Do your daily life and work activities provide you with significant and lasting fulfillment? Do they make you feel like you are making a meaningful contribution to the world? If you can say “yes” to these questions, then you will feel more engaged and fulfilled in your life compared to those who feel that there is little or no meaning in how they live.

Work and money with meaning tends to lead to philanthropy—greater service and contribution to the world.

Work and money without meaning tends to lead to escapism or debauchery.

You have a unique set or hierarchy of values and priorities that make you stand out. Whatever is highest on your list of values is the value which provides you with the most purpose and meaning when acted upon and fulfilled.

Whenever you are sticking to high-priority daily actions, ones that fulfill your top three highest values, you will feel more purposeful, productive and alive. Your life will feel more meaningful and fulfilled.

Whenever you are allowing yourself to take on lower priority daily actions, ones that do not fulfill your top three highest values, you will feel less purposeful, productive and alive. Your life will feel less fulfilled.

Dedicating yourself to what is truly higher on your list of values liberates you from a quiet life of desperation and initiates a more engaging life of purpose, meaning and inspiration. This can add years to your life and life to your years.

There are two ways of adding purpose and meaning to your day:

1. Do what you love through delegating.
2. Love what you do through linking.

Doing what you love through delegating means identifying what is truly most inspiring and meaningful to you and focusing your attention and energy on these items.  Saying “no thank you” to all other lower priority distractions and saying “yes” to what is most meaningful and fulfilling, liberates.

Loving what you do through linking means clarifying whatever lower priority daily actions you feel you are currently unable to delegate and linking them to what is most important.

“How specifically is temporarily performing this particular action step (until I can find someone to delegate it to) helping me fulfill what is truly most meaningful and fulfilling?”

When you are unfulfilled and feel your life is meaningless, you may seek immediately gratifying behaviors to compensate. You will possibly try to fulfill your gut with sugar, food or alcohol or fill your house, closets or garage with consumer items or your mind with escaping drugs or thoughts of sex.

A few years ago, I was asked to assist a fellow executive performance coach colleague with consulting one of his wealthy entrepreneurial clients. This client previously owned a multibillion-dollar, multinational company, but had recently sold it, cashed out more than handsomely, and retired. Although this client was a moderate social drinker before retirement, he soon found himself escalating his drinking to the point of excess and throughout most of his overly leisureful day. When I spoke with this client on Zoom, he was sloshed and could barely speak fluently. He was fully aware of his drinking escalation but was having a challenge controlling his behavior.

I asked this gentleman when he first started noticing his drinking escalation. It was quite evident to him that it began upon selling his business months earlier. I asked him why he sold his business. He stated that he was in his mid-seventies and was sensing it would be wiser to exit when he did before his health declined so he could “relax” and supposedly “enjoy” his leisure life after working so hard for so many years.

I jokingly (but not jokingly) told him: “There is nothing wrong with retirement as long as it does not get in the way of your meaningful work.”  He was already starting to wonder if retiring and no longer working was truly as meaningful and fulfilling as he assumed it would be.

If you do not fill your day with meaningful actions upon retirement, you can begin to “lose” your faculties and end up with senility or indulge in immediately gratifying forms of debauchery as a compensation.

I suggested that he consider renegotiating with his previous company’s new owners and leaders that he return and once again contribute his skill and expertise in the capacity of closing big multimillion or billion dollar deals for them for a fair compensation.

The client was brought to tears considering this suggestion and said he missed making his big global deals. So, the next week he did exactly what I suggested and almost immediately reduced his drinking by 90 percent. He kept his daily diary full by calling, scheduling and doing big deals, which kept his daily life more meaningful and productive. It was not the alcohol causing his excessive behavior. It was his reduction in meaningful, productive daily actions that resulted in his ungoverned behavior.

When you fill your day with high-priority actions that are truly meaningful, your blood, glucose and oxygen flows up to the executive functioning area of your forebrain, your medial prefrontal cortex, which then calms down the immediately gratifying, desire center of your brain, your amygdala, which allows you to more effectively self-govern any of your impulsive or addictive behaviors.

Meaningful service and contribution are now adding years to this gentleman’s life and life to his years.

Keep your day filled with high-priority meaningful actions before low-priority meaningless actions dissolve your life away.

Dr. John Demartini is a human behavioral specialist, educator, internationally published author, consultant and founder of the Demartini Institute.

Drdemartini.com

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Dr. John Demartini – Seven Common Fears That Can Hinder Business Growth

Are you feeling that you are plateaued in your business development or company growth? Are you wondering why you are not breaking through and going to the next level?

There are at least seven common fears that can at least partly underlie business plateaus. But, before I share them, I would first love to share a story involving a very common one.

Recently I had a 40-year-old business entrepreneur approach me and ask if I could consult with him about his business growth concerns. I stated, “certainly.” We scheduled a time, and I began the session by asking him to prioritize what he felt he wanted to work on first and foremost. He stated that no matter what strategy he has tried over the past three years, he just can’t seem to break through the business growth ceiling he is at and he feels stagnant and stuck.

I then asked him a simple straight forward question: “If all of a sudden you were to break through this current ceiling in your business and take your business to the next level, what would you be afraid could happen?” He stared at me for a moment and suddenly stated: “I am afraid my wife would divorce me, because of all the extra time and effort it would take.” Then he explained that three of his friends and business colleagues previously took off in their businesses and became a bit cocky, preoccupied in their businesses, and soon did not meet some of their wife’s needs. They all ended up in a divorce, which cost them a substantial portion of their existing fortunes and nearly completely crumbled their businesses, at least for a while. He said, “I guess the idea of that possibly happening scares the daylight out of me and maybe it is adding at least one of the brake pedals on my business growth.”

I was sure there were other fears and reasons, including certain management and delegation issues to be addressed, but I tackled his first concern on the spot. I stated, “Every decision you make and action you take will be based upon what you believe will give you the greatest advantage with the information you have according to your current hierarchy of values. Unless you find ways in which doing the proven actions to grow your business can enhance or build your marriage more than destroy it, you will probably plateau to protect you from this anxiety and its potential outcome.”

I explained to him that if his wife did not feel she would be winning if he were to grow his business, she will probably respond in a way to try to get what she wants. So I asked him how growing his business to the level he desired could help his wife achieve what is highest on her set of values and what he perceives her life is being inspired by and dedicated to.

At first, he could not see any immediate advantages to her or the family.  But Demartini prompted some possible benefits to her of him achieving his dream. As we continued, he made new beneficial associations in his mind of how getting what he wanted could help her get what she wanted. The more links we found to help her fulfill her family dreams and social contributions, the less anxiety he was feeling about achieving his goal.

He also saw how delegating some of the lower priority actions he was still doing at could liberate him and allow more quality time for his wife and family. Plus, he saw how it could liberate her from doing more mundane actions at home and allow her the freedom to pursue some of her more meaningful objectives.

His energy immediately started rising and new creative strategies and action steps started emerging and flowing. Once he saw how growing his business would not be in the way of a lasting marriage, he was inspired and ready to take action. He could not wait to go home and share the new advantages he could provide his wife and family by stepping up his business growth.

Over the next six months, his business took off and broke through the previous ceiling, but he kept his focus on how it could benefit his family. This is the definition of caring.

In addition to the fear of losing the respect of loved ones, there are six other common fears that can hinder an entrepreneur’s business growth and prevent them from getting to the next level. These are the fear of:

• Not knowing enough to strategically plan and execute business strategies to meet objectives.
• Defeat or failure by not achieving the business objectives they envision.
• Not making enough income or losing money by pursuing business objectives.
• Being rejected by social authorities they look up to for pursuing business objectives.
• Not having enough vitality, stamina, or wellness to achieve their business objectives.
• Breaking the morals or ethics of a spiritual authority they are subordinating to by pursuing their business objectives.

Each of these fears can hinder the achievement of your chief business aim. By confronting each of the existing fears that can cause you to plateau by answering specialized questions like those in the story above, you can become conscious of what you are unconscious of and see beyond the associated disadvantages holding your back and bring them into balance.

The seven common fears are simply assumptions that you are about to experience more drawbacks than benefits. So look for the advantages to these imagined fears and balance them out by holding yourself accountable and liberate yourself from the ceiling your imbalanced mind has temporarily imagined.

Dr. John Demartini is the founder of the Demartini Institute, a human behavioral specialist, educator and international best-selling author.  Drdemartini.com 

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Achieving sustainable fair exchange is a constant push and pull.

Are you creating sustainable fair exchanges in your many personal, social and professional relationships? Or are you exaggerating or minimizing yourself and trying to narcissistically get, or altruistically give, something for nothing, which can erode your relationship dynamics, wellbeing and overall life mastery?

When you arrogantly try to get something for nothing narcissistically, or humbly try to give something for nothing altruistically in your various relationship transactions, neither extreme is sustainable. Both extremes result in negative feedback responses that are designed to re-establish authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and equity.

As with negative feedback responses within your physical body striving for homeostasis, negative feedback responses within your various relationship transactions are striving to help you obtain, or maintain, equanimity and equity, and therefore overall life mastery.

People in relationships intuitively compare their inputs, benefits and rewards to their outputs, contributions, and costs and strive for equity to create sustainable fair exchange at home, at work and in their social life.

When someone challenges you and you exaggerate your perception of yourself and importance over them and think you are superior, you awaken your narcissistic persona, tend to project your values onto them and try to get them to live more in your values. You then try to get something for nothing (sacrifice them for yourself, which is ultimately futile), which eventually makes them diminish their desire to continue transacting with you. This eventually builds up resentment in them towards you to reestablish a more sustainable fair exchange.

When someone supports you and you minimize your perception of yourself and importance under them and think you are inferior, you awaken your altruistic persona, tend to inject their values into yourself and try to get yourself to live more in their values. You then try to give something for nothing (sacrifice yourself to them, which is ultimately futile), which eventually makes you diminish your desire to continue transacting with them. This eventually builds up resentment in you towards them to reestablish a more sustainable fair exchange. When you are neither superior, nor inferior, to someone, you reach a state of equanimity within yourself and a state of equity between you and them, and you are your authentic self. You awaken your sustainable fair exchange state of being and fairly give something for something where you and they are inspired to continue transacting. Here you have respectful dialogues more than alternating monologues, and you love the relationship.

There are seven primary areas of life that you can empower and master: Mentally, Vocationally, Financially, Familially, Socially, Physically and Spiritually. To master each area takes authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and equity in your daily transactions. Let me explain.

Mentally

When you exaggerate your perceptions of positives in others and are infatuated with them and put them up on pedestals and make them superior to you, you tend to minimize yourself in turn by the law of contrast. Then both you and they are not perceived objectively. Whatever you are infatuated with in them and disown in you occupies space and time in your subconscious mind, which clouds your mind with subjective bias, distortions and distractions. It is hard to sleep at night when you are highly infatuated. Here you will tend to sacrifice yourself for them altruistically for fear of their loss.

When you exaggerate your perceptions of negatives in others and resent them and put them down in pits and make them inferior to you, you tend to exaggerate yourself in turn by the law of contrast. Then both you and they are not perceived objectively. Whatever you resent in them and disown in you, occupies space and time in your subconscious mind, which clouds your mind with subjective bias, distortions and distractions. It is hard to sleep at night when you are highly resentful. Here you will tend to sacrifice them for yourself narcissistically for fear of their gain.

Both extremes cloud and distract your mind and undermine the more empowering mental functions of creativity, innovation, original thinking and genius. But a balanced equity between you and them and a balanced equanimity within yourself resulting from more reflective awareness clears, reawakens and empowers your creative mind.

Vocationally

When you exaggerate your perceptions of positives in your customers or employees and are infatuated with them and put them up on pedestals and make them superior to you, you minimize yourself in turn. Here you will tend to sacrifice yourself for them altruistically for fear of their loss. This can make you raise their salaries and lower your prices and profits to keep them. And this will eventually make you feel you deserve more than you previously assumed in order to get you back into authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and equity.

When you exaggerate your perceptions of negatives in your customers or employees and resent them and put them down in pits and make them inferior to you, you exaggerate yourself in turn. Here you will tend to sacrifice them for yourself narcissistically for fear of their gain. This can make you lower their salaries and raise your prices and profits, only to have customers decline and employees collectively bargain to humble you back into equity. And this will eventually make you feel you deserve less than you previously assumed in order to get you back into authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and equity.

Financially

When you exaggerate yourself with pride as your investment within the financial market is heading up above the mean, you can foolishly overleverage your investments with other people’s money on margin and enter into risky territory, which can humble you when it returns back down to the mean or below and the margin loan is called. Trying to get something for nothing by overbuying on leveraged margin has its price.

When you minimize yourself with shame as your investment within the financial market is heading down below the mean, you can foolishly oversell your investments and give deals to other buyers and again enter into risky territory, which can aggravate you when it returns back up to the mean or above. Trying to give something for nothing by overselling has its price.

Familially

When you come home cocky, feeling superior to your spouse, over deserving, and narcissistically expect royal treatment, your spouse will naturally criticize and humble you and pull you back down into equilibrium to maintain a relationship match and equity.

When you come home humble, feeling inferior to your spouse, under deserving and altruistically expect pauper treatment, your spouse will naturally praise and build you and lift you back up into equilibrium to maintain a relationship match and equity.

When you come home authentic and in a state of equanimity within you and a state of equity between you and your spouse, they will be present and loving and in a state of authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and equity to confirm and honor your state of authenticity. The purpose of marriage is teaching authenticity.

Socially

When you become proud, superior and arrogant to others, and expect something for nothing, society will cut you down and humble you like the “tall poppy syndrome,” which occurs when successful people are criticized. Pride before the fall.

When you become shamed, inferior and humble to others, and expect nothing for something, society will build you up. Humility before the rise.

Society will offer you negative feedback responses in the forms of criticism and praises in order to help you be authentic, and help you return you sustainable fair exchange and equity with those you care about and influence.

Physically

When you perceive yourself to be challenged by others and you become superior, arrogant, narcissistic and aggressive with a sympathetic autonomic response you create symptoms to let you know it—oxidation, hyperglycemia, tachycardia and hypertension.

When you perceive yourself to be supported by others and you become inferior, humble, altruistic and passive with a parasympathetic autonomic response, you create symptoms to let you know it—reduction, hypoglycemia, bradycardia and hypotension.

When you are authentic, in a state of sustainable fair exchange and equity, your psychology and physiology both return to a state of autonomic regulation, homeostasis and wellness. Your physiology is constantly offering negative feedback responses to guide you to authenticity, equanimity and equity.

Spiritually

When you exaggerate or minimize yourself and become iniquitous, you are not being your true authentic self. Your authentic self is poised, equanimous, present, inspired, enthused, grateful and loving. You are constantly being guided intuitively to express your most inspired state of being. You want to be loved for who you are. When you are who you are, you express and receive that love.

All seven areas of your life offer you negative feedback responses to let you know when you are not authentic and not in sustainable fair exchange, and they are attempting to bring you back into authenticity, sustainability and equity.

All of the many symptoms you may experience in each area of your life are ultimately on the way, not in the way. They are natural homeostatic negative feedback systems to help teach you to maximize your awareness and potential upon planet Earth.

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When was the last time you faced or wrestled with a morally challenging business decision? How did you handle it? Were you left with a paradoxical outcome? Or with a meaningful, integral and satisfying solution? Did you simply take the risk of the consequences and make the decision autocratically? Or did you center yourself and use more objective reasoning, resulting in a more sustainable fair exchange? Did your decision result in a zero-sum game or a non-zero-sum game?

In the early 1990s, I was contacted and requested to consult for the founder of a rapidly growing website developing company headquartered out of Florida. The company was quickly scaling up and expanding its operations to meet the urgent new demand for business websites in the US and other countries throughout the world. The founder was hiring hundreds of website developers, with their newly emerging technical and graphic skills, from various colleges. The founder presented me with what he termed his sleepless night-initiating, business challenging, moral conundrum.

His number one performer in website development package sales was a recently hired woman who was selling more website development contracts than five of the other existing sales specialists combined. Her recent coming on board seemed critically vital to the rapidly growing company. The founder was admiring her performance, was a bit now dependent on her, and felt she was definitely adding to the company’s stability, brand and image.

During this same time, his cofounding business partner of three years, who was initially very active in helping build phase one of the company, was now slacking off. He was uninspired, a bit debaucherous, and no longer considered by the founder to be very contributive and productive, yet he was still unfairly receiving 49 percent of the current business profits—at least according to the founder’s current subjective perceptions. The founder disclosed that he felt that their initial business partnership arrangement/agreement was no longer a fair arrangement for the efforts the cofounding partner was currently providing, in comparison to his own.

The founder either wanted to renegotiate the terms of the original agreement or buy his cofounding partner out, since his attempt to try to get his partner to be more focused, strategic and actively engaged was not being effective or fruitful, which was more than frustrating and enraging him. He also felt the cofounder’s lowered work ethic was also rippling down to some of the longer-term sales specialists and administrative staff and catalyzing similar less-productive entitlements in some individuals in a few of the departments.

The founder, though, had a bit of an additional challenge. The cofounding partner was “secretively” having a recently discovered, passionately intimate affair with the number one saleswoman. So the founder’s dependency on the saleswoman and his simultaneous desire for independence from the cofounder was leaving him with a challenging moral paradox. How does he approach this sensitive issue without disrupting the current growth of the company? Particularly, since the company’s current executive management policy was to disallow such romantic affairs between executives or between executives and non-executives.

If he challenged the cofounding partner on the relationship issue and his reduced productivity, and it was not done with finesse and sensitivity, it could jeopardize the dynamic he currently had with the recently hired, highly productive saleswoman, due to her potential paradox of priority and loyalty.

The founder was running various scenarios around in his mind about the fallout of confronting his cofounding partner, and about its impact on a potential decline in the percentage of the profits, and about its impact on her performance and commitment to the company—over her loyalty to the cofounder.

If he stuck his head in the sand and attempted to ignore the situation, he would further perpetuate in his mind the seemingly unfair exchange, the out-of-integrity scenario with his cofounding partner and the corporate policy infringement. This would lead to further degrees of confusion, resentment and an imbalance in workloads between the two, which would eventually resurface and again have to be faced and confronted.

The founder was certainly admiring the saleswoman’s productivity and was conscious of her upsides and unconscious of her downsides. He was simultaneously quite resentful of the cofounding partner and was, in contrast, conscious of his downsides and unconscious of his upsides. He was therefore caught in the subjectively-biased web of a harsh, emotionally-trying reality—a seeming moral paradox.

I had the founder make a thorough list of the downsides to the saleswoman that he was blind to and a list of the upsides to the cofounding partner, which he was also blind to—in order to balance out his perception. This would level the playing field and center himself back into his more objective executive function in his forebrain since he was enraged and functioning from his amygdala and emotionally overreacting. This calmed down his emotional subjective blindness and helped him perceive more fairly and objectively these two individuals. Once he perceived the balance to both individuals, he was able to come to a more reasonable solution and not impulsively and instinctually react.

He then had a meeting with the leading saleswoman and explained how important it was for her to share her highly polished selling skills with the remaining sales teams. This would help sales be a bit more evenly distributed, so as to not discourage the remaining sales specialists and not have the company too dependent upon her. When he was admiring her and blind to her downsides, he feared her loss. Once he leveled the perceptions, his anxiety calmed, and he was able to help her be more accountable to the company in a newly broadened way.

He also met with his cofounding partner, and instead of lashing out with his previous emotionally pent-up rage, he more calmly revealed to his partner the stats concerning his performance. He asked his partner what he was experiencing or going through since his productivity had so declined that it was not like his previous performing self. He also asked if he was unfulfilled in the role that gradually emerged from the growth that they now had. Was he contemplating alternative directions? Was he aware of the impact his distraction was having on the performance of the teams he oversaw? Was he feeling that he was contributing all that he could to the company? Was he contemplating other company positions? Was he wanting to retire early? Was he aware of the impact his relationship with the new saleswoman was having on the teams below him and on corporate policy infringement? In other words, he had a discussion that brought the integrity back between them and cleared the repressed emotions and uncertainties.

The cofounding partner openly admitted he was currently disengaged, was wanting to pursue a new direction for the company and was feeling that the founding partner had different intentions long-term than him. So they hashed the differences out and came to a conclusion that they were going to add another new department to the company, which allowed the cofounder to become reengaged and add new services that contributed to the overall long-term profits and growth.

The cofounder realized that his affair was leaving the company vulnerable and was not setting or exemplifying the standards originally intended and he was misleading himself and the saleswoman on his true long-term intentions. So he then humbly communicated his concerns and feelings to the saleswoman and requested that they reestablish a more professional relationship since he intuitively knew it was probably not going to be a long-term relationship, though he sincerely appreciated the time they had together. He shared with her that her talents and position in the business were far too important to take the risk of potentially jeopardizing them by being a bit irresponsible, though he was sincere with his passionate short-term feelings.

These two discussions cleared the air and energies up between all three individuals and helped reignite the cofounder’s focus on the business mission. One of the lessons learned was that: Earning money without engagement, meaning and fulfillment can lead to amygdala-based debauchery. But earning money with meaning, and fulfilling careers with engagement, can lead to integrity, sustainability and philanthropy.

Once the cofounder was re-engaged in his business, his behaviors become more governed and focused, his productivity returned, and he and the founder’s original partnership arrangement was back on track. The saleswoman was also partly relieved since she knew she was walking a bit on fire and could have jeopardized her position and career path and credibility.

The new department allowed the cofounder to be reinspired by the business mission. It also enabled him to be more of a spokesperson for the emerging specialty field in universities and in public media and therefore allowed him to participate in a greater leadership position in the website development market. The founder was sleeping again and was refocused and inspired.

Returning to integrity and sustainable fair exchange in business relationship transactions when confronted by such morally challenging business decisions pays off, physically, emotionally, mentally, vocationally, socially and financially.

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Are you an optimist? Are you a pessimist? Or are you both simultaneously, but unaware of it? What if both sides of your mental equation are equally as meaningful and essential for a masterful life? What if both poles are simultaneously present, though one may be conscious and the other unconscious?

You have moments when and where one of your optimistic or pessimistic personas are consciously expressed, and the complementary opposite other is unconsciously repressed, while at other moments the reverse is true.

When your optimist persona is expressed, you hope for, foresee or have confidence in a positive future outcome. You expect things to turn out favorably. You believe that you have the skill and ability to make so-called positive things happen. You tend to find opportunities in difficulties. But, you can also be at times overly gullible and partly blind as a result.

When your pessimist persona is expressed, you dread, foresee or have a sense of a negative future outcome. You expect things to turn out unfavorably. You believe that you don’t have the skill and ability to make so-called positive things happen. You tend to find difficulties in opportunities. But, you can also be at times overly skeptical and partly blind as a result.

When you are whole, integrated and authentic, you consciously foresee and embrace the positive opportunities and the negative difficulties simultaneously in the pursuit of your more balanced objective and what is truly more inspiring and meaningful. When you are undivided, you encompass and embrace your two sides of possible future outcomes in full awareness and you are not overly swayed by either side blindly, or with bias. You are more prepared for whatever comes along during your pursuit and therefore, more resilient.

When you have an unrealistic, optimistic fantasia view of the future, you have a positive or “optimism bias.” Your perception of the risk of misfortune is lower than true probability. It leads to a positive error correction or a negative feedback in the prefrontal cortex of your brain to return you to a more balanced and reasonable objective.

When you have an unrealistic, pessimistic nightmarish view of the future, you have a negative or “pessimism bias.” Your perception of the risk of misfortune is higher than true probability. It leads to a negative error correction or a positive feedback in the inferior frontal gyrus of your brain to return you again to a more balanced and reasonable objective.

When you have a fully reasonable and unbiased view of your present objective, you integrate such error corrections from either side of these two common subjectively-biased personas intuitively and set clear and meaningful objectives.

When you are fully conscious and acting in accordance with your true highest value(s) you awaken the executive functioning center in your medial prefrontal cortex which governs your pursuits, dampens the impulses and instincts of your polarizing amygdala and helps you pursue a more balanced and meaningful objective.

Your superconscious mind or executive center is cybernetic like and involves circular causal feedback loops to bring your overly optimistic and pessimistic states back into psychophysical homeostasis so you can set and pursuit a truly balanced and obtainable objective.

Each of your overly optimistic or pessimistic personas act as negative feedback responses to balance your overall psychophysiological state, thereby assisting you in integrating these two aspects into one more objective, authentic and powerful whole.

You have a genetic and memetic set point of equilibrium where any upward swing in positive, optimistic “happiness” falls back to the baseline and overshoots into negative, pessimistic “sadness” and then oscillates back up to the baseline. It is futile to override this law of balance long-term—what goes up must come down and vice versa.

Intentional activities based upon realistic and balanced expectations can help you appreciate the higher intuitive and governing power of your executive brain. Either supportive or challenging outer social interaction and feedback can also add to this balanced state—called “fulfillment.”

Neither optimistic pleasure and happiness, nor pessimistic pain and sadness can be pursued or avoided independently, for they are inseparably entangled like two poles of a magnet, or two quantum particles.

You may consciously express pleasure and unconsciously repress your underlying pain, or you may consciously express your pain and unconsciously repress your underlying pleasure. In either case, they are inseparable and actually two sides of one state of wholeness. Wisdom and love involves embracing the synthesis and synchronicity of these and all other complementary opposites.

The World Health Organization has called the U.S. one of the least happy and most anxious of all developed countries. Why does a nation so infatuated with optimistic happiness seem so discontented? Is it because the pursuit of fantasies breeds and is accompanied by nightmares?

It is unwise for you to try to be optimistically positive all the time. Positive thinking doesn’t actually help you as much as you might imagine. Trying to maintain only positive visions (fantasies) of the future while pursuing your goals will hinder your progress in achieving them.

A mental contrasting tool called PVGOP—Purpose, Vision, Goal, Obstacle, Plan can help. By using PVGOP you will be significantly more engaged with your work and less stressed. Although optimistic or positive thinking might feel warm and fuzzy in the initial moment, it often bears a false promise. Only when it’s paired with a clear view of potential obstacles will it consistently produce the desired results. A balanced, strategically-planned objective is more achievable. When you live congruently with your highest values, you are more likely to set balanced, objectively-reasoned goals.

“What do you get when you combine positive psychology and strengths-based leadership? You get deluded people who will never realize a fraction of their full potential. And if they happen to be entrepreneurs, there’s a very great chance they’ll fall flat on their faces and take their businesses down with them. Truth is, any fad that teaches you to focus on one aspect of reality and ignore its opposite is likely to be destructive. There is a natural balance to all things: life and death, good and bad, happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain. The very idea that you should focus on positives and ignore negatives, likewise with strengths versus weaknesses, is not only delusional; it’s a recipe for disaster. While life is full of ups and downs, one thing is certain: If you attempt to filter your consciousness and disallow negative thoughts or make believe the weaknesses holding you back don’t exist, you’ll probably never get past those hurdles and get to the next stage in your personal and professional development. And neither will your business.”
Steve Tobak

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the hedonistic or optimistic pursuit of a one-sided happiness, nor the anxiety of pessimistic sadness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of the middle path of meaning, which is unique to humans. The meaning extracted from the balance of the optimistic and pessimistic anticipation of the future outcomes together builds reasonable pursuits that are whole and productive.

Meaning is enduring. People who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate the fulfillment with their life higher than those who are almost bipolar with their conscious optimistic or unconscious pessimistic viewpoints. Both optimism and pessimism together are essential for you to have a more balanced, meaningful and masterful life.

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Have you ever noticed that whatever or whoever you become infatuated with, or philic to, you fantasize about the gain of and fear about the loss of? And that whatever or whoever you become resentful to, or phobic to, you fear about the gain of and fantasize about the loss of? 

Have you ever also noticed that whatever or whoever you are infatuated with (intelligence), you resent its contrasting opposite (unintelligence)? And whatever or whoever you are resentful to (bitter-putrid), you are infatuated with its contrasting opposite (sweet-fragrant)? 

Your evolutionary earlier paleocortex or deep subcortical brain once used such oppositional contrasts to make quick survival-based decisions to impulsively seek prey or instinctively avoid predators. Many of your decisions today are still being based upon such basic polar opposites. 

If you consciously seek one pole, you will unconsciously avoid its antipodal opposite. This is due to a basic principle of brain associations commonly referred to as the Law of Contrast. The more extreme you perceive the one pole to be, the more extreme you will perceive the other counterbalancing pole to be. 

The law of contrast is one of the fundamental principles of brain association, and the relationship between such contrasting polar opposites is known as opposition. The knowledge of these basic pairs of opposites and their inseparable unity dates back to at least the time of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus—if not way before. 

As your brain’s subcortical amygdala assigns positive or negative valency to one perceptual pole, it simultaneously assigns the opposite negative or positive valency to the other. Then both are stored in your brain’s hippocampus for subsequent use for decision making during future emergencies or life survival moments. This storage mechanism has been sometimes called your subconscious mind. 

The Law of Contrast was also one of the three Aristotelian laws of associative learning, which were the seeds from which the beginnings of psychology can be traced. The other two were the Law of Contiguity (past-future) and the Law of Similarities (tea-coffee). These Laws of Association partly explain how you learn and remember things for the sake of evolutionary survival and quick decision making. 

The Law of Contrast is founded on the assumption that individuals base much of their heuristics and general behavior on comparison of complementary opposites. The Law of Contrast states that the perception or thought of something is highly likely to trigger the thought of its direct or complementary opposite. 

The Law of Contrast states that opposites are simultaneous reminders of one another. Here are a few examples. Perceiving or thinking about. . . 

  . . . hot tends to bring to mind cold and vice versa. 

. . . happy tends to bring to mind sad and vice versa. 

. . . positive tends to bring to mind negative and vice versa. 

. . . pleasure tends to bring to mind pain and vice versa. 

. . . kind tends to bring to mind cruel and vice versa. 

. . . fantasy tends to bring to mind nightmare and vice versa. 

. . . beauty tends to bring to mind ugly and vice versa. 

. . . comedy tends to bring to mind tragedy and vice versa. 

. . . philia tends to bring to mind phobia and vice versa. 

. . . success tends to bring to mind failure and vice versa. 

As is true with a magnet, the two illusive poles are actually and mentally inseparable. If you try to cut the magnet in half and access only one of its so-called two poles, the one pole becomes illusive, for the halved magnet has once again two inseparable poles. Regardless of how many times you halve the magnet, the two resultant smaller magnets still remain with two poles. Monopoles do not emerge. 

Although your subcortical, subconscious, subjective mind may foolishly attempt to separate the inseparables, divide the indivisibles, label the “unlabelables,” polarize the “unpolarizables” or name the “ineffables,” your cortical, superconscious, objective mind intuitively and reasonably knows you can’t. It has full consciousness of the two poles at once and is mindful of the conscious and unconscious split. Instead of perceiving either positive or negative poles, it more wisely apperceives neither positive nor negative poles, but simply the simultaneous whole.   

Your philia is inseparable from your phobia and your phobia is inseparable from your philia. All pairs of complementary opposites in the mind are likened to quantum particles and their complementary opposite, non-locally entangled antiparticles. 

When your perceiving or thinking of one pole is seemingly separated from and sequential to the other, you experience a polarized emotion—either joy or sorrow, happy or sad, or attraction or repulsion. You have divided your full consciousness up and separated your conscious from your unconscious and futilely attempted to seek the one and avoid the other. 

When your perceiving or thinking of one pole is simultaneous with the other, you have a synthesis of complementary opposite emotions and you experience a transcendent metadoxical feeling—love. You have wisely integrated your conscious and unconscious into a superconscious or superpositional awareness. 

When you are living in accordance with your true highest values, your medial prefrontal cortex, or executive center, receives blood, glucose and oxygen and you become more objective, superconscious, and resiliently neutral. This awakens your Systems 2 Thinking and allows you to think before you feel and wisely and lovingly act before you foolishly and emotionally react. 

When you are attempting to live in accordance with your lower values, your subcortical amygdala, or desire center, receives blood, glucose and oxygen and you become more subjectively biased and subconsciously and non-resiliently polarized. This awakens your Systems I Thinking and allows you to impulsively or instinctively feel before you think and foolishly and emotionally react before you wisely and lovingly act. 

It is in this latter case that you subjectively bias your interpretation of reality and attempt to strive for that which is unavailable and attempt to avoid that which is unavoidable. This is the source of much of your potential futility and “suffering” and the source of the disempowering division of your conscious and unconscious minds. 

As long as you are infatuated with seeking success and happiness, you will fear their loss and also simultaneously fear the gain of their opposite—failure and sadness. The more extreme the one becomes, the more extreme the other becomes. This will become the source of much distress. Distress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment due to such polarities and separations. A neutrally perceiving mind has no fear of loss or gain, of success or failure. 

The more polarized you are, the more philias and phobias you breed and the more the Law of Contrast can become the source of your many potential distractions and frustrations. But if you intuitively integrate the pairs of opposites simultaneously, you can awaken from within a profoundly empowered state of centered and poised love and wisdom. It is in this state that leaders effectively manage wisely the many pairs of opposites they face within and around them. 

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When you meet someone in a social setting and raise their position above your own through some degree of subjective judgment and a biased perception and admire them or even become infatuated with them and put them on a pedestal, through comparison, you will simultaneously tend to minimize yourself. And you will be too humble to admit that what you perceive in them lies equally within you.

Also, when you meet someone in a social setting and lower their position below your own through some degree of subjective judgment and a biased perception and despise them or even become resentful to them and put them in the pit, through comparison, you will simultaneously tend to exaggerate yourself. And you will be too proud to admit that what you perceive in them lies equally within you.

But ultimately, if you look within and more deeply reflect on your own behavior, you will discover that what you perceive in another individual also lies equally within yourself. I have demonstrated this equative reflective principle for nearly four decades in well over 100,000 individuals around the world.

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Romans 2:1

“If you point a finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you.” Unknown

Nearly four decades ago, I went page by page through the large Oxford English Dictionary and underlined every word that described an expression of human behavior. I discovered 2,314 individual behaviors along with their complementary opposite antonyms—totaling 4,628 in all. Examples included: kind and cruel, nice and mean, honest and dishonest, generous and stingy, peaceful and warful, considerate and inconsiderate, gentle and harsh, positive and negative, etc. . .

When I deeply and honestly reflected on my life over this two-year period of lexical inquiry, I discovered that I displayed or demonstrated every one of those behaviors and their opposites at different times and places in my life and with different individuals many times. Nothing was missing in me, although initially, I was too humble or too proud to want to admit it. And initially, I unconsciously distracted myself from being willing to perceive a full or equitable reflection. But, with further introspection, I eventually discovered that what I perceived in them also equitably existed within me.

When you exaggerate or minimize the behaviors of others and put them on pedestals or pits and admire or despise them, it is partly because you are not fully perceiving these same behaviors in yourself to the same degree. You are being deflective in your awareness and are blind, unconscious or ignorant about portions of yourself, as well as of them.

And when you exaggerate or minimize another individual in a way that is not who they truly and actually are, it is not their authentic or whole self. It is a projection of your disowned parts onto them. They actually have equally both sides of the behavioral equation as do you. In a day, a week, a month, or a year or longer, you will probably discover that your initial perception of them was incomplete and partially blinded and subjectively biased to some degree or another. As you exaggerate or minimize them, you, in turn, minimize or exaggerate yourself through comparison, which also keeps you from recognizing your whole and authentic self.

Whenever you judge, or more accurately, misjudge another individual, you, in turn, judge or misjudge yourself, just as you do when you compare the temperatures of three basins of cold, moderate and hot water. When you place your hand into a basin of cold 40˚F water and then place it into a basin of 72˚F water, it, by comparison, will subjectively feel even warmer than 72˚ F. When you place your hand into a basin of hot 140˚F water and then place it into a basin of 72˚F water, it, by comparison, will subjectively feel even cooler than 72˚ F.

Whenever you misjudge yourself due to such comparisons, you play the role of the imposter and wear a mask or put on a facade. Your imposter persona can be any corresponding exaggerated or minimized expression of some portion of yourself.

When you admire or are infatuated with another individual, it is because you are more conscious of their positive behaviors and less conscious or unconscious of their negative behaviors. You have a subjective confirmation bias on their positives and a subjective disconfirmation bias on their negatives, or a false positive on their positives and a false negative on their negative behaviors.

When you despise or resent another individual it is because you are more conscious of their negative behaviors and less conscious or unconscious of their positive behaviors. You have a subjective confirmation bias on their negatives and a subjective disconfirmation bias on their positives, or a false positive on their negatives and a false negative on their positive behaviors.

The projected label of positive or negative behaviors is only a relative description based upon whether they are perceived to be supportive or challenging to your unique hierarchy of values. It is not actually who they are, it is only who you subjectively perceive them to be in that moment. This subjectively biased, perceptual distortion of another individual and the corresponding one within yourself can occur in one or many of the seven primary areas of life—Mental, Vocational, Financial, Familial, Social, Physical and Spiritual.

When you look up to someone who you assume is more mentally, vocationally, financially, familially, socially, physically or spiritually achieving than you, and, in turn, minimize your mental, vocational, financial, familial, social, physical or spiritual achievements with respect to them, you distract yourself from your state of authenticity with your self-depreciating humble shame. This humble persona tends to set too small of goals in too long a period of time to “repurpose” you upward and return you back to your more self-loving authenticity.

When you look down on someone who you assume is less mentally, vocationally, financially, familially, socially, physically or spiritually achieving than you and, in turn, exaggerate your mental, vocational, financial, familial, social, physical or spiritual achievements with respect to them, you distract yourself from your state of authenticity with your self-aggrandizing arrogant pride. This proud persona tends to set too large of goals in too short a period of time to “depurpose” you downward and return you back to your more self-loving authenticity.

In essence, when you put another individual on a pedestal, you put yourself in the pit. And when you put another individual in the pit, you put yourself on a pedestal. Just as you can have physical body dysmorphia when you compare yourself to another individual physically, you can have other forms of “dysmorphia” in each of the seven areas of life when you exaggerate or minimize others and minimize and exaggerate yourself in turn.

So how do you break through and transform such inauthentic states of being? By identifying what is truly highest on your unique list of values, planning and prioritizing your daily actions, and remaining focused on fulfilling these actions until they are completed. This brings blood, glucose and oxygen to your forebrain’s executive center which awakens a more balanced, neutral, objective or less subjectively biased and judgmental view of others and yourself and stabilizes your mind with more equanimity and equity.

Next, begin asking yourself quality questions that awaken your unconscious mind to make you fully conscious through reflective and more balanced awareness.

First ask yourself:

“What specific behavior do I perceive this individual displaying or demonstrating that I like and admire, or dislike and despise first most, second most, third most . . .?”

Then ask yourself:

“Go to a moment where and when I have perceived myself displaying or demonstrating the same behavior? Where was it? When was it? Who did I display or demonstrate the behavior to? Who perceived me doing so? Keep asking these two questions until you realize you, too, display or demonstrate all of the same behaviors 100 percent to the same degree—quantitatively and qualitatively.

Do this for each behavior you admire or despise in them and, in turn, minimize or exaggerate in you until all of them are accounted for equitably. This will level the playing field and bring your mind into a state of equanimity within and your relationship with them into equity without. This is the state where you maximize sustainable fair exchange in your transactions because the playing field is leveled.

Each individual expresses each behavior according to their own unique set of values, and they each express them to the same degree—although your brain’s subcortical amygdala wants you to avoid facing this great, yet often overlooked, truth.

When you keep asking these two questions and identify within yourself whatever you perceive in another individual and you level the playing field, you awaken, once they are equal, your authentic self. You are then neither too ashamed nor too proud to admit whatever you perceive in them—within yourself.

When you perceive equity between another individual and yourself—you masterfully awaken equanimity within yourself. You become fully conscious instead of conscious and unconsciously biased. You become objectively loving instead of subjectively judging. You become poised and present instead of impulsively seeking and instinctively avoiding. You are now able to love them, as well as yourself now, for who you both are.

It is this more masterful reflective awareness that empowers your state of authenticity and results in a sustainable state of fair exchange in each of the seven areas of life.

Dr John Demartini is an international best-selling author, educator and business consultant.

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Is your company’s leader and overall brand making incremental and progressive steps towards growing market share? Is your company building momentum in the market and becoming unstoppable?

You may ask what I mean by incremental momentum. According to a series of summarized dictionaries:

Incremental: Increasing a series of small action steps shown to build or scale up a company.

Momentum: A driven company on the move measured as a product of its massive influence and its velocity of growth.

So let’s delve deeper into the importance and power of incremental momentum and what might initiate it within a leader and the company.

The faster a leader takes action (velocity) that moves or impacts great numbers of people (mass), the greater the momentum they will develop. I rarely, if ever, discuss a topic in the field of human behavior without mentioning human values. This topic on incremental momentum is no exception.

Every human being lives according to a set of priorities, or values—things that are most to least important to them. This set of values is fingerprint specific and unique. No two people have the same exact set of values. And although this set of values may gradually or cataclysmically evolve through time, at any one moment it determines how the individual perceives, decides and acts in life. The hierarchy of their values therefore dictates their destiny.

If this individual is the leader of a company, then their perceptions, decisions and actions will be influenced accordingly, and they, with their unique set of values, will influence the company environment and culture. The greater the congruency between the leader’s actions and their true highest values, the greater their speed of action (velocity) and company influence (mass).

Whatever is highest on their set or list of values is where they will excel and accelerate their achievement and influence. Their highest value is the most intrinsic or self-initiating. Their ontological identity revolves around it—so they will identify themselves by what they value most. They will also be spontaneously inspired from within to fulfill what they value most. This is where they will be most disciplined, reliable and focused. They do not need outside motivation to get them to act in this top value. It is where they are most congruent in their identity, most clear on their mission and most knowledgeable and skilled. Whenever they are living congruently with their highest value, they awaken their greatest leadership skills and creative potential.

When a leader fills their day with high-priority actions that spontaneously inspire them, their day becomes less filled with low-priority distractions that derail them. It is here where their prioritized actions help them build momentum and they become unstoppable as a leader of the company and as an initiator of the rippling company culture.

By living congruently or in alignment with their true highest value(s) or priorities, leaders bring blood, glucose and oxygen to awaken the executive center in their forebrain—their medial prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of self-integration and authenticity. In this way, they are more likely to know themselves, be themselves, and love and appreciate themselves and others. They also become clearer on their primary purpose, mission, objective, vision and message that they would love to contribute to in the world—their philanthropic cause of deepest meaning. Their teleological purpose is an expression of their highest value.

“What matters is to find a purpose, one you feel called to fulfill; to find a truth, which is truth to you, to find the idea for which you are willing to live and die.” -Kierkegaard

When a leader lives in alignment with their highest values, they become spontaneously inspired from within to take consistent action toward their primary purpose, or chief aim. They feel they are on a relentless pursuit of their inspired master plan. They feel destined to fulfil their mission. They walk their talk by congruently doing what they say without requiring outside or extrinsic motivation and they inspire others to follow suit by their degree of congruency and persistent drive. They become more neutral, balanced and equitably objective rather than biased and subjective in their perceptions, decisions and actions.

These leaders also become more equitably fair and sustainable in their exchanges, or transactions, instead of trying to narcissistically get something for nothing or altruistically give something for nothing to compensate for their previously stored, inauthentic pride or shame. They self-govern their behavior and focus on priorities more than allowing outside circumstances to distract them. They say thank you, but no thank you, to opportunists and distractors.

These individuals pursue problems or challenges that inspire them, which awakens creativity, innovation, original ideas and genius. They achieve more and continue to want to expand their contribution and grow. Every incremental achievement initiates a further increase in desire for continued quantum growth.

They also raise their bar or standard which, in turn, inspires others to raise theirs, which elevates socioeconomic standards throughout the company and broader economy. They wake up their inherent leadership skill set and demonstrate the behaviors which magnetize other leaders to want to participate in their cause. They also initiate affiliations and other naturally-existing economic relationships.

By elevating their self-worth, certainty and belief in their capacities to achieve, they initiate a chain reaction within the teams of the company. They expand their space and time horizons and patiently think of long-term visions and legacies more than impatient, immediate gratification. Long-term visions pay. Short-term, immediate gratification costs a company.

These leaders expand their sphere of awareness and influence through spontaneous learning and specialist networking. They transcend their amygdala’s pleasure-seeking impulses and pain-avoiding instincts and govern those System 1 thinking responses, thereby thinking and planning with foresight before reacting with hindsight, because they are more purposefully thinking. They are willing to endure the transient perceptions of pleasure and pain, success and failure and victory and defeat equally in the pursuit of their mission and are therefore undistracted by Kipling’s two impostors. They perceive opportunities and take actions on them without hesitation.

When your company leader demonstrates a high degree of congruency between their daily prioritized actions and their true highest values, they will patiently and incrementally build momentum in the pursuit of their chief aim, and they will expand their influence and become unstoppable in their fulfillment of their primary objective. Their company employees will have more gratitude for their jobs, more love for what they have the opportunity to do, more inspiration by the vision, more enthusiasm about their ripple effect-based contribution, more certainty in their skill and more presence when they work or transact.

When the leader acts congruently, it gives impetus for the executives, managers and employees to do the same. They become more prioritized, they become more productive, they extract more meaning and fulfillment out of their job duties, they delegate and hire more efficiently, they become more engaged, they build more momentum and become more unstoppable.

The post Become Unstoppable: Build Incremental Momentum for Your Company appeared first on JetsetMag.com.

How well and quickly do you recover from difficult, tough or challenging events?
How quickly do you spring or bounce back from circumstances that try you?
How elastic, flexible or pliable are you when you are being tested almost to the limit?
Does your life demonstrate masterful plasticity when faced with adversity?
Do you have true grit and resolve, and do you rise from the ashes after being faced with challenging or even traumatic perceptions or experiences?

Having endurance and resilience is essential for you to have a well-lived life. Otherwise, your added daily distress levels can pile up, resulting from your inability to adapt to your constantly changing world. The perceptions of loss of that which you seek and the perceptions of gain of that which you attempt to avoid are the sources of your various distresses, but your ability to absorb shocking news with equanimity is one of the signs of maturity, wisdom and mastery. Having the fortitude and courage to remain poised or return to poise after being challenged, regardless of perceived circumstances, is essential for living an exemplary, leadership-positioned life.

It is not so much what happens to you that truly matters as much as it is your perceptions, decisions, and actions or response to what happens. These are what you have control over. They are what truly give you power and what make the greatest difference in your life. Taking command of these three neurologically driven processes can make the difference between being a victim of your history or a master of your destiny.

You have two distinct primary areas in your brain that impact the way you react or act to your daily stimuli and events. One is your amygdala, a subcortical area sometimes called “the desire center” that comes online when you are in survival mode and emotionally and sometimes foolishly overreacting to life. Its response is sometimes called “systems 1 thinking” because it is fast reacting and is designed for perceptions of subjective emergency. It is the seat of hindsight. It reacts before it thinks. Your amygdala is particularly responsible for your impulses and instincts and short-term gratification. It is reflexive more than reflective and narrow minded more than broad minded. Because your desire center is more subjective and biased, it is generally more emotionally polarized and often associated with potentially rigid absolutes. It fires off when you are seeking prey (goal-supportive opportunities) and avoiding predators (goal-challenging threats). It assigns emotional valency or charge and initiates elevated dopamine and/or adrenalin responses. It speeds up your aging process and can curtail your immunity.

“You require no extrinsic motivation to act in order to achieve what is most important or valuable to you. You spontaneously pursue whatever this highest priority is.” – Dr. Demartini

Another primary area of the brain is your prefrontal cortex, sometimes called “the executive function center,” that comes online when you are in thrival mode and thoughtfully and wisely pro-acting in life. It is sometimes called “systems 2 thinking” because it is slower acting and is designed for perceptions, thoughtful decisions, actions of utility, meaningful and objective strategies and longer-term purposeful pursuits. It is the seat of foresight and reflection. It thinks before it reacts. Your prefrontal cortex is more responsible for your inspired long-term vision, strategic planning, mitigation of risks, execution of plans and self-governance. Because your executive center is more objective, it is more neutral and adaptable and perceives less fear of loss or gain. It balances out your neurochemistry and governs and enhances your autonomic and immune functions and its resultant alpha and spontaneous gamma waves synchronize your remaining brain along with your heart. It is in this area that a greater level of patience, poise and resilience is born.

So how do you awaken your executive center and its function? This is where living according to priority comes into play. You have a unique fingerprint, a specific set of values or priorities you live your daily life by—your hierarchy of values. Whatever is highest on your list of values, you are spontaneously and intrinsically inspired to do and fulfill. This is where you are most disciplined, reliable and focused. You require no extrinsic motivation to act in order to achieve what is most important or valuable to you. You spontaneously pursue whatever this highest priority is. And whenever you pursue meaningful priorities and challenges that serve others and that inspire you, your life does not fill up with as many distressful challenges that don’t. On the other hand, if you are not filling your day with high priorities that inspire you, your day will be destined to be filled with low-priority distractions that won’t.

When you fill your day with high-priority actions, your blood, glucose and oxygen flow more into your executive center and you become more strategic, objective and resilient. You wake up your natural born leader that may be lying dormant within.

When you do not take command of your day and live according to your highest priorities, your lower priority distractions will inevitably emerge and possibly engulf you. You will become more vulnerable to outside opportunists and time-consuming distractors. Then your blood glucose and oxygen will begin to flow down more into the subcortical area of your brain—the amygdala, the desire center—and initiate a series of more reactive and rigid, subjectively-biased, ungoverned survival reactions. Now your immediate gratifying amygdala and its corresponding gut brain’s impulses and instincts will dominate your behavior and your non-resilient, less efficient and effective distress response will ensue.

When this happens, your adrenal gland will pump out cortisol and the distress response will shrink your space and time horizons and initiate immediate, gratifying survival reactions. Now you will react before you think and have to learn through hindsight, trial and error, instead of foresight and thoughtful strategic planning. You will now be less effective at perceiving, deciding and acting. And you become vulnerable to outer circumstances, more than capable of pursuing your inner yearnings of meaning and the inspirations of your heart.

So, it is ultimately how well you live according to your priorities that can determine your level of resilience. When you “knock your day out of the ballpark” as some say, through living with a clear prioritized agenda and ticking off your highest priority actions or items throughout your day, you feel on top of the world. And you go through your day and come home with more resilience to face whatever is waiting for you.

When you let your perceptions of the outer world’s challenging events dictate your reactions and you put out low-priority distracting fires all day, you can become a grizzly bear—ready to overreact throughout your day and upon returning home.

You, your employees, your friends and your family of loved ones all deserve to see you as your most authentic self, ready with resilience to inspire, lead and exemplify the way. So prioritize your daily actions and delegate your lower priorities to those who would love to take them away. Say yes to what is most important and meaningful and no all the rest. Give yourself permission to master your life with resilience and live with wisdom.

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Each of us has the intrinsic capacity to make a meaningful difference in the world, to contribute something original and impactful, possibly in the form of a scientific truth or technological discovery that serves and that leaves a lasting mark upon hearts and minds of millions of human beings across the planet. This great potential for contribution may be lying dormant within you, or it may be revealed already through your many greatly disseminated and appreciated discoveries.

How inspired are you to make such a lasting and meaningful impact, or even another great mark, with the time you still have allotted?

How determined are you to make a contribution that leaves a lasting impact or legacy?

How do you imagine your posthumous biography to read and how perseverant and patient do you intend to be at leaving your unique contribution or mark into the future?

In the last days of your life, you just might be asking yourself: Did I do everything I could with everything I was given? Did I live my life to the fullest and did I contribute my greatest and most original, creative or ingenious idea or service to the world? You just may want to be able to say: Yes! Absolutely! I gave it my all, or I lived my creative life to the fullest.

When you first identify and then stick to your highest priority action steps each day, ones that help you fulfill your most inspiring mission and vision of contribution, ones that are truly deeply meaningful and fulfilling, you can begin to build up an incremental momentum in your achievements. You can naturally expand your space and time horizons out beyond even your own life in a way that can contribute something original and that can potentially help you leave your multigenerational immortal legacy.

It has been stated by great minds for centuries that you can measure individuals by the clarity and depth of their intentions and their most distant objectives or ends. Of course, those that do fulfill such meaningful and enduring paths of pursuit, those that do follow their unborrowed visions, who are original and who blaze new trails, often become challenged and resisted by those who don’t do this. Greatness is often confronted and resisted for years or decades by mediocre minds, a phenomenon that has been described by the following individuals:

“Men can be divided into two groups: one that goes ahead and achieves something, and one that comes after and criticizes.” – Seneca

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.” – Albert Einstein

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” – Mohandas Ghandi

“First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

“First, a new theory is attacked as absurd. Second, it is admitted to be true but obvious and insignificant. Third, it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.” – William James – Pragmatism 1907

“In every field of human endeavor, the more visionary the work, the less likely it is to be quickly understood and embraced by lesser minds.” – Sean Patrick – Author of Nikola Tesla

“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning.” – Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred and resistance. The great creators, the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they ‘suffered’ and they paid. But they won. Their truth, their work, their goal was their primary motive and life. They held their truth above all things and against all men. Their vision, their strength and their courage came from their own interminable spirit. They were prime movers who lived for their cause. Only by living for their own cause were they able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind.” – Ayn Rand

You are ever engaged in the dual activity of making perceptual observations and then seeking grounding explanations of your resulting revelations. The making of your observations constitutes your empirical or factual component, and your systemic attempt to explain these facts constitutes your theoretical and principle component. Both activities are essential for your mastery of life and for the making of your most unique contribution to the world.

Many of the greatest ideas in philosophy and science have waited centuries for even indirect confirmation. And the history of philosophy and science is full of propositions and theories which were pronounced dead, then resurrected, then pronounced dead again, only to celebrate another triumphant comeback.

That is why perseverance and patience are both essential for birthing great and contributive ideas and having them take root in the everlasting hearts of humankind, regardless of the area of life they are destined to impact.

For example:

The Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus postulated that matter was comprised of atoms in the fourth century B.C. and much later, John Dalton introduced his atomic theory to chemistry in the 19th century. But it was still in 1906, more than two millennia later, that physicist Ludwig Boltzmann committed suicide, in part because he was mercilessly ridiculed for believing in such atoms, for which there was still no direct and absolute proof yet established.

Just as Philolaus’, Hicetas’ and Aristarchus’ central fire and heliocentric models became overruled by Aristotle and Ptolemy for nearly two thousand years, eventually Copernicus emerged to revitalize them. And just as Copernicus’s heliocentric model struggled for nearly a century against the dictums of the Church, it finally began to find acceptance.

Just as Aristotle and a series of other ancient philosophers proposed an evolutionary theory more than 2,300 years ago, it was not until Charles Darwin documented and reported the evidence that supported such an evolutionary theory in a way that made it valid did it become eventually embraced as a viable or useful movement and school of thought. Even in the first half of the 19th century, the theory of evolution was mired in conjecture until he and Alfred Russell Wallace compiled a body of evidence and posited a mechanism—natural selection—for powering the evolution machine.

Just as Nicholas of Cusa looked at infinity and promptly declared, ‘terra non est centra mundi,’ which means ‘the earth is not the center of the universe,’ the church did not yet realize how dangerous and how revolutionary this idea truly was. It was not until the time of mathematician Georg Cantor, who expressed his opposition to widespread views on the mathematical infinite, that any form of formal appreciation for infinity even begun to be generally acknowledged.

“I place myself in a certain opposition to widespread views on the mathematical infinite and to oft-defended opinions on the essence of number.” – Georg Cantor

James Clerk Maxwell’s discovery that visible light was one of the electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light (not instantaneously) was so revolutionary that his idea was ignored for many years in the physics departments of most universities. Instead, professors stuck to teaching the classical physics of Newton.

In 1783, John Michell, an amateur British astronomer, proposed the idea of an object with gravity strong enough to prevent light from escaping. In 1795, Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French physicist independently came to the same conclusion. In 1939, J. R. Oppenheimer published a prediction of the existence of a black hole, which no one took seriously for many years. But its existence was now finally photographically confirmed through radio astronomy just days before this very writing.

Avogadro’s law was first proposed in 1811 by Amedeo Avogadro, a professor of higher physics at the University of Turin for many years, but it was not generally accepted until after 1858, when an Italian chemist, Stanislao Cannizzaro, constructed a logical system of chemistry based on it.

In 1832, Evariste Galois, the child prodigy who made groundbreaking discoveries very young, wrote in a candlelit room in the middle of the night on the eve of his death at age 20 a completed manuscript on the symmetries of numbers. In essence, it was his love letter to humanity in which he shared his dazzling discoveries, which now have become wonders of the world. Galois was far ahead of his time. His ideas were so radical that his contemporaries could not initially understand them. His papers were rejected by the French Academy of Sciences, and it took almost fifty years for the work to be published and appreciated by other mathematicians. His work is now considered as one of the great pillars of modern mathematics.

In the second half of the 19th century (1865/1866), Gregor Mendel’s mathematical theory of natural inheritance was presented—but the importance of this great work did not gain wide understanding with his contemporaries until 1900, after his death.

Svante Arrhenius uncovered the relationship between electricity and chemistry in 1883 but was doubted and rejected by the scientific community of his time. Only after gradually winning over the minds of the scientists for twenty years did he finally receive his Nobel Prize in 1903.

Einstein’s particle theory of light was not accepted for two decades. Eight, eleven and seventeen years after the publication of Einstein’s paper, even respected physicists such as Max Planck, Robert A. Millikan and Niels Bohr were still rejecting it.

Sigmund Freud’s book, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” one of the most influential works in history, took over a decade to become famous. Only 600 copies of the first edition ever sold the first eight years.

The theory of continental drift, proposed in 1915 by Alfred Wegener, was not accepted by most scientists until the 1960s, with the discovery of mid-oceanic ridges, geomagnetic patterns corresponding to continental plate movement and plate tectonics as the driving motor.

Charles T. R. Wilson’s cloud chamber method for making the paths of electrically-charged particles (electrons and positrons) visible by condensation of vapor was not acknowledged and accepted for 15 years—not until a deeper understanding of the atomic structure had been obtained.

Barbara McClintock’s discovery of mobile genetic elements (transposons), which she published in the 1940s and 1950s, was not recognized for more than 30 years until she received the Nobel Prize in 1983.

Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielson and Leonard Susskind co-founded string theory in 1970, which was initially derided and ridiculed but eventually became, 40 years later, the leading candidate for a unified theory of nature.

It has been stated that some of the greatest advances in human understanding came about when some of the most brilliant minds spotted analogies between subjects that were already well understood and others still quite mysterious—at the junction of the known and unknown. In addition, it has been noticed that it has also taken an exceptionally talented mind to be able to strike that fine balance between too much indiscriminate analogizing on the one hand and sterile blindness to fruitful analogies on the other. It is only the quality of their inspirations that has separated the fruitful researcher and the raving crank.

What kind of daring individual is within you to break with such venerable customs as these great individuals have? What intensive yearning do you have to discover the undiscovered and to initiate the uninitiated?

As Sir Isaac Newton stated, “I now leave my finished and unfinished work for the next generations to carry on.” It is you that represents the next generation.

There is inherently a part of you that believes in the power of your own truly inspiring and original ideas, creative ideas that could be used repeatedly without ever becoming depleted, ideas that you could use without diminishing the ability of others using them. You may believe that certain of your ideas are meant to become available to all of humanity and not just for you who discovered them. This may be one of the reasons why you feel called to dedicate your life to your world vision, message and mission of dissemination and service.

In the ‘end,’ you are only known by the impact you have had on others.

“I have glorified Thee on earth. I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do. I have manifested Thy Name to the men whom Thou hast given me out to the world.” – Saint Therese

Historically, there were very few individuals over the generations who have had ideas that were sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. But the potential to be one of these few individuals lies within you.

“Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful so compelling that when—in a decade, a century, a millennium—we grasp it, we will say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How can we have been so blind for so long?” – John Archibald Wheeler

“Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labor in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it. Honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things, which we create in common. If you always keep this in mind you will find a meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude toward other nations and ages.” – Albert Einstein

What kind of human being are you if your mind does not span the universe and your thoughts do not race beyond the limits of your present terrestrial sphere of life? May you be perseverant and patient and may you leave your unique and lasting legacy.

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