The Secret of Success Without Stress

By Guy Finley Excerpted from the internationally best-selling book, The Secret of Letting Go (Llewellyn 2007) Have you ever wondered why success and stress seem to be inseparable companions in our world today? Success in business means long hours, office politics, and the neverending struggle to achieve. Success in love means constant sacrifice and working on the relationship. Success in school, art, music, science and sports means the ever-increasing pressure to perform. When we take a step back and look at the whole picture, its hard not to wonder, Is success today worth the cost? Is the fear and anxiety we feel in the present moment worth the promise of some perfect moment to come? If we look objectively at the fruit of our stressful days, and the deteriorating state of the world, we begin to realize that this is not a profitable trade. Compromising ourselves in the Now to insure a positive moment to come is a flawed formula for success. On the other hand, in those rare moments when we happen upon a pure moment of peace and contentmenta glorious sunrise, holding the hand of the one we love, the clarity of an insight or epiphanyit is obvious that success itself is an integral part of life. It is in these moments that we can hear a faint voice whispering from deep down inside our hearts, telling us that we were born to be successful; and as human beings it is our natural right to strive toward excellence and enjoy the fruits of achievement. This is the voice of intuition telling us that striving toward success is not supposed to be a dragits supposed to be light, bright, happy and fun! It is trying to reveal the beautiful truth that success without stress is possible. The only problem we really have is that we have ceased to listen to its wise counsel because we have been conditioned by society to place our attention on the objects of success, instead of on the principle of success itself. When we realize this simple misdirection that has taken place, we take the first step in learning to attract everything our heart desires. And thats the main point of this article: It is possible for us to learn to attract success, instead of trying to chase it down though years of toil, disappointment, and heartache! So how to we do it? How do we learn to attract the success we want instead of letting the

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desire for the objects of success push us around from problem to problem? The answer is simple: We begin to doubt what compromises us. This means that we will no longer automatically obey those conditioned, negative inner voices that continuously comment on us and the world around us. Instead, we begin to doubt stress when it tells us we have to rush through our day. We begin to doubt fearful thoughts when they tell us we need to worry. We begin to doubt feelings of greed and inadequacy that bully us around by telling us that who we are isnt enough. The reason that beginning to doubt our negative states is such a great key along the path to gaining our hearts true wish, is that this action separates our true selfwho we really arefrom whatever dark thought or feeling happens to be passing through us in the moment. We realize that we dont have to listen to dark thoughts and feelings; instead we understand that there is a choice, whenever we remember it, to not sacrifice happiness now for a future happy time that may never come! One specific technique you can use to begin doubting these dark states is to ask yourself this question whenever you find yourself trying to overcome any person or situation that stands in the way of winning some imagined future success: "What would happen right now if I were to want what Life wants, instead of wanting what I want? This may sound like a strange idea at first because we are so used to trying to get hold of what we want. But, when we begin to experiment with the power contained in this question, we realize that this simple action has the power to raise the level of our entire life! Everyone wonders whether or not there is one great secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own secret demands. Listen quietly for a moment. Everything can change right now. Listen to it now. It is saying, "Want What Life Wants." Locked within these four simple words is the secret of an uncompromising power for effortless living; a new kind of power that never fails to place you on the winning side of any situation. Why? Because when you want what Life wants, your wish is for Life itself. Learning to hear this supreme secret is no more difficult than choosing whether to swim against a current or to let it carry you safely to the shore. Let it speak its wisdom to that secret part of you that can not only hear what it is saying but that is, in reality, its very voice. Here are two lists that will not only make these life-healing ideas more personal for you, but they will help you to help yourself make a higher choice when it comes to what you really want from life.

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First, let's look at what happens When We Want What We Want: We are often stressed and unsettled because life may not go the way we want it to We are often tired because we spend our energy struggling against the natural flow of events We are unable to sit quietly or go to sleep peacefully because our mind is always busy trying to resolve problems that stand in the way of our desires We are easily agitated when someone or something interrupts our plans We harbor resentment toward those who have wronged us in the past We lose sight of our true nature, because we mistake what we possess for who we really are

Now lets look at what happens When We Want What Life Wants: We are always on the winning side We are free from stress, anger, and anxiety We maintain confident self-command in any situation We are never sad or disappointed because things didnt go our way We always know the right thing to do We can never be taken advantage of We are fluid and responsive to what the moment asks We are free to be kind and compassionate, even in the presence of perceived enemies We are never bored, because we are perfectly happy just being ourself Our mind becomes quiet, peaceful, clear, and sharp

But now you may ask, What if I dont like what life brings to me? Try to see that it is not what life has brought to you that you dont like. It is your reactions that turn the gift of life into the resentment of it. Life isnt denying you happiness. It is your ideas about life that have failed you. Give up these wrong ideas instead of giving up on life. Can you see the power in this simple idea! When we invite lifeinstead of resisting it we are freed from the stress and negativity that drains the positive energy required to be truly successful. We are able to participate more deeply in the present moment, which allows us to access the higher mental and emotional states required to be more kind, creative, intelligent, and loving human beingseverything our heart truly longs for. Twelve Secrets to Living Stress Free As you embrace the idea of learning to want what life wants, you will find yourself
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letting go of stress again and again. Here are twelve additional guides to help you enter a life of true success without stress: 1. Real Success is not measured by what you are driven to achieve, but by what you can quietly understand. 2. Letting Go is the natural release which always follows the realization that holding on hurts. 3. Why seek answers to tormenting questions when it is possible to realize there is no intelligence in torment? So simply drop those painful questions. 4. See the upset not as an exterior circumstance to be remedied, but as an interior condition to be understood. 5. Your secret strength knows that your secret weakness isn't really yours at all. 6. Letting Go is all about finding out what you are not, and then having the courage to leave it at that. 7. Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you ... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life? 8. Chasing after a pleasure to ease a pain is like running after a breeze to cool you down. 9. Real freedom is the absence of the self that feels trapped, not the trappings that the self requires to make it feel free. 10. Letting Go of yourself is Letting Go of your problems, for they are one and the same. 11. The only thing you lose when you Let Go of something you are afraid to live without is the fear itself. 12. Go along with your longing to be Limitless. Work with these ideas, and watch as your heart grows lighter and brighter. Your progress toward becoming free of stress will be even more sure if you always remember the following: If any want is the source of anxiety or sorrow, that want is yours and not Life's. Never accept the presence of any mental or emotional suffering as necessary, no matter how much importance these impostors lend to a particularly pressing want. By refusing their dark presence, you make space for the present moment to give you its indefinable presence. This is where the Life you wantand that wants youis waiting. Let Life bring you itself. Welcome it. At each instant, it is new, fulluntouched and undiminished by any moment before it. To enter into this full relationship with Life is to give yourself to your Self. Fulfilling the true purpose of Life is fulfilling your self. Want what life wants, and harvest the fruits of true and lasting success for yourself. 2007 Guy Finley/Life of Learning Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Develop the Power of Patience That Perfects Your Life

By Guy Finley An essential spiritual force is missing from our lives. We are about to gather ample evidence of this fact, and learn ways to recover this crucial force that we unknowingly give away. The power we're missing is patience. Real patience is not about waiting for one's expectations to be fulfilled. This is the kind of patience that we have now, and as we will see, it is necessarily filled with impatience; so, it isn't so much that we are actually patient, as it is that we are hanging around, impatiently, waiting for that moment to get what we have hoped for. This kind of patience is a contrivance. We pretend to have patience while inwardly our own unappeased thoughts and feelings pound on us. What we are about to study are some facts about the true nature of patience, and what it is that we have to acquiremeaning what we have to understandif there is any chance for any of us to become a different order of human being. The way our present mind meets life is much like a machine. Most of our lives are spent in automatic reactions to moments where an expectation of ours meets either the fulfillment or the denial of our dreams. We have yet to see that our own conditioned expectations always set us up for a sorrow of some kind or another. And what a sad state of affairs this is; our hopes are tied to the secret source of our heartachesnot just for our pressing wish to acquire more money, a better house, more respect, another relationship, what have you, but also according to the degree to which we demand that these expectations be met. What must we do to change our unconscious condition? First, we must get to the point where we see, and admit, our essential powerlessness to provide for ourselves what we believe can make us happy. This is a necessary stage in our spiritual development: to realize we don't have a clue how to help ourselves become whole. This discovery alone makes it possible for us to learn real patience. There are many references to the nature of real patience throughout all great scriptures the world over, including both New and Old Testaments. From Luke: "In your patience possess ye your souls." From James: "But let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself." And the last one that I'll mention here comes from Romans 8:24: "For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."

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What these passages would convey to us is that the true spiritual path can't have anything to do with some imagined quality of consciousness that we can give to ourselves because, for one thing, in the very imagining of that quality, whatever its name, we end up becoming impatient to possess it! This is a vital point: Our desires create an extremely powerful second force in us; and gradually, as we struggle to be seen as we hope others will see usloving, wise, strong, gentle, and patientwe come unglued! Instead of being patient, kind, and compassionate, we become the opposite: a raging volcano of conflicting desires that finally explodes. Clearly this approach doesn't work. In order to achieve our hope for what is not seena new and true patience, a forgiveness of others that sets us free, whatever that spiritual state may be that we know exists but that eludes uswe must learn something altogether new: We must learn what it means to be patient with what we can no longer do and be. There is an immense difference in this idea versus setting out to win a pleasing identity. At present, our impatience with what we hope to do or become is born out of a series of mental images and expectations that are created in a mind asleep to its own considerations. From these images we take imagined pleasure and power, without ever coming to understand why we remain unable to manifest these self-pleasing images except under certain favorable conditions. Here is a whole different idea: We must stop pretending. We must learn a new kind of patiencenot with regard to getting what we want, but with those pressing, stressed parts of us that insist we must have (or be) what we want when we want it! Can we see the difference between these two actions? The former patience is an illusion: the idea that if we are just patient and swallow what we must to get our hands on what we want, that patience will prove itself in the end and we will get our reward. This new and conscious patience that we speak of has nothing to do with the love of things, or of sensations, but with the love of what is True, what is good and graceful, spiritual in nature. It embraces the love of that which cannot be owned outright by any human being but that must be permitted to possess us if we are ever to know its peace-giving and perfectly patient presence. Inside of this new idea of patience we can begin to understand so much of what has been so elusive for us, including freeing ourselves from this terrible sense of emptiness that always follows having expectations either fulfilled or dashed. Until we understand and develop a patience born of true and higher self-knowledge, we cannot hope for anything approaching the calm contentment of a fully conscious life. Real patience has nothing to do with that familiar opposite of impatience we tolerate while waiting for what we want. Not wanting to show just how impatient we feel is not the same as being patient.

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Real patience never feels like a punishment or an enforced morality; it is a pleasurable act born of consciously participating in the process of God's life as it unfolds within us moment-to-moment. Such patience is a natural feature of a life awakened to its real place and role in the cosmos; it is both seed and fruit of a faith that cannot be shaken. To help us grow in the new understanding we need to realize this higher order of ourselves, and to give us a practical way to incorporate some of these higher ideas into our everyday lives, I have designed some special spiritual exercises. Following are five ways that we can work to develop real patience within ourselves: 1. We must develop the patience to let disturbances pass by without picking them up: This means we need to see that the reason we painfully resist any moment of life as it unfolds is that it runs contrary to our present notions of what we need to be happy and free. But the fact is, in spite of all our best ideas, we have never found this freedom from what pains us. Why? Each time we are drawn into a struggle with what disturbs usmeaning that we become identified with itthis struggle strengthens our conviction that our expectation is legitimate. How can the source of what sits behind our suffering liberate us from itself? It can't; but to practice the patience of letting disturbances pass by frees us from both our expectations and their pain. 2. We must develop the patience to be concerned with the character of our own consciousness before we attempt to make over the character of another: We are in everybody's life: Nobody walks by usnot even strangersto whom we don't give a makeover in our minds. We unconsciously sit in judgment of all we meet. What causes this mechanical reaction in us? Our present nature is limited to knowing itself through what amounts to a constant considering of anyone (and everything) that it perceives to be different from itself. So, this false nature necessarily looks, as a rule, upon the manifestations of others as a disturbance, a disturbance that we don't know what to do with, except for trying to straighten out what has offended us. So, we must learn to patiently observe and consciously bear this part of our nature that gets negative when anyone or anything doesn't match its desire. We need to put this judgmental aspect of ourselves behind us, and that takes patiently learning to ignore its demands that others conform to our expectations. New freedom follows. 3. We must develop the patience to be kind to those who do not care for us as we believe they should: This means that we can no longer do and be someone who meets others with the expectation that unless they give us our proper due, we will have nothing to do with them. What kind of human being is that? This level of self-work takes rigorous self-examination, beginning with wondering why we see some people as foes. The answer is simple: They don't give us the deference we deserve. The unconscious nature that runs us through its resentments would prove, by the pain it produces in us, that others are wrong for being the way they are. Now we know that it is what has to go.

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4. We must develop the patience to realize that we are not the only one who suffers: When we are suffering, we are sure that absolutely nobody else endures the kind of pain that we do. So, to consider the suffering of another human being almost never enters into our mind, unless it's self-serving in some way. Then we envision ourselves as a rescuing hero. On the other hand, we can learn to realize that whenever someone we know is angry or anxious, whose heart is aching, that he or she is suffering just as we do. This kind of higher self-awareness awakens compassion. And in this awakened state we are willing to be patient towards both that person in pain, as well as towards the pain in us that this same person has stimulated. 5. We must develop the patience to work for what is True until the truth in our work reveals itself to us: If all that a flower needs to bloom is given to it, how much more so must this be true when it comes to the spiritual education of a soul? If we have hope in things unseen, and work patiently for their fruition in us, how could it be that we wouldn't be given all that we need? Our task is to watch and wait; to do the work it takes to come to the end of that false nature within us under whose impatient influence we presently live. This dark nature is the soil out of which grows a level of self that is insatiable; whereas our True Self, and the true patience in which it is rooted, fulfill and perfect each other for all time. Let us work to realize that long patience within us that we will need for the long run. Remember: Patient persistence in our labors, coupled with persistent patience throughout each onethese two powers serve not only to perfect the task at hand, but also work in harmony to perfect the hand that undertakes the task. 2007 Guy Finley/Life of Learning Foundation. All rights reserved.

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The Quiet Beauty of Being Inwardly Balanced

By Guy Finley Excerpted from The Meditative Life audio album (Life of Learning Foundation 2005) The meditative life is not limited to sitting down someplace quietly, nor is it limited to someplace in time where we can control conditions so that we can experience something of a quiet mind. It can be said that meditation is the active relationship that an individual has with the whole of his or her life. Indeed, if we were able to see clearly enough into our own life, we would see something that is in itself an invitation to meditation: we are always off balance. Curiously, and what takes time to discover, is that individuals in this world are so used to being in search of balance that the search for balance has become their sense of balance. This is a phenomenon that has to be seen interiorly in order to understand it. Are we in balance or out of balance when were unhappy, afraid, lonely, ambitious, excited, or anxious? For example, you're at the supermarket, and you ask the produce man why the price of lettuce is so high. He gives you a reason, and for the next five minutes you think about lettuce. Do you even see the person in front of you? No. You're not aware of anything because you're caught up in worrying about lettuce world! It sounds silly, but the fact of the matter is, when that kind of thinking is going on, arent we looking for a way to resolve the disturbance that's inside of us? Are we not looking for a way to find what we would call the center of ourselves, a neutralizing balance, so that we dont feel the disturbance anymore? If were going to understand what it means to have a meditative life, we must understand this. All it takes is a thought or feeling, a piece of news, and were rocked off center. The "center" becomes something "out there" having to do with the condition that knocked us downan opposite in the mind of what we imagine will finally restore the sense of stability that was lost prior to the blow we received. Every single day, we are on a mission to bring balance to ourselvesachieving nothing but to throw ourselves further out of balance. Our life becomes a kind of reeling to and fro, and afterward we say balance is the search for that moment where at last we wont feel like were going to fall down. That is not what balance is! A person has to look at his or her life and see very clearly that the pursuit of balance is not the same thing as balance. If we are walking along and someone bumps into us, the sensory capacity of our body will instantaneously seek balance. We have become wrongly captive of the idea that

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being balanced, centered, is a sensation like that. In contrast, true balance is an awareness, just like beauty or stillness. Stillness doesn't have a center; it's everywhere. Awareness of stillnessand the stillness that one is aware ofare one thing, which means that real awareness has no center. There is nothing to be gained. It is already there. Likewise, beauty has no direction, which means that its center is everywhere. Everywhere we look its the whole thing. . . and so it is with real balance. How would we know how to walk straight unless there was the idea of a balance that already existed as a rectification between opposites? It is the same thing when it comes to being still. When we're quietwhether we're sitting in silence or walking down the street doing a walking meditationwe must learn to recognize those thoughts and feelings that push and pull on us. We must start to become conscious of their movement, because it is their movement that presently drives us to seek balance. If we let them go as they come up, balance is there. That is meditation: letting go to be where balance already is the center of everything in us. 2007 Guy Finley/Life of Learning Foundation. All rights reserved.

About Guy Finley & Life of Learning Foundation

Guy Finley's encouraging and accessible message is one of the true bright lights in our world today. His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most pressing personal and social issuesrelationships, fear, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom and lead the way to a higher life. Guy is the best-selling author of The Secret of Letting Go and more than 35 other books and audio albums that have sold over a million copies in 16 languages worldwide. In addition, he has presented over 4,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 400 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, Wisdom Network, and many others. His syndicated Letting Go weekly radio program is aired on several international networks including Healthylife Radio Network, WorldTalkRadio Network, and Contact Talk Radio International. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. In addition to his writing and appearance schedule, Guy presents four inner-life classes each week at his non-profit Life of Learning Foundation headquarters in Merlin, Oregon. These classes are ongoing and open to the public. To learn more about the work of Guy Finley and his non-profit foundation, visit www.guyfinley.org for a wealth of free helpful information, free audio and video downloads, and to request your FREE Self-Improvement Starter Kit.
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