What is responsible for the downfall of most people, communities, companies and nations? When thinking about this answer, try not to focus on effects and instead, think about the causes. For instance, these are a few answers that would be considered effects: political/economic/social corruption, obesity, crime, discrimination and poverty. What are a few of the causes behind these types of effects? They all involve one common denominator: human motivation.
What happens within a human’s life when they begin the downward spiral that we often see? I can testify from my experience that as soon as we are born, there are so many factors that can possibly take us away from our higher potential. Due to the styles of leadership for those who were responsible for us, many of those factors are never addressed. So much slips in between the cracks. After the fall off happens, it is often described like this: They grew up and life just kept throwing hardballs their way and then “all of a sudden” their fall off began. The reality is that in every downfall situation, a level of comfort plagues the human/humans involved. The cycle is simple. A goal is hit, enjoyment is felt and once the “I/we made it” attitude creeps in, a subtle (and sometimes major) change happens to the intentions of the “accomplished” person and/or group of people.
The craziest part of this cycle is that it is inevitable in most lives. Even an Olympic Gold medalist takes time off to rest after breaking a record. The difference about that Olympian is that their life training program is intentional. Instead of downfalls, their later performances are usually transitions into phases of their development that were designed. Once in a while, outliers like Michael Phelps(28 medals), Allyson Felix (11 medals), and Carl Lewis (10 medals) come along and stay at their peak levels of performance for much longer and my goal is to explore the motivation behind these types of results. They each had a formula that separated them from previous versions of themselves in their respective Olympic categories. Is it possible to replicate unique processes within each of our lives? How can we learn to break our personal records for as long as possible when it comes to simply handling our day to day activities? This is where the title of this blog comes into play: The Power or Zero.
To set the stage for the following thoughts I will share an excerpt from the book, Genesis, written by Guido Tonelli , an Italian physicist.
The Void is a living thing, a dynamic and constantly changing substance. Full of potential pregnant with particule and antiparticle opposites. It is not nothingness. It is on the contrary, a system overflowing with unlimited quantities of matter and antimatter. In some respect, it really does resemble the number zero. Far from being non non-number, zero contains the infinite set of positive and negative numbers. (Guido Tonelli, 2021)
Infusing this train of thought into someone’s life is not an easy task. From the time we were all small, almost everything we have gone through goes against the idea of living in the void. The foundation of most of our motivations stems from getting as far away from the void as possible. The void, since it has no number attached to it is compared to zero or nothing, when in reality, that is where the true magic happens. Why do so many of us (including me for years) look down on the void? From grades to placing in contests, we have been taught that the further we get away from zero, the better we become, so it would make complete sense for most people to equate the void to being empty, having no status, no money, no security and no attachment to anything. What I would like you to consider is a thought process that investigates the core of this feeling from another angle: if understood, it could change the way every action from this point is addressed. Let’s start with the following question.
Why do people get taken for granted? Somewhere along the relationship’s journey, a lower quality of energy is given to one of the relationship’s participants. If the offender understood how to stay “in the void” there would be no length of time which could change their intention to serve the relationship at the highest level. By embracing the Power of Zero, everyday would be a new beginning. This would not change the normal challenges of life, but it would change how it weighed on the people within the relationship. When a person is in the void, one of their highest priorities is to maximize each moment because time loses its power: the goal is to simply put all energy into the task being guided by their intentions. Here is another question.
Why do some of the fittest people in high school usually turn out to be so out of shape at the twenty year class reunion? I was not the fittest, but I was probably one of the most out of shape people from my graduating class by the time I hit thirty years old. I can answer this from first hand experience; in my case, I never had a workout/healthy eating regimine, and gradually ate more and more as time progressed. I know several fit high schoolers who simply stopped putting as much energy into their health as they got their jobs, settled down and adjusted to adult life. Their priorities changed as time progressed. If they were living “in the void” their intentions to stay healthy would have stayed just as strong as they were in their high school years, but instead, life began to dictate where their energy was placed, so instead of controlling their destinies, they slowly became an effect of life circumstances.
Are you getting the gist of the point I am attempting to make? There is nothing wrong with changing priorities or enjoying celebrations along one’s journey. The problem begins when energy is taken away from one’s intentions to grow at their highest level possible in the most important aspects of their life. Unfortunately, the Universe/God/Allah/The Most High, etc, doesn’t care if a person doesn’t know what is most important. If a person allows unimportant parts of their life to exhaust their energy, results are going to stem from those choices. If the person who took their partner for granted is surprised when a divorce is requested, that’s an effect of their lack of knowing how to spend their energy. If the person who stopped focusing on their health dies of a heart attack at forty five years old, no matter how great of person they were, their body had to react to how much energy was placed into maximizing their bodily systems. This is why I highly recommend that you explore the Four Pillars because thus far, it is one of the most efficient ways for a human to ensure that their energy is distributed to the parts of their lives that deserve the most attention.
Right now, the chances are that you, yes, YOU, have energy placed in areas that are not more important than your health, emotional intelligence, hunger to gain new knowledge and your purpose. For years, I did not connect my grades in these areas to how I interacted with loved ones, career choices, creativity and spiritual power, so I understand where you are coming from. I was there for years. One of the reasons I stay so committed to the process is because temptation regularly attempts to take me back but I refuse to give in.
If you can embrace the Power of Zero, your life accomplishments will not allow substandard performance in any of your Four Pillar areas. Even if you don’t agree with the Four Pillars of the Re-Creationism philosophy that changed my life, if you were to create a list of areas that are most important to you, by waking up everyday with the same urgency to get better in those areas, you will see huge benefits over the course of your life, but I warn you; the areas had better be in your best long term interest or you will end up getting better in areas that will contribute to the shortening of your life span. That’s why I love the Four Pillars; no matter how high my grades get in those areas, the overall quality of my life (on and off social media, SMILE) gets better. I hope something from these paragraphs has inspired you to embrace the void while letting go of all people, thoughts and habits that do not serve your highest quality of living.
Four Pillar Action Plan: Tonight when you go to sleep, I would like you to say the following;
When I wake up tomorrow, I am going to treat each minute as if I am getting a chance to start my life over. If it doesn’t serve the systems within my body(nervous, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, etc.) I will do my best to replace those actions with newer habits. I cannot allow time to indicate how I treat my precious vessel, because that frame of thought has a track record of shortening life spans. I realize that habits are challenging to stop, so my hunger to overcome them will have to grow larger than the desire to partake in any harmful actions.
This is the type of thought process that will get you closer to the Power of Zero in your day to day actions. Just remember, the only person in control of how well you carry out this mission is you. That also means that you are the only person who will truly suffer the consequences if you continue to allow human created ideas to disrupt the spiritual excellence that is causing your heart to beat this moment.
Kinja Current Reality: This week, so many of my close friends have reported that they are also experiencing breakthroughs in their own ways, and the amount of times that I have heard “thank you Kinja”, is one of the best parts about embracing the Power of Zero. What is amazing is that I don’t ever tell them what to do; my actions are the biggest motivating factor in their lives. I receive motivation from their progress and I thank them regularly as well. My biggest personal takeaway is that “being the change that you wish to see in the world” is the best way to spark progressive momentum in the lives of the people that you love. For those reasons, I will continue to wake up and attack my Four Pillars as if my life depended on it…because it does. To dive deeper into understanding the Four Pillar system, explore the 365 page manual at any time. Regardless, shortly after Labor Day, I will see you again in another episode of the Decade Series.
References
Tonelli, G., Segre, E., & Carnell, S. (2021). Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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