What are human values and why, if we work on our lower values do we attract: Calamities? Disasters? Humbling Circumstances?
Ok, we’ve all seen our very best friends, sometimes our partner or children do some really extraordinary things and sometimes we’ve seen them do the opposite. We shake our head for both… wow.
We’ve witnessed the most incredible acts of courage to overcome adversity and seen this labelled and sold as resilience but we know it’s not packable and it’s not resilience. Those who lack discipline lack something special. And that’s what we will discuss today: values.
You can see values in action in any activity on earth. Take the invasion by Mr Putin, Russia on Ukraine. It’s the first religious push back on a migrating shift in values in the past 20 years. Take the Tiwi Islands traditional owners declaring their objection to a project that will boost the ecconomy of 25million Australians because of fear on the impact on flat back and olive ridley turtles, and about 1,000 locals. Values do not draw lines of rational logic, they are purely emotional and that’s what you might need to understand first. Values are not logical.
When we speak of discipline and resilience we are tapping logic. But that’s in complete ignorance of the emotions generated by values and most of our values are not known to us. These intrinsic values are behind 99% of our life choices. They impact who we marry, who we divorce, how our children are raised, what we run away from in life and what attracts us. In other words, what we are motivated to be disciplined enough to do, and what we are driven to be lazy about.
Between the ages of 12 and 34 I think I looked at my body in the mirror twice. I just didn’t value how it looked. But I trained it daily. My objectives were not cosmetic, I was working my body at extreme levels to win things. Rowing, surf-lifesaving, running, footy, whatever it was, if there was a competition involved, and I believed I could win, I’d train with unrelenting discipline for it. In other words, I valued winning.
Later on in life, I built a powerful business in a very short time with minimal experience. I endured incredible hardship without any theory of resilience. I probably couldn’t even spell the word. And certainly never ever used it to describe my courage to get through very difficult financial and mental challenge. I just wanted to win in business as I had done in sport. I valued winning and my competitors in business didn’t have a chance against that value.
Not long after the business was in an unbeatable market position I got divorced. I lost. Now, this seems weird because for 7 years before that divorce I’d prayed everyday to find a way out of the marriage without losing (my highest value is winning). But once the divorce went from my choice to my ex wife choice, I was, in my own mind, a loser. So, I fought to win, to save the marriage. Stupid right?
Values drive everything. When I got back on my feet, I was in a world where winning anything seemed pathetic. I was meditating, doing yoga, visiting Nepal to find my soul. But nothing is ever missing it just changes in form and I started trying to be the most spiritual man in the world. I starved myself, bent my body, sat on mountains, endured Zen pain. I gave away wealth to be the best poor person because I’d be spiritual. But winning in the spiritual race was not rewarding, no trophy, no finish line. I transitioned to relationships, being the best lover, or study being the best student.
When I morphed into professional speaking that same appetite to win drove me hard. I spent over $100,000 buying training, speech writers, acting teachers, choreographers, and bought my way into the global speaking circuit. I wrote 8 books and self-published 7. The costs we enormous. So you can tell, money is not one of my highest values.
When I finally woke up to this core value of mine, to win, I realised that my mission on earth, although stated in sporting language sometimes, corporate speak other times, and spiritual language at other times, was to win. My mission is to help people beat the system, to win no matter what.
One critical aspect of this was to overcome the dark weight of compliance. That compliance is the cause of human suffering and while we suffer we cannot win. Enjoying the pain, now that’s an essential element of winning.
Each and every person I help wants to win. They do not always want to win in the field I value, they have their own values. Some just want to be the best mum or dad, some want to rock the world with their music, others want to win the most wealth they can accumulate in order not to have to compete. And this is the key.
Each of us has something in which we want to be a winner. If we feel like a loser in that sphere of life we may try to morph that desire into another walk of life but it’s very complex this morphing because we may morph into a world we just don’t really care about enough to want to win in it.
Winners are grinners
If you choose table tennis as the core focus of your life and you lose at it continually, you are going to be tested aren’t you. Do you really really really want it? Do you really really really want to be a winner in table tennis or are you doing it because your spouse, father, mother, friend or collegue persuaded you to join? If you run from a loss, the answer is made clear and nature has spoken.
One day, in Nepal, after investing over $500,000 and six months of my life in preparation I set out to do what no human had ever done before. To trek and explore an unknown valley in the Himalayas. 3 hours from the start of this massive adventure, fully committed and gear ready, fit and fighting, I gave it up. I found some of nature’s truth that day.
- I didn’t want to die doing it. (means not my core value)
- the odds of winning were low. (I only do what I believe I can win at)
- I was copying someone else, emulating them so the best I could achieve was not uniquely me, I was trying to be someone else.
- The only thing I needed that could get me through this 30 days of life challenging stress, I didn’t have.
- I was faking confidence in my ability to do it.
- I was being belligerent in ignoring that 20 people, from highly experienced to commercially savvy had advised me not to do it.
- Nobody would love me more, including me, for succeeding.
And there it was, the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. The deep driving force of my appetite to win was the worthiness to be loved. And now I had it, my deep core, purpose, my real highest value, love.
To win and not be loved would be to fail. To love and be loved and not win was fine. I just had to stitch these pieces together for myself. And I did.
This is why, in the 30 day challenge, finding your core value, your purpose is my single most important point of focus. Testing, exploring, listening to you, not to logic my way through your resilience profile or Myer Brigg profile but to hear your story and find your core. Knowing your core, your #1 value, your purpose in life changes everything. And when we know that those who work hard on their lowest value attract calamity, disaster and humbling circumstances, we know that nature too, wants you to find, know and live your core value. Her guidance process to help you find it is seriously more extreme than mine.
As you know, the most expensive seminar on earth to find your core value is a hospital bed.
