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By Dr. William K. Larkin on September 2, 2010
Each of us has "TouchStones" stored in our brains that affect your energy level. TouchStones are memories which are big, significant reference points for our thoughts and feelings.
A TouchStone can be a positive or negative anchor in our brains. We tend to make much more use of negative TouchStones in our lives than we do of positive ones. The left hemisphere of your brain will remember a "touchstone," particularly a negative one in a factual way that fits how you use it. Your right hemisphere recalls a memory within a much larger context and transforms negative energy into positive, open, and attachment oriented energy.
How do you get a negative "TouchStone" of a memory that makes you angry or upset over into the right hemisphere so the memory can be healed?
First, make a list of the "TouchStone" memories in your life that you consider negative or that still feel negative. Then ask one, solitary important question that you are willing to give some time to answering: "What was the good that came of this?" or "What is the good that can come of this?" Then allow your right hemisphere, which is connected to the "oneness" of your nature, and to the Universe, to give you the answers. There are always benefits to negative TouchStones, if we are willing to allow the answers to emerge rather than to nurse old wounds.
Give as much energy and emotional play to these answers as you need to move them from the left hemisphere negative list of psychic energy-wasters to your right hemisph
ere integrator of experience.
This is the benefit. You open your energy, you unblock your psychic energy and you become freer and much more able to be in an UpSpiral where you learn faster, are more creative, and "feel good." This increase in positive energy is a "lubricant" that allows your brain to function with greater ease and integrity.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on August 23, 2010
If y
ou don't have enough to deal with in this life that you need to go digging around in some past life, you deserve what you get- more to deal with. Maybe you had a past life, but in this life, it's none of your business.
Try this instead. There is left hemisphere memory and right hemisphere memory. Left hemisphere memories are "linear lists," stored up to tell a particular one-sided story, evidence to pull up when you want to support your narrow-mindedness, your mood, your temper, or blame someone when your toes get stepped on.
Right hemisphere memory is autobiographical. It looks at the wider picture, the wider vision. It looks at the memory with more distance, perspective and wisdom and its function is to integrate the negative memories of the left hemisphere in to a larger, more functioning whole. You go through your whole life, hopefully "mellowing" -becoming kinder and gentler and easier with yourself. That's because the right hemisphere is getting the larger picture and helping you understand and forg
ive first yourself, then others as well.
How do you get from the left to the right? There are many ways that we can teach you, but let me share two.
1. Ask yourself what you learned that has helped you become who you are because of the negative memory.
2. Ask yourself what good came of this negative -what was the door that opened?
There are many more ways not to be trapped by the linear, stuck, negative left hemispheric treatment of memory. It's like someone else writing your biography. Your 
right hemisphere is autobiographical and will help you tell your story with more wisdom, perspective and kindness to yourself and others.
The longer you exist in "positivity being," the more juice you give the right hemisphere to do its work.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on August 16, 2010
It is living at a hig
her quality of life by managing the ups and downs of life more effectively. It is creating a mood predisposition and it is State of Mind Management (SOMM). It is living more "up" than down by using the power of your choice and learning the ways to do it.
An UpSpiral Score ranges from 1-100. 100 is simply feeling good, feeling optimistic, and feeling generally "on top of it." 51-100 is an UpSpiral and 50 and below is the DownSpiral. The bottom of the DownSpiral is despondency and despair. It is characterized by pessimism and negative mood, anger, resentment, and feeling "oppressed." Life narrows in the DownSpiral.
PEOPLE WHO SPEND MORE TIME IN THE DOWNSPIRAL THAN THE UPSPIRAL HAVE TWICE THE CHANCE OF A HEART ATTACK OR STROKE.
Most people live far lower in the UpSpiral than they need to, and most people yo-yo between being somewhere in the UpSpiral and somewhere in the DownSpiral. We have come to believe that this "up-and-down" is a normal part of life, when, in fact, it is just learned behavior. We have far more choice and ability to remain in an UpSpiral than we usually know or believe.
Is it possible to be very high in an UpSpiral all of the time? Is it possible to always be in the 90's on this scale? Two answers. First, our research for the last eight years shows us that people can live in an UpSpiral in the upper 90's most all of the time, once they learn how to do it. Second, it is also fair to say that we can live somewhere in th
e UpSpiral all of the time-that experiencing the DownSpiral isn't really necessary. We may not always be in the 90's, but we can always be above 51. Despair and the narrowing of depression aren't necessary. It simply doesn't have to be so.
We live by this myth that there are ups and downs in life and that they are largely created by external events. The truth is that, for the most part, there are external events to which we respond and our response to these events determines where we are in the Spiral, not the event itself. Either you are a victim of a difficulty or you are stripping a problem of everything it has to teach you and becoming stronger and wiser. Or you are learning to let one door close so another can open.
We contend, in fact, we guarantee that you can learn to live in an UpSpiral, somewhere, 100% of the time. We believe that pessimism is unnecessary, despite some very limited research. It is unnecessary because you have strengths that, once identified and engaged, make pessimism in decision-making unnecessary.
Living in an UpSpiral is a decision. Once you have made the decision, you can learn the strategies and the skills to do it. We can teach you and we can teach you to teach others.
It is our gu
arantee.
You can learn to do this and you can learn to be a Certified and Licensed Life Coach, or just a more effective professional or leader. To learn more about our classes, click on the "Training" tab on this page, or call us at 760.636.1400, 9-4 Pacific Time, Monday through Friday.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on August 9, 2010
Negative 
memories are linear and they are managed by the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere will give you whatever negative memory or collection of them you need to sustain isolating and playing it safe. The left hemisphere, completely on its own, will store your memories of a "door that closed" so that you don't even consider where a new could or even has opened.
For every door that closes another door opens, in one way or another. ALWAYS
Negative memories and their patterns lose their power to create isolation and the host of other issues that comprise structure of blocked, negative energy by the way they are integrated by the right hemisphere. There are over 100 billion neurons and thousands of connections, numbering into the trillions and trillions of connections, that are at work here either holding you back or moving you forward into healthy engagement with the world around you.
To heal a memory or a pattern of memories, do a very simple thing.
For the last year, write down (yes, please write it down) a description of any door that has closed. Then honestly and openly ask yourself to consider what doors have opened (and please write that down!) -so you can see it all in front of you.
Then write down every door that has closed for you in the last 5 years. Beside every door that has closed, ask yourself what door has opened and write it down.
Do it then for every 10 year period of your life and write it all down.
If you get stuck, ask someone who knows you well to help you.
The left hemisphere in your brain will keep very good linear track of every door that has closed for you. You can draw upon this store house to explain every "why" of almost any behavior you want to justify, rationalize or think you are solving by asking "why."
Now do some real work with solutions. Realize that the right hemisphere of your brain is in the business of opening a door, and it always connects you in a much more positive way with your world of feelings and experiences. If you will give your permission, the right hemisphere will always open new doors.
One door closes, another door opens. Always, if you allow it.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on August 2, 2010
In my Fathe
r's house are many mansions........
What a magnificent metaphor for the truth of God- in the infinite, enormous house of the Father are many mansions. Not just one mansion but many mansions. And mansions are huge with lots and lots of doors - in fact, an infinite number of doors.
There are so many doors in this mansion that for every one of the doors that closes, an entire mansion of doors is ready to open.
Negative memories are linear and they are managed by the left hemisphere of the brain (a mansion.) The left hemisphere will give you whatever negative memory or collection of them you need to sustain isolation and "playing it safe." The left hemisphere, left to itself, will store your memories of a "door that closed" so that you don't even consider where a new door did open or even could have opened.
For every door that closes, another door opens, in one way or another. ALWAYS
Negative memories and their patterns lose their power to create isolation and the host of other issues that comprise structures of blocked, negative energy by the way they are int
egrated by the right hemisphere. There are over 100 billion neurons and thousands of connections among them numbering into the trillions and trillions that are at work in just one mansion of the brain here, either holding you back or moving you outward into healthy interchange with the world around you. Quite a house of mansions, huh?
To heal a memory or a pattern of memories, do a very simple thing.
For the last year write down (yes, please write it down) any door that has closed. Then honestly and openly ask yourself to consider what doors have opened (and please write that down) so you can see all of this in front of you.
Then write down every door that has closed for you in the last 5 years. Beside every door that has closed, ask yourself what door has opened and write it down.
Do it for then for every 10 year period of your life and write it all down. Meditate, pray. The answer of the door that opened will come.
If you get stuck, a
sk someone who knows you well to help you.
The left hemisphere in your brain will keep very good linear track of every door that has closed for you, stubbornly so. You can draw upon this store house to explain every "why" of almost any behavior you want justify, rationalize or think you are solving by asking "why."
Now do some real work with solutions. Realize that the right hemisphere of your brain is in the business of opening a door, and it inter-relates with you and your world, if you will give your permission, to open new doors.
One door closes, another door opens. Always has, in fact, and always will, if you let it.
There are many doors in the Father's mansion.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on July 26, 2010
Negative, shadowy memories get a lot of attention. More than they deserve, but after all, they sell books for half-baked healers and their publishers with most of the bucks going to the
publisher. Positive memories, which are even more powerful, don't get nearly as much attention. Why? Less bucks and more ignorance, in the true sense of the word. A focus on positive memories will heal and restore and increase our resilience.
Did you know that each side of your brain remembers your past in different ways and at different times? The left hemisphere of your brain keeps a list of memories, usually negative ones. It stores these memories out of context and recalls them for a variety of reasons. If you are one of those people who always want to ask "why," this part of your brain will cooperate and will come up with a memory, whether it's a correct reason or not. The brain will always fill a gap in knowing, but not necessarily in an altogether accurate way.
If you want an excuse to be ornery, full of self-pity, stuck in "why," or have some reason to rationalize your anger about the past, your left hemisphere will cooperate. If you want to be reflective, contemplative, contextually accurate, or autobiographical, it will be your right hemisphere that will supply you with the stuff of the maturing bra
in, especially as it does its work of the developmental stages of the second half of life.
Your right hemisphere remembers "autobiographically." If you retrieve a memory or memories from your right hemisphere, they will be more complete, more totally in context, and much more of a complete narrative. The right hemisphere is also importantly NOT JUDGMENTAL about its autobiographical recall of memory.
Very simply, if you recall a memory from the left hemisphere, it is easier to experience it negatively and to "act out" based upon that memory. If you remember from the right hemisphere, you are more likely to be reflective and to give the memory new and ever more maturing perspectives.
The research is beginning to show, and we suspect it to be so, that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) recalls memory from the left hemisphere without the benefit of right hemispheric moderation and modulation in a significant and healing way.
How do you recall memory from the right hemisphere in a more autobiographical sense to increase health? Very simple. Ask yourself what benefit there is, what good came from thi
s situation, or what there is to be glad about in any and every memory. In others words, ask of every memory, what is there to be grateful for here, what is there to be glad about, what were and are the benefits? Then feel the positive feelings, like gratitude or love, that begin to match the new perspective you are generating from your right hemisphere. You will find your way to greater resilience and peace.
I am going to be writing about this all week long on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. There are four more parts to using the right hemisphere in order to remember our memories in a way I call "Touchstones," and it's our way at ANI of dealing with the negative past.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on July 20, 2010
The f
astest and the most connected neuropathways are those we use most often and the ones in our past that we have most used.
I
f we are determined to remember negative memories, we will remember and "lubricate" the emotions that are connected to them. If we remember the good that came from any negative experience, we will grease the lightning fast movement of positive emotions.
While we tend to give memories and even "yesterday" a lot of mental air time, we can play any mental music in the "airtime" of our brain that we choose to play.
It's just hard to remember to play positive emotions.
WD-40 is a rapid fix lubricant that oils just about anything in the house. Our "brand" of WD-40 is to smile broadly, to say, and to feel, if only a little, gratitude
, peace, joy, hope, and love. As we have moved into the fullness of summer, its changes in activities, temperatures, moods and pace, we may have had to lubricate many things in our homes from doors, to car hinges, to whatever.
The WD-40 for our emotional life is so simple and just as simple to forget. We live with a mental ambient soundtrack of love, peace, gratitude, joy and hope, if we choose to and if we practice it.
I am most l-a-z-y and most easily distracted in the summer by a hundred things and so a reminder to live emotionally where I choose needs to go into the vacation plan to increase the level of fun and happiness.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on July 12, 2010
Do thoughts create the feelings we have or do our feelings create our thoughts? Does changing your thinking change your feelings or are your thoughts the captive of your mood or feeling state?
It is both and that's what undoes much of the "positive thinking" movement. Monitoring your thoughts and always trying to be positive helps, but you can't do it all the time and it just isn't the whole picture, not by a long shot. Thoughts can change feelings, but emotions and feelings can also change thoughts.
For example, negative self-talk that goes on inside your head is a combination of both feelings and thoughts.
Feelings and thoughts travel on the same neuropathways and it usually feelings that get the right of way, particularly the stronger or more persist
ent they are. If you get really, really persistent with positive thinking, it will pick up speed and power, though.
So what's the solution? The solution is not only to change your negative thinking. It's also the decision to change your negative feelings. But don't change your negative feelings by force or by denial. Change your negative feelings by learning to do what we have never really learned to do. Learn to feel positive emotion and practice feeling positive feelings. Learn to feel love, peace, gratitude, joy and hope "on call."
Some negative feelings give us important information about what not to do and other negative feelings are habits, patterns and just automatic negative feelings. Just don't live in 
negative feeling; let them tell you to get to a positive place.
"Positivity Being" is where it's at. At ANI, we teach you that in our Emotional Gym and we teach you how to discern between negative feelings that are a message and negative feelings that are like gnats buzzing around in your head.
Positive thinking alone will not do it. We have to learn to develop positive emotional muscle. It doesn't come automatically. Many folks are as much slaves to negative emotions as they are to negative thoughts.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on July 5, 2010
What do you suppose happens if you spend time shining the light on the dark side of you? You're right. You grow your dark side. But how can this be? There are so many healers and facilitators of groups watching DVDs, leading people to investigate their dark side, wallow in their hurts, dig them out, raise them up and get them healed. Just what is the healing? The healing is that after you have gone through all of the exercises that essentially blame the way you are on your past, that this dark side morphs into something else to dig up and you have more dark side to process the next time. It just never ends. And there is no research to support it. There is also no theology, except one of dualism, that supports it. All of this is the product of self-proclaimed, half-baked psychological types, poorly trained who want to exert power over others and sell books and DVDs that never get you past the negative core beliefs they contend they do.
Shine the light on the positive and you get a quite different result with "positivity being." In an UpSpiral that is supported by your real strengths, you shed the skins of the past. They simply are not issues because you are getting on with your life, and getting on with your life heals more than anything else, more quickly and more pervasively. Digging out the past at a time proclaimed by "healers" is dangerous and unhealthy and it grows the problem by focusing atten
tion there. In quantum physics, it is called the Zeno Effect.
It is true that in an UpSpiral, you will encounter negativity within yourself and you will also encounter negative patterns that have a history. However, you encounter them at the "right" time, when you are in a positive place. You can look at them in your way, from your strengths, and make decisions about changing both beliefs and behavior. The negative will be less, you will have much more resilience to deal with it, and you will spend minimal amounts of time and energy there. You won't have to buy a book, buy a DVD, or spend money on workshop led by "certified" dark side shadow chasers. You have every strength you need to deal with any negative core beliefs, negative patterns, or negative memories that exist within you. The issue is not your past. You are not a victim of it, and its power exists only in the attention that you give to it.
Stop chasing your dark side and embrace the light of living in an UpSpiral of positivity. When you do, all of the research shows that you will grow beyond what you think holds you back, you will increase your resilience, you will be less bothered by the negative for less time, and you will be less reactive.
So sorry you spend all that time chasing your dark side. You are filled with wonderful significant strengths that will keep you in an UpSpiral and give you the power to deal with any negativity from being "on top of it" rather than in a DownSpiral of it being on top of you. Don't let anyone tell you that you have dig out the negative before you can feel "positivity being" and be in an UpSpiral. It just isn't true.
By Dr. William K. Larkin on June 28, 2010
These are the words that describe us when we are not playing to our strengths. They are the things we experience when we are playing to our weaknesses. When you know your strengths (because they have been scientifically tested) it’s easier to play to them as long as you stay in an UpSpiral. In a DownSpiral, or when we are down spiraling, we will not play to our strengths, but rather to their opposites, which are our weaknesses or our character defects. The opposites of our strengths are wonderful things because they warn us by feeling restless, listless, out-of-sync, unsettled, bored, irritable, and frustrated. The more we play to our weaknesses the worse these things get.
You know your strengths by taking the tests that we give that reveal to you what they are. However, your weaknesses that are the opposite of your strengths are uniquely yours. Only you really know what they are. Take a piece of paper and list your strengths. Then list what the opposite of that strength is for you. How does the “weakness” side of the strength show up for you? What is your unique way of expressing the opposite of your strengths?
A good exercise is to make a list of your strengths and score how much you are using each one on a scale from 1-10. Then on the opposite side of the paper, to the left of your strengths, list your weaknesses (what for you is the opposite of your strengths). Score how much you are playing to your weaknesses from 1-10. Add up your final score for each column. If they match each other, your weaknesses are cancelling out strengths and the pleasure you get from using them. If the score is higher for your weaknesses, you are in a DownSpiral.
Get the score for your strengths much higher than your score for weaknesses. We can show you how!
Click on the link below and find out where “you are playing” with your strengths!
Microsoft_Word_-_The_Strengths_Weaknesses_Assessment.pdf
