Charles Moore

Do you have trouble visualizing? Try this concept I learned from @JackCanfield. Imagine that you are standing on the outdoor platform of a 100 story building. Your back is against a wall with no railing around the perimeter. Close your eyes letting your imagination picture the image of what you would see from this open roof top. Feel the wind on your body. Now walk to the edge and look down. Do you feel anxious, nervous, and have a fear of falling? If so, you are visualizing a negative outcome. Now repeat the same process of visualization on the top of the same platform, but this time before you walk to the edge, instill the belief that you can fly. Walk to the edge again and look down. Should you slip or even choose to jump, you can fly safely to the ground. This time you visualized having a positive outcome to your experience.

The order to everything you want in life is Be it Do it Have it Most people mess up the order by convincing themselves the order to be it is Have it Do it Be it The track to everything good in life is made by being it first

It’s been about 50 years since, but I remember it like it was yesterday… As a child of 10 I told myself that I will never be like him. The one I referred to was my dad. The why was his explosive anger which resulted in yelling, intimidation, and verbal and physical attacks directed at me. I don’t know all of the reasons for dad’s uncontrolled anger, but being raised in poverty to alcoholic and abusive parents was definitely a contributor. Dad is the eldest of eight siblings. My Aunt related to me that dad suffered abuse by his parents for: any transgression by any of the brothers or sisters, his parents having a bad day, or any number of others reasons that stress, money issues and/or alcohol created. I don’t know the full context of growing up as he did. I have heard stories related to the alcoholism such as the kids being left in the car without any food or water on a street in their dessert town while the parents got drunk in the bar. The environment that he was raised in was so toxic that dad tricked his drunk father into signing Navy enlistment papers when he was under 17. He earned his GED in the Navy and never lived with them again. Dad had his own I will never be like him/them moment, when he swore that he would never abuse alcohol. I am proud to say that he broke the cycle of alcohol and alcoholism in our family which unfortunately was not the case with others in his family. I wasn’t raised around my dad’s family and I have only a single memory of either of his parents. We were traveling back home from New Mexico with his mother, my grandmother, when I was a child of about 12. She had given up alcohol, but remained addicted to smoking. I recall her asking my dad if she could smoke, to which he replied, “You can’t smoke in the car, but I will stop for you to smoke outside.” What happened as he stopped the car and she exited the back seat beside me is etched into my mind as if it just happened. Over her shoulder in passing she said, “I love you son.” Dad was about 38 at the time and I can picture his face as he turned to my mom with his voice choking telling her, “That’s the first time my mother told me that she loved me!” I knew this was a consequential moment for my dad, but my childhood comprehension did not understand the magnitude of what that statement meant. However, I knew it was very significant to both of our stories as I memorized it for recall later. Dad readily told me that he loved me. He also readily shouted, screamed, hit, belted, intimidated, and punished, in a manner that was just as impactful to me. Bringing me to my declaration. “I will never be like him.” How was I to know that in doing so I was setting myself up for a battle with depression that nearly took my life. Even though I shunned the expression of anger, I was consumed with feelings that often left me angry with no outlet for them. I didn’t handle the roots of my angry thoughts or reactions, instead thinking I could simply keep a bottle on them. This practice resulted in me keeping feelings trapped inside that would have been better served being released in a healthy manner. The act of keeping anger repressed results in a cap on feeling and expressing the upper ranges of emotions, including happiness as well as anger. Much like when water is not allowed to move and flow becoming stagnant, when emotional energy is capped and not allowed to flow, depression results in an individual. In addition to repressing anger, I made it a negative emotion to feel.  I made myself wrong when I felt angry. A problem with that choice is that anger is an appropriate and healthy response for numerous situations. However, I removed that positive aspect from my response mechanism leaving me vulnerable in numerous personal and professional situations and relationships. My repression and anger aversion was so dramatic that when I was asked in a seminar to yell, Yakity Yak, don’t talk back in an angry manner, I had an emotional breakdown as I physically could not allow myself to do it. As dad broke the cycle of alcohol addiction in our family, I broke the cycle of alcoholic rage in my family. The way I broke the cycle required a heavy price by me as I paid in poor relationships not fighting for my desires and by dealing with severe depression after enduring divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and relationship and business failure. I am better having gone through everything I went through on my way to mental health, but it didn’t have to take hitting rock bottom to begin to see the causes of the issues I dealt with as a child and their impact on me as an adult Just as easily as repressing anger, I could have chosen to gain insight to see where it came from as well as obtaining better methods to utilize my full range of emotions including anger. Gaining awareness into the understanding of how your thought process works is the single greatest gift that you can give yourself. As you reflect on patterns and outcomes that develop in your life you will solve situations that can plague you in all areas of your life. Talking with a counselor, participating in a recovery group, speaking with an advisor are all ways to start the process. Reading, recordings, or other content can also provide a great foundation for developing your awareness. Meditation, mindfulness, self-reflection and other self-development methods allow you to guide yourself into the proper pathway for your awareness. Don’t limit yourself by your past choices, do what it requires to free yourself from limitation into the possibility that exists for you today.

Have you ever tried to raise your hand? When thinking about the complexity of raising your hand, it is an overwhelming amount of commands to give in order to actually raise your hand. Trying is so much harder because the doing is much simpler. Next time you think that you might try something, be like Nike and just do it.

What do you want to get completed before the end of July?