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The Biggest Idea

exclusive insights Jul 24, 2020

I’ve been thinking long and hard about the mission of what I do. Up until I was 38 or so, everything in my life was all about me. Like… in a “wrinkle up your nose” kind of way. I don’t look back on that with pride, for the record.

When I did the work to discover The Six Habits, I was still focusing on me. I was all about finding a way out of feeling terrible inside. I did (obviously), and what I found after was so life-changing… but not in the ways I expected.

Sure, I expected to be happier. I was. I expected to feel good inside. I did. I wasn’t sure I expected to be more courageous, but I was, and not terribly surprised by it. Hell, I even managed to lose weight and keep it off for the first time in my life. A bit surprising, I admit. But. What shocked me the most was how all of the ego fell away… and I didn’t even realize it was happening.

Retirement

I retired in December 2018, the day before my 38th birthday. I was working maybe 5 hours a week all through 2018, so perhaps I retired much earlier. August was the breaking point. I went to take a few weeks off before Labor Day, and about 3 days in, I was a miserable lump.

You’d think I’d be really excited about the pending retirement, and on the surface, I was. I was proud, outwardly excited, and all of it. But I was only projecting what I felt I *should* have been feeling, not what I was feeling.

In fact, I was feeling flat. Very “ho-hum” about the whole thing. Empty, too. About a week or so in, I decided to dive into happiness and success, and find out what they *really* are… not what I’d been led to believe. I discovered The Six Habits, and how to finally and fully master them, started to develop out the 90 Day program that would radically change my life.  I did the work, I changed my life and felt alive for the first time since I was a kid.

But the big change didn’t even show up on my radar until almost 6 months ago… 18 months into my journey of mastery, love, transformation, and all of it. 

The Big Change

I think the beginning of my note to you gave it away… but here it is. My ego had died and I was so wrapped up in the joy of giving love, freedom, and success to others that I didn’t even notice. 

I only noticed *after* I was invited to give a TED talk, and *after* I was interviewed on a few dozen podcasts. I noticed that my thoughts were all coming together about what I’d *always* believed… and it was all clicking into place.

Now bear with me… I hope this is where it starts to get juicy for you. If it does, you are 100% my kind of person and we need to hang.  On we go…

I’ve always argued with people when they assert that *greed* or *money* are the roots of all evil. I’ve never bought it. Still don’t. I believe (more than ever) that the root of all evil is insecurity. What is insecurity though? Is it the thing I thought it was when I was a teenager, and all about lack of confidence in my appearance?

No.  

Insecurity is the lack of security. Security is confidence in our safety. Safety to feel whole, like our needs will be met like we are not at risk of harm, lack, or anything.  Security is the knowledge that we are safe, intact, and its all going to be ok.

The more I did work on The Six Habits material, the more podcast interviews I did, and the more I prepped for my TED talk (which has been rescheduled due to Covid), the more I realized that the ego death was always coming. I needed to work on me so I could get *past* me and my pain.  I needed to see the bigger picture.  I needed to see our pain… all of it. 

Insecurity

The pain the world is in right now is tremendous. I can’t and won’t even attempt to unpack all of it right now. But let’s just hit a few (generalized) highlights though, so I can make my argument. Women and children are being trafficked, abused, and brutalized not just in the seedy underworld that most of us will never see… but at home. Different races, religions, and sexual orientations are being marginalized, bullied, and mistreated. We are being stolen from, lied to, and misled every day by governments, criminal organizations, corporations and you name it.  The media isn’t safe for our well-being or even based in fact half the time.

…dramatic pause…

Why?

…another dramatic pause…

Because of one simple thing you already know. Hurt people hurt people.  The people doing the trafficking, abuse, brutalization, marginalization, bullying, mistreatment, stealing, lying, and misleading all have one very tragic, very awful thing in common.  These people are insecure.

Hang on. Before you think I’m a crackpot, just bear with me a little bit longer.

Have you ever seen a secure (not cocky), happy, complete person, with love in their heart for themselves and others, do these things?

…oh hell, why not… another dramatic pause…

No, you haven’t.  Happy, complete people aren’t capable of these things. These crimes against humanity aren’t even on their radar.

The heinous actions are the actions of the broken, the disconnected, the victimized, the insecure. AND. We pass on what we know, so the cycle continues without intervention.

Generations of Pain and Love

Let’s go deeper, shall we? Here’s a real example that is unfolding right now and is happening all around us.

  1. “The Lost Generation” – 1901 - Young man is abused by his father, rejected and neglected. Never shown love. Taught to not talk about his feelings. Grows up angry, repressed, and uneducated about how to love himself or anyone else. He is hurt and passes on what he knows. Always getting in trouble with the law, abusive to his wife, has no issue with being involved in criminal activity, shows no empathy for others (as none was shown to him!)
  2. “The Greatest Generation” – 1923 – Young man born. Receives legacy of pain, as it’s all the father knows. Much like his father, always in trouble. Does well in life in an effort to please his father, but it never earns the approval he desires. He simply becomes more bitter and takes it out on the next generation. Uses his money as a replacement for love.
  3. “The Baby Boomer” – 1954 - Young man born. Receives legacy of pain, as it’s all the father knows. Always in trouble, aggressive, mean, and bitter. Develops an alcohol problem and abusive to his spouse and children.  Grows to resent money as it never provided the warmth he wanted as a child, he blames the money on his father’s behavior. Always broke.
  4. “The Generation Y” – 1984 - Young man born. Receives legacy of pain, as it’s all the father knows. Always broke, angry, abusive. Moved around a lot due to his own father being broke all the time. Develops drug and alcohol problems, routinely in trouble with the law. Abusive tendencies, but yearns for love anyway.
  5. “The Alpha Generation” – 2020 – THE CHANGE. Generation #4 becomes aware of his generational pain and begins to unravel the tangled web of lies about what little boys are “supposed” to be.  Acknowledges the pain of his father, his father’s father, and those before him. Understands its not about him, works through the pain, learns to love himself, others, and forgive.  He works to feel secure and whole.  He gives himself the love and nurturing his own father could not… and… welcomes his son into life with love, affection, and a determination to let the generations of pain end with himself.  This is the Alpha Generation, and the generation of healing, love, and a new legacy.
  6. Next Generation – 2050 – Young man born to The Alpha Generation. Young man is loved by his father, accepted, and nurtured.  He is always shown, love.  He is taught to love himself, talk about his feelings.  Grows up happy, fully-expressed, joyful, and educated about how to love himself.  He is happy and passes on what he knows.

This is how generations of pain and love play out.  Day to day, July 21st to July 22nd, we don’t think about these things. We don’t see the massively big picture. We see the news giving us reports about the latest info from Dr. Fauci, some Karen being a loser about mask-wearing, crime in the streets, the damn Kardashians (I am not keeping up, sorry) and the world collectively going to shit.

We’re too busy getting lost in the right now to think about the WHAT NOW and WHY NOW

This is your “what now and why now” wake up call.  What now? Healing. Why now?  Why should you care right now about 2074? Because though that is 54 years into the future, all those young faces around us will be here to see it. If I make it that long, I’ll be 94. We’ll see…

But them? They’ll be here, older, hopefully, wiser, and with a world that we all co-created to build and leave them.

Did we leave them a better world? Did we show them the way? Did we leave it up to them to figure out, or did we give them a head start by doing a lot of the work ourselves?

Generations love to yell at each other about the problems all around us and how it’s the generation’s fault before us. I don’t care about that. You shouldn’t either. What matters is you and me. Right now.Today. What choices we make. Today. Together. 

A Global Mission

My journey that started out soooo selfishly has become a global mission. Gandhi invited us to “be the change you wish to see in the world.”  It took me nearly 40 years to finally understand what that means for me, and how I can help me, help you, and help us all to have a better world.

I want to see fathers love their sons without reservation. I want to see mothers build up their daughters without hesitation. I want to see employers be generous and caring to their employees. I want to see governments actually help the people they’re meant to serve. I want to see corporations do good in the world and operate from integrity. I want to see the media educate, delight, and inspire. I want to see people buy because they’re excited about something, not because they’re trying to fill a hole. I want to see people choose not to buy things because they feel fulfilled enough. I want people to finally realize they are enough… period! 

Whether we did or did not receive the love we are fully worthy of and deserve from the world is irrelevant. We are all given the choice to sit in our own poopie diaper and moan about it or to get up, wash ourselves off, and move on.

I choose to move on.  I also choose to see things for what they are, several thousand steps back.  I am not interested in the “modern medicine” approach where I treat the symptoms.  I am only interested in the genesis issue: individuals in pain.  When you address the root cause, you address the pain correctly the first time.

Quote me on this: "When you nurture, heal, and grow the individual, you nurture, heal, and grow the world." 

My mission is clear. I want you to be part of it. This is now OUR mission. Here it is:

We will change the world, one individual at a time. We will reach 1 Billion people with the message of love, healing, and change so that by the time 10 Billion people live on this planet, we as a species will be healed, whole, and free from the crimes against humanity that plague us. The 1 Billion will change the 10 Billion.

There are a few key elements of the mission: 

  1. Exiting Generation: the people who are part of the older generations that cannot or will not adopt healthier points of view will age and pass away, taking their pain with them.  They passed on their legacy of pain, and it is up to us to decline to pass it further.
  2. Existing Generation: we must let the pain die with the elders and commit to inviting the healing into our own lives. This is our work, our time, and our invitation to face ourselves, embrace the truth, and work on us. This is our legacy to pass on.
  3. Entering Generation: the people who we love who will come to inherit our world from us, need to be shown the way. We need to lead by example, and teach the ways of self-love and joy to them, so that they may pass it on.

This is a very tidy summary, and by no means perfect. I’m still working out the details of how it will unfold, but as I believe to be true in all things – perfection isn’t necessary to be effective. I don’t need to be perfect to change the world. Neither do you, my friend. If you understand the spirit of what I’m creating here, we’re in this together.

Our world is filled with so much more evil than I described. The planet is suffering, greedy corporations are loading our food, our land, our oceans, and our homes with toxins that are causing our bodies to literally get sick, fail to thrive and reproduce successfully. The animals and plants are suffering because of our choices. Some humans have .01% of the wealth while millions upon millions starve. Cures for diseases are withheld for financial reasons. Humanity is crying out for help. Just because we’re used to it and it’s “normal” doesn’t mean it’s “right” or actually helpful.

Wouldn’t you like to live in a world where you can trust that the products you buy won’t hurt you? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where birth defects are a thing of the past? Wouldn’t it be amazing to see the oceans thriving, people healthy, nice to each other, and actually happy???

I know it sounds farfetched. 

That’s how broken we are. The fact that a good, clean, happy life sounds farfetched should be evidence alone that something is horribly, deeply, fucked up.

Please, my friend, join me in believing better is possible… and being part of it. 

I cannot fix the pain of the world alone, and it won’t be fixed in a generation.  However. I can work on me, you can work on you. I can tell you and 1000 others, and you can tell 10 friends.  And your friends can tell 10 friends.

That’s how change happens. That’s how we can affect the broken. When the good begins to outweigh the bad, when we begin to think more clearly as a collective community, when we operate from a place of love, health, and possibility – the people at the top (and below) that commit the crimes against humanity won’t last. The good will be empowered to fight the hard fights. Those with voices that never used them will start using them. Those with power will start using it for good. And frankly, they’ll be aged out and eventually die. 

Remember Braveheart?  I love that quote, “If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out.”  This is where the generations matter most. The evil that sits at the top can’t continue if we get to their children and love them harder than their own deeply damaged parents can.

“It all begins within.”  You can quote me on that too. It begins within for me, for you, and for those that are hell-bent on destroying the world.

The Six Habits

I suppose you might not get the connection with The Six Habits. Well, that’s the “within” part. It’s so simple, it’s laughable. The Six Habits is my purpose, my passion, AND my profession.  I’m all in, baby. The Six Habits is the way. I’m not kidding.

The Six Habits teaches us how to love ourselves properly, and set ourselves up for massive success and joy. Sure, the habits are simple. I’ll even tell you what they are: kindness, acceptance, gratitude, presence, goodness, and intention. But that right there? Not enough. Knowing what they are isn’t even a tenth of a percent of enough. Why? Because they’ve always been right under our noses. Without specific, consistent work, we all just stay who and where we are. The magic is in the action.

Reading the book is a start. Downloading the free exercises and doing the work is the beginning of actual change. Doing the 90 Day Program? Truly life-changing. Committing to living The Six Habits lifestyle? Believe it or not… world-changing.

And, it all begins with us. You, and me. This might be the longest thing I ever write to you (aside from the book), and I hope I’ve earned your full attention. The mission is bigger than you or me, even though it starts with you and me. It starts with ego. It always does. Use your ego, make it all about you. That’s ok! Regardless - do the work. Work on YOU.

With The Six Habits mastery work, you can undo generations of pain and let it end with you. You can be a better version of you – one that you’re head over heels in love with, and inspire others. You can start a business, lose 50 lbs, get married (or divorced!), find adventure, fulfill your dreams, start checking things off your bucket list, and so much more. Seems like a lot to promise from a small book huh? It’s because it begins within. Everything you ever wanted all comes from inside you. Your dreams start there, your results start there.

My dream is no longer about me. I did the work. I’m on the other side. Now I’m all about YOU, and the mission of 1 Billion people. You matter SO MUCH. You working on you is SO freaking important to the success of the world. Maybe you don’t believe me today… and 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed me either.

I’m on the other side. If I can invite you to take my hand and trust me… just this once… and do the work… you’ll never look back. 

Join Me

Join me. Let’s make the world a better place, starting with just you and me. If you’ve read this far, you’re with me at least enough to care. Connect with me. Reply. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me you’re on board. Read the book. Do the work. 

  1. Download the ebook instantly here.
  2. Get a free (plus S+H) autographed copy here.
  3. Get the 90-day program here (with an exclusive discount!)
  4. Write to me here and tell me you’re WITH ME in this incredibly important mission.        

We are one.

Aloha,

Laura

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