Waking up to the unconscious beliefs in your mind is an unconfortable and disconcernting realization. Realizing your unconscious beliefs have been leading you in a dream world of unnecessary emotional reactions, and sabotaging behaviors, all based on illusions in the mind is confusing and we often react with judgment and denial. It can also create [...]
Archive for the 'Emotional Reactions' Category
Fear is at the core of anger and aggression. Yet we become so busy with the strategy of control and the act of aggression we rarely see the cause. We can see the emotional dynamic at work whether we look at our internal thoughts, relationships, or the macro relationships of countries. The basis if [...]
Do you have free will? Is there even such a thing as Free Will? It is true that we are to some degree products of our environment. Our minds get filled with ideas, beliefs, and emotional patterns as we grow up. We are socialized to become a collection of habits and [...]
How can you tell if a relationship will work out? There are specific indicators to tell if your relationship will run into trouble down the road. The signs aren’t found in how much love, romance, or physical attraction there is. Two people can have great chemistry but still not be compatible.
How to [...]
How to Not Take Things Personally
In the book, The Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz outlines a code of conduct for creating love and happiness in your life. One of his Four Agreements is “Don’t Take Anything Personally. In this podcast I describe some of the hidden assumptions that cause us to take things personally. [...]
I often get asked if people can really change their life. They want to known if they can overcome fears, stop the judgments, and quiet the voice in their head. The answer is yes. However, when people ask, they usually ask with such fear and doubt that almost no amount of words will suffice. Perhaps [...]
It might be hard to believe that we fear love and happiness, but it is a real dynamic that happens in the mind. It is easier to understand if we consider the mind to be a living being with many different aspects. If we attempt to change our beliefs and behavior, then we are making [...]
Overcome fear by gaining mastery over your core beliefs.
Fear is that emotional force that drives us in a direction away from joy, happiness, and love. Fear can paralyze us to the point that we feel helpless and suffocated. Often fear appears irrational, but it only looks this way at the surface. When you scrutinize the stories [...]
What are core beliefs and how do you identify them? That’s what many people are realizing they need to do to change their emotional reactions. The problem is where do you look to find core beliefs? They are in the mind but can be hard to pin down, particularly when it is [...]
Ask Gary
Gary,
A friend of mine, Alice, broke up with her boyfriend. When I talked to another friend on the phone (she also knows Alice) I told her that Alice and her boyfriend broke up. Of course I asked myself the question: why am I sharing this info with my friend? Would this be gossiping? So [...]
Understanding Conflicting Desires
Our body has physical desires, our emotions have a desire to express love, and our mind has a desire to have its beliefs and expectations met. This can create some internal conflict that gets more complicated when we add another person’s desires to the mix. The desires from the body and emotions are natural and [...]
Money can buy comforts and our comforts can help keep the mind distracted from fears that eat away at our happiness.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. Happiness is an emotional state. From one point of view inanimate objects can’t create emotions within us. The things money can buy does allow us to occupy our mind with things that we love. [...]
When it comes to stopping or changing emotional reactions people often approach the problem like they are fixing a car. They ask, “How can I change this reaction?” or “How can I stop my jealousy, anger, frustration etc.” The assumption seems to be that if we change one thing the whole problem will go away. [...]
Of don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements most people will say that the hardest one to keep is Don’t Take Anything Personally. I don’t agree. The most challenging agreement is actually Be Impeccable with Your Word. In taking something personal you take what someone said and express an interpretation that makes it personal. We invest our faith in the [...]
I wrote an article about feeling not good enough. It relates to issues of insecurity. A big component of feeling insecure is the image of perfection that we create in our mind. When the voice in our head compares us to that image of perfection it concludes that we are not good [...]
Hi Gary,
After doing the first couple exercises that you gave us I begin to see the whole (or part of) judge-victim story. Man, how many judges and victims are there? It is a bit overwhelming sometimes. So, my question is; is it ‘normal’ to feel a bit powerless, to think that there are just too [...]
Gary,
My lover consistently takes actions I feel are disrespectful and my reaction is that my desire to do loving things for her (sweet talk, flowers, even regular conversation) decreases dramatically.
Q1 How do you determine whether you are withholding your love or preferring not to be disrespected?
Curiously, JS
The reply to this question has been moved to [...]