I designed the last Audio Note to activate your allergy to your Nature. You’ll notice as we go into your Narrative that you may have an allergy to that as well. That’s all part of this journey. The more you engage with this process, especially in these early stages, the more you’ll activate your allergies. It’s a form of resistance to the growth process that awaits you. The allergy you experience to your Nature and Narrative is just your resistance at work. It’s the sign I look for that lets me know someone is truly engaging in this work.
But I also know that as resistance increases you’re more inclined to “leave the room.” You may find yourself wondering, “Why would I engage in a process this difficult when I can listen to something that makes me feel better about myself?” To which I would respond, “Feeling better is usually a poor metric for growth.” Inspiration behaves like a drug. It gives us a hit that eventually wears off, and we go looking for the next one. And you’ll never struggle to find a pusher. Transformation is the antidote for inspiration. Through it your “form” literally changes. Everyone wants that, but very few are willing to do the work that’s necessary to achieve it.
That said, you will feel better as you go through this process, but not because you’re high on inspiration. It’s because you exhibit the evidence of transformation. I can hear the words of a client’s spouse ringing in my ears, “He’s a different person.” That’s what I want for you. But you have to do the work.
One Sunday morning while my wife was making breakfast, I collected a dozen or so coins and neatly stacked them on the front porch of our house just outside the door. I made sure none of my daughters could see what I’d done. Just before breakfast I told them something to get all three of them to go out the front door. I don’t remember exactly what I said. Maybe I told them I’d seen a lost dog or something.
I heard the door open and all three of them went out onto our front porch. It didn’t take long for them to notice the coins.
“Hey!” I heard one of my daughters say, “What are these?”
I stood close enough to listen. A fascinating dialogue ensued as the three of them puzzled over the coins. (I would donate an organ to have a recording of that conversation. You just don’t get those moments back.) They walked out into the yard and looked both ways on our street, trying to figure out where the coins came from.
Perfect! Just in time for breakfast.
They continued to talk about the mystery at breakfast. I acted like I didn’t know what they were talking about and let them continue to run with it. Fortunately my wife is patient with these exercises I impose on our children and willingly plays along.
As we sat around the breakfast table I asked what they were talking about. They told me about finding the coins and some of the best explanations for how they got there: the neighbor kids playing a prank, a friend stopped by and left them as a joke, and so on. I must have cracked at one point because I looked up and all six of their eyes were on me. The gig was up.
I asked them to review their theories for how the coins arrived on our front porch. Then I pointed out that none of their explanations lacked human agency. Everyone of them assume that someone place the coins on the porch. They didn’t just happen to roll up on the porch in a perfect stack overnight. But who was it? When did they do it? How did we not see them? Those were the questions that occupied their minds.
My experiment worked! I used the stack of coins to uncover a belief that they all held about the nature of causality. Can you think of a better way to spend your Sunday morning? We went on to have a conversation about God, the creation of the world, and our role in it.
My girls were around 4, 7, and 10 at the time. What I love about that age is how they lack sophistication. They go through life with such a sense of simplicity. They haven’t yet learned to be sophisticated yet. As we told them from a young age, “We’re your teachers while you’re young, but life will slowly become your teacher as you get older.”
The process of Selfship rewinds the clock. Through it we grow less sophisticated. The original meaning of ‘sophistication’ has to do with “Making a fallacious argument that’s intended to mislead.” As we enter adulthood, we come to believe all kinds of fallacious arguments about ourselves. Young children possess a natural immunity to these fallacious arguments. I suspect that’s why Jesus said things like, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
In a similar way, C.S. Lewis writes in The Great Divorce:
“A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.”
To repeat Lewis, “Never by simply going on.” You have to go back until you find the error—the fallacious arguments—and work them afresh. In that respect, my hope for you this week is that you diminish in sophistication—that you’re a simpler person seven days from now than you are today.
Here’s what you’re going to do:
Take out a piece of paper and write down one fallacious thing you’ve been told or that you tell yourself. Just one thing. Do you think you’re attractive? Do you think you’re smart? Do you think you have worth? You did when you were a child, so much so that you didn’t even think there was an alternative. And then you got sophisticated.
You may be tempted to fill a page. I’m challenging you to limit your fallacy to a single lie you, so make it a good one.
Next, see if you can remember a time when you didn’t hear this message. You probably never even considered it. How old were you? Maybe you were very young, or maybe you’ve always heard this message. If so, I want you to think of someone that doesn’t believe that lie about you.
I know you’re probably more accustomed to looking for evidence that confirms this message. So that’s what you do on most weeks, but not this week. This week you’re taking that unsophisticated younger self with you. The one that didn’t believe the fallacious messages. They didn’t even consider it. They were too unsophisticated. Or if you prefer, that that person with you that sees, values, and enjoys you. They never even considered that lie about you.
That’s what we’re talking about here: we have true stories about ourselves and distortions of the truth. This process will help you detangle them—to become less sophisticated in the process. Expect resistance as you “undo the spell.” Expect to feel sore. In fact, you may feel worse at times. That’s a sign that you’re engaging in the process.
