With the end of the year coming I’m starting to review where I’ve kicked ass this year and also where I didn’t. There are some things I’ve failed at. Some big failure and others smaller. As I do an accounting of my wins and losses, my successes and failures I start to think about what I need to change.
Ultimately, change comes down to what’s measurable. The nitty gritty of behavior. And that’s simple but it’s not easy. So… how do we change? Action is the thing that’s measured but what’s happening in the mind is where things have to change first.
I spend a lot of my life wrangling elephants. (It’s not easy to do that.) Elephants are big, strong, powerful… willful beings that aren’t much of a match to my little puny physicality. When it comes to action, I’ll never get an elephant to behave and act they way I want it to. Simply put, I’d be a fool to think I could do that. But If I can change the way the elephant is thinking the behavior will easily follow. Same goes for dogs… cats, not so much. (I don’t think they have a mind)
So… this is called the two pronged approach so here it goes.
Both prongs are important when it comes to change. Because of all of our childhood experiences out mind it shaped and we allow ourselves to think a pretty narrow scope of thoughts, also known as beliefs. We just don’t see things as options that are right there in front of us.
One of the things that’s needed is a significant acute rupture to our thoughts. I call this the 50,000 volts method. It simply jars us open into seeing things as we’ve never seen them before. Intense workshops, high doses of psychedelics with intention, initiations, retreats, vision quests, fasting, etc etc, an event that is so far outside our normal life that we’re forced to see things that have been there but we didn’t have access to. Man, does it get the juices flowing, it’s shocking and shaking things up.
And there’s the drip. The drip is where the integration happens. The every day small dose creates the imprinting needed to sustain change and habits for lifelong shifts.
One without the other simply doesn’t work. We need to have ourselves shocked so that things break loose and then we need to have a sustained drip of energy to create the adaptation.
The opportunity:
What are you doing to shock your belief system? What can you do to create that shock?
What is the #1 thing you’re trying to change in life? How are you changing your routine and habits to make that happen?
Thanks for your time, have a great day!