Go South, Young Man!

South...or east. Far East, perhaps.

About a month ago I had an epiphany: I could sell everything and move to Mexico or Thailand.

Or anywhere, really, but I already know I love Mexico with it's slower pace of life, vast stretches of beautiful rural mountains and plains, wonderful people and inexpensive cost of living. I always feel more relaxed within minutes of crossing the border. I could even live in my car and keep heading south to Costa Rica or even Panama, stopping wherever I felt like it and staying until deciding to leave.

And Thailand looks at least as good, maybe better with it's incredible beaches, fascinating jungles, Eastern culture plus all the unknowns since I've never been south of Hong Kong in Asia.

Well, it turns out that now may not be the best time to leave. With the housing market downturn, this is a terrible time to sell real estate, and I'll be teaching at Utah Valley University in the fall and am looking forward to that. I've never made it past about 65% decided to pick up and go, but in the mean time, while waiting, just in case, I've begun studying Thai.

I dropped by B&N but they didn't have the kind of language book I wanted (after studying so many languages, I have clear preferences), so I've turned to the internet and found a few good resources.

Just in case you've been thinking the exact same thing as me, I'll post my favorite sites so far:

• Wikipedia gives a nice, quick background and the main concepts of how the language fits together. Read this first and everything you study afterward will make more sense. If some of that linguistic stuff goes over your head, just skip it.
• If you plan to learn Thai, you'll definitely want to learn the Thai alphabet. It's phonetic and includes a few sounds that are allophones for English speakers (we consider them to be variations of the same sound and don't recognize the difference).
  
• This Wikitravel Thai phrase list is NOT the greatest way to learn a language but does supply a useful list of phrases to memorize.
• I haven't watched any of the videos yet, but this Thai podcast site has me anticipating good things. After all, you can't really learn Thai without hearing the five tones and learning to speak them correctly. Many other sites let you click on one word at a time to listen to the pronunciation, but this is both tedious and less effective because you don't get to listen to the words in context of a full sentence.

Be sure to keep in touch so you'll have my address in southern Thailand and can come visit!

Just think: white sand beaches, clear water, world-famous rock climbing, great food, nice people, great prices, unforgettable adventures...if you weren't already thinking the exact same thing as me, maybe you should start!

Life is a Game

I find it bizarre to think it took me so long to figure this out. Life is just a big game. The world is our playground. Everyone on earth is my playmate. The point is to win, and there are plenty of people eager to tell you how to measure success.

Suggestions range from self-centered measures like wealth, prestige, and comfort to more globally-minded answers like service, love, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. None of these answers are completely wrong, and my point is that whatever your life goal and however you measure success, make sure you ENJOY DOING whatever you do!

Why not?! It makes whatever you do better. More rewarding. More motivating. More inspiring. More attractive. More fun. And thus, more successful. You can even enjoy suffering if you get in the right frame of mind and see the purpose in it (and no matter what you want, you're bound to suffer sometimes so you may as well learn to enjoy it).

It surprises me that I just realized all this (again?) because it seems I always used to handle life that way. I usually did what I wanted, was very successful in most things, made plenty of time for fun and adventure, and enjoyed just about any task that I "had to" do.

I guess somewhere along the way I bought into the idea that life is "serious." And certainly there were experiences that weren't the least bit fun to endure. I may have enjoyed them more or gotten through more quickly if I had been more aware of the fact that life is a game.

Here are just a few examples of the difference this perspective can make:

• The driver ahead of you is going 15 mph under the speed limit and keeps making you miss the green lights. But then you think, "Oh, well, life is just a game and this doesn't really matter" and suddenly you're not upset at the retard ahead of you.
• You want to figure out your life direction and which of several paths would be "best" and then you realize that you're just here to get experience and enjoy the process and you can do that in many different ways so unless something tells you otherwise, you can take whichever path you feel like and it'll be fine.
• You see someone who you don't like or who intimidates you but when you remember that s/he is just another player in our giant sandbox, most of that just goes away. You go on with your game and let them play theirs.
  
• You're broke, stupid, unattractive and overweight and you suddenly realize that all those messages about how worthless all this makes you are just part of the game and you don't have to follow those "rules" and play that way. Others may believe all that but you don't have to.

Anyway, if you've been taking life too seriously, worrying, feeling discouraged or confused, and wondering how in the world anything will ever get better, here's your answer: quit taking life too seriously, worrying, and feeling discouraged and confused and just go have fun. Lighten up. Relax and enjoy yourself. Do whatever it takes. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Ready or not?

I need to call my clients back. I need to check up on how their amazing progress has continued, book appointments and collect referrals. I need to complete my materials for classes I'll soon teach on The Power of Choice, The Four Standards, Super Connection and whatever other projects I've been working on, which are largely designed to introduce people to my brand of energy work and attract new clients.

But.

I don't feel like it. Actually, I do, kinda, now, but I've been needing to do this for over a week. I was fairly sick for the past week so I have an excuse there. Before that, though, I wanted to be a bit more clear first. A bit more of my very best self. I wanted to be more ready.

My insightful friend Terelle pointed this out to me last time we spoke. It's a pattern of mine, that I wait to be more "ready" and thereby miss out on many grand opportunities. She's right. I thought back to so many things I could have done if I had forgotten about being ready and just gone for it! The realization made me want to kick myself. I hate regret.

I'm sure I've always been this way, deep down. Many things came easily to me and I learned fast. Those things I dove into headlong and loved the thrill and challenge of making it all turn out right. Things that didn't come easily, however, I often avoided and gave up on. They made me uncomfortable and I didn't have the courage to face that discomfort. Lots of examples come to mind but I won't bore you with the details.

Besides, Terelle added. "You ARE ready! You're SO ready!" And again, she's right. I do good work! I change lives with my gifts in about an hour at a time! I AM ready!

But...I could be even MORE ready! I've been working on what seems like the "last" of my deepest foundational issues. The ones that have made some things difficult. Once clear, moving forward will be so much easier!

And this approach makes sense - why not? Why not invest just one more week when it will make everything so much better? I'll also be able to help people that much more, I rationalize, because once I'm clear about something, I can help people with the same issues so much the faster.

Sometimes I intentionally choose to run before I'm ready, because I want that challenge. I want to uncertainty and challenge. I want to know that, when necessary, I CAN face discomfort and get things done despite them. But there seem to be two entirely separate categories of what I like to face before I'm "ready" and what I don't.

A friend from search and rescue once told me that "You're not afraid of anything. And if you are, you run toward it!" She was only half right. Physical challenges, for example, where I knew I could succeed, or where I knew the worst that could happen was a little fear or fatigue, rarely stopped me.

Like the first big cliff I ever skied off. I thought about the landing, decided I'd be safe, turned off my brain and slid over the edge. After asking about a solo climb of a steep, snow-covered 12,000' mountain that I had just completed, a mountaineering buddy told me "You won't admit that anything is hard unless you can barely do it."

The other half of the equation, though, the things I steered clear of, were those things I was sure I would fail at. The things that I know I would only make worse by trying. The things that didn't necessarily heal with a little R&R.

After a series of break ups, for example, and one exquisitely disappointing one in particular, I found myself reluctant to take another big chance in the romance department. I had always had this deep fear of trying for the ones that really mattered, the ones I really wanted, but after missing too many good opportunities, I finally reached the point where I began taking my chances anyway and laying it all on the line. When those failed too many times, however, I stopped. I wanted to regroup and figure out how to make it work before inviting that sort of damage again.

Theoretically, I could have lowered my expectations. I could have settled. I could have traded in my dreams and driven a nice Realitymobile off the lot. This applies primarily to relationships and career choices. In fact, however, I already knew myself too well to talk myself out of what I knew I wanted. I knew what was on my wish list and what could not be sacrificed. It wouldn't have been fair to anyone to try and pretend it was otherwise.

I found my new strategy as the decision to go back to the beginning and clear out all my subconscious fears and issues and cobwebs so I could make a truly fresh attempt without their weight dragging me back down to the bottom of the ocean. I decided to start over and do it all right this time.

And that is the plan that I feel like I'm finally winning. I'm getting there. I'm learning fast and changing and noticing the difference in many ways. I think it was a good decision. I wish I could say something more hero-like, like "I just pulled myself up by my bootstraps and made it work out." But things don't always work that way. I know. I tried. I failed. Repeatedly.

And now here I am. On the verge of being the person I always expected of myself, only better, because I couldn't have imagined this self while I still held onto all the old garbage I carried around inside me.

And now I have a choice. I can go forward right now, knowing I'm ready, if not perfectly, or I can take just a few more moments to sit back and prepare, to get my inner work done first to make the outer work easy and pleasant.

I guess the inner battle over this question is based on the assumption that I should get to work right now vs. the fact that preparation makes everything work so much better and seems like a wise plan. It's like the decision to commit troops to a conflict or depend on diplomatic resolution. The best choice depends on which will be effective and what costs are associated with each option, including time spent waiting and opportunities lost in the mean time.

In the end, it doesn't matter. I'm ready. The battle is ending. All the casualties will soon be forgotten and my world will get back to the business of living and working and loving and whatever else I can expect from this inner land of the free.

Utah Energy Works Part Two: Subtle Energy

Have you ever walked into a room full of angry people and immediately felt their anger? It was almost tangible. Have you ever performed on stage and experienced how the audience's attention and support lifts you? Artists of all kinds talk about this all the time. Have you ever met someone for the first time and felt a remarkable connection to them or known something about them beyond what you could possibly have guessed based on any physical evidence?

The simple fact is that our brains (or some part of our being) both creates and reads something known as subtle or putative energy. We all do it, mostly without being aware that we do, though some cultures take it quite seriously and let it influence business dealings and other important relationships - as it rightfully should!

Remember the movie "Contact"? Where Jodi Foster travels though space and meets with advanced aliens who tell us how disconnected and lonely our race is? Well when you learn to connect on this deep, satisfying level, you'll discover connection beyond what you've ever known, or at least you'll be surprised at how easy it is and how many people you can connect with - it's not just for best friends and soul mates (which are just people who we can't help but connect with and who mirror or complement our best traits).

If you want to learn how, read down my blog (it's not that long!) and find the post where I give the steps for an easy experiment that works, in my experience, for better than 95% of people who try it.

But now on to the main point of this post: not only do we emit some sort of signal and not only can we feel and thus understand these signals from others, creating a deeply satisfying connections, but we can actually interact on this level! We can communicate and influence.

It's getting late and I'm not going to explain everything I know about how this works in full detail in this post. You can read the story of my second-ever attempt to do this on the Utah Energy Works web page. To summarize, the results were immediate and amazing and I've since met dozens of professionals who do similar things for a living.

Some of these professionals are close friends of mine, who from time to time would call and ask for my support when they had a particularly "stuck" client. My bias for speed, ease and depth had led to developing these skills beyond what most of these friends have seen elsewhere. After months of their encouragement, I finally began to consider opening my own practice, which happened last month.

I can't claim to actually create new neural connections or prune old ones in my clients since that would require physical proof and I don't have access to the instruments that would measure it, but that's how it feels, and that's what the results lead me to believe. Behaviors change effortlessly, instantly, and automatically. Perceptions shift. New emotions arise and possibilities appear where they had previously been invisible. For ethical and legal reasons, I simply claim to work with subtle energies. Whatever follows...great. Believe whatever explanation you want.

I'm excited! Every session so far has delivered outstanding results. I can't wait to witness more of these liberating life changes. I'll post some of the experiences under the "Case Studies" category at Utah Energy Works.com.

Utah Energy Works Part One: Your Brain

First, a super-quick background on why you think and do the things you do. Super-quick because everyone should know this stuff.

Your brain has neurons. About a hundred billion of them. I've seen that compared to the number of trees in the Amazon. Each neuron is connected to 5-10,000 other neurons (source). These connections are created as we think thoughts or as our senses stimulate various areas of our brain.

Furthermore, these connections are highly changeable, which is called neuroplasticity. New connections can be made almost instantly and old ones disconnected, which is called pruning. A few weeks ago at a cutting-edge biomedical conference, I watched real-time video of these neurons reaching out, making new connections, and old connections dropping away. This is the sort of thing going on inside your head when you learn something new or have an epiphany.

So think about it - most of your perceptions about yourself and how the universe functions were formed when you were an infant. As you became a toddler, you experimented with your world's limits and added to your collection of perceptions. As a teen, full of booming self awareness and sometimes-overwhelming emotion, experimentation and results got serious. Even if you're not aware of it, you've never recovered from some of the shocks you experienced in these formative stages.

What I'm getting to is that your early perceptions have a lot to do with who you are now - your confidence level, your degree of happiness, how much money you earn, what crowds you feel comfortable with, etc. You have NO IDEA how significant this is!

The other point I'm getting to is that these perceptions and results are NOT fixed. They are not permanent. At least they don't have to be. I'm saying that every one of us can be even better than we are - who wouldn't want that? I don't just mean more productive. I mean wiser. Happier. Kinder. More interesting, more fun, more influential. In short, if there were a way to change a few key neural connections, we could be more of whatever it is we were meant to be in this world and have a much easier time of it!

I'm not talking about compensation. I'm not talking about TRYING harder or the kind of bravado that covers up concealed insecurities. That sort of self "improvement" is exhausting! Yet it's the only kind most people know how to access.

I'm talking about real, deep, foundational change. I'm talking about changing one part of our nature - the part created by our brains - to more closely match the other part of ourselves - call it spirit, potential, or whatever else makes sense to you. I'm talking about perfect freedom from our limitations.

And it's a lot easier than you ever dreamed possible. Which leads us to part two...coming right up.

Back to School

Quick note: I'll be teaching at Utah Valley University again this fall, and probably for the University of Phoenix in the next month or so. I'm just finishing up the faculty training program/interview process there.

I'm really looking forward to it! There's something about being on campus that feels SOOOO great, don't you think? All that energy. All that learning. That casual atmosphere with energetic students and cute girls in every direction. Not to mention my classroom where I get to direct a "team" toward valuable learning and rewarding success. I get to participate in an energized act of teamwork which I find quite fulfilling and difficult to replicate off campus.

I won't make a lot of money there, but it'll add some balance and fulfillment to my life.

Rounding Corners...

If life wasn't continually changing, the planet would be a lot happier. Here's why: all the miserable people would give up hope and kill themselves, leaving only the happy people.

Well, that may be a little extreme. But think back to your own personal "dark night of the soul" when your life looked the very gloomiest. What if you had known at that moment that nothing would ever change? That things would never get better? That you were destined to suffer intensely for another 40 or 60 or 80 years with no hope for relief?

If you didn't contemplate suicide, you would probably at least give up hope on the dreams you were working toward, the ones that may have been causing a lot of your stress and misery in the first place. What were the grief-causers for you? A physical ailment or challenge? Adolescent self esteem? Graduate school or a demanding job? A failed or hopeless relationship? An elusive dream? Confusion over the way life was or was not rolling forward? An expectation for a more fulfilling life?

Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to give up. Once you do, you're free! It's like the semester ended and you're now on vacation! What will you do with all your free time and energy? All the effort you had been putting into work and worry can now be spent playing or relaxing.

"Giving up" need not be permanent. You can try it on for a brief hour or afternoon or week or month or summer or even take a sabbatical for a year out of your life. The surprising thing is that such a break can make you more productive and achieve more than you'd ever have accomplished had you never stopped to catch your breath in the first place.

Recent research suggests that a major reason we tend to grow happier as we grow older is that we become more reasonable about our lofty youthful ambitions. We learn to be content with less than we once dreamed. And as a result, we lead more satisfying and rewarding lives. Why not start now? Learn from your elders and lower your expectations a notch or two. You'll probably be happy you did.

Even as I write this, part of me resists the obvious lesson. Part of me still clings to my old motto of "Everything!!! Now!!!" I'm transitioning. I'm still learning to slow down and not try to do everything at once. Reality has forced me to admit that I can't, so I may as well go peacefully.

The fact that many of the brightest, most driven and selfless people take longer to learn this lesson is one reason I often observe that the best people suffer most.

Ironically, this is not the point I intended to write when I began this blog post. I intended to say that BIG CHANGES are right around the corner for me and so much of my hard work is about to pay off. In fact, I'm already rounding the bend. I can feel the changes happening and I have some idea of their implications. I won't yet disclose what these changes are because I hate to announce something and then be surprised to find a lot more time and effort is required before reality reflects them.

I began writing intending to point out that there's ALWAYS something new right around the next bend. Something unexpected. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but change it is a-coming. The more you live your life with courage and integrity, the more you can expect change to be good.

Also, the more you take the time to finish up your inner work and clean up your foundations, the less often really challenging trials come and the easier time we have facing them. Do you know that that's why the challenges come? It's God or the Universe or your own brain giving you the opportunity to learn your next lesson, or to relearn ones you didn't learn well enough, and to unlearn the ones you got wrong in the past. Once you have your foundational lessons out of the way, the lessons become more and more pleasant to learn.

In recent months, I've successfully narrowed down my list of major projects and commitments to four or five. One of them is dedicated to helping people learn those foundational lessons faster and easier than ever before possible. So far I'm finding tremendous success. "More than I dreamed possible," said one client after a 60 minute session. But before I change topics yet again, I'll end this post and tell about that project in a new one.