For those of you that have been read­ing Into the Cen­tre and brows­ing the web­site, you’ll not be sur­prised to see a series of arti­cles con­cern­ing the ‘emp­ty­ing’ of body, mind and spirit.

I’ve got a great lit­tle story…

Dar­bella and I were off to the hair styl­ist yes­ter­day, and I gained a great, prac­ti­cal story. Our styl­ist, Kathryn, has, for the last 2 years, been on a self-discovery quest, and in a lot of respects, she’s done a great job. Back in late 2004, when my book, This End­less Moment came out, she had just begun method­i­cally chang­ing both her story and her actions.

Please note! This End­less Moment is a book you must ‘read.’ It’s avail­able as a paper­back, an audio book, and as a pdf down­load. Hun­dreds of peo­ple have read it and found it life-changing. You’ll dis­cover the rea­sons for your blocked ways of liv­ing, and more impor­tant, ways (just like Kathryn) to live your life with ele­gance and mean­ing.
What are you wait­ing for? Get your copy today!

I men­tioned my book and she indi­cated she wasn’t a reader. I thought, I could record the book so she could lis­ten to an audio book! (I also have a friend up in Port Elgin with low vision, (hey Lib! Happy 44^th!) so there would be a dou­ble rea­son. I recorded and pro­duced the audio book, and took her one.

Month after month, she’d say, “I know… I know… I haven’t lis­tened to it yet.” And then she’d list rea­sons, mostly around not hav­ing a CD player in her car. And I’d laugh and shake my head. Excuses, excuses…

This time, “Wayne! I lis­tened to it all! And boy, do I have questions!”

And thus began an hour of the three of us dis­cussing self-responsibility. But here’s the odd piece. She is great at self-responsible talk, and is get­ting great at deal­ing with oth­ers. The only issue is, she often doesn’t notice how good she is getting.

The Gen­tle Approach

She told us, (and I think this is a per­fect story about how good she is) , that her hus­band came home recently, and seemed to be in a good mood. How­ever, as the night pro­gressed, his mood dark­ened. Now, in the past, this would have led to silence, an argu­ment, blam­ing, some­thing non-pleasant. This time, rather than bit­ing, Kathryn asked him if he’d like to share what was up for him.

He said that he was upset­ting him­self over a sign that was posted at work.

“From Now On,
Every­one will be in their uni­form
and ready to work
15 min­utes before start­ing time.”

He said, “I can’t believe it! I do my job! I’m going to tell my boss off, and demand to be paid for the extra 15 minutes!”

As I said, in the past, this would have led to Kathryn say­ing some­thing, and her hus­band say­ing more, and off to the races they go. This time, Kathryn said, “Close your eyes. Imag­ine the sign. Think about where it is hang­ing. And ask your­self this. Do you wear a uni­form at work?”

He opened his eyes, and said, “Hmm. I don’t wear a uni­form at work, and the sign is in the mechan­ics’ area.” He then got quiet and went to bed.

Next day, he comes home, all excited. “You’ll never guess what! That sign is just for the mechan­ics, not for me!”

Kathryn just smiled (and no “I told you so!”)

Drama is as Drama Does

As we’re always say­ing, the inter­nal dra­mas and emo­tional upheavals are entirely optional. The hus­band, in this case, was upset­ting him­self over his fan­tasy about the sign, and mak­ing him­self all indig­nant and angry—and the sign had noth­ing to do with him!

As Mark Twain put it, ” I have been through some ter­ri­ble things in my life, some of which actu­ally hap­pened. ”

The Courage to Act

Yes, it’s really all about hav­ing the courage to con­quer your fears by act­ing in a new way. Another Twain quote: ” Courage is resis­tance to fear, mas­tery of fear — not absence of fear.”

We call this ‘act­ing as if…’

It takes both courage and per­sis­tence to change what does not and has never worked into some­thing that does work. This is rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from what I see a lot of. Peo­ple expect­ing oth­ers to change so they can be happy, for exam­ple. Then they learn a few skills and find bet­ter ways to talk, but the mes­sage is the same: “I expect you to change, or the world to change. I have all my beliefs and affir­ma­tions in place, and here I sit, waiting.”

Our friend Kathryn is ‘doing,’ and begin­ning to notice that things are shift­ing. In the end, this is the solu­tion to all dilemmas.