At certain moments in your life, you

may feel overwhelmed and feel like,

it seems like there's

nothing but obstacles,

challenges hitting you from every angle.

It seems like there's a message going on.

Maybe it's making you

question your sanity.

I'd like to address what may be behind

this and why we may be attracting

all this challenge you might say.

Each of us have a set of

priorities, a set of values,

that are unique to us.

Whenever we're living aligned and

congruent with what we value most,

the highest value, we

tend to be in the flow.

But whenever we're trying to do

something that's lower in our values,

primarily because we comparing ourselves

to other people and wishing we could be

like the Joneses, or somehow subordinating

to somebody we've given authority to,

or maybe being infatuated with somebody

and minimizing ourself and trying to

live in their values. Anytime we're

trying to do something that's not really,

really important to us, we get resistance.

And the resistance is a feedback

mechanism to guide us back to

authenticity, back to what's

really highest in our values.

Our authentic self revolves

around what we value most.

If you meet a woman who's 35 years old

and has three beautiful children under

the age of five,

and her highest priority is to raise

beautiful children, if you asked her,

who are you? She would say,

I'm a mother. So our identity,

our purpose, and our area of expertise

revolves around what our value is.

And this is where we excel,

and this is where we're more in

a state of congruence and flow.

But if we try to live outside

that in some other lower value,

we start getting resistance.

What's interesting is in our brain,

when we are attempting to live

in something low in the value,

the blood glucose and oxygen goes

into survival mode and puts the

blood into the amygdala and hippocampus.

This amygdala assigns positive

and negative valencies to events.

And we tend to want to, under

emergencies and survival,

want to avoid a predator and seek a

prey. We want to avoid a negative,

seek a positive.

We want to avoid something that challenges

and seek something that supports.

And as a result of it,

we distort our perceptions

of reality and we then seek

the positive and avoid the negative.

But nature has like a magnet,

two poles.

And anytime you try to separate the

inseparable or divide the indivisibles or

label the unlabelble's, you

automatically get resistance.

In other words,

if you set up a fantasy that you're going

to get a positive without a negative,

when the negatives come, it seems

like it's an obstacle and a challenge,

but it's actually not.

It's a feedback mechanism to help you

break your addiction to a fantasy of a

one-sided world.

That's why when you're living in your

highest values and you're in your medial

prefrontal cortex and you're in your

executive function and you're more

objective, you embrace both sides of life,

your expectations are more balanced,

and therefore you feel like you're

in a flow because nature has,

and life has a balance.

So anytime you're actually getting this

challenge and obstacles and resistance,

it's primarily because we're

addicted to the fantasy.

Now that leads to the idea

of what exactly is a goal.

A goal can range from a complete

fantasy all the way to a true objective.

So think about this,

a fantasy is a positive without

a negative. Imagine this.

Imagine that I'm in a relationship

with you and I expected you to be nice,

never mean, kind, never cruel,

positive, never negative, peaceful,

never wrathful, generous, never

stingy, giving, never taking, you know,

one sided. Are you going to be able

to live up to that? The answer is no.

No human being can. So if I have

an expectation that's one sided,

I have a fantasy. And then

when the other side hits,

I feel like it's a resistance,

it's an obstacle, it's a challenge,

it's not matching my fantasy.

But that obstacle and challenge is

actually trying to break your addiction to

the fantasy and get you

towards a true objective.

A true objective is where you

have a balanced objective.

So if you're polarized, highly polarized

and looking for a one-sided world,

or you're expecting others to live

in your values and not their own,

you're going to get a lot

of challenge and resistance.

And we call that distress. And

distress is not your enemy.

Distress is there to wake you up,

to let you know that the path

you're pursuing is needs adjusting.

It needs to be brought more into balance.

It needs to go from

fantasy to true objective.

And the spectrum of goals that we have

in life determine the resistance and

challenges we face. If we're

looking for a one-sided world,

we're going to get a lot of

resistance, and a lot of challenge,

because we're striving for a fantasy

and trying to avoid the nightmare.

And the nightmare comes with a fantasy.

Think about it in a relationship.

If you get with somebody you're

infatuated with, days, weeks, or months,

years later, you find out that

they have the other side. Well,

everybody's got both sides.

So anytime you're striving for a

one-sided thing in a relationship,

you're going to get hit

with obstacles and distress.

But anytime you're embracing both

sides, you're going to get love.

You're going to be in the flow because

your expectations are matching what's

there. Now this occurs for relationship,

it occurs for goals and objectives,

and the same thing,

we are designed to get those resistances

and challenges and obstacles as a

feedback mechanism to guide us

from lower values to higher values,

where we're inauthentic,

to where we're authentic,

where we're trying to go after

fantasies to go to true objectives.

And it's actually our friend, not our

enemy. So our challenges and resistance,

sometimes we're persistent and we get

addicted to our fantasy and we don't want

to let go of our fantasy,

but we keep getting smacked by these

challenges to make us stop and reflect

and look at what our real objective is.

Once we're going after something

that's strategically planned,

that's foresighted out, that's

already mitigated the risks,

that has a balanced orientation,

that's more objective,

we find ourselves in the flow because

it's now matching what's actually there.

And then it's the actuality

that we're doing is now what

you're getting,

you're getting to self-actualize your

life because you're pursuing something

that's real. That's really

something that can be done.

But if you're striving for a one-sided

world, you're going to have futility.

And when we have obstacles and challenges,

it's either because we're not prioritizing

and we're scattering ourselves,

injecting the values of other people,

it's because we're striving for one

sided events that are not obtainable and

we're getting futility and we're

getting the feedback from our world and

universe. We live in sort of

a self-reflective universe.

What we project out there

is what we get back.

If we're setting up a fantasy we're going

to get back the resistance that comes

with it. It's like a a two-sided magnet.

You can't get a one-sided magnet,

you can't get a positive magnet. You

get a positive and negative magnet.

So the more you're striving for one,

the more you're striving

for a positive magnet,

the more the negative magnet

hurts, because the one is pleasure,

the other's pain. The more you're

embracing the two sides of a magnet,

the more freedom you have.

Think of it this way,

if I was to give you a coin and

said you get to keep every coin

I give you that you embrace both sides to.

If you're wanting a one-sided coin and

only a positive without a negative,

you'll never accumulate any coins,

because It's got positive and negative,

heads and tails to it. But if

you're wanting a one-sided coin,

you won't ever accumulate anything.

And the same thing with life.

If you're wanting a one-sided life,

you're, you're striving for a fantasy.

And the same thing for a top. If a

top is, if it doesn't have both of,

both sides of the top,

it can't spin steady.

If you want to spin steady

and be have a steady state,

you want to be able to embrace

the two sides of the coin,

the two sides of the top,

the two sides of life.

So the obstacles and challenges and

resistance that you face are your friends,

not your enemies.

And they're making sure that you're

getting strategies are in place to get and

accomplish real objectives

and to transcend fantasies

into something that's more

meaningful. And when you're doing and

pursuing something that's meaningful,

you get more fulfillment in life.

That's one of the reasons I teach

in the Breakthrough Experience,

which is one of my signature programs,

exactly how to differentiate between

a fantasy and a true objective.

How to set objectives that are

balanced instead of fantasies that get

you resistance and obstacles and

challenges that keep giving you feedback.

How to use the world around you

and see how it can be on the way,

not in the way because

of a more objective view.

So if you're interested in

transforming the obstacles

and challenges and resistance

that you have into the flow,

they're simply the series of questions

I explain in the Demartini Method on how

to do so. It's not really rocket science,

it's common sense once you get it,

but it's knowing the questions and

knowing how to release yourself from the

perception of the baggage

and to see it as opportunity.