Not the “fake it ’till you make it” to whatever status you believe holds the magical key to empowerment. I’m referring to knowing that you know that the “real you” is already ok, just because you breathe. The starting point from this place is assuming that you are not broken, just in evolution, like the plant in the garden that is in the process of unfolding to its true beauty and potential.

We as a society tend to come from a mindset of lack and deficiency – the old paradigm of selfishness and “survival of the fittest”. This is just one way of seeing life; it is not the only way. We live in a world of infinite potential, and what determines how you experience “reality” is based on your perceptual system. How you wire your brain and nervous system really matters.

And get this; what runs your life is generally the 90% that is out of your awareness and comes from the unconscious part of your mind. So, why is self-love so important and why is it not ok to beat yourself up and put yourself down? Aren’t we taught that this is “humble”? Isn’t it “pride” to think good of yourself? Isn’t it “narcissistic”?

Narcissism stems from fear and is often rooted in insecurity. When you come from core confidence, you know that there is no need to compare yourself and judge worth and value between people. Yes, we vary in the expression of our gifts and talents, yet at our essence, the “founders” of our country had it correct when they said, “all men (and women) are created equal”.

When you come to know this Authentic Self, the essence of your very life force, you can begin to separate yourself from the “stories” of who you think you are that keep you stuck and playing small. These stories that you’ve wired into your mind and nervous system can be re-written when you are ready to accept the challenge. And it is much simpler than you may think.

In the meantime, rejecting yourself will only keep you stuck. Why or how does this work? Here are 3 reasons why self-love is not narcissism and why you want to convert to self-love and stop putting yourself down.

1. Narcissism by definition is rooted in fear and judgment. It is seeking hierarchy and “power over” others based on comparison and disrespect. When we come from “I am better than you” or “my needs are most important – period”, we are coming from lack. Often, low self-esteem and self-absorption based on this is the cause of narcissism.

2. Self-love stems from awareness of the Divine spirit that is within you and the source of life itself. It has to do with respect for self and all of life and just acknowledges the gift of life that you are. It is compassionate and says, “I’m growing” and I can see the abundance in light in life, instead of coming from a place of fear and lack. It is giving our self space to grow and expand without shame and guilt – which are the two “terrorizing twins” that keep us playing small and losing in life. Love grows and expands us; fear constricts.

3. One cannot rise above and stay above their self-image. Your brain seeks to make you “right” in the way that you really “see” yourself (self-image). When I lived in self-rejection, I used sheer will power to push my way to my goals in the hopes of finding abundance and peace. What I realized is that self-sabotage, in its many forms (even Tiger had to learn this one), will kick in if you do not deal with the “blind spots” that distort your self-image in a proactive way. Also, be informed that negative self-talk has been shown to provoke the stress response in your body and stress accounts for up to 90% of primary care doctor visits. Your subconscious mind is going to show you via the Mirror of Life what you REALLY believe about yourself and life.

In this time of change there is also great opportunity for growth. The more you embrace who you are, with love and compassion, the more likely you are to be kind and accepting of others. This is a winning formula for success as when you feel deserving of success, you can stop all of the procrastination and confusion around your business success, relationships and you are even likely to stay healthier and have more life energy.

Core confidence can only come from the inside out when you make the time to consider – and love – who you really are.  What do you think?

Common knowledge is often simply hand-me-down opinions that have been accepted as “just the way life is”. There is not a way life is that is universally true. What determines how you see life is the filter that you see the facts around you through, known as perception.

Perception is the lens we interpret through and if your brain has been unwittingly wired, particularly at a young age, to see life as threatening, this viewpoint will color the way that you see the world.

I’ve come to call these filters that keep us from connecting with our Authentic Self, sense of power, wisdom and peace of mind as “cataracts of the soul”. We all have many gifts and talents that are unique and would make a positive difference in the world.

Yet, once we develop perceptions about the world around us, our brain and nervous system keep us focused on the people, places and circumstances to keep our established perceptual systems in place. This is often the reason why change is challenging and why we stay stuck. It is difficult to have happiness, health, wealth and great relationships when your filter says, age brings disease, money is hard to get and people cannot be trusted.

The answer is to re-educate yourself while at the same time learning systems and processes that allow you to release the old perceptual memory from your nervous system/body. You can then learn how to more easily rewire and retrain your brain.

A practical example of how this plays out in your life can be seen from an article I read today about an “Aha” moment that Jada Pinkett Smith had. In the article you will note that she says that she micromanaged everything because:

“I grew up in a neighborhood in Baltimore that was like a war zone, so I never learned to trust that there were people who could help me. I was also stuck in the idea that taking care of others was the way to create good relationships. As a result, I tried to micromanage my world”.

Notice her response is based in fear. The nervous system does not judge, so whatever you feel from an emotional and intellectual level will dictate the quality of experience you have. If your perception about a given set of circumstances feels threatening to you, you will automatically, like a robot, revert to your old habitual perceptual pattern.

I totally relate to what she says here as I too once had this challenge. I’ve come a very long way, yet it is an evolving process. What has helped me the most is to realize that my brain is creating these “cataracts of the soul” and with awareness, they can be eliminated. Yes, your True Self is powerful and amazing, yet the fact is, you will not express if your nervous system is wired to cover over and hold back the expression of this Essence, the Real You.

It takes awareness because 90% of what runs our life is unconscious. This is why I re-educate my clients on the new science of the brain and nervous system, as it helps the fear center in the brain to quiet down enough to open the door to new understanding. It is also very important to understand how to release these “blind spots” at a cellular level where they are held.  They keep us from shining our light, and dull our life.  They also keep us focused on fear and what is wrong with the world and cause us to miss opportunities to grow our businesses, relationships and maintain our good health.

Since I’ve learned how to do this, it has become much easier to flow with life and to expand the vision for my life. I am no longer looking through the cloudy lens of fear and childhood experiences that color my world darkly. This is why I called my coaching system, “Breakthrough to the Real You” as it shows people how to eliminate these self-limiting perceptions simply and also retrain our brains to support us to actually live our purpose and desired outcomes.

We can release the stories that keep us playing on a constricted stage of life and learn to choose our destiny instead of staying stuck and missing out on what could have been if we only could see life clear enough to avoid falling into the ditches of “common knowledge”. What are your thoughts?

There’s truth to the saying “your attitude determines your altitude”. So, why is change so challenging? There can be several reasons, yet at the root of it is social conditioning. This conditioning is not really intentional; it is actually habitual and passed down through generational thinking. We often think that the way we see life is just “the way it is”.

Actually, reality is “mind-made”; it is a way of seeing or perception. Perception rules as it wires your brain to see what you have decided to believe as true – whether it is or not.

Once you believe something, your brain will seek to prove you right. It becomes a “self-fulfilling” prophecy as your nervous system will screen in the things it has been wired to look for and screen out the things you decided don’t work or may be harmful to you.

Of course these things could certainly just be relative and based on assumptions that are not even factual. It does not matter; this is why what you mind matters. What you keep your attention on can ultimately manifest in your life, so it can manifest, or turn into matter (a science term for physical form).

The trick is to stop focusing on what you fear or don’t want. If you associate change with “don’t want” or “bad”, then your emotional reaction will gear up for battle in the classic “fight, flight or freeze” response.

This does not have to be. I know, as I used to respond to change with much fear. It often took summing up all of my courage to push through to where I wanted to go. While you may require courage for some advances in your life, life does not have to be lived as one big struggle. I have come to embrace change, as it is one thing in life that is guaranteed.

When we resist the inevitable, we self-inflict suffering. While it is fine to have likes and dislikes, the key is to see them as merely preference and not become so attached to the outcome. Expect the best and let go. Of course, this in and of itself will require you to recondition the belief that somehow disappointment is “fatal”. I could write another whole separate post on our fear of “disappointment”.

Here are three uncommon factors that are associated with fear of change and what you can do to begin to rethink them and retrain your brain for a more empowering outcome:

1. Feelings – Let me ask you this; when you stop having any feelings at all, where will you be? (Clue: “6 feet _____”). Feeling is actually a type of emotional guidance system to let you know if what you are thinking is based in love or fear. You can consciously manage them and even change our outcomes in life by paying attention. Repressing undesired feelings instead of learning how to release them is actually hazardous to your health – really.

The first step? Learn from science what feelings are and how they become formed in the first place so that you can diffuse all the mystery about them right out the gate.

2. Clarity – Most people can tell you what they DON’T want but have little idea about what they DO want. Your nervous system functions as a missile-seeking machine and it does not judge “good or bad”. It’s goal is to take you wherever you focus your attention. Now get this: the stronger the emotional charge, the faster you are likely to manifest the outcome or results. Hence, once again, you are better off learning how to read and direct your feelings consciously instead of trying to keep them stuffed in the unconscious closet of your body.

One way to clarify what you want is to take the opposite of what you have feared. So, if you “fear poverty”, get clear about desiring abundance. How does abundance feel? (Abundance is a quality of love, by the way)

3. Stress – Realize that stress is “mind-made”; it is not “out there”. It is an inside job. Stress is all about perception. It is a story about a given set of “facts” and it is unique to you in general. So, many people are focusing on the fear of losing their jobs, etc and so they feel this fear in their bodies and it shows up as “stress”. Stress comes from feeling disempowered or expecting the worse. It is a form of faith for what you don’t want. Can you see how this ties into points one and two above? What can you do?

There are several approaches but the most long-term, lifestyle changing one to do is to learn mindfulness meditation. This form of meditation has been called “hygiene for the brain” for a good reason. It has really elevated the quality of my own life.

So, empowerment comes in a lasting way by thinking outside of the box and pulling away from the old paradigms about “survival of the fittest”. You can be successful and happy in life without seeing the universe as fearful and constrictive.

In fact, the more loving and collaborative you become, you will find that life starts to open up and you can become even more successful than you ever thought possible. This all begins within. Making change your friend begins when you set intention to breakthrough to the real you and live from an empowered sense of Authentic Self. What do you think?

Well, for one thing, what the French author Anais Nin said many years ago is true:

“We don’t see things the way they are; we see them as we are”

You will not ever really rise above your own self-image. You may outwardly look pretty good, but inside, you won’t have peace of mind if you are always comparing your sense of self-worth, or even your material possessions to someone else.

This behavior often also impacts your attitude and the altitude that you rise to in life. You will always find someone who has more or less than you in some area. This is true whether the comparison is love, money, beauty or intelligence.

The answer is not in finding someone less than you to make you feel good about yourself. The answer is to learn how to love and accept yourself independent of the world around you. I had someone ask me recently in regard to her thoughts about feeling inadequate, “what if what they say is correct”?

Here’s my short answer. Everyone has their opinion and most of it is just a projection onto you of their own self-judgment. You see, what you do is not the same as who you are in your essence. What you do does reveal your character at the moment and it does reflect your level of consciousness, but consciousness shifts. What you do changes.

Even the roles you play changes. The external world is constantly shifting and changing. The key to personal power and peace of mind is to learn how to separate who you know you are from who you THINK you are.

You are not your thoughts, strictly speaking. Thoughts are limiting, defining perceptions created by your linear “logical” mind. Thoughts are really energy/information that is interpreted based on the way you have wired your nervous system. It’s like the paint on the artist’s palette that draws and colors the picture; but it is only a picture, and not the ultimate truth.

Feelings come and go and they create experience in your body. The trick is to recognize these passing thoughts and feelings as human experiences, a part of the drama of life. If you can experience without attaching your very sense of identity to the experience, then you can live a life of self-mastery. It’s when we connect our sense of identity, our need for love, security and self-esteem with fear and the need to control and feel safe outside of ourselves that we lose ourselves.

Our true identity, our Authentic Self is cannot be limited and defined, as it is spirit.  This is why a spiritual practice that elevates your awareness of your connection to Life is so important. When you can feel the love and light of the Universe in a personal way, you will not need to chase it down from others.

You will have more courage to learn and grow to expand your network and your business. You will become less “self” conscious and more aware of others and the opportunities all around you. The decrease in stress alone will help your body to feel healthier and stronger.

Not to mention how much more likely you are to experience happier, healthier relationships. How much nicer it is to look into the mirror with eyes of compassion and admiration for who God has created you, uniquely, to be.

When you can look into the Mirror of Life and have reflected back to you a life of passion, peace and prosperity, you will know that you are now seeing clearly within the vision for your life that allows you to shine. One that gives and receives and allows you to lead a life that is well lived.

How you see yourself, your sense of self-esteem, does impact your confidence and how you lead your life and it all begins from inside out.  Do you see any where in your world where self-esteem issues hold either you back or someone you know?  What do you think about this?

As long as you are “looking for love in all the wrong places” you will not find it. You must first begin within and then you will see it “with out” – out there in the world. Now ego gets a bad rap and a lot of people who are seeking spiritual principles are inclined to think that they need to get rid of it.

Another challenge I see in people seeking spiritual awareness is that they tend to judge almost everything in sight! Well, one spiritual truth that has made all the difference in my world is learning to stop judging people, including myself – actually, especially myself.

As I’ve come to embrace the “shadow” parts of my ego, forgive myself and “upgrade” the beliefs around these parts of my self, I’ve become more compassionate and loving towards others. Judgment is a tool to show us where we need to develop compassion in ourselves, for others and ourselves.

It is not about condoning behavior; it is about transmuting it. It is about changing the energy around the beliefs about the behavior as a reflection of who you THINK you are. You see, what you do is NOT the same as WHO you are.

We get the two confused because we have been conditioned to believe as children that our self-worth comes from our performance. This is a characteristic of the “wounded” fear-driven ego. The ego is needed to be human however.

The key to power is in recognizing that the Authentic You is not the ego. The challenge is to stay aware and present in the moment enough to realize that you are playing a role; ego is not really the real YOU as the Being. In fact, there is an area in our brains, the area of “autobiographical memory” that allows you to function as a social person (actually persona or “mask”) in the world.

If you had no ego you would not say, “my name is so and so”. You would not be able to distinguish your body/self from another. It would be like experiencing a left-hemisphere stroke of your brain. So forgot about getting rid of your ego, it is just another misunderstanding made on the evolutionary journey to your personal power.

Instead, learn how to heal the misperceptions you hold, that you have wired into the brain. This is the “shadow”. The stories we have created about who we think we are that we have a lot of negative emotion around in our cellular memory and we keep avoiding dealing with it. If we would learn how to access these parts of ourselves and deal with them, which can be done without a lot of emotional shock if you know how to work with energy, you can empower yourself in quantum leaps!

You see, you also need a healthy ego to express in a healthy way in the world. You need to be able to speak up and push back when some of those dysfunctional egos come at you to try to manipulate your money out of your pockets or to have forceful control over your choices. If you don’t heal your ego shadows, you will have a tendency to be a “pleaser” who cannot not speak up for your own truth and is more concerned about being liked than being honest about your own soul’s needs.

So the root of self-esteem is connected with healing the ego’s misperceptions, the stories of the “Mental Me” so that the True, Authentic Self of you can “glow on” and let your Light shine.  I call this the “Magnificent Me”.  When you learn how to transmute these shadows of the ego, it will turn into the gold of love energy, (see what an alchemist you are?), the love energy that is the substrate of all things.

It’s just that your consciousness, which has been clouded over by fear is distorting the love light that is already the Truth of who you really are. Self-esteem has to come from the inside out or it is just another “fiction of your imagination”. What do you think?

If you have a low self-image, you tend to struggle more with confidence and fear of rejection. You are less likely to take risks, and I certainly can say that dealing with change will be frightening if you are afraid of going into the unknown.

Now I hear people say often, “a part of me feels like…” I say it myself at times. What most people do not realize is that these “parts” of us can run your life. If you believe the real you is this “part” or that you are your thoughts and memories, you will be a set up for the stories and dramas that you tell yourself are “just the way life is”.

Actually, our life experiences are a reflection of the way that we see ourselves.

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are” ~Anais Nin

There’s science for this. You see there is no “out there”. What we see and how we see it has more to do with our perception. We are conditioned to believe that what we do is WHO we are. Actually your “part” that is feeling a certain way has more to do with the way that you wired your brain to think of yourself.

So, for example, if a part of your feels afraid to public speak, it may be related to self-images you have remembered from childhood. It could be when little Johnny laughed at you at the school recital, and you did not realize that his laughter had nothing to do with you. It was just his opinion or perhaps he was not even laughing at you, he could have been daydreaming and did not even notice what you were saying.

We make up stories like this all the time and then we go as far as attaching our very identity to the feelings that we have. If you over-identify with these “parts” you will think that they are the “real deal” the real you. Actually, there is the Mental Me and then there is the real me, the “Magnificent Me”. This Magnificent me is the spirit, the Observer, the Being of me.

What we do is separate from this Self but we get it all tangled up and confused and start judging our behavior as if it is WHO we are. Once we confuse “the what” with “the whom”, once we believe that the “part” that we play on the stage of life is the real US, our self-image and self-esteem gets involved.

Is Denzel Washington the part that he plays in his movies? No. He may feel the pain of his part if he really gets into the role, but at the end of the day, he is not that part. Well it is the same with our spirit Self as it plays the roles of human. Roles are behaviors; they are not identities.

Also remember that you cannot control what others say about you or how they perceive you. What matters only is how you perceive yourself. If you have a behavior that you want to change, change it. It has nothing to do with the Being of you; it does reflect your character (see the similarity to acting again – character?), and values but these things are fluid, they change.

Your consciousness is infinite; the only thing that constricts it is your own perceptual system – the way you wire your brain and mind. You want to play a bigger game in life? Then upgrade your parts. Until you learn how to do this, you will “get played” by the projections of others and the disempowering stories that you unconsciously create for yourself via these parts. Come and learn how to retrain your brain to win at life from the inside out. Your self-image and level of confidence can be aligned with your inner Authentic Self for true empowerment.  What do you think?

This is a part of the very problem we are faced with – worry and focus on disease. Your brain does not like stress; in fact it is toxic to brain cells and a health hazard in general. I believe that the financial pressure from our existing system will likely be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I don’t care how much money is pumped into the system, until the waste stops and people change their paradigm, their belief system about HOW they think – about themselves, their bodies and life in general – the system is going to fail ultimately.

What do I mean by “how we think”? We focus on fear and what we don’t want without realizing that this is not only damaging our brains, it’s creating the very havoc we see in our lives. The hormones and processes that are released in your body when your worry and stress (both based in fear) can not only kill off brain cells, it can damage your heart, your immune system, your digestive tract and your musculoskeletal system…among other things.

Now, instead of business as usual, which is to believe that if you could just pop a pill or make other people act the way you want them to behave, if you make the time to decide to change your mind – and I do mean change your brain and mind – you can begin to shift the gears that lead to destruction in your health.

Also, you can save yourself a lot of pain, suffering and money. The answer? Learn “brain hygiene”, in other words learn how to cleanse your brain/mind of the pollutants of negative thoughts/emotions which boils down to fear. Until we learn how to obtain and maintain peace within ourselves, we can forget about seeing it “out there”.

Peace of mind begins within; you will not be able to buy it or to obtain it by trying to “fix” others. What we judge harshly in others are only projections from our own perception, parts of our story of the “Mental Me” that we don’t want to deal with.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown quite scientifically to slow down the runaway train of the busy mind and the benefits range from improved physical health to happy relationships. And, by default, good physical health and great relationships almost always translates to improved financial health.

At the root of all three is spiritual health. When we learn to take our ego fears and release them and rewire our brains, we can get the “cataracts of the soul” out of the way so that our inner Light can shine. The power of Light and inner peace is a force that can change not only your world, but also the world. A healthy you will create a healthy world. Any thoughts?

What we learn is not only contrary; it’s often outright backwards. We think that how we think about ourselves is independent of how others think of us. In fact, we think that what others think about us is more significant than what we think about ourselves.

For example, from the time we are two, we are unconsciously taught to seek for love, security and self-esteem outside ourselves. This is where we first start “looking for love in all the wrong places”. We are taught that the opinions of others are more important than our own, and that our significance comes from our associations, titles and material possessions.

Considering that these are all external to our very Being, it is no wonder that we give our power away regularly. We even make the mistake of trying to “get” love from others when we don’t even give it to ourselves.

Actually, we are love by nature. If you are a part of Life, Spirit (wake up call – if you are not, then how are you alive to even read this?) then your source of love is coming from the inside out. This is where love originates, from Spirit.

The problem is, we have lost sight of ourselves, our True Self that is. Instead, we become so lost in the illusion of the “Mental Me” the part of our brains that forms the “story of who we think we are”, that we think that we are these thoughts of ourselves.

Yes, there is an area in your brain called “autobiographical memory”. I call it simply ego or Mental Me. Ego means “I” in Latin. You see, the ego isn’t “bad”; it is just a function of your nervous system to help you feel like a separate individual, it is your “social identity”. Where the danger comes in is, when we lose sight of our inner spiritual self and buy into the belief that life is all about the “survival of the fittest” and that we are all alone we get into trouble. We unwittingly train our brains to focus on lack and FEAR (Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality).

Now here’s something very important. Perception rules and reality is relative. Your brain will wire into your body what you keep your focus and feelings on long enough to form a belief. It then will slip into your subconscious mind and affect how you perceive the world and others. Here’s the important key: how you see yourself is really going to be reflected back to you from others, meaning if you don’t love yourself, you will continuously interpret the behaviors of others as being unloving toward you.

In fact, you are likely to actually attract the people, situations and circumstances to prove you “right” – that you are unlovable or whatever other lie you believe. This is called the “Mirror of Life”. The brain is not discriminatory. It is a faithful servant to find what you are looking for especially unconscious beliefs, as these are very powerful.

If you don’t give yourself love, don’t ever expect to receive healthy love from others. Oh, you may attract lots of dysfunctional drama “love”, but you will always be searching for love when you don’t feel it for yourself first. Or, you will somehow not achieve the level of success and happiness you desire because you have unconsciously cut yourself off from the awareness of the love within for you from the Universe.

It’s all here, right now – if you can only perceive it! Love flows to and through you, but you can block it with self-rejection. The first step to core confidence, true empowerment is to learn how to love and accept yourself. Then you can come from a place of abundance instead of neediness.

Then you can free yourself from the shackles of shame and live the abundant whole life with whole relationships, first to self and then others. As you give love to YOU, you will magically start receiving it from others. I have absolutely experienced this for myself as I came from a place of “enough never enough”, I’m unworthy, unlovable etc. Empowerment is just that, power from within.

And it begins when you look within and remember who You are and that you are already ok – just because you breathe. What do you think?

One thing for sure is that we cannot solve some of our current challenges by looking in our current memory toolbox of how to solve problems. The consciousness or “mindset” that that got us here will not be the same ways of thinking that help us to change the world.

I don’t equate change with “bad”. Why not just see things as evolving to the next level, especially when it comes to individual growth? Now here’s the dilemma – the Universe is still expanding and unfolding, yet, because of the way that we have as a whole conditioned our brain we tend to fear change.

We are still “unfolding” just as the Universe is. While there is more to us than meets the eye, meaning at our core we have a spiritual essence, a “True Self”, we still live and experience life as human beings living in a physical body.

Without this body, you cannot effect change or be alive as we generally think of it relating to being on the earth. So, while I’ve heard the saying “we are spiritual beings having a human experiences”, we need to learn how to skillfully live into both aspects of our natures.

We need to become aware of how to manage our human body’s sensory/perception system – the brain and mind. Otherwise you can be so “heavenly bound that you are no earthly good”. Enter Neuroscience.

What I love about the expanding field of science is that while it is not infallible by any means, and while there is often not black and white consensus to the outcome of research (why would there be considering scientists are human also the last time I checked), the information and insights gained in the past decade can go a very long way with helping humanity to consciously begin to switch gears from a fear-based/competitive paradigm of the world to a more love/good for all paradigm.

A new paradigm could come from a place of developing the talents of individuals to be contributed to the whole. People could thus become more self-actualized and self-sustaining while at the same time society can move away from lack focus and keeping the “next guy” down. What is good for individuals will be good for the whole and the planet if approached from a higher level of awareness.

You see, we are all making up the story of the human drama anyway, so we may as well give the chapter a happier ending than we have historically been doing in the past few thousand years. Given all the chaos both within us and in the outer environment, I think the new science as arrived in a nick of time. Why?

We have been so out of balance in the way we use our brains that we generally are stuck in the “logical” brain, and this side also tends toward fear and separation. It is time to learn how to change with conscious intent not only how we see ourselves but also how we see others since again, this is due to perception and the stories that we wire into our nervous system. Most people believe that “reality” is a solid “out there”. Einstein said decades ago:

“Reality is an illusion; albeit a very persistent one”

The more science I’ve learned and blended with my intuitive mind and ancient success principles, the more I have been able to dump my own self-limiting beliefs and cast off a sense of low self-image. This is critical if we want to experience world peace. Why?

It is because we cannot have compassion for others until we have it for ourselves. Until there is self-acceptance, just because we breathe and no other reason, we will continue to struggle with comparing ourselves with others, greed, envy and a host of other negative emotional experiences.

No one can tell me otherwise, as from my point of experience, it has only been since I’ve become aware of how I was negatively wiring my brain and nervous system with self-limiting, deprecating beliefs and stopped doing this that my quality of life has sky-rocketed. Since I’ve learned how to release these negative cellular memories my peace of mind has been on a trajectory upward.

I’m all for ending human suffering and I think that we will take a giant step in this direction when we learn how to embrace change and this can really only be done when we learn how to set ourselves free from the tyranny of the fear-based stories we unwittingly have wired into our own brain. Train your brain to win from the inside out. It is more than possible; it can simply become your new “reality” if you open your mind to change. What do you think?

We have learned more about the brain, mind and nervous system in the past decade than in all the recorded centuries combined.

Why now? There can be several reasons and the ones I feel are surely relevant would be the following:

1. New technology
2. Open-minded scientists who are willing to explore the unknown instead of only staying within their “controllable” comfort zone.

It is a travesty how some researchers fight off new information that conflicts with what they want to perpetrate or believe. Knowing the tricks that the mind can play though, I think that sometimes this is done innocently. Our fear-based mindsets tend to want to hold onto predictability so unless there is a deeper awareness of the willingness to embrace change, it is common for people to close their minds to information that conflicts with their existing paradigm of the world.

Today I saw on the Oprah Show a conversation regarding weight and self-love. Overall, the message is one that I talk about often, which is that self-love and acceptance needs to be the starting point to personal growth and empowerment. There is a myth perpetuated within the psyche of most people that beating ourselves up is perfectly acceptable as a way to change behavior.

Talk about ignorance, this is just want you need to avoid! What you resist persists and creating feelings of shame is the last thing you want to do if you want to feel “good enough”. Just think about this – you are trying to feel good enough by beating yourself up. This is backwards.

Think of the flower garden since it is springtime. When your perennials come through the soil they look scrawny and dull. Or, if you plant a seedling, it starts out puny looking. Do you step on it? Do you spit on it can call it stupid, ugly or too skinny/big?

Or do you nurture it with loving energy, water and nutrients. Sunshine makes it grow, not covering it up and hiding it. We don’t say “shame on you, you ugly plant”. Well, I have news for you; you are a part of Nature also. You need to be nurtured to grow, to shine and be your best also.

I’m not saying that you are to pretend (you may have to at first – act enthusiastic and you will become so – you can reverse these beliefs), nor am I saying to condone and stay stuck where you are. I’m advocating looking at your life through eyes of compassion and say that you are doing your best at this point and that you are EVOLVING, expanding and growing.

If you keep your attention on the outcome, the potential that can unfold, and just be grateful as much as possible where you are, you mind can shift as you keep your attention on this positive outcome. Your mind is like a missile seeking machine. It goes just where you focus attention. It’s goal is to get what you focus on and the more emotion you have attached, the more powerful the mind moves to wire the brain and bring it to pass by causing the actions that you take.

You want a beautiful life garden? Stop “hating” yourself and learn to love yourself. This is what I’m teaching others as I use to believe something was wrong with me and that I was unlovable to the core. Now, finally, I “know that I know” I’m good enough. It has absolutely nothing to do with race, beauty, social or financial status. No, doggone it; I’m good enough because I breathe! As they say ‘God don’t make no junk”.

This kind of confidence and self-esteem can only be found by opening your mind, understanding how you were programmed in the first place and how to release these energetic stories, and getting in touch with your Authentic Self, and listening to your Guidance. It’s about letting go of the story about “who you think you are” and realizing who you really are. Removing the “cataracts of the soul” will allow you to see a whole new world, from the inside out!