I wish I had this human tech decades ago.
It would have made my life experience so much better.
In so many ways I’ve lived such a blessed life, and we all have so much to be thankful for, but there were plenty of years where it didn’t feel enough this way.
All those years I was ferreting away thinking that this or that needed to change so you can feel how you want.
Even studying the best teachings was never enough until I built the tools for actually getting yourself thinking and feeling your best, at will.
Irrespective of conditions
A teaching that greatly impacted me is the notion of happiness irrespective of conditions.
Back when I began reading about it some 20+ years ago when I started going deep into the mind, it resonated powerfully.
Because before this my life was about “getting there.”
What I now refer to as the Getting There Program, that’s the thing in our brains that has you believing this FALSE cause and effect—
You must first get what you want to feel how you want.
There are good reasons why the brain is set up this way—namely, survival—and also why our society is set up this way—namely, consumption and control—but this keeps many people thinking and feeling worse than they could.
And it’s also simple, factual, and immediately provable that no matter what is happening or not happening in your life, you choose how you think and feel.
While this fact is too much of a stretch for many people, it’s also what Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl concluded in the worst hell of Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
As he wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Full, whole, complete
6+ million of Frankl’s tribe were murdered by Nazis.
His wife Tilly died in the Bergen Belson camp.
His 81 year old father died of starvation and pneumonia in the Theresienstadt Ghetto camp.
And his mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz.
As a prisoner serving other prisoners who were dying every day Frankl saw the worst of humanity, and also found the best.
He came to see that no matter what, even in the worst hell of humanity, you choose.
As he put it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
This is the real CRAFT of being human, like a mason carving men and women.
It is human evolution, living whole, in a not so holy world.
Just 1 day?
Why do we only have one day dedicated to giving thanks here in America?
Is being thankful one day a year enough?
Perhaps it is like your birthday where as kids we’re trained to think that you get to feel extra special just one day a year?
What’s not special about feeling your most special every day of the year?
Well, we all get that our brains for whatever reason aren’t set up this way, are they?
Like of course we all know that every day we have so much to be thankful for, but we don’t always automatically feel this way, do we?
And there’s just so much going on in our lives and inside our own heads that we don’t always remember to practice feeling this way.
Hence, we have a day of reminder to practice giving thanks.
This you can thankfully practice every day.
Practice full
You are what you practice.
It’s never that practice makes perfect—practice makes permanent.
Meaning, bad practice, good practice, practicing looking for what’s missing in your life, practicing what’s amazing, what you’re thankful for, etc.
No matter what you practice, that’s how you are.
How you are right now practicing using your body and brain is what you are right now experiencing.
And what you keep practicing over and over again is what your body and brain experience automatically.
There’s NOTHING mysterious about this.
It’s just habits of thinking and feeling that through practice you wire to fire automatically.
Because of our brain’s negativity bias—again, survival—and our society’s conditioning—again, double negative—many of us are automatically practicing thinking and feeling lack, looking around for what’s wrong or missing.
Whereas if every day you’re practicing being “thank full” or “grate full” or “meaning full” or “play full” or so on, then this is what you are automatically wiring and firing.
Wired and fired
Hebb’s rule in neuroscience says that neurons that fire together wire together.
Meaning, if you’re constantly having your brain think about what’s lacking then that’s what you’ll keep thinking and feeling automatically.
People tend to get offended when I point out that the human is operating automatically.
Yet it’s still simple to prove to yourself in a heartbeat, and it’s mostly a good thing.
It’s like this thing called habits that we somehow turn into this mysterious hard-to-change thing.
But when you recognize that your body is automatically pumping blood, and automatically breathing, and automatically digesting food, and automatically regulating your temperature, and automatically growing hair…
Well, it’s also obvious that the brain is automatically thinking.
Thoughts are automatically “appearing” in your conscious awareness, and being conscious means that you can choose.
Do you accept how you’re thinking and feeling based on where the body and brain are automatically?
Or do you keep full?
Layer 1 Fillers
Now this concept isn’t going to be entirely clear because we haven’t spent hours going through what all this means.
What is Layer 1?
Doesn’t matter for now, we’ll come to that some other time.
Just know that in our school Rapid Sustained Transformation, RST, Layer 1 is a framework for constantly optimizing your internal reality, as I wrote about here.
So that no matter what is going on in your life or in our world out there, you choose—
Do you think and feel some lesser way, or do you keep choosing to stay full?
And all I mean by this is the same as people saying, “Are you glass half empty or half full?”
But, that’s just a trick of language, isn’t it?
And what’s pathetically lame about that phrase is either way you’re told to accept less than full.
Whereas we’re saying that every moment you can be choosing thoughts and feelings that keep you full.
This is how the 11 Layer 1 Fillers work that you see at the top of this page.
10 / 10 Thank Full
I’m hoping that this is making sense to you?
Believe me, I know how much I suck at trying to convey these things.
It’s taken me decades to really get to the heart of this and build simple and powerful tools for living full.
And given that we’re trained to live in lack—or half full at best, apparently—and run around trying to get this or that to feel how we want, this is hard to convey.
Yet if you think about this practically, I’m just saying something incredibly basic.
Think about this for a moment.
Right now reading this, how thankful are you out of 10?
For everything you have, and don’t have?
For the people who are in your life, and not in it?
For the experiences that you’ve had, and not had, etc.
Where you are automatically out of 10 is merely where your body and brain have been conditioned in the past.
So if your body and brain are right now feeling less than full, what might you do?
What ways of thinking and using your body get you to 10 out of 10 “thank full?”
Happy giving thanks
This notion of choosing to think and feel your best is a strange concept in our oh-so-not-strange world.
Tomorrow on this day of giving thanks many people in America and the world will be just as glass half empty as most other days.
It’s never our fault.
But when you get that you are choosing how you think and feel.
And you have ways of doing this, such as the Layer 1 Fillers.
Well, now you can be as thankful as you choose to be.
On this 1 day.
And every day you are being thank full.