BEAUTIFUL DESTRUCTION: A situation where a part of your life is destroyed, only to make way for better and bigger things to come to you.
BENDING REALITY: The idea that our consciousness can shape the world around us and that luck is within our control.
BLISSIPLINE: The discipline of daily bliss. The process of consciously raising one’s happiness level by adopting specific systems for living, including transcendent practices. See also Transcendent practices.
BLUEPRINT FOR THE SOUL: A person’s written answers to the Three Most Important Questions.
BRULE: A bulls**t rule. An element of the culturescape that an individual has decided to ignore or dismiss as untrue or irrelevant to that individual’s worldview.
BUSYNESS PARADOX: The fallacy of thinking one is too busy to meditate—similar to saying, “I’m too hungry to eat.”
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING: A process that generalizes a solution to open-ended problems. Open-ended problems encourage full, meaningful answers based on multiple variables, which require using decomposition, data representation, generalization, modeling, and algorithms.
CONSCIOUSNESS ENGINEERING: A method to optimize learning and hacking of the culturescape by gaining awareness of the models of reality and systems for living that may have intentionally or unintentionally been adopted from the culturescape.
CULTURE HACKING: The technique of changing the culture (beliefs and practices) of a group (as in workspace, company, family, school) by using tools to create positive advancements in the group culture. It’s applying consciousness engineering within a group to allow the members to grow and work together better. See also Consciousness Engineering.
CULTURESCAPE: The world of relative truth, which is made up of human ideas, cultures, mythologies, beliefs, and practices.
CURRENT REALITY TRAP: The state of feeling happy in the now but without a vision for the future. While this state may bring temporary happiness, it won’t bring fulfillment.
DO-DO TRAP: The condition of being so busy doing that there is no time to step back and think about how and why one is doing things.
END GOAL: An ultimate aim or destination—often discerned by following one’s heart and feelings; the opposite of a means goal. See also Means goal.
FOUR STATES OF HUMAN LIVING: Four conditions of life, each having a different level or balance (being pulled forward by a bold vision for the future and being happy in the now): 1) the negative spiral, 2) the current reality trap, 3) stress and anxiety, and 4) bending reality.
GODICLE THEORY: The idea that human beings are particles of God and are thus endowed with certain God-like abilities such as the ability to bend reality.
HUMANITY-MINUS COMPANY: A business whose product may fill an unsustainable or artificially-created demand and that leaves the world and the human race worse off.
HUMANITY-PLUS COMPANY: A company that pushes the human race forward; for example, companies focusing on clean, renewable energy sources, companies that promote healthy living, or companies working on new ways to live on the planet.
KENSHO: A gradual process of positive personal growth that often happens through the tribulations of life. This positive growth may not be noticeable while it is happening. See also Satori.
LOFTY QUESTIONS: A method of asking positive questions during a transcendent practice as described by author Christie Marie Sheldon; an alternative to affirmations and problem-focused personal growth practices; for example, How am I finding so many ways to give and receive love? instead of Why can’t I find a love relationship?
MEANING-MAKING MACHINE: A syntax in the human brain that attempts to attach meaning to situations that often are random, have no implied meaning, or do not have the meaning that has been attached.
MEANS GOAL: A goal (sometimes a Brule) mistakenly identified and pursued as an end in itself, when in fact it is simply a means to a larger, more fulfilling end. See also Brule and End goal.
MODELS OF REALITY: Beliefs about the world that play out in one’s experiences of the world, unconsciously or consciously; analagous to hardware in a computer. See also Systems for living.
NEGATIVE SPIRAL: The painful state of not being happy in the now and not having a vision for the future.
PRESENT-CENTEREDNESS: Becoming focused on the present as a technique for finding happiness in the now and raising one’s happiness set point.
REFRESH RATE: How frequently a person updates his or her systems for living.
RETICULAR ACTIVATING SYSTEM (RAS): The component of the brain that registers patterns; certain transcendent practices prime the RAS to notice the positives over the negatives in life situations.
REVERSE GAP: As explained by Dan Sullivan, the space, or gap, between the past and the present and the events that fill it—the best place to focus on when practicing gratitude and a far more reliable source of happiness than focusing on the forward gap (anticipating happiness in the future), as most people do.
SATORI: A sudden spurt of positive personal growth that happens by awakening; a life-changing insight that occurs without warning and lifts a person immediately to a new plane. See also Kensho.
SET POINT: A non-negotiable benchmark that is easily measurable and helps you measure your level of growth or maintenance.
SIX-PHASE MEDITATION: A meditation program rooted in science that takes just fifteen minutes a day and draws on many different methods to bring practitioners a rewarding and optimized meditation experience they can personalize to their own schedule, needs, and life.
SYSTEMS FOR LIVING: Structured habits and processes for living aspects of life, from play to work to growth. A repeated (and, ideally, an optimized) pattern for getting things done; analogous to software in a computer or apps. See also Models of reality.
THREE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Three pivotal questions for setting expansive, fulfilling goals on the path to bending reality.
TRANSCENDENT PRACTICES: Optimized systems for living that nurture the mind and spirit and take practitioners beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experiences. Examples include exercises in gratitude, meditation, compassion, and bliss. See also Blissipline.
TWELVE AREAS OF BALANCE: Twelve key domains of a balanced life: your love relationship, your friendships, your adventures, your environment, your health and fitness, your intellectual life, your skills, your spiritual life, your career, your creative life, your family life, your community.
UNFUCKWITHABLE: According to Internet memes: “When you’re truly at peace and in touch with yourself. Nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity can touch you.”