Archive for July, 2010

Truth and Consequences

Saturday, 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

Saturday, 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

Sunday, 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

Sunday, 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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Posted in Creator Mode, Free will, Interpreter Mode, Observer Mode, Partner Mode, Victim Mode, manifestation | 1 Comment »

Creative Power

Sunday, 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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Posted in Body Power, Gut Power, Heart Power, Mind Power, personal power | Comments Off