Steven Barnes's Blog, page 62

Asleep, dreaming that you are awake

Great, wonderful webinar yesterday.  THANK YOU to everyone who participated, and again to Cheo Hodari Coker (“Luke Cage”) for taking time from a killer schedule to offer wisdom.    One of the things I enjoy doing during interviews is probing for the core images and memories that empower peak performers, the people who absolutely knock it out of the park in at least one arena, without trashing the other two.  It is relatively EASY  to succeed in one arena of life (body, career, or relationship...

Zero Net Time Part 4: The Five Tibetans

 

I’m not going to vamp any more.  It’s time to give you the next major piece in the “Zero Net Time” system. Whether you want to change your body composition, double your energy, increase your focus…we’ve got it, and all totally free.  The system was designed to give you maximum results in not just minimum time (in fact, ZERO NET TIME!) but save you enough money to easily afford the equipment you’ll want to go beyond “ordinary” fitness levels, if you wish to.

 

But right now, you need nothing...

Why my meditations suck

I go through cycles of clarity and swimming in molasses.    This is a molasses period, where I have too much connection to the people and social tissues around me to make rapid progress: I have to bring enough “tribe” along with me that I’m paying back what I was given.  I figure that’s 1000 storytellers and artists (which will magnify to 1,000,000 humans in general) so I’m in a very very low gear heading up a very steep hill, and it can feel like the greatest weight in the universe.  But tha...

Zero Net Time Part 3

ZERO NET TIME

 

So we’ve come a long way, established why even if you are a sedentary writer, you need fitness and vitality.

How you can begin the process in FIVE MINUTES A DAY and if you don’t take those five minutes (one sixty second breathing breaks, one every three hours) or five minutes of joint recovery drills.

That if you want to tell me you don’t have five minutes to care for your physical body, but you had five minutes to watch this video, YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF.

Tim Piering said...

What If..?

I woke up this morning with a thought: all of us have concerns, things that we care about, problems we would like to fix, visions we would like to bring into existence.  Things that will affect the lives of children unborn.

 

I believe this is true of each of us.   Well…what if YOU made the difference?  What if we were close to the tipping point, and if YOU gave everything you had–

 

–if you dreamed enough

–if you loved enough

–if you were willing to burn yourself in the fire of your passion

...

Zero Net Time part 2

So yesterday, a reader said that my constant harping on the body made her feel uncomfortable.  Please desist.

With all due respect, I cannot.  All any of us can do is explore our answers to two questions: “who am I?” and “what is true?”   These take us along the path of evolution.  One truth is that the answers to these questions are ultimately beyond conscious grasping, in the way that the wind is invisible.   But our ancestors understood long ago that while the wind is invisible, various of...

The “Zero Net Time” System part one

Saw William F. Nolan at the paperback book fair yesterday.  He’s 89 years old, still sharp, still writing, still hitting the gym every day.  He made an interesting comment about “diets”: “diets are bullshit,” he said.  “Just eat right, and work out every day.   That’s all you need.”  That might be too simple, but its pretty close to true.   I was doing joint mobility drills in between the autographs, circling my fingers and wrists.  “What’s wrong?” one of the assistants asked.  “Just keeping...

Note on Fear

Here’s a note from a student:

###

Good Afternoon Steven,

I have the question of the year for you, it’s right up your alley;

How do you control fear? Better; how do you get rid of fear?

All of my life I have wondered what it is that inhibits me from accomplishing great things.

It can’t be just my environment and upbringing.

Gender may play a part as well as race, but in the end it is up to me to kick those aside. Logically I know this but theory and action are not melding.

I have read your top...

What you want from your future you already have in your past

 

This is a powerful, paradoxical concept.  It may seem to make no sense, but please bear with me.

 

Connirae Andreas’ Core Transformation process was one of the last major pieces in my own awakening.  It suggested an experiment to test a theory: at the core of all human behaviors, no matter how negative, is the urge to connect with the divine.  This “divinity” could easily be interpreted as the peace we experienced in the womb, a deep and pervasive sense of total  safety and connection.   Th...

Seeing those things that cannot be seen

Why can’t you see the forest for the trees? Because the forest isn’t the trees. The forest is the space BETWEEN the trees. The trees GROW in the forest. In order to see the forest, you have to perceive negative space, something that we’re not really programmed to do. The martial art of Aikido is all about seeing the space between–that is (in my mind) the great treasure of randori training. Jazz is what happens between the notes. Poetry is what happens between the words. And so it goes.

Samuel...