Seeing life differently, new perspectives and attitudes

I’m John Glanvill, author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD and Depression.

In this video, we’ll explore ways of transforming the experience of life by adopting new perspectives, which, if used well, will limit your parasitic anxiety’s ability to feed from your old stories, outdated beliefs, conditioned triggers and subsequent bodily agitations.

For me, that transformative experience was back in 2002 when I (quite by chance) had my eyes opened to how systematically ‘conditioned’ my mind had become through school, television, mainstream media and the alliance between governments and large corporations.

It’s all very obvious these days (for those who are looking) but twenty years ago very few people were aware of the scale of the issue.

I was the archetypal corporate hamster in the wheel of life, running faster and faster, trying to live up to other people’s definitions of success, on a road to nowhere!

And I was truly shocked at how duped I’d been, how compliant I had become and how emotionally bruised I was from all that programming, coercion and nudging.

This new perspective really stunned me, shocked me, and it prompted me into a long period of intense research with the desire to question everything that I had previously believed to be true.

So it seemed obvious, that I had to look outside of mainstream medicine, science and psychology if I wanted to find answers on how to find my form of calmness.

I knew I had to willingly suspend my own institutionalised logic, reason and analytical OCD thinking mind long enough to deeply explore new concepts that I was taught at a young age to disregard?

Some wise words that helped me enormously were from Don Miguel Ruiz in his book, The Four Agreements, where he simply said, “Don’t believe me, don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anyone else”.

Go out and experientially find out for yourself – so I did! I read hundreds of books, went on retreats, and learned from the most experienced teachers I could find (and afford).

And the top concepts I discovered that made the most significant difference to my finding calmness were…

Firstly, observing life in terms of energy. This opened up a whole new vista, where (suddenly) things made lots more sense, and my ability to influence and create was greatly advanced.

To see life in terms of energy coming into you versus energy being used emotionally and physically – and ensuring there was a big enough reserve stored in the body to repair itself and hold a buffer to manage times of future disruption or change.

Which, as we know, is always going to happen anyway.

Then, by releasing trapped trauma which is a huge drainer of energy and raising my vibrational frequency, I could further access more energy – which could be harnessed and directed towards my intentions.

Secondly, changing my perspective to consider death as a transition (rather than the end) – was surprisingly liberating for me and allowed me to be less attached to this life, which permitted me to be more brave, courageous, creative and light-hearted.

My time on Earth was to learn and experience as much as I possibly could.
And the third item was – understanding that we don’t need to think as much as

we were trained to think we do.

And that, what (and how), we think, will either free us or bind us into emotional knots of fear and anxiety, which may further exhaust us into depression.

As many people have begun to notice, videos that teach calmness, courage and independent action (such as mine) are being less promoted by the video-sharing platform’s algorithms.

Perhaps because these new behaviours will internalise your Locus of Control, making you feel good, and encouraging you to take action.

Whereas, fear, conformity and regulation – will make you feel bad and externalise your Locus of Control making you indecisive and raising your need to follow rules.

Therefore, what I am pointing to is… You can try to incrementally move out of anxiety, but the most effective way is via a huge paradigm shift.

Let me give you a comparison analogy? Many people spend their whole lives anxious and worrying about (“what if…”) terrible things happening. Then, when something big did happen, that negative event actually became a powerful catalyst for positive change.

I know many people, who after their worst nightmares come true, people leaving them, developing cancer, parents dying or losing their jobs – suddenly realised that they could handle those things, their worlds didn’t end, and other stuff happened that they hadn’t even considered – they were forced to step up and it was OK in the end.

And often, (if they were to look back on those old events with new eyes) may even be able to see their role in the manifestation of those events

It was the stories about those fears and the subsequent body’s responses to those stories that may have caused many of their problems!

And after those events, they become more courageous, more independent and more engaged with life on new terms.

This is very noticeable in those who recover from cancer.

They often say, “I know this sounds crazy, but I wish this had happened years ago – because it taught me that I wasted many years struggling with unnecessary worry and doubt – because I recovered from that condition by learning how to de-stress myself.

You also see this with people who have strange, profound or inexplicable experiences.

A friend of mine who was generally quite negative, very pessimistic and worried about everything – he temporarily died during a routine operation in hospital and needed to be resuscitated.

And during this time he had a bewildering inner experience – where he (somehow) met up with relatives that had previously passed away plus a (then living) close friend.

He told me that the experience had been beautiful even though he felt as if he had died (and that before the operation he believed there was nothing after death).

Then, after spending some time with those people – they gently pushed him away – and he felt himself returning to his body.

The next day after his operation, he told his family about meeting up with his relatives and friend, and they revealed his friend had passed away the day before – and he said, “Tell his family he is OK!”

Was this true? Was this just in his head? Did he go to heaven? Was it just the quantum entanglement of the field? Was it a dream?

I don’t know!

And whether his experience was true, or just in his mind – what matters is – over the next six months, he was a radically changed man, he stopped worrying, he became lighter and funnier, and he let go of control.

You could say, that one ‘experience’ changed his whole paradigm – he was no longer addicted to the programmed thinking of his mind because he had a completely new model running.

And that shift happened in a moment, from a new perspective, with a different story no longer based in fear.

For six months he was a different man, a changed man, fun to be around, he was happy and open to life.

And, this is what also interested me…..

Because his wife was so low energy and had a victim mentality, she was a neurotic and anxious worrier – she slowly dragged him back down into his old ways, because she couldn’t handle living with an optimist, as it left her alone in all her negative dogma.

It revealed her own limitations – she didn’t like him being fun or having fun, because she was unable to – or shall we say – was too wrapped up in her low energy drama to have fun?

Like I said in an earlier video, very often the biggest hindrance to a person changing their life is their environment or family connections.

Anxiety, OCD, depression, worry, and doing drama so often run in families, and like I said in video seven, it’s not because it is genetic, it’s because it is learned from that family.

It’s epigenetics, it’s what happens in the environment that the genes reside in, that influences the expression (or not) of those genes.

I think this is why, those who attend retreats, go travelling, move house or leave home, often make such profound leaps in emotional freedom – as being in a new more positive, higher energy environment makes such a monumental difference.

In that new environment, they see their shadow self – the way that they are like the very people who annoy them – because that’s who they were programmed by!

I remember back when I was about twenty-six, just before the birth of my son – I was hoping that he would be born an optimist and happy, as opposed to my having been born a pessimist and mostly feeling unhappy.

Back then, I just assumed that how you were born was just pot luck, poor me, I was born a pessimistic worrier and I had to learn to live with it!

How naive I was back then… There I was with a baby to look after when I couldn’t even manage myself properly, and nobody told me that my words and actions would become the operating system I would install into his little brain.

I unknowing trained him with my behaviours of pessimism and worry and assumed he was just born that way like me – “So, it must be genetic?”

Luckily that story has a happy ending as we have both spent a lot of time re- accessing who we wish to be and how we wish to be, then reprogrammed our

brains by talking and acting in those new ways over and over again until they became the new pattern.

We have both become optimists and do all we can to let go of worry, we know we are tricking ourselves, but like I said in an earlier video whether you choose to be pessimistic and imagine the worse happening or optimistic and imagine the best happening – both are a virtual reality story about the future, neither is true (in that moment) but one makes the body feel bad and one makes it feel good!

I choose the one that will make my body feel good in the now – as that is what becomes my experience of life!

Someone asked me recently, “How can I be passionate about life when I don’t know what I want and am uncertain about the outcomes of my future actions?” They went on to say, “I currently feel sad and frightened.”

But can you see that breaking out of that negative loop of thinking can’t be done by a small step? There needs to be a big change, a whole new reconceptualisation.

They were assuming you could only be passionate if you were doing a certain thing, in a certain way and getting a certain outcome – and that would bring passion into their life.

Wouldn’t it be more sensible to become a passionate person who took passion into all aspects of life regardless of whether or not they have a plan?

Surely, being passionate is an attitude that could be adopted, learned, worked on, and practised? Could you become a passionate person regardless of what is happening around you?

Passionate about cooking dinner, passionate about your relationships, passionate and optimistic in the way you talk – even if life is not what you currently want it to be.

You could moan about all the things that are wrong or become passionate about making changes, moving to acceptance or moving out of that situation.

I think this is a big trick many people fail to see – if you pretend to be more passionate, more optimistic, and more engaging all day, then, those are the emotions you will be feeling all day!

Because regardless of what happens you have lived passionately, which is better than toiling for decades to finally reach your passion!

It’s kind of obvious really, but nobody teaches us this!

Passionate people have much more fun too, other people want to hang out with passionate people and who wouldn’t want to employ a person passionate about your business?

Now, I am just using the word passionate here, but you can substitute behaviours like calmness, positivity, charisma and optimism.

How can you practise acting like the person you would like to be? Or if you don’t know who you’d like to be – pick a friend whose attitudes and behaviours you admire and copy them, ask them how they do it.

As I have said before – can you practice giving up moaning or complaining for a week? If it makes you feel different… do it for another week… Then another, until you break that old habit and unconsciously automate this new one!

Let me give you some more perspectives that might help you to make those big shifts

For example, might you see anxiety or OCD as an addiction rather than something that is happening to you? Like a drug addict being addicted to heroin – if they don’t get a fix they move into a state of intense discomfort which we might call anxiety.

We might propose that – if a person with anxiety moves towards that which makes them anxious they are experiencing withdrawal from the safety of avoiding that anxiety.

They are addicted to avoiding what makes them feel anxious and therefore move into intense discomfort when facing the challenges they know they need to address for a more fulfilled life.

So, in recovery, like an addict – they must move away from their perceived comfort and into their discomfort until that distress can be tolerated in new ways.

Which (as ever) is exposure therapy which is a wonderful thing as it expands your ability to lean into fear and therefore enables your life to expand.

I heard a joke the other day – where the first person said, “Why do you put garlic outside your window each night?”

To which the second person replied, “To keep the vampires away!”

“But there are no vampires,” said the first person. “Yes, effective isn’t it!” They replied…

I think that analogy applies so directly to anxiety (and especially OCD), where individuals run their rituals, mental routines and avoidance behaviours for safety – though the thing they are terrified about has never (or is very unlikely) to happen.

We might say, are they taking their cues on how to respond to life from their imagination rather than from the reality they see around them?

Why is it that they need to wash their hands for thirty minutes when everybody else in the family and all their friends only do it for twenty seconds?

It’s because they are addicted to avoiding the discomfort of not doing it, they believe their imaginations more than the reality of what others are doing – and (most likely) what they are trying to wash off is a feeling, which is inside them from past trauma and not even on their hands…

We might say that anxiety disorders are a disorder of the imagination coupled with an intense fear of emotions…

Let me remind you – any emotions, no matter how distressing, are just natural chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol (being released by mistake) agitating your body.

Or, trapped trauma being released from your atoms as potential energy being converted to kinetic energy through the agitation of matter – which though feels scary in the beginning – is ultimately a wonderful occurrence!!!

I have to keep reminding you of how sneaky our ego is and the subtle ways it sabotages us, often right under our noses and we can’t see it!

Many of my clients have health anxiety, which we may describe using words like hypochondria, fear of being ill or a hypersensitivity towards analysing their body, and the need for constant reassurance from a doctor or trusted loved one.

This continuous worry, about all the health problems that could happen often, leads to their bodies becoming continuously stressed, hypersensitive and exhausted, which of course brings on many of the complaints they initially feared!

As I said early in this course, placebo is very effective, if you think positively it tricks the body into being less stressed and remaining in the parasympathetic, rest, digest and repair mode – and if you could spend 90% of your day in this natural state many skin, stomach, bowel, bladder, headaches, joint pains and fatigue complaints may disappear plus your emotional battery will recharge!

It’s just how nature and biology operate – calm people have fewer medical complaints than stressed people – that’s a fact, ask any doctor!

As I have said throughout my course (and especially in video seven) our bodies operate from the chemical soup we reside in and the types of peptide receptors we have available on the surface of our cells to receive those emotional peptides.

Therefore, joking, and laughter do change your hormones and your chemical soup!

And repetition over long periods reduces the cell’s number of receptors for fear- based peptides – thus reducing hypersensitivity.

And those receptors will be replaced with receptors for happy peptides if you are making them by loving and laughing (even though right now you don’t feel like doing it!)

Once again, this is obvious really, but nobody is explaining it in these simplistic ways.

We are how we think – therefore, we need to think differently to become different!

This is why I am offering more and more lighthearted and simplistic ways of looking at life, to laugh at yourself, accept things out of your control and move more towards optimism and trust.

Rather than fearing looking foolish – see playfulness as another form of exposure therapy that is wonderful for your inner chemistry!

Therefore, rather than looking to treat the symptoms of stress and worry, we might ask ourselves how are calm people looking at life?

Or we could rephrase that to say, how were calm people trained to see the world differently from how worried people were trained?

So, in this video, my goal is to continue introducing concepts that will assist you to rise above the anxious or OCD thinking mind – by adopting new philosophies that make these significant step changes possible.

A great example from my own life (and this is just the model I use for me, you need to find the one that works for you).

Because I now believe that my Soul is immortal and I, the Observer, the Rider lives on – it’s my actions and learnings in this world that will influence the future worlds I will be living in.

Plus, the more skills and abilities I learn now, will increase my ability to thrive within them – when I get to them.

Like Bill Murray in Groundhog day, how did he escape his dogma?

He used his time wisely to learn new skills, he wasn’t afraid of death and he endeavoured to make everybody else’s interaction with him a pleasant one.

And he had a clear intention, to get the girl – and he placed all his energy and attention on that goal and ignored everything else.

Imagine what the world would be like if everybody was living that way! It would be wonderful.

Who’d not want to live that way?

The Buddha said something like – how can you take the middle path, and live lightly (and lovingly) between the objective world out there and the subjective world within yourself?

And Gandhi, who said, something like, become the change you wish to see in this World.

So, these big changes of perspective can radically speed up the escape from living in anxious and fearful ways.

You might say that, moving up to the perspective of who you wish to be, rather than being stuck in the content of who your mind thinks you are – should be a very sensible option.

From the content of avoiding an ineffable, invisible and dangerous ‘contamination’ – by washing your hands till they bleed makes sense.

But, from the perspective of trusting natural immunity overly cleaning your skin, clothes and house is completely nonsensical and ultimately leaves you more open to infection, the very thing you fear!

From the content of fearing your partner will leave you, then to keep asking for reassurance, checking up on them and controlling their behaviours – seems to make sense.

But from the new perspective, of you becoming a calm, fun and trusting person – who they will then desire to hang out with – this makes even more sense!

Can you see – we don’t escape anxiety or OCD by trying to change or stop the mind from doing its silly routines?

We must jump to a new perspective that starves the mind of its fuel – excessive thinking and fear! And gives us a new trajectory to live our lives by

So, which new perspective do you want to live your life from? And recognise that you can make that jump in seconds – from content to context – when you choose to do so.

Now, to begin this, it’s prudent for us to understand where we are starting our journey from and a model called the cycle of competency is a useful starting point.

The model maps a person’s brain behaviours as it learns new information, tries new things, adapts those new experiences into useable skills, and then automates them into becoming standard operating procedures.

So, the starting point is called being Unconsciously Incompetent – simply stated, you don’t know what you don’t know – how could you?

There is knowledge or a skill missing and you don’t know what that is yet.

As a baby, you were Unconsciously Incompetent about driving a car. And because you didn’t even know what a car is – this is totally understandable.

However, if you were doing a job and there was a new technology which was making your skill set redundant, it might be disastrous to be Unconsciously Incompetent and not know what you are missing.

But then again, this stage is the starting point of all learning. So we must acknowledge that there will always be things about ourselves that we don’t yet know which we need to improve.

We might call that concept naivety? “Forgive them, as they know not what they do!”

Which is another way of saying, “Accept people as who they are, not who you wish them to be!”

Looking back on my anxiety – though I was a smart person, I was naive about the ways of the world and how anxiety worked.

However, as we open our minds to new concepts and lovingly increase the self- awareness of our limitations we can move to the next stage.

This is called Conscious Incompetence where we consciously know we need to learn new information and develop new skills through research, action, repetition and the retraining of our minds and bodies.

For example, learning how to drive a car – in the beginning, Consciously you know that you are incompetent at that task, therefore will need to learn information and develop new skills.

As you learn and get better at driving, which we might call ERP (exposure therapy) because you are consciously exposing yourself to fearful new behaviours until they become normal, they will start off scary and then the more we do them, the easier they will become.

Like I keep saying the best type of exposure therapy is not on your anxiety fears (which are content) but on your life desires – which are the context!

Now, those actions will either be exciting or scary depending on the story you are telling yourself about that event, behaviour or yourself – are you being pessimistic or optimistic? Fearing or desiring?

Do you say Oooh? Or do you say Arrrgh? It is a shrinking in-breath like “Oh no!” Or an expanding out-breath like, “Yeah, let’s do that?”

Either way, you should expect some discomfort as you expose yourself to these new situations – how else can you ever grow?

Once you pass your driving test and have gained six months of experience – you’ll likely reach a skill level we may label as becoming Consciously Competent – you consciously know that you know how to drive and you feel comfortable doing so.

After a while, and through more repetition, your unconscious mind learns what to do, it automates, all it can automate, and you become Unconsciously Competent – you just drive well and don’t need to give it much thought.

This is a great place to be, as you feel safe, in control and are reaping the benefits from all that initial hard work and emotional stress.

But, over time, we begin to cut corners, speed a little, use the phone, take a few shortcuts, and forget what some of the road signs mean – like that one where the motorbike flies over the car. (add image)

We become complacent about driving as it’s so easy, we don’t need to think about it.

In fact, at this stage, we have returned full cycle to becoming Unconsciously Incompetent but on a skill, we think we know.

We have become worse and more dangerous drivers, yet we are consciously unaware of it! If somebody asked, you’d say, “I’m a great driver, I have all this experience!”

No, you have unconsciously automated all your shortcuts and bad habits.

Many adults spend much of their lives in this Unconsciously Incompetent quadrant, just thinking they are good at things, and not realising that everything is happening unconsciously and all their bad habits are now unconscious too – they will just keep happening automatically!

And, of course, this is especially true for anxiety and OCD!

No matter what you consciously think – the old unconscious automated routines are just running in the background.

This is why I keep saying you can’t consciously think your way out of anxiety, you’ll just be reinforcing all those old programs – we need a whole new paradigm to live and reprogram our brains from.

So, can you ask yourself, in which aspects of my life have I slipped into becoming Unconsciously Incompetent? Work, driving, relationships, parenting, social life, hobbies and most importantly, your emotional well-being!

And if you are wise (and I trust you are) you’ll be considering how to become Consciously Incompetent -and aware of where your unconscious programs are no longer serving you well!

How can you revisit your life skills, attitudes, perspectives, knowledge and mindsets to update and add new more relevant (to this time of life) talents and data, along with lots of repetition – so you may return to the start point of becoming Consciously Competent once more!

Now, as we apply this to anxiety it makes sense to add a little perspective too. For example, an anxious or OCD person is Unconsciously Incompetent at thinking with calmness and with stories of self-worth and self-esteem!

Really consider that statement…

There is very little (or even) no evidence to support your fears – except the

stories of your imagination!

You are not going to get contaminated, the world is not going to end, and the door is locked! Your hands are clean, so what if you fail, so what if they don’t like you.

So what if you are not good enough… Who said you should be? Other than your unconsciously incompetent programmed imagination?

If we are going to move around this cycle of growth, we need to learn new perspectives that will allow (with repetition) our unconscious minds to adopt these new understandings and re-automate them in new ways.

So, let me introduce another perspective. This concept is easy to understand, yet we were never taught it in childhood, probably because our parents were never taught it either!

It is the perspective of living with a non-duality mindset.

You see, from a very young age, we were conditioned to see the world from the mind’s duality of what is right or wrong, good or bad, nice or horrible, loving or hating, legal or illegal.

Our egos (our conditioned protective personalities) were trained to see one of the pairs as good and the opposite definition as bad. That you should do (or be) the good one and avoid the bad one.

But this is a human mind trap and only true in the virtual reality world of language.

Though what I am about to say is very simple our brains are just not wired to see it easily, so let here are some examples.

One of the most obvious dualities that are not true is this.
Dark is not the opposite of light – in fact, there is no such thing as darkness – it is

just one of many words that describes the absence of light.

Darkness is not a real thing, you can’t shine some darkness into a room with a flashlight. No, you shine more light into a place where there is not much light, which we might have labelled as dimness, gloominess or darkness.

There is only one scale, from there being no light up to lots of light – only one variable – the presence of light.

But human language labels it as darkness (as if it were a real thing, which it isn’t) then (potentially) positions it as bad, where the bogeyman hides, where you are in danger and vulnerable to something coming at you…

And your ego uses these stories against you – to try and keep you safe, to talk you out of doing things – trapping you in a world of fear about a word that explains a thing that does not exist.

Personally, I now love the darkness, I used the absence of light – as exposure therapy for myself, learning to be calm in the absence of light. To trust and have an optimistic high energy story in my mind during those situations.

I love walking around my house and garden in complete ‘darkness’, I see that as a skill. To be able to calmly and in darkness (the lack of light) navigate my property is a very powerful (and useful) skill, should there ever be a fire or some other emergency.

So darkness doesn’t have to be bad, it’s just the absence of light (nothing else has changed) and a sensible version of me should be able to function in either condition – without a negative story or a fearful body.

Perhaps if we jump to a more emotional perspective – what about the duality between love and hate?

Once again these are mixing human word variables with something that is not present in nature.

In reality, there is only one scale and one variable. Either there is lots of love which we might label as caring, loving, connected, intimate or not much love at all, which we may label as hatred, meanness or anti-social behaviour!

If a dangerous animal tries to eat you, it’s not because he doesn’t love you, he is just hungry and you are fuel, you might argue that is natural.

But if a fellow human is trying to harm you it is because they lack love for themselves or for you – it’s not even personal, it’s just who they are! If they could do differently they would, but they can’t.

Can you see how subtle and nuanced this is?

From the context of living your life from a reality-based non-verbal, non-duality context – we rise above the content of the ego mind’s conditioning, the horsey’s old stories – to that of the non-verbal rider (or observer) intuitively knowing what needs to be done – in any moment.

If you perceive the other person to be hateful, we can acknowledge their nievity and see that more love needs to be applied to them – or more love needs to be applied to yourself by removing yourself from their presence.

If you are clinging to an old story about hatefulness – in a non-duality world, this means you do not love yourself, you are residing down in the negative energy field of no love – based on a hateful story!

This is why we forgive others (and ourselves) not for what they (or we did) – but so we can move up from the lower energy fields of hate to the higher frequency energy fields of love.

This is why I appreciate the rational and sensible teachings of Dr David R Hawkins who says things like…

The emotions of sadness, grief and anger originate from past traumas, so stop

clinging to those stories release them, let them go, and let that pain vent out.

He said, that, fear and anxiety were the stories of the mind anticipating the future, which freaked the body out as it thought those stories were real, like in a dream.

And that, calmness (or peace) is found only in this one real moment called now – where you are not resiting the future nor clinging to the past – with neither attraction nor aversion!

Well, I think, that is bloody good advice!

Easily understood, when you have the right perspective when you are not caught up in all the drama of the content – and when your fearful programmed mind is quieter or you are not being distracted by other things.

We let go of fear by seeing it as the indulgence of our little eight-year-old, our horsey, our ego and our conditioned programmed responses.

Fear is childish, restrictive, and controlling and it shrinks us emotionally, so we tend to avoid certain people or situations, or it causes us to lash out at those we love or who are trying to help us.

But, as we become more childlike – we move from fear to caution.

Because caution is very different from fear; caution is thinking and anticipating, but not emotionalising or adding any stories.

Becoming fearful is stepping into alarm and hysteria, you could say coming apart.

But think about it, is it sensible to come apart if the situation is one of real danger? Surely you need to stay cool and learn how to handle it calmly?

You accept the situation, you change the situation, or you remove yourself from the situation – whichever is appropriate in that moment for you and in line with the perspective were currently adopting?

And Hawkins says a great tool to use in this process is to always be surrendering to and trusting in a power higher than yourself who has your best interest at heart (even if you don’t know what that best interest is!)

Even when facing death, emotionalisation is not necessary. With acceptance, you can transcend into serenity. Because death is not a possibility for the Self with the big (S) and on a certain level, everybody knows this!

I like Hawkins’s other theory too – about dementia and Alzheimer’s.

And remember, Hawkins was a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, then earned a PhD in philosophy (along with becoming enlightened) – so really is a person we might want to listen to!

He said you could take the medical view of these conditions like the brain failing, cognitive disruption, impairment, atrophy, aphasia and all that – and try to treat those symptoms – which is living down at the content level – which is true.

Or you might switch to a new context, and say, might it be enlightenment happening, but in very slow motion? Their ego leaving them very slowly.

If you ask them, “Are you OK?” They’ll say, “I’m fine.” “Do you need anything?” – “No, no I’m fine.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?” – “Oh, I don’t know, I might not even be here then!”

“What did you do this morning?” – “Oh, I don’t know, it was just another morning, it doesn’t matter they’re all fine.”

“Who got you dressed today?” – “Oh, I don’t know but they had a really nice smile.

“Are you OK just sitting here for a while?” – “I’m fine, don’t worry about me.”

In those quiet moments, they are in the wonderful state of no-mind, the horse’s ego has switched off and the rider is returned into the realm of infinite silence and calm – how beautiful.

This is perhaps a precursor to death or a transitory enlightened state (although the seems to come ego comes and go) – which is ironically what many people without dementia aspire to achieve!

If you were out hiking in the Himalayas and you saw an old man sitting cross- legged in a cave, serenely meditating – even if he was dirty, starving, thirsty, even if there was shit everywhere and rats running around – You’d say, “Wow, he’s an enlightened Soul!

But, if you came across uncle Fred, on his sofa watching tv in his apartment in New York, that would be horrific!

But, if you said to either of them, “Are you OK?” – They’d both say, “I’m fine.”

These conditions are worse for the families left behind and who often (unknowingly) agitate their loved one’s calm emotional state by getting them to do the animal things they no longer care about – like eating, washing or taking their medication!

Now I know there is much more to this than I have simply stated here, but I believe this perspective can be a very powerful tool when handling such emotionally charged and deeply personal situations.

Hawkins also developed a routine called the “And then what?” routine – which I used to think was silly, however, over the years I have come to recognise how incredibly powerful it is.

You observe your fear and say, “And then what?”

I can’t leave my house as I am too anxious… – And then what?

Well, I’ll become dependent on my partner… – And then what?

They will get frustrated and leave me… – And then what? I’ll have to sell my house. And then what?

I won’t be able to afford a new one. And then what? I’ll be homeless. And then what?
I’ll be put in a shelter or hospitalised. And then what? I might be beaten up or murdered? And then what? Then I’ll die!

The fear of physical death is nearly always at the base of most fears – but if you can say, “so what” to physical death, nothing scares you anymore!

This is why I keep prompting you to consider, that if there is no life after death, then you have nothing to lose by bravely exploring this life, in the brief time you are here.

And if your Soul leaves this plane when your horsey dies, then you are immortal and why would an immortal soul have anxiety only your body would?

We have to jump to new perspectives, by moving out of the content and into the context of any situation.

And finally, I’d like to end this video with a little light-hearted and personal story about intentions, the universe and letting go.

As many of us are, over the last few years, I have been trying more and more to let go of being attached to things, objects and outcomes, it certainly is a work in progress and I acknowledge I still have far to go.

For many years I have been saying that when my ancient iPhone 7 expires, I won’t replace it and I will stop using a smartphone altogether – that has been my intention.

It’s also interesting why I don’t just do it immediately rather than waiting – am I just kidding myself?

However, my cell phone contract ended and the company said to me it would halve my monthly fee and give me a new iPhone 13 for free if I took out a new contract.

That offer felt too good to resist, so I took them up on it, threw my trusty iPhone 7 in the cupboard and the nerd in me enjoyed my new toy!

I particularly liked the camera functions and because the storage was so much bigger all my books and photos could be easily stored, whereas on my old phone I was always trying to free up space.

Anyway, I absolutely loved it, they had hooked me in – and my intentions story morphed to “when this phone dies I will stop using a smartphone!”

How quickly our egos can deceive us…

Well, one week into thoroughly enjoying this machine I accidentally threw it into my log burner along with a bundle of logs! (add picture)…

It took me about an hour to realise my mistake and fish the burnt-out and (uninsured) wreckage from its fiery tomb.

Of course, I felt silly, of course, there was frustration, and of course, I wasn’t happy.

But I was still able to laugh at myself, then sit on the sofa and release the frustration and annoyance I was feeling.

I let the energy of it escape through me and I stayed out of my own mind’s stories as best I could – I tried to surrender to what had happened and let it go.

My mind kept trying to pull me back into all the stories – but I built a new conscious narrative, “It’s OK, such is life, it’s just a phone, blah, blah, blah!”

The next day I got a SIM card replacement, fished out my trusty old iPhone 7 and here we are again on my original intention and actually it feels right.

Was the Universe testing me? seeing how true I was to my original intentions and testing me to see if I can really let go! Who knows?

I am still working on myself, and little wins like this do contribute to my calmness being a choice rather than dependent on things or outcomes.

So, in summary…

Can you move out from the context of your anxiety to new perspectives?

Where are you on the Unconsciously Competent cycle?

And can you move your ego out of the duality trap and live from a non-duality perspective?