We’ve become a “distraction-seeking” people. We have grown uncomfortable with “nothingness” and silence. We seek stimulation, but unfortunately the stimulation we seek in the form of entertainment is filled with disagreements, drama, judgment, name calling, discord, and more.

How can we ever determine what WE believe to be best for us when we are only listening to the opinions of others, and not our own?

If we don’t take time to relish silence, we’ll never hear that voice within us that is the true revealer of our most pure self. In silence we find the wisdom and guidance (and answers) that we need most to live our lives to their fullest.

For the better part of a month now, I’ve given up radio.  It used to be part of my daily routine.  I used to listen to it as I got ready in the morning, and while I drove to work as well.  And then, it dawned on me — the radio was a distraction from things that really mattered to me.  It was noise which was drowning out what I really wanted to hear, so I gave it up.

To be more specific, I used to listen to a lot of sports radio.  I did it because I loved to listen to sports news.  I’d love to keep informed on what was happening with my favorite sports teams (namely the Green Bay Packers), but then I realized something: sports radio (and radio in general) was a lot about things that just didn’t matter that much.

Do I really need to know about a pending contract of a player?  Do I really need to know how much money someone is making or about this change or that?  Do I really need to hear about what a player has to say about a game, which serves most of us as mere entertainment?  Do I need to hear commercial after commercial?

The truth is that listening to radio — any type of radio for that matter — doesn’t help me grow as a person.  It doesn’t help me become more of who I want to be.  It doesn’t help me search inward to find out what discoveries I can make to improve the things I don’t like about myself.  All it does is help me focus on other people and their affairs — things that absolutely make no difference to me or my life at all.  I can truthfully live without knowing over 99 percent of what I’d hear on the radio or other news outlets.

Does that leave me out of the loop on certain breaking news?  Absolutely.  Am I clueless when it comes to the latest controversy or riot or gossip?  Yes, most of the time.  But, you know what?  If I really want to know what’s going on after someone brings it up, I have no problem finding all the information I need by looking online.  Not counting sports radio, I’ve really not watched or listened to the news for years — literally.  Did I know the ins and outs of what was going on in Ferguson?  No, not really.  Did I need to know everything that was going on?  Obviously not.  Still here, still living, still doing okay in the world.  I still know the latest news when it’s big enough because I see or hear other people talking about it — either in person or on social media.  I get what I need.  And, we don’t need much, in my opinion.

You see, I’m trying to be more in tune with myself, and I’m trying to listen to me — the real me — the deep me that has the answers I need.  I don’t need more noise on top of everything else.   I don’t need distractions.  What I need is silence.  What I need is the opportunity to have the space to reflect.  I need the silence to talk to the “me” that I want to talk to.  Silence provides me with the opportunity to ask questions, find the answers, and search deeper and deeper within myself.  That’s what I need.

And that’s why the radio stays off, and that’s why I have felt more grounded and more connected ever since.

Are you thinking of doing the same?  Here are some things I have done to take the place of the “noise.”

I’ve been using Spotify.  I found a radio station which is simply called “meditation.”  It’s great.  YouTube also has some great relaxing music.  Do a search for “meditation music,” or “relaxing music” or even “relaxing soundscapes.”  As a matter of fact, one of my favorites is  soundscape which is ten hours of the sound of running water.  I love it.  If you’re a fan of Pandora or i-Heart Radio, you can essentially do the same thing with those apps.

I use my smartphone and plug it into a FM transmitter in my car.  My car then becomes a “meditation machine,” and I can ride to work listening to music that allows me to reflect.  Sometimes I’ll grab a lecture or lesson from a teacher on YouTube and convert it to an MP3 and load it onto my phone to listen to as I drive too.  There are lots of options.  Regardless of what you choose, simply making the choice to do something for yourself, rather than immersing yourself in the affairs of others, has the potential to connect you with much more satisfying experiences.  I encourage you to give it a try if it sounds like something you’d enjoy.

Have you grown tired of entertainment?  Has it just become “noise” to you too?  Are you looking for deeper inquiry and deeper self reflection?  Let me know.  I’d love to hear about it.  Leave a comment below.

P.S. – And, for the record, I have not given up doing my radio show, which is intended to help people.  I’ve given up listening to radio that doesn’t help me (or others).  I just realized the title of the blog may be misleading… 🙂

Image source: http://www.freeimages.com/profile/phre3a

Before you do anything else, open up a new window or tab on your web browser and go do a Google search for the following: “How can I be happy?”

When I did it, I got about 615 million results.  I know how Google searches work, and not all 615 million hits will be entirely relevant, but it’s pretty clear looking at the first few results that there are a lot of people who have advice on how to be happy.  There are a lot of people who are looking to be happy too!

So I am openly wondering: If there are so many people seeking happiness, are those resources and references really helping?  Or, are people trying some of these, discovering that some work or don’t work, and then slipping back into “unhappiness” once again?  I mean, if there was a way to find happiness, wouldn’t we have figured it out by now, and wouldn’t we have shared it many times over and passed this from generation to generation so that we can all find happiness and keep the happiness going?

Or is it possible that happiness is not the tippy top?  Is it possible that there is yet a higher “thing” we need to pursue?  Is it possible that we may find happiness, but is it not also possible that happiness only gets us to the middle point of the mountain?

As I’ve been reflecting and meditating on this idea, I’ve come to the conclusion that there just has to be more.  There has to be a higher level of experience that we can all experience than happiness.  And, if we can work to pursue and eventually arrive at that higher level we may find what it is that we’re really looking for that we’ve thought was happiness all this time.

Is it through pursuit of something larger than one’s self?  Is it passion?  Is it developing a life full of meaning?  All are suggested avenues of achieving greater ideals than happiness itself if you take a gander out there and search for something “better” than pursuing happiness.

Maybe happiness is a form of “avoidism.”  Perhaps the pursuit of happiness and pleasure an indication of one’s attachment to them.  Is pursuing “non-attachment” to pleasure what it takes?  The Buddhist tradition suggests that suffering results from “attachments.”  I’ve been actively integrating these principles into my daily living.  I know that I feel better about life in general, but is that the “tippy top?”

I guess all I can say is that I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever the mountain is that we are all trying to reach the top of is an enormous mountain.  It’s huge.  There are a bunch of people struggling to just started on it, and there are people who are climbing higher, but the higher one climbs the fewer the other people at that elevation.  I’ve also come to the conclusion that while one like myself may have a lot of ideas and answers, it’s not about giving others the ideas and answers that I’ve found for myself.  It’s more about helping other people learn how to ask themselves their own questions to prompt their own personal discovery that lies within them.

Is happiness all there is?  I don’t think so.  And, I don’t think that we are wise to live a life in the pursuit of happiness, assuming that it’s the tippy top of the mountain, and that once we get there everything will be better.

I hope you didn’t come to this article, hoping that I would provide you with what it is that is “better” or “higher” than happiness, because I don’t have that for you today.  I don’t have a list of things that you can do or try to find more happiness or fulfillment.  If you’re looking for that, pick one of the 315 million hits that I helped you find earlier.

I wrote this with the hope that my questions will prompt your own inner questioning and discovery about yourself and what is important to you.  Is happiness where you wish to stop on the mountain, or do you believe that there is “more” to life than the pursuit of happiness?

I’d love to read what you’re thinking or what you’re reflecting upon as a result of reading this.  Please share in the comments below, and I promise to respond.

Photo copyright Steven Bratman. Images shared via creative commons license. Click here for link to image.

If you struggle to keep your emotions in check, or if you believe that you have a hard time staying “in the moment,” you’ll want to watch this video. I’ll share with you a simple strategy that you can do to instantly convert your raw, unharnessed emotions into productive, warm, and healthy emotions. You won’t want to miss this valuable lesson!  Check it out now!

I’ve been enjoying my time over the past couple of weeks, making stops at some libraries local to me, to promote, share, and talk about my book, Rise Above Criticism, Negativity and Conflict.  It’s been a lot of fun diving back into that book, and pulling out some of the main concepts and sharing them with those who are in attendance.

During my talks, I talk about four “perspectives” that we can adopt when either dealing with our own feelings, or in dealing with the feelings of others.  To illustrate this I share a story about how I ended up needing a tow truck to drag me out of a soft shoulder at the side of the road in the early spring when I pulled over to the side to take a phone call.  I thought I was being safe and prudent, and ended up paying a pretty penny for a phone call!

After being caught in what some would be ready to call a “silly” situation, it would be natural for me to tell myself how “stupid” I was for doing such a foolish thing.  I could keep beating myself down about how I seem to “always” find myself doing “dumb” things like that.  It would be safe to say that many of us have found ourselves believing these thoughts to be true, or at least entertaining the possibility of such.

But, why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do we find ourselves adopting one of the four “perspectives,” which is “It’s my fault.  I’m to blame?”  Why are we so quick to speak critically to ourselves about ourselves?

The reason why we have these conversations with ourselves is because society has conditioned us to accept punishment as a natural and acceptable way of life.  As soon as we started living in bigger “tribes” and civilizations, it became necessary for a select few people who were “in charge” to control a large group of people.  An effective way to do this was to establish rules, and if those rules were broken, that person was found guilty and then punished to serve as an example to others.

We’ve learned, as a society, to sensationalize punishment.  We’ve learned to accept the concept of good versus evil, and right versus wrong.  When someone is “bad” or “evil,” they deserve to be punished.  In the movies the “bad guy” gets either killed or has justice served as the climax of the movie.  We actually feel good about someone getting punished.  It even occurs in children’s shows and movies!

So here we are, telling ourselves how “bad” we are.  “I deserve to be punished,” we say to ourselves, as we let our guilt and shame get the best of us.  Then we start the cascade of self thoughts about how we aren’t worthy as our form of self-induced punishment.

This is utter nonsense, really.  Why do we have to do this?  Why can’t we just get past the whole “guilt-shame-punishment” game?

We can get past it, but we need to have an important conversation in order for that to happen.  We have to have a conversation with ourselves that goes a little something like this:

“I love you for who you are, as you are right now.  You are good enough as you are right now.  You are worthy as you are right now.  You are doing your absolute best with what you’ve got, as you are right now.”

In other words, go easy on yourself.  Cut yourself some slack.

Put it this way — would you talk to your friend the way you talk to yourself, telling your friend how “stupid” they are?  Or, would you tell them that you love them, they are good enough, they are worthy, and they are doing their best as they are right now?

I thought so.

So, in the future, before you start going down that road of guilt and shame and self-punishment, just try this:

Go over what happened.  Then, determine how you felt about what happened.  Think about how you’d rather feel.  Ask yourself what you need to do in order to feel the way you’d rather feel.  Do what you need to do to feel the way you want to the next time.

So, for me, I’ll just make sure that if I’m pulling over to make a phone call I find solid ground before I stop.  Then, I’ll feel better knowing that I don’t have to call a tow truck to come pull me out.

It’s so simple, isn’t it?  That’s why we just need to do it.  We just need to go easy on ourselves for a chance.  Give it a shot.

Did you find this helpful?  I’d love to hear your thoughts?  Please let me know in the comments below, and I promise to respond.

Photo copyright Ron Mader. Images shared via creative commons license. Click here for link to image.

“I can retract what I did not say, but I cannot retract what I already have said.” ~Solomon Ibn Gabirol

I just finished reading a delightful book titled Words That Hurt, Words That Heal: How To Choose Words Wisely And Well by Joseph Telushkin.  It was a relatively quick read, full of wonderful stories that really helped drive home the points being brought across.  It also included many great takeaways and things to ponder that I hadn’t really thought about or considered before reading the book.

One of the many major points of wisdom that I walked away with as a major takeaway came very early on in the book.  It was found in the chapter titled, “The Irrevocable Damage Inflicted by Gossip.”  In that chapter Telushkin talks about “three types of speech that people should decrease or eliminate.”  They are as follows:

1. Information and comments about others that are nondefamatory and true

2. Negative, though true, stories — information that lowers the esteem in which people about whom it is told

3. Lies and rumors — statements that are negative and false

Were you as surprised as I was with number one above?  Information and comments about others that are nondefamatory and true should be decreased?  Eliminated?

As a matter of fact, Telushkin even offers the question right up: “What possible reason could there be for discouraging people from exchanging such innocuous, even complimentary, information?”

That’s a great question, and I was curious to find out the rationale for adopting such a stance.  It turns out that there are about three reasons for doing so.  The first reason for shying away from nondefamatory and true statements is because, as Telushkin offers, “…the listener might not find the information so innocuous.  While one person is describing how wonderful the party was, the other might well wonder, ‘Why wasn’t I invited?  I had them over to my house just a month ago.'”

The second reason for staying away from this practice is because “gossip rarely remains so.”  Most of the human population is more likely to focus on “critical evaluations” rather than “exchanging accolades.”  The truth is that most people, left to their own devices, will focus on the one thing they don’t like about a person when there are many other characteristics and qualities about that same person that are admirable and honorable.

Finally, the third reason we would be best served to decrease or eliminate nondefamatory and true statements about others is found in the Book of Proverbs: “He who blesses his neighbor in a loud voice in the morning, it will later be thought a curse” (27:14).  Telushkin explains in more understandable and relatable terms: “if a person comes to public notice even as a result of a neighbor’s ‘blessing’ (a positive association), the intense scrutiny engendered by his newfound fame ultimately will probably damage his good name — or worse.”

Telushkin makes a compelling argument as to why it may be in our best interest to stay away from these true, but nondefamatory statements.  I can certainly relate to all three of the points he had mentioned, both on the giving and receiving end!  I must admit, however, that it does seem counterintuitive and seemingly more harmful to refrain from doing so.  Then, I am left to wonder: is it simply social conditioning?  Are we “programmed,” so to speak, to offer compliments and positive statements about others as a social nicety? But then again, even as we do this, and speak kindly of others, are we actually harming those of which we speak?  At the very least, it gave me pause for thought.

What are your thoughts?  Do you believe it is better to compliment and speak kindly of others, or have you experienced, either on the giving or receiving end, that to do so causes more harm than good?  I’d love to hear what you have to say.  Please leave a comment below and I promise to respond.

Photo copyright Ethan Lofton. Images shared via creative commons license. Click here for link to image.

Eldon Taylor is an award winning, New York Times best selling author of over 300 books, and audio and video programs. He is the inventor of the patented InnerTalk technology and the founder and President of Progressive Awareness Research. He has been called a “master of the mind” and has appeared as an expert witness on both hypnosis and subliminal communication.

I’m excited to share that Eldon is celebrating the launch of the paperback version of his book Choices and Illusions: How Did I Get Where I Am, and How Do I Get Where I Want to Be?

I was happy to be included as part of this launch celebration, and I’m happy to share an interview with Eldon that will give you insight into what he’s about, where he’s been, and what wonderful things he has done for so many people through his work.  I hope you enjoy it!

You came from a fascinating background.  How did you get inspired to write your books?

ET: As a practicing criminalist, nearly every day I saw someone, who had a world of potential, blow it over some silly stupid notion.  Perhaps they stole from their employer and rationalized it away since in their minds the employer was a bum who treated and paid them unfairly.  The fact is, every perpetrator of a criminal act can tell you why they did it, and when you stand back, their answers are justifications more than reasons.

It became clear to me that many people were making choices that were simply self-sabotaging.  Not just those who committed crimes, but the average person on the street.  At a certain point in my career, I became acutely aware of just how persistent this characteristic was with so many folks and the question became, “Why?”  Answering that question changed my life, as well as my vocation, and led to the research and books that I publish today.

What are the basic principles in your life and how did your life lead you to these principles?

ET:  I try to live my life from what I think of as the four-corner philosophy.  These corners consist of forgiveness, self-responsibility, gratitude, and service.  Let me unpack that some.

Back in the early ‘80’s we conducted a double blind study at the Utah State Prison.  The technology used was a cognitive engineering tool that used a shadowing method to deliver what most think of as a subliminal message.  The technology is known as InnerTalk today. The goal of the study was aimed at lowering hostility and aggression, and perhaps interrupting the recidivist rate.  We used some elaborate psychometrics to determine our intervention affirmations, but in the end, it was the dialogue with our inmate volunteers that led the way.

The inmates generally displaced responsibility for their actions via blame.  There were all sorts of people and events to blame, but the bottom line argument came down to something like, “All but for the grace of God, you’d be here.”

As such, we created a set of affirmations to prime the inmates self-talk and thereby change the way they talked to themselves, consequently changing their expectation.  The affirmations included three forgiveness messages, something I have referred to as the forgiveness set ever since.  Those affirmations are: I forgive myself.  I forgive all others.  I am forgiven.  We also included messages regarding self-responsibility and general well-being.  The results of the study were very positive and that led to the prison system installing voluntary libraries throughout, from the Youth Offenders facility to Maximum Security.

I took a cue from this study, for I saw that I too blamed many people in my life for many things.  My life changed as a result of practicing what I preached.  Indeed, for a few years I lectured about the power of forgiveness and our InnerTalk Forgiving and Letting Go program was our best seller.  We found as our research continued that forgiveness was a key for all walks of life.  It was just as powerful for the business executive, the athlete, the truck driver, the live in mom, and so forth.

Then one day it dawned on me, if forgiveness is really the starting point for self-actualization, then the program should be free.  So about twenty years ago we began offering the program for free and it remains free to this day.  Your readers can download it from InnerTalk.com.

As for service and gratitude, that would take longer than we have here, if I am to answer your other questions, but this short video on luck may prime the pump.

In your book, Choices and Illusions, you say that our choices are not our own.  What do you mean by that?

ET: Research clearly shows that there is activity in the subconscious before a conscious thought occurs. In other words, our so-called conscious thoughts are given to us by our subconscious. My work has shown that it is this subconscious information that dictates the kind of life we will experience, and understanding that helps us clarify why the prison intervention I discussed earlier was so powerful.  Change truly must happen from the inside out.  We must choose to take control of everything we put in to our minds.

How does this information get into our subconscious?

ET:  Most of it comes from our environment – our friends, family, peers etc. Unfortunately negative information, such as “you won’t amount to anything” has a much greater sticking power than positive information, and scientists estimate that 90% of the incoming information is negative. Additionally, we have actually been trained in many ways not to think.  In fact, in a very real sense, we have all been raised in our own little chicken yards.  I think a story is worth much more than data, so to this end I have posted a YouTube video that is the prefect illustration of how this entire process works.  The story is called The Chicken and the Eagle and can be seen here.

What do you mean, “we have been trained not to think?”

ET:  We are taught things in limited ways. Logic and linguistics make assertions about many things that are simply false to fact. For example, logic asserts that a gallon is equal to a gallon. This is simply not true from many perspectives, including the most obvious. A gallon of water added to a gallon of alcohol does not equal two gallons of combined fluid. Ergo, 1 + 1 = 2 is not necessarily so in the “real” world, for no two things are alike in every way.

I know you tell us what we can do about this limited thinking in your book, Choices and Illusions, but can you give us an example right now?

ET:  We need to realize that most of our lives we have been choosing as though we were taking a multiple-choices test, choosing between A, B and C when in fact there exists an entire alphabet that we could have chosen from.  I love to illustrate this point with one of my favorite stories. The story is called the Flower Pot story and I’d love for your audience to check it out on YouTube.  It’s a short 3 minute video but well worth the time.

Did you have any heroes or influences on your work?

ET:  In the large sense, everyone who has contributed to the knowledge that we have today is one of my heroes.  Everyone who has paved the way for more civility and greater freedom is one of my heroes.  Everyone who takes a moment to go to the aid of another human being is one of my heroes.  I think we improve our world one person at a time and the best way for each of us to begin is to help one another.  That said, I have the larger than life heroes such as Martin Luther King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Aristotle and so forth.  And I have my close heroes, Roy Bey, my partner in business who believed in what we might be able to do if we made giving back our primary motive, and my partner in life, my lovely bride Ravinder, who for over twenty five years has been my constant source of encouragement and my reservoir of strength.

What exactly is mind programming?

ET:  I could be a bit of a smart aleck and answer by simply saying, “The title to one of my books.”  The truth is, we are all programmed in some degree.  The science behind our programming is so sophisticated today that it bares the name, Neuromarketing.  Literally billions and billions of dollars have been spent learning how to motivate you to act in a given way, while making you believe that you made the choice to behave accordingly.  This is truly big business today, and whether it is a product or political platform, it’s all about choosing your choices for you.

The irony is, the research data reveals clearly that once you make a decision, you will vigorously defend it even if you must make up reasons to justify it.  That may sound absurd on the surface, but believe me, it’s quite true!  Take for instance this scenario.  We know that if we place a bottle of hand sanitizer on a table with a questionnaire designed to measure your beliefs according to a scale of conservative verses liberal values, that the bottle of sanitizer will skew your answers toward the conservative side.  Once you provide the more conservative than usual answer, you will defend it and thus become even more conservative.  The fact is, this sort of “prime,” as it is called in the business, is quite often used to influence your choices in all areas of life.  So we must really begin to ask ourselves, especially if we’re like most people and believe that these things can influence others but not ourselves, “What was our last truly original thought?”

How can we uncover our true potential?  Is mastering our mind the key to our happiness?

ET:  The Buddha is credited with saying, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.”  Science supports this assertion today whole-heartedly.  Indeed, not long ago I attended a CEU for health care professionals dealing with the latest in neurological research.  There were some powerful concluding remarks, but the bottom line take away is one that is particularly relevant here.  Let me digress just a bit first.  When I attended University, the prevailing thinking asserted rather axiomatically that personality became fixed early in life, ages 4 to 6, IQ was fixed, brain cells begin to die and do not replace themselves somewhere beginning in our thirties, and so forth.  All of this is patently untrue!  Today the research shows us that among the best things we can do to improve our lives is change our personalities.  We know IQ is not fixed and indeed, the brain is amazing!  Voila, today we become excited about the possibilities inherent to neuro plasticity.  So now, fast forward to those concluding remarks and the big take away: YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN CHANGE BUT YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN CHANGE!

How can we find out more about your work?

ET:  I am pretty easy to find.  My web site is www.eldontaylor.com.  My books are available at all fine bookstores and on line.  My work with InnerTalk can be found at www.innertalk.com.  I host a two hour radio show each week called Provocative Enlightenment, and you can learn more about it at my web site, www.provocativeenlightenment.com.

Thank you Eldon.

ET:  Thank you for the opportunity to share.

Eldon Taylor’s New York Times Best-Seller, Choices and Illusions, is available at all fine online and retail bookstores. However, to participate in the online event that Eldon has put together, including a chance to win a customized $500 InnerTalk library, please CLICK HERE.