What"s important to you? Do your actions mirror that?

Just look at your actions. Words are cheap. Only what you do counts, only what you do testifies about what is important to you.

It seems that being right, looking good, avoid domination of anyone or anything, including your own word, hoping, expecting the impossible... etc, etc, has been really important to you.

Where you are is where you are supposed to be, given all your actions.

Do all actions count? Talking, thinking, watching videos?

Only to a certain degree.

One of the people who have inspired me for many years is Werner Erhard, the founder of the est training.

What did he do?

He had hundreds of projects at different stages of development. Some were just ideas, others were ready to run on their own without much input from him.

What he did is this: he "injected" some energy, with some action, into each of them, at least a few times a week.

Tiny actions. None taking longer than two minutes of his time. A short phone call, an idea jotted down, tiny actions.

This two minutes thing is, by the way, from David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. I have been following this "rule" for two decades, and it is a life-saver.

Your mind, your spouse, your emails will suggest actions all the time... OK, some of them even DEMAND actions.

These demands break up your life into tiny fragments. You are now doing someone else"s bidding, you are building their life, and that makes you run around like a chicken without a head... the innate rhythm and design of your day is gone, and you are at best gathering the pieces to live your own life... if any time, any energy is left over.

The demands suggest urgency, the demanders" tone of voice suggest urgency... but nothing is urgent!

Nothing needs to get done in that same minute, unless it is a broken water main, or a fire.

On most tasks, projects, ideas, you can find a tiny piece that takes less than two minutes to do. And do that... Two minutes is not long enough to destroy your day... especially if you can remember what you are about... and after the two minute interruption you can return to it... ((There is this brilliant way to handle interruptions that preserve your sanity, preserve your productivity, and lets you have your cake and eat it too... serve two masters, just not at the same time. It"s called Stop-Change-Start... ask me about it.

I have mentioned it in two articles before... but it seems that I could write a third... so expect an article just about this stop-change-start... ))

But that, remembering what you are about, may be an issue when it comes to your life. You don"t remember what you are about. You go to the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get a glass of water... and you forget... you forget what you are about. You are rudderless, drifting...

So if that is you, your most important task is to take two minutes many times a day, close your eyes, and dis-identify yourself from the thoughts, the voices, the emotions, the noise in your head. Two minutes is often enough to get present to the FACT that you are none of those... and even if it doesn"t happen, yet, inside the two minutes, diligent practice will reduce the time it takes to return to yourself and to reality.

One of the gifts of the Playground is to offer sweet and short methods to neutralize jarring, bothersome, disturbing thoughts by using its methodology to return you to reality... where nothing is jarring, bothersome, or disturbing. So you can do what you meant to do... Undisturbed.

Of course if you are one of those people who think that your thoughts and emotions are important... then first I need to disabuse you... or you are on your own. Until you get that thoughts and emotions are automatic, and have nothing to do with you, have nothing to do with reality, you cannot be saved from the meaningless rushed life you are living. I measure this in a score: to what degree you honor your emotions as reality. The higher the number the more ineffective you are, and the more miserable...

You are going nowhere fast.

This is the situation of 97% of humanity.

What is the difference between the 97 and the 3%?

This is a crucial question, cuts to the heart of the matter.

If you have never set a direction for yourself and for your life, then you are part of the 97 percent.

If you are part of the 3%, then all you need to do is remind yourself of who you said you have chosen to be. With that you pull yourself out of the horizontal and default life some desire, some emotion, some person, or maybe the whole society is pulling you to... you have who you have chosen to be as an alternative: the direction others are missing.

I have two projects that are so many steps, one can"t know where to start.

And when the project is like that, then frequently doing one small 2-minute task on it is all it takes to keep it alive, until it gains momentum. When it has gained momentum, then it will carry itself, and can get done.

For example my 10% increase plan... I am stuck on the first step: drive more "suspects" to my site. I don"t know how... So instead of being stuck there, I have been doing 2-minute mini tasks on the six other areas of business... while one directly related is: asking myself the question: so how do you drive suspects to your site? And while I have been doing this every day for the past week, I had an insight: the way I drive people now is a dead end... so there is time to do something different. That is a result I would not have gotten to, hadn"t I asked the question every day.

One of my students who is an amazing idea machine (generates ideas fast!) is stuck on a kind of idea generation for a week now. I asked him: generate different question for a while, instead of generating answers to questions someone else has asked.

Asking questions is very counter to many people"s nature: with questions you expose yourself to getting killed... bosses, parents in most societies want you to be seen, not heard, so you have learned not to ask deep questions and sound argumentative.

But you will never become all you can become if you are more afraid of getting killed than of living an empty life, a meaningless life.  99.99% of the fear of the idea of getting killed... losing love, losing a client, losing a friend cost you just that... losing what you are afraid to lose.

You don"t eat the porridge as hot as you made it...

There seems to be no equivalent of this Hungarian saying in English. But the meaning is important to know.

There is always a fear when you do anything, a fear that it will be harmful... but unless you are utterly stupid and have no control of your mouth, you won"t burn it... you can allow some time to see what you cooked up.

In reality, stews are better the next day... and that should teach you something.

The fear is exaggerated and it inhibits you from asking question.

I often ask questions about severing relationships with worthless, abusive clients, students, and then let the question hang there.

Only a small percentage of the time do they remain relevant enough to require some action... even though when I cooked up the question, the answer, first, was a definite: kick them out... lol. Most of the time the fear exaggerates... and I don"t see the big enough picture. I haven"t kicked out anyone for a long time... I let myself cool off.

One of the answers, you fear you"ll get to your new question is that you are no good, you"ll never amount to anything, and it is all in vain to do this work... or some other work. It is so scary, that you want to move out of its way... sideways, anywhere...

It is never true, or not 100%. You always have choices... but it"s a process, and may take years to change something about yourself that you hate. But you"ll never change what you need to change, if you always move sideways.

Dr Popper, in one of his talks, talks about men. What it takes for men to feel like they are worthwhile... He goes through all the stages through one must de-value their goal, their direction. If they can do what it takes... from wanting power over people,  wanting power over their careers, wanting to make money, wanting to make things... to the level where it feels they cannot do anything well... and then they resort to drinking... or some other sideways move.

One of the books on my bookshelf in my bedroom, an orange book, talks about the plasticity of the brain. You, your brain, is designed to change itself. Just challenge it differently and it will do the job.

It"s a process, it"s not instant. It needs you to do things differently.

If your expect your whole world view to go through magical instant changes, you"ll be very discouraged, because that is not the nature of reality. There are no jumps in reality. NONE. Everything that looks fast has been building momentum for quite a while... in realty. Only your imagination can do the jumping. In Plato"s cave you"ll suddenly become this knight in shining armor, not that sissy boy who is still trying to prove that he can.

And if you hope in miracles, you"ll never be consistent enough to reach any worthwhile results, because the brain is looking for consistency, and discounts campaigns or sporadic weak attempts.

The kind of campaigns you have been doing in your life.