Personal growth depends to an unknown extent on our ability to be aware of, and think about, our thoughts, feelings and behavior. However if we don’t ‘do internal work’, think deeply about this vast uncharted area, we are certainly going to lead a life that is more lifeless and robotic.

If we lead our life as if the world is only outside of us, repeating patterns of behavior, with no self-reflection, what is effective for us at one point in our life cycle, sooner or later, loses it’s effectiveness.

Below are five ideas to fertilize thinking about our internal worlds:

1) The first is that even if we chew and grind up good or bad food, and drink with passionate love, it still turns into feces and urine. True? No.

It is easy to see the beginning and the end of any process. We forget, or may not even be aware, that all food is something. When we take it in it begins a mysterious journey essential for our body growth; or, if there is too much, too little, or it is poisonous or rotten, this food journey can have destructive intent and lead to misery.

Likewise, ideas and feelings we take into our mind, while in a gristmill of conflict, tension and friction, can contribute to growth or to energy ‘waste.’ This kind of information-food, good or bad, will often turn out to be seeds of vital nutrient for personal growth, the growth of our ‘mind’ and our ability to think.

On the other hand this idea-feeling food, like real food, can also pass through quickly, be burdensome, poisonous waste, and, even if nutritious, it can also be too much, too little, or get stuck and not get worked on and thought about. This can leave us with the feeling we are in a dank, dark and slippery place.

Example: Being constipated with an idea like resentment, and holding onto it inside, can poison us while an idea like forgiveness will endlessly nurture our body, mind and soul.

2) The second is that we can spit out another’s words or ideas, such as ‘God’, ‘science’, ‘truth’, or opinions like ‘God is One’, ‘it’s not scientific’, ‘it’s beautiful’; or we can spit an idea or feeling back: “Hey you, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” In both cases, in so doing, are we acting automatically? Have we briefly, or for an extended period, forgotten our self and our internal world? Are we so rattled, angry and disturbed we’ve ‘lost our mind.’ It’s perilous to not live mindfully, to not step back and ‘see’ things from different perspectives.

Example: All ideas can be thought about from infinite points of view or vertices, to name only the mentioned three: religious, scientific or aesthetic.

3) So, here’s a third idea to chew on: We never really ‘pick the brain’; surely there isn’t brain tissue in a blog. Thinking about it further, the mind is an unproven concept; so picking the brain is a metaphor for chewing on ideas, feeding ideas to others, swallowing some, spitting others out, an exchange or extension of the ideas in our internal world with the internal world of others; an exchange extended across the world with love or hate. How this exchange affects one depends on whether or how deeply it is thought about it.

On thinking further yet, maybe ‘pick the brain’ is not a metaphor. Ideas just might become brain food, brain tissue, not just ‘mind’ food. Unlike minds, brains do exist, we can ‘see them’. Like our ‘mind’ we just can’t ‘see’ ideas.

Should we be aware of and think about ideas before we flush them away? Can we be that aware of them all? How much thinking is useful? Are we failing to pick our brain? Maybe ‘picking the brain’ means learning to think deeply.

Do we ‘think’ in our dreams? Do we do dream work and ‘think’ unconsciously? Is this the only time we are fully ‘awake’? Is this a deeper way to pick our brains, to chew over of facts and ideas?

Example: Are we walking around in a daydream or are we thinking deeply with our minds, right down into our heart, our genitals, our bowels, our very tissues. Is this the way to really ‘wake up’? Or is all this just picking over bones? That’s good. I get it. I like that.

4) Another idea to think about: If we think we can get something for nothing we are forgetting nothing is not only something, it is in its own way everything. We should be careful how we value something, or for that matter anything. Nothing might be priceless and we might be making a fool’s bargain for what we think is something. Yet even if nothing is really only nothing we need to be careful not to value what is valueless.

Example: If we feel entitled to something in the present without working or paying for it, we are forgetting that the ability to work (something) is a gift of love (everything). We might get something we think we are entitled to without working or paying for it but the hidden price tag is starvation (nothing) from living automatically, repeating patterns: patterns of greed, patterns of grievance and regret. Something that turns out to be nothing leads inexorably to the misery of the loss of love (everything).

5) Chew on these ideas, swallow them; Or, what the heck, just spit them out and forget them! Don’t let them get ‘stuck in your craw.’ Maybe these ideas are just a bunch of hooey anyway.

Hmm, will anyone think about this, be wide-open to what they have read? Will it help them grow?

Have you now been able to introduce the thinking parts of yourself to one another so they can sit down and talk? Do you ‘see’ it ‘all’ differently ‘now’?

How can we communicate, see things the same way? Can we, beyond forgiveness and love, ever see things the same way?

How can I listen to what you say, read what you write, be fully open so that it will help me to grow. How frightened am I that your growth or mine might turn out to be malignant and must be killed before it murders you or me or both or all of us?

Can your concept of mind ever really meet with mine? Is my mind ever separate from yours? Mind your own business!! If minds exist can they ever be separate running their own business? If so how separate can they be? Isn’t separation the only real problem? Who and what are we trying to be separate from?

Example: The sun never stops shining. Does it for you? Is it ever miserable outside? Is it cloudy, too hot, too cold, snowing, raining or arid, or really scary?

What’s your conjecture? How much of all this is ‘really’ happening in our internal world in that concept we call our mind?

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well.

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The Language of Success

George Orwell’s 5 Rules For Effective Writing

We endlessly discuss and gossip about questions of: What am I? Who am I? What is my self?

Layers of Fear hide answers to these questions. They must be lifted off to live in the essence of an effective life.

First Layer: As this first thin layer is lifted there is a growing awareness that ideas about your self are made-up. They only exist as ideas in the minds that hold them.

It doesn’t follow that ideas are useless, or at all meant to be ineffective. It means that at their core, effective or ineffective, they are not real; they are figments of imagination. They can be easily be made into dark heavy blankets.

So in unpeeling this first thin layer you face a question: “My self, what I am, who I am, is not real! It is just an idea or concept?”

You may shake your head or say: “Thanks. How does this help me live effectively?” Hold this question as the second layer is lifted.

The Second Layer: Hold back each peel as we proceed deeply inward.

If you have even considered that you are an idea, then you will, with fear, begin to more clearly see you don’t know who, or what you are; you don’t know who or what your self is, where you are, or how to make sense of anything. You have not owned that you’re entirely free to make this up. “If this is true, why isn’t it simple to make an effective self?” It ‘is’. And it ‘is not’.

Understanding you can create whatever you want or wish, the first difficulty with ‘is not’ arises with the realization that if you want freedom from the dark you have no choice about taking full responsibility for your construction. This is why the ‘is’ seems so difficult. It asks: “Do you want to own responsibility for the self you have created?”

The external world from conception on provides ready-made ways to avoid responsibility for one’s constructed self: Physical: “Born this way”, “Body/soul is damaged”, Environmental: “Tough life”, “Parents”. This is a fruitless nature-nurture debate. For the degree you choose to avoid responsibility for creating your self, using nature or nurture, you are making-up-a-self sliding into a dark pit of pain.

The Third Layer:  The second layer is heavy, yet as you lift the third layer you see it doesn’t mean there is no truth to the fact we begin life with others totally responsible for us. Here you see is where ‘is not’ makes its stand. Given the temptations waiting at maturity, self-deception is the ‘seeming-easy’ choice; or you can ask: “How do I regain responsibility for my self?”

Deciding you want an effective life, you must own the fact that all others including society, religion and culture have put ideas into your mind about who and what you are. “You’re ‘special’. You’re X age, sex, religion.” “You’re bad. You little devil.”

So all your dark, ineffective thoughts, feelings and behavior is exposed when the third layer is lifted. Through your whole life, as you decide to make up who and what you are, you have to deal with the effective and ineffective parts of you that were installed by others before you were responsible for yourself. Even though they were made-up by others, they still have their own ability, to think, perceive and even act AS IF they are really you.

The Fourth Layer: The lifting gets heavier but keep holding the layers up. Are those glimpses of light? Underneath is a further growing awareness that you also began, when not fully responsible for yourself, to slowly but surely make up ideas of who and what others were, based on your experiences and imagination. These parts of your self, others inside you, so to speak, also act AS IF they are real and autonomous. Holding onto guilt, shame and responsibility for the made-up ineffectiveness of others inside you, as part of your own self, is a cause of immense darkness. The power of negative emotions given to these made-up others is held over you only when you don’t alternatively find the light switch of owning responsibility for making them up. You can waste large amounts of creative energy trying to fix these ineffective ‘others’ parts. They can’t be ‘fixed’! They aren’t real!! You can only release in forgiveness and thereby free yourself from these guilty thoughts born of fear.

The darkness now intensifies before the dawn for as you lift this layer you are shockingly aware that what you see outside is what you have made-up inside. Perceiving or projecting these creations onto others outside your self by criticizing, blaming or denigrating instead of releasing them to forgiveness reinforces the darkness of fear. You are letting internal constructions, meant to protect and safely hold you, lead you and leave you, in the dark.

The Fifth Layer: Like ripping off a band-aid you lift this last layer of exquisite pain. Here you decide, “I will take responsibility for what I’ve made, surely the light switch must be there, right there!” But, no, you still have to face and lift off the final two scabs of immense fear and pain.

• 1st: You have to mourn and grieve the made-up ineffective parts of yourself installed by others and then mourn and grieve the ineffective made-up parts of others you created inside yourself.

• 2ndly: You have to face a feeling of dread as you release these made up parts of yourself, BUT, because these parts have made up so much of your sense of who you are, you will feel you are falling into a ‘seeming’ abyss. It feels AS IF your whole self is being annihilated.

But as these layers are lifted the light switch is revealed: “I’ve made up who I am. I own responsibility for it, but not a shred of it is real”. The ‘power’ of money, fame, sex, ambition, drugs, power, roles and all negative emotions are jettisoned. You see your ineffective creation was meant to encircle you with an effective creation of love and forgiveness. You willingly release the ineffective.

The answer to who and what you are arises inside to tell you from Itself, and every temptation a chance to choose again for weakness or strength, truth or lies, peace or war, your will be done effectively in innocence and Love.

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well.

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The Language of Success

George Orwell’s 5 Rules For Effective Writing

Each of us begins in total dependence: the womb. From the moment of ‘delivery’ into the awesome beauty and terror of the world we struggle to come to grips with separateness and the emotions that go with it.

In this piece I raise questions and discuss what is not a frivolous question. I do this to help you assess where you are in your own emotional life journey.

Those of you who have read my book The Three Word Truth about Love and Being Well might recognize that I have addressed parts of this topic under the headings: Relationship as Love Essence and Sexuality as Love Essence. Here, I look at these areas from the vertex of weaning.

What follows can first be summarized in the old psychiatric saw: “Every patient is in therapy for one reason: to learn to separate from mother” (here mother includes, to an important but lesser extent, father).

Weaning concretely describes a mother withdrawing the breast and nipple as her baby’s food source. This event has led to serious questions around the importance of breast-feeding: Is a bottle-fed baby ever really weaned and how significant is this for development? Less often considered: Is the duration of breast-feeding and the time taken to wean significant? Lastly, how different is psychological weaning from the actual physical process? In other words, when the breast and nipple is withdrawn is anyone ever fully weaned and what are the implications? Or for you: Am I weaned?

Where are you in your journey of growing, separating and finding your self?

I extend a series of further questions for your contemplation:

Is the first crawl and later walking away from mother a part of weaning? Is going to a day care and then school a part of weaning? Is having a friend, a serious relationship, leaving home and marrying a part of weaning? And in all these cases, if this is part of weaning, who is weaning from whom? Is a man dependent on a woman, or vice versa, in need of weaning? Even further is an ex, male or female, weaned who is ‘separated’ and receives spousal support? And lastly, in the bigger picture, for instance, do we all need to be weaned off oil?

Do these examples resonate for you with feelings of underlying helplessness, hopelessness, fear, guilt, anger, greed or gluttony? Or consider, is faulty weaning an essence of distorted love for self, other and the world?

And so what starts as a seemingly frivolous question leads you back, back, back. Questions about yourself and your primary relationships, and then questions about how much your past has a ‘presence’ arise. Are you are meeting your own moral standards? How is consumption and greed affecting the whole future of mankind?

Some of the following personal determinants may help you answer these questions and assess where you’re at in your journey.

You are not weaned if you:

1) abrogate your sense of responsibility, or,

2) disavow your responsibility for your self onto or into someone else and then sit in judgment of their performance, or,

3) feel entitled to a standard of living without working for it,

4) feel other’s owe you a living and work is drudgery,

5) have ‘excessive’ trouble with: distrust, helplessness and vulnerability, fear, envy, persecution, anger, temper tantrums (internal or acted externally), feelings of unfairness, anxiety, dread, increasing isolation and numbness, impatience, any or multiple addictions, and, bodily preoccupation or behaviors.

You are weaned when you understand that:

1) bonding is to attaching as weaning is to separating,

2) other is not an extension of you, a part to be used by you,

3) other is not simply a function for you to use and depend on,

4) other is not to a puppet for you to control from behind their back,

5) you have a balanced conscience with concern for yourself and others,

6) you bear the depressive feelings of a sense of incompleteness and accept dealing with them throughout your life,

7) work is a gift,

responsibility is freedom,

9) envy becomes realistic admiration of others’ achievements,

10) you have relative peace of mind with awareness of your thoughts, feelings and behavior and ownership of all three,

11) you feel reasonable guilt and disappointment for mistakes but forgive yourself and others fairly quickly, learn from your experiences,

12) you know and own responsibility for the reality we are all more similar than different and we are in this together, and

13) you know your will is one in God’s Will, but you are fairly certain and have a strong faith that we each have separate immortal souls.

So weaning is an ultimate paradox because as we separate from our ‘mother’ internally and externally, mature, bond, and separate as adults we have the potential to ‘see’ we are separate but at the same time one with God. This presents both an opportunity and challenge for our intimate relationship: All unresolved weaning issues are replayed. They are acted out a third time in reverse with the opportunity and challenge of pregnancy. Adopting children brings unique weaning challenges and opportunities.

As couples you face weaning issues at play over and over again around dependency, responsibility, clinging, codependency, entitlement and division of labor. The degree of awareness of individual growth in God’s love will determine the health of your relationship process.

Like all physical life, ultimately your relationship too has an expiry date. Before this expiry occurs you can work to face the pain of weaning and create a transcendent, holy relationship that will thrive, or you   can sink into passivity and your relationship will become increasingly dependent, fearful, hostile and parasitic.

If your relationship becomes malignantly stagnant there will be an inevitable slide into failing mental and physical health. You or your relationship will die an early death. If your relationship ‘fails’ in separation, or in marital divorce in particular, depending on the level of ‘weaning maturity’ and resultant narcissistic injury, the pain of weaning avoided will more or less violently resurface. This can be behavior acted out with the intention to induce guilt or behavior to demand compensation / revenge. This is the cry of an internal infant to continue ‘feeding’ uninterrupted. The pain of weaning feels intolerable. In desperation and rage, to manage the resurfacing pain, unfortunately, ‘mommy and daddy’, the ‘law’, is often called on to supply what is ‘owed and deserved’. Like a tyrannical parent, most sadly, the unfeeling ‘law’ supports itself by supporting this faulty strategy. It reinforces the seeking of security and happiness in material possessions. A world like the ‘law’ itself is created, a world without ultimate meaning, a worshipping of the ‘golden calf’.

The pain in separation and divorce is an essence of weaning. It must be born in ‘the beauty of the breakup’. It cannot be assuaged or averted by entitlement and clinging to a Faustian bargain with the devil, for suckling on a rancid ‘piece of flesh’ always takes a heavy toll.

The final opportunities for transcendence in weaning occur as the physical body unmanifests. Bonding with grandchildren and seeing God in their eyes is one portal to this transcendence. Separation from, and letting go of one’s false attachments to an ended relationship, to one’s parents, to one’s dying spouse if still married, and finally to the attachment to one’s own body is another portal. All these events show how the process of weaning, mourning, and acceptance of weeping must go on throughout your life if you are to continue to grow.

By paying ongoing attention to where you are in your weaning process throughout your life span, you are more able to attach / bond, love, separate / grow and then let go in the certainty of your innocence and the pure knowledge you are forever loved and held by God. Here, there is no more weeping. You will not wean or be weaned again.

Now come the tears of joy!

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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Words That Overcome Fear and Dread

Words That Heal and Empower

In my last piece I outlined the place that the sale of fear is taking in our life. I noted the role fear plays in creating illness. I highlighted the major role of particularly guilty industries: the pharmaceutical companies, politicians, insurance companies and the news and advertising media, to name just five. These are entities that go out of their way to create a culture of fear to sell their products.

Because it is not a one-way street, however, this is not the whole story. Here in FEAR II, I outline the role we play in putting our self at the mercy of fear and dread and the personal responsibility we must own to manage these feelings. If you are interested, I explain this in greater detail, with clinical examples, in my book.

The first difficult and complex reality is that fear and dread are a very large and significant part of being human. These feelings and others, like a sense of doom, are essential elements of the human experience. Repeat this to yourself: “If I want to be fully human then I accept that fear and dread are a part of what I am.” Only by accepting this can you utilize your essential inner energy and at the same time ward off salesmen selling you more fear. You already have a plentiful supply.

The second reality is inherently more difficult to acknowledge. This is because most of us spend so much time trying to rid ourselves of fear or trying to avoid fear all together. In doing this we are denying the reality that it is quite normal to feel profoundly scared every day. If you have no sense of this you are likely cutting yourself off from your feelings and the vital energy and creativity that goes with them.

The third part, the hardest, is to realize how much it is in your interest to look into your own doom enclosed as you are as a physical entity. Close your eyes and stare into the abyss, the dark, the nothingness, the end, the loneliness, the abandonment, the sense of fading away, the terror that is in you. It is here, often to your shock, that you will find the light and source of energy that shines most brightly.

When, shaking with fear, you accept your fear the next step is to look it in the eye. Allowing your self this experience several times a day will ease your being at the mercy of your lower consciousness feelings. Doing this is only useful, of course, if you otherwise get on with what you WON’T and what you WILL do each day while accepting this experience as only one important part of feeling alive as you live. This practice frees you from being manipulated by the authoritarian voices in your own head or the voices outside who would encourage you to not feel, to look away, to seek safety and security, or conversely to attack, seek revenge, or retaliate against yourself or others.

Remember, finally, this decision, is a choice: to LOVE and BE WELL, or act out on your feelings as if you are a separate, isolated, strange specter alone with your ghoulish thoughts and fears. This you will recognize is the essence of all vampire, monster, horror and slasher books and films. This is commonly known as evil.

To know it, our fears and our dread, so we may contain it within ourselves, is to not inflict it on others, but instead to put it into the world in art or symbols of art, narratives or images. This allows us to then take it back inside our self in a more refined and less terrifying version. Here we may know our feelings and our self with comfort again.

This all, of course, depends on our having had a necessary amount of affectionate holding by parents or parent substitutes. If you have not had this amount of holding a therapist may be able to help you develop a sense of safety inside yourself. If you did have security as a child and you follow the practice outlined you will see that you think you are afraid of the forest, the dark and nothingness but you are really afraid of ‘nothing’. And, of course how can ‘nothing’ be fearful, except in the sense Augustine and Nietzsche said evil is ‘no-thing’.

As words are also not things, the words you choose will determine the thoughts that lead to your actions; this in turn will lead to consequences in terms of your peace of mind and your overall health and creativity.

If you choose to LOVE and BE WELL, then each day, morning and night, take a moment, close your eyes, let yourself relax, breath in and out, then say:

I WON’T deny my fears.

I WON’T let others project fear into me.

I WILL accept my doubts and fears.

I WILL extend love to the world.

I AM light and energy and LOVE in the midst of all darkness.

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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Words That Overcome Fear and Dread

Words That Heal and Empower

Everyone knows sex sells. Greed sells too, and again, this is something we all know. But little did we know that the really big, best seller of all is FEAR and it’s companion, dread.

Here are some current ‘epidemic’, ‘impending’ ‘catastrophe-in-the-making’, brilliantly-marketed FEARS: Fear of recession, depression, terrorists, war, disease, food, air, climate change, computer crashes, natural disasters, breast size, impotency, break-ins, drug czars and addicts, immigrants and aging.

Here I focus on an area closest to my own experience as a physician-psychiatrist: the fear of illness and dying. As you read about overcoming and transcending this fear, think of it as an effective metaphor for the other fears listed above. When you come to the end reread the piece substituting each fear.

Start with this fact: To fear our body is a powerful way to create disease. Why is this? Because fear is about being attacked and when you think you are going to be attacked you are both hard-wired and soft-wired for flight or fight. This, in simple terms, is bad for your physical health when carried on continuously or repetitively on an intermittent basis. Your body is not set up to be constantly on the alert for danger or shocked repeatedly by the unexpected. It is not necessary to go into the physiology of why this might lead to high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and even cancer. Here is the rub: If fear can be created it leads to disease thereby proving that the fear was warranted. This is every politician, salesman and businessman’s dream: to create a need for snake oil.

In the external world we no longer buy a car or a house just for comfort and to raise a family, former symbols of success and stability that they were. We now buy an alarm system surrounding a car or house to protect us from an attack that is inevitably coming.

Similarly in our internal world, in the case of fear of illness, we are taught to wait to be attacked from within by scary pathogens of all types, prions, viruses, bacteria, fungi, worms or ravaging cancerous cells. We are then inundated with words and images encouraging us to attack back with drugs and vaccines. Television sets, both advertisement and news, are now literally more like warning systems for an impending attack, even if it is a sneak attack like impotence. Get them, (it), before they, (it), get us. This simply doesn’t work to ease fear; it creates fear. In the process a lot of drugs are sold in pharmacies and in the streets, for when you are talked into fear and then become an attacker you solidify the idea that attack must be coming and complete a circle of dread. If I need one drug, then I must need another. If I attack anything I inevitably will be more afraid as I wait for retaliation.

The facts are that, as I point out in the book, your body is a perfect part of the perfect whole always healing itself. It is an error to think your body is defective or that you have a basic fault, or that you are split and separate from a perfect whole. The words you use to overcome fears are central to your sense of peace of mind and joyful living.

Focus the words you choose on wholeness and unity and thereby stop ‘buying into’ fears such as the fear of illness and the enticement to attack and demonize your body. As you see you are part of larger wholeness your immune system is strengthened so your body can naturally do what it does best, serve as an amazing communication device.

Put your attention on remembering yourself. Make it your intention to do the following simple exercise daily. With your eyes closed take a deep breath in and repeat these three phrases ten times, morning and night as you breath out: 1) I Won’t indulge in fear and I Won’t identify with my body 2) I Will love the world and I Will forgive myself and others, and 3) I Am whole and healed. I AM LOVE.

As you work these Three Words, Won’t, Will and Am, you will begin to experience recovery from their healing power.

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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Photo credit: Lrn Megan

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The Language of Success

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Every moment of every day is a new beginning for your life through the words you choose to use.

Words make up your thoughts and ideas. They shape the images in your mind, coloring what you perceive and believe.

In the world around you, words make up text messages, tweets, and on your Facebook page they explain your pictures, your past and your plans. They make up the laws that rule much of your experience.

Yet all this being true, we seldom stop to think about the ongoing power of the words we use and string together, the empowerment of words at our disposal when used effectively, or the power unleashed against us at our peril when words are used without awareness.

Our mind is the light we shine second by second on the words we choose from the infinite lexicon before us. It is critically important that we be alertly aware: The words we choose to shine the light of our mind on, shape our very life and its quality.

Now if we stop for a moment and think of the avalanche of words we are inundated with from without, never mind from the running dialogue within, it is easy to see the confusion this can lead to. Which words to choose and will they lead to an effective direction in our life?

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE WORDS

One common way to think about the words we use is to refer to them as negative thoughts or positive thoughts. This kind of classification provides some assistance in that it points out that negative thoughts and words often lead to negative feelings.

For instance: “I am too this or too that,” (This is often a comment about a body feature.), will lead to feelings of depression, anger or self-pity.

Conversely, it is popularly believed with this classification, sometimes to the point of it being called a secret that positive words and thoughts lead to positive feelings and outcomes in ones’ life.

For instance: “Just think positive and you’ll feel better.”

This kind of classification of our words and thoughts unfortunately polarizes words into good and bad, however, and this polarization can paralyze us. This is because at times so-called ‘negative’ words can be most positive in their impact on our life, and conversely positive words can easily lead us astray.

For instance, as I discuss in the book, The Three Word Truth about Love and Being Well, the word Won’t, seemingly negative, is a most powerful word leading to peace of mind and personal joy when used as follows: I Won’t judge, I Won’t criticize, or, I Won’t attach to outcome or stuff.

Conversely again, the seemingly positive word Will if not chosen with great care can lead one far astray in the power it unleashes and lead us into the dark.

For instance: I Will open that bottle of wine. I Will drive my car.

It is easy to see how the negative word Won’t can clear a space for the positive word Will, but Will needs to flow back to Won’t to keep it from going astray. I Won’t open that wine. I Will do that work I have been avoiding.  Won’t can eliminate the toxic in your life as Will can invite it back in.

TRANSCENDENT WORDS

Contrary to words classified as positive or negative, words that focus us in the ‘here and now’ tend to be transcendent. These are words like Am.

Here we can think about beginning each moment of our life with a transcendent word: I Am energy. I Am light. I Am Love.

Similarly a word like OM is used in meditation to center us in the power of the present.

I Am says there is no doubt and no obstacle that cannot be overcome; I AM transcends perception.

For example: ‘I Am going to do this’ says in fact it is already done. ‘I Am Love’ says I love the world and my view of the world is loving; as this is not a hostile view, it dissolves fear, guilt and anger.

WORKING THE WORDS

If we decide to center our life around just Three Words, Won’t, Will, (Intention) and Am we can see and feel the empowerment presented to us in the abundance of the world; we also see a way to cut through the confusion of endless words coming at us from inside and outside.

If you become clear as you begin each moment of your life to work these Three Words, that is decide what you Won’t do, you open up a space to begin the next moment with what you Will do.

Centering in WILL as the creation you are, you are able to transcend your fear, doubt, guilt and anger by realizing in your essence I Am, as is everyone else.

This realization in turn will lead you back to what you Won’t do and what you Will do as you shape your surface personality that is now ready to extend truth, beauty, creativity, love and joy to the world.

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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