Trying to search for that which is unavailable and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable is the source of human suffering. Trying to acquire the positive pole of a magnet without also acquiring the negative pole of a magnet will be futile. Trying to become only a positive thinker and trying to avoid being a negative thinker will be futile and leave you feeling frustrating. Both poles and their accompanying emotions come together and are defined in terms of each other.

This content is for educational and personal development purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any psychological or medical conditions. The information and processes shared are for general educational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional mental-health or medical advice. If you are experiencing acute distress or ongoing clinical concerns, please consult a licensed health-care provider.

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Then I asked the question,

well if I can't get rid of

negative thinking and negativity,

it must serve a purpose, so I

started asking, why is it there?

You may or may not have been,

I guess you could say

indoctrinated by an idea of

positive thinking.

And I got this kind of

put into my brain around

age 18. I was given a set of

books by Norman Vincent Peale,

The Power of Positive Thinking. So I set

out to try to be positive all the time,

and I found that I kept

falling from that ideal.

I kept trying to get positive without

negative and nice without mean,

and one sidedness. And no

matter how hard I tried,

I had all these little glitches that

somehow I really upset or negative to

myself or somebody else.

And I read more books on positive thinking

and no matter how many books I read

on, I still had positive

and negative thoughts.

So I decided to go and actually meet

with people who were the leaders in the

positive thinking movement. So I actually

went and watched Norman Vincent Peale,

and he admitted in public to about a

thousand people that he had negative

thoughts and that he wrote the books

on positive thinking to try to override

them and balance them. And I

thought, well, that's interesting.

He's at least confessing he's got them.

So I felt a little less, you know, weak,

he might say, because no matter what I

was doing, I still had negative thoughts.

And then I got to meet all the other

people that were sort of in that movement.

And I met Earl Nightingale

and his brother and I met W.

Clement Stone and all these people

that had written books on this field.

And one by one, as I knew them,

I found out they were not

positive people. . I mean,

I saw them yelling and

screaming, and I saw them upset,

and I saw them in legal suits and

one was suicidal. And I thought,

woah this is shattering my myth that

people are getting there. And I thought,

this is somehow hypocrisy.

So I started to do a

research project at age 28,

10 years of trying to be a positive

thinker and no matter what I did,

I still had positive

and negative thoughts.

And and I met pretty well the top

30 people in the field of positive

thinking promotion. And not

one of them had one sidedness.

They had both sides. And

it wasn't hard to see.

So I started doing a research

project and I monitored,

I took the most positive

words in the English language,

and I created the most

positive statements.

And I started to affirm

them 108 times a day. And I,

so I was saying 108 sets of five

to six quotes a day that were

positive to try to affirm that in my mind.

I tried all kind of gimmicks

to try to stay positive.

And I monitored this and charted this

on a day by day cycle forecasting form

that I called it. And I

printed a book called,

The 2000 Quotes of the Wise,

A Day by Day Guide to Inspirational

Living just on positive statements,

to try to increase the positivity,

because I want to know once and

for all is this real or not.

And then I realized after two

years of literally affirming,

you know, 600 to a thousand times a day,

positive statements and monitoring

in the seven areas of my life,

what was going on in my

life as honestly as I could,

I realized that I had both positives

and negatives no matter what I did.

And I thought that this is a

farce. You know, it's interesting,

in chemistry we're looking for

a balanced equation. In physics,

we're looking for a balanced equation.

And in physiology we have homeostasis.

And in psychology we have homeostasis.

We have moral licensing effects

to get us back into equilibrium.

So the more I started studying the

brain and physiology and psychology and

normal endocrinology,

I realized that it was an illusion

to try to get a one-sided world.

And then I thought, well then if there's

no way I'm going to get but both sides,

I'm not going to get a one-sided

world, and as the Buddha says,

the desire for that which is unobtainable

and the desire to avoid that which is

unavoidable is the source of human

suffering. So I thought, hmm,

I finally got this aha,

the realization after doing all

the research that I need both

, you need support and

challenge. If you get over supported,

you become juveniley dependent.

If you get overly challenged,

you become precociously independent.

You put the two together,

you get maximum growth. You

need positive and negative.

You have a parasympathetic nervous

system and a sympathetic nervous system.

One for build, one for destroy.

One for anabolism. One catabolism.

One is anabolic that builds

right and it reduces.

And the other is oxidative and breaking

things down. One for night, one for day.

And I saw these pairs of opposites,

and I realized they had to be in

homeostasis and balance in order to have

wellness. And I finally, at age 30,

after doing this research project,

I said goodbye to all the

fantasies of one sidedness.

And then I asked the question, well,

if I can't get rid of negative thinking

and negativity, it must serve a purpose.

So I started asking, why is it there?

So I'd like to share with you a number

of things that I uncovered on that.

I found out there were 15 common

reasons why people had negativity.

And I define negativity as anger

and aggression, blame and betrayal,

criticism and challenge, despair and

depression, desire to exit and escape,

you know, futility and frustration,

grouchiness and grief, hatred and hurt,

irritability and irrationality, you know,

jadedness and jerkiness.

I looked at all of these aspects

of negativity and I found that

there's 15 common reasons for it.

Unrealistic expectations on

other people to be one sided.

In other words,

let's say I meet somebody and I want to

date somebody and I'm expecting them to

be nice, never mean, kind, never cruel,

positive, never negative, peaceful,

never wrathful, all one sided,

they're not going to be.

If I communicate in their values, they'll

be nice. If I go against their values,

they're going to be mean and

they're going to have both.

And I'm going to interact

with them both ways.

And then I realize that if I

have an expectation like that,

I'm going to be angry at them

and feel betrayed by them.

So it had nothing to

do with their behavior.

It had everything to do with my

expectation on their behavior.

So if I have an unrealistic

expectation for them to be one sided,

that's the source of my negativity.

If I have an unrealistic expectation

on them to live in my values,

they have their own values, if I

expect them to live in my values,

I'm going to have the A,

B, C, D's of negativity.

If I expect them to be one

sided and live in my values,

the combination of those

two, that's a third delusion.

If I have an unrealistic expectation

on myself to be one sided,

I'll be angry at myself and I'll

have the negativities towards myself.

If I have an expectation for me

to live outside my own values,

I'm going to have anger towards myself.

If I have an expectation of those two,

to live one sided and to

live outside my values,

I'll have both of those

anger towards myself.

If I have an unrealistic expectation

on other people and myself that way,

for all six of those, I will

now have even more negativity.

If I have an unrealistic expectation on

the collective society around me to be

one sided, I will automatically have

this, this ABCD's of negativity.

And in the process of doing that,

I will have that negativity if I also

expect everybody in the world out there to

live in my values, I'll have

negativity. Because I'm not going to.

If I have an unrealistic

expectation on all of that,

put all those together, on

others, myself, on the collective,

I'm going to end up with negativity.

If I have an unrealistic expectation

on mechanical objects to be one

sided, you know, I expect a garage door

opener to always be working or expect,

you know, ATM machine working or your

computer to always be doing what you want,

that'll automatically create

that ABCD's of negativity.

If I expect that, you know,

everything in the computer world

is supposed to live in my values,

imagine if the computer's supposed to

read your mind all the time, that's again,

unrealistic expectation.

So I found out that negativity is a

feedback mechanism to guide us to set

realistic expectations on others,

ourselves and the world around us.

So negativity has a very

important part of our life.

It's giving us feedback to let us

know when we're unrealistic in our

expectations. Now, once you have this

negativity, if you want to dissolve it,

you can start to get yourself

realistic about your expectations.

But you can also have negativity when

people, when you resent somebody,

because they're, again, one sided

or not living in your values.

So if you actually do this, and

I call this the Demartini Method,

it's a series of questions in there.

If you are angry at somebody and resentful

to somebody and really angry at them,

and you ask, okay, what specific trait,

action or inaction do you perceive this

individual displaying or demonstrating

that you resent most? That

you're angry with most.

You have a negative a feeling

about most. And then define it.

And make sure it's not hearsay.

Make sure it's not vague

generalities and labels. You know,

make sure it's a real specific action

that they're doing, that you're judging.

Make sure it's not something

about how you felt just by what,

you're looking at their action, not

how you felt about their action.

And you get really clear about what it

is. And then once you identify that,

you'll find out that the thing you're

judging is either something you expected

them to be one sided, or expect

them to live in your values.

You find that it goes to that.

And then you go in there

and now ask the question,

what's the benefit to you of them

doing it? How did it benefit you?

Your first response is, it didn't,

that's why it's negative. No,

it's only negative because you haven't

seen how it served and how it benefited

you. In other words, let's say the person

verbally criticized you and you say,

well, what's the benefit of that? I say,

well, were you cocky and and arrogant,

and did you project your values onto

them and expect them to live in your

values? If you do,

they're going to give you criticism and

challenge as a feedback to let you know

that they want to be loved for who they

are, not who you want to make them.

And if you're arrogant, you

need to be brought down,

because that's an inauthentic state.

So if they're criticizing you

and they're bringing you down,

that's to your advantage.

So the benefit is,

it's humbling you and making sure you

don't project your expectations for them

to live in your values and you don't

have an expectation that's delusional,

that they're supposed to be one

sided, always positive to you.

Because If you do, you're

going to get supported,

you'll stay juveniley dependent

on them, and you don't grow.

It's the challenges in life that

make you precociously independent,

make you an entrepreneur anyway.

So if you start stacking up the

benefits of what they're doing,

when they're verbally

criticizing you, for instance,

all of a sudden you become

more resilient and adaptable.

You understand when you've been arrogant

and how you're projecting and how

you're thinking you're

superior and it calms you down.

It levels the playing field,

makes you more authentic.

It increases the probability

of sustainable fair

exchange in relationships.

And it helps you break the fantasy they're

supposed to be one sided or they're

supposed to live in your values.

And so then what happens is

when you stack up the benefits,

once the benefits equal the drawbacks,

your resentment and your anger goes away,

because you've dissolved the unrealistic

expectations that drove it. Now,

if you go on the other

side and ask the question,

if they were the way you hoped they

would've been in the moment they did the

trait that you disliked, if they

did the opposite, the fantasy,

the way you wish they would've been,

what would've been the drawback?

Because sometimes people have a fantasy

that people are supposed to be nice and

never mean and kind and never cruel,

and they're supposed to be living

in my values, not their own.

And as long as you live in that fantasy,

if you don't find the

drawbacks to the fantasy,

you keep projecting that fantasy on

other people and they can't live up to it

and you set yourself

up for the negativity.

Your negativity is your feedback

mechanism to let you know that you're

projecting unrealistic

expectations on life.

Because when you set realistic

expectations and real objectives,

if I expect you to live in your

values, I won't be betrayed.

If I expect you to live in mine,

I've set myself up for

anger and I'll be betrayed.

If I expect you to be one sided,

I'm going to feel angered,

because you're not going to be.

But if I expect you to be both sided

and nice and mean and kind and cruel,

depending on how I've interacted with

you, I have a realistic expectation.

If I am communicating and nice

and supportive of your values,

you'll probably treat me openly. If I

go against your values and challenge,

you'll probably be aggressive to

me, that's life. I'm not one sided.

You're not one sided.

Life's not one sided.

So the negativity is a feedback

mechanism guiding you to help you

rebalance your life and put yourself

back into realistic expectations.

So I went on this journey about positive

thinking, I found it was futile.

I don't waste my time on

it. I think it's childish.

It's the opium of the masses. It

sells to people. And it doesn't,

you don't live it. It's just an ideal

that you think you're going to live,

fantasize about it. And I can

easily point it out, I ask people,

how many of you still have

negative thoughts and negativity?

And they all put their hands up.

Everywhere I go, I've seen that.

So it's delusional to think you're

going to be a one-sided human being.

It's delusional to think

you're going to be, you know,

living in somebody else's values.

When you're infatuated with somebody,

you try to live in people's values,

but within a short period of time,

you eventually go back to your own.

So every decision you make is based

on what you believe will give you the

greatest advantage over

disadvantage to your own values.

So don't try to live in a fantasy

you're going to live in somebody else's

values or others are going to live in

your values.

Honor each other by communicating what

you value in terms of what they value.

When you can communicate

that and practice that,

that's the ultimate

sales and caring process.

And then you end up getting what you want

by helping other people get what they

want. That works.

Anything else pretty well is feedback

to let you know you're going to get the

ABCDs of negativity or they're going to

get the ABCDs of negativity to let you

know what's not working.

The ABCDs of negativity are feedback

mechanisms to let you know you have

unrealistic expectations,

projected or injected,

and you're expecting something that's

not happening, not going to happen,

not designed to happen. And when you do,

you now set yourself up

and the negativity's your

feedback. And the same thing.

If you have this idea that people

are supposed to be always one sided,

you're going to be let down.

So I gave that up at age 30.

From from 18 to 28 I tried to be a

positive thinker. I tried to promote that,

promote that, and I felt like a moral

hypocrite because I wasn't living it.

And I met all these people that were

also moral hypocrites and they weren't

living it. And so I

thought, this is ridiculous.

Why would I go and promote something

and teach something that's BS?

It's not sustainable.

Now I'd rather give people a reality

and gown them so they can love and

appreciate themselves and have

realistic expectations on themselves.

And your negativity is your feedback to

let you know whenever you're not having

realistic expectations. So it's not an

enemy, it's not your thing to be evil.

It's not something, oh my God, I

did this, I had negative thoughts.

It's a feedback.

It's trying to guide you on how to master

your life and how to be authentic and

how to communicate what you value

in terms of what other people value.

And by asking the questions,

now the questions I gave you

comes from the Demartini Method.

It's a method I've been developing

since I was 18 and for 51 years.

It's a thing I teach in the Breakthrough

Experience. That's why I tell people,

come to the Breakthrough Experience. I

can save them an enormous amount of time.

If you're sitting there having

catching up and beating yourself up,

or being angry at other people

and having all these emotions,

they're not necessary.

They're feedback systems.

And I can show you exactly what questions

to ask and what expectations to try to

put into place. My students

who come there and they go in,

they go out with this new perspective,

all of a sudden they notice the amount

of emotional drama that they were

creating in their life subsides.

And they know exactly what questions

to ask when they end up having these

negativity to know exactly where their

unrealistic expectations are and how

they're designing this for their life.

It's amazing when all of a sudden

you're aware, it's like liberating.

So if you want to sit there and wallow

in the fantasy that you're going to be

positive and then judge other people

for the negativity that you're feeling

ashamed that you have,

well, that's one thing.

But if you'd like to liberate

yourself, I have a way of doing it.

And then please come to the Breakthrough

Experience where I teach the Demartini

Method. The question is, again,

what specific trait, action,

inaction do you perceive this individual

displaying or demonstrating that you

despise, dislike, or hate most?

Then you can go in there and ask,

how does it serve you?

Go to the moment where and when they're

actually demonstrating this and how is

it serving you? And then if at that

moment they had done exactly the opposite,

the way you fantasize and wish

they'd have been in that moment,

what would've been the drawback?

Because as long as you have a fantasy

and an unrealistic expectation,

you're going to end up with the ABCDs of

negativity to try to guide you back to

realistic expectations that are

objective, according to real values,

so you can master the

art of human behavior.

So if you want to be more authentic,

you want to liberate yourself from

the thing, come and learn that method.

I assure you it's value, will be

useful for the rest of your life.

And it's right at the

Breakthrough Experience.

Take advantage of the opportunity.

It's changed thousands of people's

lives and I'm certain it can make a

difference in yours.