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Top 5 Ways To NOT Be Like Britney Spears

There was a time, not so long ago, when a great many people would have jumped at the opportunity to switch places with Britney Spears. That idea is not nearly as popular today, due to the mess that she's been making of her life. So where did she go wrong, and how can you avoid the same mistakes?

There is a mistake that is common amongst all demographics, when it comes to leading their lives, but is more prevalent among celebrities, especially if they became celebrities when they were young. What is that mistake? The answer is simple… they let other people tell them who they are.

There will always be people around you who want to tell you who you are, either directly or indirectly. Celebrities have a lot of people in their lives, and those people are even more likely to try to tell the celebrity who they are. Combine that with becoming a celebrity while you're young, and thus don't have a good idea of your own about who you are, and it can be overwhelming.

So, how can you avoid this? Well, here's a good start… The Top 5 Ways To NOT Be Like Britney Spears:

Take Time And Room For Yourself

It's important to have some time for yourself, with no one else around. Your body and your mind both need this time to heal and strengthen. As a celebrity, and one of the most popular for gossip magazines, Britney has a harder time than most getting time to herself, with the paparazzi always around, as well as fans, people seeking business deals or endorsement, etc. Non-celebrities can have a hard time finding time for themselves, too, though… friends, family, work, spouse, and especially children can take all the time you have every day if you let them.

Make sure that you take time for yourself, so that your mind can strengthen and you can evaluate choices that come your way clearly. This can help you to avoid making bad decisions… like driving 45 MPH with your child on your lap in the driver's seat.
Be Aware Of Others' Influence

Other people always have an influence on you. How much effect that influence has over your actions and choices, however, depends greatly on how aware of it you are. The influence of others over your choices drops as your awareness of their influence rises. Perhaps Britney could become more aware of the influence of the people she associates with, and choose NOT to wear a short dress without panties.
Take Responsibility For Your Own Choices

As long as you blame others for your choices, you can't begin to make the changes that you need in order to avoid repeating the problem in the future. Taking responsibility for your choices, and your responses to the situations around you, can be difficult. It means that there's something less than desirable about you, and it's YOU that needs to change to fix it. Britney, if she were to read this, could perhaps take this advice and not blame her mother for associating with the father of her (Britney's mom) grandchildren.
Know Who You Are

This one is always difficult, when you first approach it. You have to spend time and attention, focusing on determining what your core priorities are, what your purpose or calling in life may be. One of my passions happens to be writing, which is why you're reading this right now. I suspect that one of Britney's passions may be music, although that can (rarely) change as life goes on, and she may no longer have music as one of her core priorities.
Be Who You Are

This, of course, is the most difficult of all the advice in this article. Once you have discovered who you are, and accept responsibility for your own choices, the next step is to give up the personas that you put on for other people and be yourself… all of the time. Any choice that comes up, you should go with the one that reflects who you are the best. This may not seem like the best advice, considering what seems to be who some people are, but, as I've written before, you are who you choose to be… so make your choice of who you are in some of the time you take for yourself. Decide who you want to be, and then be that person (and I don't mean decide to be Lindsay Lohan, I mean choose how you will respond to different circumstances). You can see that Britney needs help in this area by how wildly her behavior changes.

While it would certainly be pleasant to have Britney's money, it would not be worth the trade-off with the things going on in her life. On the other hand, she can always take the steps listed above and change her life, becoming who she chooses to be, instead of letting others define her. That would bring much needed stability and peace into her life.

So, now you know how to not be like Britney Spears… do you need to stop letting other people tell you who you are, too?

Author

October 3rd

Awareness, Expectations, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Humor, Priorities

Discard Your Life And Find The Real You

What is the real you? What is it that makes up the true you, what belongs to you and only you? What do you get when you see past the surface, past the anger and fear, "love" and betrayal, hurt, pain, and even agony? The real you… the deep you, the you that is beyond what the surface you can even imagine.

When you are born, you have no concept of your "self". As you grow older, you build up a structure, a belief system, a framework of lenses and mental maps through which you see the world. You are told, and you believe, that this framework is you. The framework gets covered with experiences and emotions, and even the spaces between the beams of the support structure get filled up eventually. You go on about your life with the belief that this giant amalgamation is you.

Everyone else around you believes this, too. Only what they think of as you isn't even the structure you have built up… it's only the surface of that structure, a surface that changes constantly as new experiences, new emotions, and new everything else piles up, sometimes stripping off pieces of the old coverings, but more often simply piling over them, making them part of the inside, and making that structure ever harder to discard.

As you go about, identifying more and more with this framework that you've built, some of it intentional construction, most of it not, you build walls, walling off this portion from that portion. You do this to protect yourself, to keep yourself from getting hurt, but that's not what they do, it's only what you fool yourself into believing they do. Because those walls don't keep things out, they keep things in.

That's right… you're building yourself a prison. A prison inside a structure that is built of the giant ball of stuff that you call your life. And you not only build this prison, you voluntarily stick yourself inside of it, trapping yourself in with all the pain and injuries that you have suffered over the years. And to top it off, the prison that you build, and trap yourself inside, can't ever even fulfill the purpose for which you supposedly built it… it can't even keep out new pain!

That's right… you build up this structure of falsehoods, lies told to yourself, walling yourself in to keep out the pain, and it doesn't even work. The walls only function in one direction… they hold things in. They hold you in… they limit you to far, far below your true abilities. They keep the pain that you have experienced close to you, so that it can continually injure you and prevent you from healing. What do you do when the pain builds, when it gets harder and harder to deal with? You build more walls, and build the walls you have higher!

The walls that you build for yourself are a prison… but they're also an illusion. They are part of the framework that you have built up, an integral part as a matter of fact. But here's the thing: that framework isn't you.

That's right, all those lenses and perceptions and mental maps, all those experiences and emotions, those hatreds and angers and fears… they aren't you. They're a tiny little pimple that you've built up on the surface of the real you. All that stuff that you're trying to protect, the part that hurts, the part that knows pain and fear and suffering… that is only the very smallest fraction of you. It's like looking at a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, and calling that the ocean.

The real you is vast. It is deep, and strong, and powerful. It cannot be hurt by the vagaries of this life, because it is only the tiniest fraction of it that is involved with this life. Your physical presence, and the structure that you have built up, are merely the tiny portion of it paying attention to what you perceive as your whole life. And when you identify yourself as that tiny portion, you are giving up the vastness of the real you, like identifying yourself as your pinky.

Your walls you have created are illusions, but they are self-maintained illusions, given the power that you are drawing through your connection to the real you. Want evidence that what I'm saying is right? It's very easy to obtain… all you have to do is let down one, just one, of your walls. You will immediately feel closer to that vastness that is the real you. And with each wall that you release, you will find yourself closer to that reality.

When you get close, you may be scared by the openness, the sheer open expanse that you feel drawing nearer. After all, for all of your life that you can remember, you have lived inside your walls. You may never have even had a moment's clarity, an opening of the mind's eye to see the vastness around you. If you HAVE had one of those moments, you may be even more scared, because you have an inkling of what it's like.

It's not an empty vastness, though… you aren't alone. In fact, when you reach that vastness, you'll find that you are connected to everyone and everything else, with a deepness of connection that the very word connection doesn't seem strong enough to convey the reality of what you feel. You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

It's sometimes hard to keep this connection to the real you… it's easy to forget and focus back on the surface structure, identifying with that structure that you've built up. Once you've let the feeling go long enough, in fact, it's hard to remember what it was like… until something triggers it again, and then it all comes rushing back.

There is an old movie called Dune. They made a newer version of it, too, but I'm talking about the original. In it, there is a phrase that is repeated a few times: "The sleeper must awaken." I have always identified with this phrase… I've always felt like it meant something to me, something more. I've felt like there was something bigger slumbering inside me.

Lately, as I have read, and learned, and written, and looked inside of me, my awareness has gradually expanded, and the phrase has changed, in my mind, to "The sleeper is awakening." I felt that bigger thing inside of me stirring from its slumber, starting to uncoil.

Tonight, as I was talking to my wife to help her relax, something clicked. Sometimes the greatest words of wisdom come when the conscious mind gets the hell out of the way and lets things flow from far deeper inside. Suddenly, that thing that had slowly been awakening came aware. The sleeper has awoken.

This connection, this deeper you, is your connection to God, to the awareness that created, and contains, and in a way is, the universe. But it is being "consciously" (too small a term, I think) aware of that connection, not in some sort of vague "God created the Heavens and the Earth" kind of way. It is an intimate and strong connection, a direct connection. It is deep, wordless communication flowing back and forth, much of which, to this point at least, seems to be more of an "I am here" message and an "I know" response flowing from each direction.

This vastness is inside each of us… in fact, it IS each of us. We are not the limited lives reflected in the world we live in, we are not even the conscious part of our minds… we are far more than that. But in order to find our true selves, we must first give up the structure that have built up, that we have defined as "us"… and that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do. That last wall, the one that separates us from our true selves, the one that is the foundation of support for our whole framework of our lives, is really, really hard to let go. It is giving up the "you" that you have always known, for a great unknown.

Do not be afraid. The whole world will change before your eyes, leaving nothing unaltered. Once you let go of that last wall, and the fear, there will be no doubt, however.

It's worth it.

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Beliefs, Body/Mind Relationship, Communication, Conscience, Energy, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Internal Quiet, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Relationships

How To Reclaim Your Life From Marketers

These days every waking moment is filled with someone trying to get you to do this, or buy that. They use all kinds of sophisiticated techniques, developed in a lab, tested in focus groups, and spread across the world you live in. You hear it on the radio when it goes off to wake you up, you see it on the billboards on the way to work, even on bumper stickers on the cars filling the freeway. Then you get it again when you get home and turn on the TV to relax.

Some of them want you to do something to make them money… that's probably the most common. Some of them, however, do it because they think that whatever it is that they want you to do will make you healthier, like the anti-smoking campaigns. Speaking of which, can't they hire someone to make ads that aren't so ineffective that they actually make me want to smoke, just because the ad is so bad (and I've never smoked in my life)? They all have something in common, however… they all want you to align your life with their desires.

They break out all the tools to try to get you to do this. They use guilt, they use peer pressure, they use sex… oh boy do they ever use sex. All of it is designed to bypass your conscious mind's ability to rationally evaluate a proposition. They don't want you to actually think about what it is they're pushing you to do, they want you to feel like you have to do it. If you want to get the hot girl, you have to go buy our product. If you want your kids to love you, you have to go to our amusement park. If you don't want to die young, you have to stop smoking.

That last one at least has the benefit of being likely to be true, though my great-grandfather lived until he was 93 while smoking every day. But true or not, they are trying to make you alter your life to follow their rules. Now comes my turn, of course… what am I trying to get you to do?

Nothing… well, to be honest, I want you to subscribe to my website (it's free!) . But that's not the point… I'm not going to try to push you to do it. What I'm suggesting is that you break away from mindless consumerism (<– buzzwords), and reclaim your life. Use your mind and actually think about why YOU should do whatever it is that someone is currently trying to get you to do. Why is it that you, personally, would want to do whatever it is that they are pushing?

Here are five things that you might want to do when you feel like someone is trying to push you into something:

Engage your mind

The most powerful tool in your arsenal, and what marketers and salesmen try to avoid, your conscious mind is capable of actually making rational decisions and choosing not to buy the new Mega Ultra Thingamabob when you already have the Thingamabob Max, and wouldn't use any of the features added to the new Mega Ultra, anyway. Or even worse, to them… you can realize you have no need for a Thingamabob at all.
Discard guilt as a motivator

Guilt is a terrible motivator, and one abused by some marketers. One of the worst ways they do this is through making you feel like you're depriving your children if you don't go here or buy them that. If you feel guilty when it comes to your children… spend more time with them! Buying them things and taking them to places where you still don't pay attention to them isn't going to help them. Marketers also try to work the guilt factor when it comes to your significant other… the answer is still the same: spend more time with them! When it comes to guilt about yourself, like fitness/weight loss, just remember… you don't need to look like or be like everyone else. If you're happy the way you are, who are they to tell you that you need to change?
Realize it doesn't really matter what everyone else is doing

Why do you care what everyone else is doing? What difference does it make to you? Are you that eager to "fit in", that you would go out of your way to do something just because other people are? I know the answer for some people is "Yes", but why? You are your own person, living your own life, making your own decisions… you are who you choose to be. Why would you choose to be someone else?
Understand that no matter how many times they imply it, no product gets you hot girls (or sex)

A HUGE number of products use the allure of sex to get you to do something or buy something. They do this by showing you hot girls and their product over and over again. Just remember… it doesn't matter how many times they show the product with some hot girl… having it won't get you that girl. It's highly unlikely to get you sex, even if you already have a significant other. Unless, of course, you're a guy, and you buy your significant other shoes and a purse… there's something about those things that girls LOVE.
Figure out if YOU really care, and if so, why

Finally, take a look and see if you really care about what it is they are pushing. For example, if a marketer is trying to use sex to sell something to you, and you're already married (hopefully happily), do you really care even if it WOULD get you a hot girl? You're already taken, after all. Do you really care if that new diet pill will make you lose a few pounds? And I mean YOU… do you care for yourself, not because of the way other people look at you? Does whatever it is they are trying to get you to do really reflect who you are?

These really apply even to conversation with your friends or coworkers, when they try to get you to do something, not just the now omni-present advertising. Make your life your own… do things on your own terms, because you WANT to do it. Reclaim your life and do things that reflect who you are and who you want to be, not what someone else thinks you should be.

Author

September 24th

Awareness, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Motivation, Relationships

Are You Anchored Or Adrift?

Do you know who you are, what you believe, and why you believe it? Are you aware… do you look around and choose a path for yourself, or do you just blindly follow the path laid out for you by others? People who fit the first description are anchored, while people who fit the second are adrift.

People who are anchored know who they are. They know what they believe and why they believe it. They are aware of their own ability to choose their path consciously, and do not simply follow what others have done before or direct them to do now.

Those who are adrift, on the other hand, are mostly who other people tell them they are. They shift with the wind, accepting and following the last input they received, never (or rarely) asserting their own power of choice. Sometimes they try to place a limit on who can affect them this way, keeping it to only those they consider authorities or experts in the field, but this often a false front, with them allowing all who give the appearance of authority, or even just certainty, the ability to decide who they will be and what they will do.

You probably know examples of each type. You can probably even think of examples of a "type of person" who is expected to be anchored, but in reality is adrift, like a preacher, a teacher, or other authority figure. The sad part is that other people who are adrift rely on these people who are "supposed to be" anchored, but in reality are not, to give them direction in their own lives.

At this point, some of you may be thinking that the people I'm referring to as anchored are probably close-minded. If you're thinking that, you are wrong. People who are anchored have no need to reject the opinions and beliefs of others without considering them. They know who they are and why they believe what they believe well enough that other people's beliefs are not threatening. Close-minded people are actually adrift, rejecting the input of others without considering it because they lack confidence in their own beliefs.

Fortunately for the majority of people who are adrift, it is totally possible to become anchored. Totally possible and totally easy are not, however, the same thing. If you want to become anchored, you need to take a few steps, and while they are simple to understand, they are not without effort, and likely not without pain.

Learn To See Your Own Beliefs

If you want to be anchored, you must be aware of what you believe. That means consciously aware, and able to articulate what it is that you believe. If you cannot say what you believe, you certainly can't understand why you believe it, and so it is likely that you believe it because someone else told you it was so. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean your belief is incorrect… it just means that it's not truly YOUR belief, it is someone else's belief where you are acting as if it is your own.

If you need help getting started, you can try a series I wrote a while back:
Choose Which Beliefs You Want

Once you have learned how to see your beliefs, you must choose, for each one, whether to keep it and make it your own or discard it as not being congruent with who you want to be. This process also helps you to resolve conflicting beliefs that can be the source of much, if not most, of the stress in your life. Each belief you choose to keep is now able to become your own, and part of who you are, not just part of a persona.
Understand The Why Of Each Belief

Once you have chosen to keep a belief, and indeed even while you are considering whether or not to do so, you will need to examine it. You should find out the details, EXACTLY what is involved in the belief, what type of circumstances it applies to, and most importantly of all, WHY you believe it. If you cannot say why you have a belief, then it is not yours yet… it is still a part of the persona you are projecting, not who you truly are. Once you are aware of a belief, choose to keep it, and can explain why you believe it, you can claim it as your own, a part of your true self, your core.
Align Your Outside With Your Inside

Now that you understand which beliefs are a part of you and which are part of a persona, you can reject that persona. You have enough knowledge of your self that you no longer need the affirmations of others to feel worthy. In fact, your self-worth (which is NOT the same thing as self-esteem… in fact, there is enough of a difference that I will probably write an entire article on it in the future) will be stable, neither ridiculously high nor ridiculously low. It will simply be enough to be who you are, and allow others to be who they are, and draw shared enjoyment where you can.
Be Aware

This is the last element on the list, but in reality it shows up earlier in the mix. The thing is, it may show up anywhere on the list… it may be when you first start, when you realize that you can, in fact, choose what you believe, or any other time in this process. It is at least virtually impossible, and probably actually impossible, to complete the steps above without becoming aware. So what does it mean to "Be Aware"? It means knowing, understanding, and accepting that you have the power to control who you are and how you respond to any situation. It means accepting responsibility for your own actions… ALL of them. It means, more than anything else, being aware that you are free, that no one can force you to do anything you choose not to do. They can force your body to do certain things, but you are not your body, and that real you is completely, 100%, irrevocably free.

When you have followed each of the steps above, which are not always strictly done in the order listed, especially #5, you will find yourself anchored amongst a sea of people adrift. This gives you many advantages, too many to be listed here, but I will list one benefit: peace. Peace comes with awareness. When you know that you are free, that you are who you choose to be, and not who you choose not to be, peace is unavoidable. It is only when you try to deny this freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, that peace ever departs.

And that is a huge difference, and a huge benefit, in and of itself.

Author

September 11th

Awareness, Beliefs, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Learning

Dealing With People Being Difficult In 7 Different Kinds Of Relationships

Notepad - List

Everyone has to deal with difficult people some times. It might be someone who is difficult all the time, someone who is simply being difficult right now, or someone you don't know, so that you have no idea if it's just right now or an every day thing for them. It might be your boss, your spouse, your friend, your enemy, or a stranger. There are ways of dealing with each type of person, and some that are universal.

You know that you need to deal with your spouse being difficult much differently than your boss, or even your friend. And again, you deal with your friend being difficult differently than your boss. The type of relationship you have with the person you are dealing with has a major role in determining how to respond.

Your Spouse

Your spouse is your one and only, the person that you are going to spend the most time with for the rest of your life. That has major implications for dealing with them when they are being difficult. The most important thing for dealing with your spouse being difficult is to remember who they are the rest of the time. Don't let the current problems override your sense of who they are and what your relationship is. Just remember that the current situation is temporary, and it will pass.

If your spouse is being difficult most of the time, and they weren't when you got married, then there are issues you need to discuss. There will be something underlying the change, whether it's physical pain they are suffering (that can make anyone difficult), mental pain (death of someone they were close to, you did something that hurt them, etc.), or a change in how they see their environment (they may feel they are "stuck in a rut", they may have "met someone else", they may feel they are getting old without achieving their dreams, etc.). Discussing what it is can help to relieve the problem by itself, and may lead to a solution.
Your Children

How you deal with your children being difficult has a lot to do with their age, and a little to do with their gender. Obviously you don't deal with a 3 year old girl in the same way that you deal with a 17 year old boy. Let's start with things that do NOT depend on those variables… you don't deal with your child being difficult by giving in to their demands. That is pretty much the worst possible response… it makes them see you as weaker, less of an authority, and encourages them to repeat the performance (it worked before, right?). Once you make a decision, you can't let them being difficult change it, no matter how bad they get. On the other hand, if they are reasonable, and give input that makes sense, feel free to change your stance (as long as you're not doing it all the time, and they're not manipulating you).

Now, on to the age thing… when your children are young, they need to have the rules set down firmly. They need you to provide guide lines and stick to them. They don't need reasons (although it's still not a bad thing to give them… just don't be "explaining yourself" to a toddler, the rules are the rules), they need structure. Deal with them being difficult by taking away their toys, or by putting them to bed, either for a nap or for the night, depending on the time of day (that's the one I use the most with my 3 year old… she always wants to be up with the bigger people, so telling her she's going to have to go to bed is very effective with her).

When your children are older, around the time they become teenagers, you have to start dealing with them more as adults. They do need things explained to them, and it can often be good to use examples from your past (not all things from your past should be shared with your children, however), to show them that it isn't just an arbitrary rule, it's something that comes from experience. Punishments can move more to chores and grounding (although taking away their toys and sending them to bed can still be effective!). Remember, though… teenagers ARE still children and DO still need structure. The structure you give them as children is what they use to help build their own adult lives around, so it is EXTREMELY important.

When it comes to gender, the difference is mostly in which tactics are more effective. With boys, direct punishment is generally most effective, as in "You didn't do your homework, so now you will do the dishes for the next 2 days.". With girls, the social punishment can have more impact, such as "You didn't do your homework, so you can't hang out with your friends, talk to them on the phone, or use the computer (where they could talk to them) for the next 2 days.". These are general tendencies, and as such, may vary in individual children.
Friends And Family

Friends and family are people that you presumably want to maintain ties with in the future, but have the choice of not doing so if the relationship goes sour enough. They are also people that you know well enough that you can get over them being difficult in the short-term, in much the same way as with your spouse… remember who they are the rest of the time, and if it goes on long enough, have a talk with them to find out what's going on in their life. The biggest difference is the depth of your relationship, which determines both how much their being difficult can affect you and how easy it is to walk away if it gets bad enough. Really close friends and family can have nearly the impact of a spouse.

The other difference is how much you can rely on the relationship's value making them want to change something to become less difficult. Someone who loved you enough to marry you is likely to value your relationship highly enough to be willing to change to preserve it. A person who is somewhere between an acquaintance and a friend, on the other hand, may just write you off rather than give it much effort.
Boss And Coworkers

Your boss and your coworkers are some of the hardest people to deal with when they are being difficult. That's because you have to be around them frequently, but have very little leverage to get them to be less difficult, especially when it comes to your boss. The best way to deal with a difficult person at work is to be nice to them, be interested in them (to a limited extent… ie ask about a topic that you know is of interest to them, that sort of thing, not as in ask for the names and ages of their siblings), and in general, be helpful and nice, without being a welcome mat for everyone to trample upon.

And, as a general tip, if you need support from someone more than one level above you, make friends with their assistant… it can get you a long way toward getting the support you need.
Customers/Clients

This depends on whether they are YOUR clients, or your employer's clients. If they are your clients, keep in mind that unless they're your biggest client, the one that puts food on your table, you can always end your business relationship. That is, you can fire your client if they bring you more trouble than benefit. If they are your employer's client, on the other hand, you probably don't have that luxury.

Either way, though, if you want to keep them as a client in spite of them being difficult, the first step is to see past the difficulties to the business relationship. Keep in mind the benefits you receive, whether it's direct sales, word of mouth advertising, or something else beneficial. If you take care of a client who is difficult, especially if they're not normally difficult, they will remember it, and they are both more likely to be a return customer themselves (maybe even due to feeling bad about being difficult) and to recommend you to others, remembering that you still took care of them even when they were being difficult.
Service Staff

Service staff is an odd category of its own. It really is a pain dealing with service staff (think waiters, retail sales people, secretaries, etc.) who are being difficult. The problem is, if you plan on coming back to the place, you need to treat the staff well even if they are being difficult and you can't stand them, or you may run into problems. Waiters may spit in your soup, or bring you the wrong order, take too long, etc. Retail sales people may intentionally point you to inferior products, or not tell you that something is on sale, or even overcharge you, depending on the store. The secretary can totally turn her boss against you, by presenting only evidence of bad things relating to you, thus giving her boss a bad impression. If the person is bad enough, however, you may want to report their behavior to their boss.

That being said, the way to deal with difficult service staff is very similar to clients… if you treat them well even when they're difficult, they will remember it, and are more likely to take care of you the next time, pointing you to the best deals, being a little faster with their service, promoting you to their boss, etc. You also never know when you may have dealings with them outside of their place of employment, so it pays to be patient. That may be a lot easier if you simply concentrate on what you are getting through dealing with them (purchase an item, enjoy your meal, get an appointment with the boss, etc.).
Random Strangers

With strangers, that's the point to remember… they're strangers, and it's not worth getting riled up over them or their actions. You also need to remember that you don't know who they are, or how they might affect you in the future… so don't react negatively, just stay neutral and as polite as you can stand to be while still standing up for yourself.
Universal

There are some things that are universal, that help with dealing with any difficult person. The primary one of these, the key, is to remember that while you don't always control the situations you find yourself in, you DO control your response to your circumstances. When someone is being difficult, often times they do things intentionally to evoke a defensive response from you. If you give it to them, you make them feel like being difficult is working for them, like it gives them power. That's most likely the last thing you want to do, so… don't. Choose to take a mental step back, look at how foolish they look from an outside perspective, and sit back and let them make a fool out of themselves. Keep your calm and, to the best of your ability, completely ignore their attempts to provoke you. Deal with them from a position of power, knowing that you are in control of yourself and your choices.

There are other little things you can do, too. Smiling at people, with a genuine smile for them (not just smiling at the world, although that can help too), almost always brings a positive response. Being polite is also usually a good idea. One of the best things you can do is make small talk… it forms (or reinforces) a bond between you, emphasizing your similarities and causing them to identify with you more. It's far more difficult to be difficult with someone you identify with, particularly if you like them, as well. That's usually one of the key things that causes difficulties between spouses/friends/family… they cease to identify with each other and start looking at how they are different, instead of how they are alike. It's amazing how much difference that one seemingly little thing can make.

So there you go… seven different kinds of people, and the peculiarities of dealing with each of them when they're being difficult, plus a bonus of things that work across the board. You probably do some of them already, maybe even most of them. Putting the ones you aren't currently using into practice can really make your life go a lot smoother.

Oh, and this is not an all-encompassing list. That being the case, please leave any additions (or disagreements) in the comments, as I'm always looking for new ways to improve my dealings with other people.

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September 4th

Awareness, Communication, Free Will, Relationships, Tips Tuesday

17 Ways To Commit Slow Relationship Suicide

Broken Relationship

It is very common for people who are in a failing relationship, or who have left a failing relationship, to blame it on "growing apart". They say this as if it were some unavoidable fate, something they had no control over. It's fairly likely that they even believe it to be that way.

Growing apart doesn't just happen. It is the cumulative effect of actions, and choices, over time. That is why I call it relationship suicide… you are killing your own relationship. Relationship suicide is more a build-up of small things than it is big things, because big things tend to be more (to use a similar analogy) relationship murder, being caused by someone else (your partner).

If your relationship is on the downward slope, but not yet dead, you can often turn it around by becoming aware of what it is that is killing it. Once you start trying to be aware, you're likely to find that it is easy to see what actions are causing the most problems in the relationship. That gives you a good place to start.

It is good to read this list with your partner, but if you read it separately be aware that if you tell your partner what it says you should do there can be an instant defensive reaction to being told that they are doing something that is killing their relationship. The reaction is to deny it, and to semi-consciously KEEP doing those things, as sort of a "You can't tell me what to do!" response. That can actually be more harmful to the relationship than continuing the way you were, because at that point they know what they are doing, and are doing it consciously, and may feel either resentful to you for pointing out where they were failing, or guilty for doing it.

If you are in a good relationship, or looking to start one, use this list to educate yourself about what to avoid… the things on the list are small things that add up over time and eventually result in relationship suicide.

* Note: These are from my personal observations, and even previous personal experience, but they ARE NOT from my relationship with my wife.

Discuss Your Partner's Faults Regularly

Discussing your partner's faults is a double-edged sword, and both sides cut at your relationship. I'm quite certain you can see how continuously discussing your partner's faults with your partner could lead to a nasty confrontation. Doing so with someone else has negative consequences on multiple levels, as well… you lower the other person's opinion of your partner and word may get back to your partner, hitting several defensive reactions. And ANY time you start going off about your partner's faults, you are reminding yourself of them, paying them more attention, focusing more on them, and various other things that all lead to them weighing more heavily in your mind… if you ONLY talk about what is wrong with your partner, and never what is good about them, your relationship suicide may not even be all that slow.
Verbally "Snipe" At Each Other

Verbal sniping refers to the little things that people who have been together for a while say to each other with the intention of getting under the other person's skin. It may be a comment about their driving, or the way they do (or don't do) something around the house, or anything else, as long as it's just intended to irritate them a little bit, not provoke an upfront confrontation. I have seen quite a few different couples do this, and it really takes a toll, especially on emotional intimacy. And you might be surprised how much emotional intimacy has to do with sexual intimacy.
Let Your Partner Slide Down Your Priority List

This is one of the easiest things on this list to do without noticing. You get busy with some project or other, and so you push your partner slightly aside in your mind. When you're done with that project, or even before you are done with it, another project comes up. This time, you don't have to push your partner aside, they're already there. When the next one comes up, you end up needing to push your partner just a LITTLE more to the side. Once you're to this point, your partner is no longer at the top of your priority list, and takes less to move them from #2 to #3 than from #1 to #2, and it's a downhill slope from there. The worst part is that this particular thing is a lot of the time, probably even most of the time, subconscious… you don't consciously choose to push them to the side, your subconscious does it for something you are focused on right then. That makes it hard to fix, too, because first you have to become aware of it, and then you actually have to admit that you did it (most people don't like to admit it, even to themselves, because they feel guilty for it…. to which I might respond "There's a reason why you feel guilty about it.").
Neglect Quality One On One Time

One on one time is important… but quantity is not the same as quality. It doesn't matter if you spend twenty-three and a half hours together each day, if only fifteen minutes of it is quality time your relationship is going to suffer. In fact, one on one time in quantity without quality is probably even worse than not having the time in the first place because quantity without quality can leave you sick of it.
Stop Showing Appreciation

This is one of a few items on this list that all fit into the subheading of "Taking Your Partner For Granted"… but they are different enough to merit more depth than that. When you stop showing appreciation for the things that your partner does, even the small things, they lose much of the incentive to do those very things. That might not seem like that big of a deal on the surface, but what happens when you stop showing appreciation for, and they stop doing, things like washing the dishes, giving massages, saying I love you, taking you out on a date… you get the idea. It's the small things that bind you together in the spaces between the big things.
Stop Being Impressed

Like the one above, this item fits into "Taking Your Partner For Granted", but in a different way. It is easy to become accustomed to your partner, and stop noticing when they do things that are above average. For instance, if your partner is a good cook, it becomes easy to take for granted the good meals they cook. You forget to be impressed by how much better than normal they are. If you stop noticing the things about them that stand out above the crowd, then you start thinking about them less highly, which is a mighty fine way to start "growing apart", and eventually achieve relationship suicide.
Stop Having Deep Conversations

Communication is important. You know that, you've heard it a million times. What the people telling you that often fail to mention, however, is that it isn't just about quantity, it's about quality (like the one on one time above). The depth, and therefor strength, of your relationship is directly related to how deeply you know each other. Since people are constantly changing, that means that you need deep conversations on a regular basis, so that you can learn what things have changed, and make sure that you still know who they ARE, not just who they were.
Start Focusing On Other People

This ties into letting your partner slip down you list of priorities, but it's not the same. If you and your partner are around other people, and you focus on those others to the point of even partial exclusion of your partner, it communicates to your partner that they are less important than the other people. This is even more so if it's someone that your partner sees themselves as competing with, such as another woman (if you're a man), or someone else who is a rival in some field that your partner considers themselves good at, such as your partner being a chef, and you focus on another chef.
Compare Your Partner To Others

This is a bad idea when your partner comes out worse in the comparison, and often bad even if your partner comse out ahead. That is because any comparison communicates to your partner that you are considering their value relative to that of someone else, and indicating that the person you are comparing them to is a rival for them in whatever area you are comparing. This is made far worse if the person you are comparing them to is someone that you spend a lot of time around, and even worse than that if you compare them to an ex-partner.
Blame Your Partner For Things You Don't Like About Yourself

This is a well-known thing in psychology, where they refer to it as projecting. Projecting is when you "project" the way you feel about something onto someone else, acting like they feel that way, even when there is no evidence, sometimes even when there is contradictory evidence. Blaming your partner for things that have changed about you since you've been together, even when they had nothing to do with that change, also falls into this category.
Try To Control Your Partner

Attempting to control your partner is a bad idea. Period. Making your child check in with you every hour or two when they're out is okay. Making your adult partner do so is not. The same thing applies to spending small amounts of money… it is fine to require your child to check with you before spending $5, but the same is not true of your partner. Again, requiring your child to get prior approval of anyone they want to spend time with is fine, but trying to do the same with your partner is not.

Your partner is not a child, and especially not YOUR child. Don't treat them as if they were.
Try To Force Your Partner To Change

This is a mistake that a LOT of people make. You cannot, under any circumstances, force someone to change. It is simply not even possible. You can put in place incentives to do so, and negative consequences for not doing so, but you cannot force them to do it.

Add to this the fact that people respond extremely negatively to feeling like their power of choice is being taken away (or even infringed upon), and you have a recipe for disaster.
Try To Manipulate Your Partner

Manipulating your partner, or even attempting to do so, is bad. It causes the same defensive reactions as trying to force them to change, for the same reason. You are trying to take away their power of choice, or limit it, and people resent that. If you succeed, it also causes your regard for them to drop, because you begin to see them as something that you can control, not an individual capable of going their own way and making their own choices. That's an almost certain path to losing your respect for them, as well, and at that point, your relationship is effectively dead.
Tell Your Partner White Lies

You know you shouldn't lie. That's not a disputed issue. But some people, at a middle depth, think small lies are okay if they don't get caught. When I say at a middle depth, I mean that if you ask them they will almost always say lying is wrong under any circumstances. They also probably believe, at their core, the same thing… which is why even white lies eat at you a little bit over time. This type of lie even comes out without conscious thought at times, especially if you feel like you're under pressure, or even worse, like you're being attacked. The lie simply pops out before you are even aware you are thinking about it.

Once you have lied, one of two things is going ot happen: either you are going to get caught, or you are going to think at least slightly lower of your partner. Either one of these things will bring your relationship suicide closer to success.
Complain Regularly

Being around someone who complains all the time is draining. Having that person be your partner makes it worse, because you feel guilty if you tune them out and, of course, you spend more time around your partner than most others. Listening to someone complain all the time causes you to be more aware of the negative things, thus bringing you, the listener, to a lower mental state, as well as the complainer.

Try not to complain, and if you DO complain, try to think of two good things to say for each negative thing you catch yourself complaining about.
Complain (Regularly) About What Your Relationship Is Lacking

Combining a couple of the items above, complaining about what your relationship is lacking is a very easy way to put a serious hurt on said relationship. It is pointing out to your partner what they are doing wrong, saying that you think what they are doing isn't good enough, discussing their faults, complaining, at least somewhat manipulative (you are trying to get them to do or not do something, whatever is lacking), and many other negative things.

Discussing where your relationship could improve is a good thing… but not all the time. And when you DO discuss it, make sure you do it from a positive perspective, as in "We could be closer if we did such and such" rather than "You never do so and so".
Drop An Emotional Bomb Before Reaffirming Your Love

Want to make your partner feel pressured, overwhelmed, and attacked, all the same time? If so, try dropping an emotional bombshell on them first thing after being apart, before showing them that you love them. This includes first thing in the morning (sleeping counts as being apart), right when they come home from work or a trip, or anything else that involves being apart. Give them a chance to feel like they are at home, and, if you can, show them that you love them by doing something nice right off the bat. That something nice can be complimenting them, hugging them, kssing them, all of the above, or something else altogether that you know they appreciate.

And don't just do something positive, and then immediately hit them with the bomb either… give them at least a few minutes to shift from "out" mode to "home" mode.

So if you want to commit relationship suicide, start going down the list above. The death of the relationship will be directly affected both by the number of the above-listed things that you do, and by the vigor with which you do them.

If, on the other hand, you would like to start a new relationship off right, keep your current relationship strong, or turn around a relationship that has been falling apart, use the list above as a test. Give yourself an honest evaluation as to which of the things you do, and work on stopping them. Try to stop the behaviors that build on each other first, or the ones that you do particularly badly. You may even find out that your relationship soars to new heights!

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August 24th

Awareness, Communication, Free Will, Relationships

4 Steps To Truly Forgiving

Forgiveness… it is espoused by very nearly any program for personal growth or healing, whether scientific, religious, or new age. The reason behind the effectiveness of forgiveness is not mystical, however. The reason that forgiveness is so essential is simple: True forgiveness involves releasing your hold on grudges that are constantly draining your mental energy.

When you hold on to grudges, you are devoting mental energy to maintaining them and the emotions that you associate with them. Since we're talking about grudges here, this also means that emotions you are devoting your energy to holding on to are negative . Think about it… you are intentionally causing yourself to feel bad feelings. That doesn't make sense, but if you allow your subconscious mind control, things don't have to make sense.

Understand What Forgiveness Is

True forgiveness begins with acknowledging and accepting responsibility for any emotions that you attach to an act. "They" didn't make you angry. "They" did something, and you became angry. The difference between the two is critical. The first one assigns blame for the feeling, and responsibility to change that feeling, to the person who committed the act. The second one brings it back to where it belongs: you.

Forgiveness always comes from within, never from outside. That is because outsiders have no control over the emotions, the feelings, inside of you. The best they can do is inspire you to decide to change yourself.
Understand What Forgiveness Is Not

Forgiveness is not justifying or forgetting. It is not pretending like nothing happened, or letting actions go without consequence merely for the sake of "forgiveness".

Many people confuse forgiving an act with justifying the act. When you justify an act, you search for reasons to show that the act was never bad, right from the beginning. But that doesn't fool your subconscious… it knows what you really feel, what you really believe, and so it will continue to hold negative emotions, though your consciousness may disguise them as feeling guilty either for having provoked the action, or for not having truly "forgiven" it. Your consciousness is not fooled by false justification… and if you REALLY believe the act was completely, 100% justified, then you'll have no forgiveness to grant.

Forgetting and pretending nothing happened are actually the same thing… because you're highly unlikely to ever truly forget. Once you feel like an act has harmed you, your subconscious stores it away in patterns having to do with getting hurt, so that it can recognize similar situations in the future and act to avoid that hurt. Thus, both of these things are false fronts, and do not contribute in positive ways to either you or the person who you want to forgive.

Letting actions go without consequence is VERY commonly mistaken for forgiveness. In reality, it's one of the worst choices you can make. If actions have no consequences attached, then the person committing those actions doesn't learn anything from them. If someone does something that hurts you, and there are NO bad consequences, they will do so again in the future in the same situation. Now keep in mind, knowing that they hurt you may be a bad consequence for some people, but even then, that still requires that you let them know that they hurt you. That means that without consequences for the action, not only did you get hurt, but the person who did it won't even learn that they did something wrong.
Understand Why Forgiveness Is Important

Negative emotions have a natural tendency to become entangled. That means that when you attach negative emotions to an act, those emotions become entangled with any OTHER negative emotions you have tied to another act. They become one interconnected mass, the total size of which grows with each new act to which you attach negative emotions. The fact that they are entangled also means that as you add more to this mass, already existing emotions become harder to release, and new ones are more likely to stick.

This entangled mass is what causes situations where one annoying but inconsequential act snowballs into massive amounts of negative emotions. Basically, it catches onto the existing entanglement of negatives and rips the whole thing into your conscious awareness, but WITHOUT THE REASONS BEHIND THE WHOLE THING. That is, all of your negative emotions that you have piled up get focused on this one, inconsequential thing, and so you completely overreact, out of all proportion to the "cause". Often, you won't know, even later, WHY you did that… so you'll come up with some sort of reason that half fits.

All that energy that you are dumping into holding onto this entanglement of negatives is energy that could be spent to improve your current life, work for the future, deepen relationships, or any number of other things. Because of inertia, though, you continue to spend that energy on anger, frustration, pain, and other bad things from past events. If you were to consciously choose which thing to spend your energy on, what would you choose: positive things in the present and future, or negative things from the past?
Take Action

Letting the negative emotions attached to an act go is an intentional action. You choose to stop devoting the energy to continue feeling the hurt. You choose to untangle the negative emotions from the act you are forgiving from whatever other emotions onto which you are holding. You acknowledge that the act hurt you, but that it is in the past, and that you're only slowing yourself down by holding onto those emotions.

Once you have let the emotions associated with an act go, you can make practical choices about how to respond to the action. You can decide, in fact, if it's worthy of a response other than to note it in passing. Some acts may not be. Others may require you to respond drastically. With your sight cleared of all the negative filters from anger, pain, or whatever else, you can actually make these choices consciously and in an educated manner. You will no longer feel the desire to simply strike out, to make someone else pay for your hurt. That means that you can choose appropriate consequences, and actually let go of the attention you were giving to the act (this includes subconscious attention, which is actually the most dangerous kind, since it's difficult to recognize as even being present, let alone the cause of stress and bad feelings).

Forgiveness can be a cascading event. Forgiving one action removes some of the negative emotions from the entangled mass present in most of us. As anyone who has untied a nasty knot can tell you, each thread you remove makes the rest easier to detangle. You also learn the process, and become adjusted to it, making it even easier to do. You may find that with a few conscious efforts at forgiving specific acts, it starts to become natural… though you will still find instances that require your conscious attention from time to time.

True forgiveness requires conscious acknowledgement of an event that hurt you and the negative emotions that you attach to it. It requires that you acknowledge these feelings, and then let them go. It requires you to take responsibility for the feelings that you associate with the act, because as long as you blame someone else for making you feel that way, you won't be ABLE to let them go (how can you let feelings someone else controls go?).

But most importantly, true forgiveness opens up a huge amount of your life and energy that were closed off by those negative emotions. It makes it FAR easier to be happy and at peace. Those things you aren't fogiving are anchors holding you back from the happiness, the joy, the life that you could be experiencing.

Get rid of your anchors. Forgive someone today!

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August 20th

Awareness, Communication, Energy, Free Will, Relationships, Subconscious

Which One Runs Your Life – Love Or Fear?

Polarity

Steve Pavlina recently wrote an article on Achieving Peak Motivation through use of polarity.

In it, he writes:

                    Love polarization means you adopt the mindset of unconditional love                    for everything that exists.  You center your life around serving the                    highest good of all.  This commitment stems naturally from the decision                    to align yourself with the polarity of unconditional love.  Think of                    this as an outward flow of energy.  Your focus is on giving and on                    making a contribution.

                    Fear polarization means you become unconditionally self-centered,                    driven by greed, power, and lust.  Your commitment is to make your life                    the best it can possibly be, purely for your own self-gratification.                     Think of this as an inward flow of energy.  Your focus is on acquiring                    and absorbing all that life has to offer you.

While I don't disagree with his two types of motivation, I disagree with his labels. I think that what he is really describing is a positive (what he calls love) and negative (what he calls fear) aspect of the love polarity. I think the real love and fear polarities go deeper than that, that they have a more fundamental difference than whether you love yourself most or all people equally.

When you orient yourself toward the love polarity, you look at things from the perspective of wanting to bring certain things INTO your life, whether it be love, money, or something else. You are seeking an inflow of energy, of life, bringing things into yourself. Your focus is on bringing the good things to you.

When you orient yourself toward the fear polarity, on the other hand, you are looking at things from the perspective of wanting to keep something OUT of your life. This can be loneliness, or poverty, or any number of other things. You are expending your energy outward, pushing things away (though you may be doing it by trying to bring certain other things into your life, your focus is on keeping the bad things away).

As Steve says when talking about polarities, love and fear can both be incredibly powerful motivators. If you understand them, and use the power of conscious choice to make one a cornerstone of who you are, it can provide sustained high motivation in a way that little or nothing else can. Choosing the one that conflicts with your natural tendencies (read subconsciously learned tendencies) is one of the most difficult decisions to make stick, but it can still be done, you just have to keep at it.

If you choose the love polarity, you can then choose within that polarity from the two aspects Steve presents. If you choose the fear polarity, though I'm not certain that anyone would ever make that choice consciously, then there are probably similar positive and negative aspects, though I have chosen love, so I can't be certain. Either way, make the choice consciously… don't leave it up to your subconscious, or you may not like the results.

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August 14th

Awareness, Fear, Free Will, Polarity, Subconscious

You Are Who You Choose To Be

Signposts - Choices

You are who you choose to be. That can be a difficult pill to swallow. It means that you are responsible for yourself and everything that you do. All the good parts about you, and all the bad, are of your own choosing, though you may not be specifically aware of the choice (or choices) that led to specific traits.

It is also difficult because it is difficult to accept the power that gives you. If you have the power to control who you are, then anything you can no longer blame anyone else, including your parents, for whatever traits you don't like about yourself. If you can control how you react to any given situation, then any time in the past that you have responded poorly, it was 100% your fault. That's a very unpleasant concept, and makes it difficult to accept the power of conscious choice. If you don't accept it, then you can continue to deny the blame… though that doesn't mean it belongs any less to you, you can at least deny it, even to yourself.

You're making the choice of who you want to be already, whether you know it or not. Your conscious mind makes the choices, but it can lie to itself, though not to your subconscious. You can tell yourself that you want to be this way or that way, but not really mean it, down at the level where thoughts turn into concrete decisions and actions. You may say you want to be generous, for example, but below that, you may have a fear of scarcity that keeps you from acting out what you say you want.

When you accept the conscious power of choice, you take the power from these lower layers, where such fears dwell, and bring it up into your awareness. Now you can take those things that you say you want to be and consciously examine them to determine if that really is who you want to be, rather than something you think you should be because others tell you so. If it's truly who you want to be, then you can take it from just words, and turn it into a decision, and embed that decision in the bedrock of who you are.

How long it takes to do that depends on how truly you have let go of the concept of powerlessness. When you have truly let it go, and completely understand and accept that you are who you choose to be, change, even drastic change, can be nearly instant (referring to a change in who you are, not what you are… changes to your physical body will still take time, though quite possibly considerably less, since you will not be conflicted and fighting yourself). If you are just beginning, it may take several times making the decision to add or remove a trait to really embed it deeply.

Once you accept this power, it also leads you to the knowledge and acceptance that all of your emotions come from inside you, too. You choose which emotions to feel, and how strongly, though often your choice may not be "I'm going to be extraordinarily happy right now", but something more like "Those circumstances will no longer bring anger or pain". That's not to say that you can't make decisions about how to feel and make them instant, but it takes more work, more energy, and therefore is not as common.

After you've accepted the power of conscious choice, and experienced it for a while, you are almost certain to be more at peace. In fact, it's hard to NOT have that as your default state. After all, if who you are, what you do, how you feel and react, if everything about you is your choice, what is there to be conflicted about? You may lose your peace from time to time, when you slip and give up your conscious choice, letting your subconscious back into control, but as soon as you return to conscious awareness of choice, your peace will return.

Incidentally, when you have this state of conscious awareness of choice as your normal state, other people will notice. People may turn to you for leadership, since they can see that you have it together. They may come to you with questions and problems, some of which you may wonder why they thought you could help. They are likely to give you trust, often trust far beyond what they should give someone they know to the extent they know you… you may find strangers telling you things they would be better off keeping to themselves. Most of all, they will see you as someone they should emulate, which can bring positive or negative responses.

Acceptance of that awareness, the power of conscious choice, is good for you and good for others. It can bring peace and harmony to you, as well as improving your ability to make choose the path that is best for you in any number of circumstances (the best for you in the sense that it fits who you are the best, not in the sense that it brings the most gain to you in the eyes of the outside world). It shows other people that "people" can learn to respond to situations in the way they choose, rather than just letting their subconscious respond. It shows them that ongoing, lasting peace is attainable by someone they know, not just some Tibetan monk chanting in a Buddhist temple. It might even lead them to the knowledge that they, too, are who they choose to be.

Update: On a personal note, I went through this process of realization and becoming aware the first time around ten years ago. At the time, I had been suffering from severe clinical depression for years, though I had never been treated for it. My depression caused me to sleep very little, until I was down to about 45 minutes per night, which causes all sorts of interesting experiences after a few days (or weeks). It got to the point where I was hospitalized, and for the first time given medication to help (I think the medicine they gave me to let me sleep helped nearly as much as the anti-depressants). I was given a month's worth of Prozac, and that really helped… it pushed back the funk far enough that I could actually think clearly. It was at this point that I began (I still have slips) to acknowledge control of my own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Since then, I have had one major backslide into depression (which was around seven years ago), where I needed medicine to help. Again, I only needed one month's worth of aid from the pills, and I got my mind straightened back out. Since then I have had a few slips, including one just the other day, but now they only last hours. I have taken ownership enough that it has changed my subconscious mind's natural reaction to bad things, where instead of dwelling on them, I consider them and let them go. I can't even begin to accurately describe how much of a difference that makes… it's an absolutely amazing change.

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August 14th

Awareness, Energy, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Subconscious

The Not So Well Travelled Road To Peace

Most people can barely find a moment's peace in their hectic lives, yet others, who accomplish the same amount, simply radiate peace at all times. There is a simple but difficult step that will move you from the former group toward the latter.

It is hard to find peace. There are few, if any, people who will deny that. There is a reason why it is hard to find peace… and that's because you lose the peace in your seeking. Peace is inside you, in your heart and in your mind. By seeking peace, you are looking at it as outside of you. Since it is, in reality, inside you, you will never find it by seeking it.

Yet those people mentioned in the first paragraph have "found" peace. They did so by learning that it was inside themselves, and giving up seeking it. You have control of virtually everything inside you, and can have more or less of it. Yet when you move it outside of yourself, you lose control of it. This is true for peace, happiness, sadness, anger… even mental focus and creativity. As soon as you make it something other than you, you lose the ability to control when you will have it and how much of it you will have.

When you seek for something to bring you happiness, you are, by that very act, placing the happiness outside of yourself. You're saying "If only I had that, I would be happy". When you say that, you are wrong. Even if you are happy when you have "that", by tying your happiness to "that", you allow someone else to take it away by taking away "that".

It works similarly with anger. When you allow something outside of you make you angry, you are giving up control of something internal. Others can control you by doing whatever it is that makes you angry. You can take that control back by understanding that it is truly your choice to allow them to make you angry, that if you merely reframe the situation, it would not make you angry at all, and therefore it is not the situation that is making you angry, it is your perception of it, thus taking control back for yourself.

When you look inside yourself, to who you truly are, and accept that true self, you can have peace and happiness at will. All you have to do is turn back to the you that is inside, rather than the outside persona that you assume for the benefit of others. Any time you turn away from that internal self, and seek validation from outside yourself, you are giving up control of your own internal self. You are giving it to people or circumstances outside yourself, allowing them to decide whether you are at peace, sad, happy, angry, focused or distracted.

To move from always seeking and never finding to never seeking and always having, take control back for yourself. Understand that everything that you do, and everything that you feel, is inside you. Everything is your own choice… and if everything is your own choice, then all the power to choose who you are is yours, too. You are that which you choose to be.

Remember that…