This song started playing randomly on my phone this am.
I don’t know if you know it?
By Sia, in the chorus she sings—
I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier
I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist
There’s some bad “teachings” from this song I’ll talk about in a bit.
But there’s much good to get from it too.
Lemons from Lemonade
There’s of course lots of bad sh*t going on right now.
People are sick and dying.
Our economy and financial futures look bleak.
For the greater good we’ve given up all of our freedoms, uncertain what we’ll get back.
Yes, we can sink in this.
Spend your days and nights filled with terror, fear, worry, anxiety, depression.
Or you can use these hardest times to get stronger.
The anvil of anvils
I’ve written about anvils before.
You forge steel beating it against an anvil, and in many ways I perceive life the same.
You don’t get stronger when things are easy and all good.
You fail to grow when you’re not challenged.
As we often say we learn our greatest lessons the hard way.
And it often takes your hardest times to bring out the best and hardest in you.
Not more Frankl
He’s overplayed, but his learnings trump all conditions.
We all know his teaching that even in the Nazi concentration camps you can choose your thoughts.
You can find meaning.
No matter what is happening in our world and in your life, you get to choose your inner reality.
Yet even before the world went to hell…
How many of us were living a heavenly inner reality?
So many of our lives are crap
Billions and billions of people in the world barely have the means for shelter, food, clothing.
Let alone actually having a home, schooling, great job.
Yet, in many surveys they are happier than the rest of us living our great lives.
Worried about basically everything.
Fearful of much else.
Desperately wanting….
That new thing—to be richer, have that car, house, job, status, trophy, lover, whatever.
Many of us with great external lives live such pathetically miserable inner lives.
Desperately dreaming to have more, even many billionaires feeling poor relative to a name above them on a list.
So many of us so much in our lives never good enough.
Angry, outraged, complaining about just about anything and everything.
Popping pills just to get on with our day, and get to sleep at night.
Addicted to any distraction, and just about anything that gets us feeling good.
I hate to use the h-word, but…
Even before the world went to hell, how many of us can claim we were truly “happy.”
How many of us were swinging from the chandelier?
Filled with joy.
Loving our life.
The endless drivel on being grateful, how many of us were “great-filled?”
Celebrating these moments that we have here on this earth?
I can tell you that I for one wasn’t where I wanted my mind to be.
Tens of thousands of hours I’ve invested in the mind, discovering what to me are the secret hidden keys for all of humanity.
Yet, in that brain of mine I still needed things to be different.
I still needed to reach more people. Or my life or business to be different for me to feel, what?
Full? Joy-filled? Complete? Ecstatic?
Swinging from the chandelier?
That insidious Getting There Program keeps us stuck “here”
That’s the Getting There Program I’ve written about here and elsewhere.
The perception in our brains that something needs to change for us to feel how we want to feel.
As I disclosed in Intel 3 here, this is the plight of humanity.
Basically all of us feeling “so-so,” many feeling much worse.
Living in some sense of lack, believing that something needs to change “out there” to change our internal reality.
That program and “devils mind” keeps so many of us stuck in lack, “rationally thinking” that something needs to change.
When our greatest thinking and feeling is right here.
That’s Sia’s Chandelier
That no matter what is going on you can be swinging from the chandelier.
Sure, you certainly don’t want to be punching the air celebrating people are sick and dying.
But to be clear.
All day every day people are dying.
150,000 people a day die in lives far worse than ours.
Just in America some 2,000 of us die every day from heart disease.
Yet imagine how our lives would be if every time you pick up a fork you thought of the 2,000 people that will die today from what is a somewhat preventable disease?
Every second you can be thinking about people dying and all the things that might eventually kill you.
Living in fear of actually living.
Or you can be thinking about being here today, living!
“I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist”
Sia sings.
I’m not saying we ignore tomorrow, just that if we think our best times are ahead, we’re wrong.
How many people thought 2020 would be their year?
Looking forward to all these things you would be doing, having, getting, whatever.
Now it’s all gone to sh*t, are they dwelling in it?
Maybe…
But more likely their typical craving for the future, our desperate need to be Getting There, really our fear that our lives won’t be what we want, has been replaced with absolute terror for where this is headed.
Perhaps it will get a hell of a lot worse.
Perhaps it will quickly get better.
Optimism or being positive isn’t desperately trying to convince yourself that the future will be better.
It’s taking it as it comes, and living it as best we can today, whether tomorrow is better, worse, or even exists.
“And I’m holding on for dear life…”
“Won’t look down won’t open my eyes,” she sings.
In some ways she’s desperately clinging, afraid to see, but in other ways she’s holding on to now.
When I hear this line I think of this movie Wingmen.
It’s about these three absolute nutcases who travel the world flying some of the most dangerous terrain.
Like shooting through this small hole in the mountains of China, which could easily lead to splat.
Before the movie ends one of them has died.
Is that a tragedy? A waste of life?
Or is it such a waste of life looking around at humanity?
How many of us truly live? Get the gift of dying doing something we love?
Putting our lives on the line for something that matters more than just breathing?
Sia might be holding on for dear life.
Perhaps not looking down for fear of falling, or is she holding on to this moment swinging from the chandelier?
Word of the day is Cocoon
For the caterpillar the cocoon might be a scary place it goes to hide.
Perhaps in its nature, it just is, sheltering in the cocoon, protecting itself for it’s ready to transform.
We expect that it cannot know, locked in its cocoon, its old life torn apart, body putrefied…
It will fly out of here transformed beautifully into a butterfly.
What might be the same for you?
Surely there’s bad sh*t going on in the world right now, but if you are safely sheltered away in your home, you get to choose.
How do you use this time?
Who are you being?
And when the cocoon opens again, who is the you emerging?
More afraid? More weak? More timid? More negative? More worried?
Or the strongest, best, hardest version of you this anvil can forge?
Perhaps the most joy-filled you became swinging from the chandelier?
You get to choose, wisely…
This is the part of her song I dislike
She’s arguably pointing to a darker truth of our world many of us don’t want to see which you too might perceive watching the young girl dancing in the broken home.
And then there are lines like—
Keep my glass full until morning light, ’cause I’m just holding on for tonight
One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
Her song is drowning in liquid courage, using booze as the sedative to numb the pain.
Overcome the terror of being hurt.
Looking down and seeing life for what it really is.
When the greatest gift I have learned in all my tens of thousands of hours of training the mind is…
To be able to perceive reality clearly.
In a clear mind. To see our world, yourself, your life, through a clean lens.
And then be able to build from here the will and skill to make your reality what you choose it to be.
Perhaps life is the chandelier?
From which we hang.
Joy-filled.
Terror-filled.
Holding on. Not looking down.
Making the most of this moment.
Growing. Learning that whatever fears or pain or lemons life throws our way.
Every day we get to choose to hoist ourselves up and swing from the chandelier.
btw, here again is my how—System for living your Ultimate Days