Liberate your Struggles Read online

  With Einstein’s words in mind, let your mood pick a chapter in the book or read from the beginning to the end and allow yourself to be guided to find the answers you seek.

  With gratitude,

  John Spender

  “Appreciate the struggles

  as opportunities to

  wake up.”

  ~ Jeff Bridges

  CHAPTER ONE

  JUST A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING

  By John Spender

  To say I was nervous would have been a major understatement, heart pounding in my chest, alert, fighting to control my emotions, and, of course, the incessant mind chatter ever present. What if I look like a fool? How would it be if one of the girls breaks the board before I do? And on and on it goes. You know what I mean?

  We were all standing in the park waiting our turn as the facilitator went over his last-minute instructions. Just 20 minutes earlier, our group was learning the strategy to mastering and modeling excellence—specifically relating to drop breaking.

  “What on earth is that?” I hear you say. Sounds like something out of a karate movie, doesn’t it? Let me explain. You take a thick slab of plywood, an inch thick. You hold the board with your left hand, drop it, and break it with a forward motion with the palm of your other hand. You might be surprised to discover that a handful of the women in the group actually broke the slab of wood first go! The secret was in the strategy which created the technique that resulted in two pieces of timber lying on the ground. I broke mine on the third attempt. It was a mind f*#k. Half of the group struggled with the mental aspect of the challenge, unable to complete the task.

  “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe,

  the mind can achieve.”

  ~ Napoleon Hill

  The theory was simple; it was made up of three parts.

  1) Physiology: Is your posture strong? Straight back, shoulders relaxed, and knees slightly bent.

  2) Technique: The hand holding the board should be out in front of you at eye level with your elbow slightly bent. Your dominant hand (usually the right hand) is all the way back, fingers bent into your palm and your palm forward ready to strike the thick plywood first. As you drop the board with the left hand, you bring your right palm forward, hitting the timber in the center of the board in one smooth action. The trick is not to hit it too hard.

  3) Mindset: Creating the belief that you can break the board is absolutely critical to your success in achieving any goal. The best way to do this is through visualizing the board already broken, split in two on the ground. Thinking from the end with feeling, this increases the chances of living in your desired reality. It’s the living from the desired outcome as if it has already come to pass which helps to create a feeling of achievement; this automatically builds self-belief and confidence. In other words, fake it until you become it!

  The visualization technique that we use is called a switch pattern. If you have studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), you will have heard of this mindset weapon. You visualize in your mind’s eye the board unbroken and then you quickly change the image with the board broken. You switch from the image of the unbroken board to the broken board in quick succession four to five times until you are left with the picture of the broken board. This process works like magic.

  I’ve also done this technique when putting a regular plastic straw through a potato. Again it’s 30% form and 70% visual mindset. It also helps to see a demonstration of someone else doing it first. Watching the leader of our coaching program, Craig, in that park on the Gold Coast was one such moment when you could see that it is possible. Simultaneously, it brought up fears of failure, self-doubt, and nervousness. Being in a group of like-minded peeps who all wanted to become life coaches made it much easier to keep going after the first few times of failing to break the board.

  Often when struggling with an aspect of our life, especially if it is a challenge that we haven’t a blueprint for, therefore unsure as what to do, self-doubt can easily set in. The benefit of seeking challenges that take you out of your comfort zone is that it forces you to step into a bigger version of yourself, expanding your potential in the process. Another often underestimated reward is an anchor of possibility every time you extend your level of what you perceive as possible. I call them mind-blowing experiences or moments of wow. When you see what just happened right before your eyes, the evidence is right in front of you, but you are still in awe of the moment.

  “The struggle you’re in today is developing the

  strength you need for tomorrow.”

  ~ Robert Tew

  Tony Robbins, the famous seminar leader, has similar experiences that he takes his audiences through. He will use an NLP induction process on the audience. He also generates an atmosphere of excitement, belief, and positive anticipation. It almost feels like a rock concert. You are given an accountability partner, setting an intention of what you would like to break through in your life before you walk across glowing red-hot coals. Armed with the phrase “cold as moss,” you march across the red-hot coals, ever mindful not to look down. Before you know it, you are on the other side celebrating with your buddy.

  Another anchor of doing the seemingly impossible helps to build your resilience muscle, enabling you to push through when things in your life get difficult. Instead of quitting, you learn to push through and keep moving forward. Mind-blowing experiences also break the identity of struggle. Often I have heard people blame their circumstances on their heredity or their parents.

  One of the most famous self-help authors and teachers, Dr. Wayne Dyer, used to have a counseling practice in New York. At his live events he would often tell stories about his practice and clients. On one particular occasion, a woman came in and told him of an incident that occurred in her childhood, and she was blaming her mother. Wayne asked her to get out of his office and go get her mother. Naturally, the woman was shocked, asking why she should get her mother. Dyer replied to the woman, “Well, if your mother is the reason why you are the way you are, go get your mother, and I’ll fix her.” Rarely is the problem outside of ourselves. In many cases placing blame elsewhere is an excuse not to face certain aspects of our lives that we don’t like. When you find yourself blaming someone else for whatever reason, a good question to ask is, Where am I doing the same thing in my life? It takes some honest self-reflection, but if you sit with the question long enough, you’ll soon have your answers. Recognizing that you are part of the problem actually helps you come up with a solution. A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

  Releasing Anger

  As long as I can remember, I have struggled to control how I express my emotions, in particular the feeling of anger, especially if situations that I am emotionally invested in don’t turn out according to my expectations. I have started attending a men’s circle in Ubud. The leader of the circle was explaining that the number one issue they have noticed is how men process their anger and frustrations. I’m grateful to have found this group, as it is beneficial to be in a supportive environment.

  “A saint was asked, ‘What is anger?’ He gave a beautiful answer:

  ‘It is a punishment that we give ourselves for someone else’s mistake.”

  ~ Unknown

  You see, you are not the only one going through a particular challenge. In my case, it is anger management. I can honestly say that there hasn’t been a year in my life when I have not struggled with how I deal with my emotions and managing my anger. At one point in my early twenties with my life spinning out of control, my anger became so bad that I was getting into night club brawls and I even chased a gang down the street, that turned out to be just a couple of guys and a garage truck doing their early morning rounds. I had issues, and everyone knew it. I was mixing in the wrong circles, and I was behaving badly. It wasn’t who I wanted to be; I was headed for an early grave. (I share the full story in book nine of this series Transformation Calling) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BWQY9FB I was an angry yo
ung man to the extreme, I had no idea why? I later discovered that I was terrified to face the emotional, physical and sexual abuse I experienced as a child. There is no benefit in blaming others. I found that taking radical responsibly for how I choose to live my life rest squarely on my shoulders. Being accountable for my actions was the best solution for me. Visiting my uncle in prison and getting stripped searched was one of the many red flags that I had driven my life completely down the wrong road. It’s never too late to choose the right path no matter how long, arduous and challenging that maybe. Slowly I started to seek help.

  Let me ask you a question, can you remember the very first time you were angry? As you ponder, allow me to share with you my first memory of experiencing the emotion of anger. I was about four years of age. I had been playing with the kids up the road, the MacMahon boys: Scott, Shannon, Jamie, and Troy. Jamie and Troy were a similar age as me, so I would mostly play with them. I’m not sure how it happened, but Jamie started busting open his piggy bank, you know the large round pig that holds your change, except his was in the shape of a large office building. He wanted help to break open the other ones as well. The offer of half the contents was too good to refuse.

  In no time at all, we had rows of coins stacked up, and Jamie was dividing up the coins between the three of us. Home I went with a bag of coins. My dad was away at sea with the Australian Navy. That’s when my Uncle Peter would come to stay with us. Immediately my mom and Peter wanted to know where I got all the coins. I had about $10, which was a lot for any four-year-old in 1980. I remember telling an elaborate story that Jamie, Troy, and I had found a treasure chest with all these silver coins inside. It seemed believable when I was saying it.

  My story fell apart when Mom called the MacMahons. It turned out that we had broken into Scott and Shannon’s money boxes. I was furious when I had to return the money. It seemed unfair. After all, I had a deal with Jamie. I remember being sent to my room and, in a rage, I turned my chest of drawers onto the floor. Uncle Peter found it amusing, telling me my dad would be mad when he came home if I didn’t place the chest upright. It was way too heavy. Even when he offered the incentive of a ten-dollar bill, I still couldn’t summon the strength.

  “Take on an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle

  on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.”

  ~ Swami Vivekananda

  The meaning my four-year-old mind placed on that experience was people couldn’t be trusted when they gave their word. The interaction with my uncle conditioned my mind to believe that anger is rewarded: if only I had been stronger, the $10 would be mine.

  That was the beginning of my struggle with anger as I know it. Unconsciously I used anger to get my own way. For years now, I’ve been dismantling the pattern and the triggers that lead me to lose my temper. The exploration began in 2002 as I was seeking to unravel the why behind what I did. Where do these patterns of behavior come from?

  The very first seminar I attended was called Insight Seminars which took you on a journey into understanding your parents, releasing resentments, and developing a relationship with your inner child. Now, having attended hundreds of seminars, having trained people to build the skills of NLP in Southeast Asia, and having coached hundreds of people from all walks of life, I realize self-discovery never ends. It’s wise to note that what you focus on expands. Doing these various trainings and workshops… it stirs up the mud, making life feel unsettled. Hopefully, once the dust settles, you’ll become more aware of your unconscious habits, patterns, and behaviors. I believe that self-discovery is best done in moderation, especially the deep heavy emotional work. Otherwise, the struggles can seem endless, a never-ending loop of emotional wounds, one after the other.

  One of the processes we took people through in the NLP training I used to facilitate was Timeline Therapy. It’s a powerful tool that aids in releasing significant emotional events from the past at an unconscious level. According to Dr. David Hawkins’s scale of consciousness, the main set of heavy emotions we want to release are:

  1. Anger 150

  2. Sadness 75

  3. Fear 100

  4. Hurt 50

  5. Guilt 30

  6. Shame 20

  7. Any other of negative emotions.

  The above negative emotions are listed because they generally arise in Time Line Therapy. In his groundbreaking book Power vs. Force, Dr. David Hawkins developed a scale of consciousness that spans from 0 to 1000. We move up and down the scale, depending on the emotions we are experiencing or how much negative emotion we have trapped in the body. Dr. Hawkins discovered there is a critical point (when we reach 200 on his scale) where emotions that calibrate below this point make the body weak and there is an absence of truth. Emotions above 200 reprints a healthy body and represents the presence of truth. As a whole, people oscillate above and below the scale of 200, meaning it is about the overall resonance of the person that makes all the difference.

  “Life will give you whatever experience is most

  helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”

  ~ Eckhart Tolle

  According to Dr. Hawkins, having a frequency of 500 or above is pure unconditional love, and it is in this state that we are in complete harmony with our body and our environment. The various negative emotions can get trapped in your body and the above six emotions are the most detrimental to your health. For instance, the emotional root cause of cancer is fear and resentment. This is widely documented in the books Healing your Body by Louise Hay, in Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins and in C. Norman Shealy, MD, Caroline Myss’s 1991 classic, The Creation of Health. Acting out behavioral patterns of negative emotions is what creates disease and illness in our bodies. It’s vital that you release the emotional baggage that we all carry. This is truly liberating for the mind, body, spirit connection, and situations that once were problems disintegrate and disappear.

  Today more than ever, there is an abundance of therapies to help release toxic emotions from one’s body. I’ve tried and had success with the following: medicine wheel (Native American sweat lodge); crystal meditations with John of God facilitators; kinesiology; reiki; past-life regressions; Insight Seminars 1 and 2; counselling; NLP; tantric breathing; Alchemy of Breathe; Enlightened Warrior Training; Blair Singers’s Train the Trainer; T. Harv Eckers’s Making the Stage; MJB Seminars; Ratu Bagus’s Shaking Retreat; lucid dreaming; shamanic journeying; family constellations therapy; Heart Yoga; Dynamics Therapy; Oneness Blessing; Shavasti retreats three times… These are the ones that spring to mind. As you can see from my list, I believe it’s necessary to do some form of deep emotional clearing at least once a year. I also do daily meditation, weekly breathing practice, and power yoga. I can’t function optimally without these practices. Even with all the work I’ve done on myself, I still have challenges with anger management and expressing my needs before they build up into resentments.

  I vividly recall the first time I received the NLP process of Time Line Therapy. It was part of Craig Jervis’s Coach the Coach year-long program. In part of the course, we were trained as NLP Practitioners and Master NLP Practitioners. The first NLP training was five days and we completed 90 hours of intense inner exploration in learning the various techniques.

  I clearly remember the Timeline Therapy session being later in the evening on the third day. The trainer shared the theory and conducted a live demonstration, after which we broke up into pairs. My buddy took me on a journey to explore the emotion of anger, and I shared that experience with you earlier in the chapter. Next was sadness. We kept going until we reached the emotion of hurt. By the way, each emotion takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes per person to clear. One of the strict guidelines was to refrain from going into the emotion. Once you have discovered the very first time that you recall experiencing the specific emotion, you are meant to float up above the event just before the incident occurred.

  “Since most problems are created by our imagination

&
nbsp; and thus, imagery, all we need are imagery solutions.”

  ~ Richard Bandler

  The memory that flashed into my consciousness was when I was born. Being so intrigued, I ignored my buddy’s guidance asking me to go back up above the event. Instead, I went into the event, seeing ever so clearly a baby being born. Me! I could feel all of the emotions in the room, the excitement and relief of the doctors and nurses with their encouraging smiles. The recollection in these sessions is astonishing at times. You can recall an incredible level of detail. Your five senses really come alive. I could hear the nurse stating with joy, “It’s a girl!” I could feel my mother’s excitement and eagerness to hold me. I could see the nurse wrapping me in a blanket and discovering that I was indeed a boy.

  At that moment, with a heightened state of awareness, feeling everything at an emotional level, I could feel my mum’s disappointment at her expectation not being met. I felt intense hurt, crying uncontrollably. It all happens at a rapid rate. Brought out of the hypnotic trance with a thud, the trainer was standing over me chastising and berating me. Unable to finish the exercise, I was struggling to process the emotion of hurt.

  My friend at the course offered to assist with releasing the emotional charge before bed. We were also rooming together, which made it easy enough to manage at such intense training. Back at our room, my roomy helped me to release some of the charges around guilt and shame. It was fascinating to experience a regression of an ancestor while releasing the charge of a particular event for which I had a bird’s eye view.