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Welcome to Mind Chatter #131, the February 1, 2004 Interim Report.
In these Interim Reports, I leave out the "extras" we add to the full mid-month issue of Mind Chatter, and just share with you an article I've written or my thoughts on a particular subject.
On February 16, you'll receive a full issue of Mind Chatter.
This issue's article:
Yes, But What's INSIDE the Head?
by Bill Harris
Before I get started with the real topic of this issue, I want to briefly discuss something else with you, and then we'll move on to something I think is very important, and that will greatly benefit you once you understand it.
Many of you know that about a year and a half ago, I met Gay and Kathlyln Hendricks. Gay and Kathlyn are known all over the world, and have appeared on Oprah (twice), Larry King Live, Good Morning America, and many other major TV shows.
They've taught tens of thousands of couples, singles, and relationship professionals what they know about creating conscious, loving relationships. And, they're authors and co-authors of many best-selling books on relationships and other
personal growth topics.
They are the creme de la creme of relationship experts.
Recently, I convinced Gay and Kathlyn to give a free relationship tele-seminar, for which I was the moderator. This free seminar was held last Wednesday evening.
I expected a few hundred people to call in to hear what they had to teach about how to create relationships that really work.
Gay and Kathlyn and I were stunned by the response, and the company we use for the phone bridge was scrambling to deal with what happened:
We had over 5,000 people call in!
Thousands were turned away. To make sure everyone who wanted to hear this material could do so, we repeated the seminar three more times--and still many people were turned away.
In case you were one of them--or even if you weren't, and you want to hear this incredibly informative seminar--Gay and Kathlyn have posted it on their website, and you can go there and listen to it, free. Plus, anyone who listens get two
valuable FREE gifts from them, which are described in the seminar.
We also received many emails thanking Gay and Kathlyn for the seminar. Here are a few excerpts:
I was able to get in last night after several tries and given a different phone number and my persistency paid off. I was very impressed with the ease of everyone speaking. I greatly enjoyed and so much appreciate the Hendricks giving
their time to help us all. Please forward my many thanks to them.
--Connie C.
I was on-phone Wednesday night! It was terrific. Having been on teleseminars before, the best to do was be patient, stay on-phone, say nothing and listen. I was astonished how many people showed up for the call. Overwhelming!
--David
Thank you. I was one of the lucky ones. I did sit for a couple of minutes at one point with dead air, and wondered if I had been cut off, but decided to hang on a little longer, and was glad I did - as about 30 seconds later, back came
the operator - and off we went... I have to say that I am absolutely blown away by the miracle of technology these days. To get all those people connected and the whole thing functioning in about seven minutes was amazing. Thank you so
much for setting it all up. Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed the seminar and found it both interesting and informative - and also very clear and well presented... and, of course, I learned from it - and look forward to downloading my
gifts - which is next on the agenda. Again many thanks - it was GREAT!
--Betty.
To hear this free seminar online, just click here:
http://www.therelationshipsolution.com and click the link for the teleseminar.
Also, if please tell everyone in your address book about this seminar. After all, it's free, and free is a very good price.
**
Okay, onward.
I have something very important to share with you this time, and to make sure you can see what I'm talking about, please grab a pencil and paper, because I'm going to have you make a little diagram to help you visualize an idea I want to
share.
Don't just sit there. Go get a pencil and paper. Right now.
Okay, PLEASE go get a pencil and a piece of paper.
Thank you.
I just want you to be able to see this, and since I don't like those emails with graphics, since they take too long to load, you'll have to draw your own. It will be worth it.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I want you to draw a side view outline of a person's head, facing to your right. It doesn't have to be artistic. Just the basic outline, with a nose and some eyes, a chin, maybe some hair, if you
like.
Got it? Now, draw an arrow, maybe two or three inches long, from right to left, pointing at the face. Then, to the right of that arrow, write "sensory input/external experience". This represents that this person is receiving sensory input,
that he or she is having some kind of experience.
Now, draw two arrows pointing to the left, starting at the back of the head. You could make the top arrow slant up a bit and the bottom arrow slant down just a bit if you want to be fancy about it. To the left of the top arrow, write
"internal state" and to the left of the bottom arrow write "external behavior." These represent that this person, as a result of the sensory input, the experience, is experiencing some sort of internal state (feelings, emotions, feeling
good or not-so-good, etc.) and is exhibiting some sort of behavior.
In other words, you see, hear, touch, smell, taste the outside world in some way, and then that input causes you to feel a certain way and behave a certain way. This is your life, right?
Wrong.
This, however, is the way almost everyone sees their life. This is why people say: "He made me mad." "I can't do that." "Rush Limbaugh bothers me." "I had to tell him off." "I just get depressed when that happens." "I watched Survivor and
drank four beers even though I should have done my taxes."
It looks as if we have experiences, and that they cause us to feel a certain way and behave in a certain way.
Is this true? Are we puppets, at the whim of what happens around us? If the outside world's input is strong enough does it make us do things, or make us feel a certain way?
You already know that I don't think this is true. Yet many, many people are totally convinced that this is true--and many more who SAY they DON'T think it's true operate as if it was true anyway, giving the idea that they create their
reality lip service, but really not living it. Why?
Take another look at that head you drew. Something happens between the incoming arrows and the outgoing arrows. Once you experience something, you process it through what I call your Internal Map of Reality. This processing is quite
complex, involving thousands of permutations and possibilities.
But the most important thing I want you to understand about this processing is that for almost everyone it is unconscious. Invisible. Automatic.
If you don't see it, it really does look as if the input causes the output, and that your external experiences CAUSE your behaviors and your state of mind. If what happens in between is invisible, it doesn't seem like it's there. Only when
you realize that there is something there, do you realize that maybe there's more to life than being moved around by circumstances like a piece on a chessboard.
So, if there is something goes on between the input and the resulting state and behavior, can you become conscious of it--and, even more important, can you direct that processing? Can you choose what states you experience and what
behaviors you exhibit?
The answer is a resounding "yes!" You can make this process conscious, and you can direct it. When you do so, you gain control over how you feel and how you behave. Once you do this, you can create whatever you want and feel whatever you
want.
"I've heard this before," you say. "I've tried it, and it didn't work for me." Well, I can sympathize, because I tried it for about 20 years before I figured out why I couldn't do it, and learned what to do to make it work. There
definitely is a price to pay to become conscious of how your brain processes things and to use that information to create your life. If you want the results, you have to pay the price. As far as I know, there is no other way.
In my opinion, though, paying the price is actually a fun adventure--if you approach it the right way--and the few years it takes most people to pay it are unquestionably worth it in terms of the reward: the ability to create whatever you
want in your life.
So what is the price? Well, first let me say that I don't have a corner on THE way to do this, though I think I've found a pretty good way. Here's what I suggest you do:
First, you have to do something to make yourself more self-aware, more conscious. As long as that internal processing is running unconsciously and automatically, it will create whatever it's been set up, by your past experiences, to
create. You might have had one heck of a wonderful family who set you on the right track and, as a result, a lot of your unconscious automatic processing gives you pretty good results most of the time. Or, you might have had people raise
you who convinced you that you were no good, stupid, worthless, and unable to do anything right.
But all of this doesn't matter, if you're willing to take the internal processing off auto-pilot.
So how do you make yourself more self-aware? One way is to meditate, and of course you know that I think meditating with Holosync dramatically accelerates the results you get. In fact, I KNOW it does, because I've seen close to 150,000
people use it over the last 18 years (14 years of Centerpointe's existence, plus four more years with an informal group of early Holosync users before I started Centerpointe).
If you use Holosync, you can't help but become more self-aware, but again, there is a price. First, it does cost some money to use Holosync, though the total cost to do the whole program is between $.51 and $.78 per day, hardly a fortune,
especially considering what you gain.
And, meditating with Holosync every day takes some time--time you could be watching Bachelorette or Real-Live Police Chases or Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or doing something else that requires no effort.
Holosync (or any kind of meditation) also puts you face to face, every once in a while, with what has been blocking you from being happy and peaceful. When you become more conscious, you see ways you've been creating your life that you
sometimes don't like to see. Are you willing to face these things in order to get to the point where you really are the conscious creator of your life?
Even though they can be uncomfortable, I like to count these discoveries as big wins, though, because once you become aware of less-than-resourceful ways you've been creating your life, it becomes very difficult to keep doing them.
So, you must decide if you're willing to pay that price, you can definitely become conscious of how you create your reality.
And, if you don't want to pay the price, that's fine. It's your life, and you can do it any way you want. However, if you aren't willing to pay the price to gain control of your life, you really should stop complaining about all the ways
it doesn't work. If you don't want to pay the price, accept the consequences. (In other words, there is a price for not paying the price--either way, you pay.)
The second way to take charge of your creative process is to actually open the hood and examine your internal processing. This involves looking very closely at your beliefs, your values, the ways you filter what comes in (a huge subject,
with very wide-ranging consequences), how you file and store what comes in, how you retrieve it when you need it, how you represent it to yourself (another huge topic), how you make distinctions, how you notice relationships between
things, how you evaluate things and make decisions, how you create internal strategies, and how all of this leads to your behavior and your internal state--and a lot more.
This is what goes inside that head you drew, between the input arrow and the state and behavior output arrows, and it's how you create your life.
You can probably, without my help, examine the way you process what comes in so as to create your internal state and your behavior--if you're willing to sit down and look at each piece, examine it carefully, figure out how it contributes
to what you create, and figure out how you could change it to improve and be in charge of the results you're getting.
And then, of course, be willing to make the necessary changes, which is the third price you have to pay.
People have a way of wanting to hang on to the old way of doing things even when it is creating misery for them. I have email exchanges with people every day in which I point out precisely how they are creating the negative results they've
asked me to help them eliminate. And then, they argue with me, trying to convince me that they should keep things the way they are, or that they "can't" do things in a different way. It takes all my persuasive and explanatory skill to get
them to understand why they have to let go of the old way and be willing to try the new way.
So you must answer these questions: "Am I willing to do whatever it takes to gain control over the way I create my reality? Am I willing to become more conscious, and take the creative process off auto-pilot? Am I willing to look at what
I've been doing, even if I don't like what I'm seeing? Am I willing to give up doing things in a way that doesn't work, even if it feels very foreign to me, and a bit scary?"
These are not easy questions. In some cases, it looks as if it would just be a lot easier to forget the whole thing and flip on "Sex and the City" of fire up the X-Box and play a few hours of Halo. But distracting yourself only looks
easier. Living unconsciously is actually much more difficult. Doing so involves getting a lot of what you don't want, and it involves not getting a lot of what you do want. It also involves experiencing a lot of feelings you don't like,
and often seeming to not be in control of your own behavior.
On the other hand, being conscious takes work at first, but once you've done the work, you reap the reward forever, kind of like the rich guy who spends 20 years making his millions, then sits back to enjoy them.
I've taken this process of looking at your mind and examining all the ways you create your reality, and I've broken it down in the most basic step-by-step way I could. If you follow the steps I've laid out, and do the work (which, I think,
is really rather exciting and rather fun), and you're willing to be honest with yourself, and willing to give up those ways of thinking and acting that don't serve you--even though they may seem to be old friends--you can get to the point
where you really can create anything you want, inside and outside.
I didn't start out to make this a commercial for my online courses, but the process of figuring out how you create your reality is contained, step-by-step, in my Life Principles Integration Process online courses, and you can listen to a
free preview lesson by clicking here:
http://www.centerpointe.com/life/online/preview/
The people who are in these courses are raving about the results they're getting. These courses are VERY inexpensive, only because I can deliver them online. If you take these three courses, and do what I ask you to do, it will work for
you. And, if you're using Holosync at the same time, it will work much faster. Because each person in these courses has direct email access to me, you can ask any questions you want and get my direct, instant answers, which are often quite
detailed and lengthy. Even though this is quite tedious and time consuming for me, I do it because I really want to make sure you "get it."
If you have another way to becoming more conscious and change those parts of your Internal Map of Reality that don't work the way you want them to, then, by all means, use it. But whatever you do, make a commitment to yourself to fill in
the rest of that drawing we started at the beginning of this article. There is a lot that goes on between the arrow on the right and the two arrows on the left, and you need to be conscious of it, and be in charge of it. Make what's
happening inside that head conscious, and then learn how to operate it intentionally and consciously.
If you do so, you really can have anything you want.
As always, let me know how I can help.
Be well.
Bill
PS: An important update on something from a few issues ago:
About six weeks ago I asked each of you to make a small donation to Self Enhancement Inc., an organization that helps inner city kids in Portland, Oregon. I support SEI financially, and I was recently asked to join their Board of
Directors, something I consider to be a great honor.
I want to thank those of you who sent a donation to SEI, since this organization really is making a difference in kids' lives. So far, from Mind Chatter subscribers, over $10,000 has been donated since December.
This last year, 100% of the kids in SEI's after-school programs graduated from high school, and 80% of those are going on to college. This is in a very poor area of Portland where only 45% of black and Hispanic kids finish high school,
Many of these drop-outs end up involved in crime or drugs--or something else that makes their life much less than it could be.
I'd like to urge those of you who didn't send in $5 (or more, if you can afford it), to please help. These are real kids, who want to create meaningful lives, but have no one to mentor them, no good role models, and little hope without the
help SEI provides. When you send something, you really are helping a real human being to make something of their life.
And, as I said last month, when you give to the world, it always comes back to you in one way or another. If you aren't already thinking this way, start the habit of giving, and you will find that, very magically, your own needs will begin
to be taken care of in a much more effortless way. There are many ways to give, and this isn't the only way, but it is a very good way.
I started giving in this way when I was making about $30,000 a year. I didn't have much, but I gave a little. The more I gave, the more that seemed to come to me, and the more I made, the larger I made my gifts. This way of thinking about
money works, and I'd like you to give it a try. And if you won't do it for yourself, do it for these kids.
The secret of getting really is giving.
So please, help SEI. This money goes directly to helping these inner city kids--not to big staff salaries or a big bureaucracy. It goes right to the kids.
Five bucks. Two coffee drinks. That's all I'm asking. You know it's the right thing to do, and you'll feel good knowing you've helped.
Please make a check out to SEI, and mail it to:
SEI
3920 N. Kirby
Portland, Oregon 97227
So they can keep track, please tell them Bill Harris asked you to send it.
You can also go to their website to donate, though I believe the minimum amount the online system can take is $10. To donate online, click here, or paste the link into your browser:
https://www.applyweb.com/public/contribute?s=SELFENHA
To find out more about SEI, here is their home page:
http://www.selfenhancement.org/index.asp
Thank you so much.
Finally, if you've found Mind Chatter to be helpful, please forward it to a friend (in particular, tell them about the free Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks seminar).
Bill Harris, Director
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