Many of you know that the topic of moving through fear is one have often visited on this blog and that I sometimes broach as a speaker. I think it’s imperative to learn to conquer our fears so we can live our lives fully and accomplish our goals. I rarely publish an interview on this blog, but I felt compelled to do so after reading a free ebook, called The Flinch, by Julien Smith, which is also about moving through fear—or overcoming fear. The Flinch also is about asking people to change, compelling them to change. In that way, Julien is a change agent. So, I was thrilled to get a chance to interview him and to share that interview with you.

Julien is a New York Times bestselling author of two books, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust and The Flinch. He is a consultant and speaker who has been involved in online communities for over fifteen years, from early BBSs and flash mobs to social web as we know it today. He also was one of the first Twitter users and one of the first people to podcast in 2004 (which is impressive to me since I’ve just struggled to get my first podcast up). He has worked with numerous media publications, such as Sirius Satellite Radio, GQ, CBS, Cosmopolitan, and more.

The following interview is part of a three part interview. You can read the other parts here and here. In this part, Julien talks about our bad habit of “flinching” when we expect to experience pain and how to train ourselves to consciously build the strength to get past our fear–to stop flinching.

I just finished reading your newest book, The Flinch, which, I loved. For those who have not read it, could you just briefly explain the concept?

Sure. I guess in a way The Flinch, in a nutshell, is about our pathological lack of courage as individuals. Many of the things we shy away from are, in fact, not painful, not damaging, not bad in any way, but we just sort of shy away from them out of habit. So, really it’s a book about how to break out of bad habits and break into good ones.

That’s something most people need to do. Fear stops people from doing what they want, from writing and publishing a book, trying something new, getting into or out of a new relationships or jobs, creating the life they desire and succeeding. Can you talk about that a bit?

You start to notice as you speak to a lot of people who are trying to make change in their life that there are two kinds of people. One is a general optimist who knows at the end of everything they’ll end up fine. The other kind doesn’t explicitly say so but often feels like they have a lot of anxiety around life, let’s say quitting a job or something like that. The feeling is, ‘I’ll be broke and then I’ll die,’ or something like that. That’s the kind of sentiment that they have around change, even though they’ve never verbalized it that way. What I tried to create in The Flinch is a feeling, through a number of exercises, that you can do painful things and survive and be better as a result of them. I think that’s a series of habits that you need to develop.
Any time they feel something is difficult, many people just quit. I know I just quit often. That was a terrible habit of mine until I broke it.

That’s a pretty common habit for most people. You suggest that people should get in the ring, like a fighter.

Exactly. The reason for the title of the book, The Flinch, is because I spent a lot of time around athletes and self-defense professionals and officers and so on.  I noticed that the people who understand these things the most are the people who feel it in a visceral way. Some of the best reactions from people about the book have been from swimmers, for example. Swimmers are like, ‘I feel exactly like this every single time I’m about to do an open-water swim.’ And you have, of course, boxers and people who do Muay Thai. Athletes naturally understand this.

I think most people find it really hard to create change. Why do we not change even when we say we want to? Is it a fear of change?

Let’s talk in a more specific manner to try and sort of make this more concrete for people. They get this impression, ‘Oh, why is it so hard for me.’ We have no faith in our ability to reconstruct, and we have no faith in our own ability to make things better for ourselves. Some of the simplest things that you can do are to put yourself in situations where there really are no sort of negative social or psychological or physical consequences for what you do, but you feel this anxiety—what I call the flinch.

 

So try exercises in meeting strangers; you know, strangers are something very new in our lives. A hundred years ago there were no cities, or very few…Ninety-nine percent of the people we see every day are strangers, right? So this is new and in a way a sort of anxiety creating thing. We don’t feel that we have the ability to walk up to these people, but the reality is that there are no social consequences for walking up to a stranger at all.

 

I would say that one of the best things you can do is find hard things and do them over and over again. Before you can find them, you have to feel that sentiment inside of you, and most people just ignore it. Learn to train yourself in feeling that, and going, ‘I know what I need to do when I feel that feeling,’ and then go forward with it.

Talking to strangers is a great tip. Do you have others?

There’s a million of them, you know.  I spoke to this guy who’s one of the lead speakers in regards to the stuttering community, and he said, ‘You know, some of the exercises that you present in [your book] are the same exercises that stutterers do.’ It turns out that [they are] some of the same exercises that people who have PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, or people who have anxiety attacks use. I’ve, sort of, without really thinking about those problems, have created something which really works for them and also works for the population at large.

 

I’ve been building homework assignments, and I plan to release them later in some capacity. One of them is to stutter on purpose. It’s this amazing thing you can do maybe four or five times in a day, and then just go about your daily life. Everybody knows how to do this, but it’s an exercise they make stutterers do so they can gain control of something they normally would not be able to control at all. If you go over to someone, especially someone who’s paid to talk to you, like a clerk in the corner store or something like that, and you stutter through what it is that you want to do, and then feel that embarrassment—it’s almost like purposeful embarrassment—to realize that when you get past the embarrassment you’re totally fine.Something else I would do to feel it physically is to do something like begin weightlifting at the edge of your capacity.

 

Most people when they go into the gym, they’ll go and they’ll do weights, like twenty five or thirty reps of some insignificant weight. Instead of doing that, do something like put it up to what weightlifters call your five-rep max, and put up a weight that is almost impossible for you to lift. Stare at it, and then go ahead and do it. You’ll feel in your body this extremely hard not only physical thing but psychologically taxing thing. Even weightlifters say if you squat three times a week at that kind of ability you become psychologically drained from how difficult it is, but it also carries forward into other parts of your life if you’re able to do it.

Let’s say we don’t only want to create change in our personal lives, but we actually want to be  change agents in the world. We want to make big change, or affect change. Do these small things you’re talking about doing, these exercises you’re giving us, help us learn to make change in the world?

Some of the criticism of this book comes from people who are like, ‘What the hell. This is so trivial.’ You know, Victor Frankel wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in the Holocaust; he was in a concentration camp, and he was one of the few survivors. He wrote something which is a famous phrase: ‘Between stimulus and response, there is a moment, and in that moment lies our freedom.’  Basically, you have a stimulus, and you have an ability to react instinctively or an ability to think out a reaction to that stimulus, whatever that stimulus is. He claims the reason he survived the concentration camp is because he was able to stay psychologically strong. He could watch people and see that once they had psychologically given way, their bodies would begin to wither away after that.

 

To me, the biggest strength is an internal strength. No person can give you a job that will give you this strength. No individual can ever take it away from you once you have it either. To me it’s an internal strength that you build. It is built with a conscious sort of construction that comes from the mind and from the psyche, and then, thereafter, builds out into the world. And you’ll see that when you do this, when you become a more conscious person as a result of these supposedly trivial acts, that people will see you differently, and doors will open as a result of it.

What does it take to really accomplish something and to create something that affects change in the world?

I’ve already written a few books. To write is actually is not a big deal at all. You just have to sit there and do it. A girlfriend of mine used to say, ‘People respect travelers so much; but really all you have to do to be a traveler is to get on a plane. It’s an easy thing to do.’ In the same way, being a writer is a very easy thing to do. It’s the ability to sit down every single day and do it over and over and over again and to have the humility to destroy things that you once thought were good that you now think are bad because your standards are higher. This is really what makes someone excellent. That’s a great internal change which is really effective in the world.

Julien spoke to me about writing books, making them bestsellers, and being a change agent via your writing. You can read this part of the interview here. He also spoke about blogging and affecting change with a blog. You can read this part of the interview here.

I highly suggest you read The Flinch;  you can download it for free for your Kindle (a free version of this program is free for your laptop). I’ve told all my family members to read it. I have a personal interest in the subject of moving through fear to achieve your goals. I wrote a short book, which will one day become a full length one on the topic: Navigating the Narrow Bridge.

Do you “flinch” often, avoiding fear and not moving toward your goals? Have you found ways to change your habits or thoughts about fear? Tell me about this with a comment.

If you are interested in writing and blogging, read the other parts to my interview here and here.

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2012. The world was supposed to end, some said. (We knew better.) But things were supposed to change–the energy was supposed to change, at least.  A whole week has gone by. We are being flooded now with the light of the first full moon of this pivotal year, which is supposed to affect our consciousness on every level. Something is supposed to be changing. Or it should be getting easier to create change, right?

I wrote my vision and my goals. I created a vision map or board. I set out with good intentions. Nothing. Same ol’, same ol’.

I could blame it on the fact that my daughter is here visiting. That clients called. I had things that got in the way..projects, the need to learn to podcast, interviews to conduct, old work to get handled and out of the way, bills to pay, shopping to do, emails to answer, social media to attend to, etc., etc., etc.

It felt l like 2012 came in with a rush, driving me forward at breakneck speed. That’s how 2011 went out. Why would the new year be any different? I don’t seem to have brakes on this car I’m in. I’m not sure I’m driving. I’m trying to get control.

Here’s the fact: In the first eight days of 2012, I  didn’t keep to the schedule I set as part of my plan. I didn’t do even one of the things I said I would do. Well…I take that back. I did do one thing. I took a bit of time off to spend with my daughter. I relaxed with family. That is on my vision map and in my goals–to find balance in my life between work and personal.

Yay! I made one change. I made it consciously.

Changing habits can prove difficult. Yet, to achieve some new degree of success we must change our old habits. They’ve only gotten us the degree of success we enjoy right now.

Anything can get in the way and become an excuse. For me, getting up early to complete my client work first is a new goal, a new habit, I’d like to form. It’s easy to say I went to bed too late and simply not get up early. It’s easy to answer the phone when it rings during that time period, or to schedule an activity anyway (like walking with a friend, since that’s a goal, too), and to say that’s why I couldn’t meet my goal, make the change, create a new habit.

I find myself saying all too often I just don’t have the time to change, the energy to change. I’ll do it tomorrow or next week.

Well, a week has gone by of this new year…this year that everyone said would be one of such awesome change…when we could affect change in ways heretofore not possible. I, for one, have not found this year much different. It still remains up to me to make the change. (I hear the refrain of some song…I can’t quite put my finger on it…)

Ah, well…the Kabbalists must right. We are simply in transition. We have a long way to go before the predicted time of peace on Earth or the World to Come. (They say not until the year 6,000 on the Hebrew calendar.) Actually, many other people also say we are simply in a time of transition. And it’s likely our consciousness is changing. We can affect change and do so faster, more effectively if we do it in a conscious and focused manner. We don’t need a new year, a new era, a new anything for that.

The trick is to put that lesson–an old one really (and no “secret” either) to use now to create the desired change. For me, I’m starting small–in my life, with my habits. This helps me achieve what I need to achieve and then has a ripple affect, allowing me to affect others through my work.

I’ll go back and focus again on my vision, my goals, my vision board. I’ll work every day to keep on track, making those little changes that end up in new habits formed. By year’s end, I may have achieved a new level of success based upon those new habits.

What about you? How’s it going after the first week of the New Year? Does the energy of 2012 seem to be supporting you? Is change happening in your life or around you?

Many of us get stuck in the past. By that I mean we end up living our life looking backward at things that happened in our lives and regretting them. Some call this “looking in the rear view mirror.” I call it living life looking backward.

Here’s the thing: No matter what bad thing happened in the past, no matter what we did or what someone else did or what events happened, they are over. We can hang onto the memory of the hurt, anxiety, pain, suffering, sorrow, or whatever other negative emotion we felt at the time, and we can continue to blame others or ourselves, but this does not help us in the moment. In fact, all it does is hurt us more. It holds us in the same old emotions and prevents us from moving forward, from living our lives looking toward the future. It keeps us stuck.

They say hindsight is 20-20, and that really is true. What we really are supposed to see when we look backward at our lives are the lessons we were supposed to learn and the paths we had to take to get to where we are now. For most of us, if we hadn’t learned those lessons and had those experiences we wouldn’t be who we are or where we are in this moment.

Maybe we don’t think those experiences have shaped us for the good, but they can if we learn and grow from them. That’s the point.

In Judaism, just as in most Abrahamic faiths, we study the Torah, or bible, over and over again. Why? To try to learn from our ancestor’s mistakes and experiences. In that way we won’t repeat them. Rabbis and ministers get up ever week and offer sermons about portions from the Old Testament trying to help us learn how to be better people, have fulfilling relationships, live our lives more fully, connect with God, and t be happier and more peaceful–all by looking at the lives and experiences of those who went before us.

It’s important to look backward, but not to beat ourselves up for what we have done. Rather we want to learn from our mistakes and study the paths and detours we have taken. Then we want to  live our lives looking forward toward the future allowing those lessons to guide us on our way. Looking in that direction our vision may not be 20-20 but we will, indeed, see more clearly for having looked backward to glean understanding.

I woke today at 5 a.m. in California worrying. “I should get up and check the news,” I thought. “I should be sure everything is okay in New York.”

Both my children are in New York. But I don’t like to focus on the negative.I try not to worry (although I’m a worrier and was born to a worrier. I learned well.)

“If something had happened, someone would have called,” I rationalized and went back to sleep.

I awoke four hours later to find nothing on the news but the memorial at Ground Zero. I cried through the remainder of it, glad I had not watched all of it. It was way too sad.

I went upstairs to my computer and left notes to both my children to be safe. They both replied. I silently gave thanks that my children were safe in their dorms.

I then texted a high school friend who used to work in the Twin Towers. Ten years ago he chose to go have breakfast with his son and go to work late. That choice saved his life. I told him how grateful I was that he was still in my life.

I posted a Facebook status. It ended this way:  “Today…gratitude…just gratitude…for kids who are safe if far away…for the beautiful place I live, for my family, for life.”

My husband and I took a bike ride along the ocean this afternoon. Nothing as large as 9-11 has happened in our lives, but things have changed. Life always brings us change, and just as the 9-11 memorial fountain represents life flowing and moving forward, we peddled forward. We looked at the waves, a constant. We looked at the coastline, so beautiful.

Despite the horrific events that happen in the world and in our lives, some things never change–and that we can depend upon, we can have faith in. There will always be beauty in the world. We will always have memories, and those memories, as we say in the Jewish tradition, of our loved ones who have passed, will always be for–and a–blessing. Those memories crash upon us like the ocean waves, shocking, cleansing, refreshing. Like the vast ocean, they remind us we are part of something greater, larger…and that’s a blessing, something for which we can feel grateful.

Gratitude. Today, that’s what I felt. For the first responders. For those who helped in anyway on 9-11. For those who called their loved ones before dying. For those who prevented the plane from making it to D.C. For  those willing to stand up and recite the names of those who died. For all the souls who passed on that day, and for the souls that helped them do so.

Gratitude.

People come into our lives in all sorts of ways. Some are born into our lives. We are born into the lives of others, thus they become part of our lives. And some walk into our lives due to the places we go and and the experiences we have. In all cases, we have to learn not only to hold on to those people we love tightly but to loosen our grip and to let go…to let them go, if necessary.

I learned this lesson just this week as I let my son go off to New York City. It was not his time to leave home in the traditional sense. He was entering his senior year of high school. He should have been home with me for another year. Yet, it was his time to go…He received a wonderful opportunity to pursue his dance education that he could not pass up, not would I want him to pass it up.

And so, even though it was hard, I just had to let go. I had to let him go.

Was it easy? No. In fact, I spent the last two days at home alone crying on and off. I will miss him…and his senior year. But I’ll survive and he will likely thrive. Maybe I’ll thrive, too.

Often we have relationships that aren’t good for us, yet we cling to them. Or we have relationships that aren’t growing and we know we should allow the other person (or ourselves) to grow. We just have to let go.

When our children go off to college, we have to just let go. That’s hard, too. I’ve done it. (I cried then also.)

Sometimes are jobs don’t fit or make us unhappy. Or we don’t like where we live. Just let go!

Move on. Move forward. Or just let go and see what happens. See how the energy changes, the situation changes on its own when you stop clinging to it, stop hanging on to it and trying to make it work, trying to keep it the same, trying to stop someone from leaving.

How do you do this? With a great deal of faith. Have faith that if you let go it will all work out.

I have to have faith that my son will be all right in New York without me, and that I will adjust to not having him home–that I will find ways to share in his last year of high school despite the fact that we live on different coasts.

Rebbe Nachman says, “Faith depends on a person’s mouth. We must say we believe  — say it aloud! As it is written in Psalm (89:1) ‘I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth.’ When a person has a crisis of faith, or even passing doubts, it is very good if he says out loud: ‘I believe.” Just expressing your faith in words is itself one kind of faith. thorugh doing this you can come to genuine faith.”

This is not much different than the belief that our thoughts and words have a creative energy. What we think and say, we create. So, say, “If I let go, all will be well. I have faith that all will work out for the highest good of those concerned.”

Where in your life do you need to just let go? Try doing so now. Let me know how it goes.

Sometimes life just hands you situations and you simply do what’s necessary. Or at least you begin taking steps to do what you think might be necessary. Then you watch, wait, listen to see if the pieces fall into place.

A friend reminded me of Angeles Arrien’s teaching: Show up. Pay attention. Speak your truth. Stay unattached to the outcome.

I’m trying to do that right now. My son was asked to study ballet in New York this school year. I’m not sure that’s the right thing for him to do. We’ve asked some experts for their opinion. We are waiting for their feedback. In the meantime, we’ve started taking steps to try and make it happen for him. We’ve spoken our truth about if we think it should happen and how we think it should happen (if it should). Now we are paying attention…staying unattached (as much as possible), paying attention. And I’m showing up as the person to apartment hunt and chaperone–if that is meant to be.

That’s what may be necessary.

Did I think I’d be living in New York City next year? No. Have I done it the last three summers? Yes. Was it necessary then? Yes.

Could this be an opportunity of some sort ? Yes. For all of us.

I’ll show up. I’ll pay attention. I’ll speak my truth. I’ll stay unattached to the outcome.

I’ll do what’s necessary. Not always easy.

During her last show, Oprah Winfrey’s said, “Each one of you has a platform, your circle of influence.” I wondered how many people heard that and took it to heart.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you can create change in the world. You can teach your children, influence your neighbors, reach readers through a blog or book, speak at your church or to organizations, produce a newsletter you email to your friends, affect the life of the person whom you sit next to on a train or bus. We all have a way to extend our reach and become change agents.

You don’t have to be Oprah reaching millions of viewers on a television talk show each day to have a circle of influence. What’s your circle of influence, and do you use it?

Maybe you’re wondering why you should want to use your circle of influence. After all, not everyone wants to be a change agent.

Here’s the thing. The world needs change agents right now. Although change is a constant, we are on the cusp of major change. Many people are talking about the year 2012 and the Mayan calendar and how consciousness will make a major change at that time. In fact, consciousness is simply changing all the time. It’s just speeding up a bit as time goes on and moving towards a culmination. The Kabbalists, or Jewish mystics, don’t see that time coming yet. All wisdom teachings and teachers agree that it’s time for humanity to raise it’s consciousness–to make a leap. And to do that we must all become change agents and help each and the plant through this transformational period.

How can you do that? Figure out what you know, what you love, what you feel passionate about. Figure out what you feel is your mission or purpose. Do you feel on some deep level that God has a plan for you? That you are “supposed” to be doing something? Maybe it’s simply to teach people how to compost, to save horses from being slaughtered, to assist people in learning to meditate, or  bring God into the workplace. Whatever you feel passionate about is likely welded to your purpose. And this may be your path to becoming a change agent.

Follow it. And then use your circle of influence, no matter how small, to create change in the world.

Did you know that anger just covers your hurt? That’s right. So, when you feel angry, you really feel hurt, which means you usually need to forgive someone for something.

Once you forgive, your anger will dissipate…and you’ll change–not only from feeling angry to feeling more peaceful but into someone a bit different. Your heart will open a bit more. You’ll become a bit more conscious. You’ll deal with things and people in a new way.

Want to read about three ways to change anger into forgiveness? If so, read this article I wrote today.

My husband and I were discussing how we react to things that happen in our lives. We have very different approaches to what could be seen as “irritations” that occur. I tend to take what I call a more “spiritual” approach; he tend to take what I call a more “reactive” approach.

I’m not saying I don’t even get upset or angry over things that happen, but I try to switch gears quickly, problem solve and stay pretty positive and grateful. My husband, on the other hand, tends to just get angry and upset and to feel like a victim to circumstance. It becomes hard for him to see anything positive–any upside or opportunity.

So, for example, when our state tax refund showed up just in time to pay for the property taxes and my son’s summer dance program (both of which we were going to have to pay for out of our savings account), he saw that as something about which to be upset rather than happy. The money that we had just received went out the door as fast as it came in.

And when my old car died just as we were about to get our federal tax return, which we hoped to save, again this was something about which to feel angry.

I wasn’t pleased about spending the money we could have saved, but in both cases I simply accepted the fact that we had expenses–and we had been provided with the means to meet them. I felt grateful that we didn’t have to go into debt or deplete our savings. I also didn’t spend a lot of time getting upset or angry about the situation–or shaking my fist at God.

Rather I felt as if God were acting as my partner. As always, I believed in some way shape or form God’s hand was in all of this. I knew I just needed to trust that everything was okay and would be okay. I knew I just needed to feel connected.

Interestingly enough, this morning after more discussions with my husband about new cars and money, I got an email from one of my favorite rabbi–a man and teacher who has helped me with my own writing projects and who put me on the Jewish mystical (and Jewish spiritual) path. I took the time to visit Rabbi David Cooper’s website and found a post there that spoke to this point (and inspired my post today). In reading Rabbi Cooper’s words I was reminded how hard we must work every day to stay conscious and connected to Source, to not react to what we are presented with in our lives each day but instead to respond. That’s why we must stay on the spiritual path no matter how hard that feels, engaging in some sort of spiritual practice. And, and I’ve said before, it does take practice to stay conscious and connected. It doesn’t happen without effort and daily–almost hourly or minute-to-minute–sessions.

Rabbi Cooper writes:

The purpose of spiritual practice is to gently and consistently move us from our place, where we normally “hang out” in our day-to-day behavior, to a mind state of greater refinement. In this context, refinement is connected with our conditioning, our normal reflexes and responses to situations that arise every day. Through practice, we begin to reflect and react in different ways. This change in our behavior actually causes many significant results.

Spiritual practice, is this context, has a series of tiny ekstasis that arise when we behave out of place of our normal reactions. We must keep in mind that “normal” for most of us is quite different from “natural.” Normal is how we are conditioned to respond. Conditioning develops from the time we are conceived; some say that our propensities to be conditioned go back into our genetic dna. But the spiritual principal at the base of many traditions is that our natural inclinations arise when we fully recognize the basic nature of our own minds and thereby gain greater ability to resist conditioned reactions.

Through our spiritual practice we learn to respond rather than react, to stay connected and conscious. Another of my teachers, author Stuart Wilde, says this is like spiritual weight lifting. We become stronger, more able to change how we react to the irritations in our life–the situations that arise–by constantly practicing remaining conscious and connected no matter what arises–in spite of what arises–in our lives. Life becomes our training ground, our gym, our practice field.

Little by little, day by day, hour by hour we change simply by living. As Rabbi Cooper writes:

Skilled practice results from an ongoing engagement in the mystery of what everyday life presents. As we never know what life will bring, we need always to be prepared to meet this unknowable reality with our highest potential. Thus, to the best of our ability, we continuously are challenged to bring our awareness to the many opportunities that present themselves as a series of invitations for manifesting enlightened actions. Each and every time we succeed, we change the world.

I’ve still got a long way to go–a lot of practice before I become truly “awakened” or “enlightened.” I still react more than I’d like; I still get irritated by the irritations. I notice this when I angrily respond to the fact that my son forgot an essential item that prevented him from taking dance class–after I drove an hour and a half to take him there, the shelf in my living room has not been replaced by my husband after five months or the insurance agent takes two hours to ask me questions I already answered once before. So, you’ll find me in my spiritual gym on most days lifting weights in an effort to become more awakened.

As Rabbi Cooper explains:

The highest teachings are explicit in describing the idea that our most enlightened opportunities occur in the ordinary daily life we now experience. The difference is that one who is awakened recognizes the essential nature of what is happening while one who is not awakened is easily overwhelmed by an ongoing flow of “self” induced dramas.

To rid ourselves of this sense of drama, Rabbi Cooper says we must rid ourselves of the belief that we are separate. When we do so, we also lose many of the harmful actions, false beliefs, negative reactions, confusion, irritation, and suffering that go with it.

Instead of believing we are separate–something most of us have believed for a long, long time–we must remember we are connected and always have been. Connection is our normal state of being. We only think we are separate from the Source; the thought doesn’t happen to represent truth.  It’s a meme, a thought given to you by someone else that you adopted. You can choose to adopt the thought that you are connected instead, but knowing and feeling this connection comes with spiritual practice.

Some people end up feeling too irritated, too angry, and they fall off the spiritual path before they can change their reactions or thoughts. They leave the spiritual gym seeing no results from their efforts. They feel alone in their work there and without a personal trainer. They don’t feel connected, so they go off alone blaming the gym and it’s Proprietor for their failure. They don’t realize that if they don’t stay in spiritual shape, bit by bit, parts of their life start feeling harder and harder. Without connection and consciousness, everything begins to feel like an irritation and a struggle.You get stuck reacting to irritations in your life in the same old way you always have.

Is that what you want? I don’t. So I look for “enlightened opportunities” as they occur in my ordinary daily life to respond in conscious and connected manner. I lift spiritual weights daily. Sometimes I’m not strong enough to do all the sets, but I keep lifting.

How do you react to the irritations in your life?

Each year during the Passover holiday Jews tell the story of how the Pharaoh in Egypt enslaved the Israelites. Sometimes we talk about what modern day pharaohs exist in the world. I, however, think most of  us live with personal pharaohs every day–those in our minds.

I know I struggle with the chains put on me by the pharaoh who rules my thoughts. Well, he does not rule all my thoughts, but he does rule my negative thoughts, the ones that hold me back and don’t allow me to achieve my goals or create the things I desire. In this way he keeps me shackled, stuck in one spot.

I was listening to Wayne Dyer the other day and he spoke about how we often have the desire–the thought–that we want to be rich but the opposing thought that we will always be poor (or don’t have the ability to become rich). He said this state of mind equates to insanity. I say it equates to slavery. The part that wants to become rich is shackled by the part that believes it can’t achieve this goal.

Each negative thought that exists in opposition to your positive thought serves as just one more chain that keeps you enslaved to those negative belief patterns. And so you stay stuck right where you are or have been–achieving the same results as before.

How do you free yourself from this bondage? How do you achieve liberation from the pharaoh in your mind?

You become conscious of your unconscious negative thoughts.

Here are a few things to try (and believe me I’m trying them, too)  to help you become conscious of your unconscious thoughts:

1. Catch yourself thinking and saying things that negate what you truly desire.
2. Write down your positive thought in one column of a piece of paper and then write down the first negative thought that comes up in your mind in a second column. Do this until you run out of negative thoughts in your “response” column.
3. Ask a friend or loved one to tell you when they hear you saying something that negates your desires.
4. Spend time journaling about why you think you don’t achieve your desires.
5. Explore any issues of deservability or self-worth with a counselor or coach.
6. Make affirmations of action; rather than saying or writing positive things, actually do things that convince your mind that you are what you say you are.
7. When you say something that negates your positive thought qualify it with the words “until recently” or something like this that nullifies the negativity of the statement.
8. Try talking to your subconscious mind as if is not “sub”-conscious; treat it as if you want it to “come out of the closet” and be known. Talk to it and ask it to talk back to you. Allow those thoughts to come up in meditation or in your journal.
9. In a journal, ask the part of you that feels negative (about becoming wealthy, getting a new job or finding a perfect mate–or whatever) to tell you why it feels that way. Then try to stay aware of this part of yourself when it’s “energy” arises and turns negative at any given point during the day. In Voice dialogue, a therapeutic process developed by Hal Stone and Sidra Winkleman, this is called developing an “aware ego.” The part of you that functions as”you” most of the time becomes aware of the other parts of you that impact how you behave or react–or think.  We all have many parts of our “selves”–an Inner Child, an Inner Parent, an Inner Critic, etc.–and they can become our pharoahs controlling how we behave. Becoming aware of them allows us to free ourselves of their influence over our thoughts (and our behavior).

I suggest you try freeing yourself from the tyranny of your negative thoughts. It doesn’t have to be Passover for you to do this–and you definitely don’t have to be Jewish. We all become enslaved by our negative thoughts to some degree. I hope some of these tips help you find freedom in some way.