READ TIME: 12m
DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 10 months ago
As you journey through life, you inevitably experience moments of greater clarity and certainty, moments when you feel you are the captain of your ship, the master of your destiny, and other moments when you might feel less certain, more influenced by and reactive to outer circumstances.
This is a topic that comes up often at my webinars and seminar presentations, especially in today’s rapidly evolving world, with many people asking for specific action steps they can begin implementing in their own lives to maintain an inner poise regardless of the outer perceived chaos.
So, if you’re inspired to learn how to adapt, thrive, and embrace life's uncertain phases, then I’m inspired to help you do just that.
The pursuit for one-sidedness is futile
Let’s say, for example, that I was to come up to you and say, “You're always nice, never mean. Always kind, never cruel. Always generous, never stingy. Always giving, never taking. Always considerate, never inconsiderate. Always peaceful, never wrathful. Always positive, never negative,” your intuition would let you know this was untrue and that you have another side to you.
If I said, “You're always mean, never nice. Always cruel, never kind. Always negative, never positive. Always wrathful, never peaceful. Always stingy, never generous. Always taking, never giving. Always inconsiderate, never considerate,” your intuition would once again remind you of your other side.
However, if I said, “Sometimes you're nice, sometimes you're mean. Sometimes you're kind, sometimes you're cruel. Sometimes you're positive, sometimes you're negative. Sometimes you’re peaceful, sometimes wrathful,” your intuition would immediately say with certainty that it is true.
You can even be seemingly nice to your children by being generous and providing, while simultaneously being mean to them by making them dependent and robbing them of any independent accountability. You can also be mean to your children and at times reject them or their requests, while at the same moment setting them free from dependency and helping them become more resourceful, social or creative.
This certainty arises because you recognize and embrace both inevitable aspects of yourself simultaneously.
Uncertainty often stems from internal conflicts or splits in your consciousness and unconscious perceptions.
When you're infatuated with someone and are conscious of their upsides but unconscious of their downsides, you tend to have uncertainty about your relationship with them. That uncertainty often clouds your judgment.
Similarly, when we are resentful to someone and are conscious of their downsides but unconscious of their upsides, you also tend to have uncertainty – often around how you are going to avoid them.
In both cases, you’ve split your full consciousness into conscious and unconscious halves, resulting in uncertainty.
It's only when you acknowledge both the positive and negative aspects of an individual, when you bring your unconscious conscious, that you can have certainty that you love and appreciate them.
They are not a nice individual or a mean individual, they are simply an individual human being with the capacity to express both sides depending upon whether they perceive you are supporting or challenging their hierarchy of values. They can be nice as a pussy cat or mean as a tiger depending upon their perceptions in that moment.
It’s only when you are conscious of both sides that you tend to experience true certainty.
When you allow your perceptions to be subjectively biased, skewed and imbalanced, your amygdala in the lower subcortical part of your brain, takes control. The amygdala doesn’t have certainty. It has uncertainties, reactions and survival mechanisms that often result in you subjectively biasing or polarizing your interpretations to impulsively “capture prey” (seek) or instinctively “escape predators” (avoid).
As such, you don’t tend to see the whole, and instead you perceive and react without inner governance to only the parts that you are conscious of. As in the animal kingdom, this primitive instinctual or impulsive response is a survival mechanism to try and protect yourself for survival.
However, you are not an animal in the wild. As such, you have the capacity to activate the executive center in your forebrain, that results in balance, objectivity, presence, poise and greater certainty.
How do you activate your executive center? By simultaneously seeing both sides of an event, goal, individual, and even both sides of yourself.
Certainty is born from acknowledging that you and others possess both attributes assumed to be positive and negative.
As I said earlier, the pursuit for one-sidedness is futile. As the Buddha is reported to have said, the desire for that which is unobtainable (the one side) and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable (the other side) is the source of human suffering.
The key is to embrace both sides, embracing that they are part of our nature. So while you can't predict which side you'll show on any given day, you can be certain that you'll reveal both sides over time. Simultaneously seeing both sides of yourself, an event, goal, or individual, is the path to certainty.
Whenever you grapple with uncertainty, it is wise to remember that your perspective is likely skewed. As I often tell people in my signature 2-day program, the Breakthrough Experience, the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. By seeking to understand the other side and balance the equation, you can transform your uncertainties into certainties.
Phobias, anxieties, and fears most often stem from the assumption, through your senses or imagination, that you'll encounter more negatives than positives in the immediate or distant future.
Conversely, philias and fantasies assume the opposite – that you’ll encounter more positives than negatives in the immediate or distant future.
Your intuition will try to reveal the side you're not seeing or are unconscious of, aiming to help you see both sides and calm your polarized emotional reactions. Because when you can see both sides simultaneously, your uncertainty dissipates, and your emotional reactions tend to dissolve.
For instance, when you’re infatuated with someone, it's wise to ask, “What are their downsides?” to return your perception to balance. Achieving balance leads to certainty, as you appreciate the person for both their positive and negative aspects.
When you harbor resentment or fear toward someone, it is wise to ask, “What are the upsides?”, also to bring balance to your awareness. The result is that you transform uncertainty into certainty.
Uncertainties tend to result in you going into survival mode, while certainties tend to propel you toward thrival mode.
This stabilization of your system often results in you having greater RESILIENCE.
Here’s why.
When you're infatuated with someone, you tend to fear losing them.
When you're resentful, you tend to fear gaining them and having them near you.
However, when you love someone and see both sides simultaneously, the fear of their loss or gain tends to dissipate. As such, you become more adaptable, present and certain, with heightened resilience and reduced anxiety.
Many anxieties are fears based on an assumption of a one-sided outcome. Often, the fears that plague you don't materialize. So, you grapple not with the fear of the unknown but with the imbalanced content in your mind, that often results in feelings of trepidation and uncertainties about the future.
By asking quality questions that help you see both sides of an event at the same time, you can liberate yourself from this cycle.
To reiterate this point: the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. If you ask questions that help you see both sides of an event at the same time so you are no longer in fight-or-flight mode, you’re ready to be fully present.
This is very different from when your perceptions are unbalanced and your feelings of resentment and infatuation intrusively occupy your thoughts. This is when you will tend to experience inner turmoil, sleepless nights, anxieties, fears, phobias, and philias.
Balancing your perceptions can help return you to restful sleep and certainty.
Your perception of distress (or what some like to call stress) is an inability to adapt to a changing environment.
There are two primary forms of distress:
- The fear of loss of that which you seek or are attracted to; and
- The fear of gain of that which you try to avoid or are repelled by.
Emotional attractions or repulsions, impulses, and instincts inherently breed uncertainty. Emotionally charged matters tend to become a part of the uncertainty principle, according to figures like Heisenberg, the German quantum physicist. When your emotional charge is high, you’re like a fermion, you automatically fall into the uncertainty principle, where you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. But by balancing the equation, you transition into a super positioned boson state, where uncertainty is replaced by presence and knowing.
Quality questions play a crucial role in bringing balance to your mind. In my Breakthrough Experience program, I teach the Demartini Method, a series of questions that take uncertainties and help transform them into certainties.
By sorting through emotions that may be weighing you down, and helping you become conscious of information you may be unconscious of, you can gain certainty in your life and that helps you to eliminate anxiety about your future.
So, the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. And quality questions are ones that equilibrate your mind and bring balance to your awareness so you're fully conscious instead of consciously and unconsciously divided.
I am a firm believer that if you take the time to go and ask equilibrating questions, your life changes.
Many of your anxieties, phobias, and fears arise because you “fail” to see both sides of the story.
Many people often let external influences and moral teachings of mothers, fathers, preachers, teachers, conventions and traditions dictate what is so called ‘good’ or ‘bad’, without considering a meta-ethical perspective where events are perceived are neither good nor evil. Instead, they are perceived as being neutral opportunities to help you reach your full potential.
That's being resourceful, that's being resilient, that's being adaptable to a changing environment, that's being prepared that no matter what happens in your life that you see things on the way and not in the way. As such, you’re more likely to be the master of your destiny and not a victim of your history.
If you're feeling uncertain, it's likely because of incomplete disclosure in your perceptions and awareness of what's happening.
When you ask questions that make you aware of the side you're not seeing, you liberate yourself from this uncertainty. For instance, if you're resentful, looking for the upsides, or if you're infatuated, looking for the downsides can lead you back into certainty, presence, gratitude and love.
Certainty is a science of balanced perceptions, and something I believe is attainable through the answering of quality equilibrating questions. I have helped thousands of people at the Breakthrough Experience move from uncertainty to certainty by balancing their perceptions and seeing both sides of an event.
To Sum Up:
- In life, you're not always nice or always mean; you possess both sides. Your reactions depend on whether you perceive your highest values are supported or challenged. When you perceive that something supports you, you tend to be nice, you open up and lax the rules. When you perceive that something challenges you, you tend to be mean, shut down, withdraw and tax the rules.
- Throughout life, you'll encounter both support and challenge, leading to a balance of both sides. Just like you’re a human being with both sides, and that's something you can be certain about.
- The pursuit of one-sidedness is futile. It’s an illusion. The truth includes a balance of both sides.
- You have an inbuilt homeostatic mechanism to make sure that you experience both sides of life. For example, if you go into pride and puff yourself up, you tend to unconsciously give yourself permission to do something you're ashamed of, to bring it back down into homeostasis – this is called the moral licensing effect. And if you do something you're ashamed of, you tend to do something that makes you feel proud to compensate for it. This is where narcissism and altruistic mechanisms are automatically brought back into balance.
- This homeostatic mechanism to bring you back into authenticity and balance, allows you to have more certainty.
- Achieving balance by balancing your perceptions, allows you to have greater authenticity, objectivity, certainty, poise, presence, power, and equilibrium.
- The moment you give yourself permission to be true to yourself, to live congruently with your highest values, and to embrace objectivity by awakening your executive center and perceiving both sides simultaneously, you are most likely to attain the highest degree of certainty, resilience and adaptability regardless of what’s going on in the outer world.
- Those with the utmost certainty are the ones who lead the game; they are the authentic individuals who draw opportunity into their lives. That's one of the reasons why, in the Breakthrough Experience, I teach the Demartini Method - a series of questions designed to balance the mathematical equations of your perceptions, convert uncertainties into certainties, inauthenticities into authenticities, and to transition from the wavering and variable emotional states of the amygdala, which represents your animal nature, to your more human and angelic nature. The latter is characterized by inspiration, certainty, gratitude, presence, purpose, and enthusiasm for life.
- You don’t have to allow uncertainties to dictate your life; you can pose questions that free you from them. This is why I invite you to attend the Breakthrough Experience, where I can personally guide you through the questions, experience their impact, and help you return to certainty, thus empowering your life.
Uncertainty often leads to disempowerment, while certainty restores your power. If you are inspired to regain control, experience more certainty, bolster your resilience and adaptability, and gracefully confront uncertainties, then I would love you to consider joining me at the Breakthrough Experience. No matter the situation, uncertainty serves as a reminder that your awareness is incomplete and prompts you to ask the necessary questions. I’d love to show you how quality questions can change your life and help you transform uncertainties into certainties.
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