Unless We Are Free...

In a recent interview Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi said, "Unless we are free we cannot realize out true potential." She is a great and gracious hero who lived under house arrest for two decades for the cause of freedom in her beloved Burma. Her words have inspired millions of people to stand up for freedom in peace and with dignity.

Those particular words, "Unless we are free we cannot realize out true potential" hit home, giving me a deeper perspective on my own work. The greatest freedom we can claim is inner freedom, especially the freedom to be happy in all of its glorious forms: peace, delight, curiosity, gratitude, love, bliss, contentment -- so many faces of happiness! Until we know how to break out from the prisons of our own limiting beliefs we cannot liberate ourselves.

Few, if any of us, will meet the challenges that Aung San Suu Kyi took on. But all of us will face birth and death, sickness and health, better times and worse ones. I don't know about you, but when I grew up, I had NO guidelines for how to understand my inner reality, my belief systems, or my emotional reactions to the ever-changing events around me. It took a course in the Option Method at a school for group counselling in NYC GROW) with Bruce Di Marsico for me to open my eyes and catch my first glimpse of freedom.

I began to see that my perceptions of reality, my conclusions about what happened, the meaning I ascribed to what people said and did governed my responses -- especially my emotional responses. Since that time, in 1972, I learned more from Bruce Di Marsico and other magnificent teachers like Ram Dass, Pierre Pannetier, and Werner Erhard. Books by Jane Roberts and Joseph Murphy shook my world view, in a wonderful way. Friends and colleagues, Micheal Neill and Joe Vitale encouraged me and shared their wisom.

Most of all I have learned from my own deep exploration of my own limiting beliefs and feelings and working with courageous students to explore theirs. I put the very best of what I've learned into two books:

Emotional Options http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/ 

Travelling Free: How to Recover from the Past. http://mandyevans.com/archives/travelling-free/

I wish every one could read them. I'm not the world's best marketer. I have no desire for fame or a huge fortune. I just want to share the greatest gifts I have ever received: The gift of happiness and the gift of recovery. I was thinking about how to do that this morning, so I wrote this blog post. My message is simple, if you want break out from beliefs that block happiness and success, read my books. I'm pretty sure they will help you. If you have read them and found them useful, please tell other people about them. Because: "Unless we are free we cannot realize out true potential" and you have many gifts to share.

 You can find more information and links to order at my online Breakout Store.
 http://mandyevans.com/the-breakout-store/

Cheering you on to happiness and freedom!

Love,
Mandy

How to be Happy Again After Financial Loss

My sweet mountain cabin is in escrow. I welcome a smooth closing. Losing more money than I ever imagined having at one point. Having traded up through 4 fixer houses and 2 condos over 35 years to achieve this monumental loss, I hope the new owners enjoy it and thrive in it.

It reminds me of the old saying "There is no greater burden than a tool that is no longer useful." I'll be relieved to let it go and move on more freely.

Some of my friends express surprise that I am not really upset about all of this money going down the drain, or wherever it goes. Indeed psychological studies show the we humans will give up multiple opportunities for profit in order to avoid taking a loss. Why?

This brings up a bunch of questions. The answers have helped me and my students cut a lot of losses and a lot of unhappiness. See if they are useful for you.

Does losing money have to be painful?
No. I think the pain is in the meaning. Different losses mean various things to different people at different times in their lives.

This loss of money doesn't hurt a bit. Whatever I have lost is already gone. I want to be free from the burden of an unwanted cabin in the mountains more than I want to keep the hope that someday prices may come back up. It is a loss I can afford and maybe that is a factor. Usually the pain we feel is in proportion to the perceived importance of what we lose.

Is losing money shameful? In my work I've noticed that deep feelings of shame often accompany financial losses. That one mystifies me. Do you think losing money needs to generate shame? I fail to see anything shameful in losing money. Lessons to learn, yes. Shame, no. Unless there is wrong-doing involved, like a Bernie Madoff scheme. But then, I'm not a fan of shame anyway. It only takes a moment to recognize wrong-doing and shame blocks creative energy that could be used to set things right, or improve them as best we can.

Is a finding the positive the only way to avoid the pain? I am not wild about positive thinking. Positive is pretty. Negative is depressing. The truth is beautiful. The truth is that buying that cute little cabin is on the top of my "What Was I Thinking?!?" list. It brought a bunch of problems and disasters from day one, though things have been pretty peaceful for the last couple of years. 

Do we need to feel pain in order to learn from our experience? Why would that be true? Although we can learn from pain, we can also learn from curiosity, insight, delight, discovering new information and inspiration -- to name just a few other powerful ways to learn.

Does losing money mean you are stupid? A loser? Careless? Sometimes the most well-thought-out decisions come with unintended consequences. Often you just can't tell until you get there.

What are you concerned would happen if you lost a lot of money and felt just fine -- not because you lost money, just fine anyway? Over the years people have answered with many of the concerns above. They believed they would be a little crazy if they didn't feel bad, or that they would then be shameful and unconcerned. Some thought if they didn't feel bad, it would mean they didn't care. When we explored those limiting beliefs they proved false every time.

Does losing money make you angry? Events by themselves do not govern our emotions. Limiting, self-defeating beliefs about what happens and ourselves determine our reactions.

Does losing money decrease your hopes for happiness? In the great mysterious unknown of life we encounter infinite opportunities to be happy. Since I have a great deal to learn before I achieve enlightenment, I confess to some doubts on this one. For example, if I had only enough money to feed my children and did not know another way to provide for them, and I lost it. If they were hungry, or even perished because of the loss, the idea of being happy is a big stretch. It would rank at the top of the perceived importance of the loss scale. Still, no matter what, I would want to be happy again as soon as I could.

Are you willing to be happy? Did you, like so many people in these last years, lose money, maybe lots of it? Would it be OK with you to fill your life with happiness, creativity and new prospects for prosperity? Could you recover from your loss and break out to happiness right now?

I hope your answer is yes, because the choices we make when we are happy and at peace send us down a different path from the ones we take when we feel sad, stupid, ashamed and angry.

Cheering you on to happily cutting your losses if you want to -- great success and prosperity.

Love,
Mandy

Recommended Resource:
"Travelling Free: How to Recover From the Past by Changing Your Beliefs"
 http://mandyevans.com/archives/travelling-free/

Read it on a new Kindle Paperwhite. Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High Resolution Display with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers

Fear of Disappointment: How to Break Out

Does fear of disappointment block your enthusiasm? Does it keep you from daring to dream? Or allowing people to share your excited anticipation of a new adventure?

Active, happy desire (AHD) will motivate you more strongly than any should's or ought-to's you can muster up. What does active, happy desire feel like? It's that "Oh yes! That! Gimme some of that!" feeling. It fills you with exuberance and a strong tendency to roll up you sleeves and get to work moving toward what you want or finding a way to attract it to you. You can feel the fizz of energy generating. When that energy radiates out into the universe the we often call the results miracles.

What does happy desire look like? Have you ever seen someone light up with a new idea or possibility? It's visible, discernible. In my coaching work it's the look that tells me we've had a breakout.

Fear of happily experiencing desire is really common. Some of the hidden beliefs that fuel the fear run along lines like this:

• If I get excited and it doesn't work out, I'll feel like a fool.
• If I don't let myself want it too much, it won't hurt so much if I don't get it.
• If I get my hopes up, I'll be too disappointed.

Could anything be more self-defeating? Talk about driving with one foot on the brake, 4 flat tires, and out of gas. We do it to protect ourselves but it does not work because:

• Every moment of happiness you squelch is a moment of happiness you will never experience.
• Disappointment isn't so bad. It comes and goes. Do not add shame and embarrassment for having dared to dream. That is another painful, doomed strategy.
• Denying your desire does not avoid disappointment; it makes it more likely.
• Hiding your desire blocks the eager support of those who wish you well and may want to help you.
• Every time you conjure up that idea about the disappointment you want to avoid, you feel it. Like the poor coward who dies a thousand deaths, you fill your life with small doses of disappointment.

The common antidote only adds brake fluid to the brakes. If  your odds of success are uncertain, trying to believe you will succeed doesn't work too well. Often, the truth is that you don't know. The good news is that you do not need to know the outcome in order to allow AHD to move you down the path. You just have to be open to new information and correct your course as it becomes available. You do not have to crush your eagerness. Just add risk assessment into the equation when you make choices about what actions you want to take or pass up.

If you remain open to learning more as you allow your desire to mark your path you will be flexible. Some things will become less desirable as you discover more about them. Other possibilities will attract you even more strongly.

Only one caution comes to mind: be discerning about what you share with whom. Pay attention to which people will nurture your dreams and who may shoot them down.

The next time you light up with active, happy desire let it be! Don't spin it. Don't squelch it. Let it grow! Let it lead you to new adventures -- happily.

Please leave a comment and share your adventures so we can cheer you on. Or tell us your your blocks we can help you break out from them.

Resource: for more info about how desire works as an inner sense of direction read "Emotional Options." For book details or to order visit,
http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/

Breakout from Media Induced Anger and Fear

Can you find the lie in this headline?
Apple verdict irks South Koreans.

When a San Francisco judge ruled that Samsung had infringed on Apple patents and that headline hit the wires. It ran in newspapers from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald to the Chicago Tribune. Spot the lie? Do you believe a verdict can irk everyone who hears it?

You probably hear some version of that lie every day:

• You make me angry
• You drive me crazy
• It makes me sad
• He makes me feel guilty
• It makes me nervous
• He scares me

 No wonder so many of us believe our emotional well-being is at the mercy of people and events. That myth is built into our thoughts, language, and newspaper headlines. Therapists are trained (and train us) to ask "How does that make you feel?"

I have explored the "it makes me feel" myth with countless people over several decades and it has not proven true one time. Each time we looked deeply into the cause of an unwelcome feeling, we found that the pain was in the meaning. It could be anger, fear, guilt or any feeling that comes too often and stays too long.  

The usual approach to feeling bad is to change something, or a lot of things. But have you ever noticed that people who get angry a lot do that no matter how many things they change?

The same dynamic traps people who suffer from chronic fear so they never feel safe no matter how cautious they become.

That is because they are working on a false solution they find on a search in the wrong place. The easiest, often the only way, to feel happier is to find and discard the beliefs that cause the "irk" in the first place.

A reader who wrote about my recovery book "Travelling Free: How to Recover from the Past" explains it really well. He said:

Your one chapter is called: “The pain is in the meaning.” I had to read it a few times, because almost like some form of dyslexia, it kept turning around for me to: “The meaning is in the pain.” And I suddenly realized how much I’ve held on to pain because for some bizarre reason I’ve believed that I need the pain to produce my best work.

I’ve found a new meaning. It’s in inspiring others to live lives that have impact on the world and the people around them. Now, the meaning is no longer in the pain, it is in the impact.

Imagine spending years actually holding on to pain because you thought your creativity required it. Then bamm! The belief is gone and your new goal is to have an impact. Wow!

Hunting the meanings and beliefs that block happiness or success is a lot like searching for Easter eggs. Only instead of tucking them in your basket you can discard them. And be happy and irk-free no matter what the judge says about Apple and Samsung. It's a much more effective place to start if you want to still want to change things too!

To Your Irk-Free Happiness and Success!

Recommended resources:
Travelling Free: How to Recover from the Past by Changing Your Beliefs

http://mandyevans.com/archives/travelling-free/ 

Emotional Options
http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/

Grumpy People Need Love Too

 Report from my Experiment in the Judgment Free Zone. 

I sent out a lot of blessings! I had suggested that if we catch ourselves judging ourselves or someone else, we focus instead on what we want or send out a blessing. I was surprised at how often I caught myself. It wasn't so much in words, but a strong reaction inside to something I deemed wrong-ish and bad-ish. It was the same thing each time. Every time someone was cross, rude, or mean to another person, I sort of tensed and felt judgmental.

My friend Viki Markle made this pencil holder for me. She said it was to remind us that grumpy people need love too. It sits on my desk, but sometimes I forget.

I sent a lot of blessings to grumpy people during my Not Judgment Day. It felt so good I'm going to do it more.

Experiment in the Judgment-Free Zone

At a recent social gathering I said that happiness was unreasonable but that unhappiness (in all of its forms like anger, fear, guilt) always has at least one reason attached. I offered up Marilyn Monroe, Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston as dead proof that you cannot be beautiful enough to be happy. No amount of fame, talent or success will do it. Someone explained it all from her perspective, "They're just losers" she proclaimed.

I stifled a gasp and said, "I don't like to judge them." To my surprise, she responded, "I'm sorry. That was harsh. I didn't mean to be that harsh. She continued to explain how she had worked for everything she had and did not understand how they could be so stupid.

I sighed and slipped into observation mode.

For many years a good exchange of judgments took the lion's share of my conversations -- the harsher, the better. Harsh and funny topped them all. It is kind of like tossing a slightly toxic ball around. Feels great to catch it when it heads your way. What fun to toss it back with a fresh spin of meanness. What a good way to learn about what your friends and acquaintances like without having to reveal anything personal or challenge anybody.

Some of the poison rubs off though, with each toss and catch. After awhile your heart closes up. Your creative juices flow through one shallow ditch. As I relished the anger and contempt we expressed during the those judgment days, I did not see the connection between my mode of communication and the isolation I felt. It's hard to feel connected to your fellow beings when you use them for stealth target practice.

As I began to break out from the prison of my own unconscious, robot-like way of life, those conversations lost their appeal, little by little. Now when I end up in the middle of one, I feel a little sick and a little trapped. Sometimes I cannot find a true place to stand. I know it's not up to me to tell other people how to live. I don't even know if I am right or wrong. I  don't think it matters. I simply prefer to wish people well. I like to see courage. I wonder with compassion what makes outright cruelty seem like a good idea to so many of us.

If you are familiar with my work, you know that acceptance (not to be confused with resignation) is the foundation of all of it. I have pondered this issue for decades. The courage and discoveries so many people have shared with me convince me that we all do the best we can with what we know and what we believe at every moment. How exciting that it can change profoundly in the flash of a second with new insight.

I would so like to encourage everyone to break out from the prison of perpetual judgment! I am not selling  rose colored glasses here. Just looking for some fellow seekers of truth in a judgment-free zone.

Would you like to join me in an experiment? Take a One Day Break from Judgment. For one day, simply remove judgment from your thoughts and conversation. That includes judging yourself if you slip. If you notice contempt or disdain creeping in, let it go and think of something else. Catch yourself scoffing? Turn your focus to what you want in life or send out blessings instead.

I would love to know how it goes. Posting a comment here is a wonderful way to share your discoveries and insights. It inspires the rest of us.

Can't wait to hear from you!

Please share and spread the word.

Love,

Mandy

Much more info at http://mandyevans.com/

Exercise Your "Emotional Options" -- My Big News!

                             
Would you would like to be happier now, even before you fix all of the things you would like to change about yourself and our world?

"Emotional Options: A Handbook for Happiness" tells you how to break out from the (often hidden) limiting beliefs that block your happiness and success.

Save time, money and travel. This workshop-in-a-book serves as a complete course. It is filled with workshop-tested exercises and insights from decades of experience with thousands of intrepid inward-bound explorers.

Just out in a new edition by Yes You Can Press, "Emotional Options" is available now in paperback, for Kindle, and as a PDF at:

 http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/

Will reading "Emotional Options " be the next step to freedom that comes when you breakout from anger, fear, guilt, shame and other painful emotions? The result is happiness, expanded creativity, and energy. Often with a sweet sigh of relief!

 

I must still have some limiting beliefs to explore. I can tell because I love my book. I'm proud of the contribution it has made to people in English, Dutch and Japanese. The changes it helps readers to make in relationships, health, finances and other important areas of their lives move me deeply. But I still find tooting my own horn  a big challenge.

So I'm letting other people do it. I copied, word for word, the review headlines from the prior edition on Amazon. You know how publishers pick the best reviews and hope you don't find the others? I did not do that. Here they are for you to see the impact "Emotional Options" has on readers – all of them – not one deleted! Typos included.

"Amazingly Helpful! A Big Help, Most valuable little book, Best In Show, Key to Happiness, Breakthrough book! Truth and Acceptance, New and Improved! Simple and powerful, Useful and Enjoyable to Read, Perfect little gem, Is Everybody Happy? Sooooo helpful!!!! Elegantly Simple, Practical, & Charming, Four simple but powerfull questions, Emotional Options, another great book! Emotional Options Is a Powerful Transformer, The real deal. Emotional Options: A Handbook for Happiness."

Order at http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/ 

If you have already read "Emotional Options" please consider giving one to your friends, especially anyone who may be struggling with painful emotions.

Order at:

http://mandyevans.com/archives/emotional-options/

Thank you for the privilege of sharing my big news with you. I appreciate our connection. To Your happiness and success!

Love,

Mandy 

PS, So far, there is no way to associate the Amazon reviews from the prior edition to this one. If you've read Emotional Options and liked it, a quick review and/or star rating of this new edition (the blue and green one with the mountain) will sure help to spread some happiness! Thanks.