Here was a great video by Eckhart Tolle. His answers are often so good and relevant to what I’m going through at different points in time. This video had a lot to do with how I’m planning this upcoming quarter. I loved how he talked about the relationship with the practice and the work that comes perceived success.
“The successes are nice for the ego, but the spiritual breakthroughs they come when you fail at something”.
I’ve been doing almost a month of meditation/visualization combined. I’ve done this work before, but my visions were much smaller. Here are some things I’ve noticed usually after 30 days.
Have you ever felt like you need help from a person who is already inundated with requests? You know this person has a full inbox, but you still need help and you know this particular person has the specific help you need.
Avoid Taking without Giving
When I first started reaching out to people who I knew received many messages, I would get back messages with template responses. Something along the lines of “Hello Broderick! We’ve received your message, and someone will get back with you shortly!”. They rarely did, and it had to do with my energy. I wanted to take, take, take and not give.
What consistently helps me get answers to my questions a lot faster now is helping the person on the other side somehow…some way. Thinking win-win.
Another way to put it is Law 13 from Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power.
Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people’s self interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.
Give and Take by Adam Grant is another good book that addresses this.
Put yourself in the other person’s position and think about things from their point of view. What would be valuable to them? What do they want or need that you could provide? Money could be one thing, but you can also look for things that aren’t monetary.
Maybe they have a course or a book and they need feedback. Maybe they’re already inundated with feedback and they need a way to manage the feedback. Maybe they need a way to have more free time. Maybe they need new shoes. Maybe they need a Covid19-free hug. How can you be of service to them? How can you create value for them? If they have a website, they might mention what they need or want. Coming from a space of service when I need help has been a much more effective strategy to get the help I need.
Show some commitment if you want mentorship
If your question is a how-to/mentor kind of question, show some type of indicator that you’re committed to actually implementing the advice they’re going to give you. If they have a bestselling book (or multiple best-selling books), its likely they’re receiving many messages. Each message answered is a time investment. Again, put yourself in their shoes and imagine someone comes to you for genuine advice. How would you feel about giving advice to that person knowing it’s falling on deaf ears and that they will just ignore it? If you want to increase the likelihood that they’ll invest their time in answering your question, show that you’ve already got the ball rolling in some form or fashion.
When I was into self-publishing and I wanted some advice from bestsellers in my genre on how they gained such visibility in the Amazon Kindle Store. I emailed 4 authors with best-selling books. Two didn’t respond. One had an email assistant respond, and the last author directly responded with the exact answer I needed. An important part of this story is that I had already published books that just needed more visibility, and I led with that in my message to these authors. I wanted to show that I’m not some person thinking about doing self-publishing, but that I’ve already got works published. I’m in field.
Whatever you want, give it
If you’re having a tough time getting help from the specific source you’re looking for, consider releasing your attachment to finding your answer in that direction and consider giving help to someone else. You want advice or help? Give advice or help. That sounds crazy right? Like one of these crazy counter-intuitive solutions I keep rambling about.
There was a time where I was feeling like I needed a job and would desperately seek any office job that would hire me. My standards were pretty low at the time. I’d take a job…any job if:
This led to taking many bullshit jobs. I would try to engage with the work I was assigned as much as possible because it seemed like that’s when time went by the fastest. More often than not, my disdain for the work wouldn’t let me muster up enough engagement with it, and I would have thoughts like these:
Add to this often daydreaming about entrepreneurship and vacations.
Fast forward to today. I haven’t had a job in just over 2 years, but I have more money in my bank account and invested in crypto than I ever had before. Why?
On June 26th…I said to myself – “no more neediness of money”. I am free NOW. Many things happened as a result of drawing that line in the sand. I lived in my car for months. I went through a voluntary repossession. I started living with parents and started doing DoorDash for the little money I needed. I couldn’t count the amount of times I heard or was nudged to “get a job”. During this time, I actually started volunteering in a different way. While I was doing DoorDash, I created a course. I wrote 150+ articles. I guest posted! I actually did what I wanted to do and what I would do if I was completely free, and I’m still doing it. I experimented with different ways to share this stuff. I even learned some new songs to cover! I realized that…I get to experiment with and choose how I want to work.
I also realized I can’t be attached to how money comes in – my job is to keep working and serving! Having created a popular blog before, I thought I was going to get paid through advertisements or a sponsorship or something, but I got paid another way. I can’t prove this for a fact, but I believe money came to me because I didn’t need money. I stopped chasing it. Now, when I feel like I need more money or I have to chase money, I try to volunteer. It’s counterintuitive, but it works!
It wasn’t all good though. I gained so much weight back that I’d lost!! but I couldn’t be happier with the work I’m doing.
Aligning with Your Values
If you look at this Linked-In post by Adam Grant (author of Give and Take) many of the thoughts I listed are reflective of Phase 1 – low self-esteem in career. This is only part of the picture though.
“Living your life consistent with your deepest values is essential for you to enjoy high self-esteem. People who are clear about what they believe in and value, and who refuse to compromise their values like and respect themselves far more than people who are unclear about what is really important to them.” – Brian Tracy
Working on something you feel is important could be one standard, but why not have multiple standards for your work? Aligning with your own values can not only raise your self-esteem in your career but across the board.
One value I hold very high is freedom. My ancestors were slaves, so a big reason for the thoughts I listed above was due to not living consistent with the value of freedom I hold in high regard. Early on, I didn’t demand freedom from my career. I’d settle for working in a friggin box. From the outside looking in, living in a car creating a course was weird, but I still look at that and I’m so proud of it – because I was free. I was prouder than anytime I spent working a bullshit job in any office. There is no replacement for living consistent with your own values.
I also don’t think I understood how to handle freedom responsibly. No matter how free you are, there’s still work to do. There’s still an infinite amount of ways to serve.
I feel thankful for the work I’m doing now, because I feel like even if I help one person have a shift that feels way more rewarding, fulfilling and more important than wasting time doing something easy, boring and repetitive as work.
What are your standards?
What are you not demanding from your job? Do you like cubicles? Do you want months of vacations? Do you want to work on something important? What would that be? Is there something you feel like only you could/should do? Is your unique genius at work?
What are your values? Do you value freedom? Creativity? Responsibility? Skill-building? Service?
Have you written down your values? Values can definitely shift, but it’s good to keep some record of what you value and how they change over time.
How can you take one step today to move into greater alignment with your own values?
One of the things that surprised me the most about not having a 9-5 office job is the creativity and depth of thought I can have in other areas.
Originally, my thinking was “hey…I’ll conserve some brain power by taking some bullshit job that doesn’t require much thought, and then I’ll work on my project(s) on the side”. I tried that, but that line of thinking (along with some processed junk food) left my mind pretty dull at the end of the day.
What I didn’t realize is, that no matter what task I’m doing for 8 hours a day – 40 hours a week – it’s going to take up a lot of mental space. I underestimated how much mental space my job activities take up. It’s going to be on my mind when I’m sleeping. Finishing a task is going to be on my mind in the commute to work (which people usually don’t count as the 40 hours). It’s on my mind when I leave. It’s on my mind before I take the drive to work.
That mental space can be used so much more productively than on boring, repetitive tasks. I created a whole course as soon as I quit my job.
There have been several days where I’ve listened to a whole audiobook in a day. If an audiobook is 8 hours long, then if you really focus you can finish that in a day if you make it a priority. ALSO, you can listen to it at 1.5 or 1.75 or 2X times the speed so it won’t take so long.
If not a day, then you can break it up into 1-3 days. I wondered…if I can read a book a day…then in a year, can’t I read 365 books in a year instead of the 1 book a week recommendation that’s common?
Just a thought.
There can be a tendency to do too much work. When you start feeling bogged down by work and burnt out…it’s time to stop and completely take your mind off work. Switch modes. Switch modes into fun or entertainment or something to take your mind away.
There’s levels to this also. Vacations or group events seem to totally take my mind off work.
You’ll know you’re succeeding with this approach when you’re eager to get back to work. When you’ve played so much you feel that itch to get some productive work done. If you’re truly taking off enough time, you’ll find yourself renewed and work will flow easier. It’s like you recharged your batteries. Even the work you love needs a break now and then. Counterintuitive I know…but many of the great solutions are.
There’s always something to express! And something meaningful and valuable too. One thing I see time and time again is people not being aware of all the options there are to create.
I see lots of me-too articles or videos. A celebrity moves their left pinky and there’s 1000 blogs on it that go something like “*insert celebrity* decided to move their left pinky today and it has set the internet on fire! I think *insert their opinion here on said celebrity moving their left pinky*”.
Real Creativity
On the other hand, you blog or vlog about….
You can document your journey doing *insert journey you plan to take*. You can teach. You can cover music. If you have multiple skills you can see where those skills interact. You can create with other people too!
Even talking about your culture and how you grew up could be valuable. I’m sure other people across the earth who might have grown up totally differently would find it immensely valuable. Think about what would be valuable to others. If you’re not sure how to do this, brainstorm with people who create value for others.
The important thing is that you connect it with someone else who will find it valuable. That’s how you create flow…by putting those creations out there. There more you do that, the more the universe will reward you with more to create. All you have to do is put in the work of upgrading your skills and take the time to let things flow through you. I find that the more I write, the more things come up to write about.
