We get defensive and draw sides against the other person. Then we fight to have our side prevail. We believe that if we fight hard enough, our side will win. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

Everything you do to have your side win is calculated to have the other side lose. This puts the other person on the defensive and forces that person to fight you. Then you get upset and fight the other person even more. Then the other person gets upset and fights you even more.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of conflict that creates needless suffering and makes it very difficult to resolve anything. Fortunately, this can easily be avoided.

To learn how, let’s start by looking at the nature of arguments. Whenever there is an argument, there are two people who are forcefully pushing their point of view on the other. No one is listening. Nothing is getting resolved and the cycle of conflict is escalating dramatically.

The key to ending an argument and resolving a dispute is very simple. Stop talking and listen. It is physically impossible to have an argument with someone who listens.

The next time you are in an argument, listen to what the other person is saying and hear it from that person’s point of view. You don’t have to like what the person is saying or even agree with it. You don’t have to do anything. Just listen.

Once you have fully let in the other person’s point of view, there will be an opening for you to express yours. Once both of you have said everything you want to say, you can have a conversation about solutions.

To find a solution, look for a plan that works for everyone. When you do this, you dissolve opposition and resistance. You also find solutions. In fact, you will be surprised at how fast you find them. The solutions are always there, we just don’t see them. We don’t see them because we don’t look for them. We are too busy arguing.

“I love your e-course lessons so far. I am having some trouble with lesson #19. I am confused about being willing to be hurt again and again. What situations is it good to do that and which ones aren’t? I have the Mastery of life course with the CDs and the 3 books. Which chapters speak to this issue? Thank you for your help.”

Here is my response:

It is always important for you to be willing to be hurt. It is also important for you to be willing for every one of your fears to come true — Not in your actions, but in your heart. In your actions, do everything you can to make sure a fear doesn’t happen, but in your heart, be willing. “If it happens it happens. I’ll deal with it.” This restores your inner peace, your ability to see clearly, and your effectiveness.

Willingness is a state of mind and is totally separate from your actions. “Willingness” removes the fear, upset and tunnel vision so you can see what action you need to take.

Be willing to be hurt again and again and ironically, the more you are willing to be hurt, the less you will be. The more you are unwilling to be hurt the more you will push away love and create more hurt.

Read the different sections on letting go. Letting go is also discussed in CD #2 of the audio course. Thanks for engaging in the work.

The moment you restore your inner peace, everything changes. The tunnel vision disappears and you see your situation clearly. You can find solutions and this area of life begins to clear up. To restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness, take the following steps:

1. Find the specific circumstances that you are avoiding and resisting. What do you fear will happen? What are you fighting? Be as specific as possible.

2. Let go. Be willing for your fears to come true and for your situation to never change. Be willing in your heart, not your actions. Letting go is strictly an inner state. It restores your ability to see clearly so you can see what action you need to take. Learn more

3. Trust that you will be okay no matter what happens. This makes letting go a lot easier. Trust is something you create. It’s a declaration and a stand. It’s also telling the truth. You have had difficult times before and you have made it through every one of them. If you are in a difficult time now, you will make it through this one too.

4. Release the negative emotion. On the surface, we resist certain circumstances, but at a deeper level, we don’t resist the circumstances, we resist all the feelings and emotion that the circumstances reactivate. To remove this negative emotion, dive into it and feel it willingly like a child. Reach in and pull it out. Learn more

5. Find and heal the nerve that is being triggered. Ultimately, all the fear, upset and tunnel vision comes from the automatic avoidance of some nerve. Finding and healing this nerve is one of the most important things you can ever do. It is the key to having life work. Learn more

6. Look at your situation newly. Once the fear, upset and tunnel vision is gone, you see will your situation in a very different way. Get to this place of peace. Then look to see what needs to be done. As you look, solutions and opportunity will begin to show up.

7. Take action. Go full speed to handle this area of your life.

To resolve the problem areas of your life and to restore your effectiveness quickly, schedule an appointment with Bill Ferguson. Most situations get resolved in just a few sessions.

Look in the face of someone who has little or no walls of protection. What do you see? The words you would use to describe this person are the same words that you would use to describe the experience of love. They are the same words because this person is radiating love.

Now find someone whose walls are thick. Notice how uncomfortable you feel. This person is pushing away love. The same thing happens when your walls are up. You push away love. You also create an environment where people can’t be themselves around you. Then they put up their walls.

When two people in a relationship have their walls up, a heart to heart connection becomes very difficult. Instead of creating a relationship of love, they create one of conflict and distance.

When you are willing to be vulnerable, people feel safe around you. Their put down their walls and automatically express love in return. When you have two people expressing love, you have a great relationship.

We keep our walls up because we think this will somehow protect us from the hurt, but what side of the wall is the hurt on? The hurt we avoid isn’t outside of us. It’s inside. Our walls don’t keep the hurt out, they keep the hurt in. Instead of protecting us, they become our prison.

Being willing to be vulnerable is one of the keys to creating a great life. It’s also a state of mind. Like letting go, it’s totally separate from your actions. You can be vulnerable and still say no. Just do it with love.

Be willing to be hurt again and again. Trust that you will be okay no matter what happens. Open your heart and express your love. As you do this, you change the world around you. You bring out the best in people and you create a life full of love and joy.

The moment you restore your inner peace, everything changes. The tunnel vision disappears and you see your situation clearly. You can find solutions and this area of life begins to clear up. To restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness, take the following steps:

1 – Find the specific circumstances that you are avoiding and resisting. What do you fear will happen? What are you fighting? Be as specific as possible.

2 – Let go. Be willing for your fears to come true and for your situation to never change. Be willing in your heart, not your actions. Letting go is strictly an inner state and is totally separate from what you do. Letting go is the inner action that restores your ability to see clearly so you can see what physical action you need to take. Learn more

3 – Trust that you will be okay no matter what happens. This makes letting go a lot easier. Trust is something you create. It’s a declaration and a stand. It’s also telling the truth. You have had difficult times before and you have made it through all of them. If you are in a difficult time now, you will make it through this one too.

4 – Release the negative emotion. On the surface, we resist certain circumstances, but at a deeper level, we don’t resist the circumstances, we resist all the feelings and emotion that the circumstances reactivate. To remove this negative emotion, dive into it and feel it willingly like a child. Reach in and pull it out. Learn more

5 – Find and heal the nerve that is being triggered. Ultimately, all the fear, upset and tunnel vision comes from the automatic avoidance of some nerve. Finding and healing this nerve is one of the most important things you can ever do. It is one of the keys to having life work. Learn more

6 – Look at your situation newly. Once the fear, upset and tunnel vision are gone, you will see your situation in a very different way. Get to this place of peace. Then look to see what needs to be done. As you look, solutions and opportunity will begin to show up.

7 – Take action. Go full speed to handle this area of your life.

To learn more about how to do let go and restore your effectiveness, read the articles on this site. You can also contact Bill Ferguson and schedule a private consulting appointment. Most situations can be resolved in a few sessions.

These conditions keep showing up because we create them. We interact with life in a very specific way which produces a very specific result. When you change how you relate to life, you change what happens around you.

The areas of life may seem to be the problem, but they’re not. They are the symptom of something deeper. There will always be an underlying defense mechanism that is creating the problem. This subconscious mechanism creates a state of fear, upset and tunnel vision. It destroys love and forces us to act in a way that sabotages our lives.

Here is how it works. When you were born, you were pure love, but you were born into a world that suppresses this state. You then got hurt and experienced very painful losses of love.

As a little child, the only way you could explain these losses of love was to blame yourself. In a moment of hurt, you decided that you were worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, or some other form of feeling no okay.

It wasn’t the truth that you are this way, but in the eyes of a little child, it became your truth. You then spent the rest of your life running from this suppressed emotion. It’s the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that gets us in trouble.

Subconsciously, anything that triggers this hurt is perceived as a threat. To avoid this threat, our automatic focus is on making people and life be a certain way. We do this so we don’t have to feel the hurt.

This narrow, subconscious focus creates a state of fear, upset and tunnel vision. It destroys our ability to see clearly and to find solutions. It then forces us to fight, resist, hang on and withdraw.

Literally, every area of life that doesn’t work and every self-sabotaging behavior pattern can be traced directly to this hurt and the resulting tunnel vision.

Fortunately, all this can be healed. The moment this happens, you restore your ability to see clearly. You become creative and resourceful. Solutions appear and the areas of life that don’t work begin to clear up.

It is possible to create an incredible life. Problem areas and self-sabotaging behavior patterns can get resolved. You can have love in every relationship and in every area of life.

To learn how, read the articles on www.masteryoflife.com, attend our workshops and schedule an appointment with Bill Ferguson. You can also read the book, Get Your Power Back.

We think that this will somehow bring us the happiness that we seek, but it doesn’t. It fact, it brings us the opposite. Instead of creating a life of happiness, it creates a state of fear, upset and suffering.

Fortunately, there is another way to live. There are actually two totally opposite realms of life. There is the realm of circumstances and the realm of love.

When you are in the realm of love, you are happy, alive and free. You feel good about yourself and good about life. You see life clearly and are very effective. You have a positive attitude. Solutions appear and great things happen around you.

This is the realm of love, joy, peace, happiness and miracles. When you are in this state, you are living in the light. This is the realm where life works.

The opposite state is the realm of circumstances. When you are in this state, life is on top of you. All your focus is on your circumstances. You fight, resist, hang on and withdraw. You close down and become very negative. You then radiate this negative energy into the world around you and negative things show up.

This is the realm of fear, upset and suffering. When you are in this state, you are living in the darkness. This is also the realm where we spend most of our lives. This is a very painful, destructive state.

We don’t notice that that there are two totally different realms of life and we don’t notice that we have a choice as to which realm we live in.

Somewhere in the Bible it says, “I give you life and I give you death. Choose life.” It’s talking about the light and the darkness. Obviously, the opportunity is to choose the light. This is the key to having life work. This is also the essence of spirituality.

To live in the light, we need to break out of the illusion of darkness. To do this, there needs to be an awakening. We need to know on an experiential, heart level, that the circumstances are an illusion and that the light is a very real place to live.

There are different ways to accomplish this. Our weekend workshop, Return To The Heart, is one of the best. It is a quick and easy way to change your life.

All of our work is about having people gain this awakening and live in a way that has life work. To learn more, give us a call. We can talk about your situation and create a plan for what needs to be done. You can also learn more by visiting www.masteryoflife.com

Life is very painful when you are in this state. You lose your ability to find solutions and become very ineffective. Fortunately, there is something you can do about it. You can be free of depression and you can get your life back.

Depression may seem to be caused by your circumstances, but it’s not. It is the result of how you relate to your circumstances. There may also be chemical aspects of depression, but for now, we are just going to talk about the mental aspects.

Here is how it works: Something happens that strikes a nerve. We lose a relationship, a job, or some other major event takes place. These circumstances trigger a childhood hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, failure, or some other form of feeling “not okay.”

It’s not the truth that we are this way, it’s just a suppressed emotion, but it’s an emotion that we will do almost anything to avoid feeling. Usually, we are able to push this emotion back down, but sometimes the circumstances are so overwhelming, we can’t.

These circumstances are perceived subconsciously as a major threat to our survival. In an automatic attempt to avoid this threat, we act in a way that creates depression.

We do three very specific things that create depression… Continue this article

Little children have no concept of being dirty. A young child can easily play in a mud puddle and have a great time. But then the mother comes along and is furious at the child. She yells and punishes the child severely. The child then experiences a very painful loss of love.

This hurt is so painful it gets suppressed. This suppressed emotion then becomes associated with being dirty. From that moment on, dirty is considered to be bad and if there is enough hurt, the child can even develop a fear of being dirty. In any event, dirty has just been eliminated as a possibility in the child’s life.

The same thing happens to each of us in very different ways. We get hurt and make subconscious decisions about how we should be. We decide how others should be and how life should be. We think we are observing the truth of the universe, but we’re not. We are creating our truth.

This “truth” then becomes our reality. It determines our actions and shapes our future. We create our lives and never know it.

Life doesn’t just happen. We interact with life in a very specific way which produces a very specific result. As you discover why your life is the way it is, you become more able to determine how your life will be.

At any moment, you are totally at the effect of the world around you. No matter what happens, you will react accordingly. At the same time, the world around you is totally at the effect of you. No matter what you do or don’t do, the world around you will respond to you. This makes you the cause.

You are both “the cause” and “at the effect.” You are the creator of your life and the victim. You are both at the same time, but you only experience yourself as being one or the other.

When you are at cause, you are on top of life. You see clearly and are very effective. When you are at the effect, you are powerless. You lose your ability to find solutions and tend to make your situation worse.

So what puts us at the effect? We put ourselves at the effect by fighting the truth of something. Something is in your life that you don’t like. It’s there whether you like it or not, but you are fighting it.

When you do fight the truth of the way something is, you give your power to whatever you are resisting. You put yourself at the effect and destroy your effectiveness.

Look at any area of your life that isn’t working and notice the direction of your focus. Instead of looking to see what needs to be done based on the truth of the way your situation is, your focus is on fighting the truth.

If you could surrender to the truth of the way your situation is, you would restore your ability to see clearly. Solutions would appear and this area of life would begin to clear up.

To learn more about how to have problem areas clear up, read the articles on this site and visit www.relationshipseminars.net.