Manila MAGIC

So welcome Steve Barnes here. And it's an interesting day today because it's a little bit of Schrodinger's. Schrodinger's Passport. I'm the creator of the magic formula and life writing technology and fire dance and things like that. And what I'm doing is every day, I'm talking about the value and the power of setting up your first hour of the day so that you have a good day every day. And what we looked at yesterday was the possibility that if you define success as the progressive realization of a worthy goal or. Or the. The meaning of life is to be joyful. And we believe that our internal states can be controlled by focus, then it is possible to set yourself up or to create an absolutely foolproof success system. I'm still waking up. So, you know, the. I've been getting myself extra sleep because I'm hoping to be able to go to Manila next week. And we've been working our way through this. So the magic formula, which I created out of desperation a decade ago, is my route to this. And it comes the closest. I don't know if it's there, but it comes the closest to being a guaranteed structure for success that I can imagine. I don't know what would be more powerful. And if you have an idea, I'd love to hear it. I mean, seriously, I just. No joke, because I'm betting my life and the life of my son on the fact that I can. The notion that I can teach him some structures that will work for him that will be. You know, you can't 100% guarantee things, but you can increase your odds of external success. And to the degree that you control your internal world, you can then set yourself up so that every day you succeed. Okay, now let's take a look specifically at the application of the magic form. And I was talking to my wife Tananarive today that it really helped me get through it. And she was saying yes, because we always had work that we could do. And it wasn't just that, though. If you go, let's go through it. M A G, I C. Map or model. Action, Gratitude, intention and confidence. Confidence that you can and should do these things. So the map or model I had was I knew I had to get my passport renewed. Then I found out that I had to clear up some tax business. And so I had to navigate that and talk to lawyers and accountants and so forth and so on and talk to the tax people over and over again, trying to get a sense of the map of the territory that I had to traverse in order to satisfy this goal. It got more complicated than that because getting them to release it was one thing, or getting them to promise to release it was one thing, but getting them to actually notify the State Department that it had been done was another. So I started running into a situation where I did not understand what was going on. At that point, I reached out to people that I knew and asked what services can help with this. My manager, Jim Strater, suggested a very specific company that walks people through this. I'll give if I'm happy with what they do, I will give the name. If I'm not happy with what they do, I'll decide just how unhappy I am. I prefer to act positively than negatively, though. So I got in touch with those people. I bought their top level package, but I'm leaving something out. I also had a chance to interact with my very dear friend Victoria. And Victoria is an executive at a very large technology company and has gone through the process of getting passports for her team many times, as well as for herself. She's very well traveled, so she was staying at the house and she helped me get through this. So I then had maps or mentors to take care of the m. So I could talk about it. I could come up with different plans for traversing this, taking a look at the time frame and so forth. So. So I had to stop thrashing. I had to actually have an idea of a path that others have walked before me that would get me there. The second thing is action. I so I had to take action every single day. Every single day. I had to find some action I could take. And it eventually got to there being three different. I could call the concierge company that I was working with, I call the State Department about the passport, and I could call the irs, because the trick was to try to get the IRS and the State Department to talk. So I figured if I talked to enough different people, if I was enough of a pain, if I pushed enough buttons, eventually I would find the person who would make that jump. The third thing is gratitude. And that was tough because this was, you know, lifetime dream. And I'd invested more money than I would like to say, more time and energy that I'd like to say. And if it didn't happen, it would be because I had not taken care of some business previously. So I would be blaming myself. So how do I find gratitude? Because remember, the meaning of life is to be joyful. So I had to be grateful. I had to Be prepared to be grateful no matter what happened. That was difficult. If I get my passport, I'm going to be happy to go and have a wonderful time. If I don't get my passport, I got a great lesson about life. And not only that, but I had an opportunity to test my balance. If I'm going to go to a martial arts workshop. The secret of the martial arts is that warrior mindset. I'm ready to die and I'm ready to take you with me. That clarity. So if I'm willing to look at the pain of these different things and ask myself, how do I have to balance myself so that no matter what happens, I come out of this stronger, I come out of this better in many ways, because this is real. As opposed to a workshop, if I address it properly, it is a lesson. You know, the obstacle becomes the offering. There is value there. So I took a look at that, and I took a look at some other stresses in my life, life. And I asked, where do I have to stand? How do I have to see myself? How do I have to see the world such that if this does not happen, I am stronger and better and I get more out of that or just as much out of that as if I actually went in Technique? No. Cultural experience, no. But in terms of being a stronger person who can be more of a warrior for his family, yes, I could see how that is. And I could ask myself, who is the person? What is the part of me that can deal with this no matter what happens? Because all you can do in life is the best you can do. And then you have to detach yourself from the results, otherwise you go crazy. So it's do the very best you can, detach yourself from the results. And I could be proud of myself for being that guy. And Tananeri had commented that I've been struggling trying to get this taken care of since November. And in her estimation, I did really, really well. You know, I like that. I trust her opinion. I clear intention, had a crystal clear intention, get my passport, travel to Manila on the 24th of February, have a great time, learn lots of things, meet people, have fun, do research. So I could see I have my clear intention. And the last thing see, the question is the confidence that I can and should do this. Why should I struggle? Why should I work? Why should I hammer at this every day when there's a chance I will fail? Because ultimately, I am that guy. This is who I am. I'm the sort of person who does whatever it takes to make it Happen. Even if I can't get there, I will do the best I can. If that's my intent, to do the best I can, even under stress, then the world cannot beat me. All it can do is cut off that option. But meanwhile, I have learned about myself. I had to organize a tremendous number of different things to make this happen. I don't even want to get into how much we had to do. But the daily struggle is worthwhile. You see, it isn't just the victory, it's the path. It isn't just going to Manila. It's what I had to do and learn and be in order to go. And this is. There was, you know, I had to deal with grief. You know, it's like, what if this doesn't happen? You know, I'm dealing with the fact that I wanted to go four years ago and Covid hit and there was fear at that point. Am I too old to do this? So let me organize myself. Let me work out what do I have to do. How do I have to change in order to last another four years? I can push it four years into the future. So for four years I've been working on this, and the potential of it not happening could be a crushing defeat. Since I've already bought the tickets, I've already paid for this, I've invested all this money and time and so forth. Can I use all of that pressure and measure my success not by whether the external world gave me my passport, but whether or not I walked with integrity, under enormous pressure and found a way to be joyful and take care of my family and have gratitude for the situation at the same time. Given that, my theory was if I could do that, that everything would be okay. But I had to be prepared to die. I had to be prepared to lose and still be joyful in order to satisfy the magic formula. If this happens, and I should know later today, Certainly, you know, FedEx is supposed to deliver my passport tomorrow. If this happens, then at the very least, I mean, maybe you could say that even without the magic formula, things still would have happened. That's a possibility. But would I have acted as regularly? Even if it would have happened, I had a better experience of life because I forced myself to feel gratitude every day. And I clarified who I needed to be to take pleasure from the actions instead of just the potential results. And that's. A man's unbalance is the same as his weight. Isshinru PRECEPT Hmm, I'm not sure what that means, Mo. I mean, it could mean that even when you're imbalanced, you weigh the same thing, but I'm not sure. Or if you unbalance. Actually, if you unbalance somebody, it is easier to throw them or to trip them. So it could be that the degree to which you are unbalanced is the degree to which your effective weight diminishes. So in that sense, applying that to psychology instead of the physics of combat, it would be that the more balanced you are, the more centered you are, the more rooted you are. And life can't hurt you as much, can't blow you over that. If you let yourself get spun emotionally, in essence, you have less rooting and it is easier for life to blow you away. That would be one way of looking at it. Once again, I'm going to get into my work today because if this all happens, I need to be sure that I've done a ton of work on the Star wars novel and make sure that Jason is having a good day. And one of the things is true is that if this happens, this works. I have multiple instances of times when I've been able to use the magic formula explicitly to get an unusual result, unusual positive result. So far, it has not failed me. I am going to have to consider seriously whether or not I want to write a book about this. Certainly a book that I need to document what this is at this point. To say this again. The program that I'm giving my son Jason is the magic formula, the morning ritual to anchor that into your body. The three gates and the three centers, those are the most important things that I'm giving him. He's also doing some things on top of that. The High Performance 6 from Brendan Burchard and the RPM Rapid Planning System, you know, results focus Purpose driven Massive action plan from Tony Robbins. I'm giving him those five things or six things and hammering those every day. They seem to be a complete package that is that he can use to accomplish anything in his life. Dennis Dickens said it would definitely apply to the physics of combat. I could see some philosophical aspects of the same thing with mental weight inertia being a core. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm talking about. That's very much what I'm thinking. That the idea of balance, first of all, it allows. Here's the thing, if you're perfectly balanced, you actually have to become unbalanced in order to move. So you want to be, you don't want to be. Have your weight distributed 50, 50 between your legs. At the very least, it can be like 49:51 so that you can move quickly. So how that relates to life might be a discussion for another day. You take care. I hope everybody's okay. Please forward this to your friends. If you enjoy it, share it. And drop me a line if there's any subject you'd like me to. But it could very well be that you have seen in real time an instance of me applying the magic formula. And I hope that this has been useful to you. Take care and wish me luck.