David Herz, Coach

I was on a call a few minutes ago, a periodic collection of the friends of Jeff Pulver. He gets folk together over Zoom, and then (his sister) splits them out into rooms to share their passions, get to know each other a little, and allow a little magic to happen. You're welcome to join us by the way: just follow the link and follow to his “Zula.”

So today, I was twice in a room with a certain metaphysicist, Reiki Master, like that. And he let out that he thinks that our current pandemic is the result of a conspiracy of the rich who are only getting richer right now.

And I got it is what you make of it. It's also been an opportunity to slow down and be with our people, regroup, reinvent, and create new realities.

I was left with why do we have to make things so damned difficult, kind of what I've been doing a lot of.

So people, don't be afraid to keep it simple, to go with the most obvious explanation. It leaves you free to go deep on the things that really matter, I hope.

What should I do when I'm not over my ex 4 months later? He's my coworker and I see him every day. I still have that hope that we might get back together. He broke up with me saying he wants to be financially stable first and it's just a timing thing.

He gave you a stupid excuse to break up and you let him get away with it.

You invite him out to a coffee, at a dollar coffee place (you don’t want to show yourself a spendthrift), or even the coffee room in your office, and you have a conversation with him.

You ask him straight out if he were financially stable, would he marry you today?

If the answer is no, you get it complete, this exercise, and move on as friends.

If his answer is an emphatic yes, then tell him his excuse is unacceptable. Couples do better financially, but you are all with the being filthy rich thing, and then you make a plan to get married, align your financial goals, study wealth, and get “financially stable,” to which you will have put specific measures.

A great place to start on a strong marriage is Marriage Archives | The Art of Manliness. He’s also got some on how to talk money with your spouse.

You’ll also want to spend time with Jim Rohn’s Best Year Ever speech. You can find it on YouTube. It’s four hours long and worth every minute. Take good notes, and expect to come back to it often.

Rohn’s main point is if you want to be wealthy, study wealth. But the same goes for great relationships.

But also, be clear that you are up to this. Maybe review some of these resources first, and look if you are ready to bring the discipline and mindset they require to your life.

And then ask yourself honestly, is he? Is he wishing for things to get better, as they often do, but sometimes don’t, or does he have a plan? He already occurs to me as a bit of a flake. If he isn’t willing to grow up and be the kind of person who creates “financial stability,” which he claims is important to him, will he grow up to be the kind of person who creates a great relationship over the long haul?

When is it time to give up on getting an ex back? I’m the one who broke up with him & when I asked to try again he said he needed to think about it. (Together for 3 years & broke up because college was too much)

You couldn’t integrate this relationship into your life. You didn’t trust that he’d wait for you. You didn’t ask for his help to get you through. You related to your relationship like it was one class too many that you had to cut to get through the semester.

That’s what you need to take responsibility for. Are you willing to commit to being a partner, to asking for help, to communicating needs without killing the relationship?

If you are willing to go there, then you’ve got to let him know, and apologize for cutting him off instead of asking for his support.

You asked when. The when is when you are willing to be the person he needs to actually create a relationship. You might want to call him, take responsibility for what was, and ask what it was you missed that would and could have made this work. And when he tells you, check in with yourself if you can bring that now.

The Formula for Success

I'm on my third Coursera course of this Corona Break, this one The Science of Success: What Researchers Know that You Should Know, with Dr. Paula J. Caproni of the University of Michigan Business School.

So I've completed week three, and this week we learned the formula for success, which dovetails with a lot of the materials I've been reviewing/encountering recently:

1. A Deliberate Purpose, echoing Napoleon Hill's Definite Purpose.
2. A Mental Representation of Excellence: see my post on The Secret. This the focus of Mark Joyner's meditation that he calls the Magical Minute.
3. A Step by Step Strategy, Backward Design is what we call it in education, or a Structure for Fulfillment as I know from my work at Landmark.
4. Practice with Precision: a push, coupled with a willingness to fail (or recasting failure as a part of learning), the best learning occurring at the edge, this the edge between order and chaos (Peterson's conversation on the Dao), or Jamie Wheal's enterprise to engineer flow, which comes from challenge in the right margin. n.b. a coach can make a difference here.
5. SMART Measures:
   1. Specific
   2. Measurable
   3. Attainable
   4. Relevant
   5. Time Bound

The Takeaway being that anything is possible for the person bold enough to declare his future and believe in it.

And this from Dr. Jordan Peterson

This one is huge, I transribe the relevant part for you:

50:53

You're in a schema and something comes along and knocks out one of the presuppostions so that what you are doing doesn't work, then you're going to fall into an intermediate period of chaos, and the chaos is going to be proportionate to the importance of the proposition that was disrupted, and the importance is going to be proportionate to how much you use that axiom across multiple situations. . . .

52:13

Generally you should assume that you calibrated your machine improperly. And I should also tell you something that's akin to that with regards to a self protective mode of reconstructing your schema. . . .

53:06

Maybe the reason the person won't talk to you is because you are just wrong in a million different ways. But, let's not jump to conclusions.

53:17: The Rule

So the rule there, the Mental Hygiene Rule is “Pick the simplest possible explanation. and until you disprove it, accept it.”

Mental Hygiene Rule from
2015 Personality Lecture 05: Constructivism: Jean Piaget

Redemption is something that is accomplished at the level of the individual. Every time you hear someone say that they've oriented themselves properly, it's like a bell rings in heaven.

Higher Ed & Our Cultural Inflection Point: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson/Stephen Blackwood

For my Hebrew speaking friends, this is an appropriate sentiment for today:

For those of you who aren't, here's the gist. This Rabbi Levi was called and requested to provide comfort to the parents of a fallen soldier. He was at a loss. He knew there was no comfort.

And he addressed the day. It's not for the families of the fallen. They live with this every day. It's for the rest of us.

Rabbi Levi saw this, admitted to the parents there were no words of comfort, but there was this:

Our obligation as the survivors is to live lives that honor the sacrifice that those who came before, who died for us, made.

The implied invitation of the Rabbi, and my express one, is to live such lives.

May no life that was given have been given in vain. May it be God's will that our commanders, politicians and countries protect those who protect us as they put their lives at risk for us.

May we find it in ourselves to live lives that honor those who came before, and then actually go out and live them.