I did my presentation Sunday at the Law of Attraction Club. Frankly, I NAILED, the part of my affirmation that says, “Passionately present the Playbook Series with authenticity from my heart.”
We started with a little of my 12 step history and then introduced the concept of Confirmation Bias. We did the 6 Blind Men and the Elephant story and everyone took turns reading it. Then we went through the pictures and mind gyms.
I finished the didactic portion of the presentation with my series of numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) and their task to find my rule for incrementing the series, through asking questions and/or offering an idea of the next number. We worked with that for a while and then Bill (the owner of Lotus Store) actually figured out my rule, “The next number must be larger than the previous one.”
This was all cool, but the really kewl part was ahead and it wasn’t even in my notes! We discussed that the solution to Confirmation Bias is the Scientific Method, wherein we create a Hypothesis and then test it. Frankly, the true testing comes when you try to disprove it! I pointed out that is your hypothesis is “Women are smarter than men” and all the testing you do is with women who agree you’ll probably never get any opposition, which could be okay, but it doesn’t really test the hypothesis.
I gave a funny political analysis and we all laughed at the absurdity of people only listening to the news that will tell them what they already believe and being in absolute denial of anything that doesn’t agree, labeling that ‘other’ news as bias.
Finally, I told them that I was going to get more serious and share the relevance of this on a personal level. I then talked about growing up with mixed messages. A couple really strong messages were that I couldn’t trust myself because ‘natural man is an enemy to God’ and that I definitely couldn’t sing. Those two things were ‘absolute truths’ in my world.
Along came the Outlook Power of Choice Weekend and I got the chance to test those ‘hypothesis’ by disproving them. I shared that I have spent years supporting my YOU teenagers and telling them that they can achieve anything. I shared about Taza coming to me and wondering if she should run for International Office. I told her that I believed in her. At IYOU where she ran and was elected to that office she came to me and told me that I, and me belief in her were a big reason she choose to run. I was touched by my power, but wasn’t willing to apply it to my own life!
During that entire time that I supported them and truly wanted the best for them, I believed that I had something to share and that that was my life purpose (but, remember, I can’t trust myself). I came home and kept doing IT. In January I lost my IT job and had thoughts that it was time to step out of the shadows, BUT… I continued to apply for IT jobs! Although I was able to apply for lots of jobs, thanks to the internet, 7 months later I still had nothing when I was at Power of Choice.
There were several things I did that weekend to test the hypothesis that I can’t be trusted and that I can’t sing, but the real crazy one was to accept the invitation by Jamie to get up and sing my theme song, “I gotta be me!” It was crazy. I knew that I couldn’t sing and that I couldn’t trust myself, but I got up anyway. The Monkey Mind was loud. So loud I couldn’t hear anything else; but I stood in the space and all the sudden the voices quit and the words came and I sang.
As I shared this with them, I knew I was about to sing and the voices came back saying, “You were lucky once, but don’t think you disproved the beliefs.” I shared with the group that those voices were in my head and they quit a lot sooner, and Mikie SANG, and he sang even better than last time, and he knew that the hypothesis were wrong, and eveyone there got it, not through my words, but through my actions.
LIFE IS GOOD; AND I FEEL BLESSED TO BE LIVING IT AS WELL AS TELLING IT.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment