Everyone has setbacks in their life, perceptually, and they can occur in any of the seven primary areas of life. Dr John Demartini shares powerful insights on how you can turn any 'setbacks' into comebacks, by asking quality questions that liberate the mind, bring gratitude, and help you see the opportunity in any situation.

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And health, you know, people will say, well, this is devastating to me.

You know, today for instance, I got a raspy voice. Okay. But I see it,

the benefit side is that I've got a sexy voice. It's all the way I look at it.

And if I can see it in that fashion, I can use it to my advantage.

Everyone has setbacks in their life,

perceptually.

And I think that they can occur in any of the seven primary areas of life.

We could have intellectual setbacks.

I've had a gentleman that had to take a test three times to get his

license. That's a setback for some people.

We could have a financial setback where we can have the markets go backwards

or we thought we were gonna be able to save and invest.

And we had costs that were unexpected, these are setbacks.

We have business setbacks,

we'd have a hope to grow our business and we've had things come up

that we didn't expect that slowed down our business growth.

We've also had relationship setbacks where we've had things were flowing really

well then all of a sudden we hit a real obstacle in our relationship dynamics or

possibly a change in relationships. Those can be setbacks.

Or it could be with children,

could have setbacks with some of the children dynamics that we face.

We can also have setbacks with our social climbing and our social networking.

I've seen people all of a sudden have something happen in their life and all of

a sudden people rejected them and shut down on them.

And that can be a setback as far as the growth socially in social power.

We can physical setbacks, health issues. I've got a hoarse voice today,

laryngitis, I wouldn't call it a setback so much, but I call it my sexy voice.

Hopefully that's not too much of a hindrance to you today.

But I've had a little bit of a raspy laryngitis this morning.

We can also have an inspirational things where we're not feeling inspired and

we're losing our clarity of vision.

Some people can have that a moment and have setbacks.

So you can have a setback in any of those seven areas of life.

And I'm sure that as people would write in on the setbacks they've

had, they could fall into one of those categories easily.

So I'm going to go around and address each of those.

First thing I'm going to say is that every setback that we face

can be altered by three things; our perceptions,

our decisions, and our actions.

Those are the only three things we have control over in life.

And so we can change our perception of the event that we call a setback.

We can change the decisions of what we decide to do,

and then we can change our actions around it. And all three of those,

we have control over. We may not have control over what has happened.

We have control of our perception, decisions, and actions around it.

That's why we're never a victim of history. We're a master of destiny.

Once we understand those three things we have control over.

So no matter what happens to you,

you have the ability to change how it is in your mind.

And I teach a course called the Breakthrough Experience.

I've done it 1071 times.

And I've seen people come in with that program with all kinds of

setbacks and they've basically been resentful to people,

they've had challenges, almost in any of those areas that I mentioned.

And one of the things I do is I give them a new set of questions

to ask, so they become conscious of things they we're not conscious of and

balance out perceptions that they thought we're in the way and turn the same

experience into something on the way. So the first thing,

because we have change in perceptions, is that no matter what happens,

if we're seeing it as the setback,

it's because we're choosing to see the downsides,

not the upsides. And I'm not trying to be a positive thinker. Cause you know,

I'm not a promoter of positive thinking. I'm a promoter of balanced thinking.

Because believe it or not,

a setback can also be something we're infatuated with.,

We can have a setback because, I'll give you an example;

I had a gentlemen who his girlfriend dumped him and he

was highly infatuated with her,

which is part of the reason why she probably dumped him. He didn't,

he felt he was the underdog and she felt she was empowered and she felt she

could do better than that. And because of his infatuation,

he felt because she's left him, now his life was ended. I mean,

he was very infatuated with her and thought, 'Oh my God,

I can't function anymore.' And so he was infatuated and he needed to see the

downsides of being with her. And I worked with her,

or him pardon me and I stacked up the downsides.

So it's not always that you got to find the upsides to what's going on.

Sometimes finding the downsides of something that you just think you lost.

Remember I said in many presentations I've done,

there are two forms of stress in life;

the stress of perceiving that you've lost something that you're seeking or

perception that you've gained something you're trying to avoid.

And so changing your perceptions could be either one of those.

If you can find the downsides to the things that you're infatuated with,

you can release the stresses and have the setback dissolve.

Because all of a sudden,

if you're infatuated with somebody and you find the downsides to her,

you're no longer infatuated, you're neutral, and then if she leaves you,

you're not burdened anymore. It's not a setback, it's an opportunity.

But at the same time,

if you're resentful to somebody and you're having this event come in your life

and you need to see the upsides, otherwise it's running you.

So I'm not a positive thinker in this case.

If you're on a downside and you're perceiving more setbacks than drawbacks or

more setbacks than upsides, then you may need to come up with the upsides,

the positives. But if you're actually infatuated with somebody,

you may need to the downsides.

So dissolving setbacks is not about positive thinking,

because some of them do need positive thinking, some need negative thinking.

So I just want to make a statement that going and balancing out the equation is

what liberates you. Anything that you're infatuated with,

occupies space and time in your mind and runs you,

and you need to downsides to set you free. And anything you resent,

that you see the downsides and without the upsides,

you need to see the upsides to, to set you free.

So it depends on what the setback is.

If you've lost something you're infatuated,

you may need to see the downside of the person that you're attached to and the

upside of them being gone. At the same time if you're resentful to somebody,

you may need to see the upside of why they're coming around you and the drawback

if they were go away.

And if you go and take those two sides and balance out the equation,

there's nothing there except an event that you're now grateful for.

A perfectly balanced mind a grateful mind.

So I'm a firm believer in asking whatever question equilibrates the mind

and allows the person to see both sides of the event. So,

that could be again about relationships, it could be money.

I've had a person that has lost money and they've had a big setback

economically.

They thought they had paid their taxes and they got hit with a big tax bill,

for instance, and all of a sudden they had less money than they thought.

And they thought, well,

I need to find the benefits of now losing the money or the drawbacks of having

that money if I had kept the money and didn't have it taken.

If I neutralize that from both sides I'm now adaptable.

Adaptability comes from a balanced mind.

You're not adaptable if you're highly infatuated, you fear the loss of it.

You're not highly adaptable if you're resentful to something and fear the gain

of it, you're in anxiousness and you're in fear.

You're only set free when you have a balanced mind.

And that's what I do in the Breakthrough Experience,

the Demartini Method is designed for that.

It's a series of questions that equilibrate the mind,

that liberate you from the bondage and baggage of emotions that weigh you down,

which we label setbacks and liberates us.

So we can be free and resilient and adaptable to whatever's happening.

See we have to go through and we can gain and lose things and resilience and

adaptability is the ability to have something come and go. You know,

resilience is occur,

if you have a perfectly balanced mind and something has gone, taken from you,

if it's a perfect balance mind, you're not feeling a loss,

but if you're a highly infatuated with it and it's taken from you,

you're devastated. If you're highly resentful and it comes into your life,

you're not, you're highly stressed,

but if it's neutral and something comes into your life or goes away from your

life, you're freed.

So a perfectly neutral mind is what liberates people from the stresses and the

setbacks. A setback is nothing but an imbalanced mind.

So in the Breakthrough Experience, I have people that have had setbacks,

financial setbacks, and I ask them, okay,

so let's say that your house cost way more than you expected.

They've raised the interest rate.

You had more costs on maintenance or cost on having to buy things to

fill the house with furniture and all this other stuff.

And now you're resenting that and you're feeling you're having a setback because

you can't get ahead. You're not saving your money and this kind of thing.

So what you can do is go in there and find out what's the benefit of having that

situation and what would be the drawback of it being the way you

fantasize.

I always say depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy

that you're addicted to. And you're thinking that well,

if it was the way I fantasize life would have been better.

And sometimes the setbacks we have in life are not even setbacks,

they're comparisons of fantasies that we're addicted to.

And as long as we're holding onto a fantasy about how life's supposed to be,

then what it is, is going to be feeling like some sort of setback or challenge.

So I'm a firm believer in balancing out the mind, as you know,

and I think that the quality of your life's based on

you ask and the most quality questions you can get are the ones that bring

balance to the mind.

And how are you going to have a balanced physiology without a balanced mind?

It's not happening. You know, people say I've got an illness.

I've had people with illnesses.

I had a lady the other day when I was in India that said, I have this illness,

she had the symptoms, and what might be the benefit of it.

First she said 'I have this illness. How do I get rid of it?' And I said,

'What's the benefit you're getting out of it?' And she,

'Well there's no benefit to my illness.' I said, 'No, there's a benefit to it.

No one's going to continue to do something unless there's an upside to it.' And

we went through and we asked her that question,

and we got about six or seven answers.

It didn't take many where she started to see well maybe this is actually helping

her get what she wants.

She wanted to get out of a job she didn't want to be in and her sicknesses is

giving her a reason not to be in it and giving her time to think about the next

step in her life.

And she's manifesting the symptoms in order to make that change that she's

wanting to do. And so sometimes we think that these are setbacks,

are actually opportunities.

The body's doing something in a way that we didn't see initially.

And I'm a firm believer that once we balance out the mind we don't even see a

setback, all we see it as an opportunity,

we find the hidden order in our apparent chaos,

and we're actually now grateful for what happens.

And I always say that anything we're not grateful for somehow we've got a skewed

view of. If we balance out our mind, we have a lot of gratitude.

A perfectly balanced mind is grateful.

I've proven that in the Breakthrough Experience on thousands of people.

When I ask them a series of questions in the Demartini Method and we balance it,

there's nothing but gratitude and love.

And they see the hidden order and they don't have a problem.

They thought they had a problem, the problem was an imbalanced thinking,

imbalanced perception. And by asking the question,

what's the upside if you're down, and what's the downside if you're up,

balances it out and liberates you,

and then you realize there's nothing there except thank you.

So if you're infatuated with something,

and if you ask what's the downsides to that thing you're infatuated with

and what would be the upside to not having it and balance that,

your anxiety about losing it goes down and the setback of losing it goes down.

And if you're resentful to something and you find the upsides of what you're

resenting and the downsides of if it was to be gone,

you can balance it out.

Because you realize that no matter what's going on in your life,

a master is able to turn whatever's happening into opportunity.

And so it's just about the questions. And you change the perception of those,

by asking the right questions,

because questions help you see unconscious information.

And then what happens the second you change your perception,

your decisions of what to do with it change, and your actions change.

And if you have prioritized actions that are inspired,

that are according to your highest value, you have the most resilience.

One very, very efficient question, because as I said,

the questions you ask in life makes a difference in life.

One very powerful question is; how is whatever I'm experiencing right now,

how's it helping me fulfill what I value most?

How's it helped me fulfill what's highest on my value?

How's it helped me fulfill my mission, my purpose in life?

What my inspired vision is.

If you ask that question no matter what's going on and hold yourself

accountable to ask and answer that question,

you'd be surprised that you'll see things on the way, not in the way.

I found that's the most meaningful question you could

head. How is whatever I'm experiencing today, helping me fulfill my mission?

I think that's a great question. And people don't ask that question. They say,

well, how's this, you know, this thing that's happening to me, it sucks,

I don't want this. But if you ask, how is it helping me?

You may not see it at first,

but if you hold yourself accountable to look and you discover what that is,

you realize that this thing that's a setback wasn't a setback. In fact,

I don't think there was. When I look back at my life, you know,

you can have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process by looking back and

finally seeing how things served you,

or you can have the wisdom of the ages without the aging process,

by looking right now and looking how it serves you.

And the only difference is the one you're waiting and running your story and

being a victim over a period of time.

And the other is asking the question and seeing the blessings and the upsides of

that event or the downsides in some cases.

I had a lovely man in Los Angeles the other day that

his girlfriend, as I said, left him.

And he was devastated by it cause he was highly infatuated. And I said, 'Well,

let's just take for a second. If all of a sudden she had stayed with you,

what were the downsides?' And he goes, 'Wow.

The downsides, if she stayed with, it distracted me.

She was definitely distracting.

And I was finding myself doing stuff that I don't normally do to be with her.

And I was not getting what I really wanted to get done.' I said,

'What's another downside that if she stayed there,

if she was there and hadn't left?' 'Well,

I would have ended up spending a hell of a lot more income.' And I just started

asking him some questions in there and ask him what would be the downside if she

stayed and what was the blessing that she moved on. And he says, 'Well,

I closed a big deal. The moment she left, I closed this big deal.' I said,

'Was that some sort of confirmation that maybe that was,

you were just infatuated and blind to the downsides?' He goes. 'You know,

I think you nailed it.' And I see this very commonly, I mean,

this is a very common thing that goes on in people's lives.

The same thing in health, you know, people will say, 'Well,

this is devastating to me'. You know, today for instance, I got a raspy voice,

okay. But I see it, the benefit side is that I've got a sexy voice.

It's all the way I look at it. And if I can see it in that fashion,

I can use it to my advantage. And if I ask myself,

if I didn't have this voice what would be the drawback? Well,

it allows me to have to focus more attentively on my speech,

make sure it's clear and articulate.

But it's about asking the questions that equilibrate the mind,

you cannot have a stress in an equilibrated mind.

Because stress is the perception of polarization.

When we're living in our highest values and we're more objective,

and we embrace both challenge and support in our pursuit of what we feel is our

purpose in life, we have way more resilience and we don't have setbacks.

We're more resilient, we're more flexible, we don't see gains or losses,

we live in a world of transformation.

And I've had people come up to me and say, well, you know,

in the Breakthrough Experience I've had, you know, a guy that said, you know,

'My mother left me when I was young. And that was a setback,

I was abandoned.' 'Okay.

So first of all have you ever counted all the famous

celebrities and people that started out that way?' He says, 'No.' I said,

'Let's go look online and find out how many people started out as orphans and

abandoned by their mother.' And we came up with this huge list of super

celebrity status individuals that started out that way. I said, 'Well,

you're in that category.' And his therapist had basically had him thinking,

well, because he was abandoned,

he has certain possible psychological weaknesses that are going to occur in his

life because of this, people that have that, here's the stats. And I'm going,

that's all bullshit. I said 'That doesn't have to be that way.

That's just because you chose and people chose to be victims,

but what's the benefit of your mother leaving?' He goes, 'Well,

I don't know.' 'Well, let's look, first of all,

what did you think you missed by her being gone?

What did you think you missed?' 'Well this and this and this?' I said,

'Who provided those things?' And all of a sudden he goes, Oh,

we found three people that provided those three things. And I said,

'What else did you think is missing?' And we found people that are doing that.

I said,

'What's the benefit of those people providing it instead of your mom?' And he

goes, 'Well, I had, there's more opportunities.

My mom would never have given me those opportunities.' I said,

'So are you sure that this thing is a terrible thing that your mom has abandoned

you?

Are you sure It's not just a gift and you were set forward and she gave you an

opportunity in your life?' And he goes, 'wow,

you have a way of asking questions that make me see things differently.

I've been sitting there running a story about how I've been abandoned most of my

life. And I've never stopped and looked at how it served me.' I said, 'Well,

that's,

that's crazy not to see how things are on the way and keep them focused on in

the way.' So I basically helped him see that that's just

a gift. It's not a setback. The setback was purely a choice of perceptions.

And if a person changes their perceptions, they don't have a setback.

Like I said,

the greatest question is to how specifically is whatever I'm experiencing,

whether supportive or challenging, whether the thing's infatuated or resentful,

how specifically is it helping me fulfill my mission, my purpose,

my highest value, what's most meaningful and inspiring,

and what I'm dedicated in life? If you're ask that question, even the setbacks,

you know,

I had a guy that he had a situation where his house was taken away from him.

He wasn't paying his bills and he lost his house and went into a bankruptcy

and he couldn't afford his house. He bought the house at the peak.

He wasn't able to make the payments because he thought he was,

he had to lose his house and he was devastated. And I said,

'So how long have you had this house?' He said,

'I've had this for two and a half years. And I've been just stressed. I mean,

it's been unbelievable stressful paying these bills.' I said,

'Is there a part of you that didn't want to pay these bills?

And you wanted out of this trap?' He said,

'Yeah.' 'Did you get that done?' He goes, 'I did.' I said,

'Are you now interested in possibly renting a smaller place,

more effective while the market's still ridiculously high,

you bought at the peak of the market,

wouldn't it be wiser to just rent it temporarily until the bottom of the market

is coming in?' He said, 'Yeah.' I said,

'Can you see that this so-called setback is actually a gift,

you got out of overpriced system that you would have taken 10 years to get your

equity out of,

you've now got it structured in such a way that you could go and rent out a

place without having to worry about it.

You can lower the cost to start saving and accumulating some cashflow.

You can learn not to get enamored and fantasizing about product,

buying a house at the peak of the market,

when the prices were ridiculously high,

and right now you can wait patiently and you can come out with actually a

money-making house instead of actually a money losing house?' And he goes,

'You're right.' but he says 'I've affected my credit.' I said, 'Well,

let's get your credit back in operation.

If all of a sudden you're saving money again,

and you're paying less on your bills and you're getting your house in order,

you can go get your credit back in order.' You got to realize that the banking

system, they put you in good credit and bad credit,

it's not the end of the world.

It's just a banking strategy to make sure that they're getting the most interest

out of you. You know, it's interesting people go, you know,

I want to be able to get a credit card so I can build up credit,

which means the bank is not going to give you credit unless they make money out

of you.

They're not going to give you a good credit rating unless they're making money

out of you.

And if they show you by giving you credit card bills and they give you a minimum

payment and you pay that and they make the most money out of it they'll give you

a bigger credit card bills,

and so you can now raise your limit because you paid your credit card off.

You think that's a good thing to have all that credit and that's got

value,

but it's not the end of the world just because a bank gives you a good standing

of credit, unless you want to get dependent on a bank.

There's many ways of getting what you want in life without having to go use

money from a bank. There's many ways of getting things.

I haven't dealt with with banks other than money goes in and goes out of the

bank and goes into investments for years.

So I'm just saying to don't let something like that be a setback.

It could be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.

It made you savvy about your money and made you not live beyond your means.

It made sure that you're saving and investing money instead of just putting it

all into a house, which is actually a lifestyle instead of a actual,

there's no asset building in the house, unless you down grade,

somewhere down the line.

So it's actually helping you manage money and think about what's really priority

in your life. Somehow people think, well, I got to get a house,

but that's not necessarily the wisest use of your money,

sometimes it's wiser to go put your money into assets.

But this is just an example of somebody that takes the challenge

and sees it as a setback could turn out to be a great opportunity for him.

And he didn't realize, you know,

when he got through and we finally got him into a smaller place and paid rent

and saving away money again, he felt at ease. And he says,

'I feel like I'm not working for a frigging house and paying off a bank.' I

said, 'You're working for yourself again.' He says, 'That's worth everything,

I was devastated by the idea of a bankruptcy,

but I realize that that's only in the opinions of people in the bank.' No one

really gives a shit about it, except a bank.

And if you're not having to borrow money from a bank, whoopidoo.

It's not the end of the world. So we turn that setback into an opportunity.

And I've had people, like I said, who've had a setback in relationships,

setbacks in money, setbacks in health,

that are actually turned into great opportunities,

If we just ask the right question. And most of the things I said,

there's two basic stresses, the stress of losing that what you seek,

that's a setback, or having to deal with that, what you're trying to avoid.

And that's a setback.

All the setbacks that you're going to face are one of those two things,

and those are purely because of an infatuation with

something. And those you have control over.

In the Breakthrough Experience that I teach every week just about,

I have people that are infatuated with things and resentful to things,

and we make them ask new sets of questions, balance it out.

The emotions of the gain and loss of those things are no longer there.

They're back into resilience, adaptable.

They're back into seeing things in a grateful manner and had nothing to do with

anything about what was out there, everything to do with your perception.

Now you can also take different actions because of those perceptions.

Like I said,

this gentleman went out and rented a new house instead of bought a house.

You buy at the top of the market, and it can be very stressful to have a house.

You buy at the bottom of the market, it can be very rewarding to buy a house,

if you buy depending on the cycle,

but you can actually buy a house and then want to have to move in two years and

then buy at the top of the market, and then you can't move.

You can't move because you're going to have a loss of equity and you're going to

pay the bank . So buying a house, sometimes you're to buy a house,

that's not necessarily the smartest thing to do.

You need to run the numbers and really think this through,

make sure it's really a priority to do.

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