Tag Archives: Success

The Will to Work is The Will to Live

September 14, 2014 The Extropist Leave a comment

Life is movement. It has momentum. It has a rhythm and when it stops – life stops. We have to keep playing the game of life otherwise we will fail to exist and this is core to every living thing in the Universe. Atoms have to keep vibrating. Photons have to keep pulsating. Trees have to keep breathing. Animals have to keep beating and humans have to keep creating.

This rhythm is true to everything in the Universe because its counter-point is entropy, which describes the inevitable decline of every system into chaos and disorder. This decline exists because no system is perfectly balanced and so there is always an energy leak. The leak is catered for by this rhythm of life that we all create. It is the desire to keep moving, to push forward. To do the work we have to, to give the system more energy, and even more energy than from where we started. We have to be inspired enough to take another step even when we have nothing left.

Power of Purpose

So often we hear of people who retire and live without passion, without purpose and then they very soon leave this world. Too often we hear about a person, who has fought the good fight and continued to live on only until they decide to rest. Studies have shown that people in there 80’s who had a daily practice of stagnant resting had close to a 50% mortality rate of surviving over a 6 month period, compared to people who actively engaged through a mindfulness practice that had nearly a 100% survival rate over the same period. What this tells us is that we have to continue to be present to our system, continue to work for our life and our lives.

Will is your Life Force

We turn work into energy that can then translate into many different areas of our lives. When we put work into our relationship, and think to bring gifts, provide help and show our appreciation for the loved ones in our lives – those relationships grow stronger. When we do nothing they wither and die. When we put work into our bodies through exercise, eating healthy, and maintaining a consciousness practice – we live longer. When we become lazy and indulgent with our bodies – we put needless stress and pressure on the system causing it to fail sooner. When we work for our job, go the extra mile, and help out our coworkers, letting them know that we are appreciative of them and respect their efforts – we excel at our jobs. Yet if we lounge around and create discord, we no longer progress and often lose our place.

Energetic Credits of Money

Interestingly much of this energy we put back into these systems of our lives – relationships, work, health – is facilitated by money. And what is money, but merely the easiest and most transferable form of energy. We turn work into energy, which we then can transfer through money. It allows us to buy and grow our lives through credits we have done for work. All this work that we do in our lives results in money and this money we can transfer into each system to help maintain the overall human system. So as you can see every system in your life requires work and energy to fight the natural tendency of life to break down. And while its hard it’s up to you to maintain these systems, to keep the plates spinning so they don’t fall, to keep the balls in the air so they don’t drop and break.

But know this: Your will to work starts with you. This work is for you, not for others. Work on yourself and others will reap the rewards. The will to live is generated from the work within and the will to work from you will only then extend beyond the current form. The exciting thing about this work is that it never stops. When we have mastered the current rhythm, we invite ever greater intricacies to the systemic patterns of our life in order that we can continue to expand our repertoire, increase the complexity or our life’s rhythms and grow the breadth of our consciousness to make us ever more creative and effective human systems for the world. So the next time you feel overwhelmed by the work you have to overcome know that you are growing the systems of your life to ever higher places with each and every step forward.

ELEVATE

I Love CHAOS! And YOU asked for it? (The Extropist Series – Part III)

October 18, 2013 The Extropist 1 Comment

I have often pondered over chaos and control. What is the point of chaos? Why do we have it in our lives? And how does it relate to being an Extropist? Then one day it came to me. It’s there because we ask for it to come into our lives. And when I understood this I realized that I love chaos. This new idea about chaos came when I learnt something about evolution. EVOLUTION REQUIRES CHAOS. When something in the environment is destroyed and removed from the eco-system it creates space for new beings in this system to come in and take advantage of the change. The new being evolves to then thrive in this new system structure and be more effective and powerful than before.

This is the same thing that happens in our own lives. Something comes along and throws the stability out of our world by changing the environment. It is then up to us to best develop and evolve ourselves in order to better handle the new environment. We are forced to reassess the structure and workings of our world, tear it down and rebuild it as a new and stronger, more effective system. So you might begin to see that chaos is a good thing, but people don’t see it that way.

The Problem of Chaos

Several things make chaos seem like a bad thing. Firstly, we are hesitant to break our world down as we have become comfortable in the world that we have created. Next, rebuilding the system of our world takes energy and work. Energy that we may not have or are reticent to spend on reconstructing our world to take into consideration the change in our environment. And finally, it is the resistance that we have to the chaos and change that limits our ability to properly function and motivate ourselves to use our energy in the most effective manner to make change.

Calling Chaos

The only difference to what we see in the larger phylogenic (or species) evolution is that people can consciously create change from an ontogenic (or individual) evolution that feeds the change for the species. What this means is that we call chaos into our lives so that we can evolve our individual system. That’s right! You literally ask for chaos to come in and mess up your world. WE CREATE CHAOS! Chaos is simply disordered energy. We need more energy to increase the size of our life and perpetuate our evolution. But this energy wont just come on a platter as a ready to plug-in battery pack. Sadly, that’s not how it works, nor would it be fun if we didn’t have to solve how to evolve.

When chaos enters into our lives, there is a greater overall amount of energy now in our lives. However this disorder is causing the current system to become inefficient, as it has not been calibrated to handle the new energy. This is why we often feel unstable and out of control with it’s introduction and so we often have to completely change the whole system in order to handle the new incoming energy. It is this reordering that causes the system to be more evolved as it has learnt how to better work with the new energy in the system. This can then have a trickle down effect for the whole species because then when another person sees how this new way of being is more advantageous they may choose to follow the new system. Then another. And another until critical mass is reached and there are more people using the more advanced system than the old. So you see that chaos might actually be a good thing for not only you, but everyone.

Karmic Chaos

But you may ask “how can we call chaos into our lives? And why would we?” Well, I’m certainly not advocating forcing chaos into your life by doing something dangerous such as jumping off a cliff, but rather begin to listen to the natural ebb and flow of life. Chaos is partially karmic, as it is a consequence that mirrors the amount of energy that you have put into your life. You are actually asking for the injection of new energy because you have used up all your energy in the system and now you are getting an equivalent amount of energy back to work with. Its kind of like pushing the pendulum. When you push it away from you, you get the fruits of the upswing, but slowly it reaches the top and eventually stops moving. So we need more energy to bring into the system to continue the growth and that comes back to us in the form of chaos. It is this energy from the back swing that you get to work with to evolve the system.

With each swing you get stronger and so you can push the pendulum farther. This in turn creates a greater experience and use of the energy in your life. A bigger swing also brings back more chaos into your life. You, however, are now stronger, wiser and more able to handle the introduction of greater chaos into your life. Some people resist and deny the chaos in their lives while others embrace it. There is a great saying, “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.” But know this: You can only bring into your life as much chaos as you are able to handle and never more. This is a very important point. This is because you can always handle the force of the return swing because you created the first amount of energy. Therefore the only time chaos can overwhelm you is if you feed into the old way of thinking and tell yourself that chaos is a bad thing due to one of the three points earlier. This will limit your ability to work with the new energy, to evolve the system and create a more amazing life.

So you can see that chaos is intrinsic to creating anything in our lives. Progress requires chaos. We must not be afraid of chaos, but understand it as a natural part of the growth process in life. When you feel the all too familiar feeling of change in the air, that something is happening that is out of your control, trust ultimately that you can handle it. You don’t need comfort and security all the time if you know things will turn out for the best. When you can trust in life and the process of it, you will be able to control the chaos. You can KNOW this because you called for chaos to come into your life. Instead of shying away from the small problems and living a small life, embrace the big problems when they come so that you can live the biggest life you can dream of.

ELEVATE

The Dynamic Systems of Extropy (The Extropist Series – Part II)

October 1, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

When we want to make a change in our lives, we know as extropists that we must create a system of structured energy in order to move into an experience that better serves us. This energy injection has many different names. In science it is called “work”. It is this work that we give to a situation that helps raise the integrity of the situation by overcoming conflict and creating resolve.

This work however requires a balance of energy within the system dynamics otherwise there can be a system failure because the system is being under or overwhelmed by the amount of energy inserted into it. Every part of our lives, whether it be relationships, career, health, or anything else, is impacted by system dynamics. However, it requires an awareness of the kinds of systems that you are working with rather than assuming that all systems operate under the same specifications. Do not assume, but get in tune.

It is important to go through how the systems in our lives can become imbalanced and what that can lead to. This allows us to be aware of each dynamic in order that you can then understand where you may need to tweak the energy in order to bring it back into balance.

Sometimes you can overwork the system by putting too much work into it. This may apply to relationships when one person is giving too much to the system and therefore expecting something more than the other person can give back in return. Consider these two people are two elements giving energy to create the “relationship” system. With an imbalance of energy, this could cause person A (the input) to blow a fuse from taking more energy that it can handle or cause person B (the contributor) to burn out from working too hard and not getting enough energy/ output back to continue with or validate their work.

To further explain this, imagine that person (B) likes person (A) a lot and this person (A) is hesitant to get too involved. They are limiting the flow of energy, whether it’s because they have restricted the flow of energy they allow into their experience from person (B) or because they have been hurt previously and they have a damaged emotional structure to process the attention and energy being given to them. This person (A) receiving the energy will be hesitant to take the energy, thus limit the flow and will only give back the energy they are willing to receive.

Otherwise, if person A, takes on more energy that they can handle it can also damage the system as they are taking in more energy than they are able to handle. This will cause person (A)’s fuse to blow and they may either derail in the relationship or elsewhere in their system (career, health) depending on how the composition of the overall structural integrity of their psyche is and where their weak points may be.

Additionally, the force of energy from person B could be so great that it begins to back up and cause A to not be able to take in any of the energy offered to them at all. This could frustrate and be very hurtful to person B, because B is trying to create a greater system by forcing energy into the new structure. Without reciprocation from person A, person B is doing a lot of work and not getting a reciprocal output. As B’s energy begins to deplete, due to the failure of the work to get the desired result, this may create feelings that invalidate person B as they are not able to maintain the system and again results in a system collapse.

These types of energy dynamics exist in any system whether it’s your work or your physical body. You can be overworked and become burnt out or you can try to give too much and destroy the connections that you have built by giving too much to the system. It is important to constantly evaluate the system be aware and give and take in order to work with what the system can handle. Often people create an ideal of what they think the system is and try to force the system into that place rather than allow the system to grow into that place. Be aware of what and who you are working with. Remain conscious and try not to force your beliefs and ideals on people through the energy and work that you give because this will cause your energy to be depleted and no work to get done. Change comes from the inside, and therefore we must allow people and ourselves the room to move and grow. Otherwise the system will collapse under the rigidity of the perceived ideal structure rather than allowing the actuality of the more fluid organic structures to work with what we hope to create. To create an ever better and evolved system.

ELEVATE

The Way of Extropy (The Extropist Series – Part I)

September 6, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

There is a road we all must walk. There is no denying it. We each step on it as we are born and we continue to be on it until the day we die. This road is the road of life and we can choose where it will take us or we can go along for the ride and let it take us there. That is up to us. Whether or not we end up where we wanted to or not comes down to choice. A choice of whether we are extropists or entropists.

Entropy comes from the second law of thermodynamics which states that all systems leak energy to spiral down to an inevitable state of chaos and disorder. This is the most common form of existence, as we find that more often than not the things we have created or try to create often end up in disrepair. Whether its relationships, our careers, physical and mental health, these are all systems that are ultimately overcome by the forces of entropy. An example of this may be we fall in love, we get married and then we begin to take our partner for granted. We have put in the amount of energy required to win their hearts and now things should just coast along. Right? Wrong. Entropy states that there will be a natural dissipation of energy that will ultimately cause the system of your relationship dynamic to begin to degrade, collapse and fall into chaos. So how can we stop this from happening? Extropy.

Extropy on the other hand is putting a stop to this energy leak caused from entropy by injecting more energy into the system than its losing which results in an evolved system dynamics of using this energy. Extropy may come in the form of a couple in a failing relationship putting the time and effort into build new communication channels which result in a clearer dialogue and a happier time between the couple. Or it may result in a person studying outside of their work in order to have a greater understanding of their job so that they can do their job better which results in a promotion. Extropy ultimately leads the actor towards a system of greater organized complexity, rather than greater disorder and chaos. Ordered complexity here might sound uncomfortable but what it is referring to is ever greater functionality offered to the system with the most effective and efficient use of energy. The system can constantly evolve. There is no limit.

The greatest from of energy that we can offer is love. Love comes in many different forms, shapes and colors. Two experiences of love to mention are gratitude and giving. They require the person to actively choose to involve themselves with good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Gratitude is the internal manifestation and experience of love and giving is the external manifestation and experience of love. These forms of love are a way in which to give energy to a entropic system in order to inspire change and elevate it to greater functionality and purpose.

Therefore we need to think about how and where we put our energy and use our time. When we operate unconsciously and automatically we give energy to our habits, which are behavior patterns we apply to try to use the least amount of energy. These autopilot holding patterns may keep us feeling like we are safe but very soon we will run out of fuel (energy) and will be forced to act very fast and put ourselves in very stressful situations. So take control of your destiny and use the free will that you have been granted in order to create the destination for your road rather than have it direct you to a failed destiny. Ensure that you strive to remain a conscious creator of your life in order that you are continuously giving more energy to a situation than letting what you have created leak entropically out into the Universe around. Instead, as an extropist you want to constantly address your life with love and ask how may you give to it in order that it may evolve into a space of ever-greater ordered complexity and profound purpose. Good luck on your Journey!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZZvnb_B7w&w=420&h=315]

ELEVATE

Overcoming Obstacles – Strive to Surrender

July 9, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

We strive so hard to create something in this world that we can call our own, that we can be proud of. We come up with the idea, we go out and we work at it to make it happen. Sometimes we get there sometimes we don’t, but always we face one thing – A road that is filled with its ups, and most certainly, its downs. These downs are a trial by fire that has us look into the depths of ourselves. It questions whether we are deserving of this creation to become manifest and real or to fall into the lost shadows of things that could have been.

This decision is not made by a cosmological jury that rests high on some ideological mountain, nor is it a mythical being that weighs up all that you have done which validates your worthiness of birthing this creation. That which that decides is you. You are the person that needs to accept you. You are the person that needs to look deep into the person that you are and decide and define yourself as worthy of receiving.

So often when we attempt to create these dreams, obstacles come in our way, but why are they there? They are there to strengthen and stretch you. They are there to have you realize that you can do it. That you can say to yourself and the world… “Yes I can!” And that is the point of these troubles. That is the reason that YOU brought them into your life. You must grow into the bigger version of yourself in order to have the strength to handle the bigger version of your life. There is a great saying – “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.”

It is interesting to think that if you have asked for these things into your life, ultimately asking for these tests to present themselves, then what else can you ask for and how can you handle them? Do you fight against the fact that they have arrived? Do you try to wrestle them down to the earth and slay them like they are undeserving of existence? Maybe. Another way to handle these situations is with a word. A word that to many people seems like defeat but it’s a word based on faith and trust in the process. That word is… Surrender.

How, some may ask, can surrender result in a win? The answer is trust. When you try to create something, you set in motion a chain of events that results in your dream to be created. The chain of events are the never-ending and interconnected line of cause and effect that results in a continuous stream of action to occur, resulting in something momentous. The butterfly effect states that even from the smallest butterfly wing flap, a giant tsunami can form.

Our thoughts affect the world, not only through our action as an indirect consequence but also as a broadcasting station that reaches out past our bodies. The magnetic field from our heart has been recorded several feet from outside our bodies. Such thoughts and feelings affect the surrounding world and can result in a cascade of events that results in your test, your impasse, in which you struggle to get through.

It is however your resistance and fight that makes this transition a struggle. The same that if you try to stretch and move a tensed muscle, it is not very fluid, movable or mobile. However, when we surrender to the stretch, when we breathe into the experience, accepting it, we allow for movement and change. It is this trust that we have when we stretch and surrender to the movement and hurt, we will grow from it and ultimately be better and bigger by putting ourselves through the experience.

The same exists in our experience of life. We are stretching our consciousness. We are making ourselves bigger, because we asked for it. Because of what we are trying to create in the world, like with growing pains, as we grow we must surrender to the inevitable result of letting go of the past versions of ourselves and accepting the new bigger and better. Allow yourself to be your best, trust in the process and you will find yourself earning your rites of passage.

ELEVATE

Find Harmony in Discord with “Thanks”

June 6, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

We all have something in our life that irks us. Something that drives us mad, where we think if only this was not there, or this could be changed somehow. But no matter what we do it always stays the same. There is a solution and it is so simple. It will sound weird at first and it will be difficult, but it’s the simplest things that are often the most difficult. The best way to create a harmony when you find yourself in a discord with life, is to practice gratitude.

The process is simple. Everyday find something about that which upsets you and give thanks for 10 things about your discord. Everyday give thanks for the great things in your life. Write down 10 great things about your problem that you could be grateful for. When you write down the things you appreciate about a person you direct your attention to focus on those things to help make those things a reality. This occurs because you will act towards those things with a compassion and a genuine kindness. Even when they mistreat you, you will find a resilience and be able to see through those more difficult moments and see the beauty in them because that is where you have trained your focus. We each have a sinner and a saint on our shoulder. No-one is perfect. But by giving energy to our saint we are more likely to see the saint on somebody else’s shoulder.

We each live and look from the world from the one perspective, that perspective is from the place in which we stand. Each of us believe that our own view is the ultimate ‘Truth’, but we know from science that even the very fabric of the Universe is subjective. So do you really think that your view is the only right view when the space that we exist in is literally colored by our own thoughts. Realize this and use gratitude to look past your infinitesimal perspective of the Universe and instead open yourself up to the perspective of life through the simple act of saying “Thanks”. By allowing yourself to give thanks to someone you are opening yourself up to their perspective and thereby increasing your own ability to perceive the world more fully to have a richer experience of life. Just Say “Thanks!”

Now this isn’t the end of the practice. One you have written your 10 things about your discord. You will then write another 10 things about how you see your life working for you. Write it in detail. It can be the smallest thing, such as, I’m for the nice chat I have with my parents today or it can be I’m so grateful for the job promotion I get today. This is the same concept that works for gratitude of the past but it sets up a picture for you to focus on and work towards it. Remember where your attention goes reality grows. That means that with the positivity of gratitude, you will have more energy to work towards these outcomes that you are excited about and grateful for because you have already realized the joy that it will bring you. It’s kind of like knowing that your numbers are going to come up at the lottery. You will continue to give time and money to buying tickets because you know that you will eventually win. By continuously giving to your dream, in thought, word and deed, you will undoubtedly create that reality as your very own.

PRACTICE SUMMARY:
Think of that event, person or thing that you want to change in your life and instead give thanks for 10 things about it.
Then give thanks about 10 things that are going to change in your relationship to it.
Note: When you do this properly you will feel a surge of joy take over your body. You may feel like want to cry from happiness or you may feel tingles all over your body. This is more probable if you do more gratitude in a session. And remember it’s really important to believe!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Lick3RIwU&w=560&h=315]
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As you can see here from Dr. Charney you can restructure your brain to more easily be able to handle stressful and depressing situations circumstances. Gratitude is one of those techniques and it ties directly in with mindfulness or being aware of your thoughts and restructuring them to better serve you.

Hope it helps

ELEVATE

Head to the Heart – the fastest journey to fulfillment

February 22, 2013 The Extropist Leave a comment

We as humans seek for the highest experiences of life. We strive in many different ways through many different activities, all in the name of reaching our highest peaks.

But what are these peaks made of? And how do we get there? Peaks are made up of highs and lows, the valleys as well as the mountains. If they weren’t, then everything would be flat. So too are our personal peaks made up of polar opposites. These poles exist in our body and given the names the Heart and the Mind. The mind is the active pole and is the engine that drives us toward an end. The heart is the passive pole that stores the passion of our dreams and fuels our drive. These are the polar opposites that have been spoken about for thousands of years across hundreds of cultures. The Yin and the Yang, Shakti and Shiva, etc. These two poles have different requirements to satisfy in order to reach our peak experiences.

Mind: Emptiness is Freedom
Let us first look at the active force. In a battery this is considered the positive pole and its role is to send the electric current to the negative pole. This is also considered the masculine energy and its pinnacle is freedom and is experienced through emptiness. As a person strives for a goal in their activity and works hard in order to complete the task, once they have finished the task they have started they are deserving of a break, of a moment of peace and freedom. A space where they don’t have to think but they simply can revel in the joy of what they have created or completed. This active force opens us up to an empty space in which we can truly experience freedom. A good example of this is in sex for men in which they are often the active force of the task and once they have reached their climax of the experience they move into an empty space, one of freedom, where the built up tension has been released and they can go to sleep.

Freedom is the Mind
Emptiness and freedom is an action of the mind. It is a place where we realize there are no limitations and we embrace abundance and true potential. Our conscious minds role is to constrict, to limit and to process. It weighs up options and says what can and can’t work. Upon reaching a freedom state, people often don’t remember the experience, they feel like they have transcended time and space. This is often called Flow or in the zone and it is here that we move out of our mind and the freest we can ever be.

Filled freedom leads to anxiety
When we are not in a freedom state we feel anxious, we feel overwhelmed and constricted. People often express they are feeling physically squeezed. This is because their minds have the tightest hold on them and they are as far away from freedom as possible. They are wearing the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are obliged and responsible. Of course this is all in the mind.

Freedom Practice
We can begin our journey to freedom through the practice of meditation. It is here that you can observe your thoughts and understand the limitations that you place on yourself. When you are quiet you will literally hear the stream of chatter in which you are telling yourself about how limited you are. About how much responsibility you have. About how you are surely going to fail.

Start with 10 mins, 5 mins, or whatever you feel comfortable with and begin to add a minute a day. Sit or lie down, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Slow it down and take long deep breaths. Count each breath up to 10 and then start your counting again. You will notice your mind wander to limiting thoughts. Catch your mind and understand these are not real but only thoughts and then bring your mind back to counting your breath. We can look at any experience and feel free in what we are doing. When are free we don’t have those limitations anymore. Anything is possible and we can be anyone, anywhere at anytime.

Heart: Surrender is Love
The second domain is a little different. This is the negative pole in the battery and its role is to receive the energy from the positive pole. It’s akin to the feminine energy and its pinnacle is love, which we experience through surrender. Surrender is the complete experience of receiving without any resistance. When we can truly receive we can fill ourselves up. We are deserving of what we are given and we take it completely and wholly with thanks. This feeling of love is a feeling of whole-ment of fulfillment, where we are full and whole from life and what we were doing.

Love in the Heart
Love and surrender is an action of the heart. It is the opposite of the mind. As the mind is a limited channel that strives for emptiness and freedom, the heart is a truly abundant channel that requires you to open it up as much as you can – To have the courage to be vulnerable. To be free, to love as big as you can, because the bigger you love the fuller you’ll be.

Limiting love leads to Depression
We often see this love and fulfillment stop when a person is in depression. Here a person has closed themselves off from their hearts and they feel empty and worthless. Their life is now without purpose or fulfillment. They block out the light in their life. They block themselves from receiving anything and anyone that they would let into their heart. This is a dark experience and one that hides a person away from experiencing their life to the fullest.

Love Practice
So it is so important to be brave. To have the courage to take a step forward towards being vulnerable and opening yourself to experiences. To life. To love. To learn. By trying new things and being open to the unknown we will most certainly make mistakes. This of course is not saying go from depression to universal love because that is a dangerous and somewhat difficult task. Instead, work out the step that is the right size for you. What can you do today that opens you up one step closer to Love. Write a love letter to someone – you don’t even have to give it to them. Say thank you to a stranger. Smile at the teller at the market. By giving you are opening yourself up to receive. And remember… You deserve it. You are worthy of it all.

Head to Hearts
You may have noticed that there is a natural movement from the head to the heart. This is the same as the energy flow from the positive pole to the negative pole of the battery is the masculine pole of the mind to the negative pole of the heart. The energy naturally wants to flow towards a space that can harness and handle copious amounts of good flowing to it we just need to stop restricting the channel. A wise Native American proverb states the longest journey we will ever travel is from our head to our hearts. I find it amazing because our minds and hearts are truly the yin and yang. We are moving to fill up our hearts and we moving to empty our minds but everything and nothing are the same thing and both have an unlimited capacity for abundance. So move towards freedom by becoming aware of your mind and give to yourself and your world and you will fill up your heart. And with each step you take you will be one step closer to your dreams filled with freedom and love.

ELEVATE

Don’t try and change what exists. Instead create a new space for your dreams.

December 12, 2012 The Extropist 2 Comments

Each and every one of us has the option to live as an Extropist, someone who steps powerfully towards chaos and transforms the energy into a usable form. The Extropist often is working towards creating their purpose, as purpose is one of the greatest motivators that we can use to materialize our dreams. However, many of us have spent much time chasing dreams only to find that they constantly slip through our fingers. Why is it that our goals can be so slippery, and what can we do to help our chances in realizing these elusive manifestations in our life?

One thing that may help you along your path is the fact that everything that you see has already happened. That sounds a bit confusing, so let me further explain. The time it takes for light to bounce off an object to reach our eye and then be processed by our brain is milliseconds past the actual occurrence of the event itself.

This is important to note because what it means is that you will always be one step behind the event you are trying to change. This is why it can be so difficult to catch a rabbit with your hands, because the goal you are trying to reach has already moved. Therefore, don’t try to change what already exists. Instead create new conditions to move into.

The hunter knows not to chase after the rabbit but instead to create the right conditions in which the rabbit will come straight into his grasp. This is the same for catching your dreams. Know what things you need to do to have your dream come to you. If you are attracting a partner, don’t chase them around instead create the person that you need to be in which the partner will come to you. What type of person do you need to be to attract your dream partner into your life? If it’s a job, if you simply turn up to job interviews, chasing any open position, the job will already be gone by the time you arrive instead, what are the things you need to do to be an employ at your perfect job? What do the other employees of this job do? What is the company passionate about and how can your actions better create an inspiration of similar interests?

We can create changes in our lives to use our energy efficiently and effectively so that we can harness the chaos that surrounds us and use it to our advantage. This is further emphasized by the famous physicist Niels Bohr, who said, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. He meant that if there is a condition in the Universe where nothing exists, the Universe will work with great urgency to fill this space. This works all the way from quantum states and the zero-point field to more classical Newtonian states such as diffusion. What this means to our story, is that by setting up the right conditions, the Universe will actually push our dreams towards us in ways that not only seem improbable but actually impossible. But this is how some of the most amazing and magical loves have been ignited and baby businesses have boomed. It is all by setting up the right conditions within oneself and the entity than trying to chase down an elusive goal.

When you know what your dream is, instead of spending the time running around chasing it, spend some needed time to understand what conditions you need in yourself and the situation in which you can allow the dreams to come to you. Start with a piece of paper and write down exactly what your life will be like when you are living your dream. Then try and action as many of those conditions as possible so that you are beginning to create a space for your dreams that needs to be filled. In this way, Life will turn on its axis in the most unusual ways to have you realize your dreams in order that it will fill the space that you have created.

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Follow your Bliss…The hero’s journey always reaches their dreams

November 14, 2012 The Extropist Leave a comment

Everything that we do in life is a journey. It is in fact a hero’s journey. A journey of growth and learning on how to better ourselves by tackling the darkest aspects of ourselves. These can be fraught with dark moments of doubt and shame. But we must remember to hold strong to our dreams and know what are the essential characteristics that will allow the hero to vanquish the demons that lie before us on the road to a hero’s victory.

We can think of any task that lies before us as all part of the hero’s journey. Relationships work the same way we think of exams, and the same way we think of making money, these are a means to an end. These are tasks set before the hero to prove their worth on the road to his dreams. They are a currency that we use to reach our dream. They are the things that give us security and feed our egos but they aren’t our dreams. I have not heard of any person in their life saying, “when I grow up, I want to be a person that gets the best grades”. No, typically people dream of being a doctor or an architect or a fireman. These are of course arbitrary. The point is that they dream about becoming someone who does something of worth and provides something, whether it is their love, or something or service to the rest of the world.

When you define ‘why’ you want your dream, you elicit emotional responses deep in your physiology that will drive and motivate you with the joy you receive from your dreams to reach the person you want to be. So, who do you want to be when you grow up? Don’t think about the “how”, focus on the “what” and the “why”? What do you want to be? A doctor. Great! Why? A designer. Great! Why? A wonderful partner. Great! Why?

Your “why” will also give you an armour to protect you on this treacherous path. It will give you a resilience to keep on charging forward when you have taken a blow to your psyche and your dreams. Our love for a dream is what has every hero reach their goal, no matter what the challenge that falls before them. So give energy to define who you will be in your future and you will be able to reach whatever dream you have in your mind. The definition gives a context for why you are doing the things that precede the dream so that you can reach it. It means that when you are working on a relationship, studying, working hard to get a business started or putting in a big effort as an intern, you can use your passion for your dream to motivate you and understand that this is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Which leads me to the second part of the hero’s story. Once you understand your dream and have defined why you are taking the long journey to its gates, you then need to bring your head back from out of the clouds and focus back on your task. Whether you are studying, working, or paying your dues. You must give to the task with everything you’ve got, like this is the only step on your journey, and then you will take another step with the next task, class or client and you will give to that with everything you’ve got. Eventually, you will have taken the thousand-mile journey and walked the path one step at a time with integrity and grace. You will have learnt all that you need to prepare you to open the doors and walk through the gates of your dream.

The best thing about all of this is that originally you will begin your journey on the promise of the glory of your riches but ultimately the real treasure will have come from the journey you took to reach your dream rather than the dream itself. This is something to remember and hold in a prominent position in your mind because when you begin to feel overwhelmed by the task at hand, you can be thankful that you will overcome this obstacle, and when you do, reaching the ultimate goal will mean so much more than if it was given to you on a silver platter. So I ask that you enjoy the difficult times, remember why you are doing them to give them a context that motivates you. Give to the task at hand like it is the only task that you have to do and give to it with all your might, energy and love.

With these tools at your hand, you will be able to tackle any troubling times to reach any goal that you have and bring a new richness to any and every task that lies before you. You are the hero of your life and the only person that needs to believe in you… is you. Good LucK and Follow Your Bliss!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAE8fPbXr58&w=560&h=315]

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Dream Big, Think Small

October 3, 2012 The Extropist 2 Comments

So often we find ourselves asking the question what does it all mean? Why am I here and what am I doing? We usually find ourselves asking this same question in the same place. A place that is the most relevant to be asking and more often than not the most depressing space, and that is… our job. So often our careers are the most dissatisfying element of our lives, yet they are where we spend the most amount of time. We spend in fact, outside of sleeping, the majority of our day at work. So what is work and what can it be for us? It can be that which truly fulfills and nourishes who we are inside. It is not just a proxy to our dreams, it is the real thing. Our work is the space where we can step forward and fulfill our purpose. This is a very important idea, because it answers the age-old question why are we here? Well each person is here to answer their own question. Another way of saying this is that there is no meaning to life except for the meaning that you give it. That meaning is your dream!

The bigger the dream you choose the harder it will be to fulfill, but also the more meaning you will receive from life. Taking meaning from life fulfills you as you step towards that dream. For instance, if your dream goal is to make $1000, you will work towards it and reach that goal and then what? You will have to make another goal. There is nothing wrong with this and it is actually a very effective method, when you know what the FINAL outcome is. The big dream that you are trying to reach. This may be daunting to think what this dream could be, but once you select it you can then begin to take steps towards it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of optimal functioning, said initially the goal justifies the means but ultimately the means justifies the goal. What this means is that while you originally thought the luster of the treasure at the end of the rainbow is what will give you the satisfaction in life, in fact it’s the journey that you went on to get to the that makes the dream and the life all worthwhile.

So why tell you all this? It’s because while you have to dream big you have to also think small. Because if you try to contemplate the magnitude of your dreams you will become overwhelmed and literally become nauseas from the great heights you will have to climb. What I mean by ‘think small’ is only focus on the step in front of you and give everything you have to that one step. Think about everything that you will need to do and break them up into smaller packets of events. If those seem too big then break those down. Each one is like a brick in the wall. Instead of focusing on the wall and the thousands of bricks you have to lift up and put in place only focus on the brick itself and make sure that you really put it in place properly. If the brick is too big break it up. It’s more important that you can handle the brick than get to your goal quickly. As my friend said to me, “you don’t have to eat the elephant in one go”.

Remember what Aesop told us about the hare and the tortoise. Life is not a race, you are running only for yourself. Find patience and pace yourself by what you need to accomplish to reach the finishing line of your dream. If you compare yourself with those faster than you, you will be overwhelmed and doubt yourself and your chances. If you compare yourself with those slower than you, you will become arrogant and sloppy. Focus only on the tasks in front of you and give to them. You won’t waste your resources thinking about other people or your performance capabilities. Keep your attention outside on what you have to accomplish.

Slow and steady wins the race.
Aesop (Greek slave & fable author, 620 BC – 560 BC)

What does this mean in a real-life application? If you were talking about a dream job? What are the things you need to do to get the job? Know the job you want. Know the person you need to be for that job emotionally, mentally and physically. See yourself in that job and understand the things that you will do. Know the reason why you want the job. Understand that it is in your planning that you will become clear on who we need to be now to reach our dreams. Sun Tzu (Chinese General – The Art of War, 500 BC) said “Now, the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.”

We must understand the person we need to be for our dream. Whilst we have patience for the dream we have to embody the person that we will become. We have to take an active role in our transformation of becoming the hero of our journey. To take the planning further and create a greater belief of the hero in you. So know what you will do when you get the job. Know who you will tell and how you will feel. Know what this job means to you and write it down. Write it all down and take action where you can. Take action and give powerfully to every life detail of your big life dreams. Life wants you to take the reins and give the meaning that only you know it can have for you, because when you are the main actor in your life… Well then, all the world is your stage!

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