Easeful Social Media

3 layers that allow you on any given day that layer on top of one another for you to choose a post from, choose material from.

Examples:

1. Phase of the Moon (waning or waxing)
2. Astrology of the Moon (changes every 2.5 days, Libra, Scorpio, etc)
3. Mythical Meaning of the day of the week. (every 7 days)

Grant Ships:

1. Competitive grant giving strategy/tactics/skills
2. The game itself and the rules/structure

Matt:

1. Weekly: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.
2. Monthly: Beginnings/Conflict/Performance
3. Quarterly: Self, Community, Global, Future
4. Chakras: Stability, Connection, Power, Love, Expression, Sight, Intellect
5. Alternate colors: Teal, Purple, Orange, Magenta, Green
6. By Inspiration: Music, Basketball, Tech, Mindset, Org Design, Community Building,

KING, BEGINNINGS, SELF:

Sometimes just acknowledging that it's time for an internal change is enough for me to get things started.
What slows me down most is the feeling that my attempts at making a change are in vain, because I've tried and failed so many times before. I want to have faith that my changes are moving me in a particular direction, and that direction is well-chosen. Sometimes it feels like I'm zoomed in too closely and am just responding to circumstance rather than charting a course.

In this case I'm acknowledging that it's time to become the man who can show up persistently, consitently, resiliently to write and create in public. The journey of 10000 steps starts not with my first step. It starts exactly where I'm standing right now.

From here, if I can get perspective on where I want to go and what outcomes I want to achieve, then these moments of internal change become like orienting maneuvers that keep the different parts of myself moving in the right direction: toward my greater goals and visions.

What helps me in these moments is to notice my gifts and to notice the progress those gifts have helped me make so far. What am I best at? When am I most useful to others? What have I helped build in the past?

The next step is to bless and amplify those gifts. For me it's my gifts around leadership, community empowerment, structure & system building (that includes calling in accountability for myself), technological assistance and energetic/emotional encouragement (for myself and my community).

Whatever the beginning or goal is, if I can find a way to use my gifts and thread them into my plans and actions, then I have a better chance to stick with it long enough to create something useful to me and others.

This part of the journey is about marking the beginning. A change is coming. Acknowledge. Accept. Embrace. Prepare.

WARRIOR, BEGINNINGS, SELF:

What am I going to stick with really? To become determined is to decide to stop stopping.

Just getting clear on what's beginning for me is hard enough. What am I going to stick with really? Once I've made that acknowledgement "this is a beginning", I need to mentally prepare for the challenge, pain and excitement that will be coming. Change requires resilience and determination.

It's so easy to "forget" what I decided for myself. I do this by not making it clear what I've decided. If each option is just as valid, why stay on a particular path when it gets difficut? Back in the day people would sacrifice a goat or something to mark and important moment. Now what… I write it in my journal? Make an instagram post? How do I make this moment significant?

From where do I gain accountability?

The word "Determination" has a clue - it means "No termination". Basically to become determined is to decide to stop stopping. Remove the possibility of "terminating" an endeavor, and just keep going. Like an asteroid flying through space. Unless acted upon by an outside force, it will keep going forever. It won't get to "the end" and slow down.

In this way, determination ties into the concept of inertia. When I'm beginning something, a lot of my work is about breaking the inertia of the previous way of being.

Inertia is toughest to break at the beginning. It takes a lot of effort to get a boulder moving, but once it's rolling it becomes harder to stop. The resilience and persistence and intensity required at the beginning can be misleading, because it might seem like I'll have to keep applying that level of effort forever. My body and mind will revolt. "I can't keep this up!" But remembering that all I have to do is break and recreate inertia, so that I can get into that frictionless state of "determination" helps me get started.

Asking for help and feedback early on are important for me to get past this stage. The I Ching calls this "Difficulty at the Beginning".

These mental models help me get past internal resistance and closer to taking real action.

MAGICIAN, BEGINNINGS, SELF

We used to slaughter an animal to mark a beginning. Now what am I supposed to do?

Ok, so if I've chosen a direction, I've set myself against the boulder of inertia and am prepared to push, maybe with some help… what tools do I have to keep me going?

One I hinted at previously. Ritual. We used to slaughter a goat to signal to the gods that we were ready, aligned, making a commitment to them. With the concept of gods relegated to superstition and fantasy, who would we make a sacrifice to? To our modern minds, that practice doesn't make sense anymore.

But what do we lose when we do away with sacrificial rituals?

Much: The marking of a moment as special, as important, as distinguishable from other moments. It's a highly visible, irreversible commitment. That goat is dead, dude. Tomorrow we may have a feast, or decorate the walls with goat hide or horns to remind us. Whether you believe in gods or not, that moment of sacrifice was momentous.

So I can make a ritual for myself. I can take my vision, my decision, my grit and fire to make it through, and channel that into a ritual.

For me, getting to that point brings up fear. I'm afraid that I'll do the ritual, and still falter, fail or give up. I'm afraid I will be shamed before my gods, even if I don't logically believe in a particular god. I'm afraid my higher power might disown me, so better not to commit to anything. For me, this one goes deep. I'm afraid.

Next post will be about those feelings, that visceral shame, fear, love, anger, grief that lives in my body when I choose to consciously navigate the future, and how those feelings become my portal into a new reality.

LOVER, BEGINNINGS, SELF

Shame. Fear. Grief. Love. Anger. Joy. These are the raw fuel for a big decision. If I've chosen my direction, gathered my grit to take action, prepared a ritual to mark the true beginning of my journey… I now have a lot of feelings to deal with.

For me, shame and fear are the most prominent. Shame at having failed in the past, for not being all that I 'should be', and fear that any further commitment will just mean more failure, more shame, more fear. And ultimately, more grief at the loss of my future ideal self.

Once I've stopped avoiding those feelings, they can just sit there in my gut as a point of sensation. They ripple up my back, sadness glimmers in my heart, I feel a choked up feeling in my throat. As I breathe into it, it spreads out, diffuses through my body. Grief has this strange way of alchemizing into joy and gratitude. In the same way I might cry at a moving moment in a film, my grief can bloom into self-love and appreciation for the richness of the moment.

These feelings are my portal into the next realm. I think of this as navigating the threads of time, choosing a future and then charting the course through it.

To do that, I have to step through portals. In the end it's my feeling body, my emotions, my personal field that opens the portal. I have to feel deeply and stay present with myself to make it through. If I don't do that, the portal can close and futures might close off to me. Then I feel the whiplash of pain anyway, and the grief and shame comes back, just like I was afraid of. But the magic of it is that the portal can always reopen, so long as I follow my process, so long as I don't abandon myself.

These feelings are here because I'm at a beginning, because I'm discovering a new version of myself. It's a signal that gives me what I need to move forward and become the man I need to be to help my community, the planet, the future and access magical realms where the seemingly impossible becomes possible.