Tag: Freud

Last month I was lucky enough to be given an advanced prepublication review copy of The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga (Atria Books, May 2018 release).

I say “lucky” because the book changed my life.

I had never heard of it before. But the book is a runaway bestseller in Japan. It sold 3.5 million copies in Asia.

• A million copies sold of any book is miraculous.
• Over three million copies sold in Japan alone is staggering.

The book is a dialogue between a student and a philosopher.

The chapters are short.

The messages are potent.

Most of the material stems from the work of psychologist Alfred Adler. As much as I’ve read in psychology, I wasn’t familiar with Adler.

I am now.

Adler (1870-1937) was an Austrain physician, psychotherapist, and the founder of Adlerian psychology, sometimes called Individual Psychology.

Around 1907 Adler and Freud, along with Rudolf Reitler and Wilhelm Stekel, began meeting weekly in a type of early mastermind. Their “Wednesday Night Meetings” eventually grew into the birth of the psychoanalytic movement.

Freud and Adler did not agree and went separate ways. I’m currently collecting and reading Adler’s works, such as Understanding Human Nature (1927) and The Science of Living (1929).

While I am digging into the original words of Adler, I find The Courage To Be Disliked an easier approach to understanding him.

Here’s why…

The Courage to Be Disliked is a refreshing stir for self courage.

Rather than giving away your power to circumstances, you use your power for choice.

The book explains etiology, which is the idea of cause and effect, versus teleology, which is the idea of meaning and choice.

“We are not determined by our experiences, but are self-determined by the meaning we give to them…” – Alfred Adler

In other words, many schools of thought (including Freud’s) say you are the product of your past and/or your environment.

That is cause and effect thinking, or etiology.

But Adler’s approach is to say you can create your life from new meaning and choice, which is teleology.

Obviously, the latter is more empowering and freeing.

The latter doesn’t need anything outside of you to change for you to change.

You can change with a decision.

The Adler way is not one of victimhood but of empowerment.

For example, rather than saying you are the way you are due to the circumstances of your childhood, or current circumstances, you instead choose to create how you want to be from goals selected out of this moment.

• The past has no hold over you.
• Environment has no hold over you.
• Others have no hold over you.

At first glance, the concepts in The Courage to Be Disliked could seem daunting and unrealistic.

But as I kept reading the book, and following the concepts being explained, I realized that this book is a manual for awakening.

There are too many concepts to repeat here, but one crucial one is this:

“All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.”

Let that sink in.

“All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.”

The idea (simplified) is that you may sometimes try to please others, which is giving away your power to others.

You can’t easily be happy if you are waiting on another’s approval.

When you choose yourself, you are free.

You may be disliked; but you are free.

But here’s an even deeper insight…

An advanced insight is this: you have an interpersonal problem with someone in order to justify something you don’t want to do.

In short, you created the need for an excuse and then created the interpersonal problem to rationalize the excuse.

The problem or person didn’t come first; your need for a way out did.

This is similar to my own observation:

“The meaning you give an event is the belief that attracted it.”

You don’t realize it, but it’s actually you and your meaning/beliefs creating your life.

This completely transforms the idea of problems with other people.

You created them!

The Courage To Be Disliked explains all of this, and more, in an easy to read style.

It’s simply a conversation.

But “the student” is asking what you would probably ask.

And “the philosopher” is responding as might Socrates, or Adler himself.

Along the way you get “aha” moments of insights.

For example, learning to separate tasks is important.

That means learning to understand what is under your task to do, and what is for others to do.

• Wanting someone to like you isn’t your task. It’s theirs.
• Wanting a child to clean his or her room isn’t your task. It’s the child’s.
• Wanting to be recognized for success isn’t your task. It’s the public’s.

Knowing this “task separation” gives you freedom.

“We cannot think, feel, will, or act without the perception of some goal.” – Alfred Adler

I’ve often referred to people trying to give me their task as them trying to give me their monkey.

They don’t want to care for “the monkey” so they try to pass it off to me.

But I have enough monkeys.

Knowing that I don’t want another monkey, and that their task isn’t mine to do, makes it easier for me to have a boundary and maintain it for my own self-care.

As a result, I can be free.

Here’s a recent example:

Jaime Vendera is a vocal coach. A terrific one. He’s written Raise Your Voice and The Ultimate Breathing Workout. He’s helped lots of singers, including me.

He wrote to me one day saying he had an idea for a book I could write. He suggested it could be about mindset for musicians.

While I liked the idea, I sensed he was passing a monkey to me.

So I wrote back, saying it was his idea, or his task, so he should write it.

To my surprise, and his credit, he took the challenge.

He completely wrote the book, showed it to me, and I added some content, and a subtitle to it.

We are now coauthors of the book, Mind Over Music: Break Through the Blocks to Get Into the Studio and Onto the Stage. (It’ll  be out next month.)

Instead of my taking on his task, I simply kept my boundary and supported him.

The result was a win-win for both of us.

Do you see how this works?

The Courage to Be Disliked contains far more wisdom, theory, and technique than I could possibly relay in this article.

But I don’t want you to settle for this post.

I want you to read the book.

Whether you do or not, of course, is your task, not mine.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – The Courage To Be Disliked will be in stores May 8, 2018. You can order it in print, for your Kindle reader, or on audio right now at Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness/dp/1501197274/

I know you might be one of those people who feel like the Law of Attraction just doesn’t work for you.

I understand and I want to help.

So let’s begin…

Have you ever had one of those days where gravity wasn’t working for you?

Where you can’t seem to keep your feet planted on the ground and you wind up floating around in the atmosphere?

Of course not.

Why not?

Because gravity is a LAW.

It doesn’t work some days and not work other days.

It’s *always* working, and you are experiencing the effects of it all the time, at every moment.

Even right now.

But you probably never spilled a cup of coffee and said, “Darn that Law of Gravity!”

Instead, you realized it was your actions coupled with the existing law that caused the accident.

Well, the Law of Attraction is exactly the same.

It’s a LAW – not a feel-good principle or some kind of new-age voodoo flake-out.

You can’t “do” the Law of Attraction wrong.

It doesn’t turn off and on, like a light switch.

It’s not subject to fate or fancy.

It is a powerful but neutral force that is constantly operating.

Just like gravity.

And that means something extremely important –

It means that what you have right now (or don’t have right now) is – on some level – exactly what you want.

The good stuff and the bad stuff.

The abundance and the lack.

You’ve attracted all of it.

Why?

How?

Because your conscious thoughts aren’t all there is.

Below the surface, a complex and deep-seated collection of beliefs are exerting an extremely powerful force in your life.

When these subconscious thoughts are in harmony with what you consciously intend, you attract it.

But if there are “counter-intentions” present within you – that is, thoughts and beliefs that run contrary to your conscious wishes – you will not achieve the results you want, no matter how much you want them on the surface.

Your conscious and subconscious need to be aligned to attract the results you prefer

This is not cause for blame or guilt.

After all, you weren’t aware of the unconscious beliefs working.

What this is all about is awakening.

I’m probably the only teacher in the movie The Secret that has stood my ground about this.

I’ve taken heat for it, too.

I feel like Freud when he introduced his idea of the unconscious mind in the late 1800s and was booed off stage.

He didn’t back down.

Neither have I.

So how do you get clear of those contrary beliefs within your unconscious mind?

How do you get rid of the inner roadblocks and go warp speed ahead, right to whatever it is you’re trying to achieve or attract?

It took me some time to figure out the answer to that question.

But once I did, it was as if all the limits in and around me shattered.

I thought life was good before – I had no idea it could be THIS good.

I thought I’d achieved a pretty high level of personal and professional success – but the success I experienced once I got clear absolutely blew me away.

I had finally discovered –

“The Missing Secret” that makes the Law of Attraction work the way you want it to – 100% of the time.

There are two ways you can learn this “Missing Secret.”

1 – Get my Nightingale-Conant bestselling audio program. http://www.nightingale.com/missing-secret.html

2. – Get in my famous Miracles Coaching program. http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com

Obviously, the coaching program will require a bigger investment, but the results will be dramatic and fast.

But I understand if you’d rather invest in the audios and listen and awaken at your own pace.

Either way, the choice is yours.

Which will you choose?

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Consider: If the Law of Attraction is already working but you aren’t seeing the results you want because you don’t understand it yet, how much more incredible will your life be once you use the Law with conscious intention and crystal clarity? As I often say, “Expect Miracles.”

Here’s your choice:

1 – Get my Nightingale-Conant bestselling audio program. http://www.nightingale.com/missing-secret.html

2. – Get in my famous Miracles Coaching program. http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com

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Elsie Lincoln Benedict – the forgotten wonder woman of self-help who I wrote about here on my February 15, 2015 blog post – taught me something profound.

Book from 1921

I was reading her 1921 book, How to Unlock Your Subconscious Mind (sometimes called Mental Analysis: How to Unlock Your Subconscious Mind) when I came across this insight in the final chapter:

Insight from Elsie

“Whatever your conscious mind affirms, visualizes and suggests to the subconscious, the subconscious will build into your life.”

For you and I today, that’s probably not news. But in 1921, it was a breakthrough new concept.

It basically said that you could choose what you want with your conscious mind, and with intention and imagery, you could get it into the subconscious, where it would take seed and begin to grow.

Why is this so important?

Because Elsie said something else right before revealing that concept that was even more insightful, and something so profound that I had to reread it a few times.

Elsie wrote –

“This newest, hitherto unpublished and most far-reaching of all the discoveries concerning the laws of human life is that every human being GETS his supreme subconscious wish.”

In short, there is a type of prime directive in your subconscious mind.

It is the secret guiding desire for your life.

You may not know what it is, but your subconscious is attracting into your life everything to make it real.

What you are getting right now is a match to the secret desire of your subconscious – your “supreme subconscious wish.”

In my own work, I talk a lot about counter-intentions.

A counter-intention is a hidden belief in contrast to what you consciously say you want.

You might consciously say you want a new job, but unconsciously believe you won’t get one due to the economy (or some other excuse/reason/belief), and your unconscious, being more powerful, will make the counter-intention come true.

Ad for free lectures circa 1917

Elsie would probably agree but her deeper insight is that the subconscious has one major intention and it will allow nothing to come about to contradict it.

Elsie explains –

“Let us repeat: Your supreme subconscious wish dictates your life. It permits nothing seriously to interfere with its materialization. It is automatic, implacable. What you want most of all, as a condition in your life, it will get for you.”

Now think about this.

If your conscious intent is to attract more money – for yourself or others or causes you believe in – but your secret subconscious wish is to avoid money so you consider yourself “spiritual,” then your subconscious mind will make sure that you get your chief hidden intention — and stay broke.

Your subconscious secret desire will win.

It’s the same scenario with anything you can name.

Want a relationship but secretly want to stay alone because it feels safer?

Then nothing you do will work because the secret intent of your subconscious will control the outcome. You will be alone but “safe.”

Want better health but secretly want to stay ill so you can avoid taking actions and risks in the world?

Then your overriding subconscious desire will make sure you stay ill. You will be sick but “risk free.”

Elsie goes on to explain that your secret desire is for a feeling or condition, not anything specific. She says –

“Our supreme subconscious wish is never for any specific thing or person but for a condition, a certain avenue of self-expression.”

Elsie’s insight, offered in 1921, is a mind opener.

Elsie Lincoln Benedict

Here’s why –

First, realizing you have a secret subconscious “prime directive” helps explain why you are attracting what you have in your life: your subconscious insists on it.

Second, realizing you can change your subconscious secret desire to something else – with your conscious mind affirming and visualizing a new outcome – is enlightening and empowering.

Once again, Elsie has rocked my world.

I trust you see the power of these insights from our dear woman of the 1920s.

But here’s a suggestion –

You can sit and reflect on what your subconscious might want for you, which will help explain what you are attracting into your life.

You can then use your conscious mind to offer new instructions to your subconscious, reprogramming it to help you attract more of what you consciously prefer.

Got it?

Elsie was pointing the way to the hidden operations in our mind, long before positive psychology and neuroscience came into play.

Thank you, Elsie.

I love you.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Unraveling your own beliefs can be tricky, since you are the one wrapped up inside of them. The fastest way to expand your mind is with the help of your own Miracles Coach. Check out Miracles Coaching.

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