The seven dwarfs, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the 101 Dalmatians: numbers underpin our lives; our stories and narratives are suffused with numbers; my birthday is coming up. You don’t have to be “into math” to be “into numbers.” May is “5,” September is “9.” If you have ten fingers and two nostrils, you have numbers galore. But if you have ten nostrils and two fingers, you need to go to the hospital double-quick.

We wouldn’t want the story to be called the 102 Dalmatians, would we? And the whole notion of NINE dwarfs is horrific, a nightmare, a crime, a sin. To put it differently, each number has its personality, its specific power. To be born in 1958 is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from being born in 1858!!!!!! And there’s something particular about being born on the 31st instead of, say, the 1st.

Now that we agree about the power of numbers, we’ll dwell in the company of four (a.k.a. 4). The four cardinal points: north, east, south, west. The four seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall. The four elements: earth, fire, air, water. The four temperaments: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic. If you start thinking about it, groups of four play really important roles in your life. And you don’t have to believe in elements or temperaments to appreciate the phenomenon. Instead, you can believe in the Beatles. Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte, and Carrie; Kramer, George, Elaine, and Jerry; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. Actually, Zeppo is a bit of a stretch. Instead, let’s go with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Four is a big deal. Behind the number there lies an organizational principle so amazing that explaining it is kinda difficult. I won’t try to explain it. Instead, I’ll make a dumb joke: cappuccino, pannacotta, cioccolata, and affogato. Do you think it’s a coincidence that each of these four words has FOUR SYLLABLES?????

There’s a way of employing the power of four to gain insights and solve problems. I call it the Quaternity: two sets of two words, each set highlighting a contradiction or opposition, with the two sets somehow related.

Public and private, alone and together.

Impulses and blocages, frontiers and passages.

Reason and unreason, need and want.

Love and fear, pain and joy.

Look how compelling a Quaternity becomes if you lay it out as a cross.

You start sensing interactions: a dialogue, a negotiation, a give-and-take, a structure, a path. Each coupling is meaningful: love and pain, love and fear, love and joy. Each quartet is meaningful: love and joy go on a date with pain and fear. Love and pain, those old friends, are inseparable from joy and fear.

The Quaternity becomes a map of your life and everything in it. Career, family, health, money, choices and decisions, growth and decay: all of it seems to happen in the territory delineated by love, joy, pain, and fear. What is remarkable is that every Quaternity (built as complementary pairs of opposites) delineates a territory that encompasses your whole life.

I think this attests to the power of four itself, as well as the power of contradictory yet related pairings. Suppose that you’re trying to understand a situation or difficulty: family dynamics, your hesitation to speak in public, the final chapter in the novel you’re drafting, some nagging feeling that you can’t pinpoint. Start by free-associating, with no goals other than to accept a process, possibly rooted in the unconscious, that may or may not yield conscious results. Doodling is good. Pacing is good. Making child-like sound effects is good. Staring out of the window is good. And a word comes, maybe two; the nagging feeling announces its name, or the final chapter announces its plot. Write down the word or the two words, then “consult the Thesaurus of the soul,” the database of concepts, images, memories, sensations, metaphors anecdotes, and intuitions that dwell rent-free in your mind. The Thesaurus will deliver the missing words that complete the Quaternity and delineates the territory containing both the problem and the solution.

One day I’ll tell you about the Octernity, the terrifying and awesome Double Quaternity that elevates your life to dizzying heights. But if you’re curious about how to integrate this incredible principle into your creative, personal, and professional life, let’s talk about it just the four of us (your mind, your heart; my mind, my heart). Send me an email and we’ll set up a consultation.

Our lives are made of our deeply held feelings about what we can or can’t do. Let’s riff on it.

“I can’t perform brain surgery. I mean, really!” I can’t either. The list of things we literally can’t do is extremely long. And that’s okay! The brain surgeon can’t whistle, but we can!
“I can’t fly a plane, of course. I’ve had no training whatsoever.” Sure. But from time to time we read in the news that a passenger with no training was able to land a plane safely, with help from the control tower, after the pilot passed out. Some things we really totally can’t do; others we might become able to do in special circumstances. We don’t know the true limits of our talents and capabilities.
“I can’t draw, never could. Never, never, never.” You might feel certain of that, until the day you actually hold a pencil in your tender fingers and use it to caress a sheet of paper with. “Whaaaat? I can draw?” Some of our certainties are lies that we tell ourselves, and the lies are often supported by an elaborate intellectual and emotional scaffolding. Demolish the scaffolding, dissolve the lie, deny the I can’t!
“I can’t speak, I have no voice.” But I just heard you say, out loud, “I can’t speak, I have no voice!” I think what you mean is, “I’m uncomfortable speaking in public and I don’t enjoy the sensations of my own breath and my own vocal cords.” The subconscious listens to what you say, and takes your statements as commands. If you say “I can’t speak,” the subconscious will obey your command and prevent you from speaking. Instead, say “I want to be more comfortable. Where do I start?” You’ll receive a sign, most likely!
“I can’t wear that shirt.” What will happen, exactly, if you put the shirt on and get out of the house? Will you cause a car crash? Will lightening strike you? Likes and dislikes evolve toward can’s and can’t’s, to coin an expression. I too dislike many types of clothing. And I wouldn’t want to cause a car crash. Recently I’ve started wearing patterned shirts, after many years of wearing nothing but solids. Clothing is part of our identity. I’m glad I’m opening up.
“I can’t resign from my horrible job, where a monstrous boss and a gang of toxic co-workers make my life miserable.” Jobs are important. Or, to put it more broadly, having or earning enough money to survive is important. But suppose you quit the job and sell the house and move to a small rental studio on the edge of downtown, and you get enough money from the house sale to not worry about rent for three years. Then you get a part-time job at a bakery within walking distance of your rental studio and, hey, I’m poor and I’m absolutely ecstatic! It’s not easy to undergo revolutionary change. A monkish lifestyle isn’t for everyone. Strangely, living without strife isn’t for everyone either.
“I can’t be happy. My mother would be terribly hurt if I was happier than her, more dynamic, more fulfilled.” Ah, revolutionary change again! It takes a lot of inner work to get to the point where your wellbeing is the most important thing in your life, the thing that you nourish constantly, THE thing. Parental, familiar, and societal expectations are a big source of I can’t. The passage from I can’t to I can is, symbolically, a departure from the family and the society that impose its restrictions on you. Separation anxiety is guaranteed.

We are all in the grip of I can’t, in some way or another, or in many ways. I’m no exception. My anecdotes don’t mean that I go about my day singing “I can, I can, I can!” I’m just acknowledging a big phenomenon (which affects every human being without exception), systematizing it to some degree, and telling some jokes to see if you and I manage to defeat some of these handicapping I can’t’s.

“Believe you can and you're halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt