Evolutionary Blog

I’ve worked with hundreds of people over the years, and one of the common threads - in every case where they were starting their own business - was some version of self-doubt.

It shows up in many different forms: questioning whether they are good enough, whether they know enough, or have enough training. It shows up on how they set their prices, and in the way they have uncertainty about the future. It can also show up as perfectionism (because nothing is ever really good “enough” - and a half dozen other versions I could list.

One or more of these plague most solo-preneurs just starting out. Each of them are simple enough to resolve (and we can - and will - resolve them for you during the webinar on Thursday). Still others - as laid out below - require mindfulness and practice to let go of.

The most interesting challenge clients face - and the most pervasive dynamic I have witnessed among them - is many degrees more complicated.

The story may be familiar to you: you schedule a small talk - an introduction to your work - and let me assure you, these introductory workshops are the engine of your business. Through them, you provide value to the community and assist in building your following, your brand, and it’s an opportunity for people to see you in person so they get a deeper sense of you.

Someone comes up to you and tells you how amazing the talk was, how touched they were by it, and gets that glazed over look in their eye. It’s boom time, baby!

You pack up and go home and when you get home and check your email and there is a critical email from one of the evening’s participants saying that you needed to change XYZ about your presentation and how some of it was inappropriate. Suddenly all the inflation turns to deflation and you feel dejected and start to wonder - maybe this business isn’t for you.

How you actually performed becomes irrelevant because we are now dealing with a creation of your mind:

1) You collapsed two domains - personal and practical - you made a practical matter personal; you make it mean something about you personally when it is a matter of efficacy with the audience

2) Identification with your business or your material in the workshop causing you to react - you *are* your business in this situation. A case of mistaken identity. What’s more though, is these demonstrate an orientation to external validation.

This distinction Personal/ Practical is foundational in the self-esteem concepts I will lay out for you Thursday. 

Internal vs External orientations to validation will also make a headline appearance. These distinctions will go a long way toward increasing your freedom and choice and assisting you improve more rapidly.

There are a limited number of spots for the Webinar, so go grab your space now:
https://evolve-co.leadpages.net/self-esteem-burgers/

In Your Service,

Jason


Update: here is the video from the webinar. Enjoy!

When:  Wednesday, July 16th @ 6:30pm Pacific
Where: Online Webinar. »Register Here« 

Cost: Yep, it's free
What and Why:

The Mythology of Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage is a huge focus of pop-psychology and in the world and business of personal development. We devote time to workshops, read books, self-examine, consider it part of our necessary shadow-work perhaps, and yet still we are often left confounded by behaviors that seem to undermine our greatest aspirations for ourselves and our highest vision or our life.

We set a goal, or declare some new way of behaving or declare an end to some way we have been behaving and how long does it take to break our "promise"? Anyone who has ever tried to stop an old habit or start a new habit has experienced this--be it the smoke from a cigarette, a fatty or sugary food we should not eat, or the affections from someone we know to be as toxic for us as deeply inhaling cigarette smoke. Or, how about starting to go to the gym? Or maybe it was some New Year's resolution that you resigned from after about a week.

Or ... maybe it was saying you would not yell at people in traffic any more. Or engage with more compassion and empathy. Until that one person who ...

Or maybe it was something bigger with more at stake: a new high-paying position, a new career path, or finishing that book you've always said you were going to write, and yet your behaviors did not occur in alignment with the simple and clear steps you know – consciously -- it will take to accomplish the thing you said you would (or wanted to) accomplish (or be, do, or have.)

So most of us have begun to reduce this to some inner-enemy--some saboteur running around and setting charges on our bridges, and undermining the soiled path we are trying to walk on, having us stumble into those pitfalls.

You know: that part of you that you have probably cursed in your mind, under your breath, or even out loud in frustration.

The idea of an inner enemy is one way of relating to this phenomenon—and it is a valid and generally accepted way of relating to it. But is it an effective way of relating to it? Is it really true? Does labeling it in such a manner give us access to resolving the problem?

Most of us are aware that how we relate to something in our awareness will produce specific and predicable results both mentally and emotionally. And will even shift our "reality". The power of positive thinking and the Law of Attraction are both commonly accepted in personal development communities and among individuals interested in developing themselves. Yet these concepts are often misunderstood, misused – and underused.

Our thoughts do not create reality, because we do not experience reality directly—we experience it through perceptual filters and we interpret—and then we generalize those interpretations making meaning or creating beliefs. However our thoughts certainly create our reality--how we interpret reality will lead to our experience of reality. Objective and subjective; exterior and interior. That is to say, how we interpret what is happening "out there" will create our experience of reality "in here" and it certainly creates our immediate emotional experience and what we make that mean through generalizations and the creations of beliefs about the world, ourselves, people, etc., leads to what I like to call our "emotional atmosphere".

How is this most often done? In language; in our linguistic structures--descriptors and labels.

In this way, while our thoughts do not create "reality" with a capital R, it does--absolutely--create our experience of reality.

As clarifying example, most of us know that we can relate to the same event in one of two ways: as a "crisis" or as an "opportunity". We know that doing so will create different solutions as we will approach it differently.

Circling back to this idea of an "inner enemy", what results does that labeling of this phenomenon predictably produce? It creates a "me vs the other", us against "it" or "them" mentality which leads to tension and separation which in turn produces even greater internal dissonance.

The best thing about this way of relating to the phenomenon is this: it is not true; we made it up. The reason that is the good news is that given we made it up, we can create another way of relating to this phenomenon that is useful; a way that gives us access to resolving the confounding behavior that keeps us from attaining the heights we desire with the velocity and ease we wish for?

The answer is incredibly simple and elegant—both in the mathematical sense as well as the aesthetic. The process for resolution of this phenomenon involves getting into communication and into relationship with those parts of us that are out of alignment, find out what their positive purpose is, take that up to the highest/deepest level and integrate it from that place. It can be a fairly profound experience that is deeply healing, and allows you to create greater and greater levels of inner harmony within your Self.

Simple? Yes. Easy? Well, that depends on the skill of the Guide. That last paragraph above encapsulates and summarizes a process that can take between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the depth of the problem, but it is virtually always successful at realigning that part of you that is ... well, out of alignment.

Take your "inner-enemies" and turn them into your most powerful allies.

Find out on Wednesday, July 16th @ 6:30pm Pacific
Where: Online Webinar. »Register Here« 

Whatever you think you are -- you are more than that; whatever and however you identify yourself, you are far more than that. The problems with identification are many -- whether it is identification with/ as your gender, your nationality, your sexual orientation, your finances, your social reputation, your career, your role as a mother/father, your political affiliations, you religious beliefs, your competence or skill in a certain context, etc. -- to identify with any of those things will create problems if/when they are taken away or are shaken at their foundations as you will experience a very real identity crisis. But the "why" it creates problems is because it is not really who you are -- and to identify with it is *at least* selling yourself short.

In the face of such a crisis there are only two directions to move from an ego perspective -- expansion/evolution or contraction/regression. There is no neutral. You can expand to incorporate the new information/circumstances, or you can dig in, regress, and solidify (which requires engaging in some degree of self-deception).

Who you are is none of that. Who you are is Spirit. If you want to identify with something, identify with yourself as Spirit. 

Which every breath - breath out your lack of self worth that has you play small and identify with something less than your full birthright and breathe in the fact that who you are is ... all of it. 

Who you are is the Witness. 

And rest in that, smilingly.

Nothing else really matters. Anything else is chatter. What remains are the ego and self-esteem practices to engage in that have you experiencing the gap between what you think you are (identification) and what you really are -- Spirit manifest.

Let go of the small you and become a full-time God/Goddess. It is your birthright.

That time of year has just passed when most of us have taken inventory. And many of us imagine a future that is somehow ... different from the past.

Sometimes it comes in the form of examining what we learned from the year we have just lived and experienced--and making plans for what we want to accomplish in the coming year.

Either way, we all know how it goes for most of us by the end of January. Or, heck, by January 10th. Have you already broken a "resolution"?

This is not some failure on our part; more often it is a matter of conflicting parts within us that are yearning to be understood, appreciated, and integrated. Still other aspects can simply be not being present to our internal representations and not understanding our unconscious organization of time and how to access that and maximize its power.

Essentially not understanding how to harness the power of our own mind.

And sometimes it is not knowing how to language a goal to make certain that the probabilities that it will become a reality are dramatically increased.

We'll cover all of that in this free evening event.

What you will discover:

• How to create S.M.A.R.T. goals and outcomes
• Why resolutions rarely ever work--and how to make sure they do
• Understanding your unconscious organization of time
• How unconscious, internal conflicting parts can be brought into your awareness, honored, and integrated

• The art and science of Time Line Seeding to create spooky cool results

Join us. It's free. 

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by being exposed to this powerful way to manage your own mind.

Your future begins now ...

What: Creating Your SMART Future
When: Tuesday, January 7th @ 7:15pm Pacific
Where: 2nd and Bryant in San Francisco  »» RSVP ««

Update:

If you missed the evening, or if you were there but want a refresher, here is a video summary of the material for you that includes me guiding you through the process of creating your future.

In Service,

Jason

Viewing it on an iPad? Your video is »here« .

The video below is for the rest of us.

All of our parents were doing the best they could with the resources they had available to them at the time--and regardless of their intentions, everyone could always use more resources.

What happens in our formative years, is that patterns our parents exhibited imprinted themselves onto us as children, and later, come out in various ways as we live our adult lives. Their behaviors in relationships, their beliefs about money, about the world, about spirituality—and yes, about ourselves -- about all of life, really.

All the things they said to us that were less than empowering …

They all all made an impression on us and in many ways have us be less than fully free. Their patterns wrapped around us, clothing us in perceptions. Most people live – to varying degrees – either in perpetuation of, or in reaction against, their parents’ patterns.

We’ve all heard someone – and perhaps even ourselves – say “I’ll never be like them” or “I’ll never do that (to my kids)”. And even if you had the most wonderful parents in the world, who only loved and supported you with kindness, empathy, compassion, and clarity – there are still quirks we picked up we may be better off without – or certainly better off having choice around.

And then there are those of us who, deeply into our adult lives, are still laboring to please our parents – some of whom are not even alive anymore!

Isn’t that funny?

How do we slough off that skin shedding it to reveal our more authentic selves? How do we free ourselves from the patterns that bind?

We do it through a process called Parental Re-Imprinting.

Parental Re-imprinting is a deep and profound process I have guided hundreds of clients through – and I myself have experienced several times with my own parental history – that leaves us freer, with a greater degree of compassion and understanding—especially for our parents. Free from the patterns our parents surrounded us with.

Wherever you are on the spectrum –whether you had a traumatic and abusive childhood, or on the other end, if your parents were absolutely fantastic yet had some limitations you picked up unconsciously – or if you are still trying to please them—living your life for them, rather than you, then this process and evening will hold tremendous value for you.

These parental patterns can determine your level of happiness and success in relationships, your capacities to earn the level of money you desire, your level of self-acceptance and happiness and up to and including your overall outlook on life.

Free yourself from the patterns that bind you consciously--and unconsciously – start by joining us.

Oh -- and it's free.

When:  Tuesday, December 3rd @ 7:00pm
Where: 404 Bryant Street San Francisco CA 94107

What: Parental Re-Imprinting explained and demonstrated
Why: To free yourself 

»RSVP« to reserve your spot.