Not all conversations fall into the “I feel great!” “This is wonderful!” “I love you!” categories. Some very necessary conversations by way of their content will be more difficult than others. To my mind, the goal of healthy communication is to be understood – not to be right. It has been my experience that when I approach even the most trying of conversations from that perspective, that I simply want to be understood, that a lot of the defensiveness inherent in these difficult conversations goes away. Whereas on the other hand, when I approach conversations with the need to be right, and if someone else has a different point of view than I do, then I’ve made them wrong before I even start. And that, more times than not, leads to defensiveness and further frustration. So one of the things I have for you in this podcast is a five-step process for having those kinds of conversations where you think going in that the person you’re going to have it with may be a little bit defensive, or maybe not so receptive.

As I describe this process, I will not only provide you with the steps, but I’ll also try to provide you with some of the logic behind each one of them. One thing that is important to know about this process is that these five steps are sequential. So follow them in order, and no skipping around.

Step number one is check for timing. Is the person that you’re going to have this conversation with ready to listen? Are they tired, are they busy, are they upset? It may be wise to set an appointment: something along the lines of, “Hey, I have something I’d like to talk to you about. When is good for you?” If there’s never a good time, then a very loud and clear message is being sent. The message is, “I don’t care what’s on your mind.” If you’re unfortunate to find yourself in one of those kind of relationships, then I have something for you during the last half of this podcast.

Step two is state the facts. What has happened that has caused you to want to have this conversation? A couple of things about stating the facts: you want to avoid using words like always and never. If you were to say something like, “Well you’re always late,” if that person can think of one time when they weren’t late, then you have just undermined your entire case. Likewise, if you say something like, “You never think of me,” if that person can think of one time when they’ve thought of you, again, you have undermined your case. When you’re stating the facts, what you want to do also is avoid opinion. You know what opinions are like: everybody’s got one, and most people are highly vested in theirs.

Step three: state your feelings. No one knows how you feel until you tell them. You also want to speak for yourself. If you were to say something like, “Everybody thinks that you’re a slob,” if the person you’re talking to can find one person who doesn’t have that belief, then again, you have undermined your argument. Also when you’re stating your feelings, it’s very helpful to use the words I feel because nobody can argue your feelings – nobody can rightfully tell you what you should or shouldn’t feel. Here’s where people who are not used to identifying or articulating their feelings go off the rails. When teaching this process to my students, I used to get answers like, “I feel you’re wrong.” Well, “you are wrong” is a thought, it’s not a feeling. It’s an opinion. So in order to do step three you’ll need to sit down and identify how you feel.

Step four: state your needs. What do you need to have happen? What do you need this other person to do? Have a solution. Now during step four, behavior discussions are fine, but character discussions are not. You can talk about the person’s behavior, but you cannot call them names. These are not conversations that you can have by the seat of your pants. To do this process correctly, to get the maximum benefit from it, you’re going to have to sit down, and you’re going to have to think about what are the facts, how am I feeling, what are my needs? The more time you spend preparing for these difficult conversations, the better chance you have of being understood.

Finally, step five: ask for a response. Check for understanding. This is where mirroring works really well. You can ask, “What did you hear me say?”

Obviously this five-step process works best if all parties involved want a healthy relationship. But what if you are involved with someone who is either unwilling or unable to participate in a healthy relationship? Ernie Larson has a process that he calls, “Stuck in Wait.” In other words, you feel like you’re stuck in a relationship waiting for somebody else to modify their behavior to something more healthy and beneficial. Stuck in Wait is very similar to the difficult discussion process. It allows a person to set some boundaries. It also allows a person to remove themselves from an unhealthy relationship knowing that they have done everything that they could possibly do to save the relationship.

In step one, you decide how long you will wait. This immediately gives you some semblance of control in the relationship, as you are the one who is setting the time frame. Six months, nine months, a year, six weeks – it’s purely up to you, but what you want to do is you want to keep that number to yourself. This allows you to change your mind. I’ll use a very common example from the classes I’ve taught on drug and behavioral addiction and recovery. Let’s say that you have decided to wait six months for somebody to get into a recovery program. You keep that time frame to yourself because if you tell somebody that you’re going to wait six months, and then things get too bad and you can’t wait six months, that person can come back at you and say, “But you said I had six months!” It also allows you to decide to wait longer if you want to. So again, step number one: decide how long you will wait, and keep it to yourself.

Steps two, three, four and five are exactly the same as the process I described earlier in this podcast. State the facts, state your feelings, state your needs, and check for understanding.

There’s a sixth step to the Stuck in Wait process – Ernie Larsen calls it Creating a Crisis. It works something like this: Let’s say you’ve decided you will wait three months for somebody to get into a drug and alcohol recovery program. You’ve kept that time frame to yourself. You’ve mentioned the facts, that drug and alcohol use is causing damage to the family. You’ve said how you feel – you’re scared, you’re frightened, you’re confused. You have stated your needs; you’ve checked for understanding. At the end of that three months, the person has not changed their behavior. So step number six is again, Creating a Crisis. This crisis has to be something that will mean something to the person you had the conversation with. If the crisis that you’ve created is meaningless to this other person, then there’s no point to creating the crisis. One last note on creating a crisis: you cannot be bluffing. You have to have said what you meant, and meant what you said. If you have said that you are going to leave, and then you don’t, then you never have to be taken seriously again by that person.

It is my sincere hope that all of your conversations are free and easy, and that none of your relationships ever get to the Stuck in Wait point. But I believe that it’s better to have these tools in your toolbox and not need them, than it is to need them and not have them.

In practice, there is almost no difference between meditation, prayer, and self-hypnosis. All three of these actions share similar physical characteristics. Whoever is doing them is doing the same thing. We become still; we become quiet; we go within ourselves.

All of our lives, we have been programmed, we have been taught to pay attention to our thoughts and almost ignore our breathing. Meditation in its simplest, most pure form just reverses the focus of our attention. We become aware of our breathing. We breathe in…and we breathe out. We breathe in…and we breathe out. That’s meditation in its simplest form. A very common mistake that people who are new to the practice of meditation make – one that often undermines and causes people to give up the practice altogether – is the misconception that we calm our minds in order to meditate. That’s 180 degrees opposite of what we actually do when we meditate. We meditate to calm our minds.

Understanding levels of consciousness is also important when beginning a meditation practice. There’s beta, that’s us fully engaged in our daily lives, driving our car, going to work, talking to our friends and family – that’s a conscious state. The other three levels of consciousness are referred to as subconscious states. There’s alpha. Alpha encompasses everything from daydreaming through trance-like states, to deep dreaming. We also experience alpha when we’re watching television. That’s one of the reasons that television is so insidious. We are in a trance-like state, being bombarded with messages of fear and consumerism and crass commercialism. And when we’re in this state, these messages that we are getting – they take hold, they take root. The next lower subconscious state is referred to as theta. In theta, lucid dreaming is possible. And after that, the fourth level, delta – non-dream sleep. There are your levels of consciousness. Beta – wide awake, alpha – trance-like daydream state, theta – lucid dreaming, delta – non-dream sleep.

Tying this all together, through the simple act of shifting our focus away from our thoughts and towards our breathing, we can reach subconscious states. And in these subconscious states, there are lots of different things that we can do. There are lots of different tools that you can apply that help you in different areas of your life. Just some examples are accelerated physical healing, performance programming, dream programming, stress management, past life regression, habit control for those of you who are trying to quit smoking or stick to diets.

Which brings me back to Dialog with Feeling. When I began this journey of self-discovery 20 years ago, I was like most people. I was all too willing to abdicate the responsibility for my emotional well-being to anybody and everybody. I used words like, “you make me mad,” and “you make me happy.” Everybody does it. Take the next 24 hours – test this for yourself. Listen to people talk around you; listen to radio; listen to television. See how many times people blame their emotional state on other people. More to the point, see how many times you do it. How many times do you say other people are responsible for your emotional well-being? “You make me happy.” “You make me mad.”

What I learned is that our feelings are a unique language. Unique to us as individuals. And our feelings tell us much more about ourselves than they do about anybody else. However, most people have that backwards, and they try to use their feelings to figure out other people. I’m upset, therefore there’s something wrong with you. The meditation technique Dialog with Feeling enabled me to interpret my feelings and what they said about me. Instead of using my feelings to figure out other people, all of a sudden I was able to decipher my feelings in such a way that it freed me from the disempowering language of blame. But at the same time it enlightened me about the root causes of my emotions. As an extra bonus, I came to the realization that there’s no such thing as a negative emotion.

This podcast is designed to provide you with the basest of theories regarding meditation and hypnosis. For those of you interested in the actual practice of Dialog with Feeling, there is an additional download wherein I use guided imagery to take you from the beta state to the alpha state, and then through the Dialog with Feeling exercise.

I find in my practice usually I’m working with some feeling that I’m uncomfortable with – anger or fear or something along those lines – it doesn’t have to be one of those feelings. It could just as easily be the feelings of joy, happiness or peace. The biggest obstacle to enlightenment for people who are doing this meditation occurs when they judge the information provided by the subconscious mind. It’s our conscious mind that rationalizes – “That can’t be it,” “It doesn’t work that way.” Our subconscious mind will not lie to us.

Let me give you a personal example of how the Dialog with Feeling meditation technique works. A little over 16 years ago, my wife and I got married. We were married in

As I said at the beginning of this podcast, this is most enlightening and liberating thing that I have learned in my journey. Enlightening because I use my feelings now to better understand myself. And to paraphrase the Dalai Lama, to learn one thing about yourself is more beneficial than to learn a thousand things about somebody else.