What You Get

April 17, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

My biggest issue with most of the media-psychology, coaching and pop new-agey methods, is that they’re reductionist. They aim for mass appeal with focus on the quick fix: point out what’s wrong, what its costing in some lack of fulfillment, offer advice to fix the problems and to attain the desired fulfillment.
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But shallow methods and quick fixes aren’t transformational and the results don’t last. That’s because the quick-fix methods focus on the apparent trade-off for the client (or reader) and not on the hidden payoff.

Here’s a typical, if overly simplistic example:
The client hates his job but after years, or even decades of misery can’t break free. The trade-offs he makes are apparent to himself and to his adviser, or author:

  • trade off the creativity for the steady paycheck
  • trade off the adventurous for the familiar
  • trade off the independence for the benefits

The analysis of the client’s problem and the advice he gets address the trade-offs he makes. With the global crisis, advice like this has reached a fevered pitch, and somehow feels the same for every problem or lack.

Just start, do it. This is your life. Set a goal. Take action. Be accountable.

So why is it that we’re drawn to and consume this obviousness? Because these methods don’t touch what we unconsciously hide and protect at all costs and that we can’t bear to examine: the beliefs that drive the choices that we make to get the payoffs to which we’re addicted.

An unconscious belief system operates like a psychic one-arm bandit leaving us penniless, but we can’t stop pulling the lever. In the grip of the bandit, we’re willing to accept the cost, an unfulfilled life, rather than examine our choice to identify with a lesser self.

Most of us are driven to some extent by old, unwanted beliefs that we chose at a crucial time in our development in response to a physically or emotionally traumatic event(s), real or perceived – it doesn’t matter. The longer they live in us the more exhausting it gets to keep pulling that lever to get the security and safety payoff that we think we still need. But we don’t need it anymore; that time is long past.

Self-awareness sheds a light on the beliefs and resistance that want more than anything to hide in the dark. Moving forward, and growing, doesn’t require re-living, remembering or analyzing the past. It does require uncovering, accepting, releasing and replacing the old belief machine that provides the old payola.

The requirement is the willingness to imagine: who would you be without the damn thing? The zorba kicks in. In my experience, its never a quick fix but the new, and often surprising and unexpected payoff makes it well worth the effort.

Filed under: Belief, counter-direction, self-awareness, stress relief, the zorba, trauma release
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the zorba

April 15, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

Sometimes you need a big idea, one that might make you feel uncomfortable. If you’re never queasy about your work, you’re too conventional and must take more risk. Hopefully, this post provides inspiration. I got mine from Seth’s post about naming that unique “thing” you invented. Not your business or practice, its the thing you, and only you, do. I knew immediately that my thing is “the zorba” but I had to get past the gulp.

The zorba counter-balances thinking and concepts. The story’s narrator and main character, Basil, represents the barely alive life we succumb to when we’re so absorbed in our thinking that we lose our connection to nature, to our deep human roots, to our sensual experiences and to our robust, creature-based appetites.

“I still said nothing. I knew Zorba was right, I knew it, but I did not dare. My life had got on the wrong track, and my contract with men had become now a mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.” Basil/Narrator

The zorba is a joyful re-connection with our creaturehood and its attendant instinctual responses, sensual desires and natural aggression.

The zorba is a wake-up call, jolting us out of knowledge and control.

“Why! Why!” he exclaimed with disdain. “Cant a man do anything without a why? Just like that, for the hell of it?
Zorba

The zorba is alignment and identification with a greater power, non-resistance to what’s happening and amazement of the mysteries of the world.

He interrogates himself with the same amazement when he sees a man, a tree in blossom, a glass of cold water. Zorba sees everything every day as if for the first time. Basil/Narrator

The zorba is the conviction that the only path, the right way, is the one in front of us.

But I believe in Zorba because he’s the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are ghots. I see with these eyes, I hear with these ears, I digest with these guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you. When I die, everything’ll die. The whole Zorbatic world will go to the bottom! Zorba

The zorba is the instinct and ability to sense change before it happens.

The zorba challenges us on the constraints of linear time, fear of change and taking huge risks.

The head’s a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! Zorba

The zorba is the courage to live up to our innate entrepreneurial, creative and innovative abilities and the refusal to ignore those desires to follow a more conventional path, even as it saps our soul and betrays us.

Awakening in me was the soul of the first men on earth, such as it was before it became totally detached from the universe, when it still felt the truth directly, without the distorting influence of reason. Basil/Narrator

The zorba is the persistence to not give in to failures or be diminished by them.

The zorba is the return to innocence and uncertainty, seeing what seemed intolerable as the greatest gift and point of power.

The zorba laughs, eats, drinks, loves and laughs…even through failure.

Damn it Boss, I like you too much not to say it. You’ve got everything except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free. Zorba

Filed under: Belief, Consciousness, Creativity, Natural influence, resilience, the zorba
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