How Stories Mold Our Perception Of Reality

KATHLEEN: Hello everyone and welcome to the Journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network. And as you can tell, I am not at home, I am on the road in Torrington Wyoming working. So it's probably the one week I'm gonna work and make money anyway. So we're just gonna go ahead and get started.

KATHLEEN: But I just want to let you know that everything looks a little different. It's because I'm on the road. The purpose of the show is to help you realize that you are not alone. You are in control of your life. It does not matter what your lot in life. Is or where you came from.

KATHLEEN: We have all felt pain, suffering, hurt, abandonment, loneliness, hopelessness, et cetera. This show helps you to take those dark moments and turn them around to create a whole new. You. We were taught to be a certain way, act a certain way and to conform to society. Being socialized is not bad, but it does put constraints on us.

KATHLEEN: The guests I bring on the show are telling you their story of where they came from, the obstacles that they overcame and where they are today, they are sharing the tools they use to recreate themselves and their life podcast dot Kathleen M. Flanagan.com is a list of the guests that have been on the show with their contact information. I am aware that you may resonate with one or several of them.

KATHLEEN: My desire is that this becomes a community where you have access to the people you wish to align with and utilize the tools that they have as well as the tools being offered on Kathleen and flanagan.com. I am a certified coach who can help you reach your dreams. I can help you learn how to rely on and believe in your unlimited potential and power.

KATHLEEN: I already know that you've experienced flashes of insight and intuitive knowledge and big thinking that has you wondering just how far could I go? If only I'm here to help you stir up that innate knowing and self trust already instilled deep in your soul. I help you to forge forward when the old you would rather give up and turn back awakening.

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KATHLEEN: I didn't bring my tuning forks with me. So we're not going to be starting the show with the tuning forks. But I do have Kevin Burk here with us and he is the headmaster of the Real Astrology Academy and the creator of the Human Game and the Human Game experience. He has been counseling and coaching as an astrologer since 1998 teaching astrology since 2000 and is the author of more than a dozen books.

KATHLEEN: The Human Game is a philosophy based on the idea that the Universe is made up of stories. Story is the smallest practical unit of reality. If everything is a story, when you understand how story works, you can understand anything. The Human Game experience is an astrology based reality role playing game that can give you creative control over the story of your life.

KATHLEEN: It's an eight week online program that helps you experience the potential of the Human Game philosophy with video tutorials, a comprehensive player's handbook, personal coaching and the support of a growing community of Human Game players around the world. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to his website at Play the Human Game.com. Welcome, Kevin.

KEVIN: Thank you for having me, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN: You're welcome. So I know I'm gonna ask you in a minute about your journey of becoming an awakening spirit and how you went down this path. But the one thing that came to me when I read this and I don't think I was aware of it when we had our initial call about six months ago was our brain tells stories all the time.

KATHLEEN: And you said, I know you said that, but for some reason when I heard it from somebody else about how our brain operates, it's like, yeah, we're always making story up. That's why I have an MSU degree which is make sh*t up.

KATHLEEN: So now I understand why I always had this MSU degree. So here you are going to tell us how to get around it. I love it.

KEVIN: Make use of it because this is the thing we understand everything based on stories. Story is how we make sense of reality, how we make sense of the Universe. Stories help us, it's all about pattern matching stories. Give us a way of matching a pattern so we can go, oh this is that, that's how we make sense of things, how human beings have always functioned.

KEVIN: And I mean, stories everywhere. I mean, we love story, the multibillion dollar entertainment industry is all story.

KEVIN: But it's always such an interesting moment when people realize, oh story really is everything.

KEVIN: And, and when part ofcthe human being philosophy really says, yeah, everything is story. Let's understand how story works. So we can understand, how everything works because it's all story well.

KATHLEEN: But I think that's how we create meaning because we don't understand what's necessarily going around us.

KATHLEEN: So whatever our paradigms or limiting beliefs are, whatever good things happen, we just kind of go well, I remember when this happened and this is so we're always creating stories even when we don't and when we're little kids and we don't even know about stories. What are we doing? We're making stories up in our head as little kids, we have make believe friends.

KEVIN: Everything on every level. I mean, when I say it's all story, I mean, it's all story and nothing is just story. Story doesn't denigrate anything. But when you realize everything is story. And when you step back and look at what's the story here, how does the story work? You can compare and contrast anything because the one thing everything has in common is it's all story.

KEVIN: And if you don't, we jump in in the middle of things, I mean, you can't compare science and spirituality. Well, sure you can, they're both stories. You can't necessarily, fit them directly together. You need to step back and go.

KEVIN: Ok. How does the story of science work? Where does that fit in, in the story matrix? How does the story of spirituality fit in, in the story?

KEVIN: And then you got apples to apples and then you can understand, oh, here's where these connections are, here's where the comparison and contrasting is here's what you can do with this and it just the ability I'm still actively exploring the Human Game philosophy that I have that I have a thing I can share with the Human Game experience is great.

KEVIN: So OK, great. Now I finally have something I can put out there, but I'm still exploring and mapping out what this philosophy does and can do and the way that it just get specific, it's made my life so much easier because I'm no longer OK.

KATHLEEN: So, because you're getting a little too far out there and if you're gonna lose me. You've lost my audience. So I think this is part of that. How did you get to where you are today?

KEVIN: Ok.

KEVIN: How did I get to where I am today? I've been on a lifelong journey of trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with the Universe. Basically, my entire life, I've kind of been stomping around and going, oh, this is not acceptable.

KEVIN: I want to see the manager and that's driven me to everything. That's what drove me into astrology and spirituality and consciousness and all of the things that I had been exploring.

KEVIN: And when I started creating the human, I created about a year and a half into creating the Human Game, I finally realized, oh, I didn't know what it was, it came out of astrology and it was just really amazingly practical way of working with astrology, which I've been looking for 30 years because astrology never did what it promised.

KEVIN: I could never use it the way that it was supposed to have all the answers. Never really gave me all of the answers in a way I could do anything with them.

KEVIN: And this seemed to be doing that, but I didn't know what it was. I knew what it did and, and I say it's a coaching model or is it a floor wax or is a dessert top? Wasn't sure what it was. And then I finally realized, wow, it's a philosophy.

KEVIN: And, oh, I'm a philosopher.

KEVIN: I've always been a philosopher. I misidentified for 30 years as an astrologer. My pronouns were Scorpio cancer gemini. And then I realized I've never been an astrologer because I don't care about astrology for astrology sake. I've never fit in with other astrologers because I've always been sort of asking inconvenient questions that nobody understood why I was asking.

KEVIN: And I realized I'm not an astrologer because I don't care about astrology for its own sake. I care about astrology for the answers it's supposed to give. And that's why I'm a philosopher. I care about astrology, giving me the answers to life in the Universe and everything and that in and of itself just put my whole life into focus. It's like, oh, I wish somebody had told me that 30 years ago.

KATHLEEN: But that's your job. You're supposed to discover this all on your own.

KEVIN: Well, I'm catching up, I did, I am figuring this out. But, so much of this. So, we talked a little bit in the pre show about happiness and how important it really, all anybody cares about is how they feel.

KEVIN: That's all you actually know. I mean, your experience of reality is divided between interior and exterior and inside is who you think you are your sense of identity and how you feel and that's all you actually directly know. And literally everything else in the Universe appears to exist outside of you.

KEVIN: Human beings run on like eight lines of source code. We are really not complicated and all of it is about feeling we want to avoid pain, pursue pleasure and in any given moment, feel better. That's it. And feelings live inside you. And we engage with the outside world because we think somehow conditions in the outside world are gonna create feelings inside of us.

KEVIN: And that doesn't, that's a game you can't win because you can't really control the outside world. But how do you engage directly with your feelings? How can you know, how can you do that? And that's part of what the Human Game makes it possible to do.

KEVIN: So let me dive into a little bit of context that I need to lay forward. So everything starts to make a little bit of sense.

KEVIN: Everything is story, reality is story, what you experience as reality is what I call the composite story. Now, the composite story is like a composite image like you're seeing on your computer or your screen right now. That composite image is comprised of three component levels. There's a red channel, a green channel and a blue channel.

KEVIN: If you've ever done any video editing or digital photo editing or played around in Photoshop, you know, you've got no creative control over the composite image. If you want to make any changes to the composite image, you make adjustments to the component images and that's how it transforms the composite image.

KEVIN: So what you experience as reality is the composite story and you've got no creative control over the composite story, but that composite story is comprised of three component levels of story. There's the plot level story which is the external sequence of events. It's what happened. It's everything in the outside world.

KEVIN: Title of the plot level story is just the facts, ma'am.

KEVIN: You can have fun engaging with the plot level story, but you've got pretty much no creative control over the plot level story.

KEVIN: The character level story is your internal reality. The character level story is everything inside you. It is your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, the plot level story is what happened, the character level stories, what happened to me and how do I feel about it?

KEVIN: So the character level story is where you find happiness is where you find all of the good feelings and you've got a lot of creative control over the character level story, but you need to learn how to access it.

KEVIN: And that's part of what the Human Game experience teaches you to do. So you can engage directly with the character level story and choose how you feel about those plot level events because they don't actually create the internal feelings.

KEVIN: So first level of story, plot level story, external events, character level story is where you live. It's how you feel, it's all that matters. Then we have the theme level story. The theme level story is universal and archetypal and spiritual. It is entirely symbolic. Title of the theme level story is the Da Vinci Code Astrology operates in the theme level story. Now, the theme level story is not personal at all.

KEVIN: But when you connect the theme level story to your character level story, that's when you find meaning and purpose in your life. That's when you find the personal connection to something bigger. And you can use strategies from the theme level story like astrology to help you to achieve your goals and feel better and have fun in the character level and the plot level story.

KEVIN: So much of this process. Sure one other little thing with and then we'll veer off to where we want to go with this. One of the really valuable things that I've discovered with this process is the difference between an obstacle and a problem.

KEVIN: An obstacle is anything that interferes with your ability to achieve an external goal. Anything that stands between you and something you want is an obstacle. There are always obstacles. The obstacle is act two of the plot level story, there has to be an obstacle or nothing is interesting.

KEVIN: A problem is anything that interferes with your happiness.

KEVIN: A problem is a character level thing. So just because something is an obstacle, it doesn't have to be a problem. And when you can separate the plot level story from the character level story, the obstacle is the obstacle. You achieve the goal where you don't, you can still, it's not gonna mess with your happiness. There's no loss.

KEVIN: And when you can get to that separation, why do things transform? Why do things get a lot easier and a lot more fun because it lowers the stakes because if you win, you move forward, you all the good feelings. If you lose, you stay where you are, it's there's nothing at risk. And so that gives you a whole other set of options to play with.

KEVIN: So, question comment. Shall I launch into?

KATHLEEN: No I get it. Ok. So in your program, how do you start when you start your program? How does it look? I mean, do people do, an assessment of themselves? I mean, how would you start this process? And if somebody came to you, what would it look like?

KEVIN: Great question.

KEVIN: Somebody comes to me, I send them right to the Human Game experience because that gives you the foundation in everything. I do. One on one coaching, I'm ultimately building a training program to train other Human Game coaches. But the coaching doesn't make any sense if you don't already understand how to work with story and how to live this yourself.

KEVIN: So the sequence, so the the Human Game experience as it, it's eight modules that unfolds over, you get access to a new module. Each week starts out with a tutorial video that sort of illustrates the concepts that were because this is all new stuff. So week one is foundations of stories.

KEVIN: So I'm gonna talk you through what stories are and how they work and you're gonna look at the story makers, you're gonna really begin to understand plot level, story, character level, story, theme level story and the three acts. And that's the tutorial video. And then your first gameplay objective in week one is where you learn to spot the plot of your own stories.

KATHLEEN: Ok. Can you give an example of that?

KEVIN: Yes. The plot level story, everything has a plot, the plot level story, nothing interesting. The plot level story is just the facts.

KEVIN: And so you're gonna take a story from your life.

KATHLEEN: Go for it. Kevin, I'm sorry, go for it. Kevin, you're the one doing the job, I'm gonna have, you are me in this situation.

KEVIN: Literally any story, something small, something big whatever. And first you're gonna tell the composite story, you're gonna say what this is why I'm telling this story. And that's the composite story, then you're gonna go through and you're going to separate out the plot.

KEVIN: You've got, I think eight sentences maximum. The plot is three acts. There's the goal is act one, the obstacle is act two. The resolution is act three and you break out just the objective sequence of events and that's the plot level of the story. And this is, and I've got tutorial videos where I take other people through this.

KEVIN: So you can see because it's a fun process. But if you're just looking at the worksheet and you haven't had an example of it, it can be a little intimidating. And the big revelation here is how boring the plot level story is. You do not care about anything in the plot level story.

KEVIN: And that's the point. We think we've got to achieve these external plot level things to feel good, but none of the feelings are in the plot level story. I mean, the plot of the Lord Of The Rings is a bunch of friends go on a road trip to dispose of a piece of unwanted jewelry. That's the plot. That's what happens.

KATHLEEN: Oh my God. I love the Lord Of The Rings and you just took that whole series and brought it down to nothing. But that's the plot. But the best part of it was the whole story and the journey in it. But oh my God, I love that. That's a great analogy.

KEVIN: You care about is the character level story.

KEVIN: The the the plot level story is just the framework that we need. And it's fun. It's fun to achieve goals in the outside world. But we start to think that we have to get what we want to be happy and you don't. So that's week one and, and for some people just that revelation, oh my God, I really don't care about these events.

KEVIN: See, I thought this was just like, let's just prep you for this. And in the in the full on coaching program which I was doing as I was field testing this, I had people going through it live and was doing one on one coaching and whatnot with it.

KEVIN: And I had people just having these major revelations just with the plot. I'm like, really this is, this was just like the first set of instructions. I didn't expect this to be blowing your mind, just wait till we actually do something with this. So week two, we look at how to lower the stakes.

KEVIN: Games are fun. When the stakes are low, the higher the stakes are, the more risk there is the less fun something is. So we look. So this is a process where you start to learn how to question your stories a little bit very objectively, just double checking how high the stakes happen to be.

KEVIN: And it's not a bad thing for the stakes to be high because when the stakes are high, it adds excitement, it makes the story better. But sometimes the stakes don't need to be that high. A little drama can be a lot of fun. Too much drama is just exhausting.

KEVIN: So for example, one of the things that you consider when you're looking at this goal that you're frustrated about it, like what's the countdown clock? Everything has a countdown clock. That's the plot level story. There is a deadline by which you believe this thing needs to be accomplished. And so you gently start questioning that how much time do you actually have to complete this?

KEVIN: And, because instinctively we start to think of the countdown clock and it's like the digital clock ticking down the seconds to zero. And that's a great dramatic thing. But that little digital stopwatch that can be appropriate if all you actually have left is seconds.

KEVIN: But if you also have like hours, days, weeks, months, maybe you need a calendar instead of a stopwatch. You know, maybe you're putting a little bit too much pressure on yourself. And we look at what's the cost of failure? What do you think happens if you fail? And I've got a little meters, you rate on a scale of 1 to 10.

KEVIN: You know, how high do you think? How high does the cost of failure feel to you right now? And then what's the actual, what actually happens if you don't accomplish this? Just this goal? Not what you think may follow from that. So you start adjusting some of these things easy.

KEVIN: Again, I got tutorial videos on it because it's really, really valuable to see me walking someone through the process because when you're just looking at these questions and you don't have any context, it ironically can raise the stakes a lot. But this is a simple, fast, little fun process and it transformed.

KEVIN: It's like, oh yeah, I don't need to, and you laugh a lot but it's like, oh yeah, what was it? My deadline. Yeah, it was two weeks ago. I'm this is, it is not possible to succeed based on what I think this thing is and yet I'm still making myself crazy about that. Maybe I need to change this.

KEVIN: Maybe that's but until you realize that that's what you were doing. You don't realize that's what you were doing and the minute you do, oh, that's silly. And you stop and you suddenly feel better because the stakes are now more reasonable. And then we look at what I call the KA KA expectations at all times.

KEVIN: Every single person has these unconscious, unreasonable expectations of convenience, agreement, compliance and approval. So KA KA and you will never find a more accurate or appropriate acronym. Anywhere these expectations connect the plot level story to the character level story. They raise the stakes.

KEVIN: They're why you can't imagine being happy if you don't accomplish this external goal. And so when you question the KA KA expectations because they're ridiculous when you clear those, it further lowers the stakes, it separates out. Oh, this plot level story, I don't have to engage with it. I mean, I can but it's not life or death.

KEVIN: It's a thing. It's a goal, it would be fun to accomplish it. But if I don't, oh well, it's not gonna mess with my happiness. So those are just, and we're not even into the quest for happiness yet. Those are just the fundamental.

KEVIN: Here's how you can start to actually experience what it means to be engaging with these different levels of story because you have to have these personal references otherwise. Oh wow. It's fun and entertaining watching him do this but I'm not doing no, no, you can have what I'm having here's how, but you need to find those personal connections yourself.

KEVIN: You need to be able to start seeing these patterns. Go. Oh, yeah. That's just the plot level of this story there it is in my life and it's fun. And so once you start doing it, I don't know anybody who has actually stopped once they started doing it because it's fun and it's fun to look at the world this way.

KEVIN: So then we move into in week three, I introduced the happiness problem and the happiness problem is basically you're not happy.

KEVIN: You'd like to be happy, you're not happy. So we look at your current strategy of how are you pursuing happiness and basically you're trying to achieve happiness by playing plot level games to get what you want.

KEVIN: So basically, and, I explore this in a little more detail so a little bit of spoiler alert here. But your current, most people's current strategy to achieve happiness is that you gamble in the happiness casino. You're playing plot level games and you're risking resources.

KEVIN: But you think that if you win and you get what you want, then it's gonna actually manage the balance in your need, bank accounts. And so you can feel happy and I don't know, gambling in a casino is not a great way of managing your resources. But the happiness casino isn't an actual casino. It's a story about a casino.

KEVIN: It's actually a pretty good story. We're gonna, work with that to go. Here's how you can win. Here's how you because the thing is if you lower the risk, if you're not risking the resources that you need, so you're winning, but you're not losing. So all you need to feel happy instead of getting what you want.

KEVIN: Happiness is a feeling you feel happy when you're free from want and free from need and all you need to feel happy is to meet your safety needs and your validation needs. If you manage a minimum balance in your safety need account and your validation need account, you're happy.

KEVIN: Now we caveat here.

KEVIN: Happiness. I talk about building a foundation of happiness because happiness doesn't objectively mean you feel good. Happiness just means you no longer feel bad.

KEVIN: Happiness means you're free from want and you're free from need. You have options. By contrast, it feels amazing. But happily ever after isn't a happy ending. Happily ever after means your story goes on ever after and you just don't have to worry about happiness anymore.

KEVIN: So happily ever after is a happy beginning. This is why we're building a foundation of happiness. So you can actually go and create prosperity and joy and all these other amazing things which you can't do when you're struggling to manage your safety and validation needs.

KEVIN: So we embark on the quest for happiness officially in week four where you look at safety needs and the options market. And this is the first place where astrology comes in because you're gonna be engaging directly with your character level story. And we're going to be creating a story of what I call the happiness GPS, which gives you turn by turn directions to the best possible outcome in any situation.

KEVIN: And the happiness gps is based on the information encoded in your unique birth chart. The moon relates to happiness. Sorry, the moon relates to your safety needs. So you do not need to know anything about astrology. You will not be looking at your chart. You don't need to do nothing. You've never dealt with astrology like this before.

KEVIN: I have created an interactive PDF, which is the Human Game experience, character attributes, worksheet and there's a little tutorial video and in that tutorial video, you will go to a free website where you're gonna type in your birth data and it's gonna pull up your birth chart and you are literally just going to copy the symbols from one little table in that thing onto the PDF.

KEVIN: And then you never have to look at that first page of the PDF again. And it's going to fill in all of your happiness GPS data for your moon, for your Venus. So everything you need. All right there when you need it. Because you don't need to know anything about astrology. Wow.

KEVIN: Well, and here's the thing a little, this was the big shocking discovery for me. A little astrology goes a long way for 30 years. I was trying to figure out how to, I don't know, synthesize everything how to combine because I thought if I could just combine everything into one great big lump, that would somehow be all of the answers.

KEVIN: And, yeah, that's not at all how it works. And ironically, what I discovered is that break this down into the smallest possible components, break those down again and just use the teeny tiny components because those are actually useful. So I don't do anything with the signs. You're never gonna because the sign, you can't interpret a sign, the sign answers to unrelated questions.

KEVIN: Every sign is made up of the element and the modality and the element tells you which language you speak and the modality tells you how you approach that particular goal and they are two important but totally unrelated things and you can't mush them together and get more than the sum of its parts.

KEVIN: So the happiness gps, the modality of your moon tells you which of the three strategies you take to pursue your safety goals. So three modalities, cardinal fixed mutable, cardinal is team hair. If you're on team here, if you take a cardinal approach to a goal, the race is a sprint and the goal is an archery target, you have to hit the target with a single arrow.

KEVIN: So all of your energy, all of your focus goes into aiming and preparing and adjusting. And the minute you let go of the arrow, you're done nothing else you can do. You either hit the target or you don't. If you hit the target, take a giant leap forward.

KEVIN: If you don't, you stay exactly where you are, you start over again from zero and you've wasted some resources. You have to use a new arrow fixed is team tortoise. If you take a fixed approach to a goal, the race is a marathon with a fixed approach.

KEVIN: You are concerned about project management and sustaining and maintaining resources and everything is run by this vast internal bureaucracy that is crowned by your internal accounting department and they are keeping track of everything. And you've got all of these incremental expected targets and you just want to make sure you're hitting the targets.

KEVIN: And so, you've got resources in reserve, you're never running low on fuel, but sometimes you have to go, oh, I'm not gonna hit this target. I need that. I need to put an email into the accounting department and then have them reallocate things. And until I hear back from them I'm done, I don't need to worry. The accounting department will take care of it. Totally different approach.

KEVIN: Both of them can work. But understanding which approach you're taking is important. And then there's team Hummingbird, which is the mutable approach. If you take a mutable approach to a goal, the goal is not a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's a scavenger hunt. You break the goal, it's a to do list and you break it down into all of these different items and you can accomplish them in any order.

KEVIN: And when you've checked every item off the list, then you've achieved the goal. Now, the challenge with that, not every item is completed. Every time you check an item off the list, you feel like you've accomplished something, but not every item is as valuable or as important.

KEVIN: So you may not actually be making progress. So if you're taking a mutable approach to a goal, you may want to go through the to do list and go. Ok. First of all, here are the easy tasks and then here are the important tasks and let me pick an important task and spend some time on that.

KEVIN: And then I'll do a couple of quick, easy tasks. So I can feel like I've made progress and actually have made progress. And with a cardinal gold, you can't stop it from being an archery target. But nobody says how far away the target has to be. So you can move the target closer and you're still leapfrogging.

KEVIN: But so different strategies and they are, I mean, this is the thing, this was the thing that started the whole Human Game for me was, was recognizing these different strategies. And in 30 years of counseling and coaching as an astrologer clients around the world, I don't think cumulatively, I ever spent more than like two hours talking about the modalities.

KEVIN: They just weren't. And now it's like, oh my God, we can, two hours isn't enough to just even because it's so practical. It's so useful when I realized I take a cardinal approach to my money goals because of how my chart is particularly wired.

KEVIN: And that was one of those light bulb moments and the light bulb has never turned off like, oh my God, yes, of course, because I put all of my time and energy into preparing for like a new launch of a class and thinking how and then the minute it launches, I'm on to something else. I don't know, I can't, I make money on it. I don't know, I can't, I gotta go on to the next thing.

KEVIN: And I'm always looking for what's the giant sum of money that means I don't have to think about money for like the foreseeable future. That's the target. How do I get to that just immediately. And I always, always approach money goals that way.

KEVIN: I still do except now I recognize, oh yeah, taking a cardinal approach, let me break that down. Let me move that target a hell of a lot closer because I can, you immediately know. Oh yeah, here are the obstacles I'm creating just with my default strategy. So here are the adjustments I can make to automatically make this a lot easier.

KEVIN: And everybody, most people are on more than one team, different goals, different teams and just recognizing, oh like for me, I take a cardinal approach to safety and I take a mutable approach to validation and I take a fixed approach to happiness.

KEVIN: So it's a really interesting thing. I achieve my goals. I get this great big jump in happiness. And then my accounting department is like, what the hell are we supposed to do with this extra happiness? This isn't budgeted for. We don't know what to do with this. What are you crazy?

KEVIN: And just being able to see? Oh yeah, I see who's talking now, I see what they're doing and understand how to work with that. This for me is what I was looking for like 30 years with astrology. So you'll learn how to apply this practically in week four with your safety needs.

KEVIN: And just recognizing how when you increase the balance in your safety need account all of a sudden you get better options. All of a sudden your best choice, you've got a better, best choice and that's pretty transformational week five, validation needs.

KEVIN: You learn how validation needs work and you get the happiness gps for how you approach and look for love and appreciation. And that can be completely different from how you approach safety. So it's a dynamic there that may require some strategy week six is validation games.

KEVIN: Do you want to experience love and appreciation? The best way to do that is to express love and appreciation? So we look at how you can. First of all, we look at who the hell these other people apparently are because really you're the only actual character in your story and everyone else is just an avatar, they're sort of non player characters loosely based on who this other person probably is.

KEVIN: But since you're the only thing you know, that lives inside you and everybody else appears to exist outside of you, other people may exist, but I've only got their word for that.

KEVIN: So realizing who is this that we're actually dealing with here. And then how do you make deposits in other people's validation need accounts. Because when you make a deposit in somebody else's validation need account. It activates your validation resources and you get to feel good.

KEVIN: So week seven, I introduce you to the value compass, which is a way of connecting to what you really care about to those theme level values. And it's kind of a, it's a flow chart process. Basically, you asked three different questions you ask, what do I want? Which is a plot level question? Why do I want it?

KEVIN: Which is a character level question? And then how do I win? Which is the theme level question. And that can help you to find the joy and the meaning and the purpose in your life. Because once you've solved the happiness problem, let's build on that. And then the final week, we look at winning strategies.

KEVIN: We look at the difference between, for example, zero sum games like poker, positive sum games like blackjack and zero stakes games like solitaire. And when you complete that module, you'll be able to take a game you can't lose and turn it into a game you can't win. Sorry, you be able to take a game, you can't win and turn it into a game you can't lose.

KEVIN: I suppose you could do both. You technically could do both.

KATHLEEN: But, sometimes you want that extra drama, oh, this doesn't work for me. He's just, he's a quack.

KATHLEEN: Yeah, I mean, it's a totally different philosophy of what you said and it's a great way of what I can gather. It's a great way to really look at your emotions and look at how you perceive the world and then looking at people because how many times do we, everything is always about us and it's not always about us.

KATHLEEN: Sometimes it's about that avatar over there that we think is real but may not be real, like you said, but we're making a deal out of whatever this person is over here saying. But if they're not really real, then why are we making it real and why are we putting all of our energy? So what a great way to bring back control in a very fun way.

KEVIN: They are real, but they don't necessarily have to be a problem for you, they're not necessarily messing with your happiness.

KATHLEEN: Well, I don't think people can, I mean, happiness comes from within. It's not, if I get a million dollars, I'm happier. If I have a boyfriend, I'm happy. No, happiness is not outside. It's inside. It is. And I look at it that as long but most people don't see it that way.

KATHLEEN: They don't realize they can make themselves happy just like that. It's up to you if you want to be happy or not. But giving people tools because happiness eludes us for whatever reason. It's like this enigma in our minds and it's not.

KEVIN: But, you need a story that defines what it is and where it is and how to create it. And that's what I built with the Human Game experience like happiness.

KEVIN: And I've been living this myself since 2021. I mean, I started playing in 2021 and I kind of haven't stopped yet. I have never had more fun in my life.

KATHLEEN: I think that's what everybody wants is more fun in their life. I know I do. I'm always because I work a lot and I'm working on having more fun, but it's still, it's not always the most comfortable thing in the world to have fun because I'm not used to it anymore.

KATHLEEN: It's like we grow out of it when we're kids, you know, and it's like coming back to that child like place. And I think this gives us that opportunity to do that to start playing again. Because if we play, things start changing rapidly in our world because that's what spirit wants us is to play and we don't play. We take everything too seriously.

KEVIN: Very much so, very much so. And you have the option of playing the game you have and there's nothing wrong with not, there's nothing wrong with how you've been living your life. It's an option.

KEVIN: But I never realized that spiritual growth and spiritual development could be fun.

KEVIN: I mean, I my journey, I did the whole rip the heart of, you know, the whole, the deep, profound and I enjoyed that and it had meaning and I don't regret any of it, but I really love that. There's this other option now that I also can do this. And I'm having just as much, if not more success with this approach where I'm spending most of my time laughing.

KEVIN: I like that. I don't, there are times when there are times when things need to get a little more serious and deep and have, and I'm fine with that. There's nothing wrong with that, but I do like that. Oh yeah, there's this other option. I like this one too.

KATHLEEN: I think that would be fun because, it's like you got to find what makes your heart sing. I don't care what anybody says when your heart sings and you're happy you're playing, you're having a good time and whatever that is.

KATHLEEN: And if it's about understanding how you operate in the world because a lot of us don't, I mean, I'm sitting here going, I wonder what I am because I can fit in all those categories for the modalities you talked about and, but then it sounds like you're interchanged in all sorts of areas. So what a great insight to have about yourself in that element of your life?

KEVIN: And that's the big thing. Little astrology goes a long way. You are not being fit in any particular box but understanding. Oh, for this particular goal, I take a fixed approach. Oh, well, that helps me to overcome these obstacles and I can.

KEVIN: But for this other goal, I do, and then there's more advanced things that I'm working on because strategically, if you really want to dive into the astrology story, there's much more you can do with it.

KEVIN: There are ways of deciding, well, I could approach this particular goal in a couple of different ways I could, my default position is to jump in and embody Saturn for this particular thing. But I've got other options. I can drive a different planet for this.

KEVIN: I can move this around. So this isn't a Saturn goal for me. And now a Venus goal for me, that's gonna be a lot more fun. That's gonna be a lot easier. I can accomplish it that way and all that's optional. It's all everything is story.

KEVIN: The astrology stuff is story. But I'm exploring this way of telling better astrology stories, taking these astrology stories and having them be something you can use something that you can actually in the moment used to feel better to accomplish a goal to do whatever because this is what astrology always promised that it could do.

KEVIN: It's like, OK, I'm gonna make sure that I've built out a system where if people want to dive into that level, they can.

KEVIN: But also my God, all you want to do is feel better and a little bit of astrology can accomplish that. So you don't have to have all of it, it's there, but you don't have to have it. You're not gonna get, it's not necessarily gonna make your life better knowing more astrology. Let's just part of it.

KATHLEEN: Ok. Sorry. How can people get a hold of you because we got like 30 seconds left.

KEVIN: If you go to play the Human Game.com, you can find everything you would ever want to know about the Human Game and the Human Game experience right there.

KATHLEEN: Great. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Kevin. I really appreciate it. Very enlightening. I think our viewers are gonna really enjoy diving into this a little bit more and I want to thank everyone for coming and watching the show today. I really do appreciate you. If you like the show, please like and subscribe to it. If you wanna reach out to me, feel free to contact me at BraveTV@KathleenMFlanagan. Com. Sorry, I was trying to remember the email and we will see you all next Tuesday at 4 p. m. Eastern and from my heart to yours. I hope you all have a fabulous week.