Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

T-minus eight days and counting.

A second vade mecum for this trip: The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles. Jen Sincero recommends this book in You Are a Badass. She says this:

This is now easily the book that I recommend to people the most, and the one I read over and over. But you have to let a lot go because it will absolutely go up your nose if you’re still working on your issues around it being okay to make money.

I am still working on my issues around it being okay to make money. But I have no problem knowing flow when I see it, and Wallace Wattles writes as well as I have ever seen about the mindset and energetic focus needed to manifest true abundance into your life. This trip is, in large part, a statement of faith on my part that I can finally let go of my blocks to that manifestation, and as a reminder and a practice, this book is going with me as well.

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Links to these books:
You Are a Badass
The Science of Getting Rich

(The Science of Getting Rich is in the public domain, and so there are about 6,000 different editions of it. The above links to one of the editions I have. It’s of sufficient quality and it’s inexpensive.)

T-minus nine days and counting.

The teachings I offered myself over the past couple of days were solid teachings, but I have to admit that it’s not easy to be a good teacher to myself. I’m just a little too accustomed to being wrapped up in Student Ben’s struggles to maintain a solid Teacher Ben perspective.

Both a wise teacher and a wise student know that sometimes you have to call in reinforcements. I make sure that I still reach out to Jerry for help, because his teachings have made such a vast difference in my life and still do.

But I’m also calling in some help from outside. I’m rereading a self-help book called You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. She’s a life coach, doing work not dissimilar from what I ultimately see myself doing. You Are a Badass is every bit as cheeseball as it sounds, but is also simultaneously so good and so dead-on that Teacher Ben nods in assent at every chapter he reads, while Student Ben sees the potential in the teachings and has to fight not to sprint into the safe space of resisting everything he sees there, lest he actually embody the changes he wants to see in his life. Sadly, it is Student Ben who needs to do the work here. Teacher Ben can only help keep him on track.

Here’s how much this book resonates with me: I intend to travel as lightly as possible for my trip, but I’m planning on bringing along a hard-copy of the book, in order to read it again and again and again until I believe it. Since the book preaches that to change your life, you have to believe in the not-yet-seen–Jerry says the same, and I have enough experience now that I do as well–then I have to find a way to practice the faith that I’ve been lacking.

One possible way to do so? Carrying around a self-help book as a vade mecum through weeks of travel through Europe. That seems to suggest a certain intention. If I were my teacher, I’d recommend it.

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Should you be interested in the book, here’s a link to it: You Are a Badass

Yes, this is an affiliate link with Amazon. But please know that I don’t take making recommendations like this lightly.

T-minus ten days and counting.

In response to Student Ben acknowledging that, despite his recent low morale about bringing flow more fully into his life, there actually have been some recent successes, particularly this winter on the ski slopes, Teacher Ben might also say this:

I teach in the realm of athletics because it’s a fun playground for experimentation. But the point of increasing flow while skiing/snowboarding was never just about being a better skier/rider. In truth, that’s closer to a side effect. The point of increasing flow is about living a better life. If you are honest about the work and continue to practice, you will see the improvements in flow you find on the ski slopes spread to other aspects of your life. Flow begets flow.

T-minus eleven days and counting.

I’ve recently been a bit demoralized that I haven’t seen the changes I seek in my own life come more fully into fruition. There’s been a lot of struggle. Apparently I’m still dealing with unexplored blocks.

But if I were teaching myself, I’d like to think that I’d notice my student’s wounded morale and point out that perception and reality might not be exactly the same thing.

“How is the writing going?” Teacher Ben might ask.

“A lot of volume,” Student Ben might respond. “Not very sure about the quality.”

“But you are zero-drafting? And seeing interesting things pop up?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ve said that with respect to your skiing, you’ve seen yourself jump a couple of levels this winter, that your flow has expanded radically.”

“Yes.”

As a good teacher in this situation, maybe all I’d do is maintain a significant silence. Perhaps raise an eyebrow. As in: draw your own conclusions.

T-minus twelve days and counting.

Let’s try this on for size:

I have something important to offer.

I have skills and a track record. I’ve taught centering and energy awareness to ski students and seen startling improvements. I helped a high-level amateur tennis player improve her serve markedly in fifteen minutes. I can see and describe blocks to flow in even the most accomplished athletes.

Furthermore, the foundation for my teaching is that I am a student of flow. I understand the benefits of this work, the potential inherent within it, and the challenges one might come across, because I walk this path every single day.

T-minus fifteen days and counting.

When I talk about this trip, I find myself struggling to express my goals in a way that’s not self-undermining. I tell friends and family that I essentially seek to take my coaching business not from zero to sixty but, like, zero to six hundred, and I sound apologetic to my own ears, like I believe my goals are wholly unrealistic.

On the one hand, I have to recognize that the public evidence of my abilities is, well, the stories I tell on Free Refills. I have no reputation in this space at all. That’s just a fact. But if that’s all I tell the universe, the universe will surely affirm that belief, and I will fail. Somehow, I have to learn to acknowledge the facts as they are now, and at the same time follow it with a full-hearted expression that I know I have something important to offer.

If you could see how much of a struggle I’m having writing this piece, you’d know how much of a struggle finding this expression is for me.

At the heart of this struggle lies my fear, right? I’m scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.

T-minus sixteen days and counting.

I finished moving out of my ex-house in Boulder late last June. I’ve had a bit more than nine months now to focus on building my new life, and I struggle to feel like I have much to show for it. People who love me feed back to me that I’ve done a lot of growing, so I take some heart in their opinions, but, well, sometimes it’s hard not to say, “Personal growth plus a subway token will get you onto the subway.”

I certainly believed that I’d be a lot further along with building my career than I am now. The honest truth is that I’m terrified that I won’t succeed, and I’m even more terrified that I will–fear of success is way scarier than fear of failure. As I’ve written many times on Free Refills, it’s far easier to stay stuck in a place you know, no matter how miserable you are there, than it is to move boldly into something different. You know this place of stuckness. You feel safe here. You know you can survive here, because you’ve been doing it for so long. Everything is under control.

To move forward, I will have to let go of everything I know about myself and my life. I will have to relinquish that control.

I have read this advice uncountably many times: When in doubt, act “as if.” I’m taking a huge plunge with this trip, because I’m trying to act as if I’ve fully embodied the belief that not only do I have something to offer, but that I can express it well enough that others will see it.

I’m scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.

I leave for Europe in seventeen days and I have just begun to plan. As I write this, I haven’t yet made sleeping arrangements in any city in which I’m staying. Shit, besides the cities where the tennis tournaments are, I haven’t even decided all the places I’m traveling to.

The last time I traveled solo internationally was when I went to Spain back in college. Back then, my planning was … minimal. I often flew by the seat of my pants. You know what? Things tended to work out okay. But I’m almost twenty-fives years older now–that’s a lot of time in which to ossify.

But with only seventeen days left to go, I’m clearly gonna have to approach things to some degree as I did back then. Intellectually, I know it’s going to be okay–this is Western Europe that I’m traveling to. It’s not like I’m going somewhere where if I forget to pack something, I might die.

I know that intellectually. I’m nevertheless scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.

I leave for Europe in eighteen days. I’ll be there for just over seven weeks as I follow the ATP and WTA tennis tours through a substantial part of the clay-court season. I’ll to be at the tournaments in Barcelona, Madrid, and Rome, before finishing up in Paris at Roland Garros.

The goal for the trip is to put energy and intention into the belief that I have something substantial to offer as a coach of flow to athletes at that level, and hope the universe responds.

Do I fully have that self-belief. No, I’m scared as hell. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, I am.

This comes from a zero draft in which I attempted to write about the broader social significance of the popularity of Game of Thrones. The piece never came to fruition, but when I came across this paragraph, I had to smile.

Some might object that the word I use, nerd, should actually be geek. Feel free to do a little mental find and replace if you feel that way.

At this point in my life I’m pretty adept at passing as a normal person, but really I’ve always been and will always be a nerd, and for me and all of those like me, there’s a certain vindication when nerd culture rises in prominence and becomes an important piece of the greater conversation, and big-time popular entertainment in the fantasy/sci-fi world is always our crowning moment. “It’s our world now, bitches,” we cry out, shaking our puny but dexterous (for we are excellent typists) little fists.