Steven Barnes's Blog, page 56

Climbing Dog Mountain

 

[image error]Fifteen years ago, I wanted to climb Kilimanjaro in Tanzania as research for my novel GREAT SKY WOMAN.  Due to other factors, Nicki and I did a nature safari instead.  But the urge always remained.   The last year or so, I decided to organize my time and energy to take another whack at it. The question I had was: could I handle it physically?  Mentally?

 

And…why did I want to do it? There was a sense of pilgrimage.  Tanzania felt…odd.  Like a homecoming.   I don’t think it was as much a ma...

Business versus Government

I saw a recent conversation about business people going into government. I’d guess that someone managing a business empire might be good at running a governmental entity with a budget twice that size–say a billion-dollar business translates to a medium-size city. Does anyone know of a research paper comparing business people who go into government with government people who go into business, with comparative success rates based on size of organization or some such?0

Filed under: Autobiography...

The War of Art

Today a reader, friend and BKF brother posted the following:

Bilal Al’amin “accomplishment is a continual thing, it is reaping the rewards that elude us. For all my prowess in martial arts, I’ve accomplished a lot, yet have never reaped the  rewards. One can say it doesn’t matter but it does matter, for it gives you a feeling of doubt and second guessing. That is where laws of attraction must be applied in earnest. Yesterday I wrote myself a bestselling review, which I posted on my refrigerat...

Flow and Impostor Syndrome

One cure for both “Impostor Syndrome ” and raging ego is to think not of yourself, but of the path you walk.   I am nothing as a writer or martial artist, but my teachers and role models have molded me well.  I express them, not my ego identity.

 

When I am in the maximum flow state, there is no awareness of “I”.  My attention isn’t on me.  How can “I” be an impostor, if “I” is not there?

 

No self-pity.  No self-acclimation. No “self” in the moments of deepest commitment to craft or action.

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One of my favorite lies

I’m gonna tell you about one of my very favorite lies.  I tell it all the time.  Yes, I do.

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I watched “Chicago” again recently, and was struck by the brilliant labors of lawyer Billy Flynn ( a tap-dancin’ Richard Gere.  I mean, has he got a John Travolta voodoo doll or something?  Do you realize that Travolta turned down AMERICAN GIGOLO and AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN?).  Flynn had to get dim but clever, venomous little chippie Roxie Hart (a wonderful Renee Zellwegger) off on a charge of...

Forget clever…just tell the truth

Controlling the story you tell yourself controls the results you get. And controlling the stories you tell OTHERS influences the world, powerfully.  Lifewriting, and the techniques embedded in it, is/are incredibly powerful, so powerful that it is critical to remember the most basic gatekeepers of morality. Simple principles like Musashi’s “Do not think dishonestly” or the Sufi “the beginning of evil is to treat people as means, rather than ends.”

 

Without such basic principles, self-justifi...

“He bleeds too”

 

What is your empowering story?

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Last Christmas, I gave myself the single best gift I’ve ever had: three hours of private instruction with a man who, for various cultural   and practical reasons, might well be the greatest martial arts instructor in history, Danny Inosanto. He was Steve Muhammad’s Kempo  instructor, Bruce Lee’s lead student, and considered the world’s greatest authority on the beautiful and devastating Filipino martial arts.  He’s eighty years old, travels the world teac...

Making your own Family

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One of the things that gets me excited to wake up in the morning is that I never know what people are going to be talking about on my pages.  What emails or texts I might get about one or another issue.   What will be a theme for the day?  How can I help people?

 

Well, today what came up is painful childhoods.  Abusive step-parents, bullying, neglect.  Painful stuff, damaging our self-worth and what I call “self-love.” Without it, we search for love outside ourselves.

 

For instance:  I hav...

Helping others become the Hero

I got this great note in response to my recent post on “The Tyranny of Evil Men.”

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Thank you for this, Steven. You saved me from making a terrible mistake.

One of the things I do, besides writing, is tutoring with the local literacy society. Last week I had the initial interview with a new learner. He is about twenty and was home schooled, sort of. Mostly he was just left to his own devices. I agreed to take him on and we have our first session tomorrow. Since then, I’ve been trying vario...

Embrace the Sun

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I remember as a kid,  being at a gathering of relatives, and the subject of racism came up.  Feeling in an evil mood, I very carefully led the discussion into sports.  And proposed, carefully, that blacks were superior physically. Took about thirty seconds to start getting agreement.   And then discussions of American history.  And yes, it was quickly agreed that blacks would not have done the terrible things whites had done in regard to slavery.  And then that the greatest, earliest...