You have control over 3 things in life, your perceptions, your decisions and your actions. It’s not what happens to you on the outside, it’s what happens on the inside that determines your reaction to any outer circumstance and your ultimate destiny. Join Dr John Demartini and learn how to take control of the things you can control in order to live your most inspired and fulfilled life.

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The Breakthrough Experience

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So there are a lot of things that we think we have control over but we don't,

and then there are things that we do. And that's what I want to talk about.

What can you govern and take command of and control in your life?

We have in our brain and in our nervous system,

the extensions, in the central and peripheral nervous system,

we have sensory neurons,

that take in receptors of information,

reception of information, transduces it and turns it into electrical impulses,

action potentials.

And then it goes into the brain or into the spinal cord and up the brain,

up to the brain. And we then have what is called a perception.

So we have reception of information, then we have perception.

The perception is based on all the previous experiences

our subconscious mind that is tainting and altering what we

receive through our senses. Then we have interneurons.

So we have sensory neurons for sensory perception, then we have interneurons,

which are little neurons that go between the sensory neurons and the motor

neurons that is involved in the associations we make,

which is again, the subconscious mind to some degree.

And we use that for decisions because all those

associations are making an assessment of whether or not we will do something to

avoid something or seek something,

the advantage over disadvantage of whatever's happening

sort of make decisions by.

And then we have also descending motor neurons,

peripheral neurons and descending tracts that are involved in taking action.

We have control over those three things. So if you want to write anything down,

start with this one. We have control over our perceptions,

decisions and actions, our sensory neurons,

some of our interneurons and our motor neurons.

And no matter what you experience in your life,

you can change your perceptions of it.

John Milton said you could make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a

heaven,

by asking certain questions that make you cognizant and aware of things you may

have been unconscious of and change your attitude towards it.

So I can ask a question, make you aware of something you hadn't thought of,

or make a statement and make you aware of something and all of a sudden you

change your perspective. William James,

who was a co-founder, you might say of modern psychology,

he basically said that we can change our life by changing our attitudes and

mind.

Is one of the greatest discoveries he found that you can change your perceptions

and attitudes of mind, change your life.

So I've been doing that for decades now and helping people in the Breakthrough

Experience,

take situations in their life that they think are terrible or terrific

and dampening the perceptions of them so those things aren't running your life.

See, if you have an infatuation with somebody and you are conscious

of the upside and unconscious of the downside and you're highly impulsively

attracted to them, it's hard to get them out of your mind.

Particularly if it's really infatuated, it's hard to sleep at night,

they're running around in your mind.

And if you're highly resentful to somebody and you're conscious of the downside

unconscious of the upside,

they're going to ruminate in your mind and it's hard to sleep at night.

So anything that you have an imbalanced perspective on is going to run your mind

and it's going to occupy space and time in your mind and run you.

You're going to be externally driven and you're going to feel out of control

because they're going to control this outside thing.

And we end up giving false attribution bias when we have a distorted view and

subjective bias interpretations of those situations.

And then we get power to that individual that we're infatuated with or resentful

to, a false attribution,

they the cause of my pleasure or they're the cause of my pain,

they're the cause of my happiness, they're the cause of my sadness.

And the reality is it had nothing to do with them,

it has everything to do with our perceptions of them,

which we have control over.

Because I can sit down and take somebody you're infatuated with and point out

some things that you're overlooking that you're blind to,

because when you're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides,

if I ask questions and make you aware of the downsides,

I can dampen and calm down the feeling of emotional infatuation

and impulse towards them. And all of a sudden you're thinking, well,

maybe I need to stop and not rush into this and I can change your reaction to

them. So it had nothing to do with them,

because all we did is ask a new set of questions,

made you see things you didn't see that you're unconscious of and now see more

balanced view. And once you're balanced, they don't run you, you run you.

In a perfectly balanced mind you're not having outside circumstances run you,

you're not a victim of your circumstance, you're a master of the dance,

you're a master of yourself now.

And by when you're infatuated with somebody you're going to fear their loss.

That's why you can be jealous sometimes. And if you're resentful,

you can fear their gain, and so you have phobias and fantasies, philias.

The philia is, Oh, I want to be with that person.

And the phobia is a loss of them.

The phobia is the gain of this individual and the fantasy is escaping them.

So the moment we are imbalanced in our perspective,

then we perceive the world controlling us,

and it doesn't really have control of us,

we have control of us when we ask quality questions and bring

unconscious information up, balance out the associations in the brain,

which are designed to that. Because as you go up in the brain, the more neurons,

interneurons you have and the more the sample size of association,

the more likely you get a mean distribution and you

That's why the forebrain,

the farthest most advanced part of the brain is called the executive center

where it governs and dampens the impulses and instincts of

the amygdala, which is a lower center. And so if we ask quality questions,

we can dampen those amplitudes of those infatuation resentments and not let the

world outside us run us and we get to run our own life.

And we get to have governance,

self-governance now is living by design instead of reaction.

Pro action, not reaction. So if we ask the right questions,

and I've spent years working on what those questions are to liberate you from

the things that you resent or infatuate with,

the things that you try to avoid or seek.

And as long as you have an imbalanced perspective,

you're going to think the world out there runs you, false attribution bias,

instead of taking command of your life.

But you do have command and do have control over your perceptions.

So if you have accountability and you want to,

you can take something you think is terrible, something you resent,

and instead of having a day, a week, a month,

a year or five years later go by before you start to see the upsides to it,

you can ask the question right there as it happens and ask,

what are the upsides to this? Hold yourself accountable, find it,

calm down the emotional instinct to avoid things and center

yourself and not have it run you.

See the events around us don't have to run our life.

And I've had the opportunity to work with people with just about every

imaginable challenging event, I mean, I could go make a list,

if I made a list some of you would probably not feel so well,

have a upset stomach hearing about them. But some of those events in life,

I can sit down and have them ask new sets of question and have

a cognitive reappraisal of what's happened by asking questions,

making them see things they were unconscious of,

balance out the equation with the right questions and all of a sudden liberate

people from baggage and bondage that they've had for years. I mean,

I've had people,

I had a woman that had an idea that her mother was not there for and she

abandoned her. And I just asked a simple question,

What did you perceive that you missed as a result of her being gone? Well,

I didn't get the hugging and the nurturing and I didn't get the guidance. Good.

So who emerged in your life to take on that role? She said, nobody. I said,

Look, again, who emerged? Go to the moment you perceive your mom gone.

And she goes, Yeah, okay. And at that moment who emerged? Oh yeah.

Now that I think about it, my aunt showed up,

and my grandmother stepped in a bit,

and my teacher got a little bit more engaged with me and kept an eye on me

because she found out my mom was gone. And yeah.

And my father played a bit a role, and my big sister stepped up.

I said, What's the benefit of them doing it? Instead of your mom?

Well, I got a diversity of things. I got to learn a different language.

I got to do more traveling. I got nicer clothes.

And my mom wasn't able to do that, wasn't able to provide that,

she wasn't feeling that she could provide,

she felt she was unfulfilled in the relationship with dad and she really

wasn't focused, she was distant.

And what would've been the drawback if your mom had been there?

And we started stacking them up.

We asked for what were the drawbacks to the thing that she thought was the

fantasy and what were the benefits of what reality was.

And when you stop comparing your reality to a fantasy,

you appreciate your life again. She wasn't appreciating,

she was blaming her mom and playing the victim and thinking she was missing out

on something, but nothing was actually missing,

it was in a form that was actually to her advantage.

And she had a fantasy about how it should have been, could have been,

would've been. And those are delusions that she had.

When we cracked those by asking quality questions,

all of a sudden she was grateful. She had tears in her eyes.

She realized that her mom actually liberated her for

she would've had with her mom. And she felt appreciation for her mom. I said,

Anything that you're not grateful for in your life is baggage.

Anything you are grateful for is fuel. So by asking quality questions,

you can take anything that's happened.

I had a gentleman that lost a bunch of money and I said, All right,

so when that, when you lost this money, who, what showed up in your life,

it's a benefit to you? Well, there was no benefit. Look again. Well,

as a result of it, I got more focused at work.

I ended up being more firm with people, making more accountable,

so I became a greater manager. What else? Well, now I think about it.

There was a gentleman there that offered me a big deal and if he hadn't of heard

about it, hadn't talked about what this guy had done in taking the money,

I wouldn't have got that deal, and that's opened up my door of my business.

I said, So what's the benefits?

And I stacked up the benefits and the gains until it equaled the so-called loss.

And all of a sudden he was like going, I don't even feel any loss now.

There's no grief. I said, Well, the grief is simply lopsided perceptions.

All emotions are lopsided perceptions, bottom line.

And every time you have a lopsided perception,

you get lopsided chemistry in the brain.

And that whole model of the biochemical reason for why we have all these

emotions is now been faulted, as you know,

in the news because it's been BS it's been pharmaceutical propaganda.

And what's interesting is you have the capacity to change your ratios of

perception by changing the questions you ask to make you consciously aware of

things. Neutralize the lopsided perceptions,

free yourself up with the things that distract you, the impulses and instincts,

the animal behaviors, the prey and the predator, the seeking and avoiding,

and liberate yourself and get present.

And now all of a sudden be grateful for what's going on and get more objective

and know how to see both sides of things. Wilhelm Wundt,

the experimental psychologist about a hundred and twenty five thirty years ago,

said that there's simultaneous contrast and sequential ones.

If you see positive and then later see negative and then see positive and you

have sequential contrast,

you're emotional volatile and you're run by the external world,

you're extrinsically driven. But if you see both sides simultaneously,

you're intrinsically driven and you're in command.

And so he was encouraging people to be able to ask questions,

to be fully conscious of both sides simultaneous,

the kind of a Taoist understanding or the Buddhist middle path,

the unattached path, or the Christian's equanimity state.

So whatever you want to call it, the names are really just varied.

It's the superconscious mind instead of the subconsciously stored baggage that

we mostly run our lives by. So by asking quality questions,

you're able to see how to change your perception.

Once you change your perception, you're actually changing your decisions.

Because now instead of being avoidance of her mom, that that young lady,

she now wants to see her mom and thank her mom.

So her decisions and her actions just changed because she changed her

perceptions. And she can prioritize her actions.

We have the ability to stop and look at everything that's available to us based

on our perceptions and make a prioritization of what

command of our priorities.

And if we basically live by highest priority actions

where the blood, glucose, and oxygen goes into the forebrain,

we end up making the wisest decisions with the least amount of effort and the

most amount of fulfillment in life.

So taking command of your perceptions and taking command of your actions is

wisdom.

If we take whatever happens in our life and ask how's it helping us fulfill

what's most meaningful to us? And whatever we think is missing,

what's the new form it's in? And what's the benefit of the new form?

And what would be the drawback of the form that we fantasize It should have

been, that we're now angry because it wasn't?

And we balance that and we see how no matter what happens, it's on the way,

not in the way.

We liberate ourselves from a lot of baggage that makes

you know, the wheel, the Buddhist called it the karmic wheel.

The Buddha says the desire for that which is unobtainable, the fantasies,

and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable, the nightmares,

is the source of human suffering. But the fantasy and the nightmare,

the heavens and the hells, the imbalanced

impulses and instincts are simply lopsided perceptions that we have the capacity

to change.

And the moment we actually take the time to change them with the right question

and become accountable.

Accountable means bringing your balance sheet into balance, being accountable,

we liberate. So we have the capacity to change our perception.

We have the capacity to prioritize our actions.

And we have the capacity to make a decision,

which is the wisest thing to do at any one moment.

I always say either go and do what you love through delegation or love what you

do through linking.

Linking means taking whatever happens and finding out how doing it temporarily

until I can delegate is serving me, and helping me, so I'm thankful,

not weighed down.

And prioritizing action and delegating things is liberating me to get on with

doing the thing that's most spontaneously, intrinsically inspiring.

And I'm not bogged down again. So you have control over your perceptions,

decisions and actions, but you don't have control over the outside world.

But if you know what people's values are and you know

how to communicate in their values and say what you want in terms of their

values respectfully,

you can actually impact what they do in relationship to you.

So though you may not have direct control,

you can have indirect control by caring enough about another human being to find

out what their highest values are,

their dominant buying motive or their dominant motive itself,

and actually communicate in what you want in terms of that.

And you have a higher probability of influencing friends and making friends

and influencing people. Because now people want to be loved for who they are.

And if you help them fulfill what their highest value is they're engaged in you,

which helps you in your relationships, helps you in business,

helps you in managing of people, helps you socially,

helps your overall health and wellbeing,

because if you surround yourself with people that you care about and love,

it helps your wellness quotient, and it's more inspiring,

and you feel that you're making a difference in the world.

So the mastery of learning and caring about another human being to find out what

their highest values are and communicating what you value in terms of what they

value, allow you to have some influence on society.

Maybe not perfect control, but you can certainly do amazing things.

In the Breakthrough Experience, I show people how to do that,

how to appreciate and communicate in people's values.

So then you have in some respects some governance and control over your

external world, at least the influence of people.

But if you can take command of your perception,

take command of your your actions,

take command of the decision which way to go and take command of learning how to

communicate effectively in people's values,

you have a massive influence on the world available to you,

because you're not run by the world, you're influencing the world.

Because when you're living by what's true for you and what's inspiring to you

and you're grateful for your life, you magnetize people, places, things,

ideas and events into your life as opportunities.

So you have more opportunities, you have more influence,

you have more gratitude, you're more centered,

you have a longer life probably because you're less distressed.

Distress is the perception of loss of that which you seek and the perception of

gain of that which you're trying to avoid.

If you're not seeking and avoiding with highly polarized misperceptions,

you're centered and now you're not distressed. You're eustresed,

which is wellness promoting.

And you have a longer life and a more stable situation and the executive center

runs you instead of you running or the world running you,

and acting like a surviving animal behavior.

So giving yourself permission to take command of your perceptions,

your decisions,

and your actions and also learning how to communicate in people's values makes a

huge difference. Ask questions,

change your perception and now you change your decision and now you're changing

your actions. And it had nothing to do with the world outside you,

it had everything to do with your perception and expectations.

And people that know how to set real objectives that are balanced,

that are based on people's values and their own values,

because you can't expect others to live in your values,

you can't expect to live in other people's values,

but you can expect you and them to live in your and their values.

And when you do that, you have realistic expectations,

but many people don't and they have distortions and they're emotionally

disturbed and they're judging and they have fantasies and moral hypocrisies and

projections and injections, and all of that is dissolvable.

All of those emotional baggage sources,

all those imbalanced perceptions,

all can be balanced out by asking the right question and making you cognizant of

the other side. So you see both sides and become fully conscious and mindful,

instead of consciously,

unconsciously split and accumulating those in your subconscious mind and

becoming more animal-like instead of angelic like.

The guardian angel inside you,

the executive center in the brain is your angelic self.

The other is your animal self. And one is for survival, the animal self,

system's 1 thinking where you're, you know, reacting emotionally,

feeling before you're thinking and the other one is thinking before you feel,

and you actually have some objectivity to you, not subjective bias.

And that's what I love doing. I love helping people ask new sets of questions,

become seeing both sides.

So I know if you have a desire to have control over your life and become

governor of your own destiny, master of your own fate if you will,

and not victim of your own history, I know how you can transform it.

I know the questions to ask. I developed it over the last 50 years,

a very systematized system,

a whole bunch of specific questions that handles most all the issues that people

are facing in life and how to turn them all into thank you's.

There's nothing your mortal body can experience that your immortal soul,

the State Of Unconditional Love, the authentic self, can't love.

And I know that sounds outrageous, but it's true.

I've taken a hundred thousand people through that process at least.

And I'm certain that that can be done.

So if there's any desire to want to master your mind,

so you can master your life and be able to have governance over these so-called

vicissitudes and perturbations that you experience in life,

and so you want to have in a sense, a poised mind instead of a poisoned mind,

and you want to be able to have control over your life instead of feeling out of

control and constantly under emotional distress,

please consider coming to the Breakthrough Experience.

Because there I've got all types of proven tools that have been proven through

the test of time.

I've taught this program 1,152 times and I'm certain

that it can make a difference in people's lives.

I've got thousands of testimonials on that from people,

their lives and followed up on them for many decades even.

And I'm certain that there's science, it's a science, you know,

I've been frustrated by the social sciences and stuff,

I just felt like there's sometimes it's wishy washy.

If you'd like to not have a wishy washy approach to way handling your mind and

do a methodical scientific way of doing it that's reproducible,

come to the Breakthrough experience. I'm going to show you how to do that.

I'm going to show you how to identify your values, how to live by priority,

how to delegate things, how to structure your objectives,

make sure you're not setting up fantasies for yourself.

Learn how to communicate more effectively,

not subordinate to people or superordinate to people.

Not have unrealistic expectations, have grounded objectives that you can meet,

strategies and plans that you can help do it.

And I teach you the Demartini Method on how to dissolve all the emotional

baggage that you may be carrying around that's running you instead of you

running it. So if yo'd like to learn those questions,

because the quality of your life is basically quality

the Breakthrough Experience.

I can't wait to give that to you because it's amazing and I've got a lot of

people that have learned that method and gone on and really,

really trained and mastered that method and done amazing things helping other

people with it.

So if you'd like to master your own life or help other people master their,

come to the Breakthrough Experience. It's the first place,

the first step in a journey of absolutely going on a path of being captain of

your fate and master of your destiny kind of path.

I've been setting out to do that for the last 50 years and I've worked very

diligently on finding those tools and solutions so you can reinvent the wheel or

you can come to the Breakthrough Experience so I

You can drive your own pathway. You know,

you don't have to be a victim of history, you can be a master destiny.

You don't have to live in the shadows of anybody.

You can stand on the shoulders of giants.

And I've been standing on the shoulders of giant thinkers in the field of

psychology and philosophy and,

and all the areas of neurology to help build that system for you.

So come to the Breakthrough Experience. Let me show how to do it.

Let me show you how to dissolve it.

You're going to actually dissolve stuff right there and you'll experience it

right Live and you'll know,

you'll know you're capable of transforming anything that you face,

because I'm going to help you do the most challenging one you got.

I'm going to show you how to dissolve it.

We're going to dissolve it and then you're going to go, Oh,

I can do this on anything. So come and join me and do that.

So you can take control of your life. You don't have to be a victim of history.