Using the Firedance Ritual to break a bad habit

Well, all right, Steve Barnes here on Sunday talking about using the fire dance morning ritual to break a bad habit. I've actually got a bad habit that I'm dealing with, just stress related. So I'm applying this to myself right now. Now, what is the morning ritual? First of all, I'm Steve Barnes. I'm creation of, I'm the creator of the fire dance system of personal development. Also the life is branch of life writing system of personal development. And I'm sitting in my new house, my new office, but it is still filled with boxes and stuff. So it'll get sorted out in time. But right now, you know, bear with me. Notice I've got a screen up and back to hide the boxes. There's a, you know, just, it's just, life just gets in the way. But I don't want to stop that from being able to talk to you. So the idea is that you use a morning ritual of some kind. It is that time, you know, first thing in the morning, first hour of the day is consolidated. The diamond hour or the golden hour. It's you set your tone for your entire day in the first hour. What are you doing? Are you giving yourself positive input? Are you thinking? Are you moving? Are you doing? Are you exercising? What are you doing? Hopefully you're not filling your mind with trash. Hopefully you're doing something that actually moves your life forward. And if you're smart, if you're really smart, you figure out what the most important thing you can do to move your life forward in a particular way, and you do something connected with that in that first hour. Okay? Now it's not absolutely essential as long as you're getting those things done later on in the day. But for instance, in the life writing system of writing, you write at least one sentence a day. So you could easily write one sentence during that first hour. That boom gets you started. But the morning ritual, the fire dance ritual, is specifically using affirmations and visualizations and emotional flooding while you are moving your body. In other words, you visualize your goals or you visualize mentors who can help you accomplish those goals. The kinds of people who could do this, you know, if, let's say if you want to be a great boxer, you might visualize yourself as Muhammad Ali, okay. If you want to be a great writer, you might visualize yourself as Stephen King, you know, or William Shakespeare, okay. If you want to be, have a relationship, you might visualize grandparents who are still in love after 50 years of marriage. Okay? So, because I could, I promise you Is that these people are doing different things than you do. They do different things from the unsuccessful people. And if you will visualize them, you will find that you're tapping into your own wisdom. What do I think this writer, who I admire, would do at this moment? How do I think this athlete would deal with this challenge at this moment? What do I believe my grandparents, who managed to have a successful marriage for 70 years, you know, would do about this argument that I'm having right now with my wife? You know, I can tell you that in general, you know, they will say something along the lines of, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Steve. People, you know, go up and down and trust me, she is having as much problem with you as you are with her. So, you know, just knowing that. That there are answers out there and that you may not have them, but there are people who have already solved that problem allows you to think about a role model, a mentor, and visualize them and thereby tap into your own deeper wisdom. It really works. On the other hand, maybe there's Akashic records, maybe there's something bigger out there. You're tapping into a God force or Gaia or something like that. The universal library. Who knows what. What matters is? It works. Whether it's a stimulation of your imagination or it is a triggering of something spiritual or metaphysical, I don't know. What I do know is it works. So if you do that, that's the visualization, okay, Then you have the. The emotional flooding, which is imagining the things that you feel grateful for in your life and going deep into those. I mean, letting yourself really feel how wonderful your life is, and you focusing on the things that have to you in your life. You know, I think about my son and my daughter, the people who love me and trust me, and my beautiful wife and my sister who taught me to read and deserves all good things in life, you know, and these mentors and those. And these people. And I make sure that I populate that list of mentors of people who are better than me at things that I want to be good at, everything I've accomplished in my life. And, you know, the honest truth is that in spite of a huge amount of obstacles and this. And, I mean, we all have those things. Trust me. I'm, you know, just talking about the fact that we all have these things. I actually managed to accomplish everything that I set out to do as a kid, whether it was martial arts mastery or writing mastery or having a relationship, a passionate relationship with the woman I love more than anyone in the world. World. I just adore my wife and I love what I was able to do in the martial arts and I love what I've been able to do in writing. But it's, it's daily work. So being able to make your peace with that demands having a. A belief system that I have had wonderful things in the past, and therefore I'll be able to have wonderful things in the future. So you flood yourself with gratitude. And that sense of gratitude, that sense of, of faith that the universe is not a malign place because, wow, think of all the beautiful things that have happened to me and you let yourself feel it. If you will do that, then you can believe that maybe things aren't great right now, but they'll get better. And furthermore, you can feel that it's great because of the fact that, you know you have some choice over how you feel at a given moment. You may not have fat, you may not have control over what's happening in your life, but you do have control over how you feel about what's happening. So given that, given that in a role model of possibility, someone who could accomplish it, if that person were in this situation, how would they do? What would they do? How would they think? How would they feel? Those kinds of things. So imagining the person who could have the thing allows you to maintain the behaviors that will keep moving you forward until you're in completely new territory. And you have to be able to feel yourself as being worthy or you'll sabotage yourself. When you do those things, visualize the people who can do the things that will get you to the destination. Or feel the gratitude that tells you that even though you're feeling fear right now, fear is totally natural, normal. You felt it in the past, you'll get through it. Life has blessings for you. That feeling is essential to being able to succeed. Because the Hero's Journey, for instance, says that the process of moving from any one level of your life to another level is the dark night of the soul. And the way through the dark night of the soul is the leap of faith. Okay. It's right there. Okay. It's an all world stories. This is the older people in the village telling the younger people this is what your life is going to be. So just, you know, get over it and get on with it, as it were. Now, these things, the affirmations, you know, every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better is one of the most basic affirmations. It's been used for a long time, but you'd have to combine it with emotion so that the voices in your head that are saying, no, that's crap. That's not true. Don't have a chance to get a toehold on you. You have to have the positive emotions. Affirmations without emotion and action is delusion. So how do you take action during an affirmation? It's simple. It's so simple. You want to know what it is? Okay, I got it for you. One of your goals needs to be to refine your physical self, to connect with your physical self. So you say, I want to. I am increasing my connection with my physical body. I am decreasing my weight, or I am increasing my fitness. And that's part of what you need right now. If you are moving, you're taking, you're walking, you're dancing, you're rebounding. In my case, I use Tai chi for a variety of different reasons. If you're doing that while you're doing the affirmation, the little voice in the back of your head that says, you know, every day and everywhere, I'm getting better and better is what you're saying out loud. And there's another voice in the back of your head saying, no, you're not. What a bunch of crap that is. You can't change. People can't change. Yeah, why don't you stop, get back in bed. Those voices are going to be a natural thing in your head. So what you have to do is you have to be doing something at the moment that puts a lie to that voice. And if I'm. If one of my goals is to get better at Tai chi and I'm doing the Tai chi while I am chanting, then while it's true that I'm not getting. As I'm not improving in my Tai Chi as much as I would, as if I was putting all my attention on it. But I'm using. I'm splitting my attention so that I'm actually working on my life because I'm doing the Tai Chi. At the same time, I'm thinking about what my blessings are. At the same time, I'm imagining the people who could fulfill my challenges, who would look at my challenges, you know, like candy they want to eat. Now give me that problem. I love problems. That's the kind of person that you want, you know, in your head, on your shoulder, talking to you, advising you. So if you move at the same time, and there are all sorts of different kinds of movements you can do, I don't suggest swimming because you don't want to be swimming while you're chanting and doing affirmations, because the affirmations need to be out loud. Walking, rebounding, dancing, yoga, any number of different things. And Tai Chi is a beautiful one for a whole variety of reasons. There's all sorts of health related reasons and stress related reasons. There's real scientific research on Tai Chi and qigong and it's a complex pattern behavior so that you really has to engage your intellect. It's not just mindless motion, it's. It's standing meditation. It's so many different things. So whether you want to learn Tai Chi or whether you want to build a morning ritual, I would suggest the fire dance program is for you because it's teaching you to do both at the same time. And the idea is that a year from today, you can completely change your life. You can know a new skill. You can learn how to engage with your mind, mind and body and emotions and spirit all at the same time in just a few minutes a week. If you're willing to make those commitments, don't, don't do it. If you're not willing to actually give it a shot, if you don't feel that physical health and emotional health and financial success are important for you, then spend your time elsewhere. I mean, seriously, we're looking for students who really, really want to change their lives, to evolve their lives, who believe in themselves, who are willing to have faith in themselves. Anyway, that's. I just wanted to reach out to you really briefly today on Sunday, and I hope you're going to have a fantastic week. This is Steve Barnes saying, see you later. And I guess I'll end this with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Take care.