Wayne Dyer: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

Hello, believe Nation. I started the MentorMe series with the goal of trying to learn from people who've done a lot more than us by surrendering ourselves with them a little bit more than usual to get their ideas and wisdom and the way they think to help us break through our limited beliefs and become the best version of ourselves. So today we're gonna learn from Wayne Dyer on how to stay motivated. As Wayne is talking, if he says something that is really relevant and helpful to you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. And these top 10 principles, uh, that I have put together here for this program, uh, you might want to jot down, you might want to go into your, uh, uh, desk and just take out a little piece of paper. But I think if you practice them and look at them and see them, they come from someone who's had a burning desire, but has also been living a life in which I have felt independent of the opinions of others in terms of whether or not I should or shouldn't be doing that there's something that I allow to consult myself within myself rather than looking outside to see if this is right or not. And so let me just kind of, I'll number them and I'll go through them and I'll give you some examples of them and you decide whether they're to your liking and whether they work or not. The first of these principles came from a, uh, Adon scholar on the, in the 10th century. His name was Tilopa. It's, uh, it's not exactly bestseller books, but it's the kind of thing that really excites me because I think of going back a thousand years or 2000 years and reading what some of the greatest minds had to say and how open they were to, uh, the potentiality that each and every one of us have for greatness. And this first principle says, As to lopa, put it, have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. One of the central principles of my life is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist about anything. And that each and every one of us, when we close our mind to what is possible for us, or what is possible for humanity, closes off the genius that resides and lives in each and every one of us. Having an open mind doesn't necessarily mean, uh, finding fault with all of the things that you've been taught by others. It means opening yourself up to the potentiality and the possibility that anything and everything is possible. So, having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing really means finding within ourselves the ability to get rid of a trait that I find so common in contemporary, in the contemporary world. Do you know that most people that I meet spend their lives looking for occasions to be offended? They actually are up out there hoping that they can find some reason to be offended, and there's no shortage of reasons. They're out there everywhere. The way this person dressed, the what the worst person said, they turn on their tv, they hear the news, they're offended by this. Someone didn't, uh, someone used language that they didn't like. Someone doesn't share the same customs that you and people all day long. In fact, if you keep track tomorrow, you will find, uh, probably a hundred reasons that you can go around being offended. But a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing is a mind that says, I'm never looking for anything to be offended by. And that whatever anybody else out there has to say, my response to that is, that's an interesting point of view. I've never considered that before. I remember, uh, being interviewed for a, uh, morning television show, uh, and the woman that was interviewing me said, how does it feel to be talking to, uh, audiences where people have all of these strange beliefs, these weird things that they come to? And it, it, it intrigues me because one of the, uh, one of the things that, uh, that Emerson said is in one of his very first essays, he says, the first thing we have to say, respecting what are called new views here in New England, where we are right now, is that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mold of these new times. And that was in 1842. He was speaking about that. And this woman asked me the question. She said, uh, doesn't it offend you that there's out, there's people out there and they're talking about people using crystals to heal somebody? And I remember my response, , my response was that if I've got hemorrhoids and somebody out there is convincing me that crystals are gonna heal them, I'm ordering crystal chairs. I'm, uh, . Why not? I mean, all you have to do is understand something called a placebo and what is a placebo? It's nothing more than a convincing belief. If I hand you this pill and say, this pill is gonna cure your arthritis, and you take it and the pill is just a sugar pill, but your arthritis disappears, I'm into buying those placebos. Where can I get some of those placebos? and it's true of everything. And it's when you think about all the things that we enjoy and what our life is like, um, it took people who had a mind that wasn't closed to allow us to make the progress that we've made. Progress is imp is impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things. But the other word in this, what Telepo said is be attached nowhere. Be attached. Nowhere. Attachment really means I am diluting myself into a belief that if I can't have, or if I can't do this or that thing, then somehow I am going to become immobilized. So an open mind that is detached in one of, uh, in my most recent book, in a spiritual solution to every problem, I have a, um, an observation, and it's, uh, an observation from Anthony DeMelo, A man I respect enormously. A priest who, um, in the way to love puts it this way. Here's a great test for your relationships, especially the relationships that you're in, uh, with, uh, those whom you love, not your children, but your spouses and your lovers and and so on. Try this test on for size one, I am not really attached to you at all. I am merely diluting myself into the belief that without you, I will not be happy. And two, and here's the toughest test for non-attachment. I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking. How's that for a challenge? And so what most of us do, In our relationships and why they are not as successful as we would like them to be is that we become attached and we tell ourself that if this person behaves in a way that I find offensive, then I can't be happy. I make my happiness, my fulfillment, dependent upon those people that I love being what I think that they should be. And detachment doesn't mean being a victim, it just simply means I know that I can make my life fulfilled and happy by having a mind that is open to everything and attached nowhere. The second principle is a very simple principle. It says You can't give away what you don't have. Now, it sounds ridiculous, okay? But it's more than what meets the ear. As you hear this, you can't give away what you don't have. People who are not good at giving away love can't give away love because they don't have it to give away. If I want to give you a dozen oranges, I can't give you those dozen oranges unless I go out and pick up 12 oranges someplace. Otherwise, all it is is just empty rhetoric. And the same thing is true of virtually everything in your life. You can't give away love for others if you don't have love in here to give away. If what you have in here is contempt, if what you have in here is anger, if what you have in here is fear, then these are the things you're going to be giving away in your life. And I've often thought, and I really believe very strongly, that uh, there's a law, sort of a law in the universe. I call it the law of attraction. And the law of attraction is one that works like this. You get back from the universe, from the world what it is that you put out there in the world. And if you are putting out there into the world that I am not worthy of attracting something beautiful into my life, that the universe will respond back to you with exactly that message. And there are people who come to me and who came to me for years when I had a, uh, my own, uh, counseling practice and so on. And they would say to me, um, I just keep attracting the same kind of people, the same kind of events, the same kind of, uh, losers into my life. Why is that? Why do I keep doing that? And I keep attracting, uh, an absence of, uh, of abundance. I just can't seem to attract abundance into my life. I'm always behind the eight ball. I'm never getting ahead. And I suggest to them, I said, did, uh, ever occur to you that that's the very kind of message you're sending out to the world and out to the universe, that the ocean of abundance is there. And you can go to that ocean of abundance and you can take a Mac truck and you can fill it up 20 times a day and take it out of there. And guess what? It doesn't impact at all the ocean of abundance. It doesn't even go down a zillion of an inch. It's unlimited. Or you can go to the same ocean of abundance with a eyedropper, and you can just take this much out once a month and say, that's all that seems to be available for me. And the interesting thing for me is that when people go to this ocean of abundance, this, uh, unlimited world, all that I have is nine. It says in the Holy Books, all that I have is th it's all there for you. But if you believe inside that it's limited, that you can only get so much. That other people are gonna get it before you do, then you'll find yourself creating that very same thing. And the even more interesting part about this, you can't give away what you don't have. Principle is that if your message to the universe is gimme, gimme gi, which is a lot of people's message to the universe, I want this from you. I want that from you. Please give me this. I have to have that. That's what their prayer is like. That's what their message is, you know? And they say, I want this from the universe. Give me gimme, gimme the universe's response back to that kind of an, uh, mentality is exactly the same. The universe will say Right back to you over and over again. Give me, gimme, gimme. And you'll find yourself never, ever arriving, but always being in a state of striving, always feeling as if you're being neglected. Never feeling as if you have enough. Always feeling as if you're being shortchanged because you're constantly under the pressure to give, to get back what the universe is demanding from you. And the interesting thing about all of this, the, the irony of this is that if you shift that and you say to the universe, to the world, how may I serve? How may I serve? The universe's response back to you is, how may I serve you? How may I serve you? And it's very intriguing when you take your energy and your attention off of what you are demanding from the world. And instead saying, what can I give to the world? And it's really the, the basis behind that very famous line of the, uh, president, uh, John Kennedy's, uh, inaugural address. Ask not what your country can ask, what you can do for your country. And the irony of that is, and I've learned that in my own life, that when I stopped thinking about what was in it for Wayne Dyer and how much could I get, and I began to shift. And say, how can I help you? How can I give to you? What can I do for you? And people who write to me pe uh, I send them something. When, when I encounter somebody that needs help with some kind, I'm very often just giving that to them. And then I find that it just keeps coming back into my life. And once I shifted that energy off of what can I have into, what can I give, it seemed to me that the universe responded back with the very same message. What can I give to you? And the most incredible and wonderful and beautiful abundance has flowed into my life in every way that I can possibly think of. You can't give away what you don't have. So take a look at an inventory of what you do have. How much do you love yourself? How much kindness do you have in you? How much peace do you have in you? How much joy do you have in you? And if you're able to give that away as many times as you can in a given day, watch and see how much more of that continues to show up and come back in your life. Okay, the third principle is one of my very favors. It's called, there are no justified resentments. And this is a very difficult principle for many people to get, but one that I believe very strongly in. I was in a group one time of, uh, drug addicts and alcoholics, and I was, uh, one of the people that was a sponsor and leading this group. And the sign on the wall sai --- ught makes it so, all right. This microphone comes about as a result of thinking. Somebody imagines it, somebody then tells somebody else about, and it's, and it creates it. The dress that you're wearing, this shirt that I'm, the shoes that you have, the stage, these cameras, everything that you see that wasn't given to us was created by man as a result of the way that we think, the way that we think. So what gets inside of us as a cell comes about as a result of the way that we choose to think in our lives. Very important principle to understand because once you get a hold of thinking and that it creates everything that you have in your life, you can change and make it as absolutely perfect as you want it to be. Because thought makes it so creative. Visualization is what we're talking about here. You, the imagery or the image that you have of anything in your life is really like mental behavior. It's like going out and practicing. If you go out and practice with a basketball shooting, uh, free throws over and over again. That's physical practice. Imagery is mental practice. It's mental behavior. When you have an image that you can succeed at some, at something, when you have an image that you can do it, rather than that, you can't do it. When you get into your car and you have an image that you're going to find a parking place rather than that, there'll be no place to park. So you're not looking for no place to park. You will start acting on the image that you have very much like you will start acting on the practice that you have when you're shooting baskets or when you're hitting a forehand or, or working on your soup or anything else that you're doing. Bucky Fuller, who I served with on the Hunger Project Advisory Council for nine years, who died not too long ago, said that 99% of who you are, you can't touch, you can't see, you can't smell. 99% of you is untouchable, unsellable, and visible. It is what Ken Kai has called your, your conscious awareness. It's your, it's what looks out behind those eyeballs. What is that? It isn't. It isn't cells. It's some kind of conscious awareness that you are. And make no mistake about it, you've occupied a whole lot of bodies already. Now, this is not reincarnation talk, although I don't know about this reincarnation. People ask me if I believe in it. I said, well, I taught in a junior high school in the inner city of Detroit for four years, and I saw those dead bodies come to life every day at three o'clock. . So I believe in reincarnation. All right, Now, if what you, if 99% of who you are, you can't touch and you can't feel, and you can't smell, then where, what is it? Who is it? Where are you? What is this thing called your essence or who you are and where does it go? Now think of this. You were in a body. I have a little baby girl who's, uh, 11 months old and she, and we were all in a body that size. Well, it's only a body about this big. Got fingers only this long. , you know, got, uh, tiny, tiny little parts all over the place. I mean, she's only this tall now, is that her? Is that her essence? Because I have other children who are much older, and I am much older than that. And I can remember being three and being in a different body, still me, still my essence there. Different body, totally different. Doesn't even look anything. Like when I was 11 months old and then I was 13 and had a funny body at 13 . But still my essence was there in a whole new body. Hairs growing all over the place that I didn't understand. All kinds of things happening to it, you know? Then hairs falling out of it later on. You know, looking at those hairs that fall out and say, what held it in yesterday? You know, ? No, no. I don't even understand that. Okay. And so it's like, who I am has been in many, many bodies already. All right? And that essence, you see everything on our planet that is alive, can never die, but can never die. Life doesn't die. It just transforms. It just moves on to new places and new ways of being. New ways of being. And the way of being that is the most transcendent of all is this way that comes from seeing yourself as love and only having that to give away. Only having that to give away. Let's say I would stand up here in front of you and just visualize for a moment that I have an orange, and I take this orange and I squeeze it as hard as I can squeeze it, okay? What's gonna come out? Juice. What kind of juice? Orange juice. Apple juice. Any chance? . Once in a while. Come on now. And then little mango juice come out of an orange once in a while. No mistakes, right? Never. No matter what. Next question. Everybody passes. These are easy. Okay. Why? When you squeeze an orange as hard as you can squeeze it, does orange juice come out? Because that's not, cuz it's an orange because that's what's inside, isn't it? On our planet, when you squeeze something, what comes out of it is what's inside. Not too difficult. All right? Does it matter if your mother squeezes the orange? Does it matter what instrument she uses? Does it matter if you just had your period and then you squeeze an orange Does it matter if your boss squeezes it? How about if your kids do it? Your kids squeeze an orange? Does it your kid squeezing on? Does it matter? Does it matter what time of day? Suppose they do it at noon. All right? How about at four in the morning? Does that matter? Whenever you squeeze an orange, the only thing you get out is what's inside, right? No arguments. Same thing works for you. Same principle works for you. It's a principle of the universe. All right? Someone squeezes you. That is someone puts pressure on you. Someone says things about you that you don't like. Someone puts, uh, attention on you. Whatever your boss says, something to you that you don't like, and out of you comes anger. And out of you comes hatred. And out of you comes fear or out of you comes stress or out of you comes tension. Why? Is it because of your boss and the way they squeeze you? Never. Is it because of your mother? I mean, she really can be a pain sometimes, right? Is it because of your children? Now, what comes out of you always when someone squeezes you is what's inside. This is the, the vital principle of being a no-limit person. It's so crucial to get this and understand that that. If you have any hatred in your heart for anyone in this world or any anger or any fear or any of those things, it has nothing to do with the rest of the world. It only has to do with what you put inside. Now, how does what gets inside of you get there? That's the key. How does it get there? As you think, only as you think you see, there's no anger in the world. There's no stress in the world. There's no tension. It's perfect. We've already established it's perfect place. It works just fine. It's all flowing the way it's supposed to flow. The evidence for it is, it is . That's all the evidence you need. Just look around you. Everything out there is a miracle. Everything including you. There are no mistakes. It's all perfect and everything that happens to you in your life, whether it's a trauma, whether it's a disease, whether it's somebody treating you in a certain way, there's a lesson in all of it. No limit. People understand the lesson in life and therefore celebrate the lessons. It's true. And when you get to that point in your life where you're not cursing, the things that come your way and blaming the things that come your way, and particularly blaming it on somebody else, and you hear it all the time, she hurt my feelings. How's that possible? How can anybody hurt your feelings? Your feelings come from your thoughts. No one can hurt your feelings without your consent. No one can make a fool of you without your consent. No one can embarrass you without your consent. These are choices that you have that come from the way that you think. Someone calls you a name, hey, stupid, and you turn around. I didn't even tell anybody I was coming. How did they know that? All right, . And then you blame the person who called you a name instead of saying that's just their opinion. That's just where they are. That's where they are on the path. And it's okay. All of you are in relationships, right? Everybody has a relationship of some kind or another in your relationship. You have any problems, any of you have a relationship and you don't have any problems. , I'd like you to take this microphone. I wanna sit down and listen to you . Everybody in a relationship has problems, don't they? Right now when you say, I'm in a relationship, I got problems, therefore, there's something wrong. Something's really wrong right? Now. If you're in a relationship and you have problems and something is wrong, you gotta call in a consultant, right? You gotta call in somebody to help you with the problems. You don't want the problems to go on. Who are you gonna call in? You only got yourself, that's all you got. You might get a therapist once in a while, but they got worse problems than you do. . The only consultant who can help you with your problems is you. And who is that consultant that you're calling in? We've already established that there's something wrong with that person, right? Something wrong. So now you're gonna call in a disabled person, , to deal with your problems in your relationship right? Now, this is a really sick approach to curing your problems. You got somebody who says, we got a problem. You don't talk to me. I didn't talk to you, and you came home week last week, and this week I called you and you didn't call, and I was supposed to call you, and then you didn't do it. And how can you do that? Now, this is the consultant you're calling. Excuse me, will you come in and help us? Oh, no, I can help you. Come on. Good . That's the person you got to deal with your problems . All right? Now what you can do is you can change all of that around. You can say I'm in a relationship. We got problems. That's right. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the way things are. You know, my problem is that you are different than I am and you think differently than I do, and you behave differently than I do. And you smell different than I do. And you have all of these attitudes over here that I don't have nothing wrong with that. That's the way it is. When two people get together in a relationship, you don't have two people becoming one. If you do that, then what you end up with are two half persons who wants a half a person in a relationship. You always are single. Even if you're married and for you know, and involved in relationship for, you're still always single. You're still always you. Your unique, special, perfect self that is not trying to love, but who is love, who lives love, who is being love. The same as if you pray to God and say, God, will you please help me with my problems and want God to do it for you? Never have. You've got to be God. Not be afraid to carry God around inside of you if you want to get healed. You have got to understand that you're not going to get healed if you are asking someone else to heal you. And ask any doctor that you know, any surgeon particularly who's taking somebody into surgery and ask them which person has a better chance of living, of surviving, say, serious surgery. Is it the one who has a will to live? Or is it the one who's just given up and the surgery and the cases are exactly the same? Alright, but the person who has that will, which we can't define, you can't go out and get a bucket full of will and bring it in there. It's an attitude. It's an approach. It's a belief, all right? That you can do something. And when you have that belief about yourself, You know, you've got a, so much better, uh, opportunity to be well in your life. And a belief is everything. I don't know if you've ever thought of that. Uh, I watch, uh, a little girl, five years old, learning how to swim, and she's holding onto the edge of the pool and she wants to get over here to the steps and it's just, uh, five feet or six feet, and she'll let go and then she'll hold on again and she'll let go and she'll hold on again. And finally there comes a time when she, lets go and goes for it. Okay. You've all seen, you've seen this with your children, you've seen, and what you ask yourself is in the moment before that, when she was holding on, and then look at the moment afterwards, does she have any different skills? What's changed? Yeah. Yeah. The skills are, she didn't have any new skills. She didn't learning any skills in that second. What she has is a belief that she can do it. And when you believe it, when you really just believe that you can do it, that's what allows you to swim. And when you think about it now, do you know how to swim? Yeah. So when you dive into the water, you don't think --- ise. Mother Teresa was asked the question about what she does when she was in Calcutta. And she said, every day, every day I see Jesus Christ in all of his distressing disguises, all of his distressing disguises, that you can see this source, you can see the dowel, you can see it when, particularly in those who are the most obscure, the most, uh, Isolated from everyone else. And whenever I go to one of those meetings and I hear people get up and they tell their stories, uh, they, I, I, I always, I feel that, I feel there's so much presence of the source of God, of spirit, of Lao too, of the, of the source, of daou, whatever you want to call it, in one of those meetings than I've ever felt in any church. I've, I, I've never felt the presence of it more. And I encourage you, any of you watching this right now, go to one of those meetings. You don't have to be an alcoholic. You don't have to. I'm not an alcoholic. I don't call myself an alcoholic. I was never out of control. I drank, but I wasn't out of control. And I, uh, but I still go to those meetings. I have people in my own family that have struggled with addiction, and I go with them and I sit there and I listen to those stories, and I just, I get shivers down my back when I think about how beautiful it is to be in the presence of people, all they want to do is help each other. There's a movie called, my name is Bill w James Woods and Jim Garner. James Garner is in it. And, uh, he, his life just got totally outta control with addictions, totally outta control. And then he went to a, uh, uh, he, he, he, he went to one of these meetings and he began to realize, and he said, we can, we can actually take these, uh, these people, and all we have to do is all we have to do is love them. All we have to do is, and he's so excited about the concept of being able to go out there and, and offer it. And I keep referring to Louise because she's such a hero to me. Um, there was a time back in the eighties when our president wasn't even able to say the word aids. Was he, I mean, he come on. And here was this lady who before this thing became the worldwide phenomenon that it is, Was having meetings in her own house, and, and going and, and bringing these people, these downtrodden people who had been labeled outcasts in society and offering them a place to learn how to love each other and to care for each other. This was long before there was any celebrity sta status associated with trying to end this horrible crisis that our country has and our world has, has had. There was, uh, James Wood so excited about the idea of we can create a place where we're anonymous. Nobody has to know anything about us. We don't have to say our names. We don't have to say anything. We just have to come there and we can help each other. And before that happened, everybody who got outta control with addictions, particularly with alcohol, would, uh, would die. There was no cure. There was no cure. And where did they find their cure? They found it in being anonymous. They found it in being obscure. They found it in having no organization. They found it in having no elected representative. They founded in having no rules. There are no rules. You just come and we care if you've been one day or one hour sober, or even if you're drunk, you come. We care about you, and you are not that alcohol. Who you are is this divine soul. In the 36th verse of the Dowd doted ching, it says, the gentle outlast, the strong, the obscure outlast the obvious. Try to become a little more obscure, a little less interfering, a little less. Notice me a little less. You know, one of the specific kinds of things that you can do is just as you're about when somebody else is talking, just as you're about to interject what you've been thinking about for the whole time, waiting for them to stop talking, just as to just stop, to bite your tongue and say, tell me more. Or That's very interesting. I have never heard that point of view before. Even if they totally, completely disagree with everything that you stand for to be, to be willing to listen, to be able to stop practice it. I practiced it when I did these verses of the Dao. I practiced it every single day while I was working on that, just staying obscure. And for me, that's not always so easy because of just being recognized wherever I go. And if I saw someone who was about to recognize me, I would just put my head down. I would just walk a little bit past them like something right now, I just want to be anonymous right now. I want to be obscure. The Dow says storms always end. Verse 23, fierce winds don't blow all morning. A downpour of rain doesn't last all day. Who does this? Heaven and earth? You're already connected to everything you want or need. It will come to you at the exact perfect time. As the rivers and the streams come to the ocean at the perfect time and place you gotta trust, you gotta know it's going to come to you. You don't have to chase after it. You can become a little less obsessed with your ego and your self importance and who you are and what you've done. And you can get so much more done. And you know what? It's the most peaceful and sweet, delicious way. It's like the song that Cecilia was singing about the rose. There is an energy in the universe. There is something that is in each and every one of us, and it's also in the universe. And you are connected to it in a way that is often, uh, perceived to be, uh oh, aloof from us. Because it's invisible, because it's in the world of what we call spirit the world that is not material. And I would like to suggest that you suspend your disbelief. Allow yourself to know that you're not a human being here, having a spiritual experience, but that is the other way around, that you're a spiritual being, having a human experience and the quality of your human experience is really much more dependent upon how you use this invisible intelligence and how you connect to this energy. And once you have an awareness that you can never be separate from it, that you and it, and whatever you call it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you call it God, if you call it divine presence, if you call it soul, if you call it spirit, if you call it consciousness, if you call it Christ consciousness, you can call it Buddha consciousness. You can call it Louise. You can call it Edna. You can call it Ralph Alan Watts once said that you can't get wet from the word water. It isn't the word that allows you to experience water, and whatever it is that you call it is something that is distinct from what it is. When I was walking in here this evening on these beautiful grounds, I saw some people looking at the flowers and the different plants that were growing. And as they were looking at them, there was one person who was obviously an expert, a botanist of some kind, and he was trying to explain to each one of the people what the name was, the technical name for each one of the flowers. And I was watching that and thinking, it doesn't matter what you call it, can't you enjoy it? Look at that thing. It's orange and it just came out of nowhere. There's something very profound about enjoying it and, and being there with it, rather than being obsessed with labeling it. There was a very famous Danish theologian. His name was Soran Kard. He once said that, once you label me, you negate me. Once you place a label on me and and put me into a compartment or a category of some kind, I must then become what it is that you have labeled me to be so that we want to be able to live our lives and to practice principles of higher awareness without being so consumed with what I call ordinary human awareness. And ordinary human awareness is just the recognition or the belief system that I am a human being. Maybe I'm having a spiritual experience, I'm not quite sure, but higher human awareness, but is sometimes in the east called city awareness. In the West it's been called higher consciousness or Christ consciousness. There's many names for it, but when you get beyond just knowing yourself as this body and this personality and this thing that you inhabit and begin to realize that who you are is that which was never born and can never die when you recognize your eternal self. And that's what this program is really about. It's really about recognizing the power, the energy, the capacity to be able to do what it says in some of the most holy books that you've ever read, that even the least among you can do. All that I have done and even greater things. And that's not just empty words from holy scriptures. That's a very powerful lesson that each and everyone has can practice and live every day. What I'd like to suggest to you and what this program is really about is that there are higher levels of awareness that are available to us, A level of awareness that allows us to do things like, and it may sound a bit strange, but to manage the coincidences of our lives, to be able to place our attention on what it is that we would like to create for ourselves and our lives. To literally have the power to know that if I think about it and I keep it there and I keep that picture firm within me, that there is an energy, a source, a capacity within me that is in the universe and that is also in me, and that I can use this energy, that I can manage it. There are many ways to get the things that we want for ourselves and our lives, but basically it all begins with how we choose to think. As you think so shall you be. Seven little words that I think are perhaps the most important things that we can learn and master in our lives. This old proverb notion that I become what I think about all day long. And once you know that what you think about is what expands, you start getting real careful about what you think about. You don't allow your thoughts to be on anything that you don't want or that you wouldn't want to have manifest or show up for you in your life. Emerson said, the ancestor to every action is a thought, and you can look at every spiritual tradition, whether it's Eastern or Western, whether it's ancient or modern, whether it's civilized quote or uncivilized quote, whether it's tribal, and there is in all of these persuasions, this idea that inside each and every one of us in a place that is not material, in a place that has no dimensions, in a place that has no boundaries, that in each and every one of us, we have this power and we have this intelligence, and you can never see it. I've often said that when you die, if you're gonna die, And five minutes before you're ready to leave, they weigh your body. And let's say it weighs, oh, let's pick a good number, 150 pounds. All right, . And then life leaves your body and they weigh your body instantly after you're dead. And it still weighs 150 pounds so that your body weighs the same, alive or dead before it begins to deteriorate. And if that's the case, then your life, this thing that leaves your body and your body still weighs the same is weightless. Your life is weightless. You can't put a dimension on it, you can't put a measure on it. Who you are is that life. And that life is not in the dimension of material. It's like if I wanna wiggle my finger, I just have to have a thought. And the thought says, I think I'm gonna wiggle my finger and then I do this. And you say, well, that's really no big deal. But it really is a big deal because there's something invisible in here that says, I'm gonna wiggle my finger. I've never seen that. I've never been able to, you can't. You can put that under an x-ray. You can try to measure that and find out what it is in there that allows you to say, I'm gonna wiggle my finger and you can never find it. It's not in this world, if you will. So I can do all the scientific studies. And what I can do when I do these scientific studies is I can find the command center inside of me that a lot, and I can go to the brain and I can point to a specific point. And scientists can do this and say, there's the command center, which allows you to have a thought. I think I'm gonna wiggle my finger. But there's no computer and there's no scientists, and there's no technology that can ever allow us to go inside and say, there's the commander in the command center. Can't find it. and that commander in the command center, that weightlessness is the part of us that we just don't pay enough attention to. And what I'd like to suggest here this evening is that once you start becoming aware of the power of thought, and if you look around, just look around you at everything that you see, it all began with a thought. We become what we think about. And that is probably one of the most important principles in learning to manifest. But in my mind, as I think about this idea of gettin --- principal. And she said that, uh, Wayne Dyer was in her classroom and that he was a scurvy elephant. So she got on the phone, called the principal, and the principal said, oh no. And she said, that's Wayne. He gets everything mixed up. She didn't say that he was a scurvy elephant in her classroom. She said that he was a disturbing element in her classroom, and I always loved to say that , so a scurvy elephant is, uh, and my teacher, Abraham Maslow, which does always say to us, um, you know, the, the number one marker of self-actualizing people is their, uh, their independence of the good opinion of other people. They're just not interested in being told what to do. I watched on the, um, on my iPad , which I just got, um, and it, um, it had a, uh, a commencement addressed by, uh, Steve Jobs, uh, at Stanford University. It was a 15 minute, and I just sat there and before I meditated, I listened to what he had to say, this immensely scurvy elephant who really, I mean, just passed away a few weeks ago. And, um, you know, many his biographers now saying that he's up there with, uh, Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin and, uh, Alexander Gray and Bell, people like that. I mean, he really changed who we are as a people and how we communicate with each other. And his advice to the whole graduating class at Stanford was, don't live somebody else's dharma. Don't listen to that inner calling and whatever it calls you to do, listen to it. And don't pay attention to anybody telling you what's possible or what's not possible, just fight for it. Sage was at Mother's Day, and I don't even remember what it was that she wanted to wear or didn't wanna wear, but um, it had something to do with dresses and skirts and slacks. And I remember that Mother's Day walking in the parking lot with Sage for 45 minutes or so talking to her about, um, I know exactly how you feel and how you think. I said, but there's a lot of people who think that you should maybe wear something nice. It's Mother's Day and it's a restaurant. I said, but, uh, you don't have to go back in there. We'll go home and get something afterwards if you want. And, uh, she just gimme that I don't want to do this, and why should I be told what to wear? And I understood that. I understood it very strong, and she's still doing that. But it also serves people very, very well. This idea that, um, I'm gonna listen to that voice and we all have it. And when we have this voice and this voice has passion associated with it, that is when you feel a strong passion towards what it is that you want to become, what you want to create, the kind of person that you intend to, to be, when you have that within you, um, it doesn't make any difference whether anybody else understands it or gets along with it. You don't even try to talk to anybody else about it. You just listen to it and you become a disturbing element. You become a scurvy elephant in the world. And, and it's the only way you'll ever feel fulfilled. You won't get it by, by fitting in. So in order you have to listen to your soul. And your soul is that invisibleness and your soul is not finite. Therefore, everything up to here is finite. Everything that I spoke about, filling out the forms, fitting in, being a good citizen, doing all the right things, all these things which I applaud, which are all fine, but they only take you, um, you end up living a half lived life. Herman Melville, I spoke about him this morning when I spoke to the writers group here. I mean, his writing was so profound and so beautiful and he uh, he had this one line from Moby Dick, which is really not the story about a man chasing a whale. It's a story of, um, a person who has an obsession and that whale is a symbol of, uh, I must achieve it. I've read a really great book this summer. Every one of my kids have read it, and it's called Unbroken by Laura Hill Hillebrand. And, um, I recommend that you read it and wherever this is going around the world, get a copy of it. It's the story of Louis Zamperini who, um, survived on a raft across the ocean and was taken to a Japanese prisoner of war camp and on and on and on, and survived against all odds. And that at the end was able to go back and forgive. I mean, it's a just a powerful, beautiful, spiritual experience. And, um, and Ahab was, uh, was pursuing his own, uh, inner voice that just couldn't be stilled. And this is how Melville spoke, cuz I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Maui. Where I invite you to come in January to listen to the whales, go on a whale watch with me. And if you like what I'm speaking about here tonight, we do 3, 2, 2 or three days on it in January. Here's Melville. He said, for as this, a ocean surrounds the verdant land. So in the soul of man lies one insular, Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all of the horrors of the half lived life. The half lived life is the life that gets you to ordinary, to filling out the forms and then stopping the self-actualized. Life starts at ordinary and listens to its soul, which you can't find, but you know, is there and there are some that doubt that it's there. I had a friend who's a neurosurgeon over in Maui, and he was saying, you know, you talk about this soul thing a lot. He said, I've poked around in a lot of human brains and I've never seen a soul or anything resembling a soul And I asked him, I said, Chuck, I said, um, while you're in there poking around, have you ever seen a thought Well, no, of course not. I said, do you think there are thoughts, that such a thing as a thought exists? You can't see it. You can't touch it. You can't. The fact is that virtually everything that exists is metaphysical beyond the physical. It's very limited, our physical world, and it's not even real. Standards because it's always changing. The body that you came into this room with will be a different, you'll leave in a different body. There's something called you that just keeps occupying more and more and more new bodies until ultimately it just sheds it all together. The great Irish poet, William Butler Yates said, um, an aged man, his but a poultry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. What an image. Unless soul claps its hands and sings and louder sings for every tatter in its mortal dressed. We're just tattered coats on a stick unless we have a soul. And when we have a soul, the soul says, don't fence me in. The soul says, don't tell me what to be. Don't tell me what I can't do. Don't you dare impose upon me who you are and what you think I should be? That's your soul. And all of you have this cuz this body of yours is just an illusion. It's just a very temporary parenthesis in eternity, isn't it? And you know that you're gonna leave it and all the evidence is there and you just keep looking at it. You try to pretend that it's not there. And. So you color the gray, the color of the gray, and you lift them up and you shift it around and you put on a girdle and you do all of the, I don't know, you do all of the stuff to pretend that it's, and you're not doing a damn thing in this world. You're just being done You're just being done. But what you're being done by is the higher self. So what I would like to offer you here is a, um, a program, if you will, it's sort of a preview. I've been reading and studying and, um, lecturing all over the place for the last year or two. And for some reason I've been given a, a, a big voice and a, uh, a big audience. For some reason, I'm, I'm allowed to, uh, go on public television and, and present in primetime three and four hour specials on the Dowda Ching or on the power of intention or on changing your life, living from a spiritual place. And, um, it must be because I've had this, um, wonderful opportunity handed to me that, um, I've been getting exposed to more and more and more, but about, um, the miraculous power that comes to us when we start our life from ordinary and just leave that part of it to be taken care of and move into this extraordinary place, this place, um, that all the great writers speak about. Where we, where we transcend this ego, this ego of ours that, um, believes that who we are is so important and believes that who we are is what we own. And who believes that what we are is in competition with others and has to defeat others and has to win and has to, has to be better than I love the poets. I feel very poetic tonight. Uh, a great, um, Indian poet named Ramnath Tagore won the, uh, Nobel Prize for literature in 1927 with a collection of poetry called ga. And in there he writes about this ego of ours. He says, um, I went out alone. It's on my way to my tris. But who is this? Me in the dark? I step aside to avoid his presence, but I escape him. Not He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger. He adds his loud voice to every word I utter. He is my own little self. My Lord, he knows no shame, but I the invisible me. I am ashamed to come to theor in his company. That's the ego, the part of us that makes the dust rise from the earth with our swagger, who's always adding his loud voice. But inside there's this being that says, um, who I am is so much more than that, so much more divine. And in order to get to the path of moving towards extraordinary, and the fact is that, Even though many people will attend to talk like this and many people will buy the books and uh, and study it and look at it, the percentage of people who are willing to leave ordinary behind is very, very small. Honestly, it's only a handful of people in this room, even though the intentions are good. The, um, the book that I'm reading now, I came across a quote, um, I think I'm gonna read it if I have it here. Ah, here it is. It was by a, a French, um, philosopher, mathematician. Some of you studied him when you took a philosophy class. His name was Renee Decart. He's the one who said, I think therefore I am, I don't like to question these guys. I used to teach them at the university, but I think he headed backwards. . I really believe it should be. I am. Therefore, I think, well, that's just my opinion. I'll talk about it later. And Des Hart said, in order to reach the truth, it is necessary at some point in one's life, to rid one's self of all the opinions one has ever received, and to rebuild one's entire system of knowledge from the very foundation. And I think I've done that recently, just tossed out. I think this diagnosis of leukemia two years ago really helped me to do that. And to just say, I'm starting over. I'm going, I'm going here. And I've been doing it in some ways. Many of people think I've done it my whole life, but honestly I haven't. I've walled around in that ego a lot in my life. Um, and, and so. In order to do this thing, you have to recognize that it fundamentally involves changing your concept of yourself. And changing your concept of yourself really means understanding what is your concept of yourself? Like, who are you? What is your concept of yourself? Your concept of yourself is everything that you believe to be true about yourself and what's possible for you and anyone else. And it really means changing most of that because you have been raised to be ordinary. You've been raised to believe in your limits and how far you can go. And you've been have this imposed upon you by your well-meaning parents and grandparents and culture and religion and business and education. Uh, the systems that you have been immersed into have basically told you, get here. This is not for you. And it might not have even been done. And sometimes they might have even said, oh, you can do anything. And then we'll start to tell you all of the reasons, all of the exceptions to that, that I'm imposing on you. Like you gotta get dressed in a certain way for Mother's Day , and you've got to fit in and you've got to do this and you, and it's by, by God. It's um, it's like the soul has no finiteness to it. It it, it's infinite. So it means it just wants to keep expand. It wants to keep growing. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'd love to know what you think of it. Leave your comments down below so I can, uh, get your feedback and work to improve for future videos. I'd also love to know what lessons you learned that were most impactful from this video, leaving the comments, and I will join in the discussion. Finally, wanted to give a quick shout to Madeline Murray. Thank you so much, Madeline, for picking up my book. It really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, you want a chance at a shadow in future videos as well as some awesome bonuses, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.