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Melissa Sheil

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Hacking your own mind – Lessons from Dr Demartini

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Many people live as a victim of their own history. They act in servitude of bygone events and unconsciously towed into the future by the undercurrent of their past. For a person to become a master of their own destiny, we must first examine our own brain, understand what we value and change these values or forgive memories if they no longer serve us positively.

Human behaviourist, Dr John Demartini, has developed powerfully effective strategies (the Demartini Method and Value Determination) in identifying our personal values and learning manipulating oneself into becoming the most illuminated, clear-headed and equipped version of you possible.

The Demartini method, taught in his program ‘The Breakthrough Experience’, is a series of concise questions to help us see the hidden order in our daily chaos. It allows us to become conscious of unconscious information that causes us to have skewed, biased and emotional responses to events in our life.

By resetting the mind, we seek to turn negative events into opportunities for growth. Resentments are stored in our unconscious mind, occupying space and time, steering our behaviour and life. Dr Demartini believes you cannot escape the authority of past resentments and move forward unless we learn to love and appreciate them.

“I know a lady who was married to five men in a 25-year period, all of whom were alcoholics named Mike. Her father’s name was Mike and he was an alcoholic. As long as she’s got resentment for her Dad, she keeps marrying her Dad.”

 

One set of questions Dr Demartini devised in the method focuses on dealing with negative events and transforming them into positive lessons.

“Let’s say if somebody comes up and criticises you. You’re a little bit perturbed and upset. The question is what specific trait, action or inaction you perceive this individual to be demonstrating that you despise or dislike most. You define what just happened in the situation and what they did. And then you go to a moment where and when you perceive yourself demonstrating that same or similar behaviour in your own life,” says Dr Demartini

“It is not fair to judge somebody on the outside when they’re just reminding you of something on the inside, that you’re internally judging yourself for. A lot of our resentments come from things we’re ashamed of inside but don’t want to face.

“You then ask, how did that event serve you, how is it an upside? Every event has two sides, find out the upside to it and stack up enough benefits to it then you don’t have to be affected by it. You can actually be grateful for it and realise it has nothing to do with what happens, it’s your choice of perception. The resentment is no longer running you – you are running you.”

These questions assist in dusting through the attic of one’s mind in order to allow true perspective and make clear decisions that move forward, rather than murky ones that serve no one but our memories.

The complete method includes 80 questions; the 14 main questions are primarily about resolving resentment and infatuations, but others cater to more specific issues including perceptions of gain or loss, particular emotional states and dealing with dissociative states such as bipolar condition and schizophrenia.

The Demartini method exemplifies how a person can change their entire life through perception. Honed by Dr Demartini for more than four decades, it is used by governments, corporations, psychologists as well as ordinary people to reduce stress levels, eliminate emotional turmoil and focus on gratitude.

Value determination, used in parenting, leadership and self-actualisation, is a tactic to trick ourselves and others into doing something we want. It is another one of Demartini’s most popular mindset-based strategies.

Formatted around the idea that every human being, regardless of age, gender or culture has an evolving set of values that guide their life, value determination involves identifying these guiding inherent priorities in order to effectively motivate people.

Our brains create a hallucination based on how we filter reality, determined primarily by our values. Individuals are spontaneously inclined to do more of what they value and require extrinsic motivation and reminding from external sources to do things they value less.

“A mother whose highest value is children will walk into a store and her eyes will automatically seek children’s items. Her husband, whose highest value is entrepreneurship will have a completely different view when walking into the same store. Their children too will focus on different things than their parents.”

If we can identify what someone’s values are, we can frame a suggestion with their highest value emphasised. Respecting someone like a customer and selling ideas to them in terms of what they find most meaningful, will make the person both more responsive and gratified when the idea has been manifested.

This is a crucial tactic not only in parenting, says Dr Demartini, but in convincing ourselves to do something.

“If we can stack up enough benefits concurrent with your values, adding positive associations, we can eventually convince anyone to do anything.”

“If I took a hammer and asked to hit your thumb with it you’d say no, but if I told you that you could meet your biggest Hollywood crush, you’d put your thumb down on the table and say let’s go to work.”

“At a convention in Sydney, I convinced a woman at of her attraction to a not so typically attractive man in about four or five minutes. I painted a picture of him based on her fantasies, told her that he was intelligent, ambitious, entrepreneurial and suddenly her physiology changed. Because I accessed enough of her higher valued aphrodisiac centres, his looks were no longer an important factor. By the end of the conversation she was buzzing to meet him; I had to gently explain I had made this magical person up as an example.”

Values are constantly changing and growing throughout one’s life, through either gradual tweaking or cataclysmic change.

If the mother who holds her children as her highest value experiences her children dying in a horrific event, she will obviously have to adapt, and her values will subsequently change drastically. It is thus important to do a value determination test every so often to ensure we are working in accordance with our current self and not a past version.

In addition to easing difficulty in completing unpleasant things, value determinism allows meaningful fulfillment from accomplishing tasks that the individuals know are valued high to them. Increased resilience, adaptability, creativity, wellness quota and stronger immune system are tangible results seen by Dr Demartini in people successfully living congruently with their values.

Understanding oneself, knowing what we desire and having the tools to transform potentially negative situations into priceless information, are paramount to changing the relationship one has with themselves and others into something responsive and positive.

These two methods represent only a sliver of Dr Demartini’s practicing programs developed over 47 years.

More can be found on his website: https://drdemartini.com/

Human behaviourist is not a title likely to appear whilst rifling through career brochures, yet no other label fits Dr John Demartini as deftly.

A self-described ‘polymath’, Dr Demartini has studied psychology, human biology, chiropractic and neurology at a tertiary level and has an impressive field of knowledge outside that too; he could hold a perfectly respectable conversation on astrophysics if pressed. He is above all, an educator and studier of people.

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PARENTING

Communicating with Generation Alpha

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Generation Alpha, the moniker given to the children born after 2010, not only resets the generational alphabet, but reflects the hope and potentiality this group promises as the first cohort born entirely in the 21st century in an age of unrivalled advancement.

Parents of these children need to ensure they don’t fulfil the tendency to project their own personal and generational ideals into teaching. Instead, treat children as unique individuals with their own inherent values and context and find that communication with flourishes easier and allowing them to be more self-actualised people.

 Dr John Demartini, notable human behaviourist, believes this caring individualistic approach to parenting is crucial in the raising of Generation Alpha to ensure they prosper in a dynamic future.

Dr John Demartini, human behaviourist

Effective communication is imperative to all successful relationships; in parent and child relationships however, it is often the weakest link. People are most responsive to suggestions that have benefits valuable to them. Thus, reframing information in accordance to a child’s values produces more constructive and efficacious communication.

You wouldn’t expect a customer to buy an item if you listed all the reasons why you personally wanted it. A skilled salesman examines the customer’s personal values and generates benefits from their perspective. Children are infinitely more receptive to instruction and guidance if the conversation comes from a position they understand wherein their own values are emphasised.

Dr Demartini’s principal recommendation to parents of Generation Alpha revolves around value determination and projection. Parents are urged to consider and care enough about the child as a real person to understand that they have their own inherent set of values and independence rather than extrapolating their own contextual ideals.

The tendency parents have to project their values onto their children autocratically will naturally be met with resistance. The assumption that the child is cast in the same likeness and values the same thing as the parent is damaging. Children end up mislabelled and sometimes mistakenly medicated out of ignorance.

“Children are customers,” says Dr Demartini. “In customer relationships, you factor in their values and their needs and establish those needs before communicating. You care enough to communicate and educate them in accordance to these values and they will be receptive and be able to incorporate that into their life and expand without resistance.

“If you project your values on to somebody and not consider what they hold in esteem you are going to get resistance. Your children will be labelled difficult people when in fact they’re just not being communicated with effectively.”

As is when someone attempts to sell you something you don’t want, children become belligerent when they are approached in a way that does not coalesce with their own intentions or perceive their feelings as bypassed.

Try avoiding imperative projection phrases: should, ought to, supposed to, got to, must.

“These authoritarian terms are almost disrespectful”, says Dr Demartini.

Caring about your child means articulating things in a manner that is understanding of their world view. They will be much more receptive and expand their capacity to listen if an instruction is coming from a line of thought they can follow by someone who respects them, rather than a demand they don’t understand from an authoritarian who speaks down mindlessly.

Teach them to think of obstacles differently; things are not IN the way, they are ON the way. By manipulating the vision of a boulder in the pathway into a building block, goals seem more achievable and accomplishment even sweeter.

Parents, generally, tend to parent in the same manner they were parented. However, after decades of thorough studies on child rearing, a traditional blanket, one-size-fits-all strategy is no longer viable.

Entering a world where the internet is a necessity rather than a luxury, gadgetry is ever advancing and encroaching and speed is a highly determinate factor, these present-day toddlers will likely set the precedent for the rest of the century. As their speed of learning increases so will their expectations; demands will be expected to be fulfilled instantly due to technological advancement. Dr Demartini notes that these new contextual factors will require change in tactics for the parents of these children.

“Their immediate access to information is increasing, thus their demands of themselves and other people will go up accordingly,” says Dr Demartini.

“Their long-term visions to do things in the future will be technologically achievable and so it is important that they are raised in a way that extrapolates their true values.”

Essentially, this generation will have not only the dream to develop the world in new ways, but the technological capacity to achieve it. It is of paramount importance that they are raised with values of the future rather than the past and have confidence and respect for themselves and their support system.

Generation Alpha children will still want to empower all seven areas of their life. They will have a desire to grow their minds, find a career path that serves themselves and others, attempt to expand their wealth, develop some sort of romantic relationship and sustain intimacy with others, monitor their physical fitness and health, fight for social justice and feel spiritually empowered. The difference is that the world is veering away from tradition and steering into a more diverse, flexible state. This distinction means that children need to understand themselves and their own values so they can move with the flow of the future rather than be stunted by the learnings of bygone eras.

“My son has 20,000 followers on YouTube. He wants to be just like PewDiePie. There was no such thing when I was growing up and I don’t entirely understand it, but I have to respect the things he values and encourage him in this new pathway,” says Dr Demartini.

“I spoke to a young lady who had a 16-year-old son many years ago. She thought he was wasting his life messing around on computers and wanted help in encouraging him to do something productive. He now has a high-ranking position as a specialist at IBM (a computer hardware company). She grew up in an era where computers didn’t really exist so she couldn’t understand the value. Each generation is going to have a technology that the generation before is not familiar with and they’re going to tend to project the past onto the future instead of respecting the present.”

You cannot expect to behave the exact same way in different relationships with different people. You have to take into account the values and personality of the person you are with; bend and flex in accordance to them.

When you are in a relationship with somebody, you don’t want them to tell you how you have to be, you want to be loved for who are. Children are no different.

For more information on Dr Demartini visit his website.

 

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KIDS

World Immunisation Week

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World Immunisation Week which began on Friday 24th April and concludes Thursday 30th April, showcases the growing importance of awareness and the effective ways to keep children safe from preventable disease.

UNICEF Australia, the humanitarian fund organisation that champions children’s health and wellbeing, along with the Department of Health have urged parents to not forget about their child’s immunisation programs during this time of crisis.Though Australia has a generally high level of immunised children, experts note it is essential that we do not fall behind in vaccination upkeep.

24 countries around the globe including Brazil, Mexico and Ukraine have paused child vaccination programs in the wake of COVID 19, leaving over 117 million children susceptible to deadly and preventable diseases such as measles, tetanus and rubella.

Despite Australia not being one of these countries, we still have a low level of children who are fully immunised at the age of two years old.

Felicity Wever, Director of International Programs at UNICEF Australia says any decline in immunisation rates, particularly for this age group, would be cause for concern.  We should be making sure children are not missing out for good, putting them at unnecessary risk of preventable disease.

“The government sets out the immunisation schedule for children, but some children may be missing out on immunisation due to social distancing or fear of COVID-19.

“Immunisations are an essential part of regular health checks, so we’re urging parents to continue to make those appointments during this time.

Felicity Wever, Director of International Programs at UNICEF Australia

“UNICEF is also ensuring there is a continuity of ongoing health services for children in the wider Asia Pacific region, including immunisations, even in the midst of this pandemic.,” says Ms Wever.

Similar trends of immunisation postponement are developing in Asia Pacific regions including Vietnam and the Philippines, which is particularly dangerous as experienced during a recent secondary outbreak of  measles in Samoa,.

Due to postponement of supplementary programs, pockets of children are left un-immunised and vulnerable. In such vulnerable countries wherein health systems are often of lower standard, prevention is truly the best treatment and these childhood diseases combined with coronavirus result in communities fighting against a multi-pronged enemy.

“It’s not that long ago I that we saw a measles outbreak in Samoa. 70 lives lost and 61 children under five years old died as a result of that.” says Ms Wever.

“Outbreaks are  a very real risk when you have declined coverage of immunisation.”

“Having worked with UNICEF for a number of years now in places where it is such a precious gift for parents to be able to immunise their children because they have much higher rates of mortality under five years old;  it’s a luxury in countries with very high levels of coverage like Australia for parents to be able to make their own choices.”

Dr. Katherine O’Brien, Director of the Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals Programme at the World Health Organisation implores people to continue vaccinations wherever possible.

“WHO is working constantly with partners and scientists to accelerate vaccine development for COVID-19, but we must also ensure people are protected against those diseases for which vaccines already exist,” says Dr. O’Brien.

“The message from this guidance is clear. Countries should take what steps they can to sustain immunisation programmes and prevent unnecessary loss of life.”

World Immunisation Week is primarily about raising awareness. Children still die of completely preventable diseases, a fact that should not be the case in 2020, especially when first-hand evidence of the lethality unchecked disease results in can be seen globally.

Parents have the right and duty to protect their children. Many deadly childhood diseases have been all but eradicated, the number steadily declining.

This can only continue if awareness increases, everyone contributes and does their part to support childhood health via immunisation.

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LIFESTYLE

Empathy in Tragedy

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When Australia was dark and blackened from the recent bushfire tragedy, the spark of community empathy and human goodness sought to lighten it.

All of Australia seemed to halt this summer when devastating bushfires swept across the East Coast, razing towns and houses to the ground, devastating native Australian wildlife populations and causing unimaginable heartache for families who lost loved ones.

There was little celebration in the air on the eve of the new decade; the sky filled with smoke where there should be fireworks and sirens sounded instead of countdowns. Bushfires that started in September 2019 continued blazing with gusto across New South Wales and Queensland, with no sign of abating.

With over 42 million acres burnt, almost 2,000 homes lost and 32 people killed (as of 24th January), the dawn of 2020 was not shaping up to be the fresh start for which many had desired.

In the wake of such devastation, victims were left with little optimism and hope. However, strangers from around the globe were eager to pick up the slack and provide hope for them. Instead of locking their homes, bunkering down and thanking God it wasn’t them, people far and wide rallied to help those suffering.

Neighbours and strangers alike travelled to fire-stricken areas to help rebuild and serve in relief efforts. Contributions were diverse; some doled out water bottles and words of encouragement whilst others offered their own homes for those without accommodation.

One such person was university student, Erin Riley. Riley initially offered up the paddocks behind her home in southwest of Sydney to those without a place to stay which eventually evolved to forming the organisation FindABed, connecting those without accommodation to people ready to provide it. According to The Guardian, more than 3000 people volunteered lodgings for displaced victims within the span of four days.

Harrowing images of koalas with singed fur and gruesome injuries were accompanied by photographs of locals scouring the burnt woodlands to search for injured wildlife, tales of temporary adoption and emergency veterinary relief.

The federal government estimates over 6000 registered charities are operating in the affected regions, ranging from food providers, emergency wildlife care and disaster relief.

Those who could not physically help, gave money generously. The many charities and volunteers operating in the area were supplemented by financial efforts, with the sheer amount of money donated to bushfire relief funds dwarfing other campaigns of the season.

More than $200 million has been donated to relief funds, according to the Australia Financial Review (as of 10th January 2020), excluding the $150 million raised by the Red Cross Disaster Relief funds. Donations were not limited to spare change, with corporations, philanthropists and celebrities all pitching in to help.

In a highly impressive and record-breaking Facebook campaign, Australian comedian, Celeste Barber, raised $51 million to support fire-fighting companies.

From the few million donated by the likes of Commonwealth Bank and Chris Hemsworth, to the $20 I contributed, a huge number of people across varied socio-economic brackets have sought to alleviate some of the pain the country has endured.

The true heroes of the cause, however, were the volunteer firefighters. Displaying vast amounts of bravery, giving up family time and risking their own lives, in attempts to contain the fires, with no abject benefit to themselves or selfish motivation, fire fighters showed true heroic spirit.

Former captain and current lieutenant of Stoneville Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade and victim of the 2014 Western Australian bushfires, Greg Jones, knows exactly the sort of selfless courage demonstrated, reiterating not only the community driven motivation, but the inexplicable guilt firefighters often feel from the devastation.

“Most [volunteer fire-fighters] just want to serve their community, as a positive thing they can do,” Greg said.

“We’re used to fire. Once you’ve done your training and have been to a few events, you become comfortable with it. You get used to standing in the fuel and feel what’s normal.

“You become very clinical about it. You haven’t got time to be emotional. Save the ones you can save but you can’t protect everything. That’s a big problem for firefighters, they feel they failed because they couldn’t save everything. Standing on the side of the road watching homes burn, standing next to a fire truck that’s run out of water. Although they’ve achieved a lot, they didn’t save everything.

“When you see human life and the millions of animals we’ve just lost, that has an impact too. It’s never good, there is never a time you don’t feel guilty for what you couldn’t save.”

When asked if he had witnessed acts of kindness and empathy in the aftermath of bushfire tragedy, Greg did not have to think for long.

“Countless examples. Countless. People bond together and in times of trouble like that, the community comes together. You’ll also see the worst in some people, but overwhelmingly you’ll experience the best in humankind.”

“There are people out there scamming donations, but also those donations themselves have been in the millions. People from all walks of life do whatever they can to help, whether they’re baking scones, raffling chooks or putting on a concert. It’s something unique about Australia I think,” said Greg.

These efforts, ranging from the massive to the minor, have been done selflessly, generously and all smack of a fundamentally human trait – empathy.

Whether it manifests stronger during adversity or simply shines brighter against such a dark back drop is unknown, but empathy appears to be a B-side to tragedy.

Amidst the deep wounds caused by a mass scaled disaster is the salve of human compassion and community. Empathy and hope are foundational human traits that bely the idea that, despite our many flaws we are an innately good species.

In an increasingly connected world, we find ourselves inundated with scenes of tragedy and disaster. The media is constantly providing a new dose of human suffering to insight our malaise over.

Does this over-saturation cause us to distance ourselves and become apathetic?

Sometimes, yes.

However, as soon as a real human face, story and plight is brought to the forefront of a disaster our empathy comes rushing back in. The recent Australian bushfire tragedy exemplifies this marvellously. Although an outpouring of support has come from across the world, the ones closest to those affected seem to feel it a bit deeper.

Proximity is a key cornerstone of empathy and Australians at home and internationally seem to have removed all barriers of difference and bonded together to help in any way they can.

In a study of the social media outcry following the Boston bombings from 2013, Professor Yu-Ru Lin noted stronger feelings of solidarity, sympathy and pain had a direct correlation to those who had a personal relationship with the city; whether it be they lived there, knew someone from there, or through social media.

This strongly suggests that through globalisation, a more connected world is a more empathetic one.

If local community empathy and kindness serve as a balm to horrific incidents, surely a more globalised, connected world-wide community has the power to brighten even the darkest of times.

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