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I Love CHAOS! And YOU asked for it? (The Extropist Series – Part III)

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I have often pondered over chaos and control. What is the point of chaos? Why do we have it in our lives? And how does it relate to being an Extropist? Then one day it came to me. It’s there because we ask for it to come into our lives. And when I understood this I realized that I love chaos. This new idea about chaos came when I learnt something about evolution. EVOLUTION REQUIRES CHAOS. When something in the environment is destroyed and removed from the eco-system it creates space for new beings in this system to come in and take advantage of the change. The new being evolves to then thrive in this new system structure and be more effective and powerful than before.

Changes precede chaos

This is the same thing that happens in our own lives. Something comes along and throws the stability out of our world by changing the environment. It is then up to us to best develop and evolve ourselves in order to better handle the new environment. We are forced to reassess the structure and workings of our world, tear it down and rebuild it as a new and stronger, more effective system. So you might begin to see that chaos is a good thing, but people don’t see it that way.

The Problem of Chaos

Several things make chaos seem like a bad thing. Firstly, we are hesitant to break our world down as we have become comfortable in the world that we have created. Next, rebuilding the system of our world takes energy and work. Energy that we may not have or are reticent to spend on reconstructing our world to take into consideration the change in our environment. And finally, it is the resistance that we have to the chaos and change that limits our ability to properly function and motivate ourselves to use our energy in the most effective manner to make change.

Calling Chaos

The only difference to what we see in the larger phylogenic (or species) evolution is that people can consciously create change from an ontogenic (or individual) evolution that feeds the change for the species. What this means is that we call chaos into our lives so that we can evolve our individual system. That’s right! You literally ask for chaos to come in and mess up your world. WE CREATE CHAOS! Chaos is simply disordered energy. We need more energy to increase the size of our life and perpetuate our evolution. But this energy wont just come on a platter as a ready to plug-in battery pack. Sadly, that’s not how it works, nor would it be fun if we didn’t have to solve how to evolve.

When chaos enters into our lives, there is a greater overall amount of energy now in our lives. However this disorder is causing the current system to become inefficient, as it has not been calibrated to handle the new energy. This is why we often feel unstable and out of control with it’s introduction and so we often have to completely change the whole system in order to handle the new incoming energy. It is this reordering that causes the system to be more evolved as it has learnt how to better work with the new energy in the system. This can then have a trickle down effect for the whole species because then when another person sees how this new way of being is more advantageous they may choose to follow the new system. Then another. And another until critical mass is reached and there are more people using the more advanced system than the old. So you see that chaos might actually be a good thing for not only you, but everyone.

Karmic Chaos

But you may ask “how can we call chaos into our lives? And why would we?” Well, I’m certainly not advocating forcing chaos into your life by doing something dangerous such as jumping off a cliff, but rather begin to listen to the natural ebb and flow of life. Chaos is partially karmic, as it is a consequence that mirrors the amount of energy that you have put into your life. You are actually asking for the injection of new energy because you have used up all your energy in the system and now you are getting an equivalent amount of energy back to work with. Its kind of like pushing the pendulum. When you push it away from you, you get the fruits of the upswing, but slowly it reaches the top and eventually stops moving. So we need more energy to bring into the system to continue the growth and that comes back to us in the form of chaos. It is this energy from the back swing that you get to work with to evolve the system.

With each swing you get stronger and so you can push the pendulum farther. This in turn creates a greater experience and use of the energy in your life. A bigger swing also brings back more chaos into your life. You, however, are now stronger, wiser and more able to handle the introduction of greater chaos into your life. Some people resist and deny the chaos in their lives while others embrace it. There is a great saying, “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.” But know this: You can only bring into your life as much chaos as you are able to handle and never more. This is a very important point. This is because you can always handle the force of the return swing because you created the first amount of energy. Therefore the only time chaos can overwhelm you is if you feed into the old way of thinking and tell yourself that chaos is a bad thing due to one of the three points earlier. This will limit your ability to work with the new energy, to evolve the system and create a more amazing life.

So you can see that chaos is intrinsic to creating anything in our lives. Progress requires chaos. We must not be afraid of chaos, but understand it as a natural part of the growth process in life. When you feel the all too familiar feeling of change in the air, that something is happening that is out of your control, trust ultimately that you can handle it. You don’t need comfort and security all the time if you know things will turn out for the best. When you can trust in life and the process of it, you will be able to control the chaos. You can KNOW this because you called for chaos to come into your life. Instead of shying away from the small problems and living a small life, embrace the big problems when they come so that you can live the biggest life you can dream of.

Chaos gives birth to a divine star

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Gratitude: Breaking Patterns and Building Heart

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Many people go out and do some form of self-development. Whether mentally, physically, spiritually, or emotionally, they address the development of their inner-selves to have a resounding growth experience and increase their skill set. Normally people will find that both during and soon after the process of their learning they feel very empowered and able to manifest beautiful creations in their life.

The greatest challenge for people who want to live happier, powerfully create and be more in control of their lives, find that soon after learning such teachings these advances are thwarted with the fog of their years of negative programming. Slowly the dust settles and they find themselves falling back into old habits. All that time and effort they gave to their learning is lost, fallen through their fingers. This growth reversal ultimately results in people becoming apathetic about taking an active role in their own life and learning. Our old, non-serving automatic processes often leave people without the will or confidence to actively create in their own lives.

Often this common pattern of negativity about the difficulty of up-keeping these newly learnt ways of being, dampens the power of their intentions and the person drifts back into their unconscious way of being. These new learnings are only recently wired in the brain and like infants needs constant tending to, with a similar love and devotion you would give to a child. Remember that quickly your new-found inspiration gets overshadowed by old life programs of negativity. Our brains are lazy and these old patterns are well carved routes the brain knows well that they can take with little effort. So it takes an active ‘extropic’ effort to redirect these patterns and strengthen them so that they are the new status quo.

By constant daily practice we slowly force a new direction to the currents of our mind. Find and set a routine to help you change to your new patterns. It is the role of our front brain to inhibit impulsivity but sometimes the pull is to great to old patterns so we can anticipate the change of our mind to set up pre-planned behaviours that will nullify our old bad behaviours. This might be things like setting an alarm to get up early to run or meditate. This might be to remove all the alcohol from your house. Whatever your new pattern is, set up routines and plans of action so your lazy brain has to expend the least amount of effort to do the new behaviour. The best scenario would be for it to expend less energy doing the new activity than the old because then you will find very little internal resistance.

I had this experience with learning the power of Thanks. So many people hear and learn the words of the power of gratitude to change their life and feel an immediate rush of inspiration and creative power. They live in gratitude and create positivity through their positivity. But this takes work and the impotence from my old patterns made it difficult to redeem the reawakening to the power of gratitude.

I tried by stopping and being grateful once or twice a day, which would give me a good feeling here or there, but that’s about it. Our life programs of negativity are deep within our minds. Therefore, I learnt how important it was to constantly practice gratitude to increase the richness of life. I set alarms, wrote notes to myself, made gratitude boards and said it out aloud with such conviction I made myself believe it. Gratitude is a muscle and I learnt I needed to work all day every day to make my heart grow. By doing this all the time it changes the automatic (and even evolutionary) programs from one of negativity to one of joy and gratitude. Life was more fun, the colours of my day were saturated, food tasted sweeter and my interactions were richer. I learnt that when you practice gratitude you don’t need to make a lot of money to be happy because you already feel like a millionaire. Contentment is a powerful emotion, because it enables you to create for the sake of having fun. It allows you to create to give rather than take for yourself.

Gratitude is a case, not of seeing is believing, but believing is seeing. By waking up to, and living constantly with gratitude, things to be grateful for will constantly flood into your life. If needs be, fake it till you make it. There is always something to be grateful for and the very act will change your physiology, your chemistry, you perspective and the shape of your daily smile.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj2ofrX7jAk&w=560&h=315]

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One step backwards at a time

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We as humans are forever growing. We are constantly looking at who we are, ever trying to better create ourselves. To have control of our finances, of our emotions, of our relationships… of life!!! We reach crises points in our lives and then try to break out of the mold we have created by reinventing ourselves. We buy the latest do it yourself book, get the latest fashions, the latest gizmo, try the latest fad or just join the gym. We immediately feel proud of ourselves, optimistic about the future and capable of being agents of change and growth in our lives.

So often though, when we make changes we feel great at first but then that feeling of elation slowly dissipates. To make a true and permanent change in your life requires more than a one-day commitment. The wisdom that you gain about yourself is not something that you just learn in one moment and then it stays forever. We have a lifetime of thought and living patterns that are deeply embedded in our subconscious as life programs. So that whenever we are required to act more often than not we are reacting to something that has happened. It is when we react that we immediately move into our old behaviour programs.

We see this behaviour most often when we are avoiding an emotion that doesn’t make us feel good. We therefore employ a program that has, in the past, helped us alleviate the problem before. But this only works for the short-term. Sure enough, in a day, a month, a year, the problems always inevitably creep back. Often we know what we need to do for long-term change, which is the reason why we started the new program in the first place. However, this long-term option is often thwarted because we react to a bump or distraction and move more easily back to the known short-term program that only acts as a momentary band-aid. We can see this as examples when we aren’t feeling good about ourselves instead of exercising, we will eat some ice cream in front of the TV. Or we follow a dream but because it doesn’t manifest immediately we simply give up early on in the journey.

We must be more aware of who we are and what we want. Whatever you choose to bring into your life, you must choose it as a daily practice, as a new way of life. Something you felt motivated you to the point where you were actually driven to enact this idea for the betterment of your self and your life. So now that you were given a revelation about how to change old patterns, you must act on it as a commitment to yourself and the practice itself.

To better understand this we can think of it the same way as when you first get into a hot bath. At first the temperature is hot, but then you acclimatize to the new heat. This is fine at first, you can handle the slight drop but then slowly the heat will dissipate and ultimately you drop down to the old temperature. This is the same as taking on a new program in that you start off cooking but slowly you get cold on the idea. You feel uncomfortable and uninspired having gone back to the old world. It is up to you to lift yourself, keep providing action and re-stoke the fires every day, every moment in order to keep yourself cooking in this new space. Keep yourself elevated and inspired by the actions.

To do this you need to choose reachable goals. Don’t pick something that you just know is impossible. 100 push ups a day. Write an entire business and marketing plan in a day. If your goals are unreachable you will become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task and immediately deflate. If you feel overwhelmed by the size of a task – cut in half. If that begins to feel like too much then… cut that in half. Keep moving forward. Keep providing energy to the engine of your idea so that it continues to chug along. Sooner or later you will build some momentum and then you will be cooking with gas.

To help you with your goals get clear on your values. What type of person do you want to be? How do you want to see yourself? If you want to know yourself as someone who has control of their lives and dreams then keep this at the forethought of your mind when you start to want to just go and sit on the couch. When you want to give up. Sometimes it helps to have a friend to stoke the fires, get a buddy or a mentor someone who you want to work with and commit to bringing about change in your life. Obligations and commitments you make to your friends and community is one of the biggest motivators. That’s why we have gym buddies. Soldiers have been recorded as saying they no longer are risking their lives for their country or ideals but for the person next to them. Use whatever and whoever you can to help bring about change and deeply root these new behaviour patterns.

Something to remember about learning new ways to be in life is that eventually you will make new programs, and these behaviors, that were so hard at first, will become second nature to you and you wont have to try anymore. This then allows you to create more space to learn even more powerful behaviors about your life and how to master it even more.

Exercise 1

GOALS

– Get clear on your goal and write it down
– Work backwards step by step from the end to where you are now.
– Map out what you need to do to reach the goal
– If a step is too big – cut it in half

Exercise 2
VALUES
– Imagine you are at your funeral. Write down a short paragraph about how you would want to be remembered and How you want to think about yourself?
– Take these positive characteristics about yourself and when you feel your motivation waning. Take a breath and remember how you want to be remembered and what you will need to do at the moment to make that happen

AND REMEMBER FROM THE GREAT WORDS OF THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD —

“I THINK”….”I CAN!!!!!”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx9xO98kcBU&feature=related]