A Mason's Work

Building on the last episode's foundation of being honest with yourself, there are a ton

of times when no amount of radical honesty is going to be sufficient to help you get around

the edges of the sort of demon you're facing.

I say no amount of honesty because you can't even see the blind spot.

These are developmental blind spots that you have.

We all have them.

There's no one is immune from the blind spots that come from growing in the way that people

grow.

So as you go through the process of exploring your blind spots, you're going to find that

everything seems okay.

But you keep doing these weird things, whatever they might be.

So I'll give you a discrete example from my life.

Every time I am standing in front of the computer trying to do some work, there is a chance

and it's increasingly high that as I sit and plan on working, that I need to get up

and do something.

I need to go get my coffee is empty.

I need to go get a coffee.

All right, I need to go check and see.

I thought I heard a noise outside.

All right.

The more often I do these kind of get up and checking on things is an indicator for me

now that I'm being honest with myself and I'm beginning to understand what that looks

like that I am either confused about the work I'm doing.

I'm avoiding the work I'm doing.

The work I'm doing doesn't make sense to me.

I feel like I'm discovering it all from, you know, rediscovering a new continent kind

of thing or I'm overwhelmed by the volume.

And any of those four sort of bits of awareness didn't come organically right away because

I'm not aware enough of the things that I do on a regular basis.

But I did notice, you know, I just got up for like the tenth time in an hour to go get

coffee or go use the bathroom or go check on that noise outside.

Maybe something's happening there that is a behavior that I'm undertaking to avoid

what I was supposed to be doing.

This is how you start to peel up the edges of your blind spots.

Now I deal with the sense of ambiguity or potential in aggregate adequacy or the exploration

of new concepts and ideas seems to be getting up and avoiding stuff by going pretty much anywhere

else but where I'm supposed to be to get the work done.

And so this behavior set of mine might be similar to a behavior set of yours, it might

not.

You might find the way you avoid or the way you distract or the way you get away from

your discomforts, whatever they might be, are completely different.

You might become productively unproductive as I call it.

It's where you're doing things that feel productive but they're not the thing you're

supposed to be doing.

So you might become an exercise person who's just perpetually exercising as a way to avoid

doing the thing you're supposed to do.

But he's going to fault you for exercising.

When you're doing it at the expense of all of the things you should be doing, it's no

longer productive, it's counterproductive and that goes back to the last episode about

being honest with yourself.

So as you are trying to figure this stuff out, as you're working on sort of peeling up

the layers of your own behavior and what the origin story is for those things and how

you're going to adapt and what are you going to do to fix it.

Looking for those behavioral red flags, those little symptoms of something that you are avoiding

or you can't see.

This is, again, part of that discovery process that we all have it, it's all going to be

different and no one else can do it but you.

So keep an eye out for repeated behaviors.

Keep an eye out for avoidant behaviors.

Keep looking and you'll find that coupled with a strong sense of honesty and a good

you know, strong sense of courage, you should be able to start working out some of these

invisible demons that have been haunting you for God knows how long.

In my case, almost 50 years.

So good luck and if you have trouble, be sure to find us.

We're going to be out, you know, folks from Emasons Worker out there, out in the

Masonic communities, they're large and we're building an online one for folks just like

us who are all trying to get better.

Talk soon.