G is for Gratitude

Ship. Yeah, Steve Barnes here with morning mastery and just having my morning cup of tea. And talking about the path of mastering your life once again, name is Stephen Barnes. Created the Life Writing and Fire Dance technologies. The acronym MaGIC is my version of an older set of ideas about what it takes to get in the game. You know, the idea of improving 1% per week, moving down the road to mastery. If you're born in a hole, you've dug yourself in a hole, then you can move forward faster by putting in an hour. You know this. An hour a week will get you to 1%. An hour a day, I think, gets you to that 1% per day. And that means this sort of thing, the listening to things like what it is that I'm saying here. But remember that you also need to go out and find other people who are models for what you're trying to accomplish that are walking the path that you feel like you can walk. So don't. I'm going to give you the very best stuff that I can, but you can't just rely on me. You got to go out and do your research. So the magic formula is map or model daily action. A gratitude, intention, goal setting and conviction. Clarity, character. The feeling that what it is that you're doing is in alignment with your being, your values. If you don't feel that what you're doing, that the path to success is one that takes you closer to being in alignment with your values, you need to either find a new path or a new goal. I mean, if nobody has ever accomplished your goal, behaving in an ethical, healthy fashion, that's. That's something I would look at very carefully. So today, you know, what I like to do is to go over what's going on in my life and how I'm specifically using these things. My wife reminded me that for the last three weeks, almost, you know, really more than a month because of the holidays, I was in critical position for finishing up the Star wars novel at the same time that my time was being siphoned away for family things. But family things aren't secondary to the writing. The writing is secondary to family things. In many ways, family is much more primary. So that sense of, oh, my God, I'm panicking. I've got to get this done. But I also need to take time to be with my son and my daughter and my wife and my family and take care of these things. When holidays start becoming irritations, you know that your values are unclear. So what got me through is, first of all, the clarity to Know that what I'm doing does benefit my family. And so if I have to take a little time away in order to do this, that's okay. But also that my family empowers me to do a better job with my writing. So the time that I spent relaxing with my family is actually contributing to my ability to feel the humanity in my characters, to find the energy to do the things that I need to do. It's all good, in other words. So yesterday I had a conversation about rpm, the RPM system, the rapid planning method, results driven purpose, you know, purpose oriented, massive action plan. And the conversation was with my son Jason. And the conversation had to do with motivations for going to school, for going to his college classes. Right now he's motivated primarily by seeking to avoid pain. In other words, there are negative consequences if he does not get up, does not go, does not perform. And that will never get him the results that he wants. Never. He's got to find a way to connect with the things that he has to do and be grateful for them to find a way to connect via joy. Gratitude, in other words. Gratitude is the antidote for fear, for anxiety, for resentment, for stress. It's very difficult to feel grateful and angry at the same time, or pensive or, you know, anxious. So what I had to do is every single day, I would go through, first of all, the first thing that you do, if this is going to make sense to you, you have to breathe. And I mean every hour, 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing, at least five times a day. If you're not doing that, nothing I'm saying is going to make much sense to you. You do that and you're in the game and you can start, you know, making faster progress if you want to. The that's the most basic thing that I do. Then there's the morning ritual, which is doing fire dance Tai Chi. Www.firedancetaichi.com I'll do Tai chi while I am reciting affirmations and while I am envisioning my role models and while I am thinking about the things that I am grateful for. This locks it into my body. And all I have to do if I'm having a bad day is go deeper into my stance or tense a little bit or raise my voice, change my posture, get into a place of feeling confident for at least the 20 minutes that I'm doing Tai Chi, the 10 to 20 minutes I'm doing Tai chi, for that period of time, I am moving and thinking and talking and projecting myself like somebody who feels confident in the day. And believe me, there were times when I was not confident. There were times that I was terrified, because the way that I wrote this book is dragging it up from my unconscious mind unfiltered. So there was just, like, chunks of stuff that I had to trust that my unconscious mind knew how it all fit together. That's a matter of getting your unconscious mind the skills that it needs, and unconscious competence that you can trust it to do that. That's another subject for another day. And if you're interested in applying these techniques to writing, go to www.screenwritingwebinar.com. we're going to be doing a workshop on February 17th. So this is very important. If you do things only to avoid pain, then you're going to grind yourself out. Life is more than that. And you'll notice that the instant you stop paying attention, you'll snap right back to the old behavior patterns. You know, you can always tell when people don't want to do something because they'll only do it when their attention is on it or if you're bugging them about it. And they'll do the best job they can, but as soon as you take your attention off, they'll snap right back to their old behavior patterns. If you want to actually change, you need to literally have the new behaviors that unconscious competence. Every day you do different things, and it can take. When I say this, some of you guys are beating yourself up, thinking, oh, Steve does this automatically. Steve is so great at this. Steve just popped out of the womb. Knowing how to do this stuff now took me years, decades to get to the point where I had the clarity to be able to do these things. And then it takes time to instill the behavior patterns. I mean, every day, working at it, writing things out, visualizing, moving, thinking, researching. Because this is important to me. So I will spend an hour every day going over this stuff and researching the best minds I can find on the question of how do human beings perform, because even I'm a writer, martial artist, and husband, father in each of those areas, performance is critical. So how do I use the maximum amount of what it is that I have to offer the world? It isn't a matter of being better than somebody else. It isn't even a matter of being better than I was yesterday. Except I want to use a bigger percentage of who and what it is I am. That's it. So even if you think, oh, you know, you're older than you used to be, so you have less and so you have to give up. No, no, no, no, no. My game is not outperforming who I was yesterday. My game is using a bigger percentage of what I have than I did yesterday. And I can get better and better and better at that right up to the last breath I take in this world. And a major aspect of that is to be grateful, to find ways to be grateful for the work you have to do, for the tasks you have to, rather than saying, oh, God, I got to do this again. It's thank you for giving me another opportunity to do this thing that takes care of my family or finishes this book or fulfills my dreams or takes care of, you know, helps me pay my rent. You find a way to be grateful for what you have to do. If you can't be grateful for what you have to do, do something else. I mean, don't keep going to a job if you're not grateful. To be there is the way this would play out in any job. If you have to be there, there must be external pressure that keeps you there, in which case it would feel painful. If you lost that job, then you should be grateful to have it, even if it's a bad job around bad people and your attitude. Koichi Toha, in his book Ki talks about how in life, you know, aikido sends their energy outwards into a situation. And they do use a metaphor of a stream running into a cesspool, that as long as the water from the stream is flowing outwards, the cesspool can't back up into the stream. Okay? So the way that you can interact with a cesspool without the cesspool getting into you is to constantly keep your energy flowing outwards. The positive energy, that sense of optimism, that sense of energy, okay, you should fight every day. You should find some way to get your energy up. First thing that you do, don't even bother engaging with your life until you've got your energy up. And, you know, should you have some coffee? Caffeine is pretty decent, nootropic. I mean, I like caffeine in balance with other things. So you want to say the proof is in the pudding. What makes you feel best? Remember that the purpose of life is to be joyful and of service. So if the things you're doing make you joyful long term so that you can be of greater service to your community, you're on the right path. And it has to start with being of service to yourself, which means gratitude means moving away from pain towards pleasure. When you aren't Clear on how what you're doing brings joy into your life or helps you move away from pain. You're in a swamp. Once you understand. I do this to move away from that pain and towards this joy, away from fear and toward love. As soon as you've got that clicked in, you get to make different choices. Choices with greater clarity. To be more efficient and effective about escaping pain or fear and more efficient and effective about increasing joy and ultimately service every day, if you will do this. And like we talked about the five minute miracle, you know, breathing for 60 seconds, five, at least five times a day. If every time you did that, you envisioned something that you're grateful for, someone that you love. The last time you got hugged, last time you got thoroughly kissed, you know, the last time that, that finishing a project, getting a check, watching the sunset, something positive. Every time you take that breathing break, you deliberately access the positive. Boys and girls. I could think about stuff that happened in kindergarten and still be embarrassed about it. Tried to kiss a little girl and she slapped me. Probably deserved it. I could feel as bad about that as I want to, or I could remember something good. My mom's cooking corn muffins. A time that I ran a race and did well. A time that my sister taught me to read the Five Chinese Brothers, which was the first book I ever read. I can focus on something positive because it's a lot like those old time jukeboxes where you have all these records and you push a number and a record comes up and it plays. Your memories are the same way. If you will deliberately trigger a positive memory every time you're taking one of your breathing breaks. People who I love people. If you can feel gratitude for the past, it's easy to have faith in the future. Let me say that again. If you can feel gratitude for the past, it's easy to have faith in the future. When you're grateful for the past and have faith in the future, the work that you're doing is just chop wood, carry water. It's just, this is the work I have to do today. No resentments. In fact, you can feel grateful that you have a body that is strong enough to carry that water to chop that wood. Every morning, and I mean every morning, six days a week. When I'm doing Tai Chi, one of the things that I chant is, I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body and mind. You know, you won't have it Forever. Why? And the hell aren't you grateful for it now? If you wear thick glasses, it's still better than being blind. If you're blind, at least you got your ears. Find the things you can be grateful for. Leverage that into feeling. Hope for the world. Hope for yourself. Hope that today could be a special day. As soon as you stop feeling that today could be better than yesterday, you're on a death spot spiral. You really are. We all know people that get into that, and the best thing we can often do is love them. Give them the time that they need to recover and make sure that you are connecting to them, that they know that you love them, they know that you see them and you continue to live your life with joy without rubbing their noses in it. Just living your life with joy and loving them so that when they cycle around and they can finally take a breath and be ready to connect with life again, you're there. You've always been there. You've always been constant. But to do that, you have to move away from pain, away from fear, towards joy and love. And when your cup is filled with joy and love, you will naturally begin to increase your sense of empathy with the people around you. You'll start seeing yourself and other people, and as soon as you do that, you want to be of service to them. This is actually how you can tell, in some ways, people's spiritual progress in certain ways, from certain perspectives. To what degree are they clear about what they're doing in life to move away from pain and. And fear? To what degree are they clear about moving towards joy and love? To what degree have they filled their cup with joy, love, so that they naturally wish to be of service? One sign of people who have not evolved in that way is that they look at people who are committed to being of service and they cannot believe. They cannot believe it. You have to be playing a game, you have to be conning people, you have to be lying, because what you are does not fit their view of what the world is because they are dealing with so much pain and they have dealt with so much fear and they're still trapped in it, often disguised as anger. For them to give that up, they would have to give up some aspect of the way they believe the world is. They think that it keeps them safe to be closed up. That's it. Mo Barnes. And I'm grateful for coming out of 13 days in the hospital. That's right. There you go. We love you too, Mo. Gratitude is the antidote for fear and stress and anxiety. And resentment. Find the gratitude in your life. And for the moments, that moment that your energy is flowing outwards, whatever cesspool is flowing into cannot back up into you. And the truth is that if you can actually make contact with that loving place inside yourself, you will outlast the negative people. I used to have a lot of negative people on my side, people who had challenged me on everything that I said and just that's wrong. And you're trying to con people and this and this and this. You know something? They're all gone. And I'm still here. And I wish them well in their journey and I will see some of them again someday. But I'm not changing because I can see where my feet need to go. I mean, it's not that there's anything unusual about me, but there's something very unusual about the path, you know, the Eightfold path of right action. There is a cause for suffering, as said in the four noble Truths. That that cause is attachment. There is a way to sever that attachment, and that way is the Eightfold path. And that path of right action, right thought and so forth and so on is a more complex and thorough version in many ways of the three gates. Is it asking yourself, is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful? To the degree that these things overlap, what the three gates are is a path out of suffering as a path to be attached to the path, the process, not the results, not the expectations. You simply do what you have to do. Every day, Chop would carry water. And one of the most important things you can do is to continually reconnect with a sense of gratitude and joy. Remember, gratitude is the antidote for fear. And anxiety and anger. Let's see, the nail that sticks out is hammered down. No, not if the nail is sharp. You know that people will try to hammer you down. So you need to associate with different people. And you need to be sharper. I mean, first connect with your survival drive. Let me say that again. First connect with your survival drive. Then open your heart. The people open their hearts without being connected to their survival drive. Get savaged and they think that the world is a terrible place. No, it's not a terrible place. You just weren't good at protecting yourself. That's the adult part of you, the warrior part of you. And you need to connect with it. Unless you are being protected by your parents or protected by someone who does have that drive. It's one of the things that I say. Either you will have a vision of what you want to do with your Life and a path and a plan to get there, or you're going to end up working for someone who does. Either you will develop the part of yourself that will bear its teeth and say no more and protect yourself, or you had better find somebody to protect you. And plenty of people do that. They want to stay in their yin, so they have to find somebody who's got that yang. And sometimes that's artists who want to stay in the child self. So they need to, you know, their husband or wife is the one who takes care of business. If they don't have that, then they stay in their child self and they have an art, they have a manager or an agent, somebody to be in that adult self while you stay in the child self and each side screams at the other. You have the first thing. Breathe and commit to being willing to fight to the death to protect that little kid inside you. If you don't do that, you're going to get chewed up and spit out. Life is absolutely going to savage you. And it's tragic. But you had a choice. You really did. And the choice is to realize that no matter what you do, you're still gonna die. So if you commit to dying your way, living your life in alignment with your values, so that every breath you take, you're becoming more and more purely who you are, if you make that commitment, then the rest of it is finding the resources to do it. And trust me, the abusers and the codependent people in your life will not like this. And they will call you selfish and they will try to manipulate you. But if you keep coming back to taking breaths, and every one of those breaths is connected to your life, connected to your love, you know what the fear is that you've been moving away from? You know what the pain you've been moving away from, and you know what the joy and the love you want to move toward, then the rest is the parent part of you, providing the child part of you with all the resources that it needs to be as healthy as possible. I gotta get to work. You take care. If you'd like to know, you know, visit with me more often. You might want to come to the Saturday meetings. Stevenbarnslist.com and make sure that if you want to apply these things to writing, you come to our writing workshop at screenwritingwebinar. Com. Take care.