I meet many people each week who tell me about their feelings of frustration, depression, anxiety, and that they perceive that they are somehow ‘stuck’ in a life that doesn’t match what they had anticipated.

Some say they cannot get over their past such as broken relationships, the loss of a loved one or financial difficulty; others mention feelings of guilt or that they don’t perceive that there is meaning to their lives; while others explain feelings of frustration due to the challenges of the global pandemic.

The world around you can seem to control you if you allow it. Or, you can, if you learn how to answer quality questions, turn the world around you into something you perceive as ON THE WAY, working for you, not against you. 

I am inspired to share some powerful and practical tools that can assist you to balance your mental perceptions and master your life.

The 3 Things You Have Control Over:

There are only three things you have control over: your perceptions, your decisions and your actions.

Recently at my signature program, the Breakthrough Experience, I had somebody come up to me and say, 'My mother abandoned me.'

The lady who said this had been running that story for quite a while.

I asked her a simple question, ‘What did you particularly miss about your mom when she left?'

'Well,’ she said, ‘I missed having somebody be there for me, guide me, and love me unconditionally.’

I explained to her that at the level of the broader perceiving ‘soul’, nothing's missing in your life. At the level of your narrower perceiving senses, things appear to be missing.

However, if you ask the right questions, you can become aware of the new forms in which those actions are emerging.

I then asked her, 'Which individuals guided and loved you when your mother left? What was the benefit of having each of them taking on those roles?’ What were some of the downsides when her mother took on those roles.

She explained to me that her aunt and grandmother had taken care of her and that she had experienced a financially stable childhood as a result. She had also been able to finish school and had a close-knit group of friends that she met there.

I had her stack up a detailed list of benefits of having her grandmother and aunt take on a parenting role, and the drawbacks that would have continued to occur had her mom not left.

As a result, she was able to see opportunities she had not seen before, and transform what she had originally perceived to be a negative event into something she was grateful for.

An event is what you make it. You can make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a heaven. You can take whatever's happening at that moment and ask questions to shift your perception of it from a support to a challenge or a challenge to a support.

If you choose to go by your first interpretation that it is ‘negative’ and don’t take the time to find the upsides to it, it's not because of the event, but because you're  choosing not to see the upsides to it.

That's your doing. It’s your PERCEPTION and has little or nothing to do with the world around you.

There are no events that are ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ until you choose to make it so.

All events have benefits and drawbacks, upsides and downsides. Nothing can manifest without those two sides. If you take the time to see both sides, then you can neutralize the event and not have it run your life.

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The Ratios of Your Perceptions Determine Your Emotions:

Pharmaceutical companies and some medical professionals would love to have you believe that your perceived problems are the result of a biochemical imbalance. In some cases this may be a useful model.

But, your ratios of perceptions can and do impact your internal chemistry.

If you don’t take the time to balance your perceptions, your neurochemistry is likely to become and remain imbalanced as a result.

If you imagine or perceive that an aggressive animal is about to make a move to attack you. Some very specific actions will take place in your body at that instant:

• your cortisol level will go up;
• your norepinephrine, epinephrine, osteocalcin and testosterone will go up; and
• your dopamine and serotonin will go down.

In other words, all the compounds ready for ‘fight or flight’ will go up and all the ones aimed at ‘rest and digest’ will go down.

The majority of biochemical imbalances stem from the fact that you store in your subconscious mind your previously imbalanced perceptions. Until you balance them, they affect your chemistry. 

If you don't take the time to balance out your perceptions, you will tend to have imbalanced neurochemistry. Not because it becomes imbalanced out of the blue, but because you stored up a bunch of distorted perceptions and have not taken the time to be accountable and put them back into balance.

Balance Your Emotions:

During my 2-day seminar The Breakthrough Experience that I run nearly every weekend, I teach people how they can balance their perceptions, change their chemistries, and transform their moods and attitudes.

William James said that the greatest discovery of his generation was that human beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind.

You can change your perception of an event and therefore change your attitude, so it is unwise to blame an event and it is wise to stop running a story about how you are at its mercy.

You have the capacity with your mind to transform your perception of that event and turn it into something you perceive as instructive not obstructive, ON the way, not IN the way.

Many people are run from the external world and blame things on the outside.

The wise individual realizes there's nothing to blame, and that all events are neutral until somebody with a subjective bias skews it with an incomplete interpretation that then, in turn, creates a polarized emotion.

Those emotions create physiological changes. They create symptoms and illness as feedback to let you know that you have an imbalanced mental perception.

Your Symptoms are Trying to Lead You Back into Balance and Authenticity: 

Authenticity within occurs when you're not judging something on the outside and you perceive your surroundings in a balanced way.

• If you perceive some individual as TERRIBLE, you'll tend to look DOWN on it and exaggerate yourself with pride;
• If you perceive some individual as TERRIFIC, you’ll tend to look UP to it and minimize yourself with shame;
• Whenever you exaggerate or minimize yourself, you're not being yourself, which means you are inauthentic.

However, when you ask yourself a new set of questions and become more broadly aware, you can see both sides simultaneously – the upsides in the terrible and the downsides in the terrific - you return to BALANCE.

It is for this reason that I teach that the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. 

  Quality Questions:

The wisest questions I know to ask, which I've incorporated in the Demartini Method, which I present at the Breakthrough Experience, are:

• If you see a TERRIBLE, what are the upsides?
• If you see a TERRIFIC, what are the downsides?

It would be wise to continue asking those questions over and over until you can see both sides, and realize that NOTHING ON THE OUTSIDE TRULY RUNS YOU.

I f you're frustrated and dissatisfied with your life, it has little or nothing to do with what HAPPENED out there, and everything to do with how you INTERPRETED it.

I've been doing this for almost four decades and there's nothing your mortal body can experience that your immortal soul can't love. Your immortal soul represents the timeless minded State Of Unconditional Love.

I've seen the most challenging events turned into an gratifying opportunities.

The greater the challenge: the greater the opportunity.

The greater the crisis: the greater the blessing.

So, it's not what happens to you but instead your choice of perception.

If you ask the right question to help balance out your perception, you are capable of liberating yourself from the bondage of those events that you're infatuated or resentful to, and all the times when you tend to inauthentically minimize or exaggerate yourself.

If you’d love to learn how to do this then join me at my signature program The Breakthrough Experience where I’ll show you how to use a process called the Demartini Method to take any perception of a challenge and see the hidden order and blessing so that you wake up a deep gratitude for the event as it was, not as you imagined it ‘should be’.

The Two Sides to Life

Your relationship with a meaningful and inspiring life itself is based on your ability to simultaneously see both sides. 

As such, it's not what happens to you but what you also DECIDE to do with it.

To reiterate what I said earlier, there are only three things you have control over in your life: your perceptions, decisions and actions.

If you decide to hold on to your perception that something was a terrible event, then it is likely to stay with you, together with secondary associations that remind you of the event and result in feelings of anxiety.

In other words, you allow that event to run your life because you haven’t balanced or neutralized it.

The same process can also apply to your job and whether you choose to perceive that it is TERRIBLE or TERRIFIC.

Every week, I have people tell me that they hate their job but need it to pay the bills. The word they tend to use most often in this regard is ‘trapped’.

I don’t believe that you are truly ever trapped. Instead, you could begin to liberate yourself by visiting my website and going through my  FREE Demartini Value Determination Process so you can first gain clarity about your highest values and what your life demonstrates you are really committed to.

You can then ask yourself:

• How specifically is each aspect of my job description and what I do each day is helping me fulfill what is most meaningful and important to me?
• How is it helping me move on to the next step and achieve my primary aim?

In other words, you are not ‘trapped’ by your job. But you could be trapped by your PERCEPTION of your job.

You get to decide  how you PERCEIVE it, REACT to it, and the ACTIONS that come out of it. 

If you don’t have a viable plan of a career path that you would love to follow, you’re likely to be subject to whatever's available out there.

Instead, it is wise to take command and find a pathway to a viable career, that really also meets other people's needs, that serves others sustainably with a fair exchange and then create a plan of action that allows you to transition.

If you then look at how your current job is providing you with new opportunities, skills, experiences, networks and leads, you’ll be more likely to be appreciative of the job you have as a stepping stone to something greater. It's not your job. It's your perception of it.

Pairs of Opposites:

Your life can be magnificent if you learn the art of asking questions that balance out your mind. You can transform the perception of literally anything that's going on in your life.

There's nothing that your mortal body can experience that you can't turn into an opportunity.

Yes, things happen and may not necessarily be something you originally thought you wanted in life, but that's what happened.

Instead of holding onto your judgement of the event, it would be wiser to see how you can use it to your greatest advantage.

The things you dislike are actually part of a pair of opposites.

The more you're addicted to one side – say the ‘terrific’ or fantasy side, the more you tend to attract its opposite to break your addiction to the fantasy.

If you’re addicted to protection, you likely attract aggression.

If you’re addicted to peacefulness and everybody getting along, you are likely to attract a criticizer, challenger or warrior.

Why?

Because you need both support and challenge to grow. Maximum growth and development occurs at the border of all pairs of opposites.

There are no one-sided events or one-sided people. 

Both sides, support and challenge, pleasure and pain, nice and mean, easy and difficulty are always there and are essential.

When you are wise and have a realistic expectation of experiencing and embracing both sides you will be more resilient and adaptable because if you're neutral, you don't fear the loss or gain of it.

• If you're infatuated with something, you fear its loss.
• If you’re resentful to something, you fear its gain.

As a result, you are likely to add fear to your life when you don’t see both sides.

However, if you see both sides equally and you’re neutral, you will tend to be more resilient and adaptable.

The Buddha said the desire for that which is unavailable and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable is the source of human suffering.

‘Stress’ is the inability to adapt to a changing environment.

Distress is the fear of loss of that what you seek and the fear of gain of that what you are trying to avoid.

It's not the so called ‘negative’ event, it’s not what happens. Instead, it’s your perception of those events.

You can become freed from the bondage of your own emotions the moment you realize you are in command of your perception.

It’s On The Way

Once you see that life is ‘on the way’, not ‘in the way’, you’re likely to realize that everything is trying to awaken your authenticity.

If you attract a criticizer, it's likely because you're proud, and above equilibrium and they're coming in humbling you which brings you back into balance. They're not a terrible person. They're just playing a role in helping you become authentic.

Anything you haven't LOVED in your life and anything you're not GRATEFUL for is baggage. 

As a result, your imbalanced perceptions are stored in your subconscious mind and are likely to run you and cause you to ‘react’ instead of ‘act’ as you would if you had a balanced mind.

Anything you haven't balanced; the external world causes a reaction in. 

In other words, choosing not to balance your perceptions will likely result in the external world running you and you becoming a victim of history instead of a master of your destiny.

By not seeing both sides of a situation, you may subconsciously be holding yourself back from a resilient, amazing life.

In Conclusion:

• The quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask.  It is wise to ask questions that bring your mind back into balance.
• If you're not living by design; you're living by duty. If you're living by duty, you're living by conformity. If you're living by conformity, you're fitting in and you're not going to stand out or make the difference that you would love to make in life.
• If you're dissatisfied with your life or an aspect of your life, it is likely because you’re comparing your current reality to a fantasy, not seeing the upsides to what's happening, and you're not seeing the downsides to what you're comparing it to.
• In every perception, there are always two sides. If you ask the right questions and balance your perceptions, you are more able to liberate yourself, be in command, and live authentically.
• A perfectly equilibrated mind opens the heart. It makes you grateful because you can see the hidden order in the apparent chaos.

As such, it is wise to stop blaming the world on the outside and to instead ask the quality questions I have highlighted above to balance your mind.

The magnificence of your life the way it is far exceeds any fantasy you could ever impose upon it. So, take the time to see the perfection of it the way it is.