“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. 

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.

How many times do we say we are going to do something, and then don’t to it?   How many times do we say we are going to do something, notice we don’t do it, and still don’t do it?  We are procrastinating.  Even when we are aware we are procrastinating, we still procrastinate.  It makes you wonder what is really going on with us. More importantly, how do we stop procrastinating?

I like the anecdote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Procrastination is a pattern of good intentions.    As we dig deeper into the issue there is a natural follow up question, “If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then what is the road to heaven paved with?”   “Humility.”  Says James Garner in a line from the movie Ya Ya Sisterhood.  Humility, or a softening of our ego mind has a lot to do with eliminating procrastination.

What is humility?  I checked my Word processing program for synonyms and the one I like best is “unassuming nature.”  Let us take it to mean no ego nature; no mask of a false self-image.  Humility is being authentic and genuine.  It is what is left when you strip away all the layers of ego we carry around as a mask.  So what does this have to do with procrastination?   Procrastination is a product of the ego mind.  It is those false layers of self image that are the root cause of our bad habits.  When we strip away the ego mind we get rid of the root causes of our procrastination.

When we are humble, or without ego, we say what we mean, and we do what we say.  We don’t pretend to others, or to our self, that we are something we are not.  Notice that nowhere do I relate being humble to being meek, weak, timid, or small.  Real humility comes with a quiet confidence that is a source of power and resolve.

So how does humility help break the pattern of procrastination and get on with what we really want?  It all begins with awareness.

The ego and the false self images of the mind tricks us into procrastinating.  When you are aware of these tricks you can avoid falling for them.  To help develop this awareness we’ll start by looking at the your belief system and ego and see how they work.

Why Do We Procrastinate

Let’s first look at how and why the ego mind causes us to create procrastination.  The first noticeable action is that we make a declaration of a good intention for our self or someone else.  We’ll use the example of meditating.  We make a declaration, either in our thoughts or out loud to someone else, “I’m going to start meditating.”  In our imagination we create an image of our self sitting serenely.   We essentially make a movie in our mind with our self image as the main character.  We are doing something good, we are feeling good, and the most important thing is that we feel good about our self in our little mental movie.  Every time we think about meditating and say we are going to start we project that good self image in our little mental movie. It all happens in about 1.5 seconds.  Then it is done.  In our mind we have accomplished the task and we go on with the next thought the mind has.

What this imaginary movie does is satisfy the mind’s need for to control our attention for a little bit and give us a sense of identification with the character in our projection.  In the process we get a nice feeling as we identify with a positive self image in our mental movie.   It is the belief that we are the character in this mental movie that serves the ego and gives us a small emotional boost.

But the ego is not done yet.  It is a bit more complicated than just the singular image from one story.  We actually have many images or aspects from the ego mind that we identify with. One of the common mental movie stories we project is of failure.  Our mind projects a story of us failing or not measuring up in some way and casts a different self image in the starring role.  Sometimes this happens in 1.5 seconds also.   It happens when we think about failing, or other people judging us, or being told no.   In any imagined story like that we are again the main character but in this story we are a failure, or are rejected.  In these mental movies we identify with the failure image and believe that the projected self image in the mental movie is us.  When we are unaware and do not distinguish between our Self, and the image of our self in our mental movie out ego has effectively taken us for an emotional ride.  In this false identification we believe we are the character in our thoughts.   In fact, this is only a facet of the ego.

So far we have both a success image that is a facet of the ego and a failure image that is a facet of the ego.  In the procrastination scenario the ego’s success image gets reinforced by us telling our self we are going to meditate.  The failure image gets reinforced when we don’t meditate.

Each day we don’t meditate the mind projects an image of our selves failing.  Each time we imagine that we will meditating we identify with that positive self image.  Each time we think about meditating we project one of these two images and identify with the success image or the failure image, or both.  When we think about meditating and don’t do it but we reinforce both false images of the ego.  It is these false images of the ego that get served and become stronger.  The detrimental aspect of this is only seen when you are aware that the mental projection of self isn’t you at all.

The Ego Mind on it’s Own

The failure image of the ego mind actually needs you to NOT meditate.  If you actually started meditating regularly, the failure based self image would have no basis for being.  We would no longer identify with the failure image.  If I say I am going to meditate, and then I do it, I have no reason to judge my self as a failure.  Of course the ego mind is likely to adapt in other ways.  Our mind will project that we should be meditating more, longer, our posture should be better, our mind should be quieter, and we should be having blessed out Samadhi experiences by now.  Since this isn’t happening the first week or month the ego mind will project that we are failing, and that we are doing something wrong.  This is just the false images of the ego mind trying in various ways for reinforcement by false identification.

When we don’t reinforce the failure image in our mind it makes the ego very uncomfortable.  The ego self image begins to feel like it is dying.  We might think that if a negative image were dying that we would feel better about our self, but that is not the case.  The collapsing false image in the mind creates a feeling that is very uncomfortable.  We go through all sorts of emotions as the false image that we believe is our identity is threatened.

When this agitation happens the mind becomes very busy with various mechanisms of distraction, deception, and denial trying to get us to not meditate.  It directs us to forget for a while that we said we were going to do it.  Then reminds us at a much later date that we didn’t do it so it can reinforce the belief we are the failure character in our mental movie.

When we think that we are going to sit down and meditate the mind senses the death of the failure image and comes up with numerous other things we could and should be doing.  Yes we got busy and the house is clean, laundry is done, bills paid, and the yard is looking pretty good.  Now there is no time to meditate, or we are too tired to meditate.  In this strategy the ego mind has won the game of distractions until we run out of time, energy, or both.  Then it waits an hour or a day, or a week, and reminds us that we failed to do what we said we were going to do.  It uses the situation to project a mental movie with us as the main character that failed.  If we identify with that failure character in our mind then the ego mind is not challenged and is comfortable again.  Yes we feel like an unworthy loser that has failed, but the ego mind is comfortable with that because it doesn’t feel like it is going to die.  Such is the challenge of not identifying with the images of your ego mind.

This article continued at Causes of Procrastination II

You can find practices and exercises for changing the core beliefs causing procrastination
in The Self Mastery Course on this site.

From the TED Talks Archives:

We can’t solve our problems by laying down a set of rules and pretending that following them to the letter will produce desired results. There are consequences for having rules, and they are not always good.

When you ask this question to someone else,,, you are opening the door to giving away your personal power and creating a victim mindset.   This is a dangerous question to ask.  At the same time guidance can be helpful.

In the early stages of our personal development we ask many questions.  In the beginning the questions are general, unfocused, and many times harmful.  We aren’t aware of how powerful a question can be at controlling our attention and occupying our mind with very limited ways of thinking.  Usually we are in a unhappy or confused state when we ask these types of questions.  And the types of questions that arise from this mind set act to reinforce the very emotions we are trying to get out of.       

What are some better questions to ask?

What is the kind thing to do?
What is the respectful thing to do?
What is the compassionate thing to do?
What do I not want?
How will I treat myself?
How will I treat others?
How do I want to feel?

Learning to ask better questions is a skill.  Like any skill it can take time.  However the more we are aware of the questions we ask, the less automatic they are.  The more aware of each question our mind asks, and the automated way our imagination and emotions respond the better we will get at asking questions.

The most common of beginner question is, “What should I do?”   Why is this such a poor question to ask when we are wrapped up in emotional issues?  That question can lead us back into the same negative belief structure that asked it.

The question implies or assumes that there is a particularly “right” answer.  Whenever we are looking for the “right” answer our mind flips into a mode of duality and looks at things in a right/wrong split.  All answers that are not the “right” answer are classified as wrong.  There can be one thousand wrong.  You can imagine a poor outcome with any action you take thereby making the action appear wrong.  All of these with any possible negative outcome are classified as “wrong.”  It is assumed that the “right” or “should” action will result in everything being right and everyone being happy.  It’s a very high standard of perfection that is implied when we use the word “should” or “right.”  

This very high, and often unreasonable expectation sets us up for feeling like a failure.

Having an image of perfection or an expectation in and of itself isn’t the really bad part.  It could even be good when it motivates us to take action or inspire creativity.   The bad part is that the mental construct of an image of perfection sets you up for two rounds of self judgment.

Once you adopt this mental construct of what you “should” do, you also build a self image of the kind of person you should be.  So now there are two images of perfection.  One is of the action that leads to the perfect outcome.  The second image of perfection is more personal. It is of who you should be.  There can be more perfection images in the mind such as, how everyone else should feel, that can complicate this even further, but lets keep it simple for now.

With these two imaginary images the voice of the inner judge now has two concepts it can use for comparison.  With its typical method of comparison there can only be two outcomes.  The best outcome possible is that you meet the expectations of your belief system.  No praise here.  All you did was what was expected of you.  With your greatest effort you broke even by meeting expectations of your belief system.

The second outcome isn’t that kind.  For any lesser action, even the emotional reactions of another person that you can’t control, the inner judge criticizes you.  “I could have (should have” done that differently.”  The second judgment follows the first.  If you didn’t succeed in achieving the image of perfection outcome then you failed.  If you failed, then that means you are a failure.  It’s a simple duality based conclusion the judge and victim voices in your head do automatically.  The result is self rejection in the form of a self judgment.

This self rejection happens in your own head and can be emotionally powerful.  When we are preoccupied trying to answer the question, “What should I do?” our attention is so wrapped up in the importance of figuring out the right thing to do that we don’t see this set up to self judgment.

Why is our attention so wrapped up with figuring out the “right” thing we “should” do?  Somewhere in our sub-conscious belief system we sense that the painful self judgment will come if we do things wrong.  We are afraid of the painful self judgment from our inner judge and we seek to avoid it.   We feel the pressure to get things “right” but don’t notice that much of the motivation is really about avoiding the pain of self judgment that is going to be generated in our imagination.

We feel the pressure from the voices in our head but don’t notice that this is just our imagination and belief system at work.  It usually takes a person a while to realize that this emotional self abuse is optional.   We are so used to self judgment by the time we are adults that we accept this as an unchangeable reality.  Then the only solution to avoid the punishment that we perceive is to get the answer “right.”   And “right” means perfect where everyone is satisfied.  Of course we don’t notice that this standard assumes that everyone will interpret the action and the outcome free from any judge and victim perspectives.  (not likely)

It can be very helpful to seek help, guidance, and support.  However we can help our self more when we are mindful of the questions we ask and how their underlying assumptions can be setting us up for self judgment.

Be Mindful When Asking for Help

I’m all for advice.  I like to pick the brains and perspective of seasoned individuals that have proven results in an area.  It can save us a lot of time in learning so we don’t have to figure everything out on our own.  What I am not in favor of is collecting of images of perfection that the inner judge uses as an expectation to measure our self worth.  The next time you ask someone, “What should I do?” take a moment to notice whether your inner judge might use their answer in a conspiracy of self-judgment against you.

Please don’t ask me to give you advice about what you “should” do.  I probably won’t answer you directly.  If I answer your question in the format you expect, then I am providing you with an image of a perfection for an outcome that may or may not be achievable.   You are asking an image of perfection that the inner judge can use.   I’m probably going to try to do you the favor of not feeding this structure of beliefs.  My answer might come back as a question or redirect your attention to looking at the situation differently.

Some people will have a reaction to this.  They will get upset because I haven’t answered directly.  They are so fixated on getting things “right” that they feel cheated when avoid the trap their belief system is making.   I know that person is upset because their only hope to avoid painful self judgment is to get the answer of what they “should” do.  And any delay in getting that answer has them slipping further into the jaws of the self judgment for getting it “wrong.”

I apologize for not answering directly.  But I’m not trying to satisfy your hope of getting things right.  I’m actually trying to save you from a much bigger problem. The bigger problem is that painful self judgment and the fear it creates drives the mind to believe that the “right” answer is the only hope.

Please don’t ask me to conspire with the trap your belief system creates with  self judgments.  At the same time, it is okay and even advisable in most situations to seek counsel and guidance.  Just do your best to be aware and avoid this trap of self judgment.

If you have another question,,, a better question,,, I might give a more direct answer.  Look back to the beginning of this article for some ideas on how to ask a better question.  If these questions don’t apply, then ask other questions.  If you can’t come up with another question then ask, “What questions should I be asking?”    There are lots of ways that you can get help, support and guidance from people through sticky situations without building images of perfection that the judge will use.   
There are lots of questions that I work on asking that will help you to look at the situation differently.  There is a lot that can be done with perspective and inquiry that is extremely helpful without anyone telling you what you should do.

So if I don’t respond to your question of, “What should I do?” in a way that you expect then I hope this explains it.   I’m not trying to give you ice cubes so the pain from the fire stops.  I’m trying to help you put out the fire that you are sitting in.

To help you get more out of the Self Mastery program here’s a suggestion:

1.    Don’t go for Perfection

This may sound strange but the assignments I give aren’t always things you can accomplish, at least not right away.

Some people think that session 4 is the hardest.  They just agree with people or disagree as an automatic reaction before realizing it.  The assignment is to refrain from doing this, but I’m not expecting success.  As a matter of fact more can be gained by failing.

If all you get out of this exercise is to realize that you don’t control the words coming out of your mouth, and that much of your behavior is on automatic pilot,,, then I’d say that’s enough for a start.  While it might seem like you’ve failed at the goal you’ve actually accomplished a lot in the process. You are now aware of this dynamic.  Your awareness has expanded.  You are now being self reflective and beginning to adopt a new perspective of being an observer. You also have an insight into how agreements/beliefs are made in subtle quick ways and how quickly we accept opinions as fact and truth.  It is this new perspective that is most important at this point.

You might not like what you notice, but that’s the inner judge starting to take over.   You’ve taken an important step towards change because you can’t change a behavior until you know about it.  Just noticing these types of things in the free sessions, even if you aren’t able to change them is the most important lesson.   The exercises in the paid sessions are more focused at successfully implementing change.  The exercise used to help you discover and become aware of behavior dynamics is not necessarily the one that will be useful for changing those dynamics.

If you come out from these exercises feeling like a failure or  pissed off at yourself for failing then you’ve had another self judgment.   Not necessarily good, and not my intent, but that’s the nature of a mind out of control at this point.  Exercises in Session 6 and later begin to address this.  These somewhat humbling realizations are a necessary part of the process.  They cause us to see things about our self, our emotions, and our belief system running automatically that was previously unconscious to us.  That’s part of the waking up process.  Listen to my January podcast on Conscious Awakening for more insights into this.

The Free sessions in the Self Mastery program are usually not enough to completely and permanently stop most major emotional reactions.   What the free sessions are intended to do is help you become aware of what is going on in your mind.  With that expanded skill of observation arises the intrinsic motivation to address the real issues of underlying beliefs.  Some people will realize this and get motivated to change their beliefs.  But you can’t really start addressing these beliefs until you see what they are and how the work.

Others will get caught up in the self judgment of their belief system that creates a feeling of failure.  If a person is not aware of the dynamic of their belief system and able to observe it as the problem, they will push the exercises away thinking it is making them feel worse.  It’s not the exercises that are the problem.  It’s the unrealistic expectations their mind makes and the self rejection based on that unconscious expectation that they are reacting to.  If this is happening, the problem with the sessions isn’t failure or even you.  The problem is with the belief system in the mind making unreasonable and unconscious expectations about success, and then automated self judgments

So do your best not to get tricked into your mind’s assumption that you need to do these practices perfectly before going forward.  Some people I’ve talked to stop listening to new sessions because they haven’t mastered the current one yet.  It’s a trap of a false expectation that stops progress.

For best results don’t try to do any of these exercises perfectly.  Just do them.  Even do them with little or no success.  It’s not the perfection of these practices that are important.  It’s the doing of them in whatever fashion you can that will make the difference.  Trying to do them perfectly plays into the hands of the way our mind does self judgment.  First an unrealistic expectation, and then a self rejection.  This becomes so painful emotionally that we stop the practice before we have a chance to get decent at it.

Some people will get success with an exercise in 10 minutes.  Some will get success in 10 hours of practice, and some in 10 weeks.   Don’t worry if you don’t get success with an exercise in a few weeks and you get tired of trying.  Give it up for a while and go on to the next one.  You don’t need to get proficient at any of them as prerequisites in order to have success at this process.  Later, after a couple weeks or months of practicing other exercises, come back to the ones you skipped and try them again.  You’ll be a different person by then, and you’ll likely notice different things about the exercise that you didn’t see the first time.

Some people might feel discouraged by the fact that they don’t get immediate results.  To  me the speed at which you make changes in your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors is not as important as making these changes successfully.   After all,, if you are not successful,,, then then your efforts at going fast were wasted.

Some people define faith as a belief in something for which they have no evidence for.  Others think of faith as a set of religious beliefs.  These are limited uses and understanding of faith.  Faith is a force.  Think of it as a life force energy that you direct, consciously or unconsciously.  It is a force you use every day.   People and use faith every day in ways that are very real and practical but hardly notice.  This force of faith that you use has profound impact on your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

People use faith when they exchange money. A dollar has value largely because people believe it has value.  People have invested faith in the idea that dollars can be traded for food, gas, clothing, services, and other things.  Because other people also have faith in this same use of money it works and appears to be truth.

We put our money in a bank because we have faith that a bank is a safe place for our money.  When people have fear and doubts about the safety of that bank their faith dissolves. Or, more specifically, they invest faith in the idea that the bank is unsafe. Then they withdraw their money.  If enough people withdraw their money from a bank, it can collapse.  Even if the bank is solvent it can collapse because people no longer have enough faith in the bank. You could say that the strength of a bank is more dependent on faith of people than the actual balance sheet of the bank.

The price of a stock is largely determined by faith.  People will value and pay for a stock dependent on what is their BELIEF.   Faith is the force that makes that belief strong.  If people lose their faith in that company, then they sell their stock.  The action of selling stock is determined by where they invest their faith.  The value of a stock is determined by the faith people have in the value of a company stock.  You could say that the whole stock market is held up by the power of the faith people have in its overall worth.  That’s why prices of stocks and the whole market can change so quickly.  When people shift what they have their faith in things can change quickly.  When you change what beliefs you have invested faith in your life can change very quickly.

The value of stock, a piece of real estate, a dollar, euro, or peso is largely a matter of faith.  They are worth what people “believe” they are worth.  Only when other people believe the same thing does that belief appear real.   When people no longer put the force of their faith behind the value of a stock the price falls.   More precisely we can say that they have taken their faith out of the “idea” that the stock’s value.  People don’t invest their faith in a stock, but rather in the idea of a stock’s value.  Then they put their money in the stock based on how much faith they invested in the idea of value for that stock.  If you see this relationship it becomes clear that our actions are based on the power of faith we have invested in ideas.

Faith Impacts How We Feel

Faith in yourself can give you a feeling of confidence. If you believe that you can do something, you have faith in your ability and you produce a feeling of confidence.  When you doubt your ability, you are also investing faith.  You invest your faith in the ideas and images that you will fail, and that people will judge you.  When you put faith in those ideas and images you create emotions of fear or insecurity.  In both cases, you are expressing the energy of faith.  It is just that you express it into different conceptual ideas, outcomes, and self-images and this produces different emotions.

Suppose you did something in your past and later wish you hadn’t done it. If you invest faith in that idea then you will create emotions of guilt.  If you invest faith in the idea that you are a bad person for what you have done then you will create emotions of shame.  Guilt is an emotion based in something you have done, while shame is an emotion based in a belief about what you are.  The strength of the emotions you feel will depend on how much faith you have in these ideas about your self.   With the force of faith you can create these emotions within your self even if the story is not true.   But by creating these feelings the story will feel true.

Most everything you feel about yourself derives from the faith you invest in various ideas about yourself. Two people could have the same experience of hardship and failure, but invest their faith in opposite interpretations about what would happen next time.  One might believe he will fail again, while the other person might invest faith in the idea that she will do better next time because of her commitment or what she learned.   Failure didn’t determine how a person felt, but rather what ideas they invested their faith in did. Each person is using the energy of faith and investing it in one belief or another about themselves and the future.  Each creates a different belief system, and produces different emotions.  One person will become more focused committed and feel confident,,, the other will generate insecurity.  The action that each person takes from then on will be congruent with where they have invested their faith.

If you are feeling emotions of fear, shame, guilt, and unhappiness, it is because you have invested faith in conceptual ideas that create these emotions.  The ideas that are in your head and your self images are not the truth.  But if you invest faith in them they will produce emotions and create the feeling of being real.  The emotions you create with your faith are real, but the images and ideas of your beliefs are not.    If you want to change how you feel one of the things you will have to learn to do is divest your faith from these false beliefs.

In recovering the power of your faith from these false beliefs not only will your level of happiness change, but your actions and behavior will changes as well.  Another benefit of recovering your faith from these false beliefs is that you will then have the personal power to choose a new set of beliefs and take the actions to create a new life based on what you really want.

Learning how to gain control over the force of your faith is something that the Self Mastery course will help you do.

As you learn to live a happier life one of the things that will change is the quality of communication.  Probably one of the most fearfully corrupt areas of communication is sales and marketing.  I know this because I used to work in sales.  Once you learn to overcome this fear filled area of dealing with sales people you will be much wiser about making decisions with your money.

Sales and marketing typically uses fear and emotional abuse.  Often it is so subtle we don’t notice the specifics of it.  Because we are not aware of the specifics of it, we can be taken advantage of.  We may not know the details of how we are being maneuvered, but we know we don’t like it when it is happening.

Marketers and sales people are not really motivated to change their end of the communication.  The way they manipulate and maneuver people’s emotions puts food on their table. That means that changing the quality of communication is our responsibility.  And this we can do by being aware of the subtle ways that sales people operate and how we react to them.  As we become wise to their emotional hooks, dealing with sales people can be fun, and even entertaining.  We’ll also have to let go of our judgments of what they are doing, but that just benefits us.  But maybe what you will notice as the greatest practical importance is that you will be able to keep a lot more of your own money.

Fear of Losing Money

Spending money is a behavior, and most behaviors are emotionally driven.  Then it comes as no surprise that sales people use emotions to get you to spend money. Specifically, they use your emotional reactions to sell you their products and services.  If you become more aware of your emotions, and the beliefs that trigger your emotional reactions then you will make better decisions with your money.

There are two principle mechanisms that sales people use to transfer your money into their pocket.  They are the emotions of fear and excitement or hope.

The most common hook used by sales people is fear.  It’s most often used because it is most effective.  An obvious example is for home alarm security systems with slogans, “Don’t let this happen to you.”  Which,,, when you consider the question, causes your mind to imagine it happening to you and experience fear in the process.  It’s then followed up by a mention of their product as a means of safety from the fear that they have just proposed to you.

The planting and activation of seeds of fear in your mind get much more subtle than that.  Another common phrase,,, “Don’t miss out.”  This of course plays on our fear of missing out, and at a more subtle level, the fear of being left out.  In these scenarios it is our imagination doing the work by creating the scenario and having an emotional reaction to the scenario we imagine.

Our imagination can be an extraordinary amplifier.  It takes only a few words of suggestion and our imagination can build a scenario that is a whole virtual reality of the experience.  It comes complete with images of people, animated stories, dialog, back story, and within seconds can rapidly project months into the future.  We then perceive the scenario our mind imagines and have an emotional reaction to the virtual reality that we just experienced.  And all of this can happen with just a few words of suggestion as a trigger.

What is important to note is that sometimes those trigger words for that fear-based virtual reality scenario don’t come from anybody else.  Sometimes those trigger words are from our own thoughts.

One of the words that I use to describe the scenario of our imagination is “dream.”  I often use the word dream to describe what goes on in our imagination because it includes emotion as well as the other elements of audio, visual, and tactile experiences that our imagination can create.

Today’s Current Example:  Being Sold On Health Care Fears

A current day practical example of a fearful sales pitch is going on in the health care debate.  One phrase being used is “Don’t let government come between you and your doctor.”  The implied message there is that change is bad.  Also implied in the message is that government is bad and can’t be trusted.  What it fails to mention is that a large profit driven corporation, (ie. an insurance company) is already in between you and your doctor.  Personally I find it a conflict of my health interest when their profits increase as they restrict, or deny me health care.   But I digress.

The point is that when we hear that phrase about “government coming between you and your doctor”,  our mind is tempted to run with the scenario.  However, the more awareness we have, the more scrutiny and skepticism we apply, and the more points of view we consider, the less likely we are to fall into that dream of fear.

Sales Pitch of Fear

We could cover all the hidden messages of fear for a while, but that would get boring. It’s more important for you to become aware of the way your mind generates scenarios and creates unpleasant emotions when trigger phrases are used.  More importantly, what does your mind do once it starts to create fear?

Once you begin to generate unpleasant emotions, your mind then reacts a second time to try to make you feel better.  This is a natural emotional and mental instinct to be happy, but the way we have been conditioned is to comfort our selves with a “feel better” behavior.  When we were little the “better behavior” was usually being suggested by our parents.  Later it was suggested by people pushing our buttons.  People have an emotional reaction of anger to us, and then tell us what we should do so they can stop blaming us.  As we became consumers it became a “feel better” product offered by marketers as a solution to the fearful seeds they planted.

In all these patterned behaviors we learn the habit of doing what other people want in order to make our selves feel better.  After years of this, of looking for other people to tell us what we should do, we hardly ask the question anymore, “What do I want?”

The point is that these emotionally comforting behaviors and products that others suggest haven’t solved the problem of feeling uncomfortable.  They’ve only shifted our attention briefly from the proposed fear we imagined.  Our fears remain because the beliefs that created our fears go unaddressed.  Our imagination still operates in essentially the same way of producing fearful dreams and scenarios that we believe.  They get triggered again when we hear or think similar thoughts.  This leads to more of the same emotions and behavior patterns in the future.

The problem isn’t just with what others say.  That’s only half.  The other half of the problem with fear is the way that our mind dreams.  Changing the way other people communicate with you is not going to be very effective.  You’ll have much better success making changes in your own mind than you will have in the behavior of other people.

Changing the Fearful Pattern of Being Sold

The important point is that you learn to be aware of the subtle changes in your emotions.  With that awareness of your emotions you can begin to dismantle the beliefs that cause you to react.  In this way you detach your self from the power sales people or others appear to have over you.

I say “appear” because the power of control is really yours.  The real power is behind your own emotional beliefs.  The trigger phrases of sales people and your own thoughts are just that, triggers.  It’s only when we have these fear based beliefs that we have triggers available that others can push.

When you no longer respond in a fearful way to the seeds of marketers and sales people, then they will have to change the way they communicate with you.

If we change the way we listen and interpret, and therefore how we feel about what people say, then other people will change the way they communicate with us. Yes it’s kind of backwards, but the truth is like that sometimes.

There are practical exercises in for dismantling the fear based beliefs in your mind available in the Self Mastery Audio Program. The first few sessions are free.

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