Ivan Misner - Whos in Your Room?: The Secret to Living Your Best Life

Whos
in Your
ROOM:

THE SECRET TO CREATING YOUR BEST LIFE

Whos
in Your
ROOM:

THE SECRET TO CREATING YOUR BEST LIFE

Ivan Misner, Ph.D. Stewart Emery, L.H.D. Rick Sapio

Indigo River Publishing

Whos in Your Room?

Copyright 2018 by Ivan Misner, Stewart Emery, Rick Sapio

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Editors: Jackson Haynes, Heidi Giusto, and Regina Cornell

Book Design: mycustombookcover.com

Indigo River Publishing

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Pensacola, FL 32502

www.indigoriverpublishing.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

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Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959468

Soft Cover ISBN: 978-1-948080-46-0

Hard Cover ISBN: 978-1-948080-47-7

E-book ISBN: 978-1-948080-49-1

First Edition

With Indigo River Publishing, you can always expect great books, strong voices, and meaningful messages. Most importantly, youll always findwords worth reading.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

IMAGINE YOU LIVE IN ONE ROOM

I magine that you live in one room. Imagine that you live your entire life in this room where you and your imagination create your life. Anything at all can be contained in this space. Inside are all the people who enter, as well as the relationships and obligations that come with them. You can update and expand your room to accommodate new possibilities in your life. However, there is a unique and permanent feature of this room: It only has one door. It will only ever have one door. You may think that there is nothing unique or unusual about this one-door thing. Lots of rooms only have one door. True, but this particular door is a one-way door. Enter Only. NO EXIT. Whoever comes through this door, and whatever they bring with them, cannot leaveever. They will be with you in your room for the rest of your life.

This concept matters to you because the quality of your life depends upon whos in your room.

One more time: The quality of your life depends upon whos in your room.

It does. The person you become and whether or not you are happy and successful depends on whos in your room. Really.

Hit pause. Time to think. How is this landing?

So whos in your room? Take a moment. Look around. Take a quick inventory. You could start with your contact list, your social media list, and check whos in your checkbook. Whos in, up close and personal? Who else is infriends, family members, people you work with, people you love having in your room along with people you wish werent there?

Okay. Thats a moment. Youll look longer later.

Now ask yourself, based upon what youve seen so far: Would you have made different choices had you known that anybody who came into your room was going to be in it forever? Almost everyone weve asked has said yes to this question.

Now that you recognize this point, the important question going forward is this: How are you going to select people you wish to have in your room now that you know they can never leave?

Many people report that they immediately have an OMG! moment when first introduced to this notion. Some launch into flashback mode and say that for them it is like watching a high-speed rerun of their entire life. A train wreck for some, or just a very bumpy ride for others.

Now, if you are about to push back with It cant literally be true that once people get in my room they are in it forever, instead ask yourself this: Would I be willing, from this moment on, to live as though it were true? In fact, neurologists report that as far as your brain is concerned, this really is true. According to renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Amen, founder of the Amen Clinics, Any significant input that is received in your brain triggers neural activity that cannot simply be erased or deleted as though it never happened.

If someone hurts you, was mean to you, or belittles you, they stay in your room and theyre all over your brain. Their voice is in the voice-recognition part of your brain, their face is in the facial-recognition part of your brain, and they dont go away. When you meet someone and they get anchored, they dont go away. People may be out of your life, but theyre still in your head. The things they say and do affect your thinking, behavior, and experienceforever.

You might, for example, believe you have ended a relationship, terminated a project, or let a previous commitment go, but these events have left an indelible markaffecting your future experience in myriad waysfor better or worse, whether you like it or not.

This realization is one of those good news/bad news deals because, to our good fortune, this is also the case when someone genuinely loves you, praises you, or skillfully mentors you.

Your past is archived in your psyche, just as your future will also be when it unfolds to become a part of your past. Whats done is done. The events of the past cannot be undone. An action taken has been taken. A word uttered cannot be taken back.

We are who we are because of and in spite of others. What can be done is to curate your room to build a better future. Moving forward, you can very carefully choose who and what comes into your room and into your life. Choose well, and you will love your life. Dont choose well, and... you know how that goes! However, the good news is that later in this book well show you how to make better choices that will dramatically improve your life.

This mindset is all about looking forward to the future. Its not about looking back in anguish to the past. This book works from this moment forward. You will begin to treat constraining elements from your past with a new understanding of how to relate to people in the future.

Lets unpack all this a little more, starting with the here and now.

Putting the transformative power of whos in your room? to work begins with an inquiry rather than a rush to action.

Imagine that your life is chaotic, and lets say you want to change that. But is chaos a cause or an effect? In other words, does chaos name the disease or is it merely a symptom? Disease may seem too strong a word. However, when you remember that disease derives from the absence of ease, then it surely applies to this state of affairs.

Notice if there are characters in your room who gained entry carrying the curse of chaos with them. You know who were talking aboutpeople who dont feel they are alive unless theyre immersed in drama. You might even have become one of them. The chaotic life has you living in an overcrowded room. Too many people, too much stuff, too little time.

As you continue your review of how your daily experience is being shaped by the people in your room, were going to ask you to engage your imagination and play along a littlemaybe more than a little.

So imagine that your life feels harsh and angryperhaps not all the time, but sometimes. Now recall a specific time when you experienced harshness and anger. Put yourself back in that moment. Whos in your room with you? Notice if you have a harsh and angry person in your presenceperhaps several harsh and angry people, maybe even a mob.