Dr. Neill Neill

Sometimes life delivers a lesson, an image, a jolt that makes such a profound impression that it lasts a lifetime. This is a story of a simple act of generosity over 30 years ago that indelibly impacted me, materially and spiritually.

This past November I was heading for California on my motorcycle for a 3-day training workshop. All the early-winter storms seemed to be happening elsewhere, leaving me with decent weather for my journey. The return trip along the California, Oregon and Washington coast was spectacular.

As I rode south, I thought of earlier journeys.  I recalled a solo motorcycle adventure the year I first became a grandfather.

That particular journey started in Eastern Canada and took me through Mexico and Central America.

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Have you ever wondered where the guilt you sometimes feel is coming from? Do you think to yourself that you have nothing to be guilty about, yet you feel a twinge of guilt from time to time? Do you wonder if the guilt could be keeping you stuck in less than full mental health? Then read on.

I’m going to suggest one place guilt feelings come from and a simple way to reduce them.

When you were a child you were probably told a number of times that you should look both ways before you cross the street. Then when you mother would check up on you just before crossing a street, you would tell her with glee, "I should look both ways."

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For the past year I have been working as consulting psychologist to an alcohol and drug addiction treatment center for men. This is not my first experience in dealing with addiction; I had earlier worked five years in a coed treatment center. I have worked with a lot of functioning alcoholics and drug addicts in my private practice as well.

Although the reasons for substance abuse and subsequent seeking help for addiction are as varied as any human population can be, there is a pattern of sameness in among those men voluntarily going into rehab.

The seven characteristics presented below relate to what is going on at the point men seek help, not to the years when usage turned to habitual substance abuse and then to addiction. Some of the characteristics, but not all, apply to women as well as men. I have become aware that certain things emerge in a group of men that did not surface when men were in a coed group.

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Dr. Neill Neill

Here I sit in the Vancouver International Airport terminal preparing a post while I wait for my flight to Chantilly, Virginia via Washington, DC. I am on my way to the ninth annual conference of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP).

I’ve been deeply involved in the energy psychology movement and ACEP for seven years now, and I always come away from the annual conference recharged with innovations, insights and joyful reconnections with old friends. Energy psychology is the cutting edge of modern practical psychology. As I have said before, I believe it will drag mainstream psychology kicking and screaming into the 21^st century.

This year the plenary speakers are Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (The sense of Being Stared At), Dr. Christine Page (Spiritual Alchemy) and Her Holiness Sai Maa Lakshmi Devi who will speak on "The Art of Forgiveness." (Several of the experts featured in the movie, The Secret, have been past speakers at the ACEP conference.

The rest of the conference will be a smorgasbord of expertise and experience, the very latest stuff. The hardest part will be choosing among lots of excellent options.

I hope I’ll have time during the conference to report back to you on some of what’s happening. Stay tuned.

Dr. Neill Neill, Registered Psychologist and Diplomate in Comprehensive Energy Psychology, maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He is a member of the treatment team at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, an alcohol and drug treatment center for men. His goal is to help you to help yourself to a better life. http://www.neillneill.com

Dr. Pati Beaudoinwrote an excellent article about the movie and book, The Secret, and has given permission to post it here. If you haven’t seen The Secret, do see it or read the book. (There are links at the bottom of this page to buy either from Amazon.com.)

It is turning out to be, not only an exercise in positive psychology for some, but an important contribution to their psycho-spiritual growth. I have personally met some of the experts featured in the movie.

Pati’s analysis of The Secret makes the principles more understandable and therefore more practical. I have posted her article in two parts.

Dr. Beaudoin was a student of mine in the seventies before she became a psychologist and launched her successful career.

Watch for Dr. Beaudoin’s forthcoming book, 
Letter to Husbands From a Wife.

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As I explained in Part One, Dr. Pati Beaudoin wrote an excellent article about the movie and book, The Secret, and has given permission to post it here. If you haven’t seen The Secret, do see it or read the book. (There are links at the bottom of this page to buy either from Amazon.com.)

It is turning out to be, not only an exercise in positive psychology for some, but an important contribution to their psycho-spiritual growth.

Pati’s analysis of The Secret makes the principles more understandable and therefore more practical for self help. I have posted her article in two parts and this is the second part.

Watch for Dr. Beaudoin’s forthcoming book, 
Letter to Husbands From a Wife.

The next important level of truth is the beginning of the solution. It is what your conscious mind can do about the problem of relative power described above. When you focus on a positive that you want to attract into your life – maybe a loving relationship – the next step is, as The Secret teaches, to focus on that as much as possible, and to include the positive emotion. But there’s another step. As those positive thoughts gain a little size and power, they bump into their mismatches in your unconscious blueprint. To continue the example above, “Thank you for my husband who treats me with loving respect” bumps into the more powerful “all the ways people abuse me.” What the conscious positive does is highlight the unconscious negative, making it conscious.

This is very good news. You may not think so, because you may have been trained to think you should never notice a negative. But one of the secrets behind The Secret is that you must find the hidden negatives in order to transform them into positives. Those unconscious negatives not only have the power of repetition over time, they have the power of locked-in emotion. All the hurt and pain, fear and anger we have stored away with “all the ways people abuse me” keeps it locked firmly in place, sending out its attracting rays even when we don’t mean it to do so.

You can focus only on the positive if you choose – and it will be like a pea nudging the earth out of its orbit. Or you can cleanse the wound of the negative, moving into the center of the pain and transforming negative to positive. Then you are using the power you have in your unconscious mind to move in the same positive direction your conscious mind has chosen. This is more like the earth learning a newer, better orbit from the pea.

Those who say this sort of transformation is easier to describe than to experience are a little bit correct. It’s uncomfortable to move into the center of the pain, and I recommend you hire a good counselor or psychotherapist who is not afraid of intense emotion.

Once you have begun to transform the negative into positive, attracting positive into your life becomes much easier – but watch out! There’s another secret behind The Secret at this level. Your little conscious mind may think it knows what is best, and may wish for abundance – but the abundance you will attract is determined by a much wiser level of consciousness – your soul. You may send out attractants for abundance, thinking you need more money in your life, but if your soul knows you are ready for another type of abundance, it will come. Maybe your soul knew that you were about to get sick, and so it will attract abundant good health.

And that is the next level of depth in the secrets behind The Secret: The attracting should be aimed from the soul rather than the small conscious mind. I call it “small” because it’s quite short-sighted, having the limited view of a single lifetime and very little idea of its part in the greater scheme of things. It has a worm’s eye-view of what is important, and tends to be materialistic and – let’s face it – selfish. Your greater self – your Self or your soul – knows better. The bad news is that if you do all this transformational work to make your conscious mind send out more positive thoughts and then focus only on material gain, it may well work. This can lead to a kind of self-seduction, as in “Oh, look at how good I am! I am able to attract all this material wealth into my life, so I must be a good person, all positive.” The seduction in this lies in the material reinforcement of pseudo-spirituality. Having gone part-way in transforming the unconscious thoughts, the self-seducer traps herself in spiritual materialism, using material attraction as proof of spiritual transformation and creating an ego trip out of that alleged spiritual transformation.

The good news is that if you do the transformational work in the unconscious and send out thoughts of positivity and abundance for the soul, you will automatically attract into your life whatever your soul knows is best for you. At times that will be what your little consciousness might wish for – joyful relationships, good health and money. Other times it will be things you didn’t know you needed – a traffic jam, maybe, that prevents you being further up ahead where there’s a collision. And at other times – and really, all the time – it will be attracting the best experiences for your soul’s journey through our earthly classroom.

And the final and deepest level of the secrets behind The Secret – the best way to send out those positive thoughts is during meditation. One of the effects of meditation is to bring together all the parts of the mind to focus together. How much more powerful could you get?

So you see, The Secret isn’t wrong – it’s just the tip of a much more multi-leveled, complex secret… that will never be a secret again… and that is the best news of all.

Dr. Pati Beaudoin is a Licensed Psychologist who practices in Roswell, GA.   She has taught internationally on such varied topics as hypnosis, family violence, and energy psychology.  She is the author of Letter to Husbands From a Wife, which is due to be published in summer of 2007.

The Book        The DVD

Neill Neill, Ph.D.

The first three stress management tips involved in breathing to let go of tension, keeping your body hydrated to avoid the brain fog and going on a presence walk to get yourself functioning in present time.

Today’s tip, Take an Appreciation Break, is again very simple and easy to follow. But its effects can be profound, because they take place at the physical and spiritual levels, as well as the emotional level.

The Appreciation Break

Look at something, think about something or remember something that you really appreciate or are grateful for. Let yourself feel how much you appreciate it. Feel it at the heart level if you can. Stay with it for 15 or 20 seconds. Do it any time and often, but especially when you are experiencing stress.

When I discovered the appreciation break a few years ago, a beautiful public flower bed near our home was in full bloom. Any time I was stressed or felt under pressure, I would just let my mind go to that flower bed. Within seconds my body would relax and a smile would return to my face. It was during a rough time so I did it multiple times a day.

The thought or memory could also be of a person, a pet, a song or a saint. The content doesn’t matter, just as long as it’s something you really appreciate. (I have been appreciating the sun last few days because we are just emerging from months of cloud and rain.)

As you practice this little exercise over time, it takes less and less time to slip into a state of appreciation, so that eventually you can get there almost instantly.

On the physical level the appreciation break is one of the most effective ways of bringing your heart rhythm into coherence. Simply stated, it helps your heart to work more in congruence with the rest of the body. It’s good for you heart and as a consequence it is good for all your body’s systems.

On the spiritual level the exercise shares a great deal with giving a prayer of thanks. Both are from the heart. Both connect you with something outside of yourself, and as such, act as an acknowledgment of your connection to the universe.

Perhaps the appreciation break and the prayer of thanks are the same thing, except that the appreciation break has no explicit religious connotation. Clearly, either is an expression of human spirituality, whether you are conscious of it or not.

The appreciation break is another key to good stress management, this one grounded in positive psychology. It is a basic mental health tool. Getting in the habit of taking frequent appreciation breaks could change your life.

Dr. Neill Neill, Registered Psychologist, maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He is a member of the treatment team at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, an alcohol and drug treatment center for men. His goal is to help you to help yourself to a better life. http://www.neillneill.com

Neill Neill, Ph.D.

Choosing well is the foundation for a good marriage. Yet choosing is one of the most neglected pieces of the process of meeting, bonding, marrying, living life together and possibly having children. Choose well: the good and bad outcomes of your choice will shape your life, whether a first or second marriage, a Christian marriage, a common-law marriage, a mixed-race marriage or a same-sex marriage.

1.           Can you accept each other as you are, warts and all? You can’t change another person and you have absolutely no right to try to change your spouse. At the same time don’t promise to change if your potential partner can’t accept you as you are.  

This in no way means that you have to be the same.  Acceptance of yourself and each other can accommodate wide differences between you.

Acceptance is the most basic issue. If you can’t accept the reality of each other, walk.

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Neill Neill, Ph.D.

I think of love as a universal potion or glue that binds us all together. Love has been called a lot of things, from the ultimate high to a dangerous psychosis. It is certainly at the core of self growth and spirituality. The topic of love is broad, but we can narrow the focus by exploring the opposite of love. Consider the following collection of negative emotions:

anxiety, anger, shame, guilt, loneliness,
jealousy, envy, regret, unfriendliness,
feeling insulted, feeling abandoned,
need to control, need to be right,
feeling judgmental, feeling worried,
resentment, embarrassment, panic,
feeling unloved, depression

It’s quite a collection of negative emotions, but consider what they all have in common. They all share three related things:

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Neill Neill, Ph.D.

A judge in the Province of Ontario recently ruled that it could be offensive to some minorities to place a Christmas tree in the courthouse, and so ended a long tradition. I call this "bizarre." So I got to thinking about other erosions of traditional celebration in the name of political correctness.

I realized something else had been bothering me. I would start to wish someone a Merry Christmas.  Then I would find myself qualifying my well-wishing with "I know it’s not politically correct to say this, but…"

What I found interesting was that without exception everyone I said this to expressed similar frustration with the pressure to be politically correct.  The universal refrain was "Why can’t I just wish someone well in my own tradition?"

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