An event is NEUTRAL until you come along with a subjective bias (seeing only one side) and labels it as being terrible or terrific.

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If you change the perception of an event,

you change the per the attitude you have

towards it and the decisions and the

actions that come out of it.

Very often today we are

confronted on media with

language in psychology that is

perpetrator, innocent victim model,

and predator, prey

model. Kinda like a zoo,

a zoological psychology I call it.

And we go around and we

play victim mentality,

instead of victory mentality.

Today I'd like to talk about a

topic that therapy is really not

complete until cause equals

effect in space time.

Now what does that mean?

So let's say you are having an event in

your life that you think is traumatic,

tragic, turmoiled, terrible,

torture. And then you blame the individual

that you believe is the cause of that.

And you basically assume that

they're the cause of your effect.

And you separate cause and effect.

It happened about an hour ago.

It happened over there at that location.

As long as the cause is separated from

effect, you're playing the victim.

Because out there, that thing outside

you is the cause of the way you feel.

I'd like to offer a different

way of looking at it.

I'm a firm believer that we have control

over our perceptions, our decisions,

and our actions in life.

And what happens to us

is part of the dynamic, but that's not

the most important part of the dynamic,

because what happens is we

can change our perceptions.

For the last 50 years I've been

studying human behavior and

for probably 40 of those years I've

been clinically working with people. And

I've had people that have been

through unbelievable situations,

literally unbelievable situations that

you would think are traumatic, torturous,

terrible. But

I ask them a new set of questions and I

have them change the perception of what

actually occurred in their life. And

all of a sudden this torture disappears.

What happened occurred, but

their perception of it changed.

And when they stacked up the benefits

that came out of this situation,

immediately and over time,

they got to a point where they're

actually grateful this thing happened.

And all of a sudden I said,

do you still want to call it

torture or turmoil or terrible? No,

it's actually a blessing.

It's actually something that actually

catalyzed something great in my life that

I didn't see, and I chose to see

the down sides, not the upsides.

I had a subjective bias

in my interpretation.

I was conscious of the negatives,

unconscious of the positives.

I had a confirmation,

a subjective confirmation bias on the

negatives and a subjective disconfirmation

on the positives at that moment.

So what happened to me is an

event that's neutral until

somebody comes along with a subjective

bias and labels it terrible, or terrific.

And it can go either way.

As Milton, John Milton said,

we can make a heaven out of a

hell or a hell out of a heaven,

by thinking makes it so.

So what I've done is I've taken

people who've had this terrible event

that they initially blamed, therefore

that was the cause of their effect,

and all of a sudden asked

them what were the upsides?

What were the benefits that came

up? And if this had not happened,

what would've been the drawbacks?

And we've balanced out the

perceptions to such a degree that

they're now looking at it and they're

going, well that's not even traumatic.

I don't feel it as a terrible

event, it's actually catalyzed.

They found the mean between the positive

and negatives and they extracted

meaning out of their

existential experience.

And all of a sudden this terrible

event became something that was,

had just as much terrific as terrible.

It was completely balanced and neutral.

And then I then made people

stop and wonder, well,

is it actually the cause

out there of my effect?

Or was the cause my

perception of that event?

And actually at the moment of the

cause, my perception, I had the effect.

It wasn't something that

happened back there.

What happened back there was a subjective

interpretation of what was going on,

not an objective reality, but

a subjective interpretation.

And I chose to see the

negatives without the positives.

So I was the cause of my own effect,

even though that event occurred.

Now this leads to a very slippery

slope right now in morals and ethics,

well did what they do, are they the

cause of your and do we blame them?

It was Epictetus, the Greek

philosopher that said,

when you start on your

personal development journey,

you start off with the idea that

you blame people on the outside,

and then you actually start to think,

as I'm going through and finding the

benefits of it, you start to think, well,

I'm blaming myself because

I'm part of the perception.

And then when you balance it, you

realize there's nothing to blame.

You realize that your perceptions

really what made this whole thing

happen, your perceptions. And

then if you ask the question,

if this had never happened,

what would've been the drawback?

You crack the fantasy about how

life's supposed to be. Well,

you brought to the table the

fantasy in the first place,

and you labeled it terrible because it

didn't match the fantasy of how these

people or this event should have gone.

And so what we've done is we've

now transformed the perception.

And so now the cause was

not really the event.

The cause was the perception of the event.

So I don't like to call people, when

people come to me and say, well,

I'm a victim of a traumatic

event, a post-traumatic event,

I'd rather just say that you are an

individual that perceived an event, now

let's take our perceptions and change

it. William James, about 130 years ago,

said that the greatest discovery of

our generation is that human beings can

alter their lives by altering their

perceptions and attitudes of mind. Well,

if you change the perception of an event,

you change the attitude you have

towards it and the decisions and the

actions that come out of it. I've had

people who've had horrendous things,

that's what they labeled it

as, happened in their life.

And they're now in an anxiety and a

post-traumatic stress mode and I ask them,

what's the benefits? And they've

never asked that question.

They just assume that that's a bad

thing. And they never ask questions,

and quality of your life's based on

the quality of the questions ask.

If you ask the question,

how is this helping me fulfill

what's most meaningful to me?

How has it served me? How has

it been a benefit in my life?

How has it been an advantage by that

experience? If I hadn't had that,

what would've been the drawbacks to my

life? Where have I done that in my life?

Because many times we point our finger

at others and we're not even looking at

ourself. And then we realize if I did it,

I must have been some sort of advantage

or we wouldn't have done it at the time.

So how is this a benefit? Anything

that's occurred on the planet,

if it's still here after

thousands of years,

it must be serving human beings some

way or it would've gone extinct.

So the question is, is how did it

benefit you? How's it an upswing?

When I have these events that we think

are terrific, I also ask the opposite,

because sometimes you're blind and

now you've given a false causality.

They're the cause of my happiness.

I'm a firm believer that they're not

the cause of your sadness or happiness.

They have just initiated an action,

your interpretation of that

action is what's determined that.

In some parts of the world, different

actions have different things.

I had a gentleman that came

to me and he said, well,

I wasn't there for my mom

when she died and I felt

bad. And so he was thinking, that's

terrible. And then I asked him,

so what was the benefit of you

not being there? He says, well,

how could there be a benefit? I wasn't

there for my mom when she died. I said,

well,

you're making an assumption that you'd

been there life would've been somehow

better, and if you hadn't,

somehow that was terrible,

that's an artificial thing

you made up in your head.

So what was the benefit

that you didn't show up?

And after about five or 10 times I asked

that question and him umming and ah and

playing, he finally realized that,

huh, if I would've been there,

I would've interfered with the

completion between my mom and my sister,

because my mom died in my sister's arms

and they hadn't talked to each other in

years. And they finally got to make up.

And I know that was the most important

thing in my mom's to resolve that thing

before she died. And they got

to do it. If I had been there,

it wouldn't have happened.

And then he thought that this terrible

event actually was perfect. Nothing to,

nothing to fix. And he was

actually grateful for himself.

And he'd been shaming himself for weeks

or months unnecessarily because he

compared his reality to a fantasy

about how it's supposed to have been.

And the same thing when people have

events that we think are terrible.

I don't like to label things good or

bad or right or wrong or terrible or

terrific. I like to label them

as an event. Now the question is,

is how do you want to perceive it?

You have amazing resourcefulness.

You have the capacity to take a mountain

and make it a mole hill or a mole hill

and make it a mountain.

You can make turmoil outta something

or you can make it terrific.

It's purely how you ask the question.

And if you hold yourself accountable to

answer the question and stop putting the

label on it,

you don't become a victim of your

history and you don't separate cause and

effect. They're the cause. I'm the

effect. I'm an innocent victim.

They're the perpetrator, I'm the prey.

They preyed on me and they

now need to be punished.

And I'm this innocent victim.

And I find that that never

really gets you out of the cycle,

because now you're going

to live in anxiety,

you've got a subconsciously stored

baggage that's an incomplete awareness,

you're living in fear all

the time of that happening,

instead of being resourceful and finding

out how, what was the other side of it?

So if it happens, you win. If it

doesn't happen, you win. And to me,

I'm a firm believer in having resilience

and adaptability and taking command of

perceptions and realize that you

have control over your perceptions.

You can make things positive or negative.

We've all had an event that we thought

was terrible a day, a week, a month,

a year, or five years later, turned out

to have some terrific sitting in it,

but we didn't see it initially.

So we had the wisdom of the ages with the

aging process instead of the wisdom of

the ages without it. Well,

the quality of your life is based

on the quality of those questions.

If you ask questions

and see it right away,

you can find the terrific in the terrible

and then realize that the labels are

just illusions.

They're just things you made up based

on some moral hypocrisy that you may

have been trained in,

that may not even be true and may

have a deeper meaning for your life.

I had a situation where a gentleman

basically came and said, you know,

my father used to beat me and just was

aggressive and finally kicked me outta

the house. And I asked him, so what

was the benefit of that? And he goes,

well how could there be a benefit of

that? Well, what was the benefit of that?

And he goes, well, I

never asked that question,

how could there be a benefit of somebody

beating the hell outta you when you're

a teenager? I said, well,

what did you do to challenge the hell

out of him and make him want to beat you?

Well, I was defying him and I was

fighting with him. I said, great.

So what was the benefit of him

beating the hell outta you? Well,

I became independent, left home and

became an entrepreneur. . I said,

do you have a successful business

today? He says, I do. I said,

did you have any brothers and sisters?

Yeah, I had a brother. I said,

did he beat the hell outta

your brother? He says, no,

he always treated him differently. I said,

did you think that you wish you could

have that position where the way he

treated you, he treated your

brother? Well, yeah. I said,

so would you trade places

with your brother today? No,

he is still living at home waiting for

dad to die so he can take over a small

little farm. I said,

so what you're saying is if you

had had what your brother had,

you might end up like your

brother? And he goes, yeah. I said,

did your dad believe you were

more capable than you thought?

And maybe that's why he basically

didn't have to worry about you,

he knew you could take care of yourself,

you're a tough kid? He goes, yeah,

I became an entrepreneur and very viable

individual and completely independent.

I said, so did you ever thank your dad

for helping you become independent,

because you could be like your brother

and be waiting for a handout? He says,

no. And he started crying and

he started being grateful.

And he actually contacted his father

and then met with his father before he

died. His father was 82 and

he was 58 when this happened.

And he hadn't seen his father for 42

years. So he thought this was terrible.

And 42 years later he found out it wasn't,

he just didn't ask the right question.

So he thought he was a victim of

a cause and he was the effect.

When I got through asking the question,

he realized that the cause

was his perception and

incomplete awareness of what

was happening in life at the time.

And so all of a sudden he

was now grateful for his dad.

And he met his dad before he died.

And it was the most tear-jerking moment

in his life when he came back and

realized, I now understand what you did.

And his dad wasn't a monster when he

met him. He was just a human being.

And he realized that.

So I basically am not the believer

that we we're here to label something.

I think the labels we put on people

are, and on events like this trap us.

I'm a firm believer in asking questions

and being accountable and bringing our

mind into accountable

balance and balance sheet.

See the assets and liabilities together,

the positives and the negatives

together and balance them out,

so no matter what happens in our

life, we can use it to our advantage.

Otherwise, we're a victim of

history, not a master of destiny.

So I say that no therapy

is really complete until

cause equals effect in space

time. When you finally realize that

you're the cause by your own cause of your

perceptions of what actually event occurs,

you no longer have to play this idea

that this happened to me and now live in

fear of that happening again.

Because fear is an assumption that there's

more drawbacks than benefits coming

in the future, if all of a sudden you

find the benefits and balance it out,

you don't have to live in fear all

your life, you can live in gratitude.

Anything you're not

grateful for is baggage.

Anything you are grateful for is fuel.

So I challenge you to go and

ask a new set of questions.

Take a list of the things you think are

terrible that happened in your life.

And I could take a list and I could

share with you some of the stuff that's

happened in my life that are

blessings in my life today,

but if I showed them to you and

shared them with you, you think, wow,

that's terrible. No it

isn't. It's an event.

All events are neutral until somebody

with a subjective bias interpretation of

that event labels it, and labels it

good or bad by some moral hypocrisy,

some moral ideal that you know,

you're supposed to be nice without mean

or kind without cruel or one sided all

the time, instead of actually seeing

both sides of life. And, you know,

imagine you're getting into a relationship

with somebody and you're expecting

only the positives and

never the negatives,

well you're going to be unprepared for a

real relationship because it's going to

give you nice and mean and kind and cruel

and positive and negative and support

and challenge and there for you and not

there for you and close and distance and

you know, quiet and speaking and every

pair of opposites you can imagine.

So if you have an appreciation for both

sides right off the bat and you expect

that and you can see that,

then your expectations match reality

and you're grateful for your life.

But if not, you have a fantasy

about how life's supposed to be,

life doesn't match it,

you're now depressed because

life isn't matching your fantasy.

And then we go around label things

and expect them because of some

indoctrination of some idea that we're

supposed to have a one-sided world and

people are supposed to be only one sided.

And my experience is life

has both sides. You know,

there are people that are playing both

sides in my life and they're simultaneous

if you look really carefully.

So I'm a firm believer that until you

can actually link cause and effect back

together and get to an acausal state,

this is what Carl Jung was

talking about in synchronicity,

the synchronicity of the pairs of

opposites. If you see a negative,

where's the positive? If you see

a positive, where's the negative?

If you see simultaneously both,

then you end up liberating yourself

from the emotional baggage.

If you see only the negative side,

well it's going to occupy space and time

in your mind, it's going to run you.

If you see only the positive side,

it's going to occupy space and

time in your mind and run you.

That's why if you're highly resentful

or infatuated with somebody,

you can't sleep at night.

Because your mind's ruminating on this

intrusive thoughts of these incomplete

awarenesses.

And your amygdala is assigning valency

to your experience and storing in the

hippocampus, and it's got

this intrusive memory.

And we become victims of that and we

can't sleep at night because of these

so-called traumas. But I've had people

of almost every imaginable trauma,

asked them and held them accountable

to look for the other side,

find the balance to it,

liberate themselves,

all of a sudden take away the blame,

take away the blame of

themselves or others,

and just see the order of it and be

grateful for it, find meaning in it.

And as Viktor Frankl said

in the concentration camps,

those that can find meaning in their

experience are the survivors and the ones

that thrive, the people that can't,

become victims, they go down.

So if you go through life and you

want to be a victim of your history,

not a master of your destiny,

blame things on the outside or blame

yourself instead of look and balance the

equation and find the blessings to the

curses, the upsides to the downsides,

and balance the equation.

When you balance the equation,

you liberate the mind from a whole bunch

of emotional baggage and you realize

you're living in an acausal state.

There's no cause and effect out there.

It's transcendent to that.

And you're now not in this moral trap

that you can get yourself into living

in fear and fantasies all your life.

So no therapy is complete until

cause equals effect in space time.

When you extract out space

and time from your mind,

you enter into what the

theologians call the soul,

the state of unconditional love for

life, and you're grateful for life.

We're going to have perturbations and

perceptions that are being in volatile

throughout our lives, if we can

learn to ask the right question.

That's one of the reasons I teach

the Breakthrough Experience.

I've been teaching the Breakthrough

Experience for over 35 years,

helping people ask new sets of questions

to transform whatever they've got as

their baggage into opportunity and fuel.

Because if you do you don't have to weigh

yourself down with all the emotional

baggage and label things either

positive or negative all the time,

and be a victim of history. Take the

time to ask new set of questions,

come to the Breakthrough Experience.

Let me share with you series of questions

that I guarantee you liberate your

life and free you from a whole

bunch of emotional baggage.

Come and join me at the Breakthrough

Experience so I can teach you how to live

acausally instead of being trapped

in the animal zoology of cause,

separating from effect, perpetrator,

innocent victim, predator, prey,

zoology.