In March of 2013 — fresh off my life’s first major surgery — I sat in the speakers’ lounge at SXSW and checked my email.
In my inbox, two emails of note: One from a Self-Management for Actors student offering me tuition to an online entrepreneurial course that would absolutely impact my life in complex and phenomenal ways far beyond what was taught in the course itself. Another from a Self-Management for Actors student offering me tuition to the upcoming Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within weekend in Los Angeles.
First of all, how awesome are my clients? Y’all fucking rock. FACT.
Next, I took it as a sign. Here I was bravely traveling way earlier than I had been cleared to do so by my surgeon and the reward was the timing of these amazingly generous offers. I said yes.
Due to my physical limitations, there was plenty I was not equipped to do (*ahem*, walk on fire? Yeah. Bad idea for my adrenals at this time) and I only experienced about half of the amazing weekend in Downtown LA (even got a room at The Standard so as not to spend hours driving each way each night and day so I *could* experience as much as possible and have the ability to take naps throughout the day in my hotel room or poolside on the roof of the gorgeous hotel).
Yeah, I wanna experience another Tony Robbins course at a time when my body isn’t fighting having been invaded first by a growth and next by a surgeon trying to protect me from that growth, but I’m still so very grateful for what I *was* able to enjoy about this bizarre and intense weekend downtown.
Very clearly, I was meant to — at an extremely vulnerable and open state — experience all that I did in this jam-packed weekend. It’s a bit like how Keith and I came into one another’s lives as we had each undergone a trauma. Like, we never would’ve been vulnerable enough to open our hearts so fully to each other had we met under normal circumstances.
The big takeaway from my experience at the Tony Robbins weekend was this: There are six human needs that are met by all our choices, beliefs, attachment to emotions, and behaviors.
When we meet any THREE of these needs with ONE efficient behavior, we risk addiction. Because of the efficiency of that ONE thing creating a payoff for three human needs simultaneously, we will have to really work to let it out of our lives.
NOTE: I realized as I got toward the end of shooting this vid that I had misattributed the quote I shared about getting credit. It’s a Harry S. Truman quote, not a Calvin Coolidge one. I tapped into my “care less” muscle (even though I clearly couldn’t “care less” about the weird stuff my hair was doing during the shoot today) and decided I’d just tell you here rather than reshoot or even do a text overlay on the vid about the misattributed quote. 😉
And with that…
From my notes in 2013:
In making this list, I knew that CERTAINTY was my #1. I grew up in a single-parent household after having had a very stable first few years. The chaos that followed caused me to cling to anything predictable. My OCD patterns emerged as a response to having no idea how we were going to survive and feeling out of control in my ability to help.
If you can assure me how things are going to be — even if HOW they’re going to be is “not good” — I feel safe. I feel safe in the certainty.
My secondary — as I wrote these words in March of 2013 — was SIGNIFICANCE. Keith and I always joked about how he believes we can best give to others without getting credit and how I believe without getting credit the give is useless. NOTE: I am saying this in the past tense. THIS HAS CHANGED in my life since 2013.
In fact, some of this changed right there in the Staples Center. It’s like I was punched in the gut, hearing Tony Robbins scream these things at us.
My most dormant from this list in 2013 was LOVE.
Wow.
How fucked up is that?
I’m not saying it’s better to be motivated by love than by the ego-twisted significance, but for the LAST of the six to be LOVE? No wonder I’ve spent my whole life sure I need NO ONE (and that anyone has been able to stick around in my life has been the result of their stubbornness winning over mine, nothing more).
Yeah.
Here I was taking breaks from the pumping-music rock-concert-style energy 6000-person on-our-feet jumping-and-screaming seminar to repack my wound and change my surgical dressings in my hotel room and I could feel the impact of this bit of information about myself more than anything else.
This SETTING of mine had to get fixed up. And fast.
Here I am on the other side of this list by four years and here’s what I can tell you: My new primary and secondary needs are GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION.
I try new things because they delight me. I challenge myself because it’s fun to see what might happen next. I surround myself with people whose intellect and charisma make it fun to “yes, and…” one another. I love to GROW through my every interaction. I’m not afraid of being changed because now I understand that growth doesn’t mean I *lose* myself. I improve upon my me-ness. It’s awesome.
I no longer care whether I ever get thanked when someone whose life I’ve affected holds up something gold and shiny. Sure, it’s fun when it happens but I no longer need the praise. I know what I’ve created. I know what I’ve built. I know who I am in the world. I know I have contributed. Good. I’m leaving this world a better place than I found it. No one can take that away from me. And it’s not by telling me I’ve made a difference that I made one. I made one. Period. The rest of it is ego.
Certainty is comforting and I can still see myself gravitating to its pull because of how dominant this force was in my life for decades. Now and then my ego will ask me to be significant and I’ll correct it by assuring it that contribution is the more aligned cause. Keith is in my life as a constant source of uncertainty (OMG, to live with a Pisces who celebrates “the eternal NOW of dog-time” was once so challenging to a formerly-certainty-driven gal).
And wouldn’t you know it? LOVE has become a much bigger part of the equation, though still not my top two. It doesn’t need to be. The bliss I get from growing while I contribute surrounds me with more love than I ever could have expected.
Holy shit. My life changed when I learned all of this at the age of 42 and I love that I know it can continue to change every day if I invite it in.
This is one of the reasons I love working with artists. We’re not afraid of change. In fact, we thrive on it.
I am so gratified by this life lesson — whether or not I got the firewalk that usually accompanies it — that I just had to share it with you glorious creatures.
What are your primary and secondary motivators? More importantly: What would you LIKE for them to be?