In graduate school, they kept on telling us that our mind is very powerful and we just needed to learn how to channel this energy. Coming from a background of powerlessness it was hard to imagine, but as I started to use the tools they were teaching us, things in my life began to shift for the better.

I remember the first time I realized this when standing in line at the bank. I hated being in public at the time and often would simply sprint out of the market because I felt so anxious. This was my mainstay in the bank, as people waited in line and seemingly judged me, I grew more and more uncomfortable. Then came the day when I was just standing there, calm, and looking around at a different feeling world. It was so subtle, but there I was not feeling judged. I began laughing. The psychology that they were teaching us in school, that we had been practicing on each other, set in and began to work. The anxiety that I thought I had to tolerate the rest of my life had vanished! Well, if the people in the bank weren’t judging before they sure had a reason to now, for I was chuckling.

Power? I didn’t believe I had it but suddenly realized that I had always used my power in the opposite way. First of all, I was constantly judging myself and others. Oh, others were always better than me and I always had reasons to be critical of myself. I felt at the time that I didn’t fit in. My car, my clothing, the way I walked, being a pool cleaner. Yeah, everyone was always better. This belittling myself was getting the best of me. The funny thing is, I was still going to school, owned a good condo, and was in a good relationship. Still, I was never good enough in my mind.

In the group this week at Basic Steps, we talked about the Golden Rule and how it made me focus on pleasing others so they could meet my needs. I had no clue about self-love. Plus if you practiced self-love you were selfish or Narcissistic. Our relationships are a reflection of how we are with ourselves. When I was in the bank it wasn’t others that were judging me, it was myself. In viewing myself in a better way I was better able to deal with others. This took me a process in school. First of all, I created a personal affirmation of how I wanted to view myself and repeated it over 100 times a day. Tired of all my negativity this statement basically drowned out a chunk of it. Did the negativity stop? No. But it wasn’t as often or as harsh. Just through this statement, I began to view myself differently.

Later in the year, we learned about inner aspect work. Using this format I confronted my inner critic which always put me down, and began to adjust it. “Yes, I know Inner Critic that I am doing this wrong, so what should I do instead?” When I befriended the critical part of myself and found ways to work with it, the negativity vanished and I found myself, instead of the harsh criticism, coming up with my own solutions. I cannot tell you how much peace that created internally. Suddenly my daily meditations were peaceful where in the past a jumble of thoughts would confront me.

I believe that graduate school taught me that I had been living my life backwards. I was always looking for the worst thing that could happen and sat in judgment of people as they did things wrong. Now I was loving people for who they were and knowing that all of us were doing the best we knew. If we are all the same, which is what they continued to remind us, then if I was judging them, I was surely judging myself. The Mother Theresa quote – “If you judge people, you don’t have time to love them,” knocked me off my feet. Yes, that was how I wanted to live my life from that moment on.

Was this easy? No, it was a process, as is with all change. Our brains become hard-wired into certain automatic patterns of thoughts and actions so repeating the affirmations became my main tool to remind myself to remain positive, caring, and loving to myself and others, and helped me push forward on that path.

After 29 years of fieldwork, I have learned something from my clients, that without the desire there is no change. If a part of them refuses to unlearn and move forward they will remain where they are at. Now, if there is the motivation to achieve the things they desire to have in their life then therapy is effective. We just need to want something with all our heart.

At Basic Steps Mental Health, clients are taught counseling skills so they can be a counselor to themselves. It worked for all of us students in Graduate School, and after seeing over 10,000 people in my career, the success I have seen with this approach has been remarkable. My family taught me to manipulate and control. The put-downs and humiliation left me with expectations that everybody in public would do the same. Let alone the mass media. I grew up in a war-torn Los Angeles where rioting and murders were constant in my youth. How could I go outside and trust people, since all I knew was the world was a violent place. Then my personal work began and I began seeing hope and love and people working together.

The University of Santa Monica, where I received two Master’s degrees in psychology has changed to an online course. The energy of the room, the communion between students, and the constant love have been replaced by a computer screen, for current students. I was fortunate to attend the university in its heyday where we gathered for lunch at the nearby park, played guitar, bonded as a family, and learned to love ourselves and others. What a joy. This was education the way you always wanted it to be, so now my facility offers counseling the way you always wanted it to be. No shaming or put-downs, simply tender loving care.

A quick story:

One of my teachers actually served under Mother Theresa in Calcutta. John Whitaker, God rest his soul, was in charge of graduate students who volunteered their time to grade the homework current students were handing in. I had the honor of working under him for two years, selfishly wanting to remain at the university, because of how it impacted me. So John, with all his heart-centeredness, showed us how to grade papers with heart symbols and little smiley faces. He simply wanted us to praise whatever effort was made. This was tough for me. I put my 100% into every homework assignment and one paper handed to me was half a page – instead of the five-page minimum the assignment called for. Not finding anything that resembled a completed paper I hand-walked it over to John. He grinned as he read it.

“See. They did this wrong,” I insisted.

“Well, this is very creative over here,” he pointed. “And over here this is very thought-provoking,” he grinned.

I shook my head. “You are making something out of nothing,” I replied.

John just shrugged his shoulders with a smile.

There were other tools that enhanced my personal power. The best was creating Ideal Scenes. Instead of focusing on the worst thing that could happen, I was shown how to focus on the best! They said, it was foolish for us to lose in our fantasies, so why not focus on the most ideal situations? I’ve worked on my ideal relationship, health, job… well the list can go on and on. If we are going to focus on the future it is best to focus on winning.