Posts Tagged ‘Choice’

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The Power of “What if . . .”

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

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 | Comments Off

Getting What You Want

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

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 the Miracle

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 any energy or entity “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 have 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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Neutralizing Fear

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

I’ve often heard it postulated the most universal fear is fear of death, and I disagree.  I believe fear of the unknown is far greater.

As human beings, we like safety, security, constancy, predictability, permanence, and tradition.  To varying degrees, such assurances give us confidence.  Decisions are easier when we know what the options are.  We like reunions (or not) because we know what to expect.  Trips are easier to plan when we have road maps and hotel directories.  We like menus, study guides, business plans, instruction books, teacher and mentors.  Most of us prefer the smooth-running to the eventful.  If we could avoid accidents, we would.  Some people would avoid all surprises if they could.

By contrast, the unknown often feels unsafe, unpredictable, indefinite, risky, and dangerous.

Of course, we have individual tolerances for the unknown.  We all have areas where we’re willing to take risks and areas where we’re not.  You might be fine with financial risks and cautious about relationships.  Your partner might be fine with emotional risks and fearful in matters of health.  Your child might be a daredevil on his skateboard and unwilling to even breathe the aroma of a strange food.

I believe fear of the unknown lies at the heart of every fear.  For instance, say you’re afraid of speaking in public.  Perhaps your insecurity arises from what people will think.  Or perhaps you fear you might stutter or lose your place or forget what you plan to say.  In both cases, it’s the unknown:  you don’t know what people think; you don’t know whether you’ll falter.  If you knew people liked you, or you knew you would carry it off, you wouldn’t be afraid (or not as afraid).

Or say you’re afraid of flying.  The unknowns include the competence of the pilot, the air-worthiness of the plane, the weather conditions, and other air traffic, not to mention freaky things like wind shears, collisions with birds, and anything else your creative imagination supplies.

Or say you’re afraid of getting your heart broken.  The unknown you fear can take many guises, and the guise it takes will influence your choices.  If you’re afraid you are unworthy of love, you may never date again.  If you’re afraid there aren’t any good ones left, you may never date one person for long enough to find out.  If you’re afraid the other person is unwilling to make a long-term commitment, you may look for reasons to break it off first.

If you’re afraid of losing your job, perhaps it’s because you don’t know what might happen when money isn’t coming in (so you make something up).  If you’re afraid of driving at night, perhaps it’s because you can’t see far enough into the dark to know what’s out there.  If you’re afraid to look deep inside yourself, perhaps it’s because you don’t know who you’ll find.

Every human being has a deep, infinite reserve of power, although most of us hoard our power as if in a locked trunk.  Unlocking the truck and accessing our own power may be one of the key aspects of finding our purpose and living it.  The more “safely” we keep our power locked away, the more we operate from Victim Mode.  The emotions of Victim Mode serve as sentries, separating us from our own power.  We own the power, it’s deep within us, but we have somehow accepted the role of vassal to our emotions.  Any movement out of Victim Mode is a move toward mastering our emotions.

Fear is such an effective sentry it convinces us our power has been neutralized.  Following are several strategies for reversing the process.  When you neutralize fear, you gain access to your power.

Gain Knowledge

Because fear of the unknown is at the heart of all fear, when you expand the known you reduce the unknown and thus reduce fear.  Gaining knowledge is the simplest of all methods, and any of the following practices will help:

  • Study what you don’t know.
  • Research the facts using reliable sources.
  • Ask questions rather than make assumptions.
  • Practice and gain proficiency.
  • Invest time and energy in developing relationships you can trust.
  • Seek out teachers and mentors.

Going back to the above examples, the more you speak in public, the more skill you gain, and the less likely you are to stutter, or lose your place, or forget what you wanted to say.  Sufficient research can provide you with statistics about flying generally and factors contributing to accidents specifically.  Taking the time to develop a trust relationship with someone can reassure you your heart is safe.

Reframe your Story

One of the most typical ways of trying to resolve the unknown is to fill in the blanks.

Since you don’t know what the audience is thinking, your mind shuffles the deck of possibilities and pulls a card:  They think this isn’t going to be worth their time. You accept the first drawn card as the answer.  The unknown has been revealed and your fear is allayed; except now you’re embarrassed, frustrated, insecure, or even angry.

Since you can’t know the competence of your pilot, your mind draws a card:  He’s likely to fall asleep on the job. Now you’re more afraid than ever.

Or after dinner one night your date’s credit card has expired.  You offer to pay, but your mind draws the card:  Freeloader. Ah, one question is answered, but another unknown keeps the fear alive: What if he’s totally financially irresponsible?

A coaching friend of mine shared her reframing policy with me.  She said every time she imagines a negative possibility, she forces herself to think of three equally-likely positive possibilities.

The audience could as easily be thinking:  I’ve heard good things about this speaker! Or Good dresser. Or I never thought of that before.

The pilot could as easily be fresh from a good night’s sleep, or one of the airline’s best, or particularly savvy about weather patterns.

Your date could be a)  Forgetful.  When his new card came in the mail he neglected to activate it.  b)  Moving.  His new card is in the box of papers he’s moving from his old apartment to his new, and he’s a bit harried right now.  c)  Changing banks and the old bank closed his account one day early.

By insisting your mind draw several cards from the deck of possibilities, you avoid jumping to conclusions or making assumptions with insufficient evidence.  You still don’t know if any of the possibilities you come up with is correct, but you are a bit more willing to accept the unknown.  Such acceptance of the unknown goes a long way toward neutralizing your fear of it.

Meet Fear Head-on

Perhaps you often face your emotions.  Are you more likely to reinforce the emotion you’re experiencing, or confront it with something else?  People generally meet fear with more fear, anxiety with more anxiety, worry with more worry, etc.  This will put you in a repetitive, reinforcing loop.  The more you worry the more worry you feel, which you meet with more worry.  It’s like a leaf caught in an eddy, circling endlessly around with no ability to push back into the current.  Or like adding fuel to an already raging fire.

You can, however, meet an unwelcome emotion with its opposite, which effectively cancels them both out.  In Buddhism this is called applying the antidote to the destructive mental state.  My source for this insight* indicated there was a specific antidote for each negative emotion.  In my work with clients, however, I ask them to identify the emotion they’re feeling then choose the positive emotion that seems most appropriate as the antidote.

When you’re experiencing fear (or any other Interpreter Mode emotion), imagine its opposite.  You might choose love as the opposite of fear, hope as the opposite of anxiety, curiosity as the opposite of uncertainty, meekness as an antidote for doubt, or serenity as an antidote to worry.  If the antidotes I’ve suggested don’t resonate with you, find one that does.  Once the positive and negative have cancelled each other out, you can continue to evoke the positive emotion and powerfully establish that as your state of being.

Move up a Level

As you may recall, fear is a Victim Mode emotion.  When you are consumed by fear, you probably believe you have no power.  (Actually, your full power exists within you at all times.)  The instant you realize you have sufficient power to choose one of these strategies, you crack open the lid of your inner power chest.  When you access just a tiny ray of your power, enough to say, “I’m tired of being a victim,” you immediately move to Interpreter Mode.   And Interpreter Mode has 100 times more power than Victim Mode.

You don’t have to know how you will stop being afraid.  You don’t have to actually deal with the fear or its causes.  You don’t even have to choose what you want instead.  Try this 3-step process.

  1. Get in touch with whatever you are feeling.
  2. Name it.
  3. Say you want to be done with it.

Through recognition, acknowledgment and this small acceptance that something else is possible, you access enough of your power to move from Victim to Interpreter.

Perhaps you’re not experiencing a Victim level of fear, but feel some Interpreter version of it such as alarm, anxiety, defensiveness, doubt, dread, embarrassment, insecurity, wariness or trepidation.  The process still works:  Recognize the emotion you’re experiencing, acknowledge it by naming it, then let go of the judgment embedded within it.  Whether you’re judging someone else, the situation, or yourself, give up judgment and you instantly move to Observer Mode.  And Observer Mode has 100 times more power than Interpreter Mode.

Make Peace with Your Fear

This final strategy is both the most difficult and the most effective.  For it to be effective you must first own your fears.  You created them.  You adopted them.  You have nourished them.  You possess them.

Imagine you have erected a protective wall around yourself in an effort to keep out the unknown.  Because the wall itself wasn’t quite sufficient, you hired a dragon to guard the gate.  Then, to be sure of the dragon, you staked it right outside your door.  Because you fed and tended the dragon, it grew stronger and fiercer.  Since installing it, you’ve probably discovered it’s powerless to keeps the unknown away from your gate – but it does a swell job of keeping you imprisoned inside.

Your fears are like this dragon.  To free yourself, you have to free the dragon.  To free the dragon you have to walk right up to it.  Make peace with it.  Ask it to show you everything it’s got.  From your current perspective, you think your dragon is all teeth and claws and barbed tail.  That’s what fear does to us.  It appears to be the danger, it becomes the unknown.  Yet, in reality, it’s merely the way we’ve contrived to protect ourselves.

If you are willing to approach your fears in peace, you will discover your dragon has a deep desire to defend you, to honor you, to obey your every wish.  To convince your fears you no longer need them, step past them and take a good look at whatever you believed you needed protection against.

Should you discover a real threat, use real means to disarm it or defend against it.  Fear itself can do neither.  More likely, as you venture into the unknown, you will discover a stranger who’s willing to be a friend, an adventure inviting you to climb aboard, a wilderness waiting to be explored, an opportunity ready to be exploited, new information available for assimilation, or some aspect of yourself you’ve neglected.  The unknown may even be the milieu of your best good, if you’re willing to free your dragon.

I challenge you to take the very first step to neutralize something you fear:  Choose to be done with it.

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Posted in Interpreter Mode, Neutrality, Observer Mode, Victim Mode, personal power | 47 Comments »

Observer Power

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through -collisions.” –Yahia Lababidi

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote of my shift away from the assumption we all create our own realities.  Sometimes it’s easy to see a correlation between intention and result; far more often the relationship seems strained or non-existent.  The more I struggled with cause-and-effect at this level, the more I came to believe accidents do happen.

However, while I see no evidence everyone creates their own realities in every situation, I still believe we can create the lives we want.  I believe we do influence our results far more than we realize.  I came to frame this as living On Purpose rather than living By Accident.

The more we choose to live On Purpose, the more we avoid living By Accident.  Today, I’ll focus on becoming the Observer as a first step toward living more fully on purpose.

By Accident or On Purpose

Living By Accident seems to be the general result of operating from Interpreter Mode.   Once I accepted that emotions have power, I had to question the various ways the different emotions exert their power.  Some emotions attract, some create, some reinforce, some block, some prohibit, and some contribute.  The more we understand the power of emotions, the greater our ability to wield that power purposefully.

When we’re in Interpreter Mode, however, we tend to let our emotions take charge.  We may defer to them, succumb to them, or let them rule us.  If we try to fight our emotions, we wage war against ourselves.  Whether we submit to them or defy them, they influence our lives and our choices.

During my training to become a coach, we were given the assignment to develop our own coaching model.  I had been gestating my philosophy of cause-and-effect for many years, so I played around with ways to express it.  I came up with a three step process:

  1. Choose what you want (set an intention)
  2. Align your thoughts, actions and emotions with each other and with your intention
  3. Receive the miracle

The Model in Action

As I’ve used this model in my work with clients, sometimes the process is clear, straight-forward and effective:  Choice + Unification = Miracle.  Occasionally, a client struggles with making a choice; more often the real work comes in unifying thoughts, actions and emotions.  Wherever the struggle arises, the very presence of struggle indicates Interpreter Mode.  So we work together to acknowledge the emotions generated by the struggle and then we probe for the judgment that triggers the emotion.  Then we look to Observer Mode and find an emotion from that level to release the judgment.  As soon as someone moves from Interpreter to Observer, the struggle evaporates.

The same process will work for you:

  1. Become mindful of the struggle.
  2. Acknowledge your emotions.
  3. Probe for the judgment embedded in what you feel.
  4. Use an emotion from Observer Mode to release the judgment.

Stepping into Observer Mode

There is one small snag that can throw this process into chaos – beware the tendency to judge yourself for judging.  Especially be mindful of judging your own emotions.  If you criticize something you feel, what you feel doesn’t go away, it just goes into hiding.

Unfortunately, self-judgment is almost inevitable.  Parents, ministers, teachers, counselors, and others with influence ( including friends and enemies) join together in teaching us the difference between what’s good and what’s bad.  Most of us equate positive emotions with “good” and negative emotions with “bad”.  We don’t want to be bad, we don’t want other people to think we’re bad, so we try not to let “bad” emotions show.

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I know I shouldn’t feel that way.”?  The fact is, you do feel that way.  The emotions at Interpreter level are human nature.  You’re human.  Naturally you feel that way.  You experience hunger, frustration, sorrow, bitterness, certainty, worry, exasperation, etc. etc. etc.  And if you’re not willing to become mindful of those feelings, acknowledge them, and understand them, they become buried alive inside your heart, your mind and your body.  They exert their influence, silently but effectively, affecting your health, your relationships, your productivity and your results.  It’s not a matter of should or shouldn’t. It’s a matter of cause-and-effect.

You can, however, choose something else anytime you want.  That’s the power of choice.  When you’re in the middle of a struggle, when you’re operating from Interpreter Mode, the easiest way to choose something else is to become neutral about what is.

Being able to Observe what is and relax judgment creates the strongest foundation for any purposeful choice.  (Not just your choice of emotions.)  If you want more money, become neutral about your current income level.  If you want better health, become neutral about your infirmities.  If you want a relationship, become neutral about your loneliness.

Neutrality has power

When I first started exploring the power of neutrality, I used the word acceptance. I would say, “Accept what is.”  And almost always, I’d get an argument.  Most people think to accept meant to accommodate, to acquiesce, to abide, to tolerate.  Most people think it means resigning one’s self, giving in, perhaps giving up.  Whatever is wrong becomes the enemy, and the way to deal with an enemy is to fight, rebel, battle against, dispute.  No acceptance, no negotiation, no quarter.  No one wants to be a quitter or a loser.

Of course not.  You want to conquer, overcome, win, succeed.  Unfortunately, fighting keeps the war going.  Rebellion incites the enemy.   Disputation opens the way for more arguments.  Resistance increases tension, and struggle increases agitation.  I began to see every conflicted situation as a great big mire of quicksand.  Although I have never personally experienced quicksand, I know the folklore.  The more you struggle, the more you sink; to get free, stop struggling and let your body float to the top.  Once you’re floating on top, it takes very little effort to propel yourself to solid ground.

All emotions at interpreter level indicate a struggle against something, and the more you struggle, the more you resist what is, the more the quicksand pulls you in.  To rise to the surface of the quicksand, stop struggling.  Become the Observer.  Let go of whatever you’re struggling with, and it will let go of you.  When you find yourself on solid ground, it feels miraculous.

Open the Door to Possibilities

You can look around and see what’s possible.  You have more time.  You have more energy.   You have access to more resources.  You can recruit allies.  You have options.

Perhaps, when you are struggling in quicksand, you can imagine something else, but the struggle monopolizes you.   The struggle, far more than the situation, holds you captive.  In Observer Mode, you can see possibilities, opportunities, prospects, ways and means.  You can take fresh stock of your resources.  Gratitude becomes your mantle.  Ease replaces effort.

Entering observer mode is like getting out of debt.  No more hidden fees, no more monthly payments, no more collection notices.  Every emotion in Interpreter Mode exacts a toll.  Emotions in Observer Mode cost nothing – and more than that, they bestow blessings.

Costs and Benefits

One of the costs of Interpreter Mode is the interference these emotions interject into your choices.  Whenever you are mired in Interpreter Mode, your view of possibilities will be severely restricted.  How can you see what’s possible when you’re so busy trying not to sink you can’t wipe the mud out of your eyes?  When you view is this obstructed, you cannot be true to yourself.  Observer Mode is like washing the windows or taking off the blinders.  Suddenly you can see more clearly and more truly.  Observer Mode lets your heart speak clearly, lets your mind think clearly, and lets you direct your actions more surely.

One of the blessings of observer Mode is the freedom from struggle.  Find self-acceptance and you relax self-doubt.  Find amusement and you relax impatience.  Relax dread and you find excitement.  Find tolerance and you relax disappointment.  Find hope and you relax melancholy.  Observer Mode blesses you with ease.

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The Power of Emotions

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

I ended last week’s blog with the statement:  “How is not about action, but about emotion, and therefore the how is as much up to us as the what.  First we have to choose what we want, then we must choose the emotions that will facilitate it.”  This week, I’m going to share my thinking about the relationship between emotion and personal power.

The more I work with clients, the more I see the best results come when I can help them focus on accessing their personal power.  Situations come and go; skills, tools and understanding go on forever.  Knowledge is transferable.  Wisdom and power are the keys of creation.  So I keep thinking about the relationship between wisdom and personal power, and I find emotion central to both.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of being in the presence of someone whose emotions are running high.  The person might be excited, angry, happy, depressed or in love, and radiating the energy of that emotion until it fills the room.  Such strong emotions are often described in energy terms:  light or dark, hot or cold, fast or slow.

Perhaps you’ve been observant about your own emotions, and recognize the energy associated with them.  When you’re happy or loving, you might feel that as light, or warm or fast.  When you’re angry or sad, you might feel that as dark, or cold or slow.

Clearly emotions are energy.  Does this mean emotions are also power?

Emotions of Power

A couple of years ago, a model for different modes of personal power began to take shape in my mind. I’ve been using this model with clients ever since, and I’m finding it an incredibly useful tool.  I call it the Modes of Mastery Diamond, with five levels of personal mastery identified as Victim, Interpreter, Observer, Partner, and Creator.

The lowest mode is Victim, and the emotions of this mode include (but are not limited to) hate, envy, anger, grief and despair.  Someone beset by such strong emotions feels and reacts like a victim.

The strong, intense emotions of this mode tend to overpower the person experiencing them.  The defining characteristic of this range of emotions is powerlessness.  It’s important to note that an individual operating in this mode becomes victim to the emotions as much as to any physical threat.  In effect, the emotions own all the power.  Choice is limited to self-protection:  to fight, to run, or to freeze.

This extremely narrow range of possibilities is what puts Victim at the bottom point of the diamond.  If we were to quantify personal power (which we can’t), we might assign a 1 to Victim power, meaning not much.

Breaking Free of Victim

I see the next mode as the Interpreter Mode because the emotions of this level compel us to make up our stories.  The emotions of this mode include frustration, impatience, apprehension, embarrassment, desire and insecurity.  In this mode we want to know who, what, when, where, why and how.  We assign blame and we take credit.  We rationalize, accuse, explain, judge, and defend.  In Interpreter Mode we want to fix or destroy, reward or punish.  We assign winners and losers.

The defining characteristic of this mode is judgment, and struggle and resistance always accompany judgment.

Whether you are judging yourself, someone else, your situation, or your past choices, when you look at something as bad or good, you are operating in Interpreter Mode.  When whatever you’re dealing with seems hard, takes a great deal of energy, or seems like a battle, you’re operating in Interpreter Mode.

On the up-side, Interpreter Mode is perhaps 100 times more powerful than Victim Mode.  When beset by an Interpreter emotion, the emotion may still have a stronger grip on you than you have on it, but you start looking for options.  You may not like any of the options you see, you may feel it’s a choice between two evils, but you look for alternatives, solutions, and answers.  In this mode you will see more difficulty that possibility, but you can envision, aspire, set a goal.  If a Victim has the power of 1, an Interpreter has the power of 100.

On the down-side, it’s from the Interpreter Mode that we wage wars, seek revenge, hold grudges, demand restitution, want respect, get defensive, etc. etc. etc.

Stepping into Power

When we’re able to stop judging, we take a giant step up in personal power and become the Observer.

In Observer Mode we experience a significant power shift.  We stop letting the emotions drive us.  Emotions in this mode include awareness, flexibility, amusement, curiosity, gentleness, and hope.  In this mode, we leave the judge’s bench and take a seat in the witness chair.  In this mode we’re more likely to say, “That’s interesting,” than “That’s terrible.  We’re more likely to say, “It is what it is,” than “If only _____ would change.”  We let go of our stories.

The primary characteristic of the Observer is neutrality.  There is no good or bad, no winning or losing, no assigning blame, no taking credit, no struggle and no resistance.

The Diamond is wider in Observer Mode than any other because in this mode we see winning as well as losing, success as well as failure, plenty as well as lack, love as well as loneliness.  This huge expansion in possibilities and taking ownership of our emotions is what gives the Observer 100 times more power than the Interpreter.  On our totally arbitrary and unscientific scale, Observer has a power rating of 10,000.

The strongest technique I know for moving from Interpreter to Observer is to become mindful of your emotions.  Notice them.  Name them.  Acknowledge them.  Practice saying, “Ah, I’m choosing to feel frustrated (or angry, or impatient, or sorry for myself, or smug).”  By the very act of observing what you are experiencing – and not judging yourself for feeling it – you step into Observer Mode.

Choosing

I call the next mode Partner because in this mode we move from witness to participant.  We don’t just step into the game, we help write the rules.

The primary characteristic of this mode is cooperation, and includes such emotions as authenticity, cheerfulness, gratitude, affection and fun.  We left re-activity behind in Interpreter Mode, now we become pro-active.  We willingly take the first step, go the second mile, find the point of agreement, negotiate the win-win.  We welcome the cooperation of our tools and equipment, our associates, our adversaries, strangers, other drivers, our bodies, talents, and the universe.

The Diamond narrows in Partner Mode because we have sufficient inner strength to jettison the possibilities we don’t want.  We can discard failure and keep success, we can throw out lack and choose plenty, we can open the door to companionship and shut out loneliness.  We thrust aside what we don’t want in favor of what we do want.  By our choices, we narrow the vast range of possibilities we could see in observer mode into probabilities.  We begin to see that anything we want wants us.  We know choosing is both our opportunity and our responsibility.  We choose willingness over willfulness.

And as we continue our exponential assent into our own personal power, the Partner Mode is 100 times more powerful than the Observer Mode, which equals 1,000,000.  (Remember, these numbers are symbolic, intended to help us get a feel for the rate of expansion in power.)

Creating

I see the final and highest mode of personal power as the Creator, and the key characteristic of being a Creator is harmony.  Emotions of this mode include love, joy, peace, delight and awe.  When fully operating through the emotions of this mode, anything you choose must happen.  You are in a state of oneness with yourself, with other people, with the energies of the universe.  You are attuned to best good and you manifest best good.  By your choices, and through your emotions, you narrow probabilities into inevitabilities.

Again, accessing personal power at multiples of 100, the power mode of Creator is 100,000,000.  A bit mind-boggling, isn’t it?

Most of us move from one mode to another depending on the situation, our confidence in that situation, our wellness at the time, what else is going on it our lives, the strength of our beliefs associated with the situation, any other beliefs that may be in play, and a host of other criteria.  Things happen.  We react, or judge, or respond, or stay neutral, or choose something else.  Sometimes we actually create the outcome we want.  The power of the Creator is within each of us.  As sentient human beings, living in a place and at a time in history when choice has become our mantle, we have the opportunity to access all the power within us.

We process.  We struggle.  We try.  We practice.  We falter.  We feel.  We learn.  We grow.  And, of course, that’s what life is all about.

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The “Secret” of Personal Power

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

Several years ago, a book (and DVD) called The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, became all the rage in New Thought circles and quickly spread across the country and throughout the world.

When I watched the DVD, I was struck by several things:  First, what it had to say wasn’t secret.  The great thinkers from every religious and philosophical tradition throughout the world have known it – and taught it.  Second, it focused too much on financial rewards.  (But as my wise friend Claire maintains, money is one of the easiest things to manifest, so we can learn a lot by starting there.)  Third, it skimmed too lightly across the essential aspects of emotion, gratitude and service.

My own thinking started turning in this direction in the mid-eighties.  I participated in a motivation/success program that focused on goal setting, and while much of it made sense to me, something was missing.  Eventually, I began to see personal creation is not just about willpower; the emotions play an extremely essential role.  What we decide with our heads has no power at all without the emotional support of what we believe in our hearts.  I can practice piano with the same diligence as a concert pianist, but as long as I believe I have no talent, I will remain a mere technician at the keyboard.  (I don’t know what would be possible if I believed I had talent.  I’m pretty sure I’d get a different result.)

Obedience to Law

Early on, I decided if we (as human beings) have the power to manifest or create what we want, that power has to obey natural laws.  We may not yet know the law (after all, gravity behaved the same way before Newton wrote his law as afterward, and relativity was relativity before Einstein put it into words.)  The universe works because natural laws conform to some kind of order.

After several years of certainty that we each create our own realities, I started seeing evidence that maybe we don’t.  Bad things happen to good people: babies are born with birth defects and get cancer; accidents and suicide bombers target the innocent and guilty alike; genocide and earthquakes kill thousands.

About 8 years ago, I had a pretty bad bike accident, broke my face, spent a night in ICU with a concussion, and still bear some of the scars.  I couldn’t see any way I was “attracting” such a personal disaster; and besides, I truly believed I was invulnerable.  (Isn’t belief 90% of creation?)  Then 9/11 happened.  I knew 3000 people didn’t have a death wish – and the many thousands of their families and friends did not all have some subconscious wish for pain and grief.

Affirmations

And what about the times when affirmations worked for me and when they didn’t?  For instance, at one time during my career as a romance novelist, I decided to put what I knew about manifestation to work.  Using the cover off a real book, I pasted the name of my book over the real title and my name over the real author’s name.  I tacked this visual representation of what I wanted above my computer.  I decided a reasonable time by which my book would be picked up by an editor.  I focused my attention on this outcome.  Months before that date arrived, my manuscript was rejected.  (So I gave up writing for life – for the fifth or sixth time.)

A couple of manuscripts later, for several months, I worked with the affirmation, “Every day in every way, the value of my work grows in the minds of others.”  On New Year’s eve, an editor called offering a contract on my book – when we all knew the publishing industry pretty much shuts down between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

So why did this effort at affirmation “work” when the previous one had not?  Was it pure coincidence, or did I somehow influence the result?

If that had been my only experience with manifestation, I’d probably attribute it to coincidence, but I’ve had dozens of such experiences – and so have my clients.  After years of observation and of processing and reprocessing, I’ve identified a significant  pattern.

The Power of Emotion

I believe the difference between my first unsuccessful attempt at “creating” the sale of  a manuscript and my second successful effort was my emotional state.

The first time, my heart wasn’t in it.  My head did all the right things: setting the goal, visualizing, affirming, focusing, willing it into existence.  But it was only an intellectual effort. I certainly wanted it, but my motives were money and validation.  Maybe I cared about that particular story, but probably not, since I can barely remember it.  Mostly I had been writing for years and wanted something to show for it.  I wanted to prove I could do it, to contribute to the family coffers, to get rich. Perhaps I even wanted to prove to myself the mind has power over matter.

At this point, it’s important to note that I never much liked romance novels, and I didn’t really believe in romance.

The second time, I left all those mind motivations behind.  I became much more interested in being true to myself, in being in tune with my talents and abilities.  I wanted to use those talents and abilities the best way I could, and I didn’t care whether it was through writing a novel or some other means.  I had become willing rather than willful.

When I look back at my bike accident, and the choices I was making at the time, I see a similar thread running through that event.  About three years earlier, I had finally, truly, given up writing – at least writing romance novels.  Not having a plan for what to do instead, I went back to school and earned a B.A in anthropology.  After graduation, still not having a plan for what to do next, I moved in with my parents to help care for my ailing father.  An opportunity for work came my way, and I took it – not as a life work, but as a good way to make a living and a good way to postpone choosing what I would do next.  The closest I can come to my contribution to that accident is that I wasn’t on purpose.  I began to speculate that if one isn’t living on purpose, one is living by accident.

Perhaps most of us live by accident most of the time.  Perhaps the key to “The Secret” is to start choosing.  And perhaps the key to choosing is to choose something that is true for us.  When I decided to become a writer, that was true for me. When I decided to become a writer of romance novels, that was not true for me.  When I (finally) decided not to write romance novels any more, that was true for me.  When I stopped writing entirely, that was not true for me.

Many of you have heard me say, “What is up to us.  How is up to the  universe.”  The more I’ve worked with this and observed it, the more I believe it’s true.  Most of us jump directly into the how at the first indication of a problem, but when we jump into the how before we know the what, we end up with the wrong what.  We put our efforts into fixing symptoms instead of problems, we focus on the vehicle rather than the goal.  I am coming to see that how is not about action, but about emotion, and therefore the how is as much up to us as the what.  First we must choose what we want, then we must choose the emotions that will facilitate it.  °

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Incremental Steps

Sunday, July 10th, 2011

Last week I referred to the process I call “revolution to revelation,” going round and round – the same issue, the same kinds of experiences, the same challenges – until something you’ve seen or heard or experienced suddenly makes sense and transports you into new understanding.  Today, I’ll explore ways to make this process purposeful instead of accidental.

I think this kind of progress is important in accessing personal power and in manifesting what you want.  The art of manifestation corresponds directly to your relationship with your power. The ability to access the infinite power you already possess seems essential to your ability to manifest.

Accessing Power

When I first started coaching, I’d encourage clients to simply replace a disempowering emotion with an empowering one.  For instance, if someone was mired in resentment, I’d ask, “What do you want to feel instead?”  This seemed easy enough to me, except we weren’t achieving the desired results.

As I continued to study emotions, I began to see they fell into natural groups according to the results they produced.  These groups became the Modes of Mastery  diamond, and when I used that model, we started to see lasting change.  I realized real progress comes by moving systematically from one mode to the next.  Of course, you can experience a big leap and enjoy the resulting burst of exalted emotion, but permanent access to Partner or Creator power requires consciously mastering each mode along the way.  Since using a more incremental approach, I’ve been more effective as a coach, and my clients have experienced longer-lasting results.

Following is a quickie review of each mode:

Victim mode includes those strong, imperative emotions that result in a sense of helplessness.  You may be in a situation that initiates or contributes to a reality of helplessness, or you may be immobilized only from within.  Either way, such emotions as fear, hate, anger and resentment close off possibilities until it looks as if there is no way out.

Interpreter mode is recognized by judgment and results in struggle.  This includes any emotion that results in such judgments as comparison, blame, measurement, fault-finding, complaint and envy.  In this mode you have sufficient personal power to see possible solutions, but since the emotions produce struggle, the alternatives may seem to have more cost than benefit.

Observer mode is neutral.  The more judgment you can release, the calmer you feel.  As the observer you can see a vast spectrum of possibilities, and you are able to make more reasoned choices.

Partner mode emotions include any that connect and form cooperative relationships.  The range of possibilities begins to narrow again because you have the personal power to eliminate the options you don’t want.  The possible becomes probable.

Creator mode emotions bring you into a oneness with yourself, other people, the world, and the infinite.  When you live such emotions as love, peace, and happiness, the probable becomes inevitable.

When I assembled the list of emotions (included again this week), I put them in alphabetical order.  The emotions of each mode share characteristics, but they do not all have equal power.  I made no effort to prioritize them by strength because the words that describe emotion tend to mean different things to different people.  For instance, I might consider disappointment a deeply weakening emotion; for you it might be a temporary state.  I also included synonyms to assist in finding the word that best describes how you feel.  Trepidation and consternation may mean essentially the same thing, but you know if you’re feeling one or the other.

I’ve encouraged you often to identify the emotion you’re feeling, look to the next mode for an emotion that would be a logical step into a higher level of power.  Sometimes, however, your next “revolution” might take you to an emotion within the same mode, but one with less (or more) energy.

For example, this week, a friend of mine said she was feeling angry.  She’d asked a roommate to move out of her house, and feelings were running a high.  My friend already knew that by feeling angry she was giving away her anger to the other person.  She also knew she’d prefer to feel compassion, but that seemed pretty remote.  So I suggested an incremental approach, and this is how it went:

From Anger to Irritation to Disappointment to Sadness to Calm to Compassion

I suggested some of the steps; she suggested others.  At each transition, she felt her heart easing and her body relaxing.  The entire process took less than five minutes.

It often doesn’t work that fast.  If your anger, like my friend’s, is recent and not especially deep, you can probably shift out of it quickly – as she did.  If you’ve been holding it most of your life, you may have to take many tiny, incremental steps, then practice each step for days or weeks before you’re able to move onto the next one.

Wherever you are, identify an emotion you can move to fairly easily.

The diagram below illustrates the journey from fear to joy.  Because fear allows the least amount of personal power, it’s in the middle; joy, with the most expansive personal power, is outermost.  The progress each revolution makes is very incremental – and the time it takes to make one revolution will be very individual.

In actual practice, your starting place might be anywhere along the way.  Your path may not require as many steps as I’ve included.  You might identify your progressive steps with an entirely different set of emotions.  You may transition through some emotions so quickly you hardly notice; others might take a few revolutions.

Recognize the progression as a journey.  Also recognize each transition from one mode to another will impact every area of your life.  For instance, you may be anxious over something that’s going on at work yet staying in observer mode everywhere else.  Emotions, however, are as contagious within an individual as they are from one person to another.  If you don’t deal with the anxiety at work, it can contaminate the more satisfying areas of your life. When you address the anxiety and work your way out of it, the improved energy will also increase your power everywhere else.

Movement Strategies

The strategies for moving from one mode to another follow a basic do-have-be pattern.   Even though I’ve maintained this do-have-be cycle can begin anywhere, it actually correlates pretty will with the modes of power.

From Victim to Interpreter:

Because the primary characteristic of Victim mode is helplessness, the first step is to grasp the strands of non-helplessness that are within your reach.  Regardless of your circumstances, your emotions are nearest at hand.

Start by recognizing and acknowledging what you feel.  The more precisely you identify your emotions, the better.  Do you feel anger or fury?  Loneliness or contempt?  Hate or resentment?  Outrage or revulsion?

Once you’ve named the emotion, own it.  Your circumstances or the actions of others may reinforce a belief in your own helplessness, but no one besides yourself has any power whatsoever over your feelings.  Be willing to say, right out loud, I’m choosing to feel _____.”

These two things – naming the emotion then owning it – are powerful things you can do. The more you do them, the more you’ll empower yourself to choose something else.

If, however, the emotion feels too good to let go, be okay with that.  Maybe it feels right to be angry, or resentful, or guilty, or jealous.  If so, give yourself permission to indulge in it.  In fact, set aside a time to rant and wallow.  Mark 30 minutes (or 10, or 60, or a week) off on your calendar and make an appointment with yourself to really dig in and explore and expand and put your heart into it.  Then go for it.  For the full 30 minutes (or 10, or 60, or the whole week) focus on making the most of the emotion.  See if you can actually hold the emotion, on purpose and with intention, for the entire time you’ve set aside.

When you’re ready to move out of the disempowering emotion, choose your next step.  Keep it small and easy.  Big steps are intimidating and can set you up for failure before you even begin.  If moving from wrath to tolerance feels impossible, identify some interim steps, for instance

From wrath to anger to bitterness to indignation to irrication to exasperation to disappointment to sadness.

Once you reach Observer mode, you may be able to identify a pathway that could take you clear to Creator mode:

From sadness to tolerance to indifference to curiosity to amusement to acceptance  to sympathy to gratitude to respect to delight to love.

From Interpreter to Observer:

In Interpreter mode, doing is natural and necessary.  You want to fix, change, repair, improve, mend, control, construct, systematize, etc.  Unfortunately, the emotions of Interpreter mode are those that judge, blame, complicate, interfere, confuse, deconstruct, challenge, deplete, etc., and that makes everything more difficult.

To leave Interpreter mode, you must leave the impeding emotions behind so you can adopt the ones that will support, encourage, cooperate, and empower.  The intermediate resting place between judgment and cooperation is the calm of Observer mode.  The calming exercises I’ve presented before are very effective.  Here’s a quick recap:

To calm your body:

  • Breathe deeply.
  • Open your senses.
  • Be in nature
  • Expand your body from within.

To calm your mind:

  • Count your blessings.
  • Laugh out loud.
  • See truth.
  • Be present.

To calm your emotions:

  • Smile.
  • See beauty.
  • Be silly.
  • Evoke a neutral emotion.

(For more explanation, see “Calm and Curious.”)

Another strategy is to focus on the qualities of Observer mode emotions and implement them into your life – again in small ways.  Such emotions as amazement, curiosity, excitement, humility, awareness, resilience, etc. are also qualities you can practice.  When you let these qualities guide your actions, their energy becomes more accessible to you.

Consider such incremental doing steps as:

  • To gain amazement, try to be amazed at something every day.
  • To gain resilience, identify one thing you find threatening and find little ways to become more familiar with it.
  • To gain simplicity, analyze one of your normal routines and find one little step you can eliminate.  Or take one rarely used item off a crowded shelf and get rid of it.
  • To gain flexibility, observe your body and notice when it stiffens up.  Then review the situation and look for one little way you can bend.

From Observer to Partner:

Taking actions steps is a very strong way to move from Interpreter into Observer.  To transition from the neutrality of Observer to the synergy of Partner, it’s necessary to transition from doing to having.  Look at the list again and insert a have in front of each attribute.  For example:

have acceptance
have affection
have appreciation
have cheerfulness
have kindness
have modesty
have openness
have gratitude
have concern
have willingness

These qualities are yours for the having if you’re willing to accept them, receive them, access them, open up to them, let them come forth.  Of course, you can ask, “What can I do to show more appreciation?”  If you give that question your full attention, you’ll soon notice that when you have appreciation, doing it comes easily and automatically.

From Partner to Creator:

Creator mode is a state of being. You don’t have to act, try, work at, practice or perform.  You just are.

To reach this mode, follow the same process as moving from observer to partner.  Recognize the emotion you want to access and be the qualities of that emotion.

be cheerfulness
be enthusiasm
be serenity
be authenticity
be love
be joy
be peace
be delight

Remember, when it comes to personal power, nothing’s consistent or immobile.  We each have a personal range that generally spans three modes.  Someone habitually in Victim mode can swing into Observer mode, just as someone habitually in Creator mode will also swing into Observer mode.  Have confidence in the incremental steps of your own journey, and you will continue to move your personal range inch by inch up the scale.

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Resilience

Sunday, May 8th, 2011

In her sixties, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She took the necessary medical treatments, then went on with her life. Some years later in the course of a conversation about something else, she mentioned the variety of services extended to her after surgery, including therapy and support groups. She saw no need. Her philosophy was, “This is done, it’s over.”  She couldn’t imagine continuing to think about it, talk about it, or give energy to it in any way. This was very typical of my mother. She took whatever came her way and made the best of it. She was one of the most pragmatic, resilient people I’ve ever known.

These two qualities, pragmatism and resilience, are ways of being the observer, of staying neutral. With them, you let go of all resistance, you bend easily when the hard winds of adversity assail you. Your roots stay strong and hold fast. You bounce back readily when the storm passes. And you thrive when opportunities appear.

While these qualities are simple and straightforward, they rarely come easily. The difficulty comes from holding on to regrets, pride, hurts, resentments, fears, doubts, longing, etc. When you retain the wounds from the past, resist the challenges of the present, or doubt the promises of the future, you experience the full force of the storm. It’s much harder to stay untouched, and recovery can be long and slow.

To access and strengthen your natural resilience, consider the following strategies:

Choose

Emotions are energy. When exerted, energy always produces a result. You know from experience that when you turn on the stove, the exerted energy produces heat. You probably also know from experience that when you turn on humor, the exerted energy produces laughter. Or when you turn on anxiety, the exerted energy increases tension.

When you’re caught up in a strong emotion, it’s often difficult to see you have a choice. An event, a situation or a relationship triggers something inside you, and you feel frustrated, indignant, alone, hurt, guilty, etc., and the emotions you experience seem inevitable in the circumstances. Of course you feel frustrated by your son’s misbehavior. Of course you feel indignant if someone implies you didn’t do your best. Of course you feel hurt because someone you care about isn’t returning your calls. Of course you feel guilty if you don’t exercising every day. Etc. Etc. Etc.

However, these emotions are not merely automatic responses to stimuli. Through your accumulation of life experiences, the way you’ve interpreted those experiences in the past, and the emotions you’ve previously invested, you’ve assembled a personal belief portfolio that resides in your psyche. The emotions that flare up in response to your current events come directly from that belief portfolio. This is why, when faced with the same situation, one person will experience frustration and another person will experience curiosity. Your previous choices of emotion propagate your present emotions. When similar situations arise, you anticipate how you’ll feel, because you always do.

So you’re already primed to react in a certain way, for certain emotions to flare. Then the first flush of emotion hits, naturally. Now what?

Now you’re at a point of choice, even if you’ve never before considered you have options. You can choose to hold onto the emotion and agitate it into a steady stream of the natural energy that emotion produces. Or you can choose to let it slide on by and move into a more neutral energetic state. If you don’t consciously choose resilience, you subconsciously choose vulnerability.

There’s always a story of what happened:  who was at fault, how you were wronged, a catalog of sins, what you did or didn’t do, how you weren’t (or aren’t) up to the task, how someone else behaved. Such stories are rarely based on fact; your imagination supplies most of the details. If you indulge in the story, you enhance the original emotions, often turning a vignette into a grand opera. By your emotional investment, your original niggle of energy can grow into a firestorm. As a twinge, your emotion barely causes a ripple in the progress of your day or your life. The more reinforcing energy you invest, the more disruption and distress you will experience.

When you refrain from judgment, you become pragmatic. Neutral. When you become neutral, you widen your spectrum of possibilities. Possibilities open the door to resilience. The more options you see, the less stressed you will be by events.

For instance:

  • Your son misbehaves. If you have more options than beating him into submission (listening, teaching, redirecting, etc.), you will feel more optimistic. And optimism is very resilient.
  • Someone implies you didn’t do your best. If you have more options than proving them wrong (listening, agreeing, supporting, cooperating, etc.), you will feel more confident. And confidence is very resilient.
  • Someone you care about doesn’t return your calls. If you have more options than crying in your beer (accepting, detaching, reaching out, staying willing, etc), you will feel more compassion and acceptance. And compassion and acceptance are very resilient.
  • You feel guilty for not exercising every day. If you have more options than recounting all your faults (extending compassion to yourself, trying a different program, enjoying what you do instead, etc) you will maintain more self-respect. And self-respect is very resilient.

Pay Attention

Once you’ve decided to let go of judgment and become resilient, become mindful of the people and situations that tug you in a different direction. Chances are, you’ve decided to change the reactive habits of a lifetime. Such long-held habits rarely dissolve easily; they’d rather hang around and nag you.

It’s generally more effective to acknowledge them and then dismiss them than to ignore them or deny them.

For instance, perhaps you work with someone whose personal habits annoy you:  she taps a pen when talking on the phone, she sighs frequently and at odd moments, or she has to recount every conversation and explain her motives to anyone close enough to listen. When you let the annoyance build inside you, you become tense, irritable, easily distracted, less productive, miserable.

So you decide to disengage, to stay calm and neutral. You choose to feel amused instead of annoyed.

You do just fine through the pen-tapping and the sighing. Amusement works so well, you find yourself grinning at every sigh. But you still hate the recounting of conversations. You still dread calls from her. Stop!  As soon as you notice you’re anticipating the interruption of your own peace, pay attention. Pay attention to what’s going on inside of you; recognize you have choices. If you allow the dread to come in, if you give it more than a passing a nod, it will take hold of you and build. The energy of dread will induce anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. If you let it float on by, you build and sustain the calm neutrality you desire.

However, even as you choose resilience instead of tension, the doubts, apprehensions, misgivings, exasperations and annoyances of your old habits will tap on the door of your mind. They’ve been in a co-dependent relationship with you for a long time–maybe for years. How easily they’ll float away will depend on the strength of the positive energy you choose to hold.

Where you give your attention, there your energy follows. Whatever receives your attention will flourish. Give your attention to resilience, and you’ll become resilient.

Be Serene

The opposite of resilience is resistance, and resistance takes many forms, including anger, frustration, despair, control, resignation struggle, and anxiety. Resistance requires force–it’s pushing back, straining to control, refusing to yield, grinding forward. In resistance there’s no flow, no rhythm, no serenity. And no power.

Conversely, if you release resistance, welcome flow, find rhythm and become serene you also move into your own power.

It’s not necessary to probe for the specific resistance you may be experiencing, although you are probably already aware of it. When you choose to become pliant, flexible and resilient, most forms of resistance will simply relax. Sometimes, however, habits persist and it’s necessary to adopt firmer strategies. One such strategy is to simply declare:  “I resist all resistance.”  For me, when I make that statement, either aloud or silently, my body grows softer.

Other strategies for becoming serene include:

  • Extend compassion–to yourself, to the situation, to other people.
  • Stay attuned to your own values and priorities. Recognize “should,” and “ought to” as belonging to someone else.
  • Stop taking responsibility for other people’s emotions. Of course you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings, but what they choose to feel is not up to you.
  • Detach from the results other people create for themselves through their thoughts, actions and emotions. Allow them to experience the consequences of their choices.
  • Choose tranquility and energetically project it ahead of you into potentially stressful situations.
  • Recognize you have an infinite partner, always at your side, always ready to assist you and make your way easier. When you shed judgment and employ any positive emotional energy, you give your infinite partner freedom to act in your behalf.

When you choose serenity, serenity chooses you. The energy of serenity produces both well-being and resilience. Conversely, resistance tends to produce accidents, misfortunes, and struggle.

Practice

Like any skill worth having, resilience takes practice–especially if you have to give up old habits of intransigence. A regular practice of resilience includes choice, attention and serenity.

To practice choice, I recommend a tactic I’ve posed before. Become very mindful of your emotions. Stay attuned to your feelings. Identify them. Name them. And then acknowledge your power to choose. Say, “Ah, embarrassment. I’m choosing to feel embarrassed.”  Or, “Ah, gladness. I’m choosing to feel glad.”  The more you practice this with all emotions, the more conscious you will be of your various reactions and responses. You will also become more aware of the spectrum of choices available to you.

Mindfulness opens the door to choice. Acknowledging your choices expands the possibilities. And the more possibilities you see, the more resilient you become.

To practice attention, extend your mindfulness to the results you want. Focus on the outcome you want to create and deliberately apply the energy required to achieve that outcome. Choose to be resilient, then give your attention to that intention. Release judgment. Apply such neutral energies as amusement, curiosity, fun, hope, humility, patience, tolerance and wonder.

To practice serenity, consciously release resistance, especially in situations you have previously found stressful. Generate such cooperative energies as acceptance, appreciation, courage, eagerness, enthusiasm, gratitude, kindness, respect, trust and willingness.

Enthusiasm

The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek. The prefix en- means “in” and theos means “god,” therefore entheos means “inspired, possessed by a god.”  I heard this some years ago, and have since looked it up. During the 1600s, “enthusiasm” had a derogatory connotation of excessive religious emotion. A century later it began to be used more generally as fervor or zeal. Currently, in religious contexts, it has taken on the meaning of “god within.”

“God within” means two things to me. First is my partnership with the infinite. When I welcome the infinite power of the universe as my cohort, my ally, I know that vast power is there for me; I know my unseen partner will answer the “prayers” of my thoughts and emotions. All my infinite partner requires of me is openness, a willingness to receive.

Second, I see “god within” as my own personal power. I recognize I have infinite (mostly untapped) potential, the capacity for endless expansion, an eternal spiritual nature. My ability to access this power varies, depending on my congruence. It’s up to me to bring my thoughts, actions and emotions into alignment. It’s up to me to choose:  what I want, the path I will take, the way I apply what I learn, the rate of my progress, and my willingness to become partners with the infinite. The more I choose and practice the highest thoughts and emotions, the more I merge with god.

This is enthusiasm. And from this enthusiasm comes resilience of an infinite, eternal nature.

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Own Your Part

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

There are at least two parts to every encounter, sometimes more depending on how many people are involved. Even in partisan situations where the sides are clearly defined, the number of attitudes, biases, preferences, and options is going to be closer to the number of people than the number of sides. And of all the parts involved, the part that matters most is yours.

Yours is the only part you can control, the only part for which you have responsibility, and the fundamental source of your results. Your part has many facets, and none of them works in a vacuum. Your part includes how you relate to people, how you respond to situations, what you create, how your creation affects others, and the energy you bring into the lives of others. Most people, in most situations, get their part tangled up with the parts of others. For you to make clean and intentional choices, it’s important to claim your own part, and only your part, and then be true to it.

Your part will be influenced by several factors, and the more you accept and take responsibility for these factors the more you gain access to your own inner power.

Your beliefs

Your belief system essentially creates the world you live in. When you believe something is true, it becomes true – at least for all practical purposes. It becomes the filter through which you view the events and aspects of your life, and the filter admits only the evidence that corresponds to your beliefs. For instance, if you believed the earth is flat, you would never put it to the test. You would stay within the bounds of your imagination and discount any evidence of a global world presented by others. You would call such people liars or charlatans. Because you would confine your choices to those allowed by a flat world, your world would be flat.

Likewise, if you believed you had no choice in a situation, you wouldn’t look for options. No matted how many possibilities were presented to you, you would produce reasons why not. Therefore, those options would not be available to you – excluded by your own belief.

Similarly, if you believe you are a victim, you see will only the evidence that supports that belief. If you believe things can’t change, you won’t notice changes that occur. If you believe your partner is at fault in every argument, you will be blind to your contribution. If you believe you lost because the other side cheated, you will dismiss any errors made by your team.

On the other hand, when you accept your part, miracles happen. When you believe you have perfect health, you do. When you love your life, your life is wonderful. When you believe opportunities abound, they do. When you are impervious to the ups and downs of the economy, you prosper. When you are true to yourself, the universe supports your choices.

Examine your beliefs. Be alert to how your beliefs contribute to your reality. Look at your reality to discover your beliefs. You will find a direct causal relationship between what you believe and what your have. If you are stretched financially, perhaps you believe in lack. If you are ailing, perhaps you believe in illness. If you are lonely, perhaps you believe in isolation.

The principle works both ways: If you are rich, you believe in wealth. If you are healthy, you believe in health. If you are loved, you believe in love. If your days and ways are marked by miracles, you believe in possibility.

Your emotions

Whenever two people encounter each other, two sets of emotions also meet. Each person’s emotions arise (or remain) from their personal history. Each  person brings hopes, fears, longings, anxieties, wins and losses, confidence and doubt, and varying degrees of happiness and sadness. When these sets of  emotions meet, they interact and they play off each other in ways that may or may not be known to the individuals themselves.

So there you are, in the middle of an encounter with someone, and your  emotions are all behaving logically and properly. Then the other person says or does something one of your emotions doesn’t like. Perhaps your self-doubt surfaces. Suddenly you’re no longer sure of yourself, no longer sure of the other person, no longer sure the encounter is going in a direction you like. You say something in your own defense, and if what you say triggers one of the other person’s emotions, you’re both off and running.

Perhaps logically you both want to stop, to somehow save the day. But both sets of emotions have risen in rebellion and are determined to stick it to the end.

If you could step free of your insecurity and become neutral, you could apologize for your outburst, sympathize with the way the other person’s emotions got loose, shake hands, and continue to explore for a satisfactory resolution. But if your emotions are still edgy, angry, afraid, determined, and self-protective, most of those stirred-up emotions are saying, “Not my fault! His fault!” At this point, you have three basic choices (more if you count the nuances). You will:

  • Blame it all on the other person.
  • Blame it all on yourself.
  • Recognize you both contributed.

If you pick the first option – “Person X is controlling, insensitive, defensive, angry, abusive, etc.” – you are denying you had a part. If you pick the second option – “I disobeyed, was annoyed, mis-interpreted, was selfish, etc.” – you are denying the other person’s part. If you pick the last option, good for you. Very likely you know how to own your part and only your part. Your part is the only part that belongs to you.

Your emotions are the ones you can control or calm. How the other person acts or reacts is not yours to choose.

You can play your part any way you wish. You can choose to be combative, angry, aggressive, unyielding, etc. Or you can choose to be calm, accepting, forthright, loving, etc. Once you choose, accept the consequences. Owning your part also includes taking responsibility for your results.

Your integrity

The root of integrity is integer, from the Latin, which means complete, whole. We’ve been focusing on being the truest person you can be, and looking at factors that contribute to that being-ness, that wholeness. From your wholeness comes your integrity, and because you are a unique human being, your integrity has facets unlike those of any other person.

Consider that your integrity means standing firm in your values system – whatever that system happens to be. And because you change and grow, your values system inevitably changes and grows accordingly. Your integrity today is different from what it may have been when you were a child, different from when you first entered adulthood, perhaps different from last year.

Therefore, you will make different choices from when you where a child, from when you were a young adult, from last year. Someone else could note those differences and proclaim your integrity to be in shreds. Or someone else can look at your values system, note it’s different from theirs and declare you have shaky (or no) integrity.

When you are the truest person you can be and when you stay true to yourself, you are integral. Whole. You don’t have to match someone else’s values, ethics, moral code, or behavior. In fact, you can’t. You can agree with some people and disagree with others, but your integrity is uniquely yours.

Do you choose to act in accordance with what you believe? Do you hold your values system to be your sacred rule book? Do you live according to what is true to you? The degree to which you do or don’t is entirely up to you. And your results will reflect that choice. If you stay in your integrity, your results will be integrated and aligned with your best good. If you waiver, your results will be insubstantial or incomplete.

Your experiences

When did you first realize you have a voice in your experiences? Probably not as an infant, able to influence those around you only by crying or smiling. Perhaps not as a child, when your parents made all the decisions. Maybe not in school, when teachers, principals, ministers, cops, bullies, and cool kids all created situations in which the best  you could do was hold your own. Possibly not even as you were moving into adulthood, when someone could agree to date you or not, when a university could choose to admit you or not, when a company could choose to hire you or not. All your life there have been situations over which you have no control: your family moved around, your parents divorced (or stayed together), people died, you had illnesses or accidents, cars fell apart, expectations didn’t materialize, friends betrayed you.

So when did you realize you played a role in your life? Actually, subconsciously, you began to learn it as a baby. If smiling brought people cooing around you, you learned to smile and collect attention. If only crying brought attention, you learned to cry – maybe to throw tantrums.

Most people, by nature, are pleasers or loners or rebels. If as a child you were a pleaser, you always tried to cooperate, possibly even if that meant ceding something important to you. If you were a loner, you stood apart as much as you could, and perhaps your aloofness influenced people to coax and plead and attend to you. If you were a rebel, you objected to power wielded by others, perhaps to your own detriment. In your interpersonal relationships, you have always had a voice.

Your role in impersonal situations may be harder to find. To find your part requires looking into your own soul. For instance:

  • Emotions work as attractors; whatever you emit draws something to it: fear attracts danger, gratitude attracts bounty, anger attracts conflict, joy attracts serenity, dissatisfaction attracts disappointment, optimism attracts good results, resistance attracts pain, etc.
  • Illness often results from conflicted and buried emotions: Anger makes you vulnerable to cancer, resistance to growth leads to arthritis, disassociation from purpose generates allergies, unhappiness promotes pneumonia, impatience raises your cholesterol level, etc. (See such authors as Louise Hay and Karol Truman.)
  • An unwillingness or inability to step out and grasp something your want (health, freedom, abundance, etc), expands the situation you want to leave. If you can’t receive freedom, you will become more imprisoned; if you can’t receive plenty, you will experience more lack; if you can’t receive health, you will stay sick.

Certainly, you will find yourself in situations that make no rational sense, even when you accept the above principles. In such situations and at such times, your part may be to make the best of it you possible can, to step back and become the observer. Know that when you can accept difficult situations with curiosity and without judgment, you will experience less pain.

Your choices

In every situation, in every encounter with another person, you have at least two choices. You can come or go, speak or be silent, respond or react, agree or argue, resist or accept, fight or make peace. You always have a choice, even when you believe you have no options. When you feel helpless, you are choosing to not look for alternatives. When you reconcile to something you don’t like, you are choosing to give up your power. When you accommodate to a situation, you may be choosing to obey, to acquiesce, to honor, to approve or to submit.

You may see this more easily in your relationships with other people than in the impersonal situation in your life. With people, their choices usually contrast with yours or mirror them, and either way can illuminate your choice. With impersonal choices the part the other plays is often invisible. For instance, you have  relationships with money, with sleep, with your car, with your job (not just the people at work), with your body, with technology, with traffic, with books, with food, etc. The part of the other comes in response to your emotions. The energy of your emotions affects the energy of the other, creating a closed loop.

For instance, if you have insomnia, your energy will include the tensions of the day you bring to bed with you and also your memories of previous sleepless nights, constant reminders that sleep is important to health, your frustration over any strategies you’ve tried to no avail, etc. Your mind and body are so engaged in not-sleeping, sleep can’t help but stay away. No matter how much you want sleep to be your friend, it has become the adversary.

What choices do you make in impersonal relationships? Do you operate as the truest person you can be? Do you honor your values system? Do you choose positive-energy emotions? Your choices produce your outcomes. By the same token, your outcomes reveal your choices. To know your past choices, examine your outcomes, and ask yourself objectively, “If this is what I’ve got, what part did I play in bringing it into my life?”

Explore your emotions and thoughts as much as your actions. If you have lack, you may not be making enough money or you may have poor money habits, but you also may believe in scarcity and dread poverty. If you can’t preserve a relationship, you may be too defensive or act in inconsiderate ways, but you may also believe you are not worthy of love and resist intrusions into your privacy.

Energize Your Part

If you want to improve your relationships (any of your relationships), stay true to yourself. Stay true to the person you want to be as well as the person you are. Believe in your best good, and choose in favor of your wholeness. Energize the situation with your highest emotions. Avoid criticism, doubt and fear.

When you recognize, without judgment, your contribution to the events and situations of your life, you enter OBSERVER mode. You will experience calm within, and external conflicts will abate. When you choose to bring PARTNER mode emotions into the situation, you will notice a difference in your results almost immediately.

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Resistance

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

My model for both coaching and manifestation has three basic parts:  choose, align, receive.  Choose, bring your thoughts, emotions and actions into congruence, and that choice will become manifest.

Conversely, if what you’ve chosen does not become reality, you are either in conflict with your choice or your thoughts, actions and emotions are not congruent with each other.

This can be a hard conclusion to accept.  When we don’t get what we’re trying to manifest, it’s often more comforting to look outward for an explanation:  the economy, the weather, other people, traffic, lack of exercise or poor diet, birth order, astrological indicators, politics, personality type, parents, kids, etc.  And there will always be more than sufficient external reasons why the struggle continues.

Yet no matter how much energy we apply to resolving, or coping with, or conquering the external, the miracle will manifest only when we achieve internal congruence.  The primary challenge will always be dissolving the barriers and obstacles we generate for ourselves.

Of course, we do rarely create obstacles consciously.  You’ve probably never woken up in the morning wondering, “Okay, how can I impede my best good today?”  You’ve probably never gone to bed thinking, “Ah, how satisfying it’s been to keep myself stuck for yet another day.”

Consider that any emotion laden with negative or destructive energy is a form of resistance.  (Refer to Victim or Interpreter emotions on the Emotions List.)  Victim emotions are the most immobilizing.  They are never ambiguous; when in their thrall, you feel powerless.  Interpreter emotions are more elusive.  Sometimes they might nag and chafe and spur you to positive action; other times they lie buried deep within, strangling good intentions with silent tentacles.

Your results are always the best indicator such resistance persists–and there will always be an emotional component.  In the areas of your life where you feel contented and successful, your positive and creative emotions flourish and bear fruit.  But in the areas of your life where struggle persists, so do forms of buried resistance such as ambivalence, confusion, fears, false beliefs, past injuries, etc.

Always assess your results.  If you’re not manifesting what you want, look for the block within.  Perhaps you’re willing to recognize it and release it, yet have no idea where to start.  So let’s consider what you may be dealing with.

Beliefs: Beliefs about the way the world works begin in infancy.  To a baby, everything is fresh and unknown.  As the receptive new brain starts putting the pieces together, it draws conclusions simultaneously with gathering data.

One of the primary goals of a human being, even as a newborn, seems to be resolving the unknown.  We want to know what we don’t know, and we can create answers with very little information.  Once we decide the answer, we tend to adapt further data to comply with the model we’ve adopted.  We take the pieces that fit and say, “Ah, yes, I thought so.”  If a piece doesn’t fit, we’re likely to toss is out.  When we are comfortable with an answer, even if the answer doesn’t serve us, holding on to it is easier than challenging it.

Fears: Where beliefs arise from our efforts to resolve the unknown, fears tend to arise when we can’t.  When looking into the unknown, it’s much easier for most people to imagine the worst than to imagine the best.  Anything you can imagine has creative power.  Imagining the best comes from and/or evokes positive emotions; imagining the worst comes from and/or evokes negative emotions.  It’s always difficult to determine which comes first, the thought or the emotion, but since they become inextricable entwined it doesn’t really matter.  When the unknown looms, dread often follows.  Fear can’t settle in without our permission, except many of the fears that inhibit manifestations took root during the formative years when we didn’t know enough to be discerning.

For instance, a child who overhears parents arguing about money may inhale the fear of disaster radiated by the adults.  With no way to evaluate the validity of the parents’ feelings, and trusting them to know the way the world works, the child associates the emotions with the subject. The parent’s fear of the unknown influences the child’s belief about money.

The fears acquired by way of personal experience can be easier to identify because we often adopt them consciously.  We don’t know what the future will bring–the unknown emerges ahead of us like a great dark cavern – yet we want to be prepared for it.  If we knew the darkness was temporary and on the other side was a beautiful sun-lit garden, we would stride forward confidently.  But we don’t know.  Therefore, we assume it’s just good sense to be ready for any eventuality.  So we prepare for the worst.  If we could stay detached and focus on preparation, all would be fine.  If dread sets in, however, we tend to cringe away.

Injuries: No one gets through life unscathed–from bumps and bruises to dismemberment; from wounded pride to deep emotional betrayal, from minor colds to life-threatening illnesses, we are fragile creatures.  For most of us, the will to survive compels us to heal, to keep going, to transcend, and to prevent such assaults (even minor ones) from happening again.

We bring the past into the present by identifying the circumstances, analyzing relationships, looking for cause and effect, etc.  Once we think we have a clear picture, we put safeguards in place, and then we project the past into the future.  In the past, when A happened, B followed.  Since we don’t want B in the future, we will avoid A at all costs.

Conflicting inputs: If three people witness an event, chances are high they’ll provide three different versions of what happened.  However, when the three people are all in a group and discussing the event, they tend to influence each other to bring their details or observations into accord.  If you are one of the people involved, you may find yourself adapting your version to correspond more closely with the others.  And this may cause you to doubt your own experience.  Did you see what you thought you saw?

This happens all the time, with ideas as well as observations.  When you listen to others more than yourself, you will likely learn to mistrust your own intuition.  This tends to cause confusion,  ambivalence and insecurity.

Erroneous inputs: Information comes in all shades of accurate or false, especially in this era of the Internet.  Lies, assumptions and propaganda are often presented with the assurance of truth.  Closer to home, sometimes people we know and trust mislead us – perhaps casually, perhaps purposefully.  When wrong thinking is represented as truth it causes victimization and injury.  If loyalty to the other person is allowed to further confuse the facts, the injury of the lie deepens, and bitterness, insecurity, dejection, misery, etc. take root.

While understanding the above conditions can be a good way to dismantle them, it’s fully possible to simply dissolve the barriers they create.  Consider the following strategy.

Become the Observer: Getting out of your own story can be very challenging, but if the story itself is keeping you stuck, it’s essential to trade the old story for a new one.  Here are some suggestions:

  • Detach: Take three paces away from your life and watch it from a distance.  See yourself and the other people in your life as characters in a movie.  What do you see when on the outside looking in? Are the behaviors well-motivated and consistent?  Is the dialogue interesting or banal?  Do you want to cheer for yourself?  Can you see the emotions fueling your choices?  What would you advise yourself to do differently?
  • Dismiss judgment:  Everyone in your life is doing the best they can with what they’ve got.  We all operate with some combination of insufficient information, strong beliefs, doubts and fears, past hurts, mis-information, exhortations from others, and ambivalence.  To balance the scale, we all have talents, intelligence, inner strengths, proven abilities, and past successes.  Accept your assets without pride, your weaknesses without judgment, and other people with compassion.
  • Laugh at your resistance:  All forms of resistance gain in strength and tenacity when we take them seriously.  Certainly, you came by them naturally and honestly and you’ve probably done an excellent job learning to accommodate them.  You can still relax and laugh them away.
  • Ignore them:  The less attention you give to impeding beliefs, habitual fears, past injuries, or conflicting inputs the less strength they have.  Refuse to give them a presence in your thoughts.  The more you think about them, the more your emotional attachment swells in response; your emotions give them energy, and when you give them energy, you give them power.  Take away the energy by choosing different thoughts.  Your emotions will follow, and different emotions will create different results.

Choose what you do want: As the observer, you gain an ability to choose, an ability unavailable to you while in judgment.  Think of judgment as a mud hole, keeping you stuck.  When you become the observer, you gain solid ground.  With a solid base under your feel, you can explore possibilities, and you can launch yourself in any direction you choose.

Choosing is an amazingly powerful tool.  If you don’t want illness, choose health.  If you don’t want poverty, choose prosperity.  If you don’t want conflict, choose peace.  If you don’t want confusion, choose wisdom.  Once you have chosen, decide the type of energy that will help bring it into your life, and embrace that energy.  Adopt it.  Make it yours.  Evoke it and live it.

Refuse what you don’t want: Remove what you don’t want from your slate of possibilities.  This isn’t about denying the current situation, or ignoring indisputable facts, or punishing the messenger.  Acknowledge what is, because today it is.

Tomorrow, however, can be different.  What if you decided the old belief could stay in the past?  What if you decided to not let fear create the future?  What if you ignored everyone else’s agitation?  What if you could believe that what you want wants you?  What if what you don’t want simply drops off your radar screen?  Change your mind; change your heart; change your reality.

Sometimes the barrier to what you want can be as simple as an unwillingness to receive.  Of course, this takes us back to the beginning, to the original intention.  If you retain an unwillingness to receive, it’s not a true intention.  Perhaps it’s not true for you, perhaps you believe you should want it, perhaps you’re not willing to release your resistance.  Whatever the reasons, you won’t get what you’re not ready to receive.

If you are willing, open your heart, your mind and your life and invite what you want to come on in.  (If what you want doesn’t accept the invitation readily, you’ve probably got some lingering resistance.  Look for any embedded Victim or Interpreter emotion, and continue working with the above strategies.)

Use a powerful welcoming emotion such as enthusiasm, eagerness or compassion.  Let the emotion you choose well up within you until you can feel the energy humming.  Using that emotion¸ bring what you want into you life with your imagination, and make a place for it.

For instance, if you want peace, and you’ve decided to create it with compassion, infuse compassion into your daily activities and overlay each activity with peace.  View all the people in your life with compassion and imagine them smiling and laughing instead of growling and complaining.  Apply compassion to yourself and imagine harmony with yourself, your tools, your efforts.  Extend compassion to your challenges and let peace reign over the situation.  Project compassion into the future and acknowledge the benefits that will spread out from you to others as a result of receiving peace into your own life.

And finally, be grateful in advance.  Give thanks for what you want as if it were already here, already yours.  Count the blessing that make it possible:  your talents, your intentions, your willingness, the partners and helpers who will appear and ease your way, etc.

And one last, final thing.  Use this phrase often:  “I release all resistance.”  Say it out loud and feel what happens to your body.  Review it regularly and see what happens with your manifestation.

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