Take positive action.  Change does not come without action.

Step Seven should leave you with desires and plans: I want a new job.  I want a better relationship.  I want genuine love in my life. I want to start a foundation to improve the environment.  I want to become physically fit.  I want to stop abusing alcohol.          

Do not let the magnitude of your challenge keep you from moving forward to meet the challenge. Start slowly. Trying to do everything at once and failing fast is a classic way to wrongly convince yourself it was foolish to try. Take small steps forward.  But be sure to take them.

 Imagine you were asked to write a 300-page book on a subject you know little about. It sounds like an impossible task. But what about writing the first sentence? You could do that. A paragraph, without worrying whether it’s perfect.  Paragraphs turn into pages.  A chapter takes form.  The 300-page book that once seemed impossible to write starts to take shape.

      Dreams become reality by increments. Beginning is the key. Here is a list of reasonable, do-able actions you might take in initial pursuit of a larger goal.

·        If you’re making a career change, plan to meet with one person who works in that field.

·        If you want to lose weight, decide you’re going to walk up the three flights to your office instead of taking the elevator. If you work on the 30^th floor,  take the elevator to 27.  Or, schedule one appointment with a trainer at the gym.

·        If you want to revitalize your marriage, tell yourself you won’t leave the house tomorrow morning without paying one sincere compliment to your spouse.

·        If you’re going to invest in your vision of yourself as an artist, buy a set of paints and a canvas.

·        If you’re intent on ending your addiction to tobacco, immediately throw away three cigarettes from the package you bought today.

·        If you want to go back to school, buy the book you need to study for the entrance exam, or call up a nearby college to make an appointment with an admissions counselor.

      These may seem like small actions.  That’s good. Long-term goals are just a series of successful moments, of showing up and doing the right thing for yourself, again and again.

As you let yourself look at your life history, the past will yield its insights, and these will give way to true revelations.  You will be unearthing your buried treasure.  Myths that no longer serve you will be exploded, and dreams that can empower you will be revealed.

The future you want for yourself won’t happen overnight, but you will see progress, and people who have the information and experience to assist you in realizing your dreams will respond to your passion and authenticity.   They will want to be a part of your success—your truth.  Where you used to find walls, you will see open doors. Relationships that were once a source of conflict will be replaced by others that yield encouragement and support.

The truth has its own momentum.  As you finally do what your heart and mind know to be the right things for you, forces will align to make your dreams reality. Your job now is to let those forces draw you forward, step by step.

 Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Plan your most powerful future.

 Once you have opened your mind and heart to the chapters of your life story to date, you are ready to embark on the most exciting part of the Living the Truth journey:  Planning the next chapters, unencumbered by denial, free from the weight of all the shields you have been carrying.

 The seventh step is about vision. We believe there is great power and possibility in envisioning what you want, but only when you are confident that your dreams for yourself are true to your heart and mind.

 Before beginning Living the Truth, you ran the risk that you were dreaming about, hoping for, and working toward things that weren’t good for you, or gravitating towards people, places, jobs, and relationships that were self-defeating. Even dreams that appeared healthy to the outside world might have, on closer examination, turned out to have been other people’s dreams for you. Living the Truth means that the horizons that you see ahead really belong to you. They reflect a need to please yourself, not others. They are a result of careful and determined introspection about who you are—your authentic self.

 Imagine a woman who grew up in the shadow of a powerful, very busy father. As an adult, she based all of her self-esteem on meeting the expectations of powerful people around her. It is no accident that she found herself rising through the ranks of a male-dominated corporation, succeeding largely because of her willingness to exhaust herself to earn the praise of her superiors. By using the eight steps of Living the Truth, she realized this job was not her heart’s desire, but the result of a pattern; she wanted to attract the attention and approval of her powerful dad, or authority figures like him.  Her shield was the “high” she got when these men and her family praised her, and she was able, for a time, to convince herself that this meant she was in the right place. The discovery that she actually found her career dull and stressful, and that she did not even respect the men whose approbation she so desperately craved, was, of course, unsettling. It was also sad to confront the fact that she was, at age 35, in pursuit of love she hadn’t gotten as a child. But all these realizations were the truth, and ultimately the path to personal freedom. She was able to forgive herself for letting her entire life revolve around pleasing others. She was able to forgive her family for having misguided dreams for her. She was even able to forgive her father, whose neglect of her in service to his job was merely what he’d been taught by his own family.  Free of anger, free of the need to be a reflection of other’s ideas for her, and fully cognizant of the unconscious dynamic she wished to stop, she was now ready for Step Seven.  She found herself thinking back to being a camp counselor in college. That was work she had truly loved, and this memory led to her vision: what she really wanted to be was a teacher. At first this seemed strange to her, because she’d always made lots of money, and thought that was important to her. More work in Step Seven led her to realize that she herself didn’t place a lot of value of the things that money provided. Wealth was just one more thing she thought she needed to gain outside approval. Over time, she did leave her job and became a teacher, and is now living a life in service to her truth – a life she enjoys and cherishes rather than regrets.

 It is very possible that before you began this work, you felt, as this woman did, that your future was not really yours to plan.  But the factors that gave you this false belief will not bear the scrutiny you can now give them. Like her, you can now finally let yourself feel the emotions you’ve spent your whole life running away from, emotions that you were afraid might overwhelm you. They will not.  You will emerge intact and ready to put the past behind you. Your fear will be replaced with strength and your resentments with forgiveness. Doubt and anxiety will be replaced with self-esteem and a growing sense of possibility.  All the energy you spent suppressing these emotions and avoiding reality will now be available for positive use, to move your life in the direction you want to take it.

 Ask yourself some of the following questions: If I could choose my work, what would it be? What kind of relationship would be the most healing and joyful and would enable me to give what I have to give and to get what I need? If I am in a relationship, what do I want from it? What kind of people can I surround myself with so that I feel empowered, supported, loved and challenged? How do I keep lowering the shields that I identified, so that I am not again held hostage to patterns of behavior and emotion that keep me from my truth?

 As you ask yourself these questions over time – questions that may initially frighten or overwhelm you– notice that you will begin instead to feel a sense of well-being and empowerment. Those feelings come from the realization that you have reached a point where your dreams can resound deeply with your truth, and at which you are also entirely capable of doing whatever it takes to turn those dreams into reality.   

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

 Forgive others and yourself.

One of the hurdles of seeking out the pain in your past and turning it into your power is that it can feel as if you are blaming others for your misfortune, including people you love (for example, your parents).

It is common for people to pause at the door of self-discovery and say, I don’t want to make it seem like my parents are responsible for what I am going through. But, that’s  like a cop-out.

 This worry reflects a core misunderstanding of the goal of Living the Truth. 

Living the Truth isn’t only about empowering yourself by refusing to pull away from your own pain.  It is about realizing that your parents (or anyone else) were limited by the same very human, very understandable, yet very toxic dynamics that you were. 

In doing this work, you will finally have learned to embrace your life story, good and bad. You have seen how you buried pain and disappointment behind shields that didn’t reflect your best self or demonstrate to people your true regard or love for them. If you can accept the actions of people who hurt you, you might be able to acknowledge that they, like you – like most people – were doing the best they could. You might be able to look at your father’s anger and see the tragic influence of his own father’s alcoholism. You might be able to recognize in your competitive sister the inevitable result of the extreme pressure your parents put on her to succeed.

 When we allow ourselves to see beyond people’s actions to their pasts, we take ourselves from anger to empathy.  This is the path to forgiveness.

 Of course, the most important person to forgive is yourself.  It is very difficult to forgive ourselves, because we know both our weaknesses and capabilities so intimately. We can always envision a million and one ways we could have been better, or have avoided a failure or loss. It helps sometimes to imagine someone we love who has struggled with her own demons. Would you give her permission to forgive herself for everything she has done that is not perfect, every misstep she has made in his own attempt to avoid pain and outrun the truth?  If so, can you imagine extending a similar kindness to yourself?

 You might find it useful to mark your decision to live a life in forgiveness.   We celebrate things like graduations and weddings; why not celebrate the day you decided to stop living in the resentments of the past in favor of living in the hope and promise of the future? There’s no need to be formal or to involve anyone but yourself. Simply writing down the date and a statement about who you have been angry at, and that it is your firmest intention to let that anger go, may be a sufficiently powerful gesture.

 Forgiveness isn’t something we do once and then forget about. It is a daily practice. After we have told people we forgive them, we show them by treating them with respect and kindness, and not letting underhanded remarks or lapsed responsibilities remind them that they somehow still “owe us.” We show forgiveness to our own parents not just by treating them better, but by being better parents to our children. The amazing thing is that by forgiving others, we are forgiving ourselves. We give ourselves the opportunity to live without rage. We resolve that unhealthy dynamics and patterns that have ruled our family for generations are going to stop with us.

 Living the Truth means feeling the pain of the past; forgiving those who blindly inflicted it on us, and resolving to do better for those we love. This is the highest form of human existence.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Think about the past in order to put it behind you.

We are told not to dwell on the past.  Looking back is seen as a sign of weakness, while forging ahead is seen as a sign of strength.

We at Living the Truth disagree.  We see tremendous value in examining what we have lived through—the roots of the emotional and behavioral patterns that have set the stage for our successes or failures. We know we must understand the events and relationships that make up our life histories or we will either repeat painful dynamics from the past or needlessly waste energy as we blindly flee from them.

In Step Four we applied ourselves to connecting the dots between the past and present. In Step Five, we made a pledge to allow ourselves to feel the emotions associated with our past life experiences—especially the difficult, complicated, painful ones. We do so knowing that we have a responsibility to choose insight and authenticity over a life of denial. We can live unconsciously and let tired, recycled patterns keep us in orbits defined by fear.  Or, we can live consciously, and accept these feelings as clues to who we are and what we can be.
 
 Let’s say that when you began this work, you knew that you were unfulfilled in your job. You might have written the statement:  Instead of blindly climbing the corporate ladder, I am going to examine why I don’t believe I deserve to pursue my dreams.  You resisted having the couple of after-work cocktails that used to transform memories of another disappointing day into a vaguely pleasant haze.  By spending sober time alone with your thoughts, you discovered you were deeply affected by your parents’ divorce, and ultimately uncovered your mother gave up going to law school to become a secretary so she could support you.  Further exploration yielded up more truth: Your mother was angry about this and tried to hide it from you, but it came through in her temper, especially when you failed at anything, or suggested you’d lost interest in something. The essential message you received growing up – one that still reverberates through your life – was this: Keep achieving, don’t get distracted, or you will not get love.

 This insight is real buried treasure.  You’ve unearthed it.  Now it is time to unlock it. In order to keep the past from running your present life you have to go back and let yourself feel what it felt like to be the kid living through this dynamic.  Remember what it was like when you were 11, and your mother lost her temper about your average grades in math, and placed the blame on you for wasting time playing guitar or acting in school plays?  If you felt scared, remember the fear; if you felt lazy, remember how shameful that felt; and if your mother’s anger made you angry, feel that as well. Let yourself be sad and mad that your childhood didn’t give you what you needed.

 There is nothing wrong with acknowledging loss, or accepting that someone you loved disappointed you.  These actions won’t make you get lost in the past. They are a way of putting these feelings where they belong—back in the part of your life story in which they unfolded, not free to contaminate your present reality or limit your horizons. When you remember and feel what it was like to be four years old, or 10 years old, you’re freeing yourself to move beyond those memories and feelings.  You are making a conscious decision to place the drama of this dynamic behind you.

Patterns from our past hold us in very powerful orbits, and these orbits can only be disrupted by our will to open our minds and our hearts to what we have lived through. This determination to stop living defensively, avoiding our life histories, allows us to exit the dramas of our past, and make healthy decisions that give us back our free will and ability to choose the path that will make us most authentic and powerful.

 Before Living the Truth, your past was like loose paperwork you couldn’t seem to complete or find the right place for. When it got in your way, you just stuffed it into a different drawer. In Step Four, we started to take those pages out and look at them.  Step Five is about taking these pages and reading them carefully so you can put them in order, and bind them into their proper place in your life story. And by binding these pages, we accept they are completed – and we can’t change them.  We can learn from them and write new chapters, true to ourselves. 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Find and feel the connections between negative experiences THEN and problems NOW.

You’ve identified your problem and accepted the fact that its roots are in the past. You’re also in the process of abandoning your shield strategies to make yourself emotionally available to buried feelings.

 Step Four is about taking these feelings and putting them to work by connecting the dots: You’re ready to make those crucial connections between what’s troubling you in your life now, and what went on in the past.

If you were a building had foundation damage, Step Four is the part where the experts come in and assess what went wrong during construction. In this case, you are the expert, and your credentials are your unique access to memories about the past, the feelings that come up when you consider them, and your sense of what in your life today might be a result of these feelings remaining unexamined and unresolved.

Here it may be useful to go back to the statement you wrote in Step One. Read it to yourself. When you considered this problem before, you probably felt angry, or frustrated, or tried to think of a way to fix the problem as soon as possible. This time, try looking at the problem with curiosity. Ask yourself, why is it that I have this problem. What is it in my past – either an event, or a long-term interpersonal drama– that reminds me of how this problem looks or feels?

It might seem obvious to you: I was overweight when I was younger and teased about it, and I run from physical intimacy now. But if it is not obvious, remember our minds do not always work in linear fashion. We can imitate and repeat old behaviors, but we can also make our lives all about fleeing from them.

Take, for example, a woman who loses her older brother as a child. Later in life she finds that she will tolerate almost anything from her friends and lovers. She would rather be misunderstood or unhappy or even mistreated than risk losing people she loves. But an opposite overreaction is also possible: Another women who suffers a similar loss may have few friends and no real intimate relationship. She is so unwilling to face the risk of being abandoned that she opts to live in isolation.

Another example of running from the past might be this:Consider a man who grew up in a family in which his father lost all his money in a bad business deal. As an adult, this man clings to money. He cares only for wealth, believes financial security is the only security, and ignores any relationship that doesn’t contribute to his bottom line.

Now, think about another man with very similar life story issues who believes himself incapable of financial responsibility and won’t involve himself with money at all.

Whether you’re running away from what you experienced early in life or whether you’re running toward it, the fact that you’re running means you’re not in control. You can’t live in the present moment powerfully or plan your most powerful future.

Step Four is about waking up to the connections between then and now, in order to take ourselves off of autopilot.

As much as we can, we want to notice our feelings of sadness, anger or frustration (and of joy and freedom as well) and remember other times when we felt this way and why. We want to start putting details from the past—people places and things—together with these feelings so that we can start to tell a story—the story of how our past experiences continue to influence our choices and dreams.

What earlier trouble in your life are you replaying or running away from?
Go to friends, family, or anyone you think might be helpful in your quest to learn the truth. People are natural storytellers, and if you let them know that you are searching for clues to what happened in your past and how it influences your present life, they may share valuable insights.

Once you open yourself up to the fact that the past influences the present, you will find clues almost everywhere you turn that will link the two in your own life.

Memories will surface. Welcome them.

Because your story, both now and then, matters.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Resist the behaviors that keep the pain buried

None of us want to feel pain.

 That’s why we are all very adept at finding habits and behaviors that keep our minds from focusing on it. These habits and behaviors are called because we hide behind them, and use them as barriers against sadness, anger, disappointment or painful memories.

Some shield strategies are very obvious. Some are much more subtle. Some of the most common shield strategies include:

– Overspending
– Constantly arguing with your husband, wife, or partner
– Obsessive dieting or exercise
– Sexual indiscretions or sexual addiction
– Pornography addiction
– Gambling
– Overeating
– Obsessing over romantic relationships
– Alcohol, drugs and/or cigarettes

     The common denominator of all these shield strategies is that they cover up the truth. They soothe us, and let us feel that for now, everything is OK. But once their intoxicating or anesthetizing effects have worn off, we are left with the same pain we sought to mask.

Step Three is about finally breaking that cycle. It is about telling yourself that the temporary pleasure, thrills, and boosts in self-esteem that you get from shield strategies are no longer enough for you. It is about clearing away temporary balms and short-sighted feel-good strategies so you can prepare for real growth. It is about recognizing that you are stronger than you believed, and knowing you don’t need to hide from your truths.

It might help to imagine that beyond the shield you’re holding up is a mirror. You can’t see the mirror because the shield is in the way. But the mirror is capable of reflecting who you are and where you’ve been, going all the way back to your earliest years.

Now envision that in order to start seeing in the mirror, you have to start putting down the shield. You don’t have to drop it all at once, but you have to begin to lower it, slowly.
As long as you’re holding a shield, you are living in fear. When you put the shield down, you’re starting to live the truth.

The first thing you want to do is to identify your shield. It might be very obvious, perhaps something from the list above, and it may be the reason you were motivated to visit LivingtheTruth.com in the first place.

Having trouble identifying your shield strategies? Think about anything you do repeatedly that tends to powerfully shift your focus away from yourself and what you truly value and care about. Maybe office or family gossip has you on the phone late into the night or interferes with your daily activities. Perhaps you’ve taken to obsessing about the clutter in your house as a way of forgetting about the clutter in your head. Perhaps it is yo-yo dieting or a tumultuous relationship or the cigarette in your hand (all shield strategies) that distracts you from the underlying, emotional questions you could be answering right now. And answering them would free you to live a much more powerful future.

You may want to write down a few ideas about what your shield is, and come back to the question a few times over the course of a day. Whenever you find yourself thinking about something you don’t want to do, or a challenge that you don’t want to face, make a note of what you reach for. It may be a drink or a cigarette or the controls to a video game. It might even be a behavior that seems “healthy” – like a vow to climb every peak on the eastern seaboard before age

Be sure to record your shield strategies on your MyTruth page size: Once you identify a shield strategy, it’s time to oppose it. It would be wonderful if a two-pack-a-day smoker or an alcoholic were to quit right now. But that isn’t realistic for most people. Living the truth starts with simply paying attention to your shield strategies more than before, noticing how often you use them, and beginning to resist them. If you’re too hard on yourself – I’m so heavy that I just can’t even begin to diet; I’m so heartbroken that I will never stop thinking about him; I’m so far behind in my career that I have to work day and night or I’ll never catch up – you run the risk of giving yourself reasons to stop before you begin.

Make your changes small and manageable. Even simple changes, like throwing out one type of food you tend to binge on, taking a walk instead of reading an old lover’s email again, or changing one section of your resume instead of playing another computer game, are steps in the right direction of self-discipline, self-esteem and genuine self-improvement.

Remember that it isn’t supposed to feel good when you start using anti-shield strategies. The fact that you feel anxious or depressed or irritable when you leave an obsessive relationship, or stop binging on sweets is a sign that you’re detoxing. You’re discovering the art of spending time with yourself. The more you can put down your shield, the harder it gets for your mind’s defense mechanisms to muster forces against the truth.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Once you’ve committed to focusing on a specific area of your life that you want to change, the key to moving forward will be taking this leap of faith: Accepting the idea that your problem hasn’t come out of the blue. It has roots from the past.

If you have been trying to muscle through your problems for some time, always making the resolution to just stop yelling at your kids, to just stop eating so much, or to just stop selling yourself short in relationships or in pursuing your dreams, you are probably ready accept that simply being tired of your tired of your behavior and wanting to change it does not necessarily lead to change. 

You have suspected there’s another way, and Step Two is about allowing the key to your future could lie in coming to grips with parts of your past that you have left unexplored.

 Imagine if someone were to ask you to start reading a novel beginning on page 125, to continue reading through page 225, and to then write an ending in which the lead character meets with tremendous success.  Chances are you’d feel anxious and unprepared. After all, you’d be coming to the story midstream, without knowing the character’s motivations, strengths and weaknesses.  “This isn’t my story,” your heart would tell you.  “How am I supposed to make it come out right?”

In order to write something credible and convincing, you’d want to know what happened to the main character in the first 124 pages. You’d want to know how he or she had responded to personal challenges, what life lessons he or she had taken away from their family of origin, whether they had suffered any significant losses, what their parents’ marriage was like, so forth.  You’d want to know all about the character’s back story (his or her earlier life history).

Without this information, you could not confidently move forward, the next chapters you wrote would make the story and the character seem false.

Likewise, when we try to move forward with our lives without a true understanding of its earlier chapters, we ask of ourselves something no less fraught with difficulty.

There’s a reason we turn blind eyes to our own life histories, our own back stories:  We are needlessly afraid that looking at the past, especially the parts of it that are unsettling, will somehow weaken us or take away our momentum in life.  

Step Two asks you to stop running, and to believe that there are great rewards in store for you if you do. The truth about your life history—including the strengths and the weaknesses in your family relationships, the successes and the failures you have encountered, the gifts you received and the losses you sustained—are not your enemies. They are buried treasures. They are meant to be uncovered, looked at honestly and learned from, because they hold the keys to who we are and ways we can change. They tell us what holds us back from being our best selves, having good relationships, and achieving our goals.

 Imagine a woman who is always picking the wrong men: Men who drink, men who don’t treat her well, men who force her again and again into a caretaking role, but don’t take care of her.

What she needs, is insight into why she is making choices that cause her so much suffering, so she can change her behavior patterns and find true love.

The insight such a woman needs is as close as her own past experiences in life, very possibly in her family of origin. Maybe the insight can be gleaned from examining how her father treated her or how he treated her mother. As she opens chapters of her life story that have remained closed for too long, she will begin to see why she pursues emotionally unavailable men and why she feels unworthy of real love.  She will understand that she hasn’t been the victim of bad luck in love, but locked in a pattern established long ago.

 Knowledge is power. Armed with the truth about her life story, this woman can put the past where it belongs—behind her.  She will no longer be forced into repeating the same mistakes.  She can begin to understand her behavior and choose a more equal relationship with the potential for real intimacy.

 Our problems aren’t accidents. Unsuitable partners don’t merely show up on our doorsteps; we choose them because of ill-formed ideas about what we deserve. We find ourselves in unsatisfying careers because something early on told us that we couldn’t enjoy work, or make money, or take leadership roles. Our frustration with our children doesn’t mean we simply are bad parents; it may well mean that our own upbringing contained messages that parenting was a battle of wills instead of an act of love. 

 These painful pages of our current and future life stories will continue to be written so long as we choose to ignore their origins in the earlier chapters of our lives. That’s why the greatest promise for personal growth is looking in the mirror, in order to see behind you.

So forget about just doing it better, or hoping that your luck improves, or, even worse, resigning yourself to the idea that “this is just the way things are.”  Whatever your problem is, it likely has roots in your past, in avoiding a healing and empowering reckoning with your earlier life experiences. Taking Step Two means turning in the direction of what you haven’t been willing to look at, and keeping your eyes wide open.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

This step is about clarity.  You take this step because you want to be sure that you’re moving forward with a real, actionable goal. Maybe it’s to revitalize your marriage.  Maybe it’s to find work you really love.  Or, it could be to stop using food as a crutch.

 Many of us have multiple areas in our lives that could use some improvement.  But Living the Truth techniques work in part by acknowledging that problems in life are linked.  Often, they share root causes.  Identifying any area of your life that needs immediate attention and beginning to work on it will lead you naturally to related life issues that can also benefit from the insights you are achieving.

Having an initial goal starts the LTT process in earnest.  When we are dissatisfied, we can feel overwhelmed. There’s often a contagious nature to emotional distress from one problem that can color everything we see and feel.  And that can stop specific, liberating changes before they begin.  

 In what area of your life do you want to achieve positive change first?

If the answer doesn’t come to you immediately, that’s OK.  Find a quiet place to think for a little while.  Let your mind and heart focus.

 You might want to begin with a general statement like, “I don’t like my job. Half the time I don’t even feel like getting out of bed to go to work.”  Write down your statement, so you have a record of this very first sentence, the start of your journey toward insight and empowerment.

 Next, examine your statement.  Hone in on the specific aspect of the problem you’ve identified that troubles you most.  Is your boss someone who criticizes you in a way that is painful to you? Does work not leave you enough time for your family or for pursuing a goal you are tremendously passionate about?  Perhaps you feel that you have been assigned an impossible amount of work and can’t seem to set boundaries between your personal and professional lives.

 If you identified your marriage as the part of your life that troubles you, be specific. What is it about your marriage that is disappointing you?  Do you feel emotionally alone because there’s too little communication?  Is sex infrequent?  Is your spouse’s obsession with his or her own career mean you rarely spend time together?

Write down the most specific statement that describes what you’re struggling with.  Remember, writing a problem down makes it easier to focus on and should give you the sense that you are already committed to working to solve it.

  Don’t stop at just one attempt in making your statement specific.  Keep refining what you’ve written.  Add your emotional reactions to your statement.   If your problem is with an employer, you might ultimately write, “I feel as though I am assigned my boss’ work all the time and get no credit for doing it.  I end up being angry at myself for not setting boundaries.”

 As another example, if you identified your sex life with your partner as the issue you are focusing on, you might come up with something like: “Having to ask for sex makes me feel unattractive and unwanted.  So, I’ve stopped initiating romance between us. ” 

 Here are some other examples:

 – I want to end the co-dependent relationship I am in with a drug user, (in which I am valued mostly as a kind of nurse) and make myself available to someone who will nurture me, too. 

– I want to stop letting my mother tell me (and my husband) how to raise my children.  Her intrusiveness makes me feel like a child and disrupts my relationship with my new family.

– I want to quit smoking by understanding the underlying factors that make me feel stressed, so I can address them.

 – I want to create a marriage in which I feel understood and valued, and where my career goals are considered as important as my spouse’s. 

  It is important that you not rush this step.  Allow yourself the time and space to sit alone with your thoughts and hone in on the specific kind of growth you hope to achieve.  If you feel a little uncomfortable, that’s good.  As we peel away the layers of denial we have accumulated over the years and move toward the truth, we will inevitably experience some amount of discomfort. It’s like working out muscles that you haven’t used for a long time.  Your heart and soul feel you calling on them to do more.  But asking more of yourself is the way to become what you need to be.  

And you’re already on your way.

 Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Living the Truth (LTT) stems from this belief: Humans have the capacity to dramatically change their lives (for the better) by honestly looking at the past events and relationships that have contributed to their present thoughts and behavior patterns.  
 
This unearthing of key lessons about who we are deep in our souls also unlocks the most important secrets to what we can become.  Because when we feel authentic and grounded, when we feel, we dream with true hearts and clear minds. Then, we can become what we want to be.  

LTT also is founded upon the certainty that humans underestimate their own capacity for self-knowledge and needlessly fear their core thoughts and feelings, when those very thoughts and feelings have the power to liberate them from self-defeating behavior patterns.  That’s why one of the LTT mottos is: “Everything you need to change your life is already inside you.”

One of the ways LTT gives you access to your internal wisdom is by helping you bring into awareness the most important “pages” and “chapters” of your life story, elements of which almost all of us keep from consciousness because we think of them as painful.
 
Creating your own MyTruth page is a good way to begin this process.  It is also an excellent way to connect with others engaged in a journey of self-knowledge, who can help you with your own.

Here are some success stories of LTT:
* A 44-year-old woman who, in the past, continually chose controlling men, none of whom made her feel loved. She finally realized her father was controlling in many ways, and she did not feel loved as a child. Reclaiming her reality allowed her to stop “living” in the past and start acting as an empowered female – so that next time, she can pick a man who treats her as an equal.

* A 37-year-old man felt isolated and was addicted to alcohol. He realized he was dulling the pain he felt from losing his sibling when he was a teenager; he had never fully grieved. Allowing himself to feel emotions he denied for decades, he freed himself from the need to anesthetize himself and take a chance again on a close friendship.

* A 29-year-old man with panic disorder, whose symptoms included debilitating heart palpitations and a sense of impending doom, recalled how frightened and powerless he felt when his father was diagnosed with cancer – also at the age of 29.  By “connecting the dots,” his anxiety medicine suddenly begins to work, because it is now powered by more than chemistry.  Insight has taken hold.

* A 24-year-old woman binged and purged food as a way to distract herself from her core emotions. She realized those emotions included deep sadness about having moved from three separate cities and schools and groups of friends as her parents tried to find stability in their own lives.  She embraces how alone she felt at times, how she has come to distrust interpersonal connections and how she has kept a man she loves at a distance, fearing he will “move on,” too. Feeling more and more helps her binge and purge less and less.  She starts to believe in herself and in others and sees her relationship flourish.
 
The four core principles and eight-step programs that form the foundation of LTT were developed by me, Dr. Keith Ablow.

My clients have included celebrities, politicians and Fortune 500 business leaders, but they have also included people from every walk of life.  What I realized in the course of working with so many people was that we all have a remarkable ability to create success for ourselves, in our personal and professional lives, but only once we achieve personal authenticity.   
 

I realized this authenticity is well within reach for each and every one of us.
 
People needlessly hold up shields against internal truths that could be empowering, life affirming and even life saving for them.  These shields can include distracting, tumultuous relationships, overeating, overspending, overusing alcohol, smoking, using illicit drugs, gambling, and on and on.
 
 LTT helps individuals put down these shields, and look past them into the mirror, which reflects their true selves. Then, they can build authentic and powerful existences, putting their dreams within reach.

Over the course of the next eight weeks – every Friday – I will bring you the eight steps you need to “Living the Truth.”

There will be real-life examples, insights, stories, goals and, above all, hope.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

On Monday, June 16, 49-year-old Lori Drew pled not guilty in Federal Court to one count of conspiracy and three counts of using a computer to inflict emotional distress (violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act).

Drew, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., is accused of creating a phony MySpace account, which convinced her teenaged neighbor Megan Meier that a boy named Josh Evans (who never existed) had fallen in love with her, then suddenly came to despise her. In one message, “Evans” wrote Meier that the world would be better off without her. Brokenhearted, Meier hanged herself.

I met Megan’s mother Tina, a courageous woman who has become a national crusader against cyberbullying.

There is more at stake here, however, even than that noble goal. The Lori Drew case is another wake-up call that proves how our genuine and exquisite human emotions and vulnerabilities can be tapped and twisted by technologies like the Internet, which can “infect” us with toxic fictions that cause real-life injuries, even death.

This is a time when millions of Americans are using social networks to “connect” with one another without really knowing whether the “individuals” on the other side of those connections are speaking the truth and divulging real insights about themselves, or manufacturing “profiles” in order to manipulate and, ultimately, inflict harm on them. We are attaching ourselves to sometimes-contrived life stories that may have no roots in reality, thereby putting vulnerable individuals at the mercy of cyber-imposters who can emotionally assault from an infinite distance.

Too many of us are primed for these toxic and fictional relationships because the Web encourages them. The business plan of the reprehensible Second Life, for example, is to offer people the opportunity to live alternate existences unfettered by the real facts of their lives. 

Webkinz offers children the chance to care for cyberpets that are not real, yet attempt to elicit real emotional connections—like concern for whether the animals are having fun and enjoying their little, animated rooms. This bending of reality is not without consequences. One consequence is that we lose our ability to separate reality from fantasy and become permeable to interpersonal, Internet fraud.

This isn’t the fault of MySpace. It is a byproduct of the times and technology and of less socially responsible sites like the ones I have mentioned above.

One way (I hope) people can fight back, is by participating in communities that put truth-telling front and center as a goal. I’ve created one called Living the Truth. Although that network isn’t immune to manipulators, it is filled with thousands of members dedicated to honesty, and therefore, I hope it will be more likely to filter out imposters.

Here’s the best antidote, especially for our young people: We must tell them that nothing they experience in cyberspace is as trustworthy as what they see with their own eyes, can touch with their own hands and can feel with their own hearts. We must encourage them to speak openly with us—their parents—and with their siblings and their close friends about their true feelings. We should remind them, always, of the wisdom of the body, the value of physical fitness and of inhaling the real air available only in Nature, not on the Web. We should reaffirm our connection to other real, living beings, like our pets and the endangered species we seek to protect from harm.

The Internet can disconnect us from ourselves and make us vulnerable to others who are using wireless technology to float free of the responsibility for their very real anger and violence. We need to close some of the space that now separates us from one another and from reality. We can’t forget to join hands as we join social networks.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.