Phase One Part One – Practice

Monitor our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and even how we perceive ourselves as a byproduct of chemical

To control our chemicals, we must first be able to recognize them. This first step is a simple exercise in observation.

In this first practice section, you’ll be recording your experiences and then taking note of what state of consciousness you think you’re experiencing in a Feeling Observation Log.

One hundred percent of people who apply this knowledge on a consistent, daily basis have success, not because of my program, but because it is a simple lesson in biology, in how your body works. How you use it is going to be unique to just you but applying it—doing the practices—is key to discovering your path.  If you’ve never controlled your brain chemistry, you won’t know how to do it, and I can’t necessarily teach you. I can only tell you how you’ll feel if you get it right, but you’ll need to try and fail some times and succeed others. You’ll need to observe what works and what doesn’t and to do this, you’ll need to develop the habit of personal observation. This exercise will help you with that. If you can learn to observe yourself, you can then learn to control the chemistry creating your observation.

To begin your practice, you’ll be dividing your experience of life into three experiential states. The three states you’ll be logging are:

The Fight-or-Flight or Dying State – This state represents any ‘discomfort’ in your life or what I call any ‘state of suffering.’ It includes everything from pain, to fear, to anger or depression. It is any part of your life that is unpleasant.

The Rest-and-Digest or Surviving State – This represents the times when you are not experiencing any significant discomfort. It is when you feel a ‘relief from suffering.’ This is your current ‘comfort zone,’ where things feel manageable, where life isn’t necessarily spectacular, but it isn’t horrible either. It generally represents the times when things are ‘fine.’

The Successful or Thriving State – This is represented by the times where we feel successful and motivated. It is when we are creative, innovative, deeply centered and happy.

For all of us, the way we experience the result of chemical reaction varies. There are similarities, but how and what we experience will be unique. While we’ll go deeper into these states as we move through the book, this practice is a chance for you to understand your personal experience of life through a general observation of these three states of consciousness. Over time, you’ll gain a very clear picture of how you experience each state and how it feels to be able to change it.

I recommend beginning with this Phase One Part One practice for at least a day or two—up to a week if you can—before you expand to include the next part of the process. I recommend this because it will help you become accustomed to logging your experiences. It will also help you solidify the idea of being able to change your experiences of life by changing the chemicals driving them.

Do not move beyond this step before you are ready. Recognizing the chemical is key to being able to control the chemical. It can be our temptation to push forward, but your relationship with life will not be nearly as profound if you don’t have complete information. Spending a week or even two solidifying your understanding of how chemicals create your reality—in a very specific way—will give you the power to then measure your success. Connecting your actions to your experience of life will then make moving from average brain function to higher brain function achievable in months or years, rather than decades or maybe never.

Also, please remember to celebrate your successes. It can be our focus sometimes to recall the things which are not working in our lives. It is natural for the brain to problem-solve. It wants to reconcile suffering, so it will continually strive to find better ways by looking toward what it wants to fix, but this doesn’t work to make us feel successful. The actual practice of improving our limitations will not be our focus. In fact, I prefer you not think about problems at all. A better life will not be something we create. It will be the happy byproduct of the exercises we do.