Life Is A Daring Adventure

Three days ago, I had a conversation with some of my mentees that totally opened up a lot for me. To give you a short back ground, these are the people I am mentoring whose businesses are not going as fast as we intend it to be. Looking at them, I have been wondering for almost months already, in fact, I bring it in my sleep, how come these wonderful people are still struggling to expand their businesses? Mind you, they are skilled, they have the looks, they are intelligent, they are hardworking, they show up and they pull coaching towards them. Looking at them was like seeing a big question mark stamped on their foreheads, smacking a question at me, “how come my business is not yet zooming up coach?”

As I listened to their stories about their businesses, their plans etc., suddenly like a lighting coming from the sky, it finally struck me what stops these people from succeeding as soon as possible.

I have been a full-time entrepreneur for almost 11 years now. I have seen business leaders come and go. Those who truly succeed always have similarities with each other and those who keep on struggling also have some similarities with each other.

Listening to our struggling mentees three days ago, was like hearing someone explaining to me, his/her business just like how a machine works. With all the details of how it’s going to work. It was like listening to a salesman explaining to me all the features of a machine while I, the buyer already waiting for him/her to turn it on and show me how it works.

I have observed that a lot of not yet so successful people I have met have these attitude of asking all the tiny details of the “how to’s” before taking action. Its like an addiction to answers before finally jumping in the water (not to mention asking you how the water going to be like when they jump).

I remember one of the greatest biologist and philosophers in the world, Humberto Matunara said, that it’s an addiction to CERTAINTY. We wanted to be certain that everything is going to be fine before we take action. I believe this is an illusion; an illusion of comfort. The only certain thing in this world is that we are going to die (and of course pay taxes). Unless we accept that life is uncertain, we will be living in an illusion that our life will happen the way it should or shouldn’t and not accept that life happens or turns out the way it does.

Dwelling on the details of the how to’s, making sure all our questions are answered before jumping is not undermining questions. Questions are endless, the moment you jump, there will be more questions, new ones, its endless. Everyday we are bombarded with questions and everywhere the answers can already be found. We have a lot of “answering machines” ready to give you answers. Internet, bookshops, consultancies etc… all in the business of giving you answers. A lot of people have read Rich Dad poor dad, because they are finding answers on their question on how they can get out of the rat race. Yet, really, how many, after reading the book, really get out of the rat race after reading it? Really, how many became successful in business after reading it? One of the aspiring Core Team members I have talked to read all the books of Kiyosaki, he is a professor with a Masters degree. When he was given a task already, a task that will really test what he knows and how he’s going to apply what he learned from all the business books he has read, he quit. His reason is that he will still find answers and read again the books of Kiyosaki before jumping in. He is around 40 plus.

Simply put this, those who are successful, simply take action. Their action is based on an impossible future and they move mountains and earth to make it possible. They are not stuck with the “how” of the details. They simply declare something like, “3 months from now, I’m going to earn Php 100,000 per month passive” and they simply put their heart into it not minding the small details of the “how to’s”. They simply commit to it and make it happen. And whether it happens or not, they never lose enthusiasm to take action all over again.

It boils down to one thing, people who get to what they are up to in life, are people who are not afraid of failure. They choose a context in which to live their life and simply find the answers along the way. Focusing on the details, asking questions, making sure that everything is cleared before taking action, before jumping in the “water”, gives a lot of us a sense of security, a sense of comfort not knowing that we are simply just prolonging the agony because sooner or later, we will still get confronted by the “water”. We will still have to jump and find out for ourselves whether we can handle what’s in the “water” when we finally jump and get there.

I have often encountered a lot of people who has this attitude of waiting for the perfect moment. They make sure everything is perfect before they take action. They make sure everything is in order before making a decision. They make reasons like, “I will finish my schooling first before going into business, I’ll finish first the books of Robert Kiyosaki before I decide to go into business, I’ll check out first if my parents will allow me before I jump in etc.”

There is no perfect time, only NOW. Even in battles, “there is no battle plan that reaches the battlefield”. No matter how you plan things, it may go not as the way you planned it. You will encounter “imperfections” or surprises along the way. Every military Generals are aware of this.

One day you will die. We will all die. We will be ground up into ashes or lowered into the ground. Someone with a shovel will throw dirt upon our face. So no matter how many safety precautions you build into your tiny little world, you can imagine a fire engulfing it, a fire that will overcome all of the precautions you have built. Yes, your fundamental commitment maybe is to a “safe” home. You can never control the outcome enough to promise it with certainty. What happens to you will happen.

It’s like aspiring to compete in the Olympics. Athletes sacrifice years of their lives and put forth unparalleled effort. They know that they may or may not make it in the team. They know that a fraction of second or a point determines the outcome, even from an injury, to a loose shoestring etc… would impact whether or not they will qualify or win. Athletes accept this lack of control but these never diminish their passion for practicing, competing and winning. It is part of the rules of the game. They know that investing less energy in trying to control and manipulate circumstances, they have more energy to compete and make things happen.

It is also like riding a bike or learning to drive. We can read all the books we need to know how to ride a bike, learn the precautions, learn everything to be sure we are going to ride it properly and be safe, at the end of the day we have to get ON it and ride/drive it. The same thing in business, you simply have to get ON it. No amount of reading will make you safe, no amount of reading about business will make things happen. You have to be in business and be exposed to the challenges it entails and as Helen Keller said, “Security is mostly superstition. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long ran than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”.

It’s accepting that we cannot control the outcome of our choices and actions. We can know all the precautions, “security measures” etc. Accepting that we cannot control the outcome of our choices, is not the end of action. It is the opening for the most daring and boldest action. Its simply accepting total responsibility for the choices and actions we make. You choose to be in business then, get on with it and love every bit of success and challenges it offers.

A lot of people leave this life just like the life of Ivan Lliych in Leo Tolstoy classic story, The Death of Ivan Lliych. It was too late for Ivan to realize that all his life he never truly lived. All his life he was trying to be safe, all his life, he has lived in artificiality. One hour before his death, in a moment of clarity, he sees that, far from having lived a good life, he has lived only for himself.

I realized that this primarily the reason why not everyone succeeds in life although success is being offered to everyone. I believe that people who simply live a life in context of what they choose and take action are people who are self-less. Why? because the perfect moment can no longer wait because there are important people waiting for them to succeed. There are people who matters to them and that's why the only thing that is important is taking action NOW and get to the possible outcome they want no matter what.

And, get this, those who get to the life they want are those people who are willing to pay the price.

She who wants to have right without wrong,
Order without disorder,
Does not understand the principles
Of heaven and earth.
She does not know how
Things hang together.

-Chuang Tzu, fourth century B.C.

Raging War for Freedom

A lot of us wanted to change the world but only few truly wants to change ourselves. The message of the song is simple yet direct, we need to start first with the person we see in the mirror and that person is no other than ourselves.

Its funny that we would often try finding answers to problems in our lives by immediately looking outside without going back and examining the source of it. We often complain about our sufferings and fail to realize that whenever something happens to us whether good or bad, we are there. We are ALWAYS there; always present.

Indeed, it is time to take a hard look of ourselves in the mirror. Often when we see ourselves in the mirror, yet we only pay attention to what we see on the outside, our image. We fail to pay attention to what is really happening inside. We fail to look at ourselves in the eyes of the observer and ask, “What thoughts are constantly running in your mind?” “What are your dreams?” “What is money for you?” “What makes you worthy of love?” “Does anyone love you?” “Who are you?”

I have met and mentored a lot people in this lifetime, often they open up to me their financial, business, personal problems and ask me how they can get unstuck. The funny thing is that I refrain from giving solutions; I only guide the person to discover the solutions to their own problems. This leaves some of them frustrated for not getting immediate answers, they fail to see that the answers lies hidden in their own self and its for them to discover it.

This is also what we do in the community, we let aspiring Core Team members discover that they are the only person who can solve their problems. We let them come face to face with their fear, doubts and reservations. We let it penetrate them into the core. We let them dive to their emotions of fear and doubts. Some quit even when they haven’t fully started yet some stay. Those who stayed are those who allowed themselves to experience those thoughts and emotions fully and completely, in the end, they were the ones who learned what fear is, what being scared is, what grief is and finally learn to detach from it and take action and as Morrie Szwartz, in the book Tuesday's with Morrie said, “as you learn to die, you learn to live”. The dying that happens is dying of one’s old self.

No amount of coaching and encouragement will make a person who already decided to be a failure, succeed. In the community, we make aspiring Core Team members aware that they will never solve their problem from the same mindset that created it in the first place. It’s a total confrontation with the man in the mirror. In the community, we hold that mirror. What they see might be something harsh for them to accept yet, what separates a warrior from a fool is that “a warrior acts only a fool reacts”.

There is a war going on and it’s a war between thoughts that constantly tell us, we can never succeed, we are not worthy, thoughts that feed us fear, thoughts that tell us we are not lovable, we are unattractive and thoughts that tell us we are great, we are successful and we are the best. We hear this running in our minds constantly yet we fail to recognize that we could always CHOOSE what to plant in our minds, “whether trees or weeds”.

I remember a story of a prolific British Writer, Collin Wilson. His ambition was to become the next Albert Einstein. He was forced to quit school at very young age and ended up working in a laboratory. That time he went into despair and thought of ending his own life by drinking hydocyanic acid.That moment when he was about to do the final act, he came into a realization that there are two Collin Wilson running his life in the same body, one is the boy idiot filled with self-pity and the other one is his real self. The boy idiot is about to kill both.

The war does not happen outside, it happens INSIDE each and everyone of us. We are in constant battle and the battle that truly happens is what’s goes on with our thoughts.

The kind of war happening inside of us is best told in the wonderful story in the Navajo tradition. An old Navajo told his grandson that sometimes he feels there is a fight that is going on inside him. He said, “ it is a fight between two wolves: one wolf is evil. It is the wolf of anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, superiority, fear of healing my body and mind, fear of succeeding, fear of exploring what has been said by others to be truth, fear of walking in others’ moccasins and seeing glimpses of their reality through their eyes and their hearts, using empty excuses that my heart knows to be false.

The other wolf is good. It is the wolf of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, caring for those who have helped me even though their efforts have not always been perfect, the willingness to forgive myself and others, and realizing that my destiny is in my hands. The grandson thought about it and asked: “But grandfather, which wolf wins?” His grandfather replied: “The one I choose to feed.”

What do you feed?

As I listened over and over to this song, I realized that this is what we all need right now in this world of uncertainty. It is time to start with ourselves, that's why I'm starting with me... and as Mahatma Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world. Indeed, we must.

It might be that there are people who should be responsible for our suffering however, thinking about this does not make us accountable. When we consider this, we fail to recognize and accept that we OWN our suffering. If we only come from a space of acceptance, that we are the source of our own suffering, we can do something about it and start taking responsibility instead of blaming other people. We cannot control what happens to us but we do have control to how we will react to what life throws at us. Once we realize this we can now the take the necessary actions to transform our lives.

We often speak of freedom yet we do not pay attention what kind of freedom are we fighting for. The world right now is going on a downturn. What we believed that worked before no longer works for us. The beliefs we have about ourselves, money, life etc…no longer serves us.

It is time to rage war for freedom. It is time to win the war between the thoughts that imprison us and the thoughts that sets us free. We have been prisoners of our thoughts and unless we accept that we are, we can never plot our freedom.

The world is waiting for us to be brave

I went to watch the movie Surrogate. These past few months I am still wondering how come with all the money in Hollywood, moviemakers still fail to create a story that really is beyond what we usually expect. Nothing surprises me anymore. I think what the movie industry are more focused on marketing the peripheral aspects of the movies rather than the quality of the story.

However I must say that the movie has a context. It basically tells a lot with the kind of human beings we have now in this planet, afraid to take risks, to get hurt. In the movie, people live in a fantasy world that they can escape what life really is. AS IT IS, with all the challenges and failures. In the end no matter how people protect themselves by having surrogates, machines that look better and can do more than what the normal human being can do, at the end of the day nothing will ever protect them. They still have to get out and take risks and finally face the world as who they really are.

I like the movie for its timely message. Just this morning I read a comment in my blog in www.ca2020.net that she always wanted to take action already yet when its time to take action she finds herself stopping. I haven't yet replied to her. I believe if a person is doing from love, all the reasons in the world will be overpowered by inspiration and action whether its for our family, for the community we belong right now, for our country and for God.

Indeed, we need more people who are willing to take risks and fight for the people that matters to them and for the world that has simply forgotten what it is to be truly human.



"You have in you the power to steer the course of the world"-
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