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In Mike Jay’s ground-breaking book
@F-L-O-W, published in 2012, after a decade of global
research, he outlined a simple strategy to begin to help
you decelerate your wants, shifting you back to needs that
lead to a deeper and more profound pursuit of happiness.
Mike’s gambit @F-L-O-W is simple.
With impending limits to growth
created by exponential scale in population, use of water,
energy, and food, looming with potentially severe
consequences, Mike looked beyond what most see are the
limits of our current system and devised a simple way for
people to become part of the solution, and less a part of
the problem.
While simple, it’s not easy.
No use trying to fool anyone, if it
were easy, we all would be doing it now, and frankly Mike
knows that he’s going to be pretty much alone in that
people change the only thing they can…and that is
themselves.
Our world has grown into a model
where the buck stops somewhere else, and personal
responsibility is abdicated to governments, banks, and
financiers. Yet, the axiom that only one person can change
the world holds true @F-L-O-W and that person…is YOU.
Mike suggests a simple set of ideas
to begin to decelerate consumption, which is driving the
majority of issues looming today; whether it’s money and
credit, food shortages, energy prices, clean water, roads,
bridges, infrastructure, or disease…all of these issues are
related directly or indirectly to consumption.
For many centuries, consumption was
an engine that helped create demand, and demand fulfilled a
necessary cog in the wheel for jobs. Jobs led to
income, increasing demand and therefore steadily increasing levels
of production and consumption.
With continued finds and development
of resources, the production possibility frontier—read
simply as the sky’s the limit—continued to expand and
grow, allowing more and more people to find dignified
work, gainful employment and better lives.
Yet population continued to grow
exponentially and the distance between the haves and the
have-nots begin to be driven by more complex consumption,
requiring more from us than we had to give.
As we approach the more complex
issues and challenges in an accelerating array of
multifaceted options, we are being called into the kinds
of thinking that most of us just are not capable of
matching.
In simpler words, we are in over our
heads, and becoming more so.
Robert Kegan’s book in the
mid-nineties suggested:
“The expectations upon us…demand
something more than mere behavior, the acquisition of
specific skills, or the mastery of particular knowledge.
They make demands on our minds, on how we know, on
the complexity of our consciousness” (Kegan, 1994, p.
5).
It’s not good or bad, lest thinking makes it so.
But what it is…
Is challenging us to solve problems
and actually…
Choose problems that are the problems
we can solve.
Enter @F-L-O-W
Mike’s ideas are multifaceted and
involve several simple, yet counter-intuitive concepts:
-
We
are not equal
-
Sameness is not fairness
-
We
are not broken, and
-
Increasing our choices is probably leading to
decreasing levels of happiness.
These TALKING POINTS @F-L-O-W were
created by Mike as a challenge to our current BLANK SLATE
paradigm, as a contrast to:
-
Let’s not keep pretending we are equal
-
However, we
-
However, we deserve the same treatments
-
Each of us is perfect in diverse ways, and
-
Learning to use needs instead of wants to drive
choices leads to increasing levels of happiness.
These and other key talking points
are offered as a gift to you by our team when you join our
Movement @F-L-O-W, and register for a special program Mike
is offering to participants.
LIFE @F-L-O-W
In this four session program, Mike
will walk you through the specific steps you can take to
create these benefits for you and your family, work, and
relationships:
- Identify those things you are doing now that seem to be
things you need to change?
- Instead of changing them, learn why they are developing as
issues.
- Understand a different meaning of what it means to live
life on purpose.
- Discover very specific ways in which you can become more
competent @F-L-O-W.
- Begin to automatically decelerate the need for more:
- Money
- Information
- Time
- Energy
- Attention
- Motivation
Here’s the bottom line.
LESS IS MORE!
In order to begin to give yourself
more, not less choice, but need fewer choices, less
becomes more.
Now, the first thing you will think
is that this is about an austerity program, seemingly so much
on the minds of all of us after our spending binges and
use of money and credit for the past 60 years. It’s
not about that at all.
These are only symptoms of a deeper,
more profound need for happiness brought about by the
world that we have lived in, and our ego-needs to thrive,
flourish, and belong.
It’s not bad, it just is…
AND, the consequences are looming in
front of us individually and collectively.
Life for many has NEVER been better.
Even poor people today are making
their first cell phone calls, enjoying the benefits of
connectivity and receiving in many cases life-saving
therapies and medicines.
I’m not suggesting we throw the baby
out with the bathwater or abandon modern day society and
progressivity per se.
What I am saying is this:
The pressure that is being applied in
modern day living to maintain your edge is increasing
dramatically, and the compression of time because of the
pace of change is creating an illusion that we are not
prepared to manage.
Fewer and fewer people will be able
to manage the postmodern landscape, leaving—each day—more
and more people behind to pick up the pieces. This is a
fact in the developed world that each and every citizen is
facing.
You see, we are not good at, nor
equipped to deal with postmodern exponential scale, growth,
or complexity. We’ve stretched our systems and
capabilities beyond our limits and yet…progress continues
in all its glory, sorting out quickly those with the
capability to manage these steeper and steeper transitions
in life’s challenges.
While on the surface, we appear as
ducks on a pond, such that things are coming at us
faster and faster and we’re paddling like hell underneath
it all to even assimilate the simplest changes in volume
of Money, Information, Time, Energy, Attention, and
Motivation—all of which are strained in all of us in the
postmodern climate of accelerating complexity.
For most of you, this will sound like
a familiar, but distant message.
You know it’s happening, but the
effects are not here yet…
But they are coming, and they are
coming faster and faster and like Alice talking to the Red
Queen, you’re running faster and faster, yet not able to
get ahead, or in most cases, even keep up.
Have you tried to keep up with the
interesting books being published lately, the research
available in your field, or even the articles published
this past week in your industry journals?
We’re just touching the surface and
as complexity accelerates exponentially, choices scale
non-linearly, life is becoming our best guess, at best,
and more and more tragic at the worst.
LIFE @F-L-O-W
After subjecting my own system to
global demands for a decade, along with clients from
around the world, I realize that finding a faster bike to
pedal became a gambit I couldn’t sustain, and neither can
you.
No amount of increased speed can help
us now.
No “getting-things-done program”, no
efficiency system, faster laptops, more training in speed
reading…all of those things are lost in exponential
worlds, we have limits and clearly we’re being asked to
exceed them daily, all of which is contributing to more,
not less, and fleeting moments of flow, not alone
happiness.
All for success, and the hits just
keep happening, right?
Living @F-L-O-W was vetted for more
than a decade around the world in diverse cultures and the
answers always came up the same:
- Know your self and what you really need.
- Understand your limits, live out of your talents
- Decelerate want-based consumption.
- Collaborate with others to solve more complex
problems.
Simple Right?
Easy?
Not in our present culture of more.
While it’s time to close this note
and encourage you to register for Mike’s upcoming program
LIVING @F-L-O-W, know that you are not alone.
What’s occurred has not been out of
mal-intent or some Machiavellian scheme. It was the use of
what we thought worked best for the times.
NOW, is not the time to point
fingers, to assign blame and to create discord; and dare I
say, now is a time to love yourself and others, but as is
said in a notable quote from Mohammed:
"Tie your camel first, then pray to
god."
The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step and the world can be changed by
only one person and you are staring at her/him in the mirror.
 If
you do NOTHING else in 2013, experience the simple notions
of deepening your understanding of what you really need in
your life to be on purpose…change will emerge from that.
For a guided process in
self-illumination, join Mike Jay for Living @F-L-O-W, and
become part of the solution, rather than part of the
problem.
The course tuition is $197, which gives
you access to the bonus materials, the live calls as well
as the recordings.
Class begins September 9 at 8:30 PM ET
and continues each Monday through October 7. The
classes will be recorded if you are unable to make some of
the calls.
Guarantee: If before the start of the 2nd
class session you feel that you do not want to know more about Living at FLOW,
email happeneur@gmail.com and request a
refund.
BONUS: You will be given
access to a battery of assessments to help you understand
"you" better, which will make it easier for you to move
forward in our ever changing world. On our class site
are additional materials to help you on your journey to your
life @F-L-O-W.
Team @F-L-O-W
PS: In order to join our MOVEMENT
@F-L-O-W and get immediate access to Mike’s Talking
Points, Teachable Points of View, and the Faststart
@F-L-O-W, purchase the Book @F-L-O-W.
NOTE:
Be sure you have signed up for our 4 OPEN calls to introduce you to Living
at FLOW. Head over to
http://LivingAtFLOW.com/open-calls to register. The calls
are August 26, 27, 29, and September 5. They will be recorded, incase
you miss any.
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