If you are on this site, you will find yourself, more or less, in this article. And it may change your life.
A student writes,
Hi Sophie, I think I take trivial and superficial things too seriously. How can I let go of these immaterial incidents or people and focus on important things that truly matter to me?
I also find out that sometimes I become the victim of scams.
this was my answer
This is the sign of two things, Kate: 1. your map of reality isn’t very similar to reality. 2. you have too much importance attached to nice words about you… i.e. you want to be defined by words not by your actions.
It is the main reason I read the book Feelings, to f
This is paraphrasing the famous Leo Tolstoy quote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is the Anna Karenina principle… As all principles do, it applies to many, maybe even all areas of life. A principle is the same as a distinction… I say.
But truth is, if you know distinctions, if you know patterns, there are only about 50 different ways to get stuck… and your way is just one or two of those.
I got lucky today. I got to see something I haven’t seen in a long time.
It’s been many years that I “shared” with anyone.
Sharing is a Landmark Education distinction: you talk about some gain in your life, in a particular way, and if you did it well, the other person gets a tiny bit more than just a whiff of what you are “sharing”; they get a taste of it. A taste of your gain…As if you’ve given them a bite of your triple chocolate fudge cake… lol.
We were both early for the exercise class, and she was really relieved that she wasn’t going to be the only student…
As I was changing to shorts, and gym shoes, I asked if it would be OK with her if I bragged..
The most important thing I never learned in Landmark… that allowed me to grow
In 1967 I applied to participate in a 6-day on site advanced program in Landmark… it was still called Werner Erhard and Associates at the time.
I was denied. The staff member for admittance told me: Until you learn the difference between thinking and doing, you can’t do the course.
I had no idea what she meant. But I wanted to do the course… so I called her daily. And tried different ways to prove to her that I knew the difference… I got in by mistake.
I started to read the book by Edward Deci, “Why we do what we do. Understanding self-motivation”.
This is the first book, that I know, that defines self the way, or similarly the way I do…
To become a person, to have autonomy, self-determination, self-expression, integrity, self-motivation, the most important job is to find the self, by distinguishing what is the driver of all your actions, whether it is inner or outer.
And if it is inner… is it the self, or is it the “not-self”?
Greed, narcissism, hate… area inner motivators, but they are all the not-self. So are all the “negative” emotions, like frustration, haste, the desir
Animals are not forceful. Plants are not forceful. Why? Because, while the selfish gene is quite forceful, the animals surrender to the selfish gene… and go “with” it.
Humans are animals with a mind… and the mind is forceful. More forceful than the selfish gene…
The selfish gene is clear on what it wants: it wants to increase itself in the gene pool. That is all it is interested in. It negotiates with nature, with other species, with toxins, with members of the same species continually to lead to evolutionary stable strategies…. ess in short. It adapts or it dies. The more adaptable, the more aware the gene and the vehicle, the more successful the gene is in propagating itself, and it thrives. It cannot
If I see you as beautiful… will you see yourself as beautiful?
If I see you as magnificent, great, awesome… will you see yourself like I do?
Muscle test and my experience says: no.
The most beautiful women spend hours in front of the mirror staring at their imperfections… trying to hide them.
There are also beautiful women who can say: so what. They are in search of some other imperfection.
We know ourselves intimately, and rare is the person who can leave it alone… who can refrain bemoaning their faults, and stop trying to fix themselves while keeping up appearances.
The question came up because of my last article. I bet a lot of people thought I should have told the woman in the article
Every so-called guru talks about the subconscious mind, and such nonsense.
What they don’t talk about is how much of what is happening, what is real, what is in front of you is making no impression on you… how little of what is around you, what you are reading, watching, listening to reaches your conscious awareness.
And whatever you do is based on that 1-3% that you actually aware to or the 100%… and you think you have all the facts.
“Everyone operates and makes decisions based on his or her current level of conscious awareness.”
This is why your level of awareness is the most predictive of you success.
The article asking: where do you look to define your value got a lot of “hits” and comments.
Reading the answers I saw that some fundamental distinctions are missing, in spite of the fact that I have written about all of those before, on this blog.
So after reading the article about the three levels of valu
If you are on this site, you will find yourself, more or less, in this article. And it may change your life.
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