The "Shame-Blame-Guilt Game"

This may seem like a strange thing for a priest to say, but nothing turns people into emotional wrecks quite aseffectively as religion.

It's true. Of course, you have to keep in mind I've defined "religion" in a particular way (in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life) and that "religion" is not thesame as an "authentic ancient tradition of self-trans-formation".

This comes from Philip, one of our members, who sent in this excellent question, preceeded by a couple of paragraphs from an article he had just read. Be sure you read it through first, then go to the bottom and turn up your speakers to find out the answer:

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This morning, I was leafing through a yoga magazine in anacupuncture waiting room when I came across an article that interested me. It was about guilt, and in it, the author distinguished 3 kinds of guilt: natural (feeling guilty about something immediate and specific, which can be repaired), toxic (festering of natural guilt, nagging, non-specific) and existential (not about anything we've done personally, or about the state we're in, but rather about the state of something external (the poor, the environment, etc.)).

I'll reproduce what the author had to say about the second category, "toxic guilt":

"Toxic guilt is what happens when natural guilt festers. It manifests as a nagging feeling of pervasive but nonspecific badness, as if your whole life has something wrong with it. This type of free-floating guilt is the hardest kind to deal with, because it arises from lingering patterns, of samskaras, lodged in your subconscious.

"How can you expiate your sin or forgive yourself for something when you don't know what it is you did - or when you believe that what you did is essentially irreparable? To some extent, this particular type of guilt seems to be an unintended by-product of Judeo-Christian culture, a residue of the doctrine of original sin.

"Tantric traditions especially are known for looking at the world through a lens that sees all life as fundamentally divine. Your attitude toward your guilt will undergo a huge change when you begin to follow a spiritual teaching that - instead of assuming human beings are intrinsically flawed - teaches you to look beyond your flaws and helps you to know your deeper perfection."

(Philip goes on to say) I'm now reading "The Way of a Pilgrim" (an Eastern Orthodox spiritual classic from 19th century Russia, currently published by Shambhala). In it the author frequently refers to himself as "a sinner" and as being "unworthy". According to the yoga author's viewpoint, it would be hard to see his spiritual state as a healthy, evolved one, but rather it would seem benighted. At the same time, this character experiences life as wonder and joy, shows resilience to hardship, and never seems to feel sorry for himself, or "spiral into a pattern of self-destructive action".

So what's the truth here??
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Now turn up your speakers and I'll tell you the TRUTH about all this. And it's not likely what you're expecting to hear ;-)

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger
Warrior Coaching International - transforming your mind, body and spirit into SOLID STEEL......wrapped in cotton ;-)

Take Charge of Your Health-Immunity-Longevity NOW

My wife and I recently had dinner with an old friend from out of town, a middle aged guy who, on the outside, looks healthy enough. Turns out he wants to drop about 20 pounds, so we asked him what he's doing about it. He said, "I'm doing a lot of walking, but for some reason I'm not dropping any weight."


Well, that was my first clue, so I asked him what he eats... and that's when it all came out - junk food, too many carbs of the worst kind and absolutely no regard for food combining. Hardly a surprise, alas...


He was actually proud of his recent switch from regular Pepsi to diet Pepsi! It's enough to make a health coach drive his head into the nearest two-by-four ;-)


Anyway, given our short time together and where he was at, there wasn't a lot we could do. My wife taught him how to maximize the weight loss from his walking and gave him a diet that will almost certainly get him to his goal of losing those 20 pounds.




THE STUPIDEST THING YOU CAN DO IS THIS...


...to focus narrowly on "losing weight", rather than on your overall health and immunity. And that's especially the case if you're looking to lose less than 50 pounds or so. The ironclad law here is this: Focus on your overall health and immunity first, and only then worry about the rest.


The most common stupidity I run into is that people haven't a clue about the exercise they need most. Our friend is typical - he thought that by going for a walk every day he had covered his bases. And then you get other people who only run or only lift some weights or only swim. Why's that a problem?


Well, the Taoist longevity masters, who figured outhow to RELIABLY GET YOU PAST YOUR 100TH BIRTHDAY IN GREAT HEALTH, knew the ONLY approach to exercise that really works. They knew about the "7 Deadly Spirals of Disease" and how to avoid them all. And they knew that just "staying active" and getting conventional exercise didn't cut it.


And here's the system they came up with:


http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/details.php


It has worked for them for the last 15 centuries or so and it can work for you. This is the cornerstone of their health-immunity-longevity system.


And here's the GOOD NEWS: If you grab a copy this week, we'll send you a FIFTY DOLLAR rebate off the posted price. So don't wait. Learn the most important facts and take charge of your own health, immunity and longevity today.


Or you may want to give it as a gift to someone who,like our friend above, is on the wrong track at the moment. Just because our friend and millions like him are on the wrong track doesn't mean you have to be!


http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/details.php


To your health!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger
Warrior Coaching International - transforming your mind, body and spirit into SOLID STEEL......wrapped in cotton ;-)

Life's Great Dilemma: Go with the Flow or Force It?

One of our members, Marie, brought up a GREAT question a few weeks ago and I promised her an answer.

As it happens, you need the answer to. But first, thequestion! Here it is...
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Hi there. This e-mail came at a crucial time. Pursuant to what I've heard everywhere (not just from you) I am doing EFT with a very intuitive, great coach. However, whenever I want to go towards Peak Performance issues or talk about my vision of excellence I have for my career (much of which I've developed from reading your articles and book), she starts telling me to let go, stop being so focussed and just let things happen. She even says maybe I don't really want to be excellent at my chosen profession but would be happier married to a millionaire, pursuing this as a hobby.

It seems Law Of Attraction people, especially females, always preach a "let it just happen," "be joyous," "put a positive spin on everything" mentality that really is for a hobbyist or housewife. She may have a point that I am being too narrow in my approach, but how do you act as a "predator for your goals " (your language)and go about them methodically if you are setting aside your vision and just letting things happen? I love bringing up these dilemmas to you and maybe you can address them on the call September 10 [I didnt't]. If you can wed these two concepts I believe you will be a unique voice in the Self-Help field. Meanwhile I am looking for a new EFT practitioner ;-)
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To listen to my answer, you need to turn up your speakers and click this link:

- Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Self-Image, Principles and Character: Forgotten Keys to Excellence

More than any other factor, how you see yourself will determine your success in every area of your life. Without a solid self-image and the self-respect that comes with it, several consequences will always ensue:

• It will be difficult to increase your income, whether in a job or a business
• You will make consistently poor life decisions, especially related to income and relationships
• You will find yourself mired in habits of thought and action that will take you in a downward spiral

If you’re like most people in the Western world today, your self-image has taken quite a beating over time. Just a couple of weeks ago I was coaching a forty year old engineer who’s dissatisfied with what he’s achieved in life. Not surprisingly, he related to me that his father frequently put him down, saying he wouldn’t amount to anything. As a result, the engineer thoroughly internalized this message and it has held him back for decades, despite his many and great talents.

In your formative years, those first two decades of life, your self-image is extremely vulnerable to all the input around you – from your parents, siblings, teachers and peers, many of whom may have attempted to cover up their own inadequacies by tearing you down.

These dents in your self-image impact your character, which is how you actualize yourself in the external world. And character is everything. As Theodore Roosevelt put it, “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of individuals and nations alike.”

The wonderful news about human life is that you can rebuild your self-image! You can determine from this moment on to become an excellent person, someone of impeccable character, openness, honesty and integrity. You can choose to see yourself not only as a success, but as a leader, an inspiration and a beacon. And as you see yourself, so shall you become.

To accomplish this, the most important step is to commit yourself to living by proven principles. Devoting your life to higher principles is not only the key to success; it’s also the key to happiness itself. In the words of the great educator, Horace Mann:

“In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdue an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present for a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.”

The vital caveat here is this: you must commit to these principles NOT for the massive success they will bring you, but solely because it’s the right thing to do. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time.

The Great Principles of Life and Success:

So what are the key principles that high-performing individuals commit to? People committed to personal and professional excellence:

1. Accept full and complete responsibility for everything that happens in their life, for all that they have and are. Consequently, they refuse to blame anyone else, whether their parents, spouse, God, karma, the government or any other external factor.

2. Forgive completely everyone who has ever wronged them and work as hard as necessary to expunge any bitterness they feel toward these people.

3. Treat everyone with equal courtesy and respect, regardless of their social status and without the least regard for personal gain.

4. Commit to excellence, to accomplishing their goals and living each day of their lives in an excellent fashion, and to becoming the very best they can possibly be in their chosen profession. In all humility, they dare to see themselves as the best and they strive to attain that.

5. Commit to living by the highest and noblest values: love, faith, honesty, integrity and forthrightness.

6. Dedicate their energies to serving others, to transcending their own small lives in pursuit of a greater good.

Success depends not only on leadership but, prior to that, on “self-leadership” – your ability to be the leader of your own life. And all leadership depends on a noble and inspiring vision. Needless to say, without committing yourself to timeless and proven principles that take you beyond the narrow prison of your short-term self-interest, there is ZERO possibility of an inspiring vision.

So the essential first step in reclaiming your life is to RETRAIN your habits of thought to cleanse your self-image of the damage you’ve accumulated over the years. You do this primarily by making an irrevocable decision right now to become an excellent person and to walk, talk and think like such a person until it becomes ingrained in every fiber of your being.

If you commit yourself to living by these ennobling principles, I can absolutely guarantee that both your life and your personal satisfaction will reach new heights. This will utterly transform your self-image, multiply your self-respect and attract higher quality people to you. Though not always easy (what is?), this new direction will turn you into a natural leader, an inspiration to those around you and an inevitable success in whatever you choose to pursue in life.

On September 10, I'll be unveiling an entirely new program that teaches you the simple steps for implementing this critical information in your own life immediately with 100% effectiveness. So stand by...

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Peak Performance Training: Step Three to Personal Power

Welcome to the third in our 5-part series on building your Personal Power and taking back control of your life.

By now you’ve understood that Personal Power is just a new word for an age-old concept, a concept that the ancient world’s best schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts were well aware of. Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change your life and yourself at will. My guess is that you don’t know a lot of people who fit that description, but you’d sure like to become one of them!

This time, we’re continuing with your mindset. If you want Personal Power, you’ll definitely need to get serious about what’s going on within, about the thoughts you entertain and the attitudes you’ve allowed to rule your life.

Authentic Ancient Traditions – i.e., the ancient world’s top schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts – realized we are all very deeply conditioned by the culture we grow up in and by the events that have taken place in our lives, especially when we were young.

They realized too that if you don’t deal with all this stuff and “take the garbage out” you’ll always be:

- A slave to the emotional traumas of your past
- Wasting energy by subconsciously trying to prop up your vision of the world and your pet opinions and attitudes
- Shackled by your fears, doubts and self-limiting beliefs
- Recreating the same negative situations in your life because you live in a puddle of negative emotions you don’t even see.

Step One: Arm Yourself with the Best Weapons

I highly recommend to all my clients that they learn and start using either the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Be Set Free Fast (BSFF). These are two different and equally effective energy psychology methods that can almost instantly eliminate any fear, doubt or self-limiting belief. These tools are easy to learn, quick to use on yourself and you must have one. You can use it to blunt any attack by even your most serious mindset demons.

Step Two: Find Out What’s Really Going On Inside

For this step, you’ll need to track your negative emotions for one week. Every time you find yourself dwelling on something negative, just jot it down on a piece of paper. Why should you bother?

Simple. Most people think of themselves as nice, fun-loving and positive. In reality, that’s just the way they want to appear to others. However, if they were to take stock of what really goes on between their ears, they’d find a veritable avalanche of negativity.

To accumulate Personal Power effectively, you need to learn a new way of relating to negative emotions. You need to see them as a wake-up call, a signal that when you sense their approach, you’re starting to lose Personal Power. The easiest way to reverse this downward spiral is to turn your attention immediately to something you’re thankful for. Gratitude is the strongest positive emotion and part of cultivating peak performance and Personal Power is realizing you’re surrounded by things to be grateful for.

In other words, you need to start taking responsibility for your own emotional life and decide to be happy, joyous and optimistic. No one else can do that for you.
This means refusing the subtle emotional payoff of negative emotions. There’s a payoff to anger, rage, even fear. That payoff is related to the victim mentality, the mentality that absolves you of all responsibility for the quality of your own life. Needless to say, there ain’t no Personal Power there!

The good news here is that once you begin cultivating your peak performance and Personal Power on an ongoing, consistent basis, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more impervious to other people’s negative emotional energies. And that brings us directly to Step Three…

Step Three: Stop Associating with Negative People

The negative attitudes of people around you can suck your Personal Power, especially at the beginning. So if you’re surrounded by whiners and complainers, it’s time to do something about it. Seek out people who are peak performers, who are strong, positive and definite in their approach to life. You’ll begin to notice significant shifts inside you that come from this.

Following these three steps consistently can literally remake your emotional world within a matter of weeks. And no amount of exercise, no nutritional program and no daily visualizations will magically give you peak performance and Personal Power unless you take back control of your emotional life. So resolve to begin today!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Get your FREE Special Report on the secrets of Personal Power and resilience here:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/specialreport/index.php

Peak Performance Training: Step Two to Personal Power

Welcome to the second in our 5-part series on Peak Performance Training and building your Personal Power to take back control of your life.

Last time, you learned that Personal Power is just a new word for an age-old concept, a concept that the ancient world’s best schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts were well aware of. Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change your life and yourself at will. If you think about it, most people you know have never demonstrated this ability and my guess is that you’d like some help too.

This time, we’re continuing with your physical body, since your body is really the key to peak performance training and to control your mind you must work through your body. Last time, working through your body meant leaning proper diet and introducing periodic detoxification cleanses. This time, we take it to the next level.

1. Get that Wet Noodle of a Physique into Shape!

Why would you want to do this and what does getting in shape have to do with Personal Power? Just this:

You’ll feel better physically and have lots more energy
You’ll realize you can generate energy on demand
You’ll find yourself dealing with fewer negative thoughts
Your self-image will improve
You’ll start to dig your way out of the unseen spirals of disease creation that you don’t even recognize (see below)

How Should I Get in Shape?

You can use any exercise program or combination of programs that develops the following in equal proportions:

Strength (of muscles, tendons and ligaments)
Flexibility (of joints and soft tissue)
Endurance (cardio vascular)

Please note that developing Personal Power doesn’t require cultivating extremes of fitness. In fact, the extremes of the tri-athlete, the marathon runner or the body builder can actually cause long term damage and in themselves won’t help you on your quest for Personal Power.

2. Get Internal Exercise

What’s that? Well, internal exercises include such things as Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Yoga. These are systems designed to produce both health and fitness at the same time. And remember, you can get really fit without producing health. We want to build them in together in a balanced way.

The greatest advantage of internal exercise is that it does a much better job than our usual external exercise at overcoming the “7 Deadly Spirals of Disease” – these are downward spirals resulting from lack of proper maintenance that begin around age 30, accelerate after age 50 and produce serious medical challenges. Internal exercises will:

· Take all your joints through their total range of motion
· Cleanse your energy meridians
· Inject potent energy into your bodily tissues
· Cleanse and energize your internal organs, muscles, tendons, ligaments, bone marrow, skeletal structure, blood cells, central nervous system, fasciae, diaphragms and skin

Personally, I believe the top 5 Qi Gong systems are the fastest and easiest way to get these results.

The Personal Power Payoff

If you start working on your body with these internal and external methods, you’ll notice the payoff in terms of health, energy levels, self-confidence and sense of control over your life is one thousand percent.

There’s lots more that goes into peak performance training and accumulating true Personal Power. However, without a strong foundation in your physical body, the rest won’t help you much. So start now so that you can experience the overwhelming joy that comes from realizing you really can change your life!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger
Warrior Coaching International

Watch the video here!

For more information on mastering internal exercise, defeating disease and building true personal power, go to:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/index.php

Peak Performance Training: Step 1 to Personal Power

Feeling lately like your life is just out of control? If you’re getting hit with health challenges, faltering relationships, increased stress, and other things all at once, you’re probably asking yourself how this happened and what you can do about it.

If I were the standard self-appointed guru of modern times, I suppose I’d tell you to visualize what you want, take a particularly magical nutritional product or use some other simplistic solution. However, none of that will change your life unless you first recover what you’ve lost. And what you’ve lost is your Personal Power.

Personal Power is a relatively new term for an age-old concept. There is no true peak performance training without Personal Power. At the most basic level, Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change anything in your life – and especially yourself – at will. Ask yourself how many people you know can do that - you’ll be lucky to name even one. Yet it’s the birthright and the calling of every human being to exercise their free will to become the master of their own life.

After decades of studying the ancient world’s top approaches to spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts, I realized these traditions were able to consistently turn out people who were exactly that – masters of their own lives, graduates of the ultimate peak performance training of their time. And yet in my pastoral work and counseling and coaching it became quickly apparent that most people are exactly the opposite. They are so short of Personal Power that they have been reduced to “coping” with a life they don’t like but can’t change.

“Authentic Ancient Traditions (AATs)” – as I’ve called them in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life – were those ancient traditions capable of proving that they consistently got the transformational results they claimed. Among them are certain schools of Buddhism and Taoism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the direct continuation of the ancient Christian approach), some native American approaches and yet others worldwide.

They all know that Personal Power is the vital foundation for all spiritual development and for true happiness. They also know Personal Power is the fruit of “resilience” – becoming physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually stronger, more effective and more resilient than average. And knowing you can only develop resilience by deliberately facing tough challenges created for that purpose, these traditions put their newbies through some pretty tough stuff. To be real and produce results, peak performance training has to challenge your mental, physical and spiritual capacities.

So how can you start to develop Personal Power today and take back control of your life? Simple. You absolutely must proceed methodically, step by step, and the first step is your body.

The Body and Personal Power: Diet

If you want to develop your Personal Power and take back control of your life, you must get really serious about your body. There are some deeper reasons for this I’ll explain later, but for now here’s what you have to put into place:

1. First, you must stop eating all harmful foods at once. This includes all white flour, white rice, white and brown refined sugars, table salt, trans fats and preferably also meat that’s been subjected to antibiotics and growth hormones.

Once you start to hydrate yourself properly, eat what your body needs and not what it’s craving, you’ll find your energy levels go way up.

2. You need to cleanse your body from accumulated toxins. That means you’ll want to do a week long cleanse at least twice per year (fall and spring are often the best times) and once a week you’ll want to take a day where you go really easy on your digestive system. You see, modern research on mice and ancient research on monks came to the same conclusion: if you reduce the burden on your organism’s digestive system, you’ll quite likely live a lot longer.

3. The Mindset You Need. To make all this work, you need to create a burning desire to do it. And, strangely enough, that’s easier than you think! Here’s what to do:

Take time every day to visualize your body-mind organism as absolutely pure and functioning perfectly
Visualize yourself in perfect health
Visualize yourself with boundless energy

If you do this every day for a month, you’ll find your cravings for junk food will disappear on their own.

Is it easy to build up your Personal Power? No. Is it a magic pill that will fix everything you’ve screwed up over the years so you can continue in the same self-destructive behaviors with no negative consequences? Nope!

If you find it’s tough to take charge of your diet at first, just ask yourself, “How much do I want to live a powerful, deliberate and stress-free life?” “Am I willing to go back to the life I’ve known so far and spend the rest of my days this way?” Accumulating Personal Power and true mind-body transformation aren’t the result of pills, gimmicks or quick fixes. They take commitment and persistence. So if you’ve got what it takes, you’ll want to read this whole 5-part series on Personal Power and discover a whole new approach to what it means to be human.

And there’s a free special report for you on Personal Power, resilience and how to transform your life at:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/specialreport/index.php

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Watch the video here!