Choosing and Using

September 5th, 2010

In the mid-1990s, I attended a powerful workshop on abundance presented by Unity teacher  Edwina Gaines.  Somewhere in her workshop, she said, “What is up to you.  How is up to God.”  It’s the only thing I remember from the workshop, probably because at the time I was caught up in the importance of taking action.  Even though she continued with, “Listen for the divine idea,” I couldn’t get past my own belief in the need to do. While I had experienced the importance of aligning emotion with thought, I had also observed over and over again the necessity of also keeping actions aligned.  If you want to write a book, you must put words on paper; if you want to take bicycling pack trips, you have to put in the miles; if you want to be healthy, you have to eat properly; etc.

So I pondered and puzzled over Edwina’s words, and after about a decade, I finally got it.  I finally learned to differentiate the what from the how. I saw that what is the essence of free will.  As human beings, choosing what is our opportunity, our responsibility, our obligation.  No force in the universe (not even God) can choose for us.  We must choose, and choosing what must come first.  If we jump too quickly into the how, we’ll end up with the wrong what. Further, if we try to control the how we limit the miracle.

Taking on Your Part

However, since I’ve been working with the modes of personal power, I’ve begun to see aspects of how that do belong to us.  The more I work with emotions, the more I see them as the energy of how. Emotional energy is the force that empowers results.  If you want a certain result, you can identify the emotional energy that produces the outcome, generate that emotion within you and then use the energy to fuel the result you’ve chosen.  This is not exerting power over your emotions so much as accessing the power of your emotions.  In this respect, identifying and investing emotional energy is the how that’s up to you.

I’ve also been observing another interaction between what and how that blurs the boundary between them even more.  When you decide you want something, it’s totally natural, perhaps instinctive, to immediately begin mapping out the route between here and there.  Whether you call this a business plan, a plan of attack, a project plan, or merely a to-do list, you gain confidence in your idea when you assure yourself of the potential for success by envisioning the means to get there.  If you can’t see the how, you may discard the idea immediately.  This could be called the process of how-to-what.

Moving From What to How

Consider instead a what-to-how approach.

Begin by identifying what you want.  You can be as broad or as particular as you like, but use specific terms.  A general sense of something, expressed in general terms can come out hazy and not quite formed, i.e., “I’d like to get to a place in my heart where I can let go of animosity towards others,” or “It’d be nice if I could feel confident enough of my voice to sing in front of people.”

Instead, either the broad statement, “I want joy,” or the specific statement, “I want a happier relationship with someone (by name),”  gets more to the heart of what you want.  You can say, “I want to live on purpose,” or you can say, “I want to sing at the Met,” and either one can be perfectly accurate and true for you.

To illustrate this for yourself, draw a pyramid on a piece of paper.  Draw a horizontal line slightly below the peak of the pyramid, forming a small triangle on top.  Write what you want in the triangle.  This is your intention.  At this point, don’t give a single thought to the large space below the line.  Everything below this topmost level is how.

Sometimes we choose things that aren’t true for us.  Sometimes we resist something that is true for us.  The first how that belongs to you is to make your intention absolutely, totally, 100% true for you.

You may already have a deep emotional connection with what you want.  If so, this aspect of how may feel pretty straightforward and easily itemized.  Whether you already have that deep connection or you want to achieve it, the following practice can help you strengthen and empower your intention.

1.  Imagine what you want as accomplished, manifest, complete, a done deal.

Refuse to let doubts and potential obstacles interfere with this envisioning.  If you want joy, imagine you have it.  If you want your  relationships to be happy, imagine that happiness.  If you want to be living your purpose, imagine you are.  If you want to sing at the Met, imagine you’re on the stage.  See it accomplished, real, now.

If you can’t quite imagine what you want as real, find something comparable you have experienced and recall the feeling.  Perhaps seeing yourself on stage at the Met is a bit of a stretch, but when you ski you maneuver the moguls with ease and confidence.  Remember the success and pleasure you experience on a challenging slope.  Once you feel it, it’s transferable.

2. As you envision what you want as fulfilled, let the emotion(s) of fulfillment bubble up within you.  Recognize them and name them.  Do you feel happiness?  Joy?  Peace?  Love?  Confidence?  Exhilaration?  Gratitude?

3. Let yourself experience these emotions to the fullest.  Be them.  Let them expand and fill your entire body.  Let them flow down your arms and legs to your fingers and toes.  Feel the vibrations of them as fully and completely as you can.

4. Think about your intention and envelop it in this heightened level of your emotions.  Infuse it with these emotions.

5. At least once a day, repeat this exercise.  Imagine.  Identify.  Experience.  Infuse.

Emotion as How

Choosing and using partner and creator emotions is your part of how. This practice will help you align your thoughts and emotions with each other and with your intention.

When you become truly, fully aligned with your intention, it becomes accomplished.  You may not be joyful to the exclusion of pain or suffering, but you see such joy as both possible and attainable.  You may not yet be fully living your purpose, but you are fully connected and aligned with that purpose.  You may not yet be singing at the Met, but you know without a doubt performance is your destiny.  You may not yet have a loving relationship with someone, but you have unflinching trust that best good will unfold for both of you.

And now it’s time to look below the pinnacle of the pyramid.  Using horizontal lines, divide the large space into several sections to represent the steps of how – the journey from where you are to where you want to be.  Some journeys may have two or three steps, and others may have more than ten.  What do you see as your next step along the way, the next leg of your journey?

If joy is your intention, perhaps the next step is a happy home, or peace with your body.  If a happier relationship is your intention, perhaps the next step is becoming happier with yourself.  If singing at the Met is your intention, perhaps the next step is gaining confidence during auditions.  If living on purpose is your intention, perhaps envisioning the ways you can serve others  is your next step.

Whatever you see as your next step now become a what. Now you can set a new intention specific to this step.  Now you can identify the emotions that will help you partner with it and/or create it.  Now you can choose to experience those emotions.  Now you can infuse this what with those emotions.

Continue building your pyramid from the top down by converting each successive how into a what. At each level remember that everything beneath the level you’re working on will stay a how until you get there – and as long as it’s a how it’s not up to you.

Enhance your Product

Now draw a strong vertical pole from the base of your pyramid up through the peak.  This pole is your product.  Your product is what you give to others; it’s the way you do and/or will serve with this intention.  It remains a constant, receiving your efforts, no matter what step you are on and no matter what other efforts you make in support of your intention.  What you ultimately create will be directly related to your product.  In many cases the quality of your product determines the ultimate quality of the miracle.

Some intentions have very obvious products, i.e. the knowledge, the skill, the wisdom, the techniques, the music, the manuscripts, etc.  For other intentions, the product can be more nebulous.  For instance, if you want joy, what’s the product?  Actually, joy is both the what and the how. The more you practice joy – in your heart and in your service – the more joy you’ll have.

This brings us to yet another aspect of how that is up to you.  It’s up to you to become a person who is whatever it is you want.  When you start asking, “But how do I do this?” practice responding with this answer:  “By becoming the person who is this.”  (Or has this, or does this.)

If you were already this person, you would already be or have or do.  Since you are not or have not or do not, give attention and energy to becoming.  Working on the product certainly contributes to your becoming your intention, but action must be supported by thoughts and emotions.

In instances where the intention and the journey are the same, all efforts to become are investments in the product.  The core of any product is the service you render.  If you are becoming joy, let your joy be a service to others.  The more you become your product, the more you enrich the lives of others through the state of your own heart.

Other more physical intentions also require you to be the person who does.  As you strengthen your product, refine your thinking.  As you refine your thinking, continue to evoke and express partner and creator emotions.  Through the energy of you emotions, your thoughts, and your actions, you will become the person who receives.  You will manifest the miracles you’ve chosen.


(I offer one-on-one personal coaching.  If you would like a free introductory session, please write me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

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The Power of “What if . . .”

August 29th, 2010

Since I started to see emotion as the key to personal power and to identify the characteristics of different kinds of emotions, I’ve been paying more attention to my own judgment patterns.  In some areas of my life, based on the results I enjoy, I seem to have attained a place of pretty secure neutrality.  Based on the results in other areas of my life, however, I’m clearly still in the struggle.

When I look at the difference in my results, I can see that if I try to use Partner or Creator emotions without first becoming neutral, my efforts are handicapped by my interpretations, by the stories I’ve come up with to explain, to rationalize, to accommodate, or to place blame.  And the strongest way to eliminate judgment is to become the Observer, to employ neutral emotions.

From my own experience it seems the path to personal power is one step at a time.  You can’t simply leap from Victim mode to Partner mode.  If you’re stuck in the mud you have no traction.  You have to achieve the leverage of solid ground, and that’s what Observer mode provides.

An area of challenge for me has been my purpose.  About fifteen years ago, I got a sense of purpose far bigger than I could identify with.  I didn’t deny it exactly, but for at least ten years I wrestled with it, struggled with how, side-stepped it, and tried to make it small enough to reconcile.  Choosing to become a life coach was my first straight-forward, head-on move in the direction of that purpose, but I still couldn’t quite put it into words.  Eventually I came to peace with it as, “I teach wisdom and personal power.”  I stopped fighting it, stopped struggling with it, acknowledged it, and stopped judging myself as insufficient to the task.  After that things got easier.  My coaching practice blossomed, and the quality of my coaching improved.

But something was still missing.  Since coming up with the Diamond Of Mastery and using it as a coaching tool, I’ve realized how much I’ve been in Interpreter mode.  I still doubted my abilities, doubted I was the right person for the job, doubted I knew enough.  Yet I kept trying to leap straight from the mire to the mountain top.  So I started practicing acceptance, willingness, wonder, and courage.  As a result, when I sit down to write, the ideas come much more easily and the words flow.

And this personal understanding of the importance of starting from where I am has given me new understanding of where my clients are and how to help them start from where they are.

How do you measure?

Recently I was working with a long-time client from where she is, which is locked into a belief of good and bad.  She has a long list of criteria for being a good person, and if she can’t live up to that list (no one could) she’s a bad person.

I asked her what it would feel like if there was no such thing as bad or good.  She said it would feel good, easier, but she kept arguing in favor of the measuring stick.

Of course, we’re all in the habit of measuring, evaluating, weighing pros and cons, and trying to make the best choice.  However, we don’t make decisions based on logic; we make decisions using emotion.  (Individuals who have lost the emotion centers of the brain through accident or surgery can’t make decisions.  All options have the same weight to them.)  No matter how much data we collect or how we assess the data we collect, in the end we finally decide based on how we feel.  Therefore, the measuring stick we use to evaluate bad or good will always be subjective – subject to our beliefs, values, stories, interpretations and judgments.  And this is true whether we’re trying to buy a new car, considering whom to marry, deciding what we want to be when we grow up, or evaluating our own self-worth.

Unfortunately, if you’re in victim mode, the emotions you’re subject to are marked by helplessness and produce pain and suffering.  If you’re in interpreter mode you’re subject to emotions that produce struggle.  To create a different result for yourself, choose different emotions as your subjective base for making decisions – about yourself, about your life, about other people, about your relationships with all things.

Imagine what it would be like if there was no such thing as bad or good?  What if you could accept the world simply as it is and other people simply as they are?  What if you could not only accept yourself as you are, but also accept that you have power greater than you know?  What if you could look at yourself and what you want and say, “I am a writer.”  “Í am a smashing success.”  “I am the country’s top cartoonist.”  “I am a healer.”  “I am a perfect human being.”  “I am in partnership with the infinite.”  “I am a creator.”

What if you could acknowledge the truth residing somewhere inside you that recognizes your personal power, even if that required you to acknowledge you’re afraid of it, intimidated by it, don’t know what it means, and maybe don’t have a clue where to start.

Because my client likes to know what’s ahead, because she likes to plan and be sure, she kept asking, “But what would not knowing look like?”  I can’t answer that question.  I don’t know what’s ahead for myself, much less for anyone else.  But all the emotions of Observer mode have that aspect of not-knowing.

Transcend Measurement

Curiosity and wonder are among the most potent emotions when asking What if. . .

  • What if you valued curiosity over certainty?
  • What if you liked surprises?
  • What if wondering what else might be possible was fun?
  • What if being comfortable with the unknown took the pressure off?
  • What if some troublesome reality wasn’t a given?

More possibilities exist than you could ever know, or even imagine.  When you’re in Observer mode, you trust that expanse of possibilities.  You’re willing to say, “No, I don’t know, but I’m willing to find out.

Some of the aspects of life people commonly approach with strong Interpreter tendencies include:

Self-Perception

What if you could look at yourself with curiosity and wonder:

  • “I wonder what it would feel like if I believed I deserved to be successful (or rich, or happy, or whole).”
  • “What if I could love myself unconditionally?”
  • “I wonder what it would feel like if I believed I could sing (dance, build, heal, laugh, fly).”

Habits and Beliefs

What if you could look at your long-time habits and beliefs with curiosity and wonder:

  • “What if I believed I didn’t have to work my guts out?”
  • “I wonder what it would feel like if my emotional connection to this unwanted habit or that detrimental belief just evaporated.”
  • “If I could replace this habit with anything in the universe, I wonder what I’d choose?”
  • “I wonder what it would feel like if I let go of my frustration about ____.”
  • “What if life was easy instead of hard?”

Life Choices

What if you could look at your life choices with curiosity and wonder:

  • “What if I actually have the ability, skills and personal power to follow my dream?”
  • “What if I wasn’t afraid?”
  • “What if I truly knew I’ll be just fine?”
  • “What if I was okay with not being able to see around the next corner?”

The fact is, we can never know for sure the impact of our choices on others or on the future.  We can never know what’s ahead.  We can’t even know if we’ll be here tomorrow, let alone what tomorrow will bring.  Becoming comfortable with not-knowing can be challenging but it doesn’t have to be distressing or scary.

A few months ago, one of my students wanted a visualization she could use to become calmer about the future.  Perhaps you’re familiar with the one I suggested:  While driving at night, you can only see as far ahead as your headlights illuminate.  They only go so far, but they always illuminate the same distance ahead.  My student immediately took the metaphor ever further.  She said, “And if I stop moving, I’ll never discover what’s beyond that limited light beam.  Moving into what’s possible requires that I give the car some gas.”

Accelerate

You may find that with curiosity and wonder you also experience anticipation and hope.

It’s very easy with either anticipation or hope to start getting specific.  If you anticipate a specific outcome or hope for a certain result, you begin to narrow the possibilities.  When you restrict the possibilities, you slide back into Interpreter mode.  Almost automatically, you will begin to spot the difficulties and find the obstacles.

If, however, you stay open and continue to be curious, the scope of possibilities will expand beyond your ability to imagine.  The range of your vision will expand, almost as if you switched your headlights from dim to bright.

Hope from the Observer perspective produces the calm that all will be well.  Anticipation creates momentum toward the unknown future.

Whatever particular area of your life is currently proving the most challenging, consider taking the following steps to move from Interpreter to Observer:

  • Identify the scale by which you’re measuring.  (good/bad; for/against; me/them; easy/hard)
  • Ask yourself, What if this scale didn’t exist?
  • Be open to the possibilities.
  • Anticipate (don’t force) an answer that will amuse, astonish, excite or gratify you.

If you’re struggling with a health issue, maybe you’ll discover wellness.  If you’re struggling with financial problems, maybe you’ll discover abundance.  If you’re struggling with an unhealthy relationship, maybe you’ll discover harmony.  If you’re struggling with your purpose, maybe you’ll discover confidence.

I want to re-emphasize that when you resist, when you lock yourself into your stories, when you refuse to go forward, you create your own struggle.  Deep inside, you know who you are and you know what you are for.  As a first step, be willing to ask, “What if I opened up to that inner knowing?”  “What if I were willing to be all that I can be?”  “What if I let all the possibilities open up for me?”

What if . . .

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)


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Posted in Beliefs, Neutrality, Observer Mode, Personal Growth, Possibilities, personal power | No Comments »

Observer Challenges

August 22nd, 2010

Last week, in my post titled The Creation Conundrum, I ended with one of the challenges of  Observer mode, the difficulty of staying in neutral.  As with a car, when you shift out of gear you take away one of your means for control.  When the transmission’s disengaged, the car will easily follow the path of least resistance.

To stay in neutral emotionally, you must maintain equanimity.  You can use your breaks – refuse to let momentum pull you into Interpreter mode.  You can use your gas pedal – consciously chose an emotion from Partner mode.  Or you can use the transmission – hold steady with the emotions of Observer mode.  Which one you choose depends on where you are parked, how hard it was to get there, how urgent you are to go somewhere else, and how full your gas tank is.

First Challenge – Stay in Neutral

To be in neutral emotionally is to have reached a relatively flat surface.  It doesn’t take much of a shove to start coasting back down the hill again.  However, your response to a shove will depend not on the steepness of the hill but the difficulty of the climb.  Very likely, in some areas of your life you can stride up a steep slope with ease, while in other areas you struggle to surmount a slight incline.  The energy required to go backward is inverse to the energy it took to go forward.  If you achieved the plateau of neutrality with little effort, it will probably take a huge effort to push you back down into judgment.  If it took a concerted effort to become neutral, a little tap might send you sliding down.

There’s an emotional position in Observer mode I haven’t mentioned yet.  It’s the state of healthy discontent.  Often, discontent takes the form of judgment, much like consternation or discomfort or irritation.  It can also be the soul’s yearning for best good.  You possess a basic instinct to be the best person you can be, to serve the world and mankind to the best of your ability, and to gain mastery, empowerment and enlightenment.  In Victim or Interpreter mode, it’s easy to loose touch with that instinct, but the spark will never die out completely.  When you reach Observer mode, you essentially add energy to the spark, and it flames into life.  The resulting sense of healthy discontent will pull you toward Partner mode.

Whether you can put yourself in gear and step on the gas will depend on your reserves.  Staying in neutral a while gives you a chance to refuel, to get to know yourself better, to enjoy the view, to study your road map, to take stock of your options.  In Observer mode you have 100 times the personal power you had in Interpreter mode, and it may take some time to discover the full range of your new capabilities.

When you are free of judgment, your possibilities include: child-like levels of enjoyment and delight, security as in a mother’s arms, clarity like rain-fresh air, the hope of a new day, and in-the-now acceptance.  It may take practice to fully make use of your expanded ability to marvel, to savor, to give thanks, to enjoy, to relax, to be.

Eventually, you will know your emotions are secure, you will know it would take more than a nudge (or a shove, or a blast) to knock you into a state of less power.  Refueled, your innate desire for growth, for maximizing yourself, will propel you up the next slope.

Second Challenge – Accept the Possibilities

Another new challenge of Observer mode is that of dealing with infinite possibilities.

Interpreter mode makes things difficult, while Observer makes things possible.

When you leave Interpreter mode for Observer mode, the sudden vista of what’s possible can be both overwhelming and confusing.  If you could see the spectrum of possibilities as a continuum, everything you don’t want would stretch off to the left and everything you do want would stretch off to the right.  You could easily pivot to the right and march straight in the direction of what you want.

In actuality, the landscape is not flat or even.  It spreads out in every direction, with hills and dales, broad avenues and dead-ends, successes and failures, comfort and discomfort, security and danger.

In Interpreter mode your options seemed mostly “bad,” and you could count it a win if you made the best of a bad situation.  In Observer mode the possibility certainly exists that you could make a mistake.  Except as soon as you fear choosing badly, you slide back into judgment.  And this presents another conundrum for the Observer:  How do you remain neutral in this landscape in which everything (good and bad) is possible?

The answer can be found within the personal power you access when you become the observer.

As with all modes, the power that becomes available to you exists in the emotions of that mode.  Mastering the power you’ve accessed is yet another challenge of Observer mode.

Third Challenge – Master the Emotion

Each of the emotions of Observer mode has its own power, its own energy.  When you experience one of these emotions, you tap into the energy and embody its power.  If you want to experiment with this a bit, try the following:  Sit quietly.  Get into the now by letting go of all judgments and becoming neutral.  Then pick an Observer emotion and think of something that will evoke that emotion within you.  Spend a moment or two observing the way your body responds to that emotion.  Then pick another and repeat the process.  Take note of the shifts of energy in your body.

As I tried the experiment myself, when I evoked compassion I felt my heart swell.  When I evoked curiosity, my face and forehead relaxed.  And when I evoked amusement, I chuckled.

No two people experience emotional energy in exactly the same way, so pay attention to how it feels to you.  And if you can’t sense the energy immediately, no worries.  You wouldn’t expect to play the piano the first time you sat at the keyboard.

Here’s something you can do – sort of like a first finger piano exercise:  Find a quiet place and seclude yourself for ten or fifteen minutes.  Choose any Observer emotion and let it fill your consciousness.  The following guide might help:

  • Think about what that emotion means to you.
  • Thing about times when you’ve experienced that emotion.
  • Remember what generated that emotion within you.
  • Identify any current aspect of your life that might benefit from receiving that emotion.

Take admiration for instance.  You could begin by mentally cataloguing things you admire (sunsets, great art, beautiful bodies, skyscrapers, thick hair, a good book, a job well done).  Then bring any one of these things to mind and recall your admiration.  Next let your body recall the sensations of admiration.  And when your thoughts and your body are connected to the emotion of admiration, recall something that’s going on in your life right now (frustration at work, an interest you want to pursue, tight money, the times you spend with your best friend).  Now send admiration toward that aspect of your life (something you admire in a co-worker, what you admire most about what interests you, the good things money will buy, the way your friend listens to you).  Enjoy the calm produced by the admiration you first evoke, then feel, then send out.

Consider the time spent engaged in this sort of practice as holding sacred space.  Let it become sacred by honoring it and giving it high priority.  Do not profane it with Interpreter or Victim emotions.  When you schedule the time and dedicate yourself to feeling the energy of Observer emotions, being the energy of Observer emotions, you will discover you can:

  • Neutralize your conflict.
  • Ease your pain.
  • Smooth your way.
  • Send others encouragement.
  • Open doors.

When you use the power of Observer mode emotions for these purposes, you will look out over the landscape of possibilities more objectively.

When you review any downside, you will do so with patience and courage.  Just because you can observe the possibilities on the left side of the continuum doesn’t mean you’ll head in that direction.

When you explore the possibilities on the right side of the continuum, you will do so with curiosity and excitement.  You’ll see them as real options.

Fourth Challenge – Serve Through Neutrality

Have you ever noticed the calming effect of some rooms or buildings?  Researchers are studying the impact on mood and productivity of such things as color, ceiling height, the sharpness or roundness of corners and the placement of furnishings.  Sometimes the calm space you enter will have structural elements that contribute to that energy.  Other times the calm will be generated by the emotional energy of the person or group that uses the space.

When you are firmly in Observer mode, your personal power includes the ability to calm others.  The calming energy of your neutrality will touch everything within your immediate vicinity.  It will also reach across time and space when you think of someone or something and focus your  emotions in that direction.

In my last blog, I mentioned my client who said, in reference to moving out of Interpreter mode, “But that wouldn’t be any fun!”  In reply, I said to him, “It’s a different kind of fun.”

Observer mode presents many challenges, perhaps more than I’ve mentioned today.  Conflict is not one of them.  In addition to calm, I expect you will find meeting these challenges to be agreeable, confidence building, constructive, liberating, and healing.

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

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The Creation Conundrum

August 15th, 2010

Emotions are creative energy.

That bare-bones statement gives rise to all kinds of difficult questions with potentially untenable answers.  In The Secret of Personal Power, I raised the question I find the hardest to get my mind around:  Do people who are truly victims of circumstance create the disasters that befall them?  I believe the answer is no. Good things happen to bad people.  Innocent people fall victim to war, famine, earthquakes, floods, genocide, illness, etc.

So  let’s draw a line between the victims of those kinds of harsh realities and someone who’s caught up in the emotions of Victim mode.  When such emotions as anger, hate, despair, fear, jealousy, malice, contempt and panic are raging, and you are caught in their power, you feel helpless.  Regardless of the situation or the actions of someone else, the sense of helplessness comes from overwhelming emotion.  Emotions in this mode have all the power.  You see no way out, and you function by reaction rather than intention.  The reaction will be to fight back or give up.

Since all emotions have creative power, when such emotions are raging they reinforce, intensify, multiply, compound.  The more you reiterate your fear, the greater the danger will seem.  Dwelling on anger adds fuel to the fire.  Reviewing your hurts magnifies your pain.  Whether your emotions actually make the situation worse is irrelevant; the emotions get bigger, or deeper, or more dangerous, or less acceptable, and the nature of the situation will conform to the emotions.

And thus we encounter a creation conundrum:  Do pain and suffering create the emotions of victim mode or do the emotions of Victim mode create pain and suffering?  I think the potential exists for it to work both ways.

Interpreter Power

When you leave Victim mode, you multiply your personal power by 100.  You no longer feel totally helpless.  You start looking for answers and solutions.  Unfortunately, the solutions you attempt rarely solve the problem.  You’re still sick, lonely, poor, unhappy, frustrated, anxious, skeptical, depressed, etc.  That’s because the emotions of Interpreter mode create struggle.

The hallmark of Interpreter mode is judgment, and by definition judgment is non-accepting.  Non-acceptance is resistance.  And what you resist persists.

In Interpreter mode, you make up motivations, comparisons, definitions, descriptions and many, many other forms of stories.  In Interpreter mode, these stories infiltrate your self-talk.  Whenever you make a declarative statement about yourself, “I am _____,” you have decided something about yourself, and by your declaration you contribute to the creation of you as _____.   For instance, if you declare you are humiliated, you help create a reality of humiliation.

Sometimes such statements summarize your current condition:  “I am tired.”  “I am frustrated.”  “I am enjoying myself.”  Such summaries come in three different forms:  complaints, observations and declarations.  If your statement is a complaint, it indicates you’re operating from interpreter mode, and you are feeling relatively powerless.  If it’s a neutral observation, you’re in observer mode, and we’ll get to that in a minute.  If it’s a declaration, your words have creative power.

When you hear yourself complaining, you can immediately take a step into greater power by recognizing there must be other possibilities.  Those possibilities may not immediately come to you, but declaring they must exist takes you into observer mode.

So traffic is bad during rush hour.  Can you change your schedule?  Can you switch to a different mode of transportation?  Can you take better advantage of that block of time?  Can you create a different reality for yourself?

So your child is impossible.  Can you get to know her better?  Can you acknowledge her strengths rather than judge her weaknesses?  Can you discover what’s really bothering her?  Can you create a better relationship with her?

Of course, it’s possible to stay in Interpreter mode while you’re looking for possibilities, but any form of judgment will entangle your options in resistance and struggle.  Use the tried and true brainstorming technique of writing down every idea that comes to you without stopping to evaluate.  You’ll be surprised how often the best option turns out to be the one you initially have the most resistance to.

When you form an opinion about yourself and make self-declarations based on that opinion, that opinion is likely based on limited or mis-information:  “I don’t like carrots.”  “I’m not athletic.”  “I can’t sing.”

Perhaps you believe you don’t like carrots because when you were little, your Great Aunt Hilda always served them creamed.  Perhaps you believe you’re not athletic because your family had a ping-pong table in the basement when you were twelve and you always lost.  Perhaps you believe you can’t sing because you’re measuring your ability against that of Pavarotti or Julie Andrews.  Whatever the reasons, the more you repeat these statements the truer they become.  Once they become true, you may hate carrots even when prepared by a five-star chef; you may refuse to attempt any sports, even those that don’t require speed or good hand-eye coordination; and you might enjoy singing with the church choir, but you’ll never find out.

The conundrum I find in Interpreter mode is:  “How do I know what’s true for me vs what I perceive to be true for me?  Am I limited by my perceptions even if I want to create something else?”  I believe creating best good begins with choosing your wholeness first and being committed to what’s true for you.

Observer Power

When you leave the resistance of Interpreter mode, you discover the emotions of observer mode create calm.  When you operate from calm you are 100 times more powerful than when you operate from struggle, and the creative power shifts from the emotion to you.

The “secret” of moving from interpreter to observer is simple.  Stop judging.

Recently, one of my clients  had been caught up in judgment in a couple of situations in his life.  In all other areas he felt calm and centered, but with two or three people he couldn’t forget the injuries he’d experienced at their hands.  He named the costs of holding onto his judgment (headaches, anxiety), and during our session I kept nudging him toward neutrality.  Finally, he said, “But that wouldn’t be any fun!”  With that statement he identified the challenge:  it’s possible to get a kind of perverse enjoyment from Interpreter level emotions.

Perhaps one of the things we look for when we make up our interpretations, our stories, is evidence we’re not guilty, it’s not our fault, we couldn’t help it, someone else caused this, it was an accident, nobody’s perfect, we tried our hardest.  Etc.  We resist the very possibility we played a role or own a share of the responsibility.  Stop judging.  Extend compassion to yourself and others.  When you do, you create room for growth and development.

When your observations come from curiosity, patience or hope, you create and expand your choices.  When you relax rather than resist, your entire body responds and you enjoy greater health and well-being.  Whereas judgment is harsh and unbending, neutrality is soft and fluid.

Because the hallmark of Observer mode emotions is neutrality, the energy you experience changes.  Because you are not in constant conflict, you are not in constant tension.  You are safe, sheltered from the storm, freed from conflict, in the now.  Adversity looses its sting.  You may know you still face challenges, you are not intimated by them.  You may know times are still tough, you recognize it’s temporary.  You recognize you have accessed the power to:

  • Change at least some aspects of the situation.
  • Change your perception of the situation.
  • Look for options.
  • Choose the emotions you want to feel.

My client’s statement, “But that wouldn’t be any fun!” gives rise to the observer conundrum:  Do conflict and challenge mean the same thing, or is challenge without conflict possible?  In my experience it’s totally possible to have challenge without conflict .

Observer mode is the most slippery of all the modes because there’s no such thing as an objective observer.  As soon as you observe something, you put it in context of your life, your values, your preferences, your expectations, your aspirations.  You become the subject of your observation, and you will move in one direction or another.  You will either slide back into interpreter mode, or you will edge into partner mode.  The direction you move will depend on whether you choose judgment or cooperation.

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

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Getting What You Want

August 8th, 2010

To paraphrase Shakespeare:  What to choose and what not to choose, that is the question.

Followed, of course, by all manner of other questions:  What choices are actually within my power?  What if what I want is not within my power to obtain or achieve?  What if I make a mistake?  What if I don’t deserve it?  What if God has something else in mind for me?  How do I go about getting it?  What if I fail (stumble, look stupid, hurt someone else in the process, lose)?  What if I get it, and end up disappointed (again)?  Etc.

Choosing can be difficult for many reasons, starting with the need to know yourself pretty well and including the limits of the human imagination.  No matter how creative you are, it’s impossible to envision every outcome.  And it’s especially impossible to envision the best way for something to come about.

So here you sit, facing the questions of what to choose (or not choose), besieged by additional questions and limited by your imagination.  And held captive by your assessment of yourself.  Now what?

Well, you can wait for something to happen and hope it’s good.  You can fall back on old habits and old choices and make the best of it.  You can find ways to explain your immobility:  reality, the economy, your obligations, your fears, other people, Ego, your lack of resources (money, education, talent, opportunity).  You can look for a sign.  You can experiment with the options you see.  You can go to work on becoming better acquainted with yourself.

You can learn to make miracles.

The Nature of Miracles

Traditionally, miracles carry a religious connotation, occurring as a result of divine intervention.  You pray, and the gods respond in your favor – if they favor your request.  When I first began to explore the idea of miracles, I realized I held a core belief in the laws of the universe.  I believe natural laws govern all outcomes, and even the gods work within the laws.  I concluded if we can’t see how an outcome happens, we simply do not understand the laws.  (I’m even more convinced of that since I’ve been studying quantum physics.)

For most of my life, I’ve been observing patterns and then dissecting the patterns to discover the contributing factors.  One of the most powerful insights I’ve gained over the years is that whatever energy or entity is “out there” wants our best good.  Completely.  In all things.  Without exception.  Cosmic Consciousness (or God, or The Source, or whatever you want to call it) wants us to be happy, healthy, wealthy, wise, successful, and abundant.

That entity wants us to know ourselves, to know love, to gain enlightenment, to access the full measure of our personal power, and to serve powerfully.  There are no trade-offs.  We don’t have to sacrifice something in order to receive something.  We don’t need to abundance in order to be happy, or health in order to be wise, or love in order to serve, or service in order to know love.

Of course, if you believe in such trade-offs, they become true.  But what if they aren’t true?  What if you could believe in miracles without limitations?  What if you could believe in your own best good?  What if you could believe your best good was your birthright?  What if you could believe that just because you were born on this planet you were given the right to enjoy the full fruits of life?

I’m going to assume you do believe this, and you do want Your Best Good.

Who Knows What’s Best?

Let’s explore Best Good a bit more deeply.  First of all, recognize Your Best Good is best for you, and you are the only arbiter.  No one on this planet knows what’s best for you better than you do – although cosmic consciousness might.  Your parents don’t know, your teachers didn’t know, your boss doesn’t know, your neighbors don’t know, you minister doesn’t know, your therapist doesn’t know.  No one else knows.  Everyone else will see your best good through their own lenses, and their lenses will be tinted by such factors as their beliefs, their experiences, their values, their view of you, and what’s in it for them.

But, you may be saying, I don’t know what my best good is!  Yes, you do.  At least your soul knows.  Your mind has probably been listening to others for too many years to be able to sort what you know from what everyone else says.  However, your heart and your body have ways of communicating that knowledge to you, if you are willing to listen.

I envision the methodology for making miracles to have three parts.  Each part of the model is an action point and requires your full commitment .

First – Choose, and Choose Truly

First, the choice you make must a true for you – and you must be willing to be true to it.  If you make a choice that is not true for you, you will know it in one of two ways:  1) You won’t be able to hold the intention.  It will simply slip out of your mind and out of your life.  2)  You’ll start getting messages from your true self.  Those messages will begin with a nudge, a pinprick of discomfort, a slip-up somewhere:  you’ll come down with a cold, your car won’t start, you’ll lose a computer file, etc.  (This is not to say every slip-up is a message, but it pays to explore the possibility.)

If you pay attention to the first message and correct your course, you’ll soon be on your way to Your Best Good.  If you ignore the first message, the second will be stronger:  the flu, perhaps, or a rear-ender, or a crashed hard-drive.

If the second message slides past without acknowledgment, and you continue to pursue a choice that isn’t true for you, each successive message will be stronger still.  Pay attention to your pain, whatever form it takes.  It could be serving as a wake-up call, as a seer stone, as a magnifying glass, as a window to your soul, as a reflection of a past un-true choice, etc.

Choices in favor of Your Best Good will always result in less pain, less suffering, less struggle, fewer obstacles, a faster pace, and greater peace.

Second – Align With Your Choice

This section is tricky because it’s absolutely impossible to see the unification – the alignment – take place.  The only way you can know whether or not you’re aligned is to look at the result.  If what you have chosen isn’t happening, you’re not aligned with it.  You’re aligned with whatever is happening.

The mis-alignment can be in your thoughts, in your emotions, or in your actions.  Since actions are the most observable, it’s fairly easy to assess whether they’re in unity with your choice.  If you’ve chosen to be healthy, are you living healthily?  If you’ve chosen to write a book, are you actually writing?  If you’ve chosen to build a business, are you focused on service?

Conscious thought is also fairly easy to monitor, just tune into your mind and listen.  Are you critical or creative?  Are you distracted or determined?  Are you candid or calculating?

Sub-conscious thoughts, beliefs and emotions are more subtle, but they are not invisible.  They show up in such non-subtle ways as trials, tribulations, and pain.

During three recent coaching sessions I worked with people in physical pain.  One client had pain in her shoulder and numbness in her forearm, one had sciatica, and one had irritable bowel syndrome.  In each case, we looked for emotional conflicts by probing for the metaphorical message in the pain.  Once the client found the message, listened to it, and made a different choice, the pain eased up.  My client with shoulder and arm issues, found a belief that it was her responsibility to be the “good right arm” of others, and in accordance with that belief she was investing an excessive amount of energy in other people’s goals.  She decided to refocus her attention on her wholeness and best good.  My client with sciatica realized the pain began when she let herself be drawn into a situation she didn’t like and became angry with herself.  We revisited the incident and she chose calm instead of anger.  My client with the irritated bowel found he was taking responsibility for the emotions of others.  As soon as he identified this burden and acknowledged he had chosen to take it on, he was able to release it.

In each case, when my client recognized the inner conflict and released the part that wasn’t in alignment with Best Good, the pain subsided or disappeared.

Third, Receive the Miracle

Receiving may seem like a no-brainer.  If you choose truly, and if you unify your thoughts, actions and emotions, of course you’re willing to receive!

However, since the miracle will be Your Best Good, it might not look exactly like you envisioned when you first made your choice.  You’ve heard the old story of the guy sitting on his roof during a flood, praying for deliverance and turning away rescuers because he expected God to magically transport him away from danger.  You can’t know in advance what the miracle will look like, what form it will take, or how it will show up in your life.  Be willing to open your arms and embrace the miracle that comes.  Sometimes the miracle is the end result, and the only thing left for you is to celebrate.  Sometimes the miracle is an opportunity, and it’s up to you to stride through the door and proceed eagerly up the path.

Wanting Your Best Good is not a substitute for more specific choices.  If you want to write a best-selling novel, decide what that would feel like to you, and choose it.  Unify your thoughts, actions and emotions with that choice.  Then let go of any expectation, any concept of what that must look like.  Go to work; keep your emotions in partner or creator mode, and willingly receive Your Best Good.

The universe will then deliver the miracle.

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

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Truth and Consequences

July 31st, 2010

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

In an old parlor game called Truth or Consequences, on your turn you had to choose between telling the truth or accepting the consequences.  This was a game of risk.  Someone else got to ask a question to which you had to answer with the truth.  If you didn’t want to risk the truth, you could choose to take the consequences.  Of course, you got no advance notice of what the consequences would be.  You might have to go outside and howl at the moon or kiss the person next to you.  Since either answering the question or performing the consequence would put you in an uncomfortable spot, you were likely to end up embarrassed.  The relationship between truth and consequences was always either-or.

Life often feels as risky as the old game.  Sometimes we can see a direct correlation between a choice and result, but often events seem random.  Accidents happen.  The unforeseen takes us by surprise.  Yet it’s hard to be satisfied with non-answers.  There had to be a cause.  Surely there were clues.  There must be reasons why.

One of the conundrums of wanting to know the cause-and-effect of some things is that we then have to accept that all things are governed by the same laws.

If, as Newton stated in his Third Law of Motion, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” then everything that happens in our lives is a result of something that came before.  Do our personal lives conform to Newton’s Laws?  Or are we playing Truth or Consequences.

Facts vs. Truth

First, we want to discover the facts – and so things get interesting right from the start.  Many things in life are factual and irrefutable, such as the diameter of the earth and the speed of light.  If the sun’s shining, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

But do The Facts necessarily equal The Truth?

Some things, such as mathematical equations, can be identified in purely scientific terms.  Most things, especially living things, develop around a subjective backbone.  The Facts filter through our perceptions, beliefs, cultural norms, etc, and influence our Truth.

No matter how determinedly we try to stay neutral about an event (or a relationship or a situation), we can never be totally objective.  (I’ve been practicing neutrality regarding weather for years, and I never complain, but I still chill when my body cools and I still sweat when I get hot.  Because my body reacts to temperature, I am subjectively more or less comfortable.)   We’re human.  We process things with our bodies, our minds and our emotions.  We see things through our personal set of filters.  We draw conclusions.  We care how things turn out.

And because we care, we influence the result.  Our thoughts and emotions become contributing factors that affect The Truth.

For example, say you have a challenging relationship with your mother.  Perhaps she criticizes or complains about something(s) that matters to you – your taste in clothes, the person you’ve chosen as a life partner, your profession, what you feed your kids, etc.  Such criticism has been going on for so long you can hear it coming before she opens her mouth.

If you were to compile a list titled The Facts, it might look something like this:

  • She’s controlling.
  • She doesn’t want me competing with her.
  • She thinks she’s the only one who knows anything.
  • I’ll always be her “baby.”
  • She twists everything I say.

If you’re self-aware enough to admit you add to the problem, you might include:

  • I always get defensive.
  • I’m always primed for an argument.
  • We don’t seem to speak the same language.

For everything on the list, you can come up with Facts to substantiate your points.  But your mother can use equally specific Facts to justify her behavior.

So, here you are, with examples, reasons, perceptions, convictions, beliefs, etc.  Where, in this mess of Facts is the Truth?

The Truth is in the Consequences

One way to understand a situation is to tease apart the end result until you find the component parts.

Assuming the universe operates in a logical, consistent manner, true processes will always be replicable.  Mix the right proportions of hydrogen and oxygen and you’ll get water.  Every time.  Mix the right combination of resentment and contempt and you’ll get war.  Every time.  It’s just that in human interactions, the “right combination” means different things in different situations, depending on different criteria (such as the differences in personalities).  Still, if you have water, you know you can break it down into hydrogen and oxygen.  If you have war, you can break it down into resentment and contempt (with any number of additional elements thrown in for good measure).

Every situation can be reversed engineered to discover the component parts.  When people are involved, the components usually consist of a core belief and an central emotion, and here lies The Truth of the situation.  Consider the following possible combinations:

  • Being alone might result from the combination of the belief that, “I’m not welcome,” and the emotion of insecurity.
  • Not enough money might result from the combination of the belief that, “Money is evil,” and the emotion of aversion.
  • An aching back might result from the combination of the belief that, “It all rests on my shoulders,” and the emotion of doubt.

Let’s see if we can find a reasonable Truth of  the conflicted relationship I used as an example.  A relationship involves more than one entity (even your relationship with yourself), but the only part you directly influence is your own.  So even though your primary frustration may arise from your mother’s behaviors, it’s important to look first at what you bring into the conflict.

Perhaps you get defensive because you believe some variation of, “I’m not good enough.”  Quite a number of emotions could be central to such a belief:  resentment, self-doubt, defensiveness, contempt, yearning, misery, envy, etc.

Perhaps you believe some variation of, “She’s a bitch.”  Your central emotion might be hate, contempt, disdain, rebellion, anger, asperity, etc.

Whatever you believe and whatever you feel, you bring your own subjective energy to every encounter with your mother.  Your energy is one of the contributing elements.   Of course, her energy also contributes, but as in any chemical formula, if you change one element – or even the quantity of one of the elements – you get an entirely different compound.

Create the Consequences You Want

To produce different consequences, you have to change the Truth.  To change The Truth, change the energy.  To change the energy, make different choices.

(How’s that for a scientific formula?)

You don’t need to go searching for The Old Truth before you adopt A New Truth.  The Truth is what you feel and what you believe.  Without knowing precisely which emotion you’ve been radiating, you can choose the one(s) you want to exude instead.  Without deciphering the exact belief contributing to your past results, you can adopt a new belief that will serve you better.

Let’s get specific:

Say you want to change the fact that you’re alone.    Choose an emotion that radiates confident, welcoming energy, such as humor, pleasure or enjoyment.  Internalize the belief that will become the backbone of your new reality:  “I’m surrounded by people who like me.”  “I like others and others like me.”  “I eagerly respond to invitations to participate.

Say you want to increase your prosperity.  Choose which empowering emotion will best support your decision – love, enthusiasm, joy, exuberance, delight, gratitude, generosity.  And choose which belief will break any paradigms of scarcity:  “I happily welcome financial abundance.”  “I love money and money loves me.”

Say you want to heal an aching back.  Choose an emotion that infuses you with confidence – calmness, resilience, assurance, humor.  Find a belief that frees you of any sense of burden:  “I trust my family to have the strength and ingenuity to take care of themselves.”  “I am surrounded by partners, and I receive their love and support.”

Any shift in perception is a new choice which moves you into a different energy field.  To check this out, try a little experiment.  First, think of some recent event in which you felt delighted, happy or excited.  Review it a time or two in your mind, then notice what’s going on in your body.  How does your face feel?  Your hands?  Your shoulders?  Your stomach?  Now remember a recent situation in which you felt angry, annoyed or resentful.  Replay that incident in your mind a couple of times and pay attention to what happens to your body.  What changes in your face, your hands, your shoulders, your stomach?  Now switch back to the enjoyable situation.  If you had a scowl did it switch to a smile?  If your hands clenched, did they relax?  Etc.

Energy radiates in every direction.  It impacts other people and influences situations in much the same way it affects your body.  If you bring harsh, angry, disgruntled energy into a situation, that negative energy bombards others.  If you bring cheerful, confident, welcoming energy, that positive energy relaxes others.

Because energy, either negative and positive, affects the subjective response of everything it encounters, it changes The Truth as seen by all participants.

Let’s return again to my example of a conflicted mother-child relationship.  The decision to inject peace and acceptance into every encounter with your mother changes your subjective truth.  You see yourself through a different lens; you see her through a different lens.  This changes the energy between the two of you and that changes the energy of the situation.  Your peaceful, accepting energy permeates her energy field and changes her subjective Truth.  It’s like placing a new filter over the lens through which she views your encounters.  These changes in Truth change the Consequences.

Once you know how the two Truths of emotion and belief produce your Consequences, you can adopt the formula into all aspects of your life:

Positive energy creates Positive Truth produces Positive Consequences.

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Attraction and Detraction

July 24th, 2010

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Law of Attraction.  It’s been going around for a long while, with such catch phrases as:  “Thought precedes action.”  “You are what you think about.”  “Anything the human mind can perceive it can achieve.”

Almost everything I’ve ever read about this law considers thoughts to be the magnetic force.  The more focused the thought, the more magnetic power it has.  If you think about money (or health, or love, or happiness), and you give it your full attention, it will come to you.

Philosophically, I accept this principle.  But in my experience, thoughts are only a part of the power.  Actions and emotions are equally necessary.  You must bring thoughts, actions and emotions into congruence, and any misalignment can skew the result.

Aligning the Law of Attraction

Say, for instance, you want to loose weight.  You know the key actions – eat better and exercise more.  In addition to acting appropriately to your goal, you decide to think yourself thin.  So you put together an affirmation, “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight.”  And you repeat this affirmation all the time:  when you’re building a healthy salad for lunch, when you’re jogging on the treadmill, when you’re walking toward the mall from the far distant corner of the parking lot, when you’re taking a shower.

So far, so good.  You’re solid with two pieces of the formula – but your ideal weight stays stubbornly out of reach.  Time to bring in supporting emotions.  Love is probably the strongest healing energy, so you decide to love your body, love your thinness, love yourself as a thin person.  You also decide to enthusiastically enjoy being your ideal weight.  With this inclusion of supporting emotional energy, you might find the weight peeling away.

Or you might not.  And if not, you’re blocking it.  The block might be an action – perhaps you’re still taking in more calories than you’re burning.  It might be an emotion – perhaps you’re impatient, investing in expectation, comparing yourself to others, or holding some other kind of judgment.  Or it might be a thought.  Affirmations in and of themselves are not magic.  Just repeating what you want to be might not get you where you want to go.  If you carry a belief that contradicts what you want, you may be investing as much in the Law of Detraction as in the Law of Attraction.

Beliefs are extremely powerful.  They’re like fences, like boxes.  They hold you in, they limit your progress, they establish boundaries beyond which you cannot go.  To break past them, you must dismantle them.

An exercise I find both helpful and powerful is to write out your intention statement or affirmation, use the word “but” as a conjunction, and create a compound sentence with whatever comes up after the “but.”  For example, “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but keeping weight off has always been a struggle for me.”  Repeat at least ten times, letting other fears, objections, past experiences, and beliefs come to the surface:  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but I can’t resist dessert.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but when I was young and tiny I felt insignificant.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, but it won’t last.”

Once you have your list of “buts,” sort them and start to dissolve them.  Most such barriers fall into one of three categories.

  • Some reflect the present, your current situation.  Reframe those and use new affirmations to embed a new belief in your subconscious:  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and thin is my new reality.  I am and I will be.”  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and I easily resist dessert – even Key Lime Pie.”
  • Some are rooted in the past, old experiences or deeply-rooted beliefs about yourself.  For those, explore the story that supports the belief:  Were you insignificant?  Was your thin stature the reason?  Use logic to help you disengage from a story that probably had no basis to begin with.  For increased power, extend love and compassion to the child or adolescent you used to be, who adopted those beliefs.  Again, a new affirmation can strengthen your revised thinking.  “I am thin, healthy and at my ideal weight, and I add significant value in every situation.”
  • Some project into the future.  For those, identify the strongest emotional energy that will help you create the future to your liking.  Any partner or creator emotions will support and sustain future results.  Consider the creative power of something such as, “With delight and trust, I celebrate my idea weight every day.

Recognizing the time zone of your “buts” will help you identify the most effective ways to dissolve them.

The above suggestions are starting points.  Sometimes the first removal exercises work like magic.  Sometimes, however, other forces interfere with The Law of Attraction at a deeper level.

The Law of Detraction

The comparison of The Law of Attraction with magnetism works beautifully if you think of your desire as a magnet and what you want as iron filings.  Just increase the intensity of your desire, and you will pull more “filings” toward you.  But if what you want is another “magnet” you’ll run into the properties of polarization.

Consider magnets:  Each has a positive and a negative pole.  The only way two can connect is through opposite poles.  If they both present the same polarity, they repel each other.

In metaphysical terms this could be called The Law of Detraction:  Misaligned energies repel each other.  You have to be appropriately aligned with what you want in order to attract it.  Otherwise, your energy and the energy of what you want repel each other.  What you want must be as eager to connect with you as you are eager to connect with it.

It’s been my observation that in most cases what you want wants you.  (When what you want is human, however, that person brings a full range of human complexities into the equation so attraction is also more complex.)  If you want money, money wants you.  If you want health, health wants you.  If you want peace, peace wants you.  Very simple.

If you aren’t attracting what you want, if it isn’t responding eagerly and positively to your “attraction,” you can safely assume something is out of alignment.  Since you are the chooser, since you are the person with free agency, you alone have the potential to find the misalignment and repair in.

The Law of Detraction kicks into action any time you operate from Interpreter mode.  Every judgmental emotion interferes with attraction.  Every thought, belief, assumption, expectation or story that mires you in struggle or limitation disrupts the polarity of your energy.  Every action that doesn’t support what you want deters the positive action you desire.  This detraction  occurs whether you are the generator of the disruptive energy, or whether you assign the interference to your intention.

For example, Shelley* wanted to switch jobs to one that’s truer for her.  She set the following intention:  “With enthusiasm and joy, I relish my new job.  What I bring to my work is accepted and respected by others.”  She practiced generating feelings of enthusiasm and joy from within.  She’d worked through layers of uncertainty about the economy and her competition and her own ability to perform at higher levels.  She sent out a bunch of resumes and responded to some ads, and for weeks nothing moved.  One day, in frustration, she said, “What more can I do?  Maybe my ideal job doesn’t exist.”

I suggested we take a closer look at her perception of what was going on.  Did the job not exist?  Or did she believe, it didn’t exist?  She realized she’d never worked at a job she truly enjoyed.  She always made do, took whatever came along, settled.  I asked her to consider whether she would emit different energy if she unconditionally believed this idea job existed –  instead of believing it didn’t.  Since she had done her own inner work on this (when she affirmed enthusiasm and joy, it was real), I invited her to shift the focus of her intention statement from her own energy to the energy of the job:  “My idea job exists and it wants me.  It welcomes me, and we do beautiful work together.”  Within a week she had an interview, and a week later she had a job offer.

Here’s a set of simple questions to assess whether you’ve got Attraction or Detraction most at work with one of your intentions:

  • Are you getting what you want?  (Is your intention clearly stated?  It is true for you?)
  • Have you aligned your own thoughts, actions and emotions and thereby dismantled any barriers?
  • Are you giving your intention sufficient attention by reinforcing your aligned thoughts, actions and emotions?  (In other words, are you sticking with the program?)

If you answer yes to these three questions and what you want is still not opening up for you, take a serious look at your energetic relationship with what you want:

  • Accept that the object of your intention wants you as much as you want it.
  • Convey to the object of your intention that you want to be equal partners.
  • Ask it what it wants from you.
  • Do your best to provide what it wants.
  • Receive its best in return.

Edward* is doing this with his violin.  To Edward, the first two steps were already givens.  Then he asked his violin what it wanted from him, and it suddenly occurred to him to disregard his chin rest.  So he did, and removing that physical barrier between his body and the violin immediately changed his relationship with his instrument.  Since then he’s connecting with his violin more as a partner than a possession, and his musicianship has moved to a whole new level.

When you accept what you want as a partner at this energetic level, I suspect you will experience The Law of Attraction in surprising new ways.
*  Not their real names

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Expand your Awareness

July 18th, 2010

In many past articles, I’ve identified and reinforced neutrality as the demarcation point between helplessness and personal power.  Only through neutrality can you realize the range of options available to you.  Only through neutrality can you recognize you have both the freedom to choose from among that wide range of options and the power to manifest your intentions.  Calmness becomes the entry point into neutrality and the result of achieving neutrality.  Through calmness you transition from critic to onlooker.  With calmness you release judgment, criticism, blame, guilt, and comparison.  Instead of leaking power, you employ it.  Through calmness, you become the neutral Observer rather than the immobilized Interpreter, and you vastly multiply your personal power

The next exponential leap, the one that moves you from Observer to Partner, is surrender. You more fully own the what – your choices, intentions, and goals; and you totally let go of the how – the ways, the means, the efforts to control the outcome.  With surrender you affirm your partnership with everything around you.  You enjoin with helpers, allies, colleagues, supporters and inspiration.  Awareness becomes the entry point into surrender and the result of surrender.

Surrender is as dependent on awareness as neutrality is dependent on calmness.

Awareness of . . .

Because partner mode is so hugely powerful, awareness covers a lot of territory.  Consider the following aspects of awareness:

Your Self:  Includes everything about yourself – your talents, your preferences, your beliefs, your thoughts, your actions and reactions, your emotions, your perceptions,.

Your Circumstances: Includes any external aspects or influences over which you have no control.

Your Surroundings: Encompasses your physical environments and anything you can access with your senses.

Your Agency: Reaches out to every possibility within your personal sphere.

Your Personal Power: Begins with free choice and swells to encompass the ability to create,   As awareness grows, so does Personal Power.  Once accessed, the only way to lose Personal Power is to shut down awareness.

The Other: Touches anything and everything outside yourself, including:  people, animals, cars, tools, time, tasks, goals.  Awareness of The Other takes in the same aspects you acknowledge in yourself – their circumstances, situation, free agency and personal power.

Your Partnerships: Connects with others.  At this level, you become aware of the exchange of energy between you and others and you sense the nature of those exchanges of energy.

Your Connections: Unites you with your ability to influence the energy exchanged between you and others.

Oneness: Establishes your connection with all things.  The sense that you are an operating part of The Whole, and The Whole is both within and without.

As you become more and more mindful, it’s important to remember that awareness grows from the calmness of neutrality.  It’s reliable only when free of judgment.

Becoming more aware

Awareness at any level comes gradually, much the way a baby becomes ever more self-aware.  Even epiphanies (which often feel like a bolt from the blue) erupt out of a gradual accumulation of observation, or repetition, or exposure, or experience.

It’s fairly easy to see that the more you expand your awareness, the more you shift into higher levels of energy, and the more personal power you access.  However, actually making the shift in some troublesome area of your own life may seem difficult, perhaps impossible.  So here are some exercises to help you move from wherever you are now to wherever you want to go.

If you want to change your awareness of Your Self and Your Circumstances:

  1. Take a couple of deep breaths and imagine the air you inhale is inflating your body.  As your lungs expand, let your ribcage expand also.  Lift your head to elongate your neck.  Let your spine, your arms and your legs stretch out.  Broaden your shoulders and your pelvis.  See if you can sense the air reaching your toes and your fingers.
  2. Continue to breathe deeply until you feel totally present in your expanded body.  Now take a quick inventory of how your body feels.  Notice any spots of tension, and let that tension escape with your breath as you exhale.
  3. Think of one or two positive things you know to be true about yourself.  You can choose something obvious such as the color of your hair or eyes, or something less obvious such as something you like to do or something you’re good at.
  4. Keeping the spotlight turned off, recognize and acknowledge your emotional response to your circumstances.  Consciously step out of that limiting energy and into something more expansive.  (If you like, refer to the Emotions List)  If you’ve been experiencing fear, you might move one step up into alarm or nervousness or worry.  If you’ve been experiencing anger, you might move up into irritation, or indignation, or vexation.
  5. Mentally turn the house lights up and look at The Circumstance in the new light of your chosen emotion.

If you want to increase your awareness of The Possibilities that spread out before you, employ one or more of the following calming Exercises:

To calm your body:

  • Breathe deeply.  Inhale slowly into your diaphragm, paying attention to the air all the way in and all the way out.  Be with your body.  Repeat 4-6 times.  The body relaxes with such regulated and increased oxygenation.
  • Open your senses.  Pay attention to what you can hear, what you can see, what you can smell, what you can taste, and/or what you can feel.  Your senses are your access to the world, and compared to your own stress, the world is very stable.
  • Be in nature.  Go outside and be open to temperature, weather, plants, animals, and your body’s responses.  Nature is generous, inspiring, settling and calming.
  • Expand your body from within.  Become tall, lengthen your neck, broaden your shoulders, expand your rib cage, lengthen your arms and legs, stretch your skin.  When your body is tight, it hoards tense emotions; when your body is expanded, it welcomes generous emotions.

To calm your mind:

  • Count your blessings.  Think of five things you’re thankful for and savor them.  Especially be mindful to the blessings and advantages you enjoy that you didn’t earn.  Appreciation of what’s good switches the mind off something you might be judging negatively.
  • Laugh out loud.  Chuckle, giggle, tee-hee.  Generate it from your belly, your chest, your throat, your nose, your toes.  Just find some form of laughter inside of you and let it come out your mouth.  Laughter is a very effective medicine.
  • See truth.  Think of something you know to be true.  Even small truths work well here:  The sun is shining (or it’s raining); I love my dog (or my child, or my spouse), I am well-fed (or hungry), I like ice cream (or swimming, or a good book, or martinis).  Truth will help you stop any story your mind might be spinning.
  • Be present.  Take note of whatever you are doing.  If you are eating, savor every bite; if you are working, focus on the task; if you are walking, observe the roll of your feet, the resilience of the ground, the sounds and textures of the environment.  Focus your mind on what is, and you will find ease from whatever story your brain is making up.

To calm your emotions:

  • Smile.  Using MRI, researchers have discovered that turning up the corners of the mouth changes the way the synapses in the brain fire.  Just by smiling, you move your mental activity to a happier location of the brain.
  • See beauty.  Notice something you believe to be beautiful and savor it.  Seeing beauty is like seeing truth, except on the emotional level.  Enjoying the beautiful will ease your heart away from any agitation and cool heated emotions.
  • Be silly.  Stick out your tongue, wiggle your butt, dance a jig, cross your eyes – let down your defenses.  To be silly for even a few moments will helps you transcend any tension-causing rules that bind you to beliefs and behaviors that may not be true for you.
  • Evoke a neutral emotion.  Basically, this is letting go of judgment and becoming the observer.  That transition moves you from stress to serenity.

If you want to increase your awareness of the Partnership opportunities your life offers:

  1. Decide in advance the nature of the partnership you want and the energy it would take to create that relationship.  For example, you might want your partnership with your body to be more robust and healthy.  You might want your partnership with your child to be happier and more loving.  You might want your partnership with your work to be more serene and rewarding.
  2. Make sure your own emotions are as neutral and free of conflict or struggle as possible.
  3. Close your eyes and mentally hold your hand toward the person or thing you want partnership with (much like you would if warming your hand at a fire) and become aware of the energy radiated by your potential partner.  Because people have such a complex range of emotions, you may pick up anything between fear and eagerness.  Inanimate objects are more agreeable unless they’ve been subjected to a steady dose of negative energy from a person.  Money often radiates enthusiasm.  Tools often radiate willingness.  Depending on what’s it’s been picking up from you, your computer might radiate willingness or reluctance.
  4. If the energy you feel is positive and full of creative power, absorb it.  Surrender to it.  Let it fill you.  If the energy you feel is wounded, gather up within yourself the energy you want to establish and channel it toward your potential partner.
  5. Stay firm with what you want to create, then surrender to the creative energy of the partnership.  Let your energy form half the partnership, let the energy of the other do the rest.

Expansion

Awareness grows.  After a baby becomes aware of her hand she realizes she can move her finger, then grasp something, then put something in her mouth, then move her whole body, then mimic words and then discover the meaning of those words, then convey ideas and use words to create results.

The awareness of Personal Power can grow naturally from the infant’s sense of self to the Creator’s sense of oneness with the universe.  Use calmness to achieve neutrality.  Then use surrender to achieve partnership.

(I haven’t yet discovered the key to achieving Oneness.  As soon as I do, I’ll let you know.)

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Free Will and Limitation

July 11th, 2010

It seems to me one of the most important characteristics of sentience is free will.  As human beings, we all have the ability to choose.

Or do we?

We seem to find restraints everywhere we look.  We are bound by laws, restrictions, obligations, duties, policies, responsibilities, handicaps, social mores, habits, rules, genetics, etc.  How much free will do we actually have when we’re surrounded by limitations?

Do we, as human beings, have unlimited choice, in all things, in all areas of our lives?  What about those times or those situations where there seems to be no choice, or the choices are extremely limited, or the best choice seems to be the lesser of two evils?  Where’s the free will then?

History is full of examples of real people who have transcended their lot – people who overcame the constraints of race, sex, poverty, lack of formal education, politics, religious restrictions, caste, or physical limitations.  What about them?  Did they choose or were they destined to have those limitations in the first place?  Did they choose or were they destined to overcome them?

Free Will and Personal Power

Consider the strong correlation between free will and personal power.  The more powerless you feel, the fewer options you recognize.  Conversely, the greater you grow in your personal power, the more options appear before you.   My model – The Diamond of Mastery – illustrates the relationship between personal power and possibilities.  At the lowest point of the diamond, power is at its lowest and nothing seems possible.  At the highest point, power is at its highest, yet it’s as narrow in scope as the bottom segment of the diamond.

Does this mean the range of possibilities is no wider at the top than at the bottom?  Well, yes.

Does this also mean free will also narrows?  Yes, but for very different reasons.

Maximum Free Will

Consider the nature of observer mode, which cuts a wide swath across the middle of the diamond.  observer mode is neutral – without judgment, without criticism, without censure, without approval or disapproval, free of either condemnation or praise.  From a neutral perspective, everything is equal:  the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the hard and the easy, the true and the false, the tall and the short, the thick and the thin – plus everything in between.   The best brainstorming, the best questions, the best critical thinking, and the widest range of possibilities come from this place of neutrality.  The more neutral you are the better you can weigh the pros and cons.  Neutrality give you that broadest, highest, deepest, clearest view of any situation.  You can see what you do want; you can see what you don’t want, and you will have a pretty strong idea of why, of all possible options, what you choose will be true for you.  From this fish-eye, wide-angle 360-degree vantage point, you have the absolute highest level of free will.

Narrowing the Scope

From this center band of neutrality, the diamond narrows in both directions.  Going down into interpreter mode, you have fewer options because you distance yourself from your personal power.  In a sense, you forfeit power – which is a choice in itself.  Going up into partner mode, you have fewer possibilities because you eliminate the ones you don’t want and concentrate your personal power on the options you’re still willing to consider.

Let’s take a closer look at this idea of forfeiting power or concentrating it.

Picture this.  Your town (or city) has a municipal water supply, stored in tanks in anticipation of need.  When you want a glass of water, you turn a tap, and water comes to you from the supply.  If a pipe breaks somewhere between the tank and your house (or a drip in your house) water leaks (or flows) out and ends up as wastewater without having been put to any good use.  Perhaps all available personal power is stored in a big cosmic tank somewhere.  Certainly, all you could ever want is available to you as easily as turning on a water tap.

interpreter mode is like living with a leaky tap.  Drip, drip, drip.  Through your thoughts, emotion, or actions, you let your power leak away.  Except it doesn’t end up in some civilized “wastewater removal system.”  It puddles around you, muddying the ground you stand on, creating a mire of difficulty.  If left unattended long enough, you end up struggling in a quicksand of limited possibilities.  Your free will gets stuck in the mud.

Conversely, partner mode is like having access to a power hose.  One flick of the tap and power gushes out in a steady stream.  You point that power at something you want, and it concentrates from possible to probable.  Your free will becomes more narrowly focused.

Losing and Gaining

Toward the tips of the diamond – in either direction – your possibilities narrow even more.

Going down, you hit victim mode, where it feels as if you have little or no choice.  Because you have assumed the role of Victim (in the story of your life), it’s extremely difficult to acknowledge the past choices that brought you to this point.  But all along the way you have been forfeiting power, relinquishing responsibility, choosing by refusing to choose, and perhaps finding advantage as well as pain in your helplessness.

At the upper tip of the diamond, you access your personal power at astonishing levels and create with seemingly little effort.  However, your free will has concentrated by  previous choices into a laser-like point.  The range of choices available in creator mode may be as narrow as in victim mode, but that’s the only similarity between self-mastery and self-deprivation.

Somewhere in observer mode, you chose to go in a particular direction.  Perhaps you decided to become a writer, or major in science, or go to law school, or move to Ghana, or join a nudist colony.  In making that one choice, you discarded a whole slew of other choices.  You became discerning, shifted out of neutral, sharpened your focus – and “limited” the extend of your free will.  Of course, you retain the power to go back to neutral at any time.

Mastering Free Will

Free will is one of the most important aspects of growth.  It’s the well-spring of purpose, it expands personal power, it sharpens the energies of manifestation, it channels self-mastery.  Free will is a gift.

Free will is also one of the most important obligations of sentience, because only through thinking and choosing, only through free will, can we live in love and joy and peace.

Whatever Mode of Mastery we operate from on any given day, we always have the choice to live today to the best of our ability.  Today we can choose frustration over anger, choose flexibility over frustration, choose cooperation over flexibility, choose enthusiasm over cooperation.  (Choose any progression that describes your own situation.)

Today is the only point of choice available to us.  The gift of yesterday’s choices brought us to today’s choices.  What gift do you want today’s choices to present to you tomorrow?  If you feel constrained, bound, limited, or struggling – move into observer mode energy and give yourself expansion, assurance, or calm tomorrow.

observer mode is amazingly freeing, wonderfully open, restfully secure.  But after a while it may begin to feel unfocused, detached, uncommitted, too loose, too free.  Clearly, you’re ready to master partner mode.

Just as partner mode is an expansion of personal power, it’s also a concentration of possibility.  Narrow your options.  Choose what you do want, and form your partnerships with those possibilities.  Toss the options you don’t want out of your basket of possibilities.

Yes, by concentrating your free will you constrain it, but you’ve step into a realm of greater personal power.

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Creative Power

July 4th, 2010

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

LAST SUMMER I PRESENTED a workshop on emotional energy. After considering several ways to approach this, I decided to title it Personal Power.

But when I started to publicize it, I discovered a high level of resistance to the very idea of personal power.

As I listened to reasoning behind the resistance, I found two general themes. The first harks back to a statement made back in 1887 by someone named Baron Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Most of us have observed examples of such corruption, whether in extreme cases such as Hitler’s Nazi Germany, or closer to home in domestic situations. When one person (or group of persons) exercises unrestrained control over others, the only result is suffering. The suffering afflicts both abuser and victim – often to the point of destruction.

Perhaps power in this sense can be best understood by such synonyms as dominion, power, authority, rule, force, etc. Quite obviously, nothing good comes from unrighteous dominion, unrestrained power, excessive authority, and tyrannical rule. I contend that the best way to avoid succumbing to that form of corruption is through personal power.

The second form of resistance seems to be a perceived conflict between accessing personal power and surrendering to god. To resolve this conflict, it’s necessary to define the terms. Let’s assume surrendering to god means submission to a higher law and/or living in tune with spirit, or relinquishing the inner restraints that restrict access to spirit. Those exact same meanings can be used to describe accessing personal power. True inner power conforms to universal law and brings you into partnership with spirit.

Let me emphasize I’m advocating accessing power, not acquiring it. You already have power. It’s innate within every human being. Consider that in accessing your power you are, in a sense, also surrendering to it. Either way, you are allowing your power burst into full bloom. You are letting its light guide you to your best good.

So what is personal power?

Personal power is self-mastery. It’s the ability to govern your own energy, to choose what’s true for you, to align with positive results (whatever that means to you), to create your own life, and to manifest miracles.

Why is personal power important?

Because (as far as we know) this life is the only one you’re going to get and you might as well live it fully and joyfully.

In past articles I’ve explored in depth the three energies of thought, action and emotion. I’ve presented five Modes of Mastery and discussed how the energies of the different modes create different results.

I believe these operational modes are universal. No matter who experiences them, the thoughts, actions and emotions or VICTIM mode reinforce helplessness; those of INTERPRETER mode create suffering; those of OBSERVER mode establish calm, those of PARTNER mode enjoy cooperation, and those of CREATOR mode bring oneness. Clearly, the higher energies produce better results.

Your Unique Power

So let’s say, you mostly operate from OBSERVER mode. You stay neutral and when some INTERPRETER emotion pricks you, you simply acknowledge it and release it. With neutrality as your set-point, you often find yourself enjoying PARTNER or CREATOR energy. You participate rather than complain, you imagine rather than dread, you celebrate, love, enjoy, lead, learn, cooperate. You know you can choose love, happiness, tranquility, enthusiasm – and you do. You ask Why not? rather than Why me?

Operating from the higher modes is an essential aspect of personal power. It is the foundation of creation. Self-mastery allows you to consciously create, to live on purpose rather than by accident.

But no two people access their power in the same way. I’ve observed four paths by which people generally make the most of their talents and what’s true for them. They are:

· via the Mind, through thinking.
· via the Heart, through feeling.
· via the Body, through their senses.
· via the Gut (for want of a better word), through intuition.

Today I want to explore two particular aspects of these four paths.

1. Processing Information

You began receiving information while still in the womb, through your biological connection with your mother. Since birth, you’ve gathered information through your senses, through instruction, through formal education, through observation, through repetition, through the conclusions you draw, through extrapolation, and through the energy of others, to name a few.

But two people, sitting in the same room, watching the same scene or hearing the same lesson, can move in opposite directions. One person might pick up on tone of voice and infer a past transgression, the other might hear the high points and leap ahead to a future challenge. A favorite story in my family is when one of my brothers was listening to one of my sisters relate a hilarious experience. All during my sister’s narrative, my brother kept thinking, Wow, it would have been so fun to be there. Only later, as he sifted through the details of her story, did he realize he was there – and it hadn’t been very fun.

If you process information by way of The Mind, you probably want the information you gather to provide truth. You like facts, concepts, ideas, replicable experiments. You assemble information into logical structures. You’re curious about why and to what purpose. Scientists and philosophers are among those who follow the pathway of The Mind.

If you process information by way of The Body, you probably care most about information that contributes to application. You want to know how: How to mix the colors, how to increase your speed, how to maximize available space, how to grow a better tomato, how to increase productivity. Among those who naturally follow the pathway of The Body are athletes, artists of all types and engineers.

If you process information by way of The Heart, you probably care most about information that supports perfection. This isn’t to say you’re a perfectionist, but that you can sense wellness, fullness, trueness, the essential perfect being-ness of whoever or whatever you’re working with. You’re curious about who in terms of “at heart,” at the core. Healers of all disciplines and teachers are among those who follow the pathway of The Heart.

If you process information by way of The Gut, you probably care most about information that supports wholeness. You’re curious about what in terms of what’s possible, what’s next, what’s the key. Among those who follow the pathway of The Gut are inventors and mystics.

2. Overcoming Obstacles

Have you ever been on a ropes course? Obstacles and challenges are constructed from ropes and poles. Participants are pushed out of their comfort zones to surmount heights, cross chasms, scale walls, and cooperate. Most people take on the challenges willingly, hoping to discover new levels of courage, strength, grit, and trust. Occasionally someone will be paralyzed by fear and unable to go on. Some people proceed with eagerness and enthusiasm.

In many ways, life is like a ropes course. Almost every day provides some obstacle, snag, challenge, difficulty, frustration, or accident. Sometimes we know the snag is manageable, sometimes we know we have a safety net, sometimes it’s a challenge we’ve met before and we have experience navigating it. Other time, we’re taken by surprise and we have to find new solutions. Sometimes we’re immobilized, sometimes we proceed with enthusiasm.

Most problems have more than one solution, and different people will resolve them in different ways. The four Paths to Power present four general approaches to overcoming obstacles.

Those who follow the Pathway of The Heart seem predisposed to look for compassionate solutions. They heal, they negotiate, they repair, they work things out. They tend to be extra conscious of the directive to do no harm. In a sense, they love roadblocks out of the way.

Those who follow the Pathway of The Mind look for logical solutions. They identify premises, gather available data, sort through information and put it order, they search out key concepts, and they test for validity. Generally speaking, they think their way around obstacles.

Those who follow the Pathway of The Body like to actively move the obstacle out of the way. As necessary, they’ll learn a new skill, acquire a new tool, put things in a new order, take new action. They will organize, rearrange, dismantle, reassemble, renew their efforts, etc. Basically, they alter roadblocks by doing.

Those who follow the Pathway of The Gut are inclined to dismiss smaller obstacles as of no consequence and see big obstacles merely as challenges. Sometimes they view the solution the same way – as basically irrelevant . Of all the ways, these followers are most likely to leap first and analyze or reflect later. They tend to bypass roadblocks by guessing.

Know Yourself

I’ve often encouraged my clients to intensify their intentions through meditation (even though I don’t meditate in any formal way). Once when I was urging meditation on a musician client, he said, “No, I have to practice.” His firm insistence shifted my thinking in a whole new direction. I realized many of my clients already know what works for them. I realized most people can find their way by instinct, and all I have to do is ask the right questions.

Knowing yourself and your way will provide the following benefits:

· If a way suggested by someone else doesn’t work for you, you realize nothing’s wrong with you. You just need to find the way that is right for you.

· You will be more accepting of someone else’s way. If you’re a thinker, you can stop expecting a logical progression from someone who intuits. If you’re a doer, you can be more patient with someone who patiently heals rather than boldly changes.

· Once you know what works for you, you can apply those techniques to anything you want to create.

· When you master the tools and techniques of your way, you approach life more creatively and less accidentally.

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