Joseph Maynor

Do this exercise. This is how I do roles work myself. And I've made huge progress doing this work. Awareness alone is curative, so more specific information in your head about your role can help you arms-length the thoughts and emotions that entice you (suck you in) to play the role. You will find out what is triggering you to play the role. Then you can strategize about how to remove those triggers, or prevent them from being set off. Enlightenment is the work you wanna be doing simultaneously, because enlightenment really works to unsettle roles that have crystallized in your life. Part 1: Write the name of the role on the top of the page, and then freewrite until you fill up the entire page for each role. So, for example "The Know It All" The guy who always has to have an opinion. The guy who can't just let your opinion be yours and his his, he's gotta try to convince you otherwise. The guy who was put under siege. John put me under siege. Etc. ...And just keep doing this for the rest of the page. You gotta really open up and don't really censor yourself here! It's a core dump procedure. You gotta purge this stuff out. All your half-baked thoughts sprinkled in with connections to your life. Write quickly and briskly. Part 2: Answer these questions aloud without looking at your freewriting page. Read your freewriting page once thru though before addressing these questions, then set the freewriting page aside. Do these questions out loud like when you're walking somewhere. Give yourself time to ponder. Or go to the park and do this. (Modified from Leo's Worksheet in the Roles video.) 1. What is the role that I am/was playing? Describe the role. 2. What are the specific ways that I act/acted out this role? 3. When did I adopt this role? (Can I pinpoint the moment when I started to adopt this role?) 4. What was life like before I started acting this role? 5. How did I acquire this role? 6. What traumatic event(s), if any, created the need for this role? 7. Why do/did I need this role? What function did/does this role serve in my life? 8. What deep psychological need did/does playing out this role satisfy? How was/is this role protecting me? 9. How artificial and contrived was/is this role? 10. Which genuine aspect of me was/is this role suppressing? NOTE: Don't do more than like one role every 3 days. Give your mind a chance to wrap itself around each role. Pace yourself. You need time to do a deep dive into like 5 key roles before you can make real solid progress in roles work. That means you go through this process with like your top 5 to 10 negative roles.

You need to find out very specifically what the relevant, mandatory adversity is required for you to achieve your tasks that will cause your life purpose to become a reality. Eliminate all other adversity. Mandatory adversity should be directed towards a greater good, and it should be bought into and premeditated. Optional adversity is almost never good. It is unnecessary suffering. Life is hard enough facing mandatory adversity. It's like studying for the test versus being all over the place with your studying. I think Leo said strategy is about concentrating force on a point. Well, blow through your mandatory adversity like a champ and get rid of the optional stuff. It's kind of counter-intuitive, but personal development is like that in many respects. Make a list of 20 types of mandatory adversity that you resolve to face everyday and review it every morning. There's a practice I do myself. You should know and buy-into each category of adversity you choose to face. That way when you hit that adversity you can remind the ego that this is a category of adversity that we have decided to face.

Apply little hacks to your life like slowly taking control over an unwieldy machine. Get your daily routine instituted. Work on infrastructure as Leo calls it. Get your daily meditation practice wired. Work on developing a great morning routine. Get your diet wired in. Rid time wasting addictions from your life. Work on getting clearer about what you want by making lists. Basically, start to get your modules wired into a routine. And then look to remove stuff from your life that is dead-weight. But start slowly. Maybe aim to rig in one module per week. Personal development is just as much about practice as theory. Start practicing mindfulness all the time, not just when you are meditating. Theory is great, but practicing is just as great. Theory informs practice and practice informs theory, so they work in kind of a circle. One hand washes the other. Maybe it is time for you to start on the practice end of the pool and swim around over there for a while. That may work for you.

I think this is best determined by looking and not by theorizing about it. Mindfulness and awareness seem to denote a broader level focusing. Attention is where you can focus very specifically. So, you have an adjustment that basically institutes a broad focus, and then you have a knob where you can do more fine tuned focusing -- you might label that knob attention. But all this is story. The key is to meditate and learn how the mind sabotages mindfulness and how to make corrections for that. This work is best done by seeing and practice, not looking for definitions. Like the difference between actually driving a car and listening to somebody describe how to drive a car. Mindfulness is about driving the car.

Start a daily routine. Make a mission statement. Start a meditation practice. Practice mindfulness. Eliminate addictions. Increase positive motivation.

When you get your inner game right the action starts to take care of itself. When the resistance disappears we get auto-correction. If you think about it you are working all the time already. The key is to re-program that "natural working" you're already doing to different tasks. But it's a gradual transition. Make it a labor of love that even the lower-you could learn to grudgingly accept.

Both are important and should be cultivated. I've gotten huge results from cultivating both. Enlightenment is big and life changing. Self love is more subtle. Sort of like realizing that spanking doesn't work as a great source of motivation. You do better when all of you is on board with the hero's journey, even that sinning part of you. Love your sins to death.

I find this to be healthy practice. Record yourself often and get your thoughts and ideas out. This is how you will start to see what you have and then you can build from there. I have done this massively myself. And listen to them afterward and take notes. Make lists.

Get out of the paradigm of beating yourself up. Until you learn to be kinder to yourself and love yourself, a part of you will continue to self-sabotage. Work on cultivating positive motivation. When you pull the reins too tight the horse will buck. Give yourself more love. Work on self acceptance. Leo has a vid on this. Do the exercise in his vid. Paradoxically this will cause you to shape yourself up.

Eliminating addictions, loving myself, nurturing positive motivation, actually doing my scheduled tasks, constant mindfulness.

Do this exercise: Make 3 lists on 3 pieces of paper: 1. "things I'll get", 2. "things I've given up", and 3. a list of "ground rules". Start there. Go somewhere like the park to do this work. Stay for a few hours. Do some soul searching and visualization there.