The Master and You

I love gratitude stories. You know the type: a disguised master meets a beginner. With his sharp intuition, the master sees something in the beginner that he didn’t see: a certain talent, a quality or a precious personality trait. And, without revealing his true identity, the master gives the beginners a chance. He points him to a specific direction or just push him to do some work. Make him use his precious, yet hidden talent. In years, the beginners become a new master.

And somewhere near the top of his career, the beginner, now a master, remembers that story and tells it to world: “If it wasn’t for that master, I wouldn’t be here now. He saw something in me that I didn’t. He made me chose my path. Thanks to him, I am now a master, ready to teach others.”

I’m telling you, I’m in love with these stories. That specific moment in which the master sees “through” the other person is the key. That moment is the ignition of a new existence. That subtle moment in which the reality veils are transparent changes an entire life. What’s interesting is that most of the time us, the beginners, don’t even realize that. We just follow somebody’s advice and, magically, everything starts to “click” around us. We’re suddenly on the right path. And we don’t know we actually met a master until 20 years have passed.

Seeing the Invisible

Now, how exactly a master sees “through” a person? Is this specific ability something you learn? Or something you just naturally get when you’re born? Is this a gift? A special talent? I always was curious about that.

Browsing through those gratitude stories, an idea popped out. What if?…

What if the master doesn’t see the invisible? What if the master is not aware of any hidden talent in the beginner? And he’s just planting a seed? Now, that’s something to think about, right?

What if instead of seeing something which is already there, he is just imagining something that could be? Maybe the master is just “seeing” the beginner in 20 years as a master, nothing more. He trust the beginner to become a master. Maybe there’s nothing really special about that beginner and all that’s happening is just a simple, human hope that the master set up for the person in front of him. “Just do that, and everything will be fine with you”, tells the master, and the beginner, relieved and sure that now everything will be fine, start doing what he does best.

The more I read those gratitude stories about masters and beginners, the more I’m inclined to think that masters are just setting up high expectations. They see something, but what they really see is something which is not there. Yet. It’s just a hope, a potential. In the end, it’s the beginner’s hard work which makes that hope real, not that hidden quality.

Meet Your Master

If there’s nothing magic about those masters, if they’re human just like us and they don’t need anything supernatural to “see”, it means we can play a little game. If all you need to be a master is to set a high hope, why don’t just do it yourself? Like right now.

Let’s start a game in which the players are you and the future you.

Pretend you’re the master. Play this role. Look at yourself and “see” something you want to become. The person you’ll be in 20 years from now. How is that person? Happy? Balanced? Successful? You’re the master, you can “see” that person anyway you want. You’ll make a difference around you? You’re going to create something fantastic? See it. Remember, you are the master, you can see it.

And once you focused on that image, just tell to yourself that everything will be fine. “Just do your best and everything will click around”. And keep thinking to yourself: “I’m the master and I know that for sure”.

All you have to do now is to follow the master’s advice. Start doing your best, relieved and sure that everything will be fine.

As innocent as it may seem, this game is really, really powerful. Because it makes you understand the only real difference between you and a life master: the life master knows that everything is possible. That’s the only difference between a beginner and a mentor: the mentor knows through his own experience that there aren’t any limits to what can be accomplished. Maybe he tells you to insist on a certain quality you have, but it’s not that quality which makes you stand out and be successful. It’s your own work and determination and trust.

Nothing is really impossible. Just think about it…

Give Yourself A Chance

What if you are the master who sees something in yourself nobody else’s sees? What if you plant a seed so valuable yet so hidden in you that, within years of constant effort and work, will make you the master of your own life? Why don’t you give yourself a chance?

20 years from now, near the top of your career, you’re going to tell one of those gratitude stories I love so much: you’re going to thank to yourself.

The Gratitude Experiment – Conclusions

After almost a month since I started it, it’s time for me to write the conclusions for my gratitude experiment. Some of you may already have read a follow up on this but now it’s time to write the full conclusions. For those of you who came here directly I will shortly outline the core of the experiment, if you want to know more feel free to read the first and the second post.

Too keep a long story short: this gratitude experiment consisted in daily writing in a journal the things for which I am grateful. Being quite a geek in some areas, I chose to do this using some advanced technology like an iPhone and a specific application designed apparently exactly for that, a gratitude journal. Of course, if you ever want to start something similar you can do it with pen and paper, this is not even remotely about technology. It’s about you.

Gratitude Is Acknowledgement

It’s pretty difficult to define gratitude because of a strong cultural connotation caused by religion and / or spirituality. Gratitude has a lot to do with those areas, but it’s not entirely tied up to them. I think gratitude is only overlapping with those areas, is not contended by them. Every time you want to talk about gratitude you feel a little discomfort because it tends to take you out of the normal, day to day routine and put you into some serious and rigid realms like religion or spirituality.

We’re conditioned to perceive religion and spirituality as serious, almost limiting domains, some places where you should behave with humility, strive harder and generally lose all the fun in the life. Redemption, guilt or excessive frugality are common ground for all major religions and so we tend to act a little bit cautious toward it, unless of course, we do have a daily religious routine and we’re placing it very high in our value scale.

But gratitude is not only religion. In fact, gratitude is so flexible and versatile that sometimes appears to me to be quite the opposite from the fixed paths of religion. Gratitude is your way to tell the Universe it has been good to you. It’s an acknowledgment, it’s a confirmation you send back. It doesn’t have to be in a fixed form, nor to be contained in any ritual or structured philosophy. All it takes is to be honest. (more…)

The Gratitude Experiment – Follow Up

A few weeks ago I started a gratitude experiment. I wanted to understand more about how gratitude really works for me. I read a lot about the force of this attitude of gratitude, and also noticed how it was praised in “The Secret” and other motivational works. So, I wanted to put it to test for myself. If you came here directly I suggest to read first the original post about gratitude, in order to grasp more details. If you don’t want to go there, feel free to read on.

The experiment has 2 areas: one personal and one public. The public area involved a Twitter hashtag, “”#gratitude“ and a daily tweet about things I am grateful for, including that hashtag, of course. Also, there were some invitations to my twitter followers to join this experiment. A few days after starting the experiment I put together a page on my blog listing the last 20 tweets with the hashtag gratitude.

I plan to write more about the public area after the end of the experiment, which will come somewhere around February 10th, because I really want to involve more people and learn from their experience. So, if you want to join this and then share your experience with it, feel free to tweet once a day (or even more if you feel the need) and include a hashtag #gratitude in your tweet.

For now, I want to share something about the personal area. The personal part of this experiment is in fact just a little exercise of noting down each day at least 5 things for which I am grateful, in an open and honest way. And see what happens to me during this interval.

Initial Excitement

In the first 5-6 days, everything was smooth. I noted each evening the things I was grateful for and gave each day a rating from one to five stars. Sort of an ”excellence“ mark. I sometimes noted those things even before the clock alarm I set on my iPhone for this experiment. It felt nice.

But after the 6th or 7th days, it become a little difficult. I got caught in the daily routine and if I didn’t have that clock alarm I would surely miss some of my gratitude sessions. For the next 5-6 days I did the exercise really quick and only when the clock alarm reminded me.

And after this period, meaning in the last 3-4 days, it become even harder. I had to postpone noting those gratitude things several dozen minutes after the alarm clock, sometimes close to midnight. Right now, after I decided to write this blog post, the gratitude attitude finally resurfaced and I feel really good.

But what happened? Why it was so difficult? My guess is that is something to deal with the punishment / reward mechanism. We humans, have a strong tendency to follow this mechanism. In the beginning there was a good deal of direct reward from this activity. Knowing that I’m doing something interesting and new made me happy about. That was my little reward. Each evening when I noted the results I felt good. For 4-5 evenings in a row. But then the reward circuit was closed.

You know, the reward mechanism is an incremental one. It needs more and more. If you set up a reward for something you want to do, you’d better be prepared to raise the bet every now and then, otherwise your actions will stop sooner or later. This is how punishment and rewards works, they need more and more of each other in order to sustain the activity. So, after the initial excitement, and in absence of a direct reward, I had to rely on self-discipline in order to express my daily gratitude. (more…)

The Gratitude Experiment

The experiment is out and running, check out the new page listing the last 20 tweets tagged #gratitude on twitter.

It’s funny how a certain path we chose leads us to realms we never knew to exist. Or puts us on roads far more adventurous or enriching than we thought. In today’s post I’ll share one of those twisted yet so rewarding situations in which a certain path lead me to another, much deeper one.

The iPhone Situation

I can say in all truth that I’m using an iPhone even since before it was launched. One of the most read posts on my blog is about iPhone and GTD – total black belt productivity, a post featured on the official forums of David Allen company. That post was written weeks before the launch of the iPhone. What can I say: it’s a useful device which combines my needs for communication in one little tool.

But I use my iPhone for much more than communication. In a post about Law Of Attraction and Action I gently let you know that I exercised with the Law Of Attraction by using my iPhone. It was a very simple exercise: I set up reminders in the calendars with my goals and took time to read them and interiorize them. I kept this habit for several months and of course, it worked. I also used my iPhone for getting in touch with my Personal Mission Statement, another interesting exercise which I am still using. (more…)