Riding the “Third Rail”

Steven Barnes
4 min readAug 22, 2024

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“We breathe when we’re wrong, we breathe when we’re right, we breathe even as we slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone. So I breathe.”

-Tahereh Mafi.

The “Yellow Belt” level of MAGIC is simply to choose three goals, one in each major arena (body, emotions, mind), commit to improving by 1% per week, and map them with the M.A.G.I.C. pattern. In other words, you find a “Map” or Mentor, a proven path to accomplishment. You design a path of constant Action, things you can do every day/week to move you toward that 1%. You flood yourself with GRATITUDE, and since you need FAITH to act with confidence, tap into gratitude in each specific arena. You clarify your INTENTIONS, using any goal-setting framework you like, but be sure it compares favorably with the “SMART Goal” pattern (Specific, Meaningful, As-If now, Realistic, Time-Bound). And perhaps most importantly, your goal AND the processes you need to reach it must all be aligned with your Core values.

The MAGIC formula works all by itself, if you stay out of a “zero” in any category. But when you “customize” it by adding other patterns, you gain greater leverage. I would strongly suggest the Three Gates, which are a guide for your behavior and thought, and like The Eightfold Path, is a route out of suffering to real and lasting power. If MONEY is a huge issue for you, you would be advised to use

“Think And Grow Rich’s” 13 principles (superb!). There are many others.

But start with MAGIC. The “white belt level” is the “Five Minute Miracle” breathing, which creates a doorway between the conscious and unconscious minds in a way you’ll never believe unless you do it, and start comparing your results to the past performance. MAGIC is built atop this, and it is CRITICAL to integrate the breathing FIRST. This anchors your mind into your body. All you have to do is slow your breathing and BINGO! You can sense the flow of your core survival drive, the “Third rail” of human energetics, the only thing reliably more powerful than the sex drive. Learn to cultivate THAT and you have a sense of how badly you have to desire something to accomplish it. And EVERYONE has that river of lava within them.

An excellent question is: what HAPPENED to your passion? And what are you willing to do to regain it?

Imagine if your core goals were:

Body: Double my energy in a year.

Heart: Re-connect with my passion

Mind: Increase my income by 50% in a year

You know what? There are LOTS of patterns you could follow, which would allow you to create daily plans. Then by measuring objective and subjective results, you become a SCIENTIST, and every day an experiment, a study in the “art of YOU.” And by tracking this over time, you learn how to control yourself. How to motivate yourself. Deal with fear. How you distract and defeat yourself. A small experiment, every day.

And the “Green Belt” level asks you to test a theory: if you put 100% of your focus into creating the PERFECT morning ritual, you are building the steering wheel for your life, and all you have to do is perform it with POWER AND JOY AND CLARITY every morning, and you are guaranteed a better day.

Is it true/. Be careful here: start down this path, and you are giving up the comforting excuses. REASONS will remain. You will learn your limitations: life will always teach you those. But your EXCUSES get exposed as bullshit. Why? Because EVERYONE has time to do the White Belt breathing. If you aren’t doing it, that has NOTHING to do with the external world, and everything to do with a simple reality: YOU DON’T KEEP YOUR WORD TO YOURSELF.

Danger, Will Robinson. To start the journey away from excuses and illusions is the first Gate, yes.

I hope you’re seeing how these things dovetail. We are simply expanding and focusing in on “slices” of the dynamic sphere of life and consciousness. The Sphere itself cannot be directly addressed, but we can extract patterns and use various metaphors to help us understand (ALL world religions do this, by the way. Every one of ‘em).

Any Questions?

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FIREDANCE is shifting to Friday Noon, at the request of my darling wife. This will enable her to take the weekends off completely, resting more deeply, so that we can hit it HARD on Monday. Join us tomorrow, Friday the 23rd and every Friday, at 12 noon Pacific.

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Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.