It Takes Courage To See A Challenge

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” — Upton Sinclair

We are in a time of challenge, and the fact is that if that challenge will require work, care, focus, courage, ENERGY expended over time, and we lack that energy, it will trigger fear. Fear creates aversive patterns. We will literally create perceptual holes and not be able to “see” what is right in front of us.

To perceive challenges and even begin to really deal with them, we need energy.

Forty years ago, I was in a transformative workshop. Remember “est,” Erhardt Seminar Training? The one where they wouldn’t let you go to the bathroom? Wellll…on the first weekend I discovered why.

It was about two o’clock in the morning, and we were all exhausted, but still in that room. Maybe three hundred of us. And the trainer introduced a new subject: finances. I watched something interesting: an entire swatch of the room fell asleep. You could SEE it, like a wave washing across the room.

Then about fifteen minutes later, the trainer broached another subject: sex. And another wave washed across the room. A different set of people perked up, and a whole ‘nother group fell asleep.

And I realized something that served me well later in life: If I operated from the assumption that people “go unconscious” when they don’t want to hear something, that they literally won’t let themselves hear or understand it, a LOT…