"It is important that you
getclear
for yourself that your only
access
to impacting life is
action.
The world
does not care what you
intend,
howcommitted
you are,
how
you
feel,
or what you
think,
and certainly it has no
interest
in what you want and don't want. Take a look at life as it is lived
and see for yourself that
the world
only
moves
for you when you
act."
...
"The
source
of what people do and what they don't do is that people's
actions
are in a naturally, necessarily directly connected
dance
with
the way
the circumstances on which and in which they are
performingoccur
(show up)
for them."
This essay is the twenty first in both an open group inspired by
Landmark Programs,
and an open group on
Language.
That may be synchronous. Or it may not be.
I am indebted to David Cunningham who inspired this conversation.
While I've never outright doubted it, been skeptical of it, or
even distrusted
Werner's
idea of what impacts the results I realize in
my life,
I'd certainly never
questioned
it, at least not in any depth. Yet neither did I take it for granted. I
simply hadn't really looked at it or
asked
about it in a
way
which would've allowed me to
discover
it
authentically
for myself (you see I'm wary of being
trapped
by simply
believing
what
Werner
says: whatever he says has value only after I've
discovered
it for myself).
Then, even after what were admittedly only very cursory examinations
and inquiries, it became abundantly
clear
to me that the results I realize in
my life,
are most impacted by the
actions
I take. Specifically, the results which amount to anything
that I realize in my life, are a function of me taking
action
- which in hindsight (and hindsight is always 20/20
vision) seems to elicit an almost embarrassingly obvious "Well ...
DUH?!" while at the same time also being exquisitely
profound.
St Bernard of Clairvaux (circa 1150) reminded us with his well-known,
telling aphorism that "The
road
to hell is paved with good
intentions.".
Interimly it may seem my
intentions
(ie what I
intend
to accomplish) and my
commitments
(ie whatever I'm
committed
to), my feelings, my thoughts (ie whatever I think about), my wants and
even my hopes, my wishes, and
my dreams
all
play
a role in impacting the results I realize. Ultimately what's
true
is this: taking
action
is 99.999% of what impacts the results I realize. And the remaining
.001% fraction ascribed to whatever else may impact the results I
realize, is actually so infinitesimally small as to be almost totally
insignificant and irrelevant. So for all
intents
and purposes, what impacts the results I realize in my
life with the hands down acutest immediacy, is the
actions
I take.
With that established, the
nextquestion
I
asked
is this: if the results I realize in
my life
are a function of the
actions
I take, then what's the
source
of the
actions
I take? ie what impacts the
actions
I take? What, for example, is the
source
of me
walking?
In other
words,
how
(if you will) do I
walk?
And it wasn't too long before I noticed this: once I'd started down the
physiological path of explaining the
source
of the
actions
I take (which is to say once I'd started down the path of explaining
physiologically
how
I
walk),
any explanation I came up with quickly filed for
bankruptcy (so to
speak).
Observe
this bankrupt albeit widely touted explanation of
how
we
walk:
How
do I
walk?
I
walk
by raising one leg and setting it down in front of the other.
How
do I raise one leg? I raise one leg by contracting my leg muscles.
How
do I contract my leg muscles? I contract my leg muscles by firing a
circuit in my
brain.
How
do I fire a circuit in my
brain?
I fire a circuit in my
brain
by ...
Nooooo!Stop!
No onewalks
by firing a circuit in their
brain.
Seriously, Dude! You do notwalk
by commanding
"Brain:
left leg circuit, fire!Brain:
right leg circuit: fire!", do you? No one does. That's not
how
you
walk.
So if physiology isn't the
source
of
action,
then what exactly is the
source
of
action?
Try this on for size: the
source
of your
actionsis
the waythe world
occurs for you. That's
vintage Erhard.
Look, I'm not
asking
you to
believe
it (and if you do
believe
it, you'll ruin it entirely). I'm suggesting you
discover
it for yourself. You
walk
into a dark alley in which there's a group of people who occur as
hostile for you. A library of
actions
kicks in automatically. You
walk
into a
seminar
later in which there's another group of people who occur as
friendly
for you.
Another totally different library of
actions
kicks in automatically. So the
source
of our
actions
is
the waythe world
occurs for us.
Nothing
more,
nothing
less. Said another
way,
perhaps more
rigorously:
our
actions
are correlated withthe waythe world
occurs for us ("correlated with" is the phrase
Werneruses
- I also like the sound of "congruent with").
I assert it's
language
which impacts and (at least in part) even altersthe waythe world
occurs for us. And
the waythe world
occurs for us, is the
source
of the
actions
we take. And taking
action
determines the results we realize in our lives. So it's my
language
which is my inherent ability to
powerfully
impact the results I realize in
my life.
Listen:
so much
of
what happens
in our lives is beyond our control, beyond our dominion, beyond our
power
(if you have any doubts about this at all, just switch on the
morning news).
But if there's one thing over which I have total control
in
my life,
it's my
language.
And if there's one thing over which I have total dominion in
my life,
it's my
language.
And if there's one thing over which I have total
power
in
my life,
it's my
language.
So my
language
is my given pathway to gaining control, dominion,
power,
and impact over the results I realize in
my life.
In other
words,
my
language
provides
actionable
access to the
source
of
performance
in my life.
