Whatever you resist persists, soooo….
If there’s a situation you don’t like being in, but you find yourself repeatedly in that same exact situation, then you can ask yourself this question…
What am I resisting? There’s something if you find yourself in that situation. There is something persisting in your life because you’re resisting.
Flow with life. Dance with it.
You know you’re not resisting when you can say thank you to that which you once resisted.
When you can detach your identity from things out there, you become a more grounded, based individual.
I experienced much of this when I lost weight. I realized…hey…if I lose weight, then I couldn’t have been the weight. I had to be separate from the weight…and I had to be separate from my body. I couldn’t be my body.
You aren’t your looks…
You aren’t your weight…
You aren’t your GPA
You aren’t your intelligence
You are energy…You are consciousness.
One word – possibility.
Right now…there is something you don’t think is possible that someone else is very comfortable with. It is a result you want that someone else thinks is very easy. If you long for a relationship, there are literally men who have many relationships with many women and women who have relationships with many men.
If you struggle with money and earning it, there are people who think making $100,000 in a week is easy.
If you’re struggling socially, there are people who naturally attract people and they actual have a hard time being alone.
This contrast can really help if you don’t repel it. If you invite that contrast in and ask it for help, then you might find it’s willing to help you. You’ll also find it challenges you. Things you do repetitively are conditioned, so you must condition new habits and new ways of thinking to match their results.
One of the best ways to do this is through immersion. Find a way to immerse yourself in the solution. It’s easier to condition new habits and new ways of thinking when they’re right in your face day after day.
Just a side note, take into account ‘the natural’ if you’re struggling in an area. As in, a person who’s naturally a people person, or who just grew up making lots of money or a person who naturally has the results you want. If you try to learn from them, many times they’ll leave things out when explaining how they do things. The best people to learn from are people that have overcome a problem you’ve had. They’ll relate to your point of view and be able to tell you the steps they took on how to get from your point of view and your results to their point of view and their results. The natural never had your original point of view or anything like it.
You’ll know you’re there when what you thought was impossible doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal anymore.
Within recurring social situations, there’s something that brings everyone together. I think of this as a social connector. If that social connector isn’t there, people in the group might not relate to each other the same. This could be a job, a membership group, a club, a living situation, etc.
I remember a good friend told me back in my brief drinking days…”ya know…if you didn’t drink, we probably wouldn’t hang out because we don’t have that much in common outside of it”. I had to sit back and realize that he was right. Without drinking, at the time, we didn’t have all the much in common. Drinking was our social connector.
There would be lots of jobs I had, where I would make friends with coworkers. BUT…if one of us got fired, or our contract ended or someone quit or we got other opportunities that we wanted to take advantage of, then things changed between us. We drifted apart. As much as we attempted to keep in touch, it was never the same. Spending 40 hours a week together + time after work is different than just spending 2-4 hours a week with someone or a group. The job was a social connector, and if that didn’t connect everyone in the group, then the relationship would change.
I saw this with eating too. When I decided not to eat sugar and flour, eventually many things became very clear to me. The first thing I remember realizing was that I actually had eating buddies. We would go out for the main purpose of eating junk food – as much as we could. When I decided to give up sugar and flour, those relationships changed a lot. We drifted apart. Different restaurants and the willingness to meet at those restaurants were our social connectors.
I made very good friends in that group that helped me abstain from sugar and flour, and when I decided to leave those relationships changed. We drifted apart. It just happened. We had meetings and our willingness to meet and find venues to meet in were like the glue that kept everything together.
In that food group, we were told many times to “wear the world like a loose garment”.
Don’t be attached to that connector and be open to letting it fall away or stay depending on what you want or need. There are so many different social connectors and opportunities to connect now that we live in a more connected world.
When you ask for something, don’t be attached to how the answer shows up. It might be in the form of a person you meet. A stranger. Something you read online. A dream. A synchronicity or coincidence.
It can literally come from anywhere. After a while of the exact answers you need showing up in odd places, it makes you less and less attached to how the answers will show up, and enhances your trust that the answers WILL show up.
Stay alert. I’ve seen answers on pieces of paper on the ground. I’ve heard an answer I needed as the first thing when I turned on the radio. I’ve heard an answer I needed on a podcast. I just heard and answer I needed and wrote a blog about it here. I’ve ran into answers I needed many times, so I know the feeling. It’s like a …getting-hit-with-a-ton-of-bricks feeling. You’ll know.
It always comes from stepping into the unknown or the new. That’s when the magic happens. You get back in the flow of life and in flows the answers you need at that time.
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”
I don’t know who said that, but it’s true as shit 🙂
The first step to an idea is defining a problem. Sometimes this happens so fast you don’t even think about it.
Once you define the problem, you can then ask: “what if?”. I’ll give you a simple example. (Warning: this explanation is going to be heavily basketball related. I know many readers don’t watch basketball so feel free to skip this basketball example). Then if you connect with others and get feedback on the idea and try to connect with the people/ resources you need to flesh the idea out and handle the objections that will come up. If it’s a service or product, then you need to connect with people who can get the word out.
This is the process I used to create my first blog. I said to myself…hmmm…When I watch basketball games, I like seeing people dunking on other people. I also like clutch shots and seeing people get crossed over (and finishing the play), but those don’t happen as often as much as people get dunked on. I even like when someone doesn’t get dunked on and they block the shot. The problem? There’s not a place where I can see the pictures AND videos in the same place. If I type in “dunks on Yao” I could get so many different things besides the times Yao got dunked on, and I can only see videos on Youtube. What if there was a blog to archive the dunks and arrange them by who got dunked on and who was the one dunking? That’s how yougotdunkedon.com was born.
This happens all the time on a small, simple scale too. I see people are doing this recently with Coronavirus. The problem? We want to practice social distancing, but we still want to be social and have as much fun as we can. What if there was a way we can play games through online conferencing platforms like Zoom and Skype? The All Def Squad did this here (skip to 2:25) with #quarantinegames where they play Utter Nonsense.
See what ideas you can get going! Get some people involved in them and get some feedback. You might be surprised as to what you come up with.
So…rewind to June 2017. I had a job paying me about $650 dollars a week doing purchasing and doing deliveries on the side which payed me an additional $200 / week ….so about $850 dollars a week take home.
Not the greatest of incomes, but enough to live as a single male in Texas on my own. I went to Evolving out Loud and immediately quit my job soon after …sooo my income went down to just whatever I was making during deliveries (about $300-$400/week). I ended up living in my car for a while really avoiding moving in with family or friends because I didn’t see where this road would end and eventually ended up living with family…and my life as I knew it collapsed. This was all as a result of listening to what I felt I was hearing. The world around me was telling me to “get a job” or looking at me like I was crazy for quitting a job I had.
Did I mention I also was paying a car note and (getting help with paying it) for a 2015 Dodge Charger to the tune of $675/month? It was around March of 2019 when this all started, so now here’s an assessment of the good and bad up until now.
The Bad
The Good
Eventually I started to realize…hey…I’m not gonna die, so what’s gonna happen? Some discomfort? Missing out on some things? You can find other ways to make money if you’re willing to connect with people. There’s plenty of P2P services now like Uber, Turo, Swimply (I haven’t used this one yet, but it’s coming!). I ended up doing lots of odd jobs that support me pretty well living with family, and I’m looking to blogging to support in the future.
You start to really feel like you’ll be supported no matter what – so when are you going to do what you really want to do? What you’re really called to do?
In the United States, we are experiencing a national emergency over the Coronavirus pandemic.
One of steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (along with things such as washing your hands for at least 20 seconds, disinfecting surfaces around your home or work, and covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough) is social distancing.
For a period of time, it’s wise to avoid crowds as much as possible, put some space between you and others and stock up on supplies so you can avoid crowds as much as possible.
I think it’s also worth mentioning now, that it’s not a time to isolate completely. We still need to communicate, and fortunately with technology we can do that easier than ever before. Phone calling, FaceTime, Video conferencing, social media, etc all allow us to communicate without physically being in the room with the people we are communicating with. Lets use these resources to take bolder actions.
Call your family members. Call your friends. Make sure you’re on the same page.
