Brian Vaszily - AARP the 9 Intense Experiences: An Action Plan to Change Your Life Forever

FEEL BETTER EVERY DAY

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Contents

Copyright 2011 by Brian Vaszily. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Vaszily, Brian, date.

The 9 intense experiences : an action plan to change your life forever / Brian Vaszily.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-59635-7 (hardback : acid-free paper))

1. Self-actualization (Psychology) 2. Change (Psychology) I. Title. II. Title: Nine intense experiences.

BF637.S4V38 2011

158dc22

2010045248

Dedicated to my mother, Maryann Vaszily. Scholars, authors, doctors, artists, and sages have guided me and I am grateful, but they dont hold a candle to you. You live the knowledge, you live love, and that has been by far the greatest lesson. Thank you.

This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An Important Note for Doubters and Skimmers

This book will have you laughing out loud, crying to yourself, getting lost, dreaming vividly, giving stuff you love away, and running around in your underwear. It is unlike any other book youve ever experienced, but dont let that stop you. It will change the course of your life in powerful and positive ways. And it will do so rapidly. You will soon see why the profound changes I am promising that you will discover with The 9 Intense Experiences are natural and inevitable.

If you are seeking to overcome barriers to your happiness and success, such as fear, guilt, anger, depression, heartbreak, low self-esteem, apathy, feeling overwhelmed, and not knowing the direction to take in life, this book will inevitably help you. If you want to achieve greater success in your career, love life and other relationships, health, weight, finances, or all of these, this book will guide you in powerful ways you cant yet imagine.

In todays go-go, faster-faster, feel-as-if-you-are-getting-nowhere world, many people tend to believe they have visited and know a lake, when in reality their eyes have only skimmed the surface of that lake. Were in an age of skimming life when we were born to dive deep, and that causes a painful disconnection from the success, happiness, and inner peace we are meant to have. That is precisely the disease that this book cures.

A term I often use for this problem is the Muddy Slope Syndromewhen you have it, you feel as if life is an uphill climb in the pouring rain, and youre moving faster and faster and digging in deeper and deeper, trying to get up that hill. The faster you move and the deeper you dig in, the muddier that slope gets, and you slip farther and farther backward. You feel increasingly weighed down and blinded by the mud splattering all over you.

Please do yourself a giant favor: take a few deep breaths and slow down long enough to read just a bit more of this book. Slow down the way you slow down to kiss your lover, the way you slow down to eat really good chocolate, or the way you slow down to savor whatever you already know gives your life vibrancy.

After reading just a few more sections, you will understand why this book will inevitably change the course of your life in powerful and positive ways. It will make perfect sense. Youll also have more than a few big aha! moments that will immediately provide you with greater energy, clarity, and focus, and theres nothing wrong with a little instant gratification!

We are constantly invited to be who we are, Thoreau wrote. Deep inside, you already know who you are. If you can see yourself achieving greater happiness and success in your relationships, finances, health and weight, career, and elsewhere in your lifethat is who you already are. You cannot see something that is not there.

The challenge comes from clearing through the rust and crustanother phrase I often use to describe the years and decades of self-sabotaging habits, thoughts, and emotions that paralyze your ability to be, and sometimes even see, who you are.

As you will shortly discover, intense experiences are precisely how to clear through all of that rust and crust. So dive deeper. Accept the invitation to finally be who you know you really are. Life is way too short not to. Now is the time. You absolutely deserve it. And by the way, youre going to love it.