The Whole Enchilada

They can't. Okay, so I am live streaming this to Facebook. And as a lot of you know, there are some major things that are happening in my life. I can feel that the rhythm of engagement with life is speeding up. So these messages with you become more and more important. I have to be sure to use them not just to help you, which is a commitment that I have, but to clarify my own path. It is unfair for me to take. And having synthesized the work of so many masters without giving it away, it's simply not fair. They did not charge me for their tongue, for their wisdom. They would charge me for their time, but not their wisdom. They would charge me for the resources that it took to convey the information to me. But they gave of themselves unstintingly. And I have a similar obligation to that. It's really as simple as that. So I want to be very careful. To leave the best trail of breadcrumbs is kind of the way I'm putting it, so that anybody who wants to try what it is that I'm talking about can follow this path. Now, one of the things that I noticed is that of the three major arenas of change, the one that I have greatest clarity on is the writing. So that six step life writing process that we talk about, it works beautifully, it's worked every time. And I wish I could create similar models for relationships and for other career paths and for physical health. I haven't done it yet, but that's definitely part of what I want to do. But there's something that I wanted to talk about today. It's important to me. I can feel that I have to be hitting a different level in my life, a progression upon what I've done before. Because the frequency with which people consider me either privileged or lucky is starting to increase. They're in two camps. On the one hand, they're confused that I don't agree that anyone can succeed if they just try harder, you know? No, of course I don't agree with that. Effort is no more than 20% of the process as far as I'm concerned. But I also don't believe that the entire world has to change for you to do better. So it's interesting to criticize for some by insisting that social pressures damage depressed peoples and that we need a greater safety net. And also for believing in the equality of the races. Then I'm criticized by their political opponents, often for believing that we as individuals have power over our lives. It is sufficient to create any dream we can continuously hold in our hearts. And that Only those who have mastered their individual experience can lead others through the desert. If you ain't been there, you can't help other people there. So if you want to help raise up society, first fix your life, then teach other people how you did that. And you can lead them if you want to. But I also believe in actual equality and complementarity of gender. So it's kind of interesting who attacks me and on what ground they do. In my opinion, they're both throwing rocks at constructs of their own making. Constructs are usually out of date and bizarrely off track. They throw rocks at positions unheld. They make straw men chunking rocks at them and declaring victory. It's kind of sad in a way. You can see that and know without doubt they do this to other people and in other circumstances and on other subjects. And that pattern all by itself is enough to doom their efforts for balanced, joyful life of mastery. I absolutely don't think I'm better than anybody else. I think my current path is better than those I traveled previously. But to think that I had to be lucky or privileged in some unusual way is unfortunate. Because what you're doing is you're denying yourself the possibility. So if you think that it was luck, then I suggest that you try the experiment. Try what it is I'm saying for three months. If I'm wrong, it's less than 100 days. If I'm wrong, you'll find it out very similar to the 90 Day Love Feast. Do this 90 Day Love Feast for yourself. I can feel and I'm willing to take the position that anyone who does the things I do will get the results I'm getting. If you follow the same recipe, you'll make the same pancakes. It's as simple as that. And the people who are critical of this notion, I can tell automatically that if I asked them what their daily schedule was, their first hour of the day would have no similarity to my first hour of the day. Just none of I this caught me by surprise that I thought that the more I succeeded, the easier it would be to help people. And to a degree that's true. But the flip side of that is that the more I succeed, the less certain kinds of people believe that they could do the same things and get the same results. And all I can do is say that I love them and I wish them peace. But I have to communicate with the people who are willing to try, who are willing to perform the experiment. If you're not willing to be a scient, if you're not willing to actually experiment with what happens if you do the breathing and you do the magic formula and you create a morning ritual. Those things will enable you to test whether or not I'm correct. Otherwise, you have an opinion that you're not willing to test. And I'm begging you to be scientists about this. Prove me wrong, but prove me wrong by actually performing the experiment. Don't perform a thought experiment in your head. This process that I'm going through, creating the magic formula book about this as experiences continue to collect, is going to be one of the great challenges of my life. What do I need to include? What do I need to exclude? How much structure do I need? How much freedom do I encourage? I don't know, but I'm working on it hard. The idea is to take people from 0 to 60 as rapidly as possible, but understand that some people are in reverse. So the breathing, for instance, is interrupting that traveling reverse and hitting neutral so that you can change gears and start moving forward. All I can say is that I'm really grateful to the people who've been sharing their experience about this, so I can see what's needed. Anyway, today is what we call intention Thursday. And I want to do something today that's actually a little scary for me. I'm going to make myself kind of vulnerable today. I think that it's appropriate, it's critical that I be transparent, because if things continue to get better, I want people to be able to judge, and if things don't work, things don't happen. I want people to be able to say, well, Steve tried it, it didn't work. So I'm not going to do that. I don't have a problem with that. And I encourage you to actually look at the results and to look at the history and to make your own decisions. But more than anything, I encourage you to experiment. Please get out of your heads and actually into your lives. Experiment. I'm going to give you exactly the pattern that I use, and all you have to do is try it for three months, and if you don't get better results, I don't know what to say. I mean, you know, what would I have to do? And I have to need to bribe you, blackmail you, challenge you, bet with you? I don't know. But I believe in you more than you believe in yourself, I sometimes think. I believe you have everything you need to get everything that you need. All right, So I would suggest that you transcribe what I'm about to say. Oh, so we have some people saying Hi, Mo Barnes is saying. Hi, friend and cross country plantation cousin. Hello there. As a practical suggestion, I suggest that you make your goals about 1% weekly improvement or about 50% increase per year. You probably won't believe more than that. Sometimes I see people have fantastic goals and there is that expression that a goal of being perfect is the same as no goal at all because you don't really believe it and it will paralyze you. So by making your goals too big, you're actually cutting your own throat. But it looks great, doesn't it? Hey, I'm going to be a billionaire. I'm going to be an Olympic athlete. I've been a couch potato. But improve 1% per week, probably about 50% per year. Now I'm going to go over what it is that I do in my morning ritual. And I've never done it as completely as this before. And I know that there are people out there who are going to be looking for any reason to reject what I'm about to say. I use the word God in my morning ritual because that works for me. You don't have to. You might use nature or the universe or whatever it is that you want to say that makes sense to you. It's a grasp of an overall pattern of life or existence within which we can get into rhythm that we can get into rhythm with. Okay, so I start my morning ritual, and once again, I do it while I'm performing, doing tai chi. And I would. The tai chi is sufficient intensity and complexity that it keeps me on track. But I'm already on track. If you need to get on track, I might suggest that you use a more powerful physical activity. Running, walking hills, something that makes you sweat, something where you're pushing yourself. Because the idea is you need to push yourself out of where you are and onto the pattern where you want to be. So choose something that is intense, especially if you need major change. If you're already going in the direction you went to, you could do something more gentle. It's fine. You know, qigong, tai chi, you know, whatever. So. But as I'm doing it, this is what I say, and I say these things out loud. And what I challenge you to do is to watch this more than once and see. Can you see the pieces of the magic formula in what it is that I'm doing? Because this is designed to encode the magic formula into my body. And I do this literally every day, six days a week. I'm not kidding you. Okay? So the first thing I do is I start with, you know, every day, I'll say, every day in every way, I'm getting better and better. Every day in every way, I'm getting better and better. This is a good basic opening salvo. So what is it that I'm trying to get better at? Joy. That's the meaning of life, is to be joyful and then of service. That's the core of everything. Everything else you do is just an attempt to get to joy, to move away from pain toward pleasure. After I've done that. And let's say that each of these, I think I've got six different basic pieces. And then if you were doing a morning ritual for 20 minutes, you'd spend maybe equal amounts, three minutes on each of these. Something like that. Approximately. You can vary this, but just kind of approximately. So that was this first thing. Second thing is I say God's wealth is circulating in my life. His wealth flows to be an 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. And I will say that over and over and over again. And once again, if I was in a position where I was struggling with believing in myself, I would choose a more dynamic activity than Tai Chi. I would run or I would walk, or I would do five Tibetans or sun salutations. I'd do something that made me sweat. Something that really engaged with my body, with that animal survival drive. And once again, I use the word God. But you can change that to other things. Don't let that word stop you. If you. If you let that word stop you, that's your ego trying to keep you from doing things that will help you facilitate change. Then I go from there into gratitude. I will say out loud, I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy body. I'm so grateful for a strong, healthy mind. I'm so grateful for strong, healthy body and mind. Okay, once again to say that for about three minutes, over and over and over again. Then I'll go into the next chunk of gratitude. I'm so grateful for the people who love me and trust me. My daughter. My son Jason. My daughter Nikki. My beautiful, brilliant wife Tananarive. My sister Joyce, who deserves all good things in life. Larry Niven and Steve Muhammad. Dawn Callan and Tim Piering. Octavia Butler and Prince. My mom and dad, Bks Iyengar and Chin Manching. Danny Innosanto and William Shakespeare. Now note something. I no longer use specific financial goals. I used to, and that worked fine, but now I Trust that if I have the right role models, their natural actions and advice will bring me success. So if you can take a look at the role models I just talked about there, you could detect aspects of any basic goal. In there, you can detect the role models help you with writing, with finances, with martial arts, with health, relationships. That might be a little tricky. But at least three of those models have or had long and happy committed marriages. I say their names and I visualize them. What would they have me do today, this week to improve by 1% with joy? Yeah, I aim at 1% daily sometimes, unless things are moving too fast, then I need to slow down and integrate balance. Okay, I know I've chosen a role model well, when I can feel a little burst of energy when I speak of them or visualize them. I get that with my children. I get that with Prince. I get that with Tananarive. I get that with really all of them. And what you're looking for is that energy. Okay, then I go to the next gratitude thing, and this is where I play a little game. I give thanks for things in my life and I have them all be f words. It's just an entertainment. It's just something that makes me smile, makes me giggle a little bit. So like my felines, the force, my fortress, which is my house, my family and friends, my fans, the Filipino martial arts, my finances, my fitness. See, it's talking about these things in a way that is kind of fun. That's all I'm talking about there. Okay, then the last one is all I need is within me now. The sense that what you need to achieve and rise and evolve is an expression of some of seeds that are already within you. You find them and you water those seeds. Okay, so this is the place where I borrow a pattern from somebody else. I don't just use my own patterns. I look for people who are extremely successful. And one of the people who is very successful and who teaches success is Brendan Burchard. And he has his six high performance habits, which I like. I teach it to Jason, I teach it to my students. I use it myself. So all the clarity I need is within me now. All the energy I need is within me now. All the urgency I need is within me now. All the productivity I need is within me now. All. All the influence I need is within me now. And all the courage I need is within me now. So six things, right? Clarity, energy, urgency, productivity, influence and courage. They're damned fine principles for high level success. None of these are innate. All of Them can be influenced or programmed to thought behavior. Including increasing any of them positively increases the rest of them. And financial resources are not required to increase these things. I would say that abuse and oppression and poverty and things of this nature specifically damage your capacity to either hold the magic formula or the high performance six that you are looking almost specifically at. What gets damaged in people by life that stops them from achieving at higher levels. So by specifically addressing these things during my morning ritual, I'm implanting them into my body. Like I said, I do this while performing the Wu style tai Chi form in the morning. If I needed to get more intense, I would lower my stance, perhaps perform with dynamic tension. Instead of relaxation or speed up, I would choose an exercise that makes me sweat. Walking, running, hill walking. Increase the physical activity or speak more loudly, perhaps screaming if I needed to. To match the energy I'm going to need to move from one state to another state. Because you need energy in order to break bad habits. So I. God, I strongly suggest that you model what I've just said. That you transcribe it, make changes, changes here to fit your life, what you want, but not neglect any of the basic aspects of this. If you're not sure that this would work, then I would say model it as closely as possible. Be sure that you choose role models that represent success and the things that you care about in your life. You use words that you like, but try to match what I've got here because as far as I can see, I'm not missing anything. This is the result of decades of work and the ability to get myself to the point where I could do this every morning. Once again, decades of practice, decades of strategy, decades of trying. How do I do this every morning? Trying to get myself to do it was a nightmare. It was hard. It's still hard, but. But it's easier because I've started associating it with who it is that I am. I say I am the person who will do this every morning. If you find that you cannot perform the morning ritual or cannot avoid a zero in a critical area, the magic formula or the high performance six. And you know there are other patterns that are as powerful as a High Performance 6. But if you don't have one that you're totally confident, I would strongly suggest that you use that one. If you have a zero in any of those, you have detected a broken link in your dynamic chain of action thought, action, emotion. This is where you focus all your efforts. This is where you get help. This is where you find mentors and role models. You meditate, you journal, you get into therapy. You get until you don't have a zero, any of those basic areas. Remember, your ego thinks it's you and will fight like hell, including motivate you to do things that are similar to the pattern above but missing a critical piece so that you're working really hard but not getting the result. Take a very careful look at that. Be damn sure you don't have a zero. This is a common way that your ego will fight you. What you see above and what I've said here today is the pattern of someone who average I average about a 5 on the magic formula. That is enough to move me forward a couple percentage points a week and I can turn up the juice if there's something important going on. Like I'm about to go into an important arena right now and I need to make sure I'm performing at the highest levels. I would look at the High Performance 6 and be sure. Am I, do I have great clarity? Am I bringing my best energy? Do I understand the urgency? Am I being productive? And have I defined what productivity is? Am I aware of what it's going to take to influence the people I'm doing this for, to believe that I've done something good? Influence is important. And do I have the courage to give it everything I have and to risk failure? And yeah, it'll hurt if I fail, but it'll hurt more if I don't give my very best? Well, that's it. This is, as I've said, probably the most complete commentary on this pattern that I've ever given. And I'm making myself vulnerable. I invite you to criticize me. I invite you to question me. I invite you to look at me this once again. You don't have to use a word like God if that tweaks you. There are plenty of people who embrace agnosticism or atheism or other belief patterns. But I do believe you need faith in something, even if it's only in your own heart, your allies in the hero's journey, it's always faith in either yourself, your companions, or a higher power. So you need some faith there because you will inevitably reach a point where you cannot go any further along your current path. And you have to believe that it is possible for you to change paths and keep going further. What you think about this is not as important as whether you will experiment with it. Will you try it for six weeks, three months, 100 days and see what happens if every single morning you spend 10 to 20 minutes. Doing this if five times a day you do the breathing. If you take your goals in all three major areas and break it down to the magic formula, if you will perform the experiment and let me support you or find a partner to support you, maybe do this with a buddy, maybe you don't trust me enough to let me have. That's okay. It's not about me. It's never been about me. It's about what works or what doesn't work. And this is honestly the best guess I have based on more decades than I'm comfortable stating. I may be wrong, but I'm sincerely wrong. I really believe these things. I really use these things. This is really what I teach my son. I can't say it to you any more directly than this. Take a look at what I've said. Apply it in your life. Ask me any questions you want. I've got to go now so I can get into my day and do the work that's been placed in front of me. But please believe that I'm giving you my heart the very best I can and that if you'll experiment for just 100 days, you'll know whether or not I'm telling you the truth. Mo Barnes asked, wait, didn't Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed? Yeah, that's when he left her in his will. There's no question about that. I'm trying, people. And I love you and I love my life. And I hope that you find whatever it is that you need in life to be joyful, to move away from pain, be joyful and of service to the world. The world needs you, needs your heart. The world needs you to succeed. And remember, the oppressors of the world, the colonizers of the world, the last thing they want you to do is discover the hero in your heart. Let's be heroes. You take care, guys.