Ask yourself this question:
#32: Who am I doing this for?
I think it’s a great question for reclaiming who you are and why you do what you do? How much of your time and energy is diverted into doing things for other people either because they directly told you do so (like your boss) or for your children, partner, or spouse (because of social obligation) or that thing you do because that’s what your parents, teachers, priests, priestess, holy man/woman, best friend told you you should be doing?
Who am I doing this for is one of those questions that punches you in throat and makes you gasp for air when you really comprehend what it’s asking you. I certainly couldn’t breath after reading the question, my mind went into bullet-time as the rush of insight came flooding in.
The question has me questioning everything I do now, including writing these notes, posting shit on the Internet, buying that thing, ironing my wrinkled shirt, feeding the cat, driving on the right side of the road, waking up on all the levels that implies, working and, well, I could go on and on to the break of dawn but I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
Imagine you’re about to take your final breath and as you reflect on your life, ask yourself, whose life was it anyway?
Oh yeah, greetings…
welcome to another edition of The Coach’s Notes
#33: I imagine, when I die, these will be my last words:
“It can’t end this way, there’s still too much of the universe that hasn’t been satisfactorily explained to me yet.”
#34: Something from Hermann Hesse:
“Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself…his task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideas of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.”
From the wonderful novel, Demian.
I feel like I’ve spent half my life searching for the map that will help me find my way back to myself. In essence, my search hasn’t really even begun yet because I can’t find the blinking map with the ‘X marks the spot’ buried here is where you’ll find that golden treasure of your-Self.
The truth is I’m nothing but a one-eyed pirate sailing the seven seas of life stealing other people’s maps all the while missing my own.
I think, today, I’ll avoid conformity and fear.
In case you missed this in the discussion forum:
#35: the self-help industry is worth $9.9 billion dollars! Everywhere you look, there’s someone or some company that wants to sell you a happier, healthier, and more beautiful life. But what does that even mean?
More specifically, what would it mean to you to live a happier, healthier, more beautiful life?
Do you have a model of what that looks like for you personally bar all the stuff people tell you it is through the media, advertising and such like?
Your musical interlude
What a scary thought
#36: Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano. Do you know how well you’re being played?
#37: who are you playing?
#38: Bart Plantenga:
“Ecstasy of the mind can be reached through the appropriate arrangement of words, the use of liquor, or weed, or LSD, or Buddhism or chants or asceticism or the full soulful embrace of the beauty of nature is not without value in today’s social media addicted world. That this fails even the poet, writer, and artist does not mean they do not attain higher states of consciousness than those who choose the “easy” way. Although through life, minus peak moments of ecstasy, is not an easy life either or is all this beatnik resignation just the appropriation of spectacle and style in the name of identity politics?”
#39: The human being is a social animal. We like to be in communities. We like to form relationships. We thrive on physical contact from other human beings.
#40: Go hug somebody right now!
And that, my friends, is the end.
Be on the lookout for Tuesday’s audio edition where I’m going to get into how technology exploits our mind’s weakness. Until then,
peace and love to you.
Clay
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