Excuses You May Be Saying that are Holding You Back From Your Ultimate Success with Dr. Wayne Dyer

It's going to be risky. I'm too busy. It's going to take a long time. I'm not smart enough. Hear this and hear this well. All excuses are misalignments. What if you were free of the excuses which are holding you back from the life you want to live? And do not ever allow money to be a reason why you don't fulfill your Dharma, your destiny, and what you're here to do. Dr. Wayne Dyer returns to PBS with his extraordinary new special, Excuses Begone. Every action that we have is a choice. And this program is really about

choosing and not excusing. You can indeed change anything about yourself. Don't underestimate your own personal ability to make just that happen. With wit, compassion, and an unshakable Belief in your power to change, Dr. Dyer invites you to say, "Excuses be gone. [Music] [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh my goodness. You're so very kind. I appreciate it very, very much. This is the uh 10th anniversary of my doing public television specials and having the mayor all across the country on a Variety of subjects. I'm honored to be here with you.

Um, we've raised a lot of money for public television, which to me is one of the great great causes uh across the country. It helps people to live from a place of integrity and higher consciousness and spirit. And I'm honored to be a part of PBS there. Uh, this program is about something called excuses, excuses, excuses, excuses, habits, habits, habits. So many people live their lives from These habits and don't have to. There are a couple of quotes that I want you to look at that I put right up here for you. The first is

a very important concept. Never underestimate your power to change yourself. Never overestimate your power to change others. And the reason I put this quote out right here at the beginning of this program about excuses being gone is that um no matter who you are, no matter what Age you are, no matter how long you've lived, the promise I have of this program is that if you follow the steps that I am going to outline here for you, that if you've been overweight for your entire lifetime, if you've been addicted, to anything for your entire lifetime.

If you've lived a life of uh poverty for your lifetime, if relationships haven't worked for you, whatever it is, however long it's been with you, that there is a way to change Those habits and to change the thinking that supports those habits. I've come to know that. I've written an entire book about it. Um I believe in it. I've been practicing it not only in my own life but with other people in workshops all around the world and I know that there is something that you can do about them. You can indeed change anything about

yourself. Don't underestimate your own personal ability to make just that happen. The second quote says something That is uh responding to what it is that you have to do to make that happen. Lasu spoke about this in the dao deqing. When you correct your mind, everything else will fall into place. So whatever these habits are, whatever it is that you have uh lived with for a very very long time, it's about don't underestimate your own ability to change it. And if you work at correcting your mind in a very short amount of time, you can

go from someone who had these habits To someone who's living at a very different level. I did a program um not too long ago here for public television called change your thoughts change your life and it was based upon the great teachings of Lasu 2500 years ago in the Daoqing that some people call the wisest book ever written. In that book, what I learned and what I tried to offer to the public who watch public television, it taught us and it taught me what to Think, what ways to go about thinking that we didn't before.

So many of us who grew up here in the western world um believe that you have to always strive that you have to work hard that the harder that you work and the more you set goals and uh the tougher that you are the more you get done in change your thoughts change your life I learned to think flexible to think soft to become humble to be non-inferring to remember that a journey of a0 th000 Miles begins with a single step. Take that step. Live in the present moment. So this show, this program that I'm

speaking about here is different from that because I really think I know what to think. And I practiced it for an entire year as I wrote the book Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life and put that program out. But what so many people have difficulty with is okay, I may know what to think, but I don't know how to Change the way that I have been thinking. It just I just keep repeating the same patterns over and over and over again. And this is what I want to address here with you in this in this

program that there is there is a method there is a I call it a technology there is a program there is a paradigm and I'm going to present it to you before this program is ended and it's the promise I make right here at the beginning that if you follow the steps the steps and You'll see if you look at this beautiful set here and this staircase is I asked them to create it because it is it is the result of a quotation from Mark Twain. Habit is habit and not to be flung out the

window by any man but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. You can almost think of yourself as at the top of this staircase. And each one of these steps on this staircase represents a a way that we have of thinking that in the end Keeps us either stuck in that habitual way of thinking or changing changing those thoughts and no longer identifying yourself as someone who is stuck who's had a destiny imposed upon them. Basically, there are two very large excuses that we carry with us and I want to talk a little

bit about them here in the opening of this program and then as we move along go into the very specific steps that will help you to identify how To make those changes. And believe me, the idea that because you've done it for a very long time or because you've lived with a particular habit for a very long time is not a reason that it has to take a very long time to change it. If you're committed to that change and believe in it and follow the steps one step at a time, you can emerge from

this staircase. I told I told them I'd like to walk up this thing, but it's hanging from a thread up there and I I think That could be a mess. All right. So, the two big excuses that I as I sat down to write this book and put this program together, one of them I I learned about in a book written by a man who's become a very close friend of mine. His name is uh Bruce Lipton and he wrote a wonderful book that I encourage you to look at and examine and read and study.

It's called the biology of belief. The biology of belief really has a it's a a whole different approach. I was watching a television show one evening and and there was a uh a man being interviewed on on one of the talk shows and I heard him say just spew out um well you you can't change your DNA that's for sure. I mean you can't change your heredity. Whatever you were given genetically um is something that you're stuck with. Well, Bruce talks about something, a new science called Epigenetics. And I was sitting there and I was

taking notes and I was writing about the opening parts of the book, The Excuses Begone Book. And I stood up and I looked and I said, "You're absolutely wrong. You have within you. This may be shocking to you, but you have within you the power, the capacity, the ability, and it doesn't take that much work to literally change around the DNA. That is the basic genetic makeup of your Life. By changing around the way you perceive something, I've said it many times, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at

change. And that goes not just for things outside of you, but it goes for things inside of you as well. There is a lot of evidence now that supports the idea that we have within our brains the capacity to change the way we look at anything about ourselves and have a whole new way of experiencing What takes place in our own bodies. He speaks over and over again about the power of the mind to deal with diseases. Bruce was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and at Stanford and taught medical students for over 20

years. And one of the reasons he left that academic world is with the research that was being done, he began to realize that how we perceive something within ourselves in the environment within us, how we perceive it can literally take the Things that are going on inside of us and alter them and change them. Can you imagine that? So it's like it's like a whole new way of thinking. One of the in very fascinating studies that uh is in the biology of belief uh is called it's the placebo effect. You all know what a placebo

is. I mean someone tells you that you've got arthritis and they say here's an arthritis pill. If you take this pill for the arthritis that you have, it's going to make your arthritis Go away. And your mind begins to process that information. And before you know it, large numbers of people who take a little sugar pill, but because they believe in their hearts, they believe that this is going to do it that arthritis begins to diminish in the body. And he did a fascinating study about people who were having things like knee surgery. And he

had the various control groups. And one of the groups in there was going in for knee surgery, but They didn't do any surgery. In fact, they didn't do anything. They just opened it up. They put little holes in the in the knee. They went in there and they they looked around. They didn't even scrape. They did nothing. Another group, they did the traditional way of treating the knee. Another way they did another more experimental group. And then they found out when they looked at the three groups that the people who were told that they had

knee surgery Improved just as significantly as the people who would have the actual treatment for it. that the belief system in one of the guys after two years was uh you know running around and doing high jumping and uh dancing and and so on and he didn't find out for two years later we didn't do anything with you. You were in the group we were just testing this blew his mind. So Just keep in mind that this idea that when you think your heredity or your DNA, your DNA strands, whatever it is, are the things

that you can't do anything about and they're the great big excuse category that we have. I can't help it. It's just in my DNA is something that we're now beginning to realize you do have much more control over it. What I'd like to remind all of you and it's where I took my own take on something called the secret which many Of you saw the the movie of it and many of you read the books and so on. Um I had a little different take on that. I I said we do not attract into our

lives what we want. we attract what we are and who we are is really nothing more than the beliefs that we carry around about who we are and what we're capable of doing. So that was the first big excuse. DNA heredity, toss it out. You can change that. And when you read the biology of belief, you'll see lots and Lots of people have done just that by changing around the way they think. A second book that I read that is even bigger excuse category is called virus of the mind and the virus of the mind

was written by Richard Brody. This book takes a look at not just the physical kinds of conditioning that we've had but it takes a look at the cultural and what is called the mometic meme ti mometic. Uh the basic unit of genetics is the Gene. The basic unit of something called mometics is the word that Richard Dawson called. It's called the meme, a meme. Meme me. And these memes are really viruses. Now you know what a virus is. Most of you know what a virus is. Every virus from my research, and I'm not a scientist,

but this is what I came up with as I researched to write this book and do this program. The viruses in your body, for example, have three functions. The First function of a virus is to duplicate itself. And it doesn't care who it's involved with or whatever. It just duplicates and duplicates and duplicates. It splits and then it duplicates again over and over and over. The second function of the of a virus is to uh infiltrate. So it duplicates and anytime that there's an opening it will infiltrate. It will go into uh someplace that uh

uh that it has an opening. And the third function of a Virus is to spread duplicate, infiltrate and spread to as many bodies as it possibly can. That's what a virus does. And it doesn't care who it does it with. It's not interested. It doesn't uh it doesn't play favorites. when it gets into your body, that's what it's going to do. And we all know that if you have a virus, that taking an antibiotic is absolutely a waste of time. Even though so many people go to their physicians and beg For these uh antibiotics, which

will only treat bacteria, but very often they act as placeos. If you believe that it's going to take care of it, then sure enough, very often it works for you. But all it does is accumulate more and more of these little tiny uh antibbody things in your body. And the same thing is true of a virus in the uh in a computer. You know these viruses in computers have the same thing. It's like you get a virus in your computer and it's just duplicates Duplicates duplicates. And the third function of the virus of course is

to spread. So not only does it want to get into your computer, but it likes to get into your neighbors as well. And before you know it, you've got a major crisis. And you've all read stories about these. I have no idea how that works. Uh you know, how how this thing can duplicate, infiltrate, and then spread from one computer to the next. But somehow that's what they do. The book virus of the mind affected me very dramatically because it speaks about the very same functions but there's no particles there's no things and these are

ideas. The definition of a meme is an idea or a thought or a belief in your own mind that can spread to and from other people's minds transferring ideas and beliefs mentally. And where did it come from? Where do you get these memes, these ideas, these beliefs that we carry Around inside of us that are handed to us? Now remember, we're talking about an idea that's in your mind that goes into somebody else's mind. Like this is an idea from your mother or from your father or from your grandparents or from their grandparents or for

people who lived in the 4th century or whatever that these ideas get placed into our mind. They have absolutely there's no particle. You can't find them. There's no substance to Them and they are constantly duplicating, duplicating. You hear them over and over and over again. These mind viruses are um placed into our heads. They duplicate. They duplicate. They infiltrate and they spread and they go from one and they become cultural norms. They become things that we absolutely believe are truths and we constantly carry them around with us wherever we go. We tell other people about

them. We Have absolute total faith that these are truths when in fact they're just ideas that are viruses. And Richard Brody's book Virus of the Mind is a very powerful look at how we can do something about these viruses. I have many examples of these. I have examples of these in my own life. My mother, who is almost 93 now and was on a PBS special with me in San Francisco a few years ago, um my own mom uh grew up in The depression. She was a young woman in the early 1930s and and right

up through the end of the depression. and she was able to um put a lot of these memes, these mind viruses into my head, into my brother's head. And she got them from her mom and she got them from and we call this, some of us call this a depression mentality. And we carry around these viruses, these memes, and we and we live with them. I remember when uh when I first got Married to uh my wife um she had two children um that from a previous marriage and she they just told me about this

the other day. They were oh 0 oh seven and five or something like that or maybe a little older and they came over to uh the house where we were going to live in in Florida. And I thought, well, I'll just welcome them, you know, these two young kids, my son Shane and my daughter Stephanie. And I came and I brought them some jelly donuts, a big Whole bag of jelly donuts, which I loved when I was a kid. I mean, I used to literally be able to eat an entire dozen of them. Uh, to

me, there was nothing better in this world than And especially when you got the big juicy ones with the big Yeah. the big globs of jelly in it. Uh, I don't even touch that stuff now, but I did for So, I bought them these bags and they had never seen a jelly donut before. They had never eaten anything like that. And Stephanie took One bite and went, "Oh." And Shane went, "What is this?" And they took six jelly donuts and they put it into the garbage. They just tossed them into the light. Like, well, who

would eat this? And I saw them do that and I almost fainted. My depression mentality, the meme, you know that you are poor. And I went over to the garbage and I reached in and I started eating the jelly donuts. just knocking off a few of the things that were in that. And I ate like all six of them, I think, because every time they tell me the story, they just are still a gas that anybody would actually eat a jelly donut, let alone one out of the garbage, you know. But that depression mentality of

mine is a meme that I still carry around even to this day. I mean, when my children finish with their toothpaste tubes, I've got about two more months of brushing my teeth on what they throw away. I do. [Applause] and they get rid of a bar of soap from the shower and they just toss the soap into the like there's this much soap. That's six showers at least, you know. And then I take all of those little pieces and I put the pieces together to make a bigger piece. And I find myself doing that. Probably

my very favorite is um something that I only do when I'm uh all alone. When nobody else is around. But why I'm admitting this on national television, I have no idea. But what I do when I can't do you ever like um can't can't you can't find something, you know? It's like uh you have a letter in front of you and you're looking at it and then you look over here and it's it's just gone. you you pick everything up or there's a check there or something and and you Look everywhere you underneath it and

you go and you start going crazy, you know. My favorite is with vitamins. If I pour some vitamins out and I drop one on the floor and it just goes into it goes into a big black hole, you know, just uh the Bermuda Triangle and you look everywhere. You're down on your knees, you know? It's it's got and you don't want to give up. It's like how could how could it disappear? How could it just be Gone? It's just gone. But there's nobody home. So, I've got this something I learned. It's It's It's not really

sulking. It's just like It's just insanity. It's that's all it is. It's got to be here. It's got to be here somewhere. How could I possibly have this? It couldn't be this. And then I walk and I realize that there's nobody there. And a little profanity possibly. And I find myself acting in a really irrational, crazy way. And I catch Myself and even at 68 I still find myself when I'm all alone because I don't want to do this around because this is Wayne Dyer and he's not supposed to act like this. He's he's supposed

to be a spiritual teacher and we carry around these kinds of memes, these kinds of ideas and they extend not just to those kind of silly little things. They they extend to, for example, if you're a woman, what what is it possible for you to do? What did you Learn when you were a young girl about what women can do, about what women can't do? When I was in high school, when I graduated from high school in 1958, I think one or 2% of the people admitted to medical school and law school with women. Today,

a half a century or more later, uh it's 50%. We've changed. But these memes are things that you know we we grew up to believe in what is possible for me what's not possible for me what's h what Can happen can I attract something into my life can I not and so on and most of these are just viruses they're viruses that are in our minds that convince us that we can't change we can't make things happen or we can make things happen but somebody else has to do it for us 95% of the people

what I learned in one of the books I was speaking to you about have absolutely no genetic basis for their unhappiness, for their fear, for the kinds of things that They're taking drugs to overcome in their lives. 95% no genetic basis. And yet we still carry around these ideas. I can't help it. I've always been this way. I'm depressed. I'm unhappy. I'm miserable. I'm full of stress. Stress is one of my favorite memes. It's a meme. There's no stress in the world. None. If I gave you an assignment to go out and bring me back

a bucket full of stress, you would never find it. You'd be looking and just like for the vitamins, You'd say, "There's got to be some here someplace. Everybody's suffering from it. We're all taking drugs to overcome it." All there are are people out there thinking stressful thoughts. and all virtually all of these stressful thoughts. You have to be under stress when you know when you move from one city to another, when you go through a divorce, when uh you have a fire, when there's an illness, when there's an accident, when somebody disappoints you, That's a

stressful thing. Those are all memes. They're just viruses that have placed in your mind that tell you that this is the way you're supposed to act and this is the way we acted and this is the way our parents acted. And we want to really go to work at eliminating those kinds of things. So you don't have to really remain a victim of any of these things. What you need is to follow this excuses begone paradigm. [Music] There's a wonderful quote from the Dhamapatada which some people call the original teachings of Buddha and the Buddhist

doctrine. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts. It is made up of our thoughts. If one speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows one like a shadow that never leaves. change those thoughts, especially those thoughts that have been with you since You were a little boy or a little girl that you've come to believe that it's difficult for me to overcome these things that I've had. We have a major obesity crisis in our culture. something like 30% of our population are chronically obese

and will tell you if I talk to them that uh I can't do anything about that. I got fat genes. Um I it's just something that's always been with me. I've never been able to overcome it. We have a major addiction uh crisis in Our culture. people addicted not just to illegal things but to legal things that cause enormous amounts of problems and the belief that we can't overcome those things. People living in fear about the economy about not being able to uh deal with something like uh losing a job or having a house foreclosed

or whatever. The belief that that that has to be a depressing, awful, fearful kind of experience. These are all memes. These are all ideas. In a recession, there's Great opportunity and many people will take advantage of that because they just don't think that they want to live in something called fear. Each and every one of us has this. So, we basically have two minds. Our first mind is the conscious mind. This conscious mind is the one that's making all of these decisions about everything that we're going to do on a regular basis. And we're kind

of aware of the thoughts that we have and so on. And Then there's this habitual mind. And this habitual mind is what some call the subconscious mind. I have a little trouble with the subconscious mind because uh if it's subconscious, it's below your level of being able to perceive it and use it uh and access it. So I use the term habitual mind with the understanding that what I have learned in in in excuses be gone is that we can go into that habitual mind that subconscious Mind that has uh allowed us to stay in

these places for so long and we can retrieve a new way of being a way of being that can happen quite quickly. I'll give you an example of that. I uh I bring people from all over the country and all over the world to a three-day uh workshop on overcoming excuses. And there was a woman who came there who had been uh uh binging and purging every day for 22 years. And she was very very sickly and she didn't look like she was Going to even make it through the workshop. She is now a year

and a half completely free of it. And she did it all and changed it in about 45 minutes of really examining the way that she was thinking, going through the steps in the excuses begone paradigm. And she looks radiant these days. I saw people who quit smoking who've never been able to do it by instantly examining some of the thoughts that keep them from being where they want to be. So every action that we have is a choice and this program is really about choosing and not excusing. So the habits that we have are behaviors

that we use over and over and over again. And they become just excuses from mind viruses and memes that we've carried with us for our lifetime. Now I went to my website and I put out a request for u everybody who visits that uh website. They would uh send to me the most common excuses That they use in their life for why their life isn't working the way they would like it to work. And I didn't put any limits other than that. Just tell me what are they? And what I did is I took out

the top 18 excuses. They are the entire third chapter of the book and I'm going to share them with you because every single one of these are something that I know you've used or if you haven't you're living with someone who does. So here are the 18 the top 18. First one if I want to change it's going to be difficult. Change is difficult. It's a meme. Whether it's true or not we're going to examine a little bit later. um it's going to be risky. In other words, if I were to do this and try

this, whatever it might be, make these changes, um it's it's going to involve risk. The it's a meme. It's a mind virus. It's going to take a long time. You know, it's taken me 40 years to Become this way and I've been living this way, so it's going to take me another 40 years. Well, you don't have 40 years, you know. Uh but nevertheless, it's going to take a long time. If I were to do and live the kind of life that I would like to live, there's going to be family drama. There's going to

be people out there, aunts and uncles and in-laws and people, they're going to, you know, if I wanted to move to Montana or if I wanted to uh take up a new Career, there's going to be huge family drama. Total meme. Whether it's true, mostly unlikely, unless you decide that that's what you want your life to be. I don't deserve it. A meme. How could there be anything out there in this world that you don't deserve? You are a piece of God. How could the source, how could God create something, anyone that isn't deserving of

all of the abundance and all of the prosperity and all of the Love that comes from the source? It's not my nature. Uh your nature is your is is a meme. The idea that this, you know, that you're shy because you can't do anything about that. It's not my nature. I can't afford it. This is one of my all-time favorites and I'll deal with it a little bit later in the program. The idea that you can't afford to do something is one of the largest mind viruses that have placed upon you and it's something that

I would Urge you to never say again that you can't afford to do something. Do not ever allow money to be a reason why you don't fulfill your dharma, your destiny, and what you're here to do. And I can tell you coming from uh the background that I came from, living in foster homes, living on the east side of Detroit, and working uh my way through everything that I've had, that I've never ever ever thought that I couldn't afford to do anything, including go to The university and pay my own way and whatever. Are you

listening, my children out there? Especially the part about me paying my own way. You're hearing him, right? Are you taking notes? You guys are taking notes. Okay. No one will help me. How many times you've heard people say, "I'd like to do that, but there's no there's no hope. There's no help out there. I just can't. Nobody Nobody's out there." There's a there's six billion people on the planet. They're all waiting to help somebody. Almost all of them want to help you with what it is that you want to do. Unless you carry around this

mind virus that says, "I'm all alone and I can't do anything about it." It's just a meme. um it's never happened before. So because something has never happened before is exactly the perfect reason why it'll probably happen the next time. Unless you have that mind virus. Uh I'm not strong enough. You know, I'm too weak to do what I would really like to be able to do. It's a meme. I'm not smart enough. You're all geniuses. Every single one of you. You're all genius. you've just let yourself become deeniused by life. You know, I have

a son-in-law, his name is Joe. He uh he didn't go to college, but he came over And put a wood floor in our house that is so beautiful. He spent several weeks on it, getting down on his hands and knees, measuring every and he walks. If I had to do that uh wooden floor myself, it would never have gotten done because he can do that. and there's other things that I can do. He wouldn't want to be up here giving this talk. Maybe he would, but uh everybody has within them a genius and should never

tell themselves, I'm not smart enough. And it's something You would never ever want to convey to your kids. But indeed, they learn these mind viruses and they duplicate and they infiltrate and they spread and you get to be, you know, an adult and you start using these things and they have no basis in reality at all. uh the rules won't let me. You know, ma Martin Luther King was in a uh in a prison in Montgomery, Alabama, and he wrote a letter to the American public, and he said, "I want to remind You that everything

that Hitler did was legal, and everything that the American patriots did, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and James Madison and James Monroe and Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin, everything that they did was illegal. So that the rules ought not to be reasons why you do or don't do anything. One of my great teachers, Henry David Thorough, reminded us about the importance, not the importance, the Necessity of civil disobedience that all these rules that we have. You know, when my mom, my beautiful mom was born in 1916, she was four years old before women even

got to vote in America. And the women, I mean, half the population of our country was not involved in any decision-making in the first almost 200 years of our history. How absurd that is when we think about it now. And how did that change? Because people said, "The hell with those rules. I don't care whether it's legal or not legal. If it's not moral and I have rules within me, I have to go to those." These are memes. I don't have the energy. I'm too tired. It's a meme. One of the commitments I made, and

my kids have never heard me say it, is that I'm tired. I just, it's a word that I stopped saying in my early 20s because I used to hear people talking about that all the time. I'm so tired. I'm so tired. And the minute that you tell Yourself that you're tired, your body begins to react to the thought that you are programming it to be. So, if nothing else, just stop saying it. And well, I'll get on to that later. My own personal family history is the reason why, you know, I'm the middle child. I

mean, what what do you expect from me? And no wonder I'm confused. I don't know. Up, oh, I'm the youngest child. I'm the youngest child. No wonder people are always telling me what to do And I just wait for somebody to tell me. I'm the oldest child. No wonder I have a superiority complex. I've been telling people what to do since I was born. I had so on. Or my parents uh were divorced when I was four years old and and that's why I can't get ahead in my life. It's it's a meme. And we

hear this so much of therapeutic talk is just convincing people about what they can't do, about what their excuses are, telling them because this happened to You when you were a child. Everything that happened to you as a child had to happen. The evidence for that it did. And if it did, then you either deal with it and move on with it and learn from it or you use it as an excuse. And I use that over and over in my own life as well. And uh it's something that you want to take a real

hard look at. I'm too busy. These the final two were the most frequently cited. I'm too busy and I'm scared. It just frightens me. I live in fear. The course of miracles says there are only two emotions in this world. Fear and love. Fear. Everything that is fear cannot be love. Everything that is love cannot be fear. So you must hear an awful lot of talk on the television and reading the newspapers and so on about all the things that we have to be afraid of. You don't want to live in a place of fear.

Every every piece of fear that you have within you, every thought that revolves around fear is is a meme, a mind virus that tells you there's going to be danger. You can't do anything about it. There are hundreds if not thousands of these excuses that people employ in their life are all things that we don't have to have. What I'd like to do now is speak to you about some of the important principles that are involved in moving into the Paradigm. The excuses begone paradigm is the promise that I made at the beginning of the

show that there is a stepbystep way that you can look within, ask certain questions of yourself, examine them and move away from using excuses forever. Okay. The first of these principles is called awareness. The ego and awareness cannot coexist together. The ego is a kind of thinking that says that who I am is what I have and what I do and what other people think of me and That I'm separate from everyone else and I'm separate from God and uh and I evaluate myself on the basis of this and many of you grew up with

this idea that uh who you are is what you do what you accumulate what other people think of you your reputation and so on. Thinking with awareness is thinking from the highest place that there is. It's the kind of thinking that uh allows excuses to be eradicated from your life. It's the thinking that uh is talked about in The New Testament. With God, all things are possible. Now you tell me what does that leave out? What does all things are possible leave out? Nothing, does it? So when you think from a place of awareness, you

think in terms of instead of using one of these excuses that you see popping up here on these little thought bubbles across the stage. I can't do it. Um I'm too tired. I'm too old. It's going to be difficult. It's going to take a long time. Which is all the ego stuff which promotes these mind viruses and these memes. Instead of that, when you think with awareness, your first thought is, no matter what it is, if you get a cold, you know, if you get um, you know, if you hurt yourself in some way, your

first thought isn't, oh, this is something I can't do anything about and I'm going to be hobbled and and I'm Going to Your first thought is with God, all things are possible. With source, all things are possible. It doesn't mean that you're instantly healed and the cold is going to go away, but you set your mind on a new way of looking at virtually anything that comes into your life. All things are possible. And getting to that place in your life is it's one of the most beautiful things that you can experience. And I try

to practice this over and over and again, Whatever it might be, whether it's a a family crisis, whether it's a financial crisis, whatever it may be, instead of saying that with the economy and it's going to turn down and terrible things are going to happen and I'm going to lose my job, you know, you instantly you have a thought, an affirmation within you that says, I can handle this. I am not alone. I can make myself get through this. Uh uh I have the solution is going to be out there. I may not know what

it Is but my thoughts are always on it's possible. So that's the first of these principles. The second of these principles is something that I call uh alignment. Hear this and hear this well. All excuses are misalignments. And when I say misalignment I mean you're misaligned from your source. You came into this world from this perfect this beautiful place. I have a wonderful Paraphrase of a quote by uh TS Elliott. He said, "We we shall not cease from exploration." And at the end of all of our exploring, we'll be to return to the place from

which we originated and to know it for the first time. He was talking about death. I think I'm saying why should we have to die in order to get to that place to know to really know our source. I quoted it many times of Albert Einstein when he was Asked a question about about quantum physics or something. U again it's a paraphrase. He said um I all of that is just details. He said I just want to learn to think like God thinks. That's really what alignment means. You think like the source thinks. And if

you get to that place, you have to understand that whatever the creative source in the universe is, whether you call it the Dao or God or source or, you know, divine mind, whatever you want to Call it, it doesn't need any excuses, does it? It doesn't ever say, "Well, I'd really like to create some uh rose bushes here, but I'm too busy. You know, my hands are tied. I just can't I can't get to that right now. I'm a little old. I've been doing this for a long time, you know. It's like, you know, I'm

tired. I'm tired. That's all I ever do. You know, it's like Chris, it doesn't do that. It just It just allows it just allow. That's how you want to think. And Every excuse that you saw coming up in these thought bubbles out there is really just a misalignment. You want to move to that. A third principle is called contemplation. Aristotle had a wonderful quote. He said, "Contemplation is the highest form of activity." That what you think about isn't just a thought that pops into your mind, but that when you think from a contemplative point of

view about what it is that you Would like to create, you aren't just having a a passive thought. What you're doing is putting into practice an action. It's a verb. Contemplation. It's a verb. It's a way of acting. And I brought with me here tonight a few points written by a great man who lived in the early part of the last century. His name was Thomas Trroward and he was one of the authors of uh how to deal with the the science of of mental health. He listed the specifics of what Happens when you contemplate

in a certain way. And I'd like you to I'd like to share it with you here. These are the steps of contemplation. Now listen to these. I'm going to just I'm just going to spell them out one by one. First, number one, contemplation is the continual use of your thought process. That's what it is. Your thoughts. Number two, your thoughts are actually like things that act to begin the process of materialization. They begin this process of attracting into your life what you want. If you contemplate with thoughts that match originating spirit using his words, you

have the same power as originating spirit. You got to really hear that. If you contemplate with thoughts that match originating spirit, that is if you think like God thinks, like source thinks, like that which creates everything, then you have the same power as the source. When contemplation is a match to Originating spirit, you gain the cooperation of divine mind attracting and fulfilling your desires. But our thoughts can never be on these excuses. You can't use those. Contemplation is therefore according to Troward a kind of action in and of itself which sets into motion all of

the creative forces of the universe. That is as you begin to contemplate from a perspective of all things are possible and I can create what I want for myself In your life. You set into motion the creative forces that are operating in the universe. When you rely on excuses, says Trroward, you allow your false self, the ego, to contemplate what you do not want or why you cannot create it for yourself. That's what an excuse is. I can't do this. I'm too old. It's I'm It's past my prime. It's going to be difficult. It's going

to take a long time. It's going to be risky. Every excuse that you have is a Contemplation. The presence of excuses in your life is evidence that you contemplate what you can't do or have rather than the infinite possibilities that are inherent in the divine creative self. Do you see how an excuse is a contemplative action focused on what you don't want or what you can't get or why or why you can't have it? He said to rid yourself of excuses, you must learn to practice contemplating what you intend to Manifest and simultaneously detach from

the outcome. These are my conclusions, my words. Okay? So you want to rid yourself of excuses in order to practice contemplating what you want to manifest, what you intend to manifest. And then you detach from the outcome. You let it go. And finally, he says, contemplate like God does with thoughts of how may I serve rather than what's in it for me. You become more of a divine being. There was a great teacher from India who came Over here in the early part of last century. His name was Vivikananda and he said these words or

words similar to them. He said if you want to know how to do this, if you want to know how to get rid of this ego, this false self and really tune into the authentic self which needs no excuses, he said in the springtime go out and observe the blossoms on the fruit trees. He said the blossoms vanish of themselves As the fruit grows. So too will the lower self, the false self, the ego, vanish as the divine grows within you. You don't have to defeat anything. You don't have to beat anything. You don't have

to win. You don't have to be ahead of somebody else. You allow the divine to grow within you. And that's the essence of the paradigm. I saw a uh documentary film recently. It was Unbelievable. It's called Man on Wire. And it's the story of the guy who uh who rigged a wire between the two towers of the uh World Trade Center back in 1974. And he was in um he was in his Dennis office. He was a young boy. And this was before the World Trade Centers had even been built. There was an artist conception

of what they would look like. And this is a man who liked, he just lived on a wire. He loved to do the Typewire and it was just amazing to watch him do this. And he's at the you there are pictures of him on the edge of the World Trade Center a quarter of a mile up in the air walking like this. At any rate, he had a vision and he tore that out of the magazine. He tore that picture out and he put it in his pocket. He had a toothach. He forgot about his

toothache. He left the dentist office and he went and he contemplated this thing from a young boy until he did it In 1974. And he did it in other places as well in his imagination. And to be able to accomplish what he did, they had to smuggle a ton of equipment with by guards who were standing guard at the top of the World Trade Center. And then he had to take a bow and arrow and he had to shoot an arrow with a string across all the way across. So it landed on the 200 feet

away. He had one arrow to do it and it landed just on the edge. And then they pulled the string and then They pulled a rope and then the rope was attached to a cable and they had and they had a whole group of people doing this. Of course, I don't know if you remember this in 1974, but the reason it's called man on wire because that was the crime he was accused of. They didn't know what else to accuse him of. And not only did he walk across the World Trade Center as his dharma,

as something that he knew he had to do, but as soon as he would get over to the edge And the police were up there to grab him, he would just smile. And then he turn around and he'd walk back this way and he go down on his knees and he do a little dance a quarter of a mile in the air. And he did it at the Notre Dame, the two towers of Notre Dame. This is his life. Man on wire. But the reason I say that is when you contemplate like that and when

you have an imagination like that you know you you have to create it. So He he asks us instead of thinking about um about what might happen try would ask us to think from the end. Another one of these principles is called willingness. How willing are you to attract into your life what you want and to rid yourself of the excuses? The willingness means suspending all of your blame. It means taking total responsibility for everything that is in your life, including the memes that were handed to you by your well-meaning parents and Their neighbors and

and so on. To say, "I did it all." It also means surrendering. Willingness means you know in in the recovery movement and many of you know that uh I have been without alcoh for alcohol now for 20 years plus and just gave it up. And the reason that I gave it up and the way the reason I was able to do it was through being willing to say I surrender. I just let go and what? Let God, right? And allow this divine. You see, if the Ego was in charge of you, then why would you

get old? I was sitting in a interview today with Kenny Blanchard and he's turning 70 and I'm turning 69. And I said, you know, if the eagle was really in charge, we wouldn't be sitting here in these 68 year old bodies. We'd keep it about 23, wouldn't we? Because, you know, that's when we feel that we're the most powerful. with me. I But there's something else that's in charge. And not just in charge of our Bodies and it's aging, but there's something you have to surrender to that's even bigger than all of us. And you

have to be willing to do that to know that everything that you came here to do is a part of that. Willingness means shedding all things that you're unwilling to do. I remember when uh I did my very first PBS special back in 1999 and I went around the country and I Visited PBS stations in every market. It made no difference to me how many people were there, whether it was a tiny little market or a very large market, whatever they asked me to do. I said, "I have nothing on my unwillingness uh category." And

I made over 170 station visits. very often paying my own expenses and uh living on a very very tight budget. But I knew that I wanted to take the messages that I'm speaking about here and that I spoke about in my Earlier programs and there was nothing I was unwilling to do. I did it when erroneous was published back in the 1976. bought up the first two printings, went across the country, paid for my own expenses, 14-hour days doing interviews, whatever it might be. Whatever it takes, just have that willingness. Virginia Wolf, no one's afraid

of her, right? She had a wonderful line. She said, "Arange whatever pieces come your way." Whatever it is that comes your way, no matter how tough it may be, whatever, arrange whatever pieces come your way and make it work for you. [Music] I'd like to speak for just a moment about passion as a principle for eliminating excuses. create the create for yourself the habit of Enthusiasm about everything. When I watched the uh the interview with Philippe uh who was the guy who was the man on wire, he said you have to have passion every single

day just and what does the word enthusiasm mean? and theos God Yasm within in Greek the God within that's the meaning of when you have passion for anything inside of you you are really you're that that's God speaking to you if you have total passion for something and you just Won't let go of it regardless of what the circumstances of your life are you will find a way the universe will provide you with a way the strange synchronistic experiences and serendipities that seem to show up. They show up much more frequently and right on time

when you're living from a place of passion. No passion? Continue with your excuses. Passion is the creative source inside of You. Walk with it. I do it every day. Hold hands with it. Make it your number one relationship in life. Not to your not to your spouse, not to your children, not even to yourself. Make your number one relationship to your source, to God, to that place from which you returned, to which all things return. Live from a place of passion, and you will be guided. Those principles that I've just spoken briefly about, alignment, passion,

Willingness, they're all exemplified in someone that I'd like to introduce to America. His name is Dan Caro. C A R O Dan Caro. He was born in 1979. And on St. Patrick's Day in 1982 on March the 17th. He was out in his backyard. He's from New Orleans, Louisiana. his mom was uh watching him and he scooted off just for a second into the garage and in the garage there was a can of Gasoline and he tipped it over and there was a hot water heater in there with a flame, a pilot and uh it

exploded. It was a flash fire and this little two-year-old boy was burned over 75 to 80% of his body. He was just a wash in fire. His mother ran in. In fact, his mother and father are both here this evening um and flew here for this program. And I heard about um Dan from my dear sweet friend Tiffany who Also is from New Orleans. and she said she had met this young man and he just uh really uh made an impact on her. And over the next course of the next 12 or 14 years, he

underwent 80 plus surgeries at the Shriner Hospital up in Massachusetts. Um when they wrapped him up and they have to wrap them and wrap them and when they unwrapped his hands, his hand fell off. And when they unwrapped his other hand, his fingers and his hand fell off. And When they unwrapped his feet, after all of this therapy and all of his toes fell off. He was scarred from head to toe, burnt. And no one even anticipated that he would survive. But there's something inside Dan Carroll that exemplifies the excuses begone life that I'm speaking

about here in this program. Music is in his life. His father loved music. He's from New Orleans, city of jazz. He always envisioned himself as a musician. And yet he was hopelessly burned. And everyone thought that he probably wouldn't even live to be three or four. But there was something inside of Dan, that compassion, that passion, that willingness, that desire to make something more of himself. He wanted to be a musician more than anything. Music was in his soul, even when he was two years old. And I've seen pictures of that beautiful little Two-year-old boy.

And well he not only became a musician but he um was written up in a in a journal called modern drummer. He became a drummer without any hands. Try to imagine that not only did he become a drummer beca, but he became a very well-known drummer playing in very significant bands across the south at Lyola University. He was in the jazz band and he had to do it by eliminating all of the excuses. and I Invited Dan to come on my program when I met with him and I've had him speak with me and he

will knock you out. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like him to speak a little bit to you and then maybe even show you uh what it is that he does. My friend Dan Ko. [Music] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What do you say after Wayne Dyer talks, right? And he he pretty much covers Everything. But um I want to share something with you. When Wayne called me and asked me if I wanted to participate in this program, excuses be gone. It got me thinking about something that I've heard throughout my entire life. And that is

Dan. If anybody's got the right to complain or to make excuses, it's you. What does that mean? What gives me the right to complain about a gift? I guess some people see their lives as a curse. I certainly don't. I literally see this as a gift from God, a blessing. I have so many opportunities to inspire people through my story. If I looked at this in a negative light, it would be an insult to God. But not only that, to my family, to my friends, to everyone. I have so many opportunities to inspire people. I

mean, it's truly a blessing. And I hear people complaining all the time, and it kind of gets to me a little bit. And they make and they make some pretty ridiculous excuses. A big one today is the economy, of course. But I've also heard some silly excuses like this. I'm not smart enough. I'm too short. I've even heard one about Being bald. That never stopped. Wayne or me or me from doing what we want to do, right? I guess because I was burned so young, I've noticed early on that people look at me a little

differently. But I never wanted to be seen as different. I wanted people to see me as equal. So I thought I had to do everything that everyone else did better than everyone else did just to fit in. So when I was in kindergarten, it's about 5 years old. The task of the day was learning to tie your shoes. See, I had just had a surgery that gave me the use of a thumb at that age, and I didn't really have control of my hands. I didn't have the muscle strength. So, I couldn't grip the laces

to pull the knot tight. And I struggled with this for a very, very, very long time. And I felt at times that it wasn't ever Going to happen. And I felt so defeated. And in those moments when I felt the weakest, I felt a surge of energy overwhelmed me. And my attitude changed from one of defeat to one of empowerment to one of inspiration. And I began to work harder. And seven years after I began that journey of tying my shoes, which I consider to be the greatest struggle of my entire life. I remember the

day great. I was 12 years Old and we were dressing out for PE class and I bent down to tie my shoes like I did every day. But this day was different. I felt an energy I had never felt. I had the strength. I grab those shoelaces and I pull that knot tight. And when I tied my shoes for the first time by myself, I felt liberated. It was as though I was in the presence of God and I felt like God was asking me, "What Do you want to do now?" "I'd like to play

some drums. So, you guys are probably wondering how I hold it, right? Well, I'll tell you. I use a tennis wristband doubled over with rubber bands around the wristband. And I put the stick in like this. And on my left hand, I can grip it with my thumb. So, here we go. [Applause] [Music] [Music] Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold, look, look, hold on one second. I need some help. I need some help from you guys. Okay, y'all don't keep a beat for me. All right, check

it out. Do this. Put your clap. Right. Come on, Wayne. [Music] [Applause] [Music] D and Carol and Yeah. Thank you, Danny. [Music] the paradigm for change for literally ridding yourself of excuses that have uh existed with you for your life. So Carl Jung had a very important observation. He was a great teacher of mine. Many of you know I was I practice His form of of counseling and therapy for many years. He said our most important problems cannot be solved. They must be outgrown. We have to grow up. And by growing up, he really meant

growing back to the highest place within yourself. that place that I spoke about earlier where you allow the divine to grow within you and you see yourself not as uh as a victim but as a piece of God as a piece Of the source that from which you originated. In this paradigm there are a series of questions um I'm going to go through them as quickly as I can. The first question to ask yourself about any excuse that you use is is it true? I think one of the most the display quote that I use

for this book says this don't believe everything you think. So the question is it true? Let's take The first uh one of the first excuses. uh uh it's going to be difficult because very often people stop themselves and you'll hear it I hear this all the time when people talk to me well yeah I'd like to do but it's going to be very difficult to do and you say it almost off-handedly as if I'm supposed to buy that and accept that it's going to be difficult it's going to be very difficult to get that job

it's going to be very difficult to make the money that I would like to make it's going to be very difficult to overcome the illness that I have and the minute that you set yourself up for that you have to ask yourself this question is it True. Is it true? And the second part of this question is can you be 100% certain that what you are thinking as an excuse is true. Can you if you there's something that you would like to change about yourself and you say to yourself It's going to be difficult. Is

there any possibility at all that exists out there that it might not be difficult? And if the possibility exists that it might not be difficult, then it's not true, is it? The same thing is true with something uh such as uh I can't afford it. Is it true that whatever it is that you'd like to be able to do in your life, you can't afford it? Can you be a 100% certain that you can't afford it? Let me ask the Audience, how many of you by a show of honest hands have ever had the experience

of believing that um you needed the money to do something but you didn't have it and then you came home or something happened. You got a telephone call and unexpectedly the financing for what it is that you would like to be able to do was there. It was a check. It was whatever and it just showed up a tax refund. See, now if You look around, we're talking about basically a universal experience. The idea that you can't afford it may or may not be true. So, here we go. And here's the logic of this, and

this is what I really like you to get. If you ask yourself the question, is it true? It's going to be difficult. It's going to take a long time. I can't afford it. Three of the excuses that we use. and you say to yourself, it may or may not be true, which is the case. Then then You ask yourself, well, what's the reverse of those three excuses? It's going to be difficult shifts to what? It's going to be easy. Now, is that true or it may or may not be true? In fact, it may be

very difficult or in fact it may become easy. You don't know. So now you have a choice. You have two thoughts. Both of which may or may not be true. One will keep you from getting what it is that you would like. It's Going to be difficult. The other one which is equally may or may not be true is going to lead you to where you would like to be. Why would you pick the first one? Why would anybody pick the thought that may or may not be true that's going to lead you away from

what you would like instead of the thought that it's going to be easy, which may or may not be true. But at least when you think it, you have the option then because you Understand that you become what you think about whether you want it or not. So if you're thinking that it's going to be easy, then you will act upon that thought. Like when I sat down to write this book that this program is based upon, one of the first things that I do is I take another book that I've written or that somebody

else has written and I take a cover. I always ask my publisher, come up with a cover. This is the title. And they come up with a a beginning Cover and I wrap that cover around it. And I have the book, Excuses Begone, looking right at me every time I sit down because I'm thinking from the end rather than about the end. And I believe if I'm looking at it, it's already here. And if it's already here, this is going to be easy because it's already done. All I have to do is do whatever it

takes to complete that. On the other hand, if I say this is going to be very difficult, The first thing I will do if I know that it's going to be difficult is probably postpone it and say to myself, why should I do difficult things? I can just go and lie down. That's easy. Now, you can do this with every single one of these 18 excuses that I'm talking about here in this program. You can do the very same thing. Can you be 100% certain that it's true? Um, no. I can't Be 100% certain that

it's true. Okay. What's the reverse of that thought? Well, it's uh it's going to be easy. It's not going to take a long time. Is that true? No. Can you be 100% certain that it's not true? No, I can't be 100% certain. So, why have you all of these years been opting for the it's going to take a long time, it's going to be difficult, I can't do this, I'm too old, it's too risky, uh all the all of them, Everything that you see out there, it's not my nature, I'm not strong enough. And as

you begin to examine these, and I learned a lot of this from my teacher and and a woman that I adore, I think is one of the great powerful teachers on our planet, a very close personal friend. Her name is Byron Katie. Um, and Katie has something called the work. And I have taken a few of the things that she taught me and put it into this excuses begone paradigm. She to me is a A woman who walks her talk every moment of her life. She's nothing but pure love. So this idea of looking at

something that may or may not be true, recognizing that if I reverse it and allow myself to think that thought that at least the one that says it's going to take me where I would like to go is the one that I want to hang on to. Okay. So the next question that we ask in this excuses begone paradigm is um where did these thoughts come from? Where did These excuses that you see popping up here all all all throughout this program, where did they come from? The answer to that I can give to you

in just a few seconds. They came from you. They're all your choices. You are the product of all of the choices that you've made up until now into your life. And you say, "Well, wait a minute. I'm shy and I was I was shy as a little kid and I learned all of this when from my mother who told me that I Couldn't do this." And I said, "And were there other kids who had mothers who told them that and ignored that?" Well, yeah, we had a few kids like that in our in our Well,

so you absolut they didn't choose that and you did. So, I'm not saying that you want to be filled with uh resentment towards anybody for any of the things that are going on in your life. What I'm suggesting is that if somebody else is responsible for what it is that you are in your life, I used to Tell my patients when I had a practice out in New York years ago when I was teaching at St. John's University in Queens, New York. I used to tell them, I'd say, "Who is it that's responsible for all

of these things about you?" and they'd say, "Well, it was, you know, my my culture and my my parents, my mother particularly, she was mothers take a big big wrap on all of this stuff." I'd say, "So, it was your mother?" "Yes." "So, I want you to leave my Office and I want you to go get her and I want you to bring her to me and I will treat her and you will get better. total responsibility for everything, even your illnesses, even your infirmities, whatever it is. If you're waiting for whoever caused it to

go to change, then you're waiting for GDAU, the old the old the famous play and GDAU never shows up. All right, the third question to ask Yourself is um what are the payoffs? Like all human behavior has a payoff. No matter what it is, all of these excuses, you get something from it. I'm just going to go through very quickly because I want to get to the next one. I like the next one a lot. All right. Um, we we continue with these excuses because they help us to avoid the real work of going within

and becoming who we know we were destined to become. We have a calling inside of us that says, "I want to do This, but there's something I'm avoiding. And if I use an excuse, then I have a ready copout. Uh I'm safer. I can use these excuses to manipulate other people. Um I can use these excuses that uh to be right in all of my my engagements and all of my conversations and everything. I just need to be right. I can use it to blame other people. I can use it to protect myself from uh

you know, anything that might be dangerous out there. uh I can use it to escape Becoming a stronger, more vivacious, more intelligent, more uh you know dominant human being as a human being. So all of these are and you know I've I've written books about this earlier in my career. It's not my purpose here to give you all of that, but know that all of your behaviors have built into them uh a payoff. The next question is one of the most important questions that I think you can ask and this is and this is a

paradigm that if you get this I Think you'll make be able to make the changes. What would my life look like if I couldn't use these excuses? If I just somehow a magic wand was passed over my head and it said, "You can no longer think that it's going to be difficult. You can no longer think that it's going to be risky. You can no longer think in blame terms. You can no longer think you're too old or that you're too young or that you're too too Weak or you're not strong enough or whatever it

might be. If you just couldn't think that. And I will ask people that question over and over again and they start thinking about it. They start going into the excuse. I say, "Wait a minute. You can't think that in this little little exercise that we're doing here. What would your life look like if you couldn't use the excuse?" And you know what almost everybody says? I would be free. I would feel free for The first time in my life if I couldn't blame somebody else. If I couldn't use one of these copouts, one of these

misalignments that I've been using in my life, I would finally feel free. And then as you begin to realize that I I think one of the most important things that you can learn about this paradigm is to ask yourself like how would I feel? How would I feel? And what I want to say to you, what I want to say to Everybody out there watching this, this is so important. You have within you a great gift. It's the most powerful gift you've ever been given. It's the gift of your imagination. And in your imagination, in

your thoughts, nothing else. Go to the place within you where you begin to perceive and see what it is that you would like to be. Whether it's the right weight you would like to be or addictionfree or to have The job that you want or to be in the kind of relationship that you would like to have, just in your imagination and no place else. Just go there and create for yourself. and you can't come up with an excuse for it because you're just doing this in your mind. So that's the first thing you do.

And then when you get this firmly entrenched in your mind, you then go to the feeling that accompanies that thought. You're not thinking about what you would like to have. You're thinking From the end. You're thinking there in your imagination only. You are there. And now how does that feel? What do you feel? I was at the uh mall just recently with Sky and Serena, two of my daughters, and this young man walked up to me, young man, 39 years old, and and he had a major major speech impediment. He was a stutterer. He could

barely get words out, but he recognized me. He saw me, and it took all of his courage to come up to me. His name was Vincent. And uh finally, he just and he couldn't get the words out and so on. And and I said, 'Well, what would you like? He He started immediately talking about a speech impediment. And I said, "How would you, in your imagination, what I'd like you to do right here, right now, is I'd like you to see yourself as free of that speech impediment. Just free of it. It's gone. It's completely

gone." He said, "Okay, I can do that. I can do that." And he and I said, "Now, how does it feel?" He said, "It feels great." See, the thought is what you create in your imagination, but the feeling is where you experience it in the body. I feel great. I said, what I want you to do is every single time you think about that speech impediment, I want you to go to that feeling. I feel great. Every time you think about losing the weight, I want you to go to the place in your imagination in

which you are what it is That you want to weigh, looking the way you want to look. Every time you have a thought about you don't have enough money, I want you to go to the place in your imagination where you are free of that fear of of not having enough prosperity or abundance. Just go to that place and then ask yourself how does it feel? It feels joyful. It feels content. Now, the most important thing I want to say about all of this is the last five minutes of The day when you are about

to go off to sleep at night, almost everybody makes this huge mistake. They review all of the things that they don't like. They review all of the things that are missing. They think about all of the people who have really upset them during the day. They think about how wrong their spouse is or about how bad their children are. Now I talked earlier about this habitual mind that we call the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind Cannot make a distinction between what is literally happening to you in your life and what you are imagining in your

imagination. It can't make a distinction. So now you go off to sleep at night with all of those negative thoughts swirling around and you go into your subconscious mind and now you got eight hours to marinate. Eight hours to marinate on all the things that are wrong. Now your subconscious mind thinks that this is What you want because that's what you're experiencing and that's what you feel. and your body feels lousy and you have trouble sleeping and you're full of stress and so now you've got eight hours in which to marinate on all the things

that are wrong. Your subconscious mind which is the which is the vehicle for materialization and manifestation. That's where it takes place in this habitual mind of yours is going to work on and offering you experiences that Match up to what you feel. Supposing you were able to reverse that. And in the last five minutes of your day, you were to say, "I feel great. I feel joyful. I experienced what I want. I meet met the person that I wanted to meet. I was able to get the job that I wanted to get." And you start

saying to yourself, "This is how I feel." Now, you've got eight hours. And your subconscious mind believes that that's who you are and what you want. And for the next eight Hours, it begins to align you in the mysterious way that none of us can understand that allows for the manifestation of the materialization to take place. It comes from the feelings. Feelings are the manifestors within your life and within your body. And you go to those feelings and stay with that. Does that make sense to you? Because to me, I do it every single night.

I refuse to spend the last five Minutes before I enter into that world in which my subconscious mind is going to believe that I want to go over all the things that are wrong and all the things I don't like and all the stuff that is bothering me. Instead, I go off to sleep into that beautiful world of peace and joy and fulfillment because that's what I feel and I created it in my mind. I learned a lot of this from a great teacher who passed away in 1972. whose name was Neville and he traveled

Around the world, the United States particularly as like a 20th century Emerson as an itinerant teacher of this principle what he called the law of assumption. If you assume that what it is that you would like to have is already here and you go to the feeling that matches that and you stay with the feeling particularly as you go off to sleep and you do this on a regular basis, you will manifest what it is you want. He said it doesn't fail. It can't Fail and it doesn't ever fail for me. The next question is,

can I create a rational reason to change? Like within my mind, can I come up with something that makes sense to me? To me, it has to have two qualities. It has to be doable and it has to be make sense. It has to be doable and it has to make sense. I have a son. I have two sons, but I have a son who's 21 years old. His name is Sans. Now, Sans has got a problem. Sans's problem is that he can't wake up. He sleeps till two o'clock in the afternoon. He goes to

college and takes courses at night because he just can't get up. But when I say to him, Sans, it's just a habit. It's just a thought. Don't tell yourself that. He said, "Dad, you don't understand. It's just I'm so tired. I just can't do it. I can't do it." So for his 21st birthday, his mother and I gave him a uh a trip to Indonesia. Now In this trip to Indonesia, he was going to go surfing. Now Sans is all about surfing. He loves surfing. He lives and breathes surfing. He's on his computer checking the

waves all over the world. This is has been his life. When he was four years old, we gave him a surfboard. He paddled out. He stood up on it and rode all the way in the very first time he was ever on a board. It's in his It's just in his blood. All right. So, we sent him down to uh as a gift down to u Indonesia and where they have some of the finest surfing in the world. Okay. And down in Indonesia, they have a computer there and they find out where the waves are

and there's eight eight guys from different parts of the world and off they go to the various uh places where they surf and they surf all day. He has to get up at 5:00. He has no problem getting up at 5:00 for two solid weeks. Every morning it's up. Oh my god, this is great. We're going to find the Waves. We're going to go. This is He's all over it. He gets back at late at night. You know, it's 10:00. They're reviewing it. They've got films because they take pictures of each other. And you know,

he gets to bed at midnight. He's up at five. And he does this for two solid weeks because he has a rational reason to change. It has to be doable. It has to make sense. The last question I'd like to talk about here is how do I continuously Reinforce this new way of being so that you've asked yourself is it true? You decide that it's came it came from you. You understand the payoffs. You look at your life from a new perspective which is what would my life look like without it and how would I

feel and you begin to access divine guidance in doing it. And now you start doing ways of reinforcing this new you. You get back to nature. You have a Conversation with your subconscious mind. I do it all the time. I hold hands with it. I do. I take it on the beach and I walk and I start talking to it. Why are you giving me that same old crap again and again? And I you know and and you begin to talk to these habits and you get back to nature. You do things that make you

more peaceful. You do things like yoga. Um, and you have the most important thing. My one of the great teachers in my life is here in the Audience uh tonight. Her name is Louise Haye. She's sitting right there and I love her so much. Um, she never said she was too old. She started a a writer become a writer at the age of 61. um and today at the age of 82 is the uh CEO of uh one of the largest the largest publishing house in the world on spiritual and higher consciousness material at the

age of 82. So and she in her book you can heal your life. She has always talked about it for years Before anybody else would about the power of affirmations. Right, Louise? I mean, it's just always you have to affirm it. You have And so what I've done is I've taken the 18 excuses and I'd like to summarize that and give you affirmations that are in harmony with this new excuses begone paradigm. So if you take the first one, it will be difficult. That's an excuse. An affirmation that counteracts that is I have the ability

to accomplish any task I set my mind to do with ease and comfort. Why not? Why not affirm that even if it may or may not be true? But if you affirm it, then at least it will lead you to where you want to be. uh it's going to be risky because being myself involves no risks. It's my ultimate truth and I live fearlessly. How many times have I heard you say that Louise? I live fearlessly. It will take a long time as an excuse Becomes I have infinite patience when it comes to fulfilling my

own destiny. I have infinite patience. There will be family drama becomes I'd rather be loathed for who I am than loved for who I am not. I don't deserve it becomes I am a divine creation, a piece of God. How can I be undeserving? Why would God ever create something that doesn't deserve everything? It's not my nature becomes my essential nature is perfect and faultless. It is to this Nature that I return. I can't afford it becomes I am connected to an unlimited source of abundance. No one will help me becomes the right circumstances and

the right people are already here and will show up on time. And you affirm that over and over. It's never happened before becomes I am open and willing to attract all I desire being here and now. I'm not strong enough becomes I have access to unlimited assistance. My Strength comes from my connection to my source. I'm not smart enough becomes I am a creation of the divine mind. All is perfect and I am a genius in my own right. I'm too old or I'm not old enough becomes I am an infinite being. The age of

my body has no bearing on what I do or who I am. The rules won't let me becomes I live my life according to divine rules. It's too big becomes I think only about What I can do now. By thinking small, I accomplish great things. I don't have the energy becomes I feel passionately about my life. And this passion fills me with excitement and energy. It's my personal family history becomes I live in the present moment by being grateful for all of my life experiences as a child. All of them. I'm too busy becomes as

I unclutter my life, I free myself to answer the callings of my soul. And finally, I'm too scared Becomes I can accomplish anything I put my mind to because I know I'm never alone. I'm never alone. You write these down. You place them in strategic places around your house. You put them on the refrigerator. You put them on the dashboard of your car. You affirm them. Much research now is being done on the power of being able to just say the affirmation. Then I recommend you go to the feeling that accompanies that and go off

to sleep with it and Watch. Do it for a few weeks. night after night after night and you will set into motion all the synchronistic events and people and circumstances that you need to fulfill your destiny. I'd like to end this program on excuses begone with a story. It's a story I heard many many years ago and I've never forgotten. It's a story of a uh an older woman who lived by the side of a river up in the mountains, the Himalayas. And she was a divine soul and she carried with her bread in a

sack. And one day she was sitting by the edge of the river where she lived. And as she was looking at the riverbed, she noticed a precious stone. Not just any precious stone, but a precious stone like this big. And she picked it up and realized that with this precious stone and its value, she would have a lock on abundance and prosperity for the rest of Her life. Such was its value. And as she was sitting there, she put the stone back in her bag and a man, a traveler, an itinerate traveler came along and

noticed her sitting by the edge of the river. And he asked her, he said, "I'm hungry. I've had nothing to eat. Could I have something to eat?" She said, "Of course." And she reached into her bag and she took out a crust of bread and handed it To him. As she did this, the traveler noticed the precious stone gleaming. And he said to her, "I'd like to have that. Could I have that, please?" And she said, "Of course." And she reached into the bag and she handed it to him. Now, he knew, being poor, that

this was the answer to his success he had always wanted and the abundance and the prosperity. And he left. And the next day he came back and he talked to the woman. He said, "I'm giving you this stone back." He said, "But I would like you to give me something even more precious than this stone." And she said, "What would that be?" He said, "I would like you to give me what you have inside of you that allowed you to give me that stone." And that's the message of excuses begun. God bless you. Namaste. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Music] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One of my favorite questions to ask, and I wrote quite a bit about this in the book, is uh if no one told me who I was, who would I be? Try to imagine that for yourself. If no one had ever told you what you could become and who you were and what your Age is and what your sex is and what your abilities are, if you'd never heard that from anyone, who would you be? And generally speaking, when I

do that exercise, I realize that uh who I am is is a piece of God, part of the oneness capable of anything and all things. One of the questions that I didn't do in the program because of time limitations um is the question how can I access Divine cooperation in eliminating this excuse? How can I How can I get myself to the place where I have those moments that Jung called synchronistic, where the right people show up, where the right events seem to come together, where circumstances all seem to come together. And I wrote a

lot about this in the book. And what I'd suggest to you is uh what I learned from From my teacher from Lasu is that he said he suggested um you do not get what you want, you get what you are. And what you are becomes the vehicle for attracting anything or being able to accomplish anything in your life. what you are, what you believe as I spoke about in the program. And he said, and I really took this to heart, that there are what he called Four cardinal virtues. And if you can live your life

on a daily basis from this perspective that everything that you seek will follow from it. And it's never about what's in it for me. It's never about what can I have. He said, ' If these if these are the hands of God, and we're all pieces of God. If these are the hands of God, what do these hands do? What does God's hands do? They give. They don't ask for anything back. They just give. And he said these four cardinal v virtues all revolve around this awareness, this understanding that it's always about giving and not

chasing. I love the story I used to tell in my lectures when I was teaching in Europe Back in the 70s of a little kitten. And the kitten was doing what kittens do out in the alley. It was chasing its tail. You've all seen a little kitten do that. Chasing and chasing and chasing and running around in a circle. And an old alleycat came up to it and tapped it on its shoulder with its paw and said, "Uh, what are you doing?" And uh the kitten stopped and he said, "Well," he said, "I've just returned

from Cat philosophy school." And in cat philosophy school, we learn two things. number one that the most important thing for a kitten is happiness and two that happiness is located in my tail. So I figured that if I just started chasing it and I got a hold of it, if I ever could get a grip on it and get then I would have a lock on eternal Happiness. The old alleycat looked at him and said, 'You know, I I never had the same opportunities as you. I I never went to school. In fact, I've lived

out here in the alleys my whole life. He said, "But it's very it's amazing." He said, "I learned the same thing out here that you learned in school." He said, "Indeed, I learned that the most important thing for a cat is happiness. And indeed, I learned also That it's located in my tail." He said, 'The only difference between you and I is that what I've discovered after all these years is that when I pursue my own objectives and live the life that I know I came here to live, it follows after me wherever I go.

And that's a part of this divine message of accessing divine guidance in overcoming these excuses. The first of these four cardinal virtues is called reverence for all of life. Lasu encouraged his devotees to have reverence not not just for your family and the people close to you but all of life. to have reverence for every human being. To see in every person, not a judgment about what they are or what they aren't, what they should be or what they shouldn't be, but to see the unfolding of the Dao or the unfolding of God in that

person and rever that. Not only do you revere that in all of the people that you meet In your life, but you revere it in every bit of life that you see. In all of the animals, you have reverence for all of them. In all of the plants, the planet, you have reverence for all that is alive, and you treat it with great respect. So that's the first of what he called the cardinal virtues. And if you practice this, magical things begin to happen in your life. The second of these cardinal virtues is what he

Called natural sincerity, which manifests as honesty. Not the kind of honesty that says uh I don't steal, but the kind of honesty that manifests as I am authentic. I walk my talk. what I say I am. I don't lie. Not only do I not lie, but I I present myself as a divine piece of the Dao of God of the source of divine mind. I present myself this way and I'm not He's you know it's like you you can't call yourself a kind person if you're not kind to the lady who cleans your toilet in

the hotel room. If you're not kind to the person who drives you uh from one place to the other. If you're not kind to the person who trims the trees or empties your garbage. It isn't just being kind to the people in your family and to your children. It's about that kind of natural sincerity. And you don't waver from that. The third of These cardinal virtues he called gentleness. And gentleness manifests as kindness. But it manifests more than just kindness. It manifests as a non-infering way of being. And so many people that I know and

have worked with and treated over the years go about their life looking for occasions to be offended, looking for reasons to be upset. And if You live from that perspective, if that's where you are and what you're coming from, you'll never find any shortage of those kinds of things. You'll find someone whose hairdo you don't like. You'll find someone who dresses in a certain way. You'll find someone who speaks in a way that you don't understand. You'll find people who have different cultural values or different religious values than you or who do any number of

things that are not The way you are. And I suggest that gentleness really means just a way of a way of respecting all of life. I heard a lecture one time from the Daly Lama and the Daly Lama offered this and I've never forgotten. He said that if every child in the world were taught to meditate on compassion for one hour a week for The rest of their lives. One hour a week on compassion that is on kindness toward others. He said you would eliminate all violence and war on the planet in one generation. That's

all we would have to do. Imagine that being gentle means not dominating, not controlling, not finding fault with others. It means allowing. It means accepting everyone for what they are. Imagine if we lived that way on our planet today. Instead, we find that anyone who looks different, who speaks different, who doesn't have the same values that we do, instead of sitting down with them and talking to them and trying to understand where does this hatred come from, instead we use that non-gentle approach. And if you read the Dao Ching, you'll see that Lasu's antiviolent stance

is something that he manifests in, I think, 26 of the verses of the Da Chain. No violence, No instruments of killing at all, no war, not even cultivating animals to kill in war. At those time it was horses and so on. It's uh it's just it's an it's just a simple process of just allowing people to be what they are. And the fourth of these four cardinal virtues is the virtue of service of reaching out to other people not just as something that you do once in a while but as a way of being. that

whatever it Is that you wish for the other people in your life that you don't get along with, whatever it is that you wish for yourself, want it more for someone else than you want it for yourself, that's service. So, if you have a a family relative, an in-law, a whatever it might be, anyone, an aunt that bothers you, what, and you know they're coming over for a family dinner, instead of saying, "Oh, here she comes again and she's going to make this once again Thanksgiving is going to be all screwed up because Aunt Lucy,

you know, it's like instead ask yourself what what do I want? I just want to be at peace around Aunt Lucy." And then want the peace that you want for yourself more for Aunt Lucy than you want it for yourself. In the prayer of St. Francis, I love the prayer of St. Francis. I wrote an entire book about it, did a program on it for public television. And Francesco back in the 13th century Didn't have peace in his life. He died at the age of 45. He felt internally driven to teach the great lessons of

austerity and kindness and love towards all people. And when he would pray, he didn't say to God, "Please give me some peace. I don't have any peace. Everywhere I go, people want miracles. They bring their animals. They want me to heal them. You know, this is not easy. I mean, please just give me some peace." He didn't ever say that. He Said, "Make me an instrument of thy peace. Let me remember to be like that." And I would suggest in all of your prayers, you do the same thing. Instead of saying, "I want this and

I need that. I want to be healed. Please God, heal me of my illness. Please God, make this spouse of mine straighten up and be more like me." Instead of that, you say if you're sick, don't ask to be healed. Because the assumption behind asking God to heal you Is that God is a withholding God that has the ability to do it, but is holding it back from you. Instead, say, "Make me an instrument of thy well-being. Let me remember to go back to the place of well-being from which I originated. Let me think in

those terms. Make me an instrument of thy prosperity, thy abundance, instead of coming at God from a position of lack. I don't have enough. Because again, the assumption is that it's all God holds on to all of this and Is just withholding it from you. And God isn't doing anything different now than God was doing a million years ago and will be doing a million years from now. It's only in the now. So I brought out with me a copy of something called the Huahuching which are the unknown teachings of Lasu uh written by Brian

Walker and I want to quote from it the 59th and 60th verses. This is not in the Daqing this isn't something different and this is what he Said. When you succeed in connecting your energy with the divine realm, that is when you are aligned in your thoughts through higher awareness which I spoke about throughout the program and the practice of undiscriminating virtue living those four cardinal virtues which are your essential nature. This is what you came from. This is how that which allows all things to be works. The transmission of the ultimate subtle truths will

follow. These teachers cannot be sought out. It is they who seek out the student. You can't get it by going after it and chasing after it. He said this is the path that all angels take to the divine realm. which means you connect your energy with the divine realm and you practice higher awareness through the practice of these virtues. And then he says, "The mystical techniques for achieving immortality are revealed only to those who have dissolved all ties to the gross worldly realm of duality, conflict, and dogma. You have to dissolve your ties to this

physical world. Recognize that who you are is not a human being having a spiritual experience. You've heard it said a thousand times. Who you are is an infinite spiritual being having a temporary human experience. So you Dissolve your ties to this physical world and you begin to identify yourself by living these virtues and by practicing higher awareness. He said, "As long as your shallow worldly ambitions exist, the door will not open." And that's where I took exception to the teachings. Although I think there's brilliant and the idea that we become what we think about, put

your thoughts on what you want. The teachings of the secret, I Took it to a different place, which is you will never attract what you want. You attract what you are. Become this. The teachers will find you and the doors will open. So, what do you think? Should we like to hear a little bit more from Dan as we close out? Dan, come on out, my friend. By the way, Dan's parents are here. Where are Dan's parents? Mom and dad who've uh really Supported. Stand up. I'd like everyone in the room to uh acknowledge these

beautiful people from the world. Thank you. Thank you for coming. You can go on danc.com and you'll see about a 12 or 13 minute video of all of the things that this family went through to bring this young boy into the place where he is today. What do you think? Would you like to hear more from Dan? You're show [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Thank you, Dan. [Music]