So I was at an event many, many years ago, and a gentleman came up on stage, and he was talking about how lonely he was. In fact, he was so lonely that he had contemplated committing suicide. Obviously, nothing to joke about, and I’m certainly joking about it here. But what actually turned out as result of his feelings was funny. What happened was they were talking to him, and they said, “Hey look, why do you feel so lonely? Why do you want to kill yourself?”
“Well I’m lonely, and here I am in my fifties, and women just don’t like me. I’m not loved.” Your heart went out to him. You felt bad; here is all he wants is love, and he’s sitting here, he’s just lonely. What the speaker did, and I thought was magical, and I’ve used it ever since, he said “Tell me what it’s like? How do you know when a woman likes you? Tell me what happens?”
He said “Oh jeez, well it doesn’t happen that very often. But if a woman likes me, she’s going to see me at a bar, and she’s going to approach me. She’s going to engage in conversation with me. Once we have an engaging conversation, she’s going to let me know that she likes me. Then she’s going to maybe invite me over to a table, we’ll maybe play some pool. Then she’ll ask me out. She’ll ask me for my phone number, of course. After she asks me for my phone number, then perhaps she’ll call me, we’ll have a conversation, and then we’ll go out on a date.”
The presenter’s like, “Let me get this right.” He writes this all on the board, and it was really funny. What happens is he’s saying, “Hey look, what you’re saying is …” Not even at this point, and this goes on for almost a half an hour. It gets more and more detailed because yet he still doesn’t know this woman likes him. So he’s saying, “You go to a bar, and a woman you’ve never met before comes up to you with a group of guys that you might be with, a group of strange men, approaches you at the bar, tells you that she’s interested in you, pulls you aside away from your friends, asks you to hang out with her, has an engaging conversation … a conversation that you want to have, then she not only does that, but she gives you her number, takes your number, and then calls you, and makes sure the dates arranged. That correct?”
And he’s like, “Yeah.” It was just mind-blowing. As he’s going through this, he goes “Well, now does she like you?”
“Well, I’m not sure. We have to go on the date, then she has to kiss me …” It was all reversal. The point being with telling you this story … and it goes on for at least another half hour as I recall … is he created all of these rules and check marks that, almost like a maze, for a woman to get through to say that she likes him. In order for him to feel loved or wanted, he created a series of rules and regulations, check marks almost like a map that someone would have to travel through in order to feel that feeling of being wanted. Now by creating these rules, there’s a reason he felt lonely is that nobody made him feel wanted. He could be at a bar, a woman could come to the bar, tell him that she loves him, she’s interested, be engaging, give her number. She could have done all of that work, yet still, he didn’t feel wanted at that point. It wasn’t until later on, after about a month or two of dating that he would have started to feel wanted and loved.
What I’m trying to say is this is an exaggeration to some point, but when I coach clients and I work with people, and we talk about what are your rules for being loved? What are your rules for being a good husband? What are your rules for being a good wife? What are your rules for being a good boss or employee? What are your rules for being able to be happy? What are your rules for feeling loved? What makes you happy? What are the conditions that have to happen in order for you to feel x?
These are all rules that we create around certain ideas, or feelings even. Some people are like “What are your rules around success?” I talk to this about business people, and one person I talked to “well it’s $100,000 a month in recurring revenue.” Talk to another business person, and it’s a million dollars. The reason it’s a million dollars is that they’ve already hit the $100,000 a long time ago. For them to feel successful, they put themselves in this box. There’s a lot of other things that could be happening. But the point is, they put themselves in this box that makes it almost impossible for them to have the feeling of success.
Once I talk to them after a while says, “Well let’s redefine that. What if we said success was having a balanced life? Not completely balanced, but having your five to thrive in order. Once we talked about that for a while, they actually evoked the feeling of happiness, fulfillment, and success there in that moment, and moving forward. They’re still striving for those goals, but they’re able to have the feeling of success, the feeling of being loved, the feeling of being appreciated, without doing anything except for changing your rules. Changing your rules for how to get that feeling.
Of course, you have rules for going towards, but rules for going away from. What are your rules for being afraid, or being jealous? These things we go into a much deeper dive in the Author of Your Own Story university. But you get the idea. In this short clip, I just wanted to cover the basics of this. Here’s what I’m asking you to do: grab your journal, grab your five to thrive. So what are your rules for each of these five to thrive? What are your rules for your body? What are your rules for your body to be a perfect ten for you? Now for some of you, you want to look like a model. For others of you, you just want to be able to jog around the block. Whatever it is, those are your rules. SO what are your rules to feel successful, to feel accomplished, and to feel like you’re the author of your own story in each five of your five to thrive?
Start there. Journal about it. I think you’ll be surprised. What are your rules for feeling spiritual? What has to happen in order for you to feel that feeling of a spirituality of going through your body, through your heart, through your soul? So take your time and do this. This is not an exercise that you just was to breeze through and move on to the next thing. Spend some time thinking of this.
Now, once you have your rules, look at those and see if those work for you. If they don’t work for you, rewrite them. You can do that; you can rewrite your rules anytime. You can change things up whenever you want to. That’s the power of being the author of your own story. You’re really the author, you’re rewriting the script of your own life. So you want to make it as easy as possible for you to experience success, love, happiness, all these good feelings. Then you can rewrite your rules another to make it difficult for you to feel angry, tired, depressed. That really helps you move along the path of life. Again, this is a much, much deeper topic but hopefully, this gives you just a glimpse of the power that this actual exercise contains.
I’d love to hear from you and hear your results. If you have any questions, of course, go over the Author of Your Own Story community and we’d be happy to help you out there, too. Don’t forget, if you like this kind of stuff, and you want a deeper dive, go to authorofyourownstory.com and get in the university. We only open the doors a few times, so get in the university while there’s still an opportunity to do so. You’ll get a deeper dive in this subject and the other subjects we’ve talked about.
That’s it for me today. Remember: go out, and be the author of your own story.
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