Posts from — February 2009

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In the earlier post, “What creates a transformation?” I looked at how a declaration of what you want can be a key to causing transformation.  In that post, I said that making a declaration wasn’t the end of the creative process, just a key element to it.  So once the declaration is made, how do you create the future?  Simple. You take action.  There’s no mystery here.  Want to learn to play the piano, go sign up for piano lessons.  Want to learn to ride a horse, go take riding lessons.  Want to find a spouse, then start dating.  Want to have a new house built, go talk to contractors.  Want to start a business, lose 100 pounds, or find a new job, then take actions consistent with the future you want to create. 

This may not seem very transformational.  We know that to create anything in our lives requires action, yet knowing that it requires action and actually taking action are two very different things.  There are likely several or many areas in your life where you know what to do, but you aren’t doing it.  The past is whispering to you.  “You can’t take piano lessons, you don’t have the money.”  “You can’t have a relationship, you’ve failed at three already.”  What is that chatter describing?  It’s only describing outcomes.  Three failed relationships is not evidence for anything about the future.  You have the amount of money you have; it may not be enough to take piano lessons, but it is what it is.  Now you know that to take piano lessons, you need more money, so create the money.  “Oh wonderful, I’m already working two jobs just to make ends meet, and you want me to create more money.”  What is that chatter describing?  Again, it’s describing an outcome.  What keeps us stuck is not the condition; it’s our relationship to the condition.  It’s the chattering about “what is” that keeps us from moving forward. 

So how do you quiet the chatter?  Simple.  You declare the future.  This is something you’re going to have to experiment with, but the bottom line is the past will continue to chatter in your ear unless you say something else and say it powerfully.  Your mind can smell a lie a mile away. You mind has to know that a different future is possible and that you (not your boss, your spouse, your parents, your government, but you) are going to create it.  This is not a mindless practice of chanting what you want over and over again hoping that it will somehow magically appear in your life; nevertheless, it’s transformational. 

No transformation?  Then you haven’t said it in the way that I’m describing here.  The past is still lingering and sapping the power from your words. When you make the declaration of what you’re going to create in this way, it cuts through the past like a knife.  You’ll experience yourself letting go of the past as it lets go of you.  The lid of the default future disappears.  The illusion is cast away.  With the past quiet, your mind will naturally begin to think about and focus on how to create what you want.  Whatever comes up, do it.  You don’t need to do it right now today, but you must put it in existence to be done or at the very least, clearly declare that you’re not going to do it.  Just don’t resist.  Resistance is a product of the past.  Don’t try to fool yourself.  Like I said, your mind can smell a lie a mile away.  The moment you waver, your mind will jump on it and say, “See, it’s all bullshit.  You can’t have what you want,” and it will start chattering again, and will continue to do so until you say something different.

Does making this declaration guarantee success?  No, but if you look, failure isn’t what makes life hard.  Failure is just an outcome.  Possibility is killed in your life as a result of listening to the chatter.  It comes from living in the cage of “I can’t have what I want.”  No, success is not guaranteed, but that’s okay, because neither is failure the problem.  Standing still is.

In the end, transformation isn’t about success or failure or how we feel; it’s about what we see as possible in our lives.  I’ve used everyday things people want to create to make the point, but the ultimate point isn’t about creating those things.  This conversation is about creating a new way of life on this planet – a way of life where good things happen naturally for people, and the one thing I’m very clear about is that to achieve that end we have to get better at creating, period.  The world we want will not come about by fixing, resisting or otherwise manipulating the world we’ve already created.  It will come about in only one way: by creating it.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3    |    Part 4

Creating the Future

In their book, The Three Laws of Performance, authors Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan discuss the idea of a default future: “Our default future consists of our expectations, fears, hopes, and predictions, all of which are ultimately based on our experience in the past.  Incidents from the past live on as prediction, giving us our default future.”  When you don’t see the present moment (and all of your past for that matter) as just one possible outcome, you get drawn into it and it feels like what you have is all that’s possible.  Life has that quality of being “just the way it is” and it’s all it’s every going to be.

What robs you of joy and effectiveness in life is not that something is missing about you or your life.  It’s not the lack of something; it’s the addition of something – a default future.  As Zaffron and Logan tell us your default future is just your past resurrected.  Masked as your default future, your past becomes the lid that seals you tightly into a box you’ve created – the box called your life.  But as we’ve seen, it’s all an illusion.  This is not the true nature of things.  There is no default future.  There is no lid.  There is no future.  There’s just what you’re creating in this present moment.

This doesn’t mean that there are no limits to life.  Any box you create exists inside a bigger box labeled “Life” and life certainly has limits.  If you look though, you really don’t need to worry about the limits of life.  For most of us anyway, the things we want are not outrageous demands of life.   We’re not looking to press the limits of life.  We’re just looking to have a satisfying life experience.  For that, all you need to do is to master taking the lid off, see the illusion of your default future and then invent a future that gives life to your life. 

The point of this series wasn’t to reveal the secret of life.  It was only to distinguish a piece of the puzzle that often goes overlooked.  I think it’s an important piece, a key even, but it’s certainly not the only one.  It is though one of those more challenging pieces of the puzzle to see and fit in place.  

You know, not an edge piece … a middle piece.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3    |    Part 4

A Moment in Time

If all of life is actually lived in the present moment, then it makes sense to examine the present a little more closely.  The question I want to delve into more deeply is “What exists in a present moment?”  We already know that in our own subjective experience, we have these “things” called our past and our future, but what about what’s going on out in the world?  Imagine we could stop time and examine one “frame” of life – the world at one moment in time.  What would we see?  We’d see life, right?  We’d see houses, cars, roads, people, desks, trees, rakes, and ditches.  We’d see food, televisions, guns, tanks, buildings, and jewelry.  We’d see people being shot and killed in war.  We’d see other people dying from starvation.  We’d see others sitting on their private yacht in the Caribbean while others sit at work talking on the phone.  We’d see outcomes.  In any snapshot of life, in any moment, what exists is just a set of outcomes.

How did we arrive at the outcomes?  We end up at the outcomes of our lives based on the decisions and choices made over time in the past.  This moment you’re experiencing right now is a product of the past.  You’re reading these words because I decided to write them at some point in the past.  You’re reading these words because you decided to buy a computer at some point in the past.  You were able to buy a computer because you have a job.  You have a job because you went to college and because some person or persons decided to establish the organization you work for, on and on.  Every present moment is just a set of outcomes; outcomes that resulted from past thinking and action. 

This point, while obvious is nevertheless significant because, in life, there’s what is – the outcomes of life – and then there’s what you think about what is, and how you relate to it.  In reality, your life is just an outcome.  Your past is just filled with outcomes.  Today is just an outcome.  Tomorrow will be just another outcome.  Say whatever you want about it; it ain’t gonna change.  We don’t related to (and therefore talk about) our lives as outcomes.  We talk about our lives like something is wrong with them.  Something is always happening in our lives that shouldn’t be happening, when the reality is that whatever “it” is, is happening, and we spend our time trying to fix and change what already is!

Yes, of course, that people are starving is a horrible thing.  Yes, of course, your boss being abrasive is annoying.  That your child is failing algebra is cause for concern.  Relating to something as an outcome doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  It’s when you don’t relate to it as an outcome that you become stuck with it.  Begin today to see all that’s happening before your eyes as a mere outcome.  Right now, stop fussing over the state of your life.  All of it is just life catching up to what was said (and thought) at some time in the past. If you understand and master this, quiet all the explanations for why it is this way, and stop fixing life, then you open the possibility of really of creating a different future.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3    |    Part 4

The Past and The Future

In our collective understanding of time, the past is yesterday and the future is tomorrow.  The past is the moment that just was and the future is the moment in front of us.  Those definitions of time are absolutely valid and it’s not my intention to challenge them.  I will however challenge them as being incomplete.  Rather than look at the past and future as mere points in time, we must begin to more deeply understand another relationship we have with the past and the future - as things.  

Think about it.  Don’t you often talk about the past as “my past”?  Or hear a friend talking about “his future”?  Things like “My past has been really difficult” or “Her future is bright” are spoken as if we are saying, “This couch is uncomfortable, but that chair is delightful.”  In this way, when we talk about the past or future, we are speaking of them as objects, things.  Intellectually, of course, we know that the person whose past has been challenging is really only extrapolating specific events from his or her past, and then generalizing the experience.  Still, when we talk about the past and future in this way, we are objectifying them.  We are doing this, despite the fact that neither exist.

Yes, things happened to you in the past and yes, things will happen to you in the future, but when does the actual happening of the events occur?  It always and forever occurs in a present moment.  Ten years ago, when your child was born, the actual happening of the birth was a present moment that occurred ten years ago at a particular date and time.   Today, in this present moment, you now think and talk about your past – the birth.  Two months from now, if you’re going on vacation to Maui, all you can do today is think and talk about your future.  The actual happening of that future will occur (if at all) at a present moment of time two months into the future.  So, it’s really interesting to begin to notice that we have these things – the past and the future – that occur as real to us as a couch or a chair, when in fact they don’t exist in reality at all.   The only moment of time that exists in reality is the present moment of time (as far as we know today).  And what we do in virtually every present moment of time is we think or speak about these things – the past and the future.

Now remember, the point of this conversation is to impact your ability to create what you want in your life so we want to capitalize on the relationship we have with the past and the future.  We’re not going to stop thinking and talking about them.  There’s nothing taboo here that we’re trying to get rid of; we’re just going to learn to more fully recognize the past from the future.  And the best part is developing the ability to see the past from the future is something that can be mastered over time.  Once you fully see it, you see it and your life is changed forever.  While at first, it might seem challenging, you’ll find that it’s much, much easier to master than spending your life trying to fix who you are.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3    |    Part 4

Imagine if you couldn’t tell the difference between a pen and your watch?  Or a key and a telephone?  Or your child and your boss?  If you couldn’t do these things you couldn’t live.  You’d be asking your child for a raise and your boss to pick up her toys.  This would result in an obvious loss of effectiveness in life.  And of course, there’s a whole world, a contextual world behind all of these things.  To use a pen effectively, you have to know how to write, which means you have to know letters, words, and sentence structure.  You have to know paper.  To use a watch effectively, you have to be able to tell time.  You have to know what time is!  My point is there’s a lot going on in the processing of life, but one thing that allows for you to understand and use all these different things is an ability we all take for granted – the ability to see one thing from another.

This may seem like a silly idea, but consider this – the areas in your life where you think you’re not effective (and are afraid you’re never going to be) result simply from the fact that you cannot see one thing from the other.  In this series, I’m going to delve deeper into this idea, but I want to be clear about something right from the beginning.  Any explanation is only intended to help you see one thing from the other.  Don’t confuse the explanation with the phenomenon itself.  As ridiculous as it may seem, we all have aspects of our lives where the way we live is like trying to tell time with a pen, or trying to unlock a door with a telephone.  We’re confused about what we’re dealing with, and it is this and this alone that leads to our inability to create what we want.  

And one last point, the immediate (and freeing) implication of this idea is that any loss of effectiveness doesn’t have anything to do with explanations like not being disciplined enough or smart enough or assertive enough or really “anything” enough.  In other words, you are not broken (and so you can stop trying to fix yourself)!  In fact, the more you try to work on these things, the worse you make it.  I’m not saying that people don’t have natural gifts and talents, as well as inherent deficits and weaknesses.  What I’m saying is that those things are not the source of creating what you want.  If you attempt to write a bestselling novel with paper and a spatula, it doesn’t matter how much talent you have as a writer.  You’re not going to write anything.  Explanations like “I’m not ______ enough,” while true in some cases, mostly have become the default explanations to compensate for the fact that we simply haven’t learned that the critical ability is the one that lies behind the talent – the ability to see one thing from another.

The good news then is once you begin to get a hang of this, it really will be as obvious as “Oh, I’m using a plunger to drill a hole in my wall.  Duh, let me get my drill.”  You’ll make the shift and boom, your power and effectiveness will be restored, and that world of default explanations and trying to fix yourself will be left in the dust, while you move forward creating what you want.

So just what is the one thing from another that we’re not seeing?

There are undoubtedly many answers to this question.  Here’s one way that tends to go unnoticed:  You create a transformation by declaring possible what doesn’t seem possible to you.  You say what you want authentically without apology or resistance.  This may be hard to swallow especially if you’re thinking that you’re not even sure you know what you want.

Consider that you do know what you want.  You always know what you want.  Look at your life, are there things you have in your life right now that you don’t want? It’s only possible to know that you don’t want them because you have a reference point for what you want.  If you have a dissatisfying marriage, you know you want a satisfying one.  If you have a job you hate, you know you want a job you love.  It’s really not rocket science figuring out what you want.

So why does it seem so difficult?  In our culture, not having what you want has become the norm so we forgot that in order to have what you want, the first thing you have to do is ask for it.  You have to declare, “I want ________ (whatever it is that you want).”  Instead of asking for what we want in life and creating it, we engage in all these really odd behaviors consistent with a race that believe they can’t have what they want.  For example, instead of declaring what we want, we bitch and complain about how it is.  Or instead of creating what we want, we try to fix, change or manipulate the situation or others involved so it will somehow magically be what we want.  Some of us live lives of quiet desperation just hoping someone will save us, or worse, hoping for a quick, easy death.

I mean think about it.  If you have a piece of cake and you want a slice of pizza, there isn’t anything you can do to make that piece of cake into a slice of pizza.  There’s no magical, mystical cake into pizza transformation machine.  More importantly, you know that if you want a slice of pizza, then go get a slice of pizza!  Yet, in these other areas of life, we somehow ended up thinking it worked differently and so we spend our time trying to make people or situations into what they’re not rather than just creating what we want.

So yeah, transformation is created by asking for what you want.  Period.  Creation doesn’t end there of course.  You still have to actually create what you want, but the great thing is rather than live that life of quiet desperation or hope; you live a life of transformation.  When you make a declaration of what you want without apology, resistance or even knowing how you’re going to accomplish what you’ve declared, you step out of the world of “it’s not possible” and voila, transformation occurs.