What life-changing advice would I give my younger self?

I’ve called this video – What advice would I give my younger self…

Common sense perspectives which might have helped him to better understand his complex anxiety issues and how the world works.

Because between the ages of 12 and 36, I struggled with my emotions and fought with my brain all day (and most nights), but now, at the age of 59, I love and respect myself and am continually surprised and amazed by what my brain and body can do!

What changed? Well, I changed! My inner reality changed. My self-awareness changed.

My inner subjective reality of the events in the other outer objective reality was transformed and reprogrammed to become a far more pleasant place.

Not only did I modify the horrible stories I told myself about myself (and the outer world) to become more kind, respectful, optimistic, inspiring, and fun, but I also learned to interpret my brain’s thoughts less rigidly.

I have come to accept that my brain is essentially a proposal generator for thoughts, dreams, and imaginations. It automatically (and unconsciously) keeps me alive and well; if only I would get out of its way and talk to it nicely in the manner it was designed to operate.

During my childhood, the device not only ran the programs it was programmed with, but it also had the ability to learn, create and adapt based on the information it received from its surroundings and my conscious thoughts each day.

Back then, I hadn’t learned how brilliant (yet fallible) and easily manipulated that computerised storage device for knowledge and memories in my head was.

It had been conditioned to accept the information it received from authority sources and, therefore, never thought to challenge or test the accuracy (or truth) of that knowledge.

Then, after a pretty severe mental breakdown in my 30s, the engineer in me decided to see if he could figure out if his brain could be reconfigured to work for me, rather than dominating, exhausting and scaring me.

So, as the observer of my brain’s thoughts, I worked on changing my perspective to recognise that often those thoughts were simply metaphors, emotional desires, out-of-date safety stories (or even fantasies), so they didn’t (necessarily) need to be understood or acted upon and could be ignored if I so wished.

In addition, I was surprised to discover I could consciously implant new placebo stories into my brain, tricking that unconscious aspect into functioning more favourably to my calmness, regardless of the truth (or scientific validity) of those strategically implanted self-loving statements.

I adjusted my interpretation of physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology – to expand upon what science taught me in school. This included the input of energy (and intention) and the powerful effects of all those systems working together within the incredible electromagnetic field of energy and knowledge that we might call nature or divinity.

And, within my inner conscious awareness, I changed my values, beliefs, interpretations, desires, and intentions to be more relevant to who I wished to (now) be rather than how I was programmed as a child.

I then upgraded the degree of responsibility I took for the consequences of my life; I stopped blaming others and did whatever I could to enable my intentions.

Of course, over those years, the outer objective reality I lived in changed dramatically, too, and because I chose not to be an activist or a politician (who’d fight those changes), I chose to find sensible ways

to not allow them to demoralise, anger, or stop me from having a beautiful (inner reality) dream for myself, as best I could.

That being said, I have chosen to see myself as a subtle
influencer through how I live my life and creatively within my work.

For many years, I have been deeply influenced by the work of Dr. David R. Hawkins, especially his concept of developing the skill to rapidly ‘let go’ of thoughts, feelings and mentations about events that were out of my control or where I was consciously not prepared to take control.

Jen and I have a game we play in which if something negative, sad or disruptive happens that causes us anguish, the first person to free themselves from that torment (or emotional trigger) wins!

So, if we have an argument, or something goes wrong, or we’re let down, or have an accident (or whatever), we have managed to shrink that frustration (or disappointment) period down into minutes rather than hours (or days!)

I see this as a wonderful gift (not only) to minimise negative stress on our bodies but also to be respectful within our relationship.

Recently, we missed a flight and managed to let our negative stories (and their corresponding emotional reactions) be surrendered within 30 minutes!

After an hour, we laughed about it; then we went on to have fun and an unexpected adventure in the extra 24 hours our modified trip afforded us as we waited for the next day’s flight!

Can you see that all throughout this course, I have been asking you to observe (and contemplate) how optimistic, trusting, and calm people might think (and act) so you might replicate those patterns (if you like them) and train them into your incredible brain?

Yes, we had missed the plane. However, we took corrective action, and we moved on. And just because the outer reality no longer matched our inner story the obvious next step was to change our inner story to a more pleasing one.

If health and calmness were truly my intentions, no amount of complaining, thinking, worrying, blaming, or regret would serve any purpose except to exhaust me and facilitate my (poor little) ego’s feeding from negative emotions, like receiving sympathy, beating myself up, or complaining, none of which would help in any way!

I simply acknowledge what has happened, sort it out, and attempt to be kind to myself to the best of my conscious abilities.

It is just a process and quite simple once I understood it, though my ego did kick and scream as I learned how to starve it from its parasitic food sources of drama, worry, doubt, guilt and fear.

Now, I’m not saying you should do these things or that I am right; just here are some ideas that helped me.

So, what I am pointing to is, can you create a new subjective
reality dream that is as pleasurable as possible within the current limits of your intellect and logic-based ego?

And, can you free your inner self by doing this loving work on yourself while under the intense and constant pressure from the media, corporations, governments, society, and the education systems, which try to program you with fear, uncertainty, and doubt so you remain a trapped and compliant consumer?

Ok, so, let’s start by asking, “What advice would I give my younger self?”

And, importantly, how might I have needed to give young John that advice so he would be open enough to listen?

Because if I’m honest, back then, he was
an annoying, obnoxious, angry, opinionated know-it-all (who actually, naively didn’t know much at all of how the world operated) and who rigidly stuck to what he believed was true (from what he was taught was true) by the environment he grew up in.

Back then, I was so conditioned to believe what I was told and to always look for proof (or defer to authority) before accepting new information that I would often fight to defend what I had been taught, even if I had never tested it out in real life.

So if I did time-travel back to the 1970s and only had ten minutes to give him all my real-world experiential knowledge, the first nine minutes

would probably have been spent arguing with him to prove I was really there and wasn’t just a dream, a hallucination or somebody playing a trick on him!

Anyway, let’s assume that by some miracle, he had an open mind back then and was prepared to listen to new concepts and bother to test them out.

Firstly, I would tell him that he had completely misunderstood two very important concepts: creativity and talent.

My story is continued in the video…