Firedance: The Next Level

And welcome to Fire Dance, the next level. You know, this is just my weekly way of checking in with everybody, finding out how people who are on the fire Dance program, Firedance Tai Chi.com is, you know, www is where you can find out more about that part of the program. But it all, it's all based on taking five minutes a day, one minute at a time to breathe, spend scattered through the day under real stress. I would suggest doing that for 60 seconds at the top of every hour. 60 seconds at the top of every hour. Just stop and breathe deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. And you can ask anything you want there every week. And then I ask you, once you've got that, to break out one of those into a more expanded period where you are moving, doing Tai chi or walking or running. Simultaneously, you're chanting and visualizing the blessings in your life and your mentors who could accomplish, who could handle the challenges in your life. We talk about balancing the three centers. The belly brain, the heart center, the head center, and the three gates. Following the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind, Is it useful? And then moving forward at the rate of 1% a week, aim at just getting 1% better every week. It comes to about 70 something percent a year. If you improve by 1% per week. And you can move forward by 1% a week just by studying for about an hour or two a week. Actually, if you will attend these meetings and you consider this to be study, because I study and I bring these things to you if you will actually try them and then take a look at the quality of your work, the amount of work you're doing, your health, the way you're eating and sleeping and exercising, and then the quality of your emotions, are you treating yourself with love and care? Are you treating the people around you with love and care? When you come here, if just for this hour, you're asking yourself, how can I improve myself by 1% in the next week? Or if you will share in chat or ask questions about what you've done this week to improve by 1%, whatever that means to you, just 1% per week will get you anywhere you want to go. And if you want to achieve faster than that, frankly, that's, I'm certainly trying to improve by more than 1% per week. But there is a lot of resistance, a lot of inertia that you have to overcome. And there's a lot of, you know, if there are things inside you that have been stopping you from achieving at that level, then those things will come up if you change too rapidly. So you can change. Is it possible to change too rapidly? You bet it can. But what I do, you can ask questions about what happens if you get fear because you're changing too rapidly, if you feel upset, if you feel dizzy, if you feel off balance because you change directly. Slow down, center yourself. Each one of those five breaths can be a chance to stop and center and anchor yourself in your life. So the first thing I like to do well, I'd like to introduce my co host, the beautiful, talented Tananarive Due.

Hello. I was just asking in chat if there's anyone here from my list. Tananarielist.com Steve primarily drives this, but I am here every Saturday, so I'm eager to answer any of your questions about my writing. Your writing Life work balance. Life work, Art balance, which is what our life writing podcast is all about. So I just wanted to say a quick shout out. Sometimes my camera isn't on, but I am definitely here. And yay, Kathy. Then I'm glad you're on my list too. And welcome, Susan. All righty then, that's it. Back to you, Steve.

And sitting behind me is Julius, friend and student. We're actually going to be going to Manila together next year to, to the Filipino Martial Arts workshop. So we're going to be talking about that, you know, exchanging training, suggestions. He's a very advanced martial artist and understanding the Filipino arts. And he's been very, very useful to me in helping me understand what I need to do in order to take my skills and be able to express them in that particular arena. Partnership, mentors, students, people to share the path with critically important to me. I love knowing people who are better than I am at everything that I care about. And I think that that's one of the great gifts in life, is to find people who are better than you at the things that you care about. So it's like, you know, you don't think that I will drive. I would drive 50 miles to spend an hour with Larry and Evan, you know, to, to get his perspective on what's going on, or hang out with Charles Johnson or just any of the people who. I think these people have skills. And it's like, oh my God, had had a chance to have dinner with Robert Silverberg, you know, just, just a week ago. Just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It's, it's critical to do that. So all I am is a guy who's walking a particular path. And to the degree that you kind of like the idea of what's on that path and the, the results that you get on that path, there's something that you can do, something I can do, that's what this time is for. So I would like you guys to unmute yourselves and everybody say hi to everybody.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everybody. All right, so before I get into what it is I wanted to talk about today, as always, do you have any comments, questions, requests from any of you? And that would include our in studio guest. So let's, let's see if there's anybody here who wants to ask anything about the program about breathing, about setting yourself up with a morning ritual, writing, fitness, relationships. Who's. Hi. In studio guest Kathy. Paul says. So anybody got a hand up question?

Not so far.

Not so far. Okay. Well, I tell you what. How about you, Julius?

I do have a question because I was wondering.

Come on up just a little bit closer.

Yes. So I was wondering, when it comes to the, your ritual, is there like any, like what, what time of day do you typically proceed to do?

I like to do it as early as possible. Now, the fact is that anytime that you do it during the day is good, but I like to start my day off, you know, it's setting the tone. I will, what I will definitely do is I will do my ritual before I eat. I have to, in order to make sure that my day is the best it can be, then I have to be sure that my body, my mind, everything is kind of right there. Now, because I do it with Tai chi and I do it a little bit with the five Tibetans. I'll start with meditating, coming out of my dream state, and I'll sit up and meditate, follow my breathing and my heartbeat. And then I will get up and I will do joint mobility. And then I will do the first Tibetan and then I will do Tai chi while I'm chanting my affirmations, you know, in a very specific ritual that I've developed and continue to, to refine as time goes on. So, but all of that is, that's before I ever even leave my bedroom. I will do all of that before I leave my bedroom. Then I will go down, I'll make myself some tea and I'll do my Internet stuff and maybe a little bit of work. And I won't do my main workout until after I, I've taken care of some work in the world. I want to make sure that everything is okay out here. But I like the number of different things I have going on in my life. I have to make sure that my head is In a clear place that my body, you know, the joint mobility drills. I can tell whether or not something in my body feels stiff. So I'm not as likely to hurt my back reaching for a can of soup or something like that. I can feel, oh, there's some stiffness in there. And I can work it out. And if I go from thinking about, you know, I might start with every day in every way of getting better and better. And I go from there to. God's wealth is circulating in my life. His wealth flows through me in avalanches of abundance. All my needs, desires, dreams and goals. And instantly, by infinite intelligence, because I am one with God and God is everything. And God to me is the totality of the universe. It isn't too connected with some particular religion's view on any of this. And I'll go from there to what I'm feeling really grateful for. And I will say, you know, my. I'm so grateful for my. The people who love me and trust me. My son Jason, my daughter Nikki, my beautiful, brilliant wife Tananarive. I literally will say that out loud every day, six days a week. My sister Joyce, who deserves all good things in life, Larry Niven and Steve Muhammad. And I will go through my role models there, the people who I need. You know, it's like I'm grateful for them, but I also am honored to be walking their path. So there's nothing that I'm trying to accomplish in my life that one of my role models would not kill at. I mean, it's just, I'm just, I'm always very careful that. So it's like I have writing, I have to handle business in my writing. I have to, to be able to generate, I have to be able to come up with ideas, you know, and so between Octavia Butler and Larry Niven and William Shakespeare, I've got that handled, you know. And in terms of martial arts, I. There's performance, there's also health. And so there are a number of different people there. And I, I have this, this one thing that I might talk to you about more someday called a false physiological profile, where I keep my body operating as if it is younger than it actually is. I do that very, very deliberately. The idea being that if I was 30 years old and I had known what I know now at 30, I would have been a frigging genius if I had known at 30 what I know now. So the idea is that if I can operate with the energy of the average 30 year old, but have the wisdom I have Now, I'm a very unusual person. I'm going to walk into a room, I'm going to live my life. It's not going to be the average performance, not because I'm actually any smarter, but because I'm keeping that energy. Ordinarily, your energy drops as your wisdom increases. And so it's like that idea, you know, too soon, old, too late smart, you know, Is that idea with you? It's. No, no, no, no, no. What you want to do is you want to get a little better every day, a little better every week at figuring out how to generate the energy that you need. And then you just change it a little bit at a time. No more than 1% per week. And that's actually the thematic. Today is 1% a week. So be sure that in your morning ritual, you are moving, you are visualizing, you're flooding yourself with positive emotions with the intent to make every week just 1.1% better than last week. Just 1%. It's like, I think we can all commit to just getting 1% better a week, can't we? I mean, that.

That's.

Does that. Does anybody feel that's intimidating? I mean, I'm asking this seriously. Is 1% if. Raise your hand if 1% a week sounds good? Raise your hand if that's. If that sounds good. One percent a week. Good, good, good, good. So, okay, good. Now raise your hand if you feel that the 1% a week sounds bad. Okay, Carlton, great. Is there anybody who feels that 1% a week sounds bad? Raise your hand if it sounds bad.

I'm raising my hand only because I think 1% might be a little too low.

Fine. You know, and so in general, I would say that if. That every hour you spend per week specifically studying personal improvement could probably, you know, every, you know, 10 minutes a day will probably give you 0.5% improvement. 20 minutes a day will give you about 1% per week improvement. So if you went for that golden hour, which I'm, you know, I would. I would love everybody to think that for an hour a day, you are moving, you are chanting, you are studying personal improvement. You can improve a lot more than 1% a week. A lot more. But remember that it will multiply and that you have to be careful of moving too rapidly because the old you. That was holding you back, it's like you're constantly breaking apart your ego shells and you have to run your kidneys to process that stuff. Meditation is really great. Journaling is really great. Therapy. Talking to your friends, really getting down to the meat of why did I have those toxic relationships? Why did I not go for it in my career? Why do I not eat and exercise the way I would feed my friggin gerbil? I would give my gerbil an exercise wheel. I would feed them good food. Why don't I treat myself at the level that I treat a dog or a gerbil?

Why?

What's going on there? As you start moving through these things, you will have to process the negative ego that held you down. So don't. If 1% will get you wherever you want to go. If you're going to go for 2%, you know, I kind of aim, you know, every day I'm looking at how can I make today 1% better. But I understand that it's a game I'm playing. As long as I move forward by 1% a week, I'm cool. And right now, right now, today, I don't know about next week. This last week has been stupendous. I mean, between award nominations and winning awards and in turning in projects and working and watching Jason grow and my connection to Nanarive and, you know, seeing how all these things are going to happen, it's all beautiful right now, but I have to be sure that I stay centered and I have to be sure that I give thanks, that I understand that it takes a tribe and give thanks to all the people who've helped me and that would include my students who allow me to speak to them about these things. That's kind of wandering a field from what you asked, but I'm like that. What can I say?

No, no, that was very helpful.

Good, good, good, good. So anybody else, any comments, questions or requests before we kind of. Kind of talk a little bit more about this today? Anybody want to share any results they've had or any problems they've had implementing any aspect of this? And remember what's most important, the breathing break at the top of every hour and doing a morning ritual fire dance is, you know. Oh, so. Jaime. Yes, sir? You're unmute, please.

Yeah, get it. Getting my phone to behave. Sorry about that. Hi, everybody. And you know, I had a stupendous week as well, with a couple of big challenges in the middle of it. My car died. And dealing with a broken vehicle at the beginning of my peak business season could be a really huge, stressful deal. But I doubled down on my morning ritual and on my meditation and the granted, it is springtime in Alaska finally. So the weather's nice enough that I'm Getting a lot more movement outside.

Good. Doing it outside is fantastic.

And a couple of things occurred. I was able to handle the stress with a kind of a grace and dignity that has escaped me in the past where I did not get mad at people. I was able to just go with the flow. But the best thing out of all of it, we had such crappy weather this winter that I gained about 60 pounds over the winter, and I am down 25 pounds from where I was a month and a half ago. And I know it's going in the right direction. And it's all because of this.

Fantastic, fantastic. It's because of who you are. This is just sitting here. It's like it's a hill. You're the one who's deciding to walk it every day.

It's the. It's the business of testing the spiritual ideas. Having positive results from personal experience.

Yes.

That confirms that this stuff works for me.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, God. James. Jaime, I am so. It makes my heart so happy. Do you realize how. How many people helped me? How many people reached out to me, shared their wisdom with me? I mean, I wish. I don't even wish I was smart enough to have made all this stuff up. I don't need to be. I live in a world in which there is wisdom. And if you keep asking questions of people who've accomplished the things that you care about, you'll start picking it up. You'll start seeing the patterns. That's all that's going on here. I'm focusing in on the idea of a morning ritual. About five different teachers of mine told me to do this from different directions and different traditions. And so I've decided to specialize on that. Do you know the idea of the three gates, the three centers, morning ritual, breathing and focusing on just improving 1% a week minimum.

Kathy and Ross have their hands up, honey.

Yes, Kathy.

Hi, Steve. The things you've been talking about for framework and ritual is something that I've been kind of diving into more because I love frameworks. And what you talk about, you're going to share some things. We can try some things out, see which ones work for us, see which ones do well for us. I was a part of a lot of people a few weeks ago, laid off. So I am processing, finding my next opportunity. And when you posted about Enneagrams and I never really played with those outside of personality types of stuff. And I thought, can I turn this into a framework to help me with my process of looking for a new job. But also there's a dusty book on my computer. Project management is what I do. I'm writing a book on that. And I thought, can I apply to that? Is that a possibility?

Yes, you can.

I was supposed to be doing something else, Steve and I started playing with this after you posted about it. And I looked into it more, and it's just such a wonderful framework that I've started some great things. And it's taken me to another space where I was trying to do user case studies, but using a table, and it was just too hard to, you know. But this visually is. It's. It's a wonderful framework. It's. It's really come together quite nicely.

Fantastic. Now, here's what. Here's something you can do. And we might go more into the Enneagram at another time. I don't have an image that I can put up on the screen really easily at this moment. But what you do is the enneagram has nine points on it. Right. Okay. So take the 10 steps of the hero's journey and diagram around the point, except that the first and last steps are. Will both be at the top. They will both be the zero point and the nine point. The. The. The first step, the hero accepts, is confronted with the challenge, and the last step is the movement to the higher level. Okay, so we can talk The. The other steps. You know, the step one is the hero is confronted with the challenge. They reject the challenge. They accept the challenge. They set out on the road of trials in which they meet allies and gain powers. They have their initial confrontation with evil, in which they are defeated. They fall into the dark night of the soul, where it feels like nothing is going to work. They take the leap of faith. They confront evil again, and this time they're successful. And the last step is the student becomes a teacher. If you plot those 10 steps around the here, around the Enneagram with the. With the first and the last being the same point. And then now look at the way the lines connect with each other, if you will do that. And then ask your questions about, well, how does this relate to that? How does this relate to that? And just see what you come up with. It's like a tarot card. It's asking you to look at how do you think these things connect? You are working on the internal tensegrity, the internal tensions between different aspects of a life process, and you will come up with your own wisdom. It's.

Yeah, amazing. I actually do have visuals because I've already put them on.

Oh, you do. Can you put it up on screen?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure that you would want me to do that necessarily. I've also merged it with the. The belly brain, the heart center, head center. And I tried using. Well, I mean, I don't know if I could share my screen. If I tried using magic, I tried integrating magic and the who am I and what is true? And so those are the things I have around my nine. That's what I have.

Go. Right. That's fantastic. And if it worked for you, then it's valid.

I'm still playing with it. I'm still playing with whether or not it works, but I do.

It works. If it works.

Exactly.

You know, that's the only thing that matters. Did it work? Did you get ideas that helped you increase your joy in life, that helped you be of service in life? Play with these ideas? This stuff isn't, you know, I didn't get this stuff on a tablet from, you know, from a burning bush. You know, these are. These are human ways of looking at something that was here before humans got here and will be here after we're gone. The question of, well, what is true about the way that we can live our life and move through existence in a. In a graceful way, being of joy. Well, congratulations, Kathy. And these things that you've thought about it, send it to me and maybe I'll put it up on the screen for you. Okay, so. Yeah, so. Okay, great. So, Ross.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon, Ross.

My win is solid, objective, measurable. I have reclaimed 1 inch on my waist in the last month. Thirteenth of my goal has been achieved. I got 12 more inches to go. Until I feel good about my waistline. I'm not concerned about weight. I'm not concerned about the scales. I'm concerned about how I carry my weight. And if I can solidify and trade fat for muscle on an even basis, I will do that because my body can carry my weight if it's composed of the right material.

That's right. It shifts. Fitness is not about having some objective quality separate from the life that you're trying to live. The question is, what do you need to live a strong, vigorous life to be able to work hard all week and party on the weekend, to be able to feel good. I like the idea of, you know, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you'd want to jump your own bones. It's like you should.

That's where I'm going.

There you go. That you want to be attractive according to Your values, you. Whatever your values are, you know, it's so wonderful to feel. To move through the world feeling that you're a healthy animal. Now, I like that I have some goals in terms of martial arts. I have goals in terms of the energy that I need to handle the situations, the opportunities that are arising in my life right now. And also, of course, my body is the gift that I offer my beautiful wife. You know, I care about myself. I care about how I look, how I act, and I want to be able to say to her, I love you enough to want to be the best I can at every moment that we have to share this life together. Okay? So. And I know how hard she works, and one of. One of the things we do is we work out together and we do yoga together. And I'll tell you something. There's something really great about watching your wife sweating like a healthy animal on the other side of the room. I mean, there's.

A little bit of.

Yeah, that's my lady over there. It's healthy. We have our animal side, we have our human side, and we have our spiritual side. I believe we should feed all of them. We should feed all of them. Great. So I'm seeing. Is there any hot yoga you can have more than one meeting? You betcha. Yeah. We turn on. We turn on the heater and the humidifier in the bedroom. And when it gets steamy in there, it gets steamy in here, too. Anyway.

I want to give a testimony.

Yeah, please.

Yeah, I, you know, a more useful time in my life because I'm pushing close to 40 now, and I know I'm one of the youngest here in this room. I was very athletic. Like, I was trained by the people who trained Joe Frazier, Eddie Fletch's proteges.

Right.

And used to run, like, marathons and ultras. And I kind of let that go, whether that's because of trauma getting to me. So I let my body go when Covid happened. So this is like, right before COVID That didn't serve me well. That. That was very bad. I was. I had long Covid. So I struggled with it for almost like half a year, like, six. Six. Six to eight months. What saved me was prednisone, the steroid. They, like, kind of prescribed that to me on and off. And that got me back to. Because it Almost like I had chronic fatigue syndrome.

Right.

This practice really works for me, in a sense. It's like I can give a testimony that actually works. Like having a daily practice of, like, the five Tibetans Having breath work. I was pushing close to like £300. Like, I was in the high £280 when we started. And you.

You.

You remember seeing me, right? And because I need to get ready for our trip in Manila now I am in, like, the high 230.

So that's a big.

Like, that's a lot of weight to lose, Right. I'm still not where my goal is, but I noticed that, like, as you shed the pounds and as you get into your specific goal, you're shedding kind of the excess baggage or trauma.

The emotional baggage. Yeah, yeah.

That the body does carry trauma. And the thing is, to me, like, that's an accomplishment for where I was. Where I was like, sleeping. Like, this is like, during the time of the pandemic, like, when I got infected with COVID a second time. Like, I was sleeping like 12 hours or more just to try to get my energy up because I had, like, chronic fatigue syndrome from long Covid.

Yeah, right.

And I just want to kind of show it. It's like, I'm not making this up. Like, you should have like a 40 inch.

Like, would you. Would you. Would you look?

This is a size 38.

Make our image here bigger, right? T, can you tag this, man? I still. I still have a. Yeah, there we go.

But that's a. That's a size 38. And I. I got.

I.

You know, I have to wear a belt now to. So I was like, had like a 40 inch waist, you know, so I'm still not quite where I need to be. But this stuff works. Just having positive affirmation. I don't do it necessarily, like, from the beginning of the morning, but, like, breath work every hour. Because I work in a stressful job because I fix tankless water heaters for a living now. People call me from across the country.

I don't.

I'm not out in the field anymore. They call me different people that install it in commercial applications or in homes. And sometimes we get cussed out by H Vac people or plumbers and homeowners because they don't know any better. I'm there to help them.

Right.

And you just kind of have to take a break. You just kind of have to go, yeah, and do that diaphragmatic breathing, really slow, really. And then let go. I see the positive changes within me. Not just having the breath work, but doing like the five Tibetans. Well, calisthenic work.

Speaking of breath work, let's do a minute. Let's just do a minute of anyone.

We had one More question.

Okay, well, absolutely. If we got another question, let's go for it. Who, who else?

Paul Jackson.

I'm sorry?

Paul Jackson's hand was up. Paul.

Paul Jackson. Hey, I'm doing great. How you doing, buddy?

Something. Okay. Stephen Tyranna. I'm sorry to pronounce your name wrong, but I've been following you guys for like last year or so. I'm so happy that you opened up and having this like community kind of conversation. So about me, I'm a retired computer research engineer, lived in Seattle for like 20 years. Switched and doing digital video production on my. My better half wife, Jasmine, who's an artist and now I live in Tacoma. And so she's an artist and has done some sculptures and some print and some. Some artwork that's in Seattle. So today I'm going to go into Seattle. Not to pick it up. We're going tomorrow to pick it up. But there's some things happening in Seattle. I have a friend who wrote a book about Emmett Till and he's done some art work on Emmett Till. And he told me that a movie is going to come out or at least he's got some opportunity that he's going to show up on the View because I'm pulling a blanket on him right now. The woman that played until is a co host on the View, and so they're going to ask him to come and attend. I've shot some conversational pimp back in Seattle years ago. He wants to know how I can use those or he can use those. I'm going to go into Seattle again today to do a recording of him. I think in the chat I'll go ahead and put the link to all my Vimeo stuff. And so I don't use YouTube. I use Vimeo. And so.

So yes, you have. You're absolutely free to put a link to your material in there. Is there something in particular I can do for you today?

Well, I'm going through the imposter syndrome. And so I want to make sure that, you know, I'm good enough for it.

Okay, so imposter syndrome is when your accomplishments or opportunities are out of proportion with your self image. So the thing for you to understand is that that imposter syndrome is always there and it's there for all of us. It's the most successful person you've ever seen, has imposter syndrome. That voice never shuts up. What happens is you learn to ignore it, you learn to mock it, you learn to understand that it's just there to Try to, you know, kind of momento mori keeps you from thinking too much of yourself. But if it's too loud, then it can stop you from being the best you can be. It can stop you from exploring your excellence. So one of the things that's really critical is to when you're meditating, to separate yourself from the voices in your head. The voices in your head that say that you're not enough, or the voices that say that you're the best in the room. Neither voice is yours. You always ask, and what happens when you separate yourself is you begin to start asking yourself, well, if I'm not my voice, where did this voice come from? Whose voice is this? Okay, so can I repeat that definition of imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is when your self image does not match your accomplishments or opportunities that you start feeling like you're a fake, you're a fraud, you don't deserve it. Those voices in your head are always there. They will never shut up. What will happen is that they'll get softer. You know, you can separate yourself from them. As I mentioned in meditation, you can change the tonality of the voices like they do. They teach you in neuro linguistic programming. You know, you can literally hear those voices. You're not good enough. You'll never be good enough. You'll never make a living at this. You're not good. Nobody only got that job because of affirmative action or whatever. And you can ask yourself, whose voice was that? Might have been somebody. A bully, a teacher who hated you, the police who pulled you over. It could be a parent or step parent who is very mean to you. It could be anything. But you can literally change the tonal. You can put calliope music behind it so it's going. You can change the pitch of it.

So it's like.

Make it sound like Mickey Mouse. You don't have. It doesn't have to be silent. What you have to do is understand the voices in your head are not your voices, not your voice, and they do not control you meditatively. The critical thing about learning that the voices in your head are not you, are that. Then you get to ask, who are they? And you get to ask, who am I? If I'm not the voices in my head, if I'm not the emotional storms that I feel, if I'm not the experiences that I've had in my memories and my hopes and dreams, who am I? One answer for that is you're the space in which these things are occurring. But there's no set of words that is the same as the experience of sitting quietly, meditating, watching those voices float by like logs on a river. It's like you're on the, on the hillside, there's a river down there and there are logs floating down the river. And on each of those logs is a different looking little idiot screaming at you. You know, you don't have to obey what they say. They're not you, they're not you. Be kind to yourself. Be loving to yourself. You could sit there on, you know, on the, on the riverbank with your little boy, your little girl sitting next to you with your arm around them. You could say, look at the silly people saying these things. Look, aren't they silly? And the two of you could be giggling together instead of feeling beat up. So if every day you're doing your morning ritual and you are flooding yourself with gratitude, Gratitude is an enormous medicine to compensate for imposter syndrome and disappointment and guilt and fear and anger, resentment, gratitude. Focus on the fact that we're all alive for another week. We got to join here and look at the people talking to each other in chat, sharing positive thoughts, positive things. It costs us nothing to be here together. You are 100% welcome to be here, even if you're not part of the paid program@www.firedancetaichi.com. you know, we'd love for you to do that. Absolutely. But what I really want and the only thing I need is to share these things and to help you and watch you grow. I need to do that. It feeds me to help people in that, in that way. So does that help, Paul?

Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

You're very welcome.

In the chat I put up a link to my Facebook page because I often stream to Facebook and then also put the link to my edited videos which is on vimeo.com and so later today I'm going to go into Seattle to do some events. There is a park that is being rededicated. One of the first Africans that got land in Seattle, they named the park after him. And then, yeah, so fantastic.

Well, I hope that you have a really successful day. Look at some way that you can, when you go into this, ask yourself, how can I be of 1% greater service to the people who come here today?

Excellent.

Just 1%. If you do that, it's the same thing that will help you past fear of public speaking. Instead of being, oh my God, look at all these people. You think to yourself, there's one person out there who needs what it is that I have to say, today, how can I serve them? I'm going to be 1% better at serving my audience today. It gives you an internal focus of attention that is connected to the external aspect of service. And to me, the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. I invite all of you to feel something similar, to be joyful, that you have the right to be happy in life. But then once you found that happiness, there is so much pain out there. How about helping other people find some joy, too? How about helping other people out of pain? If you want to battle imposter syndrome, consider that it is important for you to succeed so that you can show other people that it is possible to succeed and be a good, decent, moral human being. There's so many people. If you grew up without money in your home, in all likelihood you have some. And even if you grew up with money in your home, you probably have some negative attitudes about money. Unless money brought pleasure into the home, unless you felt that your parents were good, loving, decent, contributing people who loved you with all their hearts but also happened to have a lot of money, it's very likely that you got some negative attitudes around it. So you're going to need to root those things out. And one of the things that Tananarive and I do, I would love for her to talk to this, if she would, is we're very careful to help people as much as we possibly can. That, you know, whether it's making connections, whether it is, you know, every. Every Christmas we give away thousands of dollars. We can't do that all year long. But at Christmas we actually have a fund that we use. And all people have to do is just let us know that they need money and we send them a couple hundred bucks.

You know, people contribute to this fund. It's not our money.

It starts by being our money. We. We put the seed capital in. Yeah. Contribute money, too.

We have way more people offering money than asking for money, which is one I'll make about that. And absolutely. You know, I give to bail funds when I. When I'm not giving the individuals. But the idea of giving back and finding those uses for money that are very practical and useful in people's lives. It's amazing. One of our offers is, do you need just $50 this holiday season? And $50 goes a long way for a lot of people. So I think for a lot of us, we have to stop thinking about a point in the future when we're rich. And I may be preaching to the choir here, but where we're rich and we can just help people. You don't have to be rich to help people because people don't need riches, sometimes they just need a boost.

That's right. And they also, if you do what it is that we did, which is to have a little fund and you help people, $25, sometimes $10. One of the things that happens is that you never know who is hanging by a thread in terms of believing that there are good people in the world. And if you say that and they reach out to you, they humble themselves, you remember what it costs somebody to say I need money. And you respond to them lovingly, spiritually, emotionally, an open hearted way, and you make it tangible by actually sending them a few dollars, you can save someone's faith in humanity.

And I've come from a culture like, of that kind of giving. Like me and my sisters are. My sisters and I are a great example because when my younger sister was first married and struggling, I lent her money, like $400, you know, and then when we were adopting our son and it was more expensive than we could pay, she literally paid for us to pay those fees for the lawyer for that adoption. And so we've always lent money to each other back and forth without either feeling shame or gloating. And I think that's the key.

Yeah, it's, you know, to those to whom much was given, much is expected. You know, if you think. I don't think every day. And when I give thanks every day for Larry Nevin, you know, and Jerry Purnell and Harlan Ellison and Octavia Butler, the people who, who nurtured me, who taught me, who shared with me, sometimes wisdom, sometimes resources. There were times when I needed money and people came forward and helped. This, this time that we're spending here together. I do this every week. I love this. I love it that you, you're doing me such a favor. You're giving me an opportunity to give to you. You're giving me an opportunity to pay back to you. And I owe so much. I believe that we can have joy in our lives. I believe that we can escape pain and start moving forward towards a life where we are able to experience joy. That we wake up in the morning thinking, what can I do today that will make me happy, that will make my family happy, that will make my neighborhood happy. What can I give to the world? You know, when I. So I get to write a Star wars novel, you know, I turn in the outline for my Star wars novel on Friday, actually on Thursday Night. And I'm gonna get paid very well for it. But. And I'm gonna have fun with it because a Star wars novel will enable me to work with some image systems and play with some martial arts stuff that I don't ordinarily get to do because I'm an old fuddy duddy now and I. Everything has to be more realistic than it used to when I was a younger guy. But in the Star wars universe, I can play with all that stuff and I'm going to have the best friggin fight scenes I have ever written, you know, in there. But I also have a responsibility to the fans. I have a responsibility to the people who love Star wars to give them an adventure that warms their hearts. And my commitment is to do that and to, to keep in mind the fact that this is not my universe. This is a universe that I am borrowing. This is a universe that I am playing in. I am being trusted to play in this universe for a while. So I will spend six months digging into this universe, telling the best story that I possibly can, having a tremendous amount of fun and hopefully being of service to the fans who love this mythos. If I forget that I'm there to serve them, I've missed it. And I am not worthy of the trust that I'm being extended. They're extending trust to me. Will you treat these people with respect? Will you treat them gently? Will you care about them? And the answer is yes, I do. And I, I absolutely will. So that means every day I wake up and you better believe that among my mentors have to be people who could write a hell of a Star wars novel. It's like, you know, so William Shakespeare and Octavia Butler and Larry Niven are all on that mix. They could do a great Star wars novel together. So I want to tell, what I want to do is I want to write a wonderful novel set the Star wars universe. You know, it's, it's in, it's. I'm going to use that as my foundation. But I need to make sure who do I need to be today in order to do this? I only need to write five pages. I just need to write five pages. Gonna be five pages of script, which is even easier than writing five pages of prose. Much faster. I can write five pages of script in 40 minutes. And so my whole day in terms of, in one sense is about being conscious for the hour that it takes me to do my basic work there for six months or seven months. I have to make sure that at least One hour every day, three to five days a week is creating five pages. And that means I have to get myself into kind of a Star wars kind of space. I have to be able to, you know, I have to be able to write, I have to be able to visualize. I have to be able to feel. I have to have, you know, to keep control of the thematics. And I think I have to be in that world when I'm creating the text. I'm in that world, and then I have to step back and see how it all fits together. The question if you have a goal, who do you have to be to do the things that will get you that goal? And you bet one of your goals had better be to be successful at doing it. And quite frankly, it's in the adult world. One of your definitions of success had better be making money. You had better be thinking about that. Because if you're not making money, that means that there aren't a lot of people out there who find what you're doing of value. And if you're. If your commitment is to service, then one of the ways, you know, you're serving people is that they're willing to exchange money for what it is that you've done. So getting over that, getting over that sense of sales or marketing, there's something wrong with it. If you think there's something wrong with it, then this is a difficult thing for you to do, because nothing in the world works like money in the arenas in which money works. So you have to do the work. You have to market the work. Yes, it's a tough wall to climb, Ross. But in terms of selling, like, listen, what I know that you're doing, all you have to do is market to somebody who's a younger version of yourself, someone who's just as smart as you, but doesn't know all the things you know, if you say, oh, my God, what I know right now, if I could only have known this 30 years ago, I would have given my left thumb for it. There are a bunch of things like that. Well, then it's reasonable to charge 20 bucks for it, isn't it? If you would give your left thumb for that, then just mark it to that demographic and charge them 20 bucks. And you are being honest. You're providing honest value as long as you're not trying to state things that are not true. You're trying to irritate people into being afraid to buy what you've got. But there's not really any danger, and there's not really any value.

My.

You know, one of the things that, that I got out of working in the writer's room was when, after the first week when Brian gave us notes and one of the things he said was, stop trying so hard, Steve. You're, you're acting as if you're, you're trying to prove you belong in the, in the writer's room. And that hit me hard because instead of just being myself, I was trying to be something for these people. I was trying to, to project something. I was trying to earn something. Whereas what the real value in who I am is just showing up and being myself and supporting those people and talking about Tananariou. You've got something on your mind. Come on, please highlight yourself and speak up.

No, I was just thinking that's what happens when you work for people who know you too well. I mean, the reason we were hired was because we've known Brian for some time, mostly in the virtual world, but in real life too. We had lunch many times and when he had an opportunity to bring in some staff writer level writers, so, you know, lowest level writers, he thought of us because we've never been in a writer's room. And all that knowledge he has, all those conversations we've had with them playing virtual mini golf, all that was expressed in the way he saw us comporting ourselves in that room. So we only got notes after the first week, but they were, they were dead on. And mine said talk more.

Yeah, I was, I talk nervously and Tananarive gets, you know, steps back a little bit. In between. If you average the two of us up, we make one well adjusted writer.

But I was up to my old tricks, just sort of watching and listening. That's not why I'm there.

And I was looking strategically where can I say something brilliant? Okay, there. And I can connect this to these two movies into this philosophical speculation. And I can do this and I can do that. That's all crap. Just show up and you keep making yourself better and better and you look at your results and you ping the world by asking, did you?

How did you.

How did you feel about what it is that I did? And you give people the honest space to react, or did this sell? And money is one of the ways you can measure. It's not the only. It's not even necessarily the most important, but it's one of the important things, you know, winning awards, making money, making sales, having, you know, getting fan letters from people saying something mattered to them, being able to sit down with other Writers or fans and explain your work and seeing their reactions to you, how many pages you do. All of these things are aspects of success. How do you feel about what you did? Do you feel this is honest work? Do you look at this and say, I'm proud of this. You know, this. This was good? You know, I look back on my work and because I'm in a flow state when I write it, there's a lot of stuff I do. I don't remember. I barely remember doing it. How many of you have that experience? It's like you look back on stuff you did in the past. You said, I did that. I don't remember doing that. All that means that you were in flow state when you did. In other words, this is good. You were not there. It was there. You know, Bruce Lee says, you know, if somebody attacks me, I don't hit. It hits the real self. What Stephen King calls the boys in the basement strikes you. Your best work shows up when your ego is gone. And all of us have certain experiences in life where your ego is gone. Flow state is one of those things. And you can experience flow state as you're just about to fall asleep at night. Sometimes when you're on the freeway, not falling asleep on the freeway, but you're driving and you're listening, you're having conversations, suddenly you realize you've driven 10 miles and don't remember anything about it. That's. You're also kind of going into that automatic state. It's the. It's the automatic thing. Going into that automatic place is very, very healthy, and it can be very powerful. And that's going to be. The best you can be, is you aren't there.

T. If I could jump into. Of course, I've said this before, but it bears repeating the. The importance of ritual and structure. Let's use writing as an example. There are times, especially during outlining, which I don't particularly care for, when writing feels like typing. It's not inspired writing. It's not coming from a deep emotional attachment to a character or walking behind a character's eyes through a scene. It's like, this happens, this happens, this happens. That bores me to tears. But I have found it a necessary part of the process. And sometimes if I'm working on a script or a story, the writing itself can feel like typing, especially at the beginning. Stories don't pop out like with the characters feeling fully alive from the very beginning. You just sort of have to have faith. It's a good story and it's A good scenario for them and they have their objective and they have their obstacles and they're going to get through it. But when it turns into flow, it's a wonderful thing. That's when you look up and two hours have passed and you've written five pages. That's what it's all for. So there really is that part of it that is stepping out on faith in the beginning. Like, I don't feel any magical transformation happening from doing my five Tibetans. Sometimes I don't feel any magical transformation, sometimes from doing my breathing. But having the ritual and having the structure gets to the point where, like for instance, in my case, I can feel the difference when I stop doing the ritual or stop doing the breathing, how much more anxious I am than I was when I was being more regular with that practice. So it really is stepping out on faith a lot of the time.

Well, you mentioned structure, sweetheart. And this is, you know, when talk about relationships, I find that the structure of a committed marriage has been very freeing for me to know that I am 100% committed to my wife. That this, this is the woman who holds my heart. That I want to be a good boy for her, whether she is there or not. That she could listen over my shoulder anything I ever say or do, wherever I am, and she would be proud of me. That means a lot to me. It means. It feels like I'm growing up in some ways and that Tananarive educated that from me. That I looked at this magnificent woman and I said, there's no way I can have a relationship with her if I don't bring my A game, if I don't bring everything I am. A woman like this demands that you give yourself to. To her and the marriage completely. And she is looking or hearing if there's a part of her. If I was false, I realize how much it would hurt her and what I would lose. That within the structure of the discipline of I will write this every day, this much every day, the discipline. I will move my body in this way. I will eat this way every day. Once you have accepted that discipline, you have freedom. It's like walking along a mountain path and their guardrails along the side. You don't have to worry about getting tired or getting. Getting lazy or getting dizzy and falling off the side. You just stay within there and you get all the same views, you get all the same work. You know, it's. It's the same experience of climbing the mountain, but there's much less risk of falling off and There are so many things that we can do in life that can't be undone. Cruel things we can say to our fans in public, Stupid things we could say, editors that kill our careers, Things that we do unethically that will be offered to us along the path of career or the path of a relationship or the path of taking care of our bodies. There are mistakes. You can fall off the mountain. You don't pay attention for an instant, and you're gone. For those who have perfect balance and are perfectly connected with their ethics and their sense of self, maybe they don't need those guardrails. I think human beings do. I think human beings, we need to decide what our values are, what our commitments are, what we will and will not accept from ourselves and from others in life. You can either have a shell or a spine. You better have one of them. What I'm working on really hard is develop a better and better spine, a better and better sense of who I am internally. So I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, who am I? What am I doing today? And then I do those things all day. I play with my family. I play with my pup, my grandpuppy, Nala, who is my daughter's puppy and is staying with us for a week and a half while my daughter is in Greece, you know, And I just love the fact that we can take care of Nala. Nala is a wonderful puppy, you know, and my son, you know, can I be. Can I support him? Can I play with him when he's feeling playful? Can I lead him when he needs leadership? Can I allow him to teach me when he has things, you know, to lead? A good leader can be a good follower.

Okay, I just want to say one more thing about walking on faith, which is tangentially related, I guess, to Nala.

Not really. All roads lead back to Nala.

But my upcoming novel, the Reformatory, is a real good example of a walk in faith. I've mentioned it in this group before. I will be talking about it ad nauseam over the next few months since it doesn't come out until October. But this is a book that was full of starting and stopping and starting and stopping. It didn't take seven years to write because I was writing steadily for seven years. It took 70 years to write because I was putting it down and coming back. So that typing ritual sentence, a day that we teach in life writing, got me through sort of the outlining process and sometimes the writing process, but it was a very painful subject matter. It's set in 1950 at a haunted reformatory. And I didn't like being in 1950. I didn't like being in this reformatory. Nothing to do with the haunted part. I just didn't like being in this reformatory or writing about children my son's age while I was working on it. In the meantime, Colson Whitehead came out with a book called the Nickel Boys, which was set at the exact same reformatory that I was writing about. His also fictionalized. But he beat me by years because of my slow process on that book. And then when I showed it to my agent, he said, I'm not sure this is ready. And there was one editor, Joe Monti, at Saga Press, who had been asking to see it literally for years. So we said, well, let's just send it to Joe and see what he thinks. And I have to tell you, I have not made any changes of substance to this novel between my agent telling me it was not ready and the version that is being read by potential blurbers right now. But I just got a text yesterday from a writer I greatly admire. I'm not going to name him because it was a text, but this is the text he sent me after he read the reformatory. Sorry for texting, but email's not fast enough. Just finished the reformatory. Staggeringly good. Completely floored. Book of the decade. Easy. Soon everyone will know which I'm like, oh, my gosh. So part of me, I mean, I don't know. When you're on the inside, that's my baby. When you're on the inside, you don't know. I knew the story was very important to me. I knew I had to get it out. I know.

I.

It was a tough birth. It's the toughest right I've ever had. In the quest to write an entertaining book, I had to go through a lot of pain that I could spare, hopefully the reader, not to be overwhelmed by pain like I was. But you just don't know. When we're sitting inside of ourselves and our process, we don't know. We do need other eyes. And if I had listened to my agent who thought it wasn't ready. I loathe to think of how much time I would have wasted trying to make unnecessary changes to something in my gut, I felt like was there. I revise as I write, so I felt like it was there and I trusted myself. And that's something that all of us have to do.

Absolutely. Julius would like to say something about.

Faith, about trusting the process and tackling doubt. And Tananarive would know this because she's the horror maven. Like, in Western esoteric tradition, like, when you perform magic, how do you know it's working? Because it's like you do it and you lock yourself in the room and it's like, wow, it's been days. It's like there's no science and nothing happening. Right. I think that's why it's important to do journaling when you do all this. Because I've been journaling since 2019, but I got really incredibly active and detailed in writing my diary entry, with my journal entries. So when I'm feeling down, I'm like, wow, am I really improving? Like 1%. All I need to do is go back to year 2020 or 2021, when I was looking deep into, like, long Covid.

Right.

And I have to deal with the emotional pain of that and the physical. Like, you know, my health was in shambles.

Yeah, you were dealing with a lot of shame too.

I. I was.

I remember I was telling you that I could look at your martial arts movement and I knew you were better than you were letting yourself be. That I knew what was stopping. I could feel how much skill was in your nervous system. And my attitude was, well, why can't he manifest this? It was getting you to accept yourself and love yourself. It really made a huge difference.

And that is why it's so important to throwing people lifesavers. Because you don't know what a positive comment or having just a hand stretch out can make a difference to someone. Because he definitely made a difference in my life. But going to that journal thing, that is the only thing you need to do when you have those days of doubt or like your lack of faith. You're like, am I getting better? Am I really all I need to go is like, read my journal entries and like the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, and I'm like, wow, Like, I'm in such a better place now. Like, I couldn't do that many push ups. Oh, I was like that much heavier back then, you know? So it's like, yeah, that's very important to actually. So you can see your progression.

Yes.

So you.

Because the thing is, if you don't.

Have anything to base it out of.

What are you basing that out of?

Nothing.

So I would love for you in. First of all, thank you. I would like for you in the chat to share with each other 1% changes that you've made in the last week. Just, just look, look at something about your body Something about your relationships, maybe relationship to yourself, you're meditating, you're journaling something, maybe it's your work. Just 1%. Find that, celebrate that, give yourself credit for having done that. That's important. Do you realize how few people will take the time out of their lives to actually look at this scientific method? Let me see. Dennis Dickens said something interesting. The scientific method is applied to what some call magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And this is a technology, a technology of change where we are asking the question we are observing. I observed a phenomenon called success. When I was a kid, didn't have a father, didn't have my dreams, were nothing that anybody said I could do, everybody said I couldn't do. And I was a little pot bellied, four eyed nerd with a dream of being something nobody had ever been. And I had this hypothesis that it was possible to do it if I could change my behavior so I could find the right behaviors over time. And then I decided that I had another theory. That even if there were social obstacles that stopped me from being able to do what I wanted to do, that the world would change and was changing. I could take a look at the difference between my grandfather's world, my father's world and my world. I said, okay, there is change happening, but it's happening so slowly. Maybe it'll take 30 years for the world to change enough for me to be able to do the things I want to do. How do I do that? And I had a hypothesis that there are ways to do it. That martial arts and yoga and other things could give me the strength, the wisdom to survive the ups and downs, to not want to choke somebody, not want to hurt somebody and thereby destroy my own life. That if I could just stay balanced long enough that I could succeed and if I could do that, that I would be able to turn around and help other people, that I would be able to say this way. And there are so many people who've given up and there's so many people who've been hurt and so many people who don't believe that they can have their dreams. And I just have to keep saying it and saying it and saying it. No matter how they try to knock me down, I have to be strong enough to say no, I see who you are and I see what the world is. And I believe in you more than you believe in yourself. I believe that we can have these things, we can do these things, we can live lives of Jesus, joy and contribution. We can help each other. We can hold our hands out to each other. I believe that with all my heart. And the only disappointing thing about success is that it used to be that I would talk about success and people would say, well, you haven't done anything, Steve. What do you know? And now that I've succeeded, they say, well, you were just lucky, Steve. What do you know? And I realize it's just their fear. They're afraid of caring. They're afraid of trying. They're afraid of believing in themselves. And I just asked myself, dear God, who hurt them? Well, we know who hurt them. Our families, trying to keep us from disappointment, living our dreams. Society abuses us. They try to put us in different boxes, marked by gender and race and other things. You're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too this, you're too that. You can't do it. You can't have it. How can they tell you that when they don't know you? And how do I know they don't know you? You don't even know you. You don't even know yourself. How could they possibly know you? You got to ask yourself, what is true? And who am I? And don't stop asking until you get to an answer that is divine. That is, I am made of pure energy. I am the interaction of waveforms, of information. And if I am not manifesting the way I want to, I will get better information. I will take better actions over time, and I will never lose confidence in myself. And people have asked me, steve, aren't you afraid of setting your standards too high? And my attitude is very simple. If at the moment of death, at the end of my life, I am given a moment of ultimate clarity, my last couple breaths, I'm given total clarity. And I can see for the first time exactly what was true and exactly who I was. And I saw that my ambitions were too high, I'd laugh. But if at the moment of death, I saw that I could have had anything I wanted if I had just had the courage, that would break my heart. So I will dream too big, and I will want too much. And I will encourage you to want too much and to dream too big, but to take the actions necessary. When Tananari talks about throwing her hat over the fence, you know, it's the same as Muhammad Ali saying, I'm the greatest, he'd say, I'm the greatest. But then when he got into the gym, he had to work his butt off because he knew he had to live up to that. He knew that people come into his fights to watch him get knocked out. So he had to get up at 4 o' clock in the morning and run. And he would run until he was exhausted. And then he'd go to the gym and work out. And then after that he'd get on the table and have his abdominal muscles worked on until he thought he was going to die. He hated it, but he did it because he had this image of who he was and who he told the world he was going to be. So there is nothing wrong with telling the world what you're going to be as long as you're willing to do the work, to live up to it. Do the work, to live up to it. I work every day because one of the reasons is, well, just, you know, for myself and my family. But I know that there are people that are waiting for me to fail. I know that there are people who want me to be depressed, who are waiting for me to, oh, God, everything is fine. But. Because then they can say, oh, Steve, just like the rest of us. No, I'm not like the rest of you. And none of you are like the rest of you either. Each and every one of us is unique. Each and every one of us has unique gifts to give the world. Don't you let people put you in a box. Don't do that. You live your dreams. And remember, all a goal is is a dream with a deadline. That's all a goal is. Comments, questions, requests? Who can I serve today? Who's here that wants to ask a question? There are no bad questions. You cannot embarrass me. Ask whatever you want. That's all. The only reason I'm here right now is to answer questions. Because I figure that anytime I show up here, there is one person who needs to ask something, who needs to believe in something. And all I want you to do is believe in yourself. I don't care. I don't want you to believe in me. I want you to test the things that I'm saying. And if something I've said works, then do it. But I'm perfectly capable of lying to myself, of being wrong. Of course I am. I'm performing experiments. I'm observing a phenomenon called success. And I'm formulating a hypothesis to test to explain that phenomenon. And then I create experiments to test my hypothesis. And I perform the experiment. And if it works, then I published and I say, try this, you know, try breathing and try the morning ritual and try aiming at 1%. Does it work? And if it works. We get more and more solid until we get a theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested. I. I am willing to say that what we're talking about here in finance is no longer a hypothesis. It is a theory. It still needs to be tested. It needs to be tested every day. I want it tested every day by thousands of people. And then I want those people to turn around and help others. Because we were not born with a set of instructions about how to live our lives. So we're talking about, what is it that every kid should have been given in grade school?

Paul, is your hand up?

Somebody have their hand up?

Yeah, I do. So, Steven, I thank you for this. I gotta go. I'm driving to Seattle today to shoot some video and appreciate that great information. And I'll see you guys next week. You bet.

Take care. I'll see you next week. 1%. Bring your 1% next week.

Okay.

Safe travels.

Okay. Safe travel, Paul.

All right.

Okay.

Other comments, questions, requests. What can we workshop? Nicole Beaton says, let's see. It's how encouraging. Just don't get a zero can feel as an eternal pep talk. That's right. It is. Yes. Oh, yes.

No, it's 1% about me.

Come on, we get on camera. No, no, it's a joke. It's a joke.

I was just gonna talk about how.

I'm six four plus. So 1% of all men in US my son. My son was just noticing that he is at 6, at 64. He's in 1% of all the men in the U.S. he's George Foreman. I love that boy.

He's George Foreman.

That's my son. That's my son. He's so much fun. Oh, my God. You know, and that's another thing that, you know, just being a father is healing my heart. Having grown up without a dad, I literally had that sense of, am I worth a father? Am I worth somebody loving me, wanting to parent me? I remember my mother dated very little after the divorce. And there was one guy over at the house once. I probably was about six years old. And they're sitting on the couch, and I sat on the love seat behind the couch, curled up like a little puppy. And I'll. With all my heart, I just wished, would he turn around and pat me, rub my head and let me know that he sees me? Am I such a broken, ugly thing that nobody wants to be my daddy? That was a horrible, horrible place inside me. And my father was on his deathbed. You know, I had to ask him, dad, you know, are you proud of me? And of course he was. And of course he was heartbroken that he'd made mistakes in his life that had prevented him from being the kind of father that he wanted to be, you know, that I needed. So there's definitely a part of me that says my children aren't going to go through that, that every day my daughter is going to know that her daddy loves her completely. Every day my son is going to know his father would die for him in a heartbeat if that's what it took. I would do anything for my son. I love him, and I'm incredibly proud of him. Every day I will give them as much support as my father gave me in an entire lifetime. They will not be standing in the hole that I was standing in. If you think about all the different things that I use, all these different, different techniques and things, that's all. That was all. To heal the wound in my own heart. That's all that's going on. There is. I'm saying to you, what I wish somebody had said to me 40 years ago. That's all that this is. Comments, questions, requests? We got 16 more minutes to go. Yes, Julius.

Yeah, I think, because when you see the people and you're like, wow, who hurt them? Ultimately, like, the. The nightmare is like, we begin to hurt ourselves and. And. And then that becomes like a lifetime, like, habit. And I think that's what the process is for, like journaling, doing the daily ritual. That is like our. Our us giving back our own agency to stop hurting ourselves and actually try to improve ourselves like 1% at the time.

Well, if. Thank you. I mean, if we consider that we learned a lot of what we learned from our communities, our parents would not. And they were just human beings. They were doing the best they could. They had been hurt by people came before them. Who was hurt by people came before them. That all of us, what we really want is just a sense of joy and peace in our lives. And people who are hurting themselves and hurt other people are people who are in terrible, terrible pain. That does not, you know, to. To empathize with them, to see their humanity does not mean to let them ever hurt you again. It does not mean to let them back into your life. It means to understand that we're all doing the best we can. That if you want to do better, get better resources, if you will do that, just keep getting better resources, 1% better. You know, ain't like I said, my whole thing is I try to find 1% in each of those three arenas every day. That way, I'm sure that I'm improving by 1% a week. You know, just. That's. I've got that covered because I'm really looking at 1% in each of the three major arenas every day. And I don't always find something, but I do ask my mind to kind of come up with it. And so I'm constantly. It's a little bit like Tetris, you know, where you're looking for another piece that kind of fits, and when it fits, everything kind of zeros out and you slide down a level, and that becomes unconscious competency. What's next? There are these other pieces that I'm trying to. I'm trying to do here. So I'm always looking for techniques in terms of my physical training, in terms of my writing, you know, just ideas, you know, and in terms of parenting and dealing with my emotions and becoming a better husband and father. Always looking, always looking, always teaching, always growing, always there. That addiction to doing that in balance is absolutely compulsion for me. The only thing that keeps people from thinking it's insanity is that it's imbalanced. So they interpret this as health. Oh, Steve, you're so healthy. No, actually, I'm just sick in a very balanced way.

So.

Comments, questions, requests, especially for people who haven't spoken up before, that's like Ella Maria Foley Ray sitting over. Oh, Ella Maria. She's got her hand up.

Yes.

Yes.

Elle, Maria.

Greetings, everyone.

Steve.

I wanted to just put on the table that one of the things I'm grappling with is leaving the academy and allowing myself to stand in who I am as a whole artist, as a.

Visual artist, and as a performing artist.

And as someone who really wants to feel more empowered around writing. But one thing I noticed I've had real challenges with maybe since COVID is getting back in the groove of my.

Routine of your writing.

Getting back in the groove of writing my three pages.

So don't write three pages. Don't worry about that. Write at least one sentence every day. One sentence every day is your minimum. If you will commit that, you will not let a day go by. Six days a week, you know, five to six days a week of writing at least one sentence every day. You'll find yourself doing those three pages. But first, get over the idea that you have to do some particular number. What you have to do is live a life of joy and to be of service to the world. So if you only have to write one sentence, then that's the only Work you do all day long, that's all the work. If you choose to write more, that's the fun of it. And the thing is that the little girl inside you who wants to write, that's the. The youthful part of us is. The youngest part of us is the creative part. So if the only discipline that part has to go through is one sentence, all the rest of it is play. And now you get to celebrate your work rather than feeling guilty because you're not working. You so don't feel guilty or bad about. About not writing unless you're not doing one sentence. But as soon as you've done one sentence, you want to quit your business. And what you will find is you will automatically begin to increase the amount of work that you do. Because now it's back in the joy place. No obligations, no fear. It's all fun. Thank you. You know, just. I want you to have fun. Writing is fun. It's fun. You know, it's. It's just, you know, it's. Sometimes it's good, evil fun, and sometimes it's hard. But it should be a joy to express yourself to the world. The world will take all of you that you offer it. The world. It's not that the world is evil. You know, the dog. If you leave a pork chop on the table and the dog eats it, the dog wasn't evil. You left your pork chop on the table. We open our hearts. We expect institutions to care for us the way family cares. We forget that we have to protect the little child within us that is just trying to be a beautiful gift to the world. You have to protect that little child. And you say to her, if you will just give me one sentence every day, I'll let you play for the rest of the day. Just one sentence. And what she will do is she will test you at first, but then she will say, yes, Mommy. And then she will say, look at what I did. And you will say, good child. And now you're in a healthy relationship with your heart, and you'll find that creativity flowing. The child's job is to dance and play. The adult's job is to keep the space for that dancing and play safe. So sometimes the adult part of you has to think about things like money. By the way, it is not the child's job to think about money. It's the child's job to be beautiful and play and dream and to give gifts and give hugs and kisses. The adult has to watch who gets to go in there and play with the little girl. Though very carefully. The stronger the mommy is, the safer the little girl is, and the more, the happier she'll be. Okay.

Thank you.

You betcha. And good luck to you. I would expect to see you again. And you tell us how you did 1% better, okay?

All right.

All right.

At least 1%. That's all I'm asking for. And there are people. Remember, you come here and you share that, and you're going to be inspiring somebody else. It's part of a chain. We're helping each other. Kathy.

Thanks, Steve, but Mary had her hand up earlier. I want to make sure if Mary wanted to speak, speak. And then I have something I want to share.

You're beautiful. Thank you. Mary.

Oh, hi. So I was thinking. You were talking about the pain. Sometimes people have so little feeling in their lives, they use the pain that they're causing themselves to feel like they're alive.

Yes.

So how do.

How do people.

Or how. How do I get rid of the desire for pain and replace it with it being okay to feel good every day?

In your morning ritual, do your ritual specifically move your body as if you were happy. Specifically think about your blessings. Specifically model someone who is joking, joyful, even in the midst of stress. Specifically think about, you know, smile and hold your head up. Move your body. Put on some music that makes you feel funky. I don't know what. What's. What song always makes you smile?

Well, right now I'm. It's by Sia Unstoppable. That has been my, like, anthem. I'm like a batter, you know, or whatever, without a battery. And I'm.

You put it on. So you put it on in the morning. Look for. Create a playlist of songs that make you laugh, smile, feel grateful, and feel unstoppable. Actually create a playlist and then turn it on first thing in the morning, move your booty to it while you're chanting your affirmations and thinking about all that there is in life to feel grateful for and understand. Forgive yourself. We all do that to ourselves sometimes, okay? You have to give yourself permission to be happy. You have the right to be joyful. There are people who don't even believe they have the right to be happy. I'm telling you, you have more than the right. It is a responsibility to your soul to let your soul speak. And your soul speaks in a language of joy and love. Okay? I want you to be happy, sweetheart. I want you to come back here next week and tell us how you got 1% happier, all right? You do your ritual, Kathy. You do your ritual. The ritual will tie your body, your emotions and your mind all together. You can do that consciously and learn how to make yourself happy or confident or anything else. You can trigger those feelings. You can deliberately trigger those feelings. The same way you can make yourself feel bad if you remember that nasty breakup you had 20 years ago. You can also think about your first sweet kiss and just really remember it and let yourself smile. You know, you can trigger those memories deliberately, and that's what you have to do to make more memories and leave a good life. And that's what I want for you. Okay? Okay. Kathy.

You see what you were talking about in terms of understanding people and what hurt them and also not letting it happen again reminded me. I put in the chat about, you know, I was a snake when you picked me up.

It's a.

An old parable about the snake, but there is a new. A different version of it I read a while back that I also use when I teach. And it's about a gentleman seeing a bonfire. There's garbage being burned, and there's a snake that's trapped in it. And he goes to reach in to get the snake out to help it, and the snake tries to bite him. So he goes to get a stick, puts that in, gets the snake to climb onto that and get it out. And somebody who watched it said, that snake tried to bite you. What are you doing? Why did you go again? He said, well, it's the nature of the snake to bite. It is my nature to help. I will not change my nature because of someone else, but I will take precautions.

That is absolutely important. And I believe that if you. First of all, bravo. Great story. Secondly, I start with a belief that violence stems from anger, and anger is fear. So when somebody offers me anger or violence, I ask myself, what are they afraid of? And that takes the attention off of myself. It's not about me anymore. I know I can take care of myself, and I know that I can fight with honor and die with dignity. So I get to ask myself, how am I going to be in the world? And sometimes I have to deal with racists. I have to deal with people who are terrible, they're thieves, people who want to hurt me. And if I can think to myself, what are they afraid of? Instead of thinking that this means something about me, they don't know me. Nothing that they think about me means anything about me. It's something about the way they see me. And as long as I'm standing in love and balance, I know. I mean, Them no harm. I get to ask my. I get to ask, you know, what's wrong, brother? What's wrong, sister? You know, I am not. I'm not your enemy. I'm. I'm not. I'm not the droid you're looking for. Steve.

We like the joke. It's kind of like that Robert Redford movie. You like the Racist Whisperer.

The Racist Whisperer, Remember that? Yeah, yeah, I remember that. They're people too. They're people too. And I think one of the reasons I'm that way is that I feel that in America we have to live together. You know, maybe you don't want me marrying your daughter, but we have to be neighbors. How do we do that? Maybe we don't talk about. I don't talk about race with you. Let's talk about those Yankees, you know, let's talk about the weather. Let's talk. Let's. Let's build rapport. And that comes back to the thing we talked about weeks ago about how do you communicate with someone? How do you change someone? How do you influence them? You start by building rapport with them. You start by, you know, people don't care what you know until they know that you care. That the first step is to make a heart space connection with them, to actually care about them. And a lot of people who have problems with political arguments, so on and so on, they think the other, the other political or. Those are terrible people. They're monsters. I don't care about them. They're scum, and I can't get them to listen. What you don't understand that they won't listen to you because they know you hate them. They know you think down at them. If you want to communicate with somebody, the first step is to see their humanity. The first step is not to be crapping on them. In the back of your mind, they know how you feel. They know they can hear it in your vocal tone. There's a mismatch between your words and your tone of voice and your facial expressions and your body language. And you have to be congruent. You have to genuinely congratulate, care about people. If you want to influence them. That's where you start. That's the first step. And you can't do that unless you love yourself enough to be willing to take care of yourself, to be. To take care of yourself, to love yourself enough to make yourself safe or to understand that in situations where it is impossible for you to be safe, you can fight with honor and die with dignity. And if you do that, nobody can take your life from you. You can give your life for the things that matter to you. You can live in a way that is in alignment with your values. No one can take from you. Someone asked something about a spiritual path. Let me see what that question was specifically. Okay, Steve did not want to talk about the Yankees. I see what it was. It was thing. What sports do I follow? I don't follow any team sports, but actually I'm not following many sports at all right now. I used to follow a lot of combat sports, but just for some reason or another, I don't do that as much as I used to. I don't really know who's out there. But I also don't follow any particular spiritual path, although I have a lot of respect for Buddhism and I was raised in the Episcopal Church. And I have found that every spiritual path has some respect. Really interesting, valid things if you're willing to follow them, you know, but they're also problems. The followers of any path can also are also human beings and flawed. And we, we've reached our time here today. You. I've just enjoyed this so much and I'm so grateful to everyone. And once again, if you'd like to, you know, just show up here every week and we are glad to have you. We would love for you to actually be in the fire dance program@www.firedancetaichi.com. but the most important thing is come here every week. Balance yourself with the three gates, you know, follow the three gates, balance yourself with the three centers and aim at improving just 1% per week. Do your morning ritual. Breathe. Unmute yourselves. Everybody say goodbye so we can get into our days.

Thanks everybody.

It's so nice to see you.

Take care.

Great. I'll see you next time. And I'd like to close this, as I always do, with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste and thank you to our special in studio guest, Julius.

Thank you for having me today.

Pleasure. You take care, everybody. Have a great week. Bye bye now.