Archive for June, 2010

What’s True for You

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

As I’ve worked with intentions, my own and those of others, I’ve found the following to be a good rule of thumb:

Choose what’s true for you, and be willing to be true to it.

Of course, this may raise the challenging question: “How do I know what’s true for me?”

For the following discussion, I’ll be referring often to my Modes of Mastery Model and the Emotions list

It’s important to note that someone in VICTIM mode can’t even ask that question. People in VICTIM mode are more likely to want safety than Best Good.

INTERPRETER mode also thwarts this question. If you’re focused on validation, keeping score, weighing the odds, what’s not right, making your point, reasons why not, blame, or any other form of struggle, you will have no energy left to look within. The stories you’ve generated to justify, explain, reclaim, rationalize or validate will distort your perspectives of the world, of your relationships with others, and of especially yourself. You can ask, “What’s true for me?” but you will not be able to discern the answer.

Allowing What’s True for You

When you move from INTERPRETER mode to OBSERVER mode, everything changes. When you achieve neutrality, your view of what’s possible suddenly expands and moves from black-and-white to full-spectrum color. Now when you ask what’s true for you, you can attune to the indicators.

People are most likely to choose something that’s not true for them when operating from VICTIM or INTERPRETER mode. It’s all about possibilities – or lack of them.

In VICTIM mode, things range from the total darkness of no hope to the dark gray of no more. The emotions of INTERPRETER mode range from grim dark gray to the light gray of merely frustrating. The darker emotions (violence, hostility, anxiety, grief) create the most struggle and keep the possibilities most restricted. The lighter INTERPRETER emotions (pride, devotion, relief, desire) allow enough illumination to move from not possible to difficult. The world is still restricted to black and white, however, while you are a full-color person.

In OBSERVER mode, your options become much brighter. Any neutral choice will be more true for you than those struggling for air from the muck of disappointment, embarrassment, smugness, shame – or any other emotion derived solely from your interpretation of past experiences.

Because OBSERVER mode emotions have the power of neutrality, any intention set from this mode will be true for you in a calm, neutral way. Deriving contentment and comfort from your choices now becomes possible.

When you operate from PARTNER mode, you enter the world of color, and every intention you set will take you more and more strongly toward your deepest truth. This is a realm of more risk, more challenge and more growth. The path is tougher, the gains greater, the service fuller, and the results more exhilarating. You may, on occasion, experience emotions from INTERPRETER mode. Observe them, identify them, acknowledge your investment in them, and replace them with emotions from PARTNER mode.

Creating What’s True for You

CREATOR mode is full spectrum, full density, living color. When you are attuned to CREATOR emotions, every intention you set, every choice you make will be true for you.

Most people rarely connect with what is true for them. Most people operate from VICTIM or INTERPRETER modes most of the time. VICTIM mode produces pain and suffering. Any intentions set or any choices made from VICTIM mode will also produce pain and suffering, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you. INTERPRETER mode produces struggle. Any intentions set or any choices made from INTERPRETER mode will also produce struggle, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you.

Likewise, since OBSERVER emotions produce calm, any intentions you set or choices you make from neutrality will produce calm, and that calm indicates increasing alignment with what’s true for you.

PARTNER emotions produce opportunity

(A word of caution here: “opportunity” can mean different things in different circumstances. Bernard Madoff lured people into his Ponzi scheme with an “opportunity,” but the emotions that motivated his victims were probably those of INTERPRETER mode. They may have been motivated by acquisition emotions: greed, ambition, desire, envy, gloating, yearning, lust. Or they might have been motivated by anxiety emotions, particularly concerning lack: defensiveness, dread, frustration, impatience, insecurity.)

When we look at opportunity from the PARTNER perspective, consider the expansion value of attraction, confidence, gratitude, harmony, willingness and tenacity. Practitioners of PARTNER mode know their part includes effort, focus, attention, respect for both the challenge and the other participants.

Your Best Good is Always True for You

CREATOR mode produces Best Good, and your best good always connects most strongly to your truest truth.

People persist in situations that are not true for them for many reasons, including:

· One or more of their values keeps them where they are.
· The unknown is too frightening.
· They lack confidence in their abilities.
· They defer to the values and expectations of others.
· They believe they’ll win out if they just try harder.
· They can’t see any other possibilities.
· They doubt their abilities.

Since I have experienced most of the above reasons, I can personally testify that choosing or persisting in any situation that is not true for you, for whatever reason, costs more than it’s worth.

By observing your emotions, you can recognize the extent to which you are connected to what’s true for you. By observing and acknowledging your results, you can recognize the extent to which a past choice was aligned with your truth. By observing current results, you will receive early-warning signals when a choice is not true for you.

Early warning signals can include physical ailments, losing things, forgetting things, accidents, persistent troublesome situations, conflicts with others. The first signal may be mild: a simple cold, a stubbed toe, spilled milk, feelings of annoyance. If you ignore the first signal, the second will be stronger: a sore throat, a sprained ankle, a clogged drain, increasingly frequent arguments. The more you ignore the signals, the harder your soul will work to get your attention. The ultimate penalty for persisting along a false course is death.

Please, please, please do not assume that all normal frustrations and set-backs of life indicate soul-level mis-alignment. Please do not judge yourself or others by a cold or a sprained ankle or a clogged drain. Accidents happen. I do, however, urge you to be willing to observe your own life; be willing to listen for the ways your soul speaks to you.

So now let’s look at ways to recognize whether the intention you want to set is true for you.

· True choices draw you to them; you do not have to push into them.
· True choices help you connect to PARTNER and CREATOR emotions.
· True choices supply you with the courage to face your fears and doubts.
· True choices resonate with your soul.
· True choices serve others.

Finally, I’d like to touch on the second half of my opening statement: be willing to be true to the choices you make.

Personal growth is an extremely uneven process. Sometimes it feels like a long slow slog, sometimes the learning curve rises in a breath-taking sweep. Sometimes periods of steady growth can be marked by obvious gains. Sometimes there are fallow periods of absorbing, nurturing and rejuvenation. Because of this variance in your own personal growth patterns, you may sometimes feel impatient or frustrated.

Stay True During Fallow Season

During a slow slog or times when your momentum feel stalled, you may set an aggressive intention in an effort to “get the show on the road.” You may not be mentally ready, emotionally connected or sufficiently prepared to be true to such an intention. At such times it’s possible to set out in a true direction yet make an un-true choice. I have lots of experience with this one.

For instance, when I chose to become a writer, that was true for me. When I chose to write romance novels, I chose quickly and from self-doubt (I thought it would be easy), and my choice was not true for me. I continued along that path for fifteen years, and it was all struggle.

On the other hand, during that struggle, when I began teaching writing, that was true for me. I grew, I served, I had fun, and happiness was my way. Many of my students have become successful authors, and I observed that those writers who succeeded were those for whom the intention was true for them, and they were true to it.

To be true to an intention requires you to make a couple of important decisions first.

· Be willing to know yourself.
· Be willing to release any fears, doubts and false beliefs.
· Make sure your value system is yours and not someone else’s.
· Be willing to listen to your heart.

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Belief and Perception

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

(I am a life coach.  If you would like personal help in applying the principles I explore in this blog to your own life, please contact me through my web site.)

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED that some things in your life seem easy and attainable while other things seem difficult, elusive, perhaps impossible?

For instance, perhaps you have an abundance of good relationships but wellness seems elusive because you experience one health challenge after another. Or perhaps money comes easily to you but you can’t maintain a long-term relationship. Perhaps, like me, you’re good with words and colors but struggle with music and numbers. If something comes easily to you, you probably enjoy it, participate in it, nurture it, even indulge in it. If something seems difficult or too far away you may avoid it or procrastinate it – regardless of how much you might want it

Say you want a long-term relationship. Say you’re sure such a relationship is true for you and you’re willing to be true to it. Say you’ve worked through your obstacles and you’re applying positive energy, and you’ve been at it long enough that surely the right person should have come along by now. Since it hasn’t happened, you’re doubting yourself and the universe. You may be wondering if loving someone and being loved in return simply isn’t meant to be.

A recent article in Scientific American online called The Neuroscience of Distance and Desire sheds some interesting light on what may be happening.

Things we consider to be desirable and/or attainable seem closer than they actually are, while things we consider to be undesirable and/or difficult seem farther away than they really are.

The researchers suggest an evolutionary purpose for such misperception – that energy is a limited resource, so something easily attainable is a better use of a limited resource and therefore more desirable than something which is difficult. Perceiving something as closer that it really is reinforces its desirability and motivates us toward it. Perceiving something is farther away reinforces its undesirability and influences us to not waste energy. Additionally, this could be a survival function in that when a dangerous distance seems too far we won’t leap, or when a threat seems too dangerous we won’t confront it.

In today’s world we have so many tools and so much knowledge that some challenges are not necessarily fatal, yet the survival mechanism persists. We know, for instance, that with the right equipment and adequate training human beings can walk on high wires or jump motorcycles across chasms. But we have to believe in our own ability to do so before we try.

Belief Influences Perception

Consider the relationship between desire and difficulty. When you perceive a situation to be difficult, you may have little desire. Desire is natural; most people have it in at least one area of their lives.

Likewise, non-desire is also natural. It’s so natural it’s often selected as a coping mechanism. If something proves extremely difficult, it may be easier to stop desiring it than to keep pursuing it. For instance, after struggling through a challenging illness, someone might decide there are benefits to ill-health; or someone whose coped with poverty may decide to not want what money can buy.

As a teenager, I found it extremely difficult to make friends. I ached for friends, but I perceived myself as not particularly likable. I became more and more reluctant to make the first move and took refuge in solitary activities. I had to start believing people might actually like me before I could perceive friends as attainable.

Any belief of insufficiency or difficulty or inability will make the desired result seem farther away than it really is – even unattainable. If something seems unattainable, the perception of its being too far away to bother reinforces its apparent unattainability and may influence you to not try.

So we have a conundrum: The more you desire something, the closer it will seem. But the more you believe you can’t attain it, the farther away it will seem. And the farther it seems, the more you believe it to be unattainable, and the less you will desire it. Thus, belief can sabotage desire.

Say you want to complete a marathon. You desire it for true reasons: to achieve that level of fitness, for the adventure of it, to prove you can, to feel better about yourself. But if you believe you are too heavy, or not fit enough, or too old, or generally not athletic enough, your perception of the difficulty may obstruct your desire and deter you from mastering one mile, let alone 26.

So, recognizing belief and desire influence perception, how can we turn the illusion of distance to our advantage? Here are some ways to change a false belief, reinvigorate desire and perceive something as more easily attainable.

Healing a False Belief

A belief does not need a factual basis. In fact, false beliefs are more easily acquired than true ones. With amazing agility, the human brain turns repetition into truth, adapts memories to conform to an accepted story, interprets correlation as causation. However, belief is an incredibly strong force. Once the brain processes something into belief, that belief has the effective power of truth. Thoughts, actions and emotions all conform to it – and therefore so do results. Because thoughts, actions and emotions will all engage in perpetuating a false belief, any one of them can be the key to healing.

Begin by identify the three factors:

  1. Perpetuating thoughts tend to present themselves as limitations: I can’t. It’s too hard. Money thinks I’m dead. It’s my nature. I was raised that way. (For a full exploration of the power of thought, click here)
  2. Perpetuating actions tend to take you in a different direction from where you want to go: Delay, procrastination, substitution, laying blame, resistance, or any form of conflict.
  3. Perpetuating emotions include any that reinforce helplessness or struggle.

Chose any of the three factors as a starting point.

  1. Change a thought by reversing it and recognizing something else might be true: Maybe I can. Maybe it will be easy. Maybe I have abilities I don’t know. Maybe my parents got it wrong.
  2. Change an action by taking the first small step in the direction you want to go: Walk before you run, smile at strangers, put loose change in a piggy bank (or empty your jar of coins into your savings account), join a support group, take a class.
  3. Change an emotion by recognizing and naming what you feel and choosing something else.

For help with any of these factors, I invite you to contact me and explore life coaching.

Reinvigorating Desire

With the healing of a false belief, your view of what’s possible will automatically expand. New opportunities will reveal themselves, as will new avenues for moving forward.

There are ways, however, you can close the distance between where you are and what you want. Here are a few:

1. Keep a wish list. On paper, make a list of anything and everything you want – or want to want. Follow the rules for a brainstorming session: write down every idea; use the words that come first to mind, do not edit; do not judge or examine any idea, just write it down; make no attempt to prioritize. Also, don’t think you have to get everything down at once. Keep the list handy and add to it as new ideas come to you.

Include both the grand and the trivial. You might want new drapes for the bedroom and to climb Mt. Everest. Everything goes on the list.

You may want to come back to this list and identify the things you want most immediately – especially if you decide to make a dream board – but it’s not necessary. The real power here is to open your imagination to the possible. Many desires remain buried in the subconscious mind. Naming them is often enough to free them.

2. Make a dream board (or treasure map or vision board). From magazines or from the Internet, collect pictures and words that represent or name what you want. Paste them on a sheet of poster board and hang it where you can see it easily and often. (For examples, click here.)

When you can visualize something, you make it more possible, and pictures help. Remember, when something seems impossible, you perceive it as farther away than it really is. To bring something closer, you must first name it, then you must begin to see it. The more you see it, the more you will believe it to be possible.

3. Affirm what you want. For an affirmation to be effective, it needs to meet the following criteria. What you want must be true for you, and you must be willing to be true to it. You must imagine it as a done deal, stating it in first person, present tense. You must internalize it, feel it in your heart; just keeping it in your thoughts is insufficient to impacting belief and desire. You must keep it pure and undiluted by doubts and misconceptions.

Empowering Perception

When you believe something is possible, it is. When something seems possible, your desire for it increases. When desire unites with possibilities, what you want seems closer than it really is. When things seem closer, you’re more likely to reach for them.

The strongest energies for bringing what you want close enough to grasp are love, which heals, happiness, which creates, and peace, which reproduces itself. Employing these powerful energies brings what you want into immediate existence. Always begin from where you are and step up into the next higher energy – whatever it happens to be. (The Emotions List can help with this.)

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Love Heals

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Imagine someone with a broken leg.  That person goes to the doctor who x-rays, sets the bone, immobilizes it, provides instructions for how best to assist recovery, and sends the person home to heal.

Imagine a married couple who fight repeatedly about the same issue (kids, money, personal habits, politics, food).  They go to a relationship counselor who listens, gives feedback, introduces them to better communication skills, and sends them home to heal.

Both situations have an equal potential for full recovery.

Of course, it depends on whether the “patients” involved actually follow the advice of the “healers.”  If the person with the broken leg discards the brace or puts too much weight on the injury too soon, recovery will be compromised.  If the couple with conflict continue to blame each other, or hold grudges or insist on having the last word, they will stay mired in unhappiness.  It’s pretty easy to see that action matters.  Healing is seriously compromised if the “patient” doesn’t obey the principles of recovery,

Action, however is only one kind of energy involved in healing, regardless of the nature of the wound.  The patient must also invest thought energy.  Generally thought energy takes the form of believing healing is possible.

In the case of the broken leg, our entire culture recognizes bones heal, so accepting that a particular break will mend seems a no-brainer.  However, there are always exceptions to the rule.  Some people believe they don’t heal naturally.  A physical condition, such as a calcium deficiency, might provide a basis for that belief; often such beliefs grow from emotions.  Emotion-based beliefs can retard or obstruct healing the way a placebo can aid it.

The couple who argues have a more complex problem.  Their issue of contention may be a way of ignoring or evading the true wound.  For instance, they might argue over money without realizing the deeper rift is that they don’t respect each other.  They might believe – at least in principle – they can learn to communicate and compromise about money.  That belief will go a long way to supporting any new actions they adopt.  But if they don’t believe the other person is worthy of respect, their efforts with money will not heal the relationship.

Ultimately, the most important energy governing any healing is emotion.  Emotion will support and govern beliefs, or it will limit them.  Emotion will support and sustain actions, or it will impair them.  Even in something as straight-forward and well-treated as a broken leg, emotion can speed the healing process or retard it.

The key to understanding the power of emotions in healing is simple:

Healing requires energy.

Emotions are energy.

Energy is emotion.

I believe love has the strongest healing power of all emotions.  I believe any wound can be healed by love.

Healing can occur in a number of different ways, depending on the ailment or affliction.  For instance, the healing of a misunderstanding might come from finding common ground; the healing of cancer might come by reducing the tumor; the healing of poverty might come from getting a new job, the healing of loneliness might come from giving companionship to someone else.

Sometimes love is an obvious force in such healings; more often its energy is overlooked.

Consider these three ways healing can occur:

  • Recovery.  The situation returns to its original form.
  • Reconciliation.   Negative energy is released from an adversity.
  • Transcendence.  A new reality emerges.

Let’s look at each one and note the influence of emotional energy.

Recovery

This might be the way of healing we’re most familiar with.  Something is injured, the injury mends.  We tend to let our bodies take care of a common cold, a cut finger, a stubbed toe.  We tend to let time take care of a minor rift or a hurt feeling.  We tend to spread major expenses out over time as a means of healing a lack of funds.  We tend to let time and/or nature heal the discomforts caused by weather – the rained-out party or the August heat wave.  Sometimes we apply some external assistance – the cold remedy, the band-aid, the credit card, the snow shovel, the shared meal.  Eventually the situation returns to normal.

Because such minor woes are so easily mended, it’s easy to overlook the impact of emotional energy on the recovery.

Have you ever had a common cold that lingered despite your dedicated application of cold remedies?  Have you ever disagreed with someone you normally get along with, but that particular disagreement seemed to resist resolution?  Have you ever been surrounded by friends and family and still ached with loneliness?  Have you incurred a debt, made regular payments, and made little headway in paying it off?

Chances are, you were immersed in one of the INTERPRETER Mode emotions:  worry, frustration, guilt, boredom, disappointment, etc.  (Check the Emotions List for the full range of possible culprits)  These emotions create struggle, increase difficulty, burden the body, resist healing.  Perhaps you’re in one of these situations right now.

You can expedite recovery by a simple four-step process:

  1. Recognize and name the impeding emotion.
  2. Acknowledge you have a choice when it comes to holding onto that emotion or letting go of it.
  3. Choose to let it go.
  4. Move to the next Mode of Mastery.  Since you are probably in INTERPRETER mode, move to OBSERVER mode.

OBSERVER mode emotions are neutral, free of negative energy and judgment.  When you abide in the energy of hope, humor, patience, warmth, wonder, or flexibility, you move from the difficult to the possible.  Your thoughts change from misdirected to open; you feel capable instead of burdened.

Reconciliation

In contrast to the normal, every-day kinds of ailments referred to above, some situations appear permanent.  Birth defects, the destruction caused by a natural disaster, the loss of a job, cultural hatreds, death, etc.

Occasionally we can envision a means for mediating the situation – breakthroughs in medicine, community or national cooperation in restoration, retraining or a career change, peace summits, grief counseling, etc.

The degree to which any of these situations becomes reconcilable depends on the emotional energy applied to them, and PARTNER energy is key.

When you evoke and employ such PARTNER emotions as cheerfulness, courage, gratitude, openness or confidence, the situation ceases to be an adversity.  The physical reality may not have changed, but you experience new willingness, eagerness, and power.  You can trust your intuition as an inner guide.  You welcome the opportunities for growth, for experience, for greater knowledge, and for service.

Transcendence

Transcendence is the highest degree of healing, the realm in which miracles occur.  It’s important to remember miracles always obey natural law, that everything in the universe conforms to the laws of the universe.

Consider a conflict between two factions that has raged for years (or centuries).  It’s not hard to see that love might be the only mechanism by which the two sides could transcend their differences.  The process of applying love would not be mysterious.  First they would have to set aside feelings of hatred, resentment, and anger.  They would have to release any attachment to the old stories, to the long-held myths, to their convictions of the sins of their enemies and of their own rightness.  They would have to release judgment and blame and move to neutrality.  Once they achieved calm, they could discover commonalities and ways to partner with each other.  (Anthropologists have observed that trade and intermarriage work wonders.)  Understanding often leads to respect, and from respect it’s an easy step to love.

The growth process from helplessness to power always follows the same path: from suffering to struggle to calm to opportunity to best good.  A few examples of these emotional transitions:

  • From fear to apprehension to hope to trust to love.
  • From loneliness to yearning to patience to anticipation to love.
  • From resentment to bitterness to humility to recognition to love.
  • From woe to grief to sadness to empathy to love.

(Of course, other emotions besides love put you in CREATOR mode, but today I’m specifically talking about the power of love.  Also, sometimes it takes more than one step to progress through interpreter mode.  For example, you may have to go from fear to hostility to apprehension to irritation before you can reach hope.)

Love heals.  When it heals through transcendence, a new reality emerges.

Consider the story of someone who recovers from cancer.  Perhaps for months the doctors do their best with little success, then one day the tumor is “miraculously” gone.  They may speculate on how healing occurred, but there is no testable scientific explanation – just here today, gone tomorrow.

The energy central to such a “miracle” will be love.  It might result from love of self, love of the body, love of life, love of god.  It might result from reconciling a conflict with someone or something.  It might be the progression from anger to regret to awareness to acceptance to love.

The new reality will expand far beyond renewed health.  It will always include a new version of an old story, new attitudes towards other people, and/or approaching familiar situations in new ways.  When you transcend through the healing power of love, you are freed from old beliefs, old paradigms, old restriction.  You feel like a new person.

Can you use love to heal someone else?  Of course.  The power of love is unlimited.  But healing cannot occur without the other person’s permission and their willingness to be healed.

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What You Have is True for You

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

(I am a life coach.  If you would like personal help in applying the principles I explore in this blog, please contact me through my web site.)

A TRUE INTENTION MUST be true for you.  It must resonate with you, be congruent with you, be in accord with your world view.  To bring something into existence, your thoughts (including beliefs and assumptions) must align with it; your emotions must be harmonious with it, and your actions must support it.  When those conditions are met, you will get what you want.  Your intention becomes reality.

This formula, in accordance with any scientific formula, works both ways.  Your reality is comprised of the alignment of your thoughts, emotions and actions.  What you have now conforms to what’s currently true for you.

“Wait!” you say.  “I don’t want my current degree of scarcity (or conflict, or pain, or confusion, or loneliness).”

Of course you don’t.  (Neither do I.)  But you’re aligned with it.  (And so am I)

However, in order to create something else, sometimes it’s necessary to first become un- aligned with what you currently have.  And that often includes recognizing why what you have now is true for you.

Here are four possible ways something you don’t really want could have become true:

1. You have a deep emotional tie to it.

Emotions are learned – and we learn them early.  In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton describes how the emotions of parents can be conveyed to an unborn child.  This seems to apply to both parents, so it may be genetic rather than simply physiological.  If your mother (or perhaps your father) was sad during your gestation, that sadness could imprint on the proteins that carry the messages of your DNA.

And then, children easily pick up the emotions of their parents and caregivers.  If your parents always worried about money, you certainly picked up on their fears and doubts.  If they felt insecure with each other, you probably absorbed levels of mistrust and withdrawal.  Etc.

Thus, you may have a strong but deep emotional tie to sadness.  Or your troubled relationships with money could have roots to your early childhood.  Or your inability to be intimate may reflect your parents’ misgivings about each other.

However, just because such deep ties formed early does not mean they’re cast in concrete.  Emotions are always a choice – even those you acquired before you were born.  Not only that, emotions are the key to your personal power.  Recognize those emotions, acknowledge they have been true for you, and you begin the process of uprooting them and planting something else in their place.  Every time you exchange one disempowering emotion for one with more power, you grow stronger – and you change what’s true for you.

2. You’ve accepted a false premise.

There’s an axiom in computer programming that is a new way of stating an old principle:  Garbage in, garbage out.  Faulty premises produce false conclusions.  And yet, human beings have a tendency to accept conclusions without testing the premises.

Likewise, observed (but unproven) conclusions often promote faulty premises.  For example, if you have a 5, and you want to know how you got 5, you can say that 5 comes from 3 and 2.  That’s correct.  But what if your particular 5 is the sum of 4 and 1?

A real life example I encounter often comes when people analyze a health issue.  Perhaps someone has asthma (or tendonitis, or an ulcer, or a recurring cold) and wants to solve it.  They start looking for the components, and quite logically the first components they look for are physical.  When they discover the allergies and sensitivities that trigger asthma symptoms, they come up with a 2 + 3 = 5 equation, the 2 being a genetic predisposition, and the 3 being environmental factors.  Based on that equation, the treatment for asthma focuses on removing (or treating) the environment factors.  And yes, the asthma abates.

Except what if this particular asthma in this individual is a 1 + 4 problem?  The 1 might be environmental, and the 4 might be emotional.  Treating the symptoms still leaves the largest element of the equation unresolved.  (See books by Louise Hay and Karol Truman on this subject).  Or the components might by 1+1+1+2, with the numbers representing factors yet to be discovered.

Whatever your persistent issue, examine one or more of the following as an unidentified premise:

  • You have an unresolved emotion.  If anger, grief, anxiety, disappointment, resentment, etc. are buried in the body, their toxic nature is as dangerous as any environmental contaminant.
  • You get a payoff.  Generally, when behaviors are rewarded they are repeated, and they often become habitual.  Common rewards include:  more attention from others, control over others, a reprieve from an expected punishment, an exemption from something you don’t want to do, freedom from responsibility, a good excuse.
  • You’re staging a good defense.  When faced with problems too big to handle, people often retreat.  Illness, poverty, loneliness, etc., become coping mechanisms of choice.
  • You’re employing a good offense.  The drive to conquer can produce results as debilitating as the desire to run away.  Aspiration, greed, hostility, lust, pride and possessiveness can  result in illness, poverty and loneliness, etc.

As with emotions, when you recognize a self-defeating element in any equation, you’ve taken the first step toward breaking free of a “truth” you don’t want and adopting one that’s congruent with what you do want.

3. You’ve formed an attachment.

The Buddah concluded life is suffering and all suffering is attachment.  Whether you can currently see it or not, if you suffer you probably have some kind of attachment to your current reality.

Sometimes such attachments are obvious.  Perhaps you want a partner (lover, spouse, business partner, comrade), but you prize privacy more.  Perhaps you want health, but you’ve come to rely on your doctor.  Perhaps you want an active, adventurous life, but you’re attached to safety.

Because money has been one  of my challenges, I approach it with the techniques I suggest to others.  Very recently, I probed for any attachment I might have regarding it, and I discovered an attachment to scarcity.  At first, I labeled it “minimalism,” but I realized its true name very quickly.

Since money has been scarce my entire life, I can assume deep emotional roots:  My parents were very good at doing without.  My father did all the home maintenance; my mother made all our clothes and cooked from scratch.  When I was a teenager I realized I had adopted a strategy of not wanting.  By not wanting, I avoided disappointment and resentment and could just be happy.  As a young wife, I followed  my mother’s pattern.  I made my children’s clothes (often from scraps) and I cooked from scratch.  I am very, very good at doing without.

It’s been challenging to realize I formed an attachment to getting along without, especially when that extends to an attachment to scarcity.  I’d much rather have plenty, prosperity, abundance.

When releasing attachment, it’s important to avoid simply substituting a different attachment.  It’s the attachment that causes suffering.  As the opposite of attachment, consider appreciation, peace, respect, and gratitude.

4. You have an ego investment.

Several years ago, in a book on yoga philosophy, I read a definition of ego I particularly like.  Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the book or the author so I can’t cite it, but the gist was that ego is when you need others to see you as you see yourself and/or you need to keep proving that how you see yourself is true.  I like this approach to ego because it doesn’t deny the self.  For instance, you can be smart and know you’re smart.  You don’t have to deny you’re smart, and you don’t need other people to know you’re smart.

Consider whether you have an ego investment in your current reality.  (I have to admit, I have had an ego investment in being a minimalist.)

Here are a few examples of how this can play out to keep you where you are – and how you can break the cycle:

  • You see yourself as competent.  The more problems you solve, the more you prove your competence (to yourself or others).  Thus you have lots of problems to solve.  To manifest a less complicated life, acknowledge your competence and stop needing to prove it.
  • You see yourself as sensitive.  The more you react to other people’s emotions, the more you prove your sensitivity.  Thus, other people’s needs have higher priority than your own.  To manifest more personal fulfillment, acknowledge your sensitivity and stop needing to prove it.
  • You see yourself as a sick person, and you need other people to take your illness seriously.  Their acknowledgment of your illness may be more important to your ego than your wellness.  To move toward wellness, stop claiming the disease or condition.  Call it a sinus infection, not “my sinus infection.”  Call it a back ache, not “my aching back.”
  • You see yourself as productive.  The subconscious often translates this to busy, so the busier you are the more productive you feel.  Consequently, you fill up your days and weeks and years with tasks and activities, and you have little time for what you really want.  Let go of a need to prove you’re productive and you’ll find more satisfaction.

So, what is true for you?

What’s true for you is what you believe to be true.  All the above ways can contribute to “truth,” in that they influence your results. But when you look at them logically and/or connect with them at the heart level, you may see they have nothing to do with your authentic self, with your infinite nature.

At any given moment – including this one – you can make a new choice.  You can sever an emotional tie that seeps your power and choose an emotion that supports you.  You can trade a false premise for one that’s accurate.  You can release attachment and find neutrality.  You can surrender any need to prove something about yourself and accept where you are at this moment on your life’s journey.

When you break free of an old belief and call it a lie instead of truth, what’s true for you changes.  It adapts to your new beliefs and your new choices, and you will experience new results.

Since I try to walk my talk, here’s the current status of my own story:  I realized I was attached to scarcity.  I realized I didn’t want to simply exchange attachment to scarcity for attachment to money.  But I do want prosperity, so I’ve been choosing appreciation and enthusiasm.  I’ve been embracing prosperity with love (instead of doubt).

And I’ve been getting more checks in the mail.  I’ve had more inquiries from potential clients.  I’ve had fewer cancellations for appointments.  It’s only been a week, so I don’t know what’s cause and effect and what’s coincidence.  I do know I’m going to continue along this path.

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