Intentions and the Winding Staircase

Some say I am a late bloomer. I didn’t start my first company until I was 43. I am having the most fun of my life now that I am over sixty. I’ve never been more creative, had more energy, and felt so young. Great ‘late bloomers’ abound. The painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses, or Grandma Moses, took up a brush at age 75 and became a renowned artist before she died at 101. Harlan David Sanders, the colonel of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, started his company at age 65. The writer Harry Bernstein published his first short story at 24 and his debut novel when he was 90. Julia Child didn’t learn to cook until she was 40, yet she managed to dominate the culinary world. Alibaba founder Jack Ma was a bad student as a child, was famously rejected from Harvard University ten times, could not for the life of him land a job, and then went on to become a business titan. All of them took a winding path. None could have anticipated their staircase to success by looking into the future and trying to figure out how will pan out. No one can.

When we take a revisionist review, however, we can all look into the past and see what a winding route it was with each twist meant to be.

I call this route the Winding Staircase. Here is a reminder of what that is from Three Simple Steps.:

“Once you figure out what patterns you need to change in your life, those things won’t always change in the direction you expect. When it comes to success mentality, I call the way things change as the way of the winding staircase. Consider the desire to move from the ground floor to the second story. Because you are confident the stairs are connected to the second floor, you don’t hesitate to take them. You have done it a thousand times.

Now imagine that a friendly Martian beams into the room, and asks to see your bedroom. You show him the stairs, and tell him to start climbing. At most parts of the winding staircase he is facing a direction that is away from where he wants to go. Because he does not have certainty that the stairs are connected to his intended destination, the first time he turns a corner he thinks it a trick and descends.

In my life, achievement has often come the way of the winding staircase. It is all too easy to become discouraged when we can’t see, and therefore believe, we are heading in the right direction.”

When you get the feeling that things are maybe not going the way you want, even though you are doing the tools of TQT, connecting in nature and playing the mini-mind movie, the only thing to do is to keep up with that discipline.

Just do the work.

You don’t actually have to believe it will work, but because this is all based on science it will eventually work for you anyway. Knowing that takes away all the stress of having to believe. The winding never ceases, however, because twists are curves and curves are waves, and waves are energies, and energies are changes and this is all about playing with energy to make changes.
Lessons from disappointments.

Emotional elasticity is a learned skill, says psychologist Anna Rowley who counsels executives at corporations like Microsoft on cultivating existential “mastery.” In her view, flexibility provides a personal foundation of strength and sense of safety in a chaotic world. The only way to get this quality is to fail and try again. Rowley argues that happiness is a distraction and that in fact, the best way to ensure that you feel satisfied with life is by being a person who is good at managing disappointments and setbacks. If our paths cross I’ll teach her the mini-mind movie tool.

I get a lot of emails on this topic. Many are from people who spent decades thinking in ways that harmed them. Then after doing Transformation for a short while, usually just weeks or months, and when things ‘seem’ to take a step backwards, they assume the knowledge and tools are not working. This system works whether you believe in it or not. You just have to stick with it. I’ll give one classic example:

I got an email from a big fan of TSS, who then took Transformation. He was pumped. He told me that his biggest “need” was a life partner. He was fed up of his relationships failing. He also hated his job, but the relationship was the main thing. He did a “what do you really want” exercise and a “commitment to change.”

For a few months I got regular eager and enthusiastic emails. Although nothing seemed to have changed in his life he “felt” good things were happening.

In all my responses I said the following: “Stop analyzing. stop trying to figure out how. Just do TQT, get into nature and let life fill in the details.”

He complained that I was condescending in my communication and I admit I often unintentionally come over that way. The emails eased off until November when he vented his spleen once more. He had lost his job and still had no soulmate. He was vitriolic about me and Transformation. He asked for his money back. I refused. I wrote back again: “Stop analyzing. Just do TSS and let life fill in the details.” I don’t think it is physically possible to do the things he suggested in his response to me. I am not a contortionist.

Close to Christmas Day he vented another time, but said he had been invited to his family Christmas day for the first time in years having fallen out with his relatives a long time ago. I could see life filling in the details, but I wrote. “Stop analyzing. Just do TSS and let life fill in the details.” He did not respond this time.

In January I got the following email:

“JDE here again. Christmas day was great and we are all family again like nothing ever happened. I did the let go of the past ritual (now shoot the past) I even got my mother doing TQT. My mother’s sister also came to visit for the first time in years. She told me she was looking for a business partner, but the type of person needed a unique set of skills. I matched it perfectly. We felt weird being family working together after so long not being on speaking terms. So, we agreed to a trial period. At my aunt’s office, I met a great girl and we started dating. The work trial period is going great and my Aunt wants me to commit to long term. I will have to as I need the money because I am getting married in the summer.”

No word of thanks. No mention of TSS.Like I say you don’t have to believe. Just do it.

As Sun Tzu said ‘The best leader is the one whose people said they did it all themselves.’

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