Hero’s Journey

The real lessons in life are seldom the ones we want

When we learn the lessons in life that we think we need to learn, we generally learn nothing at all. The real lessons we need to learn are the lessons that life has in store for us. You know when you’re due for your next lesson: it’s when you’re resisting some or other change. You find yourself stuck, defending your position, trying with all your might to hold on and control what should happen next.

When you’re driving a car, the sooner you react to a sudden change in circumstances, the less likely you are to crash. When you’re slow to react – because you’ve been driving too fast, had your attention elsewhere, or the obstacle has arisen suddenly – then there’s a chance that once you react, your car will go into a slide. In a real slide, the correct thing to do is to point the front wheels in the direction you want to go, and keep your foot off the brake. And wait. It’s when you touch your foot on the brake that you’re likely to spin and roll. There’s nothing else you can do, but wait until it’s all over, then check for damage, and deal with the fallout.

Change is truly exciting if you have an attitude of faith and trust

In life, when you’re in a state of flux, it’s a situation with many variables that you can do nothing about. Instead of trying to control everything, keep your mind fixed on where you want to go; give up trying to control or stop the things you cannot control (like what he or she thinks or feels), and wait. See what’s left when it stops, then pick up the pieces.

When we emerge from the wreckage of change we have the lesson that life wants us to learn. It’s seldom the lesson we wanted to learn and that’s why it took a crash to get us to learn it. Some of the greatest inventions and discoveries happened quite by accident. We can never predict what beauty or genius comes out of a new set of variables that follows change. Change is truly exciting if we have an attitude of faith and trust. Do you trust life, or only yourself? If only yourself, then please make more trees grow, and stop global warming while you’re at it!

Being uncertain is the launching pad for personal power

If there’s anything you’re certain about, anything you’re 100% sure that that’s the way life is, that’s the way God made us, then you can be certain about one thing more: that you’re fooling yourself. What you take as the absolute truth is simply the current  limit of your world, of what you believe is possible. It’s your ‘flat earth’ statement, and you just haven’t sailed beyond the limits yet to test it.

Ne plus ultra is a Latin term that means ‘not further beyond’. It referred to the point beyond which sailors would not sail their ships for fear of being swallowed by monsters or falling off the edge of the earth. We each have a ne plus ultra in our minds, the point in our beliefs beyond which we’re not willing to go.

When you go beyond that point, you’re
left with nothing but pure possibility

Going beyond our ne plus ultra is the scariest thing. Beyond it lies nothing but pure possibility. When you give up certainty, you’re left with only you; you realise that you don’t run the universe and you don’t define God, and that’s pretty humbling for most of us. It’s also the launch pad for personal power, because you start facing the problems as they are – or rather, the problem as it is, the problem of you – instead of the problem being ‘out there’ somewhere. Just as the limit for sailors was never the earth, it was always what they held to be certain in their minds.

Being uncertain about the things you’re certain about will start to dissolve your limitations.

Uncover your act, before life does it for you!

Riding a motorcycle at high speeds, climbing mountains, getting into a shootout – these are things that many men will do bravely. But ask us to expose ourselves – to drop our act – in an authentic workshop setting and it’s, ‘No way!’ A man would sooner drop his pants in public than drop his act. In fact, if he dropped his pants, he would turn that into an act!

Your act is the persona that you present yourself to be. More than that, it’s the persona that you believe yourself to be.

Let’s say you’re the lone ranger,  the one who arrives late for every party, perhaps unattached, or with a new girl every time, and everyone wonders where you’ve been; you leave early too, and dash off into the night, alone most times, and everyone’s left wondering what you’ll be up to, wishing it was them having so much fun.

Their imaginations are more fertile than the reality. For you it’s lonely out there; there’s not really that much going on. Still, you can’t drop the act, because it’s you, after all! Or is it? In fact, the act – your persona – is not really you, but has a life of its own. It’s a psychological construct that occupies you, that grips you by the scruff of the neck and leads you through life, presenting itself as the real you. Read on!

Life is designed to inevitably expose your act as an act

Trying to see the real you behind your persona is like trying to beat your own reflection in a mirror. The persona, like the reflection, moves with you, too fast for you to detach from it. It’s that tricky. So how do you know what’s your act and what’s you?

People have reported feeling separated from their bodies during trauma, like their soul lifted out of their body. There’s actually an ancient esoteric ritual designed to give the initiate the experience of falling to his death. During this short fall he is so convinced that he’s going to die that for a split second he actually has the experience of his soul separating from his body. He comes out of it convinced of the existence of the soul.

Life is filled with little mini-shocks, mini-falls, that are designed to expose your act as an act. The teasing of your mates, the little failures that show up your shortcomings, that ‘catch you out’. If you react by defending yourself, by going deeper into your act, by taking your persona – your act – more seriously instead of less seriously, sooner or later something big will happen to expose the truth of who you are. If your act is to pretend you’re the money guy when you’re really not, you’ll go bankrupt; if you pretend you’re the paragon of virtue when you’re really not, you’ll get caught with your fingers in the till and go to jail (‘The devil made me do it!); the philanderer will lose his marriage and the lone ranger will end up lonely and alone.

You can wait for that to happen and, when it does, pretend you’re the innocent victim, or you can jump ahead of the game and take a transformational workshop that’s designed to help you uncover your act and take a giant leap towards authentic being and self-mastery. (Yes, there’s one advertised below!)

Do it, before life uncovers you – in public!

Be honest with yourself first, then with others

It’s one thing to pretend to others. Then what we usually do is we pretend that we’re not pretending. We actually argue to prove a point that it’s not so. Of course I love you. Of course I’m not interested in other women. Never look at them, never would. Then comes the test – in the form of a raised eyebrow, perhaps – and we go, ‘No, I’m not just saying it, I really mean it.’

More astonishing than this, is how we actually try to convince ourselves that it’s true. I’m happily married, we’ll argue, inside the privacy of our own head, late at night. I love my staff and I’d be sad if any of them ever left. Actually, half the time it’s not true, or it’s not 100% true, but admitting that to ourselves would seem too terrible. Firstly, we tell ourselves, it would mean I’m a terrible person. Secondly, it could mean I’d have to do something about it. As to the first point, please check: who’s the embodiment of the voice in your head? The very person who you’re trying to cover up in front of? Or maybe it’s still your mother! If so, time to grow up, wouldn’t you say?

It is possible to be completely honest –
 if you can bear the consequences

Of course, when it comes to pretending and covering up, we ask, could life be any other way? In fact it can. It is possible to be completely honest, firstly with yourself, then with others. It’s a lofty level of being – it means being centred within yourself and willing to bear the consequences of your every utterance. One of the most powerful and liberating things a man can do is to admit his true thoughts and feelings to himself – and then, if he can find the courage, to act on them. 

Your country needs you to lead!

Your country needs leaders, and talking about it doesn’t create them. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ said Ghandi. Be the leader you want to see. It starts with you. The biggest wave cannot rise without all the tiny water molecules below it. The Taj Mahal relies on every brick for its beauty. It could not be without one of them. What if you were the building block for leadership in your country? Who would you have to be? What would you, leading, look like, right here, right now in your life?

Right now, where are you conforming to the mould instead of being extraordinary? Right now, where are you kowtowing to popular interests instead of leading the sheep away from the abyss? Right now, where are you serving your own survival in a situation instead of risking your position for the sake of something greater?

Being a leader means being willing
to be laughed at, criticised

Being a leader does not feel comfortable. Being a leader means risking being the butt of everyone’s jokes. You can say what you like about our leaders, but at least they’re willing to be laughed at, criticised. If you’re not, and someone else is, that person wins the game hands down, no contest. If you want to stop corrupt leaders from stealing your whole country from right under your nose, then you have to do something. It can be something small. Rosa Parks was one lady on a bus and she inspired a changed world. Would you step out like Rosa Parks, even for one day?

Hang on, I’m just tying my shoelaces!

Powerful communication requires yielding, not force

When men pretend to be confident it’s easy to spot. One way they do it is they tend to push their communication harder than they need to. If you’re trained to observe this you’ll see it in harder inflections as they speak. It’s almost like they ‘bark’ at least once per vocal utterance. It needn’t be an aggressive bark; it might be a jocular one, but it’ll sound like a bark as it rises in pitch and volume above the other words. You’ll find some good examples in the classic movies of 50 years ago.

If you look into their actions you’ll see that there too they’re all about push, about force, about making a mark, having an influence, knowing more, doing more, solving more. But like their bark, their actions will be brief flares, like sun spots, before they retreat back to their place in the pack. They’ll step into an argument, loudly make a statement, then back off.

The gentleness required of men cannot be staged or taught;
 it can only be accessed through being

There’s a different way of expressing confidence. It’s the way of the gentle martial arts, like aikido. It’s the way of giving, of yielding, of moving in towards your centre. When you speak in this way you soften your tone, drop your inflection. To a man learning this, it feels wrong – too soft, a little naff, because you have to tap into expressions of feeling. Yet the men who truly know how to move people, who touch you, who are authentic, centred, powerful and you can’t quite put your finger on it, they have this softness in their speech.

Of course, it can be staged, but then you’d feel uncomfortable with this kind of man, like there’s something about him you don’t trust. True softness is an ability that can’t be staged or trained. It can only be accessed through being. Being gentle, being yielding, being willing to step back from the fight and the show, from always having to be right. Authentic being cannot be staged, it’s what’s left when the ego has been dissolved.

Do you notice that if you’re not there arguing and pleading for certain things to be done (at home, at work) or for things to be done a certain way that they simply don’t get done, or don’t get done right? Your presence is like a coil in a watch that keeps it wound up for a short time – but when you’re not there, that particular discipline, or practice, falls away.

This phenomenon is the destiny of most men, even highly successful ones. Take a World Cup-winning sports coach. How many of Jake White’s or Clive Woodward’s practices will be successfully and accurately continued by their successors? Very few, and fewer as time passes.

Nothing lasts, so relax a little bit, lean back
and watch how the game gets played

Even though some men’s desires, plans and structures last for centuries and get taken up by the whole world, they’re seldom done the way the founder would have wanted. Is Christianity the way Jesus would have had it? What about Smuts’s League of Nations (now the United Nations)? Does Ghandi’s India still practice non-violence? Is Mandela’s legacy of impeccable integrity still alive in the ANC?

Nothing lasts. Each one of us is keeping some space open in a sea of being, that when we’re gone will simply close up as though we were never there. So relax a little. Suggest a game, or a way of doing things, and then lean back and watch how it plays out. When it unfolds in unpredictable ways, instead of trying to control it, say, ‘How fascinating!’ You’ll save yourself heartache – and a heart attack – and make life liveable for yourself and everyone around you!

You appreciate in others what you feel you deserve in yourself

People who don’t have money often don’t trust those who do. The poor, to put it bluntly, often think that the rich must have done something crooked to get their money – and that they’re up to something right now, so the poor person is suspicious of the rich person’s motive, even when the rich person tries to help. On a global scale, this phenomenon shows up as conspiracy theories. The fact is that the poor person doesn’t believe, at a subconscious level, that they deserve the wealth that the rich person has. If they did, they would have it, and keep it. End of story.

Let’s say their deserving level is at 40 out of 100, so they have 40% of the wealth that they are capable of. Anyone above that, they’re either jealous or suspicious of.

Those who are high in deserving are neither
jealous nor suspicious, but appreciative

Now let’s look at love. When you believe you deserve love at level 40 out of 100, and you experience someone expressing love towards you at a much higher level, you don’t trust them, do you? You think they’re false, that they don’t mean what they say (‘How could they possibly?’) or that they want something. Those who are rich, who are high in deserving, don’t feel that way. They are neither jealous nor suspicious; they feel comfortable with the other person’s wealth, with the other person’s loving.

How much do you believe – at a subconscious, feeling level – that you deserve? The higher your deserving levels are, the less suspicious or resentful you are, and the more you can let in – the more friendship, love, money, support, contacts. To achieve this, you have to lower your defences, open up, allow yourself to deserve. This process of allowing is foreign to men, because we’re all about ‘doing’, but you can’t ‘do’ allowing, you have to relax, drop resistance, open up. It’s the opposite of doing. You have to ‘undo’. Can you do it? Go on, you deserve it!

Do what you want others to do

There’s a story about Mahatma Ghandi, that he was approached by a woman who asked him to treat her sick child; he recognised that the child had diabetes and that it should stop eating sugar, but instead of telling her there and then, he sent her away and told her to return in two weeks. During that time he stopped eating sugar himself, and when the woman and child returned, he told the child to stop eating sugar.

Do it yourself first, and you’ll be amazed
at how quickly others get the message

There’s that hoary old saying, ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ that people use when they want their children, partners, colleagues, or staff to conform to their wishes, and they do not live up to the requirement themselves. Well, if you’re using that, or applying it, you should not wonder if people don’t comply with your requests. Ghandi was all, ‘Do as I do,’ and he took this pretty seriously, as you can see. Now if power is proportional to how many people you’re able to influence, Ghandi was one of the most powerful people in history – certainly the most powerful who did not use a government or military force to achieve his influence. Perhaps we should take him seriously.

So the next time you want someone to change a behaviour, you’ll find it somewhere in your own life, you can be sure. Do it yourself first and you’ll be amazed at how quickly the others get the message. Plus you’ll know in yourself what it takes, and will be able to guide the other person to achieve it.

Liberate yourself by saying a simple, clear no

When somebody makes a request or a suggestion and your answer is ‘no’, do you, like most people, beat about the bush and try to let them down gently? Like saying, ‘Maybe, we’ll look at it,’ and hoping it goes away. Some feel they have to explain themselves for hours and some, amazingly, find themselves caving in and saying, ‘Yes!’

If you can’t say no, here are some questions to challenge you: 1. Who are you to think that you’re so great that your ‘no’ would destroy another person’s life, or quell their ambition? As if they could never pick themselves up from your ‘no’! 2. Would you be doing someone a favour by letting them have what they want so easily, even before they deserve it, before they’ve earned it? No, you’d only delay their inevitable fall and waste their time. Things worth having are hard-earned.

If you don’t value your ‘no’,
then why would anybody else?

3. If you talk yourself out of saying ‘no’ every time, what’s the message you’re putting out? That you don’t value what you want. Well, guess what? If you don’t, then life, in the form of other people, won’t either. So what will life, in the form of those people, deliver to your doorstep? More of what you don’t want. More things to say no to, that you won’t say no to, and so you’ll spiral downwards.

In order to say a clear ‘no’ you have to know what you want and be willing to get it – and you have to give up trying to be Mr Nice Guy. And by the way, there’s no need to explain yourself. ‘No’ is a simple word and everyone understands it.