What No One Warns You About Success

The theory is that if you focus on ONE thing, the RIGHT “one thing”, and everything else happens. To me, it’s the Morning Ritual.

But I know something, can guess something. This is when the band breaks up. When the drive that GOT them to the top is not the same as the skills needed to help them STAY at the top. Irritations at small things disguise real underlying feelings of Impostor Syndrome, belief that success comes only to other people, or even that money itself is evil.

If we are shifting our family culture to rise to a new level of effectiveness and efficiency, that is creating our MASTERMIND. Mom, Dad, and Jason all looking in the same direction to accomplish a goal none of us can do individually. And if we do this, I say that two things are predictable:

1. If we get our MAGIC up about 5+, “luck” will begin to increase. SOMETHING will happen within the next two weeks that will verify this.
2. There will be potholes on the road. I think a bit of “Princess and the Pea” about it all, where irritations that would be laughed off at one level become extreme irritants at another.

I’m pretty sure about both of these. And need to watch out for both. Yesterday, I got very irritated at something for which there was no external solution. And I found myself unwilling to stop sulking (just a bit). Was it performative? Probably. I didn’t want to be comforted. I wanted to figure it out. And knew that I could shift my mood any time I wanted…but did I want to?

If you get the lesson, you can release the emotion. If you haven’t released the emotion, you haven’t learned the lesson.

Which means that some part of me considered the pain to be a survival value. I needed to think this through. Was there any REASONABLE way to stop the event? Oh, probably.

But here’s the problem: the specific incident won’t repeat. It will be something else. The problem was NOT the incident. The problem was my reaction to it. Was that true? Well…

It would have been difficult to predict. No one was behaving improperly. A little hastily, perhaps, but that happens. Its human. And most importantly…would the BEST version of myself, the version of myself who can thrive in a higher level of action, have been negatively impacted?

No. He would have sighed, and shrugged, and let it go. The specific incident can be discussed and prevented, but the real “pattern” here is that, under stress, smaller straws break the camel’s back. And live rewards you in DIRECT proportion to the amount of stress you can take without it becoming strain.

So…if the irritation had lasted until morning: DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

If I had been able to fully process it before the end of the evening, that would have been wonderful. But…I wasn’t unpleasant about it. Just a little withdrawn and quiet, and let the person involved know that they had done nothing wrong: I just needed to deal with it.

So…while it would have been BEST for the irritation to have lasted no more than a moment, I think the shortest period of time it would be REASONABLE to expect myself to process it would be…two hours. Give myself an hour to be out of balance, maybe an hour and 59 minutes. But at the top of the hour, I should have done my breathing, and flooded myself with GRATITUDE.

If I’m right, then my Morning Ritual would center me. It did. But every hour I can do a miniature version of it. And eventually, I can make the re-integrative process a matter of “unconscious competence” and the upset itself would trigger re-integrative breathing and posture, focus, and language.

Sigh. If I remind myself that THIS IS WHEN THE BAND BREAKS UP. That even GOOD stress is still stress, then I can clearly see the path leading to hell: ego and clinging to the past, rather than reveling in gratitude for all the blessings of life.

And the other path, leading to a world in which my rewards are directly proportionate to the amount of service I give the world…THAT path demands clarity and gratitude, so that fear doesn’t stop the progressive twining of male and female energies, “ida” and “pingala” climbing up the chakras. This is new territory, and will demand new skills, and healing old wounds.

So what I COULD have done was used the irritation as an experimental stimulus. “Ah! Here’s another opportunity to test myself!” and every hour done my breathing, focus and gratitude affirmations, emotional flooding and power postures until the irritation is returned to its core energy (fear) and that fear is blended with love to create the “white light” of pure energy. Placing me is a mild “observer” state. Ah! Irritation is here again! What am I afraid of? Ah! I had a specific goal of doing a specific thing, and was disappointed.

I felt a twinge of pain. BUT THEN I CLUNG TO IT. The pain, in other words…became suffering. I did not choose joy, and I could have.

Why? My ego. I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. And the “needy wounded abandoned child” within me was whining. But also not letting itself be comforted. THAT is really messed up.

I needed more gratitude, and more confidence. More clarity. And less attachment to the past, or to the picture in my head. Remember: the only reason I wanted X was to escape suffering and embrace joy. Be happy. If THAT was my goal…then clinging to it, when there was NOTHING I could do at that moment, and there was NO positive action to take at the moment, and no one had done anything “wrong”….

Look at the Three Gates. It is HONEST that I was disappointed. And KIND to myself to admit that it was, in a way justified…it was not USEFUL to cling to it. In fact, it was counter productive:

If there is nothing to be done, the wisest thing would have been to release it. And then, the only real reason I didn’t is because I wanted to keep my attention on it, to turn it over and over in my mind to see if there wasn’t some reasonable alternative course.

Ah….there really wasn’t. And I’m on the other side of it. But the VALUE in this is that realization:

THIS IS WHEN THE BAND BREAKS UP. When writers get blocked, marriages founder. Partnerships end in screaming matches.

And this wasn’t some huge thing. It was SMALL, but I can use it like a vaccination. Vaccinations don’t keep you from being infected, they sensitize your immune system so that it can recognize the disease and RESPOND to it more rapidly. A little “cowpox” to prepare you for “smallpox” in other words.

I just got “pricked”. If I pay attention, I’ll grow, and when the BIG thing happens, I’ll already know how to respond.

ON THE HOUR: Breathe. Gratitude. Visualize the mentors who could handle it with grace. Move like a champion.

Laugh at myself.

Namaste

Steve

www.stevenbarneslist.com