Lessons

Lesson Info

Moving Your Life a Level Up

Moving your life a level up. See once you've determined for yourself, this is what it's gonna take for me to start to change this aspect of my life. People often make the mistake, how many of you have ever made a New Year's resolution? Where's my resolved people? Come on. Raise those resolved- This year, I swear to god, I've been going to the gym. Bought the membership, the shoes, the pants. (Audience laughs) You've even tried them out in front of the mirror. 14th of January it was all over. Two visits. Six smoothies later. Just developed a smoothie habit. I don't do the workout but I drink the smoothies. (Audience laughs) I feel they're making a difference, although I do seem to be piling the pounds on, but I just feel better. Because it's a smoothie. Even sounds healthy. Those things generally don't work. Because it's the kind of nature of habits, right. Like I said a little earlier, you're habitually yourself, you're habitually you. What wakes up is the bad habit that you've become.

The bad habit that you've become goes for a shower. The bad habit that you've become watches Netflix, or whatever it does. So, often people when they wanna take their life on, they take this kind of blanket approach. A new me, hi. But you're so habitually you, you don't realize what you're up against. It's too much of a scatter gun approach. Nothing's getting built in that way. People wanna change their diet, quit smoking, start a business and write a book in the same month. I admire the passion but the thinking is far behind the passion in that regard. It's a mistake to do that, and it's a mistake we're gonna avoid in this program. You're gonna take on the items that you wanna take on. You're gonna take on your problems in chunks. And with each chunk you're gonna level up. As it says on the screen. Each new practice that you put in. Each new habit that you put in. Is an example of the kind of life that you wanna live. And with each new one, your life is getting filled up, with these new things, these new behaviors. Again, they're an example of the life that you say you want. If I want love in my life, I should act accordingly. If I want money in my life, I should act accordingly. I know it's so radical. Some of you are like 'boom'. If I wanna lose 10 pounds, act accordingly. Oh my gosh, who knew? What genius. Each level up starts to populate your existence with the life you're after. I know some of you are almost addicted to radical change. I need a big 'Ah ha, Gary', gimme a big ah ha, i want one of those mind blowing moments where I'm like 'Oh, I'm a squirrel' and I never knew it. (Audience laughs) How many of you have ever had paradigm shifting 'Ah ha's in your life? You've had those moments where you've had one of those paradigm shifting ah ha's. And look how quickly the darkness crept back in again. Because you never did anything different. You just felt better about the same bullshit. (Audience laughs) You need to do different shit. Than you did before. If you do different stuff today than you did yesterday, you'll have a different life today, and you'll set yourself up for a different life tomorrow and do different stuff tomorrow than you did today, and you'll be populating your life with the kind of life you want, by doing. Not by waiting on some big 'Ah ha' moment. There's no point when there's a big Gary hand gonna come down and touch you in the forehead and you're gonna be like 'bing'. I'm at one with myself. Granular, foundational, life change happens in the day-to-day moments of your life. You don't notice it until long after it becomes a habit. It's like six months later you're saying to yourself, 'you know I don't even do that anymore, I don't even notice I'm not doing that anymore, I've stopped doing that'. Most people who want to change their habits make another mistake. To me this is the most critical one. They get dragged down the rabbit hole of stopping or cutting back on what you're currently doing. Here's the news, you can't get a human being to stop something. I know. I know that's kinda like counterintuitive. Can't get a human being to stop smoking. You don't do stopping. Because when you stop something there's a space now open, like a vacuum. What goes into that vacuum after a while? What you did before. So if you wanna build new habits in life, it's not about stopping. What's it about? (Audience responds) It's about starting. What am I now gonna do with my life? Give up the whole voodoo about stopping habits, and say 'Well, what would be a habit that I would like?' What can I do habitually, that for me would really be like a great example that I could point to for the life that I say I want. What would I be doing? Human beings, last I checked you all fit in that category, have the lives that they give their attention to. If you're out to deal with your anger problem and you do that every day you have an angry life. Now matter how well you think you're doing with that, or your suppression. But if you actually gave your attention to, I don't know, joy. If I pointed myself in the direction of joy and health and vitality and I just did that stuff and where I don't do that stuff that's not where I do it but the places that I do it that's what I'm doing. The more I populate my life with the kind of actions someone would take when they're committed to joy, health and vitality. I have a life of joy, health and vitality. It's amazing. It's amazing how much love will flood into your life when you tell somebody that you love them. The act. I love you. I'm not feeling it right now but I'm saying it. Because I'm still waiting on the feeling. If you don't believe me, I do this all the time, because I like to mess with my physiology. If I'm driving and I find myself in a crummy mood or something, i'll force myself to smile. I do. People look at me like an idiot when I drive, 'But what's that guy doing?'. I'm like - (Audience laughs) I swear to gosh, your whole body changes, the endorphins are going, your whole body changes. You're like, 'What am I doing right now, this is insane' but it works. It really works. It actually works. Because your brain is programmed and in tune with your physical states as well as your emotional states. What your doing is in tune with it. Again, fear's another example of that. How many of you experience fear in life? Some of you at home right now are putting your hand up, you should probably not do that. If you're in front of your computer going 'I've got- Excuse me, I'm in Starbucks'. (Audience laughs) If you give attention to your fear, your life will be about fear. It's not about overcoming that stuff, its about letting it be there. It's okay. Fear is perfectly appropriate. There's time in your life- I realize, I've told you what goes on with me internally, my thought processes. What has a shower in the morning when I get up is 'I'm never gonna make it'. Just never gonna make it. Imagine writing a book doing that. Imagine getting to a point in the book where you're stuck and you don't know what you're gonna say. What do you think kicks in right there? 'I'm never gonna make it'. The only difference between you and I, is I keep typing. Because that's where the book's happening. I don't know what the hell I wanna say right now but I'm just gonna keep typing. I'm typing that in. Because it's important for me to keep going with what I said I would do, rather than the experience I'm having with myself, the experience that I'm having of myself isn't always in alignment with the life I want. Where you've gotten yourself trapped is you're acting in alignment with your experience of yourself. Does that communicate, you guys? For everybody in your life and out there in internet land, you've got to really give some thinking to this. Like, shoot. I really do have the life that is in alignment with what I think of myself. Not an alignment with the life that I say I want. That's where all my problems exist. In that conflict between my experience of myself and the life that I say I want. I'm conflicted there. Those are the places where your actions have gotta win. Not your experience. Look, it's easy to tell someone that you love them when you feel it. Like you look them in the eye and it's all there. (Audience laughs) Try doing it when you're thinking, 'Asshole'. 'I hate your kindness'. 'I could stab you in the eyeball right now'. 'I'm not gonna do it but I could'. How do you tell somebody you love them right there? There's the challenge. Or you've got them on the hook again for your crummy mood. The general consensus, you guys, is that a habit, a new habit takes four to eight weeks. In this next sheet, what you're gonna do is, you're gonna identify the actions that you're now taking. The kind of actions that are an example of the life you want. That's gonna deal with this item you've got. Karen, you might take on the idea, 'I'm gonna go on a date a week, or two dates a week.' or 'I'm just gonna start going to events and socializing with people and forcing myself to talk to people. How're you going?' I know that some of you at home are like 'But that's not easy'. I know. And that's what it takes. That's what it takes. It takes going beyond the internal dialogue of, 'That's not easy'. But neither's writing a book or moving to Guatemala. I don't know why I said that, but anyway. (Audience laughs) Whatever it is you wanna do with your life though, it's gonna be the challenge for you. Some of you are gonna experience the challenge of your life. Leaving this course and going home with your husband or wife and looking them in the eye and saying 'I'm sorry'. Because, I'm sorry is an example of the kind of actions you'd have to take, that are consistent with the life you're after. You're gonna have to practice everyday something you do where you express your gratitude, to somebody or something in your life. Or whatever it is that you wanna take on. But it has to be the kinda life interrupting action, that you're promising to take on. Remember I said, you gotta identify somebody you're saying is not gonna make it out of this program. That's right and you've gotta give your life to it. That thing that you're saying is not gonna make it out of here. There's an action I'm taking everyday and I'm building a habit. I'm not out to give one up. I'm not out to get over something about myself. I'm in to establish some new me. I'm not to get past my lack of confidence. I'm out to establish confidence. Not like a feeling but as an action. Does that make sense, you guys? (Audience confirms) You don't do it though to overcome something about you that you don't like. You literally do this new thing for your passion for the new thing. Every time that you check in that rear view mirror to see if that thing that you wanna get past is there, where is it? There. It's right there. You gotta give up your addiction. 'Ah, I don't feel confident.' Oh, who cares? My friend, R. Buckminster Fuller, you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. You fill your life with habits of the new you that makes the old you obsolete. You're compelled to act on a new you. You guys, I know this seems like simple, because that's how it is. We want things to be complex. We want to put our lives off in the complexity and the vagueness of something. We get to say it's not as easy as that, Mister Bishop. I never said it was easy. I said it was simple. What you've got to deal with is yourself and the establishing of that simple. You're a human being. You're not that big a deal. You're not that sophisticated. You don't have issues. You had habits. You're habitually you. Good. Well, you should introduce some new habits. Like the habit of diarying, taking on the habit of diarying. I mean, what the heck, so much better than Netflix, right? Isn't so much better than Netflix? Netflix is good, I like Netflix like anybody else who's a human being likes them. This is pretty simple, you guys, isn't it? You can see this, 'Gary, I just have to look at this area of my life, I do the brain drain. I get real about it. I fill in my little boxes. Am I a level up?' and I just do that. Bingo. The keys to life right there. Except you and I know that we're dealing with you. (Audience laughs)