“Showing up powerfully after waking up, growing up, cleaning up and opening up will ensure that the game or battle or your mission is won every time.”–Mark Divine
Commander Mark Divine talks about the difference between force and power in this podcast, and tells us how we can make the right kind of mental moves in order to be able to Power Up our mind. In addition, he is always in favor of achieving excellence, and he helps us toward that goal. He talks about how we often don’t seem to have the time to achieve what we’d like to, and how to manage time in ways that help, instead of hindering your goals. Hear how you can benefit from the information the Commander is bringing to you in this solocast.
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Other episodes of our podcast that you might be interested in are Mark’s podcasts on fueling, breathing and hydration, and recovery and integrated training.
Transcript & Shownotes
Hey this is Mark Divine with the Unbeatable Mind podcast this week. Welcome back. Thanks for joining me this week. This week I have another solocast, so just interviewing myself here. I’m going to talk about two concepts that I’ve written about recently. One is called “Powering Up,” and the other one is called “Emitting Excellence.” Let me start with Powering up.
Powering Up
[1:01]Now I’ve been thinking a lot about power lately. The word often has a negative connotation, especially when used by the media–as in “power projection” or “abuse of power.” However, what I think they really mean is force. Force is a push or a pull–a physical action that’s meant to compel or coerce another object or person, entity or even nation to respond. Power, however, is the ability to act a certain way. A way that can direct or influence, but not necessarily compel a certain response. With that said, we can see that power and force are related but they’re distinct concepts. Force can’t exist without power, but it can have either a negative or a positive effect.
Power, however, exist independently of force and relies on a skill or innate attribute to accomplish an aim, as opposed to a physical push or pull. So let’s say though, force can achieve a temporary objective, good or bad, power is required to achieve sustainable and worthy goals. Without true power, we would need to rely solely on force, like a bully. Or we’d need to rely on hope, like a dreamer.
Since here at Unbeatable Mind, we don’t aspire to be bullies, and we don’t really depend on dreaming to get things done, that means we need to develop personal power.
“But how?” you may ask. Well, I’ve got a 5 part formula, based upon the integrated development model here, that I teach at Unbeatable Mind. I call it “Power Up” because it will power you up the 5 mountains of your physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and spiritual domains.
Here’s a snapshot of the 5 power up moves that you need to make: The first is to “wake up.” The wake up move is to awaken to your story or stories and to begin to live life on your own terms. Not terms that were preprogrammed or dictated by society, your family or anyone else. Now this awakening is often a deeply moving experience where there’s a deep connection felt to nature and the spirit. And it leaves you changed. And on a thirsty quest for more growth, insight, and wisdom. Uncoupled from the chains of your previous limited thinking and behavior.
Now the 2nd power up move is to “grow up.” This is the essence of the physical and mental mountains of Unbeatable Mind. We first grow biologically and psychologically–then, rather than allowing that growth to stall after we leave our formal education years–we reignite it through integrated training to tap into our fullest potential as a human. That potential, of course, is then translated into power later on. So growing up is about taking control of your own development.
Now the 3rd power up move is called “cleaning up.” So clean up. This is the most challenging move for most of us because it involves slogging up that 3rd mountain of deep emotional work. The cleanup move is to work on our past emotional baggage. Those patterns and emotional blocks that hamper our performance and limit our power now. Most often these emotional patterns and blockages are hidden from our view but can be obvious to others. That’s why I call them your “BOO” or Background of Obviousness. This cleanup work is essential to compliment the growth. Without cleaning up, the growth will be limited and often we’ll torpedo our own success.
The 4th move, going more deeply inward is to “open up.” Opening up is where you open up to innate wisdom of you intuitive self. You learn to trust your gut, to connect with your Kokoro heart, and to see these insights clearly as they arise. When you open up, you begin to make decisions from your higher self, and you’re in control of your body/mind system to an uncommon degree. This open up move naturally must come after the first 3, after waking up, growing up and cleaning up. Because stunted development can prevent this inward move and make it very difficult to open up to your intuitive and spiritual intelligence.
Now the final power up move is to “show up.” And showing up is where all that power is projected. Now the first 4 moves develop deep potential. When projected on a worthy target with front side focus, that potential will deliver an extraordinarily powerful blow. Showing up is seen as massive action fueled by your potential, and inspired by your purpose, and guided by your winning principles.
Showing up powerfully after waking up, growing up, cleaning up and opening up, will ensure that the game or battle or your mission is won every time. Hooyah!
Emit Excellence
[07:57]So I normally advocate striving for excellence in these podcasts. Excellence in all areas of our life. And this type of excellence is going to bring us greater health, peace of mind and happiness, and, obviously, evolve our character. So I spend a lot of time discussing habits around excellence, such as our recent discussion about the 3 Pillars of sleep/recovery, nutrition, and integrated training. These things are all under our control, meaning that we decide to do them, we learn techniques to do them, and we do them, and then we benefit from them. That approach works very well. It’s time tested and it’s a crucial means of mastering the self in service to our humanity. There is no “hack” for integrated training.
But often, people tell me that their challenge is time. Time seems to work against us. We race against the clock, are pulled in different directions at the same time, are required to multi-task and our attention is diffused until we literally can’t focus for longer than a few moments on the important things. Even if we had those few moments to do so.
So we’re left feeling distracted, afraid and grumpy, saying, “I want control over my life, over my time, over my schedule.” I’ve certainly been there and done that.
I propose we flip our relationship to time. From now on let’s take control and only use time as a linear concept when we choose. Consider your body/mind system to be an energetic field which will contract or expand depending upon the mind state. When thinking is negative or rutted, or you’re working on someone else’s timeline, then that body/mind system will contract into a state that perceives time in a linear fashion. With events lined up on the clock–tick tock, tick tock.
But when your mind is in a positive, relaxed euphoric or flow state, where your higher self is the boss, then it expands and will perceive time as spiraling out from an intentional focus.
In these states of mind, you can speed time up, slow it down, go backward or forwards at will. Though I present this concept metaphorically, my personal experience, in my highest and best moments, is that reality is close to this.
So let’s discuss a few strategies that will help us emit excellence and control time in this manner.
1st, control the start and stop. If your daylight hours are on a timer, why allow someone else to push the “start” button. What if you decided to plug into linear time only at a point of your choosing? This is where you sync up with other people’s perception of time. Until that point, that point when you push the start button, you emit excellence and experience time separate from the masses.
“But I don’t have control over my work hours,” you say. Well, many people still work 8 linear hours because their employers require it. But the question is, how much intentional productivity is delivered during those 8 linear hours? Probably not much because you’re so distracted by all the other bullshit going on. As an employer, I can say with certainty that I would much rather have an employee maintain serious focus and productivity for shorter blocks and then set specific hours for meetings and problem solving. I’d rather have them do that than dodging and weaving through tasks for 8 linear hours.
Personally, I start my linear time button at 10 AM during normal business days. And then I turn it off around 3. What I mean is, I adhere to linear time for a maximum of 5 hours a day, whereby I am available for meetings and phone calls, podcasts, check-ins with my team and some focus work.
What do I do the rest of the daylight cycle? Wel,l that’s reserved for thinking, planning, writing, training and engaging with my family. And during that time my perception of time is experienced as rhythmic, natural, not pressured. In other words, it’s not linear and stressful. And I run several businesses, I’m writing a book and I’m launching a foundation, yet, if you could see my calendar, you’d see that it is surprisingly uncluttered.
Next, control the center. Controlling the center means to maintain an ever-present awareness of where the center of your attention is focused. If my objective is to write a blog post, then my center of attention is on the blog, and I don’t waver until that blog is completed. No email, no phone, no distractions. And during that writing of the blog post, time is not relevant–no clock is allowed. If I’m engaged in a conversation, the center of awareness is focused on my higher self, so I don’t get pulled into a mental/emotional rut or egoic pattern.
When I’m training, the center of attention is on the virtuosity and intention of the training session.
So when you identify the center, radar lock your attention on to it and don’t waver. This will keep your mind in a focused, non-distracted state, with expanded perception. You will fastidiously avoid collapsing back into linear reality. So controlling the center requires that you control the breath, which will allow you to direct your attention like a laser beam. Because your mind will then be in control.
So your mission is to identify the center for the most important tasks that you engage in during the day. And before you press the start button on said tasks, perform a few box breathing repetitions and recite to yourself, “I’m connecting to my higher self. I will control my center, and I’ll offer this act in service to XX”–add your concept of a higher power here. I’m confident that this drill will deliver powerful results.
And finally, let’s control the out. Know when to say no, so you don’t get sucked into linear time sucking, misadventures. Always be on the lookout for the out when and if you do get sucked in. I’ve discussed essentialism, K.I.S.S. and Deep-work principles in past writing as well as podcasts, and each of these principles ties into this concept of controlling the out. It’s all about holding onto your creative energy by controlling what you opt into, and out of. In order to know what to opt into, you must opt out of 90% of what comes your way. That means you must say “No” in honor of the bigger “Yes” in your life. Keep things simple by eliminating commitments, conversations, meetings and even people that pull you back into linear time, suck your excellence energy.
Now I admit this is a challenge for most of us, myself included. That’s why I offer it as a practice, not an absolute. We must practice saying no in honor of the bigger yes every day. Knowing that we’re not going to be perfect, but will slowly learn our way to greater simplicity and control over our lives.
So your mission here is to make a list of all the tasks and projects, business deals and people that you’ve said “yes” to that now, in retrospect, you kinda wish you had steered clear of, because they suck your time, your money and your life force. Next, identify where you are replaying that same script, and make a list of the crucial conversations you need to have to declutter your battleground. Finally, make a short list of the critical “Yeses” and a much longer list of the “Nos” and post that list where you typically make decisions. Review it frequently. And during the day practice saying No in service to the bigger Yes.
All right folks, that’s it. Thanks very much for your time and attention. You’ve got a few missions to focus on. I know that you’re going to do great. Stay focused, train hard.
Hooyah!
See you next time. Coach Divine out.
