درسنامه تفسیری

Full Engagement – Commentary

Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, badah, dadah, dadah… all right here we go. Let’s start the commentary.

Full engagement, full engagement– how do you become fully engaged? As Tony said in the interactive lesson in his speech, some mornings you wake up and you’re not motivated. Some mornings you wake up you’re not engaged.

How do you change that?

How do you become more resourceful?

How do you make sure that you are fully engaged?

How do you make yourself do it so that you’ll retain more when you’re learning, while you’re learning, so you will succeed five times faster, so that you will feel fully alive?

That’s one of the cool things about engagement. We should talk about that for a minute. Yes, you will get better results in your life, faster learning, faster improvement, greater success in all areas of life, much greater leadership power and ability when you are fully engaged. Yes, yes, yes it’s true, faster success, five times faster, but there’s another cool great advantage, benefit of full engagement. It feels good.

You need some energy to do it, so in the beginning it feels like hard work. Ugh, you feel like you’re making extra effort, but after you do it for a while, when you get the habit, you will feel more alive. That’s what’s so amazing about it. You feel more alive when you’re fully engaged. When you’re not fully engaged you’re kind of like half dead in a way, you’re not fully connected to your life, to that feeling of aliveness of being alive.

When you’re fully engaged, even with something that’s painful or difficult, there’s a kind of pleasure that comes from just feeling alive and engaged. Those push-ups, for example, that I talked about in the main lesson; they were much more difficult to do than fully engaged, a lot more pain, a lot more tiredness, fatigue. In the beginning oh my God, so much more effort, everything.

But I noticed something, after I finished doing them I had this almost crazy feeling of excitement, some excited feeling and I realized it was that feeling of being alive. I felt more alive because I fully did it with all of my energy, all of my emotion, all of my muscle, everything together, mental, physical, emotional. It made me feel alive. I felt more energized the rest of the day and I still do every time I do it.

And that’s true no matter what you’re doing. If you’re talking to someone. If you’re studying something. If you’re practicing something. If you’re at work. Even if it’s something you don’t like, when you’re fully engaged you feel more alive. Your whole life gets better, even if you’re not really changing what you’re doing. So your life can stay exactly the same, same people, same actions, but when you’re fully engaged and do them, you will feel more alive, more excited about your life it’s great. It’s great you gotta do it.

How? How is your question, I know. How do I do it, A.J., I don’t feel it right now? I’m going to give you a ritual, some steps, some steps you will do. You must practice these. Before you do something think of an action, maybe it’s English, using these lessons. Maybe it’s something at your job, a relationship, it doesn’t matter, but what you do is you have to have what’s called a pre-performance ritual. Pre- means before. So before performance. A ritual is a habit, something you do, again and again and again and you do it every time.

Athletes do this. Athletes do this. You watch a baseball player, American baseball and most of the baseball players, the professionals they come up to bat – that’s when they try to hit the ball– and they all have these weird little rituals. Like some of them will hit the bat, hit the stick on the ground three times, it’s always three times. Or some of them will do something with their arm or do something with their hat. They have all these little things they do every time.

Why are they doing that? Do they think it’s magic? Not really. What they’re doing is they’re increasing their engagement. It’s like little actions that they connect to the feeling of engagement that’s why they do these little things each time. You’re gonna do this now, but you’re not gonna do some crazy thing like athletes sometimes do.

Let’s just imagine, let’s take one activity let’s say exercise, okay, we all need to exercise. You need to exercise. So, you’re going to do an exercise, before you do it you need to do a ritual, a little habit that you do every time.

 Step one, activate and amplify your emotions.

Activate means turn on. Amplify means make stronger, increase your emotions.

How do you do that? The first thing you do (part a) step one part a, remember your big dreams and goals and get excited. Remember why, why you’re doing it. Maybe your goal was to build more muscle, maybe to lose weight, maybe just to feel energetic and live a long life. You have

a big goal, a big dream, so imagine it. Before you do your exercise think about that, remember it, remember why you’re doing it, the really big reasons and let yourself get excited. Let yourself feel that excitement as if it’s true already. Feel the emotion of it.

Part (b) then, talk to yourself. I know it sounds crazy, like oh no I can’t talk to myself that’s crazy. Wrong! We talk to ourselves all the time, but usually it’s silent inside our brain, inside our mind. We’re always talking to ourselves. Well, do it out loud with a strong voice and say positive things. You might say, I’m excited to exercise. I’m excited to get healthy. I’m excited to lose weight. I’m excited to be strong. I’m so excited because I’m going to feel fantastic! This is called self-talk, talking to yourself.

You do it in a positive way about your goals and you have to do it with energy, right, let the emotions come up as you talk about this to yourself saying these positive things, as you imagine in your mind you see it now, your big dream your goal you get excited, you activate your emotions. You turn them on. When your emotions are turned on…

 Step two, engage your body; use your body.

One thing you can do is tense all the muscles in your body. You can be standing or sitting doesn’t matter. Start with your hands, tense them and your arms and your shoulders and your chest until your whole body tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight for about 10 seconds if you can. Squeezing all the muscles in your body and then suddenly relax everything. Then repeat it again. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze argh, tight, tight, tight, everything, all your power then release. Ah, relax everything. What does this do? This activates, turns on your physical energy. When you tense those muscles very hard your heart will start pumping more. It sends a message to your brain, turn on the energy. After you do this, you do this a couple times, tensing then next stand up and kind of bounce, jump a little bit, jump a little bit up and down, jumping, jumping, jumping and have a smile. Use your face muscles, smile and jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. Your body is turned on. Your body is engaged, activated.

 Now you go to step three, you focus your mind intensely. Focus your mind intensely.

How do you do that? First just focus on the breathing as it comes in and out of your nose. Focus all of your attention on your breathing at your nose. Any other thoughts, any other thinking comes in your brain push it away and focus even more on just your breathing. Concentration, train it! After a minute of doing this, next, focus your mind on the action you’re going to do and get ready to do it.

Let’s say we’re using a push-up as an example. So you turned on your emotions, you engaged your body, now your mind first with breathing, next get on the floor get ready for the push-up and now with your mind, focus all your concentration on the muscles you’re going to use. Feel them. Put your mind, all your concentration on the feeling in those muscles. So now your mind is engaged.

 And then, of course, number four, take action; do it.

Pouring, putting in all your emotional energy. Putting all your physical energy and focusing your mind completely on what you are doing. And physical exercise is a good way to practice this because it’s more simple and it’s very direct. So you can do this with a push-up, but you could also do this with English. You could do this with a public speech, have the same pre- performance ritual.

Then, while you are doing this action you are completely engaged, it’s the only thing you’re doing you’re not focused on anything else. All of your emotions are focused on this one thing, this action you are doing. Or, if it’s a person then you focus all your emotion on that one person, you focus all your physical energy on this one thing. If it’s a person it means your body is turned towards them, your eyes are looking right at them and then your mind, your mind, you’re observing, you’re focused, completely and only on this action or on this person.

That’s how you do it and you have to practice this, it’s a skill. It’s a skill. So, it’s hard to go from a habit of 20% engagement and jump to 100, so to be honest with my push-ups I’m not at 100% yet. At first I thought yeah that’s 100%, but now I’ve been doing it a couple weeks I realize I’m still not at 100%, I could do more. Right, sometimes my mind is a little distracted it’s not completely focused. Sometimes my body, I’m squeezing my muscles very hard but not as hard as possible, I know I could probably do it a little more.

Sometimes emotionally, maybe I’m not in a great mood, that I’m not using all of my power and intensity. I’m not as enthusiastic as I could be, I could do it even more. That’s the cool thing, you can always do more. You’ll always be trying to get to 100%, but you’ll never get there completely, but that’s good it means you can always improve.

All right, let’s go through this again, let’s think about it step by step.

Right now choose one action, a big goal in your life. Okay, now look around the room, bus, train, or car wherever you are, just look around and take a deep breath. Now, focus on your feelings inside of you now. Your feelings, your energy, what’s your energy like now? What’s your mood? This is a good step also to do in the beginning before you do something, is just, where are you now good mood or bad mood? What kind of energy do you feel in your body, high, low? Just notice emotions… happy, sad, frustrated, excited… notice inside.

Then again look around where you are and imagine yourself doing the action that you need to do, the action for your big goal. Imagine doing the action normally, how you usually do it. Kind of just remember, how do you usually do it? See yourself doing the action normally, in your normal way. Then, change the image in your mind, change what you’re seeing, change what you’re feeling and do the same action, see in your mind you’re doing the same action, but two times more engagement, two times more. Just imagine, how is your mind, your focus different, your concentration? How is your emotion different? How is your body different? Two times more engagement.

Okay, and then out and then in again finally, see yourself, feel yourself, even hear yourself doing this same action again five times more engagement. Five times more. One hundred percent maximum engagement imagine it, see it, 100% mental concentration, 100% emotional power, 100% use of your body.

What does that look like? What does that feel like? What does it even sound like, doing the action with 100% engagement? How is it much different than your normal way? Much different.

And yes, when you do this every time, when you actually do the action you do it every time, you improve five times faster. Notice your feelings, how you feel more alive with maximum engagement. You feel more alive, right? And you know your goal, your dream is getting closer, faster, because you’re fully engaged faster. You feel it, feel it, you feel the difference. Feel the difference between maximum engagement and normal. You feel it and that’s why, that’s why you master. You master. You master this quickly, five times faster.

Your homework, this month choose one important goal for your life, one very important goal and every day practice with full engagement. Take an action for your goal with full engagement that’s the important part. The action you decide, anything, but you must do it with full engagement, full engagement, 100%. Do the pre-performance ritual I taught you always. You do it always before.

Then finally, tell me on Twitter. Tell me on Twitter the results. If you’re having problems, if you have questions, you can tell me on Twitter. If you have great results I want you to tell me on Twitter. When you have great success, when you feel alive, when you feel yourself improving much, much faster; five times faster, tell me on Twitter. I’ll share with other people. I will celebrate. I will congratulate you. My Twitter is AJHoge, it’s Twitter.com/AJHoge.

Do your homework. Be fully engaged this month. Congratulations to you because you are going to have much greater success, faster.

See you next time. Bye for now.