Your Journey to Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way. Kenny Weiss

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СКАЧАТЬ we are allowed to say it happens to us. If I tell you I am stressed, it sends the message, “I am powerful and superhuman in my relationship and career. I’m not a failure.” Fear is a different animal in our society. If we tell people we are afraid, it sends the message that we are weak and definitely a failure. To avoid this, we have all dropped into denial and created an empowering word to disguise what is really happening. We then continue our stress-related activity, which is self-victimization but at least we are in charge of it. This is another way we try to get our power back, though it inevitably backfires. When we are in denial, we keep self-victimizing ourselves, which keeps us repeating the cycle. When we use the word stress instead of fear, we are perpetuating the cycle. Society tells us, “it’s okay to be stressed because it means I’m doing more than you are.” By doing this, we gain sympathy from others for how much we are enduring. In essence, this gives us power. It also gives us permission to revictimize ourselves because we are stealing sympathy from others. If we used the term fear instead of stress, people would point out how we are doing that to ourselves.

      The Research of Science and Emotions

      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 85 percent of all diseases have an emotional element. That means it is incredibly rare that any illness or disease or injury is caused by anything other than what you feel inside. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) backs this up and is considered one of the largest studies ever conducted on the association between childhood maltreatment and health and social problems as an adult. In this long-term study, Kaiser Permanente and the CDC had 17,000 Health Maintenance Organization members undergo a physical exam and share information about their childhood experience of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. Participants were recruited between 1995 and 1997. About two-thirds of people reported at least one adverse childhood experience. How many adult childhood experiences (ACEs) were experienced was strongly linked with high-risk health behaviors in adulthood such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity, and severe obesity. ACEs were also correlated with depression, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, and untimely death. Although this is considered a landmark study in the medical community, few want to talk about it.

      Power Retrieval

      If you are not dealing with your emotions and the unresolved trauma trapped inside of your body, you are revictimizing yourself. Being sick and hurt is the single greatest way we gain power over others, because what happens when we get sick and hurt? Everyone comes to our rescue. We get our power back. There is a big fear about addressing this truth. In fact, my editors were concerned that by making this controversial statement about how horrible illnesses, diseases, poor relationships, and careers are somehow self-imposed that I might alienate my readers. Although it’s not in my best interest to address this, the science backs it up. But I understand why we don’t want to hear it—because right now, it is the only way we know how to overcome the trauma we suffered. We refuse to see the reality because we need the power we get from being the victim; it is the only coping skill we know. We can only do what we know. And that is precisely why I chose to write this book. It is time we face our denial and learn another way.

      Can New Ideas Really Help?

      Offering a new way can be met with skepticism. In the book Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert recounts what happened to Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in the 1840s. He practiced in an obstetrics ward in Vienna and noticed,

      The impoverished women who were under the care of hospital midwives were not nearly as susceptible to fatal childbed fever as were the wealthier women, who were cared for by doctors, and he figured out that the discrepancy could be due to the fact that the doctors were not washing their hands before examining the women. Since the doctors were on a daily schedule that took them straight from the morgue, where they did research, to the obstetrics ward, where they performed their examinations, their hands were often still covered with the blood and germs of the corpses when they saw their patients—but nobody knew of the existence of germs then… As an experiment, Semmelweis tried washing his hands before seeing patients, with the result that his patients no longer contracted the dreaded fever. But when he implored his colleagues to do the same, they scoffed and laughed, paying no attention to his seemingly outrageous idea. Finally, in 1862 in a desperate attempt to make his point, he cut off one of his fingers and plunged his hand into the open belly of one of the corpses, only to develop a fever and die within a few days. (p. 223, Molecules of Emotion)

      It can take time to accept new ways of looking at things because of the Worst Day Cycle. It causes us to scoff at anything that is new or that threatens our status quo. Throughout this book, you will be challenged to “wash your hands.” Your health and happiness will be determined by your ability to do that.

      It’s Time to Share the Truth

      The trauma and feelings I experienced after discovering my mom in the bathroom sowed the seeds for this book. It has taken me years to research and understand fully what happened and what it all means. I am finally at a

      place where I can share it with you. I am not perfect. I have blind spots in my Worst Day Cycle. None of this is a race to the finish line; it’s a process. I continue to experience shame and denial, but if something bad is happening in my life, I look at myself first before judging or blaming others. As a result, I rediscover the authentic child who was lost that night and get more freedom, joy, and spontaneity in my life.

Your Journey to Success Steps 1.The first step to success is to accept that you have experienced trauma and that when you don’t address it, it keeps you from the life you want. 2.What feeling comes up when you consider making a change that you logically know will make your life better? If you feel fear, procrastination, or are overwhelmed, those felings stem from your trauma. 3.Choose to become an expert in whatever feelings come up. This expertise will give you an opportunity to bridge the gap to all of the wonderful success processes and books out there. Without that expertise, at some point your original feelings will pop back up and stop you from following all of their incredible advice. Ultimately, underlying that feeling is our fear of success. Make a choice to confront it.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION

      Getting stuck in our worst day ever is our brain’s fault. But before I get into that, it’s helpful to know a bit about how our brains work.

      How the Brain Works

      Our brains are small, but mighty. Besides doing the physical things like regulating our body’s temperature and heart rate and giving us the ability to see, feel, taste, and touch, the brain controls our emotions and how we think. Up until the late 1970s, we didn’t know much about the connection between our brains and body when it came to stress and trauma. Candace Pert, a molecular biologist, helped identify a fundamental element of brain chemistry as a graduate student. While working at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, she and a team of researchers discovered the opiate receptor, which is the brain’s receptor that opiates like morphine fit into and bond with cells in our body. This helped change the way the scientific community looked at how the human body functions. As it turns out, thoughts and feelings release chemicals throughout our bodies that cause actual chemical reactions, proving that the mind-body connection is real.

      Think of our brains as a complex computer system that continually sends and receives information. The biggest portion of our brain is the cerebrum, which is divided into two hemispheres СКАЧАТЬ