Shawn Anchor explains how some of our beliefs about happiness and work may be backwards.  One important point he makes is that we should not delete the statistical outlier when it comes to happiness.  When actually, what we really should be noticing is the person who is happier than others, beyond any reasonable average. When it comes to achieving happiness, we should not be looking to achieve a statistical average.

“I’m a fat slob.  I’ve got to lose 20 lbs.  I’ll never be able to do it.  It’s too much. Maybe I’ll just go for a walk and start there. No!  That won’t do it.  That’s not enough.  You need more than that. You need to go for a run, a big run, a 10 mile run. If you workout really hard you can have a lean sculpted body.  You can even have six pack abs.   That’s what you need to do.  When you get fit like that you’ll feel awesome.

But you are going to need to watch what you eat too.  No more sugar, no more caramel macchiato coffee drinks.  No more desserts.  No more beer either, so stay away from happy hour after work and any social life with your friends.  You need to take this training seriously or not at all.

 No social life, no relaxing with a glass of wine, no wonderful desserts?  Just work and workouts? That’s no fun.  I think I’ll feel deprived of all the stuff I enjoy.  I’ll be miserable if I do that.  I don’t want that. Maybe I’ll just get some potato chips and see what is on TV.”

Then it starts again,,, from the beginning.  “I’m a fat slob.”

(Repeat from above)

The circular thinking resulted with my client on the couch watching television for a number of weeks.  Why are we trapped in unhealthy cycles like this?  It’s a function of our fear based and false beliefs.  These beliefs are lies.   Damn Lies.

When you look closer and study the beliefs held within these words you’ll see what holds this self destructive cycle together.  You’ll see how these thoughts lead our attention and look at certain things and not others.  How our attention goes into certain thoughts and builds whole imaginary dreams out of them.  Then we have emotional reactions to those imaginary dreams, and those emotional reactions cause more thoughts that take hold of our attention again.

I’m a fat slob.

It’s a self judgment: a verbal self rejection using the image of the body as a basis for self worth.  Basing our self worth on our body is an assumption and is the first lie.   Our self worth doesn’t have to be based on our body, but if it is, and you judge your body, you end up feeling emotions of unworthiness.   It’s a damn lie. But we can still create a lot of emotions by believing imagined lies.

I’ve got to lose 20 lbs. 

Maybe that emotional feeling of unworthiness is painful.  Maybe it hurts so much that you get motivated to change it.  So you decide to lose 20 lbs so you feel better about your self.   The problem here is that it wasn’t what your body looked like that made you feel bad.  What created the feeling of unworthiness was believing the lie about your self worth.  That was on top of the other lie of self being related to what your body looks like.

The proposed solution to feeling bad is to change our body even though it didn’t cause us to feel bad.  We lie to our self about the solution and change how we feel by changing what our mind is judging.  We believe changing our physical appearance will change how we feel emotionally. (Lie)  Our physical appearance can be amazing, but if we still believe a judgmental thought, our sense of worthiness doesn’t change at all.  But we get lulled into the effort of changing our body and ignore what goes on in our mind.  (more illusions)

I’ll never be able to do it.  It’s too much.

When we think of making a change our mind can imagine the shift in one step.  That’s not how change actually happens, but that’s why we call it imagination.  Because the imagination produces the new result immediately it didn’t fill in the actual action steps.  The mind has produced an illusion of success.  There is no plan with a step by step approach with time to execute it.  Without a scenario of how to get there, our common sense awareness kicks in and tells us the result looks impossible.  We conclude that the change is too much to do in one step.  Our conclusion is a truth, but it’s based on the lie of doing it in one step. So our thought becomes, “It’s too much.”   Our emotions go to failure and defeat.

Maybe I’ll just go for a walk and start there.

We back up and catch our self.  We begin to piece together some steps to get to our final goal of losing 20 lbs. (or whatever the amount you have I mind.)  We have a start and perhaps develop a sense of hope and possibility.

No!  That won’t do it.  That’s not enough.  You need more than that.

This thought came from a tyrannical voice of authority.  It was the side of Ben’s personality that was serious about getting things done.  It’s the voice in his head he puts in charge of hard projects requiring commitment.  There was some truth to what it said, and that made the rest of the thoughts hard to recognize as a lie.  Yes it was going to take more than one walk to get to the goal.   But it ignores the long term plan with many small steps necessary to complete a long journey.  The truth is that just getting off the couch and going for a walk might be enough to start with.

You need to go for a run, and a big run, a 10 mile run.

Here the tyrannical voice throws out another over reaching goal.  It wants’ to start off with a level of training Ben was at two years ago when he was doing a lot of training.  It’s one that isn’t going to be achieved so it’s a set up for failure.  The flag for the lie here is the word “NEED.”  Ben doesn’t need to go for a run and he certainly doesn’t need to do a 10 mile run.  That’s more likely to be self abusive and injure his body instead of make him healthier.

If you workout really hard you can have a lean sculpted body.  You can even have six pack abs.   That’s what you need to do. 

Here the conversation of voices in Ben’s head goes from abusive tyranny to a sales job.  It’s a beautiful story and it has a happy ending with lots of self images of the ego getting stroked in the process.  The salesman is trying to be his friend and get him on board with the lofty goals.  This illusion takes Ben’s attention away from the present moment and putting his shoes on for a walk.

When you get fit like that you’ll feel awesome. 

This is dangling a carrot out there and telling him his emotions of happiness are dependent on what his body looks like.  It’s a carrot made of good feeling emotions.  All it actually does is reinforce the NEED to run 10 miles story with and make it emotionally appealing so we want to believe the lie.  This is what I’ll call a damn lie.  It’s a lie that makes Ben feel good but has no basis in anything real.  It’s most dangerous because it cloaks the others lies behind this emotionally appealing self image.  It’s setting the goals too high and leads to disappointment. If we buy into the salesman’s pitch here we will have overspent on expectations.

But you are going to need to watch what you eat too.  No more sugar, no more caramel macchiato coffee drinks.  No more desserts.  No more beer either, so stay away from happy hour after work and any social life with your friends.  You need to take this training seriously or not at all. 

If we bought the lie the salesman was selling we feel committed now.  The underlying assumption is that it would be wrong to back out on our commitments.  That’s a lie too, mostly because what we are committed to are stories in the mind.  Once the salesman has got us on the hook with those feel good emotions that it linked to a fit body, it starts pushing for more.  Now it’s not enough to be committed and to run 10 miles at the first work out.  Now you have to give up everything else you enjoy in order to get that fit body.  The salesman just raised the price you have to pay before you can feel good.  Ben would be better off just going for a walk, but that’s not what the lies in his head tell him.

No social life, no relaxing with a glass of wine, no desserts?  Just work and workouts,,, that’s no fun.  I’ll feel deprived of so much I enjoy.  I’ll be miserable if I do that.  I don’t want that. 

There’s a truth in this lie as well.  You rightly figured out the salesman’s voice in your head raised the price and it was too high.  He wanted you to make your self miserable by going to an austerity plan living a fanatical lifestyle of workouts.  Truthfully this is too high a price.  Ben is not deciding to train for a triathlon.  However, the rejection of the extreme lifestyle is a general rejection of, “I don’t want to do “THAT.”   What is the “that” he is rejecting?  It’s called a healthy lifestyle.  The tricky lie is that the salesman bundled healthy lifestyle with a fanatical one.  We are saying NO to the fanatical part, but in the process we are unaware that our mind is throwing out moderate exercise and eating as well.  Another damn lie where the stuff we don’t want got mixed in with the lifestyle we do want.   Without awareness we throw out everything by believing the thought, “I don’t want that”.

Maybe I’ll just get some potato chips and see what is on TV.

When we consider the lies of a fanatical workout and social austerity lifestyle, our mind dreams an unhappy life.  Our natural instinct is to look for something that will make us happier.  At this point watching TV and eating potato chips looks like a good idea.  When we try it on in our imagination it feels a lot better than the last option.  It’s another damn lie that feels better.   We feel better for the moment but that’s only compared to an imaginary nightmare where we have no friends, no social life, and no fun.  The previous ugly scenario makes the couch feel like a relatively better lie.  It doesn’t feel genuinely good, just not as worse.  It’s also an illusion that distracts us from any small healthy steps like taking a walk and having a piece of fruit.

Of course that distraction only lasts until another familiar voice in Ben’s head proposes that he is overweight and should get off the couch.  The end result is that Ben’s imagination is running laps in a circle, but his body doesn’t get taken for a walk around the block.

If you want to get out of such a loop, then you need to get out of those lies, and damn lies.  How so you do that?  Become so aware of what is going on in your mind that you are able to see the lies in there for what they are.  When you are aware that the thoughts in your head are lies, you won’t believe them anymore.  Sometimes it’s not enough to have an opposing belief, or to try and think something else.  This does make pre-existing lies go away.  Just like the story above, these only moved Ben’s attention on to something else.

What helps to get rid of these types of lies is to become aware of the assumptions they are built on, and notice the lies within these assumptions.  That’s what I tried to do above.  I broke down each thought so you could see the underlying false beliefs (lies) they were built on. When you not only see a thought as a lie, but know WHY it is a lie, you are much less likely to fall for that tricky voice in your head the same way.

There are practical steps to learn how to do this in the Self Mastery course. 

Any good tool, technique, practice, or philosophy, can help you out of suffering and into greater happiness and love. And when that tool, technique, practice, or philosophy is taken too far, it can become a dogmatic trap that creates unhappiness and suffering. That dual edged sword applies to the tools, techniques, and practices I teach as well.  The Buddhists refer to this dynamic as a “Near Enemy.”

A hammer can pound a nail so you can hang your picture.  Miss the nail and you hurt your finger.  A skill saw or table saw can cut that piece of wood just right and help you build a house.   But if you cut a board the wrong length it costs you time, money, and you have a pile of waste.  That same saw helping you build your house can also take off a finger.

Tools can help you build a home and everything in it so you are warm and comfortable.  They can also hurt you if you mishandle those tools.  There are techniques you apply to changing your beliefs and emotions so you can be happier.  Take them too far, or misuse them, and you hurt your self or others unnecessarily.

Acceptance vs. Boundaries

The practice of acceptance can allow you to be gentle with your self.  It’s a new inner communication softening the words of the inner critic and even dissolving them completely.  It’s a way to relax internally that you feel physically and emotionally.   If taken further you dissolve judgmental criticisms in your mind about other people.  This can relieve you of lots of toxic thoughts and emotions in your head.  If you take the practice of acceptance too far you allow people to be disrespectful to you and take advantage of you. You avoid putting up boundaries with abusive critical people when it is called for.

Then, when you feel the emotional consequence of the other party’s disrespect, your overdeveloped faith in the acceptance tool tells you that you aren’t doing it right.  You should be more accepting of people who disrespect you.  You end up telling your self, “If I was just more accepting of them and myself then their words wouldn’t bother me so much.”  Self judging words inflict more emotional harm.  This is the result when you try harder with a tool that you have already taken too far.

It is a fine point of balance to stand in acceptance of your self where you are in your journey while you push forward with changes on your emotions and beliefs.  You will probably cross over this balance point many times before you stabilize on it.   That’s just part of the practice.

Left or Right?  Which way do I go?

More than once people have pointed out what seemed to be contradictions or problems with the tools I share.  Often the problem is that the understanding of the practice has been exaggerated or taken too far and is no longer helpful.   Being mindful that any practice or technique can be taken too far and it becomes harmful will help you be more skillful in your practice.

One student complained to his teacher, “A while back you said I should do more of A.  and now you are saying that I should do more of  B.   That’s almost the exact opposite of A.  I think you are contradicting your self.   The teacher responded, “Yes I did tell you those things.  That’s because last month you were veering too far off the path to the right.  So I told you to come left.  Now you are veering too far left and leaving the path so I’m suggesting you move more to the right.”

Work Ethic vs. Rest and Play

Lisa has a well developed work ethic.  She applies it to everything.  When she took on my Self Mastery program she went at it with the same work ethic she applied to her education, her job, and her triathlon training.  She made a lot of progress fast.  She saw a lot of amazing changes within her self and changes in her relationships and her life.  That inspired her to work the program harder.  Her discipline and consistent focus of time and attention was reaping rewards.  However as hard as she worked, some issues still hadn’t changed.

A conversation with Lisa revealed that no matter how hard she worked, she still wasn’t getting there as fast as she wanted.  “Where do you want to get to?” I asked.

Lisa described an extensive number of big changes she still wanted to make, including achieving levels of emotional mastery.

“What is driving you to push so hard to make those changes?” I asked.

Lisa was quiet for a while and then said, “It seems like it is a critical voice in my head of the inner Judge.”

“And how do you feel when it is beating you up for not working hard enough?” I asked.

Lisa took some time to think and feel into the dynamic.  “I feel like I’m not good enough.  Like I am lazy, like I’m failing,” she said.

“So let me get this straight. There is an image of perfection you have in your mind that your belief system says you should get to.  It’s a  kind of super spiritual ego image.  Your judge is there pushing you to it, criticizing you for not being that image already.  All under the assumption that it knows the time line for how long these changes take.  And the result of believing in the image of perfection, and the inner Judge is that you push your self hard every day, and feel like a failure of a victim while you do it.  Is that about right?”

“That’s about right,” she said.

It turned out that some of the motivation for doing this inner work was being driven by the same judge/victim belief system of suffering that existed in other areas of her life.  A strong work ethic has rewarded her well in life and she should benefit from it.  It seemed she was over using her “go to” tool and in the process abusing her self with it.

Some of Lisa’s work ethic was driven by the harsh critic voice of the inner judge.  The more she followed what it said, the more she reinforced the Image of Perfection beliefs and Victim feelings as well.  The result was that the “hard work” dynamic was reinforcing negative beliefs instead of allowing her freedom from them.

Balance and Moderation

Lisa’s new assignment was to take some time off during the week and have fun. Go do things just for enjoyment and pleasure.  Maybe it was a day off from the inner work, maybe it was an afternoon here and there where she didn’t need to struggle to be “aware.”

At first Lisa resisted this approach thinking she wanted to go faster.

“It will help you to go faster,” I said.  “It’s a different way of accomplishing the same thing.   Right now the strong work ethic approach has been corrupted by judgment and victimization.  It is inflicting emotional suffering which is what we are trying to alleviate.  So it is time to back off that pattern and work on changing those beliefs a different way for now.”

I explained that the new approach of taking time during the week to enjoy your life and have fun is actually a different way to break the pattern of the Judge/Victim beliefs causing  suffering.  When you are laughing, you are not in self judgment or a victim state of suffering.  When you are playing and having fun you are not in a judge/victim state of mind.  When you are enjoying you life you are freeing your self from suffering.  These are all ways to transcend the emotional suffering of the judge/victim mind.  Going out during the week and taking time off to enjoy your life is a direct way to do it.

In one of the early emails you get after signing up for the Self Mastery Course I tell people to make time to have fun.  I think many people over look this point or don’t understand the importance at the time.

Practice all things in balance and moderation.  Any approach, even the “hard work” approach can be taken too far and trip up your steps down your Pathway to Happiness.

Any self help tool or technique can help you to be free of unhappiness.  The same technique can also be misused, abused, and exaggerated and become self destructive to your process.   This is why the Buddhists call them “Near Enemy’s” They start out as your friend and you hold it close.  But if you hold too tightly it becomes distorted or exaggerated enough to become an Enemy that is hurting you.

It will take time to learn how to properly use the many different techniques effectively.  You will no doubt misuse some at times, particularly in the beginning.  That’s to be expected and is okay.  The over all use of any practice should help more than hurt.  And with practice you will become more skillful with each exercise so that after a while you don’t use it against your self, or others, at all.

It’s not just practice that will make you a master, but skillful practice will make you a skillful master.  In the beginning things may be a bit clumsy, but so is everyone when they start something new.  The way to solve that is to practice and observe what happens.  Put the tools into action and allow your self the freedom to change how you use them in a way that works for you.  That will help you avoid becoming dogmatic.

As you practice each tool, do so while being aware of the results as best you can.   Be aware that you can take it too far, become too dogmatic, or become too attached to its use.   If you keep each practice in moderation and balance it with skillful use, you can avoid using these tools as Near Enemy’s against your self.

Hope that helps.

Gary

Specific exercises and practices for becoming more mindful and changing beliefs can be found in the Self Mastery Course. The first few sessions are free for you to try.

In summary:  a Near Enemy is a Buddhist term used to describe how the ego distorts a useful spiritual practice into one that causes more suffering.

When we have a vision of how the “perfect” meal should come out we then feel the stress of the difference.  We then feel compelled to make the meal “fit” that image in our mind.  That compulsive feeling appears to be the answer to what will make our stress feel better. When we have an expectation of how someone “should” behave, and they don’t fit that mental image, we create stress.  The answer our distorted belief system proposes to stress is to figure out how to get someone to behave differently.  So we stress some more about coming up with the “right” way to change someone else’s behavior. All the while not paying attention to the other half of the problem,,, our expectations.

The need to control things or other people and make them “perfect” might seem like the solution, but actually it is just another reaction to a previous feeling.

So my suggestion to reducing stress is to first be aware of the need to control and make things “perfect”.  Then shift your attention away from making reality fit a seemingly “fixed” mental image or expectation. Instead, put your attention on that expectation.  Expectations are much easier to change than someone’s behavior, the reality of airline delays or, getting the mashed potatoes just right.  To be flexible give your self more than one option of what would be “okay.”  For practice or fun make it a game and give your self, and the people around you 3 or 4 options.

Stress is a good indicator that you are more attached to the illusion image in your mind than you are being present with the world around you.

Of course it is only easier to change the expectations when you are aware that you have them,,, and that they are not matching up to reality.  Notice that, and you’ll begin to see that you can change the stress you feel by detaching from some of your expectations, and accepting the mashed potatoes just the way they are.

May Blessings to you, family, and friends this season.

Gary van Warmerdam

____________

The action to make changes is a different issue.

Gary

______________

Honestly,,, nothing.  In truth you are fine.   There really is nothing wrong with you.  That’s my perspective with everyone I talk to.  And I talk to a lot of people because I do this professionally.  The next question is:

“But I don’t feel fine. Why do I feel so lousy, (angry, sad, unhappy, jealous, insecure, anxiety, etc)?”

Because the emotions you feel are being created as responses to beliefs you have.  Your beliefs are negative, fearful, anxiety ridden, and your emotions respond accordingly.  Your emotions are responding perfectly to what is going on in your mind.  The problem is that you are having negative and fearful thoughts running through your mind,,, and you are believing in them.  How you feel emotionally is just a natural response to the beliefs you have.  The important thing to understand is that YOU are not the problem.  There is nothing wrong with you, it’s what is going on in your mind that is the problem.  Your mind has thoughts and beliefs that are false and fear based. You are not those thoughts and beliefs.  As a matter of fact,,, you aren’t even the one thinking them.   Your mind is tossing them about your imagination all by itself.

In my approach I make a distinction between YOU, and your mind which is made up of your thoughts and beliefs.  YOU are fine, but your mind is filled with false and fear based beliefs.

Some people will then ask, “But why am I thinking all these negative thoughts.   And this is my point,,, YOU are not the one thinking those negative thoughts.  Your mind is thinking them all on it’s own and taking you for a ride much like a daydream, or even a night time dream.  Sometimes those daydreams turn into very focused horrific scenarios and can seem very real.   Your emotional body can’t tell the difference between reality, and what you believe is reality so it reacts according to those dreams in your mind.

Your physiology and physical body can react as well.  Your adrenalin will kick in when there is a fearful thought, as well as other fight or flight responses.  You then might have the physical responses of those chemicals in your system as well as tightness in your muscles, shifts in your digestion, accelerated heart beat, on top of your emotional responses.  Your specific reaction will depend on how fearful the thought is, how strongly you believe it, and how much awareness you have.

___________________________________

I have made a free audio podcast, “What is a belief?” and how it affects our mind and emotions that explains this in more detail.
___________________________________

Are you saying this is all in my head?

No.  Some of your emotions might be from very real life experiences.  Some of our emotions can be from real life events while some emotions are in response to what our mind projects.  Suppose you are in the midst of a divorce.  Your spouse is splitting up with you and now you are only seeing your children half time.

Those things are real and you are going to go through some emotional cycles as things change.  Those are not part of what your mind is projecting and dreaming.  Those are the facts.  But the facts probably aren’t causing you as much unhappiness as the dreamed up scenarios your mind is spinning.  Those might be how you have failed as a father, as a husband, that your life is ruined, that your kids lives are ruined, that they will be broken the rest of their life.  Those are dreams you are having in your mind.  They are imagined projections about how the rest of your life will turn out, or how your children’s lives will turn out.   They are generally fearful, unhappy, and only exist as movies in your imagination; or what I call dreams in your mind.  You might also call them thoughts or beliefs.

The distinction that is important to make here is between the facts, and what your mind projects onto the facts.  Some of your emotions are a response to real life events.  But many of your emotions, are from things you imagine.  To have the clarity to perceive the difference between reality, and projections of the mind is what I call awareness.  Awareness is critical to changing how you feel emotionally.

With awareness you first become aware of the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and judgments the mind projects all by itself.  Then notice how much of your emotions come from your mental projections.   These are the emotions that are easiest to change.  You will still likely have some emotions stemming from the reality of how your life is changing.  These emotions can and will change too with some more attention and practice.  It is also much easier to change these emotions once you don’t have the added layer of emotions coming from your negative thoughts and fear based beliefs.

What you discover in this process is that YOU don’t have to change.  That’s because you are not the problem.  You are fine.  The problem is with the negative thoughts and false beliefs in your mind causing all those emotional reactions.  When you change the interpretations your mind makes, your emotional state changes.  Then you are back on your way to feeling fine again.  This is why developing awareness is the key to lasting happiness.

Even the question, “What is wrong with me?” is a combination of thoughts and false beliefs.  It is built on the assumed belief that:

a)  There is something wrong with me.

b)   I don’t know what is wrong so that is another problem of not knowing.

c)   I should know what is wrong with me but I don’t so I feel confused because I don’t know something my belief system says I should know.

All of these thoughts have us chasing some phantom idea that there is something wrong with us.  Why don’t we find it,,, because there is nothing wrong with us.  Yes we feel bad, but that is because we are caught up in these assumed beliefs that there is something wrong.   It’s like we got on the wrong line of questioning and it is taking us into a nightmare dream that there are no answers for.   It’s equivalent to spending time trying to answer the question, “What is the smell of piano music?”  It’s a nonsense question and we would be wasting our time trying to answer it.  The same is true for the question, “What is wrong with me?

We are much better served asking questions like:

What do I believe that isn’t true?  Is the thought my mind thinking helpful to making me happy?  What assumptions are behind that thought that make it not true?   How are those false beliefs affecting me emotionally?  What are the steps to changing these beliefs?

Go to the Self Mastery Course for  practical steps to finding and changing your false and fear based beliefs. By using the tools you learn in the course you will develop awareness about what is going on in your mind and have the tools to change it.

Often inside of us there is a feeling that things just aren’t right or complete.  Perhaps we get that feeling when we look at the world and people and things just don’t make sense. Something isn’t quite right and we feel it.  Some people see something specific and are able to begin to address it. Perhaps what they put their attention on children who are hungry or that can’t read.  Maybe people are sick and you go to work in the health care field.  You might become a doctor, a nurse, or do the filing of the office records.  It doesn’t matter what you do, but because of your efforts more people are healthier at the end of the day and that makes you feel better.  But even then you may wonder what the underlying causes of why things are the way they are.  It may seem that you are seeking to create justice and fairness and in the process gain some truth.

Maybe your job isn’t so altruistic as most aren’t, or at least you don’t see the direct impact.  Maybe you don’t really like your work and don’t see it as a fulfilling service to people or a worthwhile cause.  A clerical position, administration, a banker, or a computer programmer doesn’t have as tangible way of feeling good about what they do.  But they get up every work day, and do their job like so many others.  Why?  The biggest motivator is often to feed and put a roof over the heads of your children and family.  You go to work everyday not because you love what you do but because you love the people you provide for.  You love them and because of that you serve them.  It’s the love for them that feels good, and that’s why you do it.

In the duality of that situation you consider getting laid off or quitting the job you don’t like and the consequences.  You imagine letting your family down and what that would fee like.  Just imagining it feels awful.  So to avoid that feeling you have to avoid getting laid off.  You work extra hard, you take a pay cut, or so many other things you don’t want to do to avoid that feeling.  You don’t want you or your family to go hungry, but you also don’t want to feel that awful feeling of failure.  In this case you are as much searching for a way not to feel bad, as you are looking for a way to feel good.  In any case emotions play a factor in our motivations.

Sometimes our motivations are more self directed.  Maybe we don’t have the responsibility of family and we are doing fine at supporting our self.  Yet we are still driven.  Maybe we are a researcher and figuring things out in the field of biology or chemistry etc.  There is that excitement and curiosity.   Some struggle and frustration goes with the hard work. But we make our self feel good about working hard.  We tell our selves good work ethic stories and success stories that prop up our self esteem.  When we discover something about an enzyme or polymer that we didn’t know before we get that rush of euphoria.  Like the last piece of a puzzle fitting perfectly into place your body relaxes and everything makes sense and you with that feeling of completion.  For a while you want for nothing.   And it is that feeling that gets to be addicting.  It is addicting enough that another part of our mind starts to look around for another hard problem to solve just so we can get that feeling of completion again.  A feeling that comes briefly at the end, that’s what we look for,,, a feeling.  I say that because only when we are feeling that way do we stop searching.

The feeling may not last very long at times, but when it is, we want for nothing.  We don’t have a need to search, or change, anything.

Using Logic and Reason to Understand Emotions

We spend a lot of time in school learning, memorizing, and becoming very logical about life.  We are trained to be logical.   We even try to be logical about the emotions we feel.  But logic and reason often have a distorted way of understanding emotions.

The emotions we felt so freely as a child are ignored, or we are told to ignore them with our rational mind.

While growing up emotions arise and we act in ways that aren’t approved of and we are reprimanded.  Not only is our anger not acceptable when we speak up or fight back, but expressing joy, love and happiness are disapproved of at times too.  I got in trouble myself laughing uncontrollably in church at times.  When we are happy we want to sing, shout, and run around.  We are told by teachers and parents many times to sit down, be still, and be quiet.  To make our body fit that stillness and posture we have to push down the energy of emotion moving through us even if it is joyful.  We don’t want to get into trouble so we learn to stop expressing joy in most circumstances and just do it in a few select circumstances.   We are conditioned to only express love, joy, and happiness in certain circumstances.  But over time these opportunities can slip away too.   We don’t want to feel the guilt, shame, and embarrassment when others are upset with us so we obey the ruling order and repress our joy and happiness.  Then a twist happens.  By stuffing down all that joy, laughter, happiness, and doing what we are “supposed to” do we are told we are a good girl or a good boy.

“More on the Twisted” part

A “good” girl (boy) doesn’t just stuff down their anger and sadness, they have to stuff down their joy, happiness, and laughter as well.  A “good girl” is one that is more serious and has less happiness and fun.  In the world of many rules to follow you can’t just go running around singing, and laughing with all that joy and happiness.  That wouldn’t be “appropriate.”  That’s not what a good girl does.  (There are also rules that you “can’t” go on a weekend or spiritual retreat either.)  If we are a good girl we only express our joy and happiness except in certain circumstances and then only in controlled ways.  By the time we are 30 so busy being “seriously responsible” that we hardly remember that joy earlier in our life.   We learn to feel good about our self only because other people reward us with the recognition of being “good.” But we have lost the natural intrinsic feeling of love, joy, and happiness that used to flow freely out of us when we were young.

Later in life we feel we have lost something. Something isn’t quite right. We know that because of how we feel.   Yet we no longer relate it to an emotional feeling issue because we have learned to ignore these things.  We were busy doing all the things we were supposed to do.  We were the good boy, or the good girl, but we don’t feel good.   Something inside isn’t quite right, but we don’t know what.  We don’t feel happy but we may not even know it.   We look around trying to figure out what we “should do” or “should be,” because that is the question we were trained to ask.  But it is the wrong question to address emotional states.

The other distraction we make is to look at the world and think there must be something wrong with the world that’s causing me to feel this way.  Of course we can find issues of injustice and suffering in the world and attribute our emotions to them.  But not all of our emotions are a result of the world out side of us.  More often our emotions are caused by our interpretations and beliefs about the world.  Again we try to fix the world outside but do not address changing how our mind interprets things and beliefs we have.  This causes us our own feeling of injustice and dissatisfaction.   Something inside longs for the way we used to feel when we were emotionally free, but we aren’t aware that it is a feeling we are looking for.  We don’t notice those feelings inside, or why they aren’t there anymore and remember how we used to feel.  We don’t remember that joy and happiness that used to flow out of us.

What are you looking for?

What I propose to you is that you are looking for a feeling.  A feeling you had inside of you long ago.  It is a feeling of love, joy, and happiness that flowed out of you.  It drove you to sing, to play, to be curious, to have fun, and to laugh.  It’s a feeling of joy and love that you learned to stuff down under layers of beliefs about being “responsible,” “good,” “serious,” and doing what you are “supposed to do.”  Doing all those “important” things may have satisfied a feeling of success for a while, but often those opinion based feelings don’t last.  They leave you looking for something more.

More confusing is that our mind has attempted to solve this feeling issue by asking logical questions that worked for other issues.  It asks the question,, “What should I do?”   The problem with this question is that it invites us to follow all the rules of “should” we learned years ago.  Those rules might have worked when we were 6, and 12, and 16, but aren’t the kind of agreements we should follow when we are 25, 35, 45, and 65.  Those are the same rules that caused us to repress our emotions.  They are all there stored in our memory telling us what to do, what we should do, what we are supposed to do.  They chime in as voices in our head with fear when ever we consider changing the status quo and doing something we want to do.

The fear you feel when you consider breaking free of that yoke of beliefs you carry in your mind isn’t always YOUR fear.  It’s a fear the belief system has that you will no longer obey it.  Those voices, like an external ruling system becomes afraid that you will change.  You can feel its fear, but it does not mean that it is YOUR fear.  Yes you can feel your mind reacting that way when you consider a new way of life, of just doing something fun that you want to do.  But that fear is from your belief system and not from anything authentic.

What those voices in your head will tell you is that you better not break the rules in the mind, you better not go forward and really change.  You better not pursue that feeling inside and feel all of that joy, all of that love, and all that happiness.  It says that if you really feel all of that happiness then some kind of bad things will happen. What bad things?  It doesn’t know really.  Upon exploration you might find that it comes up with ridiculous things like, “You mother will be mad at you.”  The voices in your head say these types of things even if you are 55 and your mother is already dead.  Sometimes your beliefs don’t change even if your reality has.  When that is the case you have to go and manually change your own beliefs you acquired in the past.

The voices in your head (negative thoughts) will say things like, “If you go after your happiness then soon you will do whatever you want and then how will you provide for your self?”   Hmm … I think I see some distortion here.   We didn’t say that we would quit our job and stop being responsible.  We didn’t say that we would do “whatever” we wanted.  We didn’t say that we would become completely hedonistic.  The voices in our head said that.  They exaggerated what we wanted and turned it into an idea of anarchy then point out how bad that would be.  Be careful not to fall for such distortions the voices in your head might make.  It doesn’t mean we will quit our job and not pay our bills.

All we are talking about is finding that feeling inside of us.  Finding and feeling that intrinsic joy, love, and happiness that we are searching for is what we want.   Maybe we don’t commit to a complete transformation.  Maybe we just change a few things and add a few other things that we want in our life.  It’s not anarchy.  It’s some smaller changes leading to us feeling better.   A feeling that used to naturally flow out of us before we acquired all these false beliefs and fears that repressed them.

Years ago I had a coaching client, Mary.  Mary worked as an executive in a large company.   She didn’t find her job fulfilling and thought of quitting.  She had the belief that if she worked at her church and helped people that it would be much more rewarding.  The problem was that she was a single mom raising two boys.  She didn’t want to give up income and live near the poverty line on what the church could afford to pay her.  She wanted the feeling of fulfillment and satisfying a purpose and her mind had wrapped it up in the packaging of this certain type of work.  Of course that type of lifestyle would mean all sorts of other emotional stresses financially and so she would be trading one set of unsatisfying emotions for another.

What Mary did do was identify and change the beliefs that were repressing many of the intrinsic feelings of joy, love, acceptance, and respect that she had.  As she did this she felt happier in areas of her life including her job and enjoyed it more.  Then she discovered something else.  She discovered that many of the people on her team were living in similar belief systems of fear and self judgment.  She began to set up communication systems with them that eliminated the fear of reprimands and judgments that they felt.  Her team became less guarded and began to communicate with her and each other with less fear.  With better communication Mary got blindsided less at work and began to have more enjoyment.   It turned out that she had a calling all right.  It was to help her people at work live with less fear, less judgment, less criticism, and be happier in their work lives like she was.   She was helping people and that made her feel good. She could satisfy that feeling without giving up the six figure income. When Mary found that she had those emotions of joy and happiness inside her all the time, everyday, she realized that she didn’t have to leave her job in order to feel better, or fulfilled.

What are you looking for?  I propose to you that it is Love.

We can call it many different things and it has many different ways that we feel and experience it.  It might be a feeling of joy, happiness, calm peace, gratitude, compassion, or acceptance and respect for our self and others.  Love, the emotion has many different forms, flavors, and expressions.  Sometimes in that feeling of love we are inspired to sing, or laugh.  It fills us up so fully that we have to let it out with some form of expression or action.  At other times it guides us to sit still, look around in awe of the beauty that we perceive.  It pulls our attention towards wonderful food, the smells in the kitchen, beautiful music, and nature are all inspirations for that feeling of pleasure that rushes through us.  Love has so many ways to experience it, and all of them are pleasurable.

Where will you find what you are looking for?

Where do you find Love?   The dating sites will tell you to look for a partner and to get it from them.  Marketers will tell you that you will find that feeling when you buy their product.  Their great scheme is to sell you an emotion that you create for your self, and associate it to their product.   It’s why so many people keep buying things the don’t need.  It’s the business of selling someone an emotion that they create themselves.  The customers are looking for a feeling but only know how to get it from the temporary experience of buying or having something material.

The person wanting another plastic surgery is looking for a feeling as well.  They want to feel better about their body.  They believe their body is causing their emotions.  What they don’t notice is that their beliefs about their body are causing the emotion they don’t like.  It’s just easer to notice a body than it is a belief.  They just have the belief that they will feel differently when their body appears different.  But the shopper goes shopping again because the feeling didn’t last.  The emotional benefits of the plastic surgery aren’t likely to last either.  Maybe it’s not a surgery you want, but maybe you believe you will be so much happier when your kitchen is redone, or your television is larger. We may get the feeling, but it doesn’t usually last.

What is interesting though is that we buy something else and we create that feeling again.   When you see that pattern enough you begin to question whether the emotion really came with that product.  What you discover is that you are the one creating that emotion every time and just using the product as a trigger to create it.  When you learn to create that emotion of enjoyment at will, using our own triggers, you find you can feel that love and happiness any time and all the time.  And it doesn’t cost you the money for a new appliance or pair of shoes each time.

So if it is a feeling of love and happiness that we are seeking then why do we often end up unhappy and miserable?  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Part of it has to do with the beliefs we have about what will make us happy, and how that differs from what really creates that emotion within us.  Sometimes it has to do with beliefs about idealized versions of how life should be.  Then our mind compares real life situation to the idealized version  and that results in frustration, disappointment, sadness, or anger.   The belief that life should be different than it is, or that we should be different than we are can add to our unhappiness.   And we’ve learned to believe that these idealized versions is how we “should” think about things not realizing that we are creating misery doing it.  There are many different dynamics in the mind like this that impact our emotional state in a negative way.

The point I want to make in this article is that when you feel your self looking for something, but you aren’t sure what it is, consider it might be a feeling.  You don’t really want more money as you want a feeling of financial security.  You don’t want a perfect partner as much as you want to love and be loved.  You don’t really want enlightenment as much as you don’t want to be unhappy anymore.   This idea may be somewhat foreign to your thought process as we have been trained to look for knowledge, material thing, success, a special person, or something called a purpose.  But all of these are usually only a means to an end feeling.  It is really the end feeling we are looking for.   It is when you are experiencing that feeling state that you finally stop looking for something more.  And the best feeling state, the one that no one can take away from you, is your own love coming out of you.  It is the unconditional expression of love that you have hidden away that will satisfy your search.

Where will you find love? You will find that love inside you, in your own heart.  Not in your mind of thoughts, but when your mind is quiet and you put your attention on your own heart.   Yes you can find some happiness in the ways mentioned above.  Those are ways to trigger and help tap into that source inside you, but they may not last because we are conditioned to limit the emotions.  These are triggers that allow you to let some love and joy out in controlled doses and in circumstances the rules of the belief system says are appropriate.  So it won’t be all of your love, all of your joy, all of the happiness that you can experience when your heart is open and loving unconditioned by false beliefs.

How do you find this love in your own heart? You find it by identifying and dismantling all the false beliefs, fears, and rules of “should” that hold you back from letting your love come out of you.  As the poet Rumi says, “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers with in your self you have built against it.”

I’ve set up some ways to guide you in doing this.  The first is my online self paced course, The Self Mastery Program.

There is also the option to attend workshops, retreats, and intensives such as my upcoming Spiritual Journey Intensive to Mexico.

Instead I liken it to cleaning.  Big cleaning, like a road or driveway after a flood. (Think of it as a Pathway if you want.)  First time through you go to work with a front end loader.  The road gets cleared and you can make your way.  But if you look around closely there is more that can be cleaned.  You go after it with a shovel.    It all gets scooped up.  After a while the shovel doesn’t pick anything up anymore so you think you are done.  But if you look more closely at the path, between the bumps in the asphalt there are granules of dirt and sand.  Granules that could sometimes collect in areas and create bumps or slick spots where it isn’t as safe to drive the car or brake.   So you get a broom and sweep.  Now this dust comes up that the shovel never touched.

It may seem like you are going over the same area covering the same issues and stories as before, and, like you might have failed to do a good job.  (Careful about a judge victim story like that.  Wouldn’t be the first time someone fell for it though. )   Truth was that you are showing  up as a different person now looking at the same issues and can do a more detailed cleaning that you couldn’t do the first time.  It made no sense to start with a broom.  You needed a front end loader the first time.  Now the front loader won’t do the job for these details that were hiding between the cracks and bumps.  So you have to go back over the area of the same story,,, but in a different way this time.  You the cleaner can be more thorough this time with your broom in a way that you couldn’t do with a shovel.    That’s why sometimes these same stories/issues have to be revisited again.

In a way the thing that you are cleaning is your Self from all the false beliefs and false images you carry around in your mind.   At the same time You are the cleaning instrument.  The first time around you,,, the instrument, were still pretty clouded and so you probably didn’t clean your self up 100%.  So now, after you’ve done a thorough inventory and let go a great many beliefs, you are cleaner.  You also are a more finely tuned instrument.  So when you go back and you look at the same set of beliefs that you cleaned up a year or two ago, you see them differently.  You can find the distortions now that you couldn’t see before.  You see the dust in the cracks and can sweep those thoughts out.  When you were using a shovel you didn’t have the skills as the cleaning instrument to finish the job.  Therefore returning to the same topic more than once isn’t a measurement of failure.  Rather it is a progression of your skills to refine, grow, and be more thorough and complete in your changes.

Recently while journaling after an emotional reaction I had an interesting experience I thought I would share.

2nd Person) On the other hand, the image of the 2nd person was created and compared to the assumed image of myself. The judge ruled that the 2^nd person’s image was superior to the image it had for me according to its book of how people should be (Image of Perfection). It determined I was inferior to the other person and so developed another set of ‘rules’ for how the 2nd person should act.  They were a lot different than the set for the 1st person. I believed that because this person is better than me he has the right to judge me and mistreat me. I believed I was what he said I was.  So the judge judges me for not being as I should, as long as I believe I am what he says. My belief system and the voices in my head believe I am at fault and so the ego directs its anger towards me. I am now caught in a spiral of fear, judgment and anger all directed towards myself. In reality the judgment is towards an image which I create and assume is me. If I see this I can watch the reaction without actually being in it.

In both cases the same words were spoken but I felt very differently depending on what I believed about the two people.

Here’s the most important line to read in the second to last paragraph.

If I see this I can watch the reaction without actually being in it.

My take on that is:  If you have awareness, you are free to avoid emotional reactions.

The other point to note here is that this detailed realization really senses the basis for responsibility of our emotions to our self.  This isn’t always a comfortable feeling.  It isn’t always comfortable because we sometimes comfort our self by blaming others.   However, in taking responsibility, we open to door to having power over our emotions.  As long as we are blaming others (abdicating power of our emotions to others) we are dependent on other people to change how we feel.

What Sam discovered was that he was indeed responsible for creating his own emotional reactions.   When he saw how he created his emotions, he could no longer deny that he was creating his emotions.

The important part here is that through developing his awareness of what was going on in his mind Sam is able to change his emotional reaction.   This is important because knowing what is going on or why it is going on isn’t what we want.  What we want is to change our emotional reactions.   These are some of the results you can expect from the Self Mastery Course.

Why do I call it a “Spiritual” journey or retreat?

1.   I got to call it something.
2.  Spirit means Life, and this is part of the Life journey.
3.   Spirit means Love, and this is part of the path to Love and Happiness.
4.   A Spiritual experience is about Connection, and that begins with connecting with one’s self, in a way of love and respect, and then extending that connection to others, and to all living things.
5.  All of the above.

Is it dangerous with all the drug related issues?

NO.   And yes that is a capital NO.  If there were any likelihood of danger for people in a group I am guiding I wouldn’t be going.  Heck,, it’s more personal than that.  If I thought I was personally going to be in danger I wouldn’t go myself.  We fly into the Mexico city International airport where there is plenty of security.  We take our own van with a private driver to our own hacienda/retreat center located next to the old city ruins.  The small town that we stay in mostly sustains itself from the tourist and artist business in the area.  So,,, after having travel to this area regularly over the last 17 years I have no reason to believe it is dangerous.  It is more likely that the scary things you will face on this intensive are your fears and own inner demons.

How many people will be going?

We won’t know til the last week or two.  Last year’s group was 18 in size.  I’ve done trips as small as 6 people and as large as 40.  When it was 40 people it was combined with other teachers.  There are reasons to really like a small group like the closeness and amount of personal time, but we lose out on some of the diversity and richness of personalities and insights that that happen in a larger group.  With a larger group some activities like ceremony and group meditations are strengthened with numbers.   So by my standard the ideal number is the number that show up.

Is there time for personal interaction?

Yes.  There is time during meals which we all have together and walks to and from the grounds.  There is also personal relaxation time in the afternoons before evening class.  For me sometimes the personal interaction is the most enjoyable part.  It’s not just a facilitator and participant relationship. We get a chance to share, know each other as equals, joke, laugh, and create a more well rounded relationship.  Some people that have worked with me over years have become good life long friends.  And that’s not just true for me.  You also meet others on your trip that are of a like mind that you may stay in touch with well after the retreat.

What kind of people go on these trips?

My trips are generally pretty balanced between men and women.  Most are college educated professionals.  Some are starting out in a process of working through emotional reactions that have recently arisen. Others have worked through those basic stages and discovered there is a lot more love and happiness to experience.  They return numerous times seeking deeper levels of truth and understanding of the world, and to experience deeper and more expansive love, compassion, and freedom in their lives.

I tend to attract people who appreciate my common sense and logical approach to love happiness, and changing beliefs and emotions. Last years group included two doctors, two PhD researchers, an auto mechanic, a dentist, a stay at home mom and an investment manager.

Is this process associated with any religious group?

(Sometimes read:  “Is this a cult?”)

I do not adhere to or limit myself to any single doctrine.  The essence of all spiritual traditions is the removal of emotional suffering and unhappiness and replacing it with a feeling of love, happiness, and connection.  So I embrace the fundamental truths in all traditions.  The process actually mixes and changes each day.   The morning might start with a Shamanic journey into dreaming, and in the afternoon we engage in a whole hearted forgiveness exercise based in a Christian perspective.  That evening I might use a story from the Hindu perspective to help in making a point.  What I care about is using these teachings as practical tools to guide people out of emotional suffering.

What you will find is that I am respectful of each person’s belief system.  I’ve had people attend my programs and done coaching with me that are Orthodox Jews, a Christian Seminary student, an atheist, Catholics, Buddhists, and others.  What I teach about is personal belief systems, perspective, changing emotions, and Love.  I also teach it in a way that respects each person’s religious beliefs.

And as far as the cult thing?  No.  I try hard to avoid suggesting to people what they should believe.  (You might notice a great void of this in my website and audios.)   I tend to leave people’s personal choices to them selves, even if they ask me for suggestions.  (which they often do).  Instead I guide people to become aware of their hidden beliefs, be aware of the emotional and behavioral consequences, and then decide if they want to stay attached to those beliefs.

Isn’t the place with pyramids in Mexico where they did human sacrifices?  Is that part of this teaching?

Human sacrifice is not part of what I teach.  What I point people to inquire about is themselves, what they believe, and the emotions they feel.  I then engage them in practices and processes to change those negative states of emotions.

I haven’t studied the history of human sacrifice on this issue except to understand how people could fanatically believe in a dogma so strongly that the would take the life of a fellow human being.  I think it is helpful to be aware of such things so we don’t fall into such practices.  I am skeptical about the history, mostly because it is difficult to say what happened 1000 years ago in a society or why.   There may have been a splinter sect of the teachings that distorted the things and became fanatical about their beliefs.  I really don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time that a small group of fanatics have seized power and ruled over a large group of people that just wanted simple freedoms and a simple life of happiness.  These civilizations have thousands of years of history and I am not an expert on all of it.

Pointing to one part of the civilizations past and saying they believed in human sacrifice would be like pointing to the Spanish Inquisition and saying, “That is what Christianity is about.”  Or pointing to a few Buddhist monks that set themselves ablaze in past years and saying, “That is the teaching of Buddha.”  Nothing could be farther from the point.  We wouldn’t look at the history of Rome and point to the most horrific of persecutions and conclude that is what they had to teach or is their legacy.

What it helps to be aware of is how our mind fixates on such issues that probably happened for a short period of time within the history of a culture and then ignores a thousand years of history.  How is it that our mind fixates on such a negative and builds it up in our imagination so that it blinds us from seeing the beauty in the world?  This is worth breaking free of and is the type of process that I teach.

Why do I go to the ancient ruins and Pyramids?

I go to the ancient city and pyramids because there is a rich history there of personal transformation.   A large part of their culture for many centuries consciously worked through their individual beliefs and mental states of emotional suffering. A large city of people lived in peace and harmony within their own mind, and with the people around them.  It is that part of the culture that is interesting to me. It interests me because if they could do it, then we can do it.

The city of Teotihuacan was built principally as a University for teaching conscious awakening.  Where people became aware of how the beliefs, chatter, and negative emotions in their mind were causing emotional suffering, and they developed practices to free themselves from their fears, critical judgments, and negative emotional reactions.  When we go to Teotihuacan we engage in the same types of practices that were successfully used for hundreds of years.  In short, I take people there through these processes because they work.  That’s probably the engineer side of me.  I want things to be effective and work for people or they aren’t of much value.

Do you need to do anything to prepare for the Intensive?  NO.

Often people feel they are not ready for a trip.  They feel they need to study more, or do more of my on line Self Mastery course and develop some level of skill and accomplishments before attending a week long intensive.  This is only a belief.  Truthfully this is not so.  My intensives are taught in a way that the material is accessible for the most basic beginner.  It is not necessary to have read one book, or done my online course.  At the same time there is plenty of depth for the more advanced students that have been doing personal transformation work for years.  Some of the people on the upcoming trip have done several events with me in the past, even 4 or 5 intensives to Mexico.   Each time they go the find more subtle, and sometimes more profound changes in their life.

Do I teach alone?  Generally yes.

If I know it is going to be a large group, then I might invite someone to assist.  If there is someone who is has been on several intensives before, I might call on them to share and assist at times.  This benefits them because they get to step out of their role as a “student.”   It also helps them integrate and deepen the material when they talk and share about it.  By sharing they deepen their learning.   I am discerning about the quality of the teaching experience that people get so I have a short list, but I am hoping to lengthen it.  Some people have shared an interest in learning to teach what I do.  In preparing for that these types of intensives are probably the best training.   

Will we be required to share?  No

You don’t have to share anything about your self or your process unless you want to. If you want you are welcome to do the entire intensive in silence.   I’m not inclined to have a big group counseling session where we each air the dirty laundry of our history. What I have found is that long telling of our history can be time consuming and when done in a group can be a distraction to others.  We don’t have to talk about our dark secrets in order to clean them up.  What is important is that we clean them up.  To do this we put our own attention on our own stuff in a constructive healing way.

Given that, I do invite people to share at times if they so choose.  There is value in sharing.  We can learn the lessons of others without having to repeat their mistakes.  We can gain insights and different perspectives on what they did and how they did it to help speed our process.  We get to find out that we are not alone, and not that different from others.  This helps break down the beliefs that keep us feeling isolated.   When sharing we can break the emotional patterns of hiding, and shame, that often accompany self judgment.  There is something healing about sharing what is going on inside with a group of people and realizing they don’t judge you.  It plants the seed that you don’t have to judge your self either.

So share if you like, or don’t if you prefer.  I respect each person’s free will to do their process as they please.

By the same token, when you attend one of these retreats, intensives, or spiritual journeys, you are welcome to participate or opt out of any of the activities.  Sometimes people opt to take the afternoon off and be by themselves.  That is fine.  I completely respect each person’s choices and their own process.