#39: Courage to Leap in 2025

It's 2025. It's your time.

The intent of my podcast and newsletters is to help you create lifestyle you don't need vacation from. While I appreciate you taking time to absorb the content, I prefer you to use it. Too many of you are still on the sidelines thinking about making some sort of shift, business or personal, desiring some new emotion out of life but you can't get going. I get it.

My mantra has always been "just do and course correct along the way". Like you, I have impulses about life all the time. Unlike many of you, I tend to act on them -- becoming a police officer, opening coffee shops, trying for the NFL, buying apartment buildings, living and working by the Mediterranean Sea, creating Try Life On -- employing Systematic Patience (newsletter 21), generally lacking concern for outcome (note: this is key. Don't stress outcome, that you're on the journey matters more).

Without realizing it, that mantra, since my 20s, has pushed me into higher human emotional frequencies of Courage and beyond versus remaining in lower frequencies of Pride, Anger, Desire or Fear, which is where most sit when they have a life impulse.

Recall the five freedoms - time, financial, geographic, purpose, relationships - I'm solid on first four. But I've been working serious blockers related to relationships over the past year. With the help of a mentor, came to realize I was stuck on 'Desire' related to certain wanted relationships. Once I moved back into my typical mode of 'Courage' and took meaningful action, everything changed. Life has gotten sweeter. I'm Trying Life On even more (note: This and coaching student success stories were discussed on the Dec 12th TLO Community Call, pending podcast release Jan 3rd, 2025. Listening to examples will help many of you).

The Map of Consciousness

Dr. David R. Hawkins' Map of Consciousness and Frequency Chart was first detailed in his 1995 book, Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. For this newsletter I'm focused on the chart as a behavioral tool as a mentor did for me.

Basically, the chart is a tool to understand different emotional levels and mental states and how they translate into one's view of life. They're organized on a scale from 1 to 1,000, with lower numbers (<200) representing negative, destructive states and higher numbers (>200) representing positive, life-enhancing states.

When life impulses hit, we can be stunted or empowered by our human emotions. The trick is understanding your frequency and taking action to move up, if necessary. Trying for the NFL at age 21 and 26, coffee shops at age 28, police academy at age 33, starting to buy apartment buildings at age 41, moving to a new country at age 47. For all of it I was instinctively at courage (200), well beyond fear (100), desire (125), anger (150), or pride (175). But when it came to relationships mentioned, was mentally stuck on desire and fear without realizing it. Over the past year I took actions (courageous steps) which fixed, removed or added certain relationships in my life. Everything has changed. I've changed.

Here's the Trick. Just Get to Courage.

One courageous action changes everything. One phone call, one trip, one mindset shift. In my case, setting boundaries and clear expectations, and concerted, vulnerable effort to be meaningfully available to certain people was the needed work. That courage -- find courage on chart and look left -- expanded my energy about the whole thing. Life has opened in a way not easily explainable.

The trick I learned is you don't need to fight your way up the entire chart. Once you hit 'Courage' you'll continue to naturally move up the chart and frequencies with minimal forced effort. Courage opens the rest of the chart. Courage opens the rest of your life too.

All this to say 2025 is your year. Don't beat yourself up on what you haven't done, rather, get momentum for what you want to do. Once you're aware of some basic human dynamics at play, you realize you had the capacity to Try Life On the whole time.

Now, go build that lifestyle.