Numb=Dumb

THE ATTRACTION PRINCIPLE
Thomas Leonard - the father of coaching - his birthday is coming up, July 31.

Fun facts? I was on Thomas Leonard's R&D team, and I am also a founding member of Coachville. I miss T's presence very much, R.I.P.
One reason I absolutely adored working with Thomas Leonard was that he was quick. He "got it" right away. He could go as fast as I could and we moved at the speed of light. I like that, and my EQ (emotional intelligence) programs and coaching are designed to increase the speed of your operating system. You will be smarter AND you will be liked a lot more. Nobody likes (as T says) DUMB, NUMB, CLUELESS PEOPLE.
Attraction Principle #18. Sensitize Yourslf to Notice and Feel Everything (isn't that EQ???)
by Thomas Leonard

It's fair to say that Attraction is a fairly quiet, more subtle approach to living and success. It's sophisticated and a high-end personal operating system. And to fully benefit from Attraction, the person adopting the Attraction OS needs to become more sensitive to themselves, their environments and subtle changes in others.

Why the need to become more sensitive? Because the less sensitive, more numb or more loud you are, the less you will notice what's going on in or around you. And for Attraction to work well, you'll need to sense things earlier than the average person, in order to respond to them earlier and more precisely.

If you've not sensitized yourself, the opportunities will pass you by before you have a chance to respond to them.
Numb=ignorance.
Numb=delayed reaction.
Numb=dumb.
All are unattractive.

1. Identify and reduce/eliminate numbing substances.

Alcohol, narcotics and sugar are proven numb-ers. While nothing is wrong with any of these items, you ARE reducing your body's natural ability to consistently feel and be present. So, even though you may 'feel' more while under the influence, the experience is always temporary and is not sustainable.

2. Identify and reduce/eliminate numbing behaviors.

Watching television, overeating, coping and love/sex addiction are good examples of numbing behaviors. You either overload your senses with too much input, or begin to 'feel' only when engaged in a specific activity. Again, nothing is wrong with any of these items, but as in #1 above, the experience is always temporary and is not sustainable.

3. Identify and reduce/eliminate numbing environments or situations.

If you're in a stressful home, work or lifestyle situation, you probably can't afford to feel all that is going on -- it might be too much for your body/heart/mind. So, the best thing to might be to get out of the situation before you open up your senses. However, the process of letting yourself become sensitized (feel) is usually enough to motivate a person to make big environmental/situation changes without having to 'decide' to. When your body has been sensitized properly, it won't PERMIT you to remain in situations which are not good for you. Your body knows even if your mind resists.

4. Identify and clean-up what motivates you.

It's hard to feel what's present around you if you're busy striving for something. The striving energy overrides the more subtle feeling energy. It's like television --it's a POWERFUL force and hard to keep one's senses when they are being so overstimulated by a manufactured source. Much of what motivates us is fairly expensive and future-oriented. Feelings live in the present. (However, EMOTIONAL REACTIONS [often confused with feelings] live in both the past and future.) It's very, very possible to be 100% motivated by the present, although this a major shift for most folks.

5. Make the choice/priority to sense and feel all of what is occurring inside and outside of you.

It's common to play the 'ignorance is bliss' game when it comes to feeling and sensing. Many of us would simply rather not know! And that's completely understandable. However, if you make the choice to WANT to feel and sense more, pretty soon you'll become intrigued and fascinated by all that you are sensing/feeling -- and you really will WANT to know, because it's so interesting. But to take this step, you'll probably need to believe that feelings are something worthwhile enough about which to become an expert in. (They ARE, but it may take a while for a person to see the tangible benefits from making this shift. There's no rush.)

6. Identify and reduce/eliminate the emotional blocks to your natural ability to feel.

Therapists can be very helpful in the process of emotional healing. Sometimes, emotional scars from childhood or adulthood kink up our ability to sense and respond to the FULL spectrum of life/feelings. There are either blockages or damage which gunk up the system. If you've got some emotional damage or baggage, it's hard to feel 'in the present' when you're tethered to the past.

7. Realize that more 'knowledge' is contained in feeling/sensing that is conveyed literally, intellectually or linearly.

If you've been looking for a practical or financially-beneficial reason to get on the sensitivity track, you've just found it. The point here is that words/language are not able to keep up with changing events in business or in evolving customer preferences. By the time the subtle change is first noticed (usually far later than it should be), and this information is passed up to those in power to do something about the product/design, and then get translated into English, sold to the buyers and then made available to the consumers, the original change may have changed again OR the gist of it was lost in the various translations.

I think if a company wanted to be REALLY smart, they'd place a gifted 'sensitized' person on the customer service hotline once a week so they could pick up on the subtle and obvious problems/requests that customers have. In the music business they have experts called 'ears' who can just tell if a band has a marketable sound or not. And coffee and tea tasters can recognize the SUBTLE differences in flavors / qualities. Their taste buds have been sensitized to the point of recognizing what 99%of the population cannot even if they were trying to.

8. Learn to feel vs just emotionally react.

I mentioned this distinction earlier in the list, but it's pretty important. Feelings are what you feel which are true for you all by themselves, right now. Emotional reactions are what you feel now that are really just echoes of something you felt in the past. A LOT of what we humans feel are really just emotional reactions. So, feelings get a bad rap sometimes. And, of course, in this top ten list we're talking about becoming sensitized which is even more than feeling. But the point is that if you're busy emotionally reacting to stuff a lot, you won't be feeling a whole lot and you'll not be sensitized.

9. Deliberately respond to inklings or bare traces to sensation instead of waiting for 'enough evidence' to respond to something. In other words, guess and trust.

Feeling is a skill that for many of us takes experimentation and practice to develop. As you find yourself sensing things earlier and deeper -- and then responding to them faster -- you're probably on this track of sensitivity. Because when you've been sensitized, you don't just feel or sense; you naturally respond to events, people, and situations. You don't have to 'decide' to respond; when you're really sensitized, you just do. Your body doesn't give you a chance to vote. The trick is to 'give in' to feelings and senses even before you can fully describe them.

10. Realize that by the time you can explain or fully describe/articulate something that most of the opportunity has already passed.

This one has been somewhat described in #9 above, but the point here in #10 is that most real opportunities occur far sooner than most people notice them. And just because you didn't notice an opportunity immediately, doesn't mean that you can't benefit from it later, but some of the fun in life and business is to be at the leading edge and on the curve instead of behind the curve. The idea is to be flexible and fast on your feet, eager to play in newly dawning arenas. When you relocate your personal ZIP CODE to this place, you'll find some really cool people who have been waiting for you to join them. And, THEY are attractive.
[Your thoughts on this Attraction Principle? What are the potential pitfalls to it, and are they worth risking for the benefits Thomas outlines? How have you noticed the principle in action in your life? Where could sensitizing yourself be useful to you today? Click here to comment.]

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