Your life,

it can be magnificent if you learn the art of asking questions that balance out

your mind. And a balanced mind is a balanced physiology and heals,

you heal your life.

During the COVID period and really pretty well almost anytime,

but definitely during the COVID period,

there's been a lot of challenges and adaptations and

you know, tackling new things, et cetera.

And many people are frustrated because, you know,

they didn't anticipate it taking as long and they had to do quite a bit

of adaptation and they're frustrated about the way they're, the way it's going,

the speed in which it's growing and things of this nature sometimes.

So I wanna address that issue.

When your life's not going quite as sailing smooth as you imagine,

what that could be.

So if you've got a paper and some pencil to make some notes or pen or someplace

to type or whatever, you might take some notes.

First thing I want to say is that the world around you

can control you if you allow it,

or you can turn the world around you into something on the way, not in the way.

You have control over your perceptions,

your decisions and your actions.

I have some people come up to me,

in fact this last weekend at the Breakthrough Experience

me and said, 'My mother abandoned me.'

And she'd been running that story for quite a while.

And I asked her a simple question, 'Okay,

what did you particularly miss about your mom when she left?' 'Well,

somebody to be there for me, somebody to guide me,

somebody to do this.' And she ran, you know,

ran off a list of things that she thought she missed out.

And I explained to her at the level of the soul nothing's missing in your life.

At the level of your senses, things appear to be missing.

But if you ask the right questions,

you can become aware of the new forms in which those things are emerging.

I said, 'So who was it that was there caring for you at that moment?

When she left, who took that role on?' She says, 'Well,

my aunt, my grandmother,

and some of my best friends mothers.' I said, 'Great,

what was the benefit of them taking it on?

Not your mom?' And she goes, 'Well,

I got an opportunity to do some things I wouldn't have done.

My mom was not financially stable.

She was trying to find out a career path at another city.

And yeah, if she hadn't done that, when I think about it,

I would have been very much unstable.

Wouldn't probably even been able to go to school, but the way it turned out,

I was able to finish school, I was able to have friends.

I was able to have nice clothes.' And I had her stack up the benefits of the new

people taking it on,

and the drawback if her mother had stayed and not gone off and trying to find a

new opportunity and job and then later bring her back.

And when she stopped and thought about it, she said, 'Gosh,

if I was in that situation,

I'd probably have to understand that and do it.' And then she saw that she got

opportunities she hadn't seen. And instead of it being a negative,

you know, a frustrating event, an angering event,

the event now became something that she was grateful for.

And the event is what you make it.

You can make a nightmare or a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a heaven.

You have the capacity to take whatever's happening in that moment

and ask questions. And if you choose to go by your first interpretation,

'that's terrible' and you don't see the terrific in it,

you don't take the time to find the upsides to it, well,

it's not because of the event,

it's because you're choosing not to see the upsides to it. That's your doing,

that's your perception. That has nothing to do with the world around you.

It's your perception.

And even if the whole world believes that that's a terrible event,

and you can justify the idea 'it's a terrible event' by subordinating to

conformity in the idea, doesn't mean it's true.

It just means that that's what most people would interpret it as because they

haven't taken the time to be intelligent enough to ask 'what are the upsides to

it?' We've all had events in our life that we thought were terrible.

And then a day, a week, a month, a year or five years later, we find out, 'oh,

well, if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have gone this path,

I wouldn't have taken this new trajectory. I wouldn't have met these people.

I wouldn't have gotten this experience. I wouldn't have been more resilient.

I hadn't have been more independent.' And then you look at the upside to that,

secondary and tertiary benefits of that and you kind of go, 'Huh?

Maybe that wasn't a terrible event after all.

Maybe that was exactly the event that made my life.'

Why have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process, and discover that later,

when you can look right in the moment and discover it,

and find the wisdom of the ages without the aging process and become awakened

to the both sides that are there.

There are no events that are positive or negative until you choose to make it.

There's events that have benefits and drawbacks, upsides and downsides.

There's no, nothing can manifest without those two sides.

It's like a yin yang symbol. You know,

you had that little bit of yin and yang and yang in the yin if you take the time

to find it, then you can neutralize it. And the second it's neutral,

you don't fear the gain of it, or the fear of the loss of it.

You can have an infatuation and you can be conscious of the upsides and

unconscious of the downsides and thought, 'Oh my God,

this is a terrific event.' And then a day, a week, a month, a year,

five years later, you find out, 'Oh my God,

this guy is not who I thought.' Or 'This house that I just bought is not what I

thought. Now it's got problems and cracks and costs and maintenance

and foundation issues.' And, 'Oh my God,

this thing that I thought was terrible has terrific.

Terrific has terrible's in it.

The thing I think is terrific has terrible's in it or

in it. These are all illusions at the ratios of your mind.

The ratios of your perception determine your emotions.

You know, pharmaceutical reps,

psychiatrists wants you to believe that it's a biochemical imbalance that's

causing these problems sometimes. Not all, but many.

And that's just not a fact. That's what they want you to believe.

But your ratios of perceptions change your chemistry. I guarantee you,

if you have an event and all of a sudden a tiger jumps over the wall and

starts chasing you and you try to run and you realize you can't run and you just

freeze. And you know you're about to be eaten.

Your cortisol level is going to go skyrocketing in billions of a second.

Your norepinephrine epinephrin is going to go up.

Your dopamine is going to go down. Your serotonin is going to go down.

Your oxytocin is going to go and your enkephalins are going to go down.

Histamine is going to go up.

All the compounds ready for fight or flight are going to go up and all the ones

that are rest and digest are going to go down.

And that's not because you have a biochemical imbalance because of something

just it's imbalanced. It's that we store in our subconscious mind,

all imbalanced perceptions. And until we balance them,

they affect our chemistry.

And because most people don't take the time to balance out their perceptions,

they have neurochemistry that's imbalanced.

Not because it's just imbalanced out of the blue,

but because it's imbalanced because you stored up a bunch of distorted

perceptions and you have not taken the time to be accountable and put them back

into balance.

Every weekend in the Breakthrough Experience when I do the Breakthrough

Experience, not every weekend, but nearly every weekend,

I balance people's perceptions out and change their chemistries and change their

moods, the moods and attitudes. You know,

William James said that the greatest discovery of our generation is that human

beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes and

mind. And it's true. You can change your attitude.

It is not the event. Quit blaming the event,

stop ranting and running a story about an outside event.

When you have the capacity with your mind to transform your perception of that

event and turn it into something on the way, not in the way.

It's just an illusion.

Most people are run from the external world and blame things on the external

world. Epictetus, the philosopher said, people on their journey,

starting their journey they blame other things outside them,

they give credit to things that they're infatuated with and they blame things

that they give resentment to, that they perceive in resentment.

And then they go further and they realize, 'oh my God,

it's a reflection of my projection' and then you start blaming themselves.

But the real wise individual realizes there's nothing to blame, it's simply to,

something to simply ask the questions to balance the equation and realize it's

all on the way. It's basically an event.

All events are neutral until somebody with a subjective bias skews it

with some interpretation that there's incomplete and creates an emotion.

And those emotions create physiological changes. They create symptoms.

They create illness as a feedback to let you know,

the illnesses are not something terrible,

the illnesses are actually feedbacks to let you know,

you have an imbalanced mind. If you look at the symptomatology,

you'll see it's autonomically influenced.

And those are feedback mechanisms trying to homeostate you. In fact,

all the symptoms are trying to get you back into authenticity.

Authenticity is when you're not judging something on the outside of you in a

balanced way. If you look at something terrible, you'll look down on it,

if you look at something terrific, you look up on it,

and you'll exaggerate or minimize yourself.

Just like if you look down on somebody, you'll exaggerate yourself,

and if you look up to somebody, you minimize yourself, in turn.

Whenever you exaggerate or minimize yourself, you're not being yourself.

That's not authentic. When you look out there and see both sides,

and you look over here and you see both sides,

you see the downsides in the upsides,

you see the upsides and the downsides and you center it, you have mindfulness,

and you're balanced.

That's why the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you

ask. And the wisest questions I know to ask,

which I've incorporated in the Demartini Method which I present at the

Breakthrough Experience, is 'if I see a terrible,

what's the upsides?' And 'if I see a terrific,

what's the downsides?' Until I see both sides.

And then I realize that nothing on the outside runs me.

Cause anything you infatuate with, anything you resent,

is going to occupy space and time in your mind, it's going to run you.

So if you're frustrated with your life and dissatisfied with your life,

it has nothing to do with what happened out there,

it has everything to do with how you interpreted it.

And if you ask questions and hold yourself accountable to answer and say,

instead of saying, 'I don't know, there's no benefit to it.' Look,

what is the upsides to it? I've been doing this for almost four decades,

and I'm absolutely certain that there's nothing your mortal body can experience

that your immortal soul can't love.

There's nothing your mortal body can experience that your immortal soul can't

love. I've seen the most outrageous stuff turned into opportunity.

And the greater the challenge is the greater the opportunity,

the greater the crisis, the greater the blessing. If you look.

If you choose not to, and the same thing on the reverse,

we can have these elating, infatuating,

fantasy moments and we're blind to the downsides and we're then caught and we

eventually get sideswiped by all the downsides and we think, 'oh my God,

this thing changed on me.' And you crush your fantasy.

And you're designed to crush fantasies because fantasies are the sources of

nightmares. So it's not what happens to you,

it's your choice of perception.

And if you ask a question to balance out the perception,

you liberate yourself from the bondage of those things that you're infatuated or

resentful to.

And all the things that you minimize yourself and exaggerate yourself.

How are you going to be loved for who you are if you're not yourself?

And if you're exaggerating yourself with pride and looking down on something and

not seeing the upsides to it, well, you're paying the price,

you've just lost your authenticity.

And how can you expect somebody to love you for who you are when you're not even

being willing to be who you are?

You can't be yourself when you're looking down on something or up at something,

you become yourself when you look across at something.

When you're care-less or careful and not caring,

don't expect a sustainable relationship.

Your relationship with life itself is based on your ability to see both sides.

And some people say well, 'but what about that bad?' Well,

if you want to get caught in moral hypocrisies and trap

traditional, conventional, moral hypocrisy, go ahead,

but you're not going to empower your life that way and you're going to be victim

of your history all your life and never a master of your destiny.

It has nothing to do with what society says it is.

This is about your life. If you choose to see it as bad,

just because everybody sees it bad and now you're trapped in bad,

or terrible event, that's not because it's there.

It's because you're choosing to buy into the conformity of the heard about a

belief system. When in fact, as Montaigne traveled the world,

went around the world,

that just about everything in the world that's been considered good has been

considered bad and bad's considered good in different cultures in different

times. You know, in South Africa,

the former president, Zuma had a bunch of wives, nine wives.

In America you go to prison for it. What's good there,

a sign of tribal power is considered evil

over here.

And at one time smoking pot was illegal and you went to jail for it and you're a

villain and you're in prison.

Now they're smoking pot part of the healing process.

And history has been going back and forth with those belief systems all through

time. So it's not what happens to you, it's what you decide to do with it.

You have control perceptions, decisions and actions.

If you decide to make it and keep it as this terrible event, well,

then it's going to haunt your life.

And anytime you remind you of anything that comes along that even remotely

remind you, secondary associations that might remind you of that,

you're going to have angst and you're going to add anxiety to your life.

Not because you have,

but because you're choosing to hold on to that event as a terrible event and

letting that run your life. And the same thing for your job,

every week I have people that say, 'well, you know, I hate my job,

but I've got to pay the bills'. No, that's absolutely,

absolutely not true. Nobody's trapped. Nobody's trapped.

One thing you can do is you can make a list of everything you're doing in your

job, a job description,

and then go online in my website and go onto Demartini Determine Your Values,

dr.demartini.com, determine your values and go do your value determination. Now,

week from now, a month from now, every three months,

and get really clear about what you're really committed to. Not your fantasies.

Not what you think it should be, ought to be, supposed to be, got to be,

have to be, must, need to be,

but what your life demonstrates is really important to you,

and then ask yourself; how's this job description,

one by one, their items, how's it helping you fulfill what's meaningful to you?

And don't say it doesn't, 'that's the problem with it,

I hate my job.' That's foolish. It's not the job.

It's your perception of the job.

It's your decision of how you react to it and the actions that come out of it.

Take your job and ask how specifically is this job duty helping you fulfill

what's most meaningful to you, helping you move on to the next step?

See if people don't have a plan, a viable plan,

of a career path that they want,

and they don't empower themselves with a clear plan,

they're going to be subject to whatever's available out there.

They're going to be subject to the outside world. So don't bitch about it.

You're just not taking command.

And if you don't have it and you have a fantasy about 'what I want to do',

and you don't want to like your job, then you're going to hold onto a fantasy,

but you don't have a plan,

you're going to be trapped in your job and being miserable.

And that's not because of the job is miserable,

because you're choosing to compare it to a fantasy that's not grounded,

that's not real.

But if you go and find out a pathway of a new career, that's viable,

that really meets people's needs,

that serves people that's in fair exchange and sustainable,

and with a marketing plan,

and you do your due diligence and create a plan of action that allows you to

transition. And then you ask how's the job duties that I'm doing right now,

helping me in the path of opening that new job,

you might find out that there's new opportunities,

there's new skills that you're getting paid to be trained on,

there may be new people there that might be clients, there's new leads,

there's new skills.

And you might then be appreciative of the job you have as a stepping stone to

something greater. It's not the job. It's the perception of it.

If you are not with a clear plan, then it's why,

why beat yourself up and beat the job up when you can take the job and find out

how is it serving, fulfilling your values?

I've taken jobs that people hated and wanted to throw in the towel on,

and they didn't have an option and I said, 'All right, until you have an option,

let's be grateful for the job.' And I've sat down and done this exercise.

How specifically is this job duty helping you fulfill your highest values and

mission in life? And I didn't write one answer. I'd put 10, 20, 30 answers,

until their mind was blown and go, 'Whoa,

I never saw how this job could be an opening.' And when they did,

now they're engaged and inspired by it while they're planning out their next

career path. So it's not what happens to you.

It's your perception of it. And you ask questions that equilibrate the mind,

and the things you think are down, what's the upside?

Or the things you think are up, what's the downside?

And level the playing field, neither side runs your life.

And if you hold onto a fantasy, life in comparison, if you have a relationship,

let's say, and you were infatuated with them,

and then they dumped you and they went off with somebody else and you lived in a

fantasy, 'that was my soulmate,

that was going to be everything for me' then what's happening is anything less

than that is now going to torture you because you're holding onto an unrealistic

expectation, a delusion and a fantasy about how it was 'supposed to be',

and therefore life compared to that is depressing.

Depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy that you're

addicted to,

an unrealistic expectation that somebody is supposed to live in your values,

are supposed to live up to your fantasy,

or supposed to be one sided or something. Your life is,

can be magnificent if you learn the art of asking questions that balance out

your mind. And a balanced mind is a balanced physiology and heals.

You heal your life.

You have the capacity to transform literally anything that's going on in your

life.

I've had people that have been beaten and I've had people that had been raped

and people that have been incested and people that have had lost their careers

and lost arms or something, I've seen,

there's nothing that the mortal body can experience that you can't turn into

opportunity. Every one of those situations,

those individuals now have turned it into a resource to do something amazing

with. Yes, these things happen. Great.

That's not necessarily something you originally thought you wanted in life,

but that's what happened. Now let's use it to our greatest advantage.

And by the way,

most of the things that come into our life that we don't want is because we're

addicted to it's opposite. I'm going to say that again.

Most of the things that we dislike are actually part of a pair of opposites and

the more we're addicted to one side,

the more we attract the opposite to break our addiction.

If we're addicted to protection, we attract aggression.

We're addicted to peacefulness and everybody getting along,

you attract some criticizer or challenger. Why?

Because whatever you get addicted to that you think is going to be supportive

more than challenge keeps you juveniley dependent and you don't grow.

And the challenging thing makes you precociously independent and gets you back

to growing again. And you need both support and challenge.

You need the pairs of opposites,

and there's no such thing as a human being or an event that's only one sided.

If I went up to you and said, 'You're always positive, you're never negative.

You're always kind, you're never cruel. You're always nice,

you're never mean.' Your own BS meter would go off and go, 'Nah,

that's not true.' And if I said, 'You're always mean and never nice,

always cruel and never kind and always stingy, never generous,

and always wrathful, never peaceful.' Again, your BS meter would go off.

But if I said to you, 'Sometimes you're nice. Sometimes you mean.

Sometimes you're kind, sometimes you're cruel. Sometimes you're generous.

Sometimes you're stingy. Sometimes you're peaceful. Sometimes you're wrathful.

Sometimes you're positive. Sometimes negative.' You immediately would go, 'Yep.

That's me.' You're not a one-sided event.

There are no one-sided events or one sided people. They're both sides there,

and the individual that has a realistic expectation to embrace both sides is

resilient and adaptable, because if you're neutral,

you don't fear the loss of it. If you're infatuated with something,

you fear it's loss. If you resentful to something you fear it's gain.

So anything you think is terrific, you're going to fear the loss of,

anything you think is terrible, you're going to fear the gain of.

And you're adding fear to your life because you're not seeing both sides.

But if you stop and reflect and see both sides, it's neutral.

It can come and go. You're flexible. You're adaptive.

Stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment. And all distress is,

is the fear of loss of that what you seek and the fear of gain of that what you

are trying to avoid.

The Buddha says the desire for that which is unavailable and the desire to avoid

that which is unavoidable is the source of human suffering.

So it's not the events. It's not what happens. It's your perception.

And you have the command of your perception.

That's why I teach the Breakthrough Experience every week,

just about every week anyway,

to try to help people master the ability to transform perceptions into

opportunities. Once you see that life is on the way, not in the way,

you realize that everything is trying to get you authentic.

If you're attracting a criticizer, it's because you're proud, you're cocky,

you're up above equilibrium because you're addicted to pride and you put

yourself up and they're coming in to bring you back into balance.

It's not an evil event. They're not terrible people.

They're people helping you become authentic. The same thing with events.

If you're addicted to fantasies, you attract nightmares.

Nature is striving to get you into authenticity and balance,

where you're objective, where you're mindful. When you're infatuated,

you're unconscious of the downside. When you're resentful,

you're unconscious of the upside. When you are loving,

you are conscious of both sides. So anything you haven't loved in your life,

anything you're not grateful in life is baggage that hasn't been balanced yet.

And it's stored in the subconscious mind and it's going to run you and you're

going to cause reactions.

And you're going to wonder why the world is around you running your life,

because anything that you haven't balanced,

the external world causes a reaction in.

It's not because of anything but your perceptions,

but you're let the external world run you, you'll be a victim of history.

You'll be a follower.

You'll be blaming and giving credit and you'll be trapped in moral hypocrisies,

trying to get a one-sided life.

There is no one-sided individual. There is no one sided event.

It's childish. It's fantasy.

Even though your grandmother used to say, 'Now be nice. Don't be mean. Be kind.

Don't be cruel. Be positive. Don't be negative.

Be honest...' Then she'd beat the hell out of grandpa and gave him hell and

bitched at him. Don't be caught in moral hypocrisies.

They'll trap your life,

because then you'll actually think there are events that aren't both sided.

And then you hold yourself back from a resilient, amazing life.

The quality of your life's based on the quality of the questions you ask.

Ask questions that bring your mind back into balance.

What's the ups and benefits and how's it serving my highest values?

Or what's the downs and how's it disserving it?

To break the infatuation resentments and to get yourself centered.

Because otherwise the world around you is going to run your life.

You can run your life. If you're not living by design, you're living by duty.

If you're living by duty, you're living by conformity.

If you're living by conformity,

you're fitting in and you're not going to stand out,

you're not going to make the difference what you want in life.

So taking the time and actually freeing yourself up from the bondage of

that. Because if you're dissatisfied,

it's only because you're comparing your current reality to a fantasy of one

sidedness, and you're not seeing the upsides to what's happening,

you're not seeing the downsides to what you're comparing it to.

What's interesting is,

if you have a philia or something that's fantasy that you like,

you automatically have fear of loss. The phobia comes with the philia.

And if you have something you're phobic about,

the fantasy of getting away from it is there.

You can't separate the philia and the phobia, the fantasy and the nightmare,

the positives and negatives. So in every perception, there's always both.

If you ask the question and balance it out and liberate yourself,

you're in command. And you get to live authentically,

because you're seeing both sides. Your heart opens.

A perfectly equilibrated mind opens the heart.

It makes you grateful. You see the hidden order in the apparent chaos.

You know, entropy, the physics of entropy, which is death physics,

which is the arrow of time which causes aging just means missing information by

Claude Shannon, missing information, incomplete awareness,

ignorance, unconsciousness, that's missing information.

When it's not missing anymore and you ask the right questions and make yourself

see both sides the missing information is now aware,

and now you have mindful, full information and you have negentropy,

which is life physics. Negative entropy as Erwin Schrödinger, is life physics,

it allows you to fulfill life, do something amazing.

That's why I tell people in Breakthrough,

to hold themselves accountable in their perceptions.

I train them on how to do it.

I make them do it for hours and take the events in their life they think are

terrific and find the downsides and terrible and upsides,

and have them come to a state of grace, a state of gratitude,

a state of appreciation for their life.

And when they do their executive center comes online.

Their inspired visionary center comes active.

Their self-governance goes forward. They start to see their vision.

They strategically plan their actions.

They have now a strategy on how they want to live their life.

They live by design and they're not caught in their amygdala,

their animal brain, trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure,

trying to put a moral hypocrisy together. They liberate themselves.

I watch it every week. That's why I want people to know the Demartini Method,

because it's a very powerful tool to equilibrate the mind and set yourself free

of emotional bondage, it's baggage.

We carry it from relationship to relationship in life, unnecessarily.

So if you're dissatisfied and you want to change your life,

change your perceptions.

Because your change of perceptions will change your decisions and will change

your actions.

And if you live by your highest values where you're most resilient and adaptive

and most objective, you have the least amount of things you need to change.

You have the most amount of things you're grateful for.

It's really quite impressive when you get simply,

the keys to prioritizing your life.

If you fill your day with high priority actions and inspire you and not let

outside distractions put you into distractions,

you will have a more fulfilling life, more resilient life, more balanced life,

I guarantee you. Your brain is rewarding people who live authentically,

and when you live by your highest values,

your identity revolves around it and you're masterful in life.

So don't blame the world on the outside. Don't blame the world on the inside.

Just get wise, start prioritizing your life.

Start asking questions that balance your mind. And don't let the external world,

don't let a day go by without balancing that day before you go to bed.

Don't sit there and fester on something and let it be stored in the subconscious

mind and run your physiology so you end up at the doctor telling you a

biochemical imbalance. Clear it. Balance it out,

I guarantee your chemistries will change. I've watched it every week doing it.

Take back your power. Any area of your life you don't empower,

people over power you. Take your power back. Anyway.

I wanted to go through some of those principles today with you about changing

your life if you're not satisfied or appreciative of what's going on,

because we live in a magnificent world and we have amazing things we can

accomplish. Now, now that I shared my piece,

I want to let you know about a masterclass you can get, that can help you.

It says How to Accelerate the Progress and Achievement in your life.

And this program is a really inspired master class about moving forward and

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And please ponder what I said that you took notes about today,

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There's no reason why you can't do something amazing with your life and don't

sit and run your story about how these things have happened to you.

It's nothing.