behavior andlearn how to adhere to those rules. If he had been operating out of a definite setof trading rules he would have never let the loss accumulate sufficiently that hispain would take him out of the trade. If, however, he refuses to acknowledgeand accept his current state of development by blaming the market for his lossesor trying to convince himself that somehow he wasn't responsible for what heended up with, then he would be indulging himself in illusion. He would bedenying who he is and, in effect, cutting himself off from the information heneeds to become who he wants to be.
We have to be willing to confront the truth about ourselves so that we canconfront the truth outside of ourselves. The less illusion we indulge ourselves in,the more our perceptions of the outside environment will reflect the actualconditions, because we won't be blocking so much available information. Byavailable information I mean information we are capable of perceiving. The lesswe block, the more we learn. The more we learn, the easier it is to anticipate howthe outside environment will react or respond under any given set of conditions.Otherwise, we will not allow ourselves to perceive in the environment what werefuse to know about ourselves.
None of us likes to acknowledge what we perceive to be our weaknesses. Yet itis exactly what we need to do to grow beyond them. Otherwise, we keep buildingour lives on this base of illusion that requires so much energy, alcohol, or drugs tomaintain that it eventually has to crumble, leading to these very painful forcedawarenesses. Confronting the truth in the environment or the truth aboutourselves is no more painful than are the forced awarenesses that result fromthese illusions. It's just more immediate. However, when we do confront what isinside of us, it is the first step in the process of breaking a cycle of dissatisfaction toturn it into an expansive cycle of success. What better form of goal achievement
WOM
129could there be than to confront conditions as they exist, identify what we need tolearn to operate most effectively, and then go about the task of learning it, makingour adjustments along the way?
ALL TRADERS GIVE THEMSELVES EXACTLYWHAT THEY DESERVE
Traders put on trades and then take them off when they choose. That decision-making process is the result of the sum total of all the mental componentsinteracting with one another. If we were to inventory all these components,measure the energy they hold, and then balance the components that contributeto a positive sense of self-valuation against the components that contribute to anegative sense of self-valuation, what would be left is a net amount that we valueourselves. This net amount will correspond directly with how much money wegive ourselves out of what is available in any given trade, in any day, month, oryear, or by the same token how much of our money we give away.
I know that this can be a very difficult concept to accept. However, other thantaking into account what we haven't learned yet in terms of insights and skills,how could it be any other way? We make up all our own rules when we trade. Noone forces us in or out of the markets, unless a position is liquidated by abrokerage firm for lack of margin. In any given trade, there are a number ofpossibilities to take profits or cut losses. What we decide to do in each instancewith respect to each possibility will be the result of our perceptions and all theinternal components affecting those perceptions. What we actually end up doingwill be the result of what we decide and our ability to execute our decisions,which again will be determined by a number of mental factors, all of whichcontribute to our sense of self-valuation.
Trading is an exercise in accumulating money. Once we have learned how totrade (perceive opportunity and execute our trades), who else or what else couldbe responsible for what we end up with? In fact, if traders were to chart theirequity, it would reflect their internal conflicts and what they think of themselveson a day-to-day, month-to-month, or year-to-year basis. These charts wouldlook very much like the typical bar or point and figure charts of themarkets themselves, with support and resistance levels, consolidationzones, rallies, selloffs, and retracements. All these patterns would reflectthe trader's state of mind, just as the markets themselves reflect thecollective state of mind of all its participants.
Charts like these also can have the same predictive value as in themarkets, if one learns what to look for. Some of the more sophisticatedbrokerage firms that manage large funds keep these kinds of charts on theCTAs that they employ to trade their money under management. Theywill switch the amount of equity available for each CTA to manage basedon each individual's chart formations. In other words, once you build upsome history it isn't too difficult to determine when someone is about totake a big hit because of the psychological forces building inside of him,
130just as the collective forces of the market build before a big move.
As individual traders if we want to give ourselves more and more moneyout of the markets, we have to learn how to value ourselves more and moreso that we believe we deserve what we want or deserve what we get.Trading can result in the fast accumulation of windfall profits. To keepthose profits, we have to have inner support. Most of the time, that supportdoesn't exist, and that accounts for all the rags to riches to rags stories thatcan be told in the trading world. Of course the first step in the process ofvaluing ourselves more is to accept our true starting point; that is, we haveto take complete responsibility for what we end up with as being a reflec-tion of what we need learn about the markets, about ourselves, or both.Ultimately, everything that we do contributes to or detracts from our senseof self-valuation. That is why it can fluctuate from day to day or momentto moment. The best way that I know of to add to our sense of valuation isto commit ourselves to the process of growth.
131CHAPTER 13
ManagingMental Energy
What do I mean by "managing mental energy," you ask? There are manyways that we already manage mental energy but probably wouldn't think ofit in such a way. For example, isn't it possible to take what starts out to be aslight emotional wound (like some minor insult) and intensify the emotionalenergy behind that wound to the point where we could end up in a state ofemotional frenzy? How do we accomplish this? By our willingness to thinkabout whatever caused us to feel insulted. Our thoughts can add energy to ordetract energy from the wound, depending on what kind of thoughts wechoose to think. If we think destructive thoughts, we will be addingnegatively charged energy to intensify the wound. And it goes withoutsaying that we can carry this to whatever extreme we choose and,furthermore, stop whenever we choose or whenever we are willing to.However, stopping does become more difficult in direct proportion to theamount of energy involved. Aren't we, in effect, managing or manipulatingmental energy when we purposefully make ourselves more angry thanwhen we started out by channeling negative thoughts through anexperience?
By the same token, if we think positive thoughts, we will detract emotionalenergy from the wound. I am sure anyone reading this book has noticed thatwhen a person wants to stay angry, he will refuse to listen to anything that mightdefuse his anger. When we refuse to listen to "the voice of reason" so to speak, weare making a choice not to manage mental energy. The only reason why an angryperson has to shut out "the voice of reason" is because he knows the informationhas the potential to change the way he feels. He knows that if he changes his
132perspective—which will, in turn, change the way he feels—he will experience adifferent environment on the outside. If he isn't "willing" to change—regardless ofwhat the benefits may be—he will refuse to use his thoughts in a way that wouldallow him to experience those benefits. These examples are just a few of themany ways in which we already manipulate our mental environment to suit ourpurposes based on our willingness to do so. Certainly, if it is possible to managemental energy for destructive purposes, it must also be possible to manage it forconstructive purposes. The key concepts here are willingness and purpose. Thewillingness is to consciously direct our thoughts toward a specific intent tochange something on the inside that isn't useful.
Thoughts are a very powerful tool to effect changes in the mentalenvironment. We can use them to shift, rearrange, add to, detract from, orchange the polarity of various mental components. Thoughts are a form ofenergy, probably no different from electricity or light. They can act as a cause toproduce some effect in the physical environment, as when we speak ourthoughts, for example, as well as act as a cause to produce an effect in themental environment. When we use our thoughts directed inward, we arebasically using one form of energy as a tool to change the consistency andmakeup of another form of energy, like using our thoughts to change a beliefor release the negative energy out of a painful memory.
It is precisely because of the inherent power within thoughts that people are soprotective of themselves with the kinds of information (others people's thoughtsexpressed physically) they will expose themselves to. Everyone instinctivelyknows that if we allow ourselves to think about something, the thoughts havethe power to change the way things exist inside of us. And once things change onthe inside, we know we will perceive and experience a different outside. Ifwe don't want to disturb the current relationship between inner and outer,we will consciously do whatever is necessary to make sure that we don'texpose ourselves to anything that might threaten that relationship or thinkabout anything in a way that would change the relationship. Change is theresult of, first, a willingness to think.
Personally, I believe that if we weren't meant to keep on growing mentally(adding to who we are by transcending what we have already learned) andfurthermore if we weren't meant to direct that growth at a conscious level,then we would not have been given the ability to think, reason, and create.Implied within our ability to think, reason, and create is the inherentcapability to learn our way out of the painful situations and dissatisfying lifecycles in which we find ourselves. Painful life cycles begin with and areperpetuated by painful memories. So in essence what I am stating is thatinherent within our ability to think and reason is the capability to heal ouremotional wounds so that we can perceive what is available from theenvironment beyond our fears. Healing emotional wounds is somethingthat we have to learn how to do by learning how to manage mental energy.Learning how to forget our painful memories by making them subconsciousdoes not in any way reduce their significance on our perception of
133environmental information, or their potential to cause us to behave incertain ways.
This is the gift of creativity that we were all born with. It is the capabilityto think beyond what our current beliefs, memories, and association woulddictate as being true about the environment. The capability to reason beyondour current set of limitations (beliefs, painful memories, and erroneousassociations) or use our imaginations creatively is the one compensating forcethat allows us to grow, improve, and evolve beyond the painful and destructivelife cycles that we get caught in, both as individuals and as a culture.However, there is something here that you may need to be mindful of: acapability to do something is not necessarily an ability to do something.Before a capability becomes an ability, it has to be cultivated into a skill. Forexample, we can use our imaginations to visualize and then project into theenvironment the fulfillment of some need or goal in some future moment.But that doesn't mean we are using our imaginations creatively. We mayjust be using our imaginations to project what is already in our memoriesor what we already believe. The same is true for our thoughts. Most of thetime, they will originate out of our current set of beliefs and memories, sothat what we will be thinking will correspond with the status quo. Tocreate a more satisfying future for ourselves, we need to be able to imaginethis future and project it out into the environment as some future moment.There is a direct correlation between what we project and what is alreadyinside of us, unless of course, we are imagining something beyond what wealready know.
The only real limitations that exist with respect to thought are thoserules that were either taught to us or the ones we made up for ourselves. Weare not in any way restricted to just thinking about what we already believe istrue or what we have already experienced. We are free to roam anywhere inour thoughts to explore any number of possibilities and choose to act on oneof them, regardless of whether it is inside or outside of the current set of rulesfrom which we operate, even to the point of using our thoughts to changeany rules that we may have that says we can't. If we weren't meant to directour own changes by thinking about how we might learn how to lead happierand more satisfying lives, then thinking, reasoning, and creativity wouldn'texist.
To experience the same kind of painful conditions over and over again,in an environment that is in constant motion, implies that we don't perceiveany other choices as being available that would result in more satisfyingoutcomes. What we perceive is directly connected to what we already know.To perceive other choices, other than the ones our beliefs, memories, andassociations lock us into, we have to know something we haven't learned yet.So, learning our way out of a situation that is perpetually dissatisfyingrequires that we be open to thinking beyond what we already know. Theenvironment will always offer us an opportunity for some degree of love,harmony, happiness, and success or some degree of despair,
134disappointment, anger, hate, and betrayal. What we end up with from eachof these moments has to be a reflection of what is inside of us because theenvironment does not interpret the information it has to offer in any givenmoment. That process happens exclusively in each one of us. Remember thefree money example in Chapter 10? The reality of pleasure existed right alongwith the reality of indifference or fear. The man was there to give money toanyone who wanted. How each person interpreted the data determined whatreality they experienced.
Creativity is synonymous with growth and change. Doesn't the word"create" imply bringing into existence something that did not previouslyexist? If it already existed, then it would have already been created. To useour imaginations creatively, we must to be willing to think outside of whatwe already know to be true or possible. For those of you who are not thatfamiliar with various forms of creative thinking, you would be surprisedhow just the willingness to question the usefulness of something inside ofus will bring forth an avalanche of inspiring alternatives. Otherwise, ourmemories and beliefs will cause us to think of the future in ways thatdirectly correspond with our past, thus having the effect of locking us intothe same recurring experiences. The names and places may change but thesituations and circumstances and conditions always remain the samebecause we aren't changing our mental framework to perceive anythingdifferent.
"Necessity is the mother of invention!" In other words, the need to createsome new machine, device, or process to save time, save money, or makemoney isn't any different from the need to "create a new you" to experiencesuccess and a more satisfying life. The need will act as a force behind ourthoughts to think beyond our current barriers so that we can expand. Thebarriers that act as a resisting force preventing us from expanding consistof many of our beliefs and all our painful memories. So we need a force tocounteract and penetrate those barriers. That force is our thoughts and ourwillingness to use them in creative ways.
AH our lives would become a lot easier to live and potentially moresatisfying if we operated out of the belief that we are in a state of imperfectknowledge, evolving toward something that we haven't become yet.Everything is evolving into something that it isn't yet. It may not seem likeit at times, but each moment of each day, we change into someone whowas not the person we were a moment ago. At the physical level new cellsare born and old cells die. At the mental level each moment that passes weexperience something. Each experience adds to the inner environment inthe form of a memory or belief. Each memory and belief builds a self-concept that acts as a force on how we interact with the environment. Thenas we interact with the environment, we change it in some way, creating anew environment for us to discover and experience. Everything that exists isevolving, because everything that exists is in motion, and motion createschange. Even the grandest mountain will eventually wear away into small
135rocks, which will themselves turn into sand and then dust.
However, the main point here is that implied within this concept ofevolution (where we are in a state of imperfect knowledge) is the view thatmistakes don't exist. Mistakes just point the way to something that wehaven't learned yet and obviously need to know. What exactly is a mistakeanyway? We certainly weren't born with a concept or definition of what amistake is. If left alone, all children will naturally keep on interacting withthe environment to satisfy their own inner needs to learn and grow untilthey start to learn that what they are doing isn't quite up to the standards setby the people who are watching them. And all children just loved to bewatched.
The criteria that we use for how we define a mistake is something that wehad to learn from someone. In other words, our parents and teachers passedtheir definitions on to us. These definitions would represent the mentalframework for their unresolved painful experiences and what theythemselves haven't learned about as being available from the environmentbeyond their pain. In other words, we pass on our ignorance, as well as ourwisdom, without knowing at the time the difference between the two. Andwhat was passed on that was dysfunctional will be regarded as the truth justthe same as the wisdom.
When we as adults instill in our children our rigid definitions of whatconstitutes a mistake (thinking that what we are going to do is save them),all we are really doing is perpetuating our pain in the next generation. Amistake isn't resolved until we evolve in our understanding to the pointwhere we can garner the insight that is available from the experience.When that point is reached, what we experienced is no longer a mistake orpainful because of what we have learned. However, until that point isreached, if ever, we will feel compelled to save others from the painfullessons of our mistakes, even to the point of beating it into them—for theirown good, of course. By using pain, either emotional or physical as a meansto save others from our mistakes, in effect what we are really doing iscreating a cycle of fear. We ensure that our limited level of understandingand insight will be maintained in them because fear is a contracting forcethat stifles the learning process. In a very real way, we inflict the pain of ourunresolved mistakes on our children just as our parents inflicted the pain oftheir unresolved mistakes on us. And it goes on generation after generation untilsomeone decides to use their creative powers to break the cycle.
To operate out of this belief in evolution so that we can naturally learnfrom the choices that we make, we have to first change our definitions ofwhat constitutes a mistake. It is precisely these kinds of beliefs that act asmental blocks to perceive a more satisfying way of living. Mistakes arevirtually synonymous with pain. We can find any number of ways to avoidacknowledging a mistake so we don't have to confront the pain, and in theprocess we cut ourselves off from what we need to know to grow, expand,and improve our lives. Even when we make a mistake where we supposedly
136knew better, if we really knew better, then we wouldn't have made thechoices that we did that resulted in an outcome we define as a mistake. Sowe can assume that there is something inside of us that conflicts with our"better judgment" that has more power to influence our behavior.
It isn't any less possible to change our definition of what constitutes amistake than it is to intensify the emotional energy behind an insult as in theexample. To change these definitions requires learning some techniques inmental energy management to de-energize or draw the negatively chargedenergy out of them. By doing so we will allow ourselves to learn from allour experiences instead of hiding from them, feeling pain, or punishingourselves in some way. "Without the effects of these self-defeatingdefinitions of mistakes, it is much easier to objectively monitor ourprogress toward the fulfillment of some goal. If we find our behaviorinconsistent with the steps to achieving our goals it would tell us that ourbeliefs are not in harmony with those steps or the goal itself or that we don'thave the appropriate resources. In any case, it is much easier to identifywhat we need to learn to accomplish our objective.
THE BENEFITS OF LEARNINGHOW TO MANAGE MENTAL ENERGY
Increased Sense of Security and Confidence
You will develop a sense of security and confidence knowing that you canconfront conditions as they exist, identify what you need to learn to operatemost effectively, and learn it. What better way to develop a sense ofsecurity than by learning how to develop the ability to adapt to theprevailing conditions to fulfill your needs satisfactorily.
In the mental environment the memories of our experiences don'tchange over time, but the physical environment where our goals arefulfilled does. It is constantly moving forward, offering us new conditions,which, in turn, offer us different possibilities and opportunities, if we areopen to being able to perceive them. What better form of goalachievement than to be able to change our mental perspective "at will" tobe able to perceive these new conditions and use our imaginationscreatively to determine the most appropriate set of steps to fulfill our needsor achieve our goals, even if we have never actually taken those stepsbefore?
For a truly successful trader, this form of thinking is essential. Thepossibilities of the type of movement the markets can display are almostendless because of the diverse number of forces affecting it. All of us havethis tendency to mentally lock ourselves into only a very limited number of
those ways. And when the market doesn't conform to our preconceived137mental image, we make up the difference with distortions and illusionsand suffer the consequences later. Trading doesn't have to be painful anddevoid of fun. We make it that way for ourselves because of our mentalinflexibility and inability to adapt.
Increased Levels of Satisfaction
As long as we are alive, we will have needs, and as long as we have needs,we are not whole the way we are. Our needs compel us to interact with theenvironment to achieve this state of wholeness. Growing into this state ofwholeness requires that we keep on learning. To keep on learning we needto adapt. Learning is a primary function of our existence. When we fulfillthis function, we are rewarded with feelings of happiness, well-being andsatisfaction, all of which are by-products of the quality of our experienceswith the outer environment and a function of how much we have learned.
The antithesis of learning is resistance. When we resist what is beingoffered by the environment in the way of lessons, learning, and change weexperience stress. Stress is the opposite of the sense of well-being,happiness, and excitement that we feel when we are learning. If we refuseto adapt, we shut down the learning process. The quality of our experiencesdeteriorates because our relationship with the outer environmentdeteriorates. The outer environment keeps on changing, while we remainunchanged, resulting in less of a correspondence between what is out thereand what we know. Ultimately, we end up punishing ourselves for ourresistance to adapt because what we experience is pain, disappointment,stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction, which are all by-products of our lack ofinsight, understanding, and what we won't allow ourselves to do because offear.
Increased Intuition
As you gain in your confidence to change the inside to experience adifferent outside, you will also increase your ability to confront difficultissues that all of us would have a tendency to avoid. Instead of confronting,we learn a number of avoidance techniques like alcohol, drugs, distortions,rationalizations, or even wishing and hoping, all of which can result inpainful forced awarenesses. We eventually have to confront these issuesanyway because they rarely if ever (just) go away. The longer we wait, theworse the conditions usually get, making it increasingly more difficult toresolve.
However, there is another less obvious problem with avoidance,especially with respect to wishing and hoping. A true intuitive impulse—adeeper level of knowledge and wisdom that will indicate the next mostappropriate step to take—that will always be in our best interests feelsvery much like wishing and hoping. In other words, it is very difficult todistinguish between the two, making it very easy to mix them up, which is
138one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to trust our intuition. The wayyou can know for sure that you are getting a true intuitive impulse is toclear out of your mental environment anything that would cause you towish and hope that something will happen instead of confronting the issuehead on to find out what needs to be done. You can wish and hope that themarket will come back, or you can cut your loss and make yourself readyto take the next opportunity. To be able to cut your loss and be ready totake the next opportunity requires that you change anything in yourmental environment that would cause you to avoid confrontation andconsequently wish and hope. The less cause you have for wishing andhoping that something will happen, the more you will know that when youget that certain feeling, it is a true intuitive impulse, and the moreconfidence you will have to follow it. Intuition will always guide you in themost appropriate way to fulfill your needs.
Just so there is no misunderstanding here, I am not stating that there isanything inherently wrong with wishing and hoping. There are some waysin which wishing and hoping can be very useful. As traders, however, wecannot afford the luxury of wishing and hoping because it puts us in apassive relationship with the markets. When we wish and hope, we areshifting responsibility on to the markets for making something happeninstead of confronting the conditions and doing something about itourselves. If we find ourselves wishing and hoping, it is an excellentindication that we don't know what is going on and as a result need to getout of the markets until we do.
Wisdom
When we step through our fears to break some cycle of frustration anddissatisfaction or change the polarity of a painful memory to break a cycleof pain, we gain in wisdom because we learn all sides of an issue. Wisdom isnot afraid, angry, intolerant, or prejudiced because there is a deep level ofunderstanding, confidence, and trust, all coming from having experiencedthe full range of possibilities from extreme negative to increasingly greaterdegrees of positive. If we have experienced only the negative side of acertain type of experience, we feel fear. If we have experienced only thepositive (never having had a painful experience in certain area), we won'thave that particular fear, but we do develop an intolerance or even a disdainfor anyone who has had a negative experience.
This intolerance stems from our own underlying fear of vulnerability.For instance, it is clear that the negative exists in the environment as apossibility, but since it has never happened to us, we either don'tunderstand "their fear" or don't want to confront any information thatwould indicate the same possibilities for a painful experience also exist forus. Anyone who has truly transcended a fear doesn't look down upon thosewho haven't because they don't have anything to fear. When we stepthrough some fear to experience other possibilities, not only do we give
139ourselves more choices, we also gain in wisdom. Wisdom is the by-productthat results when we retain a distinction about the nature of theenvironment without the negative energy or fear associated with thatdistinction. Wisdom is ultimately the silver lining in every dark cloud.
However, to gain this wisdom we have to actively change our negatives intopositives, because if we are offered a positive experience in an area where wehave only experienced the negative, we wouldn't believe it. Actually wecouldn't believe it, because we wouldn't have the mental framework toaccept it for what it is. The environment will be as we perceive it, and theway we perceive information and events is controlled by the energy alreadyinside of us, unless it is a first-time experience. When we don't activelywork at turning our negatives into positives, we just stay angry and afraid.It's our choice. We were all given the gift of creativity and the free will tothink any way in which we choose, and we can use our thoughts to changethe quality of our lives, if we want to.
140CHAPTER 14
Techniques forEffecting Change
This chapter offers various techniques for effecting change. Also included arevarious exercises to implement these changes.
DIRECTING A CONSCIOUS SHIFT INBELIEF SYSTEMS
The conscious mind (that part of us that is aware of the our surroundings andwhat we are thinking at any given moment) can generate thoughts outside of theframework of our beliefs or belief systems. In other words, we can ask questionsabout the validity or usefulness of any belief and purposefully direct our attentionto any area where we might discover something more useful or better suited tothe conditions. Any new knowledge comes from those who question the statusquo and have a willingness to go beyond and a willingness to accept the nextanswer.
I know this is probably going to sound overly simplistic to most readers, andit is also something everybody already knows, but not everybody knows itwithin the context of changing beliefs: The wanting to is the how. To identifyor change anything in the mental environment requires that you want to,because to want something you have to think about it, and when we thinkabout something, we are generating thought energy. This is the same energythat our beliefs, memories, and associations are composed of, and, as such,thoughts have the power to change, reorganize, add to, detract from, orchange the polarity of anything in the mental environment. In essence you
can use our thoughts to create a new identity because we want to.141Each choice we make on a conscious level, even just to choose to redirectour thoughts from an inappropriate belief (relative to our needs now), willstart to make a neurological change in the electrical circuitry of our brain. Ifyou go as far as to make a choice that is inconsistent with a belief you wantto decharge and then act out of that belief, it will eventually lose its powerand consequently lose its potential to affect our behavior.
It is important for you to understand that beliefs cannot be destroyed;once we have formed one, it will be with us for the rest of our lives.However, we can draw all the energy out of them. For example, a pile ofwood set on fire will release the energy of the wood into the atmosphere asheat. The wood will be transformed into ashes. The ashes do not have thepotential to produce any heat and, thus, will have little if any effect on theenvironment. Yet the ashes still exist. De-energized beliefs work the sameway. They will always exist but no longer have any effect on our perceptionof information or our behavior. Many of us once believed in the tooth fairyand the bogeyman in the closet. Eventually these beliefs just naturallycollapsed as we learned more about the nature of the environment. Up tothat point, however, they definitely had an effect on our perception ofinformation and behavior. Now, we can say I remember when I used tobelieve that. To remember that we used to believe something means that thebelief still exists; it just no longer has any power in our mental system.
Each belief you identify will form a comfort zone. The boundaries of thiscomfort zone are set by the limitations inherent within any belief thatmake up the zone. All definitions set boundary tines and makedistinctions. Each belief is our truth about reality. Beliefs define not onlyour environment, but also who we are in relation to that environment.These definitions establish the amount of tolerance for awareness that wehave for what exists in both the internal and external environment. Forexample, do you have a belief that would allow for the possibility of themarket doing anything at any given moment? If not, what do you believecan't happen? If what you believe can't happen did happen, how long wouldit take you to be able to recognize it, if at all? Notice the boundary lines inawareness created by the structure of the belief.
There is one thing you should keep in mind as you learn to changeyour beliefs to be more reflective of your intents and goals. With all changethere is struggle. Volcanos, childbirth, social revolution, wind, rain, andwaves are all examples of the violent nature of the forces of change. That iswhy so many people find it difficult to be creative. We are attracted andcompelled toward creativity, on the one hand, because it is an inherent partof our nature. However, on the other hand, we don't want to confront theconflict and ensuing struggle between the old and the new. It is essentiallythe same when you change a belief. There will be some conflict or somedegree of uncomfortableness as you move from one set of beliefs toanother. However, the uncomfortableness does pass, and just like anythingelse, the more you do it, the easier it gets, until it becomes a learned skill
142that you can use just like any other that is a part of who you are.
EXERCISE TO IDENTIFYCONFLICTING BELIEFSSet a timer for 10 minutes.Write a series of statements that begin with "I am."
Write as fast as you can and let every thought come to your consciousattention. It is extremely important that you do not censor anystatements, especially the contradictory ones.
At the end of