A buddy told me that in writing about my most amazing discovery on feeling how you want, I alluded to an uber secret to happiness and then dropped the mic and walked off stage.
It’s somewhat true…
In some ways my work is done. I’ve spent the better part of 20 years obsessively seeking answers to 3 life questions and this was the final piece.
The answer to feeling amazing at will, The Ultimate Solution, is so SUPER SIMPLE, and laughably ludicrous, yet it’s not easy to unpack, even with my clients who are deep on these topics.
That’s because it requires you to “out evolve” our most fundamental biological and social conditioning.
This Doesn’t Cause That
Poor baby is crying because she’s got a dirty diaper.
Notice what the “because” does to that sentence…
It rationalizes feeling crap. It makes sense to kick and scream because of a dirty diaper, right?
Wrong. That’s the problem.
At our most basic level we’re conditioned to believe that not getting/doing what we want is cause for us to “feel worse,” and satisfying our wants is cause for us to feel better.
Of course I’m not suggesting that we should leave baby in a soiled diaper to teach it to feel good irrespective of conditions, I’m merely highlighting how this pattern gets conditioned throughout our lives.
A few years later a bigger baby doesn’t get the ice cream it wants and throws a tantrum. Or is begging for a new toy that will absolutely satisfy it… until it’s crying for the next.
20 years later the even bigger baby is upset because they didn’t get the new sweater in mauve or is so desperately seeking that partner to feel complete.
It’s true that biologically we move away from what we don’t want and towards what we do, but that’s different to growing up believing this is the cause of how we feel.
Why Are You So Happy?
Hidden inside that seemingly innocent question is the cause of much misery in our world.
Why do we need a “because” to feel happy? Why do we need a cause, instead of being happy for no reason? (because many people are unhappy blaming some reason)
I recently saw a quote from a double amputee that said something like, “People ask me how I can be so positive without my legs, I ask them how they can be so negative with theirs.”
Do you see what’s implied? That having legs “should” cause you to be happy, and having them removed should cause misery.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we should be indifferent to having our legs cut off but I am pointing out that if legs were the cause of happiness we wouldn’t live in a Prozac world.
Because it relies on this flawed cause and effect thinking, nearly all of the research on happiness is wrong.
No Way, Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness?
In our mostly money-driven, all money-celebrating, mostly money-worrying world, how many times do we hear that money doesn’t buy happiness?
Although we’re constantly reminded of this faulty cause and effect, how many billions of us humans fall for it, believing that more money = more amazing?
What we really mean to say is that money causes a “richer life,” but that a richer life doesn’t cause happiness any more than a sexy dress causes pregnancy.
As long as our brains are running that faulty cause and effect we will never get it.
The same is true of the rich and famous.
With what we know about the grossness of Hollywood and the busted lives of Ben Affleck, Demi Lovato and the many other miserable rich and famous people, we still think it would cause happiness for us??
What About The Sad And Lonely People Of The World?
If only. If only they could find that special someone, then all of their heartache would go away.
But plenty of people in relationships feel lonely because the lack of a relationship was never the cause of that feeling to begin with.
Half the people who marry get divorced yet like the geniuses who turned a useless stone into a cause of forever love, we still sell marriage as a cause of happiness!
One of the most fascinating conclusions from the happiness research is that we’re terrible at knowing what has made us happy in the past, let alone what will make us happy in the future…
We think we know. We certainly point to those things that we think get us feeling amazing, but ultimately, we’re just a limited conscious observer fumbling in the dark, trying to rationalize why the body now feels “better.”
My friend told me that she felt amazing because she got laid. What’s her real because?
Did getting laid clear an underlying emotion, such as not feeling attractive? Did her orgasm “reset” her biology? Did it give her hope for a new relationship? Validate the sexy new shoes she bought? Give her a chance to dominate that man? Companionship? Self-esteem?
She can’t know. She only knows the cause and effect formula that worked for her, which will motivate her brain to seek the same stimulus “hoping” for the same result —
Contrast this to feeling amazing to begin with, and enjoying sex just because it’s fun!
It’s this type of faulty cause and effect that has us running around half-empty seeking out that next cause to fill us up, when the only cause of feeling full is…
Us
Plenty of rich people are unhappy, poor too. Plenty of married people are lonely, single too. People are happy in Zimbabwe and miserable in America, and vice-versa.
Of course there are different things that make our lives better and worse (e.g. objectively your life would likely be worse in a POW camp), yet it’s not the circumstances of our life that cause how we feel, but how we “choose” to think about it.
Nothing new there, right?
We’ve seen this stuff before, Viktor Frankl, and all that…
And herein is my greatest discovery, the final piece of the puzzle that has unlocked my feeling amazing at will…
The Cause And Effect Is Still Wrong
The notion that we choose our thoughts sounds good, but, if, like me, you’ve spent basically half your life trying to figure out how to do it, you know it’s wrong.
Our thoughts aren’t the cause of how we feel, but the result.
If you want to feel fired up like that soccer player who kicked a winning goal you don’t talk to yourself about kicking a goal, you jump up and down punching the air.
Knowing this you don’t then decide that you must become a soccer player to kick a winning goal so you can feel amazing…
By jumping up and down you simply prove to yourself that nothing but your neurology needs to change to change how you feel.
Drugs and alcohol are the same. When you drink a couple glasses of wine does your life suddenly get better? Do you decide, you know what, I’m going to choose to think better?
No. You alter the way that the body feels which automatically “spools up” different thoughts. (because thoughts are merely “coded” to the “energetic frequency” of the human machine).
While this might sound obvious in these examples, what’s become obvious to me is that all thinking and feeling is the same.
Backward Rationalization Machine
If you want to take this journey with me to train feeling amazing at will, then you are choosing to see beyond the veil of human thinking.
Neuroscience today is confirming what learned thinkers have known for thousands of years…
We don’t consciously “control” our lives. Half a second before we consciously decide to do something such as say pick up a glass of water, our brain has already “decided.”
Even though we think we are conscious creatures, our consciousness merely observes the signal and “reports” on it—Oh, I’m thirsty so I’m getting a drink.
Just like saying “I need to pee,” we are not “thinking” about peeing, we didn’t “make a decision” to go to the bathroom, our thinking mind is merely complying with the signal from the feeling body.
Yet, in doing so, because it’s a control freak, our thinking mind takes ownership.
When we say, “I’m hungry,” who is the I? Did we consciously decide to be hungry, or are we reporting on a signal from the biological machine which we identify with as “I?”
If you chop off your legs and put them on a table, are they still “you?” Is the hair being swept up after your cut “you?”
These examples are obviously simple and physical, but they demonstrate the underlying process behind every thought and feeling.
Namely, our feeling body is having sensations, and our thinking mind is rationalizing what they mean and how to satisfy them.
And Now We’re Back To Because
Every want and “unwant” is merely a sensation in the body, that then gets interpreted by the thinking mind.
The feeling body has a sensation of joy, the thinking mind claims ownership, reporting “I’m happy because,” yet it has no idea why the next day it might wake up feeling flat.
The feeling body has a lack, the thinking mind does it’s best to fill it up.
Perhaps it’s a feeling it interprets as loneliness, so now it goes out to find a mate. Maybe it’s a fear of poverty, so it goes in search of money. Perhaps it’s a desire for legs, and the “decision” that it can’t be happy without them.
No matter what it is, the thinking mind decides on a “because” to rationalize its feeling and then goes about solving it.
We’re conditioned to think of this as rational, when it’s completely irrational.
What it basically says is—there’s a feeling inside the body that I need to address by getting something outside of it.
No wonder that next thing we get or do leaves us feeling wanting, right?
Just like baby with the dirty diaper we come full circle to see that we’re conditioned to believe that the way we feel is because of what’s happening in our lives when how we feel is ONLY caused by how we’re using our bodies and minds.
Hence, to feel amazing at will you must see beyond the illusion of thinking and learn to directly condition feelings.
OK, How?
I’ll come back to that. (for now you can get a lot of value from The Cure, The Formula, House of Flow, which work on the same principle)
I’m not yet sure how much of this teaching I can share publicly, nor even how to unpack it.
Truthfully, I can’t read this and know whether it makes any sense to someone reading with fresh eyes.
As I wrote upfront The Ultimate Solution is laughably simple, but it requires evolving beyond our most basic conditioning, which is why it has taken me 4+ years of ATFT training to condition this in myself.
Now I’ve discovered the secrets I can train others rapidly, but I’ve still had to build a 3-step, 9-module system to train clients who are already deep on these topics.
Of course, it could also be true that I’m wrong and sound like a friggin’ lunatic, and that’s OK with me.
These discoveries have helped me feel more amazing than I could have imagined, and perhaps that requires losing your mind. 🙂