Stop Doing That Sh*t

by Gary John Bishop

  Whatever the answer is, big or small, ACT ON IT!

  I need to stop you here. I’ve just given you the keys to the fucking kingdom. Everything you ever wanted, just waiting to be chipped at. Should there be doubts? Yes. Might you get a bit scared or confused? Yep. What about those old patterns; are they coming back? Yes, they are. “My self-defeating dialogue will still be there?” Uh-huh. “My fear of being rejected?” Yes. “The weight of the struggle of life?” Yes.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, fucking yes. And so what?

  We’ve just torn your past a new one in these pages. We’ve dug deep, gone right into the face of your most negative, most disparaging self. In the beginning of the book, I said we were going to work on uncovering and transforming the bullshit that constantly sabotages your life. By now, you should be familiar with all of those thoughts, those emotions, those intimate and habitual behaviors and feelings that are unique to how you experience life and that crop up when you’re sabotaging your life.

  If you’re not profoundly connected to all of the ways in which you have systematically sabotaged yourself, go back and connect with the life you were thrown into, see if you can uncover your established truths that led to the three saboteurs, and get in touch with that familiar point of experience from which you start every day. Read this again as many times as you need to and with a different pair of eyes each time. The eyes that are actually looking to change your life.

  Martin Heidegger believed that once we understand the ways we’re thrown, our whole life opens up. Until that point, our thrown-ness defines who we are, but once we’ve uncovered the way it works, we find true freedom. We’re able to surpass it in a way, to go beyond it and explore what it is to be a human being.

  But that requires one important attribute. Ownership. Whatever you own no longer owns you. That’s why we have done all this work, dug in as deep as we have: for you to define and make clear whatever has had you be on autopilot. To wake you up. To make you aware.

  Good! Now you’re finally aware!

  And now you have to take responsibility for all that you are now aware of. You don’t get to use the same tired excuses, the same old moments of self-indulged guilt or shame or weakness. Sure, there will be moments, real in-your-face moments when the compulsion to do the predictable will be so enticing, so magnetic and powerful, the urge will seem like it’s just too much.

  For example, maybe you are finally committed to ending the cycle of sabotaging your marriage and instead you are working to reveal a connection of love and adventure in your relationship. But what do you do when your partner says that thing, you know the thing, the one that you completely lose your shit when they say it? In that moment you have to stop and choose. Remember that future you created, the one that is a symbol of the life and relationship you have always wanted, and start chipping. You chip, chip away in that moment. You remove the obstacle. You don’t fight it, you don’t hate it or get dramatic about it, saying something that will hurt your partner and your connection. You move it to the side and let it pass through, unperturbed, and you take the action in that moment that is in alignment with that future of love and adventure. Authentically pivot.

  That action might look like apologizing, or telling your partner you love them, or asking for a minute to gather yourself. These types of actions are an interruption to the drive of the compulsion to self-sabotage and an example of the relationship of love and adventure you are after.

  And then it’s gone. Until the next time.

  And then the next time, you move it to the side again, replacing it again with an action that makes that loving marriage you are after more real, more present in the moment. And you’ll do this every time because that’s what someone does when their very existence is about having love in their life. They bring it to the table.

  You might have to do this two times a day, you might have to do this two hundred times a day. You see, that’s what it takes to make real and lasting change. Commitment. Real, no-kidding, all-in, nothing-left-out commitment to what you really want. Especially in those moments when you are defeated or depressed or confused or any one of the number of ways in which you find an excuse to bail on yourself.

  Then there will be those days when you blow it. That’s right, you might blow it, but even then, in the aftermath of that, you look to the future for guidance on how to clean it up. If you’re committed to love and adventure in your relationship and you’ve just blown it by saying the not-so-safe word that you’re not supposed to say in a moment of upset, what does love and adventure now demand of you? Take ownership, apologize, and move on into that loving and adventurous relationship that you created in your future.

  It doesn’t matter if you blow it. What matters is that you keep working on the stone, creating and chipping away at your own masterpiece. That you honor the future you created.

  Michelangelo already had David in his mind, remember? All he did was reveal the future he had created, and that’s all you have to do here, REVEAL THE FUTURE, every day, one piece at a time. You don’t seriously think he didn’t have to fix some self-imposed messes along the way, do you?

  The same old stuff will occasionally get in the way for you too. It’ll rise up and slap you around the head.

  That’s when who you could be becomes more important than who you were.

  NO LONGER SHAPED BY THE PAST BUT INSTEAD INFORMED BY THE FUTURE

  All of the shit that I showed you, dragged you through, and made you face in this book has led to this, your real opportunity for change. Not the fake stuff you were attempting in the past, trying to fix a broken reality. This is the real, deep, fundamental change, change that’s based on an entirely new set of rules and way of doing things.

  This isn’t about a single future either. This isn’t some feathery, vague dream of a future but rather a myriad of futures. A life that’s peppered with the future of your finances, your love life, your family, your body, your career or business or purpose for this life.

  You need to define that future for all of these things. Where are you headed? What will your life really look like in two or three or five years? What are you creating? Are you going to sit there and throw that up to fate, or will you define it for yourself and challenge yourself to live that reality, moment by moment by moment?

  What have you been killing off or waiting for or screwing around with? Start getting up to the sort of stuff that inspires you!

  Right now, start creating this future life in your mind’s eye, including all the different things you’d like to see in it and who you could be in it. Imagine the kind of work you’ll do a year from now. What actions are you taking today to reveal that future? What kind of relationship do you want to have? Can you see it? All right, now look at this present moment of time. What actions are you taking right now to reveal that future?

  It goes on. Picture where you’ll live, in what kind of house and in what location—no, really, get specific. Picture who will share it with you, whether it’s a lover, your family, or your dogs, or maybe you’ll be on your own! Now, take a look at your current life next to all of that. Your current life is the block of stone, the future is your David. What do you need to work on first? What will you be challenged by? Maybe you need to end a sterile relationship or take on some other big piece of your life. I get it. It won’t be easy, but remember, you are going to live either a life of regurgitating the past or a life of revealing a whole new future . . . it’s time to choose.

  There’s no magical secret to your life, no single potion, no mystical source to your stuff, no one thing that can turn you into your greatest self or gushing with new-age purpose.

  You’re more like a body of work than a body, and there’s always work to do, new levels of effectiveness and aliveness to unpack and explore. And every day of your life, either you’re getting yourself on the hook for that task or you’re dead in the water. Period.

  The universe doesn’t have your back, your front, your top, or your bottom, and things
happen only for the reason you give them. That’s it.

  Stop indulging yourself with fantasies and dramas and unresolved issues. Wake the hell up!

  Every experience you have, from anger to depression to joy, excitement, and apathy, they’re all human, but you don’t have to jump into bed with them every time they show up in your head!

  They’re all appropriate to the human experience; just don’t get hooked on any one of them! You’re not broken, there’s nothing to fix. You’re not a fucking chair, you’re an expression, so get out there and express your future. Make it something great, something worth giving your life to.

  Do you know what life really is? It’s an opportunity for you to play with the skinbag you were given. To try it out, to take it for a ride, to work that thing to its very limit, to live this life before you fucking die. The certainty you’ve been craving? That’s it right there. You’ll die.

  Between now and then, you have this glorious opportunity to go beyond everything you’ve ever known yourself as. To be the most effective, loving, forgiving, adventurous, passionate, committed, understanding, successful, and creative human being you can muster until you’re out of time. To look the people in your life straight in the eye and be the kind of human being you’ve always wanted to be. Authentic.

  Everything else is just complaining and shit coffee.

  If you’re not inspired by your life, you haven’t created one worthy enough to light you up, and that, my magic little sponge, is always on you. When it comes down to it, do you know why you self-sabotage? You’re bored. You’re bored out of your freaking mind by your own predictable, safe, ordinary little bathtub of bullshit. You know it and I know it. I don’t care how many certificates or diplomas you have, how much money is in your bank account, or the size of your Twitter following. Your life has become a mundane and repetitive attempt at wrestling yourself free from a past that you decided you’d never be able to get over anyway. It’s completely mental.

  Fuck the past, reveal a bold future, step out there and get into action. Deal with yourself.

  Own your life, own where it’s been, own where it’s headed and what you need to do to wake yourself up to what’s possible each and every day of it.

  The future has arrived. Now, what the hell are you going to do about it?

  About the Author

  Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, GARY JOHN BISHOP moved to the United States in 1997. This opened up his pathway to the world of personal development, specifically to his love of ontology and phenomenology. This approach, in which he rigorously trained for a number of years, saw him rise to become a senior program director with one of the world’s leading personal development companies. After years of facilitating programs for thousands of people all over the world and later studying and being influenced by the philosophies of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Edmund Husserl, Gary is producing his own brand of “urban philosophy.” His lifelong commitment to shifting people’s ability to exert real change in their lives drives him each and every day. He has a no-frills, no-bullshit approach that has brought him an ever-increasing following, drawn to the simplicity and real-world use of his work.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Gary John Bishop

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  Copyright

  STOP DOING THAT SH*T. Copyright © 2019 by Gary John Bishop. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Cover design: Rainmaker Creative

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition MAY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-287185-5

  Version 03222019

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-287184-8 (Hardcover)

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-294588-4 (Intl)

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  * You’re not really a sponge. It’s an analogy to have something make sense. Get with the program, for the love of God!

  * Ezequiel Morsella et al., “Honing In on Consciousness in the Nervous System: An Action-Based Synthesis,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e168, doi:10.1017/S0140525X15000643, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/homing-in-on-consciousness-in-the-nervous-system-an-actionbased-synthesis/2483CA8F40A087A0A7AAABD40E0D89B2.