Chapter 5 – Transcendence
Transcendence is not change. Transcendence causes change. Transcendence is the power of you Self – Elevating. Self – Elevating means seeking the possible and positive versions of the moment and doing something about it. It is you leapfrogging the obstacle of daily life with your instinct. Your transcendence converts problems into challenges. You shift a moment from a burden to an inspiration.
Bill Campbell is often known as the coach of silicon valley. He was the business coach to many tech superstars including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad D. Smith at Intuit, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, John Donahoe at eBay, […]
What I learnt from the man who coached Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and more leaders of the tech world — Steal These Thoughts!
For your advance copy send an email to info@kevinmcnamara.ca
Women are better at being women than men are at being men.
Photo by Preillumination SeTh on Unsplash
This is not man bashing.
Photo by Ana-Maria Nichita on Unsplash
Imagine your three big terracotta flower pots on the sunny side of the house where the tomato plants soak up the sun. Even though they have that bitter tomato plant fragrance they smell fabulous in the summer afternoon heat. The pots where the chile plants were sown and watered got grouped by the gate in the shadow of the big tomato plant pots.
Photo by Justus Menke on Unsplash
Due to the conditions the tomatoes ripen and each plant gives lots of fruit. Whereas the chiles are small and few. The chiles have the same desire to grow. Tomatoes grow into tomatoes. Chiles into chiles. Their success depends a lot on the local conditions.
The local conditions in a woman includes her management of the Female Frixion (see below).
The local conditions in a man are impacted by his dealing with life through the Male Stack.
This is not fanning the flames of the battle of the sexes. It’s not saying there is a competition to achieve self-realization as a man or woman. It’s not a race to embody your gender before your spouse embodies theirs. It’s not a comparison because we are talking apples and oranges here.
Women are oscillating while men are projecting.
Women get lonely – and seek out companionship. Men get lost – and need direction.
Men will proclaim when a woman in the same situation will reflect.
The Female Frixion generates an emotional conflict in women about the prevalence of one of the three lives in the moment or stage of life. Those lives are: Professional, Romantic and Maternal. In men they are: Professional, Romantic and Paternal. Men don’t live the same friction of feeding these three lives in the same way. Women internalize the friction and men externalize the stress. Women make themselves responsible for their emotions about the 3-way balance of these inner lives. Men can often not understand how or why they would be responsible for their own emotions.
Each woman struggles for years with this aspect of their life. Often it can make them not feel good about themselves. A woman might start to think she is not ’a good mother’. The truth may be she is a good mother but the friction that follows her around, like a 4 year old girl follows around her older sister, won’t let her in peace.
This friction heightens her awareness to her inner lives and cultivates the connection with her instinct. Her instinct is about life. Her female instinct responds to the moment that her mind is focused on. It is not simply her instinct about how she feels about her emotions. That is included. But it needs to be understood that her instinct, the instinct, is fast and true and collects no emotional baggage. We collect the baggage with our low emotion ego trolling. The more emotional luggage we insist on hauling around life the less we can listen to and recognize the instinct.
Lateral consideration of the three lives all at once that is the mental/emotional process of women is in contrast to the vertical surging that is the one-at-a-time male style process. This is the Male Stack. Instead of a need to bring all three lives forward with the same grace and focus like a woman, the man engages one life at a time. The male life management style may appear to require less subtlety and finesse from the man himself because according to him ‘it is what it is,’ ‘what you see is what you get.’ That is the challenge staring each man in the face: To make his living of the three lives in his own unique way a vertically integrated generator of male instinctual response.
Because the female consideration is not as reactive as the surging male she can appear to be powered by an unsure woman. That is not always true. Perhaps rarely true.
The decision making circuitry to decide about the same thing as a man is different in a woman. That needs to be understood. And appreciated. So it can impact our lives. Reflected upon so it can impact our marriages. Impact our language, sayings, expectations, our workplace (like making workplace based daycare more possible).
An excellent illumination on the reality of women’s decision making is How Women Decide by Therese Huston. The book focuses on the extra and unfair work a woman has to do quickly, mentally in the moment to make her decision appear as valid as possible in the eyes of men. Huston also delves into the innate decision making differences between men and women. She highlights if a woman can grasp how to utilize her natural mental/emotional circuitry in a business setting then she can deactivate the resistance to her style of thinking. For our personal relationships the useful insights that are supported with how-to ideas are relevant to generating good conversation with your spouse to elevate understanding.
When we choose we, men and women, can update our beliefs about women. We can learn a lot if we take the time and observe how this friction is a reality. Communicate the fact of it and tell stories about it. Resist the laziness that permits this difference to damage and not enlighten. Resist blaming a woman for being a woman.
Women are not better than men. Men are not better than women. However because of the Female Frixion women are generally more true to their nature than men are to theirs.
This lack of connection with one’s essence as a man can cause stress in a man. Without a strong emotional core, a man under stress can blame others for wanting to help him, he can delve into some form of drugs (including the internet). A man, even if he is really a good man, if he feels stressed, unappreciated or lost can get angry and become violent.
Most likely women would think men experience this friction between the inner lives but they don’t. So in difficult moments that require a couple to be on the same page, they often aren’t. This can convert an important or difficult conversation into an argument. Faster than we can stop it. The argument is powered not by the issue being discussed but by the lack of understanding. And exacerbated by how we feel about not being understood or understanding.
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If women have the Female Frixion to connect them to their instinct, what do men have? What can be the sand in the seashell that is a positive friction to produce a pearl?
Ask yourself:
What do you stand for? As a man, husband.
What do you uphold? In the stress of providing for your family on a daily basis and also in the search for a sense of purpose.
How agile are you within the Male Stack (of the three lives)?
Do you want to cultivate your response to the instinct?
What do you adhere to? When the conversation turns sexist.
What do you cause in others? By what you resist.
What are you in service to? For immediate and lifetime results.
Meet the man inside the man.
Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
We are living with a mindset of a pandemic planet. Experts are at a loss for a way forward. As we have to adjust our restrictions from spring life to summer living in 2020 absolutely nothing changes about men. The combination of technological advancement and viral ferocity makes these unprecedented times.
You too are unprecedented! Your ‘photosynthesis’ of the moment is as unique as each plant in the forest. You are a ‘once in a human race occurrence’. It also means that you, and only you are responsible for your generation of belief in men. The best of men. The daily and inspiring man. If international experts and politicians can’t make decisions you can. You can forge the way forward in the bigness that is your life.
What is that man?
Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash
He is Fast. He is Slow. He is Visionary. He is all three. By nature. By birth. These innate aspects might not be so obvious as a result of upbringing and education. Regardless they are essential to highlight and aspire to.
More to follow.
At The MD Life, follow the journey of Cynthia Kudji-Sylvester and Jasmine Kudji, a mother and daughter who are “tackling medical school and residency…
The MD Life
I call it self love. Perhaps it is the same thing. Reading here may reveal we are on the same page or not. I would imagine we are.
The Book of Self-care by Mary Beth Janssen can be found here: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-book-of-self-care/9781454926313-item.html. Exercises and activities are always useful to get from advice to action. So check out the ones in this book.
It is important to note that maintenance is not growth. Maintenance is the soil for the seed of the soul. You germinate your higher soul with your sense of self love. Self love grows into the light, the warmth and transformative qualities associated with it.
Discover and share the unique of others. Highlight and refine the unique of you.
Finding a way to improve my intention is a priority
Vacuums are frustrating. Especially if you don’t like to clean. And aren’t mechanically inclined.
And hate to admitting you are cheap.
The industrial vacuums can do a good job and last a while if taken care of. Even though they too have designed obsolescence (of about 1 year of regular use) and cheap plastic parts, most brands are reliable. But one of those would be way too bulky for my pint size condo.
Then my wife’s asking why spend $300 on a new vacuum that might give you 2 years service when a used one can do the same thing for $10. This time I agree with my wife.
So we bring home the new-to-us vacuum and fire it up as we didn’t test it in the second hand store. It is a plastic, black and turquoise creation that would make a decent R2 unit on StarWars. It starts fine and vacuums well enough but there is a stench.
Being the local fixer I drop a little Essential oil on the foam air filter and Bam – no smell! For 2 minutes.
Then back to the cheesy foot smell.
Upon further investigation it becomes clear nobody- the person who donated it, the store who checked if it worked and sold it nor the customer (me:)) had cleaned the filter. It was dirty. It was packed. With gunk and other people’s dirty stuff. And once clean it worked perfectly:)
To get the most out of life keep your filter clean so the experience you have is the true, best experience in the moment.
Dirty filters mean although our eyes and ears are open, we hear how the situation impacts us as opposed to what is actually happening.
Dirty filters mean going through the motions. Dirty filters means repeating the same mistakes.
A clean filter is refreshing and is forgiveness. A clean filter is living in the moment. A clean filter is liberating your instinct. A clean filter is you when you answer your devotional life by seeking higher perception.
This higher education we can submit into daily life to improve it for ourselves, for community, tribe, for those future people who struggle with engaging humanity.
Submit it through a beautiful range of ways including: telling jokes, telling stories, inventing ceremonies, exuding love of your higher self, respect of what is foreign to you, loving and being loved.
Kurt Vonnegut advised to ‘Start as close as close to the end as possible’.
The American writer had 8 Rules For Writing. Gems of guidance for creating an interesting story. The above is #5.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing
Vonnegut’s writing put humanity on display – and it often wasn’t pretty.
Perhaps he was lazy. The closer you start to the end – the shorter the journey so the less you need to write. Perhaps starting close to the end is a story design method so the writer stays true to the intention of the story.
Each conversation is a story. Even if that conversation in a dark 30 seconds on a downtown street is between strangers, full of swearing, worrisome and in full public view. What happened was this big and tall guy darted in front of two walking women (mother and daughter) and ‘BOO!!’ he yells out of nowhere. The daughter screams back; her mother said don’t. Daughter pursued him down the sidewalk to share her fright but he wasn’t interested. He already got what he wanted and wasn’t about to listen. His sudden scare manoeuvre works to steal some good energy. In this case: Female energy; high potency anger energy; the beautiful energy of being the focus of the ‘conversation’. All of this makes him feel important and makes up for a lack of relationship in his life.
Dirty business tactics on his part. The business of energy management –
we are all in the same business of energy: give and take, diminish and elevate.
The big, tall guy on the dark, downtown street was using guerrilla tactics. And he started quite close to the end of the intention of his story – which was to steal good energy. It only took him seconds. End of story. For him.
Does that mean he is good at what he does; steal? Or that he has no art? No energy art.
What about the others in the conversation?
Still recovering from the disturbing encounter the mother was coaching her adult daughter as they resumed their journey. The residue on the daughter from the experience is anger. Next time ‘listen to your mother’.
And if her mother isn’t there next time then the daughter would do well to activate her strength of resistance. Meaning make the continuance of her life ( like the walking conversation with her mother) more important than a grown man who is blind to his own value (due to self esteem or illness).
Resist the low. Adhere to the high. You are important. Standards are important.
So, tonight when you lay your head down – wonder – ‘what is true because of you?’
What do you want to be true because of you? This is like Vonnegut telling his students to start as close to the end as possible. If you have a good day what is the energetic residue? If you have a bad day, what is the energetic residue? If you are alone? If you are accompanied?
Close your eyes and know:
Because of you there is a marriage with a sense of loving and being loved;
Because of you a woman has no fear of violence in her marriage.
Because of you a colleague knows they are valued.
Because of you nature spirits flourish.
Because of you …
Life will jump in front of you and scream ‘BOO!’ now and again. When it does, resist the low. Maintain your standards that seek the good.
Intention – what do I want to cause?
I was 14 and my friend’s dad was dropping us off at 2 week summer camp when I heard the news on the radio.
Terry Fox has died.
He didn’t cross Canada like he wanted to. He made it halfway – a few thousand kilometres. On one real and one unreal leg.
The point was to raise money for cancer research.
Now 40 years later there are annual Terry Fox runs all over the world raising money, funding research, increasing awareness and strengthening community.
All of this is true because of Terry’s intention to run across Canada.
Awesome.
There is a tensile, human strength in maintaining your intention while you make it happen. Realization of your intention may easily unravel before you in the moment. For most of us it requires we stick with it over many years. That is so valuable in this Twitter age.
The benefits of persistence- staying focused on the objective – are transferable to the next challenge. And are shareable with colleagues and children and spouse.
So …
Put it out there.
Share it.
Feed it.
Ask yourself ‘what do I want to cause?’
Make it happen.
Define ‘Cool’
Tennis great Roger Federer after an awesome back hand winner down the line as he walks pensive to the other side of the court to receive serve. Severely champion cool.
Rupi Kaur the Indian/Canadian poet has her own version of cool: smile, flick of the long black hair with the hand while eyes thinking of how to connect next. Poet cool.
On the inside, after you have done something authentic, you are cooling down.
Your talent, real effort, authentic synthesis for an elevated result.
Now your blood is reorganizing itself based on the impact of your new experience.
From the outside, this is magnetic to people’s attention even if they don’t know why. They usually don’t. This mystical magnetism is what we call cool.
Create cool.
‘Cool outfit’. ‘Cool car you fixed up’. Cool upholding the truth when someone was bad-mouthing your buddy. Cool fade away jumper.
Professional posers like the Kardashians imitate cool. They are brittle and hollow.
The cool you is agile and spontaneous.
The cool you loves and is loved.
In your blood lives your history, your initiative, your best and your worst. Cool means knowing the worst and bringing your best. Cool means knowing your mistakes and insisting on growing.
To get to cool you draw on your personal history of struggle, of growing and learning, of visualizing and wanting, recalibrating after a defeat and of allowing yourself to be inspired. Cool comes once you put your vulnerable/yet confident/authentic self out there; living your life now – then you rest and your blood cools down. That’s when you bask in the glow of your cooling blood that loved the vigour of sincere human effort.
That’s cool. That’s you.
Go Yaw.
George Gurdjieff the mystic and spiritual teacher spoke about universal forces and principles. One very simple yet powerful concept is that of pitch and yaw. Pitch is the thrusting outward force and yaw the receptive energy. Here it is easy for an overlay to be seen with the yin yang understandings. I like to think the word Yoga had a little hint or message right there in the short 4 letters of the word. It is asking us, maybe telling us to – go ya. In other words right there in the name is the essence of the discipline: go yaw. We are being asked to do the work of the poses and stretches in order to set us up to receive.
Photo by Katee Lue on Unsplash
So in class we do the movements and breathing to get to a point where you can receive, as in yaw, after the pitching nature of your movements.
As in any Martial Art the original purpose of yoga is to create oneself as a a node of connection between higher and foundational energies. Practice over time produces self knowledge. This in turn results in personal growth so one can better manage daily life to be able to participate in elevating self knowledge.
Yoga is amazing. After a class I feel my body on a subtle hum and my mind at peace (read I carry less internal friction based in the whims of the day).
The breathing, the stretching, the speeds all combine under the guidance of a teacher who lands us in shavasana (lying down ‘corpse pose’ that can be followed by seated meditation). This puts me in a place of readiness to offer high quality stillness to connect with higher realms of perception.
So go ya(w)!
Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash
This is a compact tool to focus your energy to get stuff done. Actually you can also use it at the same time for feeling a sense of purpose. You can use it in the morning to approach the day or reflect on your participation at the end of the day. It assumes you are seeking help to meet the new you, the next version of you and share it with the world. The experience can facilitate an updated sense of self and sense of belonging while also contributing to your various communities (the many inner lives, family, nation, society).
Ask yourself – What do I want? That is the I. And do something about it. That is the A. When it has a positive impact on your day, your mood and helps you to learn and participate – That is the D. When you follow through on your intention and it causes you to make decisions and ask questions that are based in your sense of connection – that is the E.
That is I.D.E.A. The idea is that as you go through you life you don’t have to stop and make your spiritual pursuit a separate life endeavour. You can be crafty in making some degree of your professional life provide the foundation for your soul development.
Photo by Ben Weber on Unsplash
Your body is a temple so why bother going to religious service. You can never be late if your attend yourself:). Current religious offerings rely more on the need lost people than on the soul connection of the people running the religions. Nothing wrong with being lost – especially being young and lost – just think of the Bieber. There is something amiss when the people offering religiousness are more lost than you. They are lost in their dogma and politics and confusion of lies. So you need to find ways to be the spontaneous you, the agile you, the humble you as you struggle to stay true to the temple of truth and growth.
As you struggle, read the following:
What is the relationship between information and elevation on our journey of personal development? Do you need more info or more inspiration? More passion?
Do you want to change your location (on the x – y axis)? Why?
x is info and y is elevation. Info gets you more of the same result pushing you further along the path. Meanwhile elevation gets perception about improvement and growth and fulfillment. Info can help elevation. Too much info or addiction to its search can usurp the idea of growth and put urgency and status in its place. Elevation gets you better info, better intel, better energetic friends who are interested in your best life.
So.
We need tools, references, resources, reasons and examples to learn how to re-locate responsibly. A prescription for a specific x. Align to a a higher y (why:))
We need tools to elevate our source of references and reasons to get perception about managing the balance of reference and elevation.
Tools include maintaining a healthy foundation in the body, mind and emotions; find a moment of peace, moving meditation, regularly distinguish between habit, routine and ritual and use them for your growth or phase them out, belief in higher purpose, be of service, teaching, mentoring and being mentored, telling stories, volunteering…
The Wild Coach 