The key to manifesting the life of your dreams is doing things from a state of love rather than a state of fear. This shift from fear to love is really at the heart of all the teachings of the law of attraction.

The first step in making this shift is to learn to tell the difference between the energetic nature of love and fear.

We all know what fear feels like. It starts in the gut as a tightening or knotting, and is followed by agitation and a desire to push back from whatever we think is causing the emotion. This “pushing away” from the perceived cause of fear is what we should be watching for. If we become conscious of this reaction as it happens, we can start to recognize the energetic nature of fear. Fear is always a resistance, a pushing away.

Love by nature attracts, and fear by nature repels. If you are constantly in a state where you repel things, it is very hard energetically to attract anything you value. You might accidentally bump into something you want while pushing away from something you don’t like, but the thing you want won’t stick around if you continue to repel through fear. Attracting (moving towards) and repelling (pushing away) are opposite forces.

The important point here is that since each of these states has different vibrations, you can’t be in both states at the same time. Making the conscious shift to a life centered in love is the quickest shortcut to taking full advantage of the law of attraction in your life.

So, how do you initiate the shift to a more loving state?

Experiencing certain emotions increases the brain’s circuits for those emotions. The more you allow yourself to feel love, the more you cultivate it, the easier and more often you will experience that emotion in the future. Therefore, it is extremely important to train your brain for love.

There are many practices for cultivating love. The one I use most often I call “being love”. To practice this technique, simply sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. When you begin to feel relaxed, notice your identification with your body and mind. Then, think of someone or something that you love. As this emotion comes into your awareness, begin to identify with it in the same way you identify with your body and mind. Bring your sense of self into the center of the emotion and feel it all around you. Imagine that love is all that is in your awareness, as if every other object is actually wrapped in and suffused with love. When you hear a sound or feel something, extend your love to that thing. Feel love wrap around it like an embrace. Continue to do this for at least ten minutes. Open your eyes and pay attention to any changes that may have taken place, then go about your day.

The act of loving is an act of embracing or attracting. If we are predominantly moving away from things through fear, it makes it impossible to attract all the things we want into our life. As we’ve seen, they are opposite forces. By focusing on love, we shift our flow of energy to one of acceptance and attraction. Then anything and everything we want in life is effortlessly attracted to us by law.

When you learn to set conscious intent, a radical shift in awareness takes place. By setting intent you move with direction instead of aimlessly wandering, hoping that life will take you somewhere good. With intent each moment becomes an opportunity to wake up.

Most people approach life without a clear goal in mind. They have many desires, but most of the time don’t consciously move towards any one of them. When a decision is formed, it’s usually weak, and most often leads to self-sabotage. When you do what you don’t want to do in the first place, you can’t possibly achieve what you want.

Earlier in life I heard a quote from Woody Allen. He said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. I thought it was pretty accurate, because I knew that a lot of my success up till that point was from being in the right place at the right time. Now I think there is much more to it, though. Showing up is not just about being somewhere physically. Showing up means being there with every part of yourself. To really show up is to be conscious and clear, to have intention.

In any situation, ask the question, what do I want? Then go deeper. What do I really want? Get clear about why you are doing what you are doing. Then form the intent as a phrase. For example, “My intent is to be fully conscious in this moment”. Speak your intent out loud with as much awareness as you can bring. The more you can engage your mind and body, the more you will align yourself with your intent.

A lot of us feel as if we have been thrown into this world without a choice in the matter. We do our best to deal with events as they arise, but deep down we mostly feel lost. It takes courage to face reality as it is and consciously decide to be here now. That is the choice everyone is faced with at all times. Every time we choose to be conscious, we move from a life of reaction to a life of intention. Then we move towards what we want, and what we want moves towards us.

Happiness is something we all want. It’s the reason we do what we do. However, less than 30% of people report being deeply happy. Everyone is motivated towards happiness and hardly anyone is happy. How could this be?

A lot of us have the false impression that we need to do something in order to enjoy happiness. Because of this reason, we hold off happiness until we meet the criteria that we have set up for ourselves.

About 5 years ago, I thought that if I could optimize my schedule I would complete my goals faster and as a result experience more happiness. However, the more I put in my day-timer, the more that new tasks seemed to pop up. I was always just a bit away from reaching all my goals. One day I had a realization. I was never going to arrive at the end, because the end kept getting pushed farther into my future. I was denying myself joy by putting it off with ever bigger goals.

There was no way i could continue to delude myself. I needed a new strategy for feeling joy. Soon after my search began I realized the obvious answer. I didn’t need to do something to be happy. I could be happy regardless of where I was in relation to my goals. It was a major breakthrough. In the book Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff says of this idea, “When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live happiness, rather than for happiness”.

This is echoed in Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. He says, “Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace–if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that…The ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now”.

Where does happiness arise in your awareness? It always comes from within. This means that happiness is not something to get, but something that is a part of your inner landscape. It is a part of you. This can be felt very intensely by closing your eyes and identifying with happiness directly, as if it is your essence. The same way that you feel like your body is you, you can feel like happiness is you.

To experience this, sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Remember a time when you last felt really happy. As the feeling of happiness comes back, begin to focus on it. Now, while feeling happiness, imagine becoming happiness. There is a vast difference between experiencing an emotion and being that same emotion. The purpose of this practice is to be happiness. Let the emotion fully suffuse your body. Sit with this awareness for at least five minutes.

By sitting as happiness, soon a sense of relief begins to wash over you. It is the relief that you can be happiness at any time. Even in the most depressed state, when the body is in pain, and the mind is lost, happiness is there. To a mind starved of deep happiness, this experience is truly refreshing.

Happiness is the experience of accepting and embracing what is. By becoming open and accepting of whatever is in your awareness you can begin to feel a profound and natural joy. True happiness is the emotion that naturally arises when we let everything be as it is. True happiness is you.

Does God exist? It seems like all the various perspectives people have on God don’t fit together. In fact, they appear downright contradictory. How is it possible to find any kind of resolution to this controversial question?

There is a popular story of five blind men in a room, all feeling different parts of an elephant and disagreeing about what kind of animal it is. The one feeling the head of course has a radically different experience than the one feeling the tail, yet both are valid in their description of what they feel. The important step is integrating all the parts of their stories into a coherent whole story. Only then will it be clear what the animal really is.

We are in a privileged position. For the first time in history we have access to all the world’s religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths. This gives us the unique ability to view the subject of God under the light of this vast wealth of knowledge. This knowledge helps reveal a far more accurate picture of reality than any one before it, and from that comes a surprising answer to our question.

We all have the ability to take multiple perspectives at any given time. The big three are “I”, “we”, and “it”. “I” refers to the subjective perspective, “we” refers to the inter-subjective perspective, and “it” refers to the objective perspective. The fact is that certain cultures at certain times lean heavily on usually one of these basic three perspectives. When you look at a path, you can easily see which perspective shaped it.

An example of a tradition that is centered on the “I” perspective is Buddhism. The approach with Buddhism is to look within, to study the mind. Buddhism and the other “I” traditions are focused on the subjective experience and therefore give us incredible insights into this dimension of our own being.

Christianity, on the other hand, is primarily focused on the “we” perspective. This is why God in Christianity takes the form of a great thou, a separate and all knowing entity. We all have the ability to relate to the universe in this way at any given time. The common misconception is that the religions that arise from this perspective give us morality. In fact, it is the perspective itself that allows morality to develop, for this second person perspective allows us to see the world through the eyes of another, something the “I” and “it” perspectives don’t provide.

The “it” perspective is an objective lens. The scientific or rational view comes from this perspective. It provides us with the eyes to view the universe as a complex web of life. The technological advancements and scientific discoveries we enjoy on a daily basis would not be possible if it weren’t for this amazing perspective.

We have to remember that in describing reality from a specific perspective we are only seeing part of the whole picture. Therefore, any tradition, religion, or philosophy that describes reality is a partial view and should not be taken as the whole truth. There is always more to reality than any one perspective can describe.

Does God exist? It all depends on the perspective you take in order to answer the question, and remember that every perspective is limited. Therefore, no one perspective can give a full view of reality. The true nature of reality is a bit of every perspective, and yet beyond any perspective. If the universe is an elephant, let’s not confuse the trunk with the whole animal.

A lot of people graduate from high school without the tools they need to build a successful career for themselves. For the most part, they are on their own to learn what they need. This process of discovery can take a long time. It really doesn’t have to, though. The most important thing is having access to the right resources. In this article, I will share the five most significant things I learned on my own that I wish I had learned while I was in school.

1. Learning Strategies

In school, I was taught one learning strategy. I sat in my seat, shut my mouth and listened to subjects I had little or no interest in. It is a great way to learn if you want to be a slave or a burger flipper. Little did I know at the time, there are actually tons of other ways to absorb and engage with information.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, for one is a series of learning strategies that blow that traditional style of learning out of the water. If you want to learn how to learn better, check out NLP.

Learning should be fun, and when you have the right strategy, it definitely is.

2. Meditation

Discovering meditation as a tool for studying my mind was a major breakthrough when I was young. Up till then my perspective had been largely shaped by unconscious patterning from culture. With meditation, I took charge of my mind. The simple practice has been the most significant tool I have ever found for learning about myself.

If you want to learn how, check out my article called How to Meditate. I even included a ten minute audio file to serve as a timer.

3. Healthy diet

If people had access to the information and tools to help them improve their diets, they would do it. The problem is that as a society we aren’t educated on how to make that happen. No one wants to suffer from things like heartburn, fatigue, high blood pressure and obesity. With a proper education in diet and health, those problems and many more would virtually disappear. I learned about diet from personal experimentation and trips to the public library. But now there is so much more information out there within easy grasp. We just have to know where to look.

One book that helped me develop a healthier diet is The Food Revolution, by John Robbins. When I first read it and applied a bit of what I learned, I noticed a massive positive impact on my health. It’s a really great book.

4. Time Management

I remember getting a day-planner when I was young. I never used it. In fact, I don’t remember anyone who used theirs. I kind of knew what it was supposed to be for, but I wasn’t shown the reason why planning would make my life better. Lately, I have begun to get clear and plan my life. I’ve realized that by optimizing my schedule, I can get more time to do the things I love. That gave me the leverage I needed to learn this important skill.

Tony Robbins’ RPM (Rapid Planning Method) is a fantastic system for making the most out of your time. It is based on the simple idea that instead of making a to-do list and going through it one by one, you chunk or group tasks based on similar intent. This works well because a lot of the inefficiency of a to-do list comes from the fact that everything is organized in a linear fashion. Our brains are not linear. We need a system that is more like how we think, and RPM is pretty darn close.

5. Self-Promotion

Because we are almost constantly looking for work, self-promotion is one of the most important skills a person can learn to succeed in the world today.

The job of the 20th century was simple. You got into a secure company, had occasional performance assessments and moved up the ladder one year at a time. Our present day world is nothing like that, though. The average person has multiple jobs and even careers in their life. Training for the present work environment is absent from the education system. You really have to look for it, but information is out there.

The best place to learn about self-promotion is from books, employment courses and good ole fashioned failure. Here are some books that have been really helpful for me:

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
The E-Myth Revisited – Michael E. Gerber
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

If you want to experience real success in life, you need the right tools. That’s why it’s so important to find someone who’s successful, and find out what they do. All the tools that I’ve talked about here came from people who were masters in their fields. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Build your success on top of the successes of others.

I’d like to share a fun game that I came up with that uses the Law of Attraction in a big way. A while back I decided to create a list of positive words, first off, to see how many I could get, and also to expand on the positive words in my vocabulary. I think a lot of people have tons of words to describe how crappy life is. What we really need is more ways to express the beauty that is out there in the world, and in our minds.

When I got the list of words, I started the exercise of repeating them every morning to myself. That was great. I kept coming up with new words, and the list kept growing. Then one day I found a game to use the words. It works best with someone else, but you can do it alone as well.

So here’s what you do. If you have someone else to play the game with, one of you start with the phrase, “This is amazing”. Put as much emotion and energy into it. Then it’s the other person’s turn. They have to come up with another word. For instance, they could say, “This is brilliant”. If they aren’t brimming with emotion, kindly remind them to do it again with more energy. Back and forth you go, until you can’t possibly think of another positive word.

Here is my initial list. Start here and see how big you can make your list.

• Amazing
• Spectacular
• Phenomenal
• Fabulous
• Terrific
• Sweet
• Invigorating
• Mouth-watering
• Refreshing
• Splendid
• Superb
• Luscious
• Heavenly
• Exceptional
• Divine
• Fantastic
• Extraordinary
• Astounding
• Fun
• Blissful
• Bountiful
• Overwhelming
• Gorgeous
• Beautiful
• Enlightening
• Jaw-dropping
• Blessed
• Orgasmic
• Delicious
• Exquisite
• Genius
• Juicy
• Dynamic
• Sensational
• Stunning
• Thrilling
• Dazzling
• Wonderful
• Mind-blowing
• Magnificent

You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.

- Eckhart Tolle, from A New Earth

Meditation is easy to learn. In this article, I will introduce you to a method that has been around for thousands of years and has been used by millions of people all over the world.

There may be a lot of different types of meditation, but they all have essentially the same purpose: to facilitate the realization of oneness with the universe. This oneness is enlightenment. Enlightenment isn’t only for Zen masters, though. It’s for everyone.

If your reason for learning meditation is not to experience enlightenment, that’s okay, too. Meditation has a lot of other positive benefits and they are all valid reasons to practice.

It is important to be open-minded when starting a meditation practice. As spiritual teacher Adyashanti put it in his book True Meditation, “The most important thing is that we come to meditation with an open attitude that’s not colored by the past, by what we’ve heard about meditation through culture, through the media, or through our various spiritual and religious traditions. We need to approach the notion of meditation in a way that is fresh and innocent”.

So, if you are ready, let’s get started.

Step 1

Sit in a comfortable position. You can either sit on the floor or in a chair. The important thing is that your posture is straight. You don’t want to fall asleep, so a pose that keeps you alert is best.

Step 2

Put your hands on your knees or lap. You can have them facing down or up; whatever you like.

Step 3

Close your eyes, and relax into the pose. Aim for a balance between resting your body and keeping your spine straight; not tense, but not loose, either.

Step 4

Breathe in and out through your nose. Begin to slow the pace until you achieve a very relaxed and comfortable pattern to your breathing.

Step 5

Pay attention to your body. Notice any areas of tension and let the tension go, let it relax. Listen to the sound of your breath coming in and out. Start to listen to the sounds around you. As you listen, just let everything be as it is. Listen to your internal dialogue in the same way. Take the role of a passive listener, not involved in your thoughts, not identified with them, but just observing them as if from a distance.

Step 6

Continue this practice of listening deeply for as long as you like. The audio file at the bottom of this article has one bell ring at the beginning and one at the 10 minute mark. You can use it if you want to do a 10 minute meditation. Start with the first ring, and when the bell rings the second time, slowly open your eyes. It is sometimes a good idea to sit for a bit and notice any new sensations, emotions, or thoughts that have come up as a result of your practice.

If your mind is busy with thoughts the whole time, this is entirely normal. In fact, one of the things you can learn from meditation is the degree to which you have almost no control over your thoughts. They come and go whether we try to stop them or not.

You also might wonder if you are “doing it right”. Don’t worry about this too much. Just keep meditating and you will start to know for yourself. One thing that might put your mind at ease is reading books or listening to audio from spiritual teachers. I have found that just listening to them helps my meditation a lot.

The most important thing in meditation is to let things be as they are. As Indian sage Ramana Maharshi said, “Let what comes come; let what goes go. Find out what remains”.

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Our model of the world is like the operating system for our mind. It directs what we focus on, what we believe and the decisions we make. As Tony Robbins says, “Decisions shape our destiny”. By upgrading our model of the world, we can, without question, improve the quality of our decisions, and ultimately our life.

A few years ago, I borrowed an audio program from a friend. It was Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness. The first time I listened to it, I was un-impressed. It seemed like a huge amount of talking without much substance. To be entirely honest, I didn’t get it. Now, it’s not that often that I don’t get something. This is because I have a habit of needing to understand what someone is saying before I can dismiss what they are saying. When I didn’t get Wilber’s program, I had this nagging frustration in the back of my mind that didn’t go away. Over the next month, the concepts kept popping back into my thoughts. I kept trying to figure out what the heck he was going on about. Finally, I decided to give it another listen. About one third of the way in it hit me. It all made sense, and I knew right there that it was going to radically change how I would see the world from then on.

Ken Wilber’s integral model was a new way of seeing for me. It’s not that I had to throw away my old way of seeing things, though. Everything I had learned up till then still applied, but from then on all the content from my old model fit into a larger context, a more embracing worldview. With that more embracing worldview came more room for truth.

I was so excited about the integral perspective that I wanted to share it with everyone I could. Unfortunately, the same barriers that kept me from understanding it stop a lot of other people as well. This article is meant to describe Wilber’s model as accessibly as possible in the hope that more people can use it in their lives.

So, what is integral? A person operating from the integral impulse desires to consciously collect and integrate all the perspectives of the world into a cohesive and all together more embracing perspective. They know that a point of view is partial. It will always leave something out. Therefore, an integrally informed person doesn’t take any one perspective in their model as absolute truth. Each perspective serves to fill in and reveal larger meta-truths beyond the details of any one view. The integral mind seeks, above all else, higher truth.

In the pursuit of higher truth, we need a model to support that truth. We can’t just run around with a billion facts and figures in our mind with no system for storing all that information. The model serves as a structural framework with sections and subsections to store all that information. It is essentially a framework of meaning. Most of us let this process of model creation go on autopilot, and we end up with a pretty crappy model. The integral impulse is to bring that process of model creation into conscious awareness. Only then do we have the perspective necessary to create a better map.

In Integral Operating System, Ken Wilber says, “If you look at a simple summary of the integral map that we use, and there are dozens of variables, but we time and time again have found that there are five that we have found are really important. We call them quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types”. Basically, Wilber is saying that based on the multitude of research throughout human history, there are five subjects that come up time and again as important dimensions of human consciousness. There are obviously way more than five, but we want a useful model that doesn’t get bogged down and become just as overwhelming as the territory of reality itself. The model must be a careful and balanced representation, not too simple but not too complex.

Quadrants

The first of these five variables is called Quadrants. Quadrants refers to our use of pro-nouns to describe the perspectives we can take at any one time. The four pro-nouns that the model uses are I, We, It and Its. Again, it comes down to settling on a useful number, and four is right on the edge of that usefulness boundary.

So, what’s the use of having four pronouns in our model? If we look at these four pronouns, we see that they describe more than just perspectives that we can take on a personal level. One place they are echoed in is truth, good and beauty. If you think about it, truth is a description of information gleaned from the “it” dimension of reality. We call something true if it resonates with objective, “it” language. Science is an example of an “it” discipline. Another way to put it is that “it” describes objective reality. We say, “It is raining”. We don’t say, “I feel raining”. Rain coming down or not is an objective statement. Good is derivative of the “we” domain. Morality and social agreements are formed from taking the “we” perspective. We call this domain Intersubjective. It is based on collective agreement between at least two individuals. Beauty comes from the “I” domain. Some people think the Mona Lisa is ugly. I happen to think it is beautiful. Neither are objectively true nor a statement of what to do. They are statements of beauty, statements of the subjective. Finally, “its” describes Interobjective systems. These can be networks, governments and environments. Think of this quadrant as objective social systems.

These four dimensions of reality should never be mistaken for, or reduced to, one another. They are separate co-arising domains, and by including them in our map we have a greater chance of honouring what each brings to the table.

A while back I was faced with the decision of whether to quit my job or not. The company I was at was exploiting its employees and it was a toxic environment to be in for any length of time. I also wasn’t happy with the work itself. For those two reasons I sent in my letter of resignation. Later I was thinking about my decision and realized what I had done. I had made an “I” (personal, emotional) and a “we” (moral) check but hadn’t considered the “it” domain enough. I tend to be idealistic and this is definitely one of the shortcomings of that trait. I realized that if I had put more emphasis on the “it” domain as a factor I may have found a better job first before walking out. It was objectively a bad decision to leave when I did. This kind of quadrant check can be a fantastic way to make sure all dimensions of a situation are being given consideration in a decision.

Lines

The next variable in Ken Wilber’s integral model is Lines. Lines refers to what Howard Gardner calls multiple intelligences. We all know that people can be smart in one area and not so smart elsewhere. Look at me, for example. My artistic line is quite high because I have spent over 10 years developing it. Now if you throw me in a swimming pool with Michael Phelps, I might not do so well. My kinesthetic line is pretty sad, to say the least. This is quite common, though. Most people spend their time focusing on one or two areas and neglect the other areas. It’s not bad at all. But what we need to do is be aware of where we are developed and where we aren’t.

There are dozens of potential lines that we could include in our integral model. Wilber’s model emphasizes seven lines that really should be taken into account to encourage healthy growth. They are: cognitive, interpersonal, moral, musical, worldview, kinesthetic and values. Again, these are just some of the more important ones, and you can include more or less if you want.

A good example of where this kind of awareness can be beneficial is in leadership. The company that I recently left had a CEO who was cognitively quite highly developed, and he knew it. Unfortunately, he is a moral slug. He has made the mistake of generalizing his intelligence over all his lines, and it negatively affects everyone around him. With lines in one’s model, these kinds of blind-spots can be largely avoided. When a leader is lacking in an area, he can work on developing that area or hire someone who is developed there to fill in the gap.

Levels

Another variable in Wilber’s model is Levels. There is a huge amount of evidence from multiple researchers gathered during the last century about levels of consciousness. The evidence points to the fact that we all start out at square one and over the course of our lives develop through identifiable stages, or structures of awareness. The basic labels for these levels vary depending on the researcher but they all point to the same thing. These levels describe the stages that our lines develop through.

Spiral dynamics is a model of values development by Don Beck and Chris Cowan. In this model, the levels are labeled from lowest to highest as follows: Instinctive /Survivalistic, Magical/Animistic, Impulsive/Egocentric, Purposeful/Authoritarian, Achievist/Strategic, Communitarian/Egalitarian, Integrative, and Holistic.

The higher the level, the wider and more embracing the perspective. For instance, the Purposeful/Authoritarian level tends to identify with family and at most country whereas the next level, Achievist/Strategic has the capacity to identify with all human beings. It continues this way all the way up.

Levels are an important variable in the integral map. Awareness of this dimension of ourselves gives us the ability to know where a decision is coming from. We can always act from the highest, most embracing and holistic perspective we know. This helps promote a stronger sense of integrity. The gap between what we believe and what we do closes.

States

The forth variable is States of Consciousness. There are three main states that all of us experience on a regular basis; the gross waking state, the dream state and the formless deep sleep state. In addition, we are capable of experiencing many other altered or peak states at any given time. This is really important to keep in mind because we have to be aware that the state we are in influences how we see the world and what we do.

Another important thing to mention is that states should never be confused with levels and lines. If one has a mystical state experience, it doesn’t mean they are all of a sudden at a higher level of consciousness. In fact, most of the masters in the world’s spiritual disciplines are of any and all levels of consciousness.

Types

The final variable in Ken Wilber’s integral model is Types. The Myers-Briggs Typology model and the enneagram are two maps of this dimension of our being. They essentially refer to the qualities and structure of a person’s personality. By being aware of this dimension of ourselves, it promotes sensitivity to the various ways humans have for getting their needs met. When we know why we do what we do, we can have self acceptance for our uniqueness and also less attachment to excuses for why we can’t do something. When we know the self, we can embrace and move beyond the self.

There are many resources online where you can take tests to identify your type. I recommend the Myers-Briggs typology test. It can be a great way to get to know why you do what you do.

Quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types are the variables that Wilber’s integral model emphasizes. It’s a good place to start. Invest the time to get familiar with Wilber’s model and a variety of other models and find what fits your experience best. Our understanding is always developing and so is our model. The more conscious we are in our development, the healthier the whole process will be.

When we are faced with any decision in our lives, it really boils down to a question about what to do. Before answering that question, we try to take as many perspectives into account as possible to make sure our decision is a good one. But not all perspectives are equal. In effect, we need a system for adding appropriate weight to the various perspectives so they correctly influence our decision. A comprehensive worldview is absolutely essential in this, and Ken Wilber’s integral model is, quite frankly, as good as it gets.

How can I make better decisions? This has been a powerful question in my development. In fact, this has been one of the central orienting questions for me for quite a long time. In this two part series, I’m going to reveal two ways to dramatically increase the quality of your questions, and as a result get explosive growth in your life.

The first factor in making better decisions is our short-term awareness directed by our physical and emotional state. It’s common sense that a bad emotional state leads to bad decisions. The opposite is true as well. The moments when we are most in tune and in the flow are largely due to the state we are in. But what most of us need is a healthy strategy for calling up appropriate states when they are needed, and that is what I will talk about here.

When I was a teenager, I suffered from depression. I even went on Paxil, an anti-depressant for a while. Unfortunately, it made it worse. As I went deeper into the depression, my school work began to suffer. I had no idea why I felt the way I did, and I felt powerless to find a way out.

Thankfully, at some point I started to notice something interesting. The depression was its worst about two hours after eating supper. What was it about supper that could cause it though? Then it came to me. Almost daily I would finish my meal, grab a handful of Oreo cookies, and head into the living room to eat them one by one.

As an experiment, I decided to stop eating the cookies for a bit to see if they were at all linked to my emotional turmoil. Sure enough, I began to feel a lot better right then. I realized that the sugar in the cookies was most likely to blame. By cutting my intake of sugar, I noticed a huge increase in my energy and emotional stability. It was the first major breakthrough in my life. I learned that environmental factors play a huge role in physical and emotional states. I also learned to take personal responsibility for my state of mind. Eventually, I went on to graduate with honors, something unthinkable a couple years before.

By taking this experimental approach to life, we can begin to find out how to control our state. When applied, this begins to immediately raise our awareness, and that will significantly impact the moment to moment decisions we make every day.

You can try this for yourself by introducing or eliminating things in your life and watching how the presence or absence affects your state. Keep a journal of these experiments and you will soon notice what makes a difference. You can then find out for yourself what induces the states you want to be in all the time.

Another great tool for controlling your state is anchoring. Anchoring is the process of mentally linking a stimulus, whether external or internal, to a response. For instance, if I was in an extremely negative state and someone touched my shoulder, I might get the two things linked. Then the next time someone touches my shoulder in the same way, I would immediately be sent back into that negative state. It happens for us unconsciously all the time. Fortunately, we can use this process in a conscious way as well.

A lot of the time, I am paying attention to the things I have linked to my positive states: creating a library in my mind. When I feel depressed, I run through all those things one by one, pulling myself back to the state when I felt good. For example, I’ll say “I feel phenomenally bad at this amazing time. I’m so brilliantly tired of being in this awesomely depressed state”. I even start to move my body in an excited way, excited about feeling bad. It doesn’t take long before I am cracking up with laughter at the ridiculousness of it. The point is to bring up as many positive anchors as I possibly can: words, thoughts, body language, emotions, vocal pacing, etc. It’s almost impossible to feel bad when you engage in positive thoughts, emotions and actions for a length of time.

If you want to make better decisions, you absolutely need to be in the right physical and emotional state to do so. This means you have to take personal responsibility for controlling and directing your state. When we can move into a desired state on cue, we have mastered our internal world. Only then are we truly capable of taking further steps toward our highest potential.

In part 2 of this article, I will talk about an even more significant factor controlling our decisions: our model of the world.