Are you the solution or are you the problem?

I am sitting here. In a few hours I have a brainstorming call with a student of mine, who is, who has been, who is proving to be impossible to train... and I am scared and angry.

This article is the process in which I change my context for the call, so I can make a difference... or not... Inside the current context all I can do is yell... Not what I want my life to be. So, here we go...

Useless vs Priceless

Or said in another way: are you the solution or are you the problem?

As a little boy or as a little girl, you made some decisions about yourself, what it is that you were supposed to get, how to get what you want.

Depending on what decision you made, you are now the problem in one way or another.

Your invented way was to solve your problem of not being noticed, not being valued, not being important. But your solution made you other people"s problem.

Your solution came at other people"s expense.

Your particular solution was pretty much consistent with your soul correction... a desire to receive for the self alone solution.

• You complain, for example, and make other people feel guilty, or impotent because they cannot solve your problem.


• Or you complain to make yourself seem smarter than everyone else.


• Or you complain to get some attention.


• Or you complain so someone takes care of you. Someone or something.

You are a problem. Not a solution.

You talk and need others to listen to you. Talk too much, do too little. You weep. You gossip. You pontificate. You explain. Justify. You don"t do, and especially don"t take care of your own needs.

You are a drama queen... and when I mention it to you, you giggle. It"s a source of glee for you.

The Playground program is a threat to you. Even if you registered for some difficult to explain reason, you don"t do the work.

Why? Because what are you going to do with your time after you become a person who can and will take care of themselves? Who will be all you can be? When you"ll have about 14 hours free... what are you going to do?

Who will you be? How was it for me?

One of the interesting things about this is that you don"t know that you are needy. You don"t know that you not taking care of your needs is a racket that perpetuates the original complaint of not being important, or loved, or whatever you didn"t get as a child.

I didn"t know. I was even self-righteous when I saw people taking care of themselves, and called them selfish.

The turning point for me was about two years ago. I didn"t feel well and I didn"t have food in the house. I complained to my brother, who said: You need to take care of yourself... which hit me in a way that hasn"t happened before.

I heard: it is MY job to take care of myself, to provide myself with what I need to be well.

I don"t think I ever got that before. It should be obvious, but it wasn"t obvious to me. And it may not be obvious to you.

I"d gotten some years before that mother wasn"t coming... meaning no one is going to rescue me, but instead of getting that it is my job, that fact gave me deep sorrow... and no solution. I just wanted to be rescued all the more...

I didn"t see, I could not see, that I was doing my darned best to neglect myself, to perpetuate the original feeling that I wasn"t loved, that I wasn"t getting what I needed.

I still recreate that at least once a month, and I am starting to distinguish the facial expression that goes with it, the shape of the mouth that is like a crescent facing down, and it also has a pout... easier said that described... you probably have your own. And if the donkey in Winnie the Pooh were human, in my drawings he would wear the same facial expression, the same eternal sadness, personally aggrieved by the Universe.

Judging from how many people are waiting for god or Jesus to rescue them, judging from how many people behave as if I could save them... this is universal with just a few little variations of shade... So I trust that you recognize yourself.

The shift from waiting for something or someone outside of you to give it to you to you providing yourself with what you need is a big one, and in my experience is neither permanent nor easy.

But what is most surprising is that each time I slip back to helplessness, to neediness, I need to do the same shift.

It is getting easier, but not easy. It is getting faster, but not fast, and definitely no "instinctive", not at all.

The job is to recognize it, diagnose it, define the solution, and start the shift towards moving the fingers facing my own self: it is MY job.

This is the deepest, most hidden racket every singly human is plagued with, even billionaires.

A deep set fundamental need unfulfilled until you, yourself, find a way to fulfill it for yourself.

Whether it is love, nurturing, significance, validation, tenderness, attention, whatever is the need, you can give it to yourself.

A significant move towards figuring out how to do that, for me, was reading the book by James Altucher: "Choose Yourself"

It was using a dramatic phrase from Seth Godin. Seth Godin said: Pick yourself... but I didn"t know that, for me choosing myself was a different drama... so I pondered it a lot. A whole lot.

And my brother"s words: Take care of yourself came exactly at the same time... and now choosing myself means what my brother said to me... (not how either Seth Godin or James Altucher meant it, to pick myself for a worldly job... or whatever they meant... no) to take care of my needs. All my needs. Emotional, physical, organizational, practical, medical... all my needs, fully and completely. ((By the way, before things can get better, they normally get worse... a lot worse. At least in my life. Before I could enjoy a life of freedom from waiting... I had to get really sick... But I remembered that it is my job to take care of me... and at some point I managed to think straight and look what it is I am not doing for myself. It was a big step from feeling like a victim... and what I found wasn"t even that difficult or complicated. So now I am well, or much better. Went from being able to work 2-3 hours a day to having energy even at the end of a 14 hour workday... without coffee, tea, or any stimulants. I say wow to that! lol. You see, even validating myself, and my results, even acknowledging victories is my job... not someone else"s.))

You need to pick yourself to give yourself what you need. Why? Because you can. And, between you and me, no one else can.

You need loving? Have you noticed that you don"t feel love that others give you, unless you also love them?

If I went to you and hugged you, and whispered in your ears: I love you, would you feel loved? No. How do I know it? Because you cannot.

You can only feel your own feelings, and love doesn"t emanate, love is not an energy, love cannot be given as an experience, unless you give yourself that love.

People need to be heard... they talk and talk and talk... talk your ears off. They talk over you. They pay me to coach them, but they don"t stop talking... And they leave the call a little emptier of tension, but in a few hours they need to talk again.

They didn"t get what they needed. Only they can provide that for themselves.

People beg me for validation... but again and again and again.

Clear that they are not validating themselves... They are not giving themselves what they need.

I have a sneaking suspicion about overly ambitious people: their unfulfilled need fuels their ambition, but isn"t a good tool to fulfill the need... no amount of money or recognition will give you a sense of belonging, but you can give it to yourself, even if you were adopted and your birth parents didn"t want you.

That little boy or that little girl is still there, wanting something that cannot be given by someone, other than yourself.

A racket is an invisible dynamic. Its visible component is an expressed or unexpressed complaint. And the dynamic"s job is to keep it going, to recreate, reproduce, re-generate the original complaint. The original pain.

The real perpetuum mobile... the one that Tesla didn"t invent.

Why is it virtually indestructible? I don"t really know. Maybe because it is now a part of the identity? Maybe because it is the soul"s pain?

Maybe because the whole soul correction is about this: give yourself what you need.

If you are not for you, who is for you?
If not now when?
If you are only for you, who are you?

Maybe the whole soul correction is about these three sentences, performed over and over and over.

One of the things I have given myself is what I see when I look out my window in my office. It is sooo beautiful, and sooo many different ways. And I am moved every time. My soul craves beauty as much as it craves anything else. Seeing beauty every minute of every day, not as an event.

My soul also craves music and dancing.

I have discovered while I was too sick to have fun, that the exercise class was not fun, I was fun when I had fun. I am well now. And I can see that I don"t need the class to have "occasional fun", I can put my headsets on, and have fun dancing, and laughing, enjoying the music and my body"s movements, whenever I want.

And I do.

And I am starting to discover that when I don"t need my customers to rescue me from certain financial ruin, they are a heck of a lot more willing to buy my stuff... lol.

And now I order grocery every week for delivery. And join the shopping group when I want to get out and about. When I give that to myself, not when I need someone to fulfill my needs.

I spoke about the Honorary Jewish Society yesterday.

If you join... My suggestion is that we adopt this "choosing yourself" habit first. If we don"t do anything else, this will make history! Your history and my history.

You"ll learn this. It took me many years, because I had only accidental guidance... but in the Honorary Jewish Society you can have me to guide you every day...

I feel a lot better, a lot clearer now.

In yesterday"s article, I think, I wrote about the incorrigibles... I used another adjective then.

The people who won"t take teaching.

Looking from the angle of "choosing yourself" to take care of yourself, to give yourself what you need, it seems to me that these are the people whose original pain was slight of one sort or another, who feel slighted. (Circuitry), Who felt left alone with no explanation even why they weren"t considered (Silent Partner), who were not chosen in comparison with another (Share the Light), or whose thunder was stolen (Removing Hatred), etc.

I am feeling my compassion awaken. I can see that the more I can succeed in teaching you to give yourself what you have been missing, the better your life can become, the freer you can be to do what can cause you to grow.

If I didn"t mention your soul correction, that doesn"t mean you don"t have a lot of work to do... This is a work in progress...

I may do some workshops for this. For now I am working with my Playground participants to develop some working methods that I can teach.

Seeing what has been running your misery is a very satisfying, maybe even enjoyable experience, but doesn"t cause any different behavior or attitude.

It is a whole different level to recognize this as the core, as the seed level in every complaint you have.

And yet another level is to learning ways to provide yourself with what you need.

And to never expect this pain to disappear... because it won"t. But instead of suffering from it, use it as fuel. You can learn how to do that.

Will you? We shall see...