15 years ago I was enamored with this personal development process.  I had discovered a whole new world.   I felt alive, happy, and excited about my new adventure.  There were fears and false beliefs that I had acquired over my life and I didn’t even know they were there.   I had been dragging them around like a dark cloud over me for years.  I had been unconscious of how they hung on me with worries of success and what others thought of me.  Now I was discovering them and attacking them with excitement and a new sense of freedom as each one fell.

I felt alive, I looked at the world different, and I was happier.  I was excited and wanted to share this new discovery with my friends.  I thought everyone would want to get on board with this process of finding their fears and getting rid of them.

I remember coming back from an Intensive Spiritual Retreat and meeting a friend for dinner.  She asked how my trip was and I proceeded to pour out all my excitement.  After about 3 minutes of non-stop talking I noticed she was leaning back away from me as far as she could.  The look on her face was split between concerns that I joined a cult, and fear that she might catch something.  I realized I needed to soften my presentation.

I continued inviting people to workshops and lectures but with a gentler approach.  I talked in an indirect way about how happy we could be, and how we needed to change these fear based beliefs to do it.  People I talked to continued to be uninterested.   I went from believing that everybody would do this work to thinking hardly anybody will do this work. I began to wonder, why such resistance to being happy?

I reflected on my own process and realized the turning point for me was that I was painfully unhappy.  I had become disillusioned in my career, and around the same time had a high drama relationship that ended.  If it was just the relationship that had crashed I probably could have buried my emotions in my work.  If it was a career that had run aground, I probably could have found comfort in my relationship.  Fortunately for me, both crashed at the same time and I ended up unable to deny how unhappy I was.  Out of a lack of alternatives I needed to do something about the illusions in my mind.

I finally understood why people wouldn’t jump head first into this self awareness process.  It was emotionally uncomfortable.  The process actually involved looking inward at our fears, emotional reactions, and self judgments.  We were doing what some people call shadow work, where we look at the unpleasant emotions we feel.  Facing that critical voice in our head can be a bit scary.  People would tend to avoid that loud abusive voice in their head criticizing them, or the uncomfortable fears they felt.   Over time I realized that I couldn’t push them past this resistance, nor did I want to.

How I Overcame Some Of My Resistance

The word I had for what we were doing was “spiritual.”  The word we used to refer to our selves was “warrior.”  We used the word warrior because we were in a kind of war.  We were fighting to be free of the fears, self judgments, and the tyranny of those voices in our head and false beliefs that controlled our attention.  We were fighting against all the patterns of unhappiness that we created in our mind and our relationships.

As a person’s self importance will do, I began to think of myself and my other spiritual warriors as doing something special.  We were forging into emotionally uncomfortable places others were unwilling to go.  I started to create beliefs that I (we) were more courageous, or fearless, or wiser than others.  I built up a belief system that people who do this type of introspection and belief changing work are more conscious and evolved than the majority of people in the world.   Perhaps I even considered that we were somehow raising the consciousness of the rest of humanity.  The smaller the number of people who entered into this field of challenging their fears and endeavoring to be happy I interpreted as evidence for how special we were, particularly how special I was.  All pretty self important stuff.

Early on in my personal process of change I listened and read Joseph Campbell’s work on the Mythological Journey of the Hero.  My mind used it to feed my self importance.  Yes I was doing something of “mythological” proportions.  I was following the path the masters before me took.  I was doing what the Buddha did facing all the illusions.  My journey inward to an authentic self was the type of journey written about and read for generations to come.  Mythological,,,, that’s what it was.

It’s interesting how the stories about our selves change over time.  Was I really engaged in anything that grandiose?   I don’t think of it that way anymore.  I was certainly living myths, and the story I had of myself at that time was another myth.   All the self importance I had built up around being a spiritual warrior and the special kind of courage it exemplified was another kind of myth I lived by.  They were just stories I had in my mind about myself and other people.   It was a much better story than the victim ones it replaced, but still not the truth.

What of the fears I challenged and the tyranny of the voices in my head telling me I wasn’t good enough and all the things I “should” do to be “good enough”?  Then weren’t they mythological too.  By that I mean they weren’t real.  They didn’t have the properties of physical matter.   I was challenging fears based in stories and beliefs in my mind.  They weren’t even written on paper, that’s how “not real” they were.

One of the fears I had was of what others thought of me.  I was afraid of the opinion or thoughts that might be in another person’s head.  I was living my life and behaving as if I would be hurt, or feel better emotionally depending on anther person’s thoughts.   I tried very hard to impress people and prove myself worthy in their eyes so they wouldn’t have judgmental or negative thoughts in their mind.  I was imagining one kind of story in their head and trying to make a different one exist in their head.  I didn’t have the awareness to realize that all of these assumptions were taking place in my imagination.  I was still in my own imagination when my mind was thinking about what they were thinking.

Later I would realize that if I didn’t have the power to control the voices and opinions in my own head, then I probably didn’t have the power to change the thoughts that went on in someone else’s head

I began to look at these stories, opinions, judgments, and negative thoughts in my fearful imagination that had me scrambling, and that I felt so courageous to challenge? They weren’t real.   They were myths. They were stuff that only existed in my imagination.  They didn’t exist as anything tangible.

Where is a thought?   Can an opinion hurt me?  Can someone actually take an opinion and hit me over the head with it?  Can they do any harm to me physically?   No.  Probably the most solid judgment or criticism that I could receive would be if someone said it out loud to me.  And is it real then?  Is there anything more landing on me than the vibration of their words through the air?   How hard is the vibration of air landing on my skin?   A leaf falling on me from a tree weighs more heavily than the air of someone’s opinion.

So why was I afraid of opinions and judgments from others, or from the voice in my own head?  I believed them.  Those words and judgments from my inner judge landed heavily because I believed them.  I accepted every myth of opinion and judgment as if it were truth.  They only landed with emotional impact when I believed them.   I was scared of the stories in my head simply because I believed them, not because they were real.

Ghost Stories

All those opinions, self judgments, and fears of what others thought were like the ghost stories we had when we were kids.  Little kids are afraid that a boogey man will come out of the closet or out from under the bed.  What makes a child afraid of such imaginary characters?   They believe that such things as boogey men are real.  The ghost they are afraid of isn’t in the closet or under the bed.  It is in their mind, and their mind projects that it is in the closet.

As kids if we leave the light on, and the door cracked we feel a little better.  As if somehow that boogey man will be afraid of the light or a cracked door and will stay away.

As an adult I kept my fears locked in the closet of my unconscious.  I tried to keep my focus on the door cracked open and a little light. I did it by working extra hard to impress people with how much I knew, what my body looked like, or how clever I was.  I focused on those little moments of acceptance and respect from others and lived off that little bit of light.  At the same time afraid to look inward at the self doubts I closeted inside.

Yes I had mythological boogey men inside me.  I was afraid to disappoint the mythical voices in my head.  When I didn’t have any awareness I dreamed up in my imagination failure, rejection, and disappointment a thousand different ways.  Only when I took a journey into those seemingly dark places did I notice they were just dreams. Of course to realize they were just figments of my imagination I had to get in where they were and take a close look.  I opened the closet of my unconscious beliefs and put my attention on what my thoughts and emotions were doing.   I had to control my attention and not look away when there was an impulse of fear or discomfort.  I crawled inside the closet of my mind to see what was really there.

What I discovered were myths in my mind masquerading as something real.    How ironic I thought.  I was convinced that I was some kind of courageous spiritual warrior on a great quest.  What I was really facing were dreams,,, conceptual ideas of the mind… and ghosts stories.  They were no more real than the figments of imagination a child has about what is under the bed.  What I was doing wasn’t very courageous at all when you find out there was nothing there to be afraid of.

Do I think a 10 or 12 year old child who challenges the projected myths of his or her imagination and looks under the bed are courageous?  No, not really.  They are just doing the common sense thing and waking up from dreams and illusions in their mind and I couldn’t consider myself as this spiritual warrior to be any thing courageous either. I had about as much courage as a 10 year unable to sleep at night finally looking under the bed.  After all,, wasn’t I just facing my own ghost stories?

Why do we avoid dealing with our issues and keep putting them off?  We avoid it because in our mind we make believe our issues are scarier than they are.  Much like the 10 year old who doesn’t look under the bed, we don’t look inward because it is uncomfortable.  Instead we just crack the door and leave a small light on somewhere to distract us from our imagination.  We hurry about the tasks of our day trying not to notice how our imagination projects illusions and then how we react to them.

The challenge with our own mind is that we are fighting dreams.  They aren’t real, but they seem that way when we believe in them.

Over the course of our life we gather up beliefs.  For the most part that’s not a problem.  Most of our beliefs help us understand the world and how it works so we can function in it. However, some of those beliefs are not going to be true.  Some of those beliefs will have unnecessary fears associated with them. These are myths we believe in and cause us unhappy emotions.  You could also call them lies.

Because we accept these myths to be truth, they appear real in our mind.  We react emotionally to fearful outcomes as if they already happened.  We imagine our partner with someone else and we get angry as if they did it.  In reality it didn’t happen. It was just in our imagination.  With faith in these mythological stories we make them bigger than they are.

Then after imagining these myths we tell ourselves other lies.  We tell ourselves that they are hard to change, that we can’t make them go away.  We tell ourselves we have to live with them.  We tell ourselves we can’t change, it’s just the way we are.  More myths about change and ourself built on top of the first set of lies.

Then, for some people, something happens.  Usually the pain of living by these myths causes so much suffering that we have no choice.  We have to challenge them.  We begin a mythological journey.  A path of challenging the myths we’ve lived by.  We apply some skills, we have some successes, and we celebrate change.  We begin to build better lives.  We tell ourself we are doing something big.  It’s true that we feel happier and are more free, but not everything we think is true.

If you run this route far enough you run the risk of self important lies like I did.  You look at yourself, compared to others lack of challenging their beliefs, and you begin to think of yourself as special.  It’s a nice lie.  It feels good to think of one’s self as better than others.  It doesn’t really hurt anyone.  In a way it helps give you confidence and faith in your self that you can challenge the bigger fears and false beliefs in your mind.   Your new Ego is an ally helping dismantle the myths we live by.  In some circles it’s called the Spiritual Ego.

Then, at some point in your journey, the Spiritual Ego becomes one of the few remaining myths you live by.  With enough awareness of self, this grandiose image of ourself as a courageous warrior no longer fits.  These false beliefs that seemed so big and scary in the beginning aren’t a big deal anymore.  Maybe it is because we have been doing the work for a while so it doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore.  Maybe it is because we realize that we are only fighting dreams in our imagination.  We realize that to face such a challenge doesn’t really take any extraordinary courage at all.  It just takes common sense.

So with our most powerful tool, common sense, we realize the spiritual warrior or enlightened being with special consciousness story doesn’t seem to fit anymore.  We are left to dissolve that mythological image of a Spiritual Ego.    We drop it.   With that the spiritual ego dissolves, we become more humble.  We become authentic.  We begin to experience a new kind of peace and happiness free of the myths in our mind.

These are some of the steps you may face on your Pathway To Happiness.

You will find an outline of practical exercises and practices for identifying and changing your core beliefs in the Self Mastery course. It’s an audio program that you can download and listen to.   The first 4 sessions are free.

Gary

Dan Ariely shares an interesting story of whether you should take the band aid off slow, or fast.   If you do it slow, the pain is less intense, but over a longer period of time.  If you take the band aid off fast it is more intense, but for a shorter period of time.

You might not think this is an unimportant question, but he debated this with the nurses while recovering from burns over 70% of his body.  Each time the nurses took his bandages off it took an hour,,, and they did it fast.  The nurses had their beliefs about why it was better for him.  After he got out, he engaged in careful research and discovered they were wrong.

They were operating from an assumption and false beliefs.  He discovered that it would be even better to start on his face and head where the pain was most intense, and work towards his feet that were less sensitive.  This way the intensity lessened during the process and creating a sense of relief as it was happening.

What is more interesting is that Dan Ariely studied peoples beliefs about cheating and money as it relates to economics.  He has good insights on how people’s belief systems operate in an environment like Enron, and shady stock trading based on his studies.

It turns out that most people’s morality is flexible depending on their social circumstances.  Check it out.

What I found most interesting was his interview with the nurse that cared for him.  One of her contentions was how she felt taking his bandages off.   She remarked that it was painful for her as well.  If you understand that paradigm of beliefs, then you could see how she would be motivated towards a belief that taking the bandages off faster is better for the patient.  Her beliefs about her self were justified on the patients experience, even though it was not true.

It’s about perspective, and being aware that other people’s experience may not match up to your assumptions and beliefs.

Audio from Ted Talks

The most important aspect to master when dealing with a liar is your emotional reactions. You can’t always change the behavior of a liar, but you can change how you feel and react to them. Once you learn to change your emotions about a situation you begin to see a lot more options.

If you are honest with the situation you will realize that your happiness is more important than their behavior anyways. The motivator for wanting someone to stop lying is so that you don’t end up unhappy.

Change begins with Awareness

The first step in dealing with liars or emotional issues is awareness. With awareness you can deal with a liar without being upset. We’ll start by understanding how someone becomes a liar to begin with.

Our social conditioning has trained us to be liars to some degree. In some ways it is required of us. When you are aware of how people are socialized your expectations change. As your expectations change the judgments in your mind dissolve along with your emotional reactions to them.

This doesn’t mean you learn to condone lying or agree with it. You just no longer have emotional reactions about it. When you are aware that someone lied to you because they were trained by other people and circumstances you won’t take it personally. You then have an opportunity to deal with the situation in a way that isn’t driven out of emotional reactions.

We learned to lie in order to be polite and respectful.

Just for starters we learned to lie in order to be polite. When we were kids, and we visited relatives or friends we ate whatever they served for dinner even if we didn’t like it. If we really hated it we might have slid it under the table to the dog so it looked like we ate it. When the host asked, “How was the meal?” we did the polite thing and told them how much we enjoyed it.

We lie so we don‘t get punished or hurt

When I was in grade school I was visiting my friends house after school. One of the cool things we did was climb onto the garage roof and jump off into grass. My friend’s mom came home later in the afternoon and asked us what we had been doing all afternoon. We didn’t mention the jumping off the roof part. We lied to our parents so we didn’t get punished.

We lied in order to build trust and loyalty

If kids are playing and they break something they try to hide it. If they are playing with something that they shouldn’t play with they don’t confess the truth. Children don’t want to be punished so they lie or withhold the truth.

As a kid if we broke something like a vase while playing we made pact with our friends or sibling not to tell. When the parent asked what happened to the vase we answered, “I don’t know.” We lied to our parents in order to maintain the trust and loyalty of our friends. Of course parents don’t give up that easily. Usually kids will succumb to the pressure of their parent’s questions and tell the truth eventually. This turns the promise of loyalty and secrecy with our friend into a lie.

Without awareness we trapped our self in a conflict of agreements. You either kept the promise of secrecy to your friends by lying to your parents. Or, you told the truth to your parents and your loyalty with your friend became a lie. We end up with either our parents or our friends not trusting us.

Later in life we learn some advanced lying techniques

Lie to people with Power

Learning to lie to parents when we are kids leads to lying to other authority figures later in life. When the higher ups in the company propose a new direction or program do you tell them what you really think? Or is it easier to be quiet and not create the conflict with people who have power over your paycheck. Even when they ask for your input it makes a lot of sense to not rock the boat. It is easy to couch your words and only hint at your concerns. Depending on the power and emotional reactions of the person perhaps you keep your mouth shut altogether.

Maybe you have a relationship with your boss where you can speak freely and that can be great. But do you speak with that same freedom to the vice presidents and owners above your boss. Most people don’t. If people give their “honest opinion” their behavior is often considered inappropriate or political suicide.

Not many company cultures can handle an honest assessment of the negative side of an issue without an emotional reaction. With people who don’t take 100% responsibility for their emotions their upset will be your fault in some way. The paradigm of power over our livelihood combined with the instability of emotional reactions suggests that we lie by omission.

In all fairness it is also a rare person who can give an honest assessment of the down side that affects them without it partly motivated by their emotional reaction.

A Liar doesn‘t want to hurt people‘s feelings.

In personal relationships we lie so we don’t hurt the feelings of the people we care about. Suppose a couple is sitting at a restaurant and an attractive woman walks by. What does a man say when his partner asks, “Do you think she’s pretty?” Can the man say, “She is gorgeous?”

He can be honest if he is with a very secure woman. He can also be honest if she has pretended to be a very secure woman. (lied about her security) He can also be honest if he doesn’t care about sleeping on the couch for a while.

Men lie to women at times so that they don’t hurt the feelings of the people they care about. Men might also lie because they don’t want to be punished by the people that love them. Women lie to men for the same reasons.

You might dismiss all these examples as being “white lies.” These are small lies told to be tactful or polite. But the motivations for lying don’t change when the stakes get bigger. If a person cheated on their spouse would they hide it from them in order not to hurt their feelings? If your friend was cheating on their boyfriend would you tell the boyfriend? Would you tell him if he asked?

The motivation for lying increases in direct proportion to the emotional reaction and potential emotional pain.

We lie when we are in Emotional Denial

When something hurts our feelings we cover it up and say it is no big deal. When we are upset or sad we say we are fine. When our heart is broken we can get mad at our ex, yet we will say we don’t care about them anymore. It’s a lie.

If we didn’t care it wouldn’t matter so much emotionally. If we really didn’t care we wouldn’t be so hurt and angry. The truth is it hurts so much that we tell our selves we don’t’ care to avoid and deny the emotional pain. We lie about the emotions we feel to pretend they are not there. We lie to our self in an effort to feel better because we don’t know a different way to let go of the pain. We attempt to lie our way to happiness.

The best way to deal with people who are liars

The first and most important thing is to manage your expectations. When you have awareness of how people were socially conditioned you have an opportunity for compassion. With awareness your understanding expands and your judgments dissolve. Be honest and aware enough to recognize the socialization patterns that people face growing up. Also be aware of the consequences that telling the truth might incur.

When you realize the extent of social conditioning you gain a greater understanding for why people compensate with lies the way they do. The emotional reactions you had behind the judgments aren’t there any more.

In relationships you are responsible for your half of the emotions.

Taking care of your half means noticing where you are lying. If you are upset with someone for lying it is because you believe they should be telling the truth. Your expectation is that they should drop all their years of social conditioning overnight.

You believe they should adopt a new behavior and become a person you expect them to be. You believe they should be the image you hold in your mind about them. They are not the image in your mind that you want them to be. When you want another person to live according to your expectations you are lying to your self about who they really are.

Use Awareness to Deal with your Lies

Being aware of the image in your mind of another person and your beliefs about who they should be will give you an opportunity to change your beliefs. Being aware of the deeply embedded social conditioning that programs a person to lie will help you drop your misplaced expectations of another. Dropping your false image of them and managing your expectations will go a long ways to dissolving your emotional reactions to someone else’s socially conditioned behavior.

If you are having emotional reactions about someone who is lying then you will need to deal with your half. Your half includes the lies in your mind about who they should be.

Why People Lie

People lie because they have been conditioned through emotional reactions. Emotional reactions aren’t intellectually logical. They are more powerful than that. That’s why people lie in spite of it being the logical or intelligent thing to do. People will stop lying as they learn not to fear their own emotions or emotional reactions from others. Learning not to fear your emotions is a beginning step to being honest that leads to Self Mastery.

If a person isn’t skillful and effective at dealing with their emotions it is unwise to expect them to change the behavior of lying.
I’m not condoning, justifying, or defending lying. I’m attempting to expand the conversation. If you are going to deal with liars or your own lying you will need to deal with the emotional reactions that drive the behavior. Whether the pattern was learned from the past, or you are afraid of consequences of being punished today it is about the emotions. When people learn how to master their emotions they won’t fear honesty and the Truth.

Boundaries

When you have dissolved your emotional reactions to someone that is lying then it becomes a simple process of boundaries. But that doesn’t mean that you need to wait until you have dealt with your emotions before you put up boundaries. Putting up boundaries is a good way to protect your self from your emotional reactions until you clean them up.

Use of boundaries also means you might want to put a boundary on what you believe. Stop believing what they tell you.  Living by the assumption that a liar will tell you the truth is just another way of lying to your self.

For exercises in how to deal with your mind, including emotional reactions, expectations, and changing beliefs download the free audio sessions in the Self Mastery course. I also suggest you listen to the free mp3 audio podcasts on Awareness and Consciousness.

Interesting story about the challenge of radical honesty versus lying.

Be a Dreamer, Just Don‘t Get Lost in Your Imagination

When I refer to an “optimist“ I’m talking about people with an overly developed “look at the bright side of things” or “focus on the positive,” kind of attitude. I don’t recommend doing that. I’ve discovered that an attitude that only focuses on the positive is out of balance with reality. Sometimes you might go so far as to call it denial. It’s a pretty limiting and unrealistic way to look at the world. You tend to miss a lot of opportunities for improvement, success, happiness, and truth. I find that to be truly wise requires a healthy skepticism.

Overly optimistic people drive down the road working to keep their attention on the positive outcome at the end of the rainbow. Their mantra is “Whatever I focus on I create.” I don’t’ buy this. When I drive down the road I like to enjoy the scenery and keep an eye out for the potholes as well. I don’t’ think I create pot holes by being mindful of them.  They are already there. I just think I have a better chance at avoiding pot holes when I can see them.

At the same time I’m not a cynic or pessimist either. I prefer to do my best and look at everything with open eyes. This might seem like common sense, but actually it’s not that common. I don’t buy into the idea that I am any good at it or even any better than anyone else at it. If I did I might set myself up for a blinding dose of over confidence and optimism.  That blinding aspect can cause you to run into a very painful reality.

Importance of Honesty and Facing the Brutal Facts

In the best selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins outlines in wonderful detail characteristics of successful leaders. One of their characteristics is the ability to honestly face the brutal facts. Collins shares the example of David Maxwell becoming the CEO of Fannie Mae in 1981. At the time the company was losing $1 million dollars each business day. David Maxwell faced the brutal facts and began making uncomfortable decisions to change the company. When Maxwell left in 1991 the company was making $4 million a day.

Facing the brutal facts might just seem like the common sense thing to do. My experience is that it’s not that common. If it was common then why didn’t David Maxwell’s predecessors do something long before his arrival? Perhaps they thought the economic conditions would turn around. Whatever their thought process was it paralyzed them from taking effective corrective action.

Jim Collins shares numerous examples of other companies that had the same relevant factual information but did not accept what it was telling them. They balked at the facts and embraced a more optimistic story instead. Their approach allowed them to feel a little better emotionally until the economic realities hit them even harder.

While one characteristic of successful people is their ability to honestly face the facts. Another characteristic is their gumption not to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by the challenge they face.

What does this Mean to Practical Matters of Your Life

When people pump up the idea about being more optimistic, hopeful, or looking at the bright side of things I’m skeptical of what they are doing. I don’t know if they clearly see what is happening around them. Their mind might use that optimism to hide from an honest assessment. It seems only necessary to prop things up with an optimistic attitude if you are compensating for some negative belief or dark perspective underneath.

If something is really the truth you don’t have to pump your self up to believe in it. I don’t need to convince myself that the sun will come up in the morning. It’s the truth. I don’t need to be optimistic about the sunrise or make myself believe that it will happen. When something is the truth you don’t have to invest your belief in it because it will happen anyways.

Practical Money Matters

On the other hand people who spend more money than they make and run up credit card debt have got to be optimistic people. They really have to believe in a bright future so as not to notice their debt. They have to tell themselves a pretty optimistic story like, “The Lord will provide,” in order to feel okay about their debt situation. If they weren’t optimistic about the finances they might curb their spending habits.

Maybe they put off dealing with the debt because they want to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions. This seems a lot like emotional denial but might just be an overdose of optimism. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

It’s Not a Lack of Intelligence

I’ve personally seen people with PhD’s run a company into the red and then still not make any changes to the operation. They weren’t alone in this either. They had other very smart people around them that supported the optimistic paradigm. They held strong to the belief that things would change even though nothing did.

Facing those brutal facts isn’t a matter of academic intelligence or education. Those situations come with such an emotional and behavior dynamic that they don’t teach in school. It’s not an academic or intelligence issue. It’s an awareness issue.
Managing your own emotionally driven behaviors is not something that they teach in an academic setting. Without the awareness of how deal with emotional issues people temporarily make themselves feel better by ignoring the reality and hope for a more optimistic tomorrow.

The Dangers of Optimism In Relationships

If you are in an abusive relationship or emotionally controlling relationship being optimistic becomes a dangerous trap. If you are hopeful that your partner will change you are less likely to leave or even ask for help. It is the image in your mind of your partner changing that becomes an illusion that you will cling to. Focusing your attention on that illusion can blind you from honestly assessing the situation.

One clue to this type of behavior is trying to make the relationship appear better than it is to your friends and family. Perhaps you only tell them about the best parts of the relationships and are afraid to share the parts you are embarrassed about. This is a sign that you are avoiding the facts.

Unhappy Relationships

It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as an abusive or controlling relationships. It might just be an unhappy relationship that you feel stuck in.

More than one woman I talked to recalls having serious concerns as she approached her wedding day. She downplayed her concerns and the possible pot holes in the road ahead. She propped up the stories of optimism and hope and forced her self to focus her attention on her hopes. This way she could deny the feeling in her gut until after the wedding. Eventually reality hit and shattered her illusions.

Optimistic about Money

A similar dynamic occurs when we invest money in a stock and then watch it sink. There is a temptation to tell your self; “It will turn around. I’ll wait for it to come back to my buy price and then sell it so I don’t have a loss.” If someone asks, “Why don’t you sell it?” The answer might be, “I don’t want to lose money on this investment.” They some how feel better believing they haven’t lost any money. They imagine that their money is still there even though the value has dropped.

In spite of feeling better temporarily you are paralyzed into being poorer by your illusions of optimism. Later the judge and victim in the mind may kick in and you will be tempted to believe self criticisms for such behavior. This can lead to a downward emotional spiral.

The High Price of Optimism

The philosophy of facing the brutal facts is crystallized with Jim Collins’ interview of Admiral James Stockdale. Adm. Stockdale was the highest ranking POW in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. He was tortured multiple times during his eight year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973.

Jim Collins found him self getting depressed just reading the story of Adm. Stockdale’s imprisonment. Collins had the opportunity to ask Stockdale about his experience and how he maintained his spirits and attitude during his ordeal. It was Adm. Stockdale’s answer that helped Jim Collins clarify the dangers of optimism and how it obscures our ability to face the facts that can lead to great success.

“”If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?“

I never lost faith in the end of the story,“ he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.“

I didn‘t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn‘t make it out?“

“Oh, that‘s easy,“ he said. “The optimists.“

“The optimists? I don‘t understand,“ I said, now completely confused, given what he‘d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, “˜We‘re going to be out by Christmas.‘ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they‘d say, “˜We‘re going to be out by Easter.‘ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.“

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end“”which you can never afford to lose“”with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.“

“To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We‘re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!“”

(Reference http://jimcollins.com/lab/brutalFacts/index.html#)

The important point I want to make is that there are different forms of optimism. Being aware of the subtle differences between forms and attitudes of optimism can be the difference between great success and emotional denial. Choose your form of optimism wisely.

For insights on awareness listen to the free mp3 audio in the podcast area. For exercises and practices on increasing awareness, controlling emotions, and changing core beliefs start with the free audio in the Self Mastery Program.

It was many years before I began to find a different kind of courage. It was a kind of courage that wasn’t easy to spot at first. It wasn’t the kind of courage that inspired external actions or would result in any medals or awards. I think of it as real courage.

From my point of view real courage is that attribute necessary to face and challenge our own inner demons. Real courage is that gumption to go face to face with your fears, anger, insecurities, and the voices of sabotage, doubt and judgment in your mind. It is a willful act of personal strength that you draw upon to deal with the conflicts in the mind and make peace within. Many people have fought wars with enemies outside of them. It is a rare kind of courage to take up the fight to make peace within.

To face that critical voice in your head and tell it that you will not believe its criticisms isn’t an easy thing to do. Oddly enough it isn’t even something that many people consider doing. They just go along with the less than favorable opinions they have of other people. They go along with the unkind and even self abusive opinions about themselves. Why do we fail to stand up to these self abusive comments? Why don’t people stand up against the tyranny in their own mind? Perhaps it doesn’t occur to us to challenge those thoughts. But perhaps it doesn’t occur to us because we are afraid of what will happen if we challenge those inner demons.

What will happen if we look face to face at our anger instead of just expressing it? What will happen if we look into all the justifications for why we are angry and say, “I don’t want to justify and defend feeling this way. What will happen if we look directly at our stories of insecurity, stand up for our self and say, “You have no power over me”?

Why does challenging the voices and rationalizations behind our unhappiness take such courage? Part of the issue is that we have come to unquestioningly trust our mind. We trust it to make decisions for us and to keep us safe from physical pain and emotional hurt. It has structured a giant list of rules to follow in order to keep from getting hurt. It constantly reminds of these rules with its “should” and “shouldn’t” chatter. We learned follow our thinking mind blindly. Yet it is those same voices that can keep us up at night with uncontrollable chatter driving us to fear and anxiety with imagined stories of terrible outcomes. Oddly we trust this very same mind to guide us to happiness.

So what is so scary about challenging the beliefs, thoughts, and opinions, in the mind that it needs real courage? Very simply, if we can’t trust our mind then what can we trust? This notion of not trusting our mind to tell us what to do can push us towards a fear that we will want to avoid.
A person needs real courage to challenge the thoughts in their head because without that mind in charge what are we going to trust to keep them safe from emotional pain? We have come to rely on every thought from our mind as being true that we feel we need it there to guide us. We trust our mind to keep us free of emotional pain and yet it is the principle means by which we generate emotional pain and anxiety.

There is a slight shift you can make to help begin the journey. It is to make a difference between trusting your mind and trusting your self. You can learn not to believe in the thoughts in your mind and still believe in your self.

What are those rules in our mind that are driven by our inner demons of fear? Fear tells us, don’t fall in love or you will get hurt. Fear tells us, that if we start that business we might fail. Fear tells us not to speak up in the meeting because we might look foolish. Fear tells us not to do something for our self because we don’t want to be labeled as selfish. Fear tells us not to climb too high we might fall. Those thoughts are rules that are supposed to help us be better off emotionally. Of course each rule requires loading our self down with a fear.

Challenging your demon thoughts and beliefs is like letting go of a hand rail that we have hung on to for safety. Our fear says that we should hang on or else we might fall and get hurt. Our fear has been reminding us ever since we fell down on the play ground as a little kid and got hurt. It has been pounding the message into our being until we don’t let go of any handrails. Learning to hang on to the handrails may be a good idea when we are little and haven’t fully developed our balance and muscle control. However when we get older we still follow the advice of fear in our mind. Fear has become our adviser in making choices in our life.

You can’t run very fast or far in your life if you don’t let go of the handrail of fear.
We sometimes fool ourselves and think that we are gripped by fear. The reverse is true. We hang on to fear as a trusted adviser gripping it as if it were going to keep us from getting hurt emotionally. We cling to all its advice in hopes that we won’t get hurt. We don’t realize that hanging on to these beliefs and fears extracts its own kind of emotional price. Fear becomes our mythological god. We follow its counsel, we trust its words. When we obey those voices of fear in our mind and serve our personal god of fear and all its laws.

What happens when we disobey the god of fear? Perhaps we hold the belief that bad things will happen to us if we disobey the rules of the god of fear. Perhaps that god of fear will judge us for being stupid and not following its advice. There is the fear of being punished or feeling guilty for disobeying. There become fearful consequences for challenging our fears. Imagine that, fear of breaking free of agreements of fear.

To challenge your personal fears may feel like taking on a whole nest of inner demons. It’s more than just letting go of the hand rail, it’s fighting off the fearful reactions in the mind that happen when we break the rules in the mind. That takes real courage. We are also risking the possibility that people will react differently when we act differently. We are stepping into the unknown. To challenge these inner demons and step into the unknown consequences takes a different kind of courage.

In my last post I shared that what we typically think of as courage often has larger fears at the foundation. What looks like a brave act may really have deeper personal fears as part of the motivation. What I have come to realize is that it takes a real kind of courage to challenge these deeper internal fears at the foundation of our behaviors and actions. To challenge the inner demons and fears in the mind is a truly heroic act that only few dare take on. That is why it is often referred to as the mythological journey of the hero.

What is different about facing your fears and inner demons is that there is no public glory in it. No one will notice that you are reflecting on your own behavior, emotions, and reactions. No one gives you medals, and hardly anyone recognizes the kind of courage it takes. There is no one rooting you on. You go on this inward journey alone. This solo adventure that you don’t do for anyone else and don’t do with anyone else is part of why it takes a different kind of courage.

It also makes for a kind of courage that doesn’t get corrupted with the self importance of getting attention and recognition from others. It has a kind of humble integrity that is independent from other people’s opinions and how they measure you.

Having the courage to take this kind of inward journey beyond your own inner demons has no external rewards, at least not in the beginning. However the internal changes and personal freedom gained is its own reward. To be free of fear, to no longer be subject to the emotional reactions of anger, jealousy, and insecurity is a reward. To no longer have to prove your self to any one, even your self is an incredible relief. To have immunity from fear of what other people think of you is an internal reward that can’t be externally measured. To slay the voices in the mind of doubt and criticism and create peace within is a completely unseen reward.
To challenge your inner demons and win over your fears is a heroic feat. It is truly a hero’s journey to face and win the war within. It is a feat that requires a different kind of courage.

I’m in awe of anyone who even tries. To me it is not important to win. We don’t know how long we have to live, maybe just a week, or month, or year. We can not count on winning over our inner demons when we don’t know how long we have. In any case this Hero’s Journey it is not about winning. If we make it about winning we are also making it about losing, and perhaps the fear of losing becomes another one of our demons. The journey is more about letting go of the fear of losing and the fear of failing that so often corrupts the desire to win or succeed.

In the challenge against our inner demons of fear and judgments winning and losing is not important. It is only important that we find the courage to try.

RELATED MATERIAL
For a step by step process on dealing with your inner demons listen to the session in the Self Mastery Audio Program

For guidance on challenging your inner demons and recovering your integrity see the Workshops and Spiritual Power Journeys events page
MP3 audio podcast on Overcoming Fear

The Courage to Live Consciously by Steve Pavlina

If someone tells you that they can empower or enable you it plants the idea in your mind that you are currently powerless. This subtle idea can shift your self image so that you see yourself as a person that needs help from outside. While you may benefit from applying the tools and techniques being offered, the powerless self image is detrimental.

Without awareness you can become hypnotized by the powerless meanings and images within symbols of words. This might be an effective marketing technique as it makes organizations services more appealing when a person is in a mindset of feeling powerless. However I doubt that organizations have the awareness of these subtle messages they are sending. If they did they would likely shift their language.

The truth is that every person has extraordinary power. It is what they do with it that is dis-empowering. Many people invest the power of their belief in conceptual ideas that they are unworthy, unlovable or trapped in some area of their life. If a person puts the power of their belief into the idea that they can’t change something then it will be true for them. In this way people use their extraordinary power of belief to hypnotize themselves into being powerless.

Even people that act as victims and feel depressed about their life are incredibly powerful. It is an act of power to invest so much belief in stories of poor self image that generate emotions of depression. Just the energy that it takes to generate emotions is an incredible amount of power.

People don’t need to be empowered. They already have plenty of it. What many people don’t have is awareness of how they use their power. Nor do they have effective techniques to unhook their attention from self hypnotic stories of powerlessness and create a new self image.

One of he most empowering things people can do is to un-hypnotize themselves from these limiting beliefs.

The mind can work at subtle yet powerful levels. Be wary of when someone offers to empower you. Be watchful that you don’t assume to be powerless over your life when someone offers to empower you. You may benefit from programs, tools, and techniques, but not because they gave you something you didn’t have, but because you used the technique to do something for yourself.

For more on how to create personal power and gain mastery over your mind and your life check out the audio program in self mastery.

Related Material
Develop Personal Power ]]> http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2006/12/06/programs-to-develop-personal-power/feed/ 1 http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2006/12/04/impeccability-and-gossip/ http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2006/12/04/impeccability-and-gossip/#comments Mon, 04 Dec 2006 01:32:16 +0000 Gerard van Warmerdam http://pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2006/12/04/impeccability-and-gossip/ Ask Gary

Gary,
A friend of mine, Alice, broke up with her boyfriend. When I talked to another friend on the phone (she also knows Alice) I told her that Alice and her boyfriend broke up. Of course I asked myself the question: why am I sharing this info with my friend?   Would this be gossiping? So my question: where does the need to share information (without giving an opinion about it) with other people come from?  Which character does this?
Many thanks in advance,
D.

Gossip and Impeccability

Dear D.
There are many possible dynamics when it comes to impeccability and gossip.  Some can be very subtle.  Most of the time we talk out of automatic habit learned over years of unconscious practice.  Sometimes we say things to people to make them feel comfortable.  We don’t want them to be uncomfortable in the silence so we respond with something to fill the gaps. This really means we don’t want to feel uncomfortable ourselves about their situation.  So for us to not feel our emotional discomfort our mouth moves and we share information.  This can often be unnecessary gossip about other people.

Breaking this habit of false assumptions of responsibility for other’s emotion is covered in session 12 of the audio program in self mastery. To explore this more and gain greater self awareness and insight about impeccability experiment with the following.  As an exercise refrain from speaking into those silent gaps for a while and see what happens.  Let the whole conversation sit in silence for certain moments and notice what emotions you feel.  These might be the emotions you avoid feeling by speaking unnecessarily.  It may not be so much a reason or need to share, as to avoid silence and all the stories and discomfort we have in the silence.  You will have to consciously choose what conversations you do this practice in so that it is appropriate for the situation.

In the big picture it is the accepted social norm to gossip about other people.  This is a big habit for many people. In an effort to be more impeccable we refrain, but in doing so we appear to be out of place from the “normal” with some people.   We don’t fit other people’s criteria of what is “normal”  and therefore acceptable.  Their initial reactions might seem judgmental or rejecting of our new behavior.  But that doesn’t mean that we are doing anything wrong by being silent.

Their judgments try to make us conform to their “normal” gossip behavior so that they don’t feel uncomfortable with our change in habits.

There are also ways to distract people from the silence without engaging in gossip at the same time.  It is not manipulation, but rather impeccable ways to shift the conversation. I touch on these somewhat in session 4 of the audio program.

Refraining from gossip is worth exploring if only for the reason that we waste an enormous amount of personal power talking unnecessarily.

Hope that helps,

Gary van Warmerdam

Whether it be the loss of a loved one, physical pain, relationships, our own death, or something as mundane as a traffic jam or vacation not going according to plan, our life will not be without surprises and discomforts that bring about emotion.

It is in these moments of adversity that you have an opportunity to see your character.

The time to measure a person’s character and integrity is when there is chaos around them and they are under emotional stress. In those moments do they let fear invade their mind? Do they resort to compensating strategies of anger and attempt to control other people in order to create emotional comfort for themselves. When times are good it is easy to be generous.

Whatever you determine your character to be in that moment, know that it is not permanent. Whether you succumb to fear or resort to anger in that moment it is not a measurement of you. It is only a measurement of your character in that moment. You can grow, become more aware, and change from the experience. If you choose to do so, you will have changed your character.

No description or label that you might place on your integrity or character is permanent. I’ve seen men and of mediocre character rise up in moments of crisis. And I’ve seen men and women of great character stumble in moments of minor pressure. The difference in the two is what each learns from it and how they approach their next moment of life.