Tending Your Inner Garden, Dr Gabriella Kortsch

™

EXTRADr. Gabriella Kortsch

Tending Your Inner Garden

Dr. Kortsch holds a doctorate in psychology and dedicates herself to integral coaching, clinical hypnotherapy, relationship coaching, and energy techniques. She is an author and professional speaker and broadcasts a live weekly radio show in English that is available on the Internet or for listening on her website, and has appeared in numerous television programs in English and Spanish. She can help you move towards greater personal and relationship success with her integral approach to life and offers training and workshops in the field of self-development and choosing responsibility for the self. Visit Advanced Personal Therapy.com and sign up for her cutting-edge newsletter in English or Spanish, or visit her blog for more timely articles.

Gabriella Kortsch, Tending Your Inner GardenThe opinions expressed in any articles in this publication are those of the individual authors and may not necessarily by shared by the publishers of No Limits. Any financial or health advice given in No Limits may not be right for your particular case and you should seek your own profession opinion before acting on said advice. Copyright © — The publisher, authors and contributors reserve full copyright of their work as featured in No Limits magazine™.No part of this publication may be copied or otherwise reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. No Limits magazine is protected by trademark.

www.nolimitsforme.com

No Limits EXTRAis published by No Limits For Me

From Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D.

CONTENTS:Tending Your Inner GardenControlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in ThemGiving Birth to YourselfCellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power BackEntering the Now Moment by Leaving Unawareness BehindDo You Dance?Where Are You Now? Feeling Compassion: Only for the Hungry, or Also for People Who Hurt You?Do You Vibrate to a Tune that Serves You Well?What Are Your Addictions?Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?Claiming Responsibility for the SelfLooking in all the Right Places

Advanced Personal Therapy. The Website of Dr Gabriella Kortsch,

Tending Your Inner Garden

Clients have often told me that they fear being by themselves. That they fear their own company. That they will do anything to avoid an evening on their own. Other clients tell me that while they may not fear being alone, they find it a most boring proposition, and can’t quite imagine how to fill the time, other than with TV or a novel. Others refer to being uncomfortable in their own company, and hence, avoid it. (See also my February 2006 Newsletter: Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives).

All three alternatives lead us to the same conclusion: if this is how you feel about being alone with yourself, somehow you are not connected to yourself – and - more importantly, you have no real relationship with yourself, and therefore, probably don’t know yourself.

Why is this important?

Marrying Someone You FearImagine marrying someone whom you fear being alone with, someone whom you avoid spending an evening with on your own. Imagine marrying someone you find so boring, that you would not want to spend time alone with them. Or imagine marrying someone in whose company you feel uncomfortable, and therefore, you avoid this person.

Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? You’d run ten miles before marrying such a person. You’d do anything not to have to spend time with such a person. Nevertheless, that’s the situation we have with ourselves when we don’t recognize the value and importance of establishing a relationship with ourselves that makes us enjoy our own company, find ourselves interesting companions about whom we can always learn something new, and who can always lead us to deeper and deeper levels of understanding, and who is fun and exciting to be with…on our own.

Conjunctio…Are You Interested in Yourself?Really? Is such a relationship with the self really possible? It basically comes down to what Jung termed the conjunctio, in other words the meeting of two separate parts of the self (generally unconscious) in the process of becoming a whole, or of uniting, and in so doing, of transforming.

But that actually sounds like a lot of psycho-babble. Who can contemplate overcoming what sounds like such a difficult hurdle? Anyway, who has the time and money to go into therapy in order to learn about all these things, and explore the deep dark past of one’s childhood? In actual fact, it is not so hard, and it certainly doesn’t depend on whether or not you go into therapy. It has a lot to do with becoming conscious and aware of the self, with a desire for knowledge of the self, and with the acceptance of responsibility for the self. So basically it has a lot to do with how interested you are in yourself.

Individuation and Becoming What You Can Truly BeJung, who brought us the idea of the integral, or holistic human being, said that becoming what we can truly be, growing into that which is inherently in us when we are born, is what the process of individuation is all about.

Maslow, who brought us the hierarchy of needs said that in order to self-actualize, we need to become everything that we are capable of becoming.

Joseph Campbell said we should follow our bliss.

Being Bored with the SelfAll of these concepts refer in some way to self-knowledge, but also to meaning. (See my June 2006 Newsletter Finding a Meaning in Your Life).One can only be bored in one’s own company, if there is no meaning in the life; if the individual has not yet bothered to think about what meaning he or she could give to his or her life. I won’t delve more deeply into that subject, as it has been dealt with in some detail in the afore-mentioned article, but I do encourage you to explore it in order to begin to understand how to find the meaning in your life.

Fear of Being Alone with the SelfIf you fear being alone with yourself, perhaps you feel there is so much in you that you hate, or despise, or judge, or criticize, that it is simply a very dangerous proposition to spend time there…together with yourself. In other words, it is scary to be with someone towards whom you have these very negative feelings. So doesn’t it make sense to get to know this person that you are inside and out, and to clean out, if necessary, all those parts that are reprehensible, or, even better, to come to realize that

there are actually no really truly reprehensible parts, and that you are, in fact, a rather enjoyable person to be with? But this is only possible if you take the journey inside in order to begin to get to know yourself…more importantly, in order to begin to love yourself.

Many of the difficult feelings you may have about yourself can be addressed by using the “energy barometer” I refer to in the article Your Energy Barometer: Make Your Mind Body Connection Work for You. Shifting your energetic vibration, in other words deliberately making yourself feel better will automatically take you to other levels where your thoughts and feeling about yourself will change. On those other, higher levels, it is so much harder for negative or low energy thoughts to find a breeding ground. When you are feeling good, how often do you dwell on downward-spiralling thoughts? When you are feeling good, you don’t want to cry. So shifting your energetic vibration to a higher level, is something I encourage you to start practicing every single day, each and every time you recognize that you are spiraling downward.

Being Uncomfortable with the SelfIf you are uncomfortable with yourself, it may have much to do with the fact that you have simply not much knowledge of yourself, and so feeling uncomfortable is similar to how you feel with a comparative stranger, about whom you know little, and who therefore does not create the sensation of ease and comfort a good friend does. Doesn’t it make sense to try to become your own best friend? Again, in so doing, you will begin to not only appreciate yourself, but also like and love yourself. Even admire yourself. Imagine spending all your time with a friend about whom you feel this way…and this friend is you!

Tending the Inner GardenI wrote earlier that this process need not be difficult, tedious, and certainly does not require the services of a therapist. It does, however, entail something akin to gardening. When you plant a seed in the garden of your house, or in a pot on your terrace, you know very well, that in order for it to grow into a strong oak tree, an elegant palm that sways in the wind, a rose, a geranium, sweet-smelling rosemary, or a flowering perfumed hibiscus, it first needs soil (preferably rich), water, sunlight, care, and constancy. The inner garden is no different.

Enriching the SoilPossibly the soil in which you are beginning your process of growth is not particularly fertile at this time. You know that out there, in the external world, you can create a compost heap in order to enrich the soil you use for your plants. In the internal world you can begin to feed your soil (your mind, heart, and soul), with reading and viewing material that will convert into great compost, rather than trashing your garden with leftover junk food and plastic waste (which on the inner level might be likened to the mass media shows and books or magazines that many people like to read and view as a steady diet, and which has no hope of ever converting into rich soil).

For more concrete pointers on these ideas, have a look at my blog, specifically at the April 2, 2007 post Keep Energy High! Watch How You Feed Your Brain, Heart & Spirit in order to better understand this concept of maintaining rich soil in the inner garden. Read also the last few paragraphs of the April 29, 2007 post Baelo Claudia: Roman Ruins and the "Now" in the same blog. Tend your garden well and watch the lush process of your own inner growth that will take place. Only you can do this for yourself, and only you can make the decision to begin it now…

Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in Them

Many of us fall into the fallacy of believing that we can control our environment and the persons who people it. Therefore, we steadfastly cling to the mistaken belief that if only we could make our spouse more emotionally available, or if only we could make our parents less intrusive, or if only we could make our boss more approachable, or if only we could make our teenage offspring more manageable, or if only we could make our neighbours less noisy, life would be wonderful. And we spend our time working on devising ways of changing these people, driven by the conviction that this would be the solution to all or most of our problems. The truth of the matter is that the only one we actually can control is our self.

Other Side of the Coin We rarely look at this other side of the coin…the fact that if we want to achieve any kind of change in our lives, it has to begin with our self. Frequently change that we bring about in our own person will motivate change in others, almost like a ripple effect that can be observed in a pond when you throw a pebble into the water, but this change in others, or in the environment should not be the stimulus to your own change. That should be sought for itself, in order that you can become more of what you really are, and are capable of being; in other words, in order that you grow into yourself. (see my article “Leaving Your Comfort Zone”),

The Silver BulletEvidently the eternal question is: how do you change or control yourself? What is the magic formula? Is there a silver bullet? And the simple answer is choice. Knowing that no matter what you feel, think, say, or do, you always have choices and alternatives, is one of the most enriching and liberating thoughts there is. When you are reacting to a given event, brought upon by your own thoughts, a nostalgic song on the radio, another person, a difficult financial situation, or even a cataclysmic global incident, always ask yourself whether there are alternatives to your current way of reacting. Then ask yourself whether any of those alternatives are feasible, and whether they would make a positive

difference as compared to the initial mode of reacting you had intended. By consciously choosing to react differently, you are not only controlling yourself by self-awareness, but you are also changing yourself because your reaction is no longer unconscious, and thus you are offering yourself one of the greatest gifts of all - freedom from that blindness.

Giving Birth to Yourself

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author of The Art of Loving among many other books, wrote: A person's main task in life is to give birth to oneself.Giving birth to yourself can happen at any age. You could be in your 70's, you could be a teenager, you might be in your mid-thirties: it makes no difference, you can make this exhilarating change in your life at any time.

Why is it exhilarating? It has to do with you finding the real you...the one that was meant to be...the one that senses a true meaning and purpose in his or her life...and the one that will bring you to greater levels of joy, fulfillment, and happiness than any other aspect of you, barring none. (See also Keep Your Energy High)

When we begin to look at our lives (and again, let me insist that this is not a question of age), from the point of view of growth and purpose; when we realize that we are here for more than the accumulation of honor, prestige, money, and things, much as those are all perfectly valid elements of a good life, then we begin to know that there is another way of looking at how we can continue to develop, that has much more to do with the eternal validity of our souls than with anything else.

The Inner LifeWe begin to become interested in our own inner life - not in a selfish fashion, not born of our ego - because this inner life is precisely what can most clearly point the way towards our own birth. The fact that our intuition is hugely involved in this process, should surprise no one. You may have heard of the fact that scientists now refer to our second and third brains (see also my May 2006 Newsletter about this subject), with regards to the billions of neural cells they now know we have in our gut (intestine) and heart, respectively. These neural cells offer intelligent information of another kind to our being, so that in conjunction with the logical information we receive via the neural cells in our brain, we also receive intuitive and emotional information from the neural cells in our gut and heart respectively. Together, the three types of information - if we will but use them in conjunction - allow us to make choices that are much more informed than those that originate merely from our rational brain.

Intuitive IntelligenceOur intuitive intelligence has much to offer us. It can speak to us in the language of our innermost self ... of that part of us that is not only the part that is visible to the naked eye, the part that others can see, but also of that innermost part of us that has always existed, and that will always be. To understand its language is to understand how we can give birth to ourselves. Hence, learning to listen to our intuition is of utmost importance, and one of the best ways to do so, is to begin to allow our hunches to lead us. (Also see the brief article about Gert Gigerenzer's new book about the subject: Intuition Has Great Value After All!).

Listening to our intuition can be fomented by spending some time alone, by meditating, by taking solitary walks, but above all, also by allowing the little voice inside of you, when it comes up and nudges you about something, to be heard. In other words, don't just ignore it, don't just tell yourself that whatever it was that you just thought had no value, and that therefore you will not pay any attention. Do something about it. Or notice if right after, something happens, as in: I just thought of Aunt Mabel and two minutes later she rings me. While this type of example is minimally important, it does allow you to begin the process of better understanding the role of intuition in your life.

Listening to our intuition also has a lot to do with our self esteem. If we have not got a good sense of self esteem, we will not esteem that inner voice and give it validity. Hence, understanding that our self esteem is one of the most important parts of our own self that needs to be enhanced by a process of self love, is high on the list of priorities towards the goal of giving birth to yourself. It is precisely from this intuitive sector of your being that you will get the greatest amount of vital information about where to go and what to do in order to expedite your birth.

How do we find meaning in our lives? One of the easiest ways is to listen with your inner ear to your bodily reactions to anything. Notice especially a sense of excitement in your solar plexus, an increased rhythm of breathing, heightened facial color and body temperature, as you hear a conversation, listen to something on the radio, watch a documentary on TV, because your body is giving you information about the importance of the particular subject in question to you and your true purpose in life (see also my June 2006 Newsletter: Finding a Meaning For Your Life). This inner listening is totally connected to your intuition and your emotional

self, and it is another way of strengthening the inner dialogue in order to give birth to yourself. (See also Using Your Emotions to Learn About Yourself).

Here are some further ideas about how you can go about this important process of change:

The Life You Don't LeadOscar Wilde said: One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.

Why would that be one's real life? Think for a moment how frequently you get side-tracked by what others think. You have a plan or a desire or an idea, and then, because of censure you feel you might receive from others or because someone says something to you that is critical or derisory about what you are planning, you set your own ideas aside.

So therefore your own ideas have been annihilated. And you can't really blame the other person - they merely stated their opinion. The problem is that you listened, and let it affect you to the point that you buried your own thoughts and are now living life - at least in this respect - according to what the other person has said...and where is your own life?

The Unexamined LifeIt was Socrates who in 399 BCE said the unexamined life is not worth living.

Most of us live unexamined lives. Why? Because that is how our world - generally speaking - is. We may examine our outer circumstances: our profession, our homes, our standing in society, our finances, etc., but we tend not to examine our inner lives.

History - world history - has shown us that there are certain cycles that repeat with some regularity, and that we can learn from in order to avoid mistakes of the past, and potentiate other, stronger, and more positive aspects.

Interestingly, humanistic astrology also focuses on cycles in the human life span, and uses, for example, the planet Saturn to determine when those cycles take place in the life of an individual. Once determined, and especially if the individual is no longer a young person, by virtue of past cycles, the current and future cycles can be much better understood (not predicted...this is not about fortune telling, but about understanding). However, even with these tools, past cycles can only be understood if the

individual has made an effort at examining the events - inner and outer - of his or her life.

Economic and business cycles also study the fluctuations of the market and the changes in any given economy or society. Also see Gregg Braden’s latest book Fractal Time.

Therefore, it would seem that examining one's life is also truly important, if one has any interest whatsoever in understanding it and oneself.

Examining one's own life is not tremendously difficult, but it does pose some awkwardness for those not versed in this kind of activity, as it involves time with oneself. I have found that for some people journaling is a good activity, as it allows them to bring out inner feelings and thoughts that they may not be so very much aware of in ordinary everyday life. More than journaling, however, I also recommend that a sheet of paper be taken for every year of the life. Then, simply write down those things that you know: residence, which family members (and pets) lived with you, school, friends, etc., progressing to further education, jobs, partners, cities of residence, and so on. As you fill in obvious bits, you begin to remember others. Jot them down in bullet fashion, in order to flesh out your own forgotten and unexamined life. This is the beginning to greater understanding. You may see how decisions you took at age 22 led you to expansion and growth at age 29, that in turn led you to other avenues at 36. Or you may see the reverse. You may notice that whenever you had one type of calamity, your reactions were of a given type, that led, some time in the future, to another version of the same calamity. Now you are in the middle of facing another one. Perhaps - due to this examination of your life - you may now decide to react differently.

However you do it, examining the life is always of great value. You may even find it fascinating!

Inauthentic LivesMany well-known and respected speakers refer to people who live inauthentic lives. The sense I get from them, is not that they are criticizing these people, but that they are suggesting that living an inauthentic life may lie at the root of much unhappiness and desperation that is often covered up with sex, eating, drinking, drugs, shopping, non-stop deadening of the senses with television and mass media, an incessant social life, and so on.

Inauthentic is defined as "false, not genuine", and what is false and not genuine about an inauthentic life, is the fact that the person living it is not in connection with his or her true self.

That is to say, this individual is generally living a life that he or she feels should be lived, a life perhaps that the parents expected, or a life that the partner or spouse expects, or simply that this individual feels should be the life to be lived in order to live up to someone else’s expectations. It’s often also a life in which much greater importance and value are given to the outer search for material abundance and social and professional prestige (all of which are very worthwhile aims), than to the inner search for purpose and meaning and for connection to the self and others. (See also my April and May 2006 Newsletters: Losing the Connection and Tending Your Inner Garden).

In an authentic life both the inner and the outer quest are given importance, a balance is sought, and the person soon recognizes that what most motivates him or her, and what most gives satisfying meaning and significance to the lifetime, is something that literally comes from within; something that emanates from the deepest inner self, and which creates a true connection to the self.

The Main Task in LifeBack to Fromm who tells us that our main task in life is to give birth to ourselves. In his article Selfishness and Self-Love, published in 1939, he damns modern culture, Calvin, Kant and others due to a pervasive taboo of selfishness. This ideology teaches “that to be selfish is sinful and that to love others is virtuous. Selfishness, as it is commonly used in these ideologies, is more or less synonymous with self-love. The alternatives are either to love others which is a virtue or to love oneself which is a sin."

Fromm becomes even more damning as he continues his assault on our societal mores concerning self-love: "The doctrine that selfishness is the arch-evil that one has to avoid and that to love oneself excludes loving others is by no means restricted to theology and philosophy. It is one of the stock patterns used currently in home, school, church, movies, literature, and all the other instruments of social suggestion. „Don't be selfish“ is a sentence which has been impressed upon millions of children, generation after generation. It is hard to define what exactly it means. Consciously, most parents connect with it the meaning not to be

egotistical, inconsiderate, without concern for others. Factually, they generally mean more than that. „Not to be selfish“ implies not to do what one wishes, to give up one's own wishes for the sake of those in authority; i.e., the parents, and later the authorities of society."

And Fromm continues: "„Don't be selfish,“ in the last analysis, has the same ambiguity that we have seen in Calvinism. Aside from its obvious implication, it means, „don't love yourself,“ „don't be yourself,“ but submit your life to something more important than yourself, be it an outside power or the internalization of that power as „duty.“ „Don't be selfish“ becomes one of the most powerful ideological weapons in suppressing spontaneity and the free development of personality. Under the pressure of this slogan one is asked for every sacrifice and for complete submission: only those aims are „unselfish“ which do not serve the individual for his own sake but for the sake of somebody or something outside of him." (italics mine)

In that sense Fromm made a magnificent statement: "Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either."

In Man For Himself Fromm wrote: "selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.

Fromm is encouraging us to love ourselves in the sense that we can be ourselves, and in the sense that we can find ourselves, in the sense that we give birth to ourselves, by loving ourselves enough to walk this path.

Cellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power Back

He not busy being born is dying.

Bob Dylan

Remember how long the days seemed when you were a kid? It took forever to get from one part of the week to the next, and don’t even mention a month … that was like a whole year … Why was it so different then?

Tolle and the NowQuite simple really, and I’ve talked about this in the past in other articles: my May 2008 newsletter – Where Are You Now?, or an earlier article: Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life. What is simple about the reason why our days no longer last as long as they did when we were kids is because we progressively live less and less time in the present moment. When we were kids and we were building a sand castle, all our attention was on that activity. When we were devouring a piece of birthday cake, all our attention was on that activity.

Now we are splintered into many pieces, and while we do a present-time activity, we are also in different places of the past or future in our mind, hence the present moment is robbed of its fullest potential, we are torn into different directions, and when we have finished with the present-time activity, we often have a difficult time remembering much about it, because so little of our present self was present!

Remember that now is all you have … your true life is not in your past, and it is not in your future … it is only and ever now, in the present moment. Nevertheless, although our rational mind recognizes the inherent truth in this, it does present a number of challenges to the psyche. How can we get ourselves into present time and stay there?

Stimuli in Your Life Capture Your PowerWhat stimuli in your life capture your power so that it goes to places and times other than where you are now? Here are just a few examples:

Music: imagine you are driving in the car, enjoying the gorgeous day, and a song comes on that is full of bitter-sweet nostalgia for you. It transports you into the glory and the pain of a past relationship. Suddenly you are no longer enjoying the gorgeous day; on the contrary, you are re-living parts of the magnificence of that past relationship, and then you are swept up into the pain of other pieces of it. By the time you reach your destination, you not only no longer feel as wonderful as you did when you began your drive, but you no longer remember the actual drive … all because a song was played on the radio

Smells, perfumes, aromas: imagine you are being introduced to a stranger at a cocktail party. Imagine you are a woman, and the stranger is a man, and as you come in a bit closer to say hello, or as you touch cheeks, as we do in so many countries, you get a whiff of his cologne. It is your father’s cologne. Immediately, in some fashion, you either associate the stranger with your father, or you go into a memory of the past, perhaps of you sitting in your parents’ bedroom, chatting with your father as he splashed on the cologne, and that memory takes you to another moment with your father when he told you he was leaving your mother and you because he had met another woman… Now the cocktail party is tinged with that memory, the feelings it evoked, and after you get home, you may find you scarcely remember any of the conversations you had while you were there … all because of a cologne.

Movies with specific scenes: these can have a similar effect on you as the above, and you may find that you frequently are attracted to movies that cause you to relive the emotions of certain parts of your life

In this regard, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now refers to the pain body and Chris Griscom (The Healing of Emotions and Ecstasy is a New Frequency) refers to the emotional body.

Essentially both terms refer to that part of us that likes to wallow in our pain. What, you say? Why on earth would I want to wallow in something painful? The answer becomes obvious. Because it is a place you know. Because you feel at home there. In other words, we have been there so

often before, in this place of pain, that when faced with a choice of doing something new and unknown, or wallowing, it is much easier to fall back to the well-trodden path and wallow. We don’t really even think about it. We just go there, because it is familiar. And then we feel comfort in the familiarity of the pain. Recognize this? Have you been there? And are you tempted right now, despite what you have read to this point, to go back to your painful thoughts? Does that just feel so much easier? (quoted almost verbatim from my article Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind).

In a sense, that is what we do when we hear the song on the radio, when we catch a tantalizing whiff of the familiar cologne, or when we see certain scenes of some movies. And we go to that place of pain unconsciously because we are not aware of ourselves. Or we may be aware enough to realize what is going on, but we have not yet decided to take on our own responsibility for ourselves. (see also Claiming Responsibility For the Self or these articles about responsibility).

Molecular & Cellular Biology … Genes & DNASo now I want to really throw an unexpected thought out there at you…if, as I have written in past articles, our thoughts do indeed influence our body, our cells, our genes, our very DNA (see also Create a New Life: One Intention at a Time or Thoughts Create Molecules, or my March 2008 newsletter: How Your Thoughts Change Your Body), then it stands to reason that by continually re-visiting the past and re-living past pain, we are negatively influencing the very cells of our body. Read some of the work by cellular and molecular biologists Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton, read what scientific researcher Masaru Emoto has to say, look into the quantum research done by endocrinologist Deepak Chopra, but whatever you do, don’t rest back on your chair, make a puzzled face, and say I don’t believe this nonsense. You can’t say that until you’ve read the research.

For those of you who still find it hard to believe that thoughts could affect your body … here are some more common and everyday physiological examples:

Some individuals are capable of reaching orgasm simply by their thoughts

Some individuals are able to provoke tears simply by Imagining something and crying because of it

Biofeedback has taught us that we can measurably alter our heartbeat, our tension and stress

Therefore, if we know this to be true, it follows that we need to consider taking cellular responsibility for ourselves.

Cellular responsibility?

Part of Your Energy Is In Your PastHow much of you is in “your story” and would be lost if you let it go? So then you might have to work on a whole new you … depending on how you think about that, it is actually quite exciting … you would no longer be burdened by that old, sad awful story you’ve been dragging around with you.

You do see that because of your story, part of your energy, part of your power is in your past, right? If you identify with your story, if that is how you define yourself, then a portion of your power is there and not here.

Getting Your Fragments Into Present TimeGetting the fragments of yourself into present time (Gary Zukav, author of The Seat of the Soul calls it a splintered personality), is a necessary part of the process of taking cellular responsibility for yourself. So there’s bit of you in 1976, and another bit in 1960, and another bunch of bits in the early 80’s and so on depending on when, in your history, things happened to you that continue to maintain a part or parts of you, especially emotionally, there, at that moment in time. The anchor that holds you there is the negative emotion that you continue to feel every time that you remember the painful event. That means there are only a few bits of you in 2008 … until you leave those past bits - that hold so much of your power – behind, you will not be able to get your power back, and you will not be able to take cellular responsibility for yourself.

Unfinished BusinessYou know that you have unfinished business with parents, with your spouse or your partner, your kids, your siblings, your friends, your bosses, your teachers, and so on, if you continue to have negative emotions of any kind when you think about them or past events involving them. Those negative emotions are the ones that can adversely influence

your body, your cells, and it is precisely those negative emotions that are at the bottom of what it is you need to begin to take responsibility for, if you want to take cellular responsibility for yourself. Finishing up that unfinished business will automatically mean that you will spend a much greater amount of time in the present instead of in the past, and that you will spend far less time focusing on negative emotions from events that took place in the past.

The Importance of Forgiving & the Law of AttractionOnce you can forgive, the unfinished business from the past transforms into a mere memory that no longer carries any negative connotations to pull your power away from the present. It is at this point that you can begin to take cellular responsibility for yourself, i.e. you will no longer be harming your body in all senses of the word by keeping that negative power in the past.

Caroline Myss (from whose work I have borrowed the term cellular responsibility) pointed out almost a decade ago in 1999 in The Science of Medical Intuition, together with Dr. Norman Shealy, that it is also at this point that you can begin to create and manifest. In other words, no matter how much visualization and affirmation you are doing, those of you who have been vicariously reading everything you can get your hands on about the Law of Attraction or The Secret, you will not be able to create, until you pull your power into the present. Forgiving those who have

trespassed you is one of the biggest steps towards that goal.

Quotes about forgiving by Caroline Myss:

By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is no longer an option but a necessity for healing.

One of the greatest struggles of the healing process is to forgive both yourself and others and to stop expending valuable energy on the past hurts.

In order to heal oneself, we must learn how to forgive.

Forgive and call back the energy wasted on past events.

The act of forgiveness is the act of returning to present time. And that's why when one has become a forgiving person, and has managed to let go of the past, what they've really done is they've shifted their relationship with time.

Some ToolsDoing some of what follows will lead you down the road to cellular responsibility where you will be able to begin to recover your power.

Become aware of yourself, your reactions to stimuli, your need to go into the pain body

Decide you will be responsible for yourself in all senses of the word

Make better choices because now you are aware and have decided to become responsible

Look at your unfinished business

Ask yourself if there are any good reasons to be feeling guilty … what will get better by feeling guilty?

o Rather than beating yourself up about what you did, why not learn from it, vow to never do it again, and move on. If not, more of your power stays there

If you are ashamed of something about yourself, ask yourself if you would like to get rid of feeling like that?

o Shame tends to involve lack of self esteem o Shame is often the root cause of obsessive thinking b/c it

allows you to focus on another person as the solution to your problems

Does reliving the past help make anything better?o Can I recognize that continuing to hurt about past events

won’t solve a problem?

Forgiveo Whom do you need to forgive?o Why are you unwilling to forgive?o Recognize that not forgiving holds parts of you in the past

o Understand that forgiving does not mean you condone what was done, nor does it mean you now need to have a wonderful relationship with that person … you may need to move on, but by forgiving, the hold that the event had over you, will be gone.

o Forgiving also does not mean forgetting – but it does mean, removing the charge from the memory

Gratitude – this is a really big one: read more in my January 2008 Newsletter: Love and Gratitude are on Your Road to Freedom as well as the December 2006 Newsletter: Gratitude, Choice, and the “Why Did This Happen To Me?” Syndrome

Mindfulness (see in particular Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn) - this is strongly connected to gratitude because gratitude can be your first step in learning how to be mindful; by being grateful for something right now, you automatically return to the now, and by learning to be mindful, you will be able to remain in the now.

Entering the Now Moment by Leaving Unawareness Behind

If you could enter a state of instant peace whenever you feel anxious, worried, angry, or afraid, would you not want to go there? Would you not want someone to tell you how to get there? And what the procedure to walk down that road would be?

Body — Mind — SpiritThe process of getting there is always based on the same premise – whether you are worried about your finances, a life-threatening illness, the impending demise of an important relationship, or about your teenaged daughter who is on drugs, whether you fear you will never get the promotion at work, or you fear standing up to face the Board of Directors for the first time in order to present the annual budget, or whether you fear telling your partner that you will no longer accept his or her emotional abuse. This process of getting to a state of instant peace moves you from your body to your mind and emotions, and finally to your spirit.

You Always Have a ChoiceAs you contemplate the dilemma or fear that is plaguing you, bring this thought into your mind, and surround yourself with all of its latent possibilities: You always have a choice. (See my February 2006 Newsletter: “Making Choices: Taking Responsibility for your Life”). So this means, of course, that if you are steadfastly convinced that you will bungle the presentation because of your fear of speaking in public, you begin to realize that your belief about this is a choice you have made. And in the same way you made one choice, you can make another, such as choosing to believe that you will be able to speak well, and make a successful presentation.

What if you believe that you will not be able to live if your partner deserts you, or because your partner is having an affair with someone else? Again…the belief you hold is your choice. (See also my article “I Need You…I Need You Not”). So you could potentially choose to believe that you will get on with your life, and that this difficult emotional situation will make you stronger. Or you could choose to believe that if someone

wishes to desert you, or has been unfaithful to you, it means that you are better off without that person in your life. Or you could choose to believe that a frustration of such proportions is in your life in order for you to learn something about yourself (see also my article “Committed Relationships: Use Them to Grow Towards Self-Understanding and Real Love”).

BodyNow breathe gently to relax. Even if the thought or worry or fear continues to make you hyperventilate or break out in a sweat, just breathe gently to relax. Watch your breath for a moment or two, and continue breathing gently. Now observe your body for a few moments. Is your stomach clenched? Your breathing shallow? Your heart pounding? Your temples throbbing? Continue to breathe gently and slowly, and just for a few moments observe your breath. In and out. In and out. Gently. Continue observing your body in order to notice how it gently slows down and begins to release its frantic hold on your nerves. Breathe gently. In and out. In and out. Gently.

Mind & EmotionsNow allow yourself to become aware of your self-talk and your emotions related to the thought, worry, or fear. Self-talk is often sabotaging and harmful bringing about further negative emotions, and sometimes, conversely, negative emotions bring about sabotaging self-talk. It’s a two-way street whose provenance neuroscientists, biologists, and psychologists have not yet determined. Do emotions cause thoughts or vice versa? Antonio Damasio (The Feeling of What Happens) and Candace Pert (Your Body is Your Sub-conscious Mind), among others, have researched this subject extensively.

So now you are breathing gently, aware of your body, and immersed in your self-talk. Grounding yourself is a wonderful way to cut the vicious cycle of sabotaging self-talk. If you just tell yourself that thinking that way is of no use, it’s my bet that your thoughts will continue to course about the hated or dreaded subject. So ground yourself. An easy exercise while you are driving is this: look at the license plate on the car in front of you. Sum its digits. If you come up with a two-digit number as a result, sum up those numbers as well. So GRZ 9482 adds up to 23, which adds up to 5. Do this with several cars until you notice that the thoughts have gone. You notice this because you are actually thinking about something totally different or nothing at all. Another exercise, should this one not have

worked for you due to its ease, or because you are not driving, is this: think of any two or three-digit number and multiply it by another two or three-digit number in your head. This will be certain to ground you and get your thoughts away from your self-talk, because it is so difficult – for most – to do, and requires much concentration.

In this new state of mind you now find yourself, with no – at least just now – negative emotions or thoughts spilling over – create substitutes for your previous self-talk and infuse these with positive emotion. So for example, you might think of yourself as speaking with ease at the Board Meeting and giving a successful presentation, at the same time as you imagine how good you would feel afterwards. This positive feeling about the intended results is very important. Any type of new self-talk or imagining should always contain within it strong positive feelings about the intended result. This intentional focusing (also see my March 2006 Newsletter: “Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, & the Law of Attraction”) on what it is you would like to create or bring about in your life, is an important ingredient in getting to the state of instant peace referred to at the beginning of this article.

Pain Body – Emotional BodySo at this point you have focused – with feeling and intentionality – on positive substitutes for your previous negative self-talk, and you now need to become aware of another hugely important ingredient of the process. Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) refers to this as the pain body and Chris Griscom (The Healing of Emotions and Ecstasy is a New Frequency) refers to it as the emotional body.

Essentially both refer to that part of us that likes to wallow in our pain. What, you say? Why on earth would I want to wallow in something painful? The answer becomes obvious. Because it is a place you know. Because you feel at home there. In other words, we have been there so often before, in this place of pain, that when faced with a choice of doing something new and unknown, or wallowing, it is much easier to fall back to the well-trodden path and wallow. We don’t really even think about it. We just go there, because it is familiar. And then we feel comfort in the familiarity of the pain. Recognize this? Have you been there? And are you tempted right now, despite what you have read to this point, to go back to your painful thoughts? Does that just feel so much easier?

The Observer – The WitnessSo as you become aware of your attachment to pain, also observe your compulsion to talk and think about it. Observe how you automatically go to this place of pain. And in so observing, begin to realize that you can make conscious choices in your thoughts, actions, reactions, and feelings, in order to leave this well-known place where you have been keeping yourself prisoner.

As you observe yourself automatically wanting to go to this place of pain, you notice that there is a difference between the “you” that observes and the “you” that wants to go to the place of pain. The observer, or the witness to your thoughts and feelings is separate from the one who wants to go to the place of pain. Tolle says: “Be at least as interested in your reactions [thoughts and feelings] as in the situation or person that causes you to react”. And he adds: “Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it”. As you do this, as you become the watcher, the observer, the witness of your own mind, you bring yourself to the present moment. You are no longer in that fitful, needy, hurtful, distressing past or future, because your observation of the part of you that is in those places, has brought you to the present in order to be able to observe, watch and witness.

SpiritIn doing this, you also become aware of your eternal self - the part of you that watches is not the part that will wither and die - the part that watches is eternal, and will forever exist. From the vantage point of your eternal self (imagine looking at your eternal existence from a high mountain, overlooking valleys too numerous to count, where your “current you” is one of those valleys), your “current you” and its pressing problems loses some of this urgency. As you access that part of you, as you recognize your eternal essence, you enter the Now moment, and you gift yourself with peace.

This entire process takes much longer to describe than to put into practice, and once you begin practicing it, you will find it easier and easier to access each time you do so. It gives you immeasurable relief from stress and anxiety, fear and worry, pain and distress. The more you do it, the more you become the observer of your thoughts and feelings, the more you give your awareness to your eternal self and remain in the Now, the less time you will be spending in wallowing in the pain body or the

emotional body. As you eliminate your ties to those connections, your life will begin to change automatically because of the new focus you are giving it.

Remember: observe your feelings, thoughts, or reactions. Identifying with the observer brings you to consciousness. Remember that your “observer self” is eternal. As you remember, you leave the painful place in your thoughts, feelings, or reactions that causes you such anguish, because by observing, you place yourself in the Now moment in which there is no room for past or future. The Now contains only the Now. Focusing on it means you are unable to focus on pain because pain comes from elsewhere. And that brings you to the beginning of the state of peace. Always.

Do You Dance?Are Joy & Happiness Major Components of Your Life?

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

When do you dance?

I'm talking about dancing in your life, not at night at a club.

Dancing in your life has to do with joy, with exuberance, with letting go, with letting your hair down, with feeling free to be you and exhilarate in the unrepressed delight of being you.

Dancing in your life has to do with knowing that life can be as good as you allow it to be, despite your outer circumstances (see also The Greatest Quality in Life).

Dancing in your life has to do with the thrill of knowing you have choices, as long as you choose to have choices at least on an inner level, even though externally your choices may be very limited.

Dancing in your life has to do with being conscious and aware.

Dancing in your life has to do with doing your joyful utmost to pursue your dreams because your dreams give your life meaning (see also The Only Person You Have to Make Happy is You – there is much good information in this article about the difference between selfishness and self-love).

Dancing in your life has to do with surrounding yourself with joy, love, and peace, even though these may only available on an inner level.

Dancing in your life has to do with knowing that you will not die without having danced to the music that is inside of you.

Have you danced lately?

Taking Responsibility for Your UnhappinessYeow.

That is not a fun thought

Taking responsibility for your unhappiness sounds like there's no one and nothing left to blame. And that - of course - is what this is all about.

It’s the Other Person’s FaultWhen you are unhappy, it is often because you have chosen to be so due to someone not behaving the way you wanted them to, or something not turning out the way you might have it expected to. So life did not go your way. Things simply weren't the way you wanted them to be.• your partner forgot your wedding anniversary • your boss did not promote you • you wanted to go to the beach and when you opened the curtains,

you saw it was raining • you expected to be able to find the car of your dreams for the

budget you had stipulated, and then realized it would cost much more. So now you have to make do with a lesser car

• you thought the person you had dinner with the first time two nights ago would call you by today, and they have not done so

• you expected your son to help you with the garden this weekend and he went out with his friends instead

• you expected your best friend to help you set up your party, and it turns out she forgot!

And so - understandably - you are unhappy.

And of course you believe you are unhappy because of what the other person did or did not do, or because of the situation that did not turn out the way you would have liked it to (see also Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives )

And that is precisely where you need to begin to take responsibility for your unhappiness.

How?

By taking responsibility for your happiness. So if you are unhappy about something, you are the one who can change how you feel. Either by choosing to change how you feel about something, how you think about something, how you view something, or by choosing to do something that will raise your energy to levels where you are able to once again feel happy.

Your happiness is in your hands. If you leave it in the hands of the acts and deeds of others, or in the manner in which situations in your life turn out, you are not free.

Freedom implies being in charge of your happiness.

Creating Joy in the Way Your Life UnfoldsSo it means that it is also about your responsibility in creating joy in the way your life unfolds.

No, I can't do that.

My life is not unfolding to plan.

My life is not good.

I don't like my life.

Under such circumstances how do you expect me to create joy in the way my life unfolds?

That is, however, precisely it. Most of our lives don't always unfold according to plan, or in the best way possible. That's the reason why we have to take charge about creating joy in the way our life unfolds.

If we do that, we begin to see joy appear in the most unexpected ways and in the most unexpected places. Once that happens, we are well on the road to experiencing joy in our lives at will, no matter what the circumstances.

How can we create joy? How can we become responsible in creating joy in the way in which our life unfolds? By deciding to do so. It's a choice. So simple. Start now.

Our JoysOur joys as winged dreams do fly; why then should sorrow last? Since grief but aggravates thy loss, grieve not for what is past. Thomas Percy, English poet 1729-1811

Grieve not for what is past ... our joys as winged dreams do fly ... doesn't it make sense that we behave the same way with our grief as we do with our joy? As the poet - Thomas Percy - says, our joys tend to leave us very quickly. And yet we dwell on our sorrows.

This is in fact, an unusually interesting statement about the human condition. We have a much greater tendency to stay with those aspects of our lives that are not bright and clear, that do not have sunshine and warmth, and tend to bring on the clouds swollen with rain. Why do we do this? Is it just a wired into us? Wired into our hearts? Wired into our brains?

I don't think so. This may very well be due to what part Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body, and what Chris Griscom calls the emotional body. I've written about this in the past, so I'll just briefly reiterate the basic points:• the pain body is seductive • the emotional body has an emotionally sticky quality that we find

hard to pull away from • both pain body and emotional body are familiar to us because they

represent pain, difficulties, and hardships that we have been subject to in the past

• this very familiarity based on the amount of time we have spent revisiting those difficult moments, is what causes us to field the seductive pull

• once we give in to the seductive pull into the pain or the negative emotions via our memory needs, we tend to wallow in the pain, much as pigs wallow in mud

• why? • Because we prefer the familiarity • if we spent as much time revisiting our joyful moments as we do

our painful ones, we might find - ironically - that we experience greater familiarity with our joy than with our pain - and wouldn't that be a wonderful state of mind to be in...

Have you ever considered why the sum total of your life very possibly seems to have an uneven tipping of the scale in favor of the negative? Could it not be simply because of where you spend much of your mental

time? And don't you agree that where you spend much of your mental time is a matter of choice? And if it is a matter of choice, why not spend more time with your memories of the joyful moments, as opposed to memories of the painful ones? It really is that easy.

So Are You Being Responsible --- About the Joy in Your Life?We know we are meant to be responsible about all those things that a decent sense of morality and a firm Puritan work ethic would demand of us.

But being responsible for the joy in our lives seems to throw our thoughts (and even emotions) into turmoil.

How, you ask. How can I be responsible for the joy in my life if my partner or spouse / parent / child / colleague / boss / friend, etc. does what they do and make my life difficult / miserable / impossible / painful / exasperating, etc.?

Simple.

By deciding that you will be in charge of the joy in your life. By deciding at each moment - no matter what it contains - that you will seek joy, or at least, that you will seek the road that allows you to remain in a state of equanimity, which will - eventually - return you to joy. If you furthermore receive joyful moments thanks to some of those others who populate your life, wonderful! But if you don't, and if you decide to be in charge of the joy in your life, you will have joy whether you receive it from others or not. The Greatest Gift For the World is a Healthy YouThe more vibrant you are, the happier you are, the more conscious and aware you are, the more responsibility you take for your own inner and outer well-being - the healthier you are.

And the healthier you are, the more you are able to give the world a gift: a gift of this higher energetic frequency, a gift of all that you emanate, a gift of your innate joyfulness ... innate, because you have made it so, and not because you were born this way.

Can you imagine the ripple effects of all of this?

And then think of it in geometric progression: the ripple effects of your presence will affect the people whose lives you touch. As they in turn, should they choose to emulate your energetic frequency because they

can feel how great it is, also create ripple effects in their lives, affecting the people whose lives they touch, the potential for more and more people to create ripple effects grows exponentially.

If only you will work on yourself to heal and change yourself, you can have the potential to be the catalyst for change in the lives of many others. And that will change our world.

See also:• Create a New LIfe: One Intention At A Time • Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind • Gratitude, Choice, and the "Why Did This Happen To Me?

Syndrome • Grow in Richness: Stop the Blaming • Happiness: Has it Become a Science or is it a Question of Luck? • Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, and the Law of

Attraction • Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life • Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives • Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success • Tending Your Inner Garden • The Energy Barometer: Make Your Mind Body Connection Work

For You • The Puritan Work Ethic, Wu-Wei, and is Life Really Meant to be a

Struggle?

Where Are You Now?

Asking yourself where am I now at intervals throughout your day in order to discover not so much where you are physically, but where you have gone in your mind will begin to show you how frequently you are not present here and now.

When You’re Not in the NowThis is a problem of phenomenal proportions when we pause to consider what happens when we are not in this now moment:• we are concentrating on a problem or worry that is not part of what

we are actually doing now, and that therefore keeps us from being present in what we are doing now

• we are reliving past pain and hurts that keep us from being present in what we are doing now

• we are reliving past moments of joy that keep us from being present in what we are doing now

• we are concentrating on future possibilities - good or bad - the thought of which keeps us from being present in what we are doing now

All of these examples indicate that we have left the only place where we live, where we are, which is now.

Learn From ChildrenTake a moment to recall your childhood. Especially the parts in your childhood when you were aware of time passing. Perhaps someone went on a trip and it seemed to you that they had been gone forever. My father had traveled to Europe on business when I was about seven and living in Canada. A friend of my parents came to pick me up in order that I could play with his young daughter. On the way to their house he asked me if I had heard from my father. I told him how much I missed him and that he had already been gone for about a year. The friend looked at me and said It's only been three weeks.

Of course at that age it meant little to me, but I always remembered the incident insomuch as it demonstrated to me as an adult, how malleable time is. As a child a mere three weeks seemed endless to me.

Time is FluidOther examples you might resonate with are summer vacations. When they started, they seemed to stretch into delicious infinity. Sometimes just one single, solitary day seemed so long, so full of possibilities.

So fast forward to now. 2008. How long does a day seem? A week? A month? Even a year? Isn't it true that now they seem to pass in a flash? Monday comes, and as much as the work week may seem onerous, before you know it, it's Friday evening. January begins, and before you know it, it's Easter, then summer, fall, and Christmas is on us again.

What really causes this apparent speeding up of time?

Without going into any kind of scientific or quantum explanation, I'd like to offer this: as children we live totally in the now. We pay attention to what we are doing while we are doing it. When we are on a swing, that is what we are involved with, with all our being. When we are building a sand castle on the beach and collecting shells, and pebbles, seaweed, and sticks to decorate it, we are involved with this creation with all our being. When we watch a movie or read a book, we are involved with this activity with all our being.

Not Being Involved in the Present MomentHowever, as adults we tend not to be involved with what we are doing, because we are off - in our minds - elsewhere. As illustrated earlier, we are worrying about something that may never take place, or reminiscing about something that already took place, or looking forward to something that will take place once such and such happens. All of these modes of thinking mean that we are not here and now. We are escaping the now moment, either because we don't like it, or because not being in the now moment has become such a habit, that we barely know how to remain there anymore.

When Do You Live Your Life?This is huge. If we are not in the now moment, I ask you, when do we live our life? Now is all we have, as Eckhart Tolle so aptly pointed out in his

The Power of Now. And if now is all we have, does it not make sense that we learn - remember - how to remain present?

Hence the question at the beginning of this article. Get into the habit of querying yourself about where you are at this particular moment. And once you pull yourself back into it - even if it is while you are involved in an activity that gives you little stimulation or joy - attempt to remain present, to do whatever it is you are doing with a sense of awareness, and in order to determine whether you could - if you really put your mind to it - derive satisfaction even from this (whatever it is).

More importantly, when you are involved in a pleasant activity, perhaps spending time with your partner or children, or out on the golf course, or bicycling through the neighbourhood, and you ask yourself the question, if you then also find that you are elsewhere inside, you will realize how monumentally important it is that you begin to be here now. Jon Kabat-Zinn's book about mindfulness Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life is excellent for further pointers, as is Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen: Love and Work, and also Tara Bennett-Goleman's Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart.

I encourage you to explore your now. With some patience not only will you find unaccustomed joy, but you will add years to your life, simply because you will be so much more aware at so many more now moments that will allow you to stretch your existence, making it malleable and pliable, and resulting in a life of much greater proportions than what you are currently experiencing.

Related Articles:• All You Have Is Now • Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life• Baelo Claudia: Roman Ruins and the "Now" • The Answer to Your Future May Not Lie in Your Past • Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind• Findng a Meaning For Your Life• Happiness: Has it Become a Science, or is it a Question of Luck?• Patience: Is it Really a Virtue?

• We are Blessed, You are Blessed, I am Blessed• Gratitude (And Your State of Being)• Making Happiness a Priority• Being a Victim or Choosing Freedom• Happiness and Gratitude• Is Your Universe Friendly or Hostile ?• Using Challenges to Grow, Instead of Fighting Problems to

Overcome• Book Review 2 - Happiness Is A Choice• Enthusiasm and Depression Can't Live in the Same Place• Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives• Gratitude, Choice, and the "Why Did This Happen to Me?"

Syndrome

Feeling Compassion: Only for the Hungry, or Also for People Who Hurt You?

Most people have no problem in understanding how to feel compassion for the poor and hungry from third-world countries, or even those in similar positions in our own wealthier nations. And certainly, most people understand why we would even begin to entertain the idea of feeling compassion for people in such a predicament. It seems the normal, human, charitable thing to feel, doesn’t it? This may even lead a good portion of the people feeling such compassion to actually undertaking something tangible that might ease the burden of those who suffer from poverty, hunger, homelessness, persecution, etc.

Partners Who Hurt, Cheat, LieOften when clients walk into my office for the first time, they will expend an inordinate amount of energy telling me, during that first session, how much their partner, companion, or spouse has hurt them, cheated them, lied to them, deceived them, manipulated them, changed on them, or abandoned them, to name only a few. And, of course, I am expected to empathize with their position, and essentially see that the other party is someone who can only be defined in unspeakable terms.

It Takes Two to Tango…At this point I frequently intervene and offer the opinion that it does take two to tango (so, for example, if he/she did such-and-such to you, why did you let it go on for so long?), and further, that no matter what “relationship crime” the other party has actually “committed”, he/she also deserves some compassion because who knows what has happened in their life up to that point (and particularly in their early life) in order to bring them to behave in such a despicable way.

This will occasionally merit me a baleful glare from my client. But often I also see a glimmer of understanding, or even of agreement. Sometimes I think it’s their way of assuaging their own angry thoughts at themselves for having fallen in love with the other person at all, of justifying to themselves that there was something wonderful there for them at the beginning (as indeed there tends to be…see my article in the April 2006 Newsletter about Committed Relationships), and that therefore it is not

necessary to view themselves as total relationship failures for having chosen so badly. Indeed. But there is more to be looked at.

The Why and the How of it allWhy we might feel compassion for someone who has hurt us seems to be easy to understand. They may have become the way they now are; this awful way they are behaving with us, in other words, because of, as mentioned earlier, difficult traumas in their childhood, perhaps painful relationship patterns prior to meeting us, or a myriad number of other plausible reasons that might allow us to get a glimpse into the inner makings of this other person.

But how do we go about feeling this compassion, when what we really would like to do is wring their necks, or never let them see the children again, or take them for what they’re worth and leave them without a penny, or make them pay in some other way that will truly make them realize just how much they have hurt us?

How do we find it in ourselves to bring up any measure of compassion when they obviously are such absolutely awful people? People who have perhaps hurt us more than anyone else. Deliberately. Hatefully. Viciously. A betrayal of this nature, where once there was love, and now there is only blackness, is perhaps more difficult to deal with than any other kind of betrayal because we see it from the position of deliberateness on the part of the other person. They wanted to hurt us. They did so knowingly.

Finding the Way to Compassion in the Mirror of our Self-ImageWhile major religions spend a great deal of time preaching compassion, religion is by no means the only method to find your way to compassion. Rather, I would venture to say, the first step might be by taking a look at yourself. By seeing what is inside of you. By getting to know yourself, your intentions, your desires, your needs, your fears, your vanities, your pride, your ego, your priorities, your patience, and your degree of self-awareness.

Self Awareness and ResponsibilitySelf-awareness is such a tricky thing. If you don’t have it, you generally don’t know that you don’t have it, and when you begin to acquire it, you keep forgetting about it until you make a discipline of it, of forcing yourself to be self-aware at as many moments as possible in your life. Only then

does it have a chance of becoming second nature, and thus of you being self aware at almost all times. This implies that you begin to take responsibility for everything you feel, think, and do (see my February 2006 Newsletter: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives), and as you take on responsibility for all that, you begin to understand that what another person has done to you is his/her responsibility, his/her problem, his/her issue to be resolved, and that no matter how much you may rant and rave or crave revenge, you will never be able to change the other. You can only change yourself. As we absorb the truth of this statement, we begin to understand that what others do unto us is truly only interesting and important from the point of view of how we react to their words or acts.

And how we react depends in large measure on our degree of self-awareness. It is at this point that the possibility for compassion enters the picture. The more self-aware you are, the more you know you have choices and alternatives at every turn of the road. Therefore you begin to understand that someone who has hurt you (hurting others generally implies, among other things, fear in the one who hurts; fear of feeling insecure, fear of chaos, fear of loss of control, etc., but that is a topic for another article) has done so from a position of blindness, of a lack of self awareness.

Careful now, I am not suggesting we simply excuse all these people and say, “oh, they didn’t know what they were doing, so it’s ok”. Of course it’s not ok. But because you are now capable of understanding where they are coming from; in other words, from blindness, you are now able to feel compassion. How they resolve their own issues that cause this behavior on their part, is their problem. Perhaps you will want to be supportive in helping them shed light on it, perhaps not. But in the meantime, you have resolved an enormous issue of your own, by looking at yourself, by resolving to become self-aware, and by choosing the path of compassion rather than the path of hatred, anger, self-pity, or revenge (For more about Destructive Emotions, see the collaboration in book format between Western psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and Buddhist scholars, narrated by Daniel Goleman).

Compassion for others does have a ripple effect. Try it and observe what happens…not only with others, but most particularly, inside of you.

Do You Vibrate to a Tune that Serves You Well?

Recently I drove through horrendous road construction going on in my area. It was still very hot, the traffic was murderous, and due to the fact that cars were stopping and starting, the cooling system did not work as well as possible. Dust abounded. Stopped once again at yet another traffic light, I was overjoyed to see a gorgeously vibrant purple flower arising from the dirt at the side of the road, very close to my window. I actually laughed out loud when I saw it, because it seemed to exemplify a point I try to make so often: do you vibrate to a tune that serves you well?

How do you vibrate? Is it an inner vibration that only allows you to see the tedium, the dirt, the noise, the delays, and the uncomfortable heat, or is it an inner vibration that allows you to see the flowers arising from the dirt?

I remember visiting the city of Cordoba with its culturally rich mixture of Roman, Moorish, Jewish, and Spanish architecture, history, and religion in the sweltering heat one August Sunday morning, and overhearing a couple complain loudly about the lack of air conditioning as they visited one of the many sites in the Jewish quarter (la Judería). What they were vibrating to, was their physical discomfort, as opposed to seeing the immense variety of traditions and inter-mingled history this nearly 2000-year-old city has to offer. It is simply a question of perspective. What are you focusing on … what do you vibrate to?

These two examples are hugely important analogies applied to everything we do in life. The perspective that we choose to have because of our inner vibration can bring beauty to an outwardly ugly moment or ugliness to an outwardly beautiful moment. You choose. (See also Happiness: Has it Become a Science or is it a Question of Good Luck?)

But to be fair, long before you choose to focus on the purple flower at the side of the road instead of the insufferable traffic and noise, and long before you choose to focus on the lack of air conditioning in Cordoba’s Jewish quarter, you have spent years making tiny choices here and there, over and over again, that eventually led you to such a vibration.

So that is it in a nutshell: choices you make every day, all your life, bring you to this place or that, just as following a specific road on a map, can

bring you to New York, or Moscow, or Santiago de Chile. But, let’s say you are well on that road towards NYC, and you realize - due to any number of circumstances – that it would be much better for you if you actually were traveling towards New Orleans, or Cape Town, or Riyadh. Then all you have to do is make minor adjustments in order that bit by bit, you would actually find yourself on the road to the new city.

Again, that’s it in a nutshell: even if the choices you have made every day of your life to this point in time have brought you to an inner vibration that does not allow you to see the magnificent purple flower raising its head above the dust, by making new choices every day from now on, you will find yourself traveling towards a whole new perspective of life.

So: how do you begin to make new choices?

People who attend my workshops, or come to my speeches, or clients, or those that write to me to make a comment about one of my articles, tell me over and over again (not in so many words, but by how they react to my answer), that they want the answer to that question about how you begin to make new choices to be a one-time deal. In other words, whatever it is they have to do, they want it to happen as a result of that one time that they do it, that one major effort that they put into it. Which reminds me of Zig ZIglar’s quote: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” (See also Consciousness is a Full-time Job).

And in the case of beginning to make new choices, you make the conscious decision to remember to do it daily. (See also Claiming Responsibility for the Self). Even if that means pasting numerous post-it notes to yourself all over your house, office, computer monitor and car. If you don’t make new a new kind of choice on a daily basis, nothing in your perspective will change. And it is your perspective that entirely colors how you see your world. And that means that it also colors how you feel at all times, how you interpret all events, and how you react to anything at all.

Here are some of the ways you can begin to make new choices:

When you’re at the gym … or doing any kind of other physical exercise (which in and of itself is a great choice to make) instead of thinking about problems while you are there, find five things to be grateful for at that moment in your life (see also Gratitude, Choice & the ‘Why Did This Happen to Me?’ Syndrome)

Wherever your eyes land, whether you are inside a building, your home, or out somewhere, make a point of reminding yourself to look for something beautiful … and if necessary, because you truly can’t anything beautiful in that particular place, simply look inside and find the beauty there

Be present … be here and now as often as possible, as opposed to living in the past or the future (see also Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind and Living in the NOW: Use it to Enrich Your Life). Here’s another secret: being present – being in the now, is the fastest way to co-creating your reality in the way you desire.

Be attentive to your gut feelings, to any intutive knowing that comes to you … it will generally give you more information about how you could choose to do things or react to things in a way that is good for you

Stop being reactive (reacting blindly to events and people), and be proactive instead (reacting to events and people after taking an inner reading about not only how you feel about this situation and what your immediate response would be, but also about how you will feel if you put that immediate response into action and whether that will be worth it, and then asking yourself what other choices of reaction you have). There are always other choices.

Do something at least once a day that aims at raising your inner energy and sense of well-being (see also Keeping Your Energy High).

These are merely some suggestions … there are myriad other ways you can discover to make new choices. But know this: making new choices will bring you towards a different path in your life. Furthermore, if by making those choices you intend to bring yourself to a place where you can see the glorious flowering growth amidst the dust and dirt, your life will change, your perspective about everything in your life will change, and the changes in you will bring about a vibration to a much greater tune tune that includes the word freedom in its title.

What Are Your Addictions?

I can just hear you saying: I don’t have any addictions. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t snort cocaine, and I certainly don’t shoot heroin. I don’t have any eating disorders and I don’t gamble.

Good. Glad to hear that.

Addictions Go Down Many Strange Byways• How about work? Have you ever had your partner complain that

you spend too much time there?• How about shopping? Did you ever cringe when the credit card

bills came in at the end of the month and you realized that once again you had spent far more money than you have?

• Now how about judging other people? You do that more than just a bit? Like quite often? So that’s an addiction. Judging other people is something we can get addicted to. If you try to stop you will notice that it is almost as hard to do as saying good-bye to your cigarettes.

• Then there’s criticizing others.• And stereotyping others.• And being a fitness buff way beyond just being healthy about your

body.• Making money is a good one. There’s an addiction that masks as

something totally different … perhaps even being responsible …• Socializing to the point of not wanting (or being able) to be alone.• Being a news junkie.• Remaining young … better said: wanting to remain young. So the

addiction is going after whatever it is you believe will keep you young: creams, clothes, injections, surgery, retreats, sports, etc. None of these things by themselves are wrong, it’s the desperate and continued and addictive search to remain young that keeps you from your life. (see also these posts on my blog about this topic)

• Complaining? (You might like to listen to my radio show about the subject … note that this particular audio clip will be up about the second week of June)

• Feeling blue … now how’s that for an addiction?• Feeling like you are a victim.• Not letting go of old wounds. (Check out Caroline Myss’

Woundology and my blog article about it Woundology).• How about being addicted to another human being? Can’t be

without them? Need their presence? Feel like something is terribly wrong when they are not totally happy with you? This generally means someone we think we are in love with, but it could also be a child or a friend or anyone…stalkers of celebrities are an extreme example of this type of addiction. (See also my July 2006 Newsletter: I Need You…I Need You Not)

• Blaming others. Uff … that’s one to write home about. You are allowed to get off scot free, as long as you have someone to blame. And as long as you do, you don’t really live your own life. (See also my November 2007 Newsletter: Grow in Richness: Stop the Blaming).

• Living at any time other than the now; always moving into the past or the future in your thoughts (See also my January 2006 Newsletter: Living in the Now: Use it To Enrich Your Life and my May 2008 Newsletter: Where Are You Now?)

• Addicted to hanging on to bad feelings • Being addicted to gossiping.• Social power. Being addicted to someone else’s social power.

Being in the reflection of their sun. Rubbing shoulders with them, their social contacts, and the remainder of their entourage.

• Not forgiving. (See also these posts on my blog about this topic)• Excusing others for their bad behavior. Not calling the shots when

you should. Having unhealthy boundaries (see also my October 2007 newsletter: Finding it Hard to Love Yourself? Check Out Your Boundaries and my July 2007 Newsletter: Emotional Unavailability: An Introduction).

Not Me. No. Definitely Not Me!No, no, you say to me. Those things you’ve been writing about in this article are not addictions. Now look here … if I judge or criticize another person, I have a good reason.

Look at those racists in that African country.

Or look at the lack of humanitarianism in the members of the regime of Myanmar after the cyclone hit.

Or look at my boss … he is so unethical … he simply takes all the credit for work we’ve all done as a team

And what about my daughter? She’s nuts … taking drugs and going out with those tattooed guys that wear earrings

And speaking of earrings … what about those teenage girls that get a diamond inserted into their belly button?

And don’t get me started on those women that let themselves go after they hit menopause

And the pastor at my church! He has such an ego. All he wants to do is hear himself speak, so his sermons are far too long, And so boring.

So you can see I have very good reasons to judge others … I certainly don’t do any of that stuff!

Right. I’m sure you don’t. But you judge others for doing those things. And furthermore, you don’t seem to be able to stop doing so. All I’m trying to point out to you is that you have an addiction to judging other people.

Ok, you say, maybe you’re right. Since I have read what you wrote, I actually tried to stop judging or criticizing people – even if it was just in my mind, and I realized that it would be quite hard to do.

So what?? you ask.

Here’s what…

Becoming What You Truly Can BeAs long as you are addicted – to anything – you will not be able to become what you truly can become. You will be a splintered personality, as Gary Zukav called it in The Seat of the Soul. And the reason is

because as long as you have addictions – of any kind – you are using the addictions to live your life for you. You use them to cope. You use them to cover up any difficult feelings. You use them to soothe yourself. You use them, in other words, to live your life for you, because without them, you are not able to. See also Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives from my February 2006 Newsletter)

There is some analogy here to Eckhart Tolle’s pain body, or Chris Griscom’s emotional body, insomuch as they speak of the pull, the attraction, the seductive lure of that part of our life that causes us pain, because we know that place so well.

Your Addictions Live Your Life for YouYour addictions live your life for you because they make choices for you.

Here are some examples:• You send a letter or email via your assistant. Something is written

incorrectly and you don’t catch it. It means a big loss to your bottom line. You rage at your assistant for his carelessness. By being addicted to blaming, your choice is to not take responsibility for your own part in the mess (the buck stops with you). Hence you have no insights about yourself and do nothing differently. And nothing changes.

• Your partner is not pleased with the fact that you have an opinion that does not coincide with hers. She gives you the silent treatment for a week. You suffer abjectly. The pain is horrendous. You don’t know what to do to make your partner be nice to you again. Finally you apologize, even though you know you did nothing wrong, and a while later, life is good again. By hanging on to your addiction to feeling bad, your choice is to not take responsibility for your own part in the mess (your unhealthy boundaries). Hence you have no insights about yourself and do nothing differently. And nothing changes.

• You wake up on the weekend you were planning to drive to the country for some down time. The weather has turned overnight and it’s raining and dark out. You phone a friend and begin to complain about the unfairness of life and you complain about the fact that on those rare occasions when you decide to take a few days for yourself, something always goes wrong. Then you

complain about the fact that on top of everything else, your hot water heater broke down and you can’t have a hot shower. By hanging on to your addiction to complaining, your choice is to not take responsibility for your own part in the mess (your attitude). Hence you have no insights about yourself and do nothing differently. And nothing changes.

There is an excellent section on this whole topic of addictions by Caroline Myss on her CD set called Advanced Energy Anatomy.

How Can it Change?This is not rocket science. If you’ve been following these articles I send out every month, you’ll know at least one or two of the steps: Become aware of your addiction/s. Make the choice to make different choices each time you become conscious of falling back into your addiction/s. In other words, you make the choice to become responsible for all of you. Becoming responsible for all of you literally means owning all of what you think, feel, say, and do. Owning it, means you deal with it as you think, feel, say, or do it, rather than using an addiction to deal with it.

Let me say that again: Owning it, means you deal with it as you think, feel, say, or do it, rather than using an addiction to deal with it.

By applying some will power to this process, you will become stronger and stronger in this department, and then you will do it automatically because the addiction will no longer be controlling your choices. And then you are on the road to self responsibility and above all, inner freedom.

Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?

Funny question, isn't it? Do you like the person you are alone with? If you are alone, there is no one with you ... other than yourself. So what about it? Do you like the person you are alone with? Do you like yourself? Enjoy spending time with yourself? Look forward to being alone with yourself? Consider yourself good company? Are you comfortable with yourself? Would you choose yourself as a friend, if you were not you?

Or do you, as so many of my clients admit to me, shy away from spending time with yourself? Find yourself looking for any activity at all in order to avoid being alone with yourself? Literally run away from any possibility of being alone with yourself? Some of my clients find themselves experiencing extreme anxiety if they have to be on their own. They will go shopping, they will eat, watch television, go to parties they don't particularly enjoy, go out on dates with people they don't find very interesting, drink, smoke, take drugs, have intercourse* (including indiscriminate, even promiscuous sleeping around*), in short, do anything they can to avoid the ultimate confrontation with the self.

Why does this happen? We could blame it in part on a society that places a much higher value on outer, material, social, and professional accomplishment than on the inner quest, where in reality both should be in balance (see also my May 2007 Newsletter: Tending Your Inner Garden). We could blame it in part on a society that does not further - or help us - to take these looks at ourselves (see also The Unexamined Life).

We could also blame it on a society – and a process of socialization within our family, religious, and educational structures, that does not generally give us appropriate tools to begin the process of self-love. Not egotistical self-love, but healthy, good self-love. The kind that airline personnel refer to, when they are giving the little talk at the beginning of the flight and say that if there should be a drop in pressure, oxygen masks will appear, and if you are traveling with small children, please put yours on first, before attending to your child. You understand that one with no problem, so perhaps you can take another look at the healthy kind of self-love we all need in order to be of use to ourselves and others.

If we do not love the self, we will probably not look forward to spending time with the self. But if we want to love the self, we must also come to know it. In order to know it, we have to look at it. And looking at it means that at first we may find much we don’t like. That’s ok. We can deal with all of it bit by bit. But let’s begin by looking inside. Inside the self.

Amazingly, even psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage therapists, family therapists, etc., are generally not required to undergo analysis, or encouraged to delve deeply within ... and as my three sons (well-versed in my opinions on the matter) would say ... Hellooooo?. Hello indeed. How is it possible that those of us who deal with the human psyche are not required to deal with our own? That, however, must be the topic of another future article.

Because we do not find this encouragement to embark on the inner quest, those of us who nevertheless do go ahead with it, find ourselves at odds with the bulk of society, if we are courageous enough to speak about it. We are either not understood, we may be mocked, and we may ultimately find ourselves ignored, or our friends may shake their heads and say or think: well, that's just his/her thing.

But what can the person who has not spent time with him or herself do to make this process easier? How can they walk along the path that will lead them into themselves, rather than consistently looking for something external to fill the unexplored void? We could recommend meditation, solitary walks, and so on, but I find that such practices are often too much for the novice, as they are then thrown into themselves to an overwhelming degree, much as someone used to a regular Western diet and who wishes to eat in a more healthy fashion, may find that going raw (eating only raw foods) is too much. (In a side note, I might add, I have gone totally raw from a regular Western diet over the past month after much reflection and reading about the subject over a number of years ... since the 70's, and find the initial effects of this raw diet - fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts - on my body and mind and state of being, as well as on my energy level and quality of sleep, highly illuminating ... more of this in a future post on my blog).

Here are some transition suggestions:• use audio CD's or tapes to spend some time on your own, but

initially accompanied by someone (the motivational or inspirational speaker) who fills your mind with thoughts you might not normally

get into on your own (see also my September 2007 Newsletter: Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success as well as posts on my blog pertaining to energy)

• start the daily practice of journaling: write down your thoughts during a period of five minutes to begin with and see where it takes you

• and if you are already journaling, do a gratitude journal as well. Just jot down five things every day you are grateful for...and remember...things can be something ranging from a material thing, to something about your looks, to a sea gull you have just spied, to the sound of the wind through the trees, to your own particular gifts and talents, etc. Being grateful brings us closer to ourselves. We become more humble in view of the greatness that surrounds us. And so we come closer to ourselves as well. (See also these previous posts on gratitude).

• start recording your dreams (see previous dream posts or listen to my audio clips on dreams) and attempt to interpret them, as this will lead you into the psyche

• if you enjoy reading, start picking up some books that don't exist merely to entertain, but also to serve as an aid with which you can get to know yourself better (there are numerous books in my extensive Recommended Books Section, others are to be found in the December 2006 and 2007 Newsletters with the yearly list culled from the books I recommend each month, in each respectively, and other book suggestions can be found on my blog)

• once you've done some of this, you may actually find yourself desirous of trying that solitary walk (I power walk one hour every day on the beach here in southern Spain, which affords me a superb opportunity each and every day to commune with myself, or be internally creative, or practice open-eyed meditation, or be grateful for this blissful part of my day, etc.).

Getting to know the self, becoming enamored of the self, finding the beloved within, is one of the most liberating things you can decide to do for yourself. All it takes is some curiosity (how can you not be curious about yourself??) and desire, and above all, the first step.

Claiming Responsibility for the Self

As children, our parents often admonished us: be responsible! Take responsibility for what you do. And we took it to mean that if we had chores or homework to do, then we needed to be responsible about completing those tasks, and not dawdle, or worse, procrastinate so much that in the end they never got done, and we wound up with real emergencies on our hands.

When he was still quite young, I used to say to one of my sons (I found the saying in some article): your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency when he would come to me in the 11th hour with a paper that had not been written, or a project that had not been properly planned.

But this is not what claiming responsibility for the self is really all about.

Implementing a Different Type of ResponsibilityOne thing is to be responsible out there in the world, as described above, and another thing is to claim responsibility for the self. Both types of responsibility form part of responsible behavior, but the latter is much less understood, and even less implemented in an individual's life. We pay little attention to it because the world at large gives it little merit, it is not talked about as something valuable to achieve, such as having an outstanding academic record, getting a prestigious position in an important firm, or becoming financially successful in the world.

Being Responsible for the Inner YouTo claim responsibility for the self literally means to decide to be responsible for all that goes on within the self. Not, let me hasten to add, for all that happens to the self. You can not control that (also see You Don't Have to Blame Anybody). If you live in a police state and are arbitrarily arrested, or if you live in an area often devastated by hurricanes, or if you live in a third-world country with raging hunger and poverty, or if you are of the wrong ethnic or religious origin (according to the powers-that-be) and are subject to harassment or worse, it is clear that you are unable to claim responsibility for that manner of events.

Claiming Responsibility for Your ReactionsBut you can - without the slightest doubt - claim responsibility for the way in which you react to all of that, and therefore, you can claim responsibility for the way you feel about it all (also see No One Can Control Your Emotions), for the state of your being in the midst of such havoc and chaos, and therefore, in a nutshell, you have control of your life. As long as you are in control of what goes on inside of you, what happens on the outside carries much less weight. Imagine the potential freedom this would give you. Imagine a world where you are free to choose how you feel, think, and react. Imagine a world where you inner well-being lies in your own hands.

Does Your External World Control You?We can take this into the arena of much more normal external events and experiences and understand how we can begin to take control of much of that which ails and plagues us by claiming responsibility for the self.• your boss just passed you over for a promotion• the bank declined your request for a loan• the person you love just walked out on you• the girl you asked out for a first date said she already has a

boyfriend• it rained the entire week you spent in Bali• seven publishers rejected your manuscript• your college application was put on waitlist• one of your best clients moved over to the competition• you had a reconciliatory dinner with your partner and the two of

you wound up having a fight

In each of these examples something external to the self causes frustration, heartbreak, pain, annoyance, anger, or any number of other unhelpful emotions. And so we explain our negative emotions to ourselves by blaming them on the event or the person (also see The Greatest Quality in Life). Obviously we feel that way because of what happened.

Choosing to be in Control of Your Well-BeingIf that is explanation enough for you, then you are willing to give over control of your state of well being to an event or another person. It is tantamount to saying that you are not in control of your state of well being. You might say: How can I be when these things happen to me? The way I feel is totally dependent on what just happened. Anybody would feel that way under those circumstances. Nevertheless, there is another way of looking at it … if only you will try. You can be in control of your state of well being by deciding to be. It's as simple as that.

Make the decision that when things happen that would normally upset you, you will, in future, look at all the possibilities, all the alternatives of reaction at your disposal. Of all of these alternatives, one of them is always going to be: • I can choose not to get upset• I can choose to remain calm• I can choose to keep my cool• I can choose to remain in a good mood• I can choose to refuse to let this person or event bother me• I can choose to look at this as a learning situation and take

something positive from it in order to advance to the next place in my life

• I can choose to grow from this• I can choose not to worry (because worrying never solved anything

at all)• I can choose to smile• I can choose to walk away from this situation• I can choose to let this person be the way they are, realizing that

their way of thinking, or their behavior says nothing at all about me• I can choose to believe in my own value as a wonderful human

being• I can choose to laugh• I can choose to shake hands

The examples of the choices you can offer yourself are endless, but if you make certain that your choices are always roads that take you to a good state of being, that enhance your well-being, and that serve you in some way, you are truly taking control, and claiming responsibility for the self. The goal of all of this is … contrary to what many of us learned in our early years … that we must first take care of ourselves. (See also The Absolutely Best Way of Giving to Others ).This is not selfishness. This is not egotistical behavior. This is recognizing that the better my inner state of well-being is, the higher my energetic frequency is (when you are happy your energetic frequency is high, when you are depressed or distressed, it is very low), and therefore the greater the possibilities are that I will have a positive impact on my world. The ripple effect of my very state of being – if it is energetically high - will be good for others, and in my own small way, I will be helping to change the world in a positive way.

Claiming responsibility for the self then becomes not only something that is good for me, but it is good for the world. Claiming responsibility for the self brings me inner freedom, and helps to bring it to the world by the ripple effect of my example.

Claiming responsibility for the self is one of the biggest and most important steps you can take to make your life and your personal world the best it can possibly be.

Related Articles:• Looking In All the Right Places• Are You in Alignment With Who You Really Are?• Are You Living the Life You Want to Live?• Cellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power Back• Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in Them• Create a New Life: One Intention at a Time• Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?• Finding it Hard to Love Yourself? Check Out Your Boundaries• Gratitude, Choice, and the “Why Did This Happen to Me?

Syndrome• Grow in Richness: Stop the Blaming

• Happiness: Has it Become a Science or is it a Question of Luck?• How Your Thoughts Change Your Body• Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, & the Law of

Attraction• Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life • Making Choices: Taking Responsibility for our Lives• Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success• Tending Your Inner Garden• The Puritan Work Ethic, Wu-Wei, and is Life Really Meant to be a

Struggle?

Looking in all the Right Places

• Where do you look when something goes wrong?• What do you focus on when you can't seem to get ahead?• Which thoughts run through your head when you've just bungled

something?• Which feelings course through you when your world turns upside-

down?• What reactions does your body give you when you just know it

can’t get any worse?

The answers to all of those questions tell you a great deal about the current quality (or lack of quality) of your life. (Also see How About Changing?)

Looking in all the right places literally means always looking for something to appreciate, love, or enjoy, something to be grateful for, looking for something that can help you grow more, looking for something that can teach you to progress more productively, to be more you, and to consistently feel better about yourself - no matter where you are currently at, and no matter what has actually happened. (you might like to take the time to listen to two of my audio clips on my website’s Radio Page: Shoes & Perspective in the Awareness Section, and When Life Threatens to Overwhelm in the Emotions Section).

That means that when the fan is full with what hit it, you are focusing on something to appreciate in this situation, something that will create learning in you, in other words, you are looking to find something in any and all situations life brings you to that makes you capable of some manner of appreciation.

Imagine just for a moment that you get to choose the things that happen to you. Obviously you would only choose good stuff. But let's imagine for a moment that you have a child in first grade. The good stuff would be recess time, and play activities. The not so good stuff might be learning how to read and write. Or math. You get the picture. For the child to progress - although the child might not willingly choose it - he needs to go through some stages of progressive learning in order to become the

competent, effective, and proactive adult that you are hoping he will indeed become.

Back to you. If you got to choose everything that happens to you, you might only choose the good stuff. But let's say there's a part of you that is wiser (as you are the - I hope - wiser adult parent to your hypothetical child in first grade). This part of you that is wiser knows that in order for you to grow on levels that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic, you will need to choose a number of situations in your life that will cause you to progress in those directions.

So if you got to choose, that wiser and older part of you would be choosing experiences that might not - at first glance - look like a lot of fun and games. Maybe you have to live in an orphanage as a young child (like Wayne Dyer), maybe you get sexually abused (like Louise Hay), maybe you are diagnosed with cancer (like Kylie Minogue), maybe you become a quadriplegic after falling off your horse (like Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman), maybe you are repudiated by the husband you love because you are unable to bear a male child (like Soraya of Iran, first wife of the late Shah), maybe you develop Lou Gehrig's disease (like the world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking), maybe your mother is assassinated (like Benazir Bhutto's son) maybe you get jailed for 28 years for expressing your political opinions (like Nelson Mandela), maybe you get sent to Auschwitz , the Nazi extermination and work camp, during the Holocaust, and your entire family gets gassed while you are in there (like psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl), maybe your mother or partner seems to spend all their time pushing your buttons (also listen to this audio clip: Who’s Pushing Your Buttons? from my newly-hatched radio show) maybe your husband is decapitated in a high-speed boating accident (like Princess Caroline of Monaco's second husband) maybe you have to battle drug addiction (like actor Robert Downey Jr.), or alcoholism (like British actor Richard Burton, twice married to Liz Taylor), or maybe your young son falls 53 floors from a Manhattan skyscraper (like Eric Clapton's son Conor), or maybe you lose your sister to suicide (like Mariel Hemingway lost her sister Margaux). The list could go on and on. I've deliberately chosen famous names so you relate more readily. You probably know of most of these people, can picture them, and watched some of them via the international media as they were going through their particular experience.

So if you could choose what happens to you, and hypothetically, if you choose one of the above examples (never in my right mind, I can hear you say ... but just bear with me for a moment here), wouldn't you have chosen that specific experience in order to gain something from it?

Again, I can hear you saying: How could I gain something from such an awful situation? Do you remember the American couple, Maggie and Reg Green, some years ago whose young son Nicholas was shot in Italy while the family was on vacation there? His parents subsequently decided to donate Nicholas’ organs and tissues to seven Italians to enable others to live and to have a future that Nicholas was denied. Their gain was to see that their young son's life was not truncated in vain. Their gain was to see the joy in the lives of seven families who were able to benefit from their tragedy. Their gain was to look beyond the merely obvious, close-down, and personal to a broader situation where we are truly all one (click here for more articles about the subject of our one-ness).

So what did they do to get there? One very important element was to focus on the right things, to look in all the right places. And part of that is: what can I do with this? How can I learn from this? How can I use this to make me a bigger, better person? How can this help me grow?

Do you doubt that most of the people I mentioned earlier did that? Remember Christopher Reeve's crusade for stem cell research? Or look at Stephen Hawking’s zest for life and scientific discovery. Or Mandela's goal to end Apartheid. Yes, it's true, not all were able to use their experience in the way I'm describing. No one says it's easy. All I'm suggesting is that if you give this a try, and begin to look in all the right places, you will make your life better no matter what the external circumstances are. And that – once again – leads to inner peace and freedom.

•