The Day I Found a Lion

I was raised in a manner that allowed me to have imaginative autonomy and the ability to shape the kind of reality that I wanted to experience. I was given the freedom to make my own decisions, learn from tangible experiences, form my own opinions about the world around me, and to go down paths that were aligned with my interests and desires. This is something my father supported and always told me, “You can live any reality you wish to live as long as you can see it for yourself and you can feel it.” For most of my childhood I did not really understand what this meant and in reality, I often felt lost is a sea of ambiguity. In fact, I did not gain clarity on this logic until I was a young adult.

Growing up we moved a lot because of the work my father did yet throughout my childhood I felt stable and secure. I do however remember discussions between my mother and my father around his work and a reoccurring, seemingly cyclical tension that would rise and fall between them throughout the years. These moments sometimes reoccurred after 2-3 months, sometimes it was after 5-6 months, and at other times it was anywhere in between. One thing that remained consistent was that this cycle would continue for as many years as I can remember.

Looking back on this I had no idea what my father did for a living as it was abstract by traditional standards so my thoughts and opinions mirrored those of my mother both in shape and form. In a way I understood our reality based on my mother’s interpretation it. As I grew up I began to understand a bit more about the tension that I had felt growing up. Those cycles of tension that I experienced were actually the times during the year when the money my father made during a certain period began to run out. So with this new yet limited information I deciphered that my father took us to a point that concerned my mother and then like magic all the concern would go away again. I took on my mother’s fears and frustrations because I was confused about many things including what my father was doing. What I learned many years later was that my father actually built a unique reality around the work that he wanted to do. My father’s passion was and still is to work with acting professionals to see the world through a different lens. My father did not just teach acting, he taught perspective and he shaped mindset allowing others to live a life of magic, hope, and transformation.

My father’s income was generated through various channels but the majority of his income was generated from his teaching seminars that he marketed and from which he developed a strong member base. I now realize that the cycles of tension and diminishing funds were not signs of diminished effectiveness, they were signs of tremendous success as he was able to effectively initiate, develop, and sustain a genuine and organic alignment between his views and beliefs and those of the people that would become his students. This alignment was apparent as his student base believed so strongly in what my father believed that his business generated enough income to sustain our family year over year. The real testament to what he created was that he generated sustainable income living out his dream reality. My father lived by the principal that if you focus on helping others and you focus on your passions, the money will come as a natural consequence of your sound process.

My father had the ability to create something that did not exist bringing people together from all over the world, united around a common purpose. My father united people around the idea that if you could change the way you see the world, if you could change your perspective of reality, and if you could change the way you perceived your own limitations then you could become a better you. Following this line of thought would then add context to the acting techniques he taught and allow them to become part of the individuals themselves driving them toward a level of success that had alluded them up to that point.

Sadly, I did not understand the reality of what my father was doing until many years later when I was a young adult experiencing my own challenges trying to create the life I wanted to live. I held more jobs than I can accurately recall through high school and college including making smoothies, selling alarm systems door to door, waiting tables at a variety of restaurants, delivering pizza, working at a Tuxedo shop, filling work day gaps with local moving company jobs, working security, and even working late nights at a liquor store all to pay my own way. I was focused on doing whatever I had to do to get by and I did just that, I got by. That was fine for me then because I told myself that I was just getting myself through high school and I would then get a better job or I was just getting through college and then with my education I would get a better job. The problem was that nothing changed as I began to near graduation.

I was applying to a multitude of jobs, none of which I was qualified for because I had no clear idea of who I was. Was I a waiter? Was I a salesman? Was I a mover? Was I a victim of whatever life provided me with? Well what I ended up doing is what I felt was best suited for me based on my experience up to that point, I went and began working full time for the moving company that I was previously using for supplemental income. I graduated, hung my degree on my bedroom wall, and started to put in 10-12 hour days with the moving company where I have to say, I met some amazing people. The money was not very good but sometimes we would be surprised by a disproportionately high tip at the end of a job which was never expected but very much appreciated.

Then after a few months I was actually contacted in response to one of the hundreds of resumes that I put out online. After several interviews I was offered a position as a Travel Advisor for a European Villa rental company which I was very grateful for. This was my first real job, at least the first job that I felt aligned with. It did not pay well either but I was able to do something that fit me and I was able to work, learn, and laugh with a uniquely diverse group of individuals. Since this role did not pay much I continued to work for the moving company on the weekends to fill the gaps as I had been used to doing over the years through school. However, after the first year in the new job I began to feel fear, frustration, and confusion in terms of what I was doing with my life.

I have never been better than any job that I have held nor will I be better than any job I will hold in the future as there is always something that can be learned about people, about business, and about myself. With that being said when you work long hours, you experience moments when you are not able to pay for the basics in your life, and when you don’t see any way that it will change in the future, it can make you feel like a prisoner in your own life. One day as I was taking a break from work to wash my car (it was not much of a car but I invested every lunch break into keeping it clean and nice) out of nowhere a thought brought me back to my childhood and to what my father told me as a child “You can live any reality you wish to live as long as you can see it for yourself and as long as you can feel it.”

What I realized in that moment was that I had created my situation and my feeling of being a prisoner to my circumstances was self-defined and self-created. From my perspective, I saw myself as nothing more than the string of jobs that I held trying to survive and I defined my life as one that was focused on the struggle of getting by and surviving. All my thoughts were focused on my struggle, my worries, my anger, my frustration, my confusion, and my negativity. Resultantly, this mentality permeated into every part of my life and solidified my circumstances. My thoughts entrenched a particular mindset which then created a feeling of hopelessness and fear.

This hopelessness and fear then structured the way I thought about things both now and in the future. Ultimately, this mindset then shaped the decisions that I made which continued to reinforce the reality that I was experiencing. When I realized what I was doing it was clear why I was where I was and why I did not feel fulfilled; I was not living the life that I truly wanted to create. It was at that moment that I understood that I could change things as I was simply experiencing my reality through a very specific and very limiting frame of reference.

Frame of Reference

A structure of concepts, values, customs, etc. by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior (Dictionary.com, 2018)

I was given a book by my father when I was in high school that I did not even read until after I had this realization (several years after graduating college) and the book added clarity to what my father had told me when I was young and it also added context to why he gave it to me. See my father, in addition to being an amazing philosophical teacher and acting coach, was also fascinated by science and about the true nature of reality as we experience it. His life has been self-created based on his ability to consistently re-invent himself and change his frame of reference in order to see things differently. He has also been able to see things that others do not because he had conditioned himself to be conscious and aware. 

Something that always impressed me about my father was that he was never fearful during challenging moments throughout my young life because as he explained it, he would already feel what it was like when things were better as if it had already occurred. It was this mindset that led to the successes I witnessed as a child and that I called magic because I had no idea what it was; it was outside my frame of reference at that time. Then I understood why he gave me the book, it was not because he thought I wanted to be a scientist, it was because he wanted to provide me with perspective and a new frame of reference for my life.

The book he gave me was “Quantum Reality: Beyond The New Physics” by Nick Herbert and this book provided me with a new perspective on my life. In this book it discusses 8 Quantum Realities derived from Quantum Mechanics that I used to shape the way I thought about the world around me and more importantly, about the way I fit within the world around me. The book highlights many interesting perspectives and one that was particularly impactful was that we see the world through human goggles and that the nature of appearances are our own creation.

The appearance of limitation or of potential is fabricated by our thoughts, views, and prior experience (Herbert, 1985). Understanding this then puts into question the reality that we are experiencing. As real as it may feel and as real as it may appear, it really is what we make it. Reflecting on this in simple terms when I have been negative, negative things have happened and when I have been positive, positive things have happened. This is a simple yet very interesting phenomenon to reflect on because we can exert much more control over our circumstances than it initially appears.

There are 8 Quantum Realities discussed in the book and of those there were 4 that I was particularly intrigued by and that reshaped my perspective (Herbert, 1985 pp.16-26):

Quantum Reality #2- “Reality is created by observation… 1.There is no reality in the absence of observation; 2. Observation creates reality.”

Looking at it from this perspective what my father had told me years prior was accurate. If I see it and feel it then it is real and during my times of challenge after college I saw and felt myself as trapped and insignificant so that is what became real for me. When I changed my perspective and I “observed” or saw a different version of myself, everything began to change.

Quantum Reality #4-“The many-worlds interpretation (Reality consists of a steadily increasing number of parallel universes.)…For any situation in which several different outcomes are possible (flipping a coin, for instance), some physicists believe that all outcomes actually occur. In order to accommodate different outcomes without contradiction, entire new universes spring into being, identical in every detail except for the single outcome that gave them birth.”

This was probably the most intriguing for me because I thought about all the possible deviations my life had taken up to the point based on the decisions that I made and how I can shape my future by the same logic. Analyzing the way I thought about things and reflecting on the decisions that my thoughts led me to make, I was able evaluate how new thoughts and perspectives could lead me to make decisions that would send me down the path to a better future.                                                                                                      

Quantum Reality #5- “Quantum logic (The world obeys a non-human kind of reasoning)…Logic is the skeleton of our body of knowledge. Logic spells out how we use some of the shortest words in the language, words such as and, or, and not. The behavior of these little linguistic connectors governs the way we talk about things, and structures, in turn, the way we think about them.”

This is an interesting concept to consider because it sheds a lot of light on how we experience our lives. We are limited not by our potential, we are limited by the narrowness of how we categorize and define our experiences and ultimately how we think about what we experience.

Quantum Reality #7- “(Consciousness creates reality). Among observer-created realists, a small faction asserts that only an apparatus endowed with consciousness (even as you and I) is privileged to create reality. The one observer that counts is a conscious observer.”

It this concept that really helped me change my frame of reference because consciousness really just means being aware of something and to be awake. If consciousness creates reality then I just had to be aware of who I really was and if I was awake and aware of who I was, what I wanted, and why it was important, then I could create a new reality for myself.

What happened to me that day as I washed my car was not some divine breakthrough or miracle moment, I simply gained an awareness of who I was. I came to understand that what I saw as solid and permanent with regard to my circumstances (as solid and as permanent as it may have felt to me at that time) was anything but solid and permanent; it was much more malleable that I had imagined. If you think about our reality like a piece of metal it feels solid, permanent, and unbreakable yet in reality, with enough heat, metal can take on a new form. With enough heat metal can be bent, reshaped, or even melted in order to forge something entirely new. If we look at our lives using this analogy then anything is possible and no circumstance or reality is permanent; we can truly shape the reality and the life that we wish to live if we can think it, see it, and feel it.

That moment changed my frame of reference and from that point on I have been able to find success in ways that I could not have previously imagine and that were unforeseen. The right conditions may not have existed, the right experience may not have been under my belt, my timing on certain decisions or actions may not have been right, the belief of others may not have been there, I may have been ridiculed for my ambitions, and I may have been all alone on more occasions that I would have planned but when I look back I see a series of events that make complete sense and a success that goes beyond mere job titles, positions, or salaries.

When I look at my success I don’t look at the jobs that I have held or the income that I have made, I look at the man that I have become based on my experiences. I look at all the personal and professional risks, gambles, and freedoms I allowed myself to take. I look at what I learned about myself when nobody else was around to support or assist me and when I only had myself and my mindset to get me through. I look at how the lives of others have improved along the way because I always took time to put people first above anything else. I look at the life that I have built for my wife and for my children. I look at the reverence that my parents have for the person that I have become. Most importantly, I look at what I have achieved and I see that I am even hungrier for growth and progression than I was when this journey started.

So looking back on that seemingly ordinary day washing my car on my lunch break I now realize what happened. Yes I developed a new frame of reference and the ability to see past my current reality but what really happened that day is that I discovered who I was. I was not a waiter, I was not a salesman, I was not a mover, and I was certainly not a victim of whatever life provided me with; I was a LION. I now saw things from a new perspective, I was hungry, and I was not afraid to be afraid because I knew what kind of reality that I wanted to create and I was willing to do whatever I had to do to get it.

I could see it and I could feel it and I am now living the reality that I saw and felt over 14 years ago. My father’s words “You can live any reality you wish to live as long as you can see it for yourself and you can feel it” don’t see as strange now. The book my father gifted me does not seem as random as it did years ago. The reality I was living and experiencing 14 years ago was clearly not as solid and as permanent as it felt in that moment. Interestingly enough, looking back as an adult on the magic that I witnessed my father perform when I was a child I still see it as magic because it was and it is.

I realize now that there is nothing wrong with magic and if the ability to change your reality and shape it as you see fit appears as magic to others, then let it be magic. All that matters is that you know the hours of equity that you have built up over the years as you put in work been behind curtains, behind doors, and underground all invisible to the world around you.

I believe in my father and I believe in magic because I can now live out my life as a LION with a hunger for my next journey and the new realities that I will create for my family, for others, and for myself. If I can help others find the magic in their lives to attain a new level of success for themselves and for their families then I will truly live a life of purpose and fulfillment; this is the reality that I wish to create.

#thoughtsbyMic

Reference:

Frame of Reference [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com, Retrieved February 2nd, 2018,

       from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/frame-of-reference.

Herbert, N. (1985). Quantum Reality: Beyond The New Physics. Garden City, NY:

       Anchor Press/Doubleday.