situations like those in your family, and not notice other choices

Transcription

1 Lesson One Notes 1. Hello and welcome to the first lesson of the Internal Map of Reality Expander online course. If you re interested in taking charge of your mind, and learning how to use it to intentionally create anything you want in life, you re in the right place. Most people in fact, nearly all people are creating their lives on autopilot. It is possible, however, to intentionally create your life, inside and out, and that s what I m going to show you how to do. 2. I m going to start by giving you an overview of what I call your Internal Map of Reality. This Internal Map of Reality is your way of processing your external experiences in order to create several key things: how you feel in each moment, how you behave, what and whom you attract into your life, and what and whom you re attracted to. These four categories collectively make up what creates your life. By mastering what generates these things, you master what you create. 3. Then, after this overview, as these lessons unfold we ll take an in-depth look, one part at a time, at each aspect of this Internal Map of Reality. As we do this, you ll learn how you re currently using it to create your current results, and what the other choices are. You ll learn what you re unconsciously and automatically doing now to create the results you re getting, and you ll discover how you can take that process off of autopilot and, instead, intentionally create whatever you want, inside and out. 4. In this first lesson, we ll focus on how beliefs contribute to what you create in your life. Beliefs are one of THE most important aspects of your Internal Map of Reality, and one of the most misunderstood. Because many people teach about beliefs, a lot of people think they already understand how beliefs work. I think you ll have a few surprises as we get into this first lesson. 5. First I want to establish some ground rules for how these lessons will work. You have the ability to ask questions about lesson content, by . You do this by clicking on the Lesson Questions link in each lesson. If you ve purchased the Platinum version of these courses where you get direct access to me, I will be answering your questions. If you ve purchased the regular version of these courses, Katie Sparks, my long-time executive assistant, will answer your questions. 6. The Question link appears on every online lesson page. Next to this link, you also have access to questions already asked about that lesson, along with the answers. There s a good chance that the question you have has already been answered. So please review these questions and answers. They contain an incredible amount of useful information. When you ask a question, you ll receive an answer by , and then we ll post your question and the answer so others can benefit from it. I leave out last names so the questioner remains anonymous. 7. Because we receive hundreds of s each week, please make your questions as concise and clear as possible. Please don t send your whole life story. Think about your

2 question before you ask it. Instead of all the details of your whole story, figure out a way to summarize in a single phrase or sentence, if possible. Instead of the details of what your mother did to you, just say, my mother was emotionally abusive at times, and that led me to believe I was not important and not smart enough or whatever. Help us out by making your questions very concise. That s the only way this question thing is going to work. 8. Here s another key point. These lessons are not going to help you if you just listen to them and go on with your life as you did before. I m going to be suggesting a new way of seeing yourself, the world, and other people a new way of thinking and acting. This new way of thinking and acting will very likely be quite different from the way you think and act now. That s why it s going to give you different and better results as you adopt it. I ll warn you right now that it s going to take some effort to make the changes you ll need to make to take control of your life. You need to make this effort. Please don t come to these lessons thinking that I m going to change you. I m going to tell you how you can change yourself, but you have to do it. 9. Before we go any further, I want to give you THE KEY to this course, so please take this in. You might want to write this down and review it periodically. This course is about discovering HOW you create your feelings, behaviors, what and whom you attract into your life, and what and whom you re attracted to. These things, collectively, create pretty much everything that happens in your life. The main point here is that whatever is happening in your life, inside and out, you are generating it. It isn t just happening. If you can figure out HOW you are doing it, you can change it. 10. Most people are concerned with WHY they do things, why they get certain results. I m suggesting that why isn t the best question. What matters is HOW you re creating whatever is happening in your life. If you re anxious, how do you DO being anxious? If you can t make enough money, how do you do not making money? If you re afraid, how do you do being afraid? Whatever is happening, somehow, you re doing it. You may not know how, but there s something you re doing inside that generates it probably not consciously or intentionally, but still, it s coming from something you are doing. This is a very different way of looking at life. What happens is coming from you, and your job is to figure out what you re doing inside that generates it. 11. To learn this, you have to actually go inside and look at what you re doing. You have to watch your internal processes. If you take this course to learn ABOUT your Internal Map of Reality, this course won t make much of a difference in your life. Now, certainly I do want you to learn about each topic we ll cover. Without that, you won t know what to look for when you start noticing your internal processes. The real learning, though, the real changes, will happen when you go inside your own head and notice exactly how you re using these different parts of your Internal Map of Reality to create what happens in your life. 12. For instance, in this lesson I m going to discuss how beliefs generate what happens in your life. You ll want to learn the principles I ll share about how beliefs work, but the

3 real learning, the real change, will come as you become aware of what you believe, and then, between lessons, as you watch inside your own head to notice exactly how what you believe generates how you feel, how you behave, what you attract, and what you re attracted to. 13. Once you actually see not understand intellectually, but actually see how your beliefs generate what happens in your life, you won t be able to continue believing what doesn t serve you. You ll begin to intentionally choose what to believe based on what will create the results you want. Most people aren t really aware of what they believe. What s more, most people have never considered whether what they believe is worth believing, and almost no one has actually gone inside their own head to watch how what they believe generates the results they re getting. 14. In future lessons, we ll discuss other aspects of your Internal Map of Reality. In each case, I ll ask you to learn certain information about how that part of your Internal Map of Reality works, but once again the real learning will happen as you go inside and observe how you re using that part of your Internal Map of Reality. This watching process is by far the most important part of the course. If you just listen to the lessons you might find yourself saying, Wow. This is really interesting, but you won t create the changes I d like to see you make unless you go inside and watch what you re doing in your Internal Map of Reality. 15. Watching what you do inside your head isn t easy at first. Up to now, you ve been running your Internal Map of Reality automatically, and for the most part, unintentionally. In other words, your Internal Map of Reality has been running on autopilot, sometimes generating what you want, and at other times generating what you don t want. This is your chance to go inside and watch it create your life, to notice your other choices, and then to exercise those choices. 16. Because some of these internal processes zoom by very quickly, and are largely unconscious at least, so far it s going to take some practice, and some persistence, to become skilled at noticing them. I promise you, though, that if you practice doing this, you can and will master it. And, once you ve mastered your mind in this way, you ll have so much personal power that there won t be anything you can t do. You ll be in charge of your emotions, your behavior, what you attract into your life, and what you re attracted to. Instead of all of this happening unconsciously, you ll be in charge of it. 17. You re going to have to make a commitment to yourself to do some homework between lessons, to deeply think about what we discuss here, to watch your internal processes very carefully, and to make some changes in how you see things and how you do things. You might wonder if doing all of this is really going to be worth the trouble. That s a decision I can t make for you. Personally, I think it s definitely worth the trouble, but that s me. 18. There is a price to pay to make the kinds of changes I ll be talking about. But there s also a price to pay for staying the way you are now and, you re already paying it as you

4 continue to get the results you ve been getting. In fact, I suspect that the reason you decided to take this course is that you re not satisfied with the results you re getting now. You have to compare these two prices and decide what to do based on that comparison, and no one else can do that for you. 19. So why would making these changes be difficult? After all, you really want to make them, don t you? And, you ve paid good money to get my advice on how to do it. Right now, you re creating results in your life that, at least some of the time, you don t want, and you know things could be better if you made certain changes. You re motivated. Why would changing be difficult? 20. Well, here s why it can be difficult to make fundamental changes in the way you think and act. You have what I call an Internal Map of Reality an internal processing system that takes what you experience and processes it internally in various ways, most of which we ll examine in this course. This processing creates your life. This Internal Map of Reality evolved as you grew up, and it was organized in a way that created the greatest amount of safety for you, given your family situation. 21. If you believed something your parents didn t want you to believe, to some degree doing so might not have been safe. If your parents were kind and loving and openminded, they might have given you considerable leeway on what you believed. In this case, safety might not have been much of an issue. However, if they were narrowminded, afraid, or had their own emotional issues, it might have been very unsafe to believe something they didn t want you to believe. The same thing applies to what you thought was important, how you made decisions, and many other aspects of how you created your life. Your Internal Map of Reality was shaped in a way that conformed to what your parents wanted, and for some of you it would have been very unsafe to do it any other way. 22. You created your Internal Map of Reality your way of thinking and acting, your way of perceiving yourself, other people, and the world in the exact way you needed to create it in order to make it through your childhood. If you had loving parents, a safe and nurturing environment, and loving mentoring, your Internal Map of Reality probably works pretty well and creates, most of the time, positive outcomes and positive emotional experiences. If you had parents who were in some way emotionally dysfunctional parents who were afraid, angry, anxious, or abusive if your environment was less than safe, if you didn t receive resourceful mentoring, your Internal Map of Reality very likely creates many outcomes you don t like and many negative emotional experiences. 23. The more traumatic your childhood was, the more likely it is that you ve structured your Internal Map of Reality in a way designed to avoid danger and create safety. Most children are extremely resourceful in creating an Internal Map of Reality that works in their family environment, and creates the maximum feeling of safety. However, once you leave your family, the rest of the world isn t like your family situation, and the strategies you created during childhood very often create problems when used outside your family environment. In fact, your Internal Map of Reality will tend to attract people and

5 situations like those in your family, and not notice other choices 24. Today your Internal Map of Reality as well as it may have worked to get you through your childhood is giving you, at least part of the time, results you don t want. If that wasn t the case, you wouldn t be paying money and going to considerable effort to try to change your life. Now, to the degree that you associate your Internal Map of Reality with safety, anything that looks like it might change it may trigger resistance in you even if you consciously want the change. So, part of the price you have to pay to create an Internal Map of Reality that allows you to create whatever you want in life is to deal with that part of you that associates your old way of thinking and acting with safety. 25. That part of you, in trying to protect you from potential danger, pulls your focus, your attention, to avoiding that danger. Since your mind creates or attracts more of whatever you focus on, placing your attention on what you want to avoid is not resourceful. Instead, it causes you to create or attract more of it. In all probability, you don t notice when you re doing this. A large part of your job in this course is to learn how to recognize when you re focusing on what you don t want, on what you are worried about, on what you re afraid of, or on what you want to avoid which are all pretty much the same thing and at those times to shift your focus, consciously and intentionally, to what you do want. Some people in fact, many people come to Centerpointe telling us that they ve tried everything, and NOTHING works for them. I ve spent many years trying to figure out why this happens for some people. Eventually, after studying hundreds of such people, I discovered what it was. Such people share two key characteristics. These characteristics are also common to people who seem to continuously have a difficult time in life. Would you like to know what they are? I thought so. 27. First, in order to take control of what you create, in order to stop creating outcomes you don t want, in order to be in charge of your emotional life, you must acknowledge that somehow, even if you don t understand how, YOU are creating what s happening to you. You aren t doing this intentionally, and you aren t doing it consciously, but still, what s happening is coming from you. Those who say that nothing works invariably are under the impression that the negative outcomes they experience either just happen to them a kind of bad luck or are the fault of someone else. 28. Except for a certain number of random acts and a few things that are biologically programmed into us death, for instance, and certain physical conditions you create whatever happens to you, and you do this by focusing your mind in certain ways. Again, you do this unintentionally and unconsciously. In other words, your Internal Map of Reality runs on autopilot, creating your life, but what happens does come from you. Master your internal processes, learn to operate them consciously and intentionally, and you master what happens to you. So you MUST acknowledge that what happens to you is coming from you, even if you don t see how, and those who say that nothing works are not acknowledging this key principle.

6 29. Second, every person I ve ever seen who s having a difficult time in life, and especially those who say that nothing works, chronically focus their attention on what they do not want. What you focus on is the key to everything. Your mind is so powerful that you create or attract whatever you focus on in one way or another. Most people, however, don t focus intentionally. Instead, their mind runs on automatic, unconsciously focusing in whatever way it was programmed to focus during childhood. If you were traumatized while your Internal Map of Reality was being formed, you ll very likely focus a lot on what you don t want, because you think you have to in order to avoid potential danger. 30. When I meet someone, I can very quickly tell what they tend to focus on, because their life is the result of that focus. If you ll learn to focus your mind intentionally and consciously on what you want, you ll attract or create it. Now please don t misunderstand. When I say that you re creating your life, I m not saying that what you re creating is YOUR FAULT. This is not about fault, it s about responsibility. Fault implies that you did something wrong, and that s not the case. You aren t doing any of this intentionally. Something happened to you, though, that caused you to make your Internal Map of Reality the way it is, and now it s just doing what it was set up to do. You have to take that map off of autopilot and take conscious charge of it. Once you do that, you can create anything and everything you want. 31. Here s another key principle I want you to burn into your brain. For any outcome, whether internal or external, there s a certain way of thinking and acting that will get it for you. You have to find it and be flexible enough to adopt it. Finding it is the easy part. Being flexible enough to adopt this new way of thinking and acting is the challenging part, because, as I said, you may not feel safe focusing your mind in a different way. But, we will deal with that problem, too. 32. So you re creating your life. It isn t just happening to you, even though that may be how it feels. You re doing something inside that generates the results you re getting, and as I said earlier, your job in this course is to discover HOW you re doing it, to see the other options you aren t exercising, and to begin to create your life consciously instead of just letting your mind run on autopilot. 33. So here is what I want you to do as you take this course. Listen to each lesson, preferably more than once. Please do NOT just read the notes, because there are some very important experiential processes that are not in the notes. Next, do the homework, which you should treat as a process of self-discovery, a chance to look at each part of your Map of Reality and find out how you ve been using it to create your life. If you set aside just a short 15 minutes a day for the homework, you ll probably complete it in a few days. 34. Finally and this is the most important part between lessons I want you watch inside to see how you re using what I ve talked about in the lesson. In this lesson I m going to discuss beliefs, so between this lesson and the next you should be watching inside to notice the relationship between what you believe and what happens in your life.

7 This watching is the most important part of the course. Yes, you need to have some intellectual understanding of the material in order to do this, but understanding the material without this inner watching will not give you the breakthrough you want. 35. Before we get into beliefs, I want to give you an overview of the Internal Map of Reality. Then we ll look at the first part of that map beliefs. Please look at the diagram in paragraph #35 in the notes: Here s how it works. You receive some kind of input from the environment. This means you see something, hear something, touch something, smell something, taste something. You have an experience. This sensory input, as it comes in, is filtered. This filtering mechanism makes up a significant part of your Internal Map of Reality. These filters include your beliefs; values; memories; decisions; the language you speak; how you sort, store, and retrieve information; your strategies for making decisions; and a few other things. As we go over these filters in detail you ll begin to appreciate how much they

8 shape your experience of life, and how by doing this filtering intentionally you can have a huge influence over how you create your life. 36. These filters have three functions. They delete, distort, and generalize. First, these filters delete some of the information as it comes in. In fact, they delete almost all of it. There are millions of bits of information coming into your mind in each moment, and a whole lot of it you just don t notice you immediately delete it. As you walk through a room, you only notice a few of the details that hit your eye. Which details you notice and which you delete is determined by how you use these filters. You don t notice every spot on the carpet, every scratch on the furniture, every whorl in the wallpaper, for instance, even if your eyes see them. And the same filtering process happens with what you hear, touch, smell, and so on. 37. So how you use your filters determine what you keep and what you disregard. This deletion process happens so automatically, so quickly, and so unconsciously, that you don t even notice it. It s not like you say Okay, let s delete this, and keep this, and delete this and keep that. Whatever your beliefs, values, decisions, memories, and other filters are set up to delete, it just happens. 38. For instance, we tend to delete whatever doesn t agree with what we believe. Contradictory evidence would have to be huge and right in your face in order to override your tendency to automatically delete whatever doesn t agree with what you already believe. Let s say you re a nerdy guy who s always been invisible to women. Attractive women don t pay any attention to you. Maybe you win the lottery, and suddenly beautiful women start flirting with you. That would be such a unique experience that it might make your beliefs sit up and take notice that perhaps they should be reevaluated. Still, it would probably have to happen quite a few times before your belief would actually change. Most everyday evidence that disagrees with whatever you believe is deleted without you even noticing it. 39. Earlier I said that when you focus on something, your mind finds a way to create or attract more of it. If you focus on being a success, for instance, you ll figure out how to create or attract success. If you focus on failing or actually, as we ll see, even if you focus on not failing you ll figure out how to attract or create failure. The importance of these filters is that they determine what is available for you to focus on. If you delete all information, all ideas, all beliefs, all strategies, all data, about success, you can t focus on it. If you delete the possibilities in a situation, there will be no possibilities. But if you let these things in, they re available for you to focus on and create in your life. So you can see that if you could consciously choose what to delete and what to keep, you d have a distinct advantage in creating what you want in life. 40. These filters also distort what comes in. There are many ways this could happen, but the one that s pertinent here is distortion in order to make what s coming in confirm what we already belief, value, and so on. Or, we might distort what comes in by adding something that really isn t there, or create some other misperception so that the input, the

9 experience, conforms with our current Map of Reality. As you ll see, this distortion could be either harmful or beneficial. 41. Here s an example. Let s say that you believe that no one will ever love you. Someone then turns you down when you ask them for a date. Because you believe that no one will ever love you, you might see this as rejection, as evidence that you are, indeed, unlovable even if the real reason is that the person was already in a committed relationship, or had another commitment that night, or you just weren t their type. To confirm that what you believe is true even if it isn t you ll leave out some of the evidence, or add something to it, or in some way distort it. 42. Distortion can be resourceful, as well. When we envision the future, when we make plans, when we set goals, when we imagine something that doesn t yet exist, but which we want to have happen, we re distorting, but in a positive way. You can see that it would be beneficial to be in charge of this distortion process, rather than just letting it happen automatically. As with deletions, distortions help determine the raw material you ll have with which to create what you focus on. Since what you focus on directly creates how you feel, how you behave, what you attract, and what you re attracted to something I ll demonstrate to you, experientially, in another lesson being in charge of what determines this raw material gives you considerable power over what you create. 43. The third thing these filters do is create generalizations. Generalizations are very useful. If we didn t make generalizations, we d have to re-learn what a door is and how to open it every time we came to one. Generalizations can be negative, though, when they cause us to fail to see the differences that make something unique, causing us to assume that a thing is exactly the same as something else that s in the same general class, but which actually has significant differences. If you had a bad experience with an authority figure, or a romantic partner, or when you were in a learning situation, it would be very limiting if you generalized this to include all authority figures, all romantic partners, or all learning situations. 44. Often when people have a traumatic experience, they make these kinds of broad generalizations. If you do, you might focus on what you don t want whenever you encounter an authority figure, or whenever you become romantically involved, or whenever you find yourself in a learning situation. Since focusing on what you don t want creates more of it, and also creates bad feelings, such generalizations would create negative outcomes for you and, would also cause you to feel bad. The truth is that some authority figures might really want to help you, some romantic partners might really love you, and some learning situations might be great fun. 45. However, if you ve made generalizations about certain classes of people, or certain situations, you ll attract more of the very people and situations that will confirm that you re right. You won t, however, attract authority figures from whom you ll benefit, or romantic partners who will love you, or learning situations you ll enjoy if you ve made negative generalizations about them. One clue that generalizations are being made is when you hear global words like all, never, always, no one, or everyone.

10 46. So your filters delete, distort, and generalize the input as it comes in, based on the way your Internal Map of Reality has been set up to filter, all of which happens in a split second. What s left is a filtered version of reality, which provides the raw material you ll use to create your focus. If you re doing all of this unconsciously, you may not filter what comes in in a way that serves you, and you may not like the results. But if you re filtering intentionally, you can direct the process. Doing so gives you tremendous power. You ll see what I mean as we get more deeply into this. 47. So information has come in through your senses, and you ve filtered it, deleting, distorting, and generalizing. With what s left, after the filtering process, you make what are called internal representations. When I say that you re focusing, I really mean making internal representations. There are several kinds of internal representations: internal pictures, hearing internal sounds, feeling internal kinesthetic (or touch) sensations, smelling internal smells, tasting internal tastes, and having internal dialog talking to yourself. Internal representations are what we call thinking. 48. This means that there are six ways you can think, six ways you can represent things to yourself internally. These six ways are called thinking modalities, or just modalities, and they are visual, auditory, kinesthetic (which means feelings and touch), olfactory (which means smell), gustatory (which means taste), or auditory digital (which is internal dialog). Most people use the word thinking to mean internal dialog, but you can actually think in any of these six modalities. And, each kind of internal representation can be one of two varieties, remembered or constructed. If I ask you to think of the first house you ever lived in, you ll create a remembered picture of your house. But if I ask you to think of your ideal house, the house you d build if you had $20 million, you d make something up in your head, and this picture would be an example of a constructed picture. 49. The internal representations you make, for better or worse, are not what originally came in through your senses. That input has been significantly altered by the filtering process. Instead, these internal pictures, sounds, internal dialog, and so on, are representations of reality, which is why they re called internal representations. And, the process of making internal representations goes on automatically, very rapidly, and almost always unconsciously. You can, however, become aware of how you do it, and learn to do it consciously and intentionally. 50. So, to recap, you re receiving a constant stream of sensory stimuli. You filter it, and with what s left, you make a continuing and constant stream of internal representations. These internal pictures, sounds, internal dialog, and so on, occur one after another, all day long, in sequences called strategies (something we ll look at in detail in a later lesson). And though you re aware of some of this, most of it and I mean almost all of it is going on outside your conscious awareness, automatically, moment by moment, for your whole life. In this course, I m giving you the opportunity to become aware of how you do all of this, which means watching yourself do it, noticing what happens when you do it the way you ve been doing it, and also finding out what happens when you do it in other ways.

11 51. So, there you are, making all these internal representations, which, you ll remember, are internal pictures, sounds, kinesthetic sensations, smells, tastes, and internal dialog. Why are these internal representations so important? Because internal representations generate three very important aspects of your life. First, they generate your emotions, plus all your other internal states (such as motivation, satisfaction, or curiosity, for instance). Happiness, sadness, anxiety, depression, motivation, confusion, clarity, excitement, fear, and all other emotions and internal states, are directly generated by the internal representations you make. 52. If you go inside and find out, for instance, what internal representations lead to anxiety, you d have control over whether or not you felt anxious, wouldn t you? Knowing how you were creating anxiety, you could decide not to do it any more in other words, decide not to make those internal representations any more. To do this, though, you have to be aware of them. What internal representations you make, once it s a conscious process, becomes a choice. If you go inside and find out what internal representations lead to feeling happy, you could make more of them. Again, if you re aware of how you do happiness, it becomes a choice, and you can do more of it. Can you see why it might be important to create internal representations consciously and intentionally, rather than just allowing them to happen automatically? 53. The second thing internal representations generate is behavior. When you take action, or decide not to take action, that action is preceded by certain internal representations. If you re motivated to act, it s because you ve made certain internal representations that create the motivation to act, and then the action. If you procrastinate, it s because you ve made certain other internal representations. If you decide to smack someone in the nose, kiss them, avoid them, speak to them, or anything else, your behavior is generated by the internal representations you ve made. All internal states, including emotions, and all behaviors, are generated by the internal representations you make. 54. Finally, internal representations generate the people and situations you feel attracted to, or attract into your life. The people you choose to become involved with, and the situations in which you put yourself are a result of the internal representations you make. You are making internal representations right now, and right now they re generating feelings, behaviors, people, and situations. It s just that you re doing all of this automatically. Your job, assuming that you want to be in charge of what you create, is to learn how to generate your internal representations consciously and intentionally, in a way that gets you what you want. 55. Internal states, behaviors, and internal representations are what scientists call a cybernetic loop. This means that they are an interconnected system, where a change in any one changes the other two. If you change your internal state, your behavior and your internal representations change. If you change your behavior (which also includes changes in posture, breathing, and movement), your internal states and your internal representations change. Finally, if you change your internal representations, you change your internal state and your behavior.

12 56. We ll discuss all of this in detail later. For now, the main point is that these three things affect each other, and if you can learn to consciously generate your internal representations, you can be in charge of your internal states, your behavior, and the people and situations that come into your life. 57. Let s look at how internal representations attract people and situations into your life. Let s say that you want to make more money. You decide to make internal representations of making more money. What happens when you do that? First, you begin to get ideas about how to make money. Second, you notice external resources that might help you to do so. You would find yourself noticing and being attracted to people who could help you. Books would jump out at you at the bookstore, you d notice snatches of conversation about making money, or a seminar advertisement, that you would have otherwise ignored. 58. You d also discover and draw on internal resources you otherwise wouldn t notice or tap into otherwise, including things like courage, persistence, learning from mistakes, greater mental clarity, and greater energy. Finally, focusing on making money would create the motivation to act once you had an idea about how to actually create more money. In this way, focusing on how to create more money causes it to happen. There might be a learning processes along the way. You might make mistakes and learn from them, perfecting your ideas for getting the money. If you keep focusing on how to make more money, and take action, you will eventually get the money. 59. What if you instead focus on what you don t want? What if, for instance, you focus on not being poor, or not being in debt? In that case, even though you don t want it, you ll figure out a way to create poverty and debt. To focus on not being poor you have to make internal representations of being poor, with the idea that you want to avoid it. Your mind, however or at least the part of it that generates outcomes takes whatever you focus on literally, as if you want it. It can t process the not part of it, because it just sees the internal representations and assumes that its supposed to create or attract it. So, being a good servant, your mind attracts people and situations that will cause you to be poor, to lose money, to make bad financial decisions, to lose motivation, and so on. And, you ll also feel bad, because focusing on what you don t want creates all bad feelings, and you cannot feel good while focusing on what you don t want. 60. When you put all of this together, you can see that by being aware of and in charge of your internal representations, you re in charge of nearly everything in your life. Yes, there are random events in life, but if you can take charge of your internal representations, you have so much control that random events have only a small effect on your life, and even when they happen, you re able to turn them to your advantage. So to teach you how to create what you want in life, we re going to be looking for the parts of this system that you can influence and change in order to create the states, behaviors, and outcomes you want. 61. Throughout this course I ll be using the term focusing quite a lot. When I talk about focusing on something focusing your mind, focusing on what you don t want, focusing

13 on what you do want I mean making internal representations. If you focus on being happy, you re making internal representations of being happy you re making internal pictures of being happy, talking to yourself about being happy, or perhaps experiencing internal sounds, smells, or tastes, or internal physical sensations, of being happy. Focusing means making internal representations. Please remember this, because I ll be using this term a lot, and I want to make sure you know what I mean. 62. This process by which you take in sensory input, filter it, and then make internal representations, thereby creating internal states, behaviors, and what and whom you attract or are attracted to, is what I call your Internal Map of Reality. Some people, as they re growing up, create a Map of Reality that creates reasonably good results. They might end up rich and happy even though their Map of Reality is running on automatic. Someone else might, as a result of his or her early experiences, create a map that quite often generates unhappiness, or poverty, or other undesirable results. Either way, you can become aware of how your Map of Reality works, and learn to operate it consciously and intentionally. If your Map of Reality doesn t work very well, you can change it so as to create what you want in life. If it already works well, you ll be able to improve your results. 63. Now that we ve completed our overview of the Internal Map of Reality, let s take a look at beliefs. Beliefs are quite simply what we hold to be true. Notice that I didn t say that beliefs ARE true. You ll see why I say that in a minute. What you believe has a powerful effect on your life. To master your beliefs and use them to create what you want, you re going to have to become aware of them, and then go inside and watch to see how they generate what happens in your life, inside and out. 64. Important principle #1: Based on early life interactions and experiences, especially with our primary care-givers, we all develop beliefs about who we are and what our relationship is to the rest of the world. We don't consciously choose these beliefs. We soak them up from our life experiences when we're too small to have an effective way to evaluate them. Beliefs become core components of how we see other people, the world, and ourselves. 65. Important principle #2: Beliefs, in combination with other aspects of your Internal Map of Reality, create or attract the results, circumstances, and experiences of your life. Regardless of what you believe, you ll find a way to create consistency between your life and your beliefs. The mind is a very powerful goal seeking mechanism. It will either find a way to make what you believe come true, or at least make it seem to be true (which amounts to the same thing, as far as your experience of life is concerned). Human beings have a powerful need for consistency between the world and what they believe. The drive to create this consistency is so strong that people will do almost anything to be right about their beliefs, even when doing so creates failure, suffering, or unhappiness. And, we don t consciously decide to do this. It isn t volitional. It s automatic.

14 66. There are three ways that you make what you believe either come true or seem to be true. Method #1: You will attract, and be attracted to, people and situations that confirm the truth of what you believe. If you believe that no one will ever love you, you ll feel a magical attraction to men or women who don t have the desire or the capacity to love you, even though you have no way of consciously knowing this about them in advance. This is why people often attract partners with the same basic characteristics, over and over again, each time in a different body. You ll attract people who will confirm what you believe as if by a hidden radar. Doing so creates consistency between what you believe and the actual events of your life. 67. If you believe you ll never be prosperous, you ll attract people and situations that will keep you from making money or cause you to lose it if you do somehow accumulate any. Whatever you believe, you ll exhibit a magnetic attraction to people and situations that will help you be right about your belief. 68. Method #2: You ll find ways to distort what you perceive so as to make a belief seem to be true, even if it isn t. If you believe that no one will ever love you, you ll interpret the behavior of others as evidence that they don t love you, even if that isn t what it really means. If you believe you ll never be prosperous, you ll find a way to interpret your situation as lacking prosperity, even if that isn t really the case. Of all the possible interpretations in any situation, you ll pick those that confirm that what you believe is true, and you ll filter out interpretations that contradict your belief. 69. Method #3: You ll act in such a way that people finally comply with what you believe by acting in a way that confirms that your belief is true. If you believe you won t be loved, that fear will cause you to act in such a way that eventually the other person finally will stop caring. If you believe you ll be poor, you ll act in such a way that you ll end up poor. There are three ways, then, to prove that you re right about what you believe: attract or be attracted to people or situations that make your belief come true, interpret whatever happens in such a way that your belief seems to be true, even if it isn t, or act in such a way that it really comes true. 70. With all three methods, you get to be right about what you believe, creating consistency between what you believe and what happens in your life. If you d rather be right than happy, this is a great strategy, but if you d like to be happy and peaceful, it s a losing proposition. So important principle #2 is really saying that beliefs shape your life because you make life conform to whatever you believe, in these three ways. 71. Important principle #3: Significant negative emotional experiences create beliefs that are not resourceful and causes us to focus on what we do not want. The emotional charge from such negative experiences pulls our focus to what we don t want. And remember, when I use the word focus, I mean make internal representations. Since the mind takes whatever you focus on as an instruction to create or attract more of it, focusing on what you don t want is not resourceful. To get what you want, you have to focus on what you want and have beliefs that tell the mind to create that result.

15 72. Let s look at this a little more deeply. People who ve had significant, negative emotional experiences create a generalization that the world is a dangerous place, or at least a potentially dangerous place. Quite naturally, they feel that they must avoid that danger. To do so, they have to focus on it. Since focusing on anything gives your mind an instruction to create or attract more of it, such people end up getting the very thing they re trying to avoid. In this way, the emotional charge on past traumas pulls your attention to what you don t want, creating more of it. 73. There are two ways to get rid of this problem. The first is to change your focus to what you want. When you notice yourself focusing on what you don t want, immediately change your focus to what you do want. You can use what you don t want to figure out what you do want, since what you do want is its opposite. Then, change your focus to what you want. A good way to do this is by asking yourself questions. 74. For instance, if you find yourself focusing on being in debt, you might find yourself making internal pictures and having internal dialog about owing money and being poor. Instead, you could ask yourself, Given this situation, how can I create enough money to pay these debts and begin to create some significant savings? Decide what you want and ask yourself how to get it. This focuses your mind on what you want. As a result, you ll begin to make internal representations of what you want and how to get it. You ll generate ideas. You begin to notice resources you didn t notice before. You begin to draw on internal resources you didn t know you had, such as persistence, problem-solving abilities, and so on. And, you ll become motivated to take action. 75. Sometimes your mind will immediately generate answers to the questions you ask. Other times, you may have to ask the question many times, over days or weeks. Because in asking such questions you re focusing on what you want, your unconscious mind immediately gets to work creating a solution. So, now that you know how this works, what might keep you from doing this? Trying to be safe by avoiding danger might keep you from focusing on what you want. If you re scanning the environment for danger which is focusing on what you don t want it s because you ve had significant negative emotional experiences, and an unconscious part of you thinks you have to scan for danger in order to be safe. 76. Do you have to focus on what you don t want if you ve had significant negative emotional experiences? Of course not. You always have a choice, if you ll just exercise it. If such experiences were strong enough there may be an unconscious pull to focus on what you don t want, but you can still decide to focus on what you want anyway. If the trauma was strong enough, you may have to get rid of the emotional charge on the root cause emotional trauma. This can be done through therapy, Holosync, and a few other methods. Once you make the past trauma emotionally neutral, though, you re free to focus on what you want and, create it. In a future lesson I ll introduce a fast and effective method for neutralizing such emotions. 77. So principle #3 states that significant negative emotional experiences create beliefs that aren t resourceful in other words, beliefs that do not serve you and these beliefs

16 pull your attention to what you don t want, inadvertently creating more of it. To believe something, you have to make internal representations of it. Negative beliefs involve making internal representations of what you don t want, which causes your brain to create or attract more of it. Negative beliefs, in one way or another, create or attract situations or people into your life, or make you act in such a way, that the negative belief either comes true or seems to be true. 78. Important Principle #4: This is perhaps THE key point about beliefs. Since everything is true to the person who believes it because you ll create or attract or make up whatever evidence you need evaluating beliefs based on whether they re true or false isn t helpful. Doing so is indulging in circular, fallacious logic. If you know in advance that you ll figure out a way to make whatever you believe either come true or seem to be true, how could a belief ever be false? If you believe it, you re going to figure out a way to make it be true. Only other people s beliefs can be false. Your beliefs will always turn out to be true. For this reason, conscious, happy people evaluate beliefs based on whether of not they re resourceful in other words, on whether or not they create the desired results and experience of life. 79. Some people challenge me on this by pointing out that rocks are still hard, even if a person believes they re soft. I m not talking about what really is, however. I m talking about your ability to convince yourself that something is true. I m talking about your ability to make what you believe come true, or to make it appear to be true. In terms of your experience of life, this amounts to the same thing. 80. If a person believes strongly enough that rocks are soft, they will convince themselves that this is true. In the same way, people convince themselves that the earth is flat, that their religion is the only true religion, that everyone is out to get them, or that their refrigerator has been taken over by aliens who re telling them to prepare for the arrival of the mother ship. In order to be right about what they believe, people are quite capable of imagining all the evidence they need. 81. But let s get back to this idea that most people choose their beliefs based on evidence. If asked why they believe something, most people will say I have plenty of experiential evidence. Yet the person across the street might believe the opposite, and he, too, has experiential evidence. Which is true? They both are, because each will use the three methods I ve described to make whatever they believe either BE true or SEEM TO BE true. Since whatever you deeply believe will end up being true, why not believe what will give you the outcome you want? Believe that you can make money, and you will. Believe that you can be happy, and you will be. Believe that you can have great relationships, and you will. Believe that you re lovable, and you will be. There are a few other things you re going to have to do, but believing it starts the ball rolling, and without believing it, nothing happens. 82. Beliefs have consequences. They create outcomes. Why? Because they involve making internal representations of something, and when you do that, you engage your mind to create or attract whatever you ve focused on. Since this is true, the best way to