Early on we talked very simplistically about a new beginning being that point in time (without duration) at which your focus shifts from project A (already in production) to project B (not yet begun). We then learned about a catalyst that kicks off the change.

We still recognize the five stations of change (antecedent, catalyst, adjustment phase, new beginning, culmination), but look at it differently for today’s episode, and take a more reductionist approach.

Given we’re living in the dark with respect to all our future changes, then we can remove the antecedent period. Likewise, when you enter project B, you are living a new life, a new antecedent begins with respect to that bucket. So let’s remove that as well. And we know that a new beginning has no duration, so what good is it(!), get rid of it too.

What are we left with, but a catalyst and adjustment phase? And the adjustment wouldn’t need to occur without the catalyst. So… it’s all about the catalyst .

Therefore, a catalyst is any stimulus that merits a potential change of focus. Depending on our frame of mind and our current state of affairs we may see any stimulus as remarkable or unremarkable.

A remarkable stimulus is a stroke of chance, a perfect combination of time, frame of mind, location. An unremarkable stimulus, by contrast, is everything else, one of millions of things that cross your senses in a single day. At times, this seems very attractive and controlling our exposure to stimuli of any kind can in fact help us slow down, but life becomes “life” through remarkable stimuli, which we should strive for.

Here we focus on illness and other situations in which your project A is disrupted but you have the option of not accepting it and thus living in an infinite, frustrating adjustment phase, or vortex. To that end, you may, with intention, avoid learning about what is happening to you. That is your decision to make.

But, if you are regularly finding yourself returning to that catalyst with indecision, it may signal that you are still in this vortex, and it will really do a number on you.

We’re all living in an untold number of antecedent periods. Given we don’t know what is about to come to us as a catalyst, in a way, it’s all happening before something else. Just what, who knows.

We continue the discussion of the catalyst and adjustment phase. The catalyst generally comes at you from an external source. It causes you to begin to take steps toward a potential new beginning.

An emergency is a situation in which the catalyst is so significant that you have no adjustment phase afforded to you. Immediately your life is so different you couldn’t possibly deny it [Disaster, accident, death, unexpected alteration to your physical appearance are typically thought, but I could also say that an unexpected cash windfall, or other deus ex machina show of kindness could also qualify. Still, I choose to use the familiar term “emergency” for these here, though that vocabulary may change for future iterations of this material.]

Some people are innately better than others at quick action, whether by nature or nurture. I posit, though, that if you are afforded an adjustment period that is a length of your choosing, you will be able to cross into project B with a much clearer mind and without regret.

The real challenge here is to be aware of the number of adjustment phases that you living through. Each had some sort of catalyst that caused you to reconsider what you were doing prior.

Would it be better to live a life completely void of catalysts, if that were even possible? Or is it better to recognize your many adjustment phases and begin to determine what is required to clear the hurdle getting you to project B, or to cleanly think through that phase and see it through, as it were, by reverting back to your previous life.

And, finally, we are ready to learn a very important concept that will tie all this together.

We have spoken of a new beginning as being that point in time (without duration) at which your focus shifts from project A (already in production) to project B (not yet begun). Now we are thinking about the period that leads into the new beginning. What is it that got you on the path toward project B in the first place? Weren’t’ you already living a life blissfully ignorant in project A?

There exists something called a “catalyst” that sets off an “adjustment phase”, and the catalyst can be many things, and the adjustment phase may be short or long, and in some cases it may even be indefinite (we’ll get to that).

It is important to realize that your life may change before you recognize it and accept it. This catalyst may make the change for you (unwelcome model, life-changing diagnosis) but will you “change your focus” to the new life?

I close with a sidebar teasing a future concept about our lives operating on myriad spectra which may require you to live on complementary sides of a fulcrum at the same time.

In this episode, which is not a clip show(!), is a review of the material we uncovered throughout the previous episodes.

But with so little to report, I guess it could’ve been a clip show.

A pause in the New Beginnings canon, as I discuss a silly moment when I realized that due to a pattern of five episode releases, the bots of the world believed me to put out new material “Mondays”. That plural really bothered me, as I intended to not let this project control me and here I was being manipulated by a machine.

I live a life full of thinking I let people down constantly, and I’m working on it, but I don’t let machines put a guilt trip on me!

If you are not required for some important, official reason, live your passions at your own pace!