Most People Don’t Like Change…I Crave It.

I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from an expatriot who’s living life powerfully. He sent me this story to rimind me how important it is to keep fluid and go with the flow. Most people loath change but I’ve embraced change so much that now I crave it. I get complete satisfaction and fulfillment from keeping things fresh and  pushing my comfort levels by learning new things and changing things up often. I owe this way of being to my ongoing financial success. I was heavily into real estate and when that industry took a downward spiral, I shifted to a completely different occupation in internet advertising. If I would have resisted, and stayed in the real estate market I would have been dragged down with it. Instead, things are going well despite the big economic downturn most people are facing right now. In order to be successful and powerful, I think it’s imparative that you get really comfortable with change yourself. The following story is a good example of why it’s so important. By the late summer of 1939, Hitler’s forces had absorbed Austria and Czechoslovakia into his growing empire, and Germany’s military was massed at the Polish border clearly preparing for invasion. In an astonishing display of perhaps the greatest complacency in the history of the modern world, however, Polish people sat lazing about their lakes, beaches, and riverbanks worrying about more pressing matters– like how to beat the summer heat. In September of that year, German troops easily vanquished the Polish army, and Krakow became the colonial seat of the occupying forces. Almost immediately, under the direction of the German SS, anyone who posed a threat was rounded up and imprisoned. This included over 180 Polish university professors and many businessmen. Krakow, of course, is also very close to two of the main concentration camps used during the German occupation, nearby Oswiecim (Auschwitz) and Plaszow. The worst part is that, even after the war was over, Poland merely swapped fascism for Stalinism. Overall, the country was shrouded in brutal totalitarian control for half a century; undoubtedly, the Nazi invasion of Poland set off a chain of events that would forever affect the lives of all Poles. It’s true that no one had a crystal ball back then… but it would certainly stand to reason that with Hitler knocking at your door, you would probably want to have an escape plan. Even more prudently, perhaps to have already executed it. Many Poles did just that; they spent the preceding seasons liquidating assets, stocking up on gold, and getting their travel documents in order.  By the time Hitler came to town, many of the smart ones were already gone. My guess is that the ones who left were probably ridiculed by their peers as “crazy”, or “fringe”, or “out of touch”, or my personal favorite, “unpatriotic.” It’s as if they had a solemn national duty to stay, get roped up and waste away in a concentration camp for the ‘greater good’ of Poland. For those who escaped before the war, many of them went on to build new lives in places like the United States, Brazil, and Argentina.  They prioritized freedom and opportunity, and they went to the best places that were safest for themselves and their families. I’ve met a businessman here (I’ll call him “Jarek”) who I think has the best story to sum this up; when Jarek’s father was just a boy in Krakow, the family saw the warning signs and decided to leave town. This was 1938. Jarek’s grandfather owned a successful bakery at the time, yet he felt that he would rather start over somewhere else than risk the safety of his family by living in a police state. They sold everything– the house, livestock, and business… and everyone else thought they were crazy. Within six months, the family was in Curitiba, Brazil; Jarek’s grandfather soon established a new bakery that eventually became a thriving business. Jarek’s father grew up in Curitiba and integrated into the local culture, yet he maintained his roots since there were many other Poles who followed them there. 30-years later, the face of Brazil started to change. By the mid-1960s, the whole of Latin America was becoming a military dictatorship.  Once again, the family decided to get out while they could and head towards better opportunity; they sold the business, liquidated their assets, and this time headed towards the United States. Jarek was just a baby when the family made this move. He grew up in a Polish neighborhood of Chicago, spoke Polish at home, and married a Polish girl from his neighborhood. He was working as a young real estate professional in the Chicago suburbs when the Berlin Wall fell, at which point he began making more frequent trips to Poland to visit his family’s homeland. In his subsequent trips throughout the following years, Jarek began feeling like there was more and more opportunity in Poland; in 2003, fearful of what would happen in Chicago because of the “War on Terror,” Jarek moved his family full-circle back to Poland because he felt like it was the safest, most opportunity-rich place for him to be. He may have been right; his business is booming, and the family really enjoys the life they have built for themselves here. To listen to him talk, though, they would happily leave and go somewhere else if the right circumstances were presented. “My most important obligation is to my family,” he told me. “I will go wherever I can provide the best life for them, whether that is Poland, America, Brazil, or anywhere else. Nothing lasts forever, you have to expect that these things will change from time to time. People have to learn to change as well, to not get rooted in ideology.” I think Jarek has an interesting point; I’d really like to hear from you, though, what do you think?

What The Heck’s A Vision Board—and How Can It Change Your Life?

I speak at Universities once in a while, to business students, about a business formula that I’ve put together. From my experience with Quizno’s, I understand the big picture of how to make any business successful no matter what the product or service is. I’ve discovered that in order to be successful every business needs to apply the exact same aspects. I stress that before starting any business, that it’s important to envision what the purpose of the business is, what it looks like and what outcome you ultimately would like. The clearer the vision, the more likely it is to appear that way, and the more likely things will show up that support your vision. Like magic!

My goal is to teach you how to use one aspect of that magic, something indubitably cheesy but surprisingly effective. I’m talking about a vision board.

All the Pretty Pictures

I have a photo box containing many images I’ve torn from magazines. I plan to glue them all to one large piece of butcher paper. The resulting collage will be a vision board; its purpose, to depict (and lead me to) my desired future. This whole process makes me roll my eyes—as I was trained to do over the course of my very rationalist education—but damn if it doesn’t work.

Sometimes.

I’ve made several vision boards that bombed out, and some that were so successful that the hairs on the nape of my neck prickled for months. Years ago I glued up a headline that said MAKING AFRICA WELL. I thought it was a joke—oh, sure, like I could do that—never expecting that a few years later I’d be invited to a wedding in South Africa and while there went to an orphanage in a township. Suddenly, I found myself raising and donating money for them.

I’ve discovered there’s a trick to making a vision board that brings forth such improbable coincidences. It starts with avoiding common pitfalls that result in faulty, inoperative models. Many people hear the basic instructions—”Find pictures of things you want in your life and stick ‘em where you can see ‘em”—and create virtually identical collages: a wad of cash, a handsome husband, a gorgeous body, a luxury car, a tropical beach.

Snore. These images constitute our culture’s idea of the good life. Even a rich, happily married beauty queen with a Porsche in the driveway and a house on the ocean will crank out this same damn vision board. This has no juice at all. To really work, a vision board has to come not from your culture but from your primordial, nonsocial self—the genetically unique animal/angel that contains your innate preferences.

When you start assembling pictures that appeal to this deep self, you unleash one of the most powerful forces on our planet: human imagination. Virtually everything humans use, do, or make exists because someone thought it up. Sparking your incredibly powerful creative faculty is the reason you make a vision board. The board itself doesn’t impact reality; what changes your life is the process of creating the images—combinations of objects and events that will stick in your subconscious mind and steer your choices toward making the vision real.

Step 1: Please Your Animal.
There are two basic procedures involved in creating an effective vision board. First, instead of cogitating about familiar images, scout for the unfamiliar. Your mind can’t do this. Your animal/angel self can. Just page through a magazine (and walk through the world) noticing things that trigger physical reactions: a heart thump, a double take, a gasp.
The only responses involved should resemble these:
“Ooooh!”
“Aaaahhhhh.”
“Whoa!”
“!!!!”
“????”

These “thoughts” register in your stomach, your heart, your lungs—anywhere but your head. You can’t produce them in response to cultural clichés or abstract ideas. Nor can you always know why your body reacts to an image. Wondering, then finding out, is one of the most delicious things about assembling a vision board.

For example, as I rummage through my current collection of images, my body is utterly unmoved by photos of mansions or designer clothing. What interests it are pictures of an abstract sculpture, a dried leaf, and (overwhelmingly) a map on which the migratory route of the springbok antelope is shown in red. !!!! Go figure.

Though it makes no logical sense, I know from experience that gluing these pictures on one big page will begin catalyzing something beyond my mind’s capacity to calculate or conceptualize. If you’re not already accumulating images that rock your socks, stay alert. Whenever you find them, filch them.

Step 2: Let Go Mentally and Emotionally.

Most folks master Step 1 easily, gathering new and interesting images by the bushel. Step 2 of making a vision board requires something trickier: not thinking. To do it you must relax completely and let your mind go blank. You don’t concentrate on the result you want.

This is exactly what you should do once you’ve created a vision board. Stop thinking about it. Lose it. Recycle it. The biggest mistake aspiring reality creators make (aside from that predictable cash/tropical island collage) is continuing to push something they’ve already set in motion. You’ve felt the repellent energy of salespeople desperate to hook you—it makes you sprint away so fast, you cause sonic booms. Don’t use that results-oriented energy.

Step 3: Be Still and Still Moving.
Making a vision board is not a substitute for elbow grease. Magical cocreator or not, you still have to do stuff. For example, I want to be better at speaking french. So I put a headline on my vision board: I am fluent in French. I watched movies with subtitles, listened to french music, and made a little progress. I made arrangements to live in Paris for 2 months, and take french language classes 3 times per week. After one month my French was flowing and could have conversations. By the time I left, after being emerged in the culture, I was fluent.

This is the zone of reality creation: regularly picturing delights that don’t yet exist, emotionally detaching from them, and jumping into action when it’s time to help the miracles occur. I’m barely learning this, to be (in T.S. Eliot’s words) “still and still moving.” But in the moments I get it right, every step I take seems to be matched by a universal mystery, which obligingly, incredibly, creates what I can’t.

So that’s my 411 on vision boards, but please, don’t believe me. Try it yourself. Do it as a lark, a hobby, a physics experiment (though calling it that may cause Werner Heisenberg to spin in his grave like an Olympic ice dancer). While you’re oohing and aahing, cutting and gluing, I’ll be doing the same.

Understanding Men Part 10 Facts vs. Feelings

One of the things we discovered years ago is that the Masculine measures reality by trusted FACTS while the Feminine reality is created by her FEELINGS.  Both of these are completely valid ways of seeing the world.

An interesting and hazardous side effect, however, is when you put these two realities in an automobile together.  Let’s call the Masculine a “Man,” although this is not always true, and the Feminine a “Woman,” also not always true ~ but easier to repeat over and over again.  He’s going to pay attention to being Factually safe, while she can’t help but notice if she Feels safe.

Add to this the difference in eyesight for men and women: He can track moving objects way better than she can; she has a peripheral vision that’s more sensitive and prey-like than predator ~ meaning she sees more threats.

This is how you have a woman full of tension and potentially freaking out because he keeps changing lanes.  Every time he moves the car to a lane on her side, it will look to her like cars on her side might hit her.  So she doesn’t feel safe.  He may know factually that he hasn’t had an accident in decades, that the car over on the other side wasn’t going to move, that the speed with which he slipped in that spot missed the other car by a mile… and so on.

Unfortunately, the fact of her being safe will not make her feel safe.  And a man’s greatest challenge with women is making them FEEL SAFE.  Because everything good from a woman begins with her feeling safe ~ and everything nasty begins with her feeling unsafe.

I would love your comments and questions related to this topic.  It’s worth exploring!

Blessings,
Heather

P.S.
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Understanding Men Part 9 – The Perfect Fit

Michele Skerl and Alison Armstrong had designed an exercise whereby the participants could practice leading horses/people of very different temperaments and capacities.  Specifically with regard to the horses, Chaka is happiest when someone brings-it-on at full power with a lot of energy and enthusiasm; Heather (Not me, but the horse) just needs clarity, if you have that you don’t even have to ask before she’s acting upon it; Alli is very sensitive to power – if you overpower her, she’ll protect herself, if you pull your power, she’ll doubt you; and Velvet needs clarity plus a gentle request – if you’re unclear she’ll appear stubborn and temp you to use more force, which she’ll resist and resent.

As the four women took turns working with each of the horses, they adapted to their needs and experienced the ability to lead horses/people just like them.  Then the unexpected began happening: the perfect fit.  For each of the women, there was a horse who so resonated with who they are that synchronicity was completely natural and easy.  Both woman and horse glowed as they discovered each other.  It brought tears to their eyes to watch.

Alison and Michele were overjoyed that each participant experienced the perfect fit.  The feeling of it is now embedded in who they are.  They’ll never forget what it feels like and never mistake anything else for it.  And they experienced the ability to work with people who aren’t the perfect fit, but with whom something is possible that is worth adapting for.

The last possibility didn’t show up in the arena, but it shows up in life.  The person who brings out the worst in you, while you bring out the worst in them.  Neither of you are bad people.  The two of you are just a bad combination.  The most honoring thing to do in this case – for you and them – is to let it go.

Many people enter into relationships, personal and professional, and hope to change that person or entity into something that they desire.  While it is admirable and generous to help someone become better, you must approach it from the standpoint that you’re making them better for them, not for you.  If your true desire is to see them become better in their own eyes, and become closer to their own ideal, then this is done out of love.  You’re not really changing them, you’re helping them become more who they want to be.  If you can’t find your perfect fit, you may confuse yourself into thinking that you can change them into something else.  While we can often make small changes in others, it can be very difficult sometimes.  You should think hard about your situation, if you have a bad fit, and decide if you’re trying to change them into someone else, or to make them more like themselves.  If you want someone else, the best thing to do is to let them go!

The Great Ones Operate With Integrity

“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence
and energy. If they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
– Warren Buffet
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Average people and performers tend to view integrity as a luxury they hope to be
able to sustain while primarily operating from a mindset of fear and doubt. In effort
to survive in a world they believe is out to get them, integrity often gets left behind.
World class performers have the conditioned advantage of operating from love and
abundance, which dictates that integrity be the baseline of every action taken. Champions have a reputation for total integrity; it is the foundation of their entry into any playing field.

The great ones are always welcomed within. Their friends, co-workers, colleagues and
contacts know that when push comes to shove, champions will always do the right thing.
Integrity is a habit of the pros, not because it succeeds, but because it’s the right thing to do.

When a champion tells you he or she will do something, their word is as good as gold.
Their handshake is a binding contract. Contrary to what they teach in business school,
handshake deals are still very common among the world class. The great ones play by
different rules, and rule number one is total integrity.

Mindy Mar, D.C.
San Diego Center for Health
www.sdcenterforhealth.com