More on stupid/smart

23979570Every success proves nothing. It can be luck, it can be accident, it can be smarts… you can’t be sure.

I am an architect by trade… and all my life as an architect I was wondering if I was talented. I could never say for certain. I could win contests, I could win awards, talent is not proven by them.

Finally I gave it up and sighed a sigh of freedom and relief.

You are the same way about being smart… or whatever is your issue. (Some people have an issue with being liked, loved, valued, respected, etc. But I think everyone has some issue with smarts. I could be wrong…)

My recommendation is that you consider the Forrest Gump saying: Stup

The cruise ship that got caught in the storm

cruise-ship-wavesSometimes I know what I want to talk to you about, and yet I don’t quite know what to say, I don’t quite know how to say it.

One such thing is your relationship to money.

I have been watching people and their spending habits for 30 years.

Either myself, or my clients have always made a living when you, people, considered your (discretionary?) income sufficiently secure to spend it.

In the middle of the month, when most credit card bills are due: no one spends any money, except a rare individual.

It wouldn’t be an issue if this were the same across the world, but it isn’t.

People in other countries are

Pursuit of happiness? or Noticing happiness?

The pursuit of happiness pushes happiness away, like a snow plow pushes snow
I find myself more often than not, in complete sync with my favorite people, one of them is Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads, famous ad man with a whole school of like-minded amazing expert, and thousands of students.

Roy H. Williams is a Christian, and that bothers me, but it’s the concept that bothers me, not the man. He writes about the subject I have been pursuing on this blog for the past week or so… so here is his piece from today’s Monday Morning Memo.

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Is it change your really want?

Change vs. what you really want

We all say we want to change. Change ourselves, our financial situation, our habits.

Some of us only use the word because we don’t know how to say what we mean. But most of us literally mean: change.

But there is a problem with the phenomenon: change. It actually gets you more of what you are changing.

It sounds like an oxymoron. More of what I don’t want? Yeah, that’s right. More of what you don’t want.

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How to get love, beauty, magic back into your life?

Recently I found myself finding my life blah. So I set out to regain my will to live… because with blah comes no will to leave, much like when you are forced to eat tasteless food, you lose your will to eat.

I also noticed that the color faded from my language. People stopped complimenting me on the turn of phrases, the expressions, the metaphors I used… because I stopped using them.

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Updated: Albert Einstein said: No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. Could this be applied to consciousness training?

I am very lucky: the questions my students send me have caused me to have a deeper understanding for my own work.

These students are often seeking new insights in their pressing circumstances from me. Lately it is all about making a decision to go or leave, to let go or to fight.

It is a huge responsibility to talk to people who are looking for answers.

If they use the insights I give them and don’t make them their own, they run the risk of making a decision “because” I said so.

One of my students asked “is it a matter of meditating over this decision now?”

This particular student has been a meditator for five years. The particular form of meditation he is doing with some master is to open up his ability to gain insight from All-of-it.

And this seemingly intelligent move, to meditate to gain insight is what I want to talk about today.
If you are a “normal” human being, brought up by parents or caregivers, if you went to school, if

A second look at the glass ceilings… or what I saw today at the skill finding workshop

My takeaways from session One of my skill workshop

Some of my students are struggling to make real headway in the world, because they haven’t been able to see where their abilities could make them a success.

Although I haven’t lead the “What color is your parachute” skill finder workshop …

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Are you using your adult capacities?

The first Osho book I have ever read, was Maturity. I started to read it in the store, and fell in love with it.

It echoed one of my favorite Landmark courses, the Wisdom Course.

In that course, maturity was a state (they call it possibility, just a Landmark word!): where you were using adult capacities to live your life.

One would think that when you are an adult you use your adult capacities, but that is not the case.

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Mind Bug #1: Knowing

The first and most important bug is KNOWING

In the Bible, in Aramaic, the verb “know” means living with, sleeping with. Intellectual knowing is a different word.

In today’s word knowing is one of those words that have many meanings. The purpose of calling many things with the same word is …

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ADD, ADHD. Are the parents guilty? What the French can teach us about that…

Is ADD and ADHD a nature or nurture phenomenon? There is a surprising answer: we compare American and French children with regards to ADD…

Based on an article by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. “Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD? French children don’t need medications to control their behavior.”
First off: what is ADD and ADHD?
Attention deficit disorder is a symptom. According to Dr. Daniel Amen, when an ADD/ADHD person wants to concentrate, at a certain point their prefrontal cortex shuts down… much like your computer crashes when you overload it.

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