Gary van Warmerdam - MindWorks: A Practical Guide for Changing Thoughts Beliefs, and Emotional Reactions

Published by Cairn Publishing

Santa Barbara California

Copyright 2014 by Gary van Warmerdam

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9905846-0-5

eISBN 9780990584612

Illustrations by Gabriel Manninen

Cover Design and Artwork by Raess Design www.RaessDesign.com

Author Photo by Alex Erotas

Introduction

A Path of Transforming Beliefs and Emotions

As humans we live in two worlds. The first is the external, physical world of family, friends, work, and environment. The second is the internal world of our mind, imagination, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs: an inner world that can feel just as real to us as the first one. This book is about that second world and how to change what happens there.

These two worlds arent separatethey impact each other all the time. In particular, our internal world invisibly influences how we experience and relate to the external world around us. Our overactive mind, driven by our beliefs, can sabotage our relationships and our attempts at happiness while tempting us to point the finger at everyone else. Our beliefs and thoughts can also convince us that we are somehow lacking, that we dont deserve happiness and success, or that we are essentially failures. The result is a lot of unnecessary, unpleasant emotional reactions and unhappiness.

This internal world draws its power from the beliefs we adopt over the course of our lives. We observe, assess, and interpret our world and ourselves through the filter of our beliefs. Because this process happens constantly and for the most part unconsciously, we have little control over it until we bring these beliefs into our conscious awareness and begin to question their validity.

As children we were naturally happy. As we grew up, our perceptions and experience became conditioned by the values, beliefs, and emotional patterns we absorbed from those around us. We learned to please others and sought approval from them; when we got it, we felt loved and accepted. We also learned to fear their criticism and to feel hurt by it.

Over the years we developed our own thoughts and beliefs about our self-worth and value, and we adopted behavior patterns accordingly. We created our own emotions and emotional reactions based on our own beliefs. If we succeeded or won we felt good about ourselves; if we failed we automatically felt bad about ourselves. We developed a part of our mind to constantly assess ourselves and find ourselves good enough or not good enough throughout the day. Our mind ran automatically with opinions, thinking, and emotional responses whether we wanted it to or not. If we want to live in happiness that is sustainable, we will have to take steps to free ourselves from these automatic thought patterns and emotional reactions.

This book offers clear explanations and several practices to help you change how your mind works. Once developed, you can apply these skills to any situation for the rest of your life. Within these pages you will find and understand in a commonsense way:

How beliefs are formed.

Why many of our beliefs are unconscious to us and yet affect our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Practical exercises to identify and effectively change these beliefs.

How to focus your attention and perspective in a way that can reduce and eliminate emotional reactions.

How to inventory and organize your beliefs so that you dont become overwhelmed and confused by your emotional reactions and conflicting thoughts and behaviors.

How to recover the personal power previously lost to your beliefs and the unnecessary emotions they create.

Why you feel the emotions you feel and practical tools to make changes in yourself.

Why many self-help techniques or other attempts at change are often ineffective or make things worse, and how to avoid those pitfalls.

Throughout the book I use real-life examples, drawn from my work with clients, to illustrate how beliefs work and how the processes described here can be applied effectively to bring about real and lasting change. What you will not find is a trite, just go to a happy place approach. This is not about projecting happy thoughts and optimistic affirmations as a surface solution to change your emotions. If it was that simple it would have worked already. Instead, I show you how to identify and dismantle those existing beliefs that are triggering painful emotional reactions and interfering with your enjoyment of life.

The last chapter provide encouragement for the task of change aheadand the rewards inherent in it. When we eliminate our false and fear-based beliefs, we find another dimension to our internal world. In the state of mind empty of fears and false beliefs, our inner world is peaceful and emotionally beautiful. From this state of mind we perceive the external world as it is and people as they are, without a filter of negative thoughts. Free of the distorting layer of false beliefs, our eyes see clearly and we perceive the beauty that exists everywhere. Most importantly, we are able to perceive the beauty and love within ourselves.

An Invitation

Life is rich with diverse experiences, challenges, and surprises. You cannot bend everything in life, or even in yourself, to match your hopes, goals, and expectations. If you rely on certain criteria being met in order for you to be happy, you will be disappointed and fearful. Your emotions will be dependent on factors outside your control. Outer events, other people, and your own judgments of yourself will determine how much love, acceptance, and happiness you experience. Even in your moments of success, you will feel driven to control external factors and people because of a fear of losing what you have. Your attempts at happiness and enjoyment of life will be unsuccessful and may even be disrespectful or abusive towards others, as well as towards yourself.

However, if you eliminate the false beliefs that make up the negative thoughts, criticisms, fears, and patterns that cause your emotional reactions, then you also eliminate much of your unhappiness. As you learn how you can create your own emotions independently of outside events, you are no longer limited in how much love, acceptance, and respect you can experience. The result is that your love and happiness can expand beyond what you can currently imagine.

What you have in your hands is a guidebook, a manual with step-by-step instructions on how to identify and change the beliefs central to negative thoughts, emotions, and sabotaging behaviors. While great care has been taken to explain what happens in your mind so that you will understand whats behind the emotional reactions you are having, this is not the books greatest value. The real benefit comes from practicing the exercises provided so that your perspective, thoughts, and emotional patterns will change.

What lies before you is an extraordinary journey to reclaim the inner world of your mind. I wish you happiness on your path, and as your destination. You will find other valuable resources, including videos and audios with a more comprehensive set of exercises and practices helpful for your journey, at www.PathwayToHappiness.com .