Don’t invest in desperation? Is this episode 61? Yes it is. And this is something I wish my Dad taught me. It would have saved me allot of unnecessary hardship.

In the language of the consciousness kind, desperation is got to. Got to is fight flight. Sometimes with got to get toward something and sometimes we’ve got to get away from something. When we hear the word got to we are hearing the word desperation.

in my life I have been desperately in love, which meant I got to be with somebody, and it also meant I ended up in resentment, got to get away from somebody. In my business life I have had deals that I have got to take and I have had business partnerships that I got to get away from. Whenever we place ourselves in a got to situation, we have become desperate, and we are a danger to ourselves and other.

the vast majority of the population put themselves in a got to situation deliberately. For example when we take a mortgage on a property that requires us to earn a certain amount of money per year to finance then we have created for ourselves a got to go to work situation. In this situation no matter what the company does to help you build a team environment or do your job with inspiration or motivation, the foundation fact is that you’ve got to work or you’re going to lose your house. That desperation permeates everything you do and makes your nervous system activated.

right now, in the world of working from home, every single second of the day is accounted for. We’ve got to go to meetings where we’ve got to proof that we are working, then we’ve got to get the laundry done, we’ve got to ring somebody, we’ve got to pay the bills, we’ve got to bring the kids home from school, we’ve got to get the dinner made, we’ve got to spend time with a partner and we’ve got to, got to got to, got to, got to, got to, got to. And that is breaking down the human immune system because got to, is a subliminal stress, a stress we don’t know we have but is eroding our DNA.

I wear an aura ring. This ring measures my well-being. One of the metrics for that Ring is HRV. It measures the heart’s response to stress. When I went through my first bout of Covid, and subsequent jabs to build my immune system to Covid, my HRV plummeted. Currently it is 50% of what it was prior to my first Covid jab. There are a lot of other variables that could be in the causation of this diminishing quality of my HRV but what this ring shows clearly is that my body and mind are under some form of challenge that I am not aware of. And that is a really important thing for you to hear. We are not always aware of the most dangerous form of stress that can impact our behaviour and our performance in life. Our body and mind can be in a state of desperation even when we are relaxing sitting by the fire side and enjoying the evening.

a balanced person is balanced in all seven areas of life. My history in relationships demonstrates that I did not worry about this too much in choosing my ex partners. I can go through the list of people that I have either married or spent significant periods of my life cohabiting with, and show that all of them had one or two areas of their life that were totally messed up, in a got to state, and I was the solution for them. On my side I thought I could repair a got to situation in a partner’s life and therefore help them become a balanced person. There are two mistakes I made in this. The first one is that if I achieve what I set out to do, which was to eliminate the got to, then, I was no longer attractive to that person in the way that I originally was, because I solve the problem and I was no longer needed as the solution. The second part is that you are never a prophet in your own home. And that means when I became the coach to a partner I sacrificed the relationship in the process.

eventually, and with my current relationship, I chose a person who was already balanced in all seven areas of life, and therefore a person who didn’t need me as a solution, and secondly a person who had no area of their life that was in a got to state. The difference in the dynamic of our home is unbelievable. Remembering that the purpose of a relationship is not happiness, it is to support and challenge each other in the name of love. And so, the form of support and challenge in the past was dealing with the areas of got to in my partners life, but is now dealing with need and want and love. It’s extremely different. So if ever you are thinking that you are a slow learner as you listen to these daily blogs, remember that I have been getting married for the past 45 years, all six times with people who had a minimum of two areas of their life in a state of got to, before I woke up and smell the roses and listened to my own rhetoric about choosing the perfect partner. That should make you feel much better about any part of the Innerwealth learning you are not applying in your own life.

I remember clearly, returning to university for two years full-time study, at the age of 36. I had at this point built three businesses, made millions, and beautiful home overlooking Sydney harbour and Fairy Bower beach in manly, travelled the world lived in the US in Germany and negotiated many a large contract with some of the worlds largest companies. That is not saying how clever I was it is saying that I had a lot of real life experience. My fellow students at the MBA were not so experienced and some had come from one or two years of working to continue their studies. When it came to exam time, there was a panic attack that emersed some people in such desperation that they needed to be medicated. People aged, became awful, some got depressed. They went into a state of desperation over the exams that were forthcoming. I, on the other hand, did not place so much importance on the exams. They were a speedbump rather than a ski jump. And so I witnessed firsthand how desperation when it comes to anything in life can take some of the smartest people on the planet and turn them into bubbling babbling messes.

so that was an example of a conspicuous human stress. When we place a desperation on getting it perfect then we underperform. I also had the opportunity through one of my relationships of being very close to elite athletes. I watched a person who in training excelled at every level. But when that person went to an event, the fear of losing, combined with the appetite to validate themselves as an athlete made them drop into a got to state of mind at least three days before the event. When this happens the energy added deep level is absorbed by the nervous system. We did so much work to learn how to come off this desperate space prior to events. And because we could work on this together it had a great effect. But on race day I could not be mentoring her for the hour prior to the start nor at the start. Event after event she failed. The ironic part is that she failed in the swim link in which she was probably one of the fastest triathletes in the world. What would happen for her is about 50% of the way through the swim she would become exhausted. It shows that at the start of the event her adrenals were pumping, a state and athlete must conserve until the last 20 minutes if not less of an event otherwise they blow up. Adrenals pump when we are in a got to state of mind. Whether you are running for the bus or busting for a cup of coffee, when you hear yourself say I’ve got to, your adrenals are beginning to fire. We have around two hours a day of adrenal function at moderate levels, but far less went highly triggered. So you can see that a lot of people at work are triggering their adrenals just like the students at the MBA, unnecessarily. To combat this we use the B,C,C acronym. Balanced, centred and calm.

desperation, or what is called got to in the Innerwealth consciousness cone, fight flight in psychology, and adrenaline in sport, can be combatted with the use of BCC.

a balanced mind, the B, NBCC, cannot be in a state of fight flight, desperation and so with leadership and relationship, it is really important to see the two sides of every coin. The metaphors are abundant in this such as, there’s a silver lining in every cloud, green fields are not always greener, there’s two sides to everything, and so on. A balanced mind cannot be tricked into reaction and desperation. So if you are sitting in some situation at work or about to start a race or choose a partner or whatever make sure that you see the two sides of that situation or to sides of that person before you leap. That’s good leadership. That’s good living. That is not desperation.

the second part, the first see is centred. The body and the mind is separated for the purpose of engineering solutions to problems. We say let me think about it, or we go to the doctor to fix an infection in the body. It’s essential that we do separate these things and then we separate them again and again and again in order to focus remedy on the particular causation. But the reality is the body and mind are inseparable. This means that your body posture while thinking determines a huge amount of the quality of the thoughts that you are having. Hunched shoulders stepped forward over a computer or a mobile phone, must in the structure of the mind body connection cause depressive thoughts. In contrast, a person who has a puffed up chest, leaning back to far over their spine, will have elated excited thoughts. Both of these situations lead to a got to mindset and in turn, desperation in thought, word and action. No I did mention that since my Covid my HRV balance has reduced. But also around the same time my back started playing up. Not my surgery area in the lower spine which has four vertebrae fused, but my upper back. This could be the result of spending more and more time on the bike turbo and not doing adequate stretching. When I went to the physio he instructed me quite strongly to do more and more floor exercises over a tennis ball to open up my thoracic spine. So there may be a correlation between the diminishing HRVY, and my body posture. These things are not an exact science but they are important in our lives because a body that is not centred is going to cause imbalance in both thinking and acting. Given that I have carried heavy backpacks up into the Himalayas nearly 60 times and been an elite athlete in rowing and kayaking, all of which cause front body strength and spine pressure, it can be understandable that I will need some more physio to make sure that my spine stays vertical, centred.

the third variable in remaining away from the concept of got to in life, is your nervous system. Stimulants of all nature can trigger your nervous system even in the most calm and placid environments. Worry and anxiety are two of the more pernicious culprits. Worry and anxiety activate the nervous system even when a person has very little to worry about. One of the great examples of this is in the times that I spent in meditation retreats and health resorts, both teaching and learning. In the most peaceful gorgeous surroundings, sharing a space with the most beautiful practitioners with good hearted intent, being treated like an absolute Movistar, my nervous systems were always, for the first years, highly activated. Any tiny noise would shock me. I found it hard to sit still. Even while I was being massaged or given a foot bath, I would be thinking, thinking thinking thinking, ruminating about something. Probably in the early years, and I’m going back along way here, talking to. Talking is one way we take that nervous energy and we put it outside our body. But it’s like a mouse in one of those wheels, the more you talk the more nervous you become, the more nervous you become the more you talk, the more you talk the more nervous you become, the more you become nervous the more you talk etc etc. My guess is that for most people 90% of talking is an attempt to release the nervous tension within them and dump it on somebody else as quickly as possible. Calm nerves is one of the most priceless assets we can have. But calm nerves do not come through doing nothing. Doing what we love and loving what we do and doing it at a healthy intensity so that the mind must focus on what we are doing is the solution to the building up of a strength in the nervous system that can cope with anything.

when I first started professional speaking I had an audience of 20 people. I shit my pants for the entire presentation and I think the audience knew it. After 100 presentations to such small audiences I know longer trembled and my nervous system could cope with the pressure. It was still very intense but my nervous system was able to cope. I evolve. As soon as I got used to dealing with 20 people my audience jumped to 50 and again I shit my pants the entire presentation. After 50 also presentations to this size audience my nervous system adapted and I was able to handle it without any nervous tension or worry at all. And then the audience jumped to 100 people and I shit my pants again for the entire presentation. It is too boring to just keep jumping forward in this way in this conversation with you here but I eventually spoke to 10,000 people and shit my pants the same as I did for the first 20 people. That was a shock to me because I thought that once I got over speaking to an audience and my nervous system would have adapted to it then any audience would be a breeze. But that’s not how nature works. If you become good at handling 20 kg of pressure then you are absolutely a baby when it comes to handling 40 kg of pressure. The more pressure you can handle with a calm nervous system the more people you can lead in a business, or a community, or a family. But many people, like me at first think that, once they can handle a situation they can handle all situations without losing their calm. This is a big mistake for people because then they start blaming the audience. They start blaming the children, they start blaming their spouse, they start blaming their team, they start blaming their bos, for their loss of calm. But it’s only because they are not evolving and they thought that once they could handle the first bit of pressure every bit of pressure would simply be a re-enactment of the first chapter.

balanced centred and calm. These three words are wise to have echoing in your mind all day every day. Balanced mind, centre body, calm nerves. Anything you are doing to stimulate your nervous system such as using alcohol or coffee you have to be very careful because without those stimulants your nervous system is very weak. Plus, the impact of stimulants is known to be adaptive to the human body so what was once sending you over the moon with coffee in the morning, requires 2 cups eventually to send you over the same moon and eventually, 10 cups of coffee a day are required to achieve the same stimulation. Same with alcohol. I know for sure that when I go on a no alcohol year, if I have a drink at the end of that, even just one glass of wine, I have to go and lie down because I’m completely off the planet. We can use this concept of adaptation to recognise the benefit of consistency of increase in pressure in our lives, cut ourselves a little bit of rope for having a degree of anxiety and stress that shows us that we are growing, not run away from the things that make us feel incompetent but give ourselves the time to adapt. Adaptation, when it comes to pressures of dealing with children who won’t do what you want them to do, is about you growing rather than coating the world with leather so you don’t have to wear sandals.

don’t invest in desperation. When you hear somebody ask for help and they are in a got to space is that is desperation and it is really something to be very very careful about because this person is operating in a very dark place and needs professional support. If a person is coming to work and their relationship is in a got to space then no matter what you do at work they are going to underperform and be a total nightmare to work with. So although you might experience some ridiculous behaviour in the workplace, don’t take it personally, because this person that is operating in a bad space at work might be, operating in a got to space in their home life or their finances or their health and it is just migrating into their business language. It is such a mistake to try to fix one aspect of a persons life. If somebody tells you how desperate they are about their job and you try to help them get a job, that is like putting Band-Aids on a broken leg. The person the whole person needs to be healed not just the thing that might be the low hanging fruit of their problems. Don’t rescue, don’t invest, in desperation.

That’s the end of Episode 61.

With Spirit

Chris