CharismaSchool

We all have paralyzing doubts in some moments of our lives. Whether if it’s too choose a college major or a job, or a business, or even simple tasks of the day to day life.Most likely you can identify this paralyzing doubt at some point of your life. It’s the kind of doubt where you simply won’t move and your mind is kept constantly analyzing scenarios and ideas without ever reaching a conclusion.

In short: You don’t know what is the right path and because of doubt, paralysis is the outcome… you don’t move one way or the other.

As time goes by, your sense of inner peace vanishes, since you live with a constant doubt troubling your mind. Should I do this? Should I do that? Should I stay put and NOT do anything?

At some moment you notice that NOT deciding is a worst fate than a wrong decision.

The secret to solving this paralyzing doubt is always by TAKING ACTION.

There’s no other way, either from your end or from the outside, some action will have to be taken so this doubt is ended.

It can be a wrong action, that’s a possibility. But a wrong action is better than not doing anything and keeping with the paralyzing doubt. At least you will learn from a wrong action. From paralyzing doubt, you won’t learn anything and your inner peace will suffer.

Sometimes it’s even taking an action of NOT taking action. You simply decide NOT take any kind of action for the time being and re-evaluate the situation after some period of time. And that’s ok too! As long as it’s not an infinite and constant delay.

It’s important to clarify that, especially in important decisions, time to think is essential. But you have to consider how much thinking is enough. At some point, we aren’t reaching any further conclusions, regardless of how much we think. This is the signal that it’s time to act one way or the other.

Or as Napoleon puts it: “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in”

The great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote:“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

So I’m not the only crazy guy saying we can actually control our own minds in order to achieve Inner Power. It’s good to know that a Roman emperor dead 2000 years ago was already advertising for Charisma School 

Joking aside, this quote packs a great depth of wisdom.

How many times have you let outside events control our own inner state? How many times have you let some random life event affect your sleep or eating schedule?

And while it’s normal that some events affect you, you must think of the degree which this is true. Some people get deeply affected by the release of a new phone, or a new project at work that won’t mean anything 6 months from now.

More often than not, due to these insignificant life events we enter a state of mental rumination and turmoil in our inner feelings that we can’t control. Meaning, we don’t want to feel stressed or anxious, but we feel it anyway.

But it doesn’t have to this way.

You can achieve a state of inner power where you can control your own reactions and achieve a mastery over your mind that allows you to be unaffected by external situations.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t give your best in your life and fight to achieve what you want to achieve. I’m not advocating a cold presence not affected by anything.

I’m advocating a control of yourself, your mind and feelings when you need and want to. I’m a certain that a clear mind and body in your work project is much better for its success, than feeling stressed and anxious about it.

Or talking to your boss about your future in the company from a position of actual inner power rather than a nervous train wreck, will probably give you a much better outcome.

Or for Marcus Aurelius, being firm in his own convictions in the midst of high pressure political conflicts.

A French author called Georges Bernanos wrote:“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.”

That’s certainly a mouthful!

This is not just a philosophical statement, it’s a very practical teaching that can be used in your everyday life for a life filled with inner power.

Sp what does it mean in practical terms?

Let’s split it by parts. The first part says:

“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much”

This is for you IF you tend to get lost in your own thoughts, ideas and feelings without any concrete actions and externalizations in your own day to day life.

Many of your thoughts may be indeed like this. They can be regrets from the past or anxieties about the future. They can be ruminations about any particular topic of feeling. They can be illusions. Our mind is the most powerful trickster. That’s why we must keep it in a tight leach.

Getting lost in your own thoughts, feelings and ideas without concrete external actions, it’s nothing more than illusions. To make sure it all means something, demand concrete proof from it. Demand external manifestations and actions.

Be it from your project ideas, love scenarios or spiritual pursuits….

The second part of the quote says:

“an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all”

This is for you if most of your actions tend to unconscious, meaning, you aren’t really awake and aware that you are doing them. This is more common than you may think at first glance, so don’t dismiss it as something you never do.

Just look around you when you take the train, or are stuck in traffic, how many of those people are truly awake? Or in your work, how many of your coworkers are merely doing automatic things?

And I don’t mean with their eyes open, I mean with an expression of LIFE and VITALITY in their eyes.

This includes not only things you DO but also the things you SAY.

How often do we use the same expressions or merely say what’s convenient at that time to avoid thinking about a particular conversation?

How often do we have the same reactions to the same stimulus?

“I always get mad when someone talks about politics”

Great! So now I know how to push your buttons! Good for me! 

How much of your life is stuck in these patterned and automatic reactions?

To really analyze both of these statements and how do they apply to your life, observe your mind for a few weeks just asking yourself these two questions:

Each time you catch yourself thinking or drowsing away maybe in a train ride or a waiting time for the doctor, ask yourself:

“How much of my thoughts are followed by actual external actions?”

And each time you take some concrete actions in your daily life (small or bit), or even during an actual conversation with someone else, ask yourself:

“How many of my actions are preceded by thoughts?”

If you actually do this exercise right, you’ll be surprised by how much your mind is truly in control of yourself; you may be guilty of only one of those statements or, more often than not, both!

You can work in depth on your own Inner Power using the 10 Steps to Inner Power training course.

To begin your journey start here:

A common question about the Sexual Magnetism training course is: “doesn’t it bring evil power over women?”It’s been brought up in different forms on my private communication with students, so it’s something I need to address publicly as well.

My thoughts about this issue, as you might expect, are quite different.

The sexual magnetism training course helps you to understand, control and project your sexual energy. Nothing more, nothing less.

Instead of being controlled by your sexual impulses, you can control and direct them into a more useful purpose.

No one would object if I would recommend to dress nicely, put a cologne and treat your date with a meal in an expensive restaurant, yet, if I recommend developing your own sexual energy, somehow it’s “manipulative” and “evil power”…

The same way that we dress ourselves up to become more attractive, or want to be in our best self when we go out in a date, why not work on our energy as well?

Why not develop a kind of energy that is naturally attractive? That makes you comfortable, relaxed in your own sexuality and better able to have a pleasing interaction.

Besides, this kind of work actually makes you LESS desperate, “needy” or prone to be manipulative since you are now a GIVER of sexual energy and not a TAKER.

This is a distinction I create very well in the training.

A sexually magnetic man is NEVER needy since he’s already very comfortable with all the sexual feelings that arise in him. He’s no longer controlled by his sexual urges, instead he uses them to feed his own attractiveness.

If you understand and develop sexual energy correctly, you actually become less manipulative and more natural. But as all tools and techniques, it’s all about your own intention. If your intention is set to evil, then this is what you’ll get.

We are flooded by sexual images every day. Merely walking on the street can be a very sexualized experience.Billboards, store windows, magazine covers and so on. Not to mention the sexuality we feel from others around us.

On most cases, we pass by them without thinking too much. Yet, they still work their magic unconsciously.

It’s impossible to be surrounded by all this without being affected. We begin to feel the sexual energy. Not exactly at that particular moment, but later on in the day, or the next day.

We may ignore it at a moment, but our unconscious registers it.

And we usually feel it not as a very pleasant energy, but as an urge, an energy of desperation. Instead of contributing to our well being, it actually becomes one more thing we are forced to deal with. Something you HAVE to do as opposed to something you WANT to do.

After all, any energy that is repressed will come out stronger. Just try to repress anxiety and NOT to be anxious and you’ll understand this very well.

Sexual energy is no exception. If you keep on repressing it, it comes out as something you have to RELEASE one way or the other. It comes out as a very uncontrolled type of energy.

If you think about it, many great men have been brought down from their careers and projects due to the uncontrolled sexual energy. I’m sure you won’t have to think much about it to discover a few names.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

You can learn how to control and use the sexual energy. You can even learn how to enjoy it and this way, all those billboards, store windows and magazine covers instead of dis-empowering you, will become a source of power!

I've had a comment from a reader that might be of interest to you. He said:

"your courses seem interesting, but also not cheap. You can get books teaching this stuff much cheaply"

And he is right on some account. But isn't this the same with all topics and human knowledge?

You can also build your own furniture, grow your own vegetables or fruits and kill a cow each time you want an hamburger. It's all great. But takes a big chunk of time and effort as opposed to going to the supermarket or the grocery store.

You can also take a 4 years college course in chemical engineering, or you can just get the bibliography, read the books and do everything yourself.

Maybe for some people this works, but for the vast majority, they end up getting lost, taking a huge amount of time, without any kind of concrete results to show for.

What you get in the courses is a structured way of learning this material AND, most importantly, the support that comes along with it. It's not enough to get the college curriculum and exercises if you don't have a teacher to adapt the information for your own specific needs.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to adapt the Charisma School courses to the students. On many cases, some exercises should be increased, others reduced, and some added to get the results.

There were cases that people were having few results, until some crucial change was made in one or two exercises. As always, one size doesn't fit all.

It's not just the content or videos for you to consume the information, it's the support that comes along with it. If you just want content, read the bibliography, it's all there and much more detailed.

But if you want true inner power or a magnetic gaze or sexual magnetism, you need not only the content, but most importantly, the "doing" with help from someone who went through the same path as you are now and can adjust the exercises and curriculum to your specific needs.

I was also taught in a close relationship with my teachers. And that's the only way to truly get it!

For more information on all the Charisma School courses, check here:

One question I often have from readers of this newsletter is about the bibliography of our work. In what books can you read more about the topics we discuss here.Because of this, I re-visited our resources page and updated it with important books and several topics. You can read more about it here:

http://www.charismaschool.com/lp/learn-charisma/

A famous thinker called E.F. Schumacher, in his book, “A Guide for the Perplexed”, wrote:“It is not physical sleep that is the enemy of man; it is the drifting, wandering, shiftless moving of his attention that makes him incompetent, miserable, and less-than-fullyhuman. Without self-awareness, man merely imagines that he is in control of himself, that he has free will and is able to carry out his intentions.”

It’s a deep quote that encompasses different aspects of what we discuss in Charisma School. There are at least two points that stand out:

1) The importance of attention: if you are merely walking through life without knowing where you are looking, without having a bright and clear mind, then you are very far from realizing your true potential.

It’s great that you can develop the concentration practices that we shared on a previous video, but you need to use that same mental state on your everyday life.

As we’ve seen before, it’s of no use to only focus those 30 minutes a day, if you’re multitasking and drifting away on the rest of your day.

2) The power of attention, as important as it is, it’s not enough to fulfill our potential. Self-awareness is another key.

This is the ability to know our true self without all the mental baggage. You need to cut through all the miscellanea of thoughts, feelings, mental ruminations, to go straight to the source of your true Will.

If this work is not done, then as Schumacher said, “man merely imagines that he his in control of himself”. To achieve true control, we must go a step beyond our thoughts and feelings.

True Inner Power, true free will, true conviction can only be achieved this way.

This is precisely what we work on the 10 Steps to Inner Power training course. To begin your journey start here:

One concept quite predominant in today’s life is the “Will specialization”. It’s very common the tendency to specialize, to do one particular activity very willful and very well, while the rest of the life stays on self-indulgence and sidetracking.For example: maybe you use your Will to go to the gym and workout hard everyday. But later on, when you need it to focus on your work and your projects, there’s no more Will power and you just procrastinate.

For some reason, your Will just vanishes when it’s time to focus on another activity.

I wouldn’t consider this to have a strong Will.

It’s great that you can find the Will to go to the gym everyday, but if then you don’t use it in all aspects of your life, your life will end up disproportionate.

You’ll have a great body but your business projects will end being failures. (for example)

The Will and inner power must encompass all aspects of your life. It’s not enough to just “specialize” in a few of them, and be self-indulgent on the rest.

Having a strong Will is a full time effort that takes time to be fully implemented.

It’s way beyond the 28 days to establish a habit that so many books claim it’s enough.

It’s not.

But one thing is certain: once you put this effort over a certain period of time, it stops being a constant effort and it starts to be just a way of being.

Using the Will ends being a habit as much as being self-indulgent is one. It’s not longer a big effort to just do the things you want to do without procrastination and laziness. It’s just part of your nature.

After the initial period of hardship and effort to sustain the strong Will, you’ll get used to doing it this way and can no longer imagine yourself of being any other way. You’ll only need to use a minor effort to give a gentle nudge to your Will here and there.

Then, it’s no longer a question IF you’re going to finish that project in time or not. You just know this is going to happen.

You just know the activities you decide will be done when you said they will be done.

And this is your normal state of life.

A state of Inner Power.

Theron Q Dumont, another pseudonym for William Walker Atkinson said the following in his introduction to the “Power of Concentration”:“Success is assured when you are able to concentrate, for you are then able to utilize for your good all constructive thoughts and shut out all the destructive ones. It is of the greatest value to be able to think only that which will be beneficial.”

I like this quote since it explains very well the true power of concentration. It goes far beyond doing a few exercises in the morning and forgetting about it the rest of the day.

Remember: the goal is not to be good at those exercises.

Just like a piano player ultimate goal is not to be great at scales. They want to play great music, and the scales is a helper for that. A playground to experiment.

The concentration exercises are the same. They are just like the scales. They will help you understand what it’s like being concentrated and what you need to do to become concentrated. A playground for your mind.

But then you’ll need to use this experiential knowledge during the rest of the day. Otherwise, even the best concentration exercises in the world won’t show any benefit in the real world.

After all, if all you do is spend 15m everyday doing these exercises, but the remaining 23h45m are completely out of focus and distracted, what message are sending to your mind?

“Hey subconscious! I want a distracted mind that is able to concentrate once a day for 15 minutes!”, since distraction is the state that you are in most of the day.

Air traffic controller is a job that demands a high level of concentration when they are working. Psychology studies have demonstrated a very high attention span once you’ve been on a job for a few years.

Why?

It doesn’t take a leap logic to understand that if you spend a big part of your day highly focused, your brain will develop itself to accommodate this fact and you become able to sustain a very high degree of concentration even in other activities.

Does that mean that you should change your job to become an air traffic controller?

Far from it. All jobs will allow itself to this intense level of concentration, even cleaning houses or waiting tables.

It’s up to you to be fully focused in whatever you are doing, with a strong intention and concentration, or to be daydreaming and thinking about your holidays or checking facebook.

The difference with the air traffic controllers is that they MUST be focused and concentrated, otherwise people die. If you carried the same responsibility in your work you would also give a big weight to your concentrated mind during your work.

This is the difference between being OBLIGATED to be concentrated and highly focused (like an air traffic controller) or be given a CHOICE (like most jobs).

Does it also means that concentration exercises are useless?

Of course not. The concentration exercises teach you what it’s like to be concentrated and give you a training ground to experiment with different states inside of yourself. They allow you to optimize your concentration state.

But then you’ll have to sustain it and use it throughout your day. Without this crucial understanding, the exercises won’t be very useful.

Last week I shared a video with you with three concentration exercises, you can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taKI1unXAoM

Hopefully you’ve already worked with some of these exercises and started to become more attentive to your focus during the day.

But one thing that I haven’t mentioned in the video is the power generated by this concentration exercises can also be used for evil.

(insert evil laugh here!)

No, I’m not talking about the influence and mind control you can eventually exert over others, even though that’s a reality of a good concentration power.

I’m talking about a far more dangerous aspect of the concentration powers.

The harm you can inflict to yourself.

Concentration is nothing more than a powerful magnifying glass. This magnifying glass can be pointed to whatever you want.

So let’s say you start exercising your concentration and focus power and you develop quite a good level of it.

What this means is that you now have a powerful magnifying glass. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s an important tool as I keep on repeating, but it’s a tool and not the ultimate end in itself.

If you, at the same time you are developing this concentration, you are also developing thought control, behavior control, your own inner power… then you’re on a good path.

Yet, if you just train your concentration without developing your inner power, then you run a serious danger of turning this magnifying glass on yourself and worsening your current condition.

If your thoughts are already depressed thoughts, negative mental states, ruminations and anxieties and you are doing nothing to change this… then congratulations, you are now able to turn this magnifying glass onto all these thoughts and states, increasing tenfold their power to harm you and cause you pain.

In short, if you are going to increase and train your concentration, make sure you’re also doing the same with your Inner Power. You sure don’t want to increase the negative states and thoughts even further.

In certain trainings you can learn techniques to bring out repressed emotions that are causing many problems in your lives.When they are out in the open, your defenses are broken. Your external armor is broken in order to destroy the packets of condensed memories that have been causing so much suffering in us.

“Great”, you think, “no more defenses or repressed memories holding me down!”

So they go down.

And then what happens the next working day or the next week or next month?

Often you find that with your defenses gone, you can barely stand up.

This is deeply significant, for it shows to what extent you rely on your defenses and your armor in order to stand firm in the world.

It’s not a true connection to the source of your Will or inner power. No, it’s merely the defenses standing up.

Your ego causes you to live constantly on the defensive and without these defenses, you are weak and disoriented in the world.

I have nothing against removing of defenses, but only if it’s replaced by a connection to the strong inner power inside of each one of us.

This is what is missing in modern psychotherapeutic practices: they know how to work and disarm the defenses, but do very little to grow the inner power, the strength of character and the true Will connection that replaces the loss of defenses.

Without this connection to your true Will, without building the inner power and learning how to control your mind, you’re only setting yourself up for another breakdown and more building up of defenses over time.

If you have been reading my newsletter for a while, you know it’s completely free of religious dogma. Yet, even if you are not a Buddhist, try to read the story below, not as advocating for a particular religion, but as a profound teaching of inner power applicable for all of us regardless of which religion we belong:There was a very poor woman who begged every day for her food. One day she heard the Buddha was coming, so she was determined to meet him.

When she got closed enough to speak to him, she asked him for food.

“What do you really want?” The Buddha asked in return.

“I want some of those fruits you have in your bowl”

“I will give you some”, the Buddha answered, “but first you must refuse what I’m giving you”

Then he held out the fruits to her:

“Now – say NO!”

It was a very difficult thing for this starving woman, who could only feel one word: “YES!” resounding in her, as she stared at the delicious fruits he was holding out.

Nevertheless, she was silent and allowed the “No!” to grow inside her.

At the instant she uttered the word, she realized that for the entire life, she had been begging inwardly as well as outwardly, which had made her dependent on others for her self-worth.

In saying NO in this way for the first time, she also discovered there was an inner power in her that was capable of refusing a desire or an immediate need.

She discovered she could actually control a very powerful force within.

This force is the inner power.

You gain strength to stand up for yourself, to refuse your mind’s wishes and connect with your own true Will.

Yesterday we discussed about finding our purpose in life and how inner power can be an important part of this process.

Now I just want to add another important piece: you can control your mind on the inside, but it also needs to be controlled on the outside through your behaviors.

Which means that not only you should not be a spectator on the internal world (by watching your mind contents flashing through) but you also shouldn’t be a spectator on the external world (by passively living without taking action).

They both go hand to hand and you shouldn’t develop one without the other.

The first thing you’ll discover as you start developing your inner power and controlling the contents of your mind is: to actually stop being a spectator you’ll need to replace the actual contents of your mind with your own contents, meaning, if your inner voice is not telling you what you want to hear, then, what do you want to hear? if your mental images are not what you want them to be, then what do you want them to be?

To know this, you actually need to start making decisions and establishing objectives. You need to decide what you want to become. Your inner power starts here.

They don’t need to be perfect and lifelong decisions, just enough to get your started. On many occasions is simply getting your life in order: getting healthy, finding a source of income, finding a partner, and so on.

They can also be related to replacing bad and negative beliefs you may have about yourself: being fat, ugly, short, etc.

When these internal decisions are made, you’ll realize that some of your behaviors, some of the actions you are taking on the external world, are not congruent with what you want to achieve.

This is where behavior control comes in.

As you change the contents of your mind, as you transform your inner voice into your own powerful source of inner power, as you transform your mental images in strong symbols of power and your mental state into overall energy for yourself, you start to notice that your behaviors also need to change in order to be congruent with this new state of power.

But now, with your new found strength and power coming from the inside, you actually have enough energy and Will to change your behaviors on the external world.

And if we wanted to tie the knot with the purpose of life from the previous email, we’ll now be able to much more easily discover it since we would be in full contact with the true source of our Will and we would be able to manifest it in the world.

To start your journey of increasing your Inner Power start with the 10 Steps to Inner Power in here: