Precision Change

In a recent episode on the Precision Change podcast David Allen, the “productivity guru” as he is called, offers some great high-level reflections on the importance of his GTD system. Using the dichotomy of being and doing David says that [I’m paraphrasing] if you want to “just be” see how long you can be [...]

The Transformation Try-Out is inspired by the notion of the 30-day trial, which Steve Pavlina made so popular. The basic idea is to take a new action, or habit that you want to establish and commit to doing regularly for 30 days (much like a software trial). At the end of the 30 [...]

In Part 1 I described the difference between victimhood and full responsibility, and how one can move toward full responsibility. In this post I wanted to push the envelope a little, and describe territory that I believe most self-development literature is unaware of (or even worse confuses with victimhood). This is the living understanding of integrated responsibility or what one could call cosmic responsibility.

What I’ve observed is that there appears to be three main ways that individuals can relate to the world, and that is either as victims, with full responsibility, or with integrated responsibility. The other thing I’ve observed is that this is largely a developmental process, where we move through these levels and at each new level there is a greater experience of freedom, flexibility, and happiness. In this series I’ll take you through a guided tour of each of these levels and also give you specific tips on how you move from one level to the next.

I was speaking with a friend this morning, who is a committed martial artist and a meditation practitioner. She was sharing a recent event in which she was sparing with a beginning student and she found herself laughing every time either of them made a mistake. She apologized for laughing, as she noticed that the guy she was sparing with was getting more and more frustrated with each mistake. Wondering why she would laugh at something like that, we reflected together on the process of mastery and how with any skill or discipline there is a move toward greater and great lightness, acceptance, and humor. I mean come on, if you do something all the time, and have for years and years, you better damn well be able to have fun while doing it! But I think what she was really getting at is a heightened sense of acceptance that comes with mastery, in which having seen so many mistakes, fuck ups, and less-than-perfect scenarios we start to soften up to the inevitability of the dark with the light, and in the end we may even begin to see the inseparability of these polarities.