Firedance: The Ultimate Goal

Okay, streaming there. Ah, I. I have so much fun doing this. You guys have no idea how much fun this is. I have so much fun doing this. You guys have no idea how fun this. Okay, so here we are. Oh, I'm turn off the anime. Turn off my, my soundtrack there. This is good. This is Steve Barnes and Tananarif my, my co host, the lovely and incredibly talented Tananarive Due. Would you tell me what you said again this morning about what you think the context of this work is? Now you're unmute. You're still. You're muted, honey. Okay, well while you get that worked out, I think I got.

I'm having weird zoom issues with. Issues with my mic. Hi everybody.

So you said something about what you think the context of this work is. And would you repeat that? Your microphone is out again. No, microphone's still out. Okay, you get that worked out. Basically the idea is we're looking at different.

Hey, while it's working for five seconds.

And this is what happens when I'm teaching class. Yeah, they see it's going out again. I suspect that it's your connection that one of your cords is inky. So let me just kind of say that roughly speaking, what was said was when I was asking Tananarivas, what do you think people come to the Saturdays for primarily? And she said that it's the idea of examining a variety of different success ideas in body, mind and spirit with the focus of improving by 1% a week. That sounds pretty, pretty solid. I mean, I can go with that. And I kind of wanted to talk about some things like that. But before I do that, let's just everybody unmute and say hi to everybody and give high fives to the people on the screen next to you and just kind of get your energy. Hi everybody. Gotta get your energy up. Hello everybody. Great, great, great. Take exhale. And just kind of get that part of you that is excited about life and the day and the potential it be here and listen and participate and over there in chat. One of the things I really noticed is you guys over the last few months you really have been helping each other and that's it. I can bring you together and I can give you things that will be of power and purpose to you, but it's whether or not you use them and share what you're doing and help each other, that's what's going to make the difference. That's what's going to make the difference. So what I want to do, I'm going to change My background there for a second because I keep. One of the things I keep doing is circling what are the most important pieces. And the most important pieces would be the things that are good for you and they're good for me and they're good for my son. That I'm, you know, what is if. If I was. If I knew I was going to get hit by a car in one year and I had just this year to finish giving my son the things that he was going to need for a lifetime, what would be the most important things I could give him? Out of all the things that I'm teaching and I have, you know, the good thing for you is that that means that anything that I'm giving you, I'm doing my absolute best with. I'm really looking at it because I love my family so much in like the 90 Day Love Feast, the notion of putting my family, especially like my wife, my son, my daughter above me, starting especially with my wife, it means that I have to take care of myself. If I don't take care of myself, I will be afraid of giving to others. Because my fear will be, what if I give to them and they don't give back? How many of us have had that fear? If I give myself away, what happens if they don't give in return? That's right. That's right. And that's a real thing. And the way around that is you take care of yourself first. You know, you put on your own life vest first. You take care of yourself so that there is no fear at all. No matter what this person does, you're going to be okay. And that gives you the ability to give with all your heart. If I were to do these talks, thinking to myself, I've got to get a sale for one of my programs out of here, you'd know the difference. So I could be totally honest with you about the fact I love money and I love making money and I love it when you guys come to the paid classes. But I also love when you come here. I mean, it is. I have to make the money I make in alignment with the other things that I'm doing and that I would do for free. That makes sense. So looking at the five, the four things that I think are the most important, you know, if this change, you know, I think that we're going to find me getting more and more solid about these four things. The first one is the five minute miracle. This five times a day, minimum stopping and breathing for 60 seconds. Deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. That's important because it gets you out of your head. Otherwise, I've given you a bunch of concepts and you're thinking about it and you're debating with it and does this work and where does this come from? And you're looking at the epistemology and you're looking over where did this word come from? And you know, where did that come from? All the stuff that is irrelevant, what's relevant is you getting the results. And so we're going to talk specifically about what are the most important results to get, because there is that question, you know, all over the world through time, people have had different goals, they have different values, different beliefs, different cultures. So the question of is there anything that is universal is very, very important, you know, because otherwise you can say, oh, yeah, well, men like that or women like that, or black people or white people or gay people or straight people, or they liked that in the 19th century or they liked that in America, or they don't like that. Those things, people do that. I think it's possible to go beyond that, but we have to start with something that everybody likes, which is that next breath of air. And the truth is that if you are a millionaire, if you are a billionaire, and I stuck your head in a bucket, you would give all the money that you had for your next breath of air. Since air is free. You literally have a gift that is beyond price, that you probably don't really appreciate as much as you would if I stuck your head in that bucket. So don't wait for life to stick your head in a bucket. Take joy in the basic things of life. Because if you do that, it creates, you know, gratitude is faith. Gratitude for what you already have opens the door to faith for the future. So for all sorts of different reasons, five minute miracle. The breathing is where we start. It is not theoretical. It is experiential. The second thing is the magic formula. For a variety of different reasons, it's. It's the closest thing I've ever come to seeing how this game works in a way that allows you to literally increase your luck. Doing it properly literally increases your luck. I can't promise that something is going to happen, but you can increase your chances of it happening. That's all I'm saying. If you have a roadmap to what you're going to do, you're taking action every day and noticing the results of that action, making adjustments, filling your heart with gratitude. Because if you have enough gratitude, you win the day, no matter what happens externally. And that's what I want you to do, set it up so that every day, every moment, every week is a victory for you because you can build on that in beautiful, beautiful ways. The three centers, Belly, brain, heart center, head center, body, emotions and mind. Fitness, health, relationship, career, however you want to look at those three things. That is the way to make sure that you don't focus so much on any one thing that you hurt yourself in other arenas. Because there are a lot of people who are really good at one of those three things, but they're blown out in the other two. And I think that we've all known people like that. They're loving people, but they have real problems with their bodies and they're broke all the time or they have a lot of money and they have problems, their relationships and their bodies falling apart or they're really fit. They can run those marathons and triathlons, but their relationships are a nightmare and they're broke. What I want is the Mexican salute, the toast that says health, love, money and time to enjoy them. I think that we can all. Can we. Can we agree that we want health, love, money and time to enjoy them and the ability to support our families and friends. Can we have an amen on a Saturday morning? There we go. That's what I want. And if you could admit that that's what you want, then you can ask the next question. Well, how do I get those things? What I want to do is to back up. And that's the three centers, the three gates. Asking yourself, before you say anything or do anything, is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? That's. I don't know how to put this any blunter. That's what keeps you from becoming an asshole. That's what you do in order to protect other people from your ambition. See? So the three centers are what you do to protect yourself from your obsessive behavior. The three gates are what you do to protect other people from your obsessive behavior. You watch what you say, you watch what you do. You're continually asking, is this useful given the outcome that you want for this, for this situation? So before I go into today's symposium, let me find out, are there things that anybody would like to talk about? Because I can always pivot and there often are specific needs that the community has. And I want to be sure, because I want you to look at money, physical health and fitness and love. Look at where are you the weakest and plug that hole. Your money, your relationship, and your relationship with yourself is primary. There, your Capacity to express physical joy and vibrancy through your body. Who has issues or who would like to see how you would apply the five minute miracle, the magic formula, three sitters and three gates to an issue that you have in your life right now. Let's just workshop it. SKS Hernandez.

Good afternoon everybody. I appreciate you doing this. I am KS Hernandez. My first name is Khalil. I write under KS Hernandez.

Hello Khalil.

Hello. Thank you, Ms. Tananari for being so sweet to me online and that is why I'm here. And nice to meet you, Steve. So here is how would I apply these strategies to my life? I'm currently injured and I'm currently low on income and what I'm trying to do, I'm sure you can guess that that's very difficult.

Of course.

So managing both things, you know, just given how expensive health care is and just given what an ablest world we live in. So how would I proceed?

Okay, so your first step is to work backwards from what your ultimate goal is. And your ultimate goal is to be happy. Can you by any chance, can you turn your camera on? If you can't, I totally understand. But if you could, it would be great.

I'd rather not. I'm not, you know.

Fair enough. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So your first step is to be happy. And your internal happiness has nothing to do with what's going on outside you directly. In other words, you can control your internal states. And by controlling your internal states, you then have the ability to see, to use, tap into that good problem solving brain. So if, if money is a problem and you have health issues that are problems, then it strikes me that focusing on money is going to be a positive thing for you. It will bring along other things, but the health issues are your health, anything that is affected by your behaviors.

It's possible. I mean in my mid-40s and you know, my current most urgent issue physically is due to being injured like in a wreck. So you know, so that.

Are you talking about like soft tissue damage, spinal alignment, you know, the things wrenched out of alignment sort of things.

Broken bones, things like that and all of the above.

So I'm so terribly sorry to hear that. So all that's real and you're saying that you don't have health care right now?

I'm not receiving health care. You're not receiving health care. Everything that surrounds getting the healthcare is costly.

Yes.

So I've kind of had to balance staying housed with getting the health care.

Absolutely. Here's what I'd say that intelligence is primarily problem solving. I don't know exactly what the situation is, but I do know that the sharper you are, the more clearly you see the situation, the easier it is for you to find the resources. Even if it's a matter of talking to the people around you and finding out how to navigate the health care system so that you can get the things that you deserve and need. That's so complex that we have to kind of take a step back and ask a separate question. And that is, what can you do to increase your income a year from now? You know there are going to be immediate problems that you have, no question about it, but a year from now, you're still going to be the same person. You're still going to be in your life. So if in, if on one level you said to yourself, I've got two different things that I have to take care of here. What is my short term taking care of this terrible situation? And one is with my health, the other is the long term. How do I generate twice as much money as I make right now? And that is going to require. Those are two kind of separate issues. One is what's imperative at the moment and the other is what is important generatively. So the five minute mirror. The first thing is five times a day, breathe deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. And for 60 seconds at least five times a day. If I were you, I would do that every, every hour, at the top of every hour. The next thing is the magic formula. Here is a very specific thing you need. It is a map or model. Who has, who do you know that has ever been in your situation and got out of it and lifted themselves up and got the resources they needed? This is what you need. You either need to find a person or multiple people who have been through what you've been through and have answers to you, or you need to model someone who is simply dynamite at solving problems. Maybe it isn't this particular problem, but somebody who is dynamited at generating money, making money with their writing, making money in other ways. You need to have some kind of map. And if you just wanted to take a look at the question of money per se, then there's no better book for that than Think and Grow Rich. That that somewhere in the, in the 10 or 12 principles of think and Grow Rich will be answers that you're looking for. But once again, you have two different sets of things. One, how to take care of your short term problem and how to take care of the long Term problem. And you have to stay out of despair and you have to keep the pain from dropping you into depression. Really, really critical. These are real things. You're not hallucinating that you're getting hit with these waves of things. So if you have a map or model, then you know what daily actions you can take. And right now we could use the magic formula. Say you've got to find a path out, a path out of your situation so you can see to yourself that a year, three years from now, you're going to be in a completely different place in your life. You're going to have a healthy body, you're going to be living a loving, joyful life, and you're going to have the money. You're going to have enough money that you're going to be able to be of benefit to others. If you can see yourself there, then the question is, how do you get there? What actions can you take? So the actions you can take is every day you're going to spend an hour studying how do people make money doing the thing that you want to do joyfully. This is a critical thing. And one of the things that you have to do. We talked with another artist is ask yourself, what are your attitudes about money? I can guarantee you that if you're struggling with money, the answers are going to be in the actions that you take, the strategies that you've used to try to make money doing the thing that you want to do, or in the beliefs and emotions you have around it. I mean, if there's a part of you that feels like money is dirty, that feels that what you want to give the world is a gift of your heart, and there'd be something wrong with getting money from it. If you have any problems with marketing, sales, things of that nature, then change the belief patterns first so that tells you the actions you need to take. The G in the magic formula is gratitude. We need to manage our emotions every day, not only because emotion is what makes life worthwhile. A day that you're happy is a good day, even if you're broke. A day that you've got plenty of money in the bank but you're miserable is a bad day. So you can give yourself a good day by finding things to be joyful for. And we can do that by controlling what we focus on, what we say to ourselves and the way we use our bodies, the movement patterns that we use. So breathing and focus and affirmation can affect all these things. You know that you're in a hole in terms of money and in terms of the way your body feels. So make no mistake, this is going to have an impact on you emotionally. So you need to kind of just decide that your primary goal, the primary goal of all human beings. Well, let's go deeper than that. The primary goal of all animals is to move away from pain as their nervous systems become more complex. The goal is to move away from pain and embrace joy. And for human beings, those of us who have this gift of being able to see beyond the immediacy in our lives, the Dalai Lama would say that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. So if you start with the belief that you have the right to be happy, you have the right to be happy, then it's just a matter of finding the role models, the actions that will bring joy into your life. And you want to take a look then at the gratitude. The I in magic formula is your intention. You have a goal. Double your income, heal your body. You know simple goals, write them down. And you know, just like if you buy a Honda, you start seeing Hondas on the road everywhere. If you buy a red dress, you'll start seeing red dresses everywhere. The reticular activating mechanism is a part of the brain that actually filters reality. If you say to yourself, I want to find a way to heal my body, double my income, and have fun in the process, that is what your brain will look for. If you're thinking to yourself, I need to make more money, God, I'm in so much pain, then your brain is staying at the same level. If you say, I have health challenges and I need to have access to the care that will help me, that's a reality. How to do that is going to be some combination of money, navigating bureaucracies and brainstorming with your brain trust. And you will find that if you can brainstorm your problem, get together with two friends and say, listen, let's brainstorm a dozen different ways that I could generate money in order to help myself. What could I do that would help me make more money? And you sit around with your friends and drink coffee and brainstorm and make sure that a lot of your ideas are silly. It's critical to come up with silly ideas, because if you come up with silly ideas and you're giving yourself permission mission to be nuts. And in order to break out of a pattern, you often need to think in a nutty way. You need to ask yourself the things that you aren't ordinarily asking yourself. So have fun with it. Laugh with it. That's joy right there. Anyway, but be clear about your goal. Double my income, heal my body. One year from now, I'm going to walk a 5K or something like that so that you have a goal that you can see and you look at your bank book and you see the money and you look at yourself walking that 10K or swimming or dancing or whatever it is so that you can see it. Then it's just a matter of how do I get there One day at a time. I don't have to improve more than 1% per week. How can you improve yourself by 1%? It doesn't feel like this is taking care of the emergency that you're in. I get that. So you need to. But you need to be in a place where you're feeling positive in order to open your mind to the problem solving that gives you the chance to come up with the radical ideas that change things. The C is for confidence, courage, character. The actions that you take, you have to feel that they are in alignment with your being, that doing these things every day makes you more of who it is that you are, that you can't do things that are not in your character. You're looking for the way to be yourself. There is a part of you that is a conqueror. There's a part of you that is a lover. There's a part of you that is a warrior. There's a part of you that is a healer. Embrace the part of you that is successful, loving, healthy, abundant. That little part of you, nurture that part every day when you wake up, the first breath that you take, when you're taking 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing, say to yourself, it could be every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. One of the things that I say is God's wealth is circulating in my life. His wealth flows through me in avalanches of abundance. All my needs, desires, dreams and goals are met instantly by infinite intelligence because I am one with God and God is everything. This is just what works for me. Find an affirmation that works for you and say it every day. While you are moving, the five minute miracle blossoms into the morning ritual. And so I guess that's what I want you to do, is to breathe and start creating a daily ritual in which you are stating clearly what it is that you want to accomplish. You are visualizing role models of the kinds of people who. If you got all those people around your kitchen table, and they were, and you brainstormed about your Problem. You know perfectly well they'd come up with the answers you need. Who are the people who have the answers that would change your life? Start visualizing those people. Feel them in your heart. If you can reach out to them. You know, an awful lot of people, you send them an email, they'll send one back. You know, it is. It is critical to remember that we're not in this alone, that it is possible to build communities. I see somebody right now saying, how can we help and support you? In chat, you talk to people. You get out of feeling that you are alone. You are not. You're in a community of human beings, some of whom cannot see your beauty, cannot see your power. But in this space, on Saturday afternoon, From noon until 1:30, we are here for nothing other than supporting each other, period. You are welcome here. This is family. This is home. You are safe, and we care about you. Does that make sense?

It sure does. And I. I do appreciate everything you've said. You know, everything you said, it resonates so deeply. And I'm in the habit of. As soon as I open my. My eyes in the morning or when I'm conscious that I'm awake, I said, thank you, Lord, for letting me see a new day.

Yes. Yes, sweetheart, thank you. You give thanks. Gratitude is the doorway to faith. To find anything that you're grateful for. One thing that you're grateful for opens the door, sweetheart. And in this space, we will always remind you of your beauty and your power. Always. That's why we're here. And I am honored to be able to serve you.

I appreciate you so much and your words. And I've been. People have been, you know, messaging and stuff, and I appreciate everybody in the chat. I've been trying to take notes as furiously as I can, you know, and I'm a slow writer, so I appreciate everybody and everything you've said. I'm going to go back and try to catch up. Thank you so much.

You're very welcome.

It means a lot to have, like, the focus to be able to do what I need to do.

Absolutely. I want you to find the place inside yourself that loves you and would protect you the way you would protect your own most beloved child. To have total love and to be a mommy tiger with yourself. That's what you need. You are fierce, lady. I could see it in you. You. I wouldn't want to mess with you. You've got that thing, and I want you to fight for your own heart. We understand each other?

Yes, sir.

Absolutely. Excellent. All right, Otis. Johnson.

Hey.

You know, I just soaked up the last advice because I've got pretty much the same story. I got injured, it disrupted my finances. Everything was nuts. And the only thing I can add to that, I mean, I absorbed just about everything you said to her, and that's what I've started to get together. You've been talking about that and using some of your time to, you know, focus on income. So I'm just trying to think of ways to make money while I'm on my ass. So other than that, I guess I'm just gonna brag. I'm in story four week, what is it? Nine. And kicking butt at that. And I will say that that the writing and everything and the machine, as you put it, is keeping me positive and keeping me afloat and keeping my brain sharp and has me looking for those opportunities you were talking about.

Great. Let's talk just a little bit about money, because money keeps coming up. It's an important subject. The meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. The meaning of existence is to move away from pain. So we have this thing that it's, you know, move away from pain, embrace joy, give service. A job is generally to avoid pain, got to pay those bills. A career should be to find something that you're joyful about. I want to spend all my time writing or I want to spend all my time serving people as a pediatric something or other. I want to clean the streets because it makes the world a better, prettier place. The career is the thing. I could spend my whole life doing this. A job is, I'm going to do this as long as I need to. So it's moving from that to this, and then after that, it's more and more service. It's just, how do I give to the world? What I see is the number of people who have negative beliefs around money. You can't. It takes money to make money. Rich people are hurting the world. You know, all millionaires or billionaires or whatever are evil, grasping. When you have negative attitudes like that, you think you're going to make money. You think you're going to make money and have fun with it. What I would suggest to you, and this is going to be tough, you look at money as a measure of how much service you're giving to the world and how much respect the world has for you and how much respect you have for yourself. That if you are doing service to the world, but you don't have respect for yourself, it is an unfortunate truth that the world Will take all that service and give you nothing. It's so nice that you serve me. Go away. So you have to be capable not only of finding something, you know? 10 honor Eve Tananari, would you comment about what your mom did with you and your sisters in terms of finding. Sometimes she's there and sometimes she wanders off, because this is my thing and she gets into it. But you told me a story about your mom that was just brilliant. Oh, your sound is still cutting out. Okay, we're going to have to work on that before your next class. Yeah, I think that. I think that. I think it might be a microphone. So we will take a look at that. But what happened is her mom would show the girls lots of different things, would give them lots of different opportunities, and would watch and see what was their natural interest. And whatever the natural interest was, she would get behind that and push that. So your first task is to make enough money to stay out of pain. That gives you the space to be able to say, well, what do I want to do? What is the thing that calls to my heart the most? You know, with me, there was a point at which I realized that writing was the thing that was closer to my heart than anything else. That, in essence, I would rather fail at writing than succeed at anything else. Then it was just a matter of, how do I do this? Because I didn't know any writers. I certainly didn't know any writers of my ethnicity, and certainly no science fiction writers. And I could walk into a science fiction bookstore and see thousands of titles and nothing that looked like me on the covers. So I had no reason to think I could do it. All I knew was that this was what was closest to my heart. This was closer to being who it is that I am than anything else. So I had to figure it out. And what I can say is that, once again, if I was to point at any single book that seemed to me to have more reality about what it takes to make money, it's Think and Grow Rich. That book has worked for 100 years. And if you haven't read that book 10 times, you haven't read it. So that is the first assignment I would give to anybody who is trying to increase their income in a way that is ethical and in alignment with their heart, Read Think and Grow Rich again and again and again. I cannot overemphasize. That was my mom. My mom. You know, I think a lot of us could say this. She gave everything to us, more than she could afford to give, really. She burned Herself out trying to give to her children. And we didn't have money. We had, you know, money problems and food insecurity and there was no father in the home. But she would play audio tapes. It was really more play records of various success things and compared to religion and comparative philosophy. She got me started on that and Think Grow Rich and the Strangest Secret in Psycho Cybernetics and the Golden Key and Message to Garcia and Acres of Diamonds and on and on and on. And she would play these things until I thought I was going out of my mind. But they began to sink in. That's right. OG Mandino, the greatest salesman in the world. That's right. In order to make money, you're going to need to develop a product or service that you can measure in some way as being in the top 20% of your field. That that's what you're aiming at, getting into the top 20% of your field. So let's say as a writer, you can sell stories. I think almost anybody can do that. Can you sell enough stories to make a living? Very few people can do that. Usually have to do books. So if you're starting to sell stories, you can get to books and you can make a living doing that. If you write like a fiend and you are very careful with your marketing. So whatever you make money doing, sales and marketing is going to factor in. And if you find yourself having a hard time studying sales and marketing, that tells you that you have an emotional thing. If marketing is just determining what the value of your product or service is and finding the market that needs it, sales is convincing that market to give you their money. Their money will do more for them in your pocket than in theirs. And they should give you their money right now in exchange for your product or service. Those two things, manufacturing something or developing a skill that is good enough that you can look at somebody and say, this is why you should do business with me. You send a story into a magazine and your first paragraph is so strong that what you're basically saying to the editor is, this is why you should publish my story and not the other 20 stories that you're going to read today. You are specifically creating a product or service constantly getting better. But then that's the art of it or the craft of it. The money of it is the marketing and sales. You have to look at the marketing sales. And if you find yourself having a hard time with that, then you know that the problem is emotional. And furthermore, you know that if you can solve that, you're probably going to move ahead rapidly because you're the one who's been holding you back. Now, how do you do that? I would say that the first thing you do is write down all your attitudes about money and be honest about it. What is the thing? If you were not raised in a family with money that was a happy family, chances are very good you have some negative attitudes about money. If you were raised in a wealthy family or well to do family that was miserable, you might say, well, you know, they had money but they were miserable. So I want to be happy, so I can't have money. If you were raised in a broke family and it was happy, you might very well think, well, money obviously can't come from working hard and being good because my parents were good and my parents were broke. So obviously money is not about being good. It's not about working hard. It's something else. And you will seek ways to blame your individual issues on group stuff. It's race, it's gender, it's my age, it's this. It's this. So the magic formula asks you to find a map or model, take daily actions, control your emotions to the positive, have a clear goal, how much money you want to make and when you want to get it, and then to be sure that the things you have to do to succeed in your plans will make you the person you wanted to be anyway. It is an expression of the person that you are so you're never changing yourself in a negative way. You can express yourself more deeply. Who are you really? If there's a part of you that says, I'm an artist and I want to share my art with the world? There are thousands of successful artists. Study them. What are they doing that you have refused to do? What are they doing that you have not wanted to do, that you're embarrassed to do, that you're too scared to do? You have, if I remember correctly, a wonderful partner, someone who believes in you. Is that accurate?

That's accurate. She's right here.

Yep, that's right. And because of that, you guys are a team. This stuff sitting down at your kitchen table and saying, how much money do we need? What is it that you are willing to exchange for that money? What is it that you're willing to commit to, to become so good that people cannot deny you? And if they're denying you, how can you get better at influencing people? That's a science in itself. Marketing is a science. Sales is a science. Networking is a science. Network. Right here, there are people right here in chat who have the answers that you need. Somebody right here on this call right now, if you can ask the right question, has the answer you're looking for. That should make you. That should piss you off. It should piss you off. But it should also give you a sense of wonder. You know, that somebody knows exactly the person you would need to talk to in order to solve your problem within. You know, if the average person knows 600 people or whatever it is, then you're never more than one or maybe two, you know, steps away from the resources that you need. If you are clear on what you want. And every day you're taking action, you're asking a different person. This is what I want to accomplish. Do you know how to do this? Do you know somebody who knows how to do this? Thank you. Move on to the next person. This is what I want to accomplish. Do you know how to do this? Do you know somebody who knows how to do this? Yes. No. Thank you. And every. If you did that every day, I would bet you that within 30 days you would be hooked up to somebody who has answers that you're looking for. Now it's just a matter of doing the damn work. Clear map. A model. Daily action. Gratitude. Which gives you the faith.

Right?

Clear goal. And you have to know that you are that bitch. You can do this. You can do this. Absolutely. Okay. Get mad and also have faith. Does that make sense?

It makes sense.

All right. You take care, buddy. Phyllis.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much. I haven't been here in a while.

We have missed you.

Well, thank you. I missed you too. It's been a little crazy.

That's life.

I just wanted. I wanted to say that there's also, for inspiration, there's Florence Coal shins Game of Life and How to play it.

Okay.

And books. Your word is your wand.

Which is amazing that you mentioned. Would you tell us something from that book? You know, contribute something to the day to day. Give us a piece of wisdom that you got from that book.

Well, she opens the book by saying that if you're stressing and striving, it's because you don't know how to play the game. Because life is a game and you have to know how to play it. And basically she breaks down the. The way we attract what we want in our lives. And she talks about a conscious mind, a subconscious and a superconscious mind. And she says that the subconscious mind is the magnet. It's the machine. It's the piece that's running our body, getting our hearts beat and getting that blood going through the body. It's the part of the mind that will, when you touch something hot, will automatically recoil from that to save your life. That's the subconscious mind, but it's also the mind that functions as a magnet. And whatever you think, that's what you will attract. And the more you think about negativity or loss or whatever, you're going to be attracting more and more of that. And so what you need to do is to let that superconscious mind, it's the brilliant mind that you wake up in the morning with all these wonderful ideas about what you're going to do and how you're going to create. And then the conscious mind, which is the mind that's from Missouri, says, ah, you can't do that. Nah, that's impossible. And it shuts you down. The superconscious mind is the. Is the. The part of the brain that comes up with all the brilliance. The conscious mind only believes what it sees. The subconscious mind will faithfully carry out what it is that you want. If you focus on it long enough and you say your affirmations. Shall I go on?

No, because what I would like you to do is to put the name of that book in chat to allow people who vibed with what you just said to find that book and read it. That sounds kind of book. That would absolutely be a contribution to this, to this group that people should take a look. I give you a few pieces, but after that, you have to customize it by knowing what your specific needs are and what speaks to you. You need to do your own research. So that sounds wonderful. It sounds wonderful. Okay, thank you.

It was, it was published in 1941 and she wrote three other books behind it. And someone put all the books together. So if you go on Amazon, you can find Florence Scoble Shin with all four books together.

Okay, so this is. Yeah, put it, put it in there. What I would say to that is that whatever principles are in there, it sounds like creating affirmations that address those principles. And then putting that into your morning ritual would be perfect. The morning ritual takes it out of the conceptual into the physical. So if you're doing something, if one of your goals was to walk two miles every day and you did your morning ritual while you were walking, the conscious mind, if you say every day and everywhere I'm getting better and better, the conscious mind says, no, you're not. That's nonsense. That's crap. But here's the thing that's interesting. If you if one of your goals was to walk two miles, and you're walking two miles and your brain says, you know, every day and everywhere, I'm getting better and better. No, you're not. What happens is you're doing the thing that's getting better and your mind is saying no for the first time. For a lot of people, they have a direct experience that their mind lies to them. Because you are walking, that is getting better, and your mind is saying no. You start being able to ask yourself, where else has my mind lied to me? What other lies has my mind told to me? That you are realizing you're not the voices in your head, you're the one listening to the voices. And as soon as you get that, you get to separate yourself from the abusive voices, the limiting voices, the fearful voices, the oppressive voices. You get to separate yourself from that and start asking yourself, who am I? And you ask that question long enough and you will come to. You are infinite potential. You're a walking stem cell. You could be anything. You could do anything, have anything. And your primary goal, move away from pain. So you look at the areas in which you're in pain and say, these are the things I'm going to deal with. Embrace joy, and then share with the world to give service and help transform the world. Because the only things we get to keep are the things we give away, the only things we hold onto.

On that note, I just want. One of the things she talks about is stepping out on faith. And if you. You want money, you need money. Well, there's an affirmation for that which is very powerful. I want nothing, I need nothing. Because I possess faith. And by possessing faith, I have everything. God is my supply. My supply is endless. Money needs me. Money. I do not need you. You need me. You are useless until and unless I use you. You need me. You will come to me so that I may help you step out on faith. If you have a dollar in your pocket, give away 10 cents. That's at 10% tithing. Just give it away. Never mind who you give it to, just give it away. It's about making your deposit in the universal bank. And when you least expect it, you shall reap. I put it in there.

Please do, because I believe in what you're saying. The only thing I want to be sure that people are doing is. Is taking action to have faith. To believe that if. If we hold it in our hearts and our minds, it will come to us is true. If we're also swimming toward the shore, you're going to get there and the tide will be. A dolphin can come up underneath you and help move you. But you have to do your part. So if you're taking positive action and you're keeping your heart, that's right. Giving to the world. You know, you believe in your own abundance. You are now doing everything you can do. You're being, you know, a cell in the body performs functions and it gets nourished, it gives away and it gets. That's a healthy cell. A cancer cell gives nothing and takes everything. So we want to be healthy cells in the body. Human. We want to be healthy plants in the garden of life. We want to inhale carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen. We want to give back to the world and we want to be aware of how much we already have. Because if you're not grateful for what you already have, you are forgetting so many blessings. If you would miss your eyes if you went blind, why aren't you giving thanks for your eyes today? If you think I don't have anything, but you're on this call. You've got electricity, you got Internet, you speak English. You found your way to this call. Community that is giving to you without asking anything in return except you give honestly of who you are. We all have so many blessings to give thanks for. I have a beautiful family, a fantastic wife who loves me with all her heart. I have a son who loves me and a daughter who is healthy and thriving. There are things that go wrong in my life that's just true. That's just being a human being. But if I ever forget that I am one of the wealthiest human beings who has ever walked on this planet, I have started lying to myself. I am blessed and I want each and every one of you to find the blessings in your life and identify with them at the same time that you're working to improve so that you can uplift yourself and your family and also provide a role model to people around you. There's so much despair, there's so much pain. There's so many people who are hurting who believe that they can't improve without becoming bad people. If you can improve your life and still be a giving, loving human being, you will give inspiration to countless other people you do not know who is watching you, who is wondering how you're going to deal with your challenges. And when you deal with them with faith and power. And you keep being a good person, a loving person. You changed the world, Phyllis. Thank you very much for your contribution today, dear. I can guarantee you that somebody's going to read that book and they're going to change.

I wanted to say one other thing.

Go for it.

Last time here I was talking about some serious tension and conflict in my community and that I had been assaulted by the tenant next door and they were behaving very badly and getting away with it, that my board had sided with them, my homeowners association. Since that time, I have had an opportunity to sit down with our community policing officers and I worked with them, making their flyers and distributing information when I need to for them to hold meetings. And I told them what was going on. And they have given our block special attention. They don't come every week, they don't come every day. But when they come, they issue tickets. And the two characters next door have gotten 12 tickets between them over the last two weeks and things have settled down a great deal.

Blessings. And I'd like you to write that. Would you write that into the chat, the process that you went through to solve your issue or to influence your issue, because there's somebody out there who needs to hear that. Okay. Would you do that for me?

Okay.

Thank you very much. All right. Excellent, excellent, excellent. We are having a great time today. Let's see who else because either volunteer or you will be voluntold. So let's see who has. Angelique M. Davis. Hello, Angelique.

Hi.

It's good to be here.

It's good to see you, dear.

Thank you. And last week was really inspiring and motivating. So thank you. We talked about getting inspiration from people, the map people who've gone before. And I was talking about my work as an academic and I was talking with my friends who's actually a black woman academic at Harvard as well. And just how everything with Dr. Gay and the whole that concerted effort has really impacted us. But thank you. I've been definitely looking at. Well, I'm grateful for this space, looking for elders for me to learn from because the walk is really hard.

Yes.

Right now. And you know, trying to dig deep but knowing that I need to have that connection with. With some older folks who've been through things like this, albeit different, but, you know, made it through.

Well, I am. I am an almost. I'm almost certainly an older folk to you. And I am delighted to speak of that journey. The obvious, the idea that the obstacle is the offer, that whatever stress you have in your life, climbing a mountain isn't about getting to the top of the mountain. It's about finding out who you are because you've given yourself a particular obstacle to overcome. If you choose to walk a path, part of you chose that path because of the obstacles that were upon it, because of what you knew you would have to do and be in order to succeed in that path. So it is an honorable thing that you do. The struggle is honorable, the fight is honorable. And what you will learn by walking this path is going to be part of what you have to teach that how to deal with the obstacles, the temptations, the power issues, the people who will try to sabotage you or throw brickbats at you, playing crabs in a basket with you. You are doing things right now that will change the lives of some of your students, because some of your students are going to be looking for exactly what you're looking for. Somebody who was older, who's walking that path with integrity, passion, health, joy, success. So your primary responsibility is to be joyful. Because then you take a look at anything you have to accomplish and you ask that problem solving brain, how can I do this and have fun in the process? How can I do this and have fun in the process? If you do that, it's a different question than the questions that most people ask themselves. So your primary responsibility is to be safe, that you have to be sure that you've got that mommy tiger inside you prepared to protect your little girl. But once you've got that mommy tiger, then you can ask the question, what would make me happy if I'm safe, what would make me happy? And then once you're experiencing joy, you get to ask, how can I share this joy? So that's the process. Take care of the pain. So like, the pain is like a bear, you know, and you're afraid that if I stop running, the bear is going to get me. There's no way to have fun doing that. If you can get clever enough with your running, that the bear is far enough behind you that you can't see the bear anymore. It's there, the bear is always there. But it's on the other side of the horizon. Now you can slow down and enjoy the territory a little bit. You can even stop and pick some flowers. The bear is back there. But you're moving fast enough that the bear is not breathing down your back. And what everyone wants is how can I have health, love and success and also be a good person to be moving towards, you know, to be serving my ancestors as well as my descendants. I never forget that everything I have and everything Tananarive is so committed to her community. She is so committed to giving back. I'm Telling you, the instant somebody talks about setting us up in Hollywood and, you know, how about this show that her first thought is, who can she. Who could she bring into the writers room? You know, who are the young writers that don't have any credits that she could help? And it's like, will you stop giving it away before we've got it? No, she can't. That's who she is. That's part of why she is who she is. She has her pain set up at unconscious competence. Her mom made sure that you're going to get your education. You're going to have a career. Now, given that education, that career, what do you want to do? What she wanted to do was to be a writer, but she could always go back to teaching or doing other things. She. She had the pain taken care of, then joy, then service. So where are you on that continuum?

Yeah.

So I so appreciate you saying this. And I've had a fair group of women, and so one of the women that a dean at Harvard's part of that group. We've been together for, like, 15 years, and we really support each other. And we were talking today about how ties into what you're doing that we're at this stage of like, the late 40s, 50s, where we're now where everyone's looking to us, like, starting, you know, on our campus, and we still. We're like, whoa, what's happening last couple years is we need support from our elders, too, in seeking that out.

That's right.

I do feel like I do a lot of coaching, writing groups, holding space for black women academics. I do a lot of that. But I'm here because I feel like I need it, too, in a different way. Right. And I think one of the things.

How can we serve you? Let me ask a specific question.

Yeah.

Is there some way that I can serve you or that Tananarif can serve you? If she can get her microphone working right, we're going to take care of that, trust me. But how can I serve you?

Yeah, I think, you know, what you've been talking through is really helpful. Often hearing that, I love stories and experiences because I think those really help, you know, resonate. And I think just being at this phase where, like, here, suddenly people are looking to you, and I'm providing leadership on my campus and in higher ed on these things. And at times I'm like, oh, my goodness. And so just thinking through the strategies to also sustain myself, I think I found that I'm not, like, completely unhealthy, but I definitely could be more physically healthy because this, the stress has taken a toll and I find myself as I'm more mindful watching like oh, I say ate that because I was stressed and not necessarily because it's going to serve me to continue this battle right. That I'm in. And I think I'm starting to notice on a daily basis and just I think feeling tired and I'm wondering what type of practices I've been thinking about, like should I do Tai Chi or other things? Okay, so anyway, those are. I was thinking through what you shared.

Okay, so I would suggest the, the best body mind discipline that is available to the general public is not Tai Chi because Tai Chi requires more hands on teaching with a teacher who really holds the fire. You know my, you know I could go to the, you know, the fire dance Tai Chi or year long. Www.firedancetaichi.com I'm very, very proud of that course. But I will tell you honestly, yoga is the best discipline that I know of that is available to the general public. And as long as you follow a few basic rules, it's also very, very safe and it's insanely powerful. In other words, you could just do it lightly. A home practice, 10 to 15 minutes. If you're not doing anything, it's transformative. Just 10 to 15 minutes. And so you can find yoga routines on YouTube, tons of them. But the ideal situation is to have a teacher go to a class at least once a month. But then build a home practice to take care of yourself. If you need something really, really, really basic, look at the five Tibetans. Look at the five Tibetans. It's five movements you do. Each of them between 3 and 21 repetitions takes no more than 12 to 15 minutes at end. The, the higher levels takes no more than three or four minutes when you start. Because you start by doing only three to five repetitions of each of these five movements and then you add no more than one per week as it gets more comfortable for you. So go to YouTube, look up 5 Tibetan rights R I T E S and start today, you know, do the, do the five minute miracle which locks you into your body. You start, you know, breathing and combine that with let's say the five Tibetans. And by the time you get up to being able to do 21 repetitions, which could take as long as you need to take, there's no hurry. There's no hurry. This is about you creating a connection between your breath, mind and body. You have all the time that you need. To do this, there's no, you know, if you do that, by the time you get to 21 repetitions, you're in good shape. There's nobody that can do 21 repetitions of those that, that, that isn't in pretty decent shape. Let's say that you need some help getting there. There are other resources. The if you looked up joint mobility Sonnen, S o n n o n joint mobility Sonnen, you would find a complete course on YouTube taught by the smartest human being I have ever known, who put that intelligence into physical motion, named Scott Sonnen. And he put an entire course in joint health and mobility on YouTube for free. It's just right there. It takes you five minutes. So there are options for you. But the first thing you have to do is make a commitment. Your goal is to be happy, is to be joyful. It's not to drag your ass out of bed so you can pay these lousy bills. No, it's to be joyful, abundant and contributing and a role model. You want to, if you're a teacher, you want to light your students up with the enthusiasm of knowledge, with the idea that we can contribute, the idea we can make this world a better place. You know the teachers who lit you on fire that made you want to be an educator, they had that fire. That's what you've got. It isn't just your intellect. What you have to offer those students goes way beyond that brilliant mind. It's into the heart, the yearning heart and the vibrant body. So if you just make a commitment, if you look at the five minute miracle there magic form, you have a role model. You're taking daily action. You have a clear conviction and it is in alignment with your character. The three centers, body, emotions, mind and the three gates. Is it true? Is it kind, is it useful? If you will pay attention to those four things that than any other principles you have, fantastic. Could be, you know, from religions, philosophies, this, that. But don't miss taking care of you. Don't miss taking care of who you are. What you're giving to your students is not cloves stuck in a ham. It's actually a piece of your body. It's a piece of your psyche. We parents, we teachers know that we're giving our hearts to our students and to our children. So that's what you have to give. And the more honest you are, the more you give of that essence, the more you're going to transform the lives of your students. And if you do that in a way where, you know, like I say, set yourself up so that the more service you give, the more money you make. Now that's really fun. If you were to ask yourself that question, how can I get paid in proportion to my service and have fun in the process? Do you think you could ask yourself that question five times a day for the next year and not come up with an answer? You know that you're smart enough to come up with an answer. You just have to ask yourself that question a thousand times.

Yeah. Well, this is so helpful. I actually do get paid for my service now, which is amazing. I feel like. And have developed, and so that's going great. But I hadn't raised my hand, so I hadn't quite formulated my thoughts. But the thing that I've been struggling with, that you really touched on intuitively, is I, you know, I work out, I do all these things. For years I had a running practice. I'm now seeing arthritis doctors and all these things. And I feel like I need a new. I need a new practice. I'm very like, I have a meditation practice, I have exercise, but I can't do something that sustained me for the last almost 30 years anymore. And so I. That's why I was, like, looking at tai chi or qigong or.

Look, Tai chi is great. Qigong is great. Yoga would be. Would be my, My. My description for you, joint mobility. And the five Tibetans, if you were to do that.

I'll do that. Yeah.

Then every week when you came on, I could ask you a simple question. How many Tibetans are you doing? And I could then diagnose. Knows you from a distance and I could see that we could talk about. Oh, I'm having problems with the second one. Well, this is how you could alter that. This is what you could do. You know, you do this.

Yeah.

I want as much as possible, all I really want is for all of you guys to be joyful in the service. That's what I want. You know, joyfulness, service, and if you will. If you will, serve the others in chat, serve others in this community. You're creating the room for us to serve you. And never stop believing that the joys in your past cannot open into far greater joy in the future that you're not the person you were 20 years ago. Do not grieve that. That's the cost of surviving. I can no longer do the things I did when I was 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. I know I can still do most of the things I did when I was 50. There are things that are inevitable about that. And so one of our tasks is to find a way to fall in love with ourselves every day. I mean, just fall in love with it. It's like, you know, tell me, isn't Angelique a great person? If you weren't Angelique, wouldn't you want to be? Wouldn't you want to be your friend? I mean, seriously. I mean, I think everybody should feel just delighted with themselves in that sense. You know, I'm delighted with Steve Barnes. If I was a guy and I wasn't Steve Barnes, I'd want to be. And if I was a woman, I'd want to get with me. I mean, it's that sense of feeling that you are delicious, that you are wonderful, and that you can't wait to experience the deliciousness and the wonder of all these other people around you and share with them and we can all grow together that sense of fun. Life is hard. We have to work hard every day. So if that's the truth, if you have a task that is hard, the way I tell my son is either get out of it or get into it. One or the other. Do not struggle your way through something. Either avoid it or find a way to have fun with it.

It.

Okay. I think you have a huge amount to contribute and I anticipate hearing more about your contributions in the future.

Thank you so much.

You're very welcome. So let's see, let's remove these pins and let's see who else is going to raise their hand before I jump on them. Come on. Somebody's flinching. Somebody's hoping that I'm not going to notice them. Morgan Lau. Who's Morgan Lau? Morgan, can you unmute yourself? Hello. Have you got a camera for me?

I am.

Hopefully. Why the. Too loud? I have a little one.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with a little one. That just gives you more motivations to be wonderful. So how are you today? How can we serve you, Morgan? I'm okay.

Because like I said, I have my 3 year old, so I've just been.

Okay, you can turn your camera off because you've got some bandwidth issues.

Yeah, I'm keeping, I'm keeping my little one distracted. So that's the bandwidth issue.

That's psychological.

But no, I, I, I feel pretty good. Like I just. Is this, is it still not working?

No, you're fine. You're fine, dear.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, they are my motivation. I've been working on, like, children's books and illustration and just trying to stay motivated and I Hear everyone talking about money. And I'm a stay at home mom, and I think about it a lot. I think about my contributions at home a lot.

So let me ask you a question.

I know I'm doing enough.

So you. You're saying that your problem is being motivated, staying motivated.

That was Tom.

No, it's not.

Yeah, I feel motivated. I just. I would love to translate that into money at some point.

Okay. So your problem is not motivation. You get your work done. So do you have a model.

Yeah.

Of the writers who can make money doing what it is that you want to do? Because if you do, then, you know, and you make sure that you're having fun along the way, then that's good. But if you have a real need to make money, like more rapidly, then you might want to split that. That you say you're going to be the best writer you can be and you're going to make good money, and eventually you want those things to come together, but they might not come together immediately. So you might have to say, okay, how am I going to make the money to support this thing I love?

Right.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say it's rapid.

Huh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not immediate. I was saying it's not immediate because I do have, you know, a partner who's very supportive, thankfully. Sometimes I'm surprised by his support. Support. But. But, yeah, eventually.

Yeah.

I would like to turn this into less of a hobby and more of a business, but I know it may take time.

Well, here. Well, one of the things I want you to do is make sure that you come to our screenwriting workshop. You know, that we. It's going to be on the 17th of February, and we have a sliding scale. You know, it's like. Yeah, we charge, you know, that's $197 if you can pay the full price. But the truth is, we don't keep anybody out. The truth is that you can pay us anything. And we'll let you in, because what we want is to have the space within which we can discuss what we've learned about making a living with our writing, especially, you know, in Hollywood. But the. But the basic structures of what we're teaching apply to all forms of writing. So www.screenwritingwebinar.com is just for people like you. And do not let money stop you.

You.

We can always work out the money. If you can be there for the time, I promise you can work out the money no matter how tight you are. I promise that that is the truth. Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

No problem.

We appreciate you. We love writers. We love writers. Let me just kind of test this for a second. Tanario, you still is your. Have you figured anything out, hon? Yeah, it's. It's still messing up. Still messing up. So what we will do is right after this is over, you can try this with my microphone and see whether or not it's a microphone cable issue. We will. We'll figure it out. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's always so nice to see you and we can't. We can't do it today. Okay, so let's see. Alexander Adams.

I've been busy chatting on the chat this whole time, trying to write and listen at the same time.

Fantastic. Yeah. Every.

Everyone I just wrote. Thank you. I've really appreciating everybody kind of reaching out and, and helping out. Yeah, this basically, it's. I. It's just. I agree with everything in. And I. I kind of follow the M, the A, the G, and the I. It's the C. I realized it was the C that I was having some issues with in Magic.

Yeah. I would say that for a lot of us, identity, who are we? Is a very, very important subject. And you, my friend, have had explorations in that arena that are extraordinary, and I think that you have that. The obstacle in that sense is the offer that if you can get down to that core question, who am I? You've looked for answers that are deeper than most of us go, and therefore you have wealth to offer us. And don't be afraid of looking directly into the eyes of the Gorgon. Okay. You know, some of us fight our. Some of us get eaten by our dragons, some of us slay our dragons. But the best of us make our dragons pets.

See, I, I stumbled while we were doing all this talking and chatting and I was processing. And the thing about money, for me, I think I was, I. I get up to that place where I get to the point of, okay, I'm ready to embrace this for myself, and I'm ready to embrace my, My value as a human being and, and, and attach, you know, some sort of resemblance of that reflection of that value in finances. But I, I've. I ran up against a problem that I, I've. I've hadn't really looked at because I'm still not processing all the way through this. My last marriage was terrible, really terrible. And one of the things that that was. There was my spouse was one of those. That money was her power and, And, and she saw it as a piece of power, and she abused it terribly.

So that means that if money was her power, she would not want you to have your own money, right?

No, she didn't. I didn't. I didn't have any money. She ran everything, and so she.

She would literally sabotage your efforts to move forward. So the question I would have is you chose her. Yeah, I did. She was an ally to some part of you that's trying to hold you back. What is that part? What's going on inside you? Why aren't all your dogs pulling the sled in the same direction? Where are they trying to go? Whatever it is that is going on inside you, those parts of you are trying to serve you. They're trying to protect you, trying to help you. But you have to have all that, all the huskies pulling the sled in the same direction, or you will never get to know.

You will.

You will die in a. In a blizzard if all your dogs aren't pulling in the same direction. So you need to figure out what's going on, and you will have. It's going to be a more complex issue than it is for some others. Yeah. The thing that I'm certain of is you can win this. You could do this, you know, if you set yourself a challenge, you can do this. I have faith in you. Do you have faith in yourself?

I do. I do.

All right.

All right. So your five. Your five breaths, you know, your. Your five breathing breaks during each of them. One of the things you need to do is focus on where you want to go in terms of your body, your career, and your relationship. And you have to feel like I am the person who can do this. And as you know what Tananarive and I do, when life throws us something and there's an opportunity and we're not absolutely sure we can do it, we look at each other and we say, we are that bitch. So it's like you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that there's something inside you that can rise to this challenge, that there is no challenge. There's no goal that you can hold in your mind and heart continuously over time unless there is some part of you that can make it happen. There's some way to make this happen, or else you wouldn't want it. Why do you want this thing? It has to be expressive of something inside you. So this is. Your ability to give service to the world is going to be connected to your ability to make more money, because money is going to be related directly to how many people are buying your products or how many people are buying your services and how many people you're supporting. Supporting. It's direct. So by playing small, you're actually limiting the amount of good you can do in the world.

Got it?

Yeah. Okay. So if you can clearly identify where you want to go and clearly identify the kinds of people who could solve the problem, you've got, you know who. Do you know that if you had. You know, if you had five people around. I have about 10 different role models that I give thanks for every day. There's Larry Niven and Steve Muhammad, writing and martial arts, you know, people. A guy named Tim Piering and another teacher, a lady named Dawn Callan and Octavia Butler and William Shakespeare and Chin Man Ching and BKS Iyengar. I will openly and alone. Loud. Give thanks for them in my face, and I will visualize them. If you can build an internal community of role models who, if you had them advising you every day, you would solve any problem you ever had. And then every day, you visualize that. You study them, you read interviews with them, articles about them. What did they do? What did they do? And you have to choose them because you're looking for ways. If you're part of this community, then you are using these four basics, but you're also adding your own flavor to it. You're putting your own stank on it. You're saying, okay, I'm going to do these things, but I'm also going to do these things over here. Once again, think and grow rich. Fantastic. If money is your issue, you can't do better than reading that book 10 times until your copy is raggedy.

It's already on our Amazon list to purchase as soon as we get off the meeting.

Fantastic. You know, get yourself a Kindle version. They're free PDFs all over the Internet. Yeah, you know, just. Just get into it. Get into it. Do this today and get started today. You understand? You do that. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. You take one step in that direction today, and by tonight, you'll be thinking. You'll be. You'll feel good about yourself. Then just take one more step tomorrow or you notice. Damn it. I didn't take a step. What did I do? How did I sabotage myself? Write down what you did to sabotage yourself. Be a scientist. Be dispassionate. Set a goal. And look at the way you stop yourself from doing it. Oh, I stopped myself by getting busy. I stopped myself by feeling guilty. I stopped myself by being Tired. It's like if you will write down what you use to stop yourself about the time that the patterns begin to repeat, repeat, your unconscious mind, which has been trying to stop you, will start running out of ways to stop you because you are flipping over those flat rocks and seeing what's underneath it. What your mind wants is to sabotage you while you're not watching. Once you start paying attention, it can't do it the same way. So it's like you start noticing. You know something? I sabotage myself because I. I keep thinking I need to clean my desk before I write. Because I think this. I think this.

How?

Figure out your recipe for successfully stopping yourself. See, you're already a success. The fact that somebody as talented as you and you are stupendously talented is not rich. Means you have had your brakes on your whole life. All you have to do is figure out how to take the brakes off. So you use the safety rails of the three gates and the three centers so that you can't hurt yourself and you can't be an asshole, but you can let your brakes off. And you want that attitude of, I will do whatever it takes to move away from pain, embrace joy, and give service. Do that. Serve your community. Alexander, there are people you can save lives. And you damn well know I'm right about this. There are people who are dealing with some of the issues that you dealt with in your life who are thinking of destroying themselves. You embrace joy and give service. You will save lives. And now you are giving the gift that you were born to give. Now you will understand why you were given the challenges you were given. And you will thank goodness and thank the universe. Thank you, God, for another opportunity to find out who I am. I am strong enough to carry this weight. And the things I learn in solving this, I will use to save other lives. If that's your commitment, we will be here for you every week. Fair enough.

Fair enough.

All right. Get out of here. Okay. D. I've got time for D today. Hello? D Unmute yourself. D D oh, no. Something terrible has happened to Dee. Oh, well, it's just. There's just a hand. All that's left of Dee is just a hand. Oh, well, we'll try later. Dee Ann o'. Connell.

I was about to say, Dee is.

Probably trying to read messages in the chat and has lost track of where she's at. Yeah, no problem.

Now you can hear her.

But now I can hear. Okay, I've got to go back to.

D. Oh, I'm so sorry.

No, please, no apologies, sweetheart.

This is my first zoom call ever, and I'm on my phone and I think I've got driving mode on.

It's okay. It's okay. I'm so glad to, you know, if you can put on your camera, that's fine. Otherwise, how can we help you today, Dee?

I'm gonna try to put on my camera. I might have to do that next week.

Week.

That's fine.

But I don't think there's anything that you can really help me with today. I'm not looking for anything new. I just wanted to say thank you. I, I, I've been using the magic formula all week just for various things. Not necessarily. Like, I'm not a writer. My husband is a writer, and he's who introduced me to both you and Tanari. And so I've just been using it for just various things. Like I was able to deep clean our apartment this weekend. I mean, this week, because I use.

The magic formula and it works, doesn't it?

It.

I couldn't believe how magic it was, to be honest. And also I've, I had stopped for a while. I run a book club, and I kind of got discouraged because nobody cares. And, But I, the book club that I, that I run, I, it's, it's for, it's to, to make complicated, like theoretical reads more accessible to the everyday person. And I feel that, I feel that sometimes marginalized women and just people in general are oftentimes just kind of. They're just statistics without actually being talk, Talking to the people. And the people who need stuff don't get it because they're not in the academic world, if that makes sense.

Yes, it does.

And it's, it's kind of a lonely place because nobody cares. Like, in my circle, I haven't found the people yet who want me to break down. Horton, or want to. I shouldn't say me to break down. I'm not that smart. But who want to have a look at Hortense Spillers and, and, you know, really dissect that and really apply it.

To our everyday lives.

And let me ask you a question. Do you have a blog? Okay, so what you want to do, one, one possible thing to do is get a blog, Facebook page, you know, whatever it is, Start post, start writing analyses every week, write an analysis of a different book, doing the thing that you do. Put it out there, and then make sure that you have a comments section and allow people to have comments. Start getting into conversations with people and then from the people who find your site. Maybe you could post articles on Medium, on Facebook, on a blog site, Put your thoughts out there. Now you're putting it out into the world, and that part of you that wants to share is being satisfied. You will start finding people who are attracted to the kinds of things you say. And out of those people, you invite them to come to a Zoom meeting where you can talk about this stuff more intimately. But the important thing is that you have a chance to express yourself and to feel that you are contributing to the world. I don't want you feeling frustrated because you can't get people to do. Because you can't do it one way. There are lots of ways to skin a cat. Lots of different things to do. I have tried dozens of different ways of expressing the, the core things that I'm. That I'm teaching here. And I don't let myself get disappointed. If I let myself get disappointed, then I'm forgetting that if I can help one person, just one person, I've earned my heir. So look, to be honest, to get better at what it is that you're doing, put it out there into the universe and I can guarantee you that you'll help more than one person. And if you've helped one person, that's enough. That's enough.

Okay.

Okay.

You have believe you have something of value. Believe it.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

You betcha. You betcha. Okay, we have time for maybe one more person, one more question, something like that. Before Tananarive and I get into our day, I think we're going to catch. Have a date night. Or maybe we're going to go to a black horror exhibit in Pasadena. Date night sounds great. I mean, I would love that. We're still. We're doing our second 90 day love feast. And I really find that putting her above me is, is one of the best things that I've ever done. Not just for her or for us, but for myself. To know that my heart is safe in the hands of a woman who is as competent and capable and beautiful and powerful as Tananariv. We all need to feel like there's a place we can rest. And the primary thing that I have to do is feel that I'm safe within my own heart. If I'm safe within my own heart, then I can give myself away. And if Tananarive knows that she is safe with me, then she is safe giving herself away to me. We all need a circle of people that we can feel that way about. And I want this meeting on Saturday to be a place where all of you feel that you are safe to come here, to show who you are, to express what you're really feeling, and that you will never be mocked. You will always be supporting that. We know that what you seek is to be joyful and of service and to get out of pain. And we will function to do that every week. And if you have any comments, questions or requests PM us, send me a message. Let me know if there's anything that I can do, anything you want to hear, any way that I can serve you. This is what we're here for. And for nothing else. Unmute yourselves. Everybody say goodbye today.

Thanks for the energy.

Thank you so much.

That's so great. I love all you guys. I can't wait. Share, you know, share the links with other people, you know, if you'd like this group to grow. Otherwise, I'm just delighted that each and every one of you is here. I will always love you. I will always take the best care I can of you. And I would like to end this, as I always do, with the Sanskrit expression that says that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Namaste. Take care. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye. Thank you.

Thank you.