spend forty-five minutes in traffic. He arrives at his desk by 8:00, where he sits down to do the same
job he's been doing for the past twenty years.
At 5:00 he goes home, pops the top on a "cold one," and grabs the TV remote-control. An hour later
his wife comes home and they decide whether to eat leftovers or throw a pizza in the microwave. After
dinner he watches the news while his wife bathes their kid and puts him to bed. By no later than 9:30
he's in the sack. He devotes his weekends to yard work, car maintenance, and sleeping in. Walt and
his new wife have been married for three years, and while he wouldn't exactly describe their
relationship as "inflamed with passion," it's comfortable—even though lately it seems to be repeating a
lot of the same patterns of his first marriage.
Do you know someone just like Walt? Maybe he's someone you know intimately—someone who never
suffers the depths of utter devastation or despondency, but also someone who never revels in the
heights of passion and joy. I've heard it said that the only difference between a rut and a grave is a
few feet, and over a century ago, Thoreau observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation." As we move into the next century, this phrase is unfortunately more applicable than ever.
If there's one thing I've noticed in the countless letters I've received since I wrote Unlimited Power, it's
the overwhelming prevalence of this kind of disassociation in people's lives—something that just
"happened" out of their desire to avoid pain—and the hunger with which they seize upon an
opportunity to feel more alive, more passionate, more electric. From my perspective, as I travel
around the world, meeting people from all walks of life and "feeling the pulse" of literally hundreds of
thousands of individuals, we all seem to instinctively realize the risk of emotional "flatline," and
desperately seek ways to get our hearts pumping again.
So many suffer from the delusion that emotions are entirely out of their control, that they're just
something that spontaneously occurs in reaction to the events of our lives. Often we dread emotions
as if they were viruses that zero in on us and attack when we're most vulnerable. Sometimes we think
of them as "inferior cousins" to our intellect and discount their validity. Or we assume that emotions
arise in response to what others do or say to us. What's the common element in all these global beliefs?
It's the misconception that we have no control over these mysterious things called emotions.
Out of their need to avoid feeling certain emotions, people will often go to great, even ridiculous,
lengths. They'll turn to drugs, alcohol, overeating, gambling; they'll lapse into debilitating depression.
In order to avoid "hurting" a loved one (or being hurt by one), they'll suppress all emotions, end up as
emotional androids, and ultimately destroy all the feelings of connection that got them together in the
first place, thus devastating the ones they love most.
I believe there are four basic ways in which people deal with emotion. Which of these have you used
today?
1. Avoidance. We all want to avoid painful emotions. As a result, most people try to avoid any
situation that could lead to the emotions that they fear—or worse, some people try not to feel any
emotions at all! If, for example, they fear rejection, they try to avoid any situation that could lead to
rejection. They shy away from relationships. They don't apply for challenging jobs. Dealing with
emotions in this way is the ultimate trap, because while avoiding negative situations may protect you
in the short term, it keeps you from feeling the very love, intimacy, and connection that you desire
most. And ultimately, you can't avoid feeling. A much more powerful approach is to learn to find the
hidden, positive meaning in those things you once thought were negative emotions.
2. Denial. A second approach to dealing with emotion is the denial strategy. People often try to
disassociate from their feelings by saying, "It doesn't feel that bad." Meanwhile, they keep stoking the
fire within themselves by thinking about how horrible things are, or how someone has taken advantage
of them, or how they do everything right but things still turn out wrong, and why does this always
happen to them? In other words, they never change their focus or physiology, and they keep asking
the same disempowering questions. Experiencing an emotion and trying to pretend it's not there only
creates more pain. Once again, ignoring the messages that your emotions are trying to give you will
not make things better. If the message your emotions are trying to deliver is ignored, the emotions
simply increase their amperage; they intensify until you finally pay attention. Trying to deny your
emotions is not the solution. Understanding them and using them is the strategy you'll learn in this
chapter.
3. Competition. Many people stop fighting their painful emotions and decide to fully indulge in them.
Rather than learn the positive message their emotion is trying to give them, they intensify it and make
it even worse than it is. It becomes a "badge of courage," and they begin to compete with others,
saying, "You think you've got it bad? Let me tell you how bad I've got it!" It literally becomes part of
their identity, a way of being unique; they begin to pride themselves on being worse off than anyone
else. As you can imagine, this is one of the deadliest traps of all. This approach must be avoided at all
costs, because it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where the person ends up having an investment in
feeling bad on a regular basis—and then they are truly trapped. A much more powerful and healthy
approach to dealing with the emotions that we think are painful is to realize that they serve a positive
purpose, and that is ...
4. Learning and Using. If you want to make your life really work, you must make your emotions
work for you. You can't run from them; you can't tune them out; you can't trivialize them or delude
yourself about what they mean. Nor can you just allow them to run your life. Emotions, even those
that seem painful in the short term, are truly like an internal compass that points you toward the
actions you must take to arrive at your goals. Without knowing how to use this compass, you'll be
forever at the mercy of any psychic tempest that blows your way.
Many therapeutic disciplines begin with the mistaken presupposition that emotions are our enemies or
that our emotional well-being is rooted in our past. The truth is that you and I can go from crying to
laughing in a heartbeat if the pattern of our mental focus and physiology is merely interrupted strongly
enough. Freudian psychoanalysis, for example, searches for those "deep, dark secrets" in our past to
explain our present difficulties. Yet we all know that whatever you continually look for, you will surely
find. If you're constantly looking for the reasons why your past has hamstrung your present, or why
you're so "screwed up," then your brain will comply by providing references to back up your request
and generate the appropriate negative emotions. How much better it would be to adopt the global
belief that "your past does not equal your future"!
The only way to effectively use your emotions is to understand that they all serve you. You must learn
from your emotions and use them to create the results you want for a greater quality of life. The
emotions you once thought of as negative are merely a call to action. In fact, instead of calling them
negative emotions, from now on in this chapter, let's call them Action Signals. Once you're familiar
with each signal and its message, your emotions become not your enemy but your ally. They become
your friend, your mentor, your coach; they guide you through life's most soaring highs and its most
demoralizing lows. Learning to use these signals frees you from your fears and allows you to
experience all the richness of which we humans are capable. To get to this point, then, you must
change your global beliefs about what emotions are. They are not predators, substitutes for logic, or
products of other people's whims. They are Action Signals trying to guide you to the promise of a
greater quality of life.
If you merely react to your emotions through an avoidance pattern, then you'll miss out on the
invaluable message they have to offer you. If you continue to miss the message and fail to handle the
emotions when they first turn up, they'll grow into full-blown crises. All our emotions are important
and valuable in the proper amounts, timing, and context.
Realize that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a
support system, a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and try to drive them out of
your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over everything, then you're
squandering one of life's most precious resources.
So what is the source of emotions? You are the source of all your emotions; you are the one
who creates them. So many people feel that they have to wait for certain experiences in order to
feel the emotions they desire. For instance, they don't give themselves permission to feel loved or
happy or confident unless a particular set of expectations is met. I'm here to tell you that you can
feel any way you choose at any moment in time.
At the seminars I conduct near my home in Del Mar, California, we've created a fun anchor to remind
us who is really responsible for our emotions. These seminars are held in an exquisite, four-star resort,
the Inn L'Auberge, which sits right on the ocean, and is also near the train station. About four times a
day, you can hear the train whistle loudly as it passes through. Some seminar participants would
become irritated at the interruption (remember, they didn't know about Transformational Vocabulary
yet!), so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to turn frustration into fun. "From now on," I
said, "whenever we hear that train howl, we'll celebrate. I want to see how good you can make
yourselves feel whenever you hear that train. We're always waiting for the right person or right
situation to come along before we feel good. But who determines whether this is the right person or
situation? When you do feel good, who's making you feel good? You are! But you simply have a rule
that says you have to wait until A, B, and C occur before you allow yourself to feel good. Why wait?
Why not set up a rule that says that whenever you hear a train whistle, you'll automatically feel great?
The good news is that the train whistle is probably more consistent and predictable than the people
you're hoping will show up to make you feel good!"
Now, whenever we hear the train pass, jubilation ensues. People immediately jump out of their chairs,
cheer and holler, and act like silly maniacs—including doctors, lawyers, CEOs—people who were
supposedly intelligent before they arrived! As everyone sits back down, uproarious laughter ensues.
What's the lesson? You don't have to wait for anything or anyone! You don't need any special reason
to feel good—you can just decide to feel good right now, simply because you're alive, simply because
you want to.
So if you're the source of all your emotions, why don't you feel good all the time? Again, it's because
your so-called negative emotions are giving you a message. What is the message of these Action
Signals?
They're telling you that what you're currently doing is not working, that the reason you have pain is
either the way you're perceiving things or the procedures you're using: specifically, the way you're
communicating your needs and desires to people, or the actions you're taking.
What you're doing is not producing the result you want, and you have to change your approach.
Remember that your perceptions are controlled by what you focus on and the meanings you interpret
from things. And you can change your perception in a moment, just by changing the way you're using
your physiology or by asking yourself a better question.
Your procedures include your style of communication. Maybe you're being too harsh in the way you
communicate, or maybe your procedure is not even communicating your needs, and you're expecting
other people to know what you need. This could create a lot of frustration, anger, and hurt in your life.
Maybe this Action Signal of feeling hurt is trying to tell you that you need to change your way of
communicating so you don't feel hurt again in the future. Feeling depressed is another call to action,
telling you that you need to change your perception that the problems you're dealing with are
permanent or out of control. Or, you need to take some kind of physical action to handle one area of
your life so that once again you remember that you are in control.
This is the true message of all your Action Signals. They're merely trying to support you in taking
action to change the way you think, change the way you're perceiving things, or change your
procedures for communicating or behaving. These calls to action are there to remind you that you
don't want to be like the fly who keeps banging himself against the window, trying to get through the
glass—if you don't change your approach, all the persistence in the world will never pay off. Your
Action Signals are whispering to you (perhaps screaming!), through the experience of pain, that you
need to change what you're doing.
