Some people think they have nothing to say. Some people believe they cannot express themselves.

These are illusions.

Your “Helpful” Friend, the Unconscious Mind

These illusions, these thoughts, are caused by the unconscious mind’s automatic learning. It learns something, usually in childhood, and quite often these “solutions” are brilliant, given the resources you have at the time. Unfortunately, like how to tie your shoes, these solutions are re-generated automatically below consciousness ever after, and sometimes they fit, but oft-times these solutions suck!

These beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and automatic reactions are a part of you, operating below consciousness, but they are illusions. (In which we are sometimes as trapped, and blind, as fish are to the water.)

(If you want to learn more about how the unconscious mind both helps and sometimes harms you, in its effort to promote your survival, pick up my free book at http://beinghappytoday.com. You can one-click unsub the newsletter if you wish.)

How to Make Writing Flow Easily

Let’s talk about how to make writing, and self-expression … easy.

I learned this from a woman named Brandt, in a book she wrote about creative writing, 40 years ago. It’s still true. Here’s what you do …

In the morning, when you arise, go immediately to a typewriter or a computer where you can type things, and start typing.

Type any garbage that comes into your head.

Describe your dream if you wish. Type out the ideas flitting through your head. If you are thinking “I cannot express myself,” then type that.

Keep typing.

It will be a lot of hooey … but you’ll notice some good ideas in there. Keep typing for 20-30 minutes, every morning.

Do this for a couple of weeks, and your beliefs and considerations that you have nothing to say or that you cannot express yourself … will have vanished.

Why Does it Work?

It works for the same reason that you can dream. In your dream you automatically create scenes, words, ideas, pictures, and on and on and on. This is an inherent skill of a human being.

And when you first awake, your “censors” are not fully functional. That’s why you must go *IMMEDIATELY* to the keyboard. And start.

By starting while still sleepy, and while your usual blocking claptrap isn’t fully booted up, you can of course effortlessly spew your trains of thought. They are huge freight trains, and they’re running at high speed, all the time.

Perhaps you’ve got out of the habit of allowing your trains to run down the track toward the horizon. Your unconscious mind is programmable; that’s how it got programmed to block you, and it can be programmed differently, with this exercise.

This simple practice throws the switches on this particular railroad, and your freight trains start building speed, moving on down the line.

Hear the clacking of the rails?

Hear the whistle soaring into the air?

It’s easy. Prove it for yourself.

You’re the engineer.

Whoooo-wooooo!

(Ladies, it will seem silly to you, but it’s going to make sense to most any guy.)

But what?

What can I be?

And what can I have? And what can I do?

And … what do I want?

Actually, if you’re not immediately in touch with what you want, then you’ve just covered it over with old hurts, old failures, old disappointments, old … something. Because when you were a child, you knew what you wanted. And it’s still in there.

The sellers of Manifestation Marvels! will tell you that you can be, do, or have anything that you want. And, most likely, you can.

But some people, faced with this radical idea, usually their lifetime of experience and their past decisions and perceptions have given them a more mechanical view of life, just can’t immediately think of anything they’d like to have. “Huh?” one fellow said. The lady sitting next to him, I think it was his wife, just shook her head.

“Not a thing,” she said, “I’ve got just everything I need.”

Do you believe that?

HOW TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH

There are actually several ways to open the door and see what it is that you’d like to do, have, or be.

1. Think back to when you were a teen, just past puberty. What interested you at that time is often something that is near to your heart. At that age, you’re adult enough to perceive things in the adult world, and you’re still child enough to tune into what interests you rather than what is practical, what is reasonable, what is mature, what is sensible, or what you think might be attainable.
2. Sit and close your eyes and relax, and imagine that some relative you never knew has departed this plane and left you immensely wealthy. You don’t have to work. You don’t have to worry. You can buy anything you want. You can spend your time any way you wish. And now, wealthy and idle as you are, just let your thoughts drift and dream up some things that you might do just for the heck of it. And keep these thoughts going for a few days, because when you open this flood gate, a lot may pour out.
3. Get some paper and pencil and start writing down possibilities, no matter how crazy or stupid they sound. Do not allow your habitual focusing squelch the idea factory; every single crazy idea gets put down on the page. Just by the practice of admitting all crazy ideas, you’ll find that you can begin to see possibilities in these ideas, once you get out of the habit of throwing them out automatically.
4. Take three pieces of paper, and on one of them write “People are …”, and on the next one “People can …”, and on the third one write “People have …” and then, over a couple of days, just jot down all the various things you think that people, other people, might be able to be, do, and have. Now on this list you may discover some of your self-limiting thoughts becoming exposed, and if you suddenly realize that you have the belief in this or that limiting factor, then ask yourself “Why not?” and “What if …” And of course on these pieces of paper you may find yourself listing things that other people could be, do, and have. And if they can have them, why not you? What if …

A half hour on these things will start turning up useful ideas.

A few days will work even more powerfully.

And then, when you start becoming more clear on what you want, then you can start thinking about how you might be able to be, do, and have these things.

It’s a good start.

However, it’s easy to become misled about this. You don’t need to know everything. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step.” And likewise, if you’re driving from Los Angeles to New York, just knowing that you’ll drive to the East is actually enough to start making a plan. In fact, you could just gas the car and start driving East.

And, lots of times, you simply cannot know everything.

Sometimes you cannot even research things very well. And if you take no action because the complete details of your plan are unclear, then very possibly no beginning step will *ever* be taken. And you’ll not reach the end of the path unless that first step is taken.

There are excellent ways to make a plan. [See STEP TWO for information on Targeting.]

But there’s a step that must come first! And, often, it’s overlooked!

What must come first is … Decision.

If you’re going to Do Something in the world, the very first step is to DECIDE that you’re going to do it. This harkens to the oft-quoted Law of Attraction. So often, discussions of the Law of Attraction center on how you can “get a lot of stuff.”

This is all very well and good. There’s nothing wrong with being, doing, and having things that interest and inspire you. In fact, the ability to be and do and have what interests and inspires you is a wonderful way to live. But let’s ignore “the stuff,” for just a moment.

::: YOU MUST DECIDEÂ

The first thing that happens — that must happen — is that you’ve got to CHOOSE what you want. You’ve got to SELECT your target. You’ve got to DECIDE what you want.

Now maybe you decide and then do some research. Or maybe you decide and then ride off madly in all directions, and by observing your results you can correct your direction and eventually arrive at your target. The wisdom of your plan, the cleverness of the details, and the speed of your arrival are not the point.

The point is that the first thing that has to happen is that you DECIDE.

Sometimes people are afraid to decide, because just thinking about such things triggers habitual unpleasant mental responses (failures and flops and embarassments!). For more about how this becomes built into the brain, see my articles “How to Approach a Woman” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”)

To shy away from wanting to re-experience unpleasant memories is an understandable human aversion to further pain. However, shying away from something you’d like will just never get you there. And the first step is to DECIDE.

::: WHICH CAME FIRST — THE DECISION OR THE EGG?

It was the Decision.

Do you want to, in general, improve your life? Do you want to be more, do more, have more?

Then your first step is to decide to be more, do more, or have more.

If you’re not quite sure exactly how you’ll do it, that’s fine.

Ghandi didn’t know exactly how he would get the British out of India. Columbus didn’t know exactly how he would land on the shore of the Americas. They had to first decide, and then, in a way, everything else was just details.

If your targets aren’t exactly clear, or if you have an idea what you want, but no clue how to go about getting there, don’t worry. Just decide. That’s the first step.

::: FIVE STEP ABUNDANCEÂ

And, (ahem!) of course you could always use the Five Step Abundance method. It has five parts:

In the first part you learn how visualization and the Law of Attraction can be put to work for you.

In the second part you learn how to set targets and then work backwards to make a plan for getting there, and how to continually increase your energy, time, and money power.

In the third part you’ll learn how to simply and easily tune your body so that you maximize your energy, and enhance your health and your outlook on life.

In the fourth part you’ll learn how you can tweak your diet so as to avoid disease, extend your life, and feel better all the time.

And in the fifth part you learn two methods for clearing out all the old stuff from the past. This not only feels good, but produces increasing calm and focus in your life, and many physical ailments are often improved.

But, although this sounds like a plan, it’s not the first step.

The first step is … decide.

(These killers are heart disease, cancer, stroke, and immune disorders including diabetes.)

Specifically, the simple method of ‘vegistentialism’ will give you a way of daily eating which will provide you with high energy, tasty and enjoyable meals, a feeling of lightness, and you will have radically altered the odds that you will live far longer. You will feel good.

A ‘vegistentialist’ is a person who has discovered ‘the essential truth about humans and vegetables.’ This approach answers the puzzle of: “What should we eat?”

Main Entry: human
Function: noun
: a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens)

Main Entry: vegetable
Function: noun
1 : a plant
2 : a usually herbaceous plant (as the cabbage, bean, or potato) grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal; also : such an edible part

Main Entry: ex·is·ten·tial·ism
Pronunciation: -'ten(t)-sh&-"li-z&m
Function: noun
: a 20th century philosophical movement centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.

The food industry in the United States alone is a 17 billion dollar enterprise. So it is no surprise that the advertising streaming at you every day gives you information which has more to do with food-industry profits than with the truth about your health.

It’s not so much that there is some sort of conspiracy to lead you into illness. Rather it is the selective presentation of information and partial information. As an example, realize that rarely will a man go up to a pretty woman and say, “Hi, I’m Joe, and I’d really like to take you out, though I should tell you that I’m lousy in bed.”

Rather, he’ll ask her out and let her find out on her own, later.

And unfortunately, this very understandable bias of the food industry has led to most of us being … shall we say … let down?

The truth is simple, and using the truth to enhance your health is simple. And the truth has been available through immense scientific studies for many years. It is only because the truth had a very limited advertising budget that we’ve not heard much about it.

You’ll find that truth here.

Weed, California, November 16, 2010 — Last night I was reading “Use Your Brain for a Change: by Richard Bandler, and he was describing how people motivate themselves to do things … such as how we wake up in the morning.

In the book, one fellow described using anxiety (how he’d be late, etc) to get himself up, but then this woman described how she thought about the pleasant things she would be doing. And when there were no pleasant things she liked doing, she thought about how pleasant it would be to have them *done*.

So this morning, I tried to think of things I’d enjoy doing today, but found little joy in the doingness of most items on today’s priority list: the Jackson Wellsprings booking followup, writing up listings to place ZenTappers on EBay, and some administrative things.

Rats! I didn’t really want to do them! Oh, what to do?

So, I decided to try what was described in Bandler’s book. Here’s what I mean …

That is, I decided to think about the pleasure of having those things *done*. For example, it was pleasant to think of having the Jackson Wellsprings booking confirmed and done, the ZenTapper listings complete and up on EBay, and the administrative tasks done and filed away and bugging me no longer!

And it felt great! I wanted to get up! I felt great pleasure thinking how those things would have been *done*!

This is a good strategy! Thank you Richard Bandler! Thank you Universe!

At breakfast time, I resisted doing my Five Rites. I wanted to just eat some toast and coffee. But again I thought how good I’d feel when the exercises were *done*!

And this made it fairly easy to start, which I’ve not done for several days. And as I did each one, I thought how pleasant it will be in my body when they’re done. Cool!

To celebrate, in the Champion juicer, I grated sweet potato with fresh ginger, which I fried in olive oil as potato cakes, crispy, with coffee. Yumbo! What a treat!

—

So I learned two things early today –

1. I can look forward to my to-do activities, some for the doing, and others for the pleasure of having them *done*. I can do the same within the little steps of these activities.
   xxx
2. I can look forward to the pleasure I feel after my exercise is *done*.

Did quick self-hypnosis session, and programmed these actions to be my new strategies for getting up in the morning, for processing my to-do list, and for doing/enjoying my exercise! That is –

• When it’s time to wake up, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel at doing the to-do items I enjoy doing, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my to-do items are *done*.
  xxx
• When it’s time to do my to-do items, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel at doing the to-do items I enjoy doing, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my to-do items are *done*.
  xxx
• When it’s time to do my exercise, my unconscious mind (Roger) will bring to my mind the pleasure I’ll feel experiencing the exercise that I enjoy, and also will bring to my mind the awareness and experience of pleasure I’ll feel when my exercise is *done*.

Thank you Richard Bandler! Thank you Roger! Thank you Universe!

There are many things which our culture believes are automatic and unknowing processes — such as regulating our blood pressure, remembering to breathe, regulating the salinity of our blood and the acidity of our stomach acid — and that these processes are built into the body, are automatic, and cannot be controlled.

Yet we know by observation that there are yogis who have in fact taken control of many of these processes, and so we know it can be done. But why don’t you and me have awareness of these things?

Baby Know

I personally suspect that, as an infant, even as an infant or fetus in utero, we were dimly conscious of many of these things. Why not? Might not have we had some dim awareness of beating our heart? We had no language, we didn’t even have a completely grown brain. But why wouldn’t we have felt the beating of our heart?

What better a thing for a growing brain to choose as a beginning project than to beat your heart? Perhaps to begin to regulate blood pressure? Perhaps to begin to learn to regulate salinity of the blood?

Some things it didn’t need to learn, perhaps. The mother’s body is regulating the blood pressure as her blood entered the umbilical tube.

The child in the womb didn’t need to learn how to operate lungs, or to digest food.

But at birth it learned how to operate those lungs, real quick.

And soon after, at the breast, it learned how to suckle, and then how to digest food.

Why would we think, just because the infant has no language, cannot speak or use a computer to write an email, that the infant isn’t learning these things? Why would we *assume* that it just knows them?

After all, it learns everything else. Why would these things be so different?

The learning would be stored in the mind, but it wouldn’t be stored in a form readily accessible to later memory. In a similar manner, you might learn how to do a triple-gainer off the high diving board, but when you access it in your memory, it’s probably a memory of sensation rather than some clear visual picture.

We Learn to Focus

In the earlier article, I discussed how we learn things, and these repeated things become what we now call habits, and what that means is that they’ve been relegated to the ‘Unconscious’ part of the mind.

But is that how it happens?

Let’s consider a different view …

I submit that at some point in our lives, starting in infancy, we learn to ‘focus’ the attention. In contrast to the dim and vague warbling of the baby in the crib, as arms and legs twitch aimlessly and the eyes wander, the child learns to focus attention. Perhaps onto being wet or hungry. Perhaps the child learns to stare at the plastic ducky hanging over the crib.

As the child focuses its attention on the yellow ducky, what happens to all the other awareness?

It goes away from consciousness. The child is not ‘attending’ to it. It’s still there: blood being pumped, lungs breathing air, food being digested. But it is not in ‘consciousness.’

I say that the other side of Focus is the creation of the Unconscious.

It’s still the one mind. A single unified mind.

But as we become skilled at focusing attention, more and more and more gets shoved below what we call consciousness. We pretty much have to do it this way in order to get along.

And along the way, we learn to do the same thing with traumatic events. We learn that our pain will subside if we turn the attention away, we place the focus elsewhere, and the traumatic memory now becomes a resident of the so-called Unconscious mind.

The practice of focusing attention is how we create unawareness of the vast majority of the thoughts and processes constantly undulating in the sea of the single, unified mind.

It’s the classical two-edged sword.

Focus is completely necessary to survival. And Focus is what creates ‘Unconsciousness.’

Conscious? Unconscious?

Now here’s something funny.

In many ways, the so-called Unconscious is way more conscious and cognizant of far more than our feeble ‘Conscious’ mind can handle.

Julian Jaynes, in “The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind”, provided a brilliant analogy. Each of us is like a person in a completely dark, huge room. On our head we have a helmet with a miner’s lamp. Everywhere we look, we see.

Because we are constantly looking, we constantly see *something*. We think we are being ‘conscious’ of the things around us.

And yet, no matter where we happen to be looking, all around us — above, below, to the right and to the left, and behind us — we are completely unaware. We are blind to 98% of what’s there, because we’re focussing on the 2% that falls within our limited attention, the limited 2% illuminated by the dim wattage of our so-called conscious mind.

Seems to me that the Unconscious mind — attending to a thousand things at once — is actually more conscious than our so-called conscious mind.

Make a friend of your Unconscious mind. It’s probably the best friend you’ve got.

[reprinted, with permission, from Shyguy's How To Get A Girlfriend Blog.]

All too often, in our lives we find ourselves being manipulated or influenced by other men, by women, and sometimes even by the damned television.

Of course, as a kid against a schoolyard bully, perhaps the only options are the Charles Atlas course, karate classes, or a tactful withdrawal. But in later life usually we’re not influenced by physical threat.

HOW DO ‘THEY’ MANIPULATE US?

It’s done with worths, with images, and with social pressure.

If you’re being influenced this way … what that tells you is that you DO NOT actually understand how it’s happening. Oh, you may have theories and opinions about those bad people.

But if you’re still being manipulated, either “having” to go along, or even resisting but feeling upset or angry about it .. then you DO NOT fully understand how it works.

But here’s how to change that …

HERE IS THE KEY:

If you wish to invest time to understand how it all works, then *you* can learn to influence people around you. You can control nearly every situation. You can attract people to you, and they will listen to what you have to say.

If you don’t wish to invest time to understand how it all works?

<!–more–>Well, then you will simply go on with the same life you now have — being manipulated by women, by men, by situations. All seeming out of your control.

So unless you wish to continue the life of a helpless pawn … then the question becomes simply … WHERE and HOW can I learn how ‘Influence’ works?

And luckily, in recent years, this is no longer mysterious.

There is a body of knowledge that reveals all of this. It requires some time investment and some study, but it actually does deliver this kind of power, this kind of skill, into your hands.

It is the rightful study of Hypnosis.

WHAT?

Now before you start thinking about guys on stage with wild eyes, and people in chairs acting like chickens, please be aware that there have been radical developments in recent years, and for the first time, these INSIDE techniques are being presented to the public.

In the past, we sometimes have described certain politicians, certain charismatic individuals, certain evangelical preachers, and certain actors as “almost hypnotic.”

Well … it’s not “almost” … they are using modern, secret hypnotic methods.

Hypnosis is all around you, being used successfully, and profitably … by business, by politicians, by television.

Why do housewives pay $2-$3 more for a bottle of name-brand laundry soap? The stuff in the other bottle works just the same. So why do her eyes go to the more expensive bottle? Why does her hand reach out and pick it up? Why does she stand at the check-out stand and pay extra?

Hypnosis is simpler than you imagine, more common that you imagine, and easy to understand … IF it’s presented simply.

I FOUND A MASTER WHO MAKES IT SIMPLE

Though I’ve known of this field since about forever, I recently stumbled across an up-to-date report and was delighted to discover an outstanding hypnotist — perhaps the best hypnotist in the world — who has the true gift of a master and a teacher …

He has a way of making it simple.

GET THE FACTS

Your life can transform itself.

You can have a body of knowledge that sets you apart, that gives you freedom from being manipulated by women, by men, by situations.

You can .. be in control.

Get the facts. The full story is revealed here –

http://learn-conversational-hypnosis.org

You’ll be happy you did.

What is it about taking a shower that causes new ideas to pop into your head?

Is it the invigorating ions that are caused by splitting water droplets?

Or is it a simple as Murphy’s law triggered because you will never have pencil and paper in the shower?

I don’t know the answer to this time-proven rule, but as of this morning’s shower, I do know a super-simple way to look at mental health, a simple way to be happier and more productive.

It’s simply this –

As you go through life, and as you go through each day, stuff will be going on. Some of it’s yours, and some of it seems to just happen. And you’re going to be seeing this stuff happening and you’re going to react to it and think about it.

Now here’s the key –

If you allow yourself to *dwell* upon the bad in it, you’ll be using your mind in a way that, over time, conditions you (by repetition) to habitual thinking. And in this thinking, you’re dissatisfied with life, you’re the effect of stuff out there, perhaps a repeating victim of stuff out there. And this will never produce happiness in your life, and your thinking or perception will tend to become oblivious to the good things, the good possibilities, the good feelings, that could turn it all around for you.

But to have a happier life, if you will make an ongoing and intentional practice to consciously find what good is in whatever is happening, if you will consciously consider what’s happening and consider how it may be to your (now or later) benefit, then several good things will happen.

Over time, as you do this you will experience more happiness, because you’re going out of your way to find some happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts tends to go along with a happy life. Sounds a little too simple, because frankly it is simply too simple. It is so simple that hardly anyone thinks to try it.

Further, as you intentionally practice focussing your attention on discerning what good is in what’s happening, or how it may turn to your advantage, you are developing a creative problem-solving mentality, and you’ll discover yourself creating new ways to operate that are to your advantage. This too is horribly simple — if you look for ways to get good from a situation, you’re likely to find some.

Now let’s hear it from the nay-sayers!

The nay-sayer will have an automatic reaction against what’s just been said here. Now in fact, what we’re seeing with the naysayer is that something happened (some words appeared) in the naysayer’s life, but the naysayer is in the habit of finding the bad, so the automatic, trained, habit of the naysayer is to now find something that will ruin it for himself.

For example, the naysayer can object that “squelching down your negative feelings and suppressing them is an unhealthy mental practice.” And, truth be told, there is a germ of truth here. Because the ongoing practice of denying the feelings one experiences will lead to the automatic, trained, habit of becoming unconscious of one’s feelings. That doesn’t help survival nor lead to a happier life.

The difference is: if you’re *pushing against* a negative thought, you just keep it there. ‘Pushing against’ will tend to be reflected in the words you say inside your head. For example, “I’m not feeling like crying, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!” is a pretty good example of pushing against. Another one is “I’m not going to be mad at Johnny any more!”

Maybe you squelch it, but it’s not really going away. And for some folks, who have fears about their mind being out of control, this can be a real catch-22. A self-fulfilling problem.

But if you have fears about your mind being out of control, then you can simply learn to practice meditation, in the simplest sense of the word.

Meditation, at the simplest level, is nothing more than practicing holding your mind on one thing. That one thing could be your breath going in and out. That one thing could be the repetition of a word, like ‘Om’ or ‘Shanti’ or ‘peace’ or even ‘boogie shoes.’ That one thing could be holding a picture in mind: a mountain, the bright light of a candle, the face of someone you love.

Now your mind *will* wander away; that is the unruly nature of a mind. And when you notice it’s wandered away, you just put it back.

And if you do this every day for 20 minutes, then after a few weeks you will notice that you feel better, and you feel calmer, and your fear about your uncontrollable mind will have dwindled, because slowly by slowly you are actually learning to control your mind. Not in a harsh, military and suppressive way, but by a gentle persistent returning way.

And this is the same way that you would develop your practice of looking at what’s happening to find good in it, or how it can be turned to good.

If you have a real stubborn case of the nasty unhappies, maybe you’ll have to start by simply finding ways to *minimize* the bad that you see all around you. But if you persist, you will slowly by slowly begin to develop the habit of seeing the good going on all around you.

Look, here’s a kind of proof:

In your life, like any life, there have been unhappinesses. Let’s consider how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ‘hard’ unhappinesses caused by something that happened in the physical universe, and how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ’soft’ unhappinesses caused as you *thought* about things that had happened or might happen.

If you’re like most humans, and even if you’ve had a rough life, then less than 5% of the unhappinesses were ‘hard’ ones, like you tripped and fell down the stairs and broke an arm or sprained a muscle, or like you had a traffic accident, or your boyfriend left for another woman, or your dog died, or somebody stole something that belonged to you, or something you owned got ruined or spoiled. These are hard unhappinesses caused by an actual event in the physical universe.

Now you may have more control over these things than you realize, but we don’t even need to think about that. What we want to look at here is this –

Do these things happen every day? Do they happen multiple times every day?

For most people, no. They don’t.

These things happen, but only now and then.

For most of us, many days go by before we get another of these ‘hard’ unhappinesses.

But if that’s the case, what about those times when you’ve been continuously unhappy for days and days at a time? Where is that coming from?

Well, if nothing is happening in the physical universe to give you a ‘hard’ unhappiness, then you’re filling up your experience with *your thoughts*.

And you must have these thoughts on automatic unhappy mode, because it’s just one unhappy thought after another. Let’s say the boyfriend left. That happened once. But what about the hundreds or thousands of times you think unhappily about it? What about the hundreds or thousands of times you think about it even before it ever happens?

With these hundreds or thousands of unhappy thoughts, you are training your mind by simple repetition to automatically generate unhappy thoughts, and these will create the unhappy emotions in your body, and you are training yourself, unconsciously and automatically, to become and remain an unhappy person.

Is this mental health? To train yourself to become an unhappy person?

No, it is not good mental health.

So what is the opposite of this unconscious training program for unhappiness?

The opposite is a conscious training program for happiness.

Can it really be that simple?

Yes. Actually, it is exactly that simple.

You choose: Unconscioiusly keep running your unhappiness training, or consciously re-train to become a happy person.

Maybe not always easy. Maybe not immediate. Takes intention, practice, and time. And it works.

You will recreate yourself as a happier, and healthier person.

Presto. Mental health and happiness.

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?

Here’s an idea to consider –

“Personal growth only takes place outside your comfort zone.”
– Tony Robbins

Think about it. Think about moments when you’ve attained major personal growth. Think about the moments just before you attained this personal growth. Would you say those moments were “comfortable?”

Probably not. We grow the most when we’re challenged. Funerals. Difficult contests. A breakthrough moment. When you go beyond what you know. That’s when it happens.

While it’s not always street-smart to “live on the edge,” it is usually exciting. And while the path of wisdom does not lead us to endanger our lives, our loved ones, or that which we hold dear, it is also a fact that living a life in which there is no challenge, no “danger,” no spice, nothing new, the same every day … well, I suppose it’s good for some folks, but I question whether it’s good for you.

Wouldn’t you rather be a pirate?

There. Didn’t that feel good, just thinking about being a pirate?

Why is that?

DILEMMA OF THE DAY

Mankind, and men (and women) have it in them to both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty. I suppose evolution built that into us. I mean, some folks living way back when who didn’t seek safety left no descendants! And other folks who avoided anything new couldn’t adapt to the first change and they didn’t leave any descendants either!

So you and me, and all the rest of humankind, are the descendants of those humans who did both (a) seek safety, and (b) seek novelty.

So that means it’s a natural fact. We’re built that way. That’s just the way it is.

Go with the flow, and live well. Rebel and become like those way-back folks who left no descendants.

HOW DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

How does it play out? Look around you. One common scenario is a guy who works at a boring job, doing something he finds less than inspiring — it never occurred to him to create something inspiring, because his attention was fixed on renting an apartment and he needed some cash each month — and he’s seeking safety.

He’s a human, so he’s also seeking novelty.

How will he find it?

Television, I reckon.

Synthetic adventures. Stuff that happened to everybody else but him.

When he gets to the end of his life, lying on his deathbed, and maybe he’s thinking back, and he’s saying to himself, “Man, what a great life. I watched me some really good TV!”

So if that’s the obvious outcome of that behavior pattern, then why did he follow that pattern of behavior for 40 years? I can think of only one answer. He just didn’t know any better. He never looked. He never examined the path, and the outcome. He was too busy seeking safety, and finding his novelty cheap and easy.

Personal growth only occurs when you’re outside your comfort zone.

HOW TO HAVE PERSONAL GROWTH

It’s simple: Just operate regularly outside your comfort zone. Make it your habit to do so.

In other words, be a pirate.

You know you want to.

Perhaps you are now asking yourself, “But how?”

Well, you’re a grown person. Figure it out. That’s your first assignment.

There. You’re outside of your comfort zone right now.

Keep it up.

Think of the President. There’s your opinion … automatically.

Go out on a date. There’s your usual feeling … automatically.

Decide to tie your shoe. There go your hands … automatically tying your shoe.

But what if you’d like to do something … different … for a change?

MAKING A CHANGE

You might formulate a plan, like going on a diet, but your usual responses are going to be served up automatically. Just the *thought* of a meal will automatically trigger your usual response to have more pie. Your non-conscious mind trying to help you, just like you trained it to do, by repetition. That’s how it learns.

But let’s use going on a date as an example. Let’s say that it has been your habit to be up-tight, anxious, and worried. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter how this got started or whether your parents were good people or what your astrology sign is. Let’s just say that uptight, anxious, and worried has become your habit.

And maybe you think this isn’t the best way to enjoy your next date.

Now, just supposing you have that thought, thinking about going on your next date, most likely already your non-conscious mind starts serving up your usual feelings, so quite likely you may begin to feel uptight, anxious, and worried … and you haven’t even gone out on the date yet!

How then can you make a change?

CREATING SYNTHETIC EXPERIENCES

One way is to mentally “rehearse,” using your ability to chose which thoughts to think. You can mentally rehearse the date, and you can choose to imagine success, and all sorts of things going right. And the way your body will react to these thoughts and images of success is by giving you a bunch of good feelings.

If you are persistent, and will rehearse and rehearse, then you can build up an amount of positive “experience” which becomes a habitual way of thinking and feeling, just as your old pattern was a negative experience which became a habitual way of thinking and feeling. If you persist, eventually you’ll have more positive “experience” than negative experience, and you will discover your dates being more enjoyable.

Of course, doing it once, and saying, “Cool!” won’t do the job.

There are some other ways, such as using hypnotic or Neuro-Linguistic Programming methods, but simple mental rehearsal gives a clear model of what works.

COMMUNICATING DIRECTLY WITH YOUR NON-CONSCIOUS MIND

As you formulate your new plan for making a change, you can also “talk” with your Non-conscious Mind. By doing this, you can discover ahead of time how your non-conscious mind will automatically *help* you, and how your non-conscious mind will automatically *block* your new plan.

If you can know these things, then usually you can modify your new plan so as not to automatically invoke a lot of blockage, and in fact you can often modify your new plan so that automatic behaviors that will be served up by the non-conscious mind will assist your new plan.

So the question is: How do you talk with a Non-conscious Mind?

It doesn’t speak you know. It doesn’t even have self-consciousness as you and I know do. It’s not an actual entity as you and I seem to be. But it *acts* like an entity. It *acts* like a different, and autonomous, part of you. Because it is.

IT RESPONDS TO YOUR THOUGHTS

Here’s the answer: Although it cannot talk, it does have the habit of automatically generating the habitual thoughts and feelings you’ve entrained it to store, by your repeated thinking, feeling, or performing habitual actions.

So here’s what you do. Let’s say your new plan is to be more relaxed on your next date, and to have more fun.

So you sit down, and though you can do this just mentally, it will be easier to learn if you first try it with pencil and paper. So you start writing down your plan, with a lot of details. And as you write, pay careful attention, with every word that you write, what feelings and thoughts are popping into your awareness.

These feelings and thoughts are the responses of your non-conscious mind to your plan, word by word, and bit by bit.

For example if you write (or say), “I’m going to go out,” you might have a vague feeling of questioning. (That’s your non-conscious mind’s automatic reaction to the idea of your going on an excursion.)

And you then continue, writing (or saying), “on a date,” and immediately you notice a gentle feeling of unease. So right there you could react, and try some different words, like “I mean, to go get some dinner,” now you get a feeling of relaxation and ease.

And you continue, “with Sally,” and you notice that there’s no feeling of uneasiness. You just saw that your thinking “go out” and especially thinking “go on a date” are triggering the unwanted, automatic responses entrained into your non-conscious mind, but that “going to get some dinner … with Sally,” doesn’t trigger any automatic unpleasant stuff at all.

HOW TO USE WHAT YOU DISCOVER

Well for one thing, pay attention to your thoughts. If you feel uneasy, did you just think thoughts about dating? If so, reframe them differently. In this way you are retraining the non-conscious mind as you go.

You might discover, for example, that your non-conscious mind is going to produce a lot of automatic negative stuff if you plan a trip to the bowling alley, but no automatic negative stuff if you go golfing, and that it will generate warm and pleasant feelings if you’ll take a picnic to the museum.

Then, for certain, take more picnics at the museum, and for those other places like the bowling alley, visit the bowling alley on your own and meditate there or listen to music that always puts you in a good mood, or do something in those places that create more confort for you in those places.

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Recently, I’ve been engaged in the process of buying a house, and I knew I had to go to the Title Company, because that’s part of the process. I’d never been to a Title Company before, and when I thought about the mysterious ‘Title Company,’ I felt a discomfort and an uneasy feeling. So, before the day that I had to go there with the seller of the house, I went to the Title Company on my own.

I walked in, and the first thing I did was to “locate” myself in the place. That is, I made a point to look at the space and the things in it. I looked at the carpet and its color, and the way the sunlight fell through the window on the floor. I looked at the desks, and the walls, and the chairs. And then I looked at the several people in the room.

I picked one of them, and was invited to sit down. I sat down and felt the chair, and examined the person across from me. And then I asked a half a dozen questions about the process, which both told me something about the process, and also told me something about the people who work there. I then thanked the lady and left, noticing the furniture and fixtures as I did so.

In short, I familiarized my senses with the place, the process, and the people.

Then, the next day when I returned there with the seller of the house, guess who was relaxed and comfortable in that place? That’s right. My disquiet (automatic reaction from the non-conscious mind) was gone, replaced with a feeling of calm familiarity.

In the same way, you can familiarize yourself with unknown places and situations, and you can de-sensitize yourself from upsets that occurred in the past in certain locations. It’s not a perfect system, but it does work.

HOW THE NON-CONSCIOUS MIND SPEAKS “NEW” IDEAS TO YOU

So far, we’ve discussed how you speak to your non-conscious mind, and how you can perceive its reactions to what you say. However, as you engage in this practice — and at many other times, once you tune in to this process — you will begin to discover that your non-conscious also initiates communications to you, and these can be new ideas. They are probably triggered by things you say and do, but these new communications, to you, represent new and additional thoughts.

This is the process we see anytime you are “brainstorming,” which is listening to all the (wild and wacky) ideas that spring up as you consider a problem. During our daily life, as humans we learn to “tune out” all these associations. We have to do so in order to concentrate on the task at hand. But when you “brainstorm,” you pay attention to all these ideas as they arise. Although many do seem irrelevant, often wondrous gems can be found. And sometimes, behind an idea which seems loco, will be found a useful idea that is completely “outside the box.”

KEEPING THE FLOW GOING

The key in brainstorming, to keep the useful flow a-flowing, is to write down every single idea, no matter how “useless” or “silly.” That is, you permit no criticalness to intrude. (If criticalness or judging ideas is permitted, then very quickly you go back into “daily tasks” mode where non-fitting ideas are squelched, and the flow dries up. Put another way, your non-conscious mind quickly gets the message that you aren’t interested, and stops bothering to send you this rich trove of ideas.)

When you are having your “conversation” with your non-conscious mind, and feeling its reactions to what you are saying, it will also offer up new ideas. These are ideas that just “pop” into consciousness. Hopefully you are listening, and being non-critical and non-judgmental during this process, because these “offered-up” communications seemingly originated by your non-conscious mind are often creative solutions to the project you are considering.

In our dating example, you might discover as you consider taking Suzie to miniature golf, that you suddenly get an image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend or a childhood friend. Where did that come from? You guessed it.

Why? That’s the interesting question. When you look, you may suddenly have an “Aha!” when you realize that Suzie is triggering this old similar situation and maybe that’s where some of the worry or anxiety is coming from. Sometimes, when you spot old connections like this, just the process of spotting it is enough to disconnect or weaken the automatic response. Much of conventional therapy is in hopes of attaining enough of these new awarenesses so as to improve your usual operation.

Or, it might be that you get that image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend, and you ponder it, and then you think, “Aha!” because you just remembered that Aunt Bessie or old girlfriend Lucy used to really enjoy baking gingerbread cookies, and you wonder if your new date might — radical thought, outside the box — you wonder if your new date might enjoy (as a “date”) the two of you baking some gingerbread cookies, and then you carry them in a picnic basket with a thermos of milk to this really secluded place in the park for a romantic date of cookies and milk? Here, your non-conscious mind had handed you a creative and different idea for a date, that might be lots of fun.

IT WILL FIND THINGS FOR YOU

We’ve all had the experience of searching for a word and can’t immediately grasp it. You’ve probably also had the experience that you are suddenly reminded of something, but you can’t quite remember what. Or you want to recall the past, and you know it’s in there but not floating to the surface.

Your non-conscious mind is already in contact with that information. That’s why you have the “feeling” that you know that word, or why you have the “feeling” of being reminded, or you have the “feeling” that you know it’s there.

If you just ask your non-conscious mind to fetch it for you, then at some later time — maybe two minutes and maybe two hours — as you are doing something else, suddenly the missing word, or the missing memory, or the missing information will “pop” into your mind. Your non-conscious mind, having been given the task, has been working on it, and has found a route to present it to you.

This is also related to the process of handing a task to your non-conscious mind, such thinking of a problem as you go to sleep, and awakening with the solution. But that’s another whole thing. And, the better you and your non-conscious mind can get along, and the better the two of you are communicating, the better it can serve you. Remember, it’s looking out for you in every way that it can, as best it knows how. And when you operate in conformity with its activities, you become more integrated and more effective. And, generally, happier.

CHANGING YOUR MIND

The Non-conscious Mind cannot speak, but it can automatically issue feelings and thoughts. That’s what it does. So if you’ll speak (or write), paying close attention to the feelings and thought automatically arising as you do so, you’ll be carrying on a dialogue with your own non-conscious mind.

You can discover where it will automatically help you, and where it will automatically block you. And so knowing, you can choose your path so that it will help you, and you can also find ways to change some of those ‘automatic blocks’ into more useful habitual reactions.

And, so doing, you are changing your mind.

For the better.