Indulging in emotions and thoughts is the favorite pastime of the unproductive

I measure this in the Starting Point Measurements. The measure is called: "To what degree you honor your emotions as reality?"

Emotions are like the hood ornament, the painted decorations, the wheel whatever shiny things on a car. They have nothing to do with where the car is going, how the car is driving, the only things that matter.

And yet, when you observe people, they hang out there, and their life passes them by.

They don"t just love talking and thinking about their emotions, they even refuse to talk about the where the car is going and the how of the driving.

They don"t care. I am not 100% sure, but my hunch, observing yesterday"s partner conversations and a coaching call I had, they are afraid that if they even talk about what matters, then they will be called to account, then their real essence will show: that they don"t want to live in reality where life happens, they just want to talk about it.

The more you talk the more suspicious you should become, that you are avoiding something.

And if you don"t outwardly talk too much: include your inner talking in the amount of talking you do. Rehashing, judging, justifying things in your head.

What is the result of all this? An ineffective life... and not less important: a life you don"t love.

Why? because all this seemingly important activity takes you away from doing what would be your "job" in life: from living. Living in reality. Doing in reality what there is to do.

You only have so much energy. And you are wasting it to useless stuff... No benefit comes from any of that "thinking" that is about as useful, and as effective for life, as treading water.

Yesterday I listened to two partner calls. Partner calls are part of my Playground program, the program that is designed to turn ineffective humans into highly effective, productive humans, that navigate life with poise, grace, and ease.

We are halfway through the year long program with the current group.

Some participants opted to have more than one partner conversations than one a week, and two participants have opted to have two partners.

The two calls I listened to yesterday had one participant talk to two different partners in two separate calls.

In both of those calls the other participant did all they could to seduce this one participant into talking about emotions, and the thinking about them, about what happened on the level of emotions, mostly guessing... projecting... philosophizing.

In essence, navel gazing... useless, treading water.

If our ancestors lived like we do today, the human species would be long extinct.

Our ancestors first made plans on cave paintings, and then went out and killed the animals they needed to feel the tribe.

You can"t kill the food where it isn"t... in your head. In words. In speculation.

Unless you get yourself to where things are, you are utterly useless, and you are out of sync with reality, out of sync with life.

What is in common between the two "other" participants is exactly that: they are not producers.

What does it mean being a "producer?"

On the lowest level: a producer does what they said they would do, to provide for themselves a livelihood, either in the present or in the future.

Thinking about doing it, talking about doing it, is avoiding doing it. Plain and simple.

And this is what 99% of humanity is doing. Even at their jobs, people do as little as they can get away with with their attention scarcely on the job.

Ayn Rand saw what I see. She saw that a small number of people carry the load of all of humanity. The small number of producers who spend their time doing what producing takes, and none of their time treading water.

Arguably, producers have a harder life than the non-producers, the looters and moochers of the world. When you produce, you have to work, and it takes energy. You have to have organized, systematic thinking, and that is the hardest work there is. You have to take the risk of being seen, being judged, making mistakes, being found out, being called selfish.

I am a producer, and have always been. And I can promise you, the life of a producer is not easy, yet I would not trade it for the world.

Also, a producer needs to pay attention to what they eat, what they drink, how they sleep, so they can be in top form.

One of the ways you know that you don"t even want to be a producer is observing how well you take care of the physical foundation of your existence.

The "other" partners on those calls are the non-producers. One"s cell hydration number is 3% and his health number is also 3%. Artificially, intentionally kept low. After all, no one can blame someone for no results if one is not well enough, strong enough to produce, right?

I want to throw up...

As a producer and as a teacher, I find this blatant attack on Life disgusting.

The other "other" is slightly less obvious, her numbers, both, are 10%... instead of the 30% a producer needs to produce.

I am frail, and I am in need of a lot of healing. Yet my numbers, puny as they are, are both at 30%... just enough to be in the producing state.

I have recovered enough, so I can go to my exercise class today... and hope that I"ll come home on my feet... lol.

Summary:

Even when people are in the Playground, unless they build all the rest of the modules, all the rest of the learning on the foundational module: What is reality?, module 1, they will slip back to living in unreality, in their heads, in Plato"s Cave, having "delightful" conversations about the invisible dynamics, about their rackets, their cases... wow, so titillating!

The first module, module 1 of the Playground has 50% of all the power of the program, even though it is only 25% of the time. It"s seductively simple... but it should not lead you to think that it"s easy.

It is the cornerstone of all the work, the cornerstone of raising your vibration, the cornerstone of building a life, a you, you can love.

PS: I just got an email from a forum owner... inviting me to discuss, have my say, and make his site better.

I am sure lots of people will jump on his offer... anything to justify not doing anything useful.

I am tempted to send him a response, even though it wasn"t a personal email, saying that I am too busy making a life to chat, chatter, discuss, have my say, to make his site better. lol

The more you talk, the less you grow... People who have conversations waiting for their turn to speak, are people who don"t even want to grow... they just want to talk.

Don"t be one of those people.

PPS: Another Starting Point Measure that is very telling is the ambition number. Ambition, in this context, is the willingness you have to put work into what you want.

But, as I noted on myself today, your ambition depends largely on how well you are. I wasn"t well for quite a few months. This past week I managed to turn a corner. I am still not well, but better. And today I noticed that a lot of what I have been unwilling to do, I suddenly had the ambition to do... So please note that your whole being is built on a physical foundation.

And most of you, willfully, don"t take care of your well-being. Like a few of my bi-polar clients, who willfully don"t take their Lithium Orotate, slipping into mania... But the higher the mania the lower the depression that comes... inevitably.

PPPS: OK, we all have these emotions... what should we do with them? Honor them as those many quotes suggest? Not at all.

You can notice the. You can label/name them. And you can own them.

The worst you can do is abdicate them, suppress them, or try to fix them. None of those work to your advantage, they are just "much ado about nothing"... "a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

You are not bad if you don"t love your child... you are not bad if you want what you want... you are not bad if you are lazy...

Don"t disown them, don"t deny them, don"t try to change them. Own them... as something that is not bad, but may not be helpful if you want to live a great life.

And, occasionally, in the course, you can find the origin or the dynamic of the machine that brings all those to bear, and you"ll have clarity... But even after that, owning them, embracing them is the best way to deal with them.

I shared in one of the classes, that as a phoner for enrollments in a course I hadn"t done, back 30 years ago, was terrifying for me. I was afraid to pick up the phone. So I looked, and saw that I was afraid, and the fear was like a little kid, or a little animal, trying to get all my attention and get me out of there... I picked up that fear, and put it in my jacket"s breast pocket... and whispered to it, as if it were a hamster: don"t worry, fear, I"ll take you with me. We"ll go together, I am not going anywhere...

And the fear stopped resisting, and I could make my phone calls, and my results were exceptional, because I made more calls than others...

That is the producer"s way: take your fear, or whatever the emotion is, with you.

When having nothing to do drives you crazy...

The Active Mindset: A Sure Way To Avoid All Boredom With Life ((this article is a little chunky... it needs a serious rewrite... so if you found it chunky, come back later and check... after I whip it into shape...))

I stumbled on an article that addresses an issue I have been seeing... and sheds light at what has been invisible to me, at the why of it: why people are not curious, why people have no questions, why people are afraid of idleness, why people choose busyness instead of doing something that is worth doing.

It"s everywhere. It"s nearly everybody. It is why you have a hard time falling asleep... or conversely why you fall asleep as soon as you put your head on the pillow. Both are symptoms of the same invisible.

It"s what drives you to busyness... to reading everything, to watching every video, to play video games incessantly, to talking without taking a breath, to overwhelming yourself and never doing anything well.

It"s your inability to think... instead of having thoughts. You have thoughts in the mind... and would think outside of the mind.

You have no control over the thoughts you have... but you could learn to come out of the mind... I teach two methods in my upcoming two courses, Reading and Sleeping...

Active thoughts, the result of thinking, are much more complex than passive thoughts. Active thinking is a form of critical thinking. It is analyzing information

The difference between thinking and having thoughts.

The "having thoughts" is repetitive, circular, leading to no resolution, dealing with the past, or dealing with the future... fear based, and fruitless.

Being an active thinker is both a thinking capacity that needs the spiritual capacity of curiosity, and a habit.

Most people I muscle test have one spiritual capacity open, and it is definitely not curiosity.

Given the way we are brought up, we are passive thinkers only... (having thoughts, no thinking) to one degree or another. It can be measured by me, and I have decided to add this measure to my Starting Point Measurements.

The main criteria is to what degree you need outside stimulation... the wanting to, needing to, having to, and should. To what degree you need excitement that comes from the outside, people, the internet, your cell phone, movies, even books to engage you so you never have to be alone. Because you are boring for yourself. You don"t know what to do with yourself.

You are not good company... and you would die of boredom if you had to be in solitary confinement.

You live in a train that is the cave of your mind... and reality, outside of the train is passing you by. You are not curious, you are unaware of, or ignore the tugging of your "soul"... and you live a make believe life.

You are boring and you are bored. And yet you avoid coming off the train, coming out of the mind, living an active life, learning new skills, taking risks that keep you out of the mind... that would help you develop critical thinking, thinking for yourself, and enjoying your own company.

Here is the article I read... its truth value is 10%: low. What"s missing for it to be higher truth value? It"s thin... there is a lot more in that rabbit hole.

Passive vs active thinking

“I’m bored.” When’s the last time you said that? I bet not too long ago.

If you give me 4 minutes, I’ll tell you why that’s a bad sign.

In the past, I always looked at other people for answers. When you’re little, your school teachers tell you what to do every day. That’s the system at primary school, high school, college, and university.

It’s always one person who tells a group what to do. What does that do to people?

School systems train us to be passive. And after we get out of school, nothing really changes. When I had my first job, I listened to my boss about what to do.

And when I started my first business with my dad, I looked at him for answers.

Now, you might think that this is a matter of experience. That’s the most obvious idea. We think:

“When I’m junior, I take orders. When I’m senior, I give orders.”

That’s about the worst mindset you can have because it’s too passive. Instead, it’s much more beneficial for our career to adopt an active mindset.

What’s the difference between a passive and active mindset? And how do we even form an active mindset? I have three-step-process that I’ve used to transform my own mindset. Feel free to use it too.
Step 1: Acknowledge that passivity is bad

So when I talk about being bored, I’m not talking about being bored in a good way. Sometimes the best ideas come to us when we’re fully relaxed. That’s good.

For the sake of this article, I’m talking about when we say I’m bored in an “I have no idea what I’m doing” type of way.

Do you recognize that feeling? It’s a sense of aimlessness.

Now, to a degree, no one knows what they are doing. The difference is that when you’re always bored with life, you’re not trying.

And people who don’t try are losers. You know why? Life is fascinating—but you must try to experience it.

There’s nothing cool about not having your shit together. You can’t go through life as a passenger.

At some point, you must take over the wheel and decide where you’re going next. That’s the difference between people who have an active mindset and people with a passive mindset.

The former owns his destiny. The latter leaves it up to others.
Step 2: Commit to learning

The Stoic philosopher Seneca put it best in On The Shortness Of Life:

“If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.”

That’s why I believe an active mindset has nothing to do with experience. I know interns who are more curious and ask more questions than most senior managers.

But having an active mindset has nothing to do with age or experience.

For example, an insurance consultant in his sixties—who I work with—is as curious as an intern. He’s enthusiastic about everything you talk to him about.

The other day I visited a printing company with my brother. The owner, a third-generation business owner, took over the business from his father years ago. He gave us a full tour and showed us the old printing presses they used, etc.

My brother and I were genuinely interested. The printing press, developed by Johannes Gutenberg, is the greatest invention for human progress. Without books, we wouldn’t be where we are today. That’s fascinating to me.

The owner said, “I’ve never met anyone who actually asked about how we print our books, magazines, flyers, etc.”

Not many people commit to learning. That’s why so many people are always bored. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you by now.
Step 3: Add value

If you apply step 2, adding value becomes easy. When you’re curious and ask questions, you learn. And when you learn, you will have more knowledge and ideas.

When you have ideas, you can use them to improve your life, work, business, etc. That’s the logic.

But that doesn’t mean you should blatantly share your ideas and advice with everyone. You know why?

Just because you have a good idea or piece of advice, it doesn’t mean you must tell the other person about it. People get offended quickly.

The reasons is that advice can be perceived as criticism.

Dale Carnegie writes about it exhaustively in How To Win Friends And Influence People. You must be subtle when you try to add value. Carnegie says:

Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain
Give honest and sincere appreciation
Arouse in the other person an eager want—It’s much better to let people realize something by themselves instead of trying to force them.

Sometimes people email me and say that I need to change something about my blog. “Your articles are too long!” Someone recently said. He clearly never read Carnegie.

When it comes to adopting an active mindset; more knowledge will not help you—only action will. People with a passive mindset think that’s common sense. They’re quick to think they already know things.

But as you and I both know; it’s not about what you know it’s about what you do.

The most important thing is that we commit to learning. If you stay assertive and try to help people (who want to be helped) in life and business, you’ll never be bored. Plus, you’ll keep making progress.

And making progress (no matter how little) is the sure sign that you have an active mindset.