What It’s Like To Be A Rabbit

Do you know what it’s like to be a rabbit?

As a mammal, you’ve got brain circuits that resemble a rabbits. Heck, all mammals have the same blueprint – same bone structure, same muscles, same control systems. Of course each species has its own spectacular adaptations, but our human penchant to anthropomorphize has a sound physiological basis.

Why am I going on about rabbits?

Rabbits freeze. Like several other mammals, they are hardwired to play dead in a certain kind of dangerous situation. In fact all mammals have playing dead as a defence. It’s ancestral, part of our evolutionary baggage. It predates “fight or flight” and can actually turn out to be lethal to the animal who practises it often or long enough.

Yes, you can literally frighten your Self to death.

In Japan, this proclivity has produced millions of people known as “hikikomori” (social withdrawal). They refuse to leave their house, some even refuse to leave their room. They are frozen, unable to participate in even normal human activities. Frozen in the lights.

Why did we develop such a system?!

Simple enough: movement excites predators. Stay still and they may not eat you. A frog will starve to death even when surrounded by dead flies to eat. A fly has to be moving before he will snatch it. Snakes won’t even know you from a tree if you stand still enough.

However, in today’s world, humans freeze for entirely different reasons. No-one is going to eat you today, and yet you may still respond to life by freezing into inaction around the things that realign who you are to others. You are frozen scared like a rabbit.

Society will punish you. In Japan they say: “出る釘は打たれる – A nail that sticks out will be hammered.” In Australia we call it “the tall poppy syndrome.” The tendency to put down anyone who dares to do differently from others around them.

At a deep level you believe your life is at stake. However it isn’t your life that is at stake, it’s your identity that is at stake. And your primitive biology fails to make the distinction.

It’s confounding really, because human logic fails abysmally trying to tackle this beast.

I see it in my Self, and I see it in ATSuccess. People have ability, they have clarity, they know the way forward. And they do nothing. They take no actions. They think. And think and think, and grow older and nothing new comes about.

What can you do about that?

As teachers of Alexander's discovery it is something we can deeply understand. You have no familiar feelings to guide you. It is the moment I call the bungee jump. Have you ever done a bungee jump or something similar?

Imagine it: there you are at the edge
You know it is safe – or do you?
At some level, you must trust
Trust is the key for letting you jump
Trust is what brought FM to the other side

You know death is highly improbable
(You take more of a risk getting into a car every day)
You know that the people who sold you the bungee jump
Do not want a death on their hands – not good for biz
Yet this kind of logic can only go so far…

What comes after logic? Oh, vague things like “faith” and “trust”.

Trust in what? Faith in what? It’s a question only you can answer. Because it is a death decision. You are a rabbit now, paralysed by your own physiology, and the only way out is to believe in something bigger than your own identity. What could that be for you?

You will never find an answer within the identity you are putting at risk.

You can’t change an identity with the identity you want to change – it doesn’t work that way. That’s why you freeze, that’s why you don’t act. There’s no belief, no trust, no faith in something greater. You need to take time to create that.

There is a shocking truth people learn once they join ATSuccess. It’s a training school in the work, except in this training school you’ve ratcheted up what you are putting on the table. Forget about stiff necks and sore backs – this is about who you want to be in the world, and your potential to make a huge difference to others.

It’s about how to be an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

Alexander's discovery is too valuable to waste your life being frozen in the blaring lights that success will bring. You have the potential to be someone known for making a huge difference in the life of others. Isn’t that a life worth living?

ATSuccess will challenge your small, middle-class, downsized view of you: “Who am I to claim this? Who am I to say I am an authority?”

Who are you not to claim the magnificence of your Self?

Don’t be a rabbit, get with the program of being human.

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It starts with information, and you can get a lot of that by signing up for my free email seminar on the 12 steps to building a practise that attracts the students you love to teach. Sign up now below, and start the process of realigning your identity with your extraordinary potential to make a real difference in the world.