Your Kingpin - A Fundamental Self-Assessment

This is a piece I first wrote years ago and have kept it alive because it's message keeps coming around on the guitar again and again.

There is one of two fundamental beliefs running the operating system of your human computer. Find out which one is yours, and practice being aware of when it's controlling your hardware & software. Once you are aware, you're in a position to change what's in control and able to CHOOSE how & who you will act in a given situation.

Easier said than done and... this IS what there is to do.

For students of The Power To Transform, keep in mind & body while reading what's below the idea that a belief, no matter how deeply rooted, is an assessment: Neither true nor false. Made up. Not real. But powerful, because as we've learned...

We act out of our assessments.

Through working with The Power To Transform, I now accept that beliefs are habits of assessment and changing my beliefs will require awareness, choice, being accountable, honestly, comitment and above all, deliberate & determind practice.

Please review the following with the distinctions you're learning from The Power To Transform. May shed new light on an old subject <smile> And of course, I'd love to learn what you get from all of this.

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Self-Improvement: The Kingpin
Your kingpin is a fundamental belief you have about you. It is the result of an experience you had a young child, what you told yourself about that and your habitual thinking that thought over your lifetime. The same way you created this belief, this habit of thought—by consistent and persistent repetition over time—you can create a new habit of thought, one that empowers instead of sabotages you... one that inspires you to action instead of holding you back.

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In the 19th century Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States, logging was a way of life and a very big business. The wood built and fueled the new nation into a world power. Lumberjacks felled the great trees by hand in the winter, sawed them into appropriate lengths (which was called bucking) and "skidded" the huge tree trunks on sleds drawn by mules or oxen out of the forest to the nearest frozen river.
 
Please remember this was long before 18 wheel trucks, much less the huge Sikorsky helicopters the timber industry employs today.
 
After the spring thaw, these tremendous logs would simply be floated downstream to the sawmill, which was by the ocean where tall ships would distribute the lumber around the country and the world.
 
Inevitably, this massive parade would become paralyzed. The result was called a logjam.
 
What a quandary that must have been: Hundreds, even thousands of logs each one weighing many tons and the whole thing stretching, sometimes for miles, back up river, a tangle of giant timbers stuck solid; going nowhere—fast.
 
But the loggers were undaunted. They knew a simple, yet powerful, secret.

There was one tree trunk—and always only one—which was holding the entire logjam in place. They name they had for it was the "kingpin."

All the lumberjacks had to do was locate the kingpin, pry it loose, and the entire mass of locked-up logs would be free, flowing on it's way again down stream to the sawmill.
 
You and I have a kingpin too: One huge three-ton-toothpick holding back our talents, skills, abilities, values and dreams, keeping us apart and away from genuine success and satisfaction in every area of our life and work.

Your kingpin is a fundamental belief you have about you—actually at this point in your life, it's no longer a belief you have...

It is a belief that has you.
 
A belief is a thought—good or bad—that you have been thinking often and consistently enough that it has become a habit. A belief is simply a habit of thought.
 
Your kingpin is the result of just such habitual thinking. And the same way you created this belief, this habit of thought, by consistent and persistent repetition over time... you can create a new habit of thought, one that empowers instead of sabotages you and holds you back.
 
Your Kingpin is lodged in your subconscious mind.
 
So, want to know what it is...?
 
Good! Let's get right to it.
 
What you say in response to the following fill-in-the-blank quiz is Your Kingpin. Wiggle this one log lose and a veritable cascade of creativity will carry you effortlessly down your stream of consciousness to the fulfillment of your desires, dreams and destiny.
 
Although there may be variations on the theme, your answer will come in one of two favorite flavors: Quantity or Quality. You are always in pursuit of either more... or better....
 
So, complete the following statement:

No matter what I do, it's never ___________.

No matter what I do, it's never enough.

No matter what I do, it's never good enough.

Take your pick. It WILL be one or the other—and the various variations...
 
Are you always in a state of overwhelm where there's never enough time to complete all you have to do?
 
Try as you might to please your family or associates they always demand more—it's never enough.
 
Are you struggling financially barely getting by on the income you dreamed of making just a few short years ago—will you ever have enough money?

More, more, more...

No matter what I do, it's never enough.

Or how about this and these...
 
You give the best sales presentation of your career, and the prospect says, "I'll think about it."
 
You've been working on that letter, report, ad or article for weeks now, and it's still not right.
 
You've read all the books, heard all the tapes, you've attended every workshop since you began your self-development quest years ago. You've done everything the experts and gurus said to do and you're still not there yet. "No matter what I do, it's never good enough."

Better, better, better...

No matter what I do, it's never good enough.

And where did all that come from you ask...? (And thanks so much for asking;-)
 
Once upon a time—one very specific long ago moment back when you were somewhere between one and 10 years old—something happened. It may have been the most innocent of non-events or a card-carrying life or death situation. It REALLY doesn't matter.
 
That was the first instant when you realized the world wasn't listening to you. You learned that it wasn't safe to tell the truth... to be who you really are. In that moment, you saw life as a struggle, literally for your "self's" survival. You knew right then and right there that the world looked at you as either not enough or not good enough no matter what you did.
 
In that single moment, you made a fundamental decision. You decided how you had to think, feel and act to safely and successfully navigate the stormy seas of life as you had just experienced and interpreted them to be.
 
It wasn't the truth, but you didn't know that. You were just a child—possibly frightened, probably in pain—a hurt little kid looking for a way to love and be loved.
 
Your goals were simple: to stay safe; to find a way to be as much of your authentic self as you could risk being and have that be okay with the world around you and the people who lived in it. You became a chameleon. You started living a lie.

You had just created your false self.

What is most amazing is that this decision made in the mind of a scared little kid is running the lives of almost every (think 99.969%) adult on the planet. No matter what culture, what circumstances, what whatevers, inside each of our subconscious minds, is a heaped-on history of this past negative programming.
 
I'm never enough (I need to be more), or I'm never good enough (I need to be better) is your false self 's primary motivation. It is what drives us, especially in stressful situations, facing difficult emotional decisions, whenever "the heat's on."
 
The good news... doesn't have to be that way. You can change it.

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Click this link to download a PDF copy of The Kingpin.

Thanks.
I appreciate you!

 

     

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Comments

[Johnny Fogg]

Good story, interesting thought, and for me it asks the question, "What do I/we replace those thoughts with? I am enough...? I am good enough...?" Or is the point simply to bring awareness to the fact that those other thoughts are running your show, and, through that awareness diminish their strength?

[Keith Higgs]

Wow That hits an open wound though I'm not sure it's one or the other? I seem to have carried a bad case of both.
I realised not good enough's influence before but not sure that that log is completly free maybe it's tangled with not enough?
Time to reasses with a more empowering I am! Thank you! Much appreciated!

[John Fogg]

YoungMan— Like Quality @ Ford, Awareness is Job #1.

Tha ShakesMan said, "Naught is either good or bad by thinking makes it so." Major Majer says, "Assessments are neither true nor false, good nor bad, they just are assessments— AND, we act out of our assessments.

Deal is: What possibilities does that assessment (ANY assessment) OPEN and what does it CLOSE.

So, I'll go with pick an assessment (any assessment) that OPENS & CLOSES the possibilities I want in my life.

It's all made up, so... make it up to serve & empower what you want to create.

Make sense?

Thanks for askin'

[John Fogg]

Sir Higgs (anyone with two g's in his last name is fine by me ) It IS one or the other in the predominant role. My Sherlock has always been: What are you always after: More, more, more... Better, better, better.

Of course, we all experience both. Game is, which is boss.

Beside "I AM" is the OPEN & CLOSE deal. What I like about that is the lack of emotional charge & investment. OPENS this & that possibility, CLOSES those. Plain & simple. And different enough for me to be able to look freshly, NOT encumbered by my past "know it all" or the other Enemies of Learning.

Trust that serves. If not... fire away