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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 1 year ago

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to have a couple of meetings with the English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician - Freeman Dyson. He was undoubtedly one of the brightest men I have had the fortune of meeting. 

Until his death in 2020 at the age of 97, he was still researching and doing presentations – there was no idea in his mind or the mind of others that he was too old to continue to live an extraordinary life – one of continued learning.

I have another friend, Bill Pollock, who runs Drake International, while in his 90s, a massive corporation that he founded in 1951. 

He told me one night at a French restaurant in Sydney Australia that when he began the company in 1951, it was the last day he ever worked because since then, he has gotten out of bed every morning to do something he loves to do. 

At an age that many may perceive as being “too old”, he continues to be an inspiring and vitalized individual.

Then there’s Mike Fremont, a marathon runner and holder of 4 world records who continues to lace up at the age of 100 years old. 

Another example is Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, who is 89, not to mention Queen Elizabeth who continued to run a major global enterprise until her passing at the age of 97. 

The Dalia Lama is 87. Martha Stewart began the Home Shoppers Network at 50. 

Berni Marcus opened Home Depot when he was 50. 

KFC’s founder was in his 60s and the founders of McDonalds were reportedly in their 50s. 

Ariana Huffington began the Huffington Post when she was 55.

My point is that, regardless of your age, it’s never too late and you’re never too old. It’s also never too early and you’re never too young. 

Age doesn't really matter. It's your perception, decisions and actions that matter. 

I have had so many people attend my signature 2-day program, the Breakthrough Experience, with the perception that they are too old to start something new because they’re in their 40s or 50s. 

They tend to be surprised when I tell them that some of my greatest achievements took place in my 50s and into my 60s.

If you perceive that you may be too old, too out of touch, too young or too inexperienced to start something new or move into a new position, it is wise to ask yourself:

How specifically is my age giving me more advantage than disadvantage? What are the upsides and the advantages I have for being my age?

If you ask that question, you might surprise yourself. You might all of a sudden find out that whatever it is, it's to your advantage.

I’ve hired people in their teens and twenties who are enthusiastic, filled with ideas and brimming with energy. I’ve also hired people in their 60s who were mature, diligent, experienced and reliable. 

So it's not about your chronological age as much as your psychological age. 

The question is, how are you going to turn that into your opportunity? 

If, like many other people I’ve worked with over the past four decades, you cite fear as being your number one concern and hindrance, it is wise to remember that fear is also a friend. 

Fear can almost always be defined as the assumption that you're about to experience more negatives than positives, more losses than gains, and more disadvantages than advantages from something you perceive may happen to you in the future.

In other words, it’s your anticipation that something will have more drawbacks than benefits.

What's interesting though, is that your FEAR is also accompanied by its opposite - a FANTASY of having more advantages than disadvantages. 

Think of a magnet – the one side is positive and the other side is negative. 

1.      The positive side (also referred to as philia) is the assumption that you're about to have more positives than negatives in the future. You have philia or fantasy about the future or become infatuated with the future. 

2.      The negative side (also referred to as phobia) is the assumption that you’re about to have more negatives than positives or more drawbacks than benefits in the future. 

The fear and the fantasies, phobias and philias, are all pairs of opposites. And, just like the positive and negative poles of a magnet, they both occur simultaneously. 

You can’t have one without the other.

Let’s look at an example – meeting somebody and becoming infatuated with them. 

In this instance, you likely have a fantasy or philia about a future with them where you perceive there will be more positives than negatives. Simultaneously, you will likely experience the opposite where you fear the loss of them.

Let’s flip it on its head to where you are resentful of someone as opposed to being infatuated with them. 

For example, you may resent someone you work with and fantasize escaping them so you don’t need to deal with them anymore, while simultaneously fearing the gain of them where you see more of them each day.

In other words, you fear the loss of that which you seek and have an infatuation with. 

You also fantasize about escaping a situation you fear or perceive to have more drawbacks than benefits.

You won’t have one without the other. There's no philia without phobia because you're going to fear the loss of it, and there's no phobia without philia because you're going to desire to escape it.

Philias and phobias come in pairs. 

Whenever you have an imbalanced perspective that immobilizes you or hyper-mobilizes you, it is wise to do the work to balance your perceptions. In this way, you are more likely to be balanced, objective, neutral, aware of the both the upsides and the downsides, able to mitigate risk, and make proactive instead of reactive decisions.

Helping people balance imbalanced perspectives is a key focus of mine in the Breakthrough Experience, where I speak about how important it is to live by your highest values. 

Let me elaborate on this because it underpins almost everything I teach. 

As with every individual, you have a set of priorities in your life. 

Whenever your life is aligned or congruent with your highest value and highest priority - blood, glucose and oxygen go into the prefrontal cortex of your forebrain. 

The prefrontal cortex is involved with more objective, neutral and balanced perspectives. 

As such, you are less likely to fear the loss of something you seek or fear the gain of something you're trying to avoid. 

You’re also more likely to be more resilient, adaptable and present, while taking a spontaneously inspired action to accomplish your goals. 

However, when you allow yourself to go into your lower values because you're trying to please people on the outside instead of live according to your own highest value - blood, glucose and oxygen go into the subcortical region of your brain including into the amygdala. This more reactive part of the brain that wants to avoid pain and seek pleasure, so it results in polarized emotions. 

As a result, when you seek something, you also fear its loss; and when you try to avoid something, you also fear its gain. This is when you are most likely to become immobilized by phobias and fantasies. It's a survival mentality. 

In this instance, when talking about any self-limiting and polarized perceptions you may have about your age, perhaps that it may be too late to do something extraordinary, you tend to be more vulnerable around your age, instead of objective and balanced where you are able to see both the positives and negatives, upsides and downsides.

There is a series of fears that people tend to have that stem from imbalanced perspectives.

1. The fear of not knowing enough, being smart enough or being intelligent enough to pull something off at a certain age. 
2. The fear of not achieving or ‘succeeding’.
3. The fear of losing money or not making money.
4. The fear of losing loved ones or the respect of loved ones.
5. The fear of rejection or not fitting into the group. 
6. The fear of ill health, death, or disease.
7. The fear that you don't have the vitality or looks. 
8. Fears of breaking the morals and ethics of some spiritual authority or moral hypocrisy that you’ve indoctrinated yourself with. 

All those fears are the result of seeking the fantasies that actually bring about the fear of their loss. 

So, if you have a fantasy of being successful, you likely also have a fear of failure. 

If you have a fantasy of knowing something, you likely also have the fear of not knowing something. 

In other words, they are all pairs of opposites. They are also compounded symptoms of not living congruently with your highest values where you are more resilient, neural and objective. 

That's why, in the Breakthrough Experience program, I help you determine your unique hierarchy of values that is fingerprint-specific to you. 

In this way, I can help you learn how to structure your life according to what's truly valuable to you and show you how to liberate yourself from the things that aren't. 

As such, you'll be far more likely to be resilient, adaptable, neutral and objective in your life, with fewer phobias and fantasies, and fewer distractions and amygdala responses. 

You’ll also be more likely to set real goals in real timeframes and take intrinsic, inspired and spontaneous actions to achieve - regardless of your age.

It’s also when you’re most likely to be fully present. 

When you're more present, you’re far less likely to be thinking and comparing yourself to the past or future, and more likely to just get into action. 

However, when you’re not living congruently with your highest values and priorities, and activate the lower functioning part of your brain, this is when you will tend to become polarized, subjectively bias yourself, misinterpret your world out there, over exaggerate the positives and the negatives, create the fear of loss or the fear of gain, and become immobilized. 

The likely outcome is uncertainty, and when you are uncertain, you often begin making excuses and hold yourself back from achieving as a result. 

Another key element I teach in the Breakthrough Experience is the Demartini Method – a series of questions to help dissolve emotional baggage you have been carrying for years - your phobias and philias, fantasies and nightmares, prides and shames, infatuations and resentments, rage, shame, guilt, and anything else that weighs you down and immobilizes you from achieving your dreams. 

To sum up:

1. It is wise and inspiring to first identify your highest values, then begin to live by priority and thereby balance your perceptions so you don’t let your philias, phobias or your age interfere with your actions. 
2. There are no legitimate excuses to not live the life you truly would love. It’s never too late to take incremental, momentum building actions. 
3. It's never too late to continue prioritizing your daily life. 
4. It's never too late to learn how to dissolve all the emotional baggage that keeps you from being present. In this way, you can achieve more in your life, whatever that may be - raising a beautiful family, running a major business, pursuing intellectual pursuits and being a scholar, a spiritual quest, physical fitness, or social contribution, whatever it may be that's true for you.
5. When you are living congruently with your highest values, that's where you're most likely to get your most power and presence. As such, you’re less likely to be thinking about your age and more likely to be thinking about what your mission is and pursuing and fulfilling it. 

Are you ready for the NEXT STEP?

If you’re seriously committed to your own growth, if you’re ready to make a change now and you’d love some help doing so, then book a FREE Discovery call with a member of the Demartini Team so we can take you through your mini power assessment session.

You’ll come away with a 3-step action plan and the foundation to empower your life.

 

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