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31

Building for Understanding Ourselves

you to avoid confrontation and consequently wish and hope. The less cause you have for wishing and hoping that something will happen, the more you will know that when you get that certain feeling, it is a true intuitive impulse, and the more confidence you will have to follow it. Intuition will always guide you in the most appropriate way to fulfill your needs.

Just so there is no misunderstanding here, I am not stating that there is anything inherently wrong with wishing and hoping. There are some ways in which wishing and hoping can be very useful. As traders, however, we cannot afford the luxury of wishing and hoping because it puts us in a passive relationship with the markets. When we wish and hope, we are shifting responsibility on to the markets for making something happen instead of confronting the conditions and doing something about it ourselves. If we find ourselves wishing and hoping, it is an excellent indication that we dont know what is going on and as a result need to get out of the markets until we do.

Wisdom

When we step through our fears to break some cycle of frustration and dissatisfaction or change the polarity of a painful memory to break a cycle of pain, we gain in wisdom because we learn all sides of an issue. Wisdom is not afraid, angry, intolerant, or prejudiced because there is a deep level of understanding, confidence, and trust, all coming from having experienced the full range of possibilities from extreme negative to increasingly greater degrees of positive. If we have experienced only the negative side of a certain type of experience, we feel fear. If we have experienced only the positive (never having had a painful experience in certain area), we wont have that particular fear, but we do develop an intolerance or even a disdain for anyone who has had a negative experience.

This intolerance stems from our own underlying fear of vulnerability. For instance, it is clear that the negative exists in the environment as a possibility, but since it has never happened to us, we either dont understand "their fear" or dont want to confront any information that would indicate the same possibilities for a painful experience also exist for us. Anyone who has truly transcended a fear doesnt look down upon those who havent because they dont

Managing Mental Energy

have anything to fear. When we step through some fear to experience other possibilities, not only do we give ourselves more choices, we also gain in wisdom Wisdom is the by-product that results when we retain a distinction about the nature of the environment without the negative energy or fear associated with that distinction. Wisdom is ultimately the silver lining in every dark cloud.

However, to gain this wisdom we have to actively change our negatives into positives, because if we are offered a positive experience in an area where we have only experienced the negative, we wouldnt believe it. Actually we couldnt believe it, because we wouldnt have the mental framework to accept it for what it is. The environment will be as we perceive it, and the way we perceive information and events is controlled by the energy already inside of us, unless it is a first-time experience. When we dont actively work at turning our negatives into positives, we just stay angry and afraid. Its our choice. We were all given the gift of creativity and the free will to think any way in which we choose, and we can use our thoughts to change the quality of our lives, if we want to.



This chapter offers various techniques for effecting change. Also included are various exercises to implement these changes.

DIRECTING A CONSCIOUS SHIFT IN BELIEF SYSTEMS

The conscious mind {that part of us that is aware of the our surroundings and what we are thinking at any given moment) can generate thoughts outside of the framework of our beliefs or belief systems. In other words, we can ask questions about the validity or usefulness of any belief and purposefully direct our attention to any area where we might discover something more useful or better suited to the conditions. Any new knowledge comes from those who question the status quo and have a willingness to go beyond and a willingness to accept the next answer.

I know this is probably going to sound overly simplistic to most readers, and it is also something everybody already knows, but not

Techniques for Effecting Change



everybody knows it within the context of changing beliefs: The iwinr-ing to is the how. To identify or change anything in the mental environment requires that you uw.t to, because to want something you have to think about it, and when we think about something, we are generating thought energy. This is the same energy that our beliefs, memories, and associations are composed of, and, as such, thoughts have the power to change, reorganize, add to, detract from, or change the polarity of anything in the mental environment. In essence you can use our thoughts to create a new identity because we want to.

Each choice we make on a conscious level, even just to choose to redirect our thoughts from an inappropriate belief (relative to our needs now), will start to make a neurologica! change in the electrical circuitry of our brain. If you go as far as to make a choice that is inconsistent with a belief you want to decharge and then act out of that belief, it will eventually lose its power and consequently lose its potential to affect our behavior.

It is important for you to understand that beliefs cannot be destroyed; once we have formed one, it will be with us for the rest of our lives. However, we can draw all the energy out of them. For example, a pile of wood set on fire will release the energy of the wood into the atmosphere as heat. The wood will be transformed into ashes. The ashes do not have the potential to produce any heat and, thus, will have little if any effect on the environment. Yet the ashes still exist. De-energized beliefs work the same way. They will always exist but no longer have any effect on our perception of information or our behavior. Many of us once believed in the tooth fairy and the bogeyman in the closet. Eventually these beliefs just naturally collapsed as we learned more about the nature of the environment. Up to that point, however, they definitely had an effect on our perception of information and behavior. Now, we can say I remember when I used to believe that. To remember that we used to believe something means that the belief still exists; it just no longer has any power in our mental system.

Each belief you identify will form a comfort zone. The boundaries of this comfort zone are set by the limitations inherent within any belief that make up the zone. All definitions set boundary tines and make distinctions. Each belief is our truth about reality. Beliefs define not only our environment, but also who we are in relation to that environment. These definitions establish the amount of tolerance for awareness that we have for what exists in both the internal

and external environment. For example, do you have a belief that would allow for the possibility of the market doing anything at any given moment? If not, what do you believe cant happen? If what you believe cant happen did happen, how long would it take you to be able to recognize it, if at all? Notice the boundary lines in awareness created by the structure of the belief.

There is one thing you should keep in mind as you learn to change your beliefs to be more reflective of your intents and goals. With all change there is struggle. Volcanos, childbirth, social revolution, wind, rain, and waves are all examples of the violent nature of the forces of change. That is why so many people find it difficult to be creative. We are attracted and compelled toward creativity, on the one hand, because it is an inherent part of our nature. However, on the other hand, we dont want to confront the conflict and ensuing struggle between the old and the new. It is essentially the same when you change a belief. There will be some conflict or some degree of uncomfortableness as you move from one set of beliefs to another. However, the uncomfortableness does pass, and just like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets, until it becomes a learned skill that you can use just like any other that is a part of who you are.

EXERCISE TO IDENTIFY CONFLICTING BELIEFS

Set a timer for 10 minutes.

Write a series of statements that begin with "I am "

Write as fast as you can and let every thought come to your conscious attention. It is extremely important that you do not censor any statements, especially the contradictory ones.

At the end of the 10 minutes, look at the list and cross out everything that is a fact. For example, you would cross out statements such as I am a man/woman, I am blue-eyed, 1 am brown-haired.

All the statements that remain are the beliefs you are looking for. The beliefs that contradict each other are of particular importance. Contradictory beliefs cancel your energy because you have a built-in



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