Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Relaxing Music for the month: Healing Hands: Liquid Mind (12:01) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hdwGhA4l50
In the mornings when I decide to ride my indoor bike, I will typically read a book on my kindle (over a couple of rides), read the 6-page pdf while listening to the mp3 (two modes of input seems to work better than one), or watch a collection of saved inspirational videos. Yesterday, I watched three of Philosophers Notes, all by Steve Chandler. The notes were from these books:
- Crazy Good: A Book of Choices (https://www.optimize.me/pn/crazy-good-steve-chandler)
- Reinventing Yourself: How to Become the Person You’ve Always Wanted to Be (https://www.optimize.me/pn/reinventing-yourself-steve-chandler)
- Creator (https://www.optimize.me/pn/creator-steve-chandler)
I’ll share the gems that resonated most with me:
Takeaways from “Crazy Good:”
First, a quote: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Then, Steve Chandler shares:
“Testing means experimenting, and as the brilliant business author Dale Dauten says, ‘Experiments never fail.’ Experiments never fail because when you are experimenting you are just as eager to find out what doesn’t work as what does. Whatever you find out helps you grow. There is no failure in that. Experiments give you a way to play with the universe. They allow you to interact with the real world and get some interesting answers. What works? What doesn’t? Let me try again. This is starting to kick in.”
Hence, my desire to create a Life Design Catalyst Lab/Studio, where people can come and perform different “life experiments” to see what works and what doesn’t work. (P.S. My ask of the universe: If you know of a place – like a college or university, or maybe a community center – that’s interested in helping me create such a place, let me know! That’s how I’d like to spend my retirement!)
My takeaway from “Reinventing Yourself,” were these two quotes:
“There is one word that does more damage and creates more victims than any other. It is the word ‘should.’ And you should never use it! (Oh my gosh I just did it. I should be more careful.) ‘Should’ actually reduces your motivation every time you use it. ‘Should’ is the most self-defeating word in the English language. It’s like a tranquilizer to the spirit.”
“Here’s how to start: Rather than asking yourself what you feel like doing, ask yourself, ‘What needs to be done?’ Believe it or not, your joyful reinvention will begin by doing what’s necessary, by being in action. … You will know what needs to be done. It’s never a mystery. Your invented future is waiting for you. All it asks is that you get busy. Do what needs to be done. Do it badly; do it slowly; do it fearfully; do it any way you have to, but do it.”
And my takeaway from “Creator” was this excerpt:
“It gives me greater understanding of why my friend and life coach Steve Hardison used to ask me two questions, over and over in the course of our work together. When I described a problematic situation in my life, he would listen carefully and then say, ‘Okay, given that that’s the situation, what would you like to create?’
Notice that it was not ‘How do you want to solve it?’ As if the problem itself had all the power. As if the problem were a bomb we had to carefully disarm. He never saw the problem as having the power in the situation. He always saw creativity as having all the power. And together we didn’t really have to ‘solve’ anything. We didn’t need to. What we created made the problems fade from all relevance.
And the second question he’d always ask me would appear whenever it didn’t look like I could do some scary thing I needed to do. Instead of telling me what I needed to do, he would always ask me, ‘Who do you need to be?’ Because he always knew, and I learned through practice, that I could create that being. I could create who I needed to be. (It’s all we ever do anyway.)”
It’s my hope in sharing is that you might find a gem in all of this wisdom that might resonate with you in your journey.
The Dream Dean 