The Power of Now

Now is New...

If not now, when?

The Secret Power of "NOW"

Why stress is essential for personal growth
By David Ruben Copyright 2006

If you are ready, the simple principles that I am now going to share with you will literally transform your life and liberate you from bad habits, anxiety, guilt and fear. Most people believe stress is the main problem in their lives. However, as long as you see stress as the problem you will never know that it is the way in which you allow it to affect you that is the real reason you are stressed out and often overwhelmed! The truth is, stress in not really bad, or bad for you. Stress is actually very useful, healthy, and important for many reasons. You may not realize it, but we all need stress in order to live. We would literally become human vegetables without stress because of the numerous forms of necessary stimulus it provides. Stress in-and-of itself is benign. The real problem stems from a lack of knowledge about why stress affects us so negatively.

The secret of total mastery over stress is so very simple: If you could step back for just a split second and observe your response to any form of stress, in that very moment everything could change. Unfortunately most of us will spend our entire lives being slaves to stress. Why? Here is the first and most important clue: Because once we react improperly to stress in any form it begins to control us. Dealing properly with stress is actually very easy when you know how. It is done by the use of a simple technique I call an observation exercise, which helps you to take on a new or "NOW" perspective toward each event or experience, thus allowing you to become immune to the affects of virtually every form of stress. I call it becoming OBJECTIVE. It is the most empowering experience you can have when you're ready.

The hidden factor behind why we always succumb to stress has mainly to do with one very significant emotion: "resentment" or anger. Can you honestly say that you are free from little impulsive sparks of anger or resentment? Naturally, everybody gets angry from time to time right? Some people more-so than others. Now, can you agree that there are constant pressures around us all the time that are attempting to push our buttons in subtle ways we often do not even notice? You know, those little tiny things that can set you off and ruin your day, and sometimes your life: whether it's pressure from a deadline, an obligation, or work. For example, let's say you're in a grocery store, it's the end of the day and you're going through the long checkout line and you are really tired. Now, this particular cashier has (unknown to you) had a fight with her husband earlier that morning and she's got an attitude. This is all you need at the end of your day. You've already had your own tough day.

So, there you are waiting in line trying to check out, and this cashier is being rude impatient, and she clearly doesn't give a damn about you... and her lousy attitude starts to get to you. Now, here's a perfect case in point about stress: Examine the conditions: you are tired, the checker is rude and the moment is ripe with potential. Two different outcomes are possible at this juncture. #1- You react, get upset and either get into a argument with the checker (in which case people see you as a jerk), or: #2- You just step back and observe her. In which case no matter what she says or does it doesn't bother you, in fact you are even capable of having some compassion for this unfortunate, miserable person. Do you see how once objectively removed from reacting you might contribute to a solution rather than a problem? You might say; "You seem really stressed right now, you must be having a rough day. I've had days like that... do you want to know a little secret about how I deal with days like this? I just pretend that I am watching a bad movie." It is amazing how people can be affected by a non-reactive or positive suggestion at a time of distress.

YOUR PERSPECTIVE CHANGES THE OUTCOME

The key is this: Let's just agree for the sake of this lesson that the cashier can't help being negative. Because she was affected by the conflict with her husband she has unknowingly taken what I call the "hot-potato."

Principle #1- The minute you become affected by any negative external stimulus, someone who's inpatient or any kind of stimulus that you might think of as negative, its almost literally like taking a hot potato from someone. And what is the result? You get emotionally burned. Why do we take the "hot-potato?" Because you have unconsciously or impulsively agreed to take on a problem that belongs to someone else that you did not have to take on or accept.

If you go to a restaurant and get a lousy waiter or waitress, that person's attitude can literally ruin your meal and your day. You are there to unwind and have a good time. You want to relax, but here's somebody that's just throwing negative vibes at you and either abusing or neglecting you. Now, step back for one second. Look at how this persons negativity upsets and disturbs your state of mind. Do you see how little tiny irritations have the power to knock you right out of your center and begin to ruin your attitude? It is important to understand that stress does one thing equally to every human being; It challenges you. It puts you on the spot. You know what I'm talking about. It happens perhaps dozens, if not hundreds of times daily. Now, here is

Principle #2- All forms of stress are requiring of you something that you may not have: Patience.

Principle #3- When you are irritated by anything you are literally knocked out of your center.

Why? Because in the very moment you are affected by the source of the irritation, as you react you literally give control of yourself over to the source as if it had authority or power over your attitude. You allow it to gain control over you as you lose objectivity. How? Almost invariably, just seconds before you have an experience with a pressure source, you are lost in thought. Perhaps about what you want to do, or don't want to do. You may be thinking about what you're going to wear out to dinner, your kids, or you may be thinking about the problems you're having. The point is you are lost somewhere in your head and you're probably immersed in some level of thought and this is why you are at a disadvantage. Because unless you are aware and consciuosly in the moment, when you encounter a pressure source you are not going to be ready for it because you are off-guard. Here is another example: Lets say you are sitting in your living room or anywhere not doing anything. Suddenly you notice thoughts streaming into your mind (this happens to everybody).

As you become overly focused on a particular area of thought, the minute this happens you begin to lose awareness. And this is the single greatest factor in why we are out of control at any given time. Remember: It's not so much that the pressure outside of us is the problem, but rather the way that we respond to it when we encounter it. This is the key to taking back your personal power. The reality is that you have no control over most things that happen in this life. Can you help it if you get grid-locked in traffic? You can't stop somebody from breaking into your apartment and stealing your belongings. There are millions of things you have no control over. But there is one thing you always have control over, and this is what you have to begin to accept right now: You have to accept this new paradigm: You have the power to control your response to stress. There is never going to be a time in your life where you are not going to be encountering some form of stress. You have to understand that there is really no place you can go to escape from it, no drug you can use, no drink, no music is loud enough. There is no person that's going to give you an oasis from stress. It is a constant factor and you know it, and feel it all the time. As a matter of fact, stress is responsible in large part, for aging. My friend Baron Baptiste who is a professional sports trainer told me that some football players who are 28 years old, look 50-years old. They act twice their age because of the tremendous stress they're under. But, it ‘s not stress that wears them out... rather it is the way they live their lives. When they're not on the ball field, they're out drinking, or carousing or doing something that is draining them of their energy all the time. They are actually depleting their inner battery, literally draining their own life force. For what purpose? Stress is a constant. Pressure is a constant. But the other more important constant is your capacity and your ability to confront it with the power of objectivity. But the only way you're going to get to this powerful mental state is to learn a principle, and this principle has something to do with the word "resentment." Lots of people have a proclivity to set goals in order to make things happen in their lives. But the moment you set a goal you are unknowingly creating pressure on yourself, from yourself.

In other words, let's say for example that each one of you has some level of ambition to be placed in a great job where you're getting everything that you want out of life and the desired end result of your ambition is happiness. So, you set your sights on what you want to accomplish. You project into the future, "When I graduate, I'm going to go to Greece, I'm going to meet somebody and get married, I'm going to have a nice house and 3 children." You start to think about all the things that you want out of life and set your goals. WAIT! Now think about this. What you begin to do is focus almost entirely on the outcome of what you want. And in a sense, it would be like attaching a rope to a post and dragging yourself toward it. Visualize this for a moment if you will. Imagine you are sitting in a chair pulling yourself by a rope to the destination you want to go. And you become completely focused on pulling yourself a little bit at a time, thinking about that end result.

This is when you are the most susceptible to stress. Because every little thing that begins to get in the way of your accomplishing goals becomes a source of irritation. It becomes an impediment, a wall. Now, everything that gets in the way of you achieving your goals begins to wear you out to the point that you feel like, oh my-gosh, now I have another wall to climb! My God! When does it stop? Have you ever said this to yourself? "When do I get free and clear of all these obstacles that I have to deal with in life? When do I have a moment of peace?. Well, here is a fact: Every day there are innumerable little irritations or impediments that get in the way of what you want and prevent you from experiencing the results that you desire. Thus, we begin to experience another key word, which is "frustration." How often do you feel frustrated?

Do you ever feel like all this effort you putting out is all for nothing? Then you think to yourself "why I can't achieve the results that I am looking for? I'm trying harder, and harder, and harder, and it seems like everyday the same stupid things keep happening to me all over again? Well, some people are very successful at achieving their goals. But what they do is put on "binders" so nothing over here on the left gets in the way, and nothing over there on the right gets in the way. And even if something should, they'd just go right over or right through whatever is in their way no matter who gets hurt. You know the attitude: "Get out of my way!" This kind of person doesn't want anything getting in their way. They want to keep those binders on because when they are diverted by a stress over here, or a pressure over there, because stress causes them to go off course. And then they have to struggle to get back on.

But, remember that there is a terrible price for those people to pay. Essentially, what goes around comes around. I want to teach you a more powerful way to achieve true success and real happiness, to achieve what you want, and experience gain without the anxiety, frustration, and fear, and ultimately the let-down that often accompanies any achievement that is goal-oriented or outcome-based. It is becoming what I call a "process-oriented person." The power of process is this: Process liberates you to feel a new sense of inner freedom because for perhaps for the first time in your life, when you choose to let the process be more important that the outcome you begin to know that you have the time to do all the things that need to be done.

When you embrace process, you can let go of the need to be pressured by goals, people, reward, and guilt. Now, this little pressure over here and that stress over there is no longer a wall. All stress becomes merely a momentary diversion. So, if you need to stop for a minute and take care of this or that problem you do so with out resentment or frustration and then immediately you're capable of turning back and refocusing your direction back where you're going. When stress no longer acts as an irritant, when you're no longer frustrated as a result of having to stop for a minute, suddenly you're not thrown out of your center anymore. And believe it or not, your attitude radically shifts so that instead of seeing problems as negative experiences you come to see them as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

What is it an opportunity to do? It's an opportunity to just simply focus for a moment. Like exercise or weightlifting when you do your work-out you do some reps, and then stop for a minute and rest. Once you catch your breath you start again. And look at what's happening as you go through the process: Instead of being debilitated, broken-down and stressed out of your mind, you're starting to build strength. You're building personal character. Are you starting to understand that life's stressful diversions aren't so bad after all? That stress (if managed properly in the moment) actually becomes many opportunities to exercise your focus, redirect your attention for a moment and then bring it back where it belongs within you.

DECISION MAKING UNDER PRESSURE

In many ways, we all have similar problems to face and deal with every single day of our lives. But I want you to understand this simple point and I am going to explain it again and again until it sinks in... once you learn to be objective, pull back, stop reacting, being resentful, being angry about the little tiny irritations that rob you of energy all day long... When you learn to stand back, take a deep breath, and relax, at this point you begin to have a whole new perspective and feel a sense of personal power. Real power. And do you know what that real power is? I'll say it again. You don't have control over most of the things that happen to you in your life. You don't have control over the traffic, and the taxes, and the people that you're involved with or much of anything at all. But you do have control over one thing, and that is how you respond to it. How you will deal with it. Learn to objectivity keep what is going on outside of you from penetrating you... and this is when you are in control.

First of yourself, and then by virtue of the fact that you are unmoved or unaffected by the pressure source you are confronting you are capable of positively dealing with literally every situation in a truly positive way. That is power... real power. Here is a real life example of how your intuitive mind will work for you. A seasoned firefighter is in a burning building. Ten other men are up hosing-down the blaze. Suddenly something says to him, "Get your men out of there." He just hears a voice telling him to move, right now. Intuitively he knows that he's got to do something. He says, “everyone pull back right now. Everybody out." Seconds later, the floor collapses.

Those men would have been dead. This really happened. How did that man know what to do? Now if he was acting under pressure. If he was fighting that fire with anger, thinking "I'm going to beat you, fire!!!" Do you think he would have had that intuition?

Do you think his mind would have been clear enough in that moment to see the writing on the wall, to know that something ominous was about to happen? No. And why you have certain problems? Because your intuitive mind is blocked by either thought or emotion. Intuition is a very powerful part of your mind. And believe it or not, It's a side affect of objectivity. When you are finally ready to give up living out of your emotional mind all kinds of interesting and powerful experiences start to kick in. You must understand that humans have a consciousness and this is what makes us very different from animals.

Animals have a conscience but it's externally motivated. When a dog goes pee-pee on the floor and you rub his nose in it, he remembers because he feels the pain and he doesn't like having his nose rubbed in it. But humans know there's a difference between right and wrong. But the difference is you consciously know why you've done something right or when you've done something wrong. It doesn't make any difference what it is. If you've been impatient or you have reacted to somebody in a wrong way you tend to feel a little guilty. You have a consciousness of what you have done. We humans are very highly evolved conscious beings, which makes us totally different from animals.

If you were not a conscious being, then you wouldn't have any anxiety or conflict. If you take an animal out of the jungle and put it in the zoo and feed it, after a shot time it will adapt and actually be perfectly happy. Why? It accepts the new environment because it does not know how to escape. As long as it gets fed, as long as it gets to sleep, it will adapt and actually come to feel safe, comfortable and secure. Once an animal accepts captivity, most of the time if you open the cage door it will not leave because it has adapted to it's new environment. Because It's more comfortable there than it was in the wild. As a matter of fact, it knows, "If I leave here, I won't get to eat." Human beings though, are conscious. We know when we're trapped and why we're not happy.

Beware: there is a great danger of being controlled by external pressures all the time. I'll give you a metaphor and perhaps you already sense this but maybe you've never thought of it this way. Here is something to think about next time you start to get irritated... Resentment or anger is often an inferior response to an unreasonable pressure. Every time you become upset, every single time you are aggravated by a pressure or stress this is what happens; you are becoming the effect of an external cause. In other words, you are moving away from your center as you respond to the external pressure source. Now think about this: The very moment before you were pressured, you most likely felt fine. But, the minute you start to react, you've lost something. You've lost that sense of wellness, of being in touch with yourself. And on top of this you've lost a sense of where you were the moment before you reacted. Have you ever seen this happen to you? Fine one minute, the next minute reacting. Every single pressure that you respond to in the wrong way erodes your self-confidence. In other words, you lose a little bit of yourself to what irritates you in that moment. The reason people become co-dependent is because of how much of themselves they compulsively give to the others.

Have you ever seen the movie "Tarzan of Greystoke?" In the story, explorers find Tarzan in the jungle where he is living with the apes that have raised him since early childhood.

The explorers return Tarzan to his Uncle in England, who is a very wealthy statesman where he lives in a palatial mansion and naturally, there is a beautiful woman who falls in love with Tarzan. But alas, Tarzan cannot bring himself to be at home in his new surroundings because he has a deeply rooted identity problem, an instinct in him that has to do with his life-long involvement with his surrogate ape family. Try as he might, Tarzan can't escape from the jungle, because he has taken in, or identified with the environment so completely that he feels more comfortable with the apes than with high class people.

What I'm suggesting is that, whether you realize it or not, every time you respond improperly to any pressure you are being converted. You are losing a little, tiny immeasurable piece of you. And this is why you don't feel quite right after reacting to any stress. Have you ever had an argument with somebody and when its over you feel like something is still unresolved and you begin to want closure? What you really want is that little piece of yourself that just went up in smoke. Because each time you respond in the wrong way (with anger or hostility) you actually loose a tiny piece of your inner-self. You move toward the pressure source as It pulls you away from this "now moment" (where you consciously should be right now) into the conflict. As this happens, you cannot help but become an extension of the pressure source you are responding to improperly.

Not long ago, in Arizona, two men had a small traffic accident. A driver pulled up behind another driver waiting at a light and bumped his car. The man waiting at the light (driver #1) got out of his car and confronted the other driver (driver#2), at which point they got into a fight and driver #1 pulled a gun and shot driver#2 dead. Why? Over what you ask? Because driver #1 was reacting to all sorts of issues and irritations over a prolonged period and was not letting any of it go. Thus driver #1 became an extension of his reaction to a virtually harmless pressure source. The accident wasn't a big deal, but driver #1's extreme overreaction or anger (the result of the building up of frustration) all found itself venting in that one moment (see the movie "Falling Down").

This is why a lot of people are afraid of guns. They think, "If I don't have a gun around I can't use it on anybody, or nobody can use it on me." But look what is really happening: This mind-set is revealing that we are really afraid of what is inside of us, of what we are becoming as a result of the building anger and pressure that we're not dealing with properly. There is great danger in reacting to pressure or stress in the wrong way, tremendous danger. You cannot be yourself. Remember: as you begin to react, you lose sight of who you are. You become an extension of a pressure source. One major reason people rise up through management is because they know how to handle pressure. They understand that they cannot react to a pressure source because in that moment, that source takes charge.

A policeman has to train his mind to deal with very difficult stressful situations all day long. He or she is confronted with people that are unreasonable, dangerous, crazy, and maybe suicidal. They may even want to kill someone. Now, can you imagine an out of control policeman?

Do you know what happens when a policeman loses control? Everything escalates when the authority figure looses control. And, add to this the fact that when you become an extension of a pressure source, you unknowingly empower that source thus exaggerating the problem. Do you ever see yourself doing that when you get into a conflict with someone? When you're in a relationship, and a little tiny thing begins to blow up and suddenly all sorts of pent-up pressure starts to come out? Naturally, both you and the other person end-up saying or doing things you both later come to regret. And the argument was over something as miniscule as toast.

STRESS ON THE JOB

Stress is not the problem. Don't let anybody ever tell you or convince you that stress is the problem no matter what the problem is. For example, if you're going to die in an airplane crash there is a right and wrong way of dealing with the experience. Sound ridiculous? Well let's go to the extreme for a moment and look objectively at what could actually happen. Remember that stress it-self isn't the problem. So let's say that your airplane is plummeting toward earth and you have three minutes to live, what are you going to do? Are you going to give into the terror? Are you going to scream and scratch and try to claw your way out of the airplane? Are you going to break your nails off? Or, are you in that moment going to understand that this is one of those moments that you have no control over and not give into the temptation to hate the condition you find yourself in?

If you can remain calm, in that moment you can find total peace of mind. You can potentially find the greatest peace of mind that you've ever found under the worst possible conditions. But I guaranty you that if you don't start to deal this the little everyday aggravations of life right now you will never be able to deal properly with the really important things such as the possibility of your final moments of on earth. You will go out screaming and in terror and have the most horrible, horrible experience.

YOU ARE EITHER AN EXAMPLE OR A WARNING

Please believe me, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm only trying get you to start with a small thing, such as when somebody steps on your foot or pushes you out of the way or cuts you off on the freeway. Begin right now to act instead of react from this moment forward and just let it go. You don't have to be a door mat, you simply don't have to react. You don't have to feel personally offended. Whatever is there goading you on doesn't have to be a pressure. At this point there is what I call a "reverse domino effect." Now instead of getting weaker and more burned out, each time you deal properly with a pressure source, you get better at it, happier, free. Suddenly you are saying, "Gee, that wasn't such a big deal after all."

Adversely, every moment that you react in the wrong way, your self-confidence erodes and you become more conditional about the way you want and need to live your life.

If you do not control stress it will certainly control you. This is the reason why up to this point in time you've wanted to order your life in such a way that you don't have to deal with stress.

Or, you try to find pleasures in escapes and substances that help you unwind... so you have a few drinks and then you're smoking a cigarette and then you're habitually watching soap operas, eating potato chips, not wanting to leave your house. It happens to millions of people. Do you know how many people in this country are obese?

About 70% of American people are over their normal, healthy weight. Why? Here it is again… Because every single time you react, you are becoming the effect of a cause, and from the anxiety and conflict of reacting, of being out of control you compulsively move toward and into some form of compensation to have a sense of well-being... because you've lost it. But the truth is once you have lost your sense of well being or confidence you can't compensate for it. It doesn't work! You can only feel right when things are right and this means confronting your issues and problems in the right way with the right attitude. Failing to this is the cause of almost all addiction.

People get into the strangest things as a result of running away from dealing with stress. Food is a very, very big one because it seems sort of... natural. Besides we're all hungry anyway, so instead of having a little portion, you have a medium-sized portion. And then you say "that's so darn good, I think I'll have some more." Or, on the flip side, you might begin to become super self-conscious. Women have a high sensitivity toward how they are perceived by others and particularly with their appearance, their weight, and body language. Once you start to become super self-conscious you begin to see food as the problem and then you end up being a dieting yo-yo... up and down. Some women even end up with anorexia. So now you binge and purge, or you gorge and then you won't eat for three days.

Why? Because one moment the food represents a form of comfort and escape, a little innocent pleasure, a little diversion from the stress of the day, and then suddenly the food is the problem. But, the food is not the problem and it never has been. Over-eating is an affect like any other compulsion of not dealing with life correctly. Food is at the front of the line when we attempt to escape from our failure to properly deal with stress because in a manner of speaking, it is a drug available almost everywhere we go.

The whole focus of what I'm trying to show you is that it's not the pressure source that is the problem. This is what most people never come to understand. It is your inability or your lack of properly dealing with it that becomes the problem. Stress is always there. But, If you deal with it, it's not a big deal.

BEING CONSISTENT

It is a very powerful experience to bring back the control of your life where it belongs within you. What few of us understand or realize, is that we are giving up our power, giving over control of ourselves to external sources all the time. The process of changing our perspective about what is really happening to us and why is what's important, not the outcome. If you have the strength to go through the process, you will be successful. You will be everything you ever wanted to be and ten times more. Strength or weakness, success or failure is a choice.

But if we do not choose wisely the end result will be that we will never be your own person, you will never be an original version of who you were destined to be. The reason is simple: Who you are, is what you believe. It's not what you do. If you're a movie producer, that's not who you are. If you're a hair-dresser or model, that's not who you are. If you own a business, that's not who you are.

Who you are is inside of you and it stems from what you believe, and how you deal with other people. And whether or not you have love, patience, or understanding. Whether or not you're just a greedy S.O.B. and really don't care how people are affected by what you do, or what you don't do. Who you are, is what you believe, what you think, and how you express yourself. And who you are is based on a set of principles. The principles of patience, understanding, kindness, sacrifice, integrity, loyalty and being morally right are my core values. For others it could be a mixture of greed and loyalty, selfishness and loyalty, egotism and loyalty the combinations are endless.

There are a complex mix of beliefs inside of you that make you who you are. But, what you do isn't who you are. It's what you think, and how you think, and this is what makes you unique. This is what makes you extraordinary. And every one of you can be.... You may already be. Everyone has within the seeds and potential to be an extraordinary person. But, you will be robbed of that “specialness” moment by moment if you don't learn to control your response to your environment, to stress, to pressure, to little temptations to do things that you know you probably shouldn't do. You will lose yourself and you will what it is means to be you unless you learn how to find your center, be objective, and have the strength to carry through. So, don't be outcome-based. Don't let any thing that you want, any person or pressure determine what your principles will be or your what moral compass will do.

SUCCESS

True success is simple: Not trying to be a success makes you a success. Simply by focusing on yourself in the right way and working on yourself... resolving your issues, success is naturally going to occur. Let me ask you a question. Have you been at the point of saying: "I don't even know what the point of living is!" Or "What am I doing all this for?" Everyone has had this experience. Sometimes life seems so futile... but it isn't.

The reason is beautiful: Potentially, every single person on this planet could be an ultimate success, If they had the right set of principles to live life by. If you had the strength to get through the hard times, if you had a mind-set from which to observe all of the little things that you have to pick and choose from all day long, all of a sudden.... like standing on top of a hill overlooking everything, rather than being down in the valley immersed in the chaos of life you would see things from a detached more distant perspective, less emotionally. One of the side effects of being centered, aware, and objective, is that you spend a whole lot less time thinking about things and a whole lot more time doing things. Because you begin to see the direction that you need to go.

When you are lost in your thoughts, as we all are all the time, we move in and out of being lost in our thoughts. When we're day-dreaming, we are not objective enough to make correct decisions. Because we are constantly thinking and rethinking and re-rethinking, and then re-re-recalculating.

And that's part of being outcome-based. We're consistently reinforcing ideas, trying to support positive thoughts that we have, and trying to get rid of ones that we don't want. But we're using so much of our energy thinking about the outcome, thinking about what we want and about what we don't want, thinking about what we have to do and thinking about what we don't want. Thinking, thinking, thinking, not doing. Thinking erodes your potential. If you spent as much time doing as you do thinking, where you would be right now? The problem is that the very thought process that gives you the idea, is the same process that takes away the power to do it. When you are thinking, you are not doing. If you get an idea to do something and then you think too much about it, slowly but surely you lose the motivation. Unless, of course, you're constantly pumping yourself up. "I gotta do it. I gotta do it. I gotta do it. I gotta do."

Thought motivation is very fleeting. I recall a story of when I was a teenager... My mom used to say to me, "Take out the garbage." Everybody's had this experience right. So I would say Yeah, okay. All right I'll do it later." And then I would think, "I gotta take out the garbage." But the second I thought, "take out the garbage," I actually thought I had done it. Do you know what I'm talking about? So when my mother would say, "David, I told you to take out the garbage" my response would be, "I did it. I took it out." and she would respond by saying, "I'm standing here looking at it." And I would say, "No, you're not. I swear I took it out." Thinking more often that not erodes doing.

Do you see what happens when thought replaces action? So here's the problem. We all have negative thoughts and impressions that literally want to drag us into the imagination and make you experience a thought as if it were real. But thought itself is only a virtual experience. Thought is virtual reality. Have you ever played a virtual reality game? The kind where you put the mask on and you walk around in a computerized world? This is what happens when you get caught up in your thinking. You go into a virtual mental scene. That's why many forms of trauma are so horrible and difficult to overcome.

Veterans came back from Vietnamwith Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Why? Because shock imbeds itself in your emotional mind.

Imagine if you can the experience of watching somebody be blown to bits, or being in an extremely stressful situation where you are in a foxhole and bombs are exploding all around you. Someone who is not emotionally strong is penetrated by the intensity of the stress factors present in the environment so deeply that 25 years later when they hear the backfire of a car for example, it reminds them of a mortar shell exploding and suddenly they are thrown backward in time mentally and emotionally into that war scene again. It is real to the mind of the victim, and in a virtual way, they are back in the actual event. I have witnessed this happen at which point the person loses control and acts out, hiding behind the couch thinking that they're under attack again. Uncontrolled thought is not your friend. And that doesn't mean to say you can't have positive thoughts or great ideas.

Thought to be actualized must translate into positive action in order for it to have any real value. Otherwise you will think you took out the garbage, or any number of other things you need to deal with that just don't get done. You lose productivity and your potential in thought. What you don't yet understand about thinking is that much of it is stimulated by an external pressure source. When you begin to experience stress, what you begin to want to do is remove yourself from the stress. So, what's the most immediate thing that you can do to remove yourself from stress? Think about something pleasurable. Daydream about being in Hawaiior about being with the one you love. Thinking often becomes a replacement for the influences that we don't yet know how to deal with properly in the moment.

We might project ourselves into the future, think about what we want to be doing. We might have daydreams: virtual dreams about all the things that we would rather be doing. We create entire worlds in our mind. Some people even reinvented the entire Universe as an aversion from pain that they are going through. There have been times in my life when I spent hours, days, or even weeks, thinking about who-knows-what because I had so much pain that I did not know how to deal with. All I knew to do was take my pain and turn it into a daydream. But during those periods of time, I wasn't really doing anything. I wasn't really being constructive. You simply must learn to be objective, to stand back, pull back, and stand upon the hill objectively watching the thought stream go by.

As you master the objective experience, you will see all kinds of things in that thought stream. Kind of like the whirlwind that was going around the house in the "Wizard of Oz" movie where Dorothy was watching all these things fly by. Positive and negative thoughts will go by the view screen of your mind. But you must learn how to stand back and watch as all these things move past your view and become the conscious viewer, not the thinker! Not subject to thought, but objective to the thought... aware of the thoughts. As you learn to view them, it feels as if you were watching a movie. After a while you become really aware and then you start to see the scenes change, and pretty soon you can't be caught up in the "virtuality" of thought any longer because it's so obvious that it's only a movie (thought). Once you are no longer caught up in thinking or day-dreaming you will find yourself saying, "I can't watch this anymore." Everyday thoughts become uninteresting. In fact the thoughts that once dominated you and caused fear, worry and anxiety will cease holding your attention.

Now, negative thoughts you once struggled with are made docile because they have no power to compel you. Why? Because you are no longer immersed in them. You are not being dragged along in the thought stream current. Now, as you were designed to be, you are no longer the thinker subject to thought, rather you are the master of you own mind; you are the observer. As the viewer you observe thought like a scientist, and as you are increasingly able to look at your thoughts from an objective point-of-view you find that you have the power to control the flow of information. Now you can say, "I don't want that thought. Go away." Or "I like that thought... Let me contemplate it some more, let me hold it there for a moment. Yes, that's an interesting idea.

You begin to have control even over the thoughts themselves as if they were in a computer. And as you observe an idea it actually evolves. The thoughts that we always have to deal with more than anything are the negative thoughts. Fear, doubt, pressure, and anger are the thoughts that create anxiety. Thoughts like, How am I going to get through this? Will I succeed? Can I pass the test? Is my spouse really happy with me? But, as you progressively become the viewer as if you are watching a movie in your own mind, you end up being the director because you are in charge of the way the story unfolds. "Wait a minute. Stop. Cut. Let's do that all over again. I don't like the way that scene worked out." You start to have total control.

Now I'll tell you about "the hungry mind." The hungry mind craves thought like the tongue-craves sweets when it's got to have a little piece a candy. Have you ever had this experience as you walk to the magazine rack at the supermarket you are literally attacked by images: People, Playboy, Car & Driver, etc. It's all screaming at you saying, "Come here and taste me! Fill up here, we've got a whole magazine full of it, right here, just for you." I caught it happening to me. And I realized that my mind was hungry, that it wanted some thought substance to chew on. I wanted some "mind candy."

Because I was objective, I became aware that my mind was a bit empty, that I was deprived of sensory stimulation and saw how it wanted something to chew on mentally. And I realized how weird that was. It was disturbing because I realized at that moment also, that if it could happen with a magazine, it could happen with anything else.

You see what I am saying don't you? The hungry mind builds itself out of thought substance. But again, it's all external. There's nothing original about it. Do you want to be an original version of yourself with your own original ideas? Not that ideas in-and-of themselves are original. But as long as you are subject to the impressions of your environment you are merely a mental, emotional clone. However, in the objective state, you the viewer of the idea, the observer of the idea or the image in the environment will see things from an objective perspective that will be truly original to you. When you become awake and conscious, you begin to become empowered to deal with all types of stress, and as a result find yourself acting differently than other people under the same conditions. What you do externally does not make you original. Remember the "hot potato?" It's the most powerful, simple principle that you can learn.

If someone tries to hand you a really a hot steaming potato, would you take it? No. So, if they want to give it to you and you don't take it, who has it? Exactly! Now look at it this way. If someone has a problem and they want to give it to you and you don't take it, who has it? If someone has stress or anger and wants to give it to you but you won't take it, who has it? But up until now what you have done out of courtesy is take that hot potato. But, do you really have an obligation to do so? Do you have an obligation to take on someone else's problems? No. But if you allow yourself to do so, can you blame them when they give that hot potato to you? No, you can't.

If you are objective, you are unaffected. However, if you react you immediately go out of your center toward the pressure and begin to become part of the problem.

This may seem harsh but the best thing you can do for somebody who's venting or who has got a problem is; don't take it off their hands. Let that person own the problem and resolve it. Let it belong to them. If they really want you to help them, the best thing you can say to somebody is, "Calm down, relax." If you have kids, or anyone for that matter that is out of control, tell them to relax. Don't tell them to "shut up" or "go to their room" or "leave me alone," or any of the things that you could say to a teenager when they're going off the walls. Just say, "Come sit down over here and calm down. Relax. Let it go." Most often that's all they really needed to hear instead of reacting to them and then getting into a big fight. So when they have a problem, they will come to you because you know what to tell them to do. "Calm down. Let it go. It's not that important." You may not realize how powerful this method of problem solving is in that moment, but it's the most important thing they need to hear.

No one can help it when they are out of control until they understand why they are reacting and giving up their power and control to external factors. You may have been one of them. But no longer! The time has come for you to experience true inner freedom. If you will practice the observation exercise I teach, all the principles I have discussed in this program will begin to operate within you without struggle or effort. You will begin to see everything from a new, "now" perspective and from this point forward you will become the master of your own destiny. The process of deep inner healing and true peace of mind will begin to transform your life with any struggle or effort. All you have to do is be committed to the simple principle of objectivity and the rest happens spontaneously. As you change you begin to affect everyone and everything around you. The effect is exponential. As you are healed, so is the world... one person at a time.