Soccer Moms and C-Level Dads

The belief that you always have to be busy, that you must have no idle time, that you must work for all that you possess, is an idea brought to you by warlords of old. This enabled the warlords to control their people in order to have larger bigger pyramids, castles, and well-groomed grounds surrounding the castles. A symbol of wealth was to have mowed grass surrounding your castle. This required a lot of sheep or a lot of servants. This is why we have well-mowed lawns, and why the rich like to play Golf.  Even religions would convince their followers that they had to become busy worker bees creating a surplus as the harsh cold winter was coming.  The more goods that everybody had stored meant more taxes and tithing paid to those in charge. The powers that be would convince everybody "That idle hands were the devil's workshop." People that were idle or lazy and not doing anything were cast out or put in prison. In order to amass more wealth, they had to convince everyone that through hard work comes salvation.

Nazis wrote on the entrance to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, “Through Hard Work Comes Freedom.” Instilling hope in these hopeless souls that if they worked hard and were subservient that they would eventually they would find freedom. Church leaders over the years would convince people that they would have to earn their salvation by acts of service, donations, and strict obedience. They would do this although they preached salvation was attained through grace. The word grace comes from a word that means unearned income. You received income through no work on effort on your part. Many today still say the only way God knows you love him is by your service, yet he is all-knowing and all-seeing. This doesn't make sense, but it will to them (Lizard Brain).

I have seen women scrub their kitchen floor with a toothbrush on their hands and knees for hours thinking, “The only way I can be a good mom is to spend hours and hours cleaning my floor.” In a commercial application, the same floor would take ten minutes, and it would be just as clean. They feel unless it takes a large effort to accomplish something, the effort must be worthless. People who run marathons will practice six to seven days a week for hours at a time, even though Tim Ferriss in his book ‘The Four Hour Body’ shows the same results can be achieved in 1/5th the amount of time. What is your goal? Is your goal to work really hard or to accomplish great things?

In The Devil State, you will put others down because they are not busy with the things that you are busy with. You will look down on others and call them lazy. They are not working for and supporting a rich person. They are not a slave to someone else. They may be busy climbing mountains, drawing pictures, playing video games, and singing; but they are not doing it for pay from a wealthy person. The only time you feel these activities are OK is when you receive lots of money for doing them. Otherwise, these artists are lazy, and to be looked down upon. In The Devil State, you will see to it that other people are busy with the proper activities. In business, you will create lengthy reports that are filed in a box, and never looked at, then thrown away. You think to yourself "At least everyone in the office was busy."

In The Human State, you will be concerned about your own business. You will be busy making money, working out at the gym, going to yoga practice, taking new courses, and learning how to be busy. In The Human State, you are concerned about yourself. Are you the busiest person in the office? If you aren't, you will ask the boss for more things to do. This will let the boss know that you are trying to be busy. When you go home you will be busy cooking dinner and cleaning the house. You will be busy making sure your family is busy. In The Human State you will care less about others outside of your circle.

In The God State, you do not care about being busy. You will enjoy time in many different pursuits. You will be willing to let the multiverse take care of you. You will allow others to be busy with their own interest. Whether others want to "be busy" or in silence, you will do all you can to help them. You will not allow the judgment of others on your busyness or non-busyness to affect you. You will recognize the unlimited energy force around you and you need to allow this to energize you. In the God State meditation allows you to be very busy, but no one else will see your busyness.

In a business, managers will think employees must be busy. It is not about how much you get done, it's about how busy you appear to others. Individuals will move papers from one side of the desk to the other, run to the copy machine, or go to the shredder. This is all to look busy. It's not about accomplishing a task or getting a job done. In one company that I went to work for I was able to perform a job that the previous person took eight hours to do in one hour. The manager was upset because I wasn't doing anything. The manager gave me another job to do in addition. Both of these jobs took me two hours. I didn't receive praise or a raise for being efficient. Eventually, I was given the work of four men, which I accomplished in less than four hours. Their solution was to send me to a part of the factory where they did not have to see me. I would come and go on my own, and just let them know that I worked 40 hours.

In the book ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ an efficiency expert in the 1920s consulted with factories to help them achieve higher efficiency. This helped the company increase its profits. He asked to see the laziest man in the factory. He watched how he performed his job with intense scrutiny for two weeks. The efficiency expert knew that the laziest man would never do anything that was not required to get the job done. The laziest man had not been fired because he was producing enough product to warrant his wages. The industrious man (Soccer Mom or C-Level Dad) would run around the factory constantly being busy, checking every little thing, sweeping the floor, doing anything to look busy, but never really getting anything accomplished. The efficiency expert would then retool the whole factory to do things the lazy man’s way because the lazy man would expend the least amount of effort to get the maximum output.

In the book "Rework", the company 37Signals mentions that excellent companies should have no M&Ms. M&Ms stand for meetings and managers. 37Signals started in 1998 with ten people, and very little income. Today they bring in over $150 million a month and have only 40 employees scattered over the globe. Each employee does their job, and they have no need for meetings and managers. The worldwide economy claimed this business model would never work, and they were wrong. Most companies will waste hours of time in meetings where very little is accomplished. In these meetings, the only thing that is accomplished is that managers get to show off their power.

C-Level Dads (and C-Level Moms) start work early in the morning, go to power lunches, and cocktail breaks, and work late into the evening. When they arrive home at night if anybody is still awake they will give them a kiss on the cheek, and crash into bed. As their head hits the pillow a thought goes through their head, "Thank God I didn't have to think about anything deep today."

Soccer Moms (and Soccer Dads) will get up in the morning, fix everyone’s breakfast, prepare all of the lunches, drop each child at school or daycare, come home and clean the house they had just cleaned thoroughly the day before, then run to participate in five or six different clubs or events that she has joined for the rest of the day. Soccer Moms will then rush to pick the kids up from schools and daycare, then drop each one off at violin, soccer, football, speech, math club, parties, youth groups, etc. She then runs home to prepare dinner, and then she runs and picks everyone up, brings them home, feeds them, cleans up after them, and when the kids are done with dinner she makes sure that everyone is done with their studies and practices until everyone collapses out of total exhaustion. Just before she goes to sleep a thought goes through her head “Thank God I didn't have to think about anything deep today.”

In order to communicate with your children at times, it will require an hour of dead silence before they reveal their innermost thoughts. Children need to have periods of boredom in order to become creative. A group of people was tested to find their creative index... they scored 98%. These people were kindergartners. The group was tested four to five years later, and their creative index level had gone down to 30%. In high school, the group's creative index level had gone down to 10%. At work, and in school, we are always graded when we seem to be constantly busy, yet the greatest inventors and thinkers of all time have always had long periods of low productivity. One of the reasons that we rush and rush to get things done is to impress other people around us.

Another reason we keep busy is to prevent us from thinking about situations that are bothering us. In yoga, we use meditation and stillness to counter this. It is very important for us to take time to think (pray or meditate), breathe, to rest, and our families need this too. If you are always running how will you become still enough to see the world around you? You probably heard the expression “We go to work at jobs that we do not like, to earn money to buy things that we do not need, in order to impress people that don’t like us.” ...or we don’t like either.

Or like the Song says

I'm in a hurry to get things done

Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun

All I really gotta do is live and die

But I'm in a hurry and don't know why.

ALABAMA lyrics are the property and copyright of their owners.

"I'm In A Hurry (And Don't Know Why)" lyrics are provided for educational purposes and personal use only.

Why are we in a hurry? Are we in a hurry to impress other people? Are we in a hurry to impress ourselves? Do we just have low self-esteem? Let's slow down, enjoy life, and be directed, people. Do your intentions fly all over the place like a shotgun, or are your intentions direct and to the point like a high-powered rifle? We don’t live on a plantation in the 1830s where if the plantation owner didn't see us pick cotton fast enough we would be beaten, not given food, and we would have to sleep outside. We can only handle so many projects at a time. We can enlist the aid of others to get things done realizing that we personally do not have the time to do.

It took more than one man to build the road in front of your house. It took a whole team of people to design and build the car that you drive. It took millions of hours of engineering and design and construction to build the plane that you fly in. No one man built that factory, no one woman built that house, and no one person has built anything by themselves in this world today.  Everything requires a team effort. Now even more than ever Robots are doing work we choose not to. Let them do it, and you can become a Human being, a Godlike human being.

Your children can be taught to make their own food, clean their rooms, and wash their clothes, all while having fun doing it. If you read the chapter "Punishment - How Does it Work?" you will understand how to motivate your children and loved ones to get things done.

All of the great discoveries of the world and scientific thought have occurred during times of inactivity.  Leonardo Da Vinci would have accomplished nothing if he had been behind a plow. He was funded by several rulers to be an artist and was given time to think about how his world works. Albert Einstein would have never developed the Theory of Relativity if he had been working in a factory. He took a job as a patent office clerk that required less than one hour of actual work every day. Because of this, he had the time to sit and think. Out of boredom comes great things.

If you do not take time for yourself and slow down, you will destroy your health, sanity, and the lives of others around you. We need time for meditation, and we need time to just hold the ones that we love. Every person doesn't have to be a soccer star. Every person does not have to be a C-Level Manager in a company. Every child does not have to be a professional basketball player. Every child doesn't need to join the math club or the chess club. Every child needs to be loved. Every child needs to be given the freedom to find their own way.

Reading expands the mind, but unless you have free time, reading won't occur. If you are forced to read a book, you will learn nothing. If you are given freedom, learning accelerates. By having time to try several different paths in life, and being allowed to fail, you will discover what motivates you the most. By giving yourself space, you will find the path that you have a passion for. Sometimes people have to quit their jobs, travel, and broaden their education before they find their true passion in life. Are you ready to find your true passion?

Caregivers in a hospice that takes care of terminal patients have reported on the common regret those who are about to die express. Most feel that they didn't spend enough time with their families and let work rule their life. An older gentleman told me that he had worked two or three jobs his whole life to provide for his family. Three years after retiring his beloved wife passed away. He regretted all of the time that he had lost with her. Many housewives express that they are more concerned about their homes than the people in their homes. They wished that they had spent less time on the material aspects and more time on the relationships. Why would you wait until you are dying and full of regret? You can take action today to understand what your true motivation in life is.

All of these things are merely ways to impress other people. We impress people with things that we usually don't care about. We feel that in order to fit into society we need a certain level of material possessions. We are afraid of being called lazy or unproductive. Are we allowing ourselves to be superficial? A superficial person is only concerned about outward appearance. A superficial person does not really have a deep love or motivation in life. The outward appearance is important for the superficial person. People do judge a book by its cover. If you have no substance inside the book, people will quickly put it down.

Robots are currently taking over a large portion of labor. Every year that passes human beings needs to do less and less.  Our basic needs are met quite easily. The Lizard Brain is still living thousands of years in the past where if one person slacks, the village would starve (never has this really been the case, but this is how they felt). With this abundance of food, shelter, and health care we never have to stress over being busy. We can enjoy our lives with our loved ones always having time for them. Your time is far more valuable to other people than your money.

I have seen and been with people over the years who will take a day off, and drive to the country. When they get out of their cars, they will take a deep breath and say "At last we are in God's Country." Now there are weeds, twigs, bear poop, deer poop, bugs, and insects all over the ground. No bushes are trimmed, no trees pruned, and mosquitoes fly all over the place. They will cook their food over an open fire, get ashes and sand in their food, burn it, undercook it, and savor every bite saying "Food always taste better outdoors." So if this is God's Country where do they live? In the Devil's Country? Then they sit and stare at the stars for hours, eat burnt marshmallows, and enjoy the most beautiful display of lights.

A painter is busy, a poet is busy, a writer is busy, a gamer is busy, and an artist is busy…. Why do you feel they are lazy? Because they are not working(slaving) for you or a wealthy person cleaning their home or turning a crank in a factory. This will only make the factory owner wealthy. This will only make the worker cranky.

Are you busy keeping the thoughts out of your head? Are you busy because you want to put the thoughts in your head onto paper, onto a stone, onto a song, onto a heart, onto a student, or onto the ones you love?

Do you want a busy life or a wonderful life?

Do you want to be busy or do you want to be loved?

Do you want to be busy or do you want to love?

You will need to find what matters and what doesn't matter.