Why is your "I"?

Hello. Hello. Hello. Testing, 1, 2, 3, 4. Testing, 1, 2, three, four. And we are now live. All right, So I will say hello. Hello. Welcome to Magic in the Rough. I'm gonna be a little rough this morning. My voice, my dress, my hair. Gosh, I'm not even shaved. But I am waking up into my daily obligations, and I am experimenting with seeing whether that is useful to you to see me getting myself back into. Into mode. My name is Stephen Barnes. I'm the creator of Fire Dance and Life Writing and stuff like that, which were all just ways of organizing myself so that I could create the life that I desired. And in some ways, the totality of everything that I created, I keep trying to boil it down into different ways so I can describe it. It's all the same stuff. But what is the right way in? What is the simplest way? And what we're talking about here is the magic formula. That's the one that seems to be both powerful and easy to explain and appeals to people. They can kind of remember it and wrap their mind around it. It is having a map or model of what you want to take daily. Action. A. To feel gratitude. G. To have a clear goal. I For intention. And to have confidence that this is in alignment with your character. If you believe that what it is that you're trying to accomplish is in alignment with your character, it is easier to do. If you believe that accomplishing a goal will change your character for the better, fantastic. If you believe that a goal is out of character for you, you will struggle. So today, talking about, you know, and by the way, if you have questions about any of this, just type it into the. Type it into chat, and I'll be happy to answer. Live, you know, while I'm here. This is just, you know, a few. Few minutes that I take every day to kind of remind myself of who I am and what I'm doing and to try to clarify. And so if this could be of any use to you, it'd be useful for me to be able to interact with you. So if you have questions, questions, comments, or requests about any of this, please do. I is for intention, for goal. And it's important to know not just what you're going to accomplish, but why. Every day, I mean. And literally, I mean this, every day, I see people complaining about love, money, or health, and they will complain about these things to me, but they won't take my advice. So, okay. I don't know exactly why they're complaining, but hopefully just the act of complaining is useful to Them. But, you know, I'm kind of. I have to admit that I'm more of a problem solver. You know, if somebody says, I hurt, and you say, you know, poor baby, and they come back next week and they say, I hurt, you say, poor baby. By the third time you. It's reasonable to ask, is there a thorn in your paw? Can we take it out? That's, that's me. And if I clarify to people that's who I am and they come to me with these things, then I don't think they should be surprised when I suggest a possible solution. I'm just being true to myself. I'm not trying to manipulate them or anything. I'm asking the question, if you know that this is who I am and you come to me with this, you must want a perspective on it. Maybe my perspective won't work. But why else would you come to me with this? If you have a goal, that's the what. As I said, everything you could ever want is somewhere on the spectrum of decreased pain or increased pleasure. Everything. Everything that any worm wants. Anything that Einstein wanted. Identifying how the thing you want will do. This is your why. And that gets you out of bed in the morning. You know, it's like, I have to do this. Why do I want to do it? When you have more positive reasons than negative, you'll get out of bed. If you're doing it to decrease pain or escape pain, you're motivated by fear. If you do it to increase joy, you're motivated by love. And the more you do, the better you feel. Note the opposite with fear. With fear, you'll do enough to reduce the symptoms or to get people off your back. Oh, God, I've got amoebas this morning. Like I said, still waking up. Ah. But unless you change your self image, the new behaviors to escape pain and fear will themselves trigger fear and pain. So in other words, let's say you were raised to believe that money is evil. Money is the root of all evil. Only bad people have money. You have to hurt people to make money. But then you're broke, okay? And you can't pay your bills, the identity you have. I am so good that I give myself away to the world. So I have no. Money is at war then with the fear of being out on the street, homeless, or being hungry and failing your family. So when that overwhelms the amount of fear that you feel about, you know, or the amount of fear fear that you feel concerning money, you know, money is evil, money is bad. You will Take additional actions. As soon as those actions pay your bills, you're going to go right back to the old identity. Money is evil, money is bad, you have to hurt people to make money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera if you want. And the same thing happens with people trying to lose weight. The same thing happens with people trying to fall in love and get gain love. If they don't fix the negative beliefs. They have a ton of whys not to do it and not enough wise to do it. And they will only take action when the whys to do it outweigh the wise not to do it. If that makes sense. When there is more pain associated with something than pleasure, you will stay in bed, you will avoid it. When there is more pleasure associated with something than there is pain, you'll do it. And that's actually how you know whether or not you have permission to do something. Am I associating more pleasure with this and pain? And one of the things to do that is what are your external motivations? And one of them is your internal motivations. Your internal motivation would be your self image. How do you see yourself? What kind of person are you otherwise? It's like a rubber band that, let's see. I think I've actually got a rubber band here. I can kind of illustrate a rubber band. You'll stretch it as long as the external pressure is on you. But then as soon as you turn your back, it goes right back to what you were. What you have to do is change your self image, move to another position and you can change your self image in different ways. If that became one of your goals, you'd simply apply the magic formula to it and Bob's your uncle. But that's for another day. So the instant the external motivations decrease, you lose the weight, you pay the bill, you find a relationship. The internal motivations start disrupting your patterns until you return to normal. When your what is clear, it's a smart goal, and your why is powerful and in alignment with your values, beliefs and self image, the hows get hella easier. Let me repeat that. When your what is clear and your why is powerful and in alignment with your beliefs, values and self image, the hows get easy. Let's be specific. I have a Star wars novel turn in, in say three weeks. You'll notice that that's been a little bit rubbery. You know, I have to look at what, what's going on, what's happening in my life. But it's a pretty clear goal. It meets all Smart requirements, you know, specific, meaningful, as if now realistic and time bound. What are my whys? Fun, money, contribution, self expression, creativity, Keeping my word, I signed the damn contract. This is absolutely in alignment with my self image. You see, there's nothing there that is not me. It will also move my life in the intended direction of decreased pain and increased pleasure. It provides abundance and give service. You know, it's everything. Can you see this? And by the way, you can probably figure out everything I'm doing from one point of view is melding the most basic principles of life. You know, movement away from pain towards pleasure, which is, you know, survival. Pain is generally things that will risk survival, except for the pains of discipline, for instance, which can enhance survival long term. So you get the war between the short term pain and the long term pleasure. But that, that movement away from pain toward pleasure which can be found in any worm then can be connected to what the Dalai Lama said about life, that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. So you look at it that way. So the meaning of life then connected to the most basic things that we can say is to move away from pain towards joy and then from joy begin to seek service. That is my position and everything that I'm saying comes out of that. So just, just for clarity, if something I'm saying is not in alignment with that, please let me know because I would be glad to see where there is something incongruent that is really valuable to me. It's one of the reasons why I put these things out. Is this incongruent? I don't care if this matches what you you think I don't care if it matches what somebody told you. Is what I'm saying incongruent? Or can I observe that it is untrue by observing life? You know, one of those two things, I'm right there with you. Otherwise your path is your path and I wish you luck with it. So the they're going to be issues. Fear, pain, doubt, sloth, distraction, fatigue, boredom. And I'll have to deal with those issues as they come up every time. Going back to the magic formula, I have the map. I know technically how to write a book. I've done it 30 something times before. And I have the tools. I know what my daily actions must be, ma. Correcting and polishing 50 pages, paper or screen. And I'm in control of my emotions. I feel great gratitude every morning. Every morning in my morning ritual, I give vocal thanks to the force. That's how I do It I give thanks to things and I give them Fs, as, you know, things that I can put into F categories in my family, you know, so in my fun, my fortress, my fiction. And then give thanks for the force. It's just a game I play with myself. Just amuses me like a clown. As I perform fire dance, I give thanks for my fire dance. I'm doing Tai chi. I'm speaking my gratitude aloud. I remember my deadlines. That's my intention, right? My goal. And I clarify my identity as someone who can and should do this, who should take these actions. I am that guy. I signed the damn contract. This is the life I asked for. So the things that I need to do are in alignment with my identity. I know why I'm doing it, and it makes it. I mean, there's still work, but it's just chop wood, carry water. My brakes are off. I'm not fighting myself. I hope you can see how this all fits together. And I do this every single day, six days a week. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes in the morning, and it powers my entire day. I'll also take at least five breathing breaks during the day. During those breaks, I will connect to my child and elder selves. And if they're both smiling, I know I'm on the right path. That's 60 seconds to check in. Most people don't check in once a year. Hopefully it's not that bad. Most people don't check in once a month. I'm asking you to check in very briefly every day. Maybe five times a day, but at the very least every week. Look at where you are, look at what you're committed to doing. See if you're going in the right direction. If you are, fine. Just Zen your way through your life. Have fun. And if you're not, make corrections every day you eat. You should move your body, strengthen your heart emotionally, and clarify your mind. And just make it a daily practice. It's simple. Not easy, but it's simple. And in honesty, this is advanced stuff. Most people won't do it or anything like it. Which explains why most people keep complaining about the same problems over and over and over again to you without really acknowledging that when they do that, they're taking up your time and energy and wasting the substance of their own lives. Because they're going in a circle. They think. No, they're not. You're always either going in an upward spiral or a downward spiral, because time is your enemy. Time eventually is going to move all the pieces off the board. So do what you're going to do in your life and do it today. I'll be there with you. You. You know, this is. This is my life too. And it's the life that I'm. I'm laying out for my son so that he, when he goes out into the world, he'll be able to test these things, see for himself whether his dad was telling the truth. So that's all I'm going to say today. Don't seem to be any questions today, so I'd like to invite you to come to the fire dance meeting on Saturdays where I answer questions, we interact, we have a supportive community, and every week we look at the question of what do I need to do to move myself forward by 1% this week? And all it takes to do that is to look at the map or model that you're following. Take daily actions. Make sure that you're feeling gratitude, you have a clear intention, and that this intention is in alignment with your self image, such that you believe you can and should do this thing. And as long as you don't have a zero in any of those, if you average a one across all five, you are improving yourself by about 1% a week. You want to go faster than that. Pump up the volume. Get a 2 or 3 or 4 or 5, average a 6. Oh, my God. By the time you're averaging a 7 or 8, you can be up there improving by, you know, 5%, 6%, 7% a week. It's amazing. And I invite you to try it and prove me wrong. It's free. All you have to do is do it. You take care. And until I see you next time, the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Take care.