You have been invited to the leadership table. Someone has seen you have leadership potential. They don’t say what they are going to do, they show what they are going to do. You have been invited to be a part of the leadership game. Here you grab the opportunity to show what you can do for the team and the organization. You have to prove you deserve the position.

When an individual received a position and title, some level of authority or power usually comes with them. You have only limited power to begin with as it must be earned from your fellow team members. The infantryman’s Journal (1954) says, “No man is a leader until his appointment is ratified in the minds and hearts of his men”
You gain leadership, not just a position.

‘Good’ leaders as Maxwell describes, which I am going to label as effective leaders as we don’t want to place a moral ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on leaders, are genuine, strive to better themselves. Frances Hesselbein said “Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are.”

What is in the way? Fears, needs, and unproductive habits! Explore the depths of who you are and understand yourself, know yourself and define your values and there will be a transformation. “Values are the soul of your leadership, they drive your behaviour”

Effective leadership changes individuals lives. It forms teams. It builds organizations. It impacts communities. It has the potential to impact the world. But never forget the position is only the starting point.

Downside of Position
Positional leaders make people feel small

By not having a genuine belief in them
By assuming people can’t instead of assuming they can
By assuming people won’t rather than believing they will
Be seeing their problems more readily than their potential
By viewing them as liabilities instead of assets

They focus on working to gain titles. They believe they have rights which has a sense of entitlement. Each of us as leaders must strive to grow up and grow into a leadership role without relying on rights.

Turnover is high for positional leaders because people don’t quit companies, people quit people

Clock watchers
People who watch the time, can’t wait to be out of there. They are already saying goodbye to coworkers at 4.30pm and are out of the door at 5pm.

Just enough workers
People will do just the bare minimum to get what they have to get done, no more.

Our instinctive being constantly emanates from and seeks a state of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual equilibrium. All pain demands us (our minds) to help restore this equilibrium.

Pain is reminding you that there is an infinitely brilliant force. Our own force, is functioning on our behalf. It is a wonderful reminder of a vast spectrum of consciousness that lies beyond the limited perception of our thoughts. This wisdom shows there are inner capacities that infinitely exceed all learned knowledge.

Trust the pain. Pain is a sign. Simply listen to yourself and what it is revealing to you. The cure for the problem is indicated by the pain. Failure to read the early pains can create larger more problematic pains in the future.

In 2007 a man who had a minimally conscious state for six years recovered deep brain stimulation of his thalamus. He received treatment for almost three weeks. Within three days he was answering questions by nodding and shaking his head. A week later he tried to walk.

It’s only been tested with one person so it’s not clear if the thalamus underlines fundamental conscious awareness or helps the patient to produce behaviors that give signs that they are aware of the world around them. But there is a glimmer of possibility.

Let’s explore consciousness and our decision-making process. When it comes to decision making, the unconscious mind is the best too we have. Sleep on a decision and your brain works overtime to analyze it and comes up with an answer. Same with solving a problem or working on a new body movement. The magic happens at night while you sleep.

If you have a creative problem, it’s best to think about it, take a break and then come back to it with the hope that your unconscious mind has been working in the background for the answer.

The brain takes in so much information, more than we are consciously aware of. It is continually testing the incoming data against the stored information. It is predicting what might happen, the likelihood of the situation. Not only do we then make hypotheses of external situations, the body makes predictions based on emotional signals coming from the body.

One researcher goes as far as to say that the conscious mind is only aware of something when the unconscious mind has processed it, sorted it and deemed it relevant to be aware of. This is ultimately how your value system works, filtering the world through what is most important to you.

Yes, you do think while you sleep. I’m sure you have said to yourself that you need to wake up at 5am and bam! It’s 4:59am and you wake. A study in 1999 of 15 volunteers went to sleep at midnight and told they would be woken at 9am and did or told them they would be woken at 9am and woke them at 6am or said they would wake them at 6am and did. The last group had an increase in adrenocorticotropic from 4:30am, peaking around 6am. People woken unexpectedly at 6am had no such spike. The unconscious mind, the researchers concluded, can not only keep track of them while we sleep but also set a biological alarm to jump start the walking process. Consider setting your biologically alarm before you sleep tonight.

What about the Sci-Fi vision (we can’t call it fantasy because some of it is coming to fruition) of machine and man merging. Is it possible to build feeling and consciousness into machine?

As human beings, we don’t just act and react, we really feel; experiencing rich and vivid sensations that are more than reactions. Science has been unable to come up with a convincing explanation of why sensations feel the way they do. Some people even insist that understanding the nature of sensation is outside the realm of science. Given this, it’s tempting to think that building anything like sensations into a robot should be impossible.

One researcher states that one reason why robots cannot have broader consciousness is that they just can’t crunch enough data. Our brain is processing an extraordinary amount of information. Even three cameras can capture more data about a scene then the human eye, robotics are at a loss to how to stitch all the information together to build a cohesive picture of the world.

The experience of feel is not a mysterious byproduct of the brain but the way we interact with the world around us. For example, imagine pressing on a sponge. Where is the feel of softness generated? The traditional approach would look for the sensations in the brain, but press down on the nearest soft objects right now and it quickly becomes apparent that the softness isn’t in the brain at all; it resides in the particular characteristics of the action involved in pressing a soft object. Sensorimotor theory proposes that all ‘feels’ might be like this. The color red, the smell of an onion, the sound of the bell are all different ways of interacting with the world. If this is so, and feel is certainly something that could be experienced by a robot – it is certainly easier to achieve than sensations that mysteriously emerge from the complex activities of the brain.

Can a robot be conscious?

We have metacognition, the ability to reflect on our own knowledge. This is what makes us unique as humans.

Anything is possible.

The study of consciousness offers a chance to get to the care for what it means to be human. Questions to selfhood and freewill help us to understand ourselves as a species, why we think, feel and act the way we do.

Maybe one day in the distant future we will understand what makes the experience of red, and is my experience of seeing the colour red the same as yours.

The Secret Blend
Leadership isn’t something you do to people. It is something you do with them. Some leaders are only concerned with getting results. This isn’t the only aspect, because you are forgetting the people.

Every team has the capability of being a high performing team. Let’s not forget the basic principle that with every high performer there is a low performer team mate, every team member you are infatuated with, there is a team member you resent.

1. They walk their talk. They lead people instead of trying to control them.
2. They lead one of the team working in partnership with the team members. This partnership will create the team potential.
3. They affirm their team’s work as important so they feel valuable.

The Effective Leader finds out what each person’s uniqueness is on the team.

They use the strengths of the team to work together.

Quarter One
The challenge begun, the first quarter was off a slow start for the Pill Free Team. The effective leaders win the trust and respect of their team members through integrity. Leadership had to be inspired from within each team member.

One of the first steps the Effective Leader had to do was walk his talk. Trust happens when what you say and what you do match. He was doing his part to enrich the evolving culture of integrity. He didn’t beat people down for their deficiencies but worked out ways to improve them. This means people are more able to make mistakes and share those mistakes without fear.

One of the first changes the Effective Leader gave access to his calendar, so the team would see that he is not taking 3 hour long lunches and that he has dedicated time each week for team members to speak to him if they so choose.

At the end of the first quarter the results showed a big increase in Triple Bottom Line of the business but not for the Effective Leader. He stated “It would be unrealistic to expect we can go from dysfunctional team to high performing team in 90 days.”

He has a strong vision and plan on how to get the team to where he sees possible.

Quarter Two
The Effective Leader wasn’t affected by the other team, he focused on his own objective. He was bust working. He worked an overnight shift to demonstrate leadership is a team effort and for the team to see what they do is valuable. The key to Effective Leadership is the relationship you build with your team.

Next, he had a team meeting to bring everyone up to speed on the bigger vision of the company. He gave a preview of the budget and revenue forecast and showed last quarter’s results. They were on the same page, working together for a common goal and there was transparency for the first time.

He decided to implement lunch and learns each week. This was an investment into the team so they would grow themselves, which would eventually grow the team. An Effective Leader fosters a partnership of cross training and job rotations for new career paths and collective skill sets of the team expanded.

Team members want to grow, and would love the opportunity to grow. Some leaders are so concerned about pushing their own agendas and protecting their own turf that they forget that they are on the same team. Effective Leaders teach what they are good at so others can do it too. Partnership harvests the potential of the team. The leader focuses on growth and success of their team because the easiest way up a hill is to do it together.

Second quarter results still didn’t come close to matching the Leadership Pills Team but they were making some strong headway.

Quarter Three
The Leadership Pill, being driven by action and outcome was becoming low on team morale. In contrast, team morale was on the up and some real gains on the Triple Bottom Line indicators.

This is where appreciation was brought in to boost team morale even more. The Effective Leader thanked the team for showing up, he affirmed by letting people know what they do is important. Not praising people every time they do something right, means they look within.

Effective Leader implemented Health Hygiene Break, knowing that people had a life outside of work. They received massage vouchers, free gym memberships, time out from work because you will go further if you stop and refuel.

Clear results are now showing in the Non Pill team. Results are decreasing for the first time in the Leadership Pill team.

Quarter Four
Throughout the year, the Effective Leader shares with the team they have grasped the ideas of integrity, partnership and affirmation. He challenges them to now decide how these will come to life for themselves. People will think of themselves when you quit doing it for them. No longer is he saying how it will be, but empowering the team to own how they want it to be. This way, your leadership is evident when you are not around.

Leadership is about getting everyone to the same place they are supposed to go. They all were living the Secret Blend. It was a part of who they had become. Not only was the leader walking their talk, the team was too. Leadership is for a lifetime, not found in a quick easy pill, like a lot of things in life.

End Result
After 12 months, the Pill Free Challenge came to an end and congratulated the Effective Leader for their efforts. The Effective Leader congratulated his team who he said deserved the credit for making it happen. He has the vision, they fulfilled it.

What one insight will you implement into your leadership style this week?

After just ten days of therapy, Taub found, patients regain significant use of an arm that would always be rendered uselessly. They could put on a sweater, unscrew a cap on a jar, and pick up a bean on a spoon and lift it to their mouth. They could perform almost twice as many of the routine daily activities as a patient who, serving as controls, did not receive the therapy. And these were not patients whose stroke was so recent that they might have regained movement spontaneously, as many do. No, these patients suffered their stroke more than a year before beginning therapy and so long past the period when, rehab wisdom held, either spontaneous or therapy-aided recovery takes place. Two years after treatment ended, Taub’s patients were still brushing their teeth, combing their hair, eating with a fork and spoon and picking up a glass and drinking from it.

This showed his clear hunch that the old brain, even a damaged brain, retains some of its early neuroplasticity – enough, at least, to rezone the motor cortex so that the functions of a damaged region can be assumed by a healthy region.
Further studies over the past 14 years have toppled the dogma that when a brain region is damaged by a stroke, the function it used to perform is forever lost. Instead the brain is able to recruit healthy, unusually nearby, neurons to perform the function of the damaged ones.

It is important to recognized what neuroplasticity is not; a glam name for the cellular changes that underlie the formation of memory and hence learning. New synapse, connection between one neuron and another, are the physical manifestations of memories. In this sense, the brain undergoes continuous physical change. But neuroplasticity goes beyond that. It produces wholesale changes in the job functions of particular areas of the brain. Cortical real estate that used to serve one purpose is reassigned and begins to do another. The brain remerges itself throughout life, in response to outside stimuli – to its environment and to it’s experience. As Taub’s violin players and stroke patients, so dramatically, many brain systems retain well into adulthood their ability to respond to altered sensory inputs and reorganize themselves accordingly. “Plasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain.” The potential for the brain to reprogram itself might be much greater than has previously been assumed.

As he sees it, neuroplasticity is evolutions way of letting the brain break the bonds of its own genome, escaping the destiny that usually cases one region to process visual input and another to process auditory input, one stretch of the somatosensory cortex to process feeling from the right index finger and another to process input from the thumb. Genes set up all that. But genes can’t know what demands, challenges, losses and blows the brain will encounter, and more than parents can’t know what slings and arrows the child they send out into the world will meet. Rather than set strict rules of behavior, wise parents teach their children to respond to the challenges they meet. So, too, has nature equipped the human brain, endowing it with the flexibility to adapt to the environment it encounters, the experiences it has, the damage it suffers, the demands the owners makes of it. The brain is neither immutable nor static but instead continuously remodeled by the lives we lead.

The environment and our experiences change our brain, so who you are as a person changes by virtue of the environment you live in and the experiences you have (p87). But there is a catch. Theses changes only occur when the person is paying attention to the input that causes them. As we shall see, if I run the finger of your left hand over the strings of a violin while you were sleeping, and did it again and again, the region of the somatosensory cortex that registers sensation from your fingers would not expand. This was one hint, seen even in the early monkey experiments, that mental activity affects, and perhaps even enables, neuroplasticity. That is, neuroplasticity occurs only when the mind is in a particular mental state, one marked by attention and focus.

The Dalai Lama said the most powerful influences of the mind come from within our own minds. The book concludes to state “the conscious act of thinking about one’s thoughts in a different way changes the very brain circuit that does that thinking, as studies of how therapy changes that brains of the people. Such willfully induced brain change requires focus, training, effort, but a growing number of studies using neuroimaging show how real those changes are. They come from within. As the discoveries of neuroplasticity, and this self directed neuroplasticity, trickles down to clinics, and schools and plain old living room, that ability to willfully change the brain will become a central part of our lives – and our understanding of what it means to be human.

There is always a cost to everything that you do and you have to weigh up if that cost worth it? Is the pain of staying the same as weighing the pain of growing?

To be successful it is not education, looks, talent or inheritance. It isn’t chance, blind faith, or done luck, and isn’t prepared nurse meets opportunity either. It is an abundance of sincere wanting, wishing and I will add doing.

Successful people don’t wish for it they work for it. They live below their means, making small adjustments knowing it will pay off in the long run. There is nothing too exciting living this way. They are mastering the mundane. The slide edge is boring.

You don’t see the results, at least not today. You are willing to wait. What you do now really does matter. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Those little things that will make you successful in life, that will secure your health, your fulfilment, your dreams. It’s the simple subtle mundane things that nobody will see, nobody will applaud, nobody will even notice.

Because they are mundane and simple they are easy to do and they are easy not to do. Sometimes the path of success is inconvenient, and therefore not just easy not to do but actually easier not to do. For most people, it’s easier to stay in bed. Getting on the path and staying on the path requires courage and faith, especially at the start. You don’t know what’s out there, but you go out anyway.

The reason the slight edge is so widely ignored unnoticed, and undervalued is that our culture tends to worship the idea of the big break. We celebrate the dramatic discovery, the big breakthrough, Big successes. When you understand the slight edge, you stop looking for the big successes and you start building step-by-step moment by moment and watch momentum build to create opportunities for you.

We all having a ripple effect of some sort already whether or not we realize it. If you’re an entrepreneur and work for yourself with no boss you have no one making you accountable. If your moods go up and down your actions become inconsistent where you do too much or too little. Our moods can shift and change the impact you have on your business. And overtime can compound and create volatility.

Greatness is always in the moment of decision. You have to decide what it is that you want to create in your life.

Social science research says that as a child, are you heard the word “no” about 40,000 times by the age of five, before you even started first grade. And how many times have you heard the word yes? About 5000. That’s eight times as many no’s as yes’s. Eight times the force holding you down, compare to the force of lifting you up. You have to override the no and focus on yes. You have to push through the barriers and the resistance to create what it is that you would love.

You have to take responsibility for your own life. Blaming someone for your life and your decisions won’t get you anywhere. Don’t complain about what you allow. Take full responsibility for the choices that you make in your life and in your work.

Mastery is the active setting your foot on the path and not in reaching it and it’s the willingness to get on the path and stay on it. It’s doing the steps that are required to achieve it no matter how difficult.

Invest in yourself. Constantly learn about yourself, the world around you and how life works every day. Learn new skills and sharpen old ones. Stay on the personal growth path. Read one chapter of an information rich, inspiring book every day. Listen to 15 minutes of life changing audio. Take a course or seminar every few weeks or months. The simple disciplines will compound over time.

The purpose of investing in yourself is not to accumulate skills or fluency in specific areas of knowledge. While those things are valuable, they are not the principal aim. The principal aim in self investment is to train how you think and what you think. You are shifting your subconscious minds so that it shifts your conscious actions.

Newton’s second law of thermodynamics states a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion. This is why the power of momentum can help you immensely to have the slight edge. That’s why your daily activities are so important. Once you’re in motion it’s easy to keep on keeping on. Once you stop, it’s hard to change from stop to go.

There are three simple yet essential steps to achieving a goal. First, write it down, give a clear description and timeline. Look at it every day. Keep it in your face, soak your subconscious in it. Stop with the plan. Make that plan simple. The point of the plan is not that it will get you there, but you will get you started.

Successful people know the power of planning. If I was given six hours to cut a tree down, I’d spend four hours sharpening my axe. Spend time mastering your planning what you’ll do. Plan then act.

Let’s end with some quick habits that will make a huge difference. Show up. Be consistent. Be committed for the long haul. Cultivate a burning desire.

What can you do to cultivate a burning desire within you?

5. Drop in visitors
People can take up a lot of unnecessarily time. “Got a minute” never means a minute. Before you say yes, ask what it is about. Control the time with drop in visitors by setting up a meeting with them, do it in 30 minutes if you can rather than an hour, see if they can confer with someone else and encourage them to work out a solution on their own.

6. Ineffective Delegation
People choose not to delegate because of a few reasons. They believe they are the only ones who will do it well, anxiety about the other person making a mistake or seek perfection in their work or they are comfortable with their work.

Effective delegation comes from giving clear instructions, give commensurate authority, follow up and coach when needed.

Do nothing that you can delegate.

7. Personal Disorganisation
Create an integrated personal system and have the discipline to do it everyday. Keep your desk clean, only have what you are currently working on in view as to not scatter your mind and help keep you focused.

Toss the to do list and only work on the highest priority list. Don’t have multiple lists
because it will cause you headaches, have just one. Keep deadlines visible. Your deadlines will keep you on track, so don’t lose sight of them. Literally.

8. Lack Of Self Discipline
Self discipline is the key to making the most of your time. It takes discipline to stick with one important job until it is finished. It takes discipline to refrain from interrupting a coworker to ask about routine matters.

Self discipline is a habit. It can also be a lack of deadlines and priorities, which encourage putting things off and doing what you like rather than what is important. Failure to follow up, which renders corrective. It can also be a lack of challenging goals that you are working towards.

9. Inability To Say No
It has been said that the strongest time management skill is the tiny word ‘no’. It is the
strongest tool, and not certainly on top of the list.

Think about the requests you get. If one request catches you off guard, think about it for 10 seconds before answering.

The four steps in saying no are,

1. Listen, make sure you fully understand what is being asked of you
2. Say no. If your decision is no, don’t build up false hope with wishy washy answers
3. Give reasons. If appropriate, explain your reasons as this enforces credibility
4. Offer alternatives. Demonstrate other options to meet the person’s values

10. Procrastination
What I have learned about procrastination is that you don’t delay things that are of value to you. You hesitate, frustrate and procrastinate on those lower values. This chapter talks about potentially the fear of failure as a strategy to not accomplish the task.

There is danger in a delay. There can be potential for mistakes when you work under pressure. Also, when you delay, you don’t allow time to speak to relevant people, to make adjustments and edits and last-minute changes.

When you are the boss. Build confidence in doing rather than being complacent. Focus on starting rather than finishing tasks or projects. Be decisive and set priorities.

You are in control of your decisions and your procrastination. Make a conscious effort to develop a ‘do it now’ attitude.

11. Meetings
The average manager spends 10 hours a week in meetings, 90% of managers say half their meetings are wasted time. That’s 5 hours a week, 250 hours a year for each person in the meeting.

When running a meeting, decide what the meeting is for

1. To coordinate action or exchange information
2. To motivate the team
3. To discuss problems on a regular basis
4. To make a decision

Prepare an agenda and invite the right people and then dismiss staff who no longer are required to be there. Start on time and delegate the start if you are the organiser and might be running a little late. Stick to the agenda and keep socialising to a minimum.

12. Paperwork
When you receive paperwork, ask your assistant to handle as much as possible so you are only doing the highest priority items. Delegate if any incoming paperwork can be done by someone else. File if it is not urgent, do it later and stay focused on high priorities. Expedite those that require your personal attention.

Email writing can take time. You don’t have to be perfect, adequate is great. Dictate if you can, it’s faster, consider alternatives, like a phone call rather than writing.

13. Leaving A Task Unfinished
Have a compulsion to close. When you are interrupted, have the self discipline to continue what you were doing rather than becoming distracted of focusing on another task. Set deadlines, build a cushion to allow for delays, learn to anticipate problems and have strategies on how you will deal with them.

14. Inadequate Staff
The question of inadequate staff has two aspects, not having enough people or the right
people. Both are fixable. Focus first on your current team, what changes can be made to enhance their productivity? On each role, prepare a thorough cost analysis outlining tasks of what is to be achieved.

When you have the wrong person in the role, check they are aware of their role and
responsibilities. They may not have been told they weren’t doing a great job because they weren’t told what they were supposed to do. You may be in a position of influence, to shape your team through training. You can also lead and guide them on through their day by day work too.

15. Socializing
Developing friendships at work creates more meaning and satisfaction at work. However, how much could be outside of work or how much time are you missing out on working due to a chat.

Do a review of how much time you spend socializing with work mates each day, each week? Add it up. You might find it is a lot more than you think. Create techniques to exit friendly conversations like “I would like to hear more, I have a deadline due by 5pm, let’s chat about this at lunch tomorrow.”

Evaluate the physical set up of your desk. Is it in the line of traffic with people? Can you move to be more productive? If you have an office, remember, it’s your office, and your time in there.

16. Confused Responsibilities & Authority
Two people each think they’re supposed to do the task – so it gets done twice.
Two people each think the other is supposed to do it, and it doesn’t get done.
One person has been giving a task, but the other doesn’t know it and doesn’t cooperate.
Two people each think they have been given authority to do something, and they give conflicting instructions to others.

Ensure effective communication in the organisation. If you are responsible for a job, make sure the people at the top let others know. Have inter-team communication. Have leaders and team communication. Whenever you give authority to someone, ensure people are made aware of it. To be effective, authority has to be made public.

Page 17. Poor Communication
Anytime you communicate, clarify your purpose, select the appropriate channel, such as email, phone, or in person. Compose the message clearly. Transmit it as clearly as possible, request feedback to check understanding, and never assume you are on the same
wavelength.

18. Inadequate Controls & Progress Reports
The purpose of a progress report is to provide a structure which you can spot deviations, potential problems or other unexpected occurrences that may slow down or influence the project and spot them in time.

19. Incomplete Information
Work out a system for the information in each project or task. Ask the following questions.

What information is needed at all stages of the project, where is the information coming
from and going to? Which people and departments are involved? Who will be responsible for gathering the information?

Always assign responsibility to someone for collecting, collating and disseminating the information.

Work out a schedule of when key people need which key information when. What might go wrong, where might be the source of delay? What steps can you take to prevent a delay or create a buffer of time on your project?

20. Travel
When travelling, even if it is the commute to work, the airport, flying, use your time effectively. Use it for time to work, read, catch up on emails. It becomes dead time and for some, it can be many hours a week of unproductive time. Don’t overlook little bits of time to solve a problem or answer an email. You could also use the time to review a plan or plan another project.

Discipline yourself when you return to get what you need done post trip, like respond to
people, close off files or note take and update your team on the progress of opportunities while you are away.

He emerged from the bathroom, bearing aloft two shining plates. “I’d better redefine some terms for you. ‘Mind’ is one of those slippery terms like ‘Love. The proper definition depends on your state of consciousness. Look at it this way: You have a brain that directs the body, stores information, and plays with that information. We refer to the brain’s abstract processes as ‘the intellect.’ Nowhere have I mentioned mind. The brain and the mind are not the same. The brain is real. The mind isn’t.”

“‘Mind’ is an illusory reflection of cerebral fidgeting. It comprises all the random, uncontrolled thoughts that bubble into awareness from the subconscious. Consciousness is not mind; awareness is not mind. Mind is an obstruction, an aggravation. It is a kind of evolutionary mistake in the human being, a primal weakness in the human experiment. I have no use for the mind.”

I sat in silence, breathing slowly. I didn’t exactly know what to say. Soon enough, though, the words came. “I am not sure what you’re talking about, but you sound really sincere.”

He just smiled.

“Soc,” I continued, “do I cut off my head and get rid of my mind?”

Smiling, he said, “that’s one cure, but it has undesirable side effects. The brain can be a tool. It can recall phone numbers, solve maths problems, or create poetry. In this way, it works for the rest of the body, like a tractor. But when you can’t stop thinking of that maths problem or phone number, or when troubling thoughts and memories arise without your intent, it is not your brain working, but your mind wandering. Then the mind controls you. Then the tractor has run wild.”

“I get it.”

“To really get it, you must observe yourself and see what I mean. You have an angry thought bubble up and you become angry. It is the same with all your emotions. They’re your knee jerk responses to thoughts you can’t control. Your thoughts are like wild monkeys stung by a scorpion.”

“Socrates, I think.”

“You think too much.”

“I was just going to tell you that I’m really willing to change. That’s one thing about me, I’ve always been open to change.”

“That,” Socrates says, “is one of your biggest illusions. You’ve been willing to change clothes, hairstyles, women, apartments, and jobs. You are all too willing to change anything except yourself, but change you will. Either I help you open your eyes or time will and time is not always gentle,” he said ominously. “Take your choice. But first realise that you’re in prison – then we can plot your escape.”

Notes On Chapter

Losing the illusion makes you wiser than finding the truth – Ludwig Borne

Your mission is to be able to see your darkness and embrace it like your light. You encompass the shadow as you bathe in your shine. Without these two qualities in balance, we will evolve eyeless in the darkness, or blinded by the light.

Just as we have to feel it to heal it, we have to see it to free it.

If you don’t get what you want, you suffer. If you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold onto it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change, free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

“Socrates, you can really be depressing, you know that? I don’t think even I’m hungry anymore.” If life is nothing but suffering. Then why bother at all?”

“Life is not suffering, it is just you will suffer it rather than enjoy it, until you let go of your mind’s attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens.”

George Gurdjieff, an American born mystic, once said “Man will give up any pleasure, but he what will not relinquish is suffering. He shared the fundamental fear that we cling to the familiar and wish to avoid change. When things are seemingly bad, we want to change it, at least some of the time, but even then, some of us have remained in painful situations because they were at least familiar. As the saying goes, “The devil you know is preferable than the devil you don’t know.”

The willingness to risk is part of the journey. Facing great fears and finding the willingness to let go of who we think we are.

As S.t Augustine wrote “Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger shoulders.”

‘Mind’ is one of those slippery terms like ‘Love’. The proper definition depends on your state of consciousness. Look at it this way: You have a brain that directs the body, stores information, and plays with that information. We refer to the brain’s abstract processes as ‘the intellect.’ Nowhere have I mentioned mind. The brain and the mind are not the same. The brain is real. The mind isn’t.

Even if you disagree with his definition of the mind, everyone has tried to calm the thoughts, storms, and worries from the mind. Some of us have tried meditation, yoga, or other methods to each a deeper state of centeredness.

Therapists serve as cognitive chiropractors, helping us to make adjustments in our ways of viewing the world.

The need to feel connected is deeply rooted. In the hunter-gather societies, the mothers carried their
babies up to 90% of the time, which is roughly the carrying rate of other primates. Touch is an important part of human experience. Babies without touch in an orphanage were more likely to die because of a lack of affection than those that received enough. Monkey’s in an experience where there were two wire monkeys, one with food, the other with a soft blanket. They infants had their food and went back to the soft wired monkey as the softness provided the illusion of affection.

As nothing is missing, maybe this is why babies and children in western societies will cling to a toy or animal because it provides themselves with that level of affection and connection they so greatly need.

Some individuals will reject society and society bonds all together and attack people who are unprepared. For modern society, that would be in movie theatres, schools, shopping centers, places of worship or simply walking down the street. Yet, if we go back to world war two, rampage killings significantly dropped and have rose again in the 80’s and continue to rise.

Modern society has disrupted the social bonds that characterized the human experience and that disasters thrust people back into a more ancient, organic way of relating. Take New York city after 9/11. there were no rampage shooting for the next two years across the US. In New York, the rate of violent crime, suicide, and psychiatric disturbances dropped immediately. Murder rate dropped by 40%, pharmacists saw no increase in the number of first time patients filling prescriptions for antianxiety or antidepressant medication. There was a social unity that followed. This experience created more mentally healthy conditions. Everyone gathered together to fight against something, like a family fighting with its neighbors, or a country fighting against another. Peace and war being conserved.

It was the same during wartime. You would assume that depression and anxiety would go up, but it actually went down. People did better during wartime. Men in peaceful areas were depressed because they couldn’t help their society participate in the struggle. They lacked having purpose and without purpose and a sense of helplessness, men has depression.

When interviewing a lady who was 17 at the time the Bosnian war broke out. She said that it was the happiest time, we laughed more. There was a bonding in the community never seen before. She felt as if she was contributing to her community. She once received an egg and didn’t know how to share one egg with her community so she made pancakes.