Certainly these articles have value for social book marking sites that help promote the material and can generate money for the writer. Bloggers and writers on the internet are encouraged write and market their articles in this fashion because they grab people’s attention. These list formats also seem effective in getting their material propelled to the top of social book marking sites. It turns out to be good marketing promotion and possibly a revenue generator for the writer, but also a disservice to their readers.

How Do You Learn?

We don’t learn much from lists. If you have read one or more of these articles, then how many items from that important principles of life list do you remember? What struck you so deeply about that paragraph that you integrated that idea into your life?

A list, even with a short paragraph of explanation, is a data point of information. One of thousands we generate or consider each day. The mind has difficulty remembering those data points unless they are meaningful. Without a context that relates to something meaningful in your life that list item floats away. Of the tens of thousands of thoughts we consider in a day a list has little or no impact. That data point of information becomes lost in the noise.

Now consider this. If the reader devotes ten minutes of time to read the article that’s 10 minutes of value. If the list has 10 items that are important then the reader has to divide his attention between 10 different ideas.  The writer has just reduced the value of each one of his ideas by one tenth. When the reader divides their attention between 10 different important points, the impact of any one of those points has lost 90% of its impact. If the writer has really done their research and compiled a list of 20 Important…_____ for Success, then each one of those items can only get 5% of a person’s attention.

When an item only gets 5 or 10 percent of a person’s attention, it’s not likely that it will be very impactful to them. They will soon forget all of what is on that list. We remember things that are meaningful. Things are meaningful when they apply to our life, or fit into the context of other things we know or find important. Reading lists, no matter how well written, don’t do that for us.

Metaphors can give context

Imagine that you are sitting at your desk and a good friend hands you a few nuts and bolts. She doesn’t tell you why. She just walks away. You know this is strange because this friend doesn’t normally do things like that. You don’t know what these nuts and bolts have to do with you so you get rid of them. You’ll spend more time wondering about your friend’s odd behavior than the bolts.

Now imagine that when she hands you the nuts and bolts she tells you, “I found these on the ground in the garage where you park your car.”

With those words she is telling you the story of how the nuts and bolts relate to you in a meaningful way. The nuts and bolts that you were going to throw away now have context. They are no longer loose bits of unrelated matter. They connect to your physical safety and well being.

Those articles about 8 life principles, 11 ways to make your self happy or 33 ways to be healthier are usually written in an informational or academic way. They aren’t presented with a real connection to a person’s life. Without that context a person isn’t likely to remember the data points through the weekend. If you can’t remember an item from the list 4 days from now did it really do you any good?

In effect the writer has provided temporary information but hasn’t added any value to the reader. The writer has held the reader’s attention with their clever writing but not delivered much in the way of value to the reader.

A writer delivers real value when their readers become connected to the information in a way that they become motivated to take action. Contextual meaning to a person’s life is one way mechanism that can lead to action. It is only through action that we make meaningful changes in our life.

Stories give context and relevance

The sentence, “I found these underneath your car” is the story that paints a picture. In that picture you can see how the different elements fit together and you are part of the picture. This story, even though it is one sentence, connects those nuts and bolts to your physical safety. The value of stories is that they give context and relationship to those individual data points.

To help understand the importance of stories in our conscious and unconscious decision making process I suggest reading Sources of Power and The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein. He has done an amazing amount of research in how we use stories in our mind to formulate decisions.

We Remember Stories

Cultures pass down history through stories. We remember stories but we don’t remember lists. We can remember stories for years. Great spiritual teachings have passed down through generations with stories.

Moses had to write the Ten Commandments down in stone so that they could be referred back to. He couldn’t trust his people to remember them. However people still tell the stories of his day because those are remembered.

Your “Top Ten Reasons to…” article might make the front page of Digg, but that doesn’t mean that it will have any lasting value to the reader. It might be good that it is written down so that people can continue to refer to it. However if they have to continually refer to it, then they haven’t integrated the principle into their life very effectively. This is to say that they haven’t incorporated it into their actions and behavior.

Emotions Drive Change

People’s behaviors are driven more out of emotions than intellectual data points. If we want to change our behavior or actions it is much more effective to do it through the power of emotions? There are a few exceptions to this, but these are the exceptions. What you are likely to find about the exceptions is that they apply to situations where people have already moved through their emotional attachment and resistance issues. Lists rarely touch people’s emotions or their emotional attachments.

A story as an example

Have you ever tried to persuade a smoker to give up their cigarettes? Have you ever talked an alcoholic out of drinking? You can talk to them about their health, cite statistics on lung cancer and liver disease with no change. If 10 good health reasons don’t get them to change a behavior then telling them 100 good reasons will just make them angry.

Why do they get angry when you share your facts figures and intelligent reasoning? They want you to stop bothering them. Getting angry at you is a way to change your behavior towards them. Couldn’t they just tell you to stop pestering them with reasons? Yes, but it’s not as effective as the emotion of anger.

First of all let’s consider that your behavior towards them has an emotional basis. Your reasoning with them is likely due to your emotional attachment to their health. Your emotional attachment is compelling you to provide them with a list of reasons to stop.

If they simply asked you to stop, you might keep giving them your reasons because you “FELT” it was important. Your emotional agenda was more powerful than their logic. To overcome your emotional agenda they use more powerful emotions. They use anger to get your behavior to change.

If they get angry enough you might become afraid. When your fear is greater than your emotional attachment to changing them you’ll shut up and back away. All your reasons to persuade them got trumped instantly with one emotion. That emotion instantly changed your behavior. Your behavior change is emotionally motivated.

More interesting is that after the emotional change happens, the mind then comes up with good reasons for the change. Very often justifications come after the fact.

Emotions are more persuasive than information

If a writer wants to affect change in people then he will have to affect their emotions. Information is not enough. The longer your list the more you engage the readers intellect in a way that disconnects them from their emotions.

And if the reader is really interested in making changes to improve themselves they might be better served by reading fewer lists. Making changes in your life will require good principles and reasoning, but those principles will have to be paid more than a passing glance of a paragraph. They will also have to be coupled with good emotional connections and motivations.

Without that emotional motivation there is no new action or behavior change and therefore no real benefit. Change doesn’t have to happen through emotions, but it often does. Big life changes usually involve a great deal of emotion. Small life changes usually involve a small amount of emotion. Why are the emotions so important? You have to break the emotional attachments that hold the resistance to change. You also have to create new emotional connections for behaviors to stick. For more understanding the importance of emotions in making behavior changes read the article in Breaking Emotional Eating Habits.

How we really learn and change

People’s behavior is driven more by emotions than by information. The information that does motivate them does so because it affects them emotionally. It connects to them in a way that is meaningful to their lives. This is more likely to be done through story than through lists and principles.

If you are writing or sharing with the intent to improve peoples lives then I suggest you include some relevant context to the points you are making. You will probably also want to impact people at an emotional level. Stories that touch upon people’s emotions are just one way to do that. Spiritual masters knew this. That’s why they often placed their teachings within stories or parables. They provide context that help connect those images to our life so we could draw upon them later. Those stories are also remembered long after items on the list are forgotten.

Related Material

Breaking Habits of Emotional Eating

Self Help Advice - Warning!!!

Emotional Eating - Addictions to Food

David is working through the issue of his unhealthy food addiction. He often binges on sweets like ice cream, candy bars, and soda pop. This isn’t a matter of simple stupidity. He’s a smart guy, a software engineer that stays busy working. He knows they are bad habits and he is aware of a list of negative consequences to his health. In spite of this and a desire to change, his food addiction behavior has challenged him for years.

It wasn’t an issue when he was younger because he exercised a lot and burned it off. That isn’t the case anymore. Due to his age he can’t exercise the same way and so his eating behavior is overtaking his weight and this health. Over the years he’s attempted multiple approaches like NLP and therapy and only gotten temporary results. He still covets his sweets and gets defensive when he considers giving them up.

David started in on the Self Mastery course on line and began to become aware of some factors behind his behavior that he hadn’t seen before. A couple coaching phone consultations for some added clarity and David developed more understanding about what was driving his addictive eating. David was surprised to find out that his junk food addiction wasn’t really about the food. David’s eating patterns were really about emotions.

David has a mind full of fears and self judgments that nurture a steady state of anxiety. As relief from his anxiety his unconscious mind has carved out a space and time where he can experience peace and calm. In those moments he is so focused on his food that the fear, anxiety, and self judgment is suspended. That space of peace and calm happens when he devours his donuts, ice cream, Dr. Pepper and candy bars.

Some might call it comfort food. I see that as a vague description that hides other issues. For starters what is it that one needs comfort from? It is in these explorations into ones emotions and beliefs that we find the devil in the details. That answer usually involves emotions and the core beliefs they stem from. In David’s case it is the fear and anxiety stemming from self judgments. Although he doesn’t usually notice this layer because he is so busy with the compensating strategy pleasing everyone around him all the time in hopes of getting their approval and acceptance.

Following rules or programs didn’t work

David had tried to follow some simple rules and principles about eating healthy many times before. This generated an intern conflict that he tried to win but always failed. He would get cranky, and even angry, and fight himself until he gave into his food addiction. Afterwards his inner judge would tell him he was weak for giving in. He ended up feeling like a failure. Of course the emotional consequence of this type of inner dialog would drive him towards more comfort food.

Why did he always fail to follow his own healthy eating rules? Because taking away his ice cream and candy bar was also taking away his emotions of peace and calm. The love he expressed towards his ice cream and candy bar gave him a feeling of peace and calm. These were the moments of the greatest joy during his day. To David’s belief system giving up sweets was equivalent to giving up the happiest moments of his day.

David doesn’t create much in the way of love and happiness outside of his eating moments. The anxiety from an internal dialog of self judgment and fears create an emotional desert. His love for sweets was an oasis in the midst of that emotional emptiness.

What would you do if someone wanted to take away the happiest moments of your day? You might get defensive or even angry about it. We’ll that’s the emotional attachment that David was unconsciously dealing with. His intellect wanted to take away his treats, but his emotions wanted to be happy. The emotions won time and time again. Even if it was physically healthier for his body, his belief system had emotional attachments related to his food. His intellect would lose out to the core beliefs driving his emotions.

At the surface it looks like a logical choice for his health of his body. But as David gained self awareness he realized it was an unconscious choice for his happiness. The unconscious choice for his happiness kept winning out even when it was tied to poisoning his body with sugar. David couldn’t recall when he had made the beliefs that associated snack food filled with sugar and emotions of peace and calm, but the beliefs were there.

Steps towards changing Emotional Eating

Sometimes we hope to change certain behaviors in one step as if there were some switch to flip. Usually when there are multiple intertwined beliefs it is necessary to make changes in steps. One of the traps that David will have to change is making the expression of calm and joy solely dependent on the trigger of food. To break this pattern he will have to retrain his emotional system to express and create those emotions at other times. Starving himself emotionally until he gets a sugar snack is part of the belief system routine. If he becomes satisfied emotionally during other parts of the day, he won’t be starved for the emotional eating version of peace and calm. .

Changing Food Habits or Behaviors

For most people changing a habit or behavior is much more challenging than deciding to adopt a new routine. Not only do you have to adopt a new pattern in your actions, but you have to invest some emotions into the new habit. You also have to challenge the emotional attachments of the old habits. In David’s case this includes what he is doing with his emotions when he is away from food.

These attachments exist as thoughts and beliefs that connect certain emotions to food. There are also certain emotions to not having his snacks. In David’s case the emotion of peace and calm is associated to ice cream and donuts. Only after David builds new ways to create peace and calm will he will have a solid chance of dropping his eating addiction. One effective way to do this is to dissolve the self judgments. These create a lot of the fear and anxiety that make it difficult to have the enjoyment of peace and calm during the regular day.

David already knows what he should and shouldn’t eat and why he should do it. This is usually true of people with food and emotional eating addictions. It isn’t just a matter of deciding to do something and doing it. It is more subtle and powerful than that. It’s emotional.

Serious about Change

To make real change you will have to break the old emotional attachments and build new ones. To do this you will have to identify and break the core beliefs that drive these various emotions. This kind of self reflective work requires a bit more introspection than passively reading a book or an article. Your beliefs aren’t in a book, they are in your mind and that is where you will have to look.

Practicing awareness of your beliefs and emotions, including the unpleasant ones, isn’t always glamorous work. Nor does it fit with the positive image that we like to have of our self. Emotional awareness is often uncomfortable, particularly when it has to do with fears, guilt, shame, or anger. Because our natural instinct is toward happiness our mind tends to shy away from this self reflection that is required for change.

However there is tremendous benefit when we deal with these emotional core belief issues. Once they have been addressed we can live free of those uncomfortable emotions and behaviors every day of our life for the rest of our life. That’s a long and rewarding return on your investment for a short bit of up front work.

Emotion is much more powerful than logic. Emotion can be a powerful force that inspires us to action and to create something marvelous. Through limiting core beliefs emotion can also create attachments that cause us to feel trapped and unable to change. The key to unlocking these emotional attachments is to inventory and change the core beliefs they are built on. When you learn to master what you believe, you are able to master your emotions.

Mastering your emotions makes it easy to change any habit or behavior at will.

For lessons on identifying and changing your core beliefs you can sign up for the first Self Mastery audio sessions for free.

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Feeling Deprived: Food Beliefs

What is awareness and what does it have to do with changing your behaviors, habits and emotions? A good part of awareness has to do with perception. People who are aware see things that others don’t. They also have a context to put those little bits of information into that help them form a clearer picture. Without the small details and the larger context to make sense of things you can get pretty lost and turned around in the mind. This is what usually happens when people attempt to change a negative thought, or emotional reactions.

Here’s a story from The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein that illustrates how awareness helps to understand a situation and the importance of seeing what others don’t.

The Invisible Adversary

The Marines conducted a training exercise for inexperienced corporals and sergeants at Camp Pendleton in California. John Schmidt is a former Marine who is highly skilled at making sense of tactical situations and was observing. The instructors controlling the exercise, and acting as the enemy, called in mortar attacks, sniper fire, and mine explosions to decimate the team. After this had gone on for a while, an instructor asked a Lance Corporal what kind of adversary they were up against. “I don’t know,” was the response. “The enemy is just clobbering us.” Further questions to probe more deeply pointed nowhere. To the Lance Corporal it was undifferentiated mayhem.

To John Schmidt it was obvious that the Marines, were facing at least a platoon, and more likely, a company of about 150 to 200 soldiers. He knew this because of the mortar rounds, there had to be forward observers to call them in. Mortars are weapons that usually belong to companies or battalions not to platoons. John was keeping track of the number of enemy contacts that had been reported. If he could account for a platoon based on actual contacts, there were probably many more soldiers they hadn’t encountered. Therefore, they were almost certainly facing a larger force than a platoon. The area covered by these different contacts suggested that they were facing a company. Furthermore, the mining of the team’s path showed their adversary planned a defensive operation and a commitment of effort. This implied a force that was certainly larger than a squad. The mortars, mines, and snipers, all seemed to be trying to channel them off the path and into a nearby field that was probably the intended killing zone. (The Power of Intuition p. 139 by Gary Klein)

When people first attempt to make changes in their mind, whether it is thoughts, emotions, or beliefs, they are inexperienced. Much like these young corporals and sergeants, they don’t know what they’re up against. They get clobbered and they don’t even know why. If you are going to win over the adversaries in your mind then you will need to become aware of them and how they really operate.

Eliminating Negative Thoughts

Beginner attempts to change negative thoughts or emotions are often done as if it were a cut-and-paste operation in your Word document. When a negative thought occurs a person will try to make the case against it and prove that it’s not valid. They take the opposing side and push out the negative thought as if to delete it. Then they fill in a positive affirmation, thought, or supportive belief in its place. They might feel better for the moment, but later they can’t figure out why that old negative thought keeps recurring.

Using the metaphor of a garden, thoughts are the leaves of weeds that we can see. When we pull the leaves off a weed it appears that we have solved the problem. However, when you look below the surface, you find that the roots of that weed are still there. Beliefs are the roots of thoughts. If you want to permanently remove a certain thought, you will have to remove the beliefs the thought is rooted in.

Attempts at changing a thought without addressing the belief is like tearing the leaves off a weed and leaving the roots intact. If you can’t see the beliefs in your mind you will have a tough time changing the thoughts. It’s important to get a clearer picture of what you are up against.

The difference between thoughts and beliefs

Example of a negative thought: “I shouldn’t have done that.”

To the casual observer, this appears to be a single thought of self judgment. However there is a system of beliefs at the root of this thought that are invisible. For starters, this judgment is a comparison that finds us wrong. Assumed in this comparison is some other action that would have been “right”. This “right” action is often not spoken in the words, but implied.

There is also the element of faith or belief in that assumed right action. The defined wrong action and the hidden “right” action for both have some faith invested in them. Without faith in this other mental construct, there would be no basis for comparison that leads to self judgment.

The Inner Judge

The part of the mind that speaks the judgment, “I shouldn’t have done that”, we could call the inner judge. It’s not the total mind, just one aspect. If another part of our mind were to disagree with this judgment, then that different part of the mind can easily be seen. This can happen if we have the opposing thought, “That’s not true. It was good that I did that.” However, if there’s no disagreement with the inner judge, the judge stands alone, and it appears as our only voice. This can make it difficult to see this inner judge character as only one aspect of the mind. Instead we tend to think of it as “me.”

Even when there is no disagreement with the inner judge there is still another part of the mind at work. It is the part that silently agrees with the judge. We call this the victim. The victim part of the mind accepts the criticism from the inner judge. When the judge and the victim agree it is also difficult to perceive these parts of the mind as separate from you. Without the awareness of where you stop and the beliefs and voices in the mind begin you will have a difficult time with these adversaries.

Awareness: The Context for Thoughts and Beliefs

What appears as one thought, “I shouldn’t have done that”, is really made up of several components that comprise a belief system. Aside from the negative thought there is:

1) The invisible force of faith you put in that negative thought.

2) The criteria of what is right or expectation that we compare our self to.

3) The invisible force of faith that we put in the criteria of “right”.

4) The inner judge part of the mind that is making the comparisons

5) The voice of the victim that accepts the comparisons of the inner judge.

6) Then there is the resulting emotion of unworthiness when this self judgment is accepted to be true.

The emotion is the consequence of believing the negative thought of self judgment. That emotion can also be a trigger for another set of beliefs such as, “I shouldn’t feel this way,” or “I wish I didn’t feel this way.” Belief in these thoughts can create more emotional reactions. When uncontrolled in the mind this can lead a person into uncontrolled downward spiral of emotions.

Set Up for Failure

When you attempt to change those negative thoughts with a cut-and-paste operation, you are likely to fail. You are pulling a leaf off a weed but leaving the roots in tact.

Each thought is sourced in a belief, and most beliefs are networked with other beliefs. The victim voice in the mind is often in automatic agreement with the judge voice. The judge voice is echoing the comparison based on the belief in the criteria of what is right or successful. The negative thought, “I shouldn’t have done that,” is just the common sense conclusion to these other beliefs. It may be the only part you hear, but it doesn’t mean that it is the only part to the problem.

Attempting to change the thoughts you can see won’t effectively get rid of the beliefs. To effectively change the negative thoughts you will have to change the beliefs that you don’t see. That’s why awareness is so important. Without awareness you won’t be able to see into that invisible world of beliefs where the real issues lie.

Reality

If you’ve attempted to stop or change your negative thoughts and haven’t been successful it doesn’t mean you are a failure. Your results aren’t a measure of your performance, discipline, or personal will power. More likely they have to do with your experience, awareness, and the tools you are using. Developing the awareness to find a belief, and skillfully remove it is a bit more involved than pushing aside a negative thought.

It’s a lot like being up against a company or battalion. It doesn’t mean that you are beat, it just means you had better gain a greater awareness of what you are up against. Then get the training and reinforcements to do the job of changing your core beliefs instead of being distracted by the negative thoughts.

The process begins with self awareness. Developing awareness will give you the ability to see more clearly these hidden beliefs. Without that ability of perception you won’t be able to see where those negative thoughts are coming from. And it’s darn difficult to stop an enemy that you can’t see.

For exercises and practices in raising your awareness and changing core beliefs I suggest the Self Mastery Audio program. The first few sessions are free.

I have been hearing a lot about LSD lately and the effects of it on the mind and how it can expand consciousness. From what I heard it can give you the same results as years of self mastery work and meditation. It sounds pretty far fetched. I was just wondering what you think about using LSD or other drugs to advance consciousness on this spiritual journey.
Being Curious AJ

Hi AJ

Drugs can have an impact on your brain and you will likely have an experience from that. What that experience will be you won’t get to know in advance.

I suppose that if you took a pot of coffee and poured it on your computer and monitor you would get an interesting experience as well. There would be a show of sparks, smoke, and possibly even an electrical fire. To a young child, or the inexperienced or naive this could be seen as a magical and profound show. To someone a bit more familiar with electricity and shorting out electrical circuits it will be foolish, dangerous, and an expensive waste of electronics.

In the same way you can have different experiences if you pour chemicals on the synapses of your brain. However at what price? As far as I know those parts of the body are not replaceable. You get issued one brain with that body so you might want to seriously consider how much risk you take with it.

My personal opinion about using drugs to elicit spiritual and conscious expansion is this. I don’t recommend it. I’ll go so far as to discourage the use of drugs for spiritual growth and consciousness purposes. These are a few of my reasons:

1. I first suggest starting with the awareness of what beliefs in the mind propose this avenue of curiosity. What beliefs dictate that you need or would benefit from an artificial substance? What part of this belief system implies that you are not powerful enough to create change on your own? What it is it about these beliefs that discount your use of skillful practice and discipline?

2. Then there is the down side risk of letting your self lose conscious control and possibly injuring your self on just a physical level.

3. I don’t see how one progresses to a Spiritual Self Mastery by losing conscious control through substances. This is just a bit contradictory. I don’t know what your version of “self mastery” is but it doesn’t fit mine. Self Mastery has to do with gaining conscious control of your mind, not abdicating power of the mind over to a substance.

4. Now consider the upside of a drug induced spiritual experience of conscious awakening. You are likely to attribute the source of your conscious raising experience to the drug. In the belief system of your mind the drug becomes the power necessary to open the door of consciousness. This perspective indirectly creates the belief that you are less powerful. The paradigm results in disempowering your self. I don’t see this as a path to gaining conscious control over one self and mastering one’s life.

The Spiritual Journey

Stopping your internal dialog and accessing expanded levels of consciousness is challenging. It is even more challenging to do without skilled guidance and a mentor. It’s why I suggest people get skilled guidance. I’ve attempted to make some of that guidance easily available on this web site through the free audio and the Self Mastery program. It certainly is not all the guidance everyone will need for every circumstance and question, but hopefully it is a starting point.

For me that guidance came in the form of my mentor, don Miguel Ruiz over many years. The guidance of my mentor was invaluable in my journey. Through his words, wisdom, and perspective he lent me his consciousness.

He was also able to provide one of the most powerful and addictive substances for my personal growth and spiritual progress. That substance wasn’t a drug, it was unconditional love. The power of unconditional love was so addictive that I made every effort to be in his presence as much as I could. But what was more powerful that sharing his unconditional love with me is that he taught me how to grow my own.

I understand that desire for that feeling of love that is often called a spiritual experience. I haven’t done any recreational drugs in my life. I really don’t have any desire to. I feel the unconditional love that I create and I don’t’ have any desire to pour artificial chemicals on that. The added benefit of using love to facilitate your expansion of consciousness is that you don’t have to come down from it.

Dear Gary,

I have an experience to share instead of asking a question this time.

I was doing the journal exercise and looking at a particularly intense recent emotional experience. I sensed that I was hitting on some very strong beliefs and even though I could journal out a lot of what was going on in my head, assign it to the various parts of my ego, I still found myself stuck in that point of view. The Judge concluded that I simply couldn’t make the agreements dissolve right then and there, and therefore, this was pointless. Through a chain reaction of agreements, it told me that I wasn’t going to figure this out. (I just got Session 11 of the Self Mastery series, so I see that lie hidden in the vagueness there.)

The frustration built up as the Victim accepted all of those self-judgments, and–to borrow a metaphor you’ve used–the elastic bands began to pull me back into old habits. I went to try and sleep. I had gotten stuck in this unsolvable intellectual conundrum of whether or not I could bring a particular person back into my life. I felt intense fear that this person would not allow it.

Then a funny thing happened…. a shift in my point of view

My mind just shifted. I thought that no matter what happened in that situation, I could be grateful. I could be grateful the person considered my request; grateful that she would say yes; grateful that she’d say no; grateful that I had my past experiences with her and that my memory functioned enough just to be able to remember them. I could even go one step further: to be grateful that my mind had the ability to make me feel misery by entertaining false beliefs as being true. The emotion I felt was so powerful, it actually brought me to tears. I’ve never experienced anything like it. In that moment, I was so grateful, I couldn’t contain it in my self.

What is incredible to me about that situation is that I made no specific effort to shift into gratitude. It just happened. What is even more interesting is that I’ve had other less intense moments like this where I simply shift and see the same situation completely differently. I’m not going at it consciously and I didn’t set out that day to do that.

The emotion of the experience I described only lasted a short time, though. The elastic of old habits eventually pulled me back to a more familiar emotional state.

So, I don’t suppose I have a question for you today. I ask a lot of those and instead would just like to share an experience with someone who is going to appreciate the magnitude of what it meant to me.

And also, I’d like say your most recent podcast on breaking habits and addictions was a great listen. The metaphor of the elastic bands really helped put shifting one’s perspective into, well, a different perspective.

I’ve found that I really don’t have anyone in my day-to-day life that I can talk to about this process. While I know many wonderful caring people who will listen to me, they simply aren’t familiar with the ideas you’re presenting. I could explain them, but I feel they use up a lot of my personal power. This isn’t to say I feel lonely in this process. Rather, I understand that what I’m doing is immensely personal and that someone else isn’t readily going to understand what that experience means to me. I consider it my path and while some can help me keep an eye out for obstacles to expect, I know I’m the only one who can and will walk it.

Much gratitude, as always.

B. B.

——————

A few thoughts on this course subscribers experience.

His emotions didn’t shift by accident. His emotions shifted because his point of view shifted. It didn’t shift in the moment of doing the Self Mastery exercises, but the exercises had a lot to do the change. The exercises in awareness and changing emotions helped knock down those walls so that he could slip easily through the opening when it was time.

Changing core beliefs, stopping the voices in your head, and shifting your emotions doesn’t usually happen the way you expect it. And that can be a good thing as long as you don’t let the expectations of your inner judge dictate your actions and intent.  Sometimes shifting your mind is like one of those tricky puzzles.  You work at it, and work at it, and then, boom.  A new perspective opens up and you see the key that unlocks it.  The funny thing is that easy solution only seems to appear after you have put your hard work and effort into the change.

You have the power to create happiness through the expression of love and truth. You also have the power to create emotional suffering in your self, and in others depending on how you use your word. When you hurt your self or another there is a way to ease and heal that suffering in your self and in another. That way is forgiveness.

What is your definition of happiness?

Happiness is a state of emotion. Happiness can be experienced in many different variations such as euphoric laughter, the spiritual bliss of overwhelming love, or just a calm quiet peace. One indicator of happiness is how little chatter there is in your internal dialog. In the happiest moments of your life, you are not thinking. You might have been keenly aware of what was going on with your self, or fully engaged in the situation around you, but your mind was probably very quiet.

What are some important factors in achieving happiness? Why?

The most important factor in achieving happiness is the expression of your love coming out of you. It is expressing the emotion of love that creates the various forms of happiness. That’s a very simple answer, and very natural to do as a child, but as one grows older it becomes more difficult. As people grow older they acquire many fear based beliefs in their mind.

If you are not happy, and you want to be, then the important thing is to identify and dissolve the fear based beliefs in your mind. This is not a one step process. It will require that you develop and practice skills of identifying false beliefs in your mind, and detaching from them. Once you detach from your fears it will be easier to express your love. One of the skills you will need to do this is the control over your attention. Some people learn this from meditation, but there are many other ways.

Do you believe that money can buy happiness? Why or why not?

Money can buy a very basic level of happiness. In this society money is the means for your basic physical needs, such as food and shelter. It is very difficult to be happy, peaceful, and calm when your body is hungry, and without shelter. It is possible but very difficult. There is usually too much primal and instinctual survival fear to overcome in order to be happy.

Once you have enough money to address your basic needs, then money has very little impact on your happiness. That is why many people are still unhappy even though they have everything they need. There are many wealthy and even successful people who are depressed, some even to the point of being suicidal.

After supplying you with basic survival, money doesn’t dissolve any of the fear based beliefs in the mind that interfere with expressing love.

If you were given $500,000 dollars to spend on ANYTHING to make you happy, what would be the most effective choice to use the money on? Why?

The love coming out of me is independent of the activity of trading cash for material things. I’m already happy. Spending money wouldn’t do anything for my happiness. I’d much rather invest it. I have everything that I need. If I invest it wisely I will have what I need for a rainy day as well.

How would you spend the $500,000 if it were entirely up to you? (Regardless of how your happiness would benefit?) Why?

Again, I would invest the money. If you told me that I had to spend it, I would buy stocks or real estate.

If it does, what role does religion (having faith in a God) play in achieving happiness?

If you perceive yourself as one single human in the world and look out at the immensity and the apparent chaos of the world, you can easily feel overwhelmed and powerless. There’s a comfort in believing that there’s a force out there orchestrating it all in a sensible way. This is just one way.

What does having a religion benefit in terms of self happiness? What does it take away?

Religion or spiritual groups can be very supportive for people when they are in need. A community of people is our human nature and we are generally happier interacting with a community. Churches and religions can provide this community that much of society is without.

Religion also impacts people in other ways. One of the dynamics of the mind is that it asks a lot of questions. The mind wants to know an answer all the esoteric questions that it generates, such as, Why are we here? or What happens when the body dies? Religions provide people answers to the many questions that the mind asks. When the mind has an answer its’ “need to know” is satisfied. This satisfaction of the mind can help a person to feel better. However the part of the mind that has a “need to know”, doesn’t care if the answer is the truth or not. Because of this many people accept answers and walk around with religious beliefs that are false.

For instance one of the beliefs that people can have is that God might punish them in Hell after their body dies. This is a lie. If people believe this lie, then they live in fear and unhappiness their whole life for something that will never happen. In spite of this fear, their mind feels secure that it knows what will happen. The real comfort from all of this is the Truth and Love. Truth and Love transcend that mind’s need to have an answer.

Do you believe religious people are generally happier (or unhappier) than non-religious people? Why or why not?

Studies have shown that people who participate in a religious organization are statistically happier than those who don’t have any spiritual affiliation. One of the reasons for this is that it creates an environment where they can express their love in numerous ways. It is the expression of love that creates happiness for a person, not the religion. A person without religion can take a walk in nature and love all the beauty in nature. Just by walking in nature they can achieve happiness with no beliefs at all.

If it does, what role does having healthy relationships (friends, family, coworkers) play in achieving happiness?

The more people you have around you that you can express your love to the happier you are. Your friends and your family won’t make you happy, but expressing your love for them will. If you are an judgmental and angry person then having more people around will give you more opportunities to be judgmental and angry. It’s really not about the people around you, but how you express your self with them.

What is the ideal background/environment to grow up in to being a happier person in the future?

The ideal environment is to grow up in an environment where your parents are happy, unconditionally loving, and accepting. Even then, they will still have to give you boundaries and teach you about punishment and reward. Very few people have this experience. Even if you have this from one parent it is very rare. I haven’t met anyone who has had that perfect childhood. The truth is that at a certain point you realize it doesn’t really matter how you grew up. What matters is right now, and what you will do about being happy in your life now. At a certain point everyone leaves behind the guidance of parents and has to take responsibility for their own emotions.

What is your view on married couples being happier than people who are single? In a general sense, do you believe it is true or false? Why?

The studies have proven that married people are statistically happier than single people. However this is a general statistic and marriage is no guarantee. The Dalai Llama is a single man, and he is a master of happiness. There are also married couples who then get divorced, and that break up can be very painful.

In intimate relationships you have an opportunity to express your love in so many ways. It is the expression of your love for your partner that will make you happy. A single person might not have as many opportunities during a regular day, so a married person that you love and see often is a big advantage to being happy.

However a person can also use their relationship as an opportunity to be selfish. They will attempt to get their partner to satisfy their emotional needs and needs for attention. If you are with a partner like this then you might be happier being single.

Clarification - The Happiness of Children

The point here is that there is no magic formula for happiness. These questions about marriage, money, religion, and God assume a relationship between your emotions and something other than your self. The questions assume that happiness is associated with something external to you. It’s not that complicated. Emotions are something that you create. It only looks like your emotions are determined by external things because of the habits of emotional reactions you have learned to external things and people.

Children don’t know about God, religion, money, or marriage, however children are naturally happy. They are happy because their mind is not filled with fear based beliefs. They have little or no judgments, they don’t believe they are right, they don’t blame others, and their mind isn’t filled with worries of what others will think of them. They have very few or no habits based on these beliefs. Because their mind has very little fear they are free to express their love in whatever they are doing. For them it is easy to be happy. They don’t need money, but they do need their physical needs met. They don’t need marriage, or a religious group, but they do need someone to express their love to.

Wisdom and Awareness for Lasting Happiness

As an adult, if you really want to be happy, you will have to dissolve the fears, and fear based beliefs in your mind. As adults you do not have the choice to be innocent like children, but you can be free of fear. To do this you will have to control the opinions and knowledge in your mind instead of letting it control you. To free your self from fear, you will have to become wise. It is through this wisdom, or what I call awareness, that you can live in a vast, unfathomable world, and be happy.

What got you interested in studying happiness and your journey? What made you want to share your knowledge?

Being happy became my number one priority in 1994. I had just broken up with my girlfriend and was miserable. I had also just left my career where I had been overworked and was burned out. My career and relationship had left me disillusioned. I realized that I had made my happiness dependent on these two external sources. I let both of these sources be driven by other people, and they drove them into misery.

I decided that I wanted to be happy no matter what. It became my number one priority. I decided that I would figure out what was in my unconscious decision making process led me to be unhappy and I’d change it no matter what. Two weeks later I met my mentor, don Miguel Ruiz. He taught me how to find and dissolve false beliefs and the fear in my mind. He taught me to open my heart and love with no conditions.

Several years later, I took time to thank him for all he had done for me. I asked if there was anything I could do for him in return. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said “No, I’m already happy.” Then after a pause he said, “But if you want to, you can go and share what you have learned with other people so that they can be happy too. If you want to of course, it’s just a choice.”

David had a relationship break up about 5 years ago. In the aftermath he felt miserable. The voices in his head were kicking in with a lot of harsh self judgments, at least harsher than usual. It wasn’t an entirely new dynamic, but the amplified self criticisms of being a loser, “nobody will want to be with me”, “another failed relationship”, and “I’ll forever be alone,” hurt so much that he couldn’t ignore them anymore. He decided to do something about it. David committed to stopping those incessant negative thoughts of self judgment that were wreaking havoc on his emotions.

After a few months of David’s best and most willful effort he concluded that he wasn’t getting anywhere. He had assumed they were just thoughts, small things, and not very powerful. How difficult could these be to change? But after months of trying and failing to stop them his mind concluded that he was less powerful than those little thoughts and voices in his head. What did that say about him if he failed to make even these simple changes? He must not be able to do much of anything. David concluded that he was a hopeless case failure. If he didn’t have what it took to beat these thoughts then he didn’t deserve to be happy and successful.

After his failed attempt for change he felt even worse than before he tried.

Of course that conclusion isn’t surprising since the part of his mind making it was the same judge and victim characters that were creating all the self judgments to begin with. But I digress.

The important part of the story is that somehow David didn’t stop. There was another part of his being, a part of his being with a desire for more love and happiness and it wouldn’t rest. That part kept searching and trying.

5 Years later:

I met David on the phone a couple months ago. We have since talked several times. In a conversation a couple weeks back he shared with me the story above and his concluding beliefs from 5 years ago. He had forgotten about them until that week.

However the agreements he made about himself weren’t forgotten. The faith he had put in those beliefs about being a hopeless failure were still there. He had invested faith in that conclusion about himself and turned it into a belief. His faith from years ago was powerful enough to keep that belief alive in his mind for years. The result of that powerful force of faith was the opinions that still echoed in his head. It was by watching those opinions of his internal dialog that he was able to spot the thread.

As he shared the story he could still feel a connection to the failure self image and the emotions it produced of unworthiness and insecurity. He didn’t know how to detach himself from this sticky failure image. Intellectually he could see it was just the conclusion at the time, but somehow the emotion and feeling didn’t shift. To him the belief was still true even though intellectually he didn’t want it to be. This is dynamic is more understandable when you become aware that faith and beliefs aren’t made and changed by the intellect.

Understanding Expectations of Self Judgment

You can’t change the beliefs if you can’t change the assumptions they are built upon. And you can’t change the assumptions they are build upon if you can’t see them. When it comes to self judgment some of the most common hidden assumptions are expectations. David saw in his flash back the concluding self judgment he believed about himself, but he didn’t yet see the assumptions and interpretations that preceded it. Without changing these preceding elements the beliefs remain stuck. We don’t usually see the assumptions but our faith goes into them and the implied agreements as well as the concluding statement we do see.

I explored this with Dave and it resulted in some surprising discoveries of hidden assumptions. I asked Dave how he went about attempting to change his self judgments. He described basically willing his mind to stop the chatter and miserable emotions. I asked him how effective this approach was. Dave explained that it wasn’t effective at all. I asked him what he did then. Dave said that he tried harder at willing his thoughts and emotions to change. And how did that work I asked. “Not any better”, Dave replied.
I asked Dave if he tried any other approaches. Dave said, “No, that’s all I could come up with.”

“So let me get this straight,” I inquired, “You attempted to will your internal dialog and emotions to change. When that didn’t work, you tried even harder to do the very thing that didn’t work”
“Yes,” Dave answered. “And when that technique didn’t work for the umpteenth time you concluded that you failed?”
“Yes,” Dave answered.

I had a few more questions in this discovery process.

Did you research and find books that had effective strategies for eliminating self judgments? “No.” *
Did you consult with a therapist who had a track record of helping people get rid of their self judgments? “No.”
Did you consult with any professionals who had a track record of helping people get rid of their self judgments? “No.”
Do you even know anyone that has gotten rid of their self judgments that you could talk to about how to do this? “No.”
Do you know anyone that is without self judgments that you could us as a model for behavior and attitude as an example? “No.”
Then I had to ask Dave how long he thought it should take him to stop the self judgment pattern. More specifically, what the critical voice of the inner judge thought it should take to rid the self judgment pattern. Dave said two months.
And just how long has this pattern of self judgment been going on? “Since I was probably about 5 years old I suppose,” said Dave.

“So let me get this straight. You had decided to stop this internal pattern of self judgment that has been going on for about 30 years. You are going to do this with no resources. You have no specific insights or knowledge of how to change the beliefs in your mind, but you are going to figure this out, and be successful at it. You don’t have any input from people who have done this effectively, or have taught others to do this effectively. You don’t know anyone who has done it to model your self after for an effective strategy. So without any of effective plans, strategy, tools, training, or resources you are expecting to succeed in two months?”

Dave was quiet as he considered my question.

Managing Expectations

With the help of some thin slicing Dave could see many of the assumed beliefs that he had unknowingly invested his faith in. The inner judge’s expectation of two months for success seemed rather ridiculous when you stood it up against the complete lack of resources, training, guidance, and support for the task at hand.

As the expectation became clear Dave’s faith started to naturally fall out of the silly expectations without much effort at all. And as his faith in the elements of the expectation drained, so did the believability of the self judgment. Dave’s agreement about being a hopeless failure dissolved as he focused his awareness on the details of his false beliefs. There wasn’t any loud strike of lightening moment. Only a quiet profound realization of “Oh,,, wow. I had no idea.” And that’s one of the ways you change a core belief through awareness.

Dave works in the construction industry so the use of the following story was used to help him put the old story of self judgment in a new context.

I said, “If I don’t give you any tools, and I tell you to build a house in two months, what chances for success do you have? “None,” Dave said. Do you know anybody that can build a house in two months without any tools? “No. No one can do that. Even a skilled builder with training can’t do it without tools.” Dave replied.

I continued, “Now, if no one you know can make a house in two months without tools, does that mean they are all failures?” “No, they are not failures. They just wouldn’t have the resources they need. They are very capable and successful people it’s just that they would be set up for failing no matter how good they are,” Dave replied.

“The same is with you Dave. The same is with you. You took on the task of dismantling the self judgments and core beliefs in your mind without any plans, tools, training, or resources that you would need. That doesn’t make you a failure. That just means you underestimated the task, and didn’t know how to prepare for it. Not knowing what you were getting into with changing your beliefs and emotions you mismanaged the expectations on the project. You can’t take this one experience and conclude what it means about you.”

And with a clearer understanding that didn’t come from his existing belief system, the inner judge, or victim point of view, Dave’s old belief dissolved and the emotion along with it.

Hidden Elements of Judgment and Beliefs

Your mind will attempt to make conclusions about what kind of person you are. It will cast down self judgments and criticisms. Or sometimes it will raise your self importance in order to set you up for a big fall later. If you aren’t aware of the elements like implied agreements, hidden assumptions, and expectations, then your beliefs will take your emotional body for a ride that you don’t control. And usually it is not a fun one at that.

If you want to take action to change your core beliefs and interpretations that drive self judgments and your emotions, you will find a set of plans, tools, and a step by step training approach in the Self Mastery audio course. The Advanced Series focuses several sessions specifically on breaking the patterns of self judgment. If you prefer a more focused approach you can supplement the audio sessions with personal coaching.

And for those that want a jump start boost on the process, you are invited to join me on the Spiritual Intensive to Mexico.

You can’t change the beliefs and assumptions you are not aware of. If you can’t change your beliefs and assumptions, you can’t change your interpretations that drive your emotions. That makes awareness the key to mastering your emotions.

Related Material

mp3 audio on Self Judgment

Have you taken time to contemplate where your emotions come from? Actually they don’t come from anywhere. You create them. When you create sadness you then feel the sadness you create. When feel anger it is because you created that emotion.
Misunderstanding Your Emotions

We are not used to thinking of our emotions as something we create. Common syntax of language produces the misinterpretation that emotions come from something or someone external. How many times have we heard or said words to the effect, “He/She makes me so angry/frustrated/sad.” Or perhaps the same reference to the opposite emotions. “He/She makes me so happy.” This phrasing is so common in language that we overlook the disempowering paradigm it creates.

Thoughts like these imply to your mind that an external circumstance like traffic or another person is determining your emotional state. Your belief in words with these assumptions can have a hypnotizing effect. Their impact builds through time and repetition until it really appears that it is about someone or something external. When mental patterns like this occur other hypnotic beliefs are forming as well. You are also creating a false self image as a person powerless over your emotions.

By believing a few symbolic words and their underlying assumptions, it can feel like love, joy and happiness are beyond your reach.

Aside from creating a victimizing paradigm of beliefs it also induces an interesting compensating strategy. If your happiness is experienced as a result of external people or events then you will attempt to control people and events in order to be happy. The reverse happens when you interact with people who live by this emotionally powerless paradigm. They will attempt to control you in order to satisfy their external need for happiness. Living by these beliefs generally puts emotional strain and drama on a relationship.

From Interpretation to Expression

People will say that their spouse or partner makes them happy. This is a misinterpretation. It’s really their expression of love for their wife, husband, or lover that is creating their state of joy. When they no longer love that person, nothing that person does will “make” them happy. At that point they might say that their ex is “making” them angry or upset. Also not true. They are making themselves angry or upset with the story they believe and express about their ex.

Years later they might have forgiven their ex about the issues of the past. They look upon that relationship as a growth experience and perceive it with gratitude and fondness. Their ex may not have changed much over time but the emotional expression towards them has. How we feel emotionally about someone is our creation. How we feel changes depending on how we express our story about them.

The secret element determining your emotions is in the interpretation of the story you believe and express. The facts might be the same but how you interpret them changes your emotional experience.

Some people say that time heals all wounds. This isn’t true. People can take anger and resentment to their grave. What heals emotional wounds is changing your belief in the interpretation of the story you have about someone. When you adopt a different interpretation, you change the expression of emotions. The challenge here is that you really have to change what you believe. Saying it is not enough.

One way of changing your story about the past is forgiveness. Forgiveness changes your interpretations and frees you from continued expressions of judgment and anger. You have the power to change your interpretation and emotions quickly, slowly or not at all.

The Secret World of Interpretations

If two people experience the same event they can have completely different emotional experiences. The difference is in the interpretation the mind makes. If two people are caught in the rain one might laugh at himself for forgetting his umbrella. The other might judge himself and feel like an idiot. The difference between being happy or unhappy is not controlled by circumstances like the weather, but by belief in the interpretation.

The mind is fast. It makes an interpretation in the instant between perception and emotional reaction. In that hidden moment the mind constructs a virtual reality of assumptions and calculates opinions, judgments, and reactions.

When you realize you forgot something the mind retraces where the item is, imagines how things should have happened, imagines what you should have done, makes a comparison between what you did and what you should have done, judges you based on the comparison, creates a negative self image, and then condemns you for being that false image it manufactured in it’s secret reality. Without awareness the only part you notice is the concluding comment, “I’m such an idiot,” and the corresponding emotions.

If you have awareness and pay attention you can intervene in that secret world of interpretation. Changing the interpretations your mind makes in that virtual reality will change the resulting emotional expressions. Until you unlock and change those interpretations, part of your happiness will remain a secret from you.

Most people have had their mind conditioned to interpret that happiness will result from doing things they are supposed to do or come from achieving certain goals. In this way the mind perceives love and happiness as something to be pursued and attained. That’s a very limited interpretation that fails to recognize the power you have to create emotions such as love and gratitude.

The pathway to your expression of love is the interpretations, beliefs, and perspective in the mind. It is those interpretations in the mind that control whether you will allow your self to express love, or if you will express emotions based in fear.

When you change the interpretations in that secret world of the mind, you unlock the doors that hold back your happiness. You are then free to let your love come out of you.

For practical steps you can take to take control of this secret world of assumptions and beliefs in the mind, and gain mastery over your happiness, download and listen to the mp3 audio in the Self Mastery program. The first sessions are free.

This article is posted at http://pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2008/04/29/secret-happiness/

The idea being pedaled is to stay positive about your goals, and don’t let the negative distract you.  I’m familiar with the examples used to illustrate the point, but it doesn’t make the point true all the time in every instance.

Do you have absolute control over your attention?

First of all the axiom assumes that all people have complete control over their attention. This just isn’t the case. Most people haven’t been introduced to the idea of controlling their attention. They haven’t practiced it, and they aren’t skilled at it, particularly when it comes to dealing with their emotional situations.

Very often people will focus on a positive aspect of a bad situation and then four, or fourteen minutes later their mind has wandered back to the old negative story.

When you attempt to follow the axiom “Stay focused on the positive” you are set up for failure. Not because you are a failure, or undisciplined, but because you have not practiced and developed the skill of controlling your attention. This is particularly challenging when in the midst of unpleasant emotions.

Focusing your attention without distraction for as long as a day is roughly equivalent to running a marathon. You need skilled and effective training before you could expect to do either. (In the Self Mastery Audio Program there are exercises and practices to gain and control your attention.)

Without the development of this skill you are set up for failure. If you expected to succeed, in spite of no instruction, training or practice, you are probably in for a dose of self judgment from the voice in their head. If this is you, then stop it. Quit trying harder to do something that doesn’t work.

But let’s put aside the issue of controlling your attention. Let’s take another look at this philosophy of focusing on the positive all the time and see where it falls apart.
Not Every Situation is the Same

The philosophy assumes that the persistence that worked for one person will work for everyone all the time. It assumes that you should apply this approach to every situation. There’s a part of the mind that loves this simplicity and likes to believe it is somehow true. This is also the same part of the mind that is prone to believe in illusions.

Different situations call for different strategies. Just because a persistent positive approach worked in one case, doesn’t mean it will always work. There is such thing as irrational exuberance. Look at the cycles in the real estate or stock markets. There’s a wrong time to assume the positive about the markets, a relationship, or be overconfidence in your abilities.

When Positive Focus Strategies are too General

Suppose I’m out sailing in a boat and I discover there is a leak. I’m taking on water. I don’t think I should be focused on the beauty of the day, the sun on the water, or the wind in my hair. Sure that would be “more positive”and fit with a live in the moment philosophy, but it goes against my survival instinct. I’m going to put my attention below decks on the water problem. Focusing on the negative is the best use of my time.

If a young child is having difficulty with math, should they just give up on learning long division? Perhaps they can do some problems well, but they keep making mistakes with others? Should they leave the difficult ones alone and focus on the positive of what they do well? Maybe they should just focus on the subjects they feel more positive about like English and History. I’m going to assume that people espousing the philosophy don’t mean it in this way, but they leave it open for misinterpretation when they are not specific.

When you distill life strategies down to one sentence you lose and distort meaningful elements like context, application, and exceptions.

There‘s a time and place to Focus on the Negative

A student struggling with math could potentially gain more by focusing on what they are struggling with. For the greatest benefit they might want to focus on the specific causes of those problems. What faulty reasoning are they applying that is creating the mistakes? What mental images and abstractions does their mind construct that distorts their understanding? How much sugar did they have during the day affecting their ability to concentrate? If they put their attention on the specific part of the process that is getting them to produce bad results they can change it.

The problem isn’t the wrong answer. Getting the wrong answer is a symptom of something distorted in their reasoning. Focusing on the faulty logic producing those mistakes is where they can gain the most value.

Focusing on the positive like History, English, or the problems they can do easily won’t serve them as well. It fits the ”Focus on the Positive”mantra but is a disservice when poorly applied. If a teaching isn’t presented with a proper context, it can be misapplied and cause more problems than help. This is often the case with spiritual or self help teachings.

Self Reflection on the Negative

If I’m not achieving my goals I want to know what I’m tripping over. I want to know the faulty logic that drives sabotaging behaviors and produces negative results. I want to put my attention on the negative so I can figure out what is in my unconscious decision making process and make changes to it. I can’t change something that I’m not aware of. If I attempt to always focus on the positive I’ll never be able to make these important changes.

There is real value in focusing on the negative, or what is sometimes called the darker side of our self. However that is still too vague. When you focus on the negative, you have to be precise in what you are looking at or you can waste a lot of time and get no where.
In the sinking boat story, it is the water that will sink the boat. However it doesn’t do much good to focus on the water. The water is a symptom of the real problem. Focus your attention on finding the leak that is letting all the water into the boat.

You can bail the water and that can help for a while depending on the circumstances Bailing is a good temporary compensating strategy that can buy you some time, but eventually you will have to rest, and who will bail then?

A compensating strategy is a short term, hold things over, and make your self feel better, without really addressing the core issue approach to the problem. The real solution is in finding and fixing the leak. This is the specific part of the negative that should get your attention and bring you the most benefit.

Jealousy and Anger:   Example emotional reaction

The emotional reaction of jealousy is something that can sink a relationship. Jealousy can produce anger and other controlling behaviors. Attempting to change the anger and controlling behavior is like focusing on the water in the boat. It’s just the symptom of an underlying problem. Underneath that layer of anger and jealousy is likely a feeling of insecurity. Putting your attention on that issue brings you closer to the leaking emotions.

If you spend time exploring and understanding the issue of insecurity you will find that one of the elements is rejection due to self judgment. If you thin slice self judgment you find specific beliefs that cause the self judgment. (I explain these in detail in the Self Judgment audio) The structure of core beliefs that generate self judgment is the hole in the boat.

You can’t address jealousy until you address the underlying insecurity. But you can’t address insecurity until you address the contributing self rejection from self judgment. Restructure those core beliefs and you no longer have the overflowing emotions of jealousy and anger to bail out.

It‘s not enough to focus on the negative.

It’s not enough to focus on the negative. If you want to make changes in your emotional reactions you will need to focus on the cause within the negative. You have to bring your attention to those causes with clarity and precision. The exercises in the Self Mastery program guide you through developing these skills.

I’m not advising that you focus on the negative all the time. That’s too general and to be helpful we need to be more specific than that or we get into trouble. I’m suggesting that you focus on the beliefs and assumptions creating the negative emotions. I’m also suggesting that when you do this you do it with the skills necessary to change those beliefs. It is best to be specific about these things.

Some people will look at the process of identifying and changing core beliefs and interpret that it is a lot of work. At least that is the assumption their mind will make as a reaction. When they make this observation I don’t think they considered how much work the alternative is; Working the rest of their life to compensate for the emotional reactions sinking their happiness.

Emotional Issues

There’s a lot of pop advice for emotional issues like insecurity, jealousy, and anger. Focus on the positive is just one example. That approach is just too simple, and general to be effective. Like most one liners, it doesn’t address any of the causes to those emotional issues. It doesn’t address or change the underlying assumptions, and interpretations that the mind is habitually making.

The approach to ”Focus on the Positive” is often used as a compensating strategy. It gives the appearance of making things better. You feel better when you focus on positive things, but only temporarily. The beliefs at the root of the problem are still there and keep creating problems. Kind of like that hole in the boat, or that faulty math logic that keeps producing the wrong answer.

Dwell on the Negative

There are those that say, ”Don’t dwell on the negative.” They say it without regard for the finer points. They say it in a way that tempts people to ignore the causes of their problems, and thereby repeat them. That kind of general advice without a proper context can be dangerous. You run the risk of applying the axiom to every situation without checking to see if the circumstances are applicable or measuring how effective the strategy is.

The persistence of thinking you should ”Focus on the positive” will hypnotize you into ignoring the real causes that created the negative situation to begin with. Ignore those causes and your emotional drama patterns in your history will likely repeat. Pay attention to what caused the negative reactions and you open up a gold mine of discovery for self awareness and personal growth.

Practical exercises in gaining control over your attention as well as identifying and changing core beliefs can be found in the Self Mastery Audio Program. The first few sessions are free.

This article is posted at http://pathwaytohappiness.com

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