Popping My Bubble

Your key job to manage your Alexander practice is effectively engineering your state. Such a boy's way of saying it! I'll put it another way - to make your business work, you need to be feeling OK with your Self, to be happy all the time. Who achieves that? Not me, that's for sure. It's a daily work. I was powerfully reminded this morning of how important this is. I have an image of me living alone in Tokyo (where I am now) while my family lives in Australia. I miss my daughters. I miss touch and companionship. I miss the easy lounging of a family with nothing more to do that hang out and be. These distant images are projected onto a bubble that totally surrounds me everywhere I go. I look at them and I feel lonely, sad, empty, barren, desperate and broken. In the shower this morning I thought: "Jerry, you can't go on living like this." I had no energy to do anything, no enthusiasm for my business. In the past I would have tried to change my life, as though something was wrong with it. Now I am wise enough to know that my life is perfect - it is the vehicle to teach me what I need to learn. It is bursting with wisdom if I just open my mind to it… So I sat down on my meditation cushion, doubting I could ever find a way out of this abyss, and within 20 minutes I was laughing out loud in joy. Whatever happened? I popped my bubble. I realised that my family is always with me. I think of them all the time, they are constantly in my thoughts. But what kind of thoughts? Not thoughts about them. Thoughts about me not having them. I was constantly viewing images I projected on to the bubble that I surrounded myself with - the lonely guy in Tokyo whose kids are 10,000 miles away. I popped the bubble and right outside it - there they were. They had been there all the time. Here's the reality: when I go back to Australia, I mostly don't see my kids. In the morning it's 10 minutes while they have breakfast and charge off to school. They are adolescents, so they come home - "Hi Dad"- go into their rooms and the next time I see them is for 30 minutes with dinner. Then back to their rooms, and if I am lucky they will let me come in and say goodnight. But I have a fantasy that this is better than what I do in Tokyo. Is it? Marginally so. What really matters is that I cherish them in my mind, love them in ways they understand. I can write to them. I can ask their teachers about them. I can gather information and fill my mind with concern, love and interest. This is my joy, to know about them, to be interested. That's why I laughed. I have so many opportunities to be with them in my mind, but instead I am with the thought that I am away from them. It is the thought that saddens me, not the distance between us. My children live mostly in my imagination - no, just about all the time. Do I really know who they are? It will fun to find out, so that's what I can do. I can live with them. All. The. Time. What Can You Do To Manage Your Self? [NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid areagetting more practical about my general comments above with the other teachers and students in my ATSuccess group. You can join anytime to be part of our discussions.]

When you hear your Self thinking: "I can't keep up with ATSuccess" or "I've got too many other things to do" you want to stop and ask the question: Where would you be if you had not given your Self this opportunity? I say this, because I know I am always reluctant to commit my Self to a mentoring program. I almost didn't go to Orlando to study with Perry Marshall. I thought: "It's too much money" and "I know all this stuff now, why do I have to keep learning?" And yet, Orlando gave me a focus and a boost that I am still living with. I also know I am going to face my group again in May - what can I say I've done? They don't force me into this position, I force me into this position. It's what I chose to do to support my Self. I read a great quote the other day:

“I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.”—Tim Ferriss, Author of The 4-Work Week.

That totally makes sense to me. I call them "Structures for Self-Fulfillment." A lot of us - I include me in this - are ADHD types. We are all over the place, shouting this way and that, starting a dozen different things, having an over-packed agenda that we keep adding to. I just looked around my flat, and counted 6 books and 4 magazines I am currently reading, with another three books in the queue. It's insane, but it's how I live. So I need to surround my Self with structures that focus me. I want to be reminded externally what I have already decided internally is important to me. I get up every morning, and I write my blog, or I check out the Facebook posts and make my comments. It's a routine, I do it even if I feel I want to do something else. (And I often feel that!) However it brings the accomplishment my true Self seeks. It moves me where I want to moved. Don't be a victim of your own weather reports. Feelings are weather - they go up and down, it's part of our nature. Up is fine, no-one fights happiness. But separate joy from pleasure. Pleasure is pain, pleasure is addictive. And if you let it, pleasure and other painful addictive emotions will move you places you do not want to go. It's hopeless to fight negative feelings - that only strengthens them. Start with the understanding that they are adventitious to your true nature. Your negative emotions are manufactured by beliefs that deny truth. They are always - without exception - dependent upon interpretations of the past, or fearful images of the future. Do you seek that middle spot - neither future nor past - where we all truly live? It's a daily art. Even "now" is a concept - by the time we label it, it's already past. It's not even that. In the true space - I believe - is the laughter that bellowed from my heart this morning. I don't claim to lead you there - I need much leading of my Self - I only point to this as a essential element when you are running your own business. Take care to make this your primary job, then the rest gets so much easier to do. How many books are you reading at the moment? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/