Nothing is Permanent

Last week while working with the University of Utah volleyball team in Las Vegas, I was involved in a traffic accident. In forty years of driving this was my first accident that I had caused. It was an interesting experience, not because it was new or surprising (it was that) but because of how I felt about it and especially as I think about it now.

First, it was an experience in the Zone, something I regularly talk about with athletes and performers. Within that few seconds I responded to what was happening with efficiency and clarity. For example, had I not turned the car away from the car coming at me, I could have been killed. Instead, the other driver hit me just behind the driver’s side of the car, sparing me from the direct force of the collision. Additionally, when I came to a stop up on the sidewalk, I found myself within two feet of a large utility pole which had I hit it directly could have killed me as well. Climbing out the other side of the car with only a bump on my head where I hit the side window, I felt relieved and fortunate. My wonderful car however, was totaled.

The second distinctive part of the experience was what happened next and later. As I moved through the process with the police, the insurance company (State Farm was fabulous and took care of it all so nicely), and the towing etc., I had a couple of hours to stand on a corner that appeared only to be frequented by the homeless. A couple blocks east of the Las Vegas strip, it was not a place I would have ever been spending time. All I could do was wait, answer questions, make phone calls, but mostly stand and look at my poor Maxine Maxima. After ten years together, I didn’t expect, plan or even consider that this is how it would end. It was more sad that anything and I grieved for the loss of Maxine. (You do have a name for your car,don’t you?)

Then and now I was reminded of the impermanence of everything. Yes, this was a car, but our relationships, our work, our environments; none of it is permanent. When we get attached to the permanence of it (an illusion), it is easy to live in fear of losing it, which inevitably we will. When we remember that nothing is permanent and fully accept that, we are free to enjoy, love, and appreciate it for however long it is in our experience. That is how I felt about Maxine and now I feel a small sense of loss but mostly just appreciation and gratitude.

I no longer have a car and I am totally OK with that. I have no plans to purchase one anytime soon because I can walk, ride my bike, or borrow a vehicle to get anywhere I need to go. Of course, I realize by working from my home that it is much easier for me. I feel a sense of calm and presence with where I am and have not even considered the “what if” of it or a “should” in any form. I haven’t been without a car since I was in college and it feels like that is where I am supposed to be.

This experience has been a confirmation at so many levels of being in the present, being grateful, trusting what happens and will happen, how our thoughts determine our experiences, and especially how little (if any) control we have over anything. This accident was not to teach me that but to remind me of that.

Next time you worry, fret or fear the loss of anything, remember that nothing is permanent and whatever happens is an opportunity for you to be present, be grateful, and join the flow. When we let go of attachment, we find freedom - it is that simple.

How the Mind Works

The mind is both my speciality and my curiosity. Nothing is more fascinating nor more powerful than the mind and how we use it to direct our lives and experiences. I continue to learn about it and share what I am learning in concepts and strategies that provide a more conscious and effective way of using the mind to make changes, improve performances, or heal our bodies. Currently, I am studying the newest research the effects of thought on cellular activity and especially the elasticity or capacity of the brain to change. More on that later. For now, I wanted to share my final Mind Tips newsletter message about how the mind works.

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After years of research, teaching and conversations, I have concluded there are three basics the mind always uses. Knowing how your mind works provides clues to why and how you are having your current experiences and how you can change your experiences in the future. Consider any challenge or problem you are facing, find what your mind is doing below and you will know how to use your mind to get a solution or resolution by either reversing what the mind is doing or using the same concept in a more effective way.

• A thought is a possibility with a repeated thought a probability, and a continuously felt and focused thought an inevitability. Thoughts matter. Think about what is wanted or not wanted and you will get.

• The mind cannot be controlled nor ignored. It is the center of operation for our feelings, behaviors, and choices. It can be taught, changed, and made a partner but only if you know what it is doing and what you want it to do.

• The mind relies on perception and the interpretations that follow to affirm or defend the mind’s reality and truth. Change the interpretations (beliefs, meanings, fears) and change automatically follows.

These are the three mind basics that are constant and consistent each day for each of us. How are they directing your experiences and how can you use them to expand or redirect those experiences?

Handling Distractions

Distractions are always the biggest threat to our success in situations, performances, and interactions. Distractions get in the way of what we are doing by taking us out of being present, blocking information, and keeping us from making appropriate responses. How we handle distractions determines what happens next and eventually how successful we can be in every experience.

The most disruptive distractions can be assigned to three categories: people, thoughts, or things. People become distractions when we focus on what they are doing or not doing rather than what we are doing. Our thoughts become distractions when we look for meanings, hold expectations, or are fearful. Distracting things include objects in a meeting room, crowds at an athletic competition, or a room that is too hot or cold.

To handle distractions quickly and effectively gently redirect focus to what is in front of you and can be done right now. Fighting with or trying to ignore distractions only guarantees the mind’s focus on them. Since the mind follows focus, redirecting focus automatically changes focus. For example, if your thoughts are on what you fear, you need only redirect focus to what you desire. When an object captures your focus, shift your view to the task before you and how you can do the task, which eliminates the distracting object from your focus.

By redirecting focus you handle distractions by instantaneously changing focus to what is informational and useful in an experience. When that new focus is on the people, thoughts, and things that lead to success, you are well on your way to effectively doing what you intended and making appropriate responses that will lead to success.

Air It Out - Use Your Breathing

Many people read books or attend seminars to learn how to manage their stress and reduce the negative stress responses. I use a simple technique with athletes that can be useful to anyone to get started in reducing anxiety and refocusing for an effective response. I use this technique daily and a starting place and always found it useful. Try it out and see how it works for you.

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No matter how frustrated, confused, or angry you are, you can change your mental state by airing it out! The more you focus on your feelings the more time and energy they consume, usually intensifying. A simple shift in focus can stop the momentum of feelings, allowing you to refocus on what you can do and doing it. This simple shift is accomplished using your breathing. Try this:

Take three deep breaths (diaphragm) and slowly exhale the air you have inhaled. As you exhale, listen to the air crossing your lips and feel the warmth it contains. By the third exhalation you will feel yourself calming and relaxing.

The combination of the focus on the breathing and the sound and temperature of the air will interrupt the fears, thoughts, and feelings coming from your mind. This simple interruption diverts your mind, giving you a moment to refocus and to better assess the current situation.

If after the three breaths the frustration, confusion, and anger continue to build something more may be needed. Remove yourself, take a time-out or take a walk, to interrupt your mental state. Find a quiet place and air it out again but longer, up to five minutes if needed. Take relaxed and comfortable breaths as you continue to keep your mind’s focus on the exhalations.

Continuing in a mental state of frustration, confusion and anger will not yield positive or sensible responses. Use the “airing it out” technique to create a state where you can regroup mentally and make choices and responses that will get a better result or resolution. With practice the technique gets easier and eventually becomes automatic. It is a simple and effective technique with a powerful effect.

Afraid of What? Common Unrealistic Fears

A popular book I read some years ago titled Who Moved My Cheese, asked a provocative question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I have often asked this question of my clients and myself when we were looking to move forward in life. Being afraid is the biggest barrier we have to change, happiness, trust, success and most importantly experiencing our potential. What are we afraid of?Being afraid is a self-protecting response we use mentally to warn us of potential threats or danger. However, most of the time our fear does little more than provide evidence for false perceptions and confirmation for negativity in previous experiences or thoughts. As such it becomes the gatekeeper of our comfort zone. In our comfort zone is that which is familiar: dramatic relationships, routines or habits, assumptions, expectations, and limiting beliefs. Comfortably stuck in the same place we were yesterday, we want to believe today is new, yet we continue to be stuck repeating yesterday. Our comfort zone has a high cost: little forward movement, indifference to change, and distancing from our true self and the life we were intended to live.

What would you do if you were no longer afraid? Who would you be if your limitations were no longer self-imposed? What could you achieve if your actions came from who you really are rather than the person others want you to be? The answers to these questions and the secret to reducing or eliminating fear is always the same - action.
The first action is to embrace and accept your fears rather than avoid them. Accept that you are afraid for a reason; what is the reason? Ask yourself these questions:

• What would happen if I …?

• What do I want to happen next?

• What actions will get me what I want?

The second action is to change your language. Instead of describing the situation in terms of the past or the future, describe it to yourself and others in the present. For example, instead of “if I stand up for myself, I could lose my job, ” think of it instead as, “I deserve to be treated respectfully, I can find another job,”

The third action is to say it all out loud. When you hear yourself saying what you fear, it is much easier to see what you want and what to do. Saying it takes it out of unconscious feeling and into conscious awareness. A fear named and seen is a fear that can be acted upon.

The fourth action is to visualize yourself doing what you want. Most often you have visualized yourself being fearful or in the feared situation. That was the evidence that gave your fear legitimacy and power. Now by visualizing what you want and can do, the evidence shifts to supporting your desires that can motivate you into action. If you can visualize it, you can do it.

While it is the first reaction of the mind to be afraid to avoid taking risks, taking action to challenge and move past your fears gives you the freedom to be who you are and live your life based on possibilities and your potential. It is to live a life of love not fear

Common Unrealistic Fears

Being afraid is fed by some common unrealistic fears. Whatever your thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations of the day’s experiences, these unrealistic fears provide an uneasiness even when we are being successful and enjoying experiences. Are you afraid of…?

1. Not Being Good Enough - This is the number one fear for most people and requires a comparison to others to form a false standard of achievement we believe we have to reach. The reality is that you can only be your best, not someone else’s.

2. Being Weak – This one feeds our self-doubt by having us believe we are not strong enough to face challenges and conquer them. The reality is that you are strong and you can do anything if you give yourself permission to take risks.

3. Being Vulnerable – You have to trust other people’s opinions and judgments more than you know about yourself to have this fear. The reality is that no one can hurt you without this fear that they can and will.

4. Being Unlovable - Love is in the eye of the beholder. The reality is that if you find the people who appreciate you and love themselves, they will love you too. Oh, and that part about being lovable, you have love yourself first.

5. Failing – No action is the only way you can fail. Besides it is another comparison of what you should be able to do that is beyond your control. The reality is that if you act you will succeed at some level.

What makes these fears unrealistic? They are rarely based on facts and most often come from conditioning and perception. Keep your focus on what is real as indicated above and these fears will lose their grip on you.

Should You Try Harder?

Trying harder is your natural response when skills, strategies, or situations are not working as you want or expect. Other people, wanting to help, may tell you to increase your intensity, give more effort, or try harder and it will get better. All of these imply that you need to do more; you just need to try harder to get success. Unfortunately, that is the opposite of what you need to do!

Trying harder increases your stress responses, raises your anxiety, and hurries your mind. You get caught up in the emotions, especially fear and anger, as you become distracted by what isn’t working. As a result, you make more errors, focus on what won’t work and raise your frustration. Continue trying harder and you will find yourself in a spiral of increasing negative results, as your mind and body get totally out of sync, interfering with what you want to do.

When a skill, strategy or situation is difficult or not happening as you expected, slow down and divert your focus elsewhere. Take a couple of deep breaths, retie your shoes, or move on to a different skill or situation; all can shift your focus quickly and immediately. By interrupting the emotional and physical states that were interfering with your performance, you allow your mind and body to find the appropriate speed and intensity or different approach needed for success.

The key to success in any situation is to provide the appropriate energy and intensity needed to get the job done efficiently. Pushing and increasing your intensity or trying harder will not change the nature of the task, only your responses to it – for the worst. By approaching the task or situation in a different state, you give yourself a chance to comfortably and confidently respond. The more you apply this approach, the more you will learn the best effort and intensity for you to succeed at anything, especially the most frustrating things

Excuses Begone by Wayne Dyer - Review

This book represents in many ways a return to Wayne Dyer’s beginning works. Trained in counseling with Abraham Maslow as his mentor during his doctoral studies, the mind as creator of experiences is critical in his writings. In this book he addresses thinking that is self-defeating or what he calls the “habit mind.” In our habitual thinking are the excuses or self-limiting thoughts and beliefs we repeat to choose our actions and behaviors now. They keep us from living our fullest life by trapping us in our past life in the form of programming. Until we challenge these “excuses” they persist and continue to create (or recreate) automatically. The good news is that we can actually “create” something new and different, make new choices, and have different experiences. This is done through “creative consciousness” by using seven principles and a paradigm shift process to address the eighteen common and most limiting excuses in the “subconscious” mind. These excuses include familiar ones such as: “I don’t deserve it,” “I can’t afford it,” “I’m too busy,” and “It will be difficult.” These and the other fourteen are the barriers to everything we want and don’t have.

The first part of the book explains how the mind works uses excuses to dominate our experiences and create lives we don’t want and don’t enjoy. The second part of the book thoughtfully presents his seven principles that include: awareness, alignment, now, contemplation, willingness, passion and compassion. Each principle is clearly explained with the creative consciousness power demonstrated as applied to some of the most common excuses.

The paradigm shift is the third part of the book. Building on Byron Katie’s “The Work” he has designed a series of seven questions that can be used to challenge thoughts and especially excuses. When thoughtfully asked these questions dissolve beliefs and fears while empowering choices. I think this series of questions may be even more powerful than those of The Work, because they allow the questioner to find a source of and identify choices for change.

Each part of this book is useful and together they provide a compelling process for clearing excuses and making permanent changes in the brain and mind. All the concepts and strategies are clearly illustrated and applied. This is a book to read, study, and use.

What I Liked in Excuses Begone

I liked this approach to behavior changes, as it is similar to what I use in life coaching. I am convinced that the mind is the key to everything from change to joy and that each of us has the power to use our mind to create anything and everything. I found much in this book to add to the ideas and strategies I share with other people and can use myself. Here are three examples of the principles I found most useful and applicable.

• Alignment. This principle says that life is an indication of our alignment with our “essential nature” and the source of our creation. Excuses and faulty thinking are indications of our misalignment. Realign and many of our problems and issues are gone. He says alignment is “awareness in action.” When we are aligned our focus is on what we want to create.

• Contemplation. All creation, positive or negative, begins with contemplation. What is in our experience and what surrounds us is due to our previous contemplation or thoughts and feelings. Fortunately contemplation now is the key to our future experiences through creative consciousness.

• Willingness. This word was an unusual way of describing what is often called commitment. Willingness is stronger and more powerful when followed. He provides four questions that support willingness zeroing in on taking full responsibility for the conditions of life, surrendering, holding our vision, and shedding all unwillingness. Answer the questions and the direction for willingness is found.

I also found the paradigm questions in the third part of the book to be very powerful as a process. Each question contains clear areas for consideration and the process is fast and effective. He encourages the reader to let the changes “fall into place” with a “mind that’s open to everything and attached to nothing.” Read the questions and the suggested areas of consideration and the application begins without plans, lists, and rules of instructions. Pretty nifty and pretty effective.

Notes for Application

• Nothing is permanent or inevitable. Even our genetics can be changed through our thoughts and creative consciousness.

• Excuses don’t move us forward they keep us from fully living in the now and the joy and love found there. The reliance on excuses is self-defeating and must be addressed if something different is wanted.

• “Always keep in mind that no single person, place, or thing can force you to believe or disbelieve anything. … Now you have the independence to choose what you believe. Your knowing is yours.”

Should You Read This Book?

Whether you are a Wayne Dyer fan or not, everyone can benefit from this book. If you need a direction, a different strategy, or the guidance to move forward, this book will definitely benefit you. For those who have read many of his books, this one maintains his philosophy but with updated and new applications, especially in terms of the process of change. I found the ideas and especially applications to be consistent with what I have learned in working with people in every area of life. I would highly recommend this book to my clients and to anyone who is ready to live the life they want, fully and joyfully.

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