Steven Barnes's Blog, page 33

“Fractal” Goal Setting

 

What do I want?

Why do I want it?

How do I do it?

Tony Robbins calls it the “RPM” system (Results focused, Purpose driven, Massive action system) but what is really remarkable about it is it’s fractal nature.

Here’s how it can work:

What do I want? To be happy

Why do I want it?  To be a symbol of light in the world.

How do I do it?   Define balance: Body, mind, spirit, emotions, finances, family.  Lead a balanced life, and make progress on all aspects on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

 

Now...

Asking is better than judging

There are people who see that a crowd is gathering, and ask: what is it that draws these people?  And if I don’t understand…what am I not seeing?

 

Because if you think they are “stupid” to be interested in something, attracted to something, your cup is full.  The men who said “There is nothing special about Wonder Woman” would have been better off saying “I see nothing special about Wonder Woman.  What are they seeing that I’m not? What connects with them that doesn’t connect with me?”  In o...

Breaking Bread and Leaving Crumbs

I had lunch with Larry Niven yesterday, and we spoke of many things. The new Dream Park novelette, his moving, and his “Grandmaster” award from the SFWA.  With all sincerity, he expressed how much that meant to him.  It was a validation, a sense that his peers appreciate what he has tried to create, what he has done with the years of his life.

 

We all start as children, with a dream of growth and freedom and joy.  The problem is that unless we are Hunter-Gatherers, or in a culture where we w...

Emerging from the cocoon

If I say: “women cannot fight back against men.  They are too weak.”  I’d be called a sexist.

If I say: “women can defend themselves against men. They have the same  survival drives as the rest of the animal kingdom” I am accused of victim-blaming.

 

Attacks are defenses.  Anger is fear.  Understand the fear that motivates BOTH responses, and you’ll grasp that they seem from a flawed self-perception, a sense of paralysis that arises from your self-image failing to match the natural world.  Th...

GET OUT nominated for four Oscars! Here’s why this is good…

“GET OUT” has been nominated for four Oscars: best actor, best director, best screenplay, and best film.    And as a superb example of a film that is both technically fine and a genuine expression of human concerns, disguised as a “mere” genre film I am ecstatic.  A movie like this succeeding allows us to dive DEEP into how it happened, and extract lessons we can apply to other works, and life itself.  It is a valid contribution to the human conversation.

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I believe we can have a peaceful...

A Jason Report

Not sure, but it seems that helping Jason understand the power of clarifying his goals and generating the right emotions to power his actions is helping him. The “Five Minute Morning Ritual” for his schoolwork continues, and ALL of his grades save one have improved. What we need now is to help him develop his own motivations for wanting to pull that grade up. I’ve been cautious about talking about this because I don’t want to jinx it, but that formula I’ve been sharing with you: 1) WHAT d...

Be the hero of your story…or a victim in someone else’s

If we speak of myths, invariably there is a “hero” of the story.  It therefore becomes useful to consciously deconstruct that concept, so that we can create stories more efficiently, and also so that we can extract the value, the critical emotional and conceptual nutrients.

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What is the most consistent pattern I’ve seen among successful people in ANY field?

They know what they want. And they define it in POSITIVE terms.  Not “I don’t want to be poor” but “I  earn 100k a year”  (Note that...

Asleep and Awake

Let’s look at the way two different models interact.

(Sleeping child–>Sleeping Adults)–>Awakened Adults

The arrows indicate the direction of growth.   A “sleeping child” is someone who  has accepted the consensus reality maps, and holds others responsible for their feelings, actions, and welfare.  A “sleeping adult” has accepted responsibility for his feelings and actions, but is still wrapped  up in the stories of life they got in childhood.

The parenthesis includes (for all practical purpos...

“Who Am I?”

Every morning, I look at the comments on my thread and respond to them.   Never know what will catch my eye.  This morning I saw a comment from a black person raised by white parents, dealing with deep confusion and identity issues. Yet another FB friend is dealing with the fact that a mentally ill mother married an abusive, sexually predacious husband.

 

Two different types of damage, but both can be deeply affected by an inquiry into those core philosophical questions: “who am I?” and “what...

Creativity, and bringing down Stringer Bell

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Remember “The Wire”?  The entire focus was to bring down drug kingpin Stringer Bell.  He was too well protected for the police to tackle, so for a time he seemed untouchable. Then they decided to create a special team.  This team took all the information they had, put each piece onto a separate card, and posted them up on a board.

 

Then, a week at a time, they drew connections between people, places, actions.  And when they did…patterns began to emerge and even if they were defeated week af...