The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Monday, February 25, 2008

Seven Secrets

I think that the “Seven Secrets” I’m going to cover in the book are as follows:

1) Lifewriting. The interaction of the chakras and the Hero’s Journey. Gives me a chance to discuss goal setting, SMART goals, Time Lines, the Dark Night of the Soul, and more.
2) IDEA. Instinctive Designation of Energy and Attention. The value of balance in developing intuition about life, one’s self, and others. Cross-references with #1.
3) Fear Removal. Fear stops more people than everything else combines. Brings in the importance of aerobic exercise. Topics include the way the body stores emotion, Six Degrees of Freedom, Aerobics, the Neuro-Immuno-Endocrine response, visualization and imagination, negative emotional anchors and so forth. Coach Sonnon’s CST and Yogic formulations fall right in here. The FlowFit/ Body-Flow/ Prasara matrix as well.
4) Intermittent Fasting. Life extension and health, as well as removing all logical obstacles for weight loss, leaving only the emotional trauma, which can be processed with #3 (and a good therapist, if necessary). The amount of saved time and increased energy can be re-invested in your life to a phenomenal degree.
5) The Five Minute Miracle. Cuts through the bullshit. Anyone who says they don’t have five minutes to work on their health and fitness is simply lying to themselves, or to you. PERIOD. It’s like I.F.—you get to see the demon in the cage directly, without camouflage. That said, we also introduce the concept of Neuro-Synaptic Facilitation, the fastest way to learn a skill, or increase strength. And Core Activation—using Grease the Groove protocol to work the abdominals. The Abs are the most important muscles in the body to work, and the core of fitness. You NEVER see anyone with tight abs but flabby arms and legs. You often see people with muscular legs, arms, and chests…but flabby guts. Do the math.
6) Soulmate. Frankly, the core of what I think 99% of people want from life: someone to love and be loved by. And finding a partner is easy if you’d be happy to marry yourself. I mean, REALLY. I think that most problems in this arena are caused by the fact that people don’t REALLY like themselves, and therefore aren’t happy with what they’re attracting. You can’t really expect to attract someone better than you are, by whatever metric you use. This ties into IDEA nicely, reinforcing the theme of balance.
7) Heartbeat Meditation. The safest meditation I know that is powerful. The most powerful meditation I know that is safe. Meditating is like running “the aquarium filter on the fish tank of your soul.” I can touch on other forms of meditation, and Dream Diary-ing and so forth. The fact is that if you try to move from one level of your life to another, your ego shell will crack, and all of the fear and damage and congealed ego it is composed of dumps into your system. This causes most people to believe that personal improvement CAUSES pain. No. It cancels out the emotional anesthetic you’ve used to CONCEAL pain. If you are trying to improve your body, your relationships, or your career, and don’t have some means of dealing with this stuff, you will bounce back to your prior energetic state, again and again, until the outside world gives you a kick in the butt (for instance…the death of a parent. Or both parents. Most people don’t really grow up until this happens.)

There are so many other things, but these seven cover all basic aspects of the Three Biggies. I can cross-reference them, so that someone can start anywhere and end up everywhere. Point to outside resources and alternate approaches. I think that they will be a fine foundation, and within each, I have room to talk about how I came to discover or uncover or stumble across them, the impact they’ve had on my life, pitfalls and cautionary notes, methods of approach, and so forth. They comprise two mental/career paths (Lifewriting, IDEA), two emotional (Soulmate, Heartbeat, Fear Removal) and two physical (Intermittent Fasting, Five Minute Miracle).

I think that would be a fine foundation. Any thoughts?

8 comments:

mjholt said...

I like the "secrets" idea, but "Seven Secrets" makes it sound derivative of the Covey book.

I think some other number, it will make it more powerful.

I would think you could come up with "Nine _________ to ______________" (this is just a general suggestion and supposes alliteration with the number word) and it would be more powerful. If you use nine (be my guest) I am sure you have two more secrets to add.

Lester Spence said...

I think that seven represents the number of completion.

Are you going to have a website along with it?

Anonymous said...

Including your real world experiences with this (and maybe the experiences of others too) would be helpful.

It's good to discuss the theory, and then follow that up with something to illustrate what things look like in practical application IMO.

Daniel Keys Moran said...

Go with 7. The hell with Covey.

As to Frazier not getting the joke -- between Ali, Foreman, Norton and Frazier, I'd have to say I think Frazier was the least talented of the bunch. But in his career Ali had five losses -- 3 of them in 1978 or later, when he wasn't himself any longer. In his prime he had two losses -- to Norton, in a split decision; and to Frazier ... in a unanimous decision.

After his last fight with Frazier Ali said "This must be what death feels like."

A good sense of humor can be overrated....

Spilling Ink said...

Seven is good. In numerology, seven represents knowledge. I have a related story. :-) The house I used to live in was a '3' house, representing creativity. I wrote a lot of fiction there. Of course, my issues started creeping into it (whole 'nother story), but I didn't have much conscious knowledge of what my issues really were, so the whole thing just made me feel like I was crazy. Until I moved here. To the 'seven' house. Then it all slammed me in the gut like a ton of bricks. Weird, huh? Seven is good, Steve. It represents power.

Anonymous said...

I'd buy that.

LaVeda H. Mason said...

Amazing. Simply amazing.

It looks like this book will cover all the bases.

I'll not gush, but I am impressed.

Are you taking pre-orders :smile:?

Anonymous said...

I have been thinking about the fact that everybody accepts that bringing up Obama's Muslim background is negative campaigning. If we accept that all Muslims are bad it would be. However, if we accept that as with other groups there are good Muslims and bad Muslims then it could be said that Obama's Muslim background is a plus, because often members of a group can be and are tougher with other members of their group that they don't approve of than outsiders.

Marty S