Break Through Your BS_Uncover Your Brain's Blind Spots and Unleash Your Inner Greatness

by Derek Doepker

  If you want to plant the seed of greatness in others, realize that you’re going to dig up some of their dirt and get your hands dirty. Are you willing to endure their potential resentment for a moment to receive their recognition and appreciation for a lifetime?

  It’s All Coming Together

  The growth mindset is also sometimes referred to as “progress” mindset. Growth and progress are action-oriented words. They’re a process. “Doing” words. They imply something that’s in motion, like the Universe, constantly expanding and evolving. You are evolved, but only because you are evolving. Take the “evolved’ part in isolation of the on-going process that’s occurring, and you’re tempted to think, “That’s it, I’ve made it!”

  It’s not “I’m great,” but rather “I’m doing greatness.” “I’m striving for even more greatness.” “I’m experiencing the greatness I have now.” It’s all of the above. It’s an “ing” word that’s about the process, not the current state.

  This doesn’t mean you can’t say “I’m great.” The question is, is that all there is to the story? This is one piece, but not the whole.

  Can you see the wholeness from the pieces? Can you see the big picture without isolating only one detail?

  Our good old friend Jeremiah seemed to do the opposite when he separated the poison from the purity. He respected that the parts didn’t make for the whole. Can you separate the poison from the purity? Can you separate the parts from the whole? Can you make distinctions and see differences between things? This is a critical game to play.

  One can only see a part and say, “True love is pure joy and bliss. There can be no suffering with only true love.” It’s true that there’s only purity and bliss in true love. It’s like pure water and sustains our life. Still, from our experience on this Earth, there is something suspended in this love called human needs from a human mind. This means that we typically experience suffering along with love – at least at some points in time, such as when we see those we love in pain. Is it the love itself causing the suffering, or what the love comes along with?

  Suffering gets suspended in love, like a poison suspended in water, when we are human. The air you breathe and food you eat is tainted with small amounts of toxins, but this air and food still keeps you alive. Your body has means of filtering toxins out with your lungs and the liver. In much the same way the love we experience on this earth is almost always a bit “tainted” when it’s mixed with our human condition, yet still essential and life giving. The love is “pure bliss” in isolation, but this isolation is hard to achieve without processing. Love shows up mixed with “humanness” which is, from one perspective, why something as perfect as love can hurt at times as well as heal. For instance, to see someone I love and feel bonded to them means that I hurt when I see them suffering.

  Perhaps there’s something even perfect about this imperfection in the way we experience a perfect love as imperfect beings. Can we separate the poison from the purity and transcend this suffering to find only the pure, true love without the pain and suffering? This is a question you may wish to consider.

  Jeremiah didn’t just see the parts though. He respected the “wholeness” of the poison and the water in their original slime state. He didn’t touch the slime and go, “Well, since it’s part water, and water is pure, this slime won’t hurt me.” He appreciated that the slime could hurt him if he wasn’t careful, just like we know love hurts if we’re not careful because it’s been tainted with our human condition.

  But in order to save his life and the life of the villagers, out of love, he boldly entered into the forbidden cave that all feared to see if there existed purity within a tainted slime. Jeremiah was willing in his greatness to see the wholeness of a pure, life-giving water, willing to see the pure love if you will, within a poisonous slime. Then through processing it out, there was ultimately perfection. A perfectly pure water was always there in the slime, but there simply needed someone to choose to see it and draw it out before perfection existed as a separate whole from the slime.

  The before was imperfection. The after was perfection. The gap in the middle is the processing. Do you forget about the middle state, where the slime was being processed and having its poison removed? Or did you just focus on the before and after? Don’t we often leave the processing part out of the story and only see the before and/or after? Yet it’s the story of the processing that’s the entire basis of all our favorite stories, The Hero’s Journey.

  Are you comparing your “before” to someone else’s “after?” Are you forgetting when you see their greatness that they too struggled? Do you forget that those who are strong were once terribly weak, if even for a moment? For they had to be. One cannot be great without going through the trials of weakness, uncertainty, confusion, despair, darkness, depression, hardship, mind games, deceptions, wrongdoing, mistakes, vulnerability, selfish appetites, sadness, anger, misery, grief, guilt, overanalyzing, carelessness, addiction, discomfort, pain, pride, and anything else life can throw at you to challenge you. This is because there is no challenge too great to be overcome by the greatness that exists within each one of us – so long as one is willing to get the help they need, as true greatness is not ever to be taken in isolation from others.

  Are these trials, which are so often avoided because they’re considered “bad,” what makes a person mediocre or insignificant if they endure them? Or are these trials the very means the great used to unleash their greatness? Is it perhaps only the willingness to endure these trials, and not the outcome, that is in itself the ultimate “being” of greatness?

  You are a work in progress, going through a filter called life to separate your vices from your virtues to work towards a greater potential, a greater purity. You are being processed, you are processing, and you have this process you experience called growth. It’s all one.

  Forgiveness is a filter by which you may let go of the poison for the purity.

  You and your greatness are not independent of those outside of you. You cannot reach your true potential without the guidance and help from others and without helping others reach their potential. You and your greatness are not in isolation from the whole. You are one piece of everything, and without you, everything is not “Everything.” Without others, you can never be everything.

  What if in helping another unleash their greatness, you’re unleashing yours? What if in your humility to receive help and allow another’s strength to shine, you find it is this very act that shows you your own true strength?

  Consider…

  Would I allow myself to give my greatness to others? Would I allow myself to receive the greatness from another? What if there is no distinction or difference between the two? What if it’s all the same?

  What if the way to unleash your greatness is to ask, how can I unleash our greatness?

  Can you combine the parts to see a whole? Can you combine your being, doing, and having? Can you see both your pieces, your vices and virtues, and yet still see the perfection in the wholeness? Can you use this division you see and this wholeness you see as motivation to create resolution among the parts of you that conflict?

  With everything, there are only pieces. With “Everything,” there are no pieces.

  A day isn’t just THE day, but also the day and the night. To look at a “whole person” is not to see them as a collection of some cells and molecules. It’s not to confuse their hand with “them.” It’s not to confuse the thoughts with the thinker who has them. It’s to see something in its entirety with no division of parts, for all parts are one. The ocean is not bajillions of droplets of water, but “the ocean.”

  No shit, right?

  Well then, let me ask…

  How responsible is the organ of your brain for your body’s life?

  100% responsible? 10% responsible?

  At least we can agree it’s 100% essential, true?

  How responsible is your heart for your life?

  How responsibl
e are your lungs for your life?

  If we start dividing things up and go, “Well, the brain is about 25% responsible, the heart 24%, the lungs 17%, blood vessels are pretty important, so let’s say 19%, and so on,” – would this make any kind of practical sense? Aren’t I just pulling numbers out of my ass? Wouldn’t you end up 100% dead without any of these things?

  But do people do this division of responsibility in their daily lives?

  I’ve heard it said, “Nutrition is 80% responsible for the results you get in your health.” Great! Now try going without sleep, stressing yourself out like crazy, and drinking poison and see what happens to your health. That 80% you have on point don’t mean shit yo.

  Division of responsibility is a useful game to play to realize nutrition might have a bigger impact than something like exercise. I love 80/20 thinking, which is looking for the 20% of things you do that get 80% of results. It’s a game of “what matters more,” which is critical for making decisions that are all essentially a matter of prioritization. Never forget, though, it’s not true or false; it’s just a game of the mind.

  If one divides responsibility and doesn’t recognize how each part may be 100% essential to the whole, it can lead to a flaw in thinking, a blind spot, of telling oneself, “Well, this is only 5% responsible, so I can go without it.” Or alternatively, “Since this is only responsible for 5% of my results, I’ll half-ass it, and that’s cool. I’m going to do what that Derek guy told me in a book and make it insignificant by saying it’s just 5%. It’s only a little thing.”

  It would be like saying, “My brain, heart, and lungs are the most important parts of my body, so this means I can go without nerves, blood, and muscles, or at least they don’t have to do their job 100%.” In other words, it’s stupid and destructive.

  If your body parts were little people, how would you want them working for you?

  How would you feel about your lungs if they said this…

  “I’m just lungs. The brain and heart seem to get all the recognition. I’m just one organ, I’m not really 100% responsible for this whole “keeping the body alive” thing. If those damn muscles didn’t keep acting up, I wouldn’t have to bust my ass so much. Maybe they just need to cut that shit out and give me a break once in a while. Why should I have to work so hard? I’ll go ahead and take a break for today.”

  Or what if your lungs said this…

  “I’m just lungs. I know I’m essential, so I won’t quit. But I’m only like 17% responsible for the life of this body, so I’ll only work about 17% as hard. If this body doesn’t get enough oxygen, maybe the heart just needs to pump a little harder. The heart has been slacking off recently and using the excuse that it has a ‘condition.’ Bullshit. I think it’s just a lazy bum.”

  How’s it going to work out for you if your organs think like this?

  Now what if your lungs thought like this…

  “I’m the lungs, and dammit, I’m kind of a big deal. If I’m not here, the whole thing falls apart. I’m 100% essential, so I’ll take 100% responsibility for doing my job. If other organs don’t step up or cause me to work harder, well then, I’ll just deal with it. The brain can sort that shit out, but I’m going to do whatever it takes that’s within my power to keep this ship sailing. If I even just let myself slack off, that’s going to negatively affect everything else, including the amount of oxygen I get for myself.”

  Wouldn’t you want each part of your body taking 100% responsibility for the life of the whole body? It doesn’t make practical sense to the logical mind to say the heart is 100% responsible and the brain is 100% responsible because that’s 200%. Yet when looked at from the standpoint that each part is essential, if any part slacks off too much, it could potentially destroy everything. If one part does slack off, would any part be justified in doing less than 100% simply because another part is slacking off? Would it be wise for an organ to cop out of their job because “everyone else isn’t doing their job 100%, so I might as well not even try?”

  However, do people ever do this?

  “I should call this person, but you know what, the phone goes both ways. They don’t ever call me. Relationships are 50/50. If they don’t call me, well then, dammit, why should I call them? Why should I be the one taking more responsibility? Screw that and screw them!”

  Meanwhile, the other person is thinking about calling and is telling themselves this exact same bullshit story. It’s a game we can play, but what does it bring about? Death of the relationship. Death of a team. Death of even ourselves sometimes.

  What if someone said, “I’m 100% responsible for this relationship with this person, with this team, with this body of mine, and with anything else that shows up in my life that I relate to?”

  Wouldn’t they then say, “I want to talk to this person, so I’m going to be the one to take responsibility and make the move to call. I’m going to be proactive. I’m going to let them know how I feel, what I want, and make things happen. It’s their choice how they respond to me, but I’m going to be a leader in my life. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this whole thing work. There’s no blame on them; it’s just my responsibility.”

  How do you want the organs in your body to be?

  Do you want your lungs to give up because your heart is slacking? Or would you rather have your lungs step it up to give your heart just a little more time to restore itself, for maybe the current reality of your heart being sick isn’t the future possibility of it being healed. Wouldn’t you want every piece in you to keep fighting for life for as long as possible to give the broken parts a chance to heal and potentially save you from destruction? If anything gave up before it needed to or stopped playing at 100%, might the whole body needlessly die when it could have been saved?

  Are you doing what you want your own organs to do in the “body” of your relationships and the world? If what you see in your world is dying, are you going to look to another to step up, or would it only make sense for you to step up, take 100% responsibility, and live boldly in your greatness doing whatever it takes to keep the whole ship sailing? Will you face your fears, work extra hard, and do more than you “should need to” in order to give others a chance to heal, all in order to save the whole? Will you let others work harder for you and suffer on your behalf when you’re weak and broken so you have a chance to heal, all in order to save the whole?

  You are one part of many, and through this thinking of yourself as “only one part,” it has the potential to make you feel insignificant. You can use this “insignificance game” to scoff off some of your responsibility and feel justified. Yet all you’re doing is slowly or quickly destroying the whole that you’re a part of.

  But you think…

  “Anyone can do what I do. I’m not special. What I do doesn’t matter.”

  There are many doctors out there, but if there’s only one doctor on an airplane when someone needs a doctor to save their life, that doctor becomes the only doctor in the world that matters. Only they, in that moment, can save this life.

  To the people you know, your family, friends, or someone you’ve yet to meet, you may be the one person, the only person, who in some moment can save their life – physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

  Your gift of healing may be an open heart, kind words, empathy, compassion, speaking the truth with love, holding their hand, sharing a smile, giving a lesson learned from your hardships, or simply being present when no one else is. Can’t these things too save a life?

  You are just one person among many, and you may only offer one thing. Yet to another person, you and your gift, in one moment, may be everything.

  There are those out there who would have not taken their life if they were just given a smile.

  What if the smile you put on someone’s face or the moment you cared about some stranger saved a life? Would you ever know?

  You can assume you don’t matter, you can assume you do. It’s your choice. There’s no way to know unless
someone tells you. Unless someone comes back and said, “That time you were there for me meant everything.”

  If you need to remind yourself that you matter, ask yourself, “Am I reminding others they matter? Have I told the people in my life that I love that they’re significant and they mean everything to me? What if in my act of giving significance to others, I reflect back my own significance to myself?”

  Your organs might not have total conscious choice in how they function, but you do. You have choice. Therefore, you may choose to take responsibility, even as one of many essential parts, for the whole. Not for the purpose of beating yourself or others up if the whole fails, but rather so you can say, “I did everything I could. Now let the dominos fall how they may, and I will rest knowing through my willingness to take 100% responsibility, I have acted with greatness.”

  Remember this…

  Everything is made up of little things. Therefore, quite literally, the little things are everything.

  Every moment is just a “little thing” that makes up the entirety of your life. Every big thing you accomplish is just a series of little steps. A collection of little parts. With this comes ease in knowing that “greatness” is often just a series of insignificant steps. Showing up just one day at a time. Giving just one smile at a time. Being there for maybe just one person in a moment. Yet through these little things, something great is created out of all of it. Like tiny “insignificant” cells creating all that you are.

  This means greatness doesn’t need to be overwhelming. You can often take small, gradual steps to greatness, although you may need to be willing to make great leaps of faith from time to time. You can put yourself at ease remembering you can’t do everything, but you can do anything just one thing at a time.

  As much as this relieves pressure to have to make huge drastic changes in your life at all times, it increases the pressure as well. The “little things” now become significant. You can’t show up half-assing little things without consequence because that means you’re, in a sense, half-assing everything. You still gotta play full out at each moment for greatness. You’ll fail at this time and time again, but then the question is, how quickly do you get back up? How much do you play full on in getting up off your ass after you fail and fall? This getting back up quickly too, is greatness.