There are two main mental states that, if you can master, will give you a blissful happy and successful life, versus live in limitations and pain.
The most painful state for a human being is confusion. Think about how painful it is when you do not know something:
- How your partner is feeling, what they are thinking
- Will you get in trouble and lose your job?
- Will your business venture succeed.
- What is going on in your body when you do not know what the cause of the pain and discomfort is.
Simply not knowing something that is critical to your life, is the most painful feeling for the simple reason that you cannot do anything about it, you cannot resolve it, understand it, plan for it. It makes you totally helpless and being helpless is very painful.
Fear, the close relative to confusion, is behind all your troubles and limitations and failures.
- You want to ask someone out on a date, but you are scared of their reaction, so you do nothing.
- You want to take a chance to invest, or start your own business, but you do not for fear of losing your money.
The biggest fear that stops people from almost anything is… fear of what will people think and say
about you.
One of the great ancient mystical traditions says that their goal is freedom. They define freedom as not being concerned with what anyone thinks or says about you.
That is power.
That is the power I attribute my business success as well as the key to having lived a life that people only can dream about.
That means, for thousands of years at least, people have lived limited lives because they are scared of what other people would say and so, they do nothing.
Fear has its good use, such as fear of poisonous snakes, or any other life-threatening instance.
The problem is that we are ruled by fear and do not even know it is happening much of the time, and when it does control us, it is almost always imaginary and the thing we fear happening will not hurt us at all, if it even happens.
The importance of preventative medicine at the first signs of trouble can be a life-or-death decision.
This applies to your health, relationship and business. There is a fear that I have seen in many people, three that I know personally, that caused their early and unnecessary death. Fear of what the doctor will say.
Many people get ill, and do not take care of it, or go to the doctor soon enough because they are scared that the doctor will say it may be a terrible illness, or that they need an operation, or have to go to hospital.
What could have been easily cured, was left unattended until it became so bad that there was no longer a chance to cure the illness, and they eventually died from it in a short time.
A 30-year-old woman was diagnosed with a brain tumour. At the time, it would have been easy to remove and she would have been fine. But she was so scared of the operation that she delayed so long, the tumour grew under the skin and could not be fully removed. Which meant, it grew back.
Now, let’s look at where you may cause these pains and sufferings in other people.
In a relationship, if you give the silent treatment, or say things when you are upset such as: “You know what you said” but never explain, that causes tremendous confusion.
The only way to deal with the pain of that confusion is to shut down and not care.
Given an example of your partner getting you upset, and you not making it clear how you feel, what they did, and how to fix it, but rather leave them confused as to what is going on in your mind, the pain they will feel in the confusion will either push them away, or make them shut down, which results in killing their emotions towards you. Then you complain that they do not love you anymore.
You are then confused as to why they have lost their feelings, and you suffer the pain of confusion.
That pain then creates fear of repeating the same event, and so you do not take chances or open up in the future to the similar situation, meaning a relationship.
A business example, relative to normal life, about my father. When he was in his early 20’s he started a business with a business partner. The business was thriving and then one day the partner embezzled all the money, leaving the company bankrupt and my father with nothing, the day before his first son was born. He was of course in shock, and confused, being an immigrant to a new country and not knowing what could be done, he was lost in confusion about what to do next to chase the crook or how to deal with the situation and rebuild.
That confusion resulted in a fear of business which led to him always telling me, if I could get a job, even $1.00 an hour, if it is a stable job, take it, keep it, and never leave, but for sure, never ever to get into business.
Had I listened to my father’s fear created advice which grew out of the pain of confusion to no idea how to resolve his situation, I would not have built and owned 8 successful companies by the age of 28 and been able to sell it all and have enough money to retire at that young age.
So what I want to say is, first thing is that you have to observe in yourself if you are in pain because of being confused which makes you feel helpless. Then do not stop looking until you find an answer, but more importantly, do NOT shut down your emotions just to avoid feeling the pain.
Second, do not let any fear of any kind stop you from doing anything. Observe the fear, which is an emotion created in negative imagination, then logically analyse the situation and objectively determine what is the worst that can happen.
Ultimately, it is better to have people speak badly about you out of jealousy for your happiness and success, if they really would do that, which they probably would not, rather than have them smile at you while you live a fearful life in mediocrity and self-pity for never having any good luck, instead of accepting the blame is entirely your fault for not taking chances.
The basic nature of the human mind is to go to the negative. When confused, our imagination will present negative possibilities. If we allow ourselves to build the negative thoughts in our imagination, that will create fear. Then the fear will make our positive emotions die or fade away, and then the relationship will end.
How many times has this happened to you?
The proof that we will normally create negative imagination and lean to the negative is based on the
news. How much news is bad and how much is good and happy stories? Movies, and modern music, filled with pain, fear, destruction, disaster. Why? Because they want to sell. And if you want to sell the most, you have to sell what the client wants. Therefore, humans want negative and fear creating information and entertainment. This proves that we will automatically go to the negative.
Resolve confusion with logical and object analysis and understanding.
Confusion is basically the internal question of; “Why is it like this? I would not do it that way.” Which means, you will judge all actions based on how you imagine you would do it.
This negates every other persons right to be an individual and do things the way they do it. Right or wrong is irrelevant at this point, it is simply how they do it, and you are creating your own pain because it is not the way you do it and you expect everyone to do things the way you would do them.
The elimination of 90% of your confusion and pain will be instantly achieved the moment you allow each person to be who they are, and not base your reactions on a comparison of how you would do
it.
All emotions and mental pain and fear are in your own mind. You do not have a choice at this point, because you are not trying to change the way your mind works.
If you want to live a happy, healthy and successful life, you must put in the effort to change the habitual way your mind works.
It is as simple as doing things differently, as difficult as it may be, the more you do things with courage instead of fear, the quicker your life will be what you dream instead of what everyone considers ‘normal’.
