The self-help industry has grown enormously over the last century. While the idea of self-help has been around for a few centuries, the modern version of the movement arguably began with Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich which was released in 1937 and continued in 1950 with Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. These two books have sold millions of copies.
One important question that should be asked: Why did self-help become so influential when it did? Why wasn’t it as popular back in the 1800s or even earlier? What was the difference?
I believe the decline of religion in the past century has a lot to do with the explosion of the self-help movement. Once we stopped putting trust in God, self-help made us believe we could put trust in ourselves.
It also had to do with how the world was changing technologically. Life in the past had never been easy, but it was simpler. Technology has made our lives easier in many ways but more complicated in others. As life became more complicated, the desire for help on how to navigate it caused many people to turn to self-help.
Another attraction of self-help is that it appeals to one of our most powerful desires: The desire to control life. Self-help promises to show you how to take charge of your life, take control of your finances, and become all that you can be. But the most important thing it promises is control. And people tend to be more motivated by wanting to control life than anything else.
But is this really so bad? The problem with this, besides the fact that life cannot be controlled, is that most self-help doesn’t really work in that it rarely delivers the life-changing results that people truly desire.
The self-help movement was plagued with problems from the very beginning. Napoleon Hill was a conman who committed fraud. He claimed to have learned the secret to success from Andrew Carnegie, but there is strong evidence that the two never met. His success strategy had an overreliance on positive thinking and lacked actionable steps.
Dianetics pushed the idea that most people are victims of bad prenatal experiences. It said people have traumatic experiences, many of which occur in the womb before birth (not just in this lifetime but in previous ones), and this trauma remains in their mind in the form of an engram. Hubbard offered a process called auditing that would supposedly allow this trauma to be removed (Auditing would prove to be psychologically damaging to some people, driving them insane). Once all of a person’s engrams were removed, they would attain a perfect state known as clear. Dianetics was supposedly a way to create the perfect man.
Needless to say, Dianetics was nothing more than junk science. Hubbard was not a scientist but a science fiction writer who would go on to create the cult known as Scientology. (One reviewer of Christianity 2.0 noted similarities between my book and Dianetics, but these similarities are merely superficial).
Certainly, part of the appeal of Think and Grow Rich and Dianetics was that they purported to offer simple, straight-forward solutions to difficult challenges. More recently, this has been repeated with the Law of Attraction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, IAT, Power Posing, and “Grit.” But if you look at the history of mankind, it unfortunately demonstrates that our limitations and our flawed human nature cannot easily be corrected or overcome.
Most self-help books, courses, and seminars are marketed with the message that anyone can succeed with them. But this idea goes against the reality that people are very unequal in their circumstances, abilities, resources, and connections. In other words, some people are just more capable than others (Example: Studies show that people who are physically attractive tend to be more successful in all areas of life than those who are unattractive).
This is not to say that all self-help is worthless. But even when there is value, it is often insufficient. A good example of this is a technique that I learned many years ago about controlling one’s focus as a way to feel good. You would ask yourself empowering questions such as: What am I most grateful for in my life right now? What I am most happy about? Who do I love? Who loves me?
To be fair, if you ask these questions and honestly search for answers, this can make you feel good. But this method has serious limitations. First, it requires mental effort. You simply can’t always be asking yourself empowering questions at every single moment of the day. But there is a bigger problem: You can’t reason your way out of pain. During those moments when you suddenly find yourself in a deep pit of despair, asking yourself an empower question is not going to help you. The same goes for almost all the other mental gymnastics that the self-help movement has promoted over the decades.
This is why I consider most self-help to be overrated at best and counterproductive at worst. The most popular of these books often just tell people what they want to hear (which is why the books sell), and these ideas often contradict what is said in the Bible.
Self-help often says your life can be easy. The Bible says you will suffer. Self-help urges you to achieve worldly success. The Bible tells us to focus on building treasures in the next world. Self-help often says you should put yourself and your own happiness first. The Bible says you should put others first.
Imagine for a moment if Jesus had decided to put his own happiness first. Imagine if he had said, “I shouldn’t have to sacrifice myself on the cross! What God is demanding of me is unfair! In fact, it’s downright abusive! Instead, I’m going to do what makes me happy!” Imagine how different the world would be if Jesus had done this.
The sad truth is that self-help can often promote selfishness, and in some cases even betrayal (i.e. divorcing your spouse is okay). Of course, it is never defined that way. It is usually defined as “living authentically” or some other nonsense.
Another negative about self-help is that it is about constantly striving, striving, striving. It’s all about what you could be doing better and what you are not doing well enough. It puts all the onus on you. This often feels exhausting and overwhelming.
We must ask the following: If the advice from these books is so great, then why are so many people still unhappy? If any of these books truly had the answers, wouldn’t humanity have been transformed by now? Self-help purports to help us to become perfect (or close to it), but again, the limitations of human nature are not so easily fixed. If it was, we would surely all be happy and successful.
Self-help generally calibrates in the low 200s which means it is, at best, good but not great. And yet the sayings in fortune cookies are in the 300s. So instead of spending large amounts of money on self-help books, courses, and seminars, you would probably be better off investing in a couple dozen fortune cookies and applying the lessons that they offer.
And it needs to be said that the Bible contains a book that could be described as falling into the genre of self-help: Proverbs. It is certainly a guide for living. One of its early verses is key:
The love of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)
This slightly edited verse is from the Holy Christian Bible, a new version of the Bible that I edited and released. This verse offers another example of how self-help falls short: It usually fails to put enough emphasis on God and religion. Studies clearly show that religious people are happier on average than atheists and have a greater satisfaction of life. They also tend to be wiser and less likely to succumb to greed which often leads to financial ruin. How can any serious self-help book promote a path to happiness, success, and fulfillment without emphasizing the importance of religion?
What is ironic is that my own book, Christianity 2.0, was described by one reviewer as “a bold rethinking of… self-improvement.” I suppose a book that shows people how to raise their level of consciousness could be described as a form of self-improvement or self-help. But the difference between my book and all the others is that I emphasize the importance of God and spiritual growth, not worldly success. And while the tools my book offers make the spiritual journey far easier than it’s ever been, it still isn’t easy. And self-help too often promises easy fixes for things that cannot be easily fixed. Don’t fall for it.
***
I’d like to offer some of my own self-help tips that I have learned over the years (some of these are also in Christianity 2.0). These are ideas that if applied can really make a big difference in your life.
***
The best self-help technique ever created has to be the Letting Go method. While it is not as powerful as the other tools I mention in my book, I still consider it to be the best because of its simplicity and ease of use. Anyone can use it whether they are a religious person or an atheist.
Letting Go offers a quick, simple way to deal with pain. Whenever you are in pain, whether it be physical pain or mental anguish, do not resist the pain. Surrender to it. Let it pass through you. Say yes to it. Ask for more of it. With Letting Go, you will often be able to quickly heal yourself and remove emotional pain. David Hawkins reported that it even works for severe injuries like burns and broken bones. (Hawkins, 2009, pp.306-307, 436)
***
Happiness is mostly based on your level of consciousness (LOC), not your circumstances. If your LOC is in the negative range (below 200), happiness will always be fleeting and elusive no matter how good your life may be. Instead of focusing on being happy, focus instead on spiritual growth. As long as you are growing, you will feel at least some sense of happiness.
***
Depression is usually the result of the inability to handle fear. There is something that you are afraid of, and that fear is causing you to feel depressed. The solution is to get a handle on the fear. First, you must figure out what it is you are afraid of. The easiest way to do this is to think of the worst-case scenario that you can imagine: You are old, you are alone, you are poor, etc.
Whatever the scenario is, you need to stop resisting it. Surrender to it. Decide that if it were to happen, you would be okay. This will require courage because it forces you to face your fear. But once you do this, the feeling of depression should disappear as quickly as if you had flipped a switch.
The other major cause of depression is eating foods with too much sugar. If you have a high-sugar diet, simply eliminate the sugar and within two weeks you should feel a lot better. (Hawkins, 2009, pp. 368-393)
For more extreme cases, doing Iboga can also be of great value.
***
Acupuncture pressure points on certain parts of the body can also be used to relieve pain. I have an issue in which one of my toes gets locked up when my feet are cold, and when this happens the pain is excruciating. But I learned of a pressure point that causes my toe to instantly unlock (and instantly stop the pain). This consists of pressing my finger under and across the nostrils of my nose. I don’t have a great deal of knowledge on this subject, but I know that in some cases pressure points can absolutely work. Acupuncture in general is very powerful and worth exploring.
Pain can also result from vitamin deficiencies. I would occasionally get charley horses in my leg which were also excruciatingly painful. It turned out this was the result of a lack of potassium. By taking some potassium every now and then, the problem has not returned. For some issues, I would also strongly suggest looking into possible vitamin deficiencies.
Some will read this and ask, “Can’t we just use the Letting Go method?” You certainly can, but in some cases applying a pressure point will stop the pain much faster. And correcting a vitamin deficiency can prevent the pain from occurring in the first place which is always the best scenario.
The lesson to be taken from all this is that much of the pain we experience, physical or otherwise, can be easily handled if we know what to do.
***
Learn to listen to your intuition. It can help you identify dangerous people and dangerous situations. Many women who were raped initially sensed danger when they were approached by their attackers, yet they ignored what their intuition was telling them. (De Becker, 1997)
Your intuition is a warning system that God has given you. Heeding its siren can potentially save your life.
***
To experience true peace, stop trying to control life. The reason our politics are so vicious is because people want to control life. Yet life cannot be controlled.
Stop trying to save the world. Most people who try to save the world only make it worse. We would all be better off if most people would just surrender the problems of the world to God.
***
Do not try to map out the entire trajectory of your life as it will probably be a waste of time. Life is unlikely to unfold exactly the way you planned. And God will often surprise you. He will often take you down an unexpected path that turns out to far better than anything you ever dreamed of. But you have to be willing to hand him the reins.
I am the perfect example of this. When I was younger, I had very specific plans for my life. But it was my great fortune that none of those plans worked out. Because if I had gotten what I wanted, I never would have taken the incredible spiritual journey that I did. I never would have reached an advanced spiritual state. And I never would have lived out such an amazing story that made for the perfect book, a book that has the potential to transform Christianity and take it to a whole new level.
***
When choosing a career to study for, it is best to pick a career that is in high demand. This will make your chances of finding a job in that field much greater. Many people choose a career solely based on what they love, and they wind up choosing a highly competitive field where there are few available positions. As a result, they are often forced to settle for a job that has nothing to do with their degree.
Most people fear being stuck in a job that they don’t love, but the answer to this dilemma is quite simple: Learn to enjoy serving others. If you can enjoy serving others, you can find purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in almost any job.
***
Avoid selfishness at all costs. It destroys relationships. It ultimately results in pain and misery. The challenge is that most people are blind to their own selfishness. If you want to know the truth, honestly answer the following question: Are you primarily focused on serving others or on serving yourself?
***
Most people feel overwhelmed because there never seems to be enough time to get everything done. They make a to-do list but usually fail to complete it, and even when they do, they still don’t feel fulfilled. So what can be done about this?
To begin, you need to change the way you view your to-do list. What matters most is not whether you complete every item on your list. What matters is whether you do the things that are the most important, urgent, and fulfilling.
For example, let’s say you make out a long list of things you would like to do for the day, and one of them is to spend time with your kids. And perhaps you spend so much time with your kids that you get nothing else done on your list. Does this mean you’ve failed?
Not at all. It’s not a failure because you did the one thing that was most fulfilling to you, while all the other tasks likely weren’t urgent and could be put off for another day.
The simple truth is that most of the items on your to-do list are not urgent and can be put off for another day if necessary. Once you realize this, life becomes so much easier.
So when it comes to a to-do list, it’s not about getting everything done or even getting a lot of things done. It’s about getting the things done that are the most urgent and the most fulfilling. As long as you do this, you can still feel good at the end of the day even when you don’t get through your entire list.
Another challenge people have with their to-do lists is procrastination. They have trouble taking action. To stop procrastinating, simply stop resisting. Taking action is only painful if you resist. And you will discover that many of the actions on your to-do list can be completed very quickly and easily, so there is no need to resist doing them.
It also will help to control your focus. When you focus on all the items on your list, it can easily feel overwhelming. Learn to focus only on the item you are working on. By focusing on one item at a time, you won’t feel overwhelmed.
***
Learn to pursue excellence for its own sake. Athletes like Michael Jordan and Deter Jeter never sought to become superstars. They simply wanted to be great players. It was by becoming great players that they became superstars. However, if they had been seeking stardom, they probably never would have attained it.
***
Many people overspend which can easily lead to financial ruin. Here is a simple strategy: For small purchases, wait a week. For large purchases, wait a month. After a couple days, the strong desire to buy will probably disappear.
***
Avoid alcohol as well as any kind of intoxication. People tend to become intoxicated as a way to escape life. But intoxication has the potential to destroy you either through addiction or accidents. Pursue the spiritual path as outlined in Christianity 2.0. It is an elixir far more rewarding than anything else this world has to offer.
***
Avoid pornography. It is poison. It calibrates extremely low, from 23 to 55. Numerous studies have clearly shown that porn is destructive to society. It destroys marriages and relationships. It renders many young men impotent, giving them perverted views about sex and women.
***
Avoid listening to heavy metal, rap, and hip hop. These all calibrate below 200, and they will negatively affect you. Instead, you might want to consider listening to country music which is in the 500s (Love).
***
Become an interesting person. Sadly, most people are not.
Most people are afraid of being disliked. However, this fear is misplaced. What they should really be afraid of is that other people will find them boring.
Many people want to be creative. They want to write a great novel or screenplay. They think that if only they could create a great work of art, then other people would find them interesting.
But the truth is that great art is made by interesting people. Mediocre art is made by boring people. The reason for this is that boring people don’t have anything interesting to say.
Think about the greatest movies you’ve ever seen or the best books you’ve ever read. They usually have something interesting to say about life, love, or the human condition. They inspired you. They made you think. They made you question. And they did all these things at least in part because they were made by interesting people (Sadly, most books and movies today are made by uninteresting people which is why they are so awful).
So if you want to be a great artist, or if you simply wish for people to be attracted to you like a magnet, you need to become an interesting person first.
So how does one become interesting?
Go out and live a full life. Travel as far as you can. Work in different industries. Read books on various topics. Pay attention to what is happening in the world. Have a sense of your country's history. Be open to different kinds of thought. Don't assume you have all the answers. Don't be an ideological zombie.
All this will take time. My own book, Christianity 2.0, required 46 years of life experience. I could not have written it any sooner than I did. Many young people want to create great art, but they lack the necessary life experience that great art almost always requires.
Perhaps the most important thing is that interesting people have courage. They aren't afraid to swim against the tides. They are willing to do difficult things and not take the easy path. They are willing to do the hard work.
In today’s social media age, it all seems to be about impressing other people. But interesting people don’t have to try to impress. Other people are naturally drawn to them.
So dare to be interesting. It is one of the most important things you can do.
***
Your birth determines whether or not you are going to be an optimist or a pessimist, whether or not you view life as safe or dangerous. It all comes down to the way a baby emerges into this world.
Many babies experience sensory overwhelm at birth. They emerge from the warmth and security of the womb to loud noises, bright lights, and cold. This can be extremely damaging.
Expecting mothers should consider water births (also known as warm-water imprinting) in which a woman in labor sits in a tub of warm water. This method calibrates at 508. It makes the transition from the womb to the world much easier for the child and is critical to positioning them to prosper in life. (Hawkins lecture, 2010)
Even more importantly, Radical Truth or Stacking can be used to raise a baby’s level of consciousness to 200 or higher. It is actually fairly easy to do this because the baby is new to the world and thus has a clean slate. The mother or father can act as a surrogate and release negative blocks for the child.
It is also crucial that a mother fully loves her baby. Many mothers actually hold back love from their babies due to whatever personal issues they may have (i.e. lack of self-worth). They are usually unaware that they are doing this, but this can be very harmful to the child. Infants need to be fully loved by their mothers. If they are not, it can lead to serious emotional problems later in life.
More tips for raising children:
One important question that should be asked: Why did self-help become so influential when it did? Why wasn’t it as popular back in the 1800s or even earlier? What was the difference?
I believe the decline of religion in the past century has a lot to do with the explosion of the self-help movement. Once we stopped putting trust in God, self-help made us believe we could put trust in ourselves.
It also had to do with how the world was changing technologically. Life in the past had never been easy, but it was simpler. Technology has made our lives easier in many ways but more complicated in others. As life became more complicated, the desire for help on how to navigate it caused many people to turn to self-help.
Another attraction of self-help is that it appeals to one of our most powerful desires: The desire to control life. Self-help promises to show you how to take charge of your life, take control of your finances, and become all that you can be. But the most important thing it promises is control. And people tend to be more motivated by wanting to control life than anything else.
But is this really so bad? The problem with this, besides the fact that life cannot be controlled, is that most self-help doesn’t really work in that it rarely delivers the life-changing results that people truly desire.
The self-help movement was plagued with problems from the very beginning. Napoleon Hill was a conman who committed fraud. He claimed to have learned the secret to success from Andrew Carnegie, but there is strong evidence that the two never met. His success strategy had an overreliance on positive thinking and lacked actionable steps.
Dianetics pushed the idea that most people are victims of bad prenatal experiences. It said people have traumatic experiences, many of which occur in the womb before birth (not just in this lifetime but in previous ones), and this trauma remains in their mind in the form of an engram. Hubbard offered a process called auditing that would supposedly allow this trauma to be removed (Auditing would prove to be psychologically damaging to some people, driving them insane). Once all of a person’s engrams were removed, they would attain a perfect state known as clear. Dianetics was supposedly a way to create the perfect man.
Needless to say, Dianetics was nothing more than junk science. Hubbard was not a scientist but a science fiction writer who would go on to create the cult known as Scientology. (One reviewer of Christianity 2.0 noted similarities between my book and Dianetics, but these similarities are merely superficial).
Certainly, part of the appeal of Think and Grow Rich and Dianetics was that they purported to offer simple, straight-forward solutions to difficult challenges. More recently, this has been repeated with the Law of Attraction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, IAT, Power Posing, and “Grit.” But if you look at the history of mankind, it unfortunately demonstrates that our limitations and our flawed human nature cannot easily be corrected or overcome.
Most self-help books, courses, and seminars are marketed with the message that anyone can succeed with them. But this idea goes against the reality that people are very unequal in their circumstances, abilities, resources, and connections. In other words, some people are just more capable than others (Example: Studies show that people who are physically attractive tend to be more successful in all areas of life than those who are unattractive).
This is not to say that all self-help is worthless. But even when there is value, it is often insufficient. A good example of this is a technique that I learned many years ago about controlling one’s focus as a way to feel good. You would ask yourself empowering questions such as: What am I most grateful for in my life right now? What I am most happy about? Who do I love? Who loves me?
To be fair, if you ask these questions and honestly search for answers, this can make you feel good. But this method has serious limitations. First, it requires mental effort. You simply can’t always be asking yourself empowering questions at every single moment of the day. But there is a bigger problem: You can’t reason your way out of pain. During those moments when you suddenly find yourself in a deep pit of despair, asking yourself an empower question is not going to help you. The same goes for almost all the other mental gymnastics that the self-help movement has promoted over the decades.
This is why I consider most self-help to be overrated at best and counterproductive at worst. The most popular of these books often just tell people what they want to hear (which is why the books sell), and these ideas often contradict what is said in the Bible.
Self-help often says your life can be easy. The Bible says you will suffer. Self-help urges you to achieve worldly success. The Bible tells us to focus on building treasures in the next world. Self-help often says you should put yourself and your own happiness first. The Bible says you should put others first.
Imagine for a moment if Jesus had decided to put his own happiness first. Imagine if he had said, “I shouldn’t have to sacrifice myself on the cross! What God is demanding of me is unfair! In fact, it’s downright abusive! Instead, I’m going to do what makes me happy!” Imagine how different the world would be if Jesus had done this.
The sad truth is that self-help can often promote selfishness, and in some cases even betrayal (i.e. divorcing your spouse is okay). Of course, it is never defined that way. It is usually defined as “living authentically” or some other nonsense.
Another negative about self-help is that it is about constantly striving, striving, striving. It’s all about what you could be doing better and what you are not doing well enough. It puts all the onus on you. This often feels exhausting and overwhelming.
We must ask the following: If the advice from these books is so great, then why are so many people still unhappy? If any of these books truly had the answers, wouldn’t humanity have been transformed by now? Self-help purports to help us to become perfect (or close to it), but again, the limitations of human nature are not so easily fixed. If it was, we would surely all be happy and successful.
Self-help generally calibrates in the low 200s which means it is, at best, good but not great. And yet the sayings in fortune cookies are in the 300s. So instead of spending large amounts of money on self-help books, courses, and seminars, you would probably be better off investing in a couple dozen fortune cookies and applying the lessons that they offer.
And it needs to be said that the Bible contains a book that could be described as falling into the genre of self-help: Proverbs. It is certainly a guide for living. One of its early verses is key:
The love of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)
This slightly edited verse is from the Holy Christian Bible, a new version of the Bible that I edited and released. This verse offers another example of how self-help falls short: It usually fails to put enough emphasis on God and religion. Studies clearly show that religious people are happier on average than atheists and have a greater satisfaction of life. They also tend to be wiser and less likely to succumb to greed which often leads to financial ruin. How can any serious self-help book promote a path to happiness, success, and fulfillment without emphasizing the importance of religion?
What is ironic is that my own book, Christianity 2.0, was described by one reviewer as “a bold rethinking of… self-improvement.” I suppose a book that shows people how to raise their level of consciousness could be described as a form of self-improvement or self-help. But the difference between my book and all the others is that I emphasize the importance of God and spiritual growth, not worldly success. And while the tools my book offers make the spiritual journey far easier than it’s ever been, it still isn’t easy. And self-help too often promises easy fixes for things that cannot be easily fixed. Don’t fall for it.
***
I’d like to offer some of my own self-help tips that I have learned over the years (some of these are also in Christianity 2.0). These are ideas that if applied can really make a big difference in your life.
***
The best self-help technique ever created has to be the Letting Go method. While it is not as powerful as the other tools I mention in my book, I still consider it to be the best because of its simplicity and ease of use. Anyone can use it whether they are a religious person or an atheist.
Letting Go offers a quick, simple way to deal with pain. Whenever you are in pain, whether it be physical pain or mental anguish, do not resist the pain. Surrender to it. Let it pass through you. Say yes to it. Ask for more of it. With Letting Go, you will often be able to quickly heal yourself and remove emotional pain. David Hawkins reported that it even works for severe injuries like burns and broken bones. (Hawkins, 2009, pp.306-307, 436)
***
Happiness is mostly based on your level of consciousness (LOC), not your circumstances. If your LOC is in the negative range (below 200), happiness will always be fleeting and elusive no matter how good your life may be. Instead of focusing on being happy, focus instead on spiritual growth. As long as you are growing, you will feel at least some sense of happiness.
***
Depression is usually the result of the inability to handle fear. There is something that you are afraid of, and that fear is causing you to feel depressed. The solution is to get a handle on the fear. First, you must figure out what it is you are afraid of. The easiest way to do this is to think of the worst-case scenario that you can imagine: You are old, you are alone, you are poor, etc.
Whatever the scenario is, you need to stop resisting it. Surrender to it. Decide that if it were to happen, you would be okay. This will require courage because it forces you to face your fear. But once you do this, the feeling of depression should disappear as quickly as if you had flipped a switch.
The other major cause of depression is eating foods with too much sugar. If you have a high-sugar diet, simply eliminate the sugar and within two weeks you should feel a lot better. (Hawkins, 2009, pp. 368-393)
For more extreme cases, doing Iboga can also be of great value.
***
Acupuncture pressure points on certain parts of the body can also be used to relieve pain. I have an issue in which one of my toes gets locked up when my feet are cold, and when this happens the pain is excruciating. But I learned of a pressure point that causes my toe to instantly unlock (and instantly stop the pain). This consists of pressing my finger under and across the nostrils of my nose. I don’t have a great deal of knowledge on this subject, but I know that in some cases pressure points can absolutely work. Acupuncture in general is very powerful and worth exploring.
Pain can also result from vitamin deficiencies. I would occasionally get charley horses in my leg which were also excruciatingly painful. It turned out this was the result of a lack of potassium. By taking some potassium every now and then, the problem has not returned. For some issues, I would also strongly suggest looking into possible vitamin deficiencies.
Some will read this and ask, “Can’t we just use the Letting Go method?” You certainly can, but in some cases applying a pressure point will stop the pain much faster. And correcting a vitamin deficiency can prevent the pain from occurring in the first place which is always the best scenario.
The lesson to be taken from all this is that much of the pain we experience, physical or otherwise, can be easily handled if we know what to do.
***
Learn to listen to your intuition. It can help you identify dangerous people and dangerous situations. Many women who were raped initially sensed danger when they were approached by their attackers, yet they ignored what their intuition was telling them. (De Becker, 1997)
Your intuition is a warning system that God has given you. Heeding its siren can potentially save your life.
***
To experience true peace, stop trying to control life. The reason our politics are so vicious is because people want to control life. Yet life cannot be controlled.
Stop trying to save the world. Most people who try to save the world only make it worse. We would all be better off if most people would just surrender the problems of the world to God.
***
Do not try to map out the entire trajectory of your life as it will probably be a waste of time. Life is unlikely to unfold exactly the way you planned. And God will often surprise you. He will often take you down an unexpected path that turns out to far better than anything you ever dreamed of. But you have to be willing to hand him the reins.
I am the perfect example of this. When I was younger, I had very specific plans for my life. But it was my great fortune that none of those plans worked out. Because if I had gotten what I wanted, I never would have taken the incredible spiritual journey that I did. I never would have reached an advanced spiritual state. And I never would have lived out such an amazing story that made for the perfect book, a book that has the potential to transform Christianity and take it to a whole new level.
***
When choosing a career to study for, it is best to pick a career that is in high demand. This will make your chances of finding a job in that field much greater. Many people choose a career solely based on what they love, and they wind up choosing a highly competitive field where there are few available positions. As a result, they are often forced to settle for a job that has nothing to do with their degree.
Most people fear being stuck in a job that they don’t love, but the answer to this dilemma is quite simple: Learn to enjoy serving others. If you can enjoy serving others, you can find purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in almost any job.
***
Avoid selfishness at all costs. It destroys relationships. It ultimately results in pain and misery. The challenge is that most people are blind to their own selfishness. If you want to know the truth, honestly answer the following question: Are you primarily focused on serving others or on serving yourself?
***
Most people feel overwhelmed because there never seems to be enough time to get everything done. They make a to-do list but usually fail to complete it, and even when they do, they still don’t feel fulfilled. So what can be done about this?
To begin, you need to change the way you view your to-do list. What matters most is not whether you complete every item on your list. What matters is whether you do the things that are the most important, urgent, and fulfilling.
For example, let’s say you make out a long list of things you would like to do for the day, and one of them is to spend time with your kids. And perhaps you spend so much time with your kids that you get nothing else done on your list. Does this mean you’ve failed?
Not at all. It’s not a failure because you did the one thing that was most fulfilling to you, while all the other tasks likely weren’t urgent and could be put off for another day.
The simple truth is that most of the items on your to-do list are not urgent and can be put off for another day if necessary. Once you realize this, life becomes so much easier.
So when it comes to a to-do list, it’s not about getting everything done or even getting a lot of things done. It’s about getting the things done that are the most urgent and the most fulfilling. As long as you do this, you can still feel good at the end of the day even when you don’t get through your entire list.
Another challenge people have with their to-do lists is procrastination. They have trouble taking action. To stop procrastinating, simply stop resisting. Taking action is only painful if you resist. And you will discover that many of the actions on your to-do list can be completed very quickly and easily, so there is no need to resist doing them.
It also will help to control your focus. When you focus on all the items on your list, it can easily feel overwhelming. Learn to focus only on the item you are working on. By focusing on one item at a time, you won’t feel overwhelmed.
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Learn to pursue excellence for its own sake. Athletes like Michael Jordan and Deter Jeter never sought to become superstars. They simply wanted to be great players. It was by becoming great players that they became superstars. However, if they had been seeking stardom, they probably never would have attained it.
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Many people overspend which can easily lead to financial ruin. Here is a simple strategy: For small purchases, wait a week. For large purchases, wait a month. After a couple days, the strong desire to buy will probably disappear.
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Avoid alcohol as well as any kind of intoxication. People tend to become intoxicated as a way to escape life. But intoxication has the potential to destroy you either through addiction or accidents. Pursue the spiritual path as outlined in Christianity 2.0. It is an elixir far more rewarding than anything else this world has to offer.
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Avoid pornography. It is poison. It calibrates extremely low, from 23 to 55. Numerous studies have clearly shown that porn is destructive to society. It destroys marriages and relationships. It renders many young men impotent, giving them perverted views about sex and women.
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Avoid listening to heavy metal, rap, and hip hop. These all calibrate below 200, and they will negatively affect you. Instead, you might want to consider listening to country music which is in the 500s (Love).
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Become an interesting person. Sadly, most people are not.
Most people are afraid of being disliked. However, this fear is misplaced. What they should really be afraid of is that other people will find them boring.
Many people want to be creative. They want to write a great novel or screenplay. They think that if only they could create a great work of art, then other people would find them interesting.
But the truth is that great art is made by interesting people. Mediocre art is made by boring people. The reason for this is that boring people don’t have anything interesting to say.
Think about the greatest movies you’ve ever seen or the best books you’ve ever read. They usually have something interesting to say about life, love, or the human condition. They inspired you. They made you think. They made you question. And they did all these things at least in part because they were made by interesting people (Sadly, most books and movies today are made by uninteresting people which is why they are so awful).
So if you want to be a great artist, or if you simply wish for people to be attracted to you like a magnet, you need to become an interesting person first.
So how does one become interesting?
Go out and live a full life. Travel as far as you can. Work in different industries. Read books on various topics. Pay attention to what is happening in the world. Have a sense of your country's history. Be open to different kinds of thought. Don't assume you have all the answers. Don't be an ideological zombie.
All this will take time. My own book, Christianity 2.0, required 46 years of life experience. I could not have written it any sooner than I did. Many young people want to create great art, but they lack the necessary life experience that great art almost always requires.
Perhaps the most important thing is that interesting people have courage. They aren't afraid to swim against the tides. They are willing to do difficult things and not take the easy path. They are willing to do the hard work.
In today’s social media age, it all seems to be about impressing other people. But interesting people don’t have to try to impress. Other people are naturally drawn to them.
So dare to be interesting. It is one of the most important things you can do.
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Your birth determines whether or not you are going to be an optimist or a pessimist, whether or not you view life as safe or dangerous. It all comes down to the way a baby emerges into this world.
Many babies experience sensory overwhelm at birth. They emerge from the warmth and security of the womb to loud noises, bright lights, and cold. This can be extremely damaging.
Expecting mothers should consider water births (also known as warm-water imprinting) in which a woman in labor sits in a tub of warm water. This method calibrates at 508. It makes the transition from the womb to the world much easier for the child and is critical to positioning them to prosper in life. (Hawkins lecture, 2010)
Even more importantly, Radical Truth or Stacking can be used to raise a baby’s level of consciousness to 200 or higher. It is actually fairly easy to do this because the baby is new to the world and thus has a clean slate. The mother or father can act as a surrogate and release negative blocks for the child.
It is also crucial that a mother fully loves her baby. Many mothers actually hold back love from their babies due to whatever personal issues they may have (i.e. lack of self-worth). They are usually unaware that they are doing this, but this can be very harmful to the child. Infants need to be fully loved by their mothers. If they are not, it can lead to serious emotional problems later in life.
More tips for raising children:
- Give them a religious upbringing.
- Teach them to be generous, not selfish.
- Be their parent, not their friend.
- Closely monitor and limit their internet use.
- Do not give them a smartphone.
- Do not be afraid of making them dislike you.
- Do not schedule too many activities for them.
- Give them enough leash to fail but not enough to get seriously hurt.
- Teach them to use the Letting Go method.