Dancing Geek

The what now?

The Wisdom of the Ages written as a school science report.

Yeah, exactly, but that’s what happens when you live inside my head.  I’ve broken it up with lots of pictures because a) that’s what school kids do these days, and b) it’s kinda long and chock full of goodness, so you don’t want to skip too much text.

Hypothesis

I will be truly happy all the time if I shed my negative mental models.

Happiness

• freedom to act from my truest best intentions for myself and others
• freedom to enjoy others company, giving value & being still
• freedom to accept all of what is, including myself

Negative mental models

• fear
• limiting beliefs
• negative prejudice & assumptions

(Take a moment to think about that while you look at this picture.)

Proof

Happiness is subjective, no objective proof can be given.  But if it is true for me then I can prove it to myself by trying it and testing the results.

Corollaries

• There is nothing one can receive to make one happy (wealth, love, respect)
• Happiness is not the result of an action
• Unhappiness is the result of certain thoughts
• There is nothing I can do to be happy except stop doing that which makes me unhappy

Methodology

The simple (but not necessarily easy) breakdown of steps to happiness.

• To be happy more often I need only change my thoughts.
• To change my thoughts I need only be aware of them and inquire about them.
• For the change to become lasting and effortless I need only do this repeatedly until I create a new pattern.
• To sustain this repetition I need only motivation and energy.

If I follow this reasoning in reverse I get the way to greater happiness:

1. Motivation and energy, which supports
2. Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

This leads to new mental models and if the hypothesis is subjectively correct, then I will be happier.  If I am not happier, it is subjectively false.

Step 1: Motivation and energy

My motivation

If I can truly yearn for the freedoms I listed under happiness I will have my motivation.  If I remember them, I yearn for them.

Energy

I need to balance the expenditure and replenishment of my mental, physical & emotional energies.  As well as refuelling these energies, greater efficiency in their use can improve performance, as can the quality of the fuel.

Refuelling: Food, sleep and the support of friends*

Efficiency: (reduce losses) Warmth, safety & comfort.
(more effective burning) Fitness, mental agility & emotional intelligence.

Quality of fuel: Quality of food (diet), quality of sleep and quality of friends and your relationship with them.

*Friends can include family and partners

Step 2: Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

Bringing awareness to my thoughts

• Shiva Nata
• Conversations with myself
• Mindfulness & witnessing

Inquiring about my thoughts

• Byron Katie
• Conversations with myself
• Exploring alternative mental models (e.g. the benevolent Universe)

Example thoughts to inquire about

• There is something that will make me happier if I get more of it
• That was bad and shouldn’t have happened
• People will not like me because I am selfish
• I should do things for others to be happy
• I’m incomplete, unfinished or broken

Notes

It is a practice, not a goal

I do not complete tasks so that when I have finished them & completed 100% I will be happy, but until then I am not.  Rather, the more I repeat these tasks the happier I will be overall.  There is no end point, except possibly death, and, as the small print goes, my happiness may go down as well as up, so I must keep my investment working over the long term if I seek the best returns.

Photo credits:

• Student in Class by foundphotoslj
• freedom by Guille
• Where thoughts are legible in the eye… by carf
• Resurrection by Untitled blue
• Pebble Art by pshutterbug
• I’m thinking of… by gutter
• Minimal perfection by Yago1.com

Tribes eBook

Along with the Tribes book by Seth Godin, there’s a new free eBook going around, written by those who got in early enough to join the triiibes.com website (what is with that – there’s more than one I in tribe, perhaps?)

Anyway, I opened it, I read the first one and had another BAM! moment. BAM! moments are excellent because they help you realise something that you were ignoring before. BAM! moments suck because they bring up all the hurt, fear & shame that where the reason you were ignoring the something in the first place.

BAM! moments are worth writing about…

Worth reading

The first story/post/section in the eBook is called “Tribes You Don’t Want to Belong to” (not to go offtrack, but why the mixed capitalisation? I always find that annoying). It’s written by Jon Morrow and it’s about being disabled. Go read it.

Worth paraphrasing

I’ve picked out the parts that say what I need to say, added or changed parts that I need and removed bits that don’t apply. They ask you not to change it, but I’m not changing the eBook, I’m just writing my own version of one of the stories. I hope that’s ok by the Triiibe.

Tribes You Don’t Want To Belong To

“Sometimes, you don’t get to choose the tribes that you belong to. They choose you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I’m a member of one of those tribes.”

“But regardless of how we arrived, no one wants to be a member.”

“Some people take it hard. They feel like they’ve been kidnapped from another tribe, the Tribe of Normal People. They feel like everything they were and everything they knew was taken away.

Eventually though, most of us realize that the Tribe of Normal People doesn’t actually exist.”

“It’s strange, but we also tend to stay away from each other, as if being around one another could remind us that we are a member of the tribe. We prefer to forget.

Still, we have common leaders, people that inspire us.”

“For the longest time, I didn’t want to be a part of it.”

“It takes courage to look at yourself and accept your [differences]. It takes courage to love yourself anyway. It takes courage to go beyond merely trying to survive your life and start trying to actually enjoy it.

How could you complain about being in a tribe like that? It’s wonderful.”

“Would I still like to be cured of my [difference]?”

“When you learn to accept yourself, you also learn to accept the tribes you belong to. They don’t have to be rich or clever or even desirable. The fact is, it’s your tribe.

And sometimes, that’s all that matters.”

So what was my point?

Since I’m comparing myself to a disabled person, I want to clarify a couple of things.

My difference isn’t obvious. I can hide my difference if I want to. Some disabled people can too, but not all. I have a choice about letting others who meet me know, but at some point it becomes a choice of lying or being yourself and that isn’t a choice at all.

It affects me everytime I interact with someone. It’s there changing the way I behave, how I connect with people, how I feel. Until I learn completely to not let it define me I will still give it some power over me. In that way I feel it is the same.

I want to know more people in my tribe, but I’m scared by it too.

For both our tribes (Jon’s and mine) I know that there are people who are proud of being a member (heck, I have my moments), and therefore might take offense at the phrase “no one wants to be a member”. The point is that these tribes change the way you view the world – you can’t be in or out of these tribes without changing who you are and how you think. Being in these tribes brings lessons that others don’t always learn, and that’s a bonus, but you can learn these lessons another way, and I therefore think that people (if it were possible to have the choice) would choose the other way. That’s what that phrase means to me. You don’t choose to be a member of the tribe. You find yourself in it and you deal.

I don’t want to offend anyone with this. But I needed to say something.

The fact that I can look at this photo without freaking out is pretty damn awesome.

A lifelong fear

When I was a cute little kid (oh, what went wrong?! ) I had nightmares about wolves. Well, a nightmare actually. The same one, over and over and over again. I can still retell it to this day (not that I like to, it still freaks me out a little).

Getting what you need

Anyway, in the vein of ‘the Universe sends you stuff when you need it’ I’ve been reading various posts that converged for me. First off (thought not necessarily chronologically speaking), Havi recently posted about how to meet your fear in a totally amazing and non-yucky way, then Urban Panther posted about her Panther name and ‘companion’, also Emma wrote about being able to turn towards her fear cave/tunnel through the use of crayons and I was also reading about the Rememberance process from Mark’s free workbook.

Turning fear into strength

So, that’s the prelude, here’s the story.

I was having a go at the Rememberance stuff (the bit you need to know is that I end up feeling full of compassion and love and happy thoughts). To do it I had my eyes closed, and the dark (plus it’s like 2am or something because that’s when I do my stuff) triggers my wolf fear again. Oh hello wolf fear, I know you sooooo well.

The thing is, and I can’t remember where I got this from, the opposite of love is fear. And I was chock full o’ love at this point so the fear popped up but I found myself happy to sit there and watch it, and let it be, and not ignore it or chase it away. So my wolfy buddy just sat there and wasn’t chased away and didn’t disappear. Then the crazy amazing wonderful bit happened.

NOTHING HAPPENED!

Mr Wolf sat there, he did not run at me and bite my head off, growl, snarl or even howl. He just sat there looking at me. (Note: at this point, I can’t actually see a wolf, this is just the intense feeling I get that a wolf is near me) By this point I am kinda doing a little freaked out happy dance in my head. Wow, being able to sit with my fear is amazing. Plus, hey, there’s this wolf feeling that’s been following me around for 20+ years and it’s sat there patiently waiting for me.

Meeting my fear in animal form

So now I had this amazing opportunity to meet my wolf fear and have a little conversation with him. Hmmm, wacky sounding, but given the journey I’ve been on for the last 11 months I was ready to try something other than left-brain logic to deal with a situation.

That particular evening I was really only prepared to acknowledge and sense. I got an image (a non-snarly version of picture above, or pretty close anyway) and just felt the presence with a sense of love rather than fear. For me, pretty damn monumental.

Fast forward to tonight. I spend a fantastic evening with one of my few met-in-real-life, super cool, can talk about fear with, friends. At the end I spot some wolf bookends and a conversation gets kicked off. Lots of support and lots of honesty (“You can lie to yourself, James, but you can’t lie to me.”) The end result, I’m about ready to actually have a conversation with the one thing that has terrified me my entire life.

Let’s have that again for real dramatic effect:

I’m about ready to actually have a conversation with the one thing that has terrified me my entire life.

How’s that for awesomeness?!

So here goes:

Hi. Why have you been following me around for 20+ years?

• You’re not in with the rest of the pack, you need to come join us.

Oh, that sounds a bit scary, why do I need to join the pack?

• In the pack lies strength of numbers, and the assurance to allow you to build real self-confidence
• In the pack you can be part of something bigger that works towards real action
• In the pack you will no longer feel alone

BAM! And with number three we have tears. Who knew? Well, apparently, my wolf did. He’s being following me around a long time. I’m so glad I finally learnt how to listen to him.

Thanks to everyone who helped me get here and thanks to you for reading this. Let’s go howl at the moon!