Am I held back by my past? Well, it's totally up to me.
I can be a victim of history or I can be a master of destiny based on the
quality of the questions I ask myself, and the actions I'm willing to take.
If I look back at my life and I see an event that I thought was,
had more drawbacks and benefits and I labeled it bad, terrible,
tortured, trauma, turmoil, you know, something of that nature,
then that becomes, I hold onto it in my memory as something that's bad,
and then I'm going to want to disassociate from it and to avoid that in my
memory, try to repress it,
try to avoid people that are anything that remind me of that.
And I'm now an automaton reacting to my wounds of the past,
my little child in there that's been wounded.
And then I'm basically going to be searching for its opposite,
whatever the opposite of this thing is,
and then be infatuated with this opposite and resent this past.
And then those two things will occupy space and time in my mind and stored in my
subconscious mind and causes impulse seeking and instincts avoiding.
And I'm basically run by that. And then I'm basically victim of my history.
Or I can go back into the moment,
where and when I perceived this event that was initiated by someone or
maybe not, myself. And then go and find out,
at that moment how did it benefit me? What's the upside to it?
And if it's something somebody else did to me, where do I do that?
So I'm not judging them. Where do I do it? Until I own it a hundred percent.
And what's the benefit to you? In the Demartini Method, I ask people,
when somebody does something you resent and you feel you're a victim of, I go,
okay,
go to a moment where and when I perceive myself displaying or demonstrating the
same behavior, and own that. And go find out where you've done it,
at first you're going to say, I don't do that.
I pride myself on never being that way.
But I've been doing this on thousands and thousands of people and I assure you
that whatever you see in others you have. And once you identify it,
you realize that the only reason you're resenting somebody on the outside it's
reminding you of something you're feeling ashamed on the inside.
And once you go and identify it,
and then go find out how did what they do serve you?
Because there's no downside without an upside.
Any behavior out there in the world that happens,
if it didn't serve human beings, it would go extinct in evolution.
But it's there and it serves.
So we want to find out how did it serve you and how when you did it,
how did it serve other people? It does.
I've been doing this for thousands of people. And people at first, they go,
how can it serve? And then they go and look and they find out,
well it helped this, it's catalyzed this.
There is no event in life that doesn't have a value,
if you choose to find how it helps you.
We have the capacity to be incredibly resilient and adaptable to no matter what
happens in our life, and we can take no matter what happens,
and turn it into heaven or hell, John Milton described it that way.
We can take it, it's not what we actually have experienced, it's the perception,
decisions and actions we take from it.
I've had people that have been through horrendous stuff.
That's what they labeled it as. And then I asked them, so what was the benefit?
Well, there is no benefit. Well, let's look again.
And then they uncover it and they started going, well,
it catalyzed this and it made me meet this and made me study this and made me
get buckled under and go and get my degree and allowed me to meet these people
and made me move to this location. Well, how did that benefit you?
Once you reassociate in the brain a balance of the benefits and drawbacks,
and it is neither positive nor negative,
you don't have the fear of loss of the fantasies or the fear of gain of the
nightmares anymore. You have a clear consciousness, you're present,
and then you realize, it had nothing to do with what was out there.
It had everything to do with your perception.
You have the power to transform your perception of whatever's happening in your
life and turn it on the way, not in the way. So you can be master of destiny.
And one of the greatest questions you'll ask yourself is,
how is whatever I'm experiencing today, pleasureful or painful,
ecstatic or traumatic, how's it helping me fulfill my mission?
What I feel my calling and my direction, my highest value,
what's most fulfilling to me, how's it helped me fulfill that?
How's it helping me do what I love?
How's it helping me make a fortune doing that?
How's it helping me fulfill my life? How's it helping me find the one I love?
How's it helping? If you ask those questions,
your life turns into a meaningful pathway. If you ask the question,
why did it happen to me and why did they have to do that?
And I'm a victim of that, you're not going to empower your life.
You're going to think that the external world determines your destiny,
and then you're going to be, in a sense,
a follower of the outside world instead of a creator of the,
from the inside of that outside world.
You can be a follower or a leader in the path.
If you lead your perceptions and decisions and actions,
you'll create the life you want. If not, you're going to be following all the,
the illusions of all the victims out there.
The truth has not been in the hands of the masses typically.
And the masses always run these victim things.
They want to use false attribution biases,
blaming this and giving credit to this all outside themselves.
But the master's the one that realizes that it's nothing out there.
Epictetus, the Greek philosopher said, at first, you start on your journey,
you blame things,
then you blame yourself and then you realize there's nothing to blame.
There's nothing to blame.
There's something to experience and to see both sides of.
When you can see both sides of an event simultaneously, it doesn't run you.
You run it, you run you. But when you see only one side, it runs you.
If you see the positives without the negatives,
you're now infatuated and it runs you. It's an impulse that's from the amygdala.
You're like an outta controlled, passionate seeking.
But if all of a sudden you're sitting there and seeing the downsides without the
upsides,
now you've got an instinct of avoiding and you're like living as an animal in
survival with predator and prey,
constantly bombarding your consciousness and stopping you from doing something
that's liberating and inspiring from within intrinsically. But a balanced,
objective mind that's neutral,
that is able to see both sides simultaneously by asking questions,
what's the upside to what I think is down?
And what's the downside to what I think is up?
And bringing them into balance allows you to be resilient where you don't fear
the loss of things or fear of gain of things,
you focus on the inspiration of what you want to make a difference in in the
world. So we can be victims of our history or masters of our destiny.
The quality of our life is based on the quality of the questions we ask,
if we wake up our questions, we wake up our awareness,
we see both sides simultaneously,
we're liberated from the and we get moving forward and to do something
extraordinary on planet earth. Give yourself permission to shine, not shrink.
Give yourself permission to be a master of destiny, not a victim of history.