The 4 Laws of “The Field”
This conversation is excerpted from an episode of the Ask the Shrinks! podcast with Phil Stutz and Barry Michels.
BARRY: Mari M asked if we could describe “The Field” and why we say it is feminine. She says, “This would be a very useful concept for those of us who are constantly trying to push and force things to happen. I always thought that if I tried hard enough, I could do anything, and if things didn't work, it was because I simply didn't try hard enough. Maybe The Field can help me understand this dynamic better.”
PHIL: I’m going to start off with a little tangent here. They used to say good parenting was telling your kid they can do anything, but there is a complementary problem with that. If the child doesn’t succeed, they will think it was their fault. I suggest it's better to fit the child in with the goals somehow. For example, I think it’s a fair assumption that I wouldn’t have become a concert pianist. In fact, I did want to play in the NBA, and my failure to do that isn’t all my fault.
So, The Field. Have you ever tried really hard to make something happen? You try and fail again and again until finally you give up. And then, the next day, the thing happens by itself. The classic example of this is pregnancy. A woman can’t get pregnant and eventually she adopts and then she immediately gets pregnant. What does that mean? It means that you didn’t do it. You are not in control. The Field did it.
Now, just so you don't think we're completely crazy, an operational definition of The Field is an invisible, creative force that is goal-directed not so much for what you want but for what you need.
“The Field is an invisible, creative force that is goal-directed not so much for what you want but for what you need.”
—PHIL STUTZ
A lot of people are not comfortable with this idea. Interestingly, the group that accepted it the most quickly wasn’t people living on the beach in Venice or what have you. It was the CEOs of big companies. I think the reason they grasped it is it fit in with their experience.
Because they are at the top and basically make all the decisions, they also have to be responsible for the bad decisions. Their day-to-day experience was that they couldn’t fully control things. They knew there was something else there that they could feel but couldn’t articulate. But when I laid out the 4 laws of The Field, they knew exactly what I was talking about. The Field is a feminine force, which means you can’t control it. You can’t force it to do anything—it has to be related to.
BARRY: That's really important. The masculine force is revealed in Mari’s question when she says, “I always thought that if I tried hard enough, I could do anything.” The emphasis is on my individual effort and will. The Field is feminine because when you're in The Field, whether you like it or not, no achievement is purely individual.
If you achieve something, it isn't simply because of your effort. There was still some other factor that allowed you to have it—The Field. And if you don't achieve something, it's not necessarily because you didn't try hard enough—it’s because The Field decided that it's not the right time for you to have that thing. That's what defines the feminine quality of The Field.
PHIL: That’s right. And to relate properly to The Field, you have to get rid of your ego. Barry has a great story about this.
BARRY: I was in Costa Rica to teach some seminars a few winters ago. I always get a little nervous before public speaking, but this time I was really nervous. Maybe it was because we were in a foreign country. Maybe it was because I hadn't really prepared a lot. I don't know what it was.
I was at lunch before the first workshop, and a guy sat down who I didn't know. He was a participant at one of the workshops, and as we spoke I told him I was a presenter and that I was really scared. He was very very supportive, and after a while he took a deep breath and said, “Listen, can I tell you something?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely. I'm a shrink, you can tell me anything!”
He said, “I'm in AA, and one of the most important things I learned is: it ain't about you.”
This went through me like an arrow. It was the best thing that he possibly could have said to me, because I realized I was worried about me, about my plan, but I’m here for them. I immediately calmed down and I gave a great workshop. That's The Field.
“The Field is feminine because when you're in The Field, whether you like it or not, no achievement is purely individual.”
—BARRY MICHELS
PHIL: That’s right. That's such a great story. I'm going to tell you the four laws of The Field. The Field wants to help you, and to get its help, you can’t violate these rules.
LAW NUMBER ONE: NONATTACHMENT
This means exactly what it says. You can want something, and want it badly—there’s nothing wrong with that—but you have to be willing not to have it. Don’t mistake this for not trying at all. Nonattachment only counts or is only relevant if you’re trying hard.
LAW NUMBER TWO: MICROTRANSACTIONS
This is one of the things I have to explain to the guys who run big companies. They have this word culture that refers to the ethos or values or the experience they want people to have in their company. This is also true for a family or a school or a million other things.
But what I tell these guys is their influence over their employees doesn't come through a singular meeting or a memo. It comes every second they are exposed to you. If they see you in the bathroom, if they see you at night at a restaurant, if they bump into you as you're walking into the building—all of those moments are called micro-transactions.
These are mostly unscripted interactions, and every one of them is an opportunity to impress on the person that you see them and that they exist. We say that the person with the most micro-transactions wins because it builds up a tremendous following, and it's what you have to do to promulgate the culture of anything.
BARRY: I want to emphasize that you create culture in a family in the same way as you create one in a corporation. In some ways, in the family it's even more important that you purvey validation, love, and empathy—and also authority. There are opportunities in every transaction, no matter how minor the content of the transaction, to purvey those forces.
PHIL: A lot of guys will say to me, “that takes an awful lot of energy.” And I say, “Well, it takes a lot of energy, but if you really want to take up a lot of energy, don’t do it and have a rebellious set of employees!”
LAW NUMBER THREE: COMMITMENT
We have a pretty stringent definition of commitment, and basically what it means is if you make a promise to yourself that you're going to do something, regardless of what it is, you must keep the promise. If you say you’re going to make a phone call tomorrow morning at 10:00am and you don’t make it, no matter how committed you were the night before, then you’re not committed and you lose The Field. If you say you’re going to sit down at your desk and write something, and you set a time to do it and you blow it off, you lose The Field.
The Field likes it when you're committed because commitment comes from the infinite part of the human being. What comes through your senses and the physical body is temporary. The only part of the human being that’s infinite is the constant repetition of whatever is involved in going towards your goal now.
BARRY: I want to point out a similarity between the first three principles is that they all require humility. Nonattachment is humbling because it says I'm going to try my hardest, but I can't be attached to the results because there's a factor out there that's going to compel the results, not just me.
Micro-transactions are humbling because it says I get to work on this every moment of every day. It's not just one big dramatic intervention or action step that I can take that will do it.
Commitment is humbling for the same reason—you can't do what you want to do. You have to do what you've committed to. You have to put your ego aside.
PHIL: With that attitude, you're activating an infinite part of yourself. Now what difference does that make? The answer is The Field works because it reaches up into Higher Forces and activates them. Those Higher Forces are, by definition, infinite.
If you don't have that attitude, these Forces leave. The only way you can connect to them and influence them, so to speak, is to be infinite yourself, and the only way you can be infinite yourself is through your actions. Not any other way. It's not that the Higher Forces are punishing you; it’s that they literally can't reach you; they can't touch you unless you're in this committed state because only then are you activating the immortal or infinite part of yourself.
The last law is probably the easiest to understand.
LAW NUMBER FOUR: SELF-RESTRAINT
When you let your worst habits—your temper, your addictions, etc.—run riot and be in control, you’re pushed down into the lower world. Since the forces that The Field evokes are from the higher world, you can’t reach them from the lower world. If you can't control your impulses, the spiritual forces can't find you. It’s like if you're too low down, they don’t find anybody home, so they leave.
So those are the four laws that give you access to The Field. You can practice them by rote every day, but certainly, when there's an opportunity to practice them anytime, take it.
