How you get up to piss at night can change your life. I mentioned micro-exercises before, and this is pretty micro, it only takes a few seconds. As you get older, you will have the opportunity [unwanted]to practice several times an evening. And yet in those few seconds you can transform your life. 

Doesn’t seem possible does it? Possible even ridiculous, but not really. First let me quickly describe the exercise. You plant both heels on the ground, then stand up. Check to see that your hips are directly over your heels. You can do this by feel. Then check to see that your head is directly over your heels also. It may take a little wiggling, but you should have your heels, hips, and head in a straight line. If you are having a little problem with this squeeze the checks of your ass together as though you were slightly straightening out the curvature of your back. So far you haven’t spent more than a few seconds, and you are standing like a Gold Medal winner while they play the national anthem, and therein lies the problem. 

There is a part of you that will rebel against that self-image even for the few seconds when you first stand to pee in the middle of the night. 

What if Cinderella, because of the abuse of the step sisters, walked about like a servant girl with her head down like a whipped dog? Then getting all dressed up and going to the ball wouldn’t have done much. On the other hand, if she had used her normal “cleaning,” and other work behaviors to train her posture and self-image, then she wouldn’t have needed a fairy god mother. Full disclosure, I am not your fairy god mother. 

But the magic is there inside you, just waiting for you to access it. The relationship between self-image, what you can achieve, and posture is magical. You can say this to yourself anyway you want, you just have to believe it. And this isn’t difficult once you accept your self image to be a script for the part you play in life. So obviously we must look and act the part. 

And lets think about that in terms of the movies we have talked about. Recall the heroes we have mentioned, and consider their posture, balance, and grace of movement. You don’t find any of them with an, “aw shucks,” type of presence. The bad guys, or the nothing characters, have a plain to worse posture. Many Hollywood types go to special classes for deep massage and alignment so that they can walk the walk that will be yours just doing this micro-exercise. 

But you will find that you are faced with a deep internal resistance to change. This is because your self image is fighting to keep its “loser” posture. In other words self image will work to portray its character to the world. Everything we have been talking about, your posture, carriage, and movements are the actualization of your self image. You have a complete body memory that goes with the part you have been learning all your life. If your inner you, believes that role, then it will rebel against you moving through life with a confident posture. There will be a dissonance. But this can work the other way. If you have heroic, confident Ronin* posture, and can maintain it with the right attitude, then your posture will change your mindset and your self-image. 

And this will change your life. Part of the change will be that you will evoke different reactions from those around you. Let’s look at this like a play. You began this play, that is your life with one script, evidenced by your posture, and now suddenly you change scripts. Of course others will react differently. If you were a “loser,” before with subservient posture, and now you come to work for the guy who hired the loser, when he finds himself looking into the eyes of a hero it may disturb him. You might become an unemployed Ronin.*

*Those of you who have hung in there with me know that I am providing a Life System. “Ronin,” is one of 7 positions in the system. This will all be made clear as we progress.