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The
Mind Box
Part I
UNRAVELING THE SECRETS
OF THE MIND
2 Burt Goldman
The
Mind Box
Part I
UNRAVELING THE SECRETS
OF THE MIND
Burt Goldman
4 Burt Goldman
The Mind Box. Copyright 2007 by Burt Goldman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address: October75 Publishers, P.O. Box 2158, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270.
Burt Goldman books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For
information please write: Special Markets Division, P.O. Box 2158, Rancho Mirage CA 92270
5 The Mind Box
BURT GOLDMAN’S MIND BOX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I
UNRAVELING THE SECRETS
OF THE MIND
Page Chapter
7 1 Secrets to Meditation
17 2 Secrets to Habit Control
27 3 Secrets to Boosting Self Esteem & Confidence
36 4 Secrets to Gaining Friends & Influence
45 5 Secrets to Overcoming Grief & Depression
52 6 Secrets to Speed Learning
60 7 Secrets to Finding Love & Lasting Relationships
69 8 Secrets to Mastering Your Emotions
75 9 Secrets to Achievement
85 10 Secrets to Overcoming Fears & Phobias
93 11 Secrets to Controlling Your Thoughts
6 Burt Goldman
PLEASE NOTE:
CHAPTER ONE
SECRETS TO MEDITATION
Meditation brings about a stress free mind that attracts the good things
in life.Here’s why that’s important to you. Psychologists have listed hundreds
of causes of stress, even to listing them in a hierarchy, on a variety of scales,
usually listing the death of a spouse as the number one cause and hundreds if
not thousands of other reasons for stress, all listed by number generally from
1, which indicates a mild stress, to 100, which indicates a stress so severe it
could be life threatening. We are going to look at stress a bit differently.
Stress, very simply, is caused by a change of the way things are. Any
change in the status quo will create a situation that causes stress. However
you cannot give a number in a hierarchy for an event as a person’s attitude
will determine how they react to the change. People react differently to change,
and therefore to stress. If everyone always reacted the same way then there
would be no point in trying to alleviate stress by changing an attitude, but
they don’t and so that allows us to modify, and in many cases, eliminate
stress. Stress causes an uneasy mind. When your mind is restful, stress is
impossible. Now the question will arise, how can I have a resting mind?
Often, a metaphor can show the way. So let me tell you a story of an
incident that would normally cause a great degree of stress in most people. It
took place 25 years ago during a class I was presenting on stress and how to
deal with it. Lunchtime came along and I, along with three people in the class
went out together to go to a nearby restaurant. We were going to take my car
as I had purchased a new one only the week before. As we approached the
vehicle in the parking lot we all saw it at the same time; a big dent in the right
front fender. Someone had slammed into the car while it was parked in the lot
and had driven off without even leaving a note on the windshield. The three
students with me looked at me and waited for the blowup. I must admit for a
8 Burt Goldman
moment I could feel irritation and my body tightening with anger. But I cut it
off immediately with a simple technique I will teach you in a moment.
Jumping into the car I said to the three “Let’s go. There’s a body and fender
shop just down the street.”
“You going to get it fixed right now?” One of the students asked.
“Nope.” I answered, “What I’m going to do is to get a price on what
it costs to repair the dent, and whatever that price turns out to be, I’m going to
create something that I’m not doing right now, and I’m going to make three
times the cost of the dent.”
We drove to a nearby shop and I was told that the cost of repairing the
fender would be $450.00. I immediately tripled the figure and thought, $1,350;
I’ve got to earn with something new, $1,350.00. Now whenever I looked at
the dent in my fender I didn’t mentally start cursing the low life who dented it
and ran off, no, not at all, now when I looked at the dent I thought, $1,350.00
I’ve got to earn $1,350.00. I kept thinking of how I could make that amount of
money. It had to be something that I was not doing at that time. I thought
about it and thought about it and finally came up with the answer.
I would create a brand new seminar for my friends and if they liked it
I would send out a mailing to all the people who had been through my classes
and I would set a goal of making $1,350.00 from it. And so I put the seminar
together and did it for fifteen of my friends, didn’t charge as I was checking
out the new material. My friends loved it. I sent out a mailing after renting a
meeting room and did the new seminar. I was surprised I made more on that
seminar than the new car cost, and all because someone dented my fender.
The technique that I used was a simple re-direction of energies,
something I think of as the RD, or Re Direction. But first, I had to rest my
mind. The title of the first CD track is resting the mind, now what does that
mean? Stress requires an active mind. When you are stressed out, many things
are flitting through your mind, expectations of things to come. There is always
some catalyst to set the mind off. The catalyst is usually of a negative nature
but not always. Winning the lottery, or getting a promotion are both positive
things but they can precipitate a good deal of stress. Any change in the normal
routine will do that. When you are involved in routine your mind is resting,
you act by rote, just a mechanical repetition. That repetition can be with regards
to an occupation, the routine of housework, or a simple taking a walk with
your dog. Anything that you do over and over again you will find that you
usually do that with a mind at rest.
When I first saw that dented fender my mind flew off into all kinds of
9 The Mind Box
directions. Mentally cursing the person who did it while I looked around to
see if there were any cars speeding away, there wasn’t, and I knew immediately
I had to redirect that negative mental activity at once. In came Bagha Yoga. I
used it and felt immediately at ease. And now comes our technique to bring
about the resting of the mind to forestall and eliminate stress. But first, let me
tell you when I learned it. It was actually the first technique I ever learned. It
was over fifty years ago. I must have used it a thousand times since. I’ve
never been disappointed in the effect.
Let me take you back to 1951. I was at the Self Realization Fellowship
Lake Shrine near Brentwood, California. To me it was, and is still, the most
peaceful place on Earth. I spent a lot of my time there practicing Kriya Yoga
and just meditating near the windmill. But I was disturbed that day. I don’t
recall why. My friend Cheslo picked up on my unease. “How can you meditate
when your mind is filled with butterflies?” He asked.
I just shrugged.
“Use the Bagha,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Bagha Yoga. You know. Haven’t you been taught the Bagha?”
I shook my head. I had no idea what he was referring to.
“Let me help you brother,” he said sitting on the bench next to me.
“What makes your comfortable?” he asked.
“Sitting here, by the windmill, and meditating. Nothing makes me
more comfortable than that.”
He smiled and nodded, I’m sure that he felt the same. All the disciples
were most comfortable at the Lake Shrine.
“Close your eyes and create a picture in your mind of this place.
Sense that you are comfortable and in deep meditation but do not meditate,
just imagine that you are meditating.”
I did so.
“Now hold the image of yourself meditating and comfortable and
touch the roof of your mouth with the tip of your tongue.”
With my eyes and mouth closed I lifted my tongue and touched it to
the roof of my mouth holding it there for a few seconds. I took a breath,
sighed, opened my eyes and looked at Cheslo.
10 Burt Goldman
1. Touching the roof of your mouth with the tip of your tongue stimu-
lates the thought processes and the mind to accept that something is about
to take place, this is called the ‘Bagha’. The initial Bagha use is relax-
ation and comfort. When using the Bagha for other things it acts as a
negative magnetic pole to attract, and a positive magnetic pole to repel.
2. Whenever you feel the need of the comfort you feel when meditating,
simply touch the roof of your mouth and hold your tongue there for a few
seconds and you will feel some of the comfort you feel when meditating.
Whenever any of the negative emotions are closing in on you use the
Bagha .
3. To re-direct your thoughts, use the Bagha and immediately think about
the positive elements of the situation.
4. Use the Bagha whenever you feel the need to take your mind off a
subject, or whenever you wish to concentrate on a subject.
toward things.
Stress is also caused by the fear that you will experience harm or
loss. This fear is usually based on a real or an imagined threat to the routine of
your life. In the most general sense, stress is created, and controlled by opinion.
Your opinion of things is called attitude. Your opinion of yourself is called
Ego. When dealing with stress and attempting to gain a life that is free of
stress you must address the difference between attitude and ego.
Is the stress caused by something outside yourself, say a war, the
economy, a natural disaster, a person, an event or series of events, a perceived
loss of some kind? That would be stress caused by attitude.
Or is the stress that you are undergoing caused by a feeling of not
being as worthy as you like, or a feeling of guilt, or self limitations.The Polarity
Technique is a useful resource in either instance. If you were to take all your
friends and put them in a hierarchy or ladder of success, who would be on the
top rung; who would be on the bottom? And where on that scale would you
12 Burt Goldman
1. Grade the thing that bothers you on a range of from one to ten.
Mentally make it worse, until the degree gets higher.
3. Continue to make the thing better, then worse, again and again while
using the Bagha until the thing no longer bothers you.
virtually every type of stress, you will also realize how easy it can be to
control.
But first, here is a great truth for you, an axiom. STRESS AND
RELAXATION ARE THE SAME THING, they only differ by degree.
Now you are going to take exception to that, as well you should; at
least until I explain what I mean by that statement. I’m going to now show
you how by using one of the seven Great Principles of Hermes, Polarity. You
can learn more about the seven principles on CD Number 17.
Polarity states that all things have an opposite, and the opposites are
the same, only differing by degree. Allow me to follow that thought through
to see if it leads us to a solution to the secret of stress. First of all how would
you find the opposite of stress? That’s the right question. You find the opposite
by either reducing or enhancing. Well it’s obvious we do not want to enhance
stress, so let’s reduce it. Take stress and put it on an arbitrary scale. Say the
stress on our scale is at the one hundred degree mark. Now make it less, less
again and as you lessen the stress you of course become a little relaxed. Make
the stress still less and you will be fully relaxed. Stress can easily be unlocked,
so long as you use relaxation as your key.
The secret of stress is to use relaxation as a weapon to defeat it. How
do you get dark out of a room? You can’t sweep it out, you can’t wash it out,
you can’t talk it out; the way to get dark out is to let light in. You get stress out
of your mind by letting relaxation in. The greatest form of relaxation is
meditation; on that virtually all authorities agree.
Stress is insidious. It comes at you from everywhere. Some would
say this emotion goes back as far as the cave dwellers. Well we d on’t have to
have our metabolism speeded up by a shot of adrenaline to leap up a tree and
away from danger, but the chemical is still produced by our bodies when
perceiving any threats.
Luckily though, the solution is easy to utilize. And once you know
the technique, it will be with you, like all of our techniques, forever.
Everyone knows the word meditation and most people have a picture
in their minds of a person sitting quietly, hands in lap, with eyes closed, at
peace with the world. Well that’s a description of meditation, but there are
other ways to reach that state when you have a desire to use meditation to
modify and rid yourself of stress. Especially so if the stress is getting in the
way of your productiveness and making you less effective at what you do.
The way to look at meditation is as a concentration of attention.
14 Burt Goldman
Anytime your mind is at rest, and focused on a single objective, excluding all
the trivia that normally besets your mind, you are in kind of a trance like state.
On the first track of this CD you learned about the Bagha. Once you
begin to use the technique of instant meditation you will find that stress will
bother you less and less. Do remember however that one of the facets of
meditation is intense concentration on one subject. Later on in this series you
will learn to use the Bagha to propel you to the spiritual dimension.
After many, many years of meditation I use a very simple method to
get there. Preparation is essential. Yes you can use the Bagha while walking
along an avenue and it will work, you can use it for a great many things. But
the formal type of meditation that most people are familiar with is different.
This is the way that I do it. In my home, I have a corner that I use strictly for
meditation. If you can arrange such a thing in your home or office it will
make the process much easier as a calming energy builds up when you practice
in one area. Places absorb energy. Places where people gather to worship
have a peaceful energy that can be felt. Places where people are restrained
such as hospitals and prisons have a strong negative energy that can be felt.
That’s why, if possible, I advice you to set aside an area for meditation.
So, now you have decided you wish to formerly meditate. You want
to be more productive, and more effective in what you do every day. Before
you meditate, you must understand that you will be leaving behind all the
trivial details of the day, all the mental images that bother you. When you sit
down and make yourself comfortable you then direct your thoughts to one
objective. This is the first concentration of thoughts. Many people will use a
mantra to concentrate their attention. Indeed, when a person counts down, or
see colors, or uses music they are fixing their attention on whatever method
they are using. What we will use as a focus of attention is the mantra Aomm.
It is said in a drawn out manner, and mentally. Aaooomm, Aaooomm.
Aaooomm. Use the mantra Aaooomm by saying it mentally with each outgoing
breath, or each exhale. Concentrate on the word, only the word. Do it slowly.
Now, here is the secret to deepening your meditation.
With eyes closed, you take a breath and as you exhale you mentally
say the first Aauumm and project it to your right at about ear level. Take
another breath and as you exhale you mentally say Aauuumm and you project
it to your left at about ear level. Each time you take a breath and exhale, you
mentally repeat the word Aauuumm and go from right to left again and again.
You will find this takes you to the very pleasant state of meditation.
During the second track of CD number one you had the Bagha set in
15 The Mind Box
2. Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, think of the
thing that you want to happen as already having happened. and direct your
mind from the area of your right ear to your left ear, then your right, back
and forth quickly, three times. You should find your attitude changing to-
wards the event.
your inner conscious while you were meditating. To use the Bagha in any of
a variety of ways outside of meditation, experiment with this. Say that you
want something of an immediate nature. A good seat at a restaurant, or a
parking place in a difficult situation, or you’re late for a meeting and you
want to get there on time, or for any of the ordinary things that normally come
up in your mind. Use the Bagha in this manner. This is called, the Bagha Duo,
or the BD technique. Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth,
think of the thing that you want to happen as already having happened, and
sense it first at your right ear, and then at your left. Do this a series of times,
but not less than three times, right, left, right left, right left. You will find your
attitude towards things changing as you get more and more successful in the
use of the BD technique.
You wish to be more productive. Think about how you can be more
effective and more productive. Think about the end result of your being more
productive. Then use the Bagha Duo. Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof
of your mouth and think about the job you wish to be more productive with as
successfully completed. Bring that image to your right and then to your left as
you just learned. That’s the quick and easy way to have a resource at your call
anytime you wish, to adjust your attitude and to gain control over quick and
easy meditation.
On the fourth track of CD-1 you will find the Daisy Pond, a meditation
exercise; you might well call it a guided fantasy; I created the Daisy Pond
many years ago for people in distress, and also for children whose natural
ability to fantasize would stand them in good stead. The Daisy Pond, with my
16 Burt Goldman
permission, has been translated into many languages and I have received much
feed back over the years from parents who have used it to soothe their children,
and also from people in hospital settings who use it to relieve themselves of
stress. It is the only meditation I encourage people to copy and to give to their
family and friends in need. Just be as a child when you listen to it and allow
your great imagination to take you for a relaxing, comforting trip, far, far
from any cares or stress you might have.
17 The Mind Box
CHAPTER TWO
Of all the diets and all the suggestions from books, clinics, dieticians,
friends and all the rest of the sources that refer to controlling weight, the best
diet advice could be the one that is just two words long. That advice is: Eat
less. Period.
How easy, how difficult. During a weight control clinic I was holding
in San Francisco, Margaret Reed, a rather plump woman in the audience asked
a most pertinent question when I said the best diet advice was simply to eat
less. She asked, with a tear in her eye, ‘How?’
There are so very many factors involved with weight control it is
virtually impossible to know which one’s to address. But that one, I did want
to address. I did want to tell her how.
You let the thought of the cake, or whatever you have a strong desire
18 Burt Goldman
for, come and then you mentally shout, STOP. You now have a thought stopping
technique that is useful not only for weight control, but for many other things
as well. Virtually everything that is a bother to you, that includes most of your
problems, if your thinking about them is causing you any discomfort at all,
you can block those thoughts. Just allow the thought to come, and mentally
shout with all the mental force you can muster, STOP.
The Thought Stopping technique works marvelously well. In the
nineties I trained many hypno therapists both in the U.S. and in Europe. The
technique, when used by a therapist requires the therapist to get the subject
thinking about the thing that is bothering them and after a period of quiet,
shouting out loud, STOP. This apparently confuses the brain and the thought
leaves and if it comes back, it is greatly reduced in its strength.
There is a reason that people overeat and the problem is not in their
compulsive natures but rather in the way they represent the things they are
thinking about.
Everyone has at least five ways in which they represent the things
that are being communicated to them by their outer senses. The representations
vary by degree to the extent of the strength of a particular sense. You may be
very strong with the inner sense of taste, but weak in the auditory area.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the strongest, you could be a 10 in
taste, an 8 in tactile or feeling, a 7 with visual imagery, a 4 in the auditory, and
a 2 in olfactory, (sense of smell.)
That being the case you would probably have a problem with food.
You would work with your hands, you would be a moderate day dreamer, you
would prefer loud, simple music with a strong bass sound, and you would not
understand why people rave about a particular fragrance. These are all mental
representations they do however have an effect on things physical as all things
must be represented mentally before they can be acted upon.
We’ve already talked about chocolate cake, what about other foods.
OK, first of all determine what foods are causing what you consider to be
your “weight problem.” Do this while you are at that relaxed state of mind
and body, the meditation zone.
Find a comfortable place, relax with eyes closed, and think about
food. While concentrating on food in general, ask yourself, “What foods are
causing me a problem?” You will find that you are getting an impression of
one or several foods.
19 The Mind Box
One by one, you get a strong mental image of the problem food; and
then mentally use the Power Shout by mentally shouting, STOP.
Do this every time you think about a particular food that you can do
without.
Then there are quantities. You don’t want to stop craving chocolate
cake and then go ahead and eat four pounds of meat. So how do we deal with
quantities?
You mentally see a plate full of the food you would normally eat.
State, mentally “This food (name the food) is no longer going to cause
any problems for me,” and then mentally mark a big, red NO over the mental
picture of half of what is on the plate. From there on, whenever you think of
that food, immediately paint a mental NO over at least half of it.
Let’s look at what is taking place with this technique You are stimulated
by a smell, a sight, a sound, a feeling or a taste. Thoughts begin to form,
fueled by the now building energy. While the thoughts are forming, stop them
with the fully formed thought of STOP. The energy buildup is halted—
overcome by the desire to offset the appetite for food.
By interrupting the stimulus, your body breaks the cycle and appetite
diminishes. Suddenly you find that your diet works, whatever that diet may
be. I cannot recommend any diet personally since the authorities who are
experts in the field have continually contradicted one another since time
immemorial. Go to any bookstore or health-food store and browse through
the diet book section. Whatever diet you wish will be found there, including
numerous fasting diets which might be classified as non diets. What is your
pleasure? You like rice? There is the rice diet. You like meat? There is the
meat diet. Your like to drink lots of water? There is the water diet. You like
vegetables? There is the vegetarian’s diet? You like eggs There is the egg diet.
You like alcoholic beverages? There is the diet for drinkers. You like
20 Burt Goldman
1. Whenever a thought comes to you and you want to stop it, allow it to
come. Concentrate on the image in your mind. make it brighter and more
colorful.
2. While concentrating on the mental image, shout mentally, with all the
volume you can muster: STOP!
3. You can use thought stopping to block any negative thought you would
like to rid yourself of.
carbohydrates? There is the high carbohydrate diet, the low carbohydrate diet,
the high protein, the low protein, the soup diet, and on and on and on an on.
To rid yourself of weight you must start where the problem begins.
With your mind. With your belief system. What do you believe is causing
your weight problem? Do you feel that you must finish everything on the
plate and that you must have dessert? Program yourself to leave something
on your plate and that you do not have to eat dessert. You can have dessert but
look at it as a food and not as a reward.
Virtually every weight control practitioner will ultimately tell you to
eat less. That’s the bottom line. But no one tells you how. Let me repeat how,
once more.
To instill this program, listen to CD-2 where you will go to that relaxed
state of mind, the meditation state, and see yourself with a full plate of food.
You’ll visualize yourself eating and enjoying about half of your dinner. See
yourself pushing away the balance of the meal. Do this any number of times
but no more than once a day.
If guilt about the starving people of the world is a problem with you,
see the restaurants serving smaller portions so that everyone leaves something
on the plates. See yourself buying less at the market visualize this surplus
backing up to the farmer. See the surplus being sent to the starving masses.
No need to feel guilt about leaving something on the plate but rather the
opposite.
21 The Mind Box
So just consider all foods that you eat. Ask yourself this question: Is this food
going to feel good in my mouth, or my stomach. Here is what Muriel Singer
wrote after attending a weight control class I was presenting in Houston.
“It took me a while to understand the concept but when I did it changed
my eating completely. I love cheesecake but I knew it was strictly a mouth
food; I didn’t particularly want it in my stomach. At first I programmed myself
so that I would be satisfied with a half portion, and then a quarter portion.
Now I can get along just fine with a taste but I don’t even need that any more.
I love soup and salads, both of them I look at as stomach foods even though I
like them in my mouth as well. I am training my eight year old and she is
taking to the mouth and stomach food business like a duck takes to water.
Thanks.”
The idea of Stomach Rule as we call the concept is to build a desire
in you to eat foods that you want in your stomach. It would be presumptuous
of me to offer a course on nutrition in a CD that takes less than an hour to play
but I can give you a few thoughts on the subject.
I am speaking about needs. If you feel that you need the wrong kind
of food remember the Power Shout. Use it whenever the mental image, or the
sense of taste brings on a desire for a food you do not want in your stomach.
Rule your stomach, instead of allowin your stomach to rule you.
Develop new needs; needs to reduce to what you consider your ideal
weight and size. You will be satisfied with less food than you were formerly.
A few bites and swallows of food will take away your desire to eat and you
will only eat what you consider to be necessary to maintain good health.
From this day forward you think about your health when eating and you will
eat healthy foods. You will eat only the amount of food you consider necessary
to maintain health. Health will be the issue not weight. You will consider
before ever putting any food in your mouth whether it is food you need in
your mouth, or food you need in your stomach.
Health will be what you consider, not taste, not a full stomach, not
crunch or sweetness. Health will be what you consider from now on.
Before you eat anything at all consider how you will feel about having
eaten that food one hour after you eat it. Eating for your mouth you will not
feel all that good about having eaten it an hour after you have eaten it. Eating
for your stomach you will feel good about having eaten it an hour after you
have eaten it.
23 The Mind Box
Before you eat anything, imagine it is an hour later. Think about how
you will feel about eating the food, and think about how you will feel about
eating the quantity of food you will be eating.
The Meditation Training exercise on CD-2 will program and set this
concept so that you will have control over your weight. Play it as often as you
think necessary.
There are many definitions for addictions and habits, possibly the
simplest and easiest to understand is that an addiction is something you are
dependent upon, have a great interest in and devote a lot of time to. A habit is
something you do over and over again often without realizing it. You can be
addicted to a thing, a drug, a person, a philosophy, or any other thing that you
depend on. Let’s see if we can develop a technique that will help in your
problem with a particular person, thing, or substance.
Dependence to an addiction simply means that you have a great need
for it. In other words there is a good relationship between you and the thing
you are addicted to. With respect to a habit, the dependence is much weaker
as there is not as great a need to do the thing again and again.
Over the years, I have been involved with many different philosophies.
Just a few as example are, yoga, hypnosis, huna, kabala, mind control, NLP,
eye movement therapy, psychic healing, Pavlov, Hermetic philosophy, Feng
Shui, parallel universes, and a dozen or so other concepts. Most of which I
have been teaching others over the past decades.
I have often been asked if there were not something in all that to help
a person with an addiction to overcome that thing they were so dependent
upon. The problem is that like all things there are varying degrees. Some
people have addictive personalities and a single exposure to something that
comforts them, hooks them so that they cannot escape. Other people exposed
to the same thing can rid themselves of it with a shrug of the shoulders. No
single thing seems to work for everyone.
Most addictions and habits are started by a stimulus of some sort. It
could be a stimulus coming from the outside, as example a picture of a slice
of apple pie seen by a person addicted to food, or it could be the craving of the
body for a particular experience or drug. Stimulus surrounds us constantly.
24 Burt Goldman
Some are affected by it some are not. For those affected by stimulus, a thought
is created. Something in the imagination builds until an energy is formed.
This energy allows the individual to take an action. The acronym for this set
of syndrome is STEA. Stimulus, Thought, Energy, Action. Stimulus cannot
be controlled, it is everywhere. The energy build up to facilitate the action is
also difficult to control as this is the true cause of the addiction. What is left is
thought. And therein lies the solution, also, the problem. When you can control
thought, you control the energy and the action.
The mind cannot hold on to two thoughts at the same time. Whenever
stimulus triggers a thought, the trick is to change the polarity, or to put it in
another manner, allow the stimulus to let you think of the opposite of the
problem thought. The one technique that we will be using over and over again
is the Bagha, the touching of the tip of the tongue to the roof of your mouth.
In many cases this tells the mind, get ready, we are going to do something. In
this case, the ‘doing something’, is changing the energy of the thought for a
different action.
As example, I used to be a smoker. About a pack and a half a day. To
my mind it was a nasty addiction that I wanted to rid myself of. There were
many stimuli. When I was stressful, I reached for a cigarette. When I finished
a meal, I reached for a cigarette. When I had a cup of coffee, I reached for a
cigarette. When I had nothing to do, I reached for a cigarette. When I sat
down to rest, I reached for a cigarette. It seemed that anything I did caused me
to reach for a cigarette. I decided to quit. Thinking of all the methods I chose
a technique that I used to get people to stop drinking.
What I did was to think of the cigarette as a snake. I used the Bagha,
went into a deep meditation and imagined packs of cigarettes as packs of
small snakes. I saw myself pulling out a cigarette and lighting it and when I
inhaled, a snake rode the smoke into my lungs. I did that for about twenty
minutes setting the metaphor in my mind. Now the thought that was created
by the stimulus was not of a cigarette with soothing smoke going into my
lungs, but a snake riding the smoke into my lungs. I quit then and there and
have not smoked since.
I recall Vince Silveri, a person who had tried everything for his
alcoholic problem but nothing seemed to work. He asked me how to change
the stimulus as when he wanted a drink it became the most important thing in
his life. He couldn’t help himself, how could he change the energy of his
thoughts, how could he think about something else?
First thing we had to turn the problem, alcohol, into something else.
25 The Mind Box
2. Whenever you have any desire whatever for the habit or addition,
touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue and shout: STOP!
Metaphors are helpful in that they allow you to conceptualize without the
stimulation of the actual difficulty. In this case I used a gorilla. Vince said he
liked the effect that drinking had on him and he realized that it was bad for
him but all that was ‘some day’, a day far in the future. Addictions are now
things, actually all addicts are immature in that they need instant gratification.
We had to turn the addiction into something he could imagine, something that
was happening now, something that would turn his thoughts in another
direction. Here is what I told him.
Hidden within alcohol is a different kind of entity. Vince, what you
do not see is that there is a twelve hundred pound gorilla. This gorilla has the
ability to smile and confuse you all the while he waits until you are lulled into
a state where he can pounce and tear you apart. This gorilla has the ability to
make himself so small, so seemingly insignificant, that he can fit into a one
ounce glass. But make no mistake, once the alcohol in that one ounce glass
gets into your body the gorilla grows. He needs sustenance and so he demands
that you feed him. That’s why you always want more. It’s not you that wants
it, but the gorilla and he insists you bring him more, he demands another
ounce of alcohol, and then another. Alcohol is what he lives on; inside your
body. You are powerless when confronted by this gorilla.
Every time you drink, even to touch your tongue to any form of alcohol,
the gorilla is invited in. You cannot avoid it. Touch alcohol to your tongue and
the gorilla leaps into your body, and that’s the only way he can get there. You
have absolutely no ability to get him to leave. And when he has settled into
your body, he needs more alcohol to sustain him. When you drink alcohol, to
any degree, the gorilla takes over. You give him the power to command you.
You do things the gorilla wants to do, not you. But without the power to
countermand his needs, you are forced to follow along with his.
You are powerless before this twelve hundred pound gorilla. The only
26 Burt Goldman
way to regain your own power is to realize he is too strong for you. Your
power is in building a defense against him; that defense is easy, you know
that the only way, the only way he can enter your body is through alcohol,
that is his channel to you. And once his great power overcomes you, you
become his obedient slave. If you are willing to be a slave then so be it, but if
you realize that he is just too much for you then the answer is easy. You must
be willing to take the power back. And the way to do that is to simply not take
another drink of any type of alcohol.
Why let a gorilla to manage your life? You can do a much better job
without him. Start today, right now, make a decision. Never again allow that
gorilla inside your body.
Before you can overcome a problem, you must admit a problem exists.
The metaphorical gorilla is managing your life and you were unable to manage
it. At this time, admit that you are powerless against the alcohol and what it
introduces into your life.
Think of one way, just one for now, one way that you are powerless
over alcohol. Think of one way you were powerless over alcohol during the
past year.
Consider how your life is unmanageable. Consider how alcohol has
made your life unmanageable. And most of all: Think about how your life
will be if it were manageable.
Take the power away from the gorilla and the rest of your life will be
the best of your life.
Use the metaphor technique. This technique will often work when all
else has failed. However we do recognize that no technique will work for
everyone. I like to call this technique a band aid. Not everyone needs brain
surgery; most just need some sort of a process to help them along. Try it, if it
works for you wonderful, if it doesn’t, well you’re no worse off than before.
But it may well work. Do it. And ask yourself this question. ‘What would my
life be like if I did not have this habit, or addiction?’
27 The Mind Box
CHAPTER THREE
equal to everyone else on this earth. You are a human being and therefore
equal to every other human being on earth. You have unique qualities that
make you different. They have their unique qualities that make them different.
No human being is better than you are. They are only different from you.
Imagine yourself at a gathering of people. A social gathering. There
are all kinds of people at this social gathering. There’s a prince, a president,
a famous actor, a singer, a musician. There’s a doctor, an architect. There’s a
judge and a clerk, a secretary, a ditch digger, a plumber, a sanitation worker,
a farmer, an unemployed carpenter and many others.
You and they are all human beings. You and they are all equal as
human beings. You’re not better than or worse than the prince or the judge.
You are not better than or worse than the farmer or the ditch digger. They are
human. You are human. You are all equal. Every one of these people can do
things that you cannot do. You can do things that they cannot do. You’re all
different. Think of the things that you can do that the prince cannot do. Think
of the things that you can do that the judge cannot do. Think of the things that
you can do that the coal miner cannot do. Think of the things the coal miner
can do that you cannot do. These things do not make the coal miner lesser
than or better than any other person at this social gathering. You are all unique
and have your own quality. You are unique and have your own quality. Your
mind is unique and has its quality. You are equal to every other person on this
earth.
During the meditation exercise on CD-3 you will imagine this
gathering of people with different professions and occupations. Mix and
speak with them mentally. You are all equal. Tell them about the things that
you do. What you do. The things that you do that they cannot do. Speak
about the positive nature of what you do. Mix with this group. Imagine that
you are there.
Whenever you think of your occupation, what you do, think of the
positive aspects of what you do. Everything that everyone does in some way
adds to the whole and is a contribution. Think of the ways that you contribute.
Think of the things that you do that help humanity. Even a leaf that falls to
nourish the earth below makes a contribution. You make a contribution. Let
every man be as a brother. Every woman a sister. If you are not willing to go
that far, see them as cousins.
When you view all people as either sons or daughters, fathers or
mothers, and brothers or sisters, your view of the world changes and you can
truly love your neighbor. You can truly see the positive aspects of your
29 The Mind Box
neighbor. They are no better than you. You are no better than them. All are
equal. All are different. Accept people for what they are. They are they. You
are you. Sense the positive nature of everyone and the world will be a better
brighter place for you for everyone has a positive nature. When you are
involved with a negative individual, remember that they are negative because
they feel an inequity in life. They do not feel equal. You know better. You
know that all are equal. You know that things are different, but equal in that
we are all human beings.
But is that all there is to it? Just changing an attitude? Let’s see. Your
attitude is a way of thinking, the way that you think. Everything in life revolves
around your attitude, when you change your attitude; you change you. Now
the question becomes, do you want to change yourself? The answer to that
would have to be yes, for why else would you be listening to a CD about
raising your self esteem. It could be curiosity, I would agree, but even so,
there’s a glimmering in all of us for change. Positive change, good change, a
change that we’re satisfied with. The kind of a change that, when you looked
back on it with a decade from now perspective, you would nod your head and
be happy that you took that road. The problem with all the positives that go
with change is a polarity that exists. What if the change turns out to be wrong,
what if it’s a negative change, a change for the worse?
And that thought my friends is why change is such an ordeal. Does
the word ordeal sound too harsh? A great contemporary philosopher, Eric
Hoffer, wrote an entire book about, ‘The Ordeal of Change.’ It is difficult to
change. Change represents the unknown; and the unknown is fearful. When
you deal with change, you also deal with fear. How much fear? Now we’re
back to our old friend Attitude. The degree of fear is dependant upon your
attitude. Ask the right question and you may get a helpful answer and the
question is not how can I boost my self esteem and confidence, that will come
about automatically when you tackle change, and to do that you have to have
the right attitude. Now we come into the right question: How can I change my
attitude?
Aha. That is what the meditation exercises are all about; attitude
change. When you reach the medative state and visualize the equality of all
people you are setting a pattern. It is believed by many in the scientific
community that the brain cannot differentiate between the real and the
imagined. When the imagined is under your control, you can manipulate your
thinking, and therefore your attitude.
Kathy Pembrook is an executive in a large industrial company. She
sits on the board of directors and was a student in a class I was doing on Self
30 Burt Goldman
Esteem and confidence. She agreed with everything she heard but still had a
problem. Kathy told us that during board meetings she would sit quietly and
even though she felt she was bright enough, and had creative ideas, she never
spoke up, just sat and listened without contributing anything to the discussions.
I asked her why and she said that everyone at the table was a giant and she felt
intimidated. She agreed that all the directors were indeed human beings as
were all the rest of the workers in the plant but still, the board meetings scared
her, ‘How,’ she asked, ‘can I change my attitude. It’s easy for you to say, but
is there any kind of a technique I can use?’
Yes there was. A simple, almost childish technique, but one that
worked very well. I call the method the ‘Polarity Switch.’ Here’s what I told
Kathy to do the next time she attended a board meeting. “Kathy, You see
yourself as a little mouse when you’re with the board. You said yourself that
they are all giants, so what does that make you?”
After a moment, she smile, and nodded sheepishly, “A mouse?”
“Exactly. Here is what you do. Get to the meeting a few minutes
early. Use the Bagha and as you meditate, visualize yourself as a giant. Create
a mental image of the other executives of the board as small, diminished in
size. Make them all tiny beings while you are the giant.”
Kathy later reported it worked so well she is using the Polarity Switch
for many other things in her life.
That basically was it. The Polarity Switch is simple reversing the
roles that you have accepted that cause a loss of confidence. Do recall that the
brain does not differentiate between the real and the imagined. When someone
is intimidating you it is because you have accepted their dominance. When
you sense yourself as the dominating figure, even within your own mind,
your attitude changes and you are better equipped to deal with the person
and/or situation.
Here’s the way to use the Polarity Switch for other things in your life.
Say that there is a person who bothers you when you think about him, or her,
and it is having an effect on your self esteem. Think about the person, get a
good image of that person, then using the Bagha, with your tongue touching
the roof of your mouth, imagine the person first on the right side of you, and
then the left side. Switch the person back and forth rapidly; this mixes up the
person in your brain. Stop. Think of something that makes you feel good.
Now back to the person who makes you feel bad. Mentally say, ‘switch’ and
change the image to the thing that makes you feel good. That’s it.
31 The Mind Box
2. Stop. Think about something that makes you feel good, say the
word ‘switch’, and change the image to the thing that makes you feel
good.
3. Move the image that makes you feel good back and forth, slowly.
The next day he figured out a way to spread the padding faster and cut another
30 minutes from his time. He started to move faster. He had a goal every day.
He would cut the time down even more. A month went by and Bobby was
practically flying through the apartment, one eye on his timer. Faster and
faster he became until one day he discovered that he had just broken all the
company records for Barrington. He completed an apartment in just 4 ½ hours.
Beverly Sanders dreaded Saturdays. That was the day she did all her
house work and she hated housework with a passion. She was unwilling to
hire a housekeeper and kept a tidy house but the chores were overwhelming.
She became depressed and moody. The weekend was supposed to be a restful
period, instead it became something she grew more and more anxious about.
After listening to and reading about our self competition techniques she decided
to try it herself. Her normal routine was to change the bed linens, do the
weeks washing, vacuum the floors, tidy up the kitchen, and shop for the weeks
groceries.
She hated the work so much that she procrastinated through every
chore. She often found herself still doing housework at six in the evening
when she should have been relaxing with a good book, or going out with a
friend.
But Saturday, March 1, she had a goal. She would set her base line.
She went about her work as she usually did but there was no procrastinating
this time. She needed to know what her base line was. She started the house
work at nine in the morning and was finished at four. Seven hours with a
thirty minute lunch break. That was her base line.
She looked forward to the coming Saturday for the first time in years.
Finally Saturday March 8, came along. She had breakfast and watched the
news until 9:00 am. She started in the kitchen and worked her way through
the house finishing everything by three o’clock. Six hours with a thirty minute
lunch break. Wow.
The week seemed to drag as she waited for the next Saturday, finally
it came around. She couldn’t wait for nine o’clock and started her chores at
eight. Now she was flying through the house. Her entire attitude had changed.
She whistled, and sang, and even danced as she whipped through the day. No
lunch break needed that day as she finished all the work at twelve o’clock on
the dot. Double wow. Four hours.
Beverly’s attitude towards her Saturday housework changed
33 The Mind Box
2. Do the thing normally and note how well you do it and how much
time it takes to do it. That is your base line.
3. The next time you do the thing look to improve how well you do it,
or the time it takes to do it. A slight change in improvement or time is
sufficient, that becomes your new base line. Do it again, etc.
completely, not only was she finished by noon but she actually looked forward
to it. She kept the competition going finally settling on three hours and fifteen
minutes. That was the best she could do but the spark was still there. At eight
o’clock exactly, she would start flying through her chores now seeking to
break her record by a minute or two, but the goal was always there. She had
taken self competition to the edge, and she won. She began to use the concept
in many other areas of her life.
SELF COMPETITION. 1. Set up a base line. When you do just do
the job as you normally do, neither slowing down, or speeding up. 2. The next
time you do the job you have a goal to beat the time of your base line. 3.
Continue to do the job with the idea of bettering your time each time you do
the thing.
Lori Johnson was a real estate broker in Glen Rock, New Jersey. She
attended a class I did in nearby Ridgewood. Her problem was that she couldn’t
stand rejection. It turned out that for ever twenty calls she made, nineteen of
them didn’t buy. Nineteen rejections for every one she sold. It was getting so
she was anxious about every call. She began to prejudge every person she
called on thinking ‘they’re not going to like the house, or the price, or the
neighbors, or the neighborhood, or anything else of a negative nature that
would pop into her mind. Her closure rate went down and she went through a
period where she called on forty two people before one of them bought. Her
boss sent her to a seminar I was holding at the Holiday Inn. She asked how
she could change her attitude towards her job when she could count on virtually
every client rejecting her offers?
I asked, “How many people do you call on before you make a sale.”
“Well lately it’s all of them. My self esteem is in the pits. I haven’t
34 Burt Goldman
Use the techniques and if any of them are questionable to you please do
it again. If it doesn’t work the first time it does not mean it doesn’t
work, it only means it didn’t work that time.
made a sale for two months. Before I went into this slump it was about twenty.
I don’t know how I can compete with myself. I can’t work any faster or
smarter.”
“No you can’t,” I replied, “but you can change your attitude. Let me
show you how to do that. You say you make about ten thousand dollars every
time you sell a house and you call on twenty people average before you sell
one. How about if I show you a way that you can make yourself five hundred
dollars on every person you call on, whether they buy or not?”
Lori looked at me with a grimace on a screwed up face and wise
cracked, “Yes and next you’ll be telling me how to make caviar out of chicken
eggs.”
“No, I mean it. I will show you how to make five hundred dollars on
every single call you make. Even if they show you the door after five minutes.”
She shrugged and said, “All right, I’ll bite. Show me.”
“Well Lori, I don’t have to show you, you already told me. Just listen
for a moment. You call on twenty people and you make ten thousand dollars.
Now you can’t just call on the one who will buy as you don’t know that yet.
But as long as your average of twenty calls to one sale will hold up; and
apparently it will, then you will be making your five hundred on every sale.
You’re just looking at it the wrong way. Look at it this way. Twenty people
called on means ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand divided by twenty, is five
hundred, therefore you are making five hundred dollars on every sale, whether
they buy, or not. You just have to adopt a different attitude.”
Lori Johnson was quiet for a few moments. You could almost see the
gears meshing in her head as she thought about it. Finally the light went on.
35 The Mind Box
She smiled, and then laughed. She immediately saw the logic in what I had
told her. Her attitude changed right there and then.
I heard from Lori a few months later and she said she was a new
person. It was all in the way of looking at it, which of course, most things are.
She had a complete attitude change and looks forward to making calls now.
After all, why not. Every time she makes a call, whether she spends five
minutes or five hours with her client, she makes five hundred dollars.Often
with a simple change in the way you look at things you can control your
attitude, and when you control attitude, you also are in charge of your self
esteem.
How many areas of your life can you change with a simple change of
attitude, or self competition? Think about it. You may surprise yourself.
36 Burt Goldman
CHAPTER FOUR
How can I win and keep friends? This seems to be the question of
this training but if you would ask that you would be asking the wrong question.
Some people are just normally charismatic. Friends surround them and they
always seem to have more than most others. Then there are those who seem
to become invisible when with other people. Is it due to their behavior, the
way they speak, body language, or something other than that?
Three synonyms for charisma are charm, appeal, and magnetism. All
components of personality. Allow me to address these issues. Charm and appeal
could come from the way that a person looks, that is the first observation. A
beautiful woman or a handsome man does initiate an initial reaction of interest
at first glance. Many people are overwhelmed when confronted by great
beauty. Many societies of the world encourage this with advertising, movies,
magazine covers, and contests to stimulate interest and persuade the general
public to associate beauty with whatever it is that they are offering. The general
public however is never offered a chance to view or communicate with the
real person. The image one sees on a screen, or a magazine, is just a shadow
of reality.
Shadows however, have no substance, and following one initiates no
reward. The shadow only appears when there is illumination, the brightness
of celebrity or personality. Remove the light, and view the person in the dimness
of reality and you find the real, not the imagined.
And so, once again, we come to the right question. How do I
illuminate my image? With an illuminated image the shadow appears, and the
shadow can be anything you wish it to be. It is under your control. Move an
arm, the shadow follows suit. It has no will of its own. You are fully in
37 The Mind Box
Where is your problem? Where is the dilemma? It was a tale, only that; it
signified nothing. The power was always, and only, within you.
Me? I’ll leave for awhile, but I’ll be back. Paint box, brush, and all.
How do you reach me? Easily. Just close your eyes, imagine I’m there, and I
will be. Who am I? But don’t you know? Come with me, over here. This way.
Ah there it is. Look, you can see me right there. Yes, that’s right,
directly ahead; over there; in the mirror.
Point being that everyone wears a mask. That story came out of an
old friend of mine from my Yoga days. Those who understand the story can
control the facade. Actors, politicians, salespeople, and successful people all
recognize this. They control the public image they project, and the impression
they make. How can you utilize this aspect of life to gain friends and influence
people? Well I don’t expect you to draw on your face like a clown, not
physically, although it is a good metaphoric example.
When I was undergoing yoga training in 1949 one of my instructors,
Layton Shaw, was showing me a few techniques that reminded me of the
Kahuna methods I had learned in Hawaii two years before. I mentioned this
to him and he said that it was all interconnected and when I understood the
metaphoric value of things it wouldn’t matter what I called the process. This
was brought forcefully to me many years later when I was mastering the art of
Feng Shui.
I asked if Brother Shaw could teach me to heal. I still recall clearly
his next move. Placing his hand on my forehead he told me to close my eyes.
I did so and he said, “What do you see?”
I clearly imagined a cap on my head. It was a Beanie cap with a small
propeller on top. A few days prior to this I had called Stan Freberg, an
acquaintance who I hoped would help me in getting a children’s show I was
producing ‘The Chocolate Choo Choo,’ on KGFJ a local radio station in
Hollywood. Stan was one of the voices of Beany on the Time for Beany show.
I figured that was where the image of the cap on my head came from. I laughed
when I told Brother Shaw what I visualized but he was quite serious. “That is
not a Beanie hat; it is a symbol of your healing power.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Whenever you have a desire to heal anyone, mentally put on your
Beanie cap, twirl the propeller, and hold your hands over the afflicted area.”
39 The Mind Box
“It’s about time you figured some of these things out for yourself.
But I will tell you as long as you asked. Before I became a dedicated disciple
here at SRF I worked in a circus.”
I had no idea of Layton Shaw’s life prior to meeting him at the Lake
Shrine. It seemed of no consequence. But a circus? That puzzled and amused
me at the same time. Especially when he told me that he had been a clown. He
was known as the clown with two faces. He was sad, and he was happy. He
much preferred being Happy the Clown. Now that was too much of a
coincidence. The Chocolate Choo Choo featured as characters, Aunt Laurie,
played by my partner Laurie Rogers, Cracky the Parrot, Gung the Frog, and
Happy the Clown, all played by me. I was also the voice of the Choo Choo.
Remember please I was twenty at the time. When Layton told me he was a
real clown, and he was Happy the Clown, it seemed as though the universe
was trying to tell me something. What that was I had no idea.
“I noticed,” Layton continued, “that when I had on my sad face, with
the corners of my mouth turned down, people responded with sympathy as
well as laughter, but when I had my happy face on, with the corners of my
mouth turned up, people responded to me in a totally different manner. I really
liked the happy face response. At that time the most famous clown in the
world was Emmett Kelly whose trademark was a sad face, a very sad face.
Actually I copied him. He was my hero. Then one day when I painted on a
happy face a child came up to me and held out his arms for a hug. No one had
ever done that with my sad face. Suddenly I had leap of understanding. It was
as though I had been touched by an angel instead of a child. I decided never to
be sad again. One thing led to another and I wound up an acolyte following
Swami Yogananda. I never looked back.
“The secret to friendship, my friend, is simple. Be friendly. But how
does one be friendly? First of all by feeling at one with oneself. That we do
with meditation. When we meditate we are truly one. One with ourselves, and
one with our spiritual natures. Then to be friendly with others it remains only
to dispense with our own egos, our opinions of ourselves and of others and
discover the interests of the person we wish to befriend. And it is as simple as
that.
“Boring, uninteresting people are that because they are uninterested
in anyone outside of themselves and their self interests. Be interested. Discover
what other people are interested in and join those interests if they are not in
total conflict with your own. After all you would not want to be friends with
a person of a murderous nature. Be friends with people who would share
some of your own interests. You cannot befriend all, there is too much variety.
41 The Mind Box
But keep in mind that all are seeking friendship. No single person is more that
the whole. A grain of sand on a beach is unique it is true, but still it is part of
the whole. But the grain of sand is not a pebble or a bush. Its nature is the
beach, not the forest or the mountains.
“Seek your own kind and you will have more friends than can be
imagined.”
I asked my friend how to locate my own kind.
“Let us say that you are meeting a person for the first time. Use the
Bagha and inwardly paint a smile on your lips. Call this the Clown Technique.
A clown can become anyone in an instant. All you need is an imaginary
paintbrush and a bit of mental paint. Meeting a person you want to be friends
with, mentally paint you face the way you wish to be; happy, friendly, helpful,
likeable, whatever you wish to project. Your mental magnetism will manifest
on the physical level and the person you wish to befriend will feel drawn to
you. Try it. You will find it works very well.”
One time I had occasion to use the technique that stands out in my
mind was with a good friend of mine, Hal Litberg. Hal was an encyclopedia
salesman. I accompanied him on one of his calls after talking to him about a
seminar I was presenting. He met this man at his place of business. We were
outside by a loading dock. The man was giving orders to his workmen. He
looked at Hal and told him he didn’t have the time to talk to him to come back
another day. Hal looked at me and shrugged.
I touched the roof of my mouth with my tongue and imagined a wide
grin on my face. I imagined my eyes sparkling like the stars. I imagined the
man smiling at me. Actually I just stood there in front of the loading dock
looking in another direction. But I was sending out positive forces, magnetic
forces. The man came back to the dock and said to Hal, “You still here?”
He looked at me and jumped down from the dock, put his arm around
42 Burt Goldman
my shoulders and walked with me to his office a short distance away. I asked
him how he got into that business and he soon was treating me like a long lost
son. Finally he turned to Hal and asked him the price of his encyclopedias.
Later, Hal asked me what had happened, I told him and invited him to one of
my classes, which he attended with his son Larry. But that is an entirely
different story.
The meditation exercise on the following track will help you to attain
the level and quality of friends you wish to have.
1. Set the Bagha whenever you feel listless, tired or down, and act as if
you are a person who has energy; its simple, easy, and effective.
2. When you act as if you are the person you choose, you set up a
mental image that stimulates the cells in your body, when you are
through acting as if, just act as if you were back to your old self again.
This allows you better control over your attitude and actions.
that pundits have dreamed up. After all there have been many books written
on the subject. Indeed one of the best selling books of all time was HOW TO
WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE by Dale Carnegie. Since his
modest work there have been hundreds of others writing along the same lines.
Many seminars have been held world wide, generally by people who have a
great many friends and who have no idea whatever why they do.
I am about to reveal to you a great secret, the secret of winning friends
and influencing others.
I discovered this secret of friendships during the days I taught
hypnotists the art of hypno therapy. Under hypnosis people could be anything
I asked them to be, so long as it was not in conflict with their beliefs. I found
I could turn a person into the Queen of France, and that was a process I used
in virtually every seminar on hypnosis that I taught. I could also turn a person
into a homeless recluse, and in a few seconds. But then again, any competent
hypnotist could do the same thing. All that hypnosis is, is getting a person to
act as if they are the person the hypnotic operator is instructing them to be.
Under hypnosis you can be anything. It is simply a matter of suggesting to the
person, who is wholly concentrative on the suggestion, to act as if they are the
person suggested.
And that is the secret of winning friends. Simply act as if you are the
person’s friend. And it will be so. This is the Act as If Technique. Now why
should a hundred books be written about anything so simple? Well you may
well ask why should so many tens of thousands of books be written about
losing weight when everyone knows the answer is to simply eat less. Because
people are asking the wrong question again. How do I lose weight? Wrong
question. How do I eat less? That is the right question. Ask the right question
44 Burt Goldman
CHAPTER FIVE
Grief is the normal and natural reaction to something gone from one’s
life; mental suffering over real, or perceived loss. This would include loss of
money, health, a relationship, or a person in one’s life. Money can be regained,
health can be restored, and severed relationships can be brought back, but
when a person dies, there is no regaining, no restoration and no coming back.
Let’s examine one of the basic reasons some people feel a profound sense of
that loss while others accept it, cry a bit, and then get on with their lives. To
understand the attitudes of different people with regard to grief it is necessary
to be aware of the complex of sin-guilt-punishment.
There are many marks, or goals, or ways to do things that are set by
authority figures in our lives. Many shall and shall not’s have been pounded
into you from the time of infancy to your full maturity. Each of these
commands, (set first by the parent, then by institutions, both religious and
educational, then by professors, friends, the media, books, governments, peers,
and employers,) when accepted by the individual becomes a mark, a goal, to
do, or not to do.
Generally, these things you are told to do, or not to do, are set to help
you. Some are logical, (don’t play with fire it will burn you) and some are
illogical, (don’t eat meat on Friday) but all of them, ostensibly are set to help
you, (the faction setting it up believes.) When you miss the mark, when you
do the thing you feel you shouldn’t have done, or when you do not do the
46 Burt Goldman
thing you feel you should have done, a feeling of having done something
wrong comes about. The depth of the feeling is dependent upon the degree of
the sense you have about the event. There are people who feel more remorse
over the killing of a rabbit then they would over that of a human being.
When you miss the mark, nature has implanted within us an emotion
to succeed that we call guilt. Guilt is simply a compulsion to repeat the act
correctly and thereby alleviate the feeling of having done something wrong.
Undo the wrong and you feel better about the thing. However there are many
things that cannot be undone, what of them?
When the implied wrong is not made right, the third member of the
trio comes into play, punishment, and that is the segment that wreaks havoc in
so many lives. Punishment generally comes in the form of limitations—I only
deserve so much. I only deserve so much in the way of relationships, of friends,
of income, of health, of freedom, of good things, and on and on. Limitations
prevent us from utilizing the natural talents we have when those feelings of
self sabotage are instigated by a sense of having done something wrong, and
not correcting it. The limiting factors invariably come about after a loss of
some kind. (More on this concept in CD #-8.)
You may well ask if it works? I’ve been doing it for more than twenty
years, with hundreds of grief stricken people, and with hundreds of successes.
Our method is not only for recovery from grief but a myriad of other
things as well however here I will address only the relief of grief. Here are
specific instructions for you to diminish the grief you feel, perhaps even
eliminate it entirely. The way is simpler than you might imagine. It requires
you to take a journey; an interior journey, a journey of the imagination, a
journey of fantasy. But as grief resides in the imagination, you will find the
solution there as well. I call this the Converse in Spirit Technique.
This requires a short trip to the spiritual dimension via that great
imagination of yours. The road is one that has always been there but perhaps
hidden from view. Fling aside the curtain and there you will find the answer.
2. Sense the person you wish to contact is in front of you and then have
a mental conversation with the departed.
When the picture is clear in your mind say, ‘now the spiritual
dimension’ and the image will change. You now sense the person as they are,
not as they were. At that point hold your mental conversation with the person
you had been grieving for and say the things you should have said, imagine
doing the things you should have done, ask the person’s forgiveness, and hear
the person forgiving you. Then relax and come back to the present. Whenever
you think about the person after that, imagine the person happy and satisfied
with their new life in another dimension.
Do not concern yourself with the question, “Am I really at the
Spiritual Dimension? How do I know this?” Your mind does not differentiate
between the real and the imagined. Only the logical, outer conscious you
does that. And it is important in the general working of things. Deep seated
beliefs are real for the individuals who have those beliefs in their mind. Seldom
are these beliefs taken out into the light of day to be examined by the logical
outer conscious. At the meditation state of consciousness whatever you project
on the screen of your mind is. If you think you are at the spiritual dimension,
you will be.
During the following meditation exercise of CD-5 you may well ask
yourself another question. After the completion of the Journey to the Spiritual
Dimension meditation do you feel better? If you do, then you were there. It’s
as simple as that
Overcoming Depression
There are many different types of depression. From Clinical depression
which has been considered to be a chemical imbalance in the transmitters of
the brain to a general feeling of unease, of being depressed; of “being blue”,
“feeling sad for no reason”, or “having no motivation to do anything”. Clinical
depression is generally acknowledged to be more serious than normal
49 The Mind Box
First, a story about a man who was depressed because he had just
lost his job. Now this is something that most people would simply take, look
for another job, and forget about. But not Samuel E. Burns. Samuel was furious.
He took the fact that he was let go to heart and drove home angry and vindictive.
He imagined himself doing all kinds of negative things to the manager who
let him go. Why do things always happen to him? He thought. His dinner was
tasteless and he soon had indigestion. He tossed and turned that night thinking
of the stupid person who had fired him. The next morning he could hardly get
out of bed. The next day he replayed the incident over and over until it was all
he could think of. He related the story to his friends. His family suffered and
50 Burt Goldman
by the end of the day depression set in. All he could think about was the
unfair way he was treated.
Determine to get a better job, that pays more, and concentrate on that
instead of the fact that you lost your job. Change the direction of your thinking.
Control your attitude. You will note that this is the same Re Direction technique
you learned in CD #1 on dealing with stress. Well, it is the same thing. Stress
will lead to depression. Actually they are the same thing, or rather on the
same scale, differing only by degree. Another reason for the type of stress
that leads to depression could be a feeling of helplessness; the feeling that
you are unable to prevent a thing that you are fearful is going to happen.
Whenever an event in your life causes anything that you suspect may
lead to depression, and generally speaking that event will be a stressful one,
re direct your energies by using the event to stimulate a creative change in
your attitude. You can get help, and from a technique that has worked for
countless others, for thousands of years. The method that is most effective in
achieving this is through the meditation state, along with a mantra to offset
the oncoming depression.
51 The Mind Box
1. Meditate. When you feel you are relaxed and comfortable mentally
chant auumm three times.
And here is the answer. The Contentment Mantra, still another Mind
Box technique will be one that signifies contentment to you.
And from now on use the mantra every morning and evening. You
will find the meditation state relaxing, and rewarding. Meditate while chanting
your mantra for ten minutes and after that if you wish to stay in the remarkably
restful state of meditation simply allow yourself to do so.
CHAPTER SIX
In ancient times few people could read, books were hand written and
far beyond the means of the great majority of people. Until Gutenberg invented
the printing press in 1450 only the clergy and a few members of the royal
families could read. In the 18th century most of the world was illiterate and
not until the late 1800s was it fashionable to be able to read. Millions upon
millions of people, illiterate; and yet, intelligent. How did they get all the
information that was available without books?
When people who lived during those times heard something, they
remembered it. People had memories then. A story about Plato’s incredible
memory is that he had a system. Possibly the first memory system reported
historically. Plato had built up, with his imagination, a palace of one thousand
rooms. Each room was numbered and was for a specific purpose. As example
let us say that the first five rooms were for, food, war, family, politics, and
friends. Further, let’s say that Plato’s cook required four lambs, six gallons of
wine, and a variety of vegetables for a social event he was having. Into the
food room it would go to be retrieved when needed. When something political
was being discussed he would retrieve pertinent information from the political
room. Anything pertaining to warriors or war would be in the war room. This
method was used by many people for millenniums. And it is still offered by
many memory experts today.
The concept couldn’t be simpler. When you attach the thing you want
to recall, that’s what memory is really—recall, it becomes easier to find. The
secret to a good memory is attachment. Attachment of the thing you wish to
recall at a later date to something else.
I met a person whose name was Bob Float many, many years ago. I
only met him once but as it was during a memory course I implanted his name
on my neuron memory bank by a simple visual image when we were
53 The Mind Box
introduced. As I shook his hand I created a mental image of him bobbing for
apples that were floating in a large metal tub, the attachment was so strong I
remember to this day although after the introduction I never spoke to him
again. Another fellow I met about the same year was Moss Watanabe. I saw
him on a field of moss in front of a large door. The door had a large knob. The
biggest door knob in the world; and there was a bee on top of it. What a knob.
And Moss Watanabe’s name stuck to me.
If you believe you have a poor memory, you are wrong.
No one has a poor memory. Everything you have ever seen, everything
you have ever read, everything you have ever heard, everything you have
ever tasted, smelled, touched, and experienced is there in your brain, stored,
it’s believed, electromagnetically. Stored in a manner that no one quite
understands. We do, however, know the information is there, for it can be
brought out through various methods. It can be brought out through the art of
hypnosis it can be brought out through shock, through electrical stimulation,
the use of drugs can bring back memories, or associations will bring back
past seemingly forgotten memories. The information is there.
The problem with people who believe themselves to have a poor
memory is one of recall. Of bringing the information from the deep recesses
of the brain to the present where it can be utilized in some way. It is theorized
by one school of scientific thought that the memory is stored as particles
within the cells of the brain. These particles are called neurons. There are
billions of neurons that accept information. Attaching each neuron to another
is a fabric called a synapse. For each neuron there are two or more synapses.
These synapses also hold information. When you multiply the billions of
neurons by the billions of synapses, you have what amounts to virtually a
limitless amount of information that may be stored.
Picture, if you will, although this is not quite the way it works, a
single neuron holding a single bit of information. The eyes see a couch the
sight is transferred to the brain and is impressed on one of the neurons. If the
eyes have read the word couch, then the letters c-o-u-c-h (couch) are impressed
on one neuron. The time relationship has a great deal to do with recall, for the
impression is strongest immediately after it takes place and weakens with the
passing of time (although it is always there).
Even more so than time, emotions at the time of the memory strengthen
the neurons. Think back on things that are easily recalled and you will have
had strong positive, or strong negative feelings about the thing you remember.
Information can be brought forth easily or with difficulty depending
upon the strength of the original impression. If, for example, you were to see
a couch in a store window, a week or so later you may or may not recall what
54 Burt Goldman
the couch looked like. It is impressed on one neuron. To facilitate the recall of
information you have only to impress that couch on many neurons. The more
neurons you impress with information, the easier it is to recall that information.
That basically is the concept of memory and also of creative thinking.
Here is a proof of sorts as to the installation of material on a great
many neurons. If I were to ask you to memorize this number, you would have
a hard time of if you were to do it in the manner most people memorize
things, by rote.
07200750741776130711076055651225. There are thirty two numbers
to memorize and most people have a problem memorizing a phone number
which has only seven. Here is how you impress a great number of neurons
which makes it easy to recall the information.
By turning the numbers into a story, it automatically is impressed on
adjoining neurons and synapses. Look at the number and separate it by saying,
“The year is 07, 2007, and there are 50 states in the United States. But when
the U.S. was formed, on July (the 7th month) 4 1776, there were only 13
states. There were no (0) 7-11 stores, there were no (0) 76 gas stations, there
were no (0) 55 or 65 mile per hour speed limits, and a dozen eggs cost a
quarter.
Repeat the story a few times to yourself and you have not only
memorized the thirty two digit number but you can now repeat it backwards
just as easily as you can do it forwards.
Neurons contain information. The more neurons you can impress with
information, the easier it is for you to recall that information. The method of
impressing information on neurons is twofold: (1) abstracting, taking some
information and putting it on one neuron, such as hearing a name and repeating
it over and over again, or reading a story and impressing the words on neurons
or (2) placing that information on a great many neurons through the sense of
visualization. That is done by sensing what you are seeing, what you are
hearing, what you are reading, and turning it into a visualization. That
visualization is impressed on numbers of neurons and so it becomes easy to
recall the information.
Whatever your age, whatever your schooling, utilize this method of
thinking and you will find your belief system changes as your memory
improves. Those people who believe they have a poor memory change their
thinking about memory, realizing it isn’t memory that’s at fault, it’s the method
they use to put the information into their mind. By turning information into
visualization as much as you can, by impressing more neurons, you can more
easily recall that information. And so the individual grows and so you become
55 The Mind Box
more aware.
What is required is the desire to know, the desire to want the
information. Primary in all of the things that we do in life is desire. You must
actually want the thing to be. That is a prerequisite for everything that you
attempt, everything that comes to be. Thoughts are things and do manifest
into reality. The stimulator of those thoughts, the stimulus for the energy to
begin those thoughts on their magnetic trip throughout the universe, is desire.
How strong is your desire? The stronger the desire, the more likely the success
of whatever it is you are programming for.
Now then, you might say, “But I can’t make an extra image up every
time I hear something.”
And my response would be, “Sure you can, especially if it’s a Power
Image. That’s the key; once you understand the concept of the Power Image
and start to use it, even on things in the past, your memory will improve. It
has to. That is the entire premise of Memory Power, that associations are the
strongest means to a powerful memory.
If I asked you what were you doing on April 19th 2003 you couldn’t
tell me if your life depended on it. But what if I asked what you were doing on
September 11, 2001. I bet you can tell me. And so can virtually every person
on the planet. Why? Association. And even though they never heard of the
term they were all using Power Images. The stronger the emotions during the
association the stronger the memory and the easiest to recall.
If you were to bring in an emotion while memorizing something or
simply wanting to keep the material easy to recall associate the thing you
wanted to memorize with something. Fantasy is fine. As a matter of fact, the
more ridiculous the association, the easier it will be to recall.
With that knowledge as your base, you will soon be ready to use the
concept of Plato’s Information Rooms. Create segments for various memories.
As example at present there may be a few things you want to be able to recall
at some future time. Say that there are things you want at the hardware store.
Imagine a room in your mind that says ‘hardware’ and put in there the few
things you want to purchase. Say it’s a hammer, a chisel, and a tape measure.
Think about the Hardware room in your mind and imagine putting in a hammer,
a chisel, and a tape measure. Later on you discover you are out of coffee, and
you need butter and eggs. Imagine a food room, or kitchen room, and put
coffee, butter and eggs there. Do this for a variety of things.
56 Burt Goldman
Now when you head for the hardware store you don’t have to sift
through a thousand memories to get to what you want to buy there. Just go to
your hardware room and there it is, a hammer, a chisel, and a tape measure.
Association. Remember that word and you will always have a better
than average memory.
A Power Image is seeing the thing you wish to remember in your
mind. Consciously creating a mental picture.
It was Christmas Day, 1776, and snow was gently falling in the forest
along the Delaware River. General George Washington had under his command
2200 rag tailed troops who would rather have been back on their farms than
where they were, shivering in the freezing afternoon cold. Hungry and tired,
they waited patiently for the command none of them was anxious to hear.
“Into the rowboats, men. Let’s cross the river and attack.”
On the other side of the Delaware about a thousand kilometers away,
stood a row of cabins from which one could imagine the tantalizing smell of
succulent roast meats, drifting across, carried by the crisp air. In the cabins
were the well-fed Hessians, a German mercenary army hired by the British to
fight the revolutionary colonists. These men were the enemy and must be
conquered if the United States was to be born.
The men grudgingly walked quietly to the waiting rowboats. Some
of them had long since walked through their shoes and now had rags wrapped
around their feet, in some cases soaked with red. Those were the feet that
were cut and bleeding. Into the boats they went and then they quietly rowed
across the river, oars wrapped with cloth to muffle the sound. Occasionally
they had to push the ice aside.
Once across and undetected they quietly gathered together and under
Washington’s command attacked the Hessians, winning the day, as well as all
57 The Mind Box
the good food the Hessians had stored for their Christmas dinner.
Now close your eyes and allow me to ask you something. You answer
the question either aloud or in your mind.
Let’s take this first sentence here: It was Christmas Day, 1776, and
snow was falling in the forest along the Delaware River.
Imagine that you are in a forest. You are standing in a forest. Pretend
that you are in a forest.
There are trees all around you.
Sense it. Now its snowing, imagine you’re standing in the snow and
shivering.
It’s Christmas day. Put a big Christmas tree in the forest.”
Put a star on top of it.
There’s snow falling. Feel the snow. \
76 is the name of gasoline stations in the U.S. There are 76 gas stations
all around. Picture 17 of them. There are 17 76 gas stations.
The name of the river is the Delaware. Think about Del the bellman
at the Washington hotel. They call him Del the Bell. And Del always wears a
strange uniform. He is aware of this but wears it anyway. Delaware is the
name of the river. George Washington stands straight as a pine tree. He is
standing up in one of the rowboats. He wears a three sided hat. There are a lot
of rowboats. They sing a song. Row, row, row, your boat across the Delaware.
There are 2200 men in George Washington’s army. See an owl with
huge round eyes like two zeros. The owl has a 22 on top of his head.
The name of the enemy soldiers is the Hessians. They are the enemy
so hiss. Turn the hiss into the word Hessian.
58 Burt Goldman
How many planets are there, you probably know there are 9 accepted
planets. Can you say what they are in the order they are in from the sun?
The names of the 9 planets in the order from the sun are, Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
During one of the children’s class I used to do I would promise the
parents that their child would learn the names of the planets and the order in
which they were in less than 3 minutes. And that they would remember it for
all the rest of their lives. I do not recall even one child not being able to do it,
after 3 minutes.
All I would do is to get their attention. Remember, memory is based
on attention and awareness. I got their attention by telling them a simple
story. This created the associations so they would remember. This is the story.
59 The Mind Box
There is a magic garden where the sun shines every day. It gets awfully
hot and so there is a big thermometer filled with mercury. The sun heats the
mercury which rises so you can tell how hot it is. Next to the thermometer
filled with mercury is a statue of Venus. The famous statue with the broken
off arms. Venus is very warm with the sun beating on her as she stand next to
the thermometer filled with mercury and so she kicks the globe at her feet, it’s
a globe of the earth. There are 4 little green men on the globe that Venus
kicked, they fall off and get scared. They run to hide in a large Juniper tree in
the middle of the garden. On top of the Juniper tree is a Satin sheet, a large
satin sheet. It had rained the day before and the Satin sheet is still wet, water
pours off it like rain. The rain falls on Neptune, the god of the sea, he doesn’t
like it, and so Neptune sees a dog, its Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto. And Pluto
runs off into the distance yelping his anger.
First planet, Mercury, second, Venus, who kicks the globe of the third
planet Earth, 4 green men from Mars fall off the fourth planet Mars, and run
to the 5th planet Jupiter, represented by the Juniper tree. On top of the tree is
the sixth planet Saturn represented by the satin sheet, the seventh planet Uranus
represented by the rain water falling on Neptune, the eight planet, who kicks
the dog who represents the ninth planet Pluto.
Now think about the 9 planets. What is the first planet? The second,
the third. Now go backwards. What is the ninth planet? The eighth? See how
easy it is. Now go through all 9 planets in your mind, starting with the first
planet Mercury. Pay attention, be aware, and memory improves.
60 Burt Goldman
CHAPTER SEVEN
be more creative,” you open a great many doors that have been blocked by
the weight of hate.
Soon you begin looking forward to your works knowing that each
day will bring new concepts for you, new abilities, and new manners in which
to become creative. You have opened the door. The key to opening that door
is, of course, love.
Love is a positive viewpoint.
Relationships are based on needs. The stronger the need that is filled,
the more intense the relationship. When a person has a strong need and that
need is filled, you have a good relationship, when a strong need is not filled,
the relationship has problems. Everyone has needs, the problem is most people
do not know of their own needs much less someone else’s. The best way to
discover a partner’s needs is through communication. But allow me to speak
of the energy of a relationship.
Every person, well every living thing but we are only concerned here
with people, every person has a field of energy surrounding them. It is
sometimes called the energy field, the aura, prana, the halo, the glow, and
many other descriptions depending on the language of the country defining
the words. I will call it what I believe it is, your energy field. These fields
vibrate at an infinity of frequencies and just as though there are no identical
fingerprints so there are no identical energy field vibrations.
Picture a sound, a perfect sound that a violin is making. The vibrations
of that violin go out into the air and meet with a tiny bone in your ear that
vibrates in unison with the sound from the violin. Your brain interprets that
vibration and converts it so that you hear the beautiful music. There was a
meshing of energies. That is on the physical scale——to some degree the
same thing happens on the mental scale. Just as everyone’s body sends out
this energy so does the mind. That old axiom, as above so below, as below so
above, comes into play. As it is on the physical, with regard to energies, so it
is on the mental. Waves of anything are energy.
A radio wave is energy flowing through the air, or a wire. TV sends
out waves of energy. We know the brain sends out waves of energy as brain
waves are measurable. The mind as well sends out an energy field. A mental
aura. This field goes out and away from the body weakening with distance.
There are many people; more than you would imagine, who believe the field
65 The Mind Box
continues all around the earth. This field touches every other field, but it is
especially strong from the person to a distance of 18 feet, after which the field
begins to weaken. However when the energy fields are identical, distance
doesn’t matter. One of my acquaintances, Edgar Mitchell, 6th man to walk on
the moon sent mental messages to earth from the moon. More on that on the
CD # 18, Connecting to your Psychic Self.
When you are thinking of another person and the phone rings and
there he or she is, that’s an example of a meshing of energy fields. For a brief
moment in time you were one with regards to the energy field. Distance is
important, but not crucial when you are both on the same wave length.
When you are close to another person you are involved with each
others energy fields. Energy fields fluctuate constantly, what controls the field
is your emotions. An emotion is any thought that has like or dislike attached
to it. When you see or think about another person that person will be somewhere
on a scale of either like or dislike, to some degree. If you like that person your
emotion might be at say 122 on the scale. (Now that’s purely arbitrary I have
no idea what degrees might be on a scale like that) but say it’s 122 for examples
sake. Another person you love; that person might be 356 on the scale. You
love that person, you’re more emotional about that person. A third person
comes onto the scene, you don’t like this person. Your scale flattens out and
goes into minus 27. If we could quantify this energy production it would
change constantly because in your home, or office, or place of business you
change constantly. There are always things about, that you like or dislike.
Look at what’s in front of you, if you look around there will be things you like
more than other things. Most things you see are simply neutral in your sight;
those are the things you don’t notice or pay attention to.
Love is a positive emotion and the more love the higher on our scale
you would be. Say that your love for the other person in the relationship is at
the 475 degree mark on the scale. So you are vibrating at 475 and that energy
is thrust out from you. No one, including you, can see it, but it’s there. Just as
you and everyone else on earth are surrounded by radio waves, so you are
surrounded by energy field waves. A radio transmitting on 1120 frequencies
would not be heard unless a receiver was tuned to 1120. 1115 won’t do it.
Neither will 1125. It has to be set to 1120.
If your energies at that moment are at 475 and you meet someone
who is also at 475 what the Sicilians would call the ‘Thunderbolt’ would
strike, there would be a perfect blending of energy fields and the result is the
highest and strongest kind of love. Hopefully you have been there; or will be
one day. People often ask me if there is a way to tell when someone is in love.
66 Burt Goldman
has changed. Use the Tapping Technique and control your likes and dislikes.
The key to a perfect relationship is to set the degree of the frequency
of the energy fields of both people to the same meshing level. The way to do
this is to have the couple create an aura of the same mental image, with the
same amount of energy going into the blending of the pair. If they’re both
thinking about the same exact thing, (pre determined) their energy fields will
mesh.
Two people sit comfortably either on the floor or on two chairs, close
to one another, but not touching. The two people go to their meditation level
at the same time (all this will be on the next track where I’ll guide you through
it) and when they are calm and peaceful, they go to a mental place of relaxation
that has been predetermined to be the same for both. Once meditating and at
the place of relaxation, each individual visualizes themselves with the other
person at that place of relaxation.
They sit quietly picturing the other person alongside, each person
thinks of the other and senses mentally, they are coming together, then merging
one entire body each into the other so that now the two are one. They dance as
an auric energy form spiraling up and moving joyously about the room like a
perfect musical note.
At this point still in the meditation zone, again through the magic of
visualization, they separate, and then they both create an image of doing
whatever the other person would enjoy.
View this particular event facing the other person, deep into the zone,
for one, five, ten, or twenty minutes. The time depends upon the people
involved, their viewpoints, how deep within this realm they wish to be. After
a strong visualization, a dynamic visualization, a power visualization, the
couple open their eyes. The one who comes back to the outer level first gently
speaks to the other person, saying, “I’m going to count from one to three.
When I reach the count of three, you will open your eyes, be wide awake and
involved with me.” Then very slowly and very gently, count one—two—
three. With both parties-just out of meditation, all energies entwined, it only
remains to allow nature to follow its natural course. The experience will be
long remembered.
Use this technique only if you wish to truly enhance your relationship.
69 The Mind Box
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emotions drive brain waves and the stronger the emotion the higher
the brain wave. In addition to that you learned that the higher the brain wave
the less you are able to think in a clear, constructive, logical manner. We will
now address the emotions themselves. But first the definition. What is an
emotion?
An emotion is any thought, that has like or dislike attached to it.
When you are neutral about a person, and event, or a thing, there is
no emotion and you have better control over the situation. Unfortunately the
human psyche practically demands we show some sort of feeling towards
everything we do. You either like it, or you dislike it, and by harboring these
feelings emotions come into play.
The true captains of their souls are those who have control over their
emotions. Or, to state it more plainly, those who control their likes and dislikes.
You learned about changing your attitude towards things you have strong
emotions about but cannot avoid. Have a strong feeling of dislike to washing
dishes? Don’t wash dishes, sparkle up the kitchen. This may seem like trading
a half dozen, for six, but it does allow you to control your emotions when you
begin to see the power residing therein.
To simply say switch your attitude may sound like an
oversimplification of the problem but often the simplest explanation is the
correct one. During the Meditation exercise in CD #9 you will be programmed
with a pair of power glasses.
70 Burt Goldman
When you put on your Power Glasses, you automatically see the
positive nature of the thing you’re doing. To put on the Power Glasses you
touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and say the words,
‘Power Glasses on’ and imagine the glasses are in place. See the next chapter
for more information on power glasses.
Metaphors, or symbols, such as the power glasses example, can help
to achieve success in controlling emotions. We use many Power Metaphors
in our trainings as they are often the key to instant success in achieving what
we want. You’ll note that our Mind Box Home Seminar Kit is loaded with
Power Metaphors. But what distinguishes a ‘power’ metaphor from a simple
metaphor.
But let me back up a bit. I wanted to show the people attending that
the shield, although a mental construction was a real thing. Emotions are also
mental and so the shield, built on the physical level by the power of the mind,
being on both levels was effective in blocking energies. Going over to Werner,
71 The Mind Box
a gentleman in the front row, I whispered in his ear so that only he could hear
me. “I want you to build a wall, a mental wall, somewhere between the front
of the room and the back of the room. Just imagine a solid wall of energy
going from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Don’t tell me where it is, but you
make note of where it is.”
He did so. I took a wire hanger and bent it into an L shape so that it
became a horizontal dowsing rod. Starting at the front of the room, my hand
wrapped around the foot of the L with the tip pointed out and away from me,
I slowly walked to the back of the room. When I reached a point about three
quarters of the way back, the wire pulled to the right. I said to Werner, “You
built the wall right here.”
He smiled and nodded. I then told the class why I had whispered in
his ear. Had I told him to build his mental wall so that everyone could hear
there would invariably be someone there who would also build a wall and
they would be all over the place.
I told the class that these mental constructions were very often real
things. They did not have enough energy to forestall anything physical, but
they were definitely strong enough to block mental energies. An emotional
charge from a person who is sending negative thoughts to you can be enough
to cause you misery. Cynthia’s husband, she reported, was doing just that.
She couldn’t sleep, her appetite was gone, and she was fearful all the time.
She just knew that her husband was at the bottom of her distress. Was it all in
her own head? No way to tell, but now she had the means to block whatever
energies were coming from her husband.
I told her to build a wall, just like the one I had built, except her wall
72 Burt Goldman
was to stave off all negative energy that was directed towards her. She asked
how is that done, and this is the technique for the Emotional Power Shield.
You mentally sense a wall, a psychic shield if you will, between you
and where you believe the person you are shielding yourself from is. If you
do not know exactly where they are then surround yourself with the shield.
Just imagine this shield surrounding your body. That’s all you have to do.
Cynthia did me one better she reported later. She wasn’t satisfied
with the shield and so she built, with her mind of course, a wall that was
mirrored on the side she believed her husband was at the time.
Cynthia reported that she had a good night’s sleep that evening for
the first time since the problem with her husband began. She smiled and said
she couldn’t say the same for her husband.
I’ve used the Power Shield many times as have many people who
have learned the technique and the reports from others who have used it are
truly astounding. After it is programmed during the Meditation exercise on
the following track you have only to touch the roof of your mouth with the tip
of your tongue and say the words, Power shield protect, and imagine the
shield between you and the person you feel is directing negative energies
towards you.
There are places as well as people who have strong energy fields.
Jails as example will always have a strong negative, disruptive field that is
disturbing even when driving or walking past. Hospitals also have a disturbing
energy due to the pain and fear of the people inside. Places of a spiritual
nature such as temples, churches and mosques have a calming positive energy
field. You can actually test this. If there is a police station in your neighborhood,
and if there is a temple or church in your neighborhood, have a friend drive
you by the both of them and have your eyes closed. You will know which one
you are passing simply by the way you feel as you are driven past the structure.
The power shield will protect you from the negative energies of places
as well as that of people.
This technique will give you power and control over the emotions of
others and the energies of places and situations. During the track following
the next meditation training track you will learn techniques for controlling
your own emotions and why it is important to do so.
How would you control your emotional state? Let’s see. When you
73 The Mind Box
are emotional you have a strong sense of either like or dislike about a thing.
So then if you are emotional you are displaying a high degree of either like or
dislike. The more like, the more emotional you will be, the more dislike, the
more emotional you will be. Knowing that we can focus in on the real culprit—
like and/or dislike. Now the question becomes, How would you control your
likes and dislikes?
Now that we are focusing on likes and dislikes you are getting closer
to control of your emotions. Let’s take a thing you like; oh say an article of
clothing. There are clothes in your closet that you like more than other things
there. Take your favorite sweater or jacket. You wouldn’t exactly say that you
are emotional about a jacket but if you like it more than other jackets in your
wardrobe you are indeed emotional about it. Anger and fear may be subjects
you associate with emotions but anything you demonstrate attachment or
detachment to also bring about an emotion. When you learn to deal with an
insignificant emotion, using the same process you can deal with a significant
one.
Say that you can’t find your favorite jacket. You’re going out and
want that one in particular; you look all over for it but you can’t find it. You
must have that jacket; you love it and have to have it. Where is it? You don’t
know. Now this is a rather insignificant thing but it does elicit an emotion.
Virtually everything you are involved with brings out an emotional response
with respect to feeling a degree or more of like or dislike.
You can be emotional about anything. During CD number 2 in this
set, Weight Power, you will find that the problems people have with food are
emotional. Some foods are enjoyed so very much that the emotions run high
and the person must satisfy the need they feel. This brings up still another
factor, emotions bring forth needs. The more intense the emotion, the stronger
the need.
An emotion can be controlled by either diminishing or enhancing the
like or dislike of the thing that is causing the emotion. Another method of
controlling an emotion is to control the need.
The missing jacket, without a need for it, becomes simply an article
of clothing that can’t be located for the moment. So you pick another one. But
if there is a strong need for that jacket, say you got it for your birthday from a
good friend and you are meeting that friend and want to wear the jacket. Then
need does indeed come into play and emotions will run high.
Needs and wants stem from attitude and so we come to the one thing
that we can control and by doing so all emotions can be directed to wherever
we wish them to be. Attitude control will automatically bring about the degree
of emotion we want to bring about.
74 Burt Goldman
Control your attitude and you control your emotions. And now we
come to it, a new way to control your attitude. I’ve found the quickest, most
effective way to control attitude is to first of all to defuse the attitude you
want to change by neutralizing it. The way to do this is with the Power Shout,
coupled with your Power Glasses. This practically guarantees an instant change
of attitude.
Let’s take a hypothetical situation, or better yet, we’ll use the missing
jacket as an example. You are looking frantically for the jacket, it’s in your
mind. You have created a mental image of it; it’s in all your thoughts. You can
be assured of this as the same mind set would come about with anything you
were that emotional about.
Focus your thoughts on the missing jacket and mentally shout as loud
as you can: Stop! That will put the thought into neutral. Then touch your
tongue to your palate and mentally say ‘Power Glasses on.” Power Glasses
are programmed in CD #9. Power glasses are programmed so that when you
mentally put them on you will see the positive aspects of all things. With your
Power Glasses on your attitude will shift and you will suddenly see a different
jacket that will suit you just as much as the missing one.
As soon as you feel the need for the new jacket, and with your Power
Glasses on, do a Power Tensing by standing straight and quickly tensing your
feet, calves, thighs and up the body to your head. Hold the tension for a few
seconds and release it. (More on tensing in the next chapter.) You will find
your attitude has changed and you no longer have a desire for the missing
jacket.
Of course the jacket is a metaphor for anything in your life that you
are emotional about.
To go through the process once again. Any time you are emotional
about something and you do not want to be emotional about the person, thing,
or event. Allow the thought to come into your mind, then shout, mentally,
with all the mental volume you can muster, STOP!
Immediately after mentally yelling stop, touch your tongue to the
roof of your mouth and say ‘Power Glasses on” and imagine the Power Glasses
on your head. With the Power Glasses on you will see the situation from its
positive aspects.
With the glasses in place tense up from feet to head and you will find
the emotions changing to where you want them to be. And that is emotion
control.
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CHAPTER NINE
SECRETS TO ACHIEVEMENT
All actions are preceded by an energy to create that action. The energy
is built up by the thought of what the energy is to be used for. Example; anger
begats fighting and so the energy of anger is strong, immediate, fierce and
temporary. Whereas the energy built by the thought of making one’s family
member feel good is of an entirely different octave. The latter energy is mild,
grows with time, is gentle and lasting.
When you continually build a fierce energy that force sifts into other
emotions and so a person angry at his boss can very well take that energy
home with him and direct it at wife and children.
The thought that creates the mental images that bring about the energy
to perform the action is in itself created - by some stimulus. The hierarchy
here is Stimulus, Thought, Energy, Action. No action can be taken without
the energy to act. No energy can be formed without an intentional thought.
And no thought is ever formed without the stimulus of some agency to fire off
whatever that stimulus has been anchored to.
I like to make difficult concepts clear and so I will clarify the subject as
best I can so that you may use the concept to better your life if you so desire.
3. A happy attitude.
4. A relaxed state of mind.
Assuming that you are aware of what constitutes ‘a healthy diet,’ we
would carry on with a short walk, eventually a brisk walk. Working up to, if
you are not comfortable walking already, an hour brisk walk, every day.
A relaxed state of mind can be easily achieved by going to a meditation
level, and working at least three goals per week, say one on Monday, one on
Wednesday, and the last on Friday. You will be amazed at how relaxed you
get when you are conceptualizing a goal. Take your time at it. Take a few
minutes to get to your meditation level and spend another couple of minutes
visualizing your goal. This will open your ESP channel and enhance a relaxed
state of mind more so than anything else you can do.
And last, and most important of all, a happy attitude. How to achieve a
happy attitude when circumstance tell you otherwise. You seldom know
whether the thing is good or bad except in retrospect.
If you are going through hard times in some aspect of your life or other
it could very well be a message that you are on the wrong road and should
take another. Remember it is never the event that causes the emotional
problems that cause ill health, it is your attitude towards the event. Change
your attitude and change the event.
My favorite attitude metaphor is the one about the dirty dishes. Almost
everyone hates to wash dishes whereas everyone loves a sparkling clean
kitchen.
To change your attitude, don’t wash dishes - sparkle up the kitchen.
The dishes will be in the way of that and you will have to wash them, but you
are not washing dishes, you are sparkling up the kitchen. To use the modern
popular jargon, put a different spin on it.
That simple change of attitude can help you keep in good health and be
well.
Don’t study, learn. Don’t curse the dark, let in the light.
Attitudes direct your life more than relationships, more than money,
more than sex, more than education, more than anything. When you direct
your attention towards an event it is invariably your attitude that creates peace
or havoc in your life. Many a healthy millionaire has done himself harm
because of a wrong seeing attitude.
If my methods do one thing to change a persons life it would be to
77 The Mind Box
change that person’s attitude. One changes from a fearful, phobic, failure in
many aspects of life to a person with faith in the future, courage in dealing
with the minor and major events in life, and a realizer of the fact that failure
does not exist except as a learning experience.
You can ‘fail’ a dozen times, you only have to succeed once.
Not to take an action is to fail, for if the action is not taken you can
certainly not succeed.
Actions are more likely when your attitude towards the thing the action
is directed is that of a positive nature. Action requires energy. But what exactly
is energy. Let’s see.
You have no control over the stimulus you are confronted with daily,
it’s all around you. In things, people, and events. Stimulus comes at you through
the media, billboards, movies, friends, and virtually everywhere. You do not
control it. But you do have control over your thoughts. Your thoughts can
make you, or break you. Thoughts too are things. Every thing you see, was
once a thought. A pencil, before it was a pencil was a drawing on a piece of
paper. A battleship, an aircraft carrier, was once a drawing on a piece of paper.
Drawn by engineers who were thinking of the configuration of the pencil or
the battleship before it was manufactured. All things were once thoughts.
Including you.
Let’s now see how to control the controllable and bring about energy
at will. But first, does thought really control energy? Think about this, you
get bad news, this weakens you so much that you may have to sit down. You
get good news, this strengthens you so much you feel like dancing. But it’s
really all in the mind. Your mind is the source of your energy.
How using about a Power Mind Trick? Say that you have a sink full
of dirty dishes and you hate washing them. You have no desire, and therefore
no energy available to wash them. How would you change the stimulus of the
dirty dishes to build desire? The answer is really very simple. You change
your attitude.
Let’s get back to the dirty dishes in your sink. What is the end result
of your washing the dishes? The end result is a sparkling clean kitchen of
course. The way to change your attitude is not to think about a sink full of
dirty dishes but rather the end result; a sparkling clean kitchen. With your
79 The Mind Box
Power Glasses on you will see a sparkling clean kitchen not dirty dishes, the
dishes will be in the way, but you won’t be washing dishes, you will be
sparkling up the kitchen.
A young lady came to my seminar with her father. She hated to study.
I asked her why she did it if she hated it. She said she had to learn the material
she was studying. I asked her if she liked to learn? She said she loved to learn.
I said, well then, the next time you open your books, don’t study, Learn. She
looked at me and said “But it’s the same thing.”
“No it’s not.” I replied, “How can it be the same thing if you love one
and hate the other?”
She learned the Majestic Sight technique and uses it all the time.
If you have a lack of energy, you can bet it’s because there are too
many dirty dishes in your life. So start sparkling up the kitchens.
You can see for yourself how effective the Majestic Sight Technique
is by thinking about tomorrow morning when you get up. Whatever it is you
have to do, if there is anything that you do not enjoy doing, ask yourself why
you are doing it. The end result will be what you have a desire to do. Use your
imagination. Put on your Power Glasses and concentrate on the end result.
Sparkle up the kitchen.
Carol Lacey, during a break in the seminar, told me how much she
hated going to work. Carol is a kindergarten teacher and the 16 four and five
year old children in her class were driving her crazy. She had so little energy
she could barely get into her car to drive to work. She would get home eat
something and go to bed. She was going to quit teaching; were there any
suggestions for her?
Now write down your students names, every one of them. She did. I
said now put one of the personalities next to each of the students. She did. I
looked at the list and noted the name Anna. Next to it was Marilyn Monroe.
Another name was Alex, and next to it Brad Pitt. Consuela became Julie
Roberts, and a particularly obnoxious young lady became Britney Spears.
She had placed a personality that she liked, next to each of her students. After
completing the list she looked at me quizzically. “What now?” she asked.
Keep this list on your desk and tomorrow, put on your power glasses
and see the child as an adult, growing up to be one of these personalities.
Anna will still be Anna but you see her as a young Marilyn Monroe. Alex will
still be Alex, but in your mind he is going to grow up to be Brad Pitt. And do
the same with each of your students.
Carol Lacey did that and her attitude changed completely. School
became a game to her. She actually looked forward to her students. They
hadn’t changed. They still shouted, and cried and complained, but Carol had
changed. She saw them in a different light and her energy soared.
Then there are those who set impossible goals for themselves like
having to be in two places at the same time knowing they won’t make the
second appointment. But they try and their adrenaline skyrockets creating a
81 The Mind Box
chemical surge of energy. Not the best thing to do as after the high comes a
crashing low. Natural energy strengthens the immune system and sustains
youthful vigor. All you have to do is to change your attitude. Put on your
Power Glasses and sparkle up the kitchen.
The meditation exercise following this track will help you to do exactly
that. Play it whenever anything is bothering you to the degree that it is sapping
your energy.
And be sure to listen to both the training and the meditation following
the next track. You’ll learn ‘Power Tension’ one of my power techniques
designed to bring in energy in less than one minute without stirring from your
position, its dynamite/
In 1920 Angelo Siciliano, a skinny young man got tired of being picked
on and decided to do something about it. He couldn’t afford the weight set he
wanted and there were no body building sites at that time and so he spent
many hours at the library until he came across a book about isometric
contraction, an exercise in which you put tension on muscles without lifting
heavier and heavier weights. An example of isometric contraction would be
putting your two palms together and pushing one against the other.
Then one critical day in his young life he found himself wandering
through the zoo. Stopping at the cage of lions he watched as one of them lying
on his side, listless and lethargic lazily stretched. The lion’s paw and leg
lengthened until it couldn’t go any further, there was a rippling of muscles
under the hide of the beast and the paw was extended still further until it
seemed as though it could go not a millimeter more. The muscles were
obviously being tensed and released. The lion then pulled in his leg and
stretched out his back paw and leg, muscles rippling merrily under the skin
all the while, and then he stood up and roared, seemingly filled with energy.
When he saw that Angelo Siciliano had a mind blowing thought. By creating
tension between one muscle and another, the muscle would grow and be
stronger.
Angelo Siciliano changed his name. He changed it to Charles Atlas
and put together a course in isometric contraction to build muscles and sold it
through the mail. It was so successful that the Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension
course is being sold even today, almost a hundred years later.
The core of what Atlas was teaching would today be called Isometric
Contraction—exercises in which you put tension on muscles, by pitting one
against the other. Machines and weights are not used. Instead, you’re working
with opposition from other muscles.
82 Burt Goldman
You might wonder what that has to with Motivation and Energy Power.
Charles Atlas’s course worked wonders, but he completely overlooked
an even larger benefit of isometrics. He overlooked it just as much as the man
who couldn’t find gold and left the area not realizing he was working in a
diamond bearing field. What Charles Atlas overlooked was the fact that
isometric contraction did indeed build muscles in a few short months, but that
isometric contraction could also built energy; in a few short seconds.
That’s what CD-9 is about. Not isometric contraction as we will not
be working with one muscle opposing another. We’re not looking to build
muscles; we’re looking to build instant energy.
When you work a muscle, you energize it. You extend it, then it
contracts, and back and forth. A concert pianist’s fingers are loaded with energy,
allowing the fingers to fly over the keys. If you could look into the muscular
structure of the finger you would find the muscles extending and contracting
so quickly they seemed to vibrate with energy, as indeed they would be doing.
Any time you work a muscle you energize that muscle. Muscles do not exist
in a vacuum; when you energize one the neighboring muscles are energized
as well. Work your large muscles in turn and the entire body is energized.
The technique you are about to learn is called Tension Power.
When you walk or run there is a constant contracting and releasing of
your leg muscles. In other words, the muscles are working. Work takes energy.
Energy flows through the legs and then to the entire body during this process.
Many years ago I asked myself the question: What if a person would
contract and release muscular tension while he was sitting still…like Charles
Atlas’s lion?
After a few trials, and feedback from others I tested the technique
and presented Power Tension during seminars that I presented in the U.S. and
Europe. Working the concept out over the years I’ve simplified it so that
anyone, young or old can use it with impunity. The idea of Power Tension is
to ease into the technique and discover how much muscle tension it takes to
83 The Mind Box
CHAPTER TEN
To understand fears and phobias you must first understand the basic
definition of fear. A fear is simply an expectation of something of a negative
nature happening. A negative expectation; period. Anxiety is a real, or
imaginary negative expectation. A phobia is an irrational expectation. Let’s
now see if we can make sense of all that. For the overcoming of fear rests first
of all with an understanding of what it is.
A rational fear is one in which there is fight or flight attached. Fear is
natures response to danger. Your heart speeds up pumping blood and oxygen
through your body. You breathe faster taking in more oxygen. Adrenaline
flows into your bloodstream stimulating and strengthening you; it raises blood
pressure, produces a rapid heartbeat, and acts as a neurotransmitter. After the
fear leaves there is a general depletion of energy and lethargy sets in; the
danger is over.
An irrational fear is one in which there is no running, no protecting
oneself involved. Fear of flying, fear of the dentist, fear of a loss, or any
perceived negative outcome where there is no perception of getting away
from the result.
Rational fear you want to leave alone. Walking by a dark alley at
night you want that adrenaline flow if danger comes at you. You want the
energy to move out of the way. Walking through the woods and seeing a
rattlesnake directly in front of you; you want that adrenaline flow to get you
away in a hurry. Rational fear is natural and protective.
Irrational fear, fear of the unknown and fears you cannot do anything
86 Burt Goldman
about, that kind of fear is imaginary. Because the fear lies in the imagination
we will use the imagination to get rid of the fear.
Metaphor, or a thing that is used to represent another thing can be
very useful in overcoming irrational fears, in this case we will use the Bagha
in conjunction with Power Tension. This dynamic pair will be programmed
while you are at the meditation level of mind during the next track of this CD,
but first, an explanation.
To overcome the irrational fear we are going to use a technique that
was developed centuries ago, I was taught the technique by a good friend and
Kahuna Master, Dr. Robert Stone..Bob wrote a number of books about Kahuna
and was a professor at the University of Hawaii. To describe the Kahuna
method of overcoming fear I will use as an example a common irrational fear,
the fear of public speaking. Consider that a metaphor for any fear.
First you think about the worse case scenario, that would be you
speaking in front of a group and forgetting a word, or a line, or becoming
suddenly hoarse, or developing a stutter, and the group laughing at you. You
imagine this scene in the palm of your left hand.
Second you think about the best case scenario, that would be you
speaking easily and with great confidence. The group applauds you with a
standing ovation, and you receive the prize for the best talk ever. You imagine
this scene in the palm of your right hand.
With the best case scenario set and in your mind, visualizing it in the
palm of your right hand, you use the Bagha; you touch your tongue to the roof
of your mouth for three seconds.
Third, you smash your two hands together destroying the fear at both
87 The Mind Box
image and do not concern yourself with it again. Whenever you consider the
thing, visualize only the positive, beneficial results.
If flying is your fear, visualize the positive aspects of the trip you’re
taking. Visualize yourself sitting comfortably on the plane. Picture a safe,
smooth landing and the successful outcome of the trip. Imagine the things
that you would be doing happily if you did not have this fear.
To dominate your fear, you change the negative expectation to a positive
expectation. You do this with your viewpoint, at a relaxed state of mind, through
meditation. You do this with that part of your own mind that rules the world,
your imagination.
Fear is imaginary; courage is imaginary. The source of courage is in the
imagination—your image-making creative ability. Therein lies the ultimate
wellspring and true source of courage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The negative thinker doesn’t expect anything that is beneficial and good
to happen and is not disappointed when good things do not happen. Most
negative thinkers develop early in life, but occasionally time chips away at
the positive attitude of an adult, and those who are plagued by constant
disappointment often turn to the protective cloak of negative thinking, thereby
avoiding additional pain.
As the negative thinker is never disappointed it would seem that negative
thinking has positive results. However, there is a side effect to negative
thinking. When one loses the excitement of positive expectations, life becomes
dull and bland, a spice less existence.
When people have nothing to look forward to, no goals and few desires,
that dullness creates an apathy that brings with it the depressive state that so
many in our modern society are afflicted with. And following closely behind
depression is that state of mind that unfortunately afflicts many of the elderly,
despair.
Despair is a feeling that what is desired is impossible to attain. When
despair comes into people’s lives, they care little for anything, feeling that
94 Burt Goldman
anything they want will be impossible to get. They learn to want nothing and
life soon becomes no more than a waiting room for the grim reaper.
Hopefully you are not bothered by this unfortunate affliction, but you
may know someone who is. The easiest way to protect yourself against people
like this is to avoid them, if you do not like something or some one, avoid it or
them. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. What if the afflicted is a loved one, a
close friend, a business associate, or an acquaintance you like?
Let us see how a negative thinker is born, for an understanding of this
type of person may help you decide to what degree you may wish to be
involved.
Betty W. was six years old and a more exuberant, positive, excited young
lady would be hard to find. The world was bright and gay and filled with
wonder. Every stroll down the street led her to new discoveries. For her, grass
was always green, the sky was always blue. When she woke up in the morning,
she could hardly wait to jump out of bed to see what new wonders the world
held in store.
One day her mother says, “Betty, we’re going to the zoo this weekend,”
and Betty is joyful and animated as she tells her friends all about her impending
visit to the zoo. Friday evening comes and her mother says to Betty, “I’m
sorry, darling, I know I promised to take you to the zoo, but Daddy has to
work this weekend, and we can’t go.”
Betty is desolate. But with her youthful energy she bounces back and is
her old self once again by Sunday. A few weeks go by and Betty’s mother
says to her joyfully, “Honey, I know we disappointed you about the zoo but
this time for sure we’re going for a picnic in the park on Sunday.”
And Betty jumps into the air with a great “Hooray!” and runs to tell her
friends. Saturday comes and Betty’s mother says, “I’m terribly sorry, Betty,
but I forgot we’re going to Grandma’s house and can’t go on the picnic.”
Now Betty loves her grandmother dearly, but if she were to weigh going
to grandmothers against a picnic in the park, Grandma would lose every time.
Once again Betty is disappointed.
It won’t happen the second time, the fifth time, perhaps not even the
twentieth time Betty is disappointed. But one day, when mother says something
like, “Betty, we’re going to the amusement park this weekend,” Betty will say
in reply, “Aw, it’ll probably rain Mother, or Daddy will have to work, or
maybe I’ll get sick.” And another negative thinker has been born.
Betty learned that disappointment hurts. She does not want to be hurt
anymore and so has figured out for herself that if she does not expect good
things to happen, she will not be disappointed when they don’t, and therefore
95 The Mind Box
Call your institutionalized or just plain lonely loved one on the telephone
or write and set an exact time that you will be there to visit. Be there at that
time. When leaving, make up a strange time for your return visit. Say something
like, “Dear, I’m visiting a friend in the neighborhood next Tuesday and I have
to leave there at twelve. I’ll be here to see you on Tuesday at twelve-fifteen.”
Make sure that you both have the same time, and make doubly sure that
you’re there at precisely twelve-fifteen for you can bet that they will be staring
at the hands of the clock from the moment twelve o’clock comes along. It will
take awhile, but one day your loved one will begin to come back to life. “You
know,” you might hear, “the food tastes a little better.” Suddenly, appetites
begin to return, not necessarily just for food but for experience, for change,
for a grain of excitement.
It’s unlikely that a negative thinker will turn into a Pollyanna, but your
goal should be to carry them as far from despair as possible.
What of those people you feel are impossible to change? Or those people
who are not loved ones but who you do not wish to avoid, for whatever reason.
If you simply avoid a negative person, then of course you’ve rid yourself of
the problem. Attitude Management is the answer.
Using the same method of not disappointing them until they are secure
with you, you may well find that their negativity is confined to those outside
96 Burt Goldman
ATTITUDE MANAGEMENT
You can control your thoughts. Something happens, you observe the event,
and perception comes into play, and now comes choice. You choose what
your attitude will be. Will it be positive, or negative.
Let me illustrate with an actual event. Something that happened to me
some time ago.
The story I told on the first page of this workbook bears repeating as it
sums up so many of the Mind Box trainings. It was during the lunch break
that it happened. I was teaching a positive thinking class in Tarzana, California,
not far from my home. I had just explained the difference between perception
and attitude. It was an all day seminar. Four of the students in the class were
going to accompany me to a nearby restaurant. We approached my car. It was
brand new as I had purchased it two days before. When we approached the
vehicle we all saw at the same time a very large dent in the right front fender.
Someone had apparently backed into my car, smashed the fender and left
without leaving a note or trying to locate me.
The students looked at the dent, then at me and smiled. I just knew they
were waiting for me to get mad, curse the person who crumpled the fender, or
blow up in some way. How to positive think this one? What’s the positive
attitude towards a smashed up fender in a brand new car? We all observed the
same thing, a dented fender in a new car. That was what we perceived. Their
attitude was something between amusement and curiosity. They were waiting
to see how I would take it.
The last story I had told before lunch was the one about the dirty dishes
in the kitchen. Don’t think about dirty dishes I had said, if you hate washing
dirty dishes but love a sparkling clean kitchen, don’t think about washing
dirty dishes, think about sparkling up the kitchen. Reverse your attitude, that’s
positive thinking. The dishes will be in the way of the sparkle and will have to
be washed, but you’re not washing dishes, you’re sparkling up the kitchen. I
just knew those four students were all thinking, how could that apply to my
crushed fender? Using Attitude Reverse, (you’ll find the technique in the
Mind Box on the next page) I stared at the dent for a second and said, “Let’s
get in the car. There’s a body and fender shop a few blocks down the street.”
One of the four said, “You’re not going to get it repaired now are you?”
I had no intention of getting it repaired right then, we were, after all, in
the middle of a seminar. “No, but I want an estimate of what it will cost to fix
it. Whatever it costs to fix, I am going to make three times that amount of
money over and above what I would normally make in the next three months.”
We drove to a nearby shop and I was told that the cost of repairing the
fender would be $450.00. I immediately tripled the figure and thought, $1,350;
98 Burt Goldman
I’ve got to earn with something new, $1,350.00. Now whenever I looked at
the dent in my fender I didn’t mentally start cursing the low life who dented it
and ran off, no, not at all, now when I looked at the dent I thought, $1,350.00
I’ve got to earn $1,350.00. I kept thinking of how I could make that amount of
money. It had to be something that I was not doing at that time. I thought
about it and thought about it and finally came up with the answer.
Instead of eating myself up, upsetting myself when I saw the fender, I
used the Attitude Reverse Technique and creative thinking was stimulated.
That story happens to be true. I’ve told it many times over the years as it
is a perfect example of how to polarize an event when you have positive
thinking as a resource in your life.
How many things that have happened to you to cause depression or any
other negative feelings could you have turned around to make for a more
satisfied state of mind?
2. Immediately consider the good that can come out of the event. If there is a
loss involved, think of things you can do to set up a gain.
2. Divide the amount of income by the total number of successes and failures.
The amount you come up with is what you earn on every single one, whether it
was a success or not.
fifty people in a month and according to Rory, forty of them were ‘misses’ as
he called them. The people he sold he called ‘hits’. The misses were causing
him a lot of stress. At night he went over each miss and agonized over his
failure to sell them. He even qualified people when he first spoke to them
telling himself that one was a sure miss because they had a scuffed shoe, or
were in need of a hair styling. He made negative excuses for everyone he saw.
He was getting more and more negative about his job, and it was carrying
over into his family life as well.
Attitude Management in Rory’s case was putting all his presentations
together, that would be fifty, and dividing them by the total amount he made
which was six thousand. Fifty into six thousand is one hundred and twenty.
The positive thinking attitude was that he earned one hundred and twenty
dollars for every presentation he made, whether they bought or not.
It was like a light going off in his brain brightening his entire world. His
former attitude, negative thinking, was that forty people a month rejected his
product. His new positive thinking mode was that every time he spoke to a
person about his product, whether they bought or not, he made a hundred and
twenty dollars.
Rory Graham changed. His whole demeanor changed. He was a new
man. It showed not only with his work, it showed with his family and friends
as well. His ego grew, he walked straighter, was happier, and actually looked
forward to Monday when he started his week. Thats Attitude Management.
There are always two ways to look at a thing. You can see the dark side,
or the bright side. The negative or the positive. One makes you feel good the
other makes you feel bad. Generally speaking, when you’re feeling bad, out
100 Burt Goldman
of sorts, or ill, if you examine your thoughts, you’ll find they are negative
thoughts. And of course the reverse is true as well. Examine your thoughts
when you’re feeling good and you will find they are positive thoughts.
And therein lies the secret to positive thinking and feeling good. When
your thoughts are of a positive nature you feel good. During the meditation
track of CD-11 you will find guidance to good things. The Attitude
Management meditation is designed to make you feel good. Play it when you
feel down or unhappy about anything. If you happen to be going through a
bad time remember those famous words of an unknown author, possibly the
most encouraging four words ever spoken. “This too shall pass.”