Mental Freedom®: “Free your mind, open your heart and transform your life.”

Our minds are filled with rules, beliefs, values and other information we picked up as children, into adulthood and still today. Some of it serves us but much of it doesn’t. I have developed a system for freeing your mind so you can live the life you want to create instead of being a prisoner in a mind you unintentionally created that is holding you hostage. Responsibility, Trust and Appreciation are the trifecta of mental and emotional freedom.

100% Responsibility:

Nobody likes to be blamed for things; it never feels good. So, when we make a decision or take an action that doesn’t work out, we want to find someone else to blame—the opposite of claiming 100% responsibility for your behavior. There is also another way we shirk responsibility: Have you ever told yourself or others, “I don’t want to do that, but I have to”? This lie we tell ourselves creates a lot of our misery. Instead of leaning into that cop-out, realize and accept that, everything we do, we do because we want to—if we didn’t, we wouldn’t do it. You may be thinking of many things you do, or have done, that you didn’t want to do: This is the brain conditioning we need to free ourselves of. You are 100% responsible for everything you do, including those things you deliberately choose not to do. No one can force you to do anything—you are a fully autonomous individual.

Let’s pretend someone has a gun to your head and tells you to do something you don’t want to do. You will likely choose to do it because you want to live. You can, of course, refuse and pay the consequences, but you will likely choose to comply. You may say, “I had no choice,” but that isn’t true. You could have said no and died. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point that you are 100% responsible for everything you do, and you do something because you want to.

The emotional freedom comes in when you get in touch with your why—why you want to do it. I want to do what the gunman says because I want to live. I want to pay my bills because I want heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. I work because I want to have a home to live in and a car to drive. I want to do something I may find difficult, annoying or unfair because of the benefits of doing so are worth it.

When you believe you are being forced to do things by outside forces, you create a lot of misery for yourself. Nothing can make you do something against your will. It may be unpleasant, but there will always be an internal reason or motivation for why you chose to do it. Accept that, own it and be willing to accept full responsibility for every action you choose—the good and the bad. This is the path to power and freedom. You are always in charge of your decisions, no one else.

The Unconditional Trust Challenge:

Trust is an interesting concept. I believe trust is especially important for relationships, but I speak of a different trust than most people do. When most people talk about trusting someone, what they really mean is they are trusting someone to be the person they want them to be. We all have a fantasy picture in our Quality World of what we want certain people to act like. When they match what we want, we say we trust them. If they disappoint the picture we have of them in our head, then we say we can’t trust them.

The path to freeing your mind is to stop trusting people to be who you want them to be and begin to trust people for who they have shown you they are, until they show you something different.

You can always trust everyone to do one thing in every circumstance without exception, and holding this trust will help you on your journey to mental freedom. You can trust that every single person on the planet is going to do what they believe is their best option in any situation to get what they want based on the information available to them. If you care about them, isn’t that what you’d want them to do? It’s also difficult to get angry at someone for doing the best they can to get what they want in a situation, right? I call this the Unconditional Trust Challenge.

When someone does something that interferes with what you were hoping they would do, then you have a decision to make about how you will respond, and you are 100% responsible for your response.

Appreciation for the G.L.O.W.:

In our lives, there will be circumstances we have zero control of or influence over. A lot of trauma falls into this category: natural disasters, accidents, deaths of loved ones, job loss, etc. You don’t ask for it, you don’t want it, and yet you got it anyway. What can you do? You basically have four choices: 1) You can stay miserable and frustrated over what’s happened that isn’t fair and you can’t change. 2) You can decide to tolerate it by stuffing your feelings elsewhere, creating physical and emotional turmoil for yourself. 3) You can accept it as something you don’t like, but yet it happened, so you decide to stop being angry, depressed, anxious or frustrated over it. Finally, 4) you can look for ways to find appreciation for it.

This may seem impossible, but when you recognize the balance in all things, you realize that your brain tricks you by directing your focus toward the painful parts of the experience. Our brains are hardwired for negativity to aid in our survival. This is great if we are in a life-threatening situation, but if we are in an emotionally challenging one, we need to look underneath the painful part to the benefits and advantages that the situation is affording us. I call this the G.L.O.W. You are looking for the gifts, lessons, opportunities and wisdom in the situation.

Practicing 100% Responsibility, the Unconditional Trust Challenge and Appreciation for the G.L.O.W. will be a journey that leads to increasing power and freedom over your mind, so your mind starts to work for you instead of against you. It will result in peace.