Last week we learned about the five different kinds of beliefs (Basic, Personal, Authority, Derived and Inconsequential) and which ones can be changed (Personal, Authority, Derived). We were also introduced to Terri, who has just been let down by a man, one more time. And we saw the beliefs Terri has that were triggered by this most recent betrayal.

Now, let’s get down to it and see how to change those undesirable beliefs!

In Terri’s situation, in which she felt betrayed and was lied to by her fiancé, we asked this question: “What kind of beliefs would Terri have to have to create the experience of betrayal and being lied to?” We mentioned two possibilities; I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want and men are untrustworthy liars. It’s also possible that Terri has a belief that she is not lovable and/or does not deserve a lasting, loving relationship. Or that love doesn’t last. Or the men she loves don’t love her.

Terri can begin to change these beliefs in two ways. One is with the use of affirmations and the other is with “choice statements”.

Affirmations are positive thoughts that you intentionally insert into your consciousness (especially your subconscious mind) to produce a desired state or experience in your personal reality. Affirmations can be very effective and powerful when applied properly. So, what is the proper application of affirmations?

The way the old beliefs became implanted in your consciousness was through repetition, i.e., hearing your family and cultural beliefs repeated over and over again, sinking into your subconscious mind until they became a part of you. That’s why these beliefs take on the appearance of “that’s just the way it is”, without questioning. Until, like Terri, you begin to wake up to the subconscious programming that is determining your experience in life and relationships and decide to do something about it.

There is an art to inventing affirmations. Basically, you want to craft a statement that is roughly the opposite of the undesirable experience and reflects the desired experience.

Let’s take Terri’s beliefs, “I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want” and “Men are untrustworthy liars” as an example. If Terri wants to have an experience of being loved the way she wants by a man who is honest and trustworthy, it might sound something like this. “I, Terri, am now attracting into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”

Now, this will seem like a lie to the part of her mind that is convinced that not only are there no men in existence like that, but if there were, she couldn’t find them! The project of working with affirmations is to convince your subconscious mind of the truth of your affirmation until it is accepted. The way you know your affirmations are effective is that you begin to see evidence in your experience.

There are two powerful ways of applying affirmations to transform your beliefs at the deepest level. One is with writing and the other is verbally with a partner. Here’s how they work.

When writing affirmations, you want to be sure to work in all three persons, like this:

1. “I, Terri, am now attracting into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”
2. “You, Terri, are now attracting into your life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates you just the way you are.”
3. “Terri is now attracting into her life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates her just the way she is.”

Number one is the first person, number two is the second person and number three is the third person. Second person affirmations are very powerful because that is how we received much of our programming when we were young. The third person is as if you are overhearing others talk about you.

It is recommended that you write your affirmations three to five times in each person at least once a day.

Working verbally with a partner is very powerful and is a great way to encourage and support one another in your goals and dreams. It works like this. Select an affirmation and say it with feeling to your partner. Your partner will enthusiastically agree with you, then repeat.

After a few rounds in which your partner agrees with you, your partner will then repeat your affirmation back to you, and you agree with them, then repeat your affirmation to them. This process is described in our book, Straight From the Heart, and includes lots of examples of affirmations for relationships.

Now, sometimes the difference between your current reality and the state of being you are affirming is just too great and seems impossible to achieve. When this is the case, you may feel inner resistance to the affirmation, which is counterproductive. That’s when you want to use the “Choices Method”. (The Choices Method was developed by our friend and colleague, Dr. Patricia Carrington, as an advanced form of Emotional Freedom Techniques – EFT. You may learn more about EFT in our online multimedia EFT Training Program – http://www.efttrainingonline.com/)

Here’s the difference between traditional affirmations and Choice Statements. Notice how it feels to say each one aloud.

• “I am wise and discerning.”
• “I choose to be wise and discerning.”
• “I am attractive.
• “I choose to acknowledge my attractive qualities.”
• “I feel peaceful.”
• “I choose to feel peaceful.”
• “I am wealthy and prosperous.”
• “I chose to take steps to become wealthy and prosperous. I am determined.”

For Terri’s affirmation, the Choices Method might sound like this, “I, Terri, now choose to attract into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”

You can work with Choice Statements exactly the same way you work with traditional affirmations. You may find working with Choice Statements to be more convincing and more readily accepted by both your conscious and subconscious mind.

Affirmations and Choice Statements are like a grappling hook thrown into the future you desire. You use them to pull what you want to you and you to it.

Working with your beliefs to transform your experience is working at the causal level. Trying to improve your life and relationships any other way is like trying to reach into the mirror to adjust your clothing.

Silver Koi Encounter

This image was made in Encinitas, California at the Garden of the Self-Realization Fellowship. It was founded in 1937 by Paramahansa Yogananda. It was on this bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean that he wrote the now classic of spiritual literature, Autobiography of a Yogi. The gardens have been built up over the past sixty years with meandering pathways, ponds with koi fish, and nooks to duck out of sight and enjoy the sun and a quiet moment. The area is dense with greenery and an impressive landscape that isn’t necessarily large, but certainly lush.

I hope you enjoy this image and, as always, your comments and questions are appreciated. You may see more of my images here.

“Men!”, Terri exclaimed, her eyes red and swollen from crying. “I’m so tired of having my heart broken. Why can’t I just find a man who’ll love me the way I want him to?”, she asked no one in particular. “What’s wrong with me?”, she cried.

She just learned that her fiancé was still seeing his former girlfriend and had been lying to her. And this was just one more in a long string of betrayals for Terri. She just didn’t know if she could take another one, but here it was. This could mean the end of her engagement if they didn’t get this sorted out. But, she felt so hopeless – and wasn’t even sure she wanted to sort it out.

Reading this, it is easy to feel that Terri has been “done to” one more time. Yet, sympathizing with her about how bad men are does not empower her to see her part in creating her circumstances. And, more importantly, changing them.

The best way for Terri to reclaim her power and dignity in this situation – and that is to look at the beliefs within her that helped to create this painful event. Your rerlationships reflect your beliefs about relationships and about yourself. Until she can discover the beliefs within her that have contributed to her string of betrayals, she will never know lasting peace of mind in her relationships with men.

Your beliefs are fundamental to your sense of self and the world. You are oriented to the world through the medium of your beliefs. Many of your beliefs are so close to you that you can’t even see them. You are essentially embedded within them and experience them as who you are and how the world is.

For Terri, at least one of the beliefs she has is that she cannot find a man who “will love her the way she wants him to.” She probably also has beliefs about men being untrustworthy liars. The problem is that these troubling beliefs lie deep within her subconscious mind, well below her everyday awareness.

An important part of becoming enlightened is simply learning to observe your beliefs, without judgment. “But, if my beliefs are hidden in my subconscious mind, how can I observe them?”, you might well ask. One of the best ways to do that is by looking at your experience and asking yourself, “What beliefs would a person have to have to create an experience like this?”

In Terri’s case, what beliefs could create her experience of betrayal and being lied to? We mentioned two possibilities; I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want and men are untrustworthy liars. It’s also possible that Terri has a belief that she is not lovable and/or does not deserve a lasting, loving relationship. Or that love doesn’t last. Or the men she loves don’t love her.

Your experiences in life are born in your consciousness, from the seeds of belief. If you plant tomato seeds in a garden, do you expect to get corn? Of course not! The problem with the beliefs planted in your consciousness is that, for the most part, you don’t remember planting them because they were planted long ago in your childhood. So, by the time they appear in the garden of your experience, they appear to come out of nowhere. Unless you can identify the seeds of belief that have been planted in your mind and begin to uproot them and plant new ones, they will continue to produce their predictable results.

Dr. Milton Rokeach, a renowned psychologist, distinguished five different kinds of beliefs.

1. Basic beliefs that are socially shared, e.g., “We all need to eat in order to live.” These kinds of beliefs tend to be facts about our universal experience as human beings.
2. Personal beliefs that are not socially shared, e.g., “I can never do anything right.” or “I am God’s gift to women.” These beliefs are concerned with self-identity and one’s view of the world and are completely subjective. These kinds of beliefs are assessments and may or may not have anything to do with reality.
3. Authority beliefs are those that are outside our direct experience. They result from others whose authority we assess as credible, e.g., “CNN is the most accurate news network.”
4. Derived beliefs are a variation of authority beliefs in that they rely on identification with the authority. This is how we acquire beliefs from our culture, religion, and our family, e.g., “Suicide attacks on our enemies is justified because martyrdom is good and we have no other means of defense.”
5. Inconsequential beliefs are simply a matter of preference and personal taste, e.g., “Steve Martin is a funnier comedian than Billy Crystal.” They are opinions.

The negative beliefs that are worthy of changing are in numbers 2, 3 and 4 – personal beliefs that determine self-identity and world view, authority beliefs that we accept from others we see as more informed, and derived beliefs from authorities with whom we are identified.

Now that we have identified the kinds of beliefs and which ones are subject to change, in next month’s edition we will talk about the process of belief change. We will work with Terri’s beliefs and show you how you can use the same tools to identify and change your undesirable beliefs.

We really appreciate the honest and helpful comments many of you gave on our first bookstore video test a couple of weeks ago. We have taken your feedback to  heart and produced a shorter video by more than half, now under a minute.

We would appreciate your impressions and comments on this new bookstore video. Thanks in advance for your  help!

Clouds Over the Ortiz Mountains

New Mexico skies are dramatic and constantly changing. The Ortiz Mountains are a small mountain range south of Santa Fe off Highway 14, or the Turquoise Trail. There are very old turquoise mines in these mountains. A former mining town called Madrid is now a thriving art colony.

As always, your comments and questions are appreciated.

People yearn for relationships they can trust. They want to be able to depend on people. They want relationships characterized by ease, clarity and harmonious cooperation. But, is there any adult who hasn’t felt let down or betrayed by someone who didn’t live up to his or her agreements?

What Is an Agreement?

What is an agreement really? An agreement is a method for coordinating action between two or more people. It is supposed to smooth the way for efficient harmonious interaction. But why do people so frequently not live up to their word? Usually an agreement fails because it does not reflect the true desire and motivation of all the people making the agreement. People who agree to something because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t agree, will more than likely not follow through, unless they are pressured to do so.

It is important to know that agreements alone will not secure the safety and dependability we all yearn for. For an agreement to be effective the internal motivator that drives it should be so compelling that the people involved are aroused to fulfill their part, of their own volition. In other words, an agreement you can count on has to come from the right place.

Why Am I Agreeing to This?

That means that each person must answer the question, “For the sake of what am I agreeing to this?” This reason needs to be explicit. You can’t assume the same thing motivates everyone. You have to question, discuss and clarify. Successful agreements are always driven by a clear purpose that inspires action. There are two very important things that need to be part of a process for creating agreements that will work. A clear and inspiring purpose for your agreements and a process for restoring trust when an agreement has been broken.

A good purpose statement for sharing household chores might be something like; “We agree to share in household chores so that we can enjoy a relationship that is free from resentment and filled with trust, intimacy, passion and fun!” For business agreements something like, “The purpose of the following agreements is to ignite an unstoppable force for imagination, creativity and collective accomplishment.” It is also a good idea to post this declaration in a place where it will be seen frequently by the participating members, e.g., refrigerator, coffee room, bulletin board.

Once you have crafted an inspiring purpose statement for your agreements and you have listed the agreements, make sure they are consistent with your purpose. Then you need to determine a protocol for handling the inevitable broken agreement. This protocol needs to be something everyone accepts and is willing to use.

Agreements Aren’t Always Kept

Yes, it may be sad but true that even with the best intentions, sometimes agreements aren’t kept. You agree to be on time and you get a flat tire. You agree to pay a special project bonus and your biggest account defaults on a payment. The best kind of protocol is one that quickly restores trust and completely neutralizes any disappointment or hard feelings. This is important because we want to make sure the memory of the event doesn’t carry forward any resentment, blame or guilt. Any of these feelings are toxic to a harmonious future.

We have found that using amendments to restore broken agreements is a stellar solution. When someone does not keep an agreement for whatever reason, they offer an amendment to the other person. It is much better if someone does not have to ask for an amendment, but the person who did not keep the agreement readily offers it.

Apologies and Amendments

An amendment is different from an apology. An apology includes saying “I’m sorry” and how you will handle things differently in the future. An amendment is something you do to make up for whatever disappointment or bad feeling happened when the agreement was not kept as promised. An amendment is not a punishment. It is an opportunity to restore trust. What you offer for an amendment depends on the intensity of inconvenience or distress the other person experienced because you did not keep the agreement as promised.

Imagine someone who is late for a meeting and says upon arrival, “I apologize for being late. I’m sorry you were kept waiting and wondering. How about I bring flowers for the front desk tomorrow to make up for it?” Offering an apology and an amendment is a winning combination. It is a very grown up move that rekindles trust and allows everyone involved to bounce back to a very high level of teamwork.

Amendments work best when they are pleasurable for everyone involved. Treating someone to lunch is a better amendment than cleaning their car, unless of course you enjoy cleaning cars. Buying flowers tomorrow is better than doing a big thing in two or three weeks.

No Big Deal?

Sometimes people want to pretend that the agreement being broken was “no big deal” and an amendment is not necessary. We caution you against this consistent reaction. It sends the wrong message. It is important for people to keep their word, to be accountable for their promises. The ill feelings that come from broken agreements can build up over time. Using amendments is a great way of averting the kind of disastrous blow-ups that happen when people get fed up.

It is a good idea to bring a light heart, a sense of humor and your creativity to the amendment process. Remember the purpose of an amendment is to restore trust and harmony to a relationship.

Written Agreements or Verbal Agreements?

Sometimes people balk at the idea of written agreements. It seems like too much trouble. But if you take a step back and look at most of the failures in your relationships you will probably notice most of them came from lack of clarity and alignment. The hallmark of an enlightened partnership is intentional design. Great relationships don’t just happen, mediocre ones do.

The process of clarifying purpose and agreements is a necessary part of the design process for relationships. The conversations you will have will illuminate what is truly important to each person. This knowledge is essential in creating relationships that work well over the long term. If you create agreements that reflect the authentic motivation of each person and you plan for predictable breakdowns in a way that fosters accountability you can relax into a new certainty and trust in your most important relationships.

Santa Fe Summer Sky with Double Rainbow

I saw this double rainbow near our home recently as I was driving to the co-op. It lasted a really long time and was very dramatic and beautiful. I took a lot of pictures and I think this is one of the best. I hope you like it! As always, your comments are appreciated.

See some of my other photos

Top Ten Practices of Enlightened Relationships

Relationships are in many ways like real, seagoing ships. Just like a sailing vessel needs regular, constant care and upkeep, your relationships need regular care and upkeep. The crew of a sailing ship is knowledgeable in the standard practices of seamanship, which is absolutely required to maintain a ship’s seaworthiness. Unfortunately, most people are not knowledgeable in the standard practices of maintaining their relation-ships.

Yet, most people in relationships of any kind are usually focused on the goals of the relationship, whether building a life or a business or a community center. There is very little attention paid to the relation-ship itself. And often, somewhere along the voyage of life, the relation-ship is unable to withstand the inevitable and predictable storms of life that can damage both the individuals in the relationship and the relation-ship itself. Maintaining a strong, stable, satisfying relation-ship requires knowledge and skill – neither of which is commonly taught in our culture.

Enlightened relationships are distinguished both by the shared vision that guides the relationship as well as the standard practices of its partners. Enlightened relationships are created and maintained through specific standard practices. Unfortunately, these practices are uncommon in a popular culture gripped by fear and ignorance. But, through the commitment to learn and use these practices, the individuals and the relationship are elevated to new heights that uplift and evolve the soul.

Below we offer for your consideration the Top Ten Practices of Enlightened Relationships to help you in building and maintaining strong, durable and enlightened relationships.

1. Write down the purpose and desired results for your relationship. A relationship without a stated purpose and intended results is like a ship setting sail without a chart or plotted course. The purpose should be stated in a way that lifts the spirit of all partners.
2. Make choices grounded in love rather than fear. Become aware of your automatic reactions that are based in fear and look for the love choice instead. Ask yourself, what would love do or say in this situation?
3. Mutually agree upon strategies for dealing with predictable break-downs, i.e., miscommunications, upsets or disagreements and use them when needed. It is important to have these strategies in place before the breakdowns occur. It is difficult, if not impossible, to create and implement them in the middle of a breakdown.
4. Commit to win/win outcomes; don’t settle for anyone being the loser. For the relationship to win, all participants in the relationship need to win. If anyone in the relationship loses, the entire relationship loses. Keep asking questions that lead you to the win/win outcome.
5. Practice “high performance” communication from the heart. People respond positively to the expression of heart-felt truth because it builds trust, even if they don’t agree with it. High performance communication involves four specific skills, plus the ability to listen without judgment for the concerns of the other person that may be hidden behind their words.
6. Assume personal responsibility for your emotional reality and refrain from blame. Blame and projection will pollute the emotional climate of a partnership faster than anything.
7. Take the initiative for the satisfaction of your own needs and wants and make clear requests of others that inspire their cooperation. Don’t wait for people to guess what will make you happy. Nobody likes to endure demands or covert manipulation.
8. Share power rather than struggle for it. Let go of the need to be right all the time. Value others ideas and perceptions as being as valid as your own. Heal your unresolved power/authority issues from the past.
9. See problems as opportunities. Every problem contains the gift of spiritual development within it. Learn to unwrap the package.
10. Nurture a conscious relationship with your Soul. The more spiritually attuned you are, the more enlightened you and your relationships will be.

Sunlit Still Life

In the summer for a brief period each day the setting sun shines on our dining room credenza illuminating a hanging oriental carpet with cranes, a bejeweled silver box and a silver pitcher. It is a visual delight and I hope you enjoy this image.

As always, your comments and questions are  appreciated. You may see other images here – http://paul-cutright.artistwebsites.com/.

Floral Fantasy

Here is about a two minute interlude of floral beauty to brighten your day! This video is a compilation of some of my flower images set to music. I hope you like it!

You might also like to see this website of some of my photographs that are available to order as framed archival prints, stretched canvas or note cards – Paul Cutright Photography. I am really happy to report that a dear friend just purchased a 22.50 x 30 inch framed canvas of Iris in Silver Pitcher for her master bedroom! You can see it on my photo site at the link above.

As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated. Please share this with your friends and network by re-tweeting it or by whatever means you prefer.