, that I am a loving being, that I am a creature who lives to give love to others every day of my life? How much love can I give my son? How much love can I give my beautiful wife, my daughter Nikki? My friends, my God. A few days ago I found out that a friend of ours is in another country where they're surrounded by people who do not see their humanity and do not love them for who they are. I won't go into it, but this is a person who has been of such joy in our lives, who has meant so much. And I realized, my God, I could reach out to this person just by zooming with them every week. And I can give joy to somebody who's been good to me and I give thanks for that. Oh my God, I get to do something nice for somebody who deserves something nice being done. That, that is, I live for that.

I.

You know, every week you need us to talk to you every week, you got it. We got a zoom day every week we're going to go on. How about we play, you know, virtual this? How about we do this because we love you. We love you. We were there, we'd give you a hug. But what we will do is we will take our time every week and we'll connect with you. And when you do things like that, are you not a good person? Are you not a loving person if you do that? Why would you not give love to yourself if you're the kind of person who gives to others simply because it feels good? Are you not worthy of love? What did the universe do to create you if you're not worthy of love? What does it say about the nature of the universe? This connects with everything you think the universe is in, everything you think you are, and everything you can give to the world. If you can connect to your heartbeat and feel love, if you could connect with your breathing and know that you deserve to be here. If you can realize you've done the most you could with your body, the most you could with your mind, the most you could with your emotions, and forgive yourself, then you can forgive other people. And if you do that, you cut all those negative cords and you're surrounded by nothing but love. The universe being a loving thing, separated into all these apparently separate identities, and we can move together through life, giving each other all we can. As you are in the chats right Now, I see 40 new messages. You guys are taking care of each other. You're sharing with each other, you're helping each other. That is what's going to make this work. Not me. You're going to make this work. And in order to do that, you have to love yourselves enough to take the discipline to say, I want to find the things that will make me happier in life. Let me try this. Let me try this. Let me see what works over here. Let me see what works over here.

Why?

Because I'm worth it every day. If I'm going to do the things I need to do to create my life, I need to feel the emotions I need to feel so that it is all worth it. And love is one of the most worthwhile things in the world. Does anybody know anything that's more worthwhile than love? If you do, I'd love to hear about it now, because I don't know. I'd do anything for the people I love. I do anything for the boy inside me who started this journey, who I love. If all he wants to do is give his love to the world. And all the martial arts stuff was just that I'd feel comfortable being loving so I could just be this way. I could be a big goofball and cry and laugh and hug people without fear. I had to go through almost 50 years of martial arts training to be able to feel free to just be myself. And the gift that I can give to the world are the things that will cut that time for you, that you can start being more loving to yourself today. If anything that tells you you are not worthy of being loved is not you and it is not your friend. It's a voice in your head that somebody else put there. That's not how you came from the factory. That's what somebody programmed in along the way. And if you breathe and slow your breathing down and move, you are hitting a factory reset. Movement is short circuiting all the head stuff. Your body doesn't care what you think. Walking a mile, that mile is just there. It doesn't matter what you think about it. You do it or you don't. And that's what you want. You want the things in life where you do it or you don't. If you cannot now walk a mile or you cannot now do tai chi and you're in the program. Breathe, breathe. Focus your attention. Focus your language. Focus your breathing. And you're breaking the emotional chain that allows you to step into love. Start changing your behaviors so that, like I said, we're all just along this journey. There's no place to get to, no place to get to at all. There's just walking with integrity. Integrity to your vision of yourself and the life that you want to live in, the life, the world that you want to create. I think all of us would like to live in a healthier, happier, more loving world where people tell the truth, are more caring and effective at handling the problems in the world. And the best way to do that is to embrace that in your own life. Tonal Reef once again, was it anything. Okay, I'm wrong about that. You sure about that? Okay, so comments, questions, or course, Kathy, you've almost always got something to say.

So what you're going to do then, Steve, is put me on blast so that I can try and live up to that statement right there. So thank you for that challenge. I'm just. I'm going to say I appreciated both of your newsletters this week. To Nanari's story about what she went through. And I'm stealing yours, Steve, about strip mining your heart. Because that, that was my most previous week of finding myself in a conversation with someone who thought they could Weaponize my emotions.

Oof.

Yeah. Bare your teeth like a wolf. Do not let anybody play you. You're fierce, Kathy.

Yeah, no, that's what happened, Steve. But after that, after the lioness came out, it was the echo of the experience because that's what happens. You have the moment and then it continues to reverberate because the moment's over. So now it's just an echo of the moment and you're experiencing it and you're feeling it. So that was the. That was the next stage that I had to work with and wrote about. I did write about it. So it was the need to recognize that, not to fall into that. The difference between processing and wallowing is what I wrote about the idea of what did I just learn? And based on what I just learned, what do I need to do differently or how to approach my next engagement. So that was that. So what you wrote about it, just a lot of universal connections.

Fantastic. I invite people to believe that all living things will move away from pain toward pleasure and that the purpose of human life is to live a life of joy and service. That if you look at it like that, everything else can fall into place. There are other ways of looking at it. I just invite you to find one that's in line with your own heart. But until you find that other way that's in line with your heart, I suggest try this. That you have the right to joy and you have the responsibility of service as you were given to by life, by your parents, by your ancestors, by your teachers, by your mentors. Decide to be a force for good in the world. We know we can see the forces for evil. We can, and they're mostly fear. We can see people tearing the world apart with their fear. What we need is people who are willing to be warriors of the heart, who are absolutely capable of ripping your throat out with their teeth. But they would rather hug you. They would rather hug you because there is so much pain in the world. We do not need to increase the net amount of pain in this world. Our commitment should be to increase the net amount of joy. And that means we need to be strong for our families, especially if our families have dealt with multi generational issues. Pain, oppression, bigotry, abuse. Heal yourself and show others the path to healing and come back to this community and teach us what you found. How did you apply these things? What seemed to you to be the limitations of these approaches? Let's brainstorm how to be happy and healthy and joyful and service to our communities together in that Sense is that we're all in this alone together.

I had polo coilo running through my head. Steve. Give, but don't allow yourself to be used. Love, but don't allow yourself to be abused. Trust, but don't sell your sword. So I still got my sword.

Excellent. If you don't have a sword, get one, get two.

Says the Bible.

Yes.

Right.

Comments, questions and requests. We've only got a couple more minutes, but I want to make sure. Is there anyone who has not had anything to say today, they would like to, to interject something. I want to be very, very careful that I'm taking care of you guys. Okay. If there isn't, then.

Mo.

Yes. Any chance with me? We were talking the, I gave the guidance and did a 10 second description of fire dance Tai Chi. Any chance of you and your wife doing that song there? Those lyrics that popped up.

Oh, you're talking about the blessing dance.

No, no, no. I, I, I sent it to your wife and to you.

Yeah. Chad AI write a little.

Did.

Yes.

It's in chat, though, for everyone to see. In the realm of words where the stories unfold There's a fire within waiting to be stoked. Writers, gather round Let your spirits ignite a dance of healing Words will take flight and it goes on.

Well, make sure to save that for us. Okay. I want to take a look at that later. Thank you very much, Mo.

You're welcome.

Hi.

Let's see. Megan Lancaster. Maggie.

Yes.

Hi, sweetheart.

Hi.

How are you? I'm doing okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

We had some conversations, some things that you wanted to work on, and I just want to know how that's going.

It's going okay? Yeah, it's going okay. I have, I am in the process of trying to or seeing if I can take on an intern. I have an intern that's interested and to kind of help me inventory what I have to work with.

And.

This is a really big step for me. It's very scary. So I keep thinking about it and I kept trying to blow it off and then coming back to it and I kept thinking, no, I need to step into this because this is a fear I have to face. I'm not sure where the fear is coming from, but I was very excited about the opportunity and then the person actually showed up and I began to think, is this a terrible idea?

No, it's a very good idea. You may not feel ready for it, but I think that interrogating the fear is a great question. What you might want to do is to envision the old Woman, you're going to be on your deathbed and ask her what you were afraid of. She will probably speak truth to you, you know. Okay.

Oh.

Tom Barkley said. Steve, you want me to talk today about a sentence a day? Okay, maybe we can do it next week. But yes, the. I would if. If your Internet is choppy, be. Feel totally comfortable sending me a list of questions that I can then read on air and address for you. Fair enough.

Well, you wanted. You wanted me to talk about the results I was getting.

Oh, okay.

Well, you're. You're. I can hear you right now. Let's give it a shot.

Okay. The storm seems to have died off. I left a story that had good potential, and I was surprised to find out I left it five years ago, that it had just been sitting on a hard drive. A couple of hard drives. And with the. Making the promise that I would work on it to you here, a couple of weeks ago, I got going and I went from eight pages the first week to 23 pages. I think I'm up to 34, 35.

You're on fire.

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm making progress. Well, the funny thing is this is. Everything that you talk about, about people who keep the stories inside themselves and don't run them through the keyboard was true. I knew what needed to hit the page. I just wasn't doing it. And I'm jumping around to the different points of view of the different characters in the story, and they're, you know, they're saying, okay, now it's my turn. Now it's. And then the next one comes up and says, you need to move my part of the story forward. And, you know, to you is to.

Keep the story short. Are you published, Tom?

Not in fiction. Only in.

So.

So what you want to do is you want to write. You want to aim at stories that are no more than five to 10 pages long. The tendency will be to make. To just keep going, going. And what by doing that, you're not practicing. You're not working on your structure, and you're not working on the muscle that allows you to submit your story. Okay, so. So it's. It's critical. First of all, you're doing great. But then start. Start getting to that. You start reading more really, really, really short stories so that you understand how to do it within that framework. If you mostly read novels, you literally won't know how to write short stories. So do that. But the most important thing you're doing is what you're doing, which is your writing, that is major. It's massive. Tenonari. Do you have anything to input on that? The question.

No. I mean, I would never tell a writer to throw away anything they're working on. I think the progress you're making on this story you described is fantastic. But it is true that while you work on that, or alternating like, I'm working on a couple different projects now, one week on one, one week on another. I love the idea of practicing short. I mean, even if it's 10 or 15 pages. The bigger point Steve is making is that as learning writers, we have to train ourselves to completion. Because not just from a structural standpoint, because learning beginning, middle, and end is an important part of story structure, but also from an emotional standpoint. Because sometimes we don't finish stories unconsciously because we don't want to submit them, and we don't want to submit ourselves for rejection. And we always, at every level, have to. I mean, I took seven years to write a novel, so I know what I'm talking about. You have to practice endings, you know, and it's not easy to write shorter by any means. In some ways, maybe it's more difficult because you're creating a character and a premise and some kind of a conclusion in a very short amount of time. But he's absolutely right that reading shorter stories is the key to training yourself to think in shorter stories.

But primarily, congratulations, Tom.

You know that I. Yeah, that's amazing.

What you must do is celebrate. If you don't celebrate this victory, and it's a major victory, you're stealing joy from your own life. You did something that's important. You know, I would suggest, you know, take stop and kind of do a happy dance. I mean, seriously. I mean, you know, get up, Tom.

Definitely finish that story you're working on for sure.

Get your butt out of the chair. Okay, now, what I want you to.

Do.

Breathing down in your belly, raise your arms and say, I am. I am a writer.

A writer.

I am.

I am a writer. A writer.

And I'm having fun with this.

And I am having fun with this.

There you go.

Yeah, it's. It's. You're right that it's longer than is ideal in this respect, but it's just.

Look, this is just a different perspective.

I've got another one that'll finish that I can finish within 10 pages.

Fine.

Fantastic.

And then your third story, the third story you write, I will read it and we will evaluate it on the air for you. You'll see exactly how this works, I will take. I will give you a thousand dollars worth of story analysis for free.

That's very kind.

You do kind. This is my community. You're my people.

Well.

And kindness is part of this community.

How about that? Okay, good. I accept your correction, Tom. Well, it had to happen sometime, you know. Oh, God, I'm not even fair. Anyway. Okay, people, I think I'm going to be going to the Science Fiction Writers of America gathering on Anaheim. So I wanted to just thank you. Thank you one and all for being here and giving me an opportunity to work with you and give myself to you. This means the world to me, and you guys matter to me. Please, just do your breathing. Five minutes a day. Start creating your morning rituals. Join the program at www.firedancetaichi.com. tell your friends, you know, tell. Bring a couple friends in here, people you can network with and will hold you responsible, you know, for just breathing, taking care of yourself. Do that and we will all grow together and anything. Final thing you'd like to say, John Reeve?

No, I was just really excited. This was a. This was a great meeting. Chat was incredible. It was like a whole different meeting, but really happening.

That's what I want. Eventually. Eventually we will have breakout chat rooms for you guys as long as you're taking care of you. But they'll need one person, at least one person in each chat room who is dedicated to taking care of the people in there. So I can't see what's going on in there. We will split this so that we can have enough intimacy to move things forward.

That's future us for when we're.

Thank you so much to close this today, as always, with the Sanskrit expression that says that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Unmute yourselves and say goodbye. Have a wonderful week. Bye, everybody.

See you next week. Bye.

Linda, on your class. I know you'll knock them dead tomorrow.

That's right. Jennifer and Mary and Dennis and Doug and. Oh, my God. Lisa, Karen.

Hi, Karen.

Bye. Bye.

Have a great week. I love you.

I love you, too.