No, of course not… but that neighbor down the street… and that hussy over in accounting department… well, they’re constantly sticking their noses in where they have no business, right?

But just for today, let’s forget about them, and instead – for a brief moment or two – let’s turn our pointing finger around to take a closer look at ourselves.

And here to help us with this bit of self-examination is frequent guest author Peter Vajda, who says…

I know what you did and why. Really?

By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

“Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.”
— Krishnamurti

Hardly a moment passes before the reputed behavior of a mainstream personality – actor/actress, politician, religious leader, sports figure, writer/artist/musician, corporate executive, etc. – or that of someone in our personal stream – spouse/partner, parent, child, in-law, relative, friend, neighbor, boss, co-worker, etc. – crosses our radar. And hardly a moment passes before many of us are quick to respond with a knee-jerk reaction – a judgment – that reflects our need to tell that person not only that he is bad or wrong, but how he should be (or should have been) behaving. We don our counseling or psychotherapist’s hat and begin to “author” that person’s life by critiquing their values, beliefs, premises, choices, and behaviors and then moving to create, for them, the type of life they should be leading, according to “me.”

For most of us “authors,” it’s just too difficult to take in observations of people without needing to immediately react with our own observations that are replete with judgments, criticisms, evaluations or other forms of analysis. And more, once we have finished judging, we then pile on by taking the role of advisor, educator, “good parent,” interrogator, interferer, explainer, hypothesizer, or fixer.

Author, heal thyself

“And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
- Matthew 7:3

What is it about folks who seem to need to run other peoples’ lives – either in the here and now or from a distance? What is it about folks who seem to want to “help” others but can’t seem to get a handle on their own life or issues? What is it about people who aren’t happy unless they’re authoring someone else’s life? In a word – control. Most of these folks are to some degree out of control in their own lives and so they gain a false sense of grounding and control by attempting to run others’ lives. Meddling is their fix.

Lacking close scrutiny

On 30th Street in Boulder, Colorado you’ll find a sculpture of a man chiseling himself out of a block of stone. He has already carved his head, torso, arms, and thighs. Holding a hammer in his raised right hand, he’s ready to strike a chisel he grasps in his left hand. He is forming his right knee.

Most authors of others’ lives have yet to chisel their own sculpture. Feeling unsafe, insecure, fearful, overwhelmed, lost or confused, their block of granite is incomplete. And to feel some sense of value and worth, they choose to chisel another’s sculpture.

Authoring someone else’s sculpture brings a fake and phony sense of individuality, self-actualization and self-determination. The opposite is the truth. Authors of others’ lives are seldom self-made individuals, lack self-direction and autonomy, rarely assume self-responsibility for their actions, and are poor at self-management. They often are withering on the vine of life, rather than growing and moving forward. Rather than being continuous learners or continual creators of their own life, they take a false sense of pleasure in attempting to tell others how to live. They never take an honest self-inventory. Better to judge, evaluate and tell others how to deal with their emotions, obstacles and struggles of life, than to “know thyself.”

Self-authorship

So, for those who are steeped in authoring others’ lives, perhaps this might be a good time to step back, leave those others alone and focus on your own self-authorship – in an honest, sincere and self-responsible manner, i.e. chisel your own sculpture.

While chiseling, consider:

What conscious choices will I make to enhance my personal, professional, relational, and spiritual life?

Will my sculpture reflect an honest, sincere and self-responsible effort to take care of my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health, my financial and career health, my living environment, my relationship with my spouse/partner, friends and family, my colleagues and co-workers?

Will my sculpture reflect my core values, integrity, trustworthiness and authenticity? And reveal my conscious choice to be a better listener, be empathic, compassionate, patient, accepting and understanding?

When folks come by to view your sculpture, what is the legacy they’ll see? Will it reflect a finely thought-out, creative, resonating figure, or will it be whole, flat, and untouched because you were too busy obsessed with telling other folks how to chisel their granite blocks?

Finally, remember that everyone is in chapter three of their life. Try as hard as you might, you’ll never, ever know what transpired in another’s chapter one or two – ever. So, attempting to author their life, without a grasp of those first two chapters, will never work – for you or for them – hard as you try. Which is a good reason to close the book on their life and author the book of your own.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Do you tend to “author” others’ lives? Are you continually judging others? Do others consider you to be a judgmental person?
• Do you feel a need to interfere and meddle in others’ lives? If so, what does meddling get you?
• Is self-reflection a challenge for you? If so, why?
• Would you prefer to evaluate other’s lives rather than your own? If so, why?
• What one action step can you take this week to chisel one small piece of your block that will result in a healthier, more self-responsible, more honest, more sincere, more positive and more creative life at work, at home and at play?
• Are you a continuous learner, a “work in progress?”
• Has your chisel dulled? What can you do to re-sharpen it? Do you have the strength to lift your hammer?
• Have you stopped chiseling?
• What was “meddling” like when you were growing up? Were you surrounded by people who constantly talked about and judged others? Were you constantly judged?
• The ultimate purpose question: Why do you think you’re on the planet?

Peter Vajda, Ph.D., C.P.C.
True North Partnering –
      – your guide to a better you
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda@truenorthpartnering.com
www.truenorthpartnering.com
Twitter: @petergvajda

Back to Charles:
….. So how did you measure up on Peter’s list of questions? Are you really attending full-time to your own growth and refinement? Or do you sometimes get distracted by thoughts of what “they” ought to be doing, for goodness’ sake?

Let’s face it, sometimes we need a reminder to face it.

Of course, in today’s climate of wildly pointing journalistic fingers, it’s easy to get caught up in TV commentators’ pompous, huffy, self-righteous claims that “she should do this” or that “he should never have done that.”

Ever stop for a moment and wonder what your life would look like if the news cameras should descend upon your workplace or home? What if they were to put you or me under the microscope?

Oh, but we’d be safe, right? Nothing to hide here… is there?

Remember, we’re talking about investigative journalists. Whether we like it or not, they’re professional muck rakers. People who have perfected innuendo and half-truths to the point that they’ve occasionally been known to manufacture stories from nothing. So even if we are as pure as the driven snow, some of our life’s details might be twisted to seem smutty. How would we like that?

What if tomorrow you got up, looked out the window and found that for some reason (real or fictitious) the news crews and cameramen were suddenly camped out around your front door, how would it feel?

That friendship two years ago, which you finally convinced your spouse was purely Platonic – what if gangs of reporters suddenly started shouting questions about it? And those funny numbers back when you were club treasurer? Sure, you got that straightened out, but with all these new questions pouring in, what if everybody started looking into everything all over again?

And those parking tickets, all in the same neighborhood… and that big dent in your car’s fender, that night when you were so late getting home. And all those times you said you had to work late… What could they make out of those things?

And how avidly would your neighbors follow all that stuff when you, as the latest victim, appear on the horizon? Ever get the sneaking feeling that this might be a bad habit – a form of dirty-minded voyeurism? Well, that’s probably part of it.

But even more than that, it may be a way of avoiding having to face and deal with our own shortcomings. Ever think things like this?
……….“Look at them; look how they _________. ”
……….“They shouldn’t ___________.”
……….“They ought to _____________.”
……….“At least I don’t ___________.”
……….“And at least I’m not _______________.”

In other words, “they” are so bad that I’m pretty good by comparison. This means I don’t have to change anything about myself. Instead, I can just sit back and feel holier-than-them.

So why might it be important to change this bad habit? How about…

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

What? Is that it, Burke? Some mealie-mouthed adage from the old days?

Yep, that’s it. I mean, think about it. If everybody stopped responding to the public airing of dirty laundry, then the TV networks, the newspapers and the magazines would stop featuring it. They’re just doing what businesses do, after all. They find what their market wants and provide it.

Stop buying it, and they’ll stop selling it. Perfectly logical. But the trick is, how do we stop wanting it? How do we stop needing to put our attention on people who are “worse” than us?

In the end, it’s pretty simple. Just honesty. Honesty about ourselves and about what we do. And honesty about our own long-standing dishonesty. Peter’s list of questions is a good starting point. Ask them. Answer them. Then go back and ask them again.

And please note – this shouldn’t be done as a form of self flagellation. The purpose here is to know yourself better, to love yourself more, and to grow toward being more comfortable with who you are (warts and all).

Do that, and you’ll no longer even be interested in how badly somebody else screws up.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Ever hear somebody say you’ve got to “find your passion”? I used to hear that, and they almost made it sound like passion is some kind of colored rock – just lying out there under a bush – waiting for the lucky day I’d somehow stumble across it.

Well, passion is a funny word to begin with, and we use it pretty loosely. We often say “passion” to mean a strong, uncontrollable fit of emotion.
……….“He flew into a passion of rage at the insult.”
……….“The lovers were swept away by their passion.”
……….“This murder was a crime of passion.”

And I don’t know about you, but that kind of passion doesn’t sound very desirable or trustworthy. Passionate love, or passion in my work aren’t bad ideas, but it all sounds so unmanageable – sort of like a thundering herd of wild and fractious horses.

Little wonder, then, that many of us can’t bring ourselves to go out and “find your passion.” Heck, who wants unbridled emotions sweeping us away at the most inconvenient times?

Complicating things further, we’re also told that nothing great is ever achieved without passion. So here we sit, stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the rock being a fear of murderous rages and the hard place being our right and proper desire to do big things in life.

Rewording the Meaning of Passion

Right here I’m going to offer what I think is a logical solution. How about we retire this troublesome word “passion” but keep the desirable qualities it stands for.

This first crossed my mind a few years back.

I was in a coffee shop, eating my burger and fries and eavesdropping on two guys at the next table. I still remember their names – Frank and Eddie. Their conversation went like this:

Now, I suspect that Frank’s wife was responding the way she was because Frank was also not being very eager or enthusiastic. Everything in their relationship had probably become routine, un-adventurous, un-exciting. The problem was, Frank could clearly see what he was not getting. But was almost certainly blind to what he was not giving.

Making Passion More User Friendly

Hearing that conversation, I had a sudden realization. Sitting there chewing my burger, I saw what had been missing from my life. My work – in fact, most of my life – was as flat as Frank’s situation. I began to realize, dimly, that I was trying to get life to give me all the good stuff, while I was investing virtually none of my own eagerness or enthusiasm. And without these qualities, there was no fire in any of my day-to-day experiences. Life was rolling over and saying “Well… okay…” but it wasn’t excited by my advances.

Life was meeting me halfway, but I didn’t like where the halfway point lay.

From that day I gradually began injecting extra enthusiasm into my dealings with other people. And you know, the darndest thing started happening. Others began showing more enthusiasm in return.

At work, I deliberately looked for and found reasons to be more eager. And there too, results changed for the better.

Life was still meeting me halfway, but now the halfway point was in a much better neighborhood.

So the next time you hear an expert advising you to “find your passion,” you may want to simply rephrase it into “find your eagerness and enthusiasm.” I suggest that just changing the words will make things feel more manageable, more doable, and give you an armload more confidence.

It worked for me.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

I was watching a YouTube video of Haramein recently in which he discussed his decades of work on a unified field theory. I never got clear on whether he’s a theoretical physicist or a pure mathematics man, but I was managing to sort of keep up with his presentation (or rather not get too swamped by it), when he said something that knocked the wind out of me, sat me down hard and took me back almost 40 years.

It was 1975 and my parents had just sold their plumbing business in Chicago and moved off to retire in, of all places, Kansas. For their mode of retirement, they had chosen to buy a farm, which, it should be noted, is not too different from buying THE farm.

Anyway, there I was in my early thirties, foolishly volunteering to help my parents settle in on their new homestead, a 120-year-old farmhouse with a hand pump in the kitchen and a 30-yard walk to the outhouse. All the amenities.

Since the farm lay five miles outside the nearest small town of 8,000 souls, and there was little in the way of entertainment , I spent a good deal of time paging through some of Mom’s old magazines. One stack I found particularly novel was some kind of UFO journal. I gave the articles only casual attention until I stumbled over an interview of Bruce Cathey, a retired airline pilot who claimed he had personally witnessed UFOs on many occasions during night time flights. The man sounded less white-eyeball than most of the people featured in the articles, so I read, and then re-read the interview.

Now, I should note here that a couple of Cathey’s books can still be found on Amazon today. One is titled “The Energy Grid: Harmonic 695: The Pulse of the Universe” and another is “The Bridge to Infinity.” Both are classed as Alternative Science.

In that UFO interview Cathey referred to an energy grid inherent to the Earth’s gravitational field, which, he said, accounted for UFOs’ characteristic skipping movement when they fly, which resembles stones skipping across water. He said they were literally propelling themselves in spurts or leaps from one grid intersection point to the next.

The Day Gravity Disappeared

I can no longer recall the chain of logic I followed forward from his grid point theory, but after a week or so of thought experiments, I (reluctantly) reached the conclusion that the phenomenon we call gravity is not inherent in physical bodies as is commonly assumed. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Gravity is not an attractive force at all, but a repelling one.

And it’s all because what we think of as empty space isn’t. It’s much more full than the densest matter.

And that’s what Nassim Haramein, the FBI agent lookalike, was saying in his YouTube interview. Empty space isn’t empty, and our current model of the universe is actually a negative picture. Up until now we have had everything backwards.

Here’s how it would work. Researchers already know about “zero point energy.” That is, more potential energy is contained within a single cubic centimeter of vacuum than we could ever release from our biggest nuclear device. However, they’re not exactly sure yet how to access that energy.

The implications, though, go far beyond energy sources.

What to Use Instead of Gravity

Think about gravity itself. We see our world keeping the moon in orbit, and we say it’s because of mutual attraction. But it may not work that way at all.

Just for a moment, let us imagine that the natural state of the Universe is to be “empty” and void of matter, but that here and there a warp or flaw appears in the seamlessness – a bubble of matter, if you will. Why might this happen? We don’t know that yet, but just for the sake of our hypothesis, let’s say it happens. And further, let’s imagine that the so-called “empty space” tries to push the bubble away, to repel it.

This type of phenomenon is not unknown to us. Go underwater and release a bubble, which is less dense than the water surrounding it. What happens? It moves upward, right? We call that buoyancy.

Water is non-compressible, so the pressure per square centimeter increases with the depth.

Our bubble is surrounded on all sides by water, but the pressure at the deeper side of the bubble is greater than the pressure at the shallower side. The water is pushing harder on the bottom than it is on the top, so the bubble gets moved away from the greater pressure.

The actual mechanism of buoyancy, then, is literally a kind of squeezing action.

Deep Space Bubbles

Now, take that image and transfer it into space. Empty space is the very dense water, and matter is the bubble. In the deepest part of outer space, way out there between galaxies, there would be almost no variation in the “density” of space. And a single world sitting there would have equal pressure being exerted on every side. It wouldn’t be moved in any direction.

However, place two worlds a hundred thousand miles apart, and because the worlds would be mutually shielding each other from the repelling force on the sides facing each other, the pressure gradient in the space between them would be lower. That means the worlds would be squeezed toward each other, like that bubble being pressed in the direction of lower water density.

In other words, gravity isn’t two bodies attracting each other, but space trying to reduce the amount of distortion by combining the two “solid” bodies by pushing them together. The two bodies are being repelled toward each other to take up less space. In short, gravity may not even exist – except in our mistaken explanations of how things work.

Now, I’ve never had the math skills (nor talent) to handle a concept like this, so I laid it down and walked away from it. And there it lay until two weeks ago when I ran across Nassim Haramein, who spouts to anybody who’ll listen, this “heresy” about an inside-out Universe in which everything is the opposite of the way we think it is.

I’m delighted that someone else had the same idea and particularly glad that they had the math to pursue it.

But Wait, There’s More -

Actually much more – to this subject than gravity and UFOs.

For example, all those intricately interwoven atomic and sub-atomic particles that science is so busy discovering? That same science is also telling us that those particles don’t really exist as such, even though their behavior exists. It seems that instead of particles, we have rapidly moving waves of energy that, when there are enough of them acting together as a group, take on the characteristics we call “solid matter.”

But why? Empty space is perfect and pure. All points are filled with limitless potential, and everything that can exist does exist there, although it’s only in potential – only in undifferentiated and non-physical form.

Doesn’t this sound vaguely like the philosophers and teachers who have taught us that everything we desire already exists in potential, waiting only for us to call it into reality?

I have long believed that the force which causes the limitless potential of empty space to suddenly disgorge something solid and corporeal, such as a star or a planet or a new car, is what we call conscious choice.

Until some conscious entity decides something, nothing happens. No new events occur. No new things come into existence.

Way down there in the deepest part of empty space, where we find atomic and sub-atomic particles, there are only two states. One is rapidly moving energy, and the other is perfectly static stillness.

There is either movement, or the potential for movement. What causes this difference?

Now, it has always been tempting to assume that, between the two states of “real” and “not-yet-real,” the waves of moving energy (the matter) side of the equation are the more important of the two. But investigators are now saying that, after all, it’s the other way around. But more than that, I believe that there is a third state, which we would call consciousness, that can act upon the void of stillness and cause it to differentiate into “reality.”

In the beginning was the Word.

You and I, already act in harmony with these new ideas. We have long believed that the riches and abundance and plenty that surrounds us is real. That it’s limitless. That we only have to claim it – to call it forth from Ali Baba’s cave of vast riches – and that this is all it takes to make the things we desire come into reality.

In other words, for a very long time we have known that making a conscious choice – issuing a personal claim – is all it takes to call something utterly new and wonderful into existence from out of “nothing.” Now, science is increasingly ratifying that knowledge.

And so it is.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

How about a self-help article that lists out eleven of the worst self-help books ever, tells you what’s wrong with them, tells you why to avoid those books in particular, and then includes sales links to each one of them at Amazon.

If you’d like to see this for yourself, it’s at The E-Advisor Blog (where, according to their tagline, “Education Meets Edgy”).

Here are just four of their oddly mixed articles:

• Bad Faith Insurance Claims … What You Need to Know?
• Do Not Believe Everything You Read About Your Child?
• Dog Grooming Tips to Keep Your Fido Looking Sharp?
• Finding Financial Aid for Online Colleges

Are you as impressed as I am?

Cheers,
Charles

But have you ever had a teacher come tapping on your shoulder, ready and eager to reveal to you all the secrets of the ages? Most people will laugh and tell you that, no, their teacher is really, really late for their appointment.  Don’t be too hasty, however, to answer this question. If you’re like me – like most people – you may have unwittingly turned away more teachers than you’ll ever realize.

In the first place, have you ever wondered why a teacher would even appear and take you on as a student? Anybody can understand why you’d welcome a teacher to guide you forward. But how do you know when one appears? And what does a teacher look like, anyway? Well, it’s probably not like you were expecting.

If you’ve been thinking of a wise looking personage draped in a bedsheet and carrying a little wad of flowers, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

In real life, most teachers aren’t even people. When was the last time you over-ate and got indigestion?

Or drank too much and felt hung over the next morning?

I’ll bet you never thought of those feelings of discomfort as your teachers. But there they were, tapping on your shoulder, offering you their wisdom, and you may have ignored the lesson they wanted to give you.  Instead, you may have downed a quick stomach-soothing potion or popped a headache pill – some kind of “quick-disconnect” to keep from suffering the results of your own actions. Well, pay attention here. As long as we use quick-disconnects between our actions and their results, we’re refusing to learn from the most common form of teacher.

So do we really welcome lessons?

We all say we’re trying to learn, to improve, to master life’s lessons. We claim that we’re seekers after truth. Yes, that’s what we say…  But not all of life’s lessons involve noble-sounding eternal truths. Life has lots of things to teach us. And so it scatters lessons everywhere amidst our day-to-day affairs.

Often the most important lesson we can learn today awaits us in the humble, nitty-gritty details of life, down in the dirt. And we never have the opportunity to meet that lesson till the day we stumble and fall, and we’re lying face-down in that dirt where the lesson is waiting.  For a lesson like that, we won’t ever learn it until we’re reduced to that level. Only then are we in a position to receive that particular wisdom from life.

Even then, we may not be ready. We may actually meet that problem again and again, each time treating it as an annoyance brought to us by the perversity of life. But that problem can teach us important lessons.  Something has to change, however, before we’re ready to learn from that teacher. Only when something changes – something within us – only then can this “problem” become a teacher.

We all have lots of teachers waiting patiently to teach us their lessons. In fact, there’s a whole faculty crowding around to share their lessons with us. These teachers are all dressed in the rags of problems. But their lessons involve wisdom about:

• Money,
• Love,
• Honesty & honor,
• Confidence,
• Persistence,
• Self worth,
• Health,
• Habits,
• Appetites, and
• Trust.

Although this list is not complete, these ten areas cover most of the problems we all wrestle with on a daily basis.

For years we have probably been trying to avoid, weasel away from, or eliminate problems like these. For years we may have been treating those problems as unwelcome, unfriendly inconveniences. Something to be escaped from as quickly and painlessly as possible.

In fact, I’ll bet you have never looked at your money problems as a teacher. Nor ever seen your marriage agonies as a kindly instructor of spiritual growth.

Well, life’s teachers may not always be gentle, but they ARE endlessly resourceful. And the only reason they ever seem harsh is because they are simply bringing to us what we unwittingly ask them for.  That upset stomach, or that hangover… admit it now, don’t we know – before we start – that this sometimes happens? But we go forward anyway, gambling that this time we may not have to pay the price. Or thinking that there’s always a “cure” that will cancel out the results of our own careless, unwise actions.

We do this everywhere, whether it’s in matters of money, love, or personal relations. We deliberately ignore the results of our own actions, refusing to take responsibility for what we bring on ourselves.

So if we want a real, live human teacher to appear and instruct us in the mastery of life’s mysteries, we’re going to have to meet them half way. Because they’re the advanced teachers. First, we’ll have to graduate from the simple stuff before they ever appear.

But the truth is, we may never see one of the flesh-and-blood teachers. Why? Because we so resolutely resist the ‘simple’ lessons that the Universe may be thinking, “Why waste a ‘real’ teacher on the bad students? These bottom-of-the-class dunces are constantly whining, complaining, dragging their feet, and refusing to learn from the results of their own actions.”

But the real teachers are there. They’re standing back waiting for us to become ready. And what does it take to be ready?

First, are you still ignoring the teachers you already have? If so, you might consider paying more attention to your problems and listening to the lessons you’re already being offered.

That’s it… just listen

Stop the constant, desperate struggle, and just be still. It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re not fighting, not resisting and struggling to escape, not denying.

Every problem we have is a product of our own thinking, our own feelings, our own actions and habits. And that problem is there to do us a service. Its intent on one thing only.

No, not to torture us, but to teach us.

The teaching, however, will seem like torture for just as long as we continue to struggle against and resist the lesson embedded in the situation.

Fortunately, there are a couple more shortcuts to recognizing the face of these teachers. There truly are simple ways for finding the lessons, for learning them and for leaving the struggle behind.

Mastery Method #1

I’ve already mentioned the first way. That’s simply to stop fighting and listen. Just asking in simple honesty, “What is the lesson in this situation?”

You already know about any number of spiritual or mental practices. You’ve read about meditation. You may be doing it on a daily basis.

But how are you using it?

For the longest time, I was trying to use meditation as a tool for solving my problems. That approach did not work consistently.

Then one day I realized that meditation is not for solving problems. In fact, as long as you’re focused on solving, you’re not receiving anything. You’re not learning.

Try this approach instead and see how much more effective it can be.

Go into your meditative state in your favorite way. That may be chanting, centering, self hypnosis, or repeating a mantra silently. However you like to do it, spend a few minutes becoming still.

Now, instead of floundering around, trying to create the solution to your problem, simply imagine yourself PAST the problem. The difficulty no longer even exists in your life. Feel the peace and the simplicity of your life without the struggle. Let this feeling of being past the problem wash over you and fill you. Feel how you would be living your life when the problem doesn’t even exist.

Then give thanks for this feeling. Let waves of gratitude roll through you, then open your eyes and go about your business. Every time that problem confronts you, just remind yourself that you already know how it feels to live with that problem behind you.

What happens to the problem? Sometimes, believe it or not, it’ll just dissolve and disappear from your life – never even requiring you to solve it.

This most often happens when you find you’ve lost interest in the behavior that causes the problem. Somehow, you are no longer attracted to overeating or drinking too much. Whatever behavior is connected with your particular problem, it may simply fade from your life.

Other times, the solution will come to you during the daily routine of your life, and it will always be far simpler and easier than you ever imagined.

In any case, the best approach to learning from problems is to recognize that you are the one who supplies the energy to them, and you are the one who can withdraw the life from them. You are the source of their power. When you begin ignoring them, you starve them, and they go away.

This approach is simple and elegant.  And it’s vastly disappointing to anyone who loves to talk about all the drama and difficulties in their life. You’ll need to get past this addictive need for drama.

Mastery Method #2

One of the basic truths of psychology is that each person is nearly blind to her or his own weaknesses, even though others can see them clearly.

You can see others’ peculiarities, and they can see yours. Most people, therefore, try to avoid being unmasked by others.

However, there’s a better way to use this principle.

Why not form a mutual aid group dedicated to helping each other see themselves through the eyes of the rest of the group?

This type of group is, in fact, extremely common among highly successful people.

It’s called a MasterMind Group, and virtually every successful man and woman who ever lived has formed or joined such a group.

Let’s say you’re struggling with the marketing aspects of your business. You know your product or service extremely well, but you don’t know the best way to reach the public.

As a member of a MasterMind Group, you find that everyone freely shares their skills and insights with each other. So when you belong to one of these groups, it’s a simple matter to ask the other members for advice on marketing. In effect, you’ve just told the group, I have a weak area that I need your help with.

The strong marketers in the group, on the other hand, may have a blind spot in the area of product development, so you freely help them.

Everybody gains because everybody is there to help the entire group to grow.

Thus, you have access to a whole group of teachers. And your only obligation is to serve as one of THEIR teachers.

Hah! I’ll bet you never expected to discover that you’re somebody’s long-awaited teacher, did you?

Life’s funny that way. Everything you think you know sooner or later turns out to be backwards: your problems are your teachers… you are someone else’s teacher… what else is waiting to be turned upside down?

Why, next somebody may be telling us that life can even be beautiful.

Cheers,
Charles

I don’t know if the following story is true or not, but in either case, it shows how some of the things we unquestioningly believe in don’t  even exist.

Does Evil Exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?

A student bravely replied, “Yes, he did!“

“God created everything?“ The professor asked.

“Yes sir“, the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil“. The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, “Can I ask you a question professor?“

“Of course“, replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, “Professor, does cold exist?“

“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?” The students snickered at the young man’s question.

The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat.“

The student continued, “Professor, does darkness exist?“

The professor responded, “Of course it does.“

The student replied, “Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.“

Finally the young man asked the professor, “Sir, does evil exist?“

Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”

To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.“

The professor sat down.

The young man’s name — Albert Einstein.

Of course, the name you use for “God” may be something else. Universal Intelligence. The Law of Attraction. The Order. Or something else entirely. That’s not the important point – or probably shouldn’t be. The real point is, are you still blindly accepting concepts and ideas that have been handed down unquestioningly for generations upon generations.

So back to those bad habits we struggle against so mightily. We know that feeding them energy always makes them stronger and sinks us deeper into a quagmire of our own making.

How much more effective would it be to spend our time mulling – not our failings – but the positives we want? No more struggle. Simply a steady consideration of higher qualities. And if we screwed up – as we sometimes do – what if we gently said to ourselves, “No, what I really wanted to do was this…” and go right back to our higher aspirations?

Indeed, what if?

Cheers,
Charles

Checking out at the supermarket recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days“.

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations“.

She was right about one thing–our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day, here’s what I remembered we did have….

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended & stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a water fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

If you’re an old-timer a person of extensive experience like me and getting tired of all those “lessons in conservation” then you may want to pass this post along.

Cheers,
Charles

Everybody else will have the same old year they’ve been repeating for ages. Slapping a new number on the same old stuff and pretending it’s the Emperor’s New Year is either cynical or self-delusional.  Only a change of Actions, Thoughts and Intentions will make 2012 something new for you and me.

So as we go about wishing everybody “Happy New Year,” do we really mean it, from deep down in our guts, or are we just mouthing easy words?

Happy New Year?
Charles

Even apart from the new year period, the fact is, most folks spend their time focusing on the ways things go wrong: What didn’t get done; what I don’t like, can’t do, am not suited to, wouldn’t be interested in, and anyway it’s just an awful lot of bother. That’s the best worn pathway in most of our minds.

Two main ways most folks talk about new year’s resolutions: One way is with great resolve and hope. The future gleams before us anew, and we’re giddy with the thought of making a fresh start. A start in which we won’t be shackled by any failings and weaknesses that might have hobbled us in the past. This attitude is most common around the first week or two in any new year.

The second way we talk about hopeful new ambitions is with a wry, not-quite-cynical-but-close-to-it grin of dismissal. We may be apologetically pushing away our own pretensions of optimism, or we might be discussing someone else’s obviously overblown and hopeless ambitions.

However, as the Buddha said,

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

And in another place,

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Notice what I wrote above? That the most common habitual way of thinking about ourselves, about our hopes and our aspirations is dismissive, even slightly cynical? Indeed we are what we think.

Notice also that the other way, the optimistic and hopeful way is on the right track, but it has little staying power. At the first signs of opposition it usually cools like stale steam and drips away in tiny dribbles.

So in the spirit of the new (possibly world-changing) new year, I have a different suggestion, one that I like to call New Year’s Realizations.

More about that in a moment, but first, I’d like to share with you some extremely well-thought-out observations and suggestions from guest author Peter Vajda on ways we use to keep ourselves inside the failure fence.

One Way We Might Subvert Resolve in 2012
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

New Year’s resolutions are on the tip of most everyone’s pen and tongue. Thousands of suggestions, “how tos,” and “best ways” are being offered to help folks make, and carry through on, their New Year’s resolutions. Sadly, as in past years, 98% of those who make resolutions will have given up or failed by Valentine’s Day.

Three major causes of failure are:

When we understand the nature of the “victim consciousness,” we gain insight into how true and real change occurs.

The victim is rife with self-limiting and self-sabotaging habits and patterns of living, working and relating. It is these self-limiting patterns that prevent us from do-ing and be-ing from a place of integrity, responsibility, maturity, accountability, dedication, and commitment. It is our subconscious drives that cause us pain and suffering.

When we look deeply inside, honestly and self-responsibly, we uncover our shadow self – a self, feeling victimized, that lives a life of greed, ruthlessness, egocentricity, blind ambition, irresponsibility, inaction, and/or self-sabotage. Choosing to reflect and become conscious of these habits, patterns and programming in an effort to release them supports us to evolve to a place where clarity and a truthful picture of our inner and outer realities will serve us well.

When we look deeply inside and reflect, we become more able to transmute the energies of our self-limiting habits and patterns into the energy of authenticity, integrity and trustworthiness – supported by our inner qualities of courage, commitment and steadfastness.

Four characteristics of a victim mentality are:

• lack of clarity about our goals: ping-ponging between and among realistic and unrealistic or illusory expectations and goals, and blaming others for our lack of clarity;
• inability to deal with time and resource limits and constraints and blaming other people and events for our inability to use time and other resources effectively and intelligently;
• confusion around the law of cause and effect – lack of awareness about how we are creating/causing the current events in our life and a lack of clarity about how we can change our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, intentions, behaviors and actions to effect positive change, believing that my issues are not about “me” but about others who are responsible for my issues; and,
• denial that my life choices have positive or negative mental, physical, emotional and spiritual effects on my overall health and well-be-ing, and that my pain and suffering are caused by some external event or circumstances.

Mired in the quicksand of victimization, we find ourselves constantly projecting our anger and negativity on to events, circumstances and others for our predicament. We project our (unconscious) inner frustration with ourselves out towards anyone or anything we feel we can blame for our state in life. Sadly, we’re actually creating our own universe but blaming others because it’s not what we want.

Taking time for honest and conscious self-reflection supports us to take responsibility for our self – including our “dark side.” Self-reflection sheds light on the “stories” we make up to avoid taking responsibility for how we project our “stuff” on to the world. Self-reflection supports us to identify how our emotional programming – anger, fears – create our lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

When we are honest and clear about our wants and needs, and what we are willing to do, we can create a solid foundation for our personal growth and development. We attract and relate with others who share the same self-empowering life view.

When we understand the lessons we need to learn from our current situation, what we need to do becomes obvious. Then we have to choose to take action. However, this understanding requires focus, commitment, consistency and compassion for our self.

Spending time in our inner world through meditation, silence, journaling, etc., is both emotionally and spiritually nourishing. This nourishment supports awareness of the “how” and “why” things appear in our lives – how we are creating our personal universe. Time in our inner world nurtures our capacity for self-love and self-kindness – which support us to create and inhabit a love-based, victim-less personal universe.

In this place of safety and protection, we begin to extricate our self from a victim mentality and move forward from a place of positivity and steadfastness. In our inner world, there can be no victimization as it’s a place of neutrality – a place of soul qualities – clarity, peacefulness, groundedness, stillness, surrender and allowing.

Self-reflecting helps us observe how we use our emotions to create our inner and outer worlds, our worlds of victimization. For example, are we being “nice” to accommodate others in our attempt to feel acknowledged, seen and loved or because we authentically wish to engage in adult, heart-felt, mature relationships – are we holding our physical, emotional and psychological boundaries with others or allowing others to threaten and abuse our boundaries so we can feel wanted and liked?

Once we have cultivated support, self-love and solid ground within, we can expand our space to include others. But we must be very conscious not to include any event, circumstance, idea, thing or person who will take us away from our center, from our self-love and move us back into feeling the victim.

When we surrender to someone else’s agenda, at work, at home, at play and in relationship, we enter their universe as a victim. The important question is why we allow others to control us. Perhaps,

Inner work and self-reflection, done diligently can often support us to

Inner work and self-reflection can support us to focus on what really matters, to let go of what holds us back, to trust our soul and Spirit for guidance and to use our core, inner strength (not “willpower” which hardly ever works) to take positive action for our self instead of engaging in self-destructive and self-sabotaging actions, releasing our self from the stranglehold of victimization.

Many “resolutions” are not conscious choices. They are knee-jerk reactions to something we don’t like about our self – and it’s usually about our “packaging” or some surface issue. True “resolve” requires a deep, inner, and conscious process. The start of 2012 is a wonderful opportunity to change our experience of failed “resolutions” to one of true and lasting change and transformation. We can choose to release the victim within and see what being in true control of our life is really, really like.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Who or what is my guiding authority? How is this authority working for me?
• What are my core values and how do they direct my choices and decisions at work, at home, at play and in relationship?
• How do I choose and implement my personal standards?
• Am I self-reliant? How so?
• Do I ever explore the dynamics of my inner world?
• What bright light shines in my inner world?
• What does not shine in my inner world? Do I know why?
• What feelings and thoughts inhabit my inner world? Are they supportive or limiting?
• Who’s in my personal world? Are they supportive or toxic? Do I want them there? How have I attracted them into my life?
• Did I (or others in my family) experience being a victim when I was growing up? How so? What was that like?
• How can I create a more nurturing, loving and compassionate inner world for my body, mind and emotions?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
….. We’re not beginners here. We know that our thoughts create our reality. Our thinking forms our path beneath our feet even as we’re stepping forward into it. Yes, we know it, but…

So the question is, why don’t we see more change in our lives, more satisfaction, more positive achievement?

And in that very question lies the answer we’re seeking so desperately. To be satisfied, we find ourselves needing more, more, more.

However, what if we decided to put some of that dissatisfaction on hold for a bit, and – just for a little while – dip a tentative toe into the pool of satisfaction instead?

Rather than keeping that so-elusive satisfaction far, far away, out there in the future somewhere, couldn’t we – just for a little while – find something we have right now to be satisfied with? Even one little thing?

After all, if we’re what we think, what are we thinking? What are we thinking?

New Year’s Realizations

So my big suggestion is really quite small and easily accomplished. Instead of our usual frantic, frenetic round of doing, of running in this and that direction, what if we just think a few of our thoughts differently – just for a little while – and watch what happens?

Now, the conjoined twin of cynicism is impatience. They always walk in together, a matching pair, and where you see one, you’ll find the other as well. Of course it has to be that way. Isn’t it obvious that cynicism and low expectations cannot bear being in the presence of patience? And vice versa?

The other day I mentioned to a friend that this year I’d be doing New Year’s Realizations rather than the traditional resolutions. She asked, do you mean realizations as in “new awarenesses” or realizations as in “things that become real”?

My answer: why make a choice? If we’re doing the new awarenesses properly, then the new things becoming real will follow quite naturally and easily.

That’s why, in 2012, I’ll be spending more time on my thoughts and mental processes, and I’ll be spending less time thinking about all the stuff I want more, more, more of.

Instead, I’ll be directing my thinking toward all the things I’m glad about, all the things I’m thankful are already in my life, all the ways I already have so much joy and happiness and fulfillment and health and friends and family and satisfaction in my life.

I hope you’ll join me – just for a little while – in these New Year’s Realizations.

Cheers from the end of 2011,
Charles

P.S. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think. Even better, tell me what you’re going to do?

Now, I don’t know if this new year will truly mark the end of anything, nor the beginning of anything else. But since I am a hardcore optimist at heart, I find myself expecting some kind of 2013 to be revealed a year from now, once 2012 has unspooled itself onto the cutting room floor of history.

So life goes on – or it may do. Because if it doesn’t, then what the hell, none of this mattered anyway, did it?

More About 2011

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting for some time. In fact, I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical since May of this year. After a solid ten years of writing about self-help and motivation, I just got bored with it and took some time off for myself.

This year has been something of an experiment for me. In my last post, back on May 21st (Discipline – The Unpopular Side of Self Help), I showed you a tiny little form I had started to use for keeping track of my “confidence work.” It’s a simple little table with one cell for each day of the year. And at the time of that posting I’d already spent better than four months with it – a third of a year.

Now this year is ending, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve been doing during my time off.

I may not have been writing but I was still trying stuff on myself, which is where it actually counts. In my last report, I was still using brainwave entrainment recordings that combined both alpha-wave (or deeper) sounds with positive suggestions for personality change.

I mainly used three different recording sets. One was the Quantum Confidence set (the so-called Morry Method).

The second was the EmBRACES Belief Entrainment System by Alan Tutt.

And the third was an isochronic recording at five beats per second with a bit of pink noise overlaid. I made this one myself and supplied my own suggestions live during each session. You can download a copy of this recording here if you’d like to give it a try.

Each of these approaches has strong points. In both Morry Zelcovitch’s Quantum Confidence recordings and the EmBRACES recordings from Alan Tutt, there are two separate tracks, with differing suggestions for the left and right ears, plus a third “center track” with still more suggestions.

Listening to these is quite confusing at first. The conscious mind just can’t adequately handle all that relentless input, which leaves the subconscious mind free to listen and absorb without the usual meddling and monitoring of the conscious mind. That’s the theory, anyway, and in my experience it seems to have a good deal of validity.

A word about Alan’s EmBRACES set. It’s massive, and there’s a good reason for that. Alan did extensive testing with something like 150 test subjects, and he found that the more variety there was in the recordings, the more effective the suggestions seemed to be. The only downside to this is that you won’t know what to try first. Honestly – it doesn’t matter. Just dive in. You’ll figure it out as you go.

So, being a compulsive over-deliverer, he set out to give his users all the variety and choice they could ever ask for… and more. I’m talking 360 MP3 recordings in 10 modules – nearly 160 HOURS of material.

You know how, after you’ve used a set of recordings for a while, boredom can begin to set in? Well, that’s much, much less likely to happen here. According to my calculations, boredom won’t be a factor until you’ve been using the set for about 987 years – or longer. You can find out more about Alan’s EmBRACES here.

Now… back to my self-help efforts.

How Persistent Was I?

Instead of telling, let me just show you.

As you can see from the varying colored dots, I experimented with a few different things during the year. Took a few weeks off here and there (more a result of laziness than design.) On the other hand, I spent a 4-week period beginning in mid-September doing four sessions a day. That was a bit much, so after a month I rested a bit then dropped back to the usual two-a-day.

Results

Some objectives, like confidence or leadership, are pretty hard to quantify, especially if you’re self-rating the results. There’ll be days when you’re sure you’ve become a superstar. Other days you’ll wonder if you’re ever going to make any progress.

It’s normal to have ups and downs.

So in the interests of minimizing subjectivity, here are some specific, measurable things that have happened during the past year.

1. I got a call – out of the blue – asking if I’d like to become the M.C. for the Expat Club meetings. The man who had been doing an outstanding job for three years had decided to move on to other activities, and would I be interested? The Expat Club has around 500-600 members overall, but not all are in-country at any one time. Attendance at the meetings varies from around 70 in the low season to upwards of 150 in the high season. I accepted the job and have been having a ball running the monthly meetings.

2. Several writers living here in Thailand have asked me to format their books and get them Amazon-ready. Some were for paperback publishing, and others were for Kindle ebooks. I found that this was not only easy for me, it was actually fun. This led me to start a new service business website MisterEbook.com, where I accept ebook formatting for authors who would rather be writing instead of getting all tied up in the techie stuff. This site is still new, so I don’t have consistent performance data to share yet.

3. In July I had an operation – an angioplasty – to clear some blockage in a coronary artery. Now, was this a negative thing? Or was it a positive step to correct something that I had previously allowed to become negative? Not sure, but I thought I should lay it out and let you decide for yourself. At any rate, I’m still alive and kicking, much to my delight.

4. Because of back injuries when I was young, back pain, cramps and rigid muscles had been a problem for years. This year, I took measures to change that. Twice a week I do go for Thai massage, which if done properly, can free up tight, locked muscles. So morning backache and occasional bouts of my back “going out” have disappeared. Next month I turn sixty-nine, and my back feels better than it has for thirty years. (Now I’m starting to sound like an old geezer, aren’t I?)

5. This one is more subjective and a bit difficult to put into words. However, for what it’s worth, here it is: During the past year I’ve begun noticing that people treat me with more deference and respect than before. This amazes me because, in groups I have usually felt like the wallpaper. Other people sparkled, not me. And when meeting new people, I was just one of the faces. Now when I meet folks, or sit in on a new group, I’m treated like a visiting dignitary. On the one hand, this is flattering, but on the other hand, it’s a bit unsettling. I’ve always tried to avoid being an ego-driven kind of guy, so while it’s pleasant, it puts me on my guard to not let myself get swept away by approval.

Anyway, these are some of the results I’ve noticed after working on my confidence fairly consistently for one year.

Try This at Home, Boys and Girls

I fully intend to continue these efforts in the new year, and if you’d also like to track your own efforts, here’s a chart ready for you to use.

To download your copy, right click on the image, or right click here and save as “2012 Meditation Record” on your computer.

Once you’ve downloaded it, trim it down and tape it somewhere that you’ll see it every day, or keep it on a clipboard, ready to use at any time.

The only thing to avoid is – don’t lay it down on a flat surface. If you do that, it’ll soon be covered up and forgotten. Once a tracking instrument like this goes onto a horizontal surface, it’s useless. Just put it where nothing else can get piled on top of it, and it’ll keep reminding you of your intentions.

Then, next year, I hope you’ll report back and let me know what you’ve been working on and the results you’ve seen.

Cheers from the end of 2011,
Charles

P.S. If you’ve been using the 2011 form that I posted back in May, tell me what results you’ve been getting. No results? Then tell me that too.