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SATS ——– The Ultra Powerful “State Akin To Sleep”

SATS – What Is It?

The cliche of the hypnotist when I was growing up was of of guy with a dark vandyke beard holding a gold pocket watch attached to a chain and swinging it back and forth, back and forth, slowly in front of you while saying to you, “watch the watch, just watch the watch…..back and forth…….you are now getting sleepy…..verrrry sleepy”. Ultimately the subject would fall asleep and be subject to the hypnotic suggestions of the hypnotist.

Every day of your life, you, oh so briefly, travel through that twilight zone between waking consciousness and sleep that has been called SATS or State Akin To Sleep. It is during these fleeting moments when, if you so desire, you can get some heavy duty manifestation work done on your behalf. It is at those times that your body is at its maximum relaxation while you are still in a state of consciousness. It is while you are in the “SATS Zone” that you can best impress upon your subconscious exactly what it is that you desire to receive in your life. While you are in SATS, all the mental and emotional barriers that your conscious mind erects between you and your desire, are temporarily down. Your subconscious stands ready at those times to send to you what you are imaging, what you are feeling, as your true reality.

As Real As Real Ever Gets

This stuff isn’t some fairy tale, it’s too good to be true gingerbread story. It is as real as real ever gets for you. It is stone cold real. Feeling that your desire has already been materialized in your life has been proven to yield definite results innumerable times. There are several videos and articles on the internet to teach you how to intentionally enter into SATS. It is during that time of maximum relaxation when you can train yourself to feel yourself already having your desire. It is during SATS that your subconscious says, “hey this guy really believes that he has that new car. Shoot, I better get to work pronto on this.”

Are You Ready To Do The Work?

The whole thing simply boils down to this…..it’s not whether this SATS thing will “work” or not in bringing to you your desired result…..it’s whether you are ready to do what work is necessary in learning how to do it. Yes, there is work involved. Personally, I think it’s easier to work with SATS just before sleeping as opposed to immediately upon waking but that is just my personal makeup. I tend to start thinking with my logical mind the second I wake up but there is more of a conscious/semi-conscious SATS paradigm going on just before I drift off to sleep.

Drop Your Doubts In The Garbage

If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, why don’t you just give this a honest effort. After you’ve done some appropriate preliminary research from Mr. Google (key words: manifesting/SATS/State Akin To Sleep) on what you have to do, give it a go and see what happens. Look for signs. Many times small signs precede the actual manifestation. Columbus saw the birds with twigs in their beaks before he saw land. Sometimes the manifestation comes quickly and sometimes it comes not quickly. Be patient. You really don’t have anything to lose. It will not cost you any of your money. It’s totally free except for the expenditure of time on your part.

You might start thinking, “Yeah but what if it doesn’t work? It will just be another disappointment in my life.” Dump these doubts overboard with the rest of the garbage. You don’t need them. Those thoughts merely turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. If you have trouble getting into the swing of it, just start with small things and work up from there. However small it may be, when you get that first breakthrough, and if you stick with it, you will, the rush of joy you feel will make it all worthwhile and will advance you on to bigger things.

Conceive. Believe. Receive.

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For Good Health —– Quarantine Your Excuses

The 1980 movie, “The Blues Brothers”, starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd and an all star cast, had both great music and really hilarious scenes. One of those scenes involved Belushi and Ackroyd using a tunnel to get to their car and avoid being captured by the police. As they are walking through the tunnel suddenly a mystery woman who has been trying to kill them all throughout the movie appears and is armed with an M-16 rifle. It turns out that it was Belushi’s ex-fiance that he jilted at the altar. She is after revenge. She tells Belushi that is about to die, stating “You betrayed me.” Then he drops to his knees and pleads the following. ” No I didn’t. Honest. I ran out of gas. I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. It wasn’t my fault, I swear to God!”

I think at one time or another we have all played that scene. Excuses are deadly. They kill honesty. They kill personal responsibility. They kill growth. They kill credibility. When something goes south in your life, they throw a sheet over your bedroom wall mirror and tell you to look everywhere else, look anywhere else, but don’t look at yourself. As long as the excuses keep flowing, your troubles will keep on growing.

Excuses are fundamentally different than reasons. Reasons are real. Excuses are phony. What is meant by that is that sometimes motivation, focus and determination may still not be quite enough. There may be legitimate reasons why a specific desire has not yet been achieved. You may bear responsibility for caring for a child with multiple handicaps where your daily free time is counted in minutes rather than hours. You may be caring for an elderly parent who has issues that require huge chunks of your daily time. You may be mightily struggling to pay the bills each month with just keeping your head above water a much higher priority than learning the perfect swimming breaststroke. You may only have a handful of energy left every day after tending to work, chores and things that crop up. These may be considered reasons. Excuses are when you do have some time, you do have some resources, you do have some ability, you do have some opportunity and yet, you still make the choice to do something else other than go after your desire. Then you use excuses to execute the con job. Even if legitimate reasons exist however, you can still do whatever you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are at. Even if it is just some tiny little thing each and every day that you can do (ie., a five minute scientific prayer), it will make a positive difference in your life.

When you say to yourself, “Enough with the excuses already…Enough”, and just throw them overboard as useless cargo, you will feel an immediate jolt of lightness and that wonderful feeling of being in greater control of your precious life. You will suddenly find yourself dealing more effectively with any legitimate reasons that your goal has not yet been achieved. You will be pleasantly surprised to discover that even your overall physical health will improve thus increasing your inner storehouse of energy.

Deal with the reasons as best as you know how to do. Use everything and anything in your personal arsenal to work past them. At the same time, get rid of the excuses. They are not serving you. Wherever you are on your life journey, putting those phony excuses in permanent quarantine, will immediately put you in a better place.

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Give Thanks — You Really Will Love The Results

November 26 ………. Thanksgiving Day. Much will be said today about giving thanks and being grateful for blessings. Good feelings will abound. By November 27, the holiday will be officially over. For many it will be back to “business as usual” — carping and complaining.

Having a consistent attitude of thanksgiving has been well documented in a number of published scientific medical studies to actually improve both your physical and your mental health. Perhaps most important of all, it strengthens your spiritual health enabling you to get a glimpse past the surface of your life experiences into the deeper spiritual truths that are at the core of your very existence and are the basis of improving that life of yours.

Why is it important for you to feel gratitude for blessings received? There is another perspective besides the traditional ones. Usually you are told to be thankful because it is what is commanded of you by the religious precepts in which you were brought up. You are told that it is the will of God for you to be thankful. You are told growing up that you should always say thank you when you get something from someone. You are told people like to be thanked for their efforts. You were told by your Uncle Charlie that if you don’t say thank you to Aunt Gertrude for that sweater she gave you (that you don’t even like) that Aunt Gertrude is going to be pissed off and probably take it out on Uncle Charlie when they get home. You are told a lot of things about being thankful. What you may never have been told however is that the way that the universe is constructed, the more that you are honestly thankful, the more good things the universe is going to lay on you. Give…..Get.

What does an attitude of gratitude actually mean? Does it mean just saying the words, “thank you, appreciate it” and that’s it? Does it mean that you must come up with a way to actually demonstrate your gratitude in some way? Answers: (1) Action … (2) No … (3) Yes. For you to set into motion the Universal Law of Thanksgiving, you must actually live it. In doing so, you keep the force in play that sends you more to be thankful for. You might even say that being honestly thankful and demonstrating it by doing something to reflect that thankfulness, is something that is primarily for your benefit.

When the member of the clergy tells congregants that God commands them to be thankful, it tends to present an image of an old guy with a robe and long beard sitting on a throne looking down and saying, “Dance, my minions, dance”. Then he sees someone not thankful, frowns and orders St. Peter to bring him his zapper. Our Creator, the one true God, Universal Force of Unlimited Love and Unrestrainable Power, directs you to be thankful and then follow through with some action reflecting that gratitude because of the one hundred percent certainty that your gratitude in action will bring additional good to you, His beloved created being.

A thanksgiving action can be a silent prayer of blessing for someone, a kind smile, listening to someone who has something to say, a hug, tolerance when someone makes a mistake, an offer to help someone who is struggling, doing something for someone without the slightest expectation that they will ever even know about it or a thousand and one other actions that you can come up with.

There is no way to get around it. Thanksgiving is important. The thirteenth century theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, said, “If the only prayer that you ever said during your entire life was ‘thank you’, it would be enough”.

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Free To You…….The Lectures of Neville Goddard

One of the beautiful things about writings and recordings that are in what is known as “the public domain” is that they are absolutely free of charge to anyone who wishes to read, listen or copy them in any way they choose. One set of writings and recordings that are in the public domain that could help you jumpstart your manifesting efforts involve those of the twentieth century mystic, author and lecturer, Neville Goddard.

Neville Goddard (1905 – 1972) was born in the British West Indies on the island of Barbados. He was the fourth of ten children and immigrated to the United States in 1922. He was the author of several books as well as giving countless lectures in person, on the radio, on television and on recorded albums. He is not an easy person to pigeon hole as a proponent of this philosophy or that philosophy but was definitely radical in his explanation of scripture. I guess you can call him a proponent of the power of imagination to shape your reality.

If you are a person who would rather listen than read a book, there are many of Goddard’s lectures that are available on the internet. A quick sampling of just some of the lectures available to you include: How To Use Your Imagination; Live In The End; You Create The Reality You Live In; How To Really Pray; Your Creative Power; How To Feel Your Way Into The Wish Fulfilled. The lectures where he is talking to a physical audience at a lecture hall are the best as he seems to talk a little slower than when he is under time constraints (radio, tv, albums). This guy could make a fortune today as a voiceover artist. When you listen, it is as if you are listening to a kindly professor (with an melifluous English accent no less) in a lecture hall somewhere. Instead of a lecture on engineering or history or mathematics however, you are listening to a lecture about insights on life.

Q: Why bother with this? A: You can immediately take and use to your benefit the concepts put forth by Goddard to make your life better. If you truly commit yourself, you can shape your life how you really want it to be instead of getting stuck in a life, your life, that somehow just doesn’t feel to you like it’s hitting on all cylinders. If you feel that your life could be better than it is now and you have a true desire to do something about it, then, that is why you take the time to hear what he has to say.

Take advantage of these commercial-free lectures. Just sit, chill, and listen. Open the windows of your mind. Some ideas may give you an “aha moment” while others may give you an “I don’t buy that moment”. If you don’t resonate with all the concepts put forth, that’s ok. Take the ones that resonate with you at this juncture of your life and run with them. You’ve got nothing to lose but less than an hour of your time but you’ve potentially got a whole lot to gain.

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Smedley Darlington Butler: True American Hero

On this Veterans Day holiday, it’s a perfect occasion to talk about a true American hero that you have never heard of — Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. He is one of only nineteen badass soldiers who have ever been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor – twice. And he just may have been resposible for saving American democracy.

Butler grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania and was educated in Quaker schools. He entered the Marines as a teenager and served for thirty-three years, moving up through the ranks to major general. Wounded in combat and a recipient of not one but two Congressional Medals of Honor, Butler retired from the military in 1931 as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

In 1924, the corruption in the city of Philadelphia was so bad that the mayor asked President Coolidge to release a military general on a leave of absence to fight the corruption as police chief. He sent General Butler who did indeed reduce corruption, so much so that the mayor fired him in 1925. You could almost hear the mayor say in a back room somewhere, “I wanted him to fight corruption, not eliminate it”.

After his retirement, Butler maintained contact and popularity with veterans and was a strong promoter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He was disgusted at the way that then President Herbert Hoover refused to meet with the 1932 Veterans Bonus March protestors and how Hoover used Army calvary to disperse their campground. Although Butler was a Republican, he campaigned tirelessly against Hoover’s re-election.

In 1934, Butler exposed that he was approached by a middle man for powerful banking, Wall Street and industrial interests. They wanted to gauge his interest in leading a conspiracy (being a front man) to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt and establish a fascist dictatorship of the sort that was taking place in Germany and Italy at that time. When Butler exposed the plot, it was quickly and quietly dissolved. All the big shots behind it stuck together and called it a hoax and fake news. Congress held hearings on the matter but the puppet masters effectively quashed any subsequent action regarding the plot and it became a forgotten footnote of history.

Throughout the 1930’s, Butler continued to speak out against the big corporate interests who he said actually pulled the strings of the puppet politicians. In his 1935 book, “War Is A Racket”, he wrote, ” I spent thirty three years in active military service ….. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.”

The military-industrial complex, that was first identified and warned about by President Eisenhower, has now grown to epic proportions as generals and admirals in retirement slide directly from retirement to the boards of giant defense contractors. People of General Butler’s truthfulness, character and honesty are needed now more than ever.

General Smedly Darlington Butler, (1881-1940)— A Man of Remarkable Achievement, Uncompromising Integrity and Rock-Solid Incorruptability — A True American Hero.

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In Love With Autumn

I am one of those people that like the change of seasons. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter all have their own unique charms and idiosynchrocies. As one season takes a break for nine months, the next season slides in to do its thing for the next three months. Of the four of these lifelong friends however, I confess that I have always been in love with Autumn.

The Cooler Temps. The sunshine and warmth of Summer are nice but for the most part I just barely tolerate it when the heat gets humid and sticky. Ninety degree weather is perfect for some but for me it gets old after a while. When that first snap of cooler Autumn weather arrives, it always quickens the beat of my heart. The brisk air of Autumn fits me like a glove. There is no need to break out the sweaters and coats. I just continue with my short sleeve shirts but now without getting all sweaty. The hot, sticky, humid days have gone. The cold, biting days of winter have not yet arrived. It is the time of the year to enjoy the brisk, Autumn air that makes the leaves dance.

The Leaves. To see all of those universally green leaves change to a rainbow of colors before my eyes never fails to delight me. I love evergreens but the show that the deciduous trees put on every year in Autumn is always worth the price of admission. The explosion of color before dying and dropping to the ground is sort of how I want it to go for me when my time comes — a kind of “last blast” of achievement before my body goes in the ground. Another thing I like about the leaves when they do fall to the ground is that crunchy sound that they make when you walk on them.

Autumn Holidays. Two Autumn holidays within the season that I have always enjoyed are Halloween and Thanksgiving. As a kid, Halloween was great. It was the only way to ever get such a large haul of candy. And back then, there were no snack size candy bars. We got full sizers as well as home made candy and caramel apples. Yum. Thanksgiving to me is the best holiday of the year, hands down. No gift giving…..just thanks giving. Turkey…stuffing…gravy…family…football…pumpkin pie. When we went to my maternal grandparent’s house, there was kielbasi, pierogies, golabki, ham, kapusta, barley and babka. Everybody was in a good mood. A heartfelt Thanksgiving prayer. Taking a walk or throwing around the football after dinner. The greatest holiday ever.

Pumpkins and Apple Cider. Making Jack-O-Lanterns from pumpkins right from the pumpkin patch and of course eating pumpkin pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Fresh pressed mugs of apple cider, both hot and cold, with or without spices. Usually got the cider at a roadside stand near an orchard, where we also got a basket of crunchy winesap apples.

The Houseflies and Mosquitoes Hit The Road. The universally annoying house guest and the vampire of the insect world both go bye-bye in Autumn. Halleluah! I am sure most of you have had the experience hilariously parodied on the tv show Family Guy where you have the window open for the fly to go out and he proceeds to fly everywhere around the window but out, even with you shouting “You SOB, the damn window is open right in front of you. Get out!” Likewise, getting situated in a lawn chair in the back yard in the pre-dusk evening with a cold mug of beer when the mosquito world Count Dracula and his minions decide that all parts of my body is one big juice bar. Autumn means that these irritating critters go elsewhere. Good riddance.

The Lawn Goes Into Hibernation. I actually find that I enjoy mowing the lawn during Spring and Summer. It is good exercise for my arthritic knees. I love my Ego (electric) lawn mower (highly recommended by the way). I recite enjoyable affirmations in my head while I am mowing. With all that said however, it is nice to have a break from mowing the lawn until the Spring.

The Room A/C’s Get Turned Off. I am truly grateful for the coolness that the room A/C’s bring during the Summer but the rooms sure do get nice and quiet when they go off in Autumn. Also, the electric bill goes down as well and the moderate temps mean the heating bills stay low also.

College. To be blunt, high school, for me at least, totally sucked. College however was a completely different matter. I loved my four years in college and of course, Autumn meant a new school year in September. New professors. New courses. New experiences. Another step closer to the diploma. Being on campus in the Autumn was always a great experience.

I have always been in love with Autumn. I will continue to savor however many of them I get to enjoy before my number is called.

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They Stand Ready To Help You Make It Happen

For this week’s blog post, I will present to you a bakers dozen (twelve plus one) authors who have potent knowledge to share with you which will help you in some manner or form. I have read all of the books noted below from each of these authors. I heartily recommend all thirteen authors and these books to you. If you wish to do your own research in the realm of the metaphyscial, “create your own reality” world, these books will get you started. A number of these books are in the public domain so they are available to you free of charge online.

I like the image above because it represents a scenario whereby each of these authors, through their writings, are patiently awaiting your visit and would love to share with you helpful information that they have learned and actually experienced during their lives concerning the topic of creating your own reality.

The writings of these authors cover a wide range of ideas and concepts, some you may have heard of, others you may not be familiar with. Some of the ideas you might agree with while others you might reject. You are certainly free to choose to accept or reject the information they put forth. That is always your soverign right for anything that anybody tells you. You may reject a particular concept then pick up the book ten years from now and see the concept in a different light. In any case, it never hurts to open your mind and let some fresh air in. Pay very close attention however to how you feel as you read from whatever author or authors you have chosen. If what you read deeply resonates with you, if it feels natural to you, then the information is meant for you right now and will immediately yield you benefit if you put it into practice. That is the eternal catch — if you put it into consistent practice. You can’t just read it — you also have to do it. Thought + Feeling + Action = Results.

There is a saying that I heard once that I really liked. It has an stuck with me all through the years — “A book is a portal to another dimension”. If you choose to read further of the works of these authors, and I hope you do, make sure your mind is wide open, hold on tight and enjoy the wild ride through these other dimensions.

Neviile Goddard — Feeling Is The Secret (1944)

Stuart Wilde — Life Was Never Meant To Be A Struggle (1987)

Catherine Ponder — The Dynamic Laws Of Prosperity (1962)

Emmet Fox — Around The Year With Emmet Fox (1931)

Ernest Holmes — The Science of Mind (1926)

John Templeton — Worldwide Laws Of Life (1998)

Joseph Murphy — The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)

Florence Shinn Scovill — The Game Of Life And How To Play It (1925)

Lynn Grabhorn — Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting (1999)

Joseph Weed — Wisdom Of The Mystic Masters (1968)

Lolette Kuby — Faith And The Placebo Effect (2001)

Phillip Cooper — Secrets Of Creative Visualization (1999)

Wallace Wattles — The Science Of Getting Rich (1910)

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Guard Your Thoughts Relentlessly

Have you ever watched the movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”? It is a western involving the two protagonists, who are train robbers, being relentlessly chased by a crack posse hired by the railroad. Every time they use their skill and ingenuity in evading the posse and think they are “in the clear”, the posse shows up. A number of times Butch Cassidy says, “Who are these guys?” and the Sundance Kid replies. “They are very good.”

Your subconscious mind is like that posse in the sense that it is absolutely relentless in bringing to you what you yourself believe is your reality. And it is very good at what it does. It does not argue with you. It does not try to coerce you to do something. It makes no judgments that you should have this or shouldn’t have that. It creates the reality of your life by relentlessly observing your habitual thoughts…..the habitual way that you choose to feel inside…..your habitual beliefs…..the habitual words that come out of your mouth. After observing what you continually think, feel, say and believe, your subconscious goes to work through connection with Universal Intelligence to use the natural channels of society to bring to you an equivalent reality that matches up with your habitual thoughts, feelings, words, beliefs.

Closely and slowly read this biblical passage from the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 4, Verse 23 (from the Good News Bible translation)…..”Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.” In this chapter of Proverbs dealing with the love of wisdom, you are being clearly, unmistakeably, lovingly advised to use your God-given power of free will to continuously exercise discipline over the content of your thoughts. Your thoughts are real things. They represent real energy, real power.. The thoughts that you dwell on either will make you or break you.

Your subconscious mind is relentless because it is tireless. As long as you signal to it what you desire through your habitual thoughts, feeling and beliefs, it will create situations that will make your desires transform into physical reality right before your eyes to the closest degree possible. By closest degree possible, take the example that say you desired to be able to fly. As the evolution of mankind on this planet has not yet included the ability to de-gravitate yourself and fly, the subconscious will get as close as it can (meaning you will ultimately find yourself in a hang glider, helicopter, airplane, etc.). You need not be concerned about a stray harmful thought being picked up by the subconscious and immediately creating that reality. The key to the whole process is the word….habitual. We have been created so that if we randomly think of something, it does not instantly appear in our life. Think how chaotic that would be. When harmful thoughts enter the inner space of your mind, just shoo the harmful thought on its way and go about your business…..the business of creating your life as you specifically desire it to be. Guard your thoughts relentlessly because they truly run your life.

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Your Very Best That You Are Able To Do

There is a morning prayer that goes like this: “My Creator, help me to make my best effort today better than it was yesterday.” Whenever I pray that, I usually follow that up with with apologies to my Maker if my past ” my best” was actually a crappy version of “my best”.

Having vision, intent and faith in a particular goal, no matter how tiny or large that goal is, means that you simply can’t bullshit yourself when you say “I’m giving it my very best shot”. Ask yourself every time “Are you really?” In the image above, I have no idea what the runners particular goal may be with his run. My perception is that he is giving it his very best whatever the goal is. Every muscle, every part of him seems laser focused on achieving what he is trying to achieve. No posing for the camera. No looking to the left or to the right. No smiles for the camera. Only total concentration and effort in achieving whatever it is that he has set out to achieve.

When you are engaging in specific activity to manifest a particular desire that you have, doing what the man in the image above is doing, putting one foot in front of the other with total concentration and focus, is usually what’s gonna eventually get it done for you. We all need to just kick back and relax from time to time. However, you cannot say to yourself “I’m doing my best” and then spend three to four hours watching tv every night. Of course if what you desire to manifest is a history of watching of tv, then you have succeeded. Congrats. If that is not your manifestation desire however, then you have failed at truly giving it your best and you are just sabotaging yourself. Self-sabotage is definitely one of mankind’s favorite hobbies, and one of the most detrimental. Telling yourself that you are doing your best, when in fact you really aren’t, is an insidious con job that you put over on yourself almost always with bad results. I know because I have been there. I think that we all have to some degree.

At the end of each day, spend a bit of time before you fall asleep, reviewing your activities for that day, starting from when you woke up and continuing over the course of the day. It doesn’t have to be a long time. Five minutes will do. Review objectively. Do not spend time berating yourself where you observe that you could have done better. That does you absolutely no good. You must remember that the scriptural command to “judge not” also includes yourself. If there is no place where you observe that you could have done better, then congratulations, you have had a most great and wonderful day. If there are areas where you could have done better, simply note it to yourself and vow to to work on that in the future. If you do this, you will find that “your best” does, over time, become better and better. The result of that is the prize you are after, the prize we are all after….. greater and greater success in your manifesting your desires.

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Ultimate Freedom

As the concentration camp prisoners entered the Auschwitz concentration camp, they were cruelly mocked with the sign above the gates, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which translated means “Work Makes You Free”. This was just another one of the “big lies” of the nazis as they had no intention of granting freedom to any of the inmates. In a sense, you are constantly doing the same thing with your own precious life, creating your own little Auschwitz. You do this whenever you grant your permission for someone or something to come into your thoughts and dictate to you what you are to think or how you are to feel. For example, someone may say “He made me so angry” or “She made me so jealous”. When you relinquish power to that someone or something that is now dictating the show and pulling your strings, you have just walked through the gates of Auschwitz. It doesn’t have to be that way. Your natural state of existence is freedom with the choice to exercise free will over your thoughts and feelings at any time in any place.

Freedom. It’s a word that conjures up a multitude of images and meanings. It’s a concept, a way of living, that human beings have fought for, have died for, countless times throughout mankind’s history. What does the word “freedom” mean to you? In his famous 1941 “four freedoms” speech, Franklin Roosevelt described four essential human freedoms that people of the world were striving for: freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. The concept of freedom has always been dear to the hearts of Americans. The state of New Hampshire even made their state motto, “Live Free or Die”.

For the most part, human beings are creatures of habit. Our tendency in life is to form habits of behavior. We feel secure when we follow known paths. After awhile, we are on auto-pilot taking the path of thoughts, words, feelings, beliefs with which we are familiar. We take the path of shaping our thoughts, our feelings, even our beliefs to conform to the satisfying of our fears. Fears of what others will think of us. Fears that we will not be accepted. Fears that we will fail at something we are trying to do. Fears we will be unloved or unprotected. The problem is that by giving up your sovereignty to think and feel as you choose, you have voluntarily entered through the gates of Auschwitz. You have surrendered the only true freedom that you have in this world…..your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs.

Ultimate freedom, where you and only you choose what you think and how you feel, is the way we were meant to live and grow and thrive. Ultimate freedom requires ultimate responsibility on your part. Nobody makes you angry. Nobody makes you fulfilled. Nobody makes you sad. Nobody makes your life filled with joy. Nobody makes you nervous. Nobody makes you feel at peace. Every time, each time, you choose. You. The freedom to choose is yours. The power to choose is yours. It always has been. Live free or die…..I think New Hampshire got it right with their state motto. Choose to live free. It is a great way to live.