The Day-by-Day Phenomenon
Many people fail to realize that we lead our lives by days – not years. Sure, we can say that each day adds to a collective accumulation of accomplishments – such as writing a few pages a day results in, eventually, a book. There are examples, such as the training we do for health that, in the long-term, results in optimal fitness and figure. These would appear to be collective product of individual accomplishments. Other examples are the overwhelmingly tedious amount of work we put into creating a musical album, preparing a business proposal, or starting a restaurant. However, all of the little steps in these events were produced in a day. Everything starts as a day, and you must live your life as one single day to get anywhere successful. Sure, you can say that planning, and looking “down the line’ to examine your future, checking your bearings and seeing mistakes you’ve made so you don’t capriciously jump into something, is important. However, if you plan, seize the day and plan your life, don’t squabble with worthless goals. If you choose to plan your day – which is your entire life – for God’s sake, plan your dreams! Program your dreams into your life in the morning, pursue them in the afternoon, and then relish in your accomplishments in the evening. That is the true key to seizing the magnitude to which your life will encompass.

The Emotional Program
Many people I have worked with say they have emotional problems or completely deny they have emotional problems. The analysis – we all have emotional walls, boundaries and obstacles. Anthony Robbins talks about a type of psychology combining linguistics and neurological programming so that a powerful state, or mood, can be conjured just by a clap of your hands. This is a very powerful resource and it can produce massively productive benefits. Just imagine, whenever you feel anxious or worried, or butterflies in your stomach, just being able to produce a strong feeling of empowerment, security, certainty, and confidence with the snap, literally, of your fingers! Such skills seem almost magical or wizard-like. The veracity of this neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is profoundly powerful.
However, one interesting thing that NLP can lead to is the produce to negative emotions. I worked this one young woman who was extremely sensitive to complements. Usually people blush, or are speechless, or are flabbergasted by a complement. These are all response that I have felt, caused, and seen in others. Most people acknowledge the complement and move on. This young woman has hitting an emotional wall. Whenever I complemented her, I said that her expertise of the restaurant we were both working in at the time was profound. I told her that she most certainly “right” in almost any dispute, simply because she has such a wealth of knowledge and expertise about the restaurant. However, when I told her this, it was like I touched a raw, emotional nerve. I could almost see her visibly twinge. When I complimented her on her expertise see became furious, threatened to leave, and almost started crying. I couldn’t understand this behavior at all because I all of my experience compliments mend disputes, instead of provoking them. I was speechless, so I told her that she is an incredible employee that new much more about the restaurant business than myself. After this, she bolted out of the restaurant and refused to have me talk to her!
I couldn’t understand the emotional behavior that was occurring here at all. I later realized that, for some reason, she had developed an NLP for complements and the effect of such a complement was crippling! It was as though I was becoming the judge, but with comliments instead of criticisms. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but the reaction she had told me that this complement I was giving her, almost made scream in pain!
It was pain she was experiencing from the complement! What does this show us? That neurolinguistic programming is excruciatingly powerful to produce positive and negative emotions in people. Anthony Robbins teaches how to conjure up strong emotions of empowerment with a clap of your hands. In contrast, when I complemented this young woman, NLP caused her to conjure up strong emotions of fear, insecurity, and weakness – the opposite of what I was trying to provoke, and, most certainly, the opposite of what she, or anyone, wanted to feel.
It is true that our NLP can empower us or cripple us. Maybe her father complemented her and then immediately told her she was dumb or stupid or useless, so that a complement became habitually associated with her irregular emotional patterns, producing fear and neglect, instead of empowerment and self-confidence. I was so taken-back by this experience because I had not realized the excruciatingly powerful affects of NLP. Sure, you could say that she already “knew” she was an incredible employee, and telling her that was monotonous, but her reaction was so impulsively enraged. I could see her about to explode as though I had stuck her with an electric volt.
After a respite of limited communication, we resolved our issue with the tip jar, and created peace. It simply took her awhile to let it sink in that she was right, and that I knew that she was right. She kept feeling that she needed to persuade or convince me that I was right, when I was telling her that she almost always was right. In contrast, she was most certainly wrong about her approach to the incident because we ended up arguing in front of the customers, a point I pointed out. The only way, I knew the argument would end would be to tell her that she was right (even though she did act somewhat immature, puerile, and irresponsible), so I did that. In doing so, she felt that I had the upper hand, which infuriated her.
She was so used to needing to tell people “she was right” that when someone actually acknowledged her correctly valid astuteness, she was overwhelmed with negatively charged confusion. This reminded me of the time when a very close person kept asking me “why” at my own home, and I started beserkly crying! It hit an emotional twinge, and shows we all have them.
This woman took complements as insults because she was so attached to the notion of needing to be valid, in control, and on top of her life, and always achieving it, and plowing this disposition out for herself (See Awaken Your Passion in Chapter 4for more information on attachments). When I acknowledged her work, and told her that she possess and had achieved an “in control” “valid” life, she cringed with pain! Complements have been worse than insults for some people because they are so unused to them being delivered. People who never receive complements (because their parents neglected to complement them) lack the ability to deal with the strong emotions of complements. What this person was feeling was a confused joy, most likely. I could delve into her family history or history of abuse, but that is irrelevant.
What is important is learning how to acknowledge and emotionally experience complements. She may have had my image transformed into an authority figure, or father figure, when I complemented her, but I have had people say that I am mean, annoying, and experience overwhelming emotions when I complement them! We must learn to transform the productive emotional energy of a complement into a pleasing experience instead of a painful one because complements are a part of life!
I was overwhelmed by the excruciatingly powerful impact I was having over this young woman’s emotions. I was left dumb-founded about what to do because she was responding so negatively to complements, what I normally to be glue, rather than explosives, in a dispute or argument. This goes to show how effective emotional interactions are with people and that we must continue to awaken each other’s passions, but to be sure not to Judge there accomplishments to astutely or directly, especially if they have worked hard at them, because then their attempt at pursuing something is lost. The restaurant girl’s problem was acknowledging her own accomplishments. She worked two years, almost more than any other employee, in the restaurant. She learned all the nuances of making coffee, communicating with the chefs, working the stoves, taking to-go orders, and helping customers. She had put so much effect into trying to achieve the goal of a respectable, knowledge employee, who “knows what’s right”, that when she had already achieved that, she forgotten what all the work was for and felt crippled by the weight of her efforts. There is a saying that describes this situation perfectly:
“I have been waiting so long, I have forgotten what I am waiting for.”
-Anonymous
The amount of effort we put into our goals can become so incredibly trying, exasperating, and difficultly arduous, that when we finally achieve the goals, we are lost not knowing what action to take. This is similar to building a farm – doing years of research on agriculture, buying the land, understanding chemical growing, erosion, and soil solidity, and tending to the crops meticulously after the years of study – but when the harvest comes around, you’ve learned how do everything possible except enjoy the fruits of what you reap. Experiencing our accomplishments is one of the most important parts of finding our accomplishments, because this allows us to acknowledge them, recognize them, and become empowered from them. With the restaurant situation, my compliments were most certainly, not complementing her needs!
Possibly even moving past our accomplishments is a part of the achievement process. Just as setting goals and passionately pursuing the goals is important to achieving accomplishments, experiencing, relishing, and absorbing the accomplishment is an essential part of that process as well. After all, if we don’t keep score, or evaluate our accomplishments realistically, we may feel like are losing, but may have already won!

With our multitude of faces and desire for an indiscriminately and inspirationally encouraging alleviation from our daily qualms, mishaps, and, possibly, threats, we draw upon our own inner voice. Now our voices are drawn upon from many different aspects and registered by many different forms of media, prompts of transgression, and day-to-day happenstances. What we really find most important to us, and the suppression of that interest, is the catalyst, and at times, the igniter for such indolent bursts of flavor in our lives. These things in our life allow is to access our own inner beliefs. Separate from our community’s voice, societal voice, national voice, possibly even our ethnicity’s vocal beacon of guidance and advice, is profoundly utilized in almost all of our day-to-day activities, but our own personal, individual, profoundly significant and powerful voice remains scattered, and at times, inaccessible in the myriad of faces we must portray and the societal masks that we, at times, epitomize.
By not pursuing the enormous amount of problems that we have already accumulated, we end up creating the financially indisposed dilemma of not having problems to solve. This dilemma, however, hosts exactly what we lack – a personal revelation of inspirational juices, flavors, and appetizing recipes that will support our foundation. So, we must stop the pursuit of solutions to unnecessary problems and engage in the study of hosting this revelation. With this tide of change, creativity will provide the support for our foundation, so that we can internally grow.
With this internal cultivation, we may be able to answer questions like, What really allows us to ignite, or catalyze a reaction that can lead to a new scoop of our personal guidance system? How can we alleviate our temptation from creating a simplistic, idyllic environment, which is superficially a mechanism of doubt used as an apparatus of fear to suppress our voice? Basically, how can we cherish and accept ourselves?
This self-induced state, of residing in the duplicity of our individually concocted environment, won’t work anymore. We are prevented from creating inspirational guidance for ourselves, by ourselves. The state that we put ourselves in makes us, unfortunately, at risk for hundreds of fragmented standardizations and jeopardizes our possession of security. An example is our national and political stance with Iraq. While we are sending troops to Iraq, we establish a temporary environment utilized for the priming of our superficial security. But this day-to-day environment must be established on a day day-to-day schedule. This is similar to needing to paint the advertisement every morning to display that X Company is a better deal than its competitor; the U.S. must paint and repaint its patriarchal achievements without responding to the internal doubts within the country. I am not saying the U.S. is internally doubtful, but, rather, that we should pay close attention to are inner voice as a beacon for our external actions.
Sure, we’ve done an incredible job of establishing ourselves as an international force – militaristically, economically, commercially, politically, and diplomatically. But these establishments and symbols of recognition address the wrong dilemmas, producing extremely desirable and accomplished results, but not the ones that will allow us to excel. We are finding solutions to problems that are trivial in retrospect to the smorgasbord of dilemmas that face our extremely well established nation. We need that internal flow of creative juices and foundational recipes to emerge.
Maybe the question, or the problem we should try to answer or solve is “Are we becoming too established?” Are we designing our nationalistic masks to such an extreme that we forget the values – the integrity – that our mask exudes? Are we emanating self-confidence when we must mend self-integrity? Are we pursuing boldness when we must acquire self-mastery?
Take the recent assassination of Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. After months and months of excitement and exuberance in the Gaza when American troops lay dead, smoldering in explosive rubble, finally, the tables are turned and the terrorist receives the terrorism. Great, the elimination of a source of negative destruction is complete. But the mechanism used to eradicate this destructive entity was viscously devastating in itself. Is fighting with fire, the answer? At times for sure, but in this situation, I feel the only result will be more burns and mournful scars.
When I look at the Washington Post headlines, I see “Hamas Chief Mourned by thousands in Gaza”. A multitude of beliefs, century year-old arguments about Middle East territory, and impassioned emotions and reactions are all consumed in this 7-word headline. First off, look at “Hamas Chief”. Chief connotes, most certainly, a leader, but in a proverbial undertone this word connotes something more physical – some one warrior-like. You would never refer to a religious figure as “Chief”. Instead, you would refer to him as a leader, director or guide – more benign titles that suggest powers of encouragement and motivation, rather than valueless control and manipulation. But words like Chief, Boss, Ruler, and even Manager put forth the overwhelmingly discriminatory notion that this person has some level control over a group of people and that his or her values may not be all that thoughtful. Whether it be the ability to incite minions to arms or the possession of a crafty aptitude for political puppet-mastery and the capacity to connive and produce political results at will and on whim, the title of this leader, Chief, connotes a characteristically dark alternate meaning, especially in a geographic location where deleterious manipulation has much more far-reaching affects. While it is beneficial that a terrorist force has been eliminated, I feel that, in the long run, this will only add more fuel to the politically bloody and incessant, feuding turmoil that rages in the Middle East.
Still analyzing the headline, the phrase “mourned by thousands” connotes an image of impassioned grief possibly mixed in with sparks of rage. Finally, the location of this ill-named leader and volatile emotional turmoil is described in the newspaper heading – the Gaza. The Gaza itself could be defined as a group of thousands of mourners with all of the incessant conflict, unresolved issues, and upheaval entrenched in the patterns of this convoluted area, but the fact that this territory is integrated in with a specific incident of mourning and the elimination of a controlling terrorist, makes this event even more potent.
From merely the headline of this article, one con dispel any myths of the Middle East being an enchanting, magical place for beliefs and religion. Instead it is a horror-house of air raids, hesitance to claim responsibility, and adherence to rigidly impassioned beliefs and traditions. It is anything from the free expression of beliefs; it is the viscious struggle for creating space for traditions. Because these traditions have so much belief associated with them, they are overwhelmingly sensitive and are the catalyst for this constant quarrel.
Back and forth like a ping-pong game -- not even like a chess game anymore -- these countries seem to bomb, raid, or destroy each other. I used to feel, from historical Cold War times, that the Middle East was the stage for the largest political chess game imaginable – land claimed by so many different cultures, religions, and backgrounds with so much impulsive energy fueling that area. Now, However I am sickened and perturbed by the trite and hackneyed actions that take place. The headlines tell you. First PLO refugees volley an attack, which is followed by another reactionary volley from Israel, which sparks resentment for Palestinians, resulting in another volley back. The depth, strategy, and efforts for peace have been eliminated from this conflict. Instead, it has turned into a mindless, undiplomatic game of pong that channels the nervous, uncertain emotions about territory, religion, political control, oil, and physical and cultural boundaries into destructive entities.
This destructively inane game of back-and-forth is exactly what the U.S. should not get involve itself in, but should attempt to impede. Whether it be a distraction or a force, I feel that if, with as little risk as possible, we should try to catalyze a bump or a push or maybe even provide some political fuel for this conflict to get it in any place more socially prolific than a mindless ping-pong battle played with suicide terrorists, political assassinations, and militant extremism.
I feel that once the U.S. has cultured its internal infrastructure of beliefs, growth, confidence, and recipes of values, we will be in a confident position to contribute to the progressively dormant state of the Middle East. I use the phrase progressively dormant because, while there are perceived changes in the Middle East --attacks, military responses, and defensive maneuvers -- nothing, in hindsight, is changing, improving or budging. It is a recalcitrant quarrel played by passionately obstinate players. The situation is politically and diplomatically stagnant; all of the mourning, blood, rotting flesh, unresolved diplomacy, and explosive terrorism is being dumped from one blood-stained glass into another and then poured back into the same glass, over and over again. In taking tremendously great caution to not over-engage (the U.S. has a tendency to over-engage and become a dominant obstacle for growth rather than a productive element), we should attempt to relay unproductive patterns in the Middle East. We should take proactive action towards fueling the fires of resolution, rather than being complacent with yet another volley in the militaristic ping-pong game of the Middle East. With this progressive action, we will cultivate the alleviation we need from our own intractable qualms and problems because we would have discarded our political sham for the creation of a valuable and benevolent state of diplomacy, teaching, and inspiration.