The room is silent as you ready yourself. You plot out your battle strategy as you slowly and methodically place each piece of your armor in its proper place. You steady yourself under the weight, as you rise to face your skillful foe.   You know every movement and every thought that they know, for you have battled this opponent day after day. Your opponent has a name that you know oh so very well. That name is your name. That name is YOU!

Dwelling within each of our brains is a "committee" that meets daily, incessantly talking about and promoting a state of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.  The committees chatter fixates on attitudes and thoughts of deceit, contempt, resentment, hurt, bitterness, anger, insecurity, fear, unhappiness, judgment, criticism and much more.  Although for most individuals these patterns aren't chronic, activation by a variety of stimulus sends most people into these patterns all too often.

There are 4 interlinking components to the human experience; 2 of which we can have control over and 2 of which we do not have control over.  The 2 components that we are able to influence are our thoughts and actions.  The 2 components we are unable to influence are our physiology and emotions which are driven by bio-chemical releases in the brain. These chemical releases are in response to fight, fright or flight activations when the Mammalian Brain feels or perceives threat.  The chemical that is released is Cortisol.  We refer to this chemical as the “feel bad chemical”.   

There are plenty of challenges in your life and some of them are of your own making. Ok, we’re being kind here. Most of them are of your own doing! People tend to undermine themselves, making assumptions about what's possible, imposing restrictions regarding choices in their lives, and allowing their fears to stop them from even trying to reach their goals and dreams. Like hogs that are unaware of the mud they wallow in, being stuck in entrenched patterns of thinking keeps people blind to the many opportunities that are embedded within that would remove them from the mud hole.

How can you get unstuck? How do you get yourself out of the mud you so readily find yourself playing in? It won’t occur by thinking and doing things the same old way, but by becoming deeply aware of the physiological and emotional responses in order to disrupt the accompanying negative thoughts and self-defeating actions. Most people engage in pre-disposed patterns of counter-productive thoughts and action when triggered by stressors, duress, and difficulties.  This is referred to as insanity; doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

“We only know what we know”.  No less. No more.  It is what you don’t know that can excite and motivate you, allowing your potential greatness to expand, creating room to become bigger than who you are in this moment.  

Every day of your life you have thousands of thoughts that race through your head. Some of these thoughts are positive but for the masses there is an over abundance of negative. Unfortunately, dwelling on negative thought patterns becomes the norm which manifests unhappiness and discontentment in people’s daily lives. Most people carry over many of these thoughts into the next day. For some, there is a tendency to dwell on the past and over-analyze what could or should have been done. For others, there is a tendency to project their fears into the future creating distorted scenarios and outcomes. “Analysis equals paralysis” as the old saying goes. If those thoughts are not supporting you, you will no doubt have trouble getting the results you want and overcoming the challenges along the way. Being able to manage your thoughts and getting out of your own way by living in the “present” is the solution to creating successful attitudes and outcomes (not always the outcomes you anticipated).

At the end of the day it is only you and you alone that gets in the way of your joy and well being.  Every morning upon awakening, a new day will greet you.  This day is neutral and will operate as it does without your permission.  You’ll have no control over people, places and situations, leaving you with the options of acceptance or resistance.  In your ability to accept life on life’s terms there will be a greater abundance of joy and well being.  To the degree you choose to live in resistance, will result in direct proportionate your level of misery and unhappiness.  The very first thing that needs to be accomplished when we are bidding for change, is to learn to get out of our own way, by recognizing that we are the ones blocking the doorway.  
There are certain principles that when unleashed from consciousness creates a transformative experience internally. These principles are Trustworthiness, Honesty, Amends, Neutrality, Kindness, and Surrender (THANKS®). In and of themselves these principles are neutral, not unlike gravity. The secret is in how you use them that will determine your experiences.  We understand that no one can achieve perfection.  It is about steady progress, not flawlessness.

What we have been witnessing in the world is a steady breakdown of people operating within their core values, separating them from joy and abundance. Greed, selfishness, and lack of integrity are the main components that are causing so many to suffer.  Driven by fear, these components have left massive wreckage in its wake.  More and more, people are recognizing the need to bring back a principled foundation. The purpose of this class is to help you learn to live consciously, discover, uncover, practice and live the THANKS® paradigm for true power, success, joyfulness and greater peace of mind.

THANKS® is designed to support you in getting out of your own way in order to experience greater clarity of mind, joy, happiness and impeccable integrity in the face of challenge and uncertainty.  To equal measure, this class will create a great deal of excitement for you because the THANKS® principles are an inherent part of your makeup, crossing cultural, ethnic, gender and age barriers. 

You will journey through many layers of self truth creating a myriad of opportunities to let go of erroneous beliefs, by working with inherent principles that are absolute.  As you travel through the exercises presented throughout this class, you will discover or rediscover that all of the joy and happiness you possess is already within you.  

Most people that we’ve met have a “committee” living rent free in their head, that when activated is filled with negative thinking, judgment, criticism, incessant complaining, self doubt, self deprecation or thoughts of arrogance and superiority.  They also live in a variety of self defeating patterns that enhance the insecurity and belief that they can’t rise above their own “demons”.  The voices of the “committee” are accepted for most people as a normal state of being.  In actuality, this deception legitimizes and perpetuates the committee’s ability to exist.  The committee is broken down into a wide variety of negative influences within, and many of these influences are well camouflaged.  Fear, pain, shame, and anger are at the root of the committees influences. The phrase we have coined that parallels these 4 emotional states is called the “Time Traveler”.  The Time Traveler catapults you into the past and the future with the merciless negative self talk that is generated by the committee.  When the Time Traveler journey’s into the past, it gathers painful experiences and uses them to then catapult back to the present or into the future for the purpose of generating unhappiness as well as futile and fatalistic outcomes. 

Some of your “charter members” that become life time fixtures are the critic, the judge, the superior one, the inferior one, the victim, the greedy one, the self deprecator and a host of others.  Each has their own unique voice and script quite invested in living rent free in your head.  They each look like and sound like you reinforcing and influencing this false identity.  These committee members are the source of self-centeredness, selfishness, and self seeking motives. 

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT!  These committee members are not a normal state of being and are not you.  As a matter of fact, we refer to these committee members as to “who you’re not”.  They are the commotion generated by fear, pain, shame, and anger that deters you from your authentic, neutral self where love, joy, creativity and peace of mind dwell.  It is now time for them to pay rent and will do so by virtue of learning how to identify and detach from the commotion.

Copyright 2007 Trans-World Dynamics, LLC and Corporate Culture Cure. THANKS® and THANKS for Everything ® are registered service marks of Trans-World Dynamics, LLC.  All written materials unless otherwise noted is copyrighted and protected under all copyright laws.  All materials copyrighted are not to be reproduced without prior written authorization of Trans-World Dynamics, LLC.  All rights reserved.

Brad Stevenson, MBA
Chief Operating Office
EXHIB-IT!
505828-0574