Lifewriting Live: Getting Started, Rewriting, and "Luck"

And we are started, I think we are here with life riding live today on the last Sunday in July. I believe this Today is the 25th. Right. And you know, I been trying to make do these more regularly, try to aim it at noon, but today got it at a little after 1 o', clock, 1:07. So I will keep trying to do that. If you have any comments, questions or requests, be sure to either personal message me or put it right here in the comments and I will have a chance to explore, express, explain how the different concepts that I've spoken relate to your concerns. So first of all, I hope everybody's having a great summer. You have like one month of summer almost exactly left here. So I want to make sure that we're accomplishing everything we want to accomplish, largely being dumping stress, getting ready for the school year, which is Jason's last school year. So the question of what does it take to succeed is very, very important to me. One of the things that came up was the question of luck in success. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, luck is important. If you, you can get crushed by bad luck, there's no question. I don't think you can get sustained success with just luck, but you can get the opportunities that lead you to success with just luck. And you certainly get, you know, promotions and things like that and positions because your parents, you know, owned the company. So the, the question of what luck is is tied into what the magic formula was. The magic formula was what I created in response to a book called, let's see, what was it? The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. It was said to be one of the generative root books that created the Secret. And in reading it, I was forced to confront some things about myself that I was poisoning my own chances of success because I was unwilling to be happy in the bad situation because I was afraid of that. If I was happy in the situation, it would let the, you know, let some of the people responsible for the unhappiness off the hook, perhaps. Or I was afraid that if I was unhappy I would lose the motivation that I needed to do change. But it turned out that the unhappiness was one of the things that actually was poisoning me. So for those of you who believe that luck is the primary determinant, I would strongly suggest, and I'd actually be willing to bet somebody 20 bucks against nothing. You don't even have to, you know, you don't even have to give me 20 bucks if I turn out to be right. But I'd Be willing to bet that if you'd follow the magic ritual for a month and keep track of your results. Oh, the name of the book? Amy Pierce asked the name of the book. The name of the book was the Science of Getting Rich, and the author's name is Wallace D. Wattles. W A T T L E S. It's available for free in many sources on the Internet or really, really cheap Kindle copies on Amazon, but you can find free PDFs of it. It's very interesting. And what I boiled it down to is that M A G I C, you need a map or model of what it is you're trying to accomplish. You need to be taking daily actions. You need to have a sense of gratitude, a positive sense of emotions in your life. You need to have a clear intention for what you're trying to accomplish. And you need to have confidence that your efforts can and will add more pleasure than pain to your life. If you have those five things, you have what I consider to be the basics that you need to get into the top 20% in your field. It's possible to do better than that. But if you don't have any one of those things, if you don't have a map or model for what you're trying to accomplish, if you're not taking action, if you're not monitoring your emotions and generating the positive emotions, if you don't have a clear intention, clear goal, and if you don't have confidence that your actions are going to bring you pleasure, not pain, you're dead in the water. You're just dead in the water. If you have a zero in any one of those categories, you're dead. So just make sure you have at least a 1 on a scale of 0 to 9 in each of those categories. If you have at least a one in each of them, then you are at least in the game. If you can get yourself up to eight or nine in each of them, oh, my God, you're gonna motor. It's gonna be amazing. So the question of luck. I believe that if you do this, and that's the magic formula, the magic ritual is taking this and chanting it during movement. You know, like you're walking, you're jumping rope, you're running, you're doing yoga, you're doing tai chi, you're rebounding something, you do something physical, and you're chanting affirmations that cover each of those five arenas. Amazing response. And like I said, I would be happy to bet somebody $20 against nothing. If you need a little, little Motivation to get you going. I have an obligation to my teachers to give back to the world for the incredible wealth that they gave me in terms of understanding. So I can't think of anything better to do with 20 bucks. And that's just the honest truth. So if you would like to take that bet, get in touch with me, and the first person who does will get, you know, I will interact with them for a month in public so they have an opportunity to see what happens when you really make these changes. So that's in terms of luck. Can you create your own luck? I believe that you can. I've seen the instance of it, and I'd be willing to prove that point and be willing to bet 20 bucks. Now let's go to the point. I ask people for questions or concerns, things that they would like me to address, expressing my point of view on these things. All this stuff comes out of life writing, which was originally the observation that the hero's journey could be applied not just to the structure of a book, but to the writing of a book and also to the life of the writer. That that realization was a breakthrough for me. That there are many, many, many story patterns, lots of them. Like you have a character in a situation with a problem and their efforts to solve the problem. Or series of revelatory increasing failures that lead to a precipitating event making necessary a solution followed by a reward. That's a perfectly good story pattern. But I wanted one that applied to people's lives so that your skill at writing becomes your skill at living. So life writing was first. That was the very first realization. The second one was that the yogic chakras were the path of the hero. Asking the question, what is a hero? A hero is a person who's on this journey to complete themselves in the course of their life. The hero's journey then becomes the path, the syntax of action in between the different levels of the chakras. Moving from core survival to gaining sexual experience and power in the world and opening your emotions and learning to communicate and learn and learn to express yourself and develop a map of reality. Raising a family. These things are sort of like in levels, not perfectly. It's not a perfect syntax. People do things out of order. And it's just seven steps that are nearly universal among human cultures. If I use that as the Y axis and the hero's journey is the X axis that I had a circle. And then I later realized that it was possible to turn that into a sphere, that that became a dynamic sphere. When I added an additional axis, a dynamic sphere of human life through which I could begin to sense patterns. The fact that this was based on wisdom that was cumulative human wisdom over thousands of years helped me to believe that I wasn't just making this up. I was noticing something that was. It was there. So things like the magic formula and the five minute miracle and stuff like this are all tools that connect to life writing. They're all tools that the hero would find along the way in order to help them to achieve their goals. So I like using simple tools and talking about them from a variety of different directions. Formulating experiences, experiments that people can actually perform in their own lives to test whether or not they think that these theories are correct. That's perfectly reasonable. In fact, I would consider it to be unwise to adapt anything anybody says if you can't test it. So I definitely invite you to test these things. If you reject them without testing, then I think you're faith based. You're not interested in knowing. And you might very well be looking for reasons to fail. See, you don't have to take responsibility for your life. I'm just going to say that, honestly, it's not that people cannot be crushed by circumstances and that groups of various disadvantaged kinds, the curve will drop the efforts of the average person in that group. But that has nothing to do with you as an individual can accomplish. An individual can ignore statistics. An individual can create their own destiny. You know, if the average member of your group is doing great, that doesn't mean you as an individual cannot fail, cannot fall on your face. And if your group as a whole is not allowed to accomplish because of bigotry and prejudice and oppression, that does not mean that you as an individual cannot be extraordinary. In fact, your family is sort of counting on you doing that. So that's where all my emphasis goes. It's not that there are not real problems, it's that there are also real solutions. So today, the only two things. And I said, you know, Luigi, I have problems pronouncing your name. I'm so sorry. But I appreciate you too, darling. And it's always great to see. It's always great to see people show up here just for these conversations. So the two things that I was asked, I was asked people to ask questions. And the two that were asked was one, how do you get started? And two, doing Wanda. Wanda. Okay, Wanda. That's great. That's great. I love the name Wanda. And what can you do to get started? And what can you do to really rewrite now those are two different things. Rewriting is a matter of technical combining some technical threads, but getting started just in general is a matter of increasing your motivation until it is more than your resistance, or decreasing your resistance until it is greater. Until the resistance is less than your motivation. You can go on both sides of that. So if you look at your resistance, you ask yourself, what is the fear you're going to be stopped from doing the thing? If the thing that you want to do will bring pleasure into your life, then your resistance has to be some fear that doing this thing is going to be more painful than the positive result, either on a short term basis or on a long term basis. Now, if you believe, well, if there's no hope, well, then you won't even get started. If you believe, well, it might work out for some people, but I don't think it'll work out for me. Then you need to work on your confidence. You go back to the magic formula and you would need to be sure you don't have a zero in any of those categories. Do you have a role model who has accomplished the things that you want to accomplish, starting roughly with the resources you have? Are you taking daily action? That's the thing that you're looking for? I need to take daily action. Do you have a positive, positive emotions about it? Because you create your emotions by the way you move your body, what you focus on, and the language that you use. So you can literally just affect those three things and start changing your emotions anytime you want to. Do you have clear intentions, a clear goal? Do you know exactly what it is that you're trying to do? Because that will make a big difference. You don't just want to avoid a problem. It's not just that you don't want to go to San Diego, it's that you do want to go to San Francisco. Because if all you know is what you don't want, you'll wander in a circle until you run out of juice. But if you know, I want to get to this particular place now, you can plan for the resources to be sure that you have the best chance possible to get there. So you also need to have courage, conviction to look at the situation, to be able to calculate it and say, you know something? I feel that I have very good reasons to believe that if I take these steps day by day, I'm going to be happier. I'm going to be happier than if I don't take these steps. If you believe that you'll take the action, if you're not taking the action, then, even if you don't realize it, you don't believe that. Because we're set up in terms of our basic wiring to do things that move us toward pleasure and away from pain. So if what you want is to, let's say, write, because it wasn't said getting started, doing what, let's say it's writing. Well, the life writing writing principle is you do at least one sentence every day. So either you don't believe that doing one sentence every day is going to have a measurable impact on your joy in life and you your accomplishment, or you have enough resistance to stop you from doing even one sentence a day. And because I believe there is no logical reason that you can't do at least one sentence a day, you then get to look very carefully at your belief patterns. What is it that you believe about your writing? What is it that you believe about this process? If you can have what I call an autonomous goal, something that is the minimum amount, that is a building block towards your bigger goal, which in this case a sentence is a good minimum building block. If you have that and you can't get yourself to do that, then you've removed all the logical reasons for not doing it from the equation and what you're left with is your emotions. It's like kicking over a flat rock. I can't do this because I hear my mom screaming in my ears that writers starve, or I'm afraid of rejection, or the kids used to laugh at me when I wanted to read stories in the class, or I got a bad grade from a teacher I respected, or whatever it is that associated pain to the thing that would bring you to pleasure, it gives you a chance to look at that stuff. But that's in terms of the negatives. On the positive side, what you have to do is look at your reasons for doing it. What are your motivations? Why do you want to do this thing? Invariably, when people don't do things, they've got a lot more reasons to not do it than they have to do it. So literally all you have to do is get a piece of paper and divide it in half and on one side write down your reasons not to do something something, and on the other side, write down your reasons to do it. All the pleasure, all the joy, all the fulfillment, all the growth, all the education, all the self knowledge, whatever it is, that are the positive things that you can use to motivate yourself to accomplish something. When you've got enough of those things, they will outweigh your reasons not to do it. So if you're simultaneously questioning your reasons not to do something and working on your. Your reasons to do it, consider it to be like a balance beam. Okay, you got a balance beam. If you're not doing something, the pain outweighs the pleasure. If you're doing something, it's because the pleasure outweighs the pain. You will know that this is true because you will be motivated to do it. It's as simple as that. You will do the thing if you know, if you follow the magic formula, if you have a role model so you can see how to accomplish it. If you're taking daily actions, if you have. Have positive emotions, if you have clear intentions, and if you have confidence in your ability to do it, you will start taking action. You will start making progress. The higher your score in each of those things, the better off you are. But as long as you don't have a zero in any of them, you're okay. So that's the general thing. I could answer more specific questions if there was a more specific request, but as a general thing, that pretty much does it. So any comments, questions, or requests about any of that before we continue, I always take a look at the comments section, and I want to make sure that, you know, that, you know, I'm responsive to you. But. So we'll wait for a moment and just kind of see, this is. This is kind of a cool thing. It's got a frozen core that you keep in the freezer. And then when I push the button, it blows it my face. I like that nice, cool air. It's a little bit hot in my office because the. My office is not weatherproofed. I let Tanarive have the weatherproofed part of the house. That's just, you know, the house that we had to move into. We'll be moving from when Jason graduates high school. All right, so the next question I was asked was re rewriting. So the trick is there are people who will rewrite as they go. Tananarive does that. She'll write a sentence, get it perfect, Then she'll write another sentence and get that perfect, and then write another sentence and get that perfect. That is one way to write. And there are fine, fine writers who use that approach. There are also writers who use my approach. My approach is more like a Polaroid picture. I will create a rough draft of the whole thing, Then I will find the most polished sections of that, the ideas that are the best, and start reworking the other material until it hits that standard. But whichever way you do, you got questions about the rewriting process. So I would say that. Let's say that you use my approach because in minimal form, what you're doing is you're taking a look at, at what you've written and comparing it to what's in your mind, comparing it to the intent you had. Does it reflect the values that you wanted to express? Does it express the thematics you wanted to express? In general, you don't work on theme in a piece of writing until you finished your first draft. I agree with that approach that you write the first draft what Ray Bradbury called running slow mo through the daisies. You don't even know necessarily how it's to going, going to end. Now, I personally like knowing where a story is going to end, but that's because I'm a little paranoid. It is perfectly valid to write just for exploring, especially if that process works for you. So the real process that you want is the one that works. So you, if, you know, if you're once again following the life writing principle and you have to finish at least one story a month, you know, writing at least one sentence every day and then producing a story a month, you sit back and you ask yourself, did I create a story every month? If I do, then whatever it is that you're doing is fine. If you want to do more, then you might pump up the volume someplace. But as long as you're doing the minimum, you're going to be okay. You're going to get what it is that you're looking for. So if you have a piece, let's say you have a finished story and you finish the first draft on it, you start asking yourself questions. You create some global questions, some rewrite questions or positions. One of them would be that the meaning of the story is the emotion that the reader carries away with it. So you might ask yourself, look at the last page. What are the emotions that I'm inviting? I'm attempting to put prompt from my reader. And then does the rest of the story support that emotional charge? What can I do with the rest of the story to build up that emotional charge? Am I using the right language, am I using the right imagery, etc. Etc. So you go back and reread it based upon the final impact you want that story to have? What is the theme you want it to have? Every sequence in your story is thesis or, or antithesis. You're either promoting that theme or you're specifically countering it and saying, well, maybe that's not true. You know, love conquers all as opposed to life crushes the open hearted. You know, what do you really believe? You can have different scenes that tiptoe into the different realities, the different possibilities, or you can have different characters who express different aspects of your theme. But once again, you're looking at your story and you're starting to make adjustments. I would suggest that you read the story aloud. That reading a story aloud will reveal different things to you than reading it silently. What are your principles? I look for rewriting until what I call music. Until I can start hearing the music. Music in the story. There is a feeling that I'm looking for and that feeling will. I never know where that feeling will erupt. But what will happen is that I'll read through a story and there will be some sequence, some scene, some line, some piece of dialogue, some observation that will jump out as being more honest and effective and powerful than what it's surrounded by. And I will ask myself why? And then I will start, as I said earlier, begin to rewrite everything else to try to hit that same level. So, and if I can do that, then something else will pop up as bang, that was better than everything else. Oh, why is that better? What's going on and what it is, is it's the unconscious part of your process that is jumping up into conscious awareness. So it's creating that connection between, you know, the boys in the basement, Stephen King's phrase, and your conscious intent. In order to do that, you have to take action. You have to have your map, you know, you have to feel, have positive emotions, you have to have a clear intention and you have to have confidence that you can do this. So you're applying the magic formula. There are other formulas, other approaches. I do not deny that at all. I'm simply saying this one works. And it has worked for me for years and it works for everybody I have seen who has tried it. So those are the answers to those questions. If there aren't any more questions, then I'm going to get into my day. I intend to kick back and watch movies and go over a manuscript that I'm working on with Larry Niven and enjoy myself. So let's see, is there anything else that I wanted to deal with? Well, once again, I'll make that. I'll make that bet. If you'd like to try the magic for formula and see whether it's possible for you to create your own luck, I bet you 20 bucks that it'll work for you. And that's 20 bucks against nothing on your side. I will, you know, take one or two people up on that bet. I'm not stupid, but I do love helping people. So you take care. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. And, you know, Frank and Wanda and Amy, me and all those who will read this or look at this after, you know, later on into the day. Just have a wonderful day, a wonderful summer and a wonderful life. Take care. Bye. Bye.