Episode 2: Look in the MIRROR – You Are in Charge!

Summary

In Episode 2, I introduce the concept of taking a look in the MIRROR, which stands for Manage, Improve, Reveal, Resolve, Observe, & Repeat, 6 critical actions to take charge of our lives and start achieving victory!  I also introduce the practice LEAD, which stands for Learn, Emulate, Assess, and Decide.

Transcription

Last week, we started with the opening passage from Sunzi’s Art of War, which reads:

“Warfare is a major affair of state, the point of life and death, the pathway to survival or extinction – it cannot be overlooked.”

This week we continue on with passage 1.2, which reads:

“Therefore, manage warfare through the Five Factors, improve combat effectiveness through strategic planning, and reveal & resolve its underlying conditions.”

I have extracted 6 critical actions for achieving victory from this passage.  They form the acronym: MIRROR = Manage, Improve, Reveal & Resolve, Observe, and Repeat.

1. Manage: Start Where You Are

In order to win, we need to take a good, hard look in the MIRROR. In the Art of War, Sunzi states that we need to manage our Daily Battles with Five Strategic Success Factors, I am going to talk about those specifically in next week’s episode, so for today, let’s focus on the imagery and implications of these critical actions, beginning with managing.

The Chinese character Sunzi uses here comes from the ancient Chinese textile industry.  It means to both interweave and to support, to manage and to take charge, to experience and to pass through.  It is a depiction of silk strands 糹 and a weaving loom 巠.

It conveys the idea of “pulling the strings” or managing the warp and woof, the main and cross threads of an interwoven textile or tapestry.  The loom provides the frame that supports and structures the interweaving of all the strands of the tapestry.

So it is with a leader.  Good leaders – even leaders of one – get a clear vision of what they want, as we discussed in last week’s episode, and that clarity provides a structure that supports and directs all of the interwoven elements into a cohesive whole.

How?  After getting clear on what we want to create in our lives, the next step is to choose to be proactive and intentional.

At any moment we have the option and opportunity to take charge of our lives!  Regardless of how long we may have given control over to other people or things.  We are actually still in command! 

Take charge/control of what we want.  How?  It starts by taking ownership and accountability of where we are right now. By embracing the empowering truth that each of us is the one weaving the threads in the tapestry of our own lives.

Too many of us are giving control and relinquishing responsibility for our lives to someone or something else. We want other people to solve our problems, we want the government to provide, and we want institutions to take care of us.

The victim mindset is rampant in America right now.  I know, I suffered from it for decades of my life. The problem was it didn’t help me, it just kept me stuck.

Please understand that I am NOT saying that there aren’t horrible and unfortunate things that happen to people every day, because there are.  There will always be elements, situations, and circumstances over which we have no control.

Life is like a RIVER and we are like a RAFT, we don’t get to control the currents of what comes into our lives or what other rafters are doing but we ALWAYS have the ability and power to choose how we are going to navigate our raft through the rapids and currents of life.

We get to decide.  We don’t have to go with the flow and let the river of life dash our hopes and dreams on the jagged rocks of reality or just hold on and hope the river eventually takes us somewhere better or easier downstream. We can always do something to improve and empower ourselves and take a step towards what we really want.

To switch to a sailing analogy, we can’t control the winds but we can adjust our sails so that the winds propel us toward our destination instead of blowing us off course in our lives.

It is time to take back our Personal Power & Control!

How do we do that?  By managing our MESS!

Manage Our MESS

If you are anything like me, the instant we start to pursue something we want, life can get kind of messy – mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.  There is inevitably going to be some resistance inside.

To plot a course to where we want to go and get what we want in our lives, out of our lives, and for our lives, we need to know where we are – we need a starting point for our hero’s journey.

Managing our lives is about identifying our starting position, our resources and our liabilities and making a commitment to start taking action today in how we spend our time, energy, and money to move toward more autonomy and freedom – we can at any moment begin to manage our MESS. 

The acronym MESS stands for Mental – Emotional – Spiritual – Social

In thinking about where we are in relation to our “Big Deal,” it’s helpful to think through and write out responses to the following questions.  What is the MESS I am going into?  What MESS am I bringing into this?

Mental: What is my mental mindset going into this?  Is it supporting what I want to achieve?  Or is my thinking like a big bag of cats, hissing and thrashing about!

Emotional: What emotional energy am I bringing into this?  Bold, timid?  How do I feel about achieving this?  Confident, insecure?

Spiritual: What (limiting) beliefs, doubts, or fears are coming up for me as I think about this?

Social: Who am I going to encounter or interact with in pursuing this?  What could their MESS be?

As we reflect on these, it is absolutely critical to do so with without blame, shame, or judgment.

Remember, we can only control our own MESS and we are not responsible for other peoples’ MESS or external factors & circumstances beyond our control.  However, we can ALWAYS compensate for and control how we respond to those external factors – the MESS beyond our control.

It doesn’t matter how we got where we are or whose fault it was – our own or someone else’s.  It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been stuck in a rut or felt trapped in our lives.  It doesn’t matter how many times we may have tried and failed in the past.  None of that matters.  It’s not helpful in moving forward.  So let go of the would have, could have, should haves and the regrets of yesterday. 

Instead, focus on what we can do right now.  For what we choose to do next is infinitely more important than what we have done in the past. 

If the goal is to become a better athlete, get out on the court and start playing.  If the goal is to learn to play an instrument, get one and start making some noise, give ear plugs to anyone around … 😀

If the goal is to get a date, then get cleaned up, get out there and meet people.  Just start!  Don’t wait for some perfect magical moment before beginning.

Don’t listen to the voices in our heads that are going to try to dissuade us from pursuing our dreams and goals. 

Voices that say stuff like, “I don’t know how to …,” “I’m not very good at …,” “I don’t have enough …,” “What if people …,” or “nobody’s going to …”

All those messy thoughts and feelings, those fears and doubts, those limiting beliefs, are dream killers and goal crushers!  We don’t have to listen to them.  We can literally tell them to sit down, shut up, do something helpful, or get out! 

Our opportunity is right here, right now with whatever we have at our disposal – and we can begin to transform our lives with it in this very moment!  We can begin to pull the strings of our own lives and weave what we want from the fabric of the universe.

So start where we are.  Take a step.

2. Improve

The second critical action for achieving victory is to improve and enhance efficiency & effectiveness through strategic planning & tactics.

Now that we have made a commitment to ourselves to actively manage our lives and not give in to our internal resistance, those messy mental, emotional, spiritual, and social limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world, we want to start working smarter not just harder!

We want to improve our odds and give ourselves the best chances of success and develop strategic plans to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and capabilities.

The imagery Sunzi uses here is that of a drill.  Like many other cultures, the ancient Chinese fire drill was comprised of a bowstring wrapped around a stick.  Simple tools like these were used to start fires and drill holes and were way more effective than doing it by hand. 

This character is part of a word family meaning to emulate, assess, enhance, and improve efficiency.  It is also the term for field grade military officers and thus by extension also refers to leading, to command, and to take charge.

Sunzi intentionally used this word for all of its various connotations and associations at once.

Good leaders make things better.  They take charge of situations and improve efficiency.  So can we.  We can lead out in our lives, even if we are only a leader of one – ourselves.

So, I have another acronym to help with this: LEAD, which stands for Learn, Emulate, Assess, & Decide.

LEARN: Now that I’ve started, what can I learn to do better?  What do I need to learn to improve in my life and my pursuit of my “Big Deal”?  How can I improve what I’m doing?  And what can I learn from the process?

EMULATE: Who is doing what I want to do and getting the results I want?  Who has mastered what I want to learn?  How did they get where I want to be?  Who are the examples? What can I learn from them?  Because they may have had different approaches to the same goal, the more examples we can learn from the better as each one will help us triangulate our own personal approach.

ASSESS: What areas can I do better in right now with the skills and awareness I have at this moment?  Which areas can I deploy my newly acquired knowledge and skills to the greatest effect?  Is this helping or working for me?  Everyone’s path is different, just because something worked for someone else does not guarantee that it will work for us and just because something didn’t work for us, doesn’t mean there isn’t another way for us to get what we want.  There is ALWAYS a Way.  There is ALWAYS another option.

DECIDE: We can’t do everything we need to all at once in the beginning.  Trying that approach almost always guarantees burnout.  But we can do something, and we can decide to do the most important and impactful things first and be determined to see them through.

Start doing it, see what works for us and what doesn’t.  Determine how we can adapt and refine our new skills and knowledge.

3. Reveal

The third critical action for achieving victory that Sunzi identifies is “getting to the bottom of things.”

The imagery of this verb means to seek out, discover, or uncover.  It depicts a rope made of silk strands 糹, threads, or vines 𣎵.  It conveys the idea of revealing, exposing, and unraveling the various strands and exposing the pith or heart of the matter – the core issue.

As we begin to take manage our lives and work to improve, issues are going to arise, obstacles are going to appear, and resistance is going to emerge – internally and externally.

Externally, we may be using underdeveloped skills, ineffective tactics, or inefficient approaches to get what we want.  We might not have good systems in place for success. 

As we begin to manage our lives and start to improve our results, we need to reveal and get to the bottom of our obstacles.  This is usually pretty easy when it comes to external things.

When I was 11, I grew six inches in one year and sprouted up to my current height of 5’10”.  I was playing power forward on the basketball team and my skills were focused on rebounding, positioning, and shots down low around the basket. 

Over the next couple of years, my teammates continued to grow and I didn’t, so I moved from power forward to small forward and had to increase my shooting range and interior passing.  When I moved to shooting guard, I had to improve my off-ball movement and spot-up shooting.  I remember the day my coach told me that if I wanted to continue to play basketball at the high school level that I was going to have to improve my ball handling and dribbling skills.

Far more difficult are the internal obstacles that come up as we pursue our “Big Deals” – they are more difficult to see and often times we don’t want to see them.  We are going to hit personal walls and reach the edges of our own comfort zones.

When I was a teenager, I went on a backpacking trip through Zion’s Narrows.  It was amazing!  However, on the first day, I cut my finger open badly while attempting to spearfish with my knife.  I was so embarrassed that I didn’t tell anyone but just bandaged up my finger and continued the trek.

Three days later, when I returned home, my parents discovered my wound and promptly took me to the doctor.  He took one look at it and stated that he was going to have to open it up to clean it out due to exposure to bacteria in the river water I had been slogging through for three days.

Due to a traumatic broken leg I had earlier in my life, I was morbidly afraid of both pain and doctors. I was almost hysterical and tried to convince him that the injury had already begun closing up and healing and that I would be fine.  He patiently helped me understand that if I didn’t get all the germs and bacteria out of the wound that they would be trapped inside and fester until I could lose my finger to infection.

Then he quickly opened up the wound and taught me how to scrub it with a micro-brush, which I had to do for three days before he could stitch it closed. 

The greatest obstacle to my healing was not actually the wound but my fears and my beliefs.  Once those were revealed and resolved, I was able to move forward with the painful but manageable task of cleaning my wound and it healed and I was able to move on.

More often than not it is our internal obstacles that keep us stuck.  Limiting Labels, Belittling Beliefs, Unexpressed Expectations, & Self-Deception.  I actually have a podcast planned on this topic next month so stay tuned.

Remember, our beliefs inform our thinking, which generates our feelings, which drive our actions, which create our results. 

Last week, I mentioned the idea that if we believe, then can we achieve, and only then will we receive.  This is at the heart of the Law of Attraction & The Law of the Harvest

The challenge is that when we expand our goals – when we get in touch with that yearning deep down inside – that “Big Deal” that we can’t imagine life without, we often don’t have the beliefs and thinking to support achieving it yet.  There is a disconnect.

Often that is revealed in our self-talk. So in order to achieve something new in our lives, we need to not only choose actions aligned with our dreams and passions and that move us toward our “Big Deal” we also need to identify the feelings that will motivate and drive those behaviors, the thoughts that will create those feelings, and the underlying beliefs that will support success.

That may require some digging in.  It may require peeling back the layers to get at the heart or the pith of the underlying beliefs about ourselves, the world, or the situation.

If left unexposed or unrevealed, these limiting beliefs will continually fester, subtly and secretly undermine our efforts, and cause us personal pain and discomfort.

4. Resolve

Like my cut finger, what is concealed, must be revealed, in order to be healed. Once we have revealed or exposed the problem, we have the opportunity to resolve it, to reprogram our thinking by choosing more empowering beliefs, and reframe our entire experience – even the past. 

You might ask: How can I change the past?  Simply by telling a new narrative about it.

See life is only about 10% what happens to us and 90% the stories that we tell about the things that have happened. 

Holocaust survivor Viktor Fankl (1905-1997), who became one of the most influential thinkers of his age taught: “There is a space between stimulus and response, and in that space is a choice, and in that choice is freedom.”

This is NOT to say that horrible things don’t happen to us through no fault of our own because they do.

And yet, even in those horrible things, we have the choice to decide whether we will let those things devastate us or whether we will rise above them!

We are the ones who get to decide what things mean in our lives and for our lives.  We get to make what happens to us mean something.  If we don’t make it mean something tragic and don’t cling to that meaning by repeating, retelling, and reinforcing the story, then it’s gone and forgotten – meaning nothing for our lives in this moment.  If we decide that we are going to use the horrible things that have happened to us as fuel to advocate for change and for a cause.

That doesn’t mean that what happened to us was right or justified in any sense.  What it means is that, we are taking our power back and transmuting that suffering into something that will serve and empower ourselves and others. 

We don’t always or even often get to control what flows into our lives from the RIVER of life but we ALWAYS get to decide how we are going to navigate even the roughest rapids and challenging currents. 

Once we have revealed the thought patterns and beliefs that are holding us back and sabotaging our efforts to move forward, we can change them.

The limiting lumber and lumbering limits inside must be chopped down with the battle axe of bravery.

Chop down anything in our thinking, our feelings, or our behavior that gets in the way or holds us back from what we really want or that we believe disqualifies us from deserving what we really want.

Things like: “This is too hard!  This sucks!  I’m no good at this. Everybody else is …”

Expose the underlying limiting beliefs and replace and resolve them with something that is encouraging and empowering. 

When we say: This is too hard!  What we might really believe is “I’m not good enough” or “I was expecting quicker results” … those are beliefs that we can change if we want to into something like “I’ve done lots of hard things in my life, I’ve got this” or “I’m going to stick to this as long as it takes.”

5. Observe

Take a step back and observe — see what happens when we change our thinking and our beliefs about something.

We may be surprised how fast things can turn around.  Doors can open quickly when we find the key.  Progress can happen rapidly, once we find our bearings.  Chains can be removed once the right combination is obtained.  A large movement can begin as soon as we find the perfect blend or special sauce.

USAFA stairs story …

Make some observations and then continue to adjust.

See we knowingly or unknowingly accept our beliefs about something and then we experience them. What were the results of our initial attempt?  Did we get where you wanted to be?  Create what we were hoping for?  Is there still more work to be done to achieve our “Big Deal?” Have my objectives changed?

In a sporting event, let’s say football.  Both teams come out with a game plan based on their best preparation and scouting of their opponents.  As they execute, they adjust based on what is working and what is not.  During the contest things come up, like injuries or obstacles.  While coaches do their best to adjust real-time, at the quarter or during halftime breaks, film sessions between games, matches, and competitions provide more time to observe what is happening and make more substantive adjustments.

So it is with our lives. 

6. Repeat

Taking charge of our lives and fighting for what we really want – our “Big Deals” – is not a one-and-done event but an ongoing process.

Don’t give up if you don’t succeed the first time.  Keep going.  Keep trying.  Go back to the drawing board.  Dig deeper.  Hit it again.  Progress is a process.  Learn from our mistakes and keep moving forward.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Thomas Edison light bulb story.

Taking charge of our lives, starting where we are, constantly improving and enhancing our efficiency and effectiveness, revealing, exposing, and getting to the heart of issues and obstacles that are undermining and standing in our way, then resolving, observing – seeing where we are at, what’s working, and making adjustments, and repeating the process   The key is to “re-solve” them – to solve again and again – as many times as it takes to get what we want.

Conclusion

In conclusion, take a look in the MIRROR this week.  Start Managing your life in the areas that are critical to achieving your “Big Deal.”  You get to weave the tapestry of your life!  So start managing your MESS!

Then take steps to Improve: Learn, Emulate, Assess, and Decide.  Find ways to get better.

As issues and obstacles arise Reveal and Resolve them.  Get to the heart of the matter.  Replace anything that stands in the way of getting what you really want out of life.

Observe how things are progressing.  Get some feedback and then Repeat the process as many times as needed.

Here is an example of how to put all this together: If your goal is to learn to play a sport, start playing.  Get the needed gear and start playing around.  Find groups who are playing and join them. Then start learning the skills to play the game.  Watch videos online, practice with people, get some coaching.  There are lots of resources and people willing to help.

For a long time, I didn’t like looking in the mirror, I didn’t make eye contact with myself because I didn’t like what I saw there and I was afraid of what I might see.  My beliefs about myself had created a self-loathing that was unimaginable.  I was self-abusive.  I said things to myself that I would never have said to another living being – and those beliefs – that I was a failure, that my best was NEVER good enough, that I was fundamentally flawed and broken – affected everything and everyone around me and prevented me from creating the life I wanted and pursuing my dreams. 

And yet I had the power within me to change all of it.  I remember one day several years ago I was driving in my car and while checking my rearview mirror I unintentionally made eye contact with myself and a voice popped into my head – it was my own voice and it said: “You don’t have to beat yourself up anymore!” 

All of a sudden, I was bawling my eyes out.  See, earlier in my life I didn’t realize that I had a choice about what I believed.  I beat myself and condemned myself because I believed I deserved it, and all my failures and shortcomings were proof that I was nothing.  But in that moment it became crystal clear.

So with lots of help, I turned the painful experience of looking at myself in the mirror into an empowering one and so can you!

If you have believed things about yourselves that limited or denigrated you in any way, you can stop.  You can choose to believe something different about yourself and the world. 

As I mentioned in last week’s episode, you are a powerful being with a profound purpose on this planet.  You have great gifts to give the world.  You are awesome!  You are amazing!  And you are absolutely essential in this world!  Someone out there in this vast world desperately needs what only you can provide, someone is searching for the very thing that only you can create, and they are just waiting for you to show up in their lives as the best version of yourself.  Do you believe it?  Will you believe it?  If so, then your life can and will begin to change just as mine has.

So go discover your destiny, recover your self-worth, and uncover your uniqueness.

Intro & Outro soundtracks by Sentius

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-woman-looking-at-the-mirror-774866/